This is Mensan.Eu a collaborative Mensa blog, open to any mensan in the world to signup and say their bit.
Inform, educate, entertain ... whatever, so long as its slightly relevant to Mensa the international High IQ society. Ie interesting to mensans or anyone interested in Mensa.
If you wish to become a site member and blog, contact me via this web form or email mensanblogger@gmail.com
You must be a member of Mensa (any country). Note. This blog is unaffiliated with and has no connection with Mensa. Not officially anyway!
David (Mensa Demographic…): I have only met one or tw… Buckshot (Mensa Demographic…): C’mon, be brave. Tell us… David (Intelligence and …): Occasionally it’s about M… Dusk (Intelligence and …): Nice site. This blog is n… David (Mensan Youth): I was 20 when I joined (1… Bob (Pivot 1.30 Beta 2…): And this is what a commen…
27 July 06 - 19:36Intelligence and Heredity - NY Times Article
A very interesting piece in the N.Y Times about recent research into heredity and its effect on IQ. In “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,” the University of Kansas psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley find that by the time they are 4 years old, children growing up in poor families have typically heard a total of 32 million fewer spoken words than those whose parents are professionals. That language gap translates directly into stunted academic trajectories..
Regardless of whether the adopting families were rich or poor, children whose biological parents were well-off had I.Q. scores averaging 16 points higher than those from working-class parents. Yet what is really remarkable is how big a difference the adopting families’ backgrounds made all the same. The average I.Q. of children from well-to-do parents who were placed with families from the same social stratum was 119.6. But when such infants were adopted by poor families, their average I.Q. was 107.5 — 12 points lower.
In conclusion- if you want your kids to be bright, stimulate them, talk to them, read to them, play them music, sing engage their thinking process. Do as much as possible to grow their brains, before they are four.
Sureprisingly, it's milk chcolate not dark chocolate. Well dark chocolate is good for diabetes and blood pressure. A Wheeling Jesuit University professor reports that eating milk chocolate can improve your brain activity. Fifteen minutes after consuming various types of chocolate (and none at all). various intelligence tests were performed.
Composite scores for verbal and visual memory were significantly higher for milk chocolate than the other conditions," says Dr. Raudenbush, associate professor of psychology and director of undergraduate research at the University. “Consumption of milk or dark chocolate showed improved impulse control and reaction time. These findings provide support for nutrient release via chocolate consumption to enhance cognitive performance.”
So there you have it. Milk Chocolate makes you smarter, for a while anyway. Mind you I found out the hard way that eating chocolate can also make you fat!
In my experience, it's hard to find people my age at Mensa events. I know from an earlier post that the majority of Mensans are over 40 (and I'm not), so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Attending lunches and events, I always found myself surrounded by people well over 20 years my senior. It's not that I can't chat with these folks (they're always very friendly), but doing so is only infrequently how I'd choose to spend my Friday night on Monday afternoon.
In my local group, we formed a "20-30 something" group....
As well as the SIGs (Special Interest Groups) mentioned in the a previous Blog entry, local groups all round the world publish newsletters. For about 6 months back in 1990 I produced one for the Blackpool & Fylde as I was Locsec there. As with any group, getting material for a newsletter (or blog!) is the hardest job.
I did a quick search on Google for Mensa Newsletter and there are some excellent examples to be found. I won't include the menu though. Mensa is also the name for a refectory -ie Student Canteen in Germany!
One of the lesser know benefits of Mensa membership is the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which flourish within the Mensa world, providing members with a means to interact through a common interest. SIGs publish newsletters- some quite fabulous creations and many now have websites and/or forums.
You can see some here and a list of over 100 on the British Mensa website here.. I can't substantiate this claim but I suspect that a lot of Mensans get more out of their SIGs membership than by ever attending meetings. Mensa's dark secret, well not really dark is that only 5-10% of members are active and attend pub nights. The other great things about SIGs is that any Mensa member can start one.
Why even I (David) am webmaster of partysig in British Mensa. As the old joke goes. "What comes before Part B?" - Partay!
Looking around the web, I came across the BBC's Science and Nature Homepage with a topic on Intelligence. There's a quiz on "What sex is your brain?". Apparently I scored highly at tests that women are generally good at, distinguishing between subtle hints and details and having a good visual memory. D'oh!
