Tag Archives: Genius

THEODORE (TED) KACZYNSKI — WHAT MADE THE UNABOMBER TICK

Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski is a former math professor turned American domestic terrorist— the Unabomber—who’s serving life without parole for murdering three random people and injuring twenty-three others in a series of explosions. Kaczynski’s reign of terror lasted seventeen years from 1978 to 1995. During that time, the FBI conducted their lengthiest and most expensive investigation ever undertaken. The case is long closed, but a lingering question remains. Why’d he do it? What made the Unabomber tick?

Ted Kaczynski got his Unabomber tag long before he was caught. It developed through law enforcement and mainstream media because his victims were primarily associated with UNiversities and Airlines, hence UNA bomber. The name caught on and is still solely associated with Kaczynski today.

Before going into the Unabomber’s modus operandi, series of crimes, and how he was identified, it’s necessary to know who this man was. That’s the key to rationalizing his motive. It’s also necessary to know this man was not insane. No. Far from it. Actually, Kaczynski was a far-sighted genius.

Let’s look at what made the Unabomber tick.

Ted Kaczynski was born near Chicago in 1942 which makes him eighty today. His parents were working-class Polish Americans who provided a stable home for Ted and his younger brother, David. Early on, his family noticed a brilliance shining in Ted which also caught his teachers’ attention.

Academics came easy for Ted Kaczynski—especially mathematics. An early IQ test scored him at 167 which put Ted in the “highly gifted” category. He skipped grades in public school and entered Harvard University at age sixteen through a scholarship.

Peers and professors described Ted as “very intelligent but socially unprepared” for the campus. He was quiet, reserved, and not any source of trouble or rebelliousness. In 1962, at age twenty, Ted Kaczynski graduated with an advanced mathematics degree and a GPA of 4.12.

Ted Kaczynski went on to the University of Michigan where he earned his masters and doctorate in math. In 1967, his dissertation won the university’s top prize to which his doctoral adviser said it was the best he’d ever seen. It was so advanced, the advisor said, that perhaps only a dozen people in the country were equipped to understand it.

The University of California, Berkley, offered Ted Kaczynski a professor of mathematics role. He accepted it and, in 1968, he was given full tenure at Berkley. He was the youngest prof on the campus.

At this point in Ted Kaczynski’s life, his entire outlook changed. He became very disenchanted—disillusioned, embittered, or jaundiced, you could say—with “The System”. Without any explanation, he abruptly resigned on June 30, 1969, and moved back to his parent’s home.

Ted Kaczynski reconnected with his brother, David, and the two undertook a venture of building a 10-by-12-foot cabin in the secluded mountains near Lincoln, Montana. It was without power and water, but the isolation and discomfort suited Ted just fine. He lived off odd jobs and financial support from his family.

The Unabombings began nine years after Ted Kaczynski quit his university position and seven years after he became a Montana hermit. Here is a bombing timeline copied from the FBI’s Unabomber website:

May 25, 1978: A passerby found a package, addressed and stamped, in a parking lot at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus. The package was returned to the person listed on the return address, Northwestern University Professor Buckley Crist, Jr. He did not recognize the package and called campus security. The package exploded upon opening and injured the security officer.

May 9, 1979: A graduate student at Northwestern University is injured when he opened a box that looked like a present. It had been left in a room used by graduate students.

November 15, 1979: American Airlines Flight 444 flying from Chicago to Washington, D.C., fills with smoke after a bomb detonates in the luggage compartment. The plane lands safely, since the bomb did not work as intended. Several passengers suffer from smoke inhalation.

June 10, 1980: United Airlines President Percy Woods is injured when he opened a package holding a bomb encased in a book called Ice Brothers by Sloan Wilson.

October 8, 1981: A bomb wrapped in brown paper and tied with string is discovered in the hallway of a building at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The bomb is safely detonated without causing injury.

May 5, 1982: A bomb sent to the head of the computer science department at Vanderbilt University injures his secretary, after she opened it in his office.

July 2, 1982: A package bomb left in the break room of Cory Hall at the University of California, Berkeley explodes and injures an engineering professor.

May 15, 1985: Another bomb in Cory Hall at the University of California, Berkeley injures an engineering student.

June 13, 1985: A suspicious package sent to Boeing Fabrication Division in Washington is safely detonated, but most of the forensic evidence was lost.

November 15, 1985: A University of Michigan psychology professor and his assistant are injured when they opened a package containing a three-ring binder that had a bomb. The bomber included a letter asking the professor to review a student’s master thesis.

December 11, 1985: A bomb left in the parking lot of a Sacramento computer store kills the store’s owner.

February 20, 1987: Another bomb left in the parking lot of a Salt Lake City computer store severely injures the son of the store’s owner. A store employee sees the man leave the bomb, and that witness account helped a sketch artist create the composite sketch.

