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Mensans v Non-Mensans
Jill, at Feministe, makes a blog post ridiculing a comment that uses Mensa membership to validate a fondness for the Cathy comic strip.

The first comment starts off with a defense of Mensa and an earnest explanation of what it means to be a genius. But soon comments erupt criticizing all standard tests, defending standardized tests and Mensa, along with accusations of ableism, lamenting the loneliness and social ostracization that is the lot of smart people and horror at Jill's very appalling anti-intellectualism.

SweetMachine nicely rounds up the kerfuffle: Way to fight the good fight, Mensa lovers! Put that genius to work!

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beccastareyes
2010-08-18 09:24 pm UTC (link)

IIRC, the standard deviation of the IQ test is scaled to 15, so an IQ of 130 means you have a higher IQ than 97.7% of the population. It was what my school district used as the definition of 'gifted', IIRC*. 'Highly gifted' was 145, or higher than 99.9% of the population. 'Genius' was 160 and meant you were in the top 0.003%.

Of course, that ignored musical geniuses, artistic geniuses or the habit to call anyone bright and hard-working a genius. (Seriously, I remember explaining that I knew my IQ wasn't genius level, it was 145 which was highly gifted, because I was a textbook definition of a kid with Aspegers', and words had meanings darn it.)

* Well, except that as you got older, you could just sign up for the courses anyway. And it couldn't be the only way to get into the 'smart' classes, since I seem to recall there was usually one in five or so of those classes, rather than the one in 50 indicated by the percentages.

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ecchaniz0r
2010-08-18 10:28 pm UTC (link)

... ... ...I think your childhood and mind had some kind of weird synergistic wavelength thingiee. Because I did the same dang thing with the definitions and the - yes.

Ah, mandatory elementary school enrichment classes. How boring you were. How you massacreed what little social life I had. :B The joys of a dinky little Catholic school. My cousin's school was bigger and had SUCH a cool enrichment program - I mean they BUILT THESE NIFTY LITTLE MINI ROBOTS, AND THEN HAD JOUSTING/SUMO MATCHES WITH 'EM. I was so jealous. omgz.

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librarianmouse
2010-08-19 02:44 am UTC (link)

an IQ of 130 means you have a higher IQ than 97.7% of the population. It was what my school district used as the definition of 'gifted'

My school district had the same requirement. I still don't know my exact IQ, but they let me into the program so it had to be at least that high.

Strangely, the only thing I remember about my IQ test is that the school psychologist looked like Inspector Gadget.

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	risha 2010-08-19 05:43 am UTC (link)
	The only thing I remember from mine was being pissed off immediately after that I had failed to identify that country as Greece, which I totally knew. (I honestly thought that my school district was the only one that had that fucked up requirement. You guys aren't both from Pennsylvania, are you?) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	librarianmouse 2010-08-19 03:00 pm UTC (link)
	Nope. It seems to have been widespread. (Reply to this)(Parent)

white_tean
2010-08-19 01:43 pm UTC (link)

Of course, that ignored musical geniuses, artistic geniuses or the habit to call anyone bright and hard-working a genius.

I'm supposedly top two percent of intelligence and being that I've chosen to work as a designer, I fucking wish I was top 2% of creativity instead. But creativity as often is a function of being willing to sit down and generate a hundred ideas to get one with the right frisson, so where luck of the draw fails, hard work will prosper.

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