This might explain my equal fascination with the extreme cosmetics section on the same website but honestly, any topic that starts with Lasers, sandpaper, acids and toxins are now used in cosmetic treatments and Botox is a diluted food poison used to temporarily paralyse muscles is sort of fascinating. Honest!
The Wilmington Star website reviews Dupree and starts with this choice paragraph. "You know: The buddy from high school (or maybe college) who's the life of the party but doesn't know when to leave, the merry prankster who instigates all the stunts but who never quite grows up. He's the MENSA member who's still trying to find himself at 36, who knows all the answers but can't hold a job, maintain a relationship or find someplace to live other than a dorm-room substitute."
My first introduction to the word Mensa was reading Winston Churchill's autobiography. IIRC he hated Latin and had to recite all the different tenses and declensions of the word Mensa. Here are all the meanings and uses I could find.
Mensa - Latin for Table.
Mensa - Mexican slang for Stupid Woman. (Shouldn't that be Densa!) Apparently Mensa there is called Mesa but I can't confirm that.
Mensa - German or Dutch word meaning University canteen for students.
Mensa is also a constellation viewable in the southern hemisphere.
Mensa is the word used in planetary geology to describe a flat elevated rock- what is known as a Mesa in the south west of USA, which explains the Mexican use of it as well.
12 July 06 - 09:16Sir Clive Sinclair about to get on his bike
Britain's most famous Mensan ( and Honorary President of British Mensa) has been working on a folding bike called an A-Bike for the last couple of years. It is not electric, just very compact, weighs 12lbs and should sell around the $300 mark according to this article (with pictures). The wheels look as if they're from a supermarket trolley but apparently are pneumatic.
11 July 06 - 07:03Why Members Leave - a Past Survey Reveals...
20 years ago, in August 1986, Jack B. ReVelle, Ph.D. and Brenda L. ReVelle conducted a survey for American Mensa. They are reproduced with permission here.
In April 1986, questionnaires were mailed to 900 former and 500 present members. A total of 355 former members and 280 present members returned their surveys for response rates of 39 and 56 percent, respectively.
From the Survey report "The majority of present members have been in Mensa for over three years and are over 40 years of age. Most are married, salaried professionals with a graduate degree. Just over half of present members are male. Members learned about Mensa primarily from a published article. Most frequently cited reasons for joining are (in order): intellectual stimulation, to prove they could qualify, to meet others with similar interests, and to seek friends. "
Victor was one of the key people who helped British Mensa grow - 8 years after it started in 1946 there were only four people at the 1954 AG- two of those being Victor and his wife Winifred. At that point it was just a bunch of friends who liked to meet. As Secretary though, it all changed. He added zest to a flagging black-tie dinner club by sending out brochures, appearing on television, contacting universities and introducing supervised testing as an entry requirement.
Then he decided that Mensa must be completely impartial with no corporate views, and that anything said by any member should be his or her personal view not Mensa's. The original mission of providing advice to governments was quietly put to one side as no one was interested. The rocket was loaded, the fuse lit and Mensa took off.
07 July 06 - 07:36About Densa, the opposite of Mensa
Unless you qualify for membership of Densa, you can probably figure out what Densa is about. There is no official Densa organisation or website BTW- all the various registered Densa domains just have adverts, i.e no inimical value, apart from Densa.me.uk which will point here soon!
Densa is a mythical organisation whose membership (in theory) is at the other end of the Bell curve from Mensa. Thinking this through of course, it would suggest that they are just about living and breathing with barely above zero intelligence and unable to join a bus queue never mind any kind of group. Surprisingly the word densa returns over 3 million results on google. You can find various Densa quizzes all over the web with questions like "Do they have a 4th July in England"...
In the news this week, Linda Walker a former university administrator fron Newcastle in the North East of England suffered a stroke and started talking with an accent that resembled Jamaican, or French Canadian or even Slovakian. This is an example of "Foreign Accent Syndrome". The first case was diagnosed in Norway in 1941 when a woman suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air raid. Afterwards she started talking with a German accent. Not a particularly good thing to have then! She ended up ostracised because of it
I'm not but on this page about left handedness, it is claimed that 20% of Mensans are. Mind you it also states that British slang for left-handed are: kefty, scrammy, and wacky and I've never heard those terms used which makes me wonder if that 20% assertion? Apart from passing the Mensa test and having lots of computer programmers (or so it seems) are there other characteristics that Mensans share?
