08 October 06 - 21:00Mensan Fictional Hero
Question : Which fictional hero is a proud member of the Mensa Society, although he does miss a lot of local meetings. The Author has never been a member, but counts a number of Mensans among his friends and acquaintances.
Answer : Ben Candidi. Who? He's the hero (protagonist) of five Ben Candidi murder mystery novels by author
Dirk Wyle. The pen name of Duncan H. Haynes, Ph.D who retired in 2001 to write the Ben Candidi novels, all based on amateur sleuthing in a medical environment or setting.
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Used tags: ben_candidi, duncan_h_haynes, fictional, mensan
04 October 06 - 06:57Back from the UK Mensa AG 2006
This was an amazing 5 days, spent in the company of almost 600 other Mensans, many who had flown from as far away as New Zealand, the USA, Canada and many European countries including Poland, Switzerland, france, Holland and Germany.
There's a full set of Mensa AG Photos
here.
Most Mensa weekends kick off on a Friday night but there were so many present on thursday evening that it was a mini icebreaker in itself. We had the entire Hotel bnooked out which helps and a big central bar area which was a terrific hub for meeting up. For once, we had a decent hotel as well- the Brittania in Nottingham.
Friday saw the main icebreaker event with everyone playing body Scrabble. Each player was given a Scrabble letter with the score and had to get others to make up a high scoring word.
Here is a photo of a 15 pointer. It wasn't really a competition though some took it very competitively. By the time we'd got enough letrters for the word quizzically we';d lost the will to live- possibly alcohol had something to do with that.
Saturday saw the AGM- the real business of the AG and a variety of quizzes, talks, trips out, meetings, and of course games playing. reiner Knirtzia's Mensa Connections was the competition game and the games area was busy at various times. I abandoned the pub crawl as trying to get over a hundred people into three small pubs on a weekend evening.. um perhaps not such a good idea!
There were so many people that two official and one unofficial dinner took place on Saturday night. I was at the Black tie dinner where Gerald Ratner was extremely entertaining about his former business 'problems' and kept us amused for half an hour.
Things petered out for most on Monday with a few early leavers on Sunday.A few die-hards stayed on for a goodby meal Monday night but by tuesday you'd never have known we were there. It was a remarkable few days and thanks to the two hard working organisers Maxine and Andy and their team of volunteers : Susan, Mark, Geoff, Michael (and others) and the Mensa office staff who made this such a great weekend. The hotel of course vastly under rated our drinking capacity but managed to cope, with only minor problems.
And the weekend raised over £1,500 for the
RNIB talking books.
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Used tags: ag, gerald_ratner, icebreaker, mensa, nottingham
