february 2012 ij extra
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mensa international journal ebruary 2012
mensainternational journal /E X T R A /
05
Our Past
Te history o Mensa in China is
a long and complicated one. Over
the years, there have been several
unsuccessul attempts to orm Mensa
China. Each time the ailed attempts
aced the same major hurdles:
1) Members were scattered through-
out China; travel time and costs were
prohibitive
2) Only voluntary work was allowed
and no private nancial assistance
was permitted
3) Te local chapter must orm a
non-prot organization rom the
outset.
Faced with these diculties,the early members struggled valiantly
to create an ideal organization. But
despite a lot o time and money
spent, the membership stayed at
about 50 and no breakthroughs were
achieved by the volunteers or nearly
a decade.
Tis all nally changed when
we attended the IBD meeting 2010,
in New Zealand. At this meeting, we were able to meet with Michael
Feenan and Executive Commit-
tee members ace to ace. From the
meeting, we learned that the orma-
tion o a non-prot organization was
not on the critical path to being rec-
ognized. We also learned that many
other national chapters had employed
ull time sta who could then be re-
lied upon to deliver on various work.
Upon return, the membership
raised unds amongst themselves,
hired some ull-time sta and began
the work to become accepted as the
newest chapter in Mensa. We quick-
ly completed the minimum require-
ments or recognition and submitted
our application to ExComm. Soon
ater the IBD meeting, Mensa China
was ocially recognized by ExComm
as an emerging National Mensa.
Tis gave us legitimacy by having a
direct link rom the MIL website to
our website and also enabled us to
test and recruit members on our own
which paved the path or us to move
orward to the next levels o national
certication.
Our Present
Ater holding our elections in May
2011, the new ocers o the emerg-
ing Mensa China began to work
to expand our membership and set
an internal target to achieve Full
National Chapter status by the 2012
IBD meeting. We devised a mem-
bership recruitment campaign that
combined television, print, social
media, and campus seminars. From
the publicity and marketing eorts,
the website has received over 1,000
candidate requests or testing. In
the next ew months we will be busy
handling the testing and conversion
o successul candidates into our
permanent memberships.
Our FutureHow big will Mensa China be? Te
theoretical limit o 2% translates to
a membership o 26 million people.
Just achieving 1% o that limit would
be 260,000 members, which is double
the current membership o all o
Mensa currently. In China, achieving
the minimum numbers or member-ship will not be our problem. In-
stead, we will have to careully man-
age the growth o membership. Tis
will be achieved, mainly by limiting
our testing and targeting potential
candidate groups.
Limiting membership or the
rst ew years will have a ew big
benets. Firstly, we will be able to
organize controlled growth. Activi-ties can be planned, websites can be
built, and many procedures can be
careully written to prevent abuses
in the uture. All this can happen
without dealing with the unplanned
chaos that can come rom viral
growth. Secondly, we hope it will
result in a more balanced member-
ship as regards gender, age groups
and proessional background. Lastly,
it enables us to create benet rom
unmet demand and improve the pub-
mensa chinathe story of a 65-year-old organization’snewest emerging baby...
Mensa China’s Chairman, Ayawawa Yeung
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mensa international journal ebruary 2012
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06
Potent Microbes
Science News, 24 September 2011, p.
17. “Panda Poop May Hold Biouel
Key.”
Panda bears eat bamboo, which
is hard to digest. Cows have our
stomachs to
deal with their
diet o pasture
grass. Pandas do
the job with justone stomach.
According to
scientists at
Mississippi
State University,
this is possible
because the
cuddly black
and white bears possess a unique
population o microbes that break down cellulose or them. Tese
microbes are similar to the ones that
live in termite guts. I scientists can
duplicate the enzymes these bugs
use, it will be helpul or both waste
disposal and energy production.
Rock It
YaleNews 10 November 2011. “Old-
est Rock Art in Egypt Discovered.”
(Antiquity, December 2011) Con-
tributed by Stephen Darnell.
Pharaohs started running Egypt
5,000 years ago. But people lived
along the Nile beore that, and they
let rock art behind. Yale scientists,
along with a team rom Belgium,
have been using a sophisticated
dating method known as Optically
Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to
discover that the images o aurochs, wild cows, and human hunters seen
there are 15,000 years old. Tat’s
approximately the same age as the
amous Lascaux cave paintings
in France. In act, the style o the
images is similar to those seen at
Lascaux. In OSL
dating, researchers
expose rock sur-
aces to a particular
color o light, and
the rock then glows
in a dierent color.
Te brightness o
the glow tells them
how long ago the
sample was last
exposed to strong
sunlight.
Bully for Jupiter Astronomy Magazine, 11 November
2011. “Giant Planet Ejected rom the
Solar System.” Contributed by Lee
Helms.
