I'm No Genius, but...
We're still getting mail for the guy who lived here before us. He subscribes to a magazine for drummers and The Mensa Bulletin.
The Mensa Bulletin caught my eye and I sat down to read it. I was curious about what geniuses (OR is it genii?) talk about. I assumed there would be stuff about rocket science and complicated math problems, but it's mostly politics.
Then, I went to the Mensa website and took their little practice quiz called the Mensa Workout to see if I, too, could qualify as a genius and belong to an exclusive club of really, really smart people. Could I be a little genius diamond in the rough just living among the common stones that make up the rest of the world? Well, it turns out the answer to that is no, BUT, I didn't do too bad on it (as long as we don't count the fact that I went over the stop time by a half hour). You only have 30 minutes to answer 30 questions. That ain't easy with questions like this:
If it were two hours later, it would be half as long until midnight as it would be if it were an hour later. What time is it now?
I hate math word problems. I'm okay with straight-up number crunching, but as soon as I have to actually use it to figure out a problem, I'm lost. I mean, they don't even tell you whether they're talking about Eastern Standard or Pacific time. That has to factor in somewhere.
I'm alright with patterns and word problems though, but that's because I buy those Dell puzzle books all the time, so I had an advantage there.
But, back to The Mensa Bulletin. There's a Question of the Month section in which readers email their answers. The question is: Why Are We at War in Iraq? Here are some answers submitted:
"Islam is a serious long-term threat to life as we know it. Our government had to start somewhere, and Iraq was it." by Dr. Miles E. Kuttler (SmileK@aol.com)
----------
"They promoted this invasion long before 9-11 and even before Bush's election, originally to Israel. The reason for this goes back to Moses and the Bible. Moses told the Israelites that they should inhabit a nation that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River. All gentiles should be enslaved to serve it.
The westward expansion of Israel has also come to a virtual halt. Softening up Iraq, then Iran and Syria, is in preparation for their resumed march to the Euphrates." by Gordon Bakken (g-j-b@usa.net)
----------
"They fell into the trap that Osama bin Laden laid to get the U.S. involved in a war to cause our collapse and to bankrupt us." by Matthew James Kenney (mjkyk@worldnet.att.net)
----------
"Say what you will in retrospect about the wisdom of implementing [Donald Rumsfeld's Eight Objectives of War]; to attribute any additional motivation to the administration is simply conspiracy theory run amok." by Jerry H. Tempelman (jerry_tempelman@yahoo.com)
To be fair, there were many good answers to that question as well as the less-than-genius answers above. But overall, most Mensas agree that it was all about the oil.
The rest of the magazine was boring. Some interesting letters to the editor. Some not-so-interesting stuff, like listings of Mensa gatherings, Mensa election results, Mensa achievements (a guy made it on the list of Top 10 U.S. Attorneys), list of Mensas who died recently, Mensa submitted articles where people wax nostalgic about boring shit...
But, then I came across something interesting. It's about The Free State Project, an agreement among 20,000 Libertarians to move to New Hampshire and just fucking take it over. They plan to turn it into a Libertarian state by getting into government and community positions and then reforming it. They even talked about secession. Yale University professor Jason Sorens published an article in The Libertarian Enterprise in 2001 (see link above), which outlines the plan. Unfortunately, for Libertarians (but not the rest of us), fewer than 8,000 have joined and only about 500 actually moved to New Hampshire. I give them credit though. At least they're trying to make a difference and they're serious about it, even though Libertarianism could never work and it's a selfish ideology.
Another article called The Tyranny of the Minority left me wondering if this is the conservative (Libertarian) version of the Mensa Bulletin, and if so, was there also a liberal version?
"Membership in a minority does not deny a person their rights, but neither does it grant them more than the next person."
I kept reading to find out which minority group has more rights than the majority (White Christian men), but couldn't find anything. Continuing through the magazine...a weak argument about liberty and freedom. It basically says some of our rights should be repressed. Yes, I agree. That's why we have laws. But he spells it out for us anyway, as in "I am not free to exceed the speed limit." Although, I disagree with "we are not free to advocate overthrowing the government." Yes we are. Thomas Jefferson said so in the Declaration of Independence. We can totally do that. I hope Homeland Security doesn't read this.
Next, another article on freedom and liberty and rights. This time it's about free speech and how the government is taking it away. That's nothing new or profound. Another article by someone who is paranoid that his guns will be taken away. Some bad Mensa poetry:
Once did a shy but spry gypsy
Spy a pygmy, who made him feel tipsy
Her form, like a lynx, sylph, and nymph
Made all his glands feel quite lymph
Oh my God! Make it stop! Okay, okay. I turned the page. An article called Nuclear Waste Pyramids that says instead of burying nuclear waste, we should build Egyptian-type pyramids over collections of radioactive waste. See, that right there is the kind of thing that people think about when they're stoned and write it down. But, the next day when you read over it, you're all like, "What the hell is this?" This guy sent his idea in though. And they actually published it.
Some stuff about science: "Lightning is not only pretty and dangerous, it represents a vast chemical synthesis engine, manufacturing something between two and 20 teragrams of NOx per year, worldwide." Turning page now...the rest is a list of books about New England and then a bunch of ads.
So here's what I learned about Mensas: Some wrote very intelligent articles, others stated the obvious, and some of them must have cheated on their IQ tests. Also, they should stick to science and math and stay away from politics.
