This Cartoonist Explores The Absurdly Thin Line Between Genius And Stupidity. An Interview With The Cartoonist. 11 Cartoons.

An interview with the cartoonist. What do you mean by the absurdly thin line between genius and stupidity?

Perhaps there are some people who manage to be geniuses all the time. I’m not one of them. I can be really intelligent in one room, walk through the doorway and suddenly lose all intelligence in the process. There are other ways to switch between genius and stupidity, and this cartoon series explores different ways in which it happens.

As for what is genius and what is stupid, only you can decide that.

Tell me about “call yourself after a contrichthian”.

Many sharks look the same. I was browsing through the common names of sharks and their relatives, the rays and holocephalians, as you do. And became impressed by the wide range of common names and their emotional impact. That’s all.

Tell me about Einstein’s “Common sense is merely a prejudice …”.

As soon as Einstein came up with Relativity in his miraculous year, other physicists started complaining that relativistic time dilation and length contraction contradicted common sense. In exasperation, Einstein responded with “Common sense is merely a prejudice …”. It’s perfectly true, but as the cartoon makes clear, ignoring common sense is not a good philosophy to live by.

The complaints about relativity being against common sense became so bad that Einstein’s colleague Herman Bondi wrote the book “Relativity and common sense” in which he used radar to illustrate that the assumption that light travels at a fixed speed makes relativity inevitable.

Tell me about Large Hardon Collider.

One of the most embarassing moments of my life, one which I haven’t admitted until now, is that in one of my first scientific papers, I transposed two letters in my co-authors name, turning it into an English word that throws an entirely new light on the contents of the paper.

The cartoon “Large Hardon Collider” commemorates that incident. No matter how intelligent, careful, conscientious and dedicated you are. You will make stupid mistakes.

Tell me about the intelligence mindmap cartoon.

IQ is a terribly bad measure of intelligence. Anybody, whatever their intelligence, can with a little training increase their IQ by 20 points. There are so many aspects of intelligence not measured by IQ. Intelligence is knowing what to do when I don’t know what to do. This mindmap lists some aspects of intelligence that aren’t measured by IQ tests, including perhaps the most important of all aspects of intelligence: RUN!

Tell me about the “open mind” cartoon.

The text for this came from a friend of mine. I cannot claim authorship.

Tell me about the “aquatic T rex” cartoon.

The first sign for me that T rex is semi-aquatic was when the sectioning the bones found that extant T rex skeletons are of youngsters. The only way a carnivore could have gained weight that fast is by eating fish. Once we accept that, many other signs point the same way.

The peg-like teeth of T rex are like those of crocs, orca, sperm whale, mosasaur, all who had a mixed diet including fish. The sense of smell of T rex was superb, like that of crocs and large sharks. The eyes and nose were highset with brow ridges like crocs and capybaras.

Perhaps most important of all, a huge carnivorous animal could only sneak up on prey without being seen or smelled, by hiding underwater.

The Chinese medicine for COVID cartoon?

This is pure speculation on my part. The early death rate from COVID was 4% in China, 8% in the USA, 13% in Europe and 19% in Peru and Mexico. One difference is that China used both Western and Chinese medicines simultaneously. Western countries only used Western medicines. Perhaps the Chinese medicines made a big difference, or perhaps not. These are the ones that were used in China.

The “performance enhancing drugs” cartoon?

Creative stupidity is an option. Make up a lie and convince other people of it, then fall into the trap of believing it yourself. The lie may be self-serving or malicious. The lie “practice makes perfect” is self-serving. It’s a blame-shedding alliteration that shifts blame from the teacher to the student, and hides the uncomfortable truth.

Cartoon “incognito”.

43 facial muscles contribute to a smile. This happened to me. I had a photo taken for my passport and, just a fortnight later, facial recognition software couldn’t recognise me as the person in the photograph.

A genuine smile activates so many facial muscles that facial recognition software can’t cope with the change.

Cartoon “would you like to play a game”.

Yes, this happened to me.

I repeat, it’s up to you to decide whether these are stupid or genius.