Too smart for my own good

Or, if you're so smart, why ain't you rich? I noticed a little picture on Stu Savory's blog that announced that the reading level for his blog was "College (Undergraduate)". I thought cool, so I tried it myself. It came back genius. At first I thought that's pretty cool, someone (more like something) acknowledges how smart I am. But then I thought maybe that's not so good. Only geniuses can understand what I right? Not too many of them around, might explain why I have so few readers. But then I got to wondering about what this evaluation was based on. The default page of my blog? All the blog entries? The number of big words I use? What?

I try to be clear "to even the meanest understanding"*, but an evaluation like that indicates that perhaps I am not succeeding. I know I am not the greatest writer. I can put together sentences that can convey some meaning, but I don't think anyone will ever mistake it for elegance. Numbers are more my cup of tea. I think all my kids write better than I do.

I saw the word cloud widget on someone else's blog and I thought it was pretty cool, so I thought I would add it to my blog. I did and one word stood out in bold in the middle of the cloud: REALLY. I think my high school English teacher would have grimaced at that. Shoot, I grimaced. I didn't post the word cloud widget on my blog.

And why aren't I rich? Well, relative to some people I am, but then any American is rich compared to most of the third world. But the real answer is that money is just not that interesting. I suspect I could make a living day trading (buying and selling stocks). The trick would be to find some stocks that are actively traded, but don't really change much. They might go up or down a few points but basically they stay in the same range. Of course it takes nerves, especially if you using very much of your capital. But it's work, you have to stay on top of it constantly, and you really have no control over what's going on. You are like a seagull following a ship. You know there are going to be scraps coming over the side, all you have to do is hang out and wait for them. I'm not very good at waiting, I get bored. I want something to do.

*this phrase comes from reading too much Patrick O'Brian.

Update December 2016 replaced missing image. Old readability test has vanished, new one claims this blog has a 5th grade reading level, but the results are liable to be skewed by the large number of navigation items in the right hand column.