June 22, 1993: A geneticist at the University of California is injured after opening a package that exploded in his kitchen.

June 24, 1993: A prominent computer scientist from Yale University lost several fingers to a mailed bomb.

December 19, 1994: An advertising executive is killed by a package bomb sent to his New Jersey home.

April 24, 1995: A mailed bomb kills the president of the California Forestry Association in his Sacramento office.

———

The FBI formed a task force in 1979. It was jointly with the US Postal Service and the ATF. The force grew to over 150 full-time investigators, lasted seventeen years, and amassed millions of documents .

To say the investigators were stumped is an understatement. They had no idea who the Unabomber was, but they knew one thing. They were dealing with a genius.

The Unabomber deliberately constructed his devices from common and untraceable components. Further, he chose his targets randomly. There was no clear pattern to his victims except that they were linked to various universities and airlines.

The big break in the Unabomber case came in 1995. An anonymous person, claiming to be the Unabomber, sent a 35,000-word essay to the FBI. It was titled Industrial Society and Its Future. This manifesto, as the Unabomber called it, came with a clause. The Unabomber promised to stop his campaign of terror if his views on the ills of modern society were published in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The FBI Director and the US Attorney General made a tough decision. Despite an existing policy never to negotiate with terrorists, they agreed that by asking the Times and the Post to print the Unabomber’s piece someone would recognize the author.

The manifesto became public on September 19, 1995. Someone did recognize the Unabomber’s style—his brother, David Kaczynski. David contacted the FBI and gave them the tip. Ted Kaczynski became Unabomber suspect #2,416.

On April 3, 1996, the FBI raided the Unabomber’s tiny Montana cabin and arrested Ted Kaczynski. They found mountains of indisputable evidence. So much so that Ted Kaczynski confessed and pleaded guilty to all charges. He was sentenced to life without parole on January 22, 1998.

Psychiatrists did extensive interviews with Ted Kaczynski. Primarily, this was to establish if his mind state was suitable to understand due process and stand trial or if he was clinically psychotic. The shrinks said, clearly, that Ted Kaczynski was in full control of his faculties—in fact, highly intelligent and completely aware of what he’d done.

Struggling to figure him out, they classified Ted Kaczynski in a Psychiatric Competency Report (as per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM 4) as:

Axis I: Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type, Episodic with Interepisode Residual Symptoms

Axis II: Paranoid Personality Disorder, with Avoidant and Antisocial Features

Nowhere in the 43-page report do they address a motive. That’s because they couldn’t find one. Neither could the courts, although motive is a non-necessary ingredient of establishing the burden of proof. Many armchair quarterbacks and internet sleuths have optioned opinions on why someone as bright as Ted Kaczynski would do something as crazy as Unibombing.

The answer is hiding in plain sight. Ted Kaczynski offers his motive up front in his 232-paragraph manifesto. Here are the opening quotes to help understand what made the Unabomber tick:

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE

INTRODUCTION

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it may eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a political revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.

In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as 2 unimportant. For practical reasons, we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM

Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology. (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the whole truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY

By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self- 3 esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro”, “oriental”, “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy”, “dude” or “fellow”. The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion”. Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word “primitive” by “nonliterate”. They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures are inferior to ours. We merely point out the hyper sensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.

Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. are inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)

Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may not be as strong and as capable as men.

Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They say they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he grudgingly admits that they exist; whereas he enthusiastically points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

Words like “self-confidence”, “self-reliance”, “initiative”, “enterprise”, “optimism”, etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, procollectivist. He wants society to solve every one’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in 4 his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, and objective reality, and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior.1 But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they prefer masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive 5 to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to invent problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

———

Theodore Kaczynski goes on for another 209 paragraphs but, by now, he’s made his point. He’s warning the world of the irresponsible and elite, progressive liberal movement—the Wokes—the counter & cancel culture we now see wrestling their own paranoid,  non-acceptable of other viewpoints, Wokeism chokehold on political and academic power—meaning their ideologic, counter-right, non-common-sense agendas. Ted Kaczynski saw this in 1995, but he had no platform like today’s social media he’d had to get out his message. His only venue was through mainstream publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

By setting himself up with the notoriety he created through the Unabomber persona, Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski achieved his goal and his manifesto lives on forever, easily obtained through the internet.

That’s what made the Unabomber tick.

DID ALIENS REALLY ABDUCT GRANGER TAYLOR?

On the evening of Saturday, November 29th, 1980, then 32-year-old Granger Taylor departed his parent’s farmhouse near the town of Duncan in the Cowichan Valley on southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Granger vanished—apparently into space—never to be seen alive again. Some closest to Granger believe his mysterious disappearance was an actual close encounter of the third kind. They’re convinced that, somehow, aliens really did abduct Granger Taylor.

