Parsley is a bright green biennial herb, often used as spice. It is common in Middle Eastern, European, and American cooking. It is used for its leaf in much the same way as coriander, although parsley has a milder flavor.

A type of parsley is grown as a root vegetable in Central and Eastern European. It produces much thicker roots than those cultivated for their leaves. Although little known in Britain and the United States it can be used in soups and stews. Parsnips are among the closest relatives of parsley, although root parsley tastes quite different.

Parsley is widely used as a companion plant in gardens. It attracts predatory insects including wasps and predatory flies to gardens, which then tend to protect plants nearby. For example, they are especially useful for protecting tomato plants as the wasps that kill tomato hornworms also eat nectar from parsley. While parsley is biennial, not blooming until its second year, even in its first year it is reputed to help cover up the strong scent of the tomato plant, reducing pest attraction.

Chinese and German herbologists recommend parsley tea to help control high blood pressure, and the Cherokees used it as a tonic to strengthen the bladder. When crushed and rubbed on the skin, parsley can reduce the itching of mosquito bites. When chewed, parsley can freshen bad breath.

Parsley should not be consumed as a drug or supplement by pregnant women. Parsley is high in oxalic acid, a compound involved in the formation of kidney stones. Parsley oil contains furanocoumarins and psoralens which can lead to extreme photosensitivity if used orally.

The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983 to more accurately define the concept of intelligence and to address the question whether methods which claim to measure intelligence are truly scientific.

Gardner’s theory argues that intelligence, particularly as it is traditionally defined, does not sufficiently encompass the wide variety of abilities humans display. In his conception, a child who masters multiplication easily is not necessarily more intelligent overall than a child who struggles to do so. The second child may be stronger in another kind of intelligence and therefore 1) may best learn the given material through a different approach, 2) may excel in a field outside of mathematics, or 3) may even be looking at the multiplication process at a fundamentally deeper level, which can result in a seeming slowness that hides a mathematical intelligence that is potentially higher than that of a child who easily memorizes the multiplication table.

As one would expect from a theory that redefines intelligence, one of the major criticisms of the theory is that it is ad hoc. The criticism is that Gardner is not expanding the definition of the word intelligence, rather, he denies the existence of intelligence, as is traditionally understood, and instead uses the word intelligence whenever other people have traditionally used words like ability.

Gardner argues that by calling linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities intelligences, but not artistic, musical, athletic, etc. abilities, the former are needlessly aggrandized. Many critics balk at this widening of the definition, saying that it ignores the connotation of intelligence which has always connoted the kind of thinking skills that makes one successful in school.

Defenders of the multiple intelligence theory would argue that this is simply a recognition of the broad scope of inherent mental abilities, and that such an exhaustive scope by nature defies a simple, one-dimensional classification such as an assigned IQ value. They would claim that such one-dimensional values are typically of limited value in predicting the real world application of unique mental abilities.