New Orleans Mensa

La Plume de NOM for June 2014

The Magazine of New Orleans Mensa Information and Entertainment


Mensa Gamers Award Annual Honors

This year’s edition of Mind Games, the annual event during which Mensans spend a long weekend playing and evaluating new board and card games, took place in Austin, Texas on April 18 through 20.

Over 250 Mensans took part in determining the recipients of the coveted Mensa Select® seal. The winners were:

To review press coverage of the event, visit the following links, provided by American Mensa Marketing / Public Relations:

For more information, visit http://www.mindgames.us.mensa.org/ .

Notice a little extra white space?? Help us fill it up! Our newsletter has plenty of room for your original content, so please consider sharing something with the group. Here are just a few suggestions for submissions, and I’m sure you can come up with others:

So the Story Goes Like This

By Bart Geraci

I was taking a class in ancient cultures and economics and I was introduced to this group of people (whose name escapes me now). They were one of the first ones to use money and to use them to purchase items.

In addition to that, they would sometimes make their money containers in the shape of an object they wished to save up for. So a “piggy bank” object was created to hold enough money to buy a pig.

The professor explained that they had vase-like containers to save money for funeral expenses. I said “Well, that makes sense because…”

“...a penny urned is a penny saved.”

FROM THE LOCSEC

By Bart Geraci

This month begins hurricane season in our area. So it’s time to think about where we plan to evacuate to, canned foods, and water.

This month is also the start of summer, but temperatures have already been there so far.

Next month, American Mensa is having its Annual Gathering in Boston over the July 4th weekend. And by Boston, really Boston: the 1994 AG was held in Cambridge, MA, across the Charles River.

Let’s go Zephyrs!

BRAINFORK: A Mensan writes about food

Bart J. Geraci

Brainfork is on hiatus for the summer. See you in the fall!

News & Notes for Young Mensans

Lisa Van Gemert

Happenings & Celebrations:

June 4 Applesauce Cake Day

June 8 Best Friends Day

June 13 Friday the 13th

June 17 Eat Your Vegetables Day

June 25 Log Cabin Day

June is Aquarium Month.

Resources:

Applesauce Cake Day: Find a terrific, simple recipe here http://bit.ly/applesauce-cake-recipe. Yum!

Best Friends Day: Find out how you can help your child make friends with our presentation available at http://bit.ly/mensafriends.

Friday the 13th: A new word for you – friggatriskaidekaphobia – fear of Friday the 13th!

Eat Your Veggies Day: The most popular vegetable is the potato. If you’d rather do science with it than eat it, here’s a suggestion http://bit.ly/straw-potato.

Log Cabin Day: Learn a little about the history of log cabins here http://bit.ly/log-cabin-history.

Aquarium Month: Don’t want to take care of a real fish tank? Never fear! The virtual YouTube fish tank is here! http://bit.ly/virtual-aquarium. You can also watch one of the aquarium cams from the Monterey Bay Aquarium at http://bit.ly/aquarium-cam.

Triviality:

In honor of Aquarium month, here’s some fishy trivia (answers are at the bottom):

1. Name an animal with fish in its name that isn’t actually a fish.

2. What are baby sharks called?

3. Do you know the only fish that swim upright?

4. What is the biggest fish in the world?

Do you like trivia? Be sure to follow @MensaGT or like the Mensa Foundation’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MensaFoundation to get a trivia question every weekday!

Benefit Highlight:

Have you submitted to the contest? It runs through June 15th, so hurry and get your comic in! More information on our contests at http://us.mensa.org/gycontests.

WHAT: Create own comic and share it with us! Choose your category and create your comic!

Categories

Answers to Triviality Questions:

1. Neither starfish nor jellyfish are fish. Did you think of any we missed?

2. Baby sharks are called pups.

3. Seahorses are the only fish that swim upright.

4. The giant whale shark is the biggest fish in the world. It can be nearly 60 feet long!

Regards,

Lisa Van Gemert Youth & Education Ambassador |mensafoundation.org

lisav@americanmensa.org

get resources: pinterest.com/brightkids

find more: mensaforkids.org

From the RVC

By Roger Durham, Region 6 Vice Chair

As I write this, I’m preparing to attend the year’s first Regional Gathering in Region 6, Gulf Coast Mensa’s SynRG in Houston. Depending on when you are reading it, there may still be time for you to register for SynRG, but if not, there will be plenty of other upcoming opportunities for you to find out why Mensa Gatherings are so popular, if you’ve never attended one. Next up, of course, is the Mother of All Gatherings, the Annual