Alien abduction stories are rare—exceptionally rare. Most people dismiss an alien abduction story as pure bullshit or the product of a mentally impaired mind amplified by hallucinogens. But the theory of Granger’s alien encounter and subsequent space trip are based on interesting facts. That’s partly because Granger Taylor told his friends and family about ongoing telepathic alien contact and left a note explaining what he was up to the night he left home forever. Here’s what Granger’s message said:

“Dear Mother and Father, I have gone away to walk aboard an alien ship as reocurring dreams assured a 42 month intersteluar voyage to explore the vast universe, then return. I am leaving behind all my possesions to you as I will no longer require the use of any. Please use the instructions in my will as a guide to help. Love, Granger.”

Hearing a will mentioned in a run-away note immediately raises suicide suspicions. However, Granger modified his will and replaced the words “death” and “deceased” with “departure” and “departed”. The problem with suspecting suicide in Granger’s case was he had absolutely no sign of suicidal thoughts or tendencies. In fact, Granger Taylor had everything to live for. He was an exceptionally bright and gifted man.

The best description for Granger was an eccentric genius. Although Granger was odd in some ways and did a few things outside the lines, no one ever called Granger Taylor crazy. Associates described Granger as “eccentric”, “a prodigy”, “brilliant” and a “mechanical guru”. Over his short time on earth, Granger lived up to these terms and more. However, there’s far more to the Granger Taylor story.

Was this an actual case of alien contact?

Granger Taylor

Granger quit school after Grade 8. He said he’d learned every academic thing he needed to know including reading, writing and arithmetic at a level far beyond his years. Granger went to work repairing and building machinery. He proved a natural machinist and mastered self-taught skills ranging from welding to electronics.

They say Granger was somewhat shy and reclusive, although by no means antisocial or a hermit. He was a large man but extremely gentle and generous. Granger was never one for girls or the party scene, rather he immersed in mechanics and engineering. He remained single and attached to his parents where he slept in his childhood bedroom on their 21-acre rural property.

At age 12, Granger scratch-built an automobile powered by a one-cylinder engine he designed. By 14, he could tear down and rebuild practically every type of motor vehicle and moved on to heavy equipment. That took in logging trucks, farm tractors and vintage bulldozers.

One of Granger’s most ambitious projects was rescuing a derelict steam locomotive from an abandoned logging site. He disassembled the train engine and packed it piece-by-piece from the bush to his farm. Over time, Granger restored the locomotive to full working order. Today, it sits on display at the British Columbia Forest Museum in Granger’s home town of Duncan.

Not satisfied with wheels and tracks, Granger developed a keen interest in flight. His mechanical curiosity was unbounded and he longed to understand how airplanes operated. As strange as it seems, Granger source the fuselage of a World War II Kitty Hawk fighter plane. As with the locomotive, Granger found parts for the plane. What he couldn’t buy, he built.

Within two years, Granger made the Kitty Hawk airworthy. Although he didn’t have an airstrip at his farm, let alone a pilot’s license, Granger’s intelligent creativity came up with a flight plan. He installed restraint bars in the back of the plane and then chained it to a massive tree. By powering up the engine and working the flaps, Granger elevated the aircraft and held it to hover.

Granger’s farm plane was a huge community hit. Many people watched him demonstrate the fighter which he eventually sold to a collector for a tidy sum. Speaking of money, Granger was no slouch when it came to business. By the time he disappeared, Granger amassed a considerable bank account which he left for his parents.

Although Granger was somewhat reserved, he was exuberant about helping the local youth. Granger gave his time and teachings to help kids throughout the Cowichan Valley. There was never a hint of impropriety with young folks associating with Granger and he never had the remotest hint of being troublesome in the community.

Granger Taylor was clearly project-orientated. Once he mastered the mechanics and engineering principles of mobility like vehicles’ locomotives and aircraft, Granger extended his interest horizons. He began studying spacecraft which led to his curiosity about intelligent alien lifeforms and what advanced technology they likely possessed.

Granger made it his mission to find out. The late 70s were a time fixated on the possibilities of space and space life. This was the time of TV shows like Star Trek and movies such as Close Encounters and Star Wars. UFO reports were common and a few alien abduction stories sporadically surfaced.

Granger watched, read and observed everything he could about space travel and what machines would take him there. That led to Granger Taylor building a flying saucer. He made it from two huge satellite TV dishes and welded together a convincing concoction which, for all the world, looked like the classic UFO shape often depicted in alien contact stories.

Granger didn’t intend his flying saucer model to fly. Rather, he used it as a think-tank where he’d spend hours in quiet thought—meditating is a good analogy—and it was during long periods of solitude and altering his state of consciousness that Granger Taylor began to have episodes where he reported telepathic contact with voices from beyond.

