MENSA: lol or...lol?

Wikipedia lists Mell Lazarus, creator/artist of Momma and Miss Peach, as a MENSA member.
lol...or lol?

ALSO I just learned MENSA is not an acronyme, was p sure the "M" stood for "MEATNAL"??

Mensa (play /ˈmɛnsə/; Latin: [ˈmensa]) means "table" in Latin, as is symbolized in the organization's logo, and was chosen to demonstrate the round-table nature of the organization; the coming together of equals.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ed/Mensa_logo.svg/110px-Mensa_logo.svg.png

THIS TABLE IS SQUARE, RIDDLE-SOLVERS!

Much of my 1980s existence to thread...

Buckminster Fuller was president & he's a righteous dude!

when i was 13 i think i wanted to be in mensa, but as an adult i realize that the only self-congratulatory intelligentsia groups worth belonging to aren't quite so on-the-nose about their affiliation

buckminster fuller is def a righteous dude. love the bucky balls. also the geodesic domes.

everything i know about mensa i learned from a friend who used to brag abt being a mensa member

the total sum of that knowledge being that he is, in fact, a mensa member

I don't know anything about Mensa at all, really. I just imagine loquacious people sitting around solving riddles/battling this guy
http://comicsroots.webs.com/riddler2.jpg

Is it like ROtary Club but with percentile flashing?

I passed some sample MENSA entrance exam when I was a kid, so I'm inclined to say LOOOOLLLLL.

pretty sure they're not meeting somewhere solving the world's problems

the world's crossword problems

There's a SUV I see driving around with a giant MENSA sticker across the back window. Second only to the Porsche Panamera with JNGALT vanity plates in douchiness.

If MENSA people are so smart why haven't they solved all the worlds problems

Too busy solving the problems in this month's issue of Games Magazine irrc.

they have, they just choose not to share the answers with peons like us

People tend to congregate around shared interests. The members of MENSA are very interested in what high IQs they have. As long as this gives them harmless pleasure, I can see no problem with it, but it seems a very weird interest to share.

Roland Berrill, an Australian barrister, and Dr. Lancelot Ware, a British scientist and lawyer, founded Mensa at Lincoln College, in Oxford, England, in 1946. They had the idea of forming a society for very intelligent people, the only qualification for membership being a high IQ.[6]

Berrill and Ware were both disappointed with the resulting society. Berrill had intended Mensa as "an aristocracy of the intellect," and was unhappy that a majority of Mensans came from humble homes,[12] while Ware said, "I do get disappointed that so many members spend so much time solving puzzles".[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International

When I was 12 my mum went out with someone who was in Mensa, which I was quite interested in at the time, 12 probably being the peak of my "gifted child" bullshit before disillusionment and minor league teenage rebellion set in. In retrospect I could've been one of those dicks, but maybe that would've been better than a depressed drunk

my brother did the test to join mensa and missed by a few IQ points, which i found hilarious

unfortunately i knew i scored a few points lower than him on IQ tests (we did them in school or something? but just as a throwaway thing) so i couldn't join just to troll him

this 1996 Andy Beckett article about MENSA has some compelling stuff in it

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/too-clever-by-half-1344906.html

The fact I always like to quote is that Garry Bushell and Jimmy Savile (genius level I believe) were members. Just checked and Garry (Who?) Bushell is still listed as 'famous member' on their website, no mention of the bold Jim though :(

It all makes me think of this enigma

http://www.ctmu.org/

I think the problem is no one really has a very thorough understanding of what "intelligence" really is - and that tehre are probably several differnt types of intelligence - I mean Picasso may not have been able to solve a rubik's cube but that's not to say he was an idiot

There's a Ford Explorer that drives around my city with a MENSA sticker that takes up the whole back window.

Yeah intelligence is way too hard to measure. Like book smart vs street stupid - who cares how smart you are if you’re socially inept or can’t defend yourself irl

who cares how smart you are if you’re socially inept

Of course social aptitude is everything, any deficit there and you're a worthless POS. Sorry autistic people.

Not that an IQ test will tell you but if you are "socially inept" then you might actually care to know where you are 'smart.'

You probably didn't mean it that way but it did look kinda ableist.

Definitely didn’t mean it that way

I’m a former social worker with children who had autism and my nephew has autism

I’ll stick to ilm, thanks

ILX is MENSA for the Pepsi Generation

IQ may or may not be a good measure of intelligence, but whatever intelligence a person may have, what matters most is not the fact of its existence, but the uses to which you put it. Solving logic or word puzzles is a pretty low grade use, but essentially harmless. Using one's intelligence to embezzle money or commit serial murders without being caught doesn't mean you are extremely smart. It only makes you a very horrible human being.

Aimless always otm

A truly smart person will always self-identify as such, usually while wearing an expression that appears smug to those who are less smart which is in reality a rictus of sorts suffered by those who are burdened with trying to maintain control over such immense intelligence.

There's this guy in my choir who is pretty much a straight up genius; ph.d. in theoretical physics, cellist, speaks four languages including Japanese, but now he works as a high school maths teacher and focuses on raising his kid. The other day me and this other other guy began discussing black holes and the theory of relativity - I think we began with Star Trek and it kinda escalated from there - and he sits silently in the corner, and then when we ask him if we've gotten it right, he just shrugs and says 'The thing about doing a ph.d theoretical physics is that it makes you realize how little you really get it.'

He sounds pretty smart to me.

Ross, I think the idea that social ability is of fundamental importance is understandable but it's not a universal and remains a largely unquestioned 'neurotypical' bias.

Not meaning to have a go at you, just that it's pervasive and a source of personal misunderstanding for people with differing neurology in that regard. Even, perhaps especially if you are 'high functioning' it's possible not to grasp what a relatively massive load even basic navigation of social spaces is, and how contrary to one's native biases it can be.

But maybe I should post on an autism thread.

Perhaps related, perhaps not. I sat an invigilated test about 25 years ago, mainly for a laugh and being a bit competitive with colleagues. Scored well enough to join but didn't see any reason to. Of course it tests for particular kinds of aptitude (duh), but as it happens there are related things I am good at.

:) thanks mate

true - one intelligence is the intelligence to knwo what you knwo and what you dont!

What kind of intelligence is the smartest kind because that's the one I have.

I am a member of the super exclusive MENSB which you can't even know enough if you not are smart as I am.

why nto just make mensa open to whoever wants to join - I mean if you care abot intelligence that seems more inportant than being intelligent

This Irish guy i used to know (who was pretty fucking thick tbh) once said to me: "The problem with you is you've got a good brain, but it's just not a thinking one".

I am intimately familiar with that problem.

human motivations are emotional not logical thus everyone is a dumb ass

^ awards LG twenty bonus IQ points for knowing that

lg otm