IQ And Alphabet Soup

Here’s a headline today on CNN-IBN:

Six-year-old has IQ higher than Einstein

Leave aside the dubiousness of the concept of IQ and the measurement of it—two thoughts strike me here:

1. Given that IQ, such as it is, is something that we’re more or less born with, a luck of the draw, why is this a matter of pride for anyone? It doesn’t represent an achievement of any sort, and if anything, the parents of that kid should be humbled by the good fortune they’ve got, and determined to make something out of it and then boast.

2. Why does that article tell us that the kid “loves alphabets” and “recite[s] alphabets backwards”? A, B, C all the way to Z are letters of the alphabet, not alphabets. Indeed, A to Z is one alphabet. Now, it is entirely possible that the kid, being so terribly smart, can actually recite alphabets like the Hanunó’o, Aramaic, Ge’ez, Abakada and even Roman backwards. But somehow, I doubt that’s what the writer meant.

(Link via email from Deepak.)