One of Granger’s closest friends and confidants was a man named Robert Keller. Bob Keller was younger than Granger—just in his late teens when Granger departed. Bob still lives in the Cowichan area and firmly believes Granger was in full control of his faculties despite disclosing his conversations with distant deities.

Bob Keller also described a side of Granger many didn’t see. It turns out Granger Taylor loved smoking marijuana. He did some of his best thinking while stoned. Keller states he and Granger would seal up the space ship and turn it into a giant hotbox where they’d blast away and reef themselves into another reality.

During these weedy sessions, Granger elaborated on his recurring alien contacts and how they’d offered him safe passage to distant parts so Granger could experience advanced technology first-hand. Granger told Keller that his departure day was approaching and leaving the earth was something he had to accomplish.

Bob Keller also disclosed that besides cannabis, Granger experimented with hallucinogens—specifically LSD or acid. In later media interviews, Granger’s sister confirmed the LSD abuse but was steadfast it was simply a curiosity for Granger to expand his mind. There were no reports Granger was a habitual drug user with bad trip troubles that would negatively affect or impair his thought process.

Granger Taylor’s parents also confirmed Granger “did some drugs” but he had no substance abuse issues, including alcohol. Granger didn’t drink. The parents were also adamant Granger showed no sign of mental illness and absolutely no hint of suicidal plans. To all Granger’s family members and friends, Granger was on a continuous curiosity voyage and it was a natural step to seek higher knowledge.

Granger’s Parents – Jim & Grace Taylor

Family and friends were divided about the alien abduction theory surrounding Granger Taylor. Some believed it and some didn’t. But all agreed Granger’s whereabouts was a total mystery. As Jim Taylor (Granger’s father) put it at the time, “It’s hard to believe Granger went off in a space ship, but if there is a flying object out there, he’s the one to find it.”

Granger Taylor’s 42-month hiatus expired on May 29th, 1984. During the time, Jim and Grace Taylor kept their back door unlocked and their son’s bedroom intact in the remote hope the ship would land and Granger would return unharmed. It didn’t work out that way.

In 1986, nearly six years after Granger left the note for his folks, forest workers discovered a giant blast site in the woods. Not too far from the Taylor farm, as the crow flies, there was an overgrown debris area roughly 600 feet in diameter. This was off a secluded service trail near the top of Mount Prevost which is the high point overlooking the Cowichan Valley.

Strewn about the blast site were vehicle parts. Shrapnel was embedded in trees well above the ground and other parts were driven deep into the soil. The police investigated and soon tied the blast site to Granger Taylor. Within the debris field were parts displaying the vehicle identification number (VIN) recorded on Granger’s pickup truck. A police dog search found fractured human bones, the largest being a left-arm humerus. And, sadly, Grace Taylor confirmed that clothing remnants recovered from the site were consistent with a shirt she’d made for their son.

There was nothing left of Granger Taylor’s body to make a positive ID. His skull and teeth weren’t found, and this was the days before prevalent DNA testing. However, the circumstances were sufficient for the coroner to confirm Granger’s death and the police were satisfied there was no foul play—despite the enormous explosion.

Officially, Granger Taylor’s missing persons case was closed with his classification of death being “undetermined”. Coroners have five death classifications available to wrap up their investigations—natural, accidental, suicide, homicide and undetermined. Common sense dictates no case could arguably be made of Granger dying from natural causes. Additionally, there was no evidence that someone killed Granger to establish a homicide ruling.

It’s a stretch to think Granger accidentally blew himself up, certainly not with a force of that magnitude. That leaves a hard look at suicide. However, coroners must follow a guideline called the “Beckon Test” where the balance of probabilities must overwhelmingly support a conclusion the decedent intentionally took their own life.

In Granger Taylor’s case, the coroner obviously struggled with firmly concluding the death was a suicide. One supporting pillar for a suicide conclusion is any history of suicidal thoughts, expressions or tendencies. In Granger’s case, there was nothing—absolutely nothing—in his past to suggest he was planning a suicide. Within the normal understanding, that is. It appears the presiding coroner ruled with caution and gave Granger the benefit of the doubt despite knowing about suspicious occurrences happening the day Granger Taylor said goodbye.

Jim Taylor reported that a “significant” volume of dynamite disappeared from his farm along with Granger. The Taylors were licensed to keep and use explosives for stump clearing on their land. Granger was completely familiar and competent with using dynamite and engineering explosive demolitions.

Something else happened on November 29th, 1980. A “100-year” storm hit the Cowichan Valley that evening. It knocked down trees and killed power across the area. Granger knew it was coming, and he’d told Bob Keller that the aliens would arrive under the cover of a storm to camouflage their presence.