If there is one thing that Mensa members have in common it's a love of books. I have hundreds, perhaps thousands. So here is a new site feature. Book Reviews by Mensa members. I've started the ball rolling with a review of the The Book of Tells.
Read an Interesting book recently? Send in a book review and share it with us.
Book Publishers. Got a book that you think would look well reviewed by a member of Mensa? Email mensanblogger@gmail.com.
27 07 06 19:36Intelligence and Heredity - NY Times Article
A very interesting piece in the N.Y Times about recent research into heredity and its effect on IQ. In “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,” the University of Kansas psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley find that by the time they are 4 years old, children growing up in poor families have typically heard a total of 32 million fewer spoken words than those whose parents are professionals. That language gap translates directly into stunted academic trajectories..
Regardless of whether the adopting families were rich or poor, children whose biological parents were well-off had I.Q. scores averaging 16 points higher than those from working-class parents. Yet what is really remarkable is how big a difference the adopting families’ backgrounds made all the same. The average I.Q. of children from well-to-do parents who were placed with families from the same social stratum was 119.6. But when such infants were adopted by poor families, their average I.Q. was 107.5 — 12 points lower.
In conclusion- if you want your kids to be bright, stimulate them, talk to them, read to them, play them music, sing engage their thinking process. Do as much as possible to grow their brains, before they are four.
Sureprisingly, it's milk chcolate not dark chocolate. Well dark chocolate is good for diabetes and blood pressure. A Wheeling Jesuit University professor reports that eating milk chocolate can improve your brain activity. Fifteen minutes after consuming various types of chocolate (and none at all). various intelligence tests were performed.
Composite scores for verbal and visual memory were significantly higher for milk chocolate than the other conditions," says Dr. Raudenbush, associate professor of psychology and director of undergraduate research at the University. “Consumption of milk or dark chocolate showed improved impulse control and reaction time. These findings provide support for nutrient release via chocolate consumption to enhance cognitive performance.”
So there you have it. Milk Chocolate makes you smarter, for a while anyway. Mind you I found out the hard way that eating chocolate can also make you fat!
In my experience, it's hard to find people my age at Mensa events. I know from an earlier post that the majority of Mensans are over 40 (and I'm not), so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Attending lunches and events, I always found myself surrounded by people well over 20 years my senior. It's not that I can't chat with these folks (they're always very friendly), but doing so is only infrequently how I'd choose to spend my Friday night on Monday afternoon.
In my local group, we formed a "20-30 something" group....
As well as the SIGs (Special Interest Groups) mentioned in the a previous Blog entry, local groups all round the world publish newsletters. For about 6 months back in 1990 I produced one for the Blackpool & Fylde as I was Locsec there. As with any group, getting material for a newsletter (or blog!) is the hardest job.
I did a quick search on Google for Mensa Newsletter and there are some excellent examples to be found. I won't include the menu though. Mensa is also the name for a refectory -ie Student Canteen in Germany!
One of the lesser know benefits of Mensa membership is the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which flourish within the Mensa world, providing members with a means to interact through a common interest. SIGs publish newsletters- some quite fabulous creations and many now have websites and/or forums.
You can see some here and a list of over 100 on the British Mensa website here.. I can't substantiate this claim but I suspect that a lot of Mensans get more out of their SIGs membership than by ever attending meetings. Mensa's dark secret, well not really dark is that only 5-10% of members are active and attend pub nights. The other great things about SIGs is that any Mensa member can start one.
Why even I (David) am webmaster of partysig in British Mensa. As the old joke goes. "What comes before Part B?" - Partay!
Looking around the web, I came across the BBC's Science and Nature Homepage with a topic on Intelligence. There's a quiz on "What sex is your brain?". Apparently I scored highly at tests that women are generally good at, distinguishing between subtle hints and details and having a good visual memory. D'oh!
This might explain my equal fascination with the extreme cosmetics section on the same website but honestly, any topic that starts with Lasers, sandpaper, acids and toxins are now used in cosmetic treatments and Botox is a diluted food poison used to temporarily paralyse muscles is sort of fascinating. Honest!
