You have probably heard the concept, "taking an academic interest" in something. From An Asperger Dictionary of Everyday Expressions By Ian Stuart-Hamilton

Something of academic interest is of limited usefulness and may be considered an inconsequential detail.

If any of my readers has another interpretation of this, I would like to know. You will note the difference between an academic approach or interest, and that of a craftsman. The academic takes idle interest in learning, having no ultimate objective in bringing change or utilizing the knowledge gathered, whereas the craftsman's objective is the direct and immediate use of the information, testing hypotheses through the application of acquired skill. This simple distinction explains everything about American education. Whereas Commenius, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Cygnaeus, Salomon, Dewey and other early educators called for learning through doing, modern education stops with the acquisition of information. It is what happens when you leave crafts out of the classroom, or raise children under the influence of computers. You end up with children who can't write with pencil or pen, can't braid or do the most simple crafts and have no foundation for exploration of more complex systems or realities.

The paper I mentioned to you this morning from Scientific American is particularly interesting as it applies to intelligence. Every expression of intelligence is a matter of energy. If you are stripped and sapped of energy, you are made stupid as a consequence. Depression does that. The creative use of the hands in skilled effort restores the sense of well-being and control from which emotional energies arise to nourish intellect. This all can be described through an analysis of the generation and distribution of neurohormones, but it is also something you can witness in your own life, no experts required.