Granger was last seen leaving a diner where he was a usual patron. This was about 6:30 pm. It’s a half-hour drive from the restaurant to the top of Mount Prevost through a tight, switch-backed dirt road. Around 8:00 pm, residents at the mountain’s base heard a loud “Boom!” It wasn’t consistent with storm thunder.

Looking back, there’s no doubt Granger Taylor died in a vehicle explosion. The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive. There’s also no realistic doubt Granger orchestrated the blast that ended his life. The question is why.

Why did an apparently untroubled and free-thinking man do something so outrageous? Why did Granger plan his demise and tie it to contacting alien intelligence? What in this world was going on in that brilliant mind?

I don’t think this puzzle can be solved. It can only be speculated. Perhaps the answer lies within the mind and where sources for ideas originate—no matter how bizarre, creative or devastating these notions can be.

Most people believe in some sort of a higher power that provides all information necessary to govern the universe. You can call it God, Infinite Intelligence or Mother Nature. Regardless of the name, human minds seem programmed to tap into this source of ideas that Plato called “Forms”. That’s where the word “information” derives.

Granger Taylor was a remarkable man. In life, he was inventive and inquisitive. Many similar people are described as a blend between nuts and geniuses. Maybe it’s because their thoughts are so far out on some intelligence plane that “normal” people like me can’t relate.

Possibly a genius like Granger projected his thoughts into a part of the universe not experienced by most humans at this point of our evolution. Maybe, in return, some sort of thought pool—call it an alien presence, if you’d like—responded to Granger and communicated in some telepathic way. Strange things happen. Think how lesser species like spiders get instructions to build web structures that humans can’t recreate with our current technology.

There’s an argument that Granger had some sort of undiagnosed mental trouble. Compounding the mental illness, his mind might have been polluted by illicit drugs. But that doesn’t wash given Granger’s history and the mass of literature indicating few people, if any, are driven to a thoroughly planned-out suicide by a mellow pot buzz or a good acid trip.

No. Something else had to be going through Granger Taylor’s head when he rocketed himself and his truck on top of the mountain. Perhaps it was a true belief he’d mentally connected with alien intelligence forms and the only way to leave his earthly shackles and join them was by blowing himself into space.

If that’s the truth then maybe, in some bizarre psychological way, aliens really did abduct Granger Taylor’s mind.

HOW INTELLIGENT ARE YOU?

Ever taken an IQ test? If you did, you probably marked around 100. That’s the average where over 80 percent of all people fall in. Maybe you scored higher—say 140. That’d put you in the top 2 percent where Mensa members like Stephen Hawking resided. Or, you could be down in the 80s which some consider slow. But don’t feel bad if you’re sub-100 because Steve Jobs got an 86 and he made out just fine.

IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient. That’s an arbitrary scale where mental cognitive functions are examined and given a numeric value. How valid is it? Well, there are divided opinions on IQ meanings. Some brilliant savants need velcro for shoelaces while Muhammad Ali, who scaled 76, handed out exceptional jabs of wisdom never mind dealing knock-out blow interviews.

If you’ve never taken an IQ test, here’s your chance to do one online. There are lots of sites available. Some are credible. Some are not. One belongs to Mensa and that worldwide organization for the gifted is considered the leading authority for rating and linking people with exceptionally high IQs. Their acceptance mark is 132. It has to be verified under proctored conditions. But, then, Mensa membership has its perks.

Can you make the Mensa club? You just might. But, first, let’s look at what science says about intelligence, where it comes from and where it’s going—especially artificial intelligence or AI. We’ll see how intelligence is classified as well as investigate human traits more important than book smarts. It’s interesting to know some famous people’s IQs and who are the top 5 of all time. We’ll sample a Mensa exam and give you the opportunity to test drive one. Then we’ll check how I made out qualifying for Mensa.

True intelligence is tough to define. It’s subjective and objective at the same time. That makes defining intelligence controversial. Possibly the best analogy comes from Albert Einstein who said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” Einstein never took an IQ test and he’s estimated to have ranked pretty high mentally. Practicality was a different story. He theorized relativity and the space-time continuum but couldn’t balance his checkbook. Socrates also had a go at defining intelligence. “I know that I am intelligent because I know nothing,” the great philosopher said. Then Socrates dismissed the brain as being part of the body’s cooling system and concluded intelligence came from the heart.

The word “intelligence” comes from the Latin verb “intelligere” which means to comprehend or perceive. This developed into the Greek “intellectus” or “understanding” and the phrase “intellectus intelligit” that translates to “understanding understanding”. This play-on-words describes a general mental capacity involving the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think in abstract, comprehend complex ideas, communicate and learn from experience. It’s more than book learning, academic skill or test-taking smarts. Intelligence is the ability to make sense of things, catch on quick and figure out what to do.