The Wilmington Star website reviews Dupree and starts with this choice paragraph. "You know: The buddy from high school (or maybe college) who's the life of the party but doesn't know when to leave, the merry prankster who instigates all the stunts but who never quite grows up. He's the MENSA member who's still trying to find himself at 36, who knows all the answers but can't hold a job, maintain a relationship or find someplace to live other than a dorm-room substitute."
My first introduction to the word Mensa was reading Winston Churchill's autobiography. IIRC he hated Latin and had to recite all the different tenses and declensions of the word Mensa. Here are all the meanings and uses I could find.
Mensa - Latin for Table.
Mensa - Mexican slang for Stupid Woman. (Shouldn't that be Densa!) Apparently Mensa there is called Mesa but I can't confirm that.
Mensa - German or Dutch word meaning University canteen for students.
Mensa is also a constellation viewable in the southern hemisphere.
Mensa is the word used in planetary geology to describe a flat elevated rock- what is known as a Mesa in the south west of USA, which explains the Mexican use of it as well.
12 07 06 09:16Sir Clive Sinclair about to get on his bike
Britain's most famous Mensan ( and Honorary President of British Mensa) has been working on a folding bike called an A-Bike for the last couple of years. It is not electric, just very compact, weighs 12lbs and should sell around the $300 mark according to this article (with pictures). The wheels look as if they're from a supermarket trolley but apparently are pneumatic.
11 07 06 07:03Why Members Leave - a Past Survey Reveals...
20 years ago, in August 1986, Jack B. ReVelle, Ph.D. and Brenda L. ReVelle conducted a survey for American Mensa. They are reproduced with permission here.
In April 1986, questionnaires were mailed to 900 former and 500 present members. A total of 355 former members and 280 present members returned their surveys for response rates of 39 and 56 percent, respectively.
From the Survey report "The majority of present members have been in Mensa for over three years and are over 40 years of age. Most are married, salaried professionals with a graduate degree. Just over half of present members are male. Members learned about Mensa primarily from a published article. Most frequently cited reasons for joining are (in order): intellectual stimulation, to prove they could qualify, to meet others with similar interests, and to seek friends. "
Victor was one of the key people who helped British Mensa grow - 8 years after it started in 1946 there were only four people at the 1954 AG- two of those being Victor and his wife Winifred. At that point it was just a bunch of friends who liked to meet. As Secretary though, it all changed. He added zest to a flagging black-tie dinner club by sending out brochures, appearing on television, contacting universities and introducing supervised testing as an entry requirement.
Then he decided that Mensa must be completely impartial with no corporate views, and that anything said by any member should be his or her personal view not Mensa's. The original mission of providing advice to governments was quietly put to one side as no one was interested. The rocket was loaded, the fuse lit and Mensa took off.
Unless you qualify for membership of Densa, you can probably figure out what Densa is about. There is no official Densa organisation or website BTW- all the various registered Densa domains just have adverts, i.e no inimical value, apart from Densa.me.uk which will point here soon!
Densa is a mythical organisation whose membership (in theory) is at the other end of the Bell curve from Mensa. Thinking this through of course, it would suggest that they are just about living and breathing with barely above zero intelligence and unable to join a bus queue never mind any kind of group. Surprisingly the word densa returns over 3 million results on google. You can find various Densa quizzes all over the web with questions like "Do they have a 4th July in England"...
In the news this week, Linda Walker a former university administrator fron Newcastle in the North East of England suffered a stroke and started talking with an accent that resembled Jamaican, or French Canadian or even Slovakian. This is an example of "Foreign Accent Syndrome". The first case was diagnosed in Norway in 1941 when a woman suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air raid. Afterwards she started talking with a German accent. Not a particularly good thing to have then! She ended up ostracised because of it
I'm not but on this page about left handedness, it is claimed that 20% of Mensans are. Mind you it also states that British slang for left-handed are: kefty, scrammy, and wacky and I've never heard those terms used which makes me wonder if that 20% assertion? Apart from passing the Mensa test and having lots of computer programmers (or so it seems) are there other characteristics that Mensans share?
If there is one thing that Mensa members have in common it's a love of books. I have hundreds, perhaps thousands. So here is a new site feature. Book Reviews by Mensa members. I've started the ball rolling with a review of the The Book of Tells.
Read an Interesting book recently? Send in a book review and share it with us.
Book Publishers. Got a book that you think would look well reviewed by a member of Mensa? Email mensanblogger@gmail.com.
