Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

[Garland Best]

Got this in my email today and it appears to be legit. Perhaps someone would like to try out.
_________________

Good afternoon,
My name is Amanda Boglis and I am the Casting Assistant for CBC’s hit show - Canada’s Smartest Person.

We are reaching out to you today because we are hoping that you might know (or might be yourself!) a well-rounded individual in your chess club that would be perfect for the third season of Canada’s Smartest Person on CBC. Below is our more formal casting blurb that is easy to copy and paste and circulate to your various circles.

It’s a wonderfully-challenging television program with a really positive message, and a really cool opportunity for everyone who is chosen.

We hope that you become a part of the CSP family - we would love for you to be Canada’s Smartest Person!

Cheers,
---
We are currently casting for CBC’s hit prime-time show, “Canada’s Smartest Person” - a groundbreaking interactive competition series that challenges preconceived notions about intelligence and has inspired a nation-wide conversation about what it means to be “smart”. We couldn’t be happier to be launching into another incredibly exciting season!
The revolutionary CBC show has been an international as well as a domestic success, with the format rapidly being acquired in various countries abroad.
The focus of this CBC series is to show the country that there is a lot more to intelligence than simply being a math whiz or a trivia buff or having a high IQ score. Heading into our third season, our Casting Team is searching for Canadians who are ready to put their smarts to the ultimate test! Between Season 1 and Season 2, we have featured some incredibly intelligent and inspiring Canadians from all walks of life: an Olympian, the youngest surgeon in Atlantic Canada, a firefighter, a YouTuber, CEO’s and company directors, a stay-at-home mom, a truck driver, teachers, novelists, a radio host, an artist, grad students and even a cheese salesman! So, remember that “Canada’s Smartest Person” could be anyone - even YOU!
We are currently scouring the country for ‘Canada’s Smartest People’, so, we encourage you to forward along this email to the “best and brightest” and in your circle.
APPLY OR NOMINATE SOMEONE TODAY: CBC.CA/SMARTESTPERSON!
“Canada’s Smartest Person” is guided by the theory of Multiple Intelligence and the idea that there are many different ways people can be smart. Competitors will be tested in the following categories: linguistic, physical, musical, visual, social and logical. We test in all of these different areas to distinguish the Canadian with the most comprehensive and versatile overall intellect. The theory of Multiple Intelligence has redefined what it means to “be smart” and only a rare few excel in all of the different categories.
DO YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW, HAVE WHAT IS TAKES?!?
We have attached our casting notice and would really appreciate if you would distribute it to anyone and everyone you feel might be interested. Selected candidates from the application phase will be contacted for an interview and further testing over the months of June and July 2016.
Being smart has never been this fun!

[Vlad Dobrich]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I nominate Nigel Hanrahan

[Aman Hambleton]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

Thanks for posting Garland.

Like you, I also think we have a very high chance of finding Canada's smartest person on ChessTalk.

Upvoted for visibility.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

Competitors will be tested in the following categories: linguistic, physical, musical, visual, social and logical.

Let me guess - in chessboxing LOL

[Garland Best]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

Like you, I also think we have a very high chance of finding Canada's smartest person on ChessTalk.

The best form of satire is when you almost think the person is serious.

[Nigel Hanrahan]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I nominate Nigel Hanrahan

Thanks! Apparently, I've not only made enemies here. I've decided to watch the show at least. I like that they are using Gardiner's Multiple Intelligence(s) rather than simply some logical-mathematical definition of intelligence.

The late Stephen Jay Gould wrote a famous book, The Mismeasure of Man, in which he skillfully debunked simplistic notions of intelligence like the one I've noted here and showed how some very ugly racism was at the heart of 19th century notions of intelligence. At one time, falsified data around skull measurements were used to claim the greater intelligence of Europeans over Africans, etc.. [The idea was that bigger brains meant more intelligence. But we know now, e.g., that corvids (Ravens, Crows and the like) as well as Cephalopods (Squids, Octopus, Cuttlefish) are brilliantly intelligent creatures. It seems intelligence also has to do with brain size relative to body size.] So good on the CBC for taking a different tack.