There are many theories of intelligence. They come from scientific disciplines like neurology and psychiatry. They flow from philosophers and learned scholars in education. Even religious groups take a crack at rating intelligence. Regardless of where opinions come from, two main forms of human intelligence are universally recognized.

  1. Crystallized intelligence encompasses factual knowledge gained through education and life experiences.
  2. Fluid intelligence is the ability to process information, make logical decisions and inhibit irrational emotional impulses.

Two main theories around intelligence are attributed to Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg. Gardner, a Harvard professor, itemized seven specific components of intelligence—musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal. The idea behind his theory explains why some people are better than others at skills like numbers, words and relationships. Sternberg disagreed. He broke intelligence into three groups—analytical, creative and practical. Those are abilities to solve problems, deal with new situations and adapt to changing environments.

Charles Spearman hypothesized that one factor generally framed intelligence. He called it the “g-factor” and postulated all people are basically the same—only some are better at things than others. I’m not sure I follow that simple reasoning and tend to agree with mainstream theories of intelligence being divided into distinct categories. It seems some people are clearly at ease with particular intellectual domains and there’s no single factor explaining performance across a wide range of intelligent abilities.

Anatomy and neuroscience have taken a good, hard look at what constitutes intelligence. They see it developing as electro-chemical signals being transported through interconnected neuron circuits. Basic brain structure monitored by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows most “intelligent” interactions occur in the frontal or parietal region and are centered in the anterior cingulate cortex. This is called the Parietal-Frontal Integration (PTI) theory and it’s supported by scientific evidence.

There’s one problem with the PTI theory. It can’t account for consciousness. Without consciousness, there’s no intelligent operation in the brain and science doesn’t have the remotest grasp on the nature or origin of consciousness. Consciousness is suspected to be the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) that unites the basic known physical properties of space-time and energy-mass into one single explanation of the universe. At the center of the GUT is the source of intelligent consciousness and God only knows where that came from. But that’s another discussion.

Over centuries, educators recognized various students have various cognitive abilities. At the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, German psychologist Wilhelm Stern was tasked by a government public school commission to devise a way for detecting children with significantly below-average intelligence and mental retardation. The idea was to economically group these kids into Special-Ed classes rather than lock them inside expensive asylums.

In 1905, Alfred Binet developed a scoring system for the intelligent quotient Stern was looking for. Binet used a ratio of mental ability to chronological age and based it on a point system with 100 being average. Anything below 100 was classified in retarded degrees and anything above was considered advanced. It was like ignition timing on an internal combustion engine. Lewis Terman at Stanford University in the United States realized Binet was on to something so Terman fine-tuned the IQ test into what’s known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. It’s still in use today as the industry standard.

The Stanford-Binet 5th Edition IQ Range Classification goes like this:

  • 160+ —      Brilliant
  • 145-159 — Very gifted or highly advanced
  • 130-144 — Gifted or advanced
  • 120-129 — Superior
  • 110-119 —  High average
  • 90-109 —    Average
  • 80-89 —      Low average
  • 70-79 —      Borderline impaired or delayed
  • 55-69 —      Mildly impaired or delayed
  • 40-54 —      Moderately impaired or delayed
  • 39- —          Not classified

When the Stanford-Binet IQ Test was first used, there were official classifications for people who scored low. The terms “moron”, “imbicile” and “idiot” were dropped in recent years out of correctness but we all know buzz words for smart and dumb people. Today, “switched-on” and “switched-off” are part of the Urban Dictionary. So are “privileged”, “backward”, “enlightened”, “dimly-lit”, “high-brow” and “half-wit”. We’re not allowed to say “retard” like I was teased as a kid. It’s now replaced with “mentally-challenged” which I’m not. My mother had me tested.

So the logical question is, “How did human intelligence develop to the point I’m at today?” Anthropologists agree homo sapiens jumped down from the primate tree around 2 million years ago and made a huge mental leap forward when they learned to cook food. That took intelligence in harnessing fire just as it took intelligence to invent simple machines like the wheel and axle, the screw, the pulley and the inclined plane. Despite what creationists say about evolution, the evidence is empirical that our brains progressively evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to expand a field called intelligence. Genetics, diet and social interaction played a big part.

Discoveries and inventions made life easier. They gave humans more time to refine arts, literature and sport. Devices evolved into complex machines like smart cars and computerized guidance. Our evolution has arrived at the point where intelligent machines are in daily use and moving forward fast. We’re at the threshold of implementing Practopoiesis. That’s the conceptual bridge between biology and artificial intelligence. AI is here and it’s a matter of time before computerized brain implants are real.

That might be good and that might be bad for the human species. We’ve always struggled between haves and have-nots. Social advancement intrinsically links to out-thinking a competitor but societies have a way of balancing fairness in weak vs. strong. We’re able to see a line between naturally knowing and not being able to know.

