I was just now invited to a birthday party on Monday for a friend who is going to be in from England for Thanksgiving. It's too late to order pounds for a gift, and I don't want to get her anything that will take up too much room in her luggage. Does anyone have any ideas?

Doctor Who comics? Obama comics?

I'm not sure she is a comic fan.

Turkey jerky?

I'm out of ideas.

She's got a couple points here, that I think she's muddling pretty much.(Pointing it out might make me The Man in her eyes, though.Which is a new one for me, gotta say.) 1.Cognitive testing has been badly misused throughout history.(No doubt. I think she is too hard on Binet here...he did the research for an entirely different purpose than the one it was ultimately used for.) 2. Cognitive testing does not tell the full story of a person's life... can't argue here, either. My ACTs kinda stunk up the place, comparatively. But somehow that gets all wrapped up in the cultural preference for verbal fluency and all kinds of other shit. But then, I also like cleverness and verbal fluency too...in fact, they sometimes get me hot. Does that make me a Tom or something? Ok, I admit it might be a fetish once it makes me crush on Alan Grayson, but then I'm a pervert, not an ableist.

Cereal: Kind of want to post the previous and watch Crip Blogger Lady's head spin off. But that's kind of why I'm not really in the Movement anymore. They don't get me either. sj: gift card or like, zoo membership.

Yeah, Binet was researching in order to help identify students who might need extra help because he believed intelligence was fluid. It was the good ol' USA that took the test and said, "Hey, this would be a nifty way to categorize people in order to stratify them and match them up with the hierarchical job system we've formed post industrial revolution!" I have an excellent article about this somewhere. I'll link to it later. We've been studying thus concept a lot at school this year--talking about shifting from a fixed to a growth mindset about intelligence. The parents and students are much harder to convince than the teachers, sadly.

Yes - there's a HUGE difference between saying "IQ tests are flawed and have been used to justify all sort of horrific racism/etc" and saying "No human being is more or less intelligent than any other human being," and she seems to be conflating the two in a big way.

This was what I was taking from it, and why I have a problem with her conclusion. Using any kind of standardized test to determine someone's intellectual capacity and therefore worth as a human being -- not a good idea.

Calling the word "intelligence/intelligent" an ableist word, though -- I can't get behind that.

But can William Shatner?

Exactly. Intelligence is something people can acquire over time, brain research says, so how can it be ableist? It's not like being blind, which is generally a done deal, barring medical miracle.