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MSN Sponsors Mensa
crankyspice writes "Fresh on the heels of Google courting members via GLAT advertisements in the Bulletin, Microsoft's MSN is now sponsoring American Mensa events, featuring Mensa questions on the MSN homepage, and Mensa will put MSN's search on their new homepage."
I couldn't agree more.
What irritates me about Mensa is the fact that they consider intelligence to be purely a function of a few odd tests.
Hmm, how weird.
I've known some incredibly intelligent people who'd probably flunk these tests - folks that can play music so amazingly well and reproduce exact notes after hearing them just once.
The point is, intelligence is not a function of how well you can do in a few puzzles. And more importantly, it is not all that hard to ace the Mensa test if you prepare well enough for it - just spend a while solving puzzles and patterns, and it'll be a cakewalk.
It's almost like a self-righteous organization of sorts - hey, lookie! We can solve all these cool puzzles, therefore we'll pretend that we are smarter more than you all are.
From The Center for an Informed America.
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For those who don't know, Mensa is, in its own words, "an international society in which the sole requirement for qualification for membership is a score at or above the 98th percentile on any of a number of standardized intelligence tests." It is, in other words, an organization that fancies itself to be a collection of the brightest minds from around the world -- who amuse themselves primarily by indulging in such intellectual pursuits as eating to grotesque excess.
Now I happen to have a, uhmm, 'friend' who is currently a member of this organization. He first joined the group several years ago, "out of curiosity," or so he claims. He was decidedly unimpressed with his limited exposure to the Mensa organization, and so he did not renew his membership beyond the first couple of years.
But early this year he decided to rejoin, primarily to see how the group's publications were dealing with the September 11 attacks and everything that has come in their wake: the steep rise in U.S. militarism; the vast erosion of civil liberties; the pursuit of reactionary social policies; and the exposure of the rampant corruption of corporate America.
And what my friend found was that the allegedly best and brightest minds in the country were operating comfortably within the parameters established by academia and the American media: the official story of what happened last September 11 is unquestioned, as is the fact that any real investigation into the events of that day has been officially blocked; unprovoked U.S. military actions are given the same superficial level of debate that can be heard on any cable news broadcast; the frontal assaults on civil liberties are either not discussed at all or are justified as a legitimate response to what supposedly happened last September, with, you know, maybe a few instances where the government has, with all good intentions, of course, maybe overstepped just a bit; the social agenda of Team Bush receives barely a mention; and the corporate scandals, and the direct connections of various members of the Bush cabal to those scandals, are apparently old news.
After reading such drivel for several months now (my 'friend' passes them on to me after he's read them, you see), I still wasn't prepared for what I was to find in the September 2002 issue of the Mensa Bulletin, the slick monthly publication of American Mensa. Featured in a new survey column therein were the results of the first query posed to members: "Who are your heroes?"
And who do you suppose ended up in the #1 position on that list? Who do the 'intellectually gifted' among us look up to as a hero? Who, above everyone else, does the Mensa community place on a pedestal? None other than George W. Bush, of course.