It’s important to know IQ testing is not meant to identify character or personality traits. It’s strictly a ranking of intelligence to form a baseline for comparison. But the Stanford-Binet equation is recognized as a valid and useful measure for psychological and legal purposes. It forms part of a criminal defense strategy to establish mental culpability and the United States Supreme Court established anyone with a score of 70 or less is exempt from the death penalty.

Before we look at how your IQ Test is structured and where you’ll mark, let’s see who’s been tested and how they rated. Many famous and infamous people have their IQs recorded and psychologists have speculated about where historical figures stood. We’ll break the categories down into science/invention, politics/military and arts/entertainment.

Science/Invention

  • Albert Einstein — Swiss physicist — 160
  • Albrecht von Haller — Swiss medical scientist — 190
  • Benjamin Franklin — American inventor — 160
  • Bill Gates — American inventor/businessman — 160
  • Blaise Pascal— French philosopher — 195
  • Charles Darwin — English botanist — 165
  • Edith Stern — American computer engineer — 198
  • Francis Crick — British discoverer of DNA — 134
  • Henry Ford — American automaker — 125
  • Immanuel Kant — German philosopher — 175
  • Isaac Newton — English scientist — 190
  • Leonardo da Vinci — Italian inventor/artist — 190
  • Marie Curie — French chemist — 185
  • Paul Allen — Microsoft co-founder — 168
  • Ruth Lawrence — British Mathematician — 175
  • Stephen Hawking — British theoretical physicist — 160

 Politics/Military

  • Abraham Lincoln — US President — 140
  • Adolf Hitler — Nazi leader — 141
  • Andrew Jackson — US President — 120
  • Angela Merkel — German Chancellor — 136
  • Benjamin Netanyahu — Israeli Prime Minister — 182
  • Bill Clinton — US President — 137
  • Barak Obama — US President — 130
  • Boris Johnson — British politician — 79
  • Donald Trump — US President — 156
  • George Armstrong Custer — US Cavalry leader — 80
  • George W. Bush — US President — 125
  • George S. Patton — American WW2 general — 151
  • Hillary Clinton — American politician — 143
  • John F. Kennedy — US President — 117
  • Margaret Thatcher — British Prime Minister — 176
  • Ronald Raegan — US President — 103
  • Ulysses S. Grant — US Civil War general/US President — 110
  • Vladimir Putin — Russian President — 130

Arts/Entertainment

  • Andy Warhol — American painter — 86
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger — American actor/politician — 135
  • Asia Carrera — International adult film star — 156
  • Bobby Fischer — American chess master — 187
  • Brittany Spears — American singer — 104
  • Charles Dickens — British writer — 180
  • Cindy Crawford — American model — 154
  • Conan O’Brien — American television host — 160
  • Geena Davis — American actor — 140
  • James Woods — American actor — 180
  • Jodie Foster — American actor — 132
  • John Travolta — American actor — 90
  • Lisa Kudrow —American actor — 161
  • Madonna — British entertainer — 141
  • Mayim Bialik — “Amy Farrah-Fowler” on Big Bang Theory — 163
  • Nicole Kidman — Australian actor — 132
  • Paris Hilton — American celebrity — 120
  • Quinton Tarantino — American movie director — 165
  • Robin Williams — American actor/comic — 142
  • Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) — British actor — 178
  • Tina Fey — American entertainer — 143
  • Tom Cruise — American actor — 94
  • Vincent van Gogh — Dutch painter — 150+

That’s a pretty diverse and well-known crowd but they’re not the smartest— at least not as recorded IQ goes. That mark of distinction goes to these five.

  1. Marilyn vos Savant holds the Guinness Book of Records as the smartest woman alive. She’s best known for her high score but is an accomplished author and advice columnist. Ms. vos Savant repeatedly broke the 200 mark in IQ tests.
  1. Kim Ung-Yong is a Korean child prodigy. By the time he was three, Kim was fluent in five languages and could read and write all. He became a NASA engineer but returned home where he quietly teaches university classes. Kim has an IQ of 210.
  1. Christopher Hirata is an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology where he began professing at 14. He won the Physics Olympiad gold medal at 13 and scored 225 on his IQ exam.
  1. Terrance Tao is a Chinese genius who teaches advanced mathematics at the University of California. He’s won every math prize there is. It’s probably due to his IQ being 232.
  1. William James Sidis is no longer alive but has the distinction of the highest human IQ score ever recorded. There are discrepancies in test methods but it’s generally accepted he pushed close to 300. Sidis was an oddball and actually quite unstable. He attended Harvard at age 11 as a math student and went on to learn over 40 languages. His political activism got Sidis jailed and he died young. It was a cerebral aneurysm. Literally, his brain exploded.