There is no truth to the rumour that one of the US networks is doing a spinoff show called America's Dumbest Person. (snort).

[David Ottosen]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I'll gladly hold my hand up and say last time they sent out this call, I applied. Got to interview stage, but I suspect my charisma was too much to be cast. Ah well!

[Eric Hansen]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I'll gladly hold my hand up and say last time they sent out this call, I applied. Got to interview stage, but I suspect my charisma was too much to be cast. Ah well!

Just one question for you Mr.Ottosen: was the interview before or after you became a chessbrah?

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

Got this in my email today and it appears to be legit. Perhaps someone would like to try out.
_________________

Good afternoon,
My name is Amanda Boglis and I am the Casting Assistant for CBC’s hit show - Canada’s Smartest Person.

We are reaching out to you today because we are hoping that you might know (or might be yourself!) a well-rounded individual in your chess club that would be perfect for the third season of Canada’s Smartest Person on CBC. Below is our more formal casting blurb that is easy to copy and paste and circulate to your various circles.

It’s a wonderfully-challenging television program with a really positive message, and a really cool opportunity for everyone who is chosen.

We hope that you become a part of the CSP family - we would love for you to be Canada’s Smartest Person!

Cheers,
---
We are currently casting for CBC’s hit prime-time show, “Canada’s Smartest Person” - a groundbreaking interactive competition series that challenges preconceived notions about intelligence and has inspired a nation-wide conversation about what it means to be “smart”. We couldn’t be happier to be launching into another incredibly exciting season!
The revolutionary CBC show has been an international as well as a domestic success, with the format rapidly being acquired in various countries abroad.
The focus of this CBC series is to show the country that there is a lot more to intelligence than simply being a math whiz or a trivia buff or having a high IQ score. Heading into our third season, our Casting Team is searching for Canadians who are ready to put their smarts to the ultimate test! Between Season 1 and Season 2, we have featured some incredibly intelligent and inspiring Canadians from all walks of life: an Olympian, the youngest surgeon in Atlantic Canada, a firefighter, a YouTuber, CEO’s and company directors, a stay-at-home mom, a truck driver, teachers, novelists, a radio host, an artist, grad students and even a cheese salesman! So, remember that “Canada’s Smartest Person” could be anyone - even YOU!
We are currently scouring the country for ‘Canada’s Smartest People’, so, we encourage you to forward along this email to the “best and brightest” and in your circle.
APPLY OR NOMINATE SOMEONE TODAY: CBC.CA/SMARTESTPERSON!
“Canada’s Smartest Person” is guided by the theory of Multiple Intelligence and the idea that there are many different ways people can be smart. Competitors will be tested in the following categories: linguistic, physical, musical, visual, social and logical. We test in all of these different areas to distinguish the Canadian with the most comprehensive and versatile overall intellect. The theory of Multiple Intelligence has redefined what it means to “be smart” and only a rare few excel in all of the different categories.
DO YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW, HAVE WHAT IS TAKES?!?
We have attached our casting notice and would really appreciate if you would distribute it to anyone and everyone you feel might be interested. Selected candidates from the application phase will be contacted for an interview and further testing over the months of June and July 2016.
Being smart has never been this fun!

Last night I came across something I could post to this thread, to see how many on Chesstalk can determine a logical fallacy (an important component of being 'smarter'). I watched an episode of Stephen Hawking's "Genius" on public television. It's a series of 1-hour shows, where each show focuses on a particular question that many people ask. Three guests on each show get to try out various setups that Hawking has devised to demonstrate a point relevant to the overall question.

Last night's show had the question "What are we?" Let's see who can figure out what is wrong with the way Hawking (who is supposed to be very, very smart) answered this question:


It all started off fine with a general assertion that we are biological entities existing on a rocky planet. At the beginning of the episode, Hawking had the guests kick-start a long, complex apparatus much like the game of Mousetrap (for those who remember that), and this was to show them (and the viewers) that once such an apparatus has been set up, it's outcome is inevitable and predictable once the initial energy has been applied.