Computer simulations o the orma-
tion o our solar system don’t work
right when astronomers assume that
only the known solar system bodies
were present. But, i they add another
giant planet at the start, everything
works very well. Jupiter tosses the
extra giant out o the system, and all
the other planets settle in nicely the
way we see them today. Tis model is
supported by the discovery o many
orphan worlds in interstellar space
that don’t seem to belong to any star
system.
john blinke [email protected]
licity and value o the Mensa brand.
In the years to come, we would like
to emulate the success o the Mensabrand in the larger countries.
As Mensa China expands, we
will begin to attract the attention o
the central government. Beore they
start to restrict us in any way, we will
have to convince them that we are a
well-managed and well-behaved so-
cial organization. Te work process to
get on the good side o government
is a long and dicult one, but it is
the way o all successul organiza-
tions in China. However, in a coun-
try where a single actory can have
1,000,000+ workers, Mensa China
will have to have some impressive
membership numbers or us to be
noticed. We’ll be looking orward to
this day soon!
Sherman Chui
supplementally
Puny Plague
Science News, 19 November 2011,
p. 18. “Plague Bug Wasn’t All Tat
Fierce.” (Nature)
Scientists have sequenced the DNA
o bacteria recovered rom victims o
Europe’s black death, and they nd
that the plague bacterium wasn’t very
diferent rom its modern relatives.
Te medieval plague organism was
probably not more erocious than the
bacteria we live with. It was able to
wipe out hal o Europe’s population
in the 1300’s because o a combina-
tion o starvation, crowded cities, and
a bumper crop o rats. Te weather
suddenly turned cold and wet, ruin-
ing crops and starving the population
whose health wasn’t good to begin
with. So the plague didn’t have to be
very potent to do its damage.
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mensa international journal ebruary 2012
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07
mind, that is. As cognitive science
uncovers our intuitive unctions andpowers, scientists are conducting
studies o automatic processing, sub-
liminal priming, implicit memory,
heuristics, right-brain processes,
instant emotions, nonverbal com-
munication and creativity. Cognitive
scientists and psychologists tell us
that thinking, memory and attitude
operate on two levels: the automatic/
intuitive level and the conscious/
deliberate level. Tis two-tiered
concept is more commonly reerredto as dual processing.
In order to avoid conusion at the
outset, let us distinguish between
instinct and intuition. Te current
essay is about intuition, not instinct.
Briefy, instinct is a genetically
programmed behaviour that the
human species shares with ani-
mals. Instinctual behavior is not
the result o learning, and it can
be seen across all members o a
species. Intuition, as dened by the
Oxord English Dictionary, “is the
ability to acquire knowledge with-
out inerence or the use o reason”.
Undoubtedly, there are many de-
nitions o intuition, but most are
problematic. Te conscious act o
refecting on intuition is precisely
what intuition is not. Intuition is
your brain on autopilot processing
inormation out o the consciousawareness that it is operating. In
other words, intuition is noncon-
scious (or subconscious) thinking.
Cognitive science is uncovering a
ascinating and complex subconscious
mind, a mind that even the Grand
Master, Sigmund Freud, never told
us about. In this mind, thinking does
not take place consciously, but rather
subconsciously. Tinking occurs outo sight and out o mind - conscious
How then does intuition work?
When we think in images and weeel, we are experiencing a unction
o the subconscious mind which is
called intuition. “Sensual thinking”,
as intuition is commonly called, is
the expression o images, visions
and eelings, brought to lie and
sometimes into creative, artistic
expression. Te poet Stephen
Spender called it the logic o im-
ages. It is not words we are look-ing or, but rather sensual associa-
tions or eelings. Sensual thinking
is commonsense thinking, not
only or poets but or all o us.
Composer George Antheil
strove to write his music ollowing
his “inner pattern”, his inner logic.
Te practice resulted in musical
orm. Mathematician Norbert
Weiner discovered that his bod-
ily eelings, his sensual thinking,
could act as temporary symbols
or a mathematical situation. No
matter how private or how intimate
the memory, an imaginative articula-
tion o images and eelings ollows.
Tis sensation, metalogic or super
logic, has its own rules.
Conceptually, metalogic is very
close to intuition, i not intuition
itsel. Words rarely accompany intuitive insight. We see , we get the
Intelligent IntuitionTe heart has its reasons, which reason cannot know.
~ Blaise Pascal
Have you ever seen or heard the following: ‘ You know more than you know you know.’? Is it t rue
and might it easily be used as a proposition in a rhetorical debate or logic/semantics discussion?
Could ‘I just know that the sentence is true because I have a gut feeling that tells me so’ ever be a
valid argument? Could your intuition ever be suff icient? Thomas Hally scrutinises the notion...
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