These smart folks come from diversified backgrounds and have equally diverse personalities. They’re different, yet alike. Psychologists have found six characteristics that high-functioning people have in common, regardless of their IQ level.

  • They’re highly adaptable
  • They know what they don’t know
  • They’re intensely curious
  • They ask good questions
  • They’re sensitive to other people
  • They’re open-minded and critical of their own work

So that’s a wrap of how some scored on their IQ tests and how they operate. Now—how about yours? I’ve lined up a Mensa website where you can try your intelligence but, to practice, here are sample questions for helping you prepare.

Pear is to apple as potato is to?

  • Banana
  • Radish
  • Strawberry
  • Peach
  • Lettuce

There are 1200 elephants in a herd. Some have pink and green stripes. Some are all pink. Some are all blue. One-third are all pure pink. Is it true that 400 elephants are definitely blue?

  • Yes
  • No

If it were two hours later, it would be half as long until midnight as it would be if it were an hour later. What time is it now?

  • 18:30
  • 20:00
  • 21:00
  • 22:00
  • 23:30

What same three-letter word can be placed in front of these words to make a new word?

SIGN, DONE, FOUND, DENSE, FIRM, TRACT, DUCT

“If some Smaugs are Thors and some Thors are Thrains, then some Smaugs are definitely Thrains.” This statement is:

  • True
  • False
  • Neither

The price of an article was cut 20% for a sale. By what percent must the item be increased to again sell it at the original price?

  • 15%
  • 20%
  • 22 ½%
  • 25%
  • 30%

Which one of the five is least like the others?

  • Ham
  • Liver
  • Salmon
  • Pork
  • Beef

If you count from 1 to 100, how many 7s will you pass on the way?

  • 10
  • 11
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21

Sally likes 225 but not 224; she likes 900 but not 800; she likes 144 but not 145. Which does she like?

  • 1600
  • 1700

Jack is taller than Peter and Bill is shorter than Jack. Which of the following statements is the most accurate?

  • Bill is taller than Peter
  • Bill is shorter than Peter
  • Bill is as tall as Peter
  • It is impossible to tell

What is this word when unscrambled?

H C P R A A T E U

Which of the five designs is least like the other four?

  • A
  • Z
  • F
  • N
  • E

Find the missing number:

0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,—,34,55

John received $.41 in change from a purchase at the drugstore. If he received six coins, three of the coins had to be:

  • Pennies
  • Nickels
  • Dimes
  • Quarters
  • Half-dollars

Only one other word in the English language can be made using all the letters from the word INSATIABLE. Can you find it?

If FP = 10 and HX = 16, what does DS = ?

What letter appears next in this sequence? B-V-C-X

Cattell III B has 158 questions. Cattell IV A has 317 questions. Which one is more difficult?

“A fish has a head 9” long. The tail is equal to the size of the head plus one-half the size of the body. The body is the same size as the head plus the tail.” How long is the fish?

  • 27”
  • 54”
  • 63”
  • 72”
  • 81”

I tried 60 of these Mensa test questions and was allowed 20 minutes. After that, the process timed out. That’s 20 seconds per question. It doesn’t give much room for calculating, googling or phoning a friend. I’ll admit I guessed on some — especially the fish.

It’s not my first go-around on an IQ test but was my first try with Mensa. Back in high school, we were given IQ tests as some sort of socialist experiment. We were never shown scores so I don’t know my outcome. I was never a shining light in grade school but was smart enough to slide through by friending the smart kid.

I sat beside Terry Blaney (we called him Terry Brainey) and I glanced across as Terry whizzed through our IQ test. I checked off what I saw him do then guessed the rest. My bet is Terry’s IQ hits 140 or better. He went on to get an engineering degree and I became a cop. I never kept in touch with Terry but you can’t hide on the internet. So I found him on Linked-In and see he retired as a VP with Shell Oil. Now Terry runs his private petroleum consulting business in Shanghai and I’m a wanna-be crime writer doing blog posts like this.

Which brings to my own intelligence and also to yours. Over the years, I’ve slid a lot further on bullshit than on gravel. And my experience firmly proves that bullshit baffles brains. But I know it’s hard to BS the computerized Mensa format so I gave it an honest go. Here’s the link if you’d like to try it: https://www.mensaiqtest.net/

I did the best I could with 60 questions within 20 minutes. Man, that was a challenge. Some were easy. Some took a pen & paper. Some were pure guess and some were gut feel. But all required an application of intelligence no matter how you approached. Then I hit the calculate button and got this:

The bastards wanted 19.92 Euro to release my score. That’s over 20 bucks US—25 up here in Canada. They accept Visa, Mastercard and other forms of payment but I hit the escape button and left.

I guess that’s the mark of intelligence.