Mensan.Eu - A Mensa blog

LOLMENSA

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 11:03:00 +0100

It's an epidemic. LOLCATS is evolving faster than people can mange. Now it's spread to Mensa.

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IMAG This Weekend

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:12:00 +0100

The annual Irish Mensa Gathering takes place in Belfast between Thursday 3rd of May until Monday the 7th. These are always popular and attract many visitors from afar. This year includes the Titanic tour, a trip to Stormont, Carrickfergus castle and many more. I'll be there with my trusty camera.

Mensa Wikipedia

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:52:00 +0100

It's always interesting to find new resource about Mensa. This was set up by Daniel Tobias, an active mensan and webmaster. He is a busy person- go and look at http://dan.info - Its pretty uptodate with entries about the latest partysig sig sec and even one for myself, which I've enhanced..

The Mensa Unoff List

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 08:05:00 +0100

For over ten years, British Mensa has had an Unoff list. You have to be a member (or ex-member) to gain admission, but this is a lively though not overly heated discussion group. More akin to a virtual pub meet is how some describe it.

There used to be a link to this on the old Mensa website but that was lost with the new one. If you are interested in knowing more, just email unoff-mensa-uk-l-request@home.ease.lsoft.com. You will need some proof or personal association.

Unoff btw is just unofficial. Although it's about Mensa (and all topics of interest to mensans- like this website) it has no official mensa recognition.

Vegetarianism and Mensans

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:15:00 +0100

According to the Australian Daily Telegraph newspaper, a new study, published in the British Medical Journal, suggests that people who choose the vegetarian path are smarter than their carnivorous counterparts. The study traced 8,000 people from birth and found that those who became vegetarian by 30 had an IQ five points above the average.

The implication though is not that choosing the path of vegetarianism makes you smarter (if anything you would expect it to be less smarter - perhaps not eating Omega 3 from fish) but that being smarter makes you more inclined to be vegetarian.

New British Mensa Community Website - Brief Review

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:41:00 +0100

This is the new Mensa website that I've mentioned before. Well it's been up a few weeks and I do like it. A nice clean modern look, and best of all it works with mensa.org.uk as well as www.mensa.org.uk. That's a minor techy thing but I do hate to see sites that only work on www.

It's still early days though with regards to contents. Like a village where everyone has moved in but theres no pub or church or social centre. The screen shot shows the members area- the navigation bar is in yellow while its almost white in the public area. There's more choices as well- theres news, events, community, shop and self development as well as sub menu options off these. I was impressed with being able to add money to my sigs account. British Mensa members get 2 sigs (Special Interest Groups) as part of their annual subs and you can buy extras. It took just 3 mins to add money.Some pats are user generated- you can add events for ad hoc meetings that didn't make the magazine or just announce them early. I'll look at some other features in the next part of this review. Don't expect me to give away any secrets though?

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Web Community Starts Within the Week

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:50:00 +0100

Things have been quiet here, but I received my username/password form for the new British Mensa Websites sor "Web Community" as it is called, and will report back once I've tried it.

This will give British Mensa a 'This is what Mensa offers you' edge to its marketing if they choose to use it. Of course not everyone in Mensa has heard of computers but the UK is pretty advanced in that respect. I expect the next Mensa mag will be full of stuff about it.

Mensan Fictional Hero

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:00:00 +0100

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.

Back from the UK Mensa AG 2006

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 06:57:00 +0100

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.

Off to the AG

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 07:47:00 +0100

So what cerebral activities will I be participating in this weekend? Well tonight will be the pub crawl around Nottingham. So if you are in the vicinity and see a bunch of intellectual inebriates, it might just possibly be myself and others. I remember my last one, round Birmingham a year or two back. It ended up in a noisy debate with a mate who I'll call Pete (for that is his name) and I arguing over the weight of air inside a hot air balloon.

Tomorrow though is the Karaoke which I have to confess is one of my favourite activities. Sadly this clashes with the Poker tournament which is also something I enjoy though I'm not quite Doyle Brunson yet.

But fear not dear reader, Mensa does have intellectual activities as well. I'll be chairing the meeting regarding the Meson Sub B particle which Fermillab have just confirmed (as we predicted ten years ago) flips flops between being matter and anti matter 2.7 trillion times a second. After that comes the revision of the UFO encounter protocol. We think that the Govts of the world should remove the 'apply deadly force immediately to overwhelm alien life forms and secure advanced technology' as a little bit provocative or at least tone it down.

Then its the AG saturday, dinner saturday night with Gerald Ratner (as previously discussed). You cann see for yourself what we'll get up to (or at least what we admit we'll get up to!) here.

PS. One of these paragraphs may be full of porkies...

Seen Any Good Articles on Intelligence

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:23:00 +0100

US Mensa offers an annaual prize of $1,000. This will be given annually for the best reporting in a newspaper or magazine meant for a general audience, on the topic of human intelligence, especially giftedness. Articles must have appeared during calendar year 2005.
(I assume this rolls forward!).

So if you have seen any that you thought were good or have written yourself, write to Phyllis Miller: millerp@mail.montclair.edu

The last one was in March 2006 so presumably March 2007?

Some More Mind Games

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 22:14:00 +0100

I came across these today. I'm also a Director in a Personality Survey company (they're surveys not Personality Tests !) and slowly building up a website called Personality Tests though it now covers a bit more than that.

On this site you'll find an interesting selection of IQ Quizzes, Memory tests and Mind Toys.

Which reminds me, I've just bought my other half a Nintendo DS with the Big Brain Game on it. Once I've doubled my IQ or at least had a good play, I'll write a review of it.

New British Mensa Website Due

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:47:00 +0100

If I recall correctly, the new British Mensa website is intended to go live in September 2006 at the AG. The old one has been around years and is a little creaky- not so easy to search, and it usually takes about 8 clicks to get anywhere.

One of the problems with Mensa is that it has members of all ages and technical ability. Passing an IQ test is not a guarantee that you can operate a VCR or even use the web. So moves to make Mensa wholely web based risks disenfranchising a proportion of members. As time goes on, the numbers of such luddites will dwindle. It won't happen soon but there must come a time?

Mensa Games The Game of Set

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:11:00 +0100

Had you been in a pub on Baker Street (London), last night, you might have observed 6 mensans playing card, dice and board games. I don't think you could isolate Mensa and games playing. E.g. there is the Mensa Games in the UK and the Mensa Select weekend in the USA. And before you ask, yes I did play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) when younger!

One of the games we played was Set. This is a pack of cards with one, two or three shapes on each card. 12 cards are turned face up and all the players have to scan them looking for sets of three with matching or not matching attributes. Think its easy- have a look on the maker's website.
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Congrats MSO Winners

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 15:45:00 +0100

The Mind Sports Olympiad finished a couple of weeks ago with entrants and winners from all over the world. At least an Englishman won the "Draughts English Go As You Please Championship". We may not have won the soccer World Cup but in Draughts we can hold our head up proud without too much huffing.

I see the winner of the Acquire competition was an old game playing acquaintance of mine - Michael Haytack. Well done that man!

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