Hawking then had the guests toy with some manafuctured magnetic parts in various shapes, yellow and blue in color. The guests soon realized that they could create complex shapes by joining certain of these magnets together -- one of these shapes was a small sphere the size of a tennis ball. Then they realized there was a circular contraption where they were to place all the magnets, with an egg-carton like sponge bottom and a clear plastic wall to hold the magnets inside. The magnets were just thrown in willy-nilly. There was an electrical switch, which when activated caused the entire contraption to shake randomly.

What this showed is that with input of energy, the magnets (in which each shape of magnet represented a chemical element, such as carbon, oxygen, etc.) would gradually and randomly attach themselves to other magnets to form more complex shapes. Several of the spheres mentioned above got formed.

Hawking then tried demonstrating how life arose from lifelessness. For this, he had the guests pour many gallons of water into a very large, semi-spherical clear plastic container. Then he had them add into the water things like salt, amino acids (which could be considered as complex molecules formed by the random process demonstrated by the magnets), and glycerol (a type of sugar, i.e. stored energy). They mixed all that up. It looked something like dirty brown swamp water.

The guests then added to this mixture a small amount of bacteria. A number was given, it might have been 100 bacteria added to the mixuture, or it might have been 1000, but a very small number. Hawking is narrating as they do this, and says that the bacteria represents a complex molecule that at some point in early Earth history was formed and gained the ability to make copies of itself.

Making copies of themselves is exactly what bacteria do, ad finitum ad nauseum. The guests were to come back to their mixture in 24 hours. Needless to say, the bacteria had multiplied many many times over, such that there were now (according to Hawking) over 100 trillion of them in the mixture. They had the special ability to release green light when exposed to oxygen, which was demonstrated so that yesterday's swamp water was now a bowl of glowing fluorescent light green liquid after oxygen was bubbled through it.

Hawking says something like the bacteria, by forming copies of themselves, "have formed life out of lifeless molecules". The episode then moves on to demonstrate the evolution process of natural selection. Hawking's intention is clear: to demonstrate that we are the natural products of a "machine", and that the appearance of the first single-celled living organisms all the way to proliferation of multi-celled creatures in rich diversity as we see today was all predictable once the initial chemical elements were in place and a rocky planet like Earth was formed.

There are 2 things that I can see wrong with this presentation. One of them is quite obvious, and most should be able to figure it out. The other maybe not so much. In any event, it is apparent that Hawking's bias overcomes his 'smartness'.

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I also found this email in my inbox. It was unsolicited and contained an attachment so I deleted it straight away!

[Walter De Jong]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I also found this email in my inbox. It was unsolicited and contained an attachment so I deleted it straight away!

Based on his eminently sensible response, Gordon is clearly qualified to be Canada's Smartest Person :)

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

I'll nominate Ted Hsu of Kingston!

He is the former MP for Kingston and the Islands, voted Parliamentarian of the Year, has physics degrees from Queen's (B.Sc. Hons.) and Princeton (PhD), had careers in banking, nuclear energy, and alternative energy. He hasn't played competitive chess for a while, but had earned a rating of about 1900. :)

[David Ottosen]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

Just one question for you Mr.Ottosen: was the interview before or after you became a chessbrah?

Before. My application contained hardly any profanity, and the actual interview even less. Must have been the problem!

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Canada's Smartest Person - Seeking nominees.

There are 2 things that I can see wrong with this presentation. One of them is quite obvious, and most should be able to figure it out. The other maybe not so much. In any event, it is apparent that Hawking's bias overcomes his 'smartness'.

Well, of course introducing the bacteria is a shortcut. I don't know about your second point. Or if my comment is about the first or the second point. With you, the reasoning is always a little bit fuzzy, to say the least.

But anyways, that doesn't disprove Hawkins' overall point. Life did appear out of lifelessness. You should read more about RNA and how these very simple molecules can self-replicate and eventually form complex structures such as ribozomes, which lead to more complex structures and so on....

The fact that we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle doesn't mean a superior entity designed the whole thing. It just means we're gonna keep digging until we figure out everything. We always did and it's not gonna change, regardless of what some fundamentalists think.

[Dilip Panjwani]

Why Life Does Not Really Exist

The following Scientific American article is interesting:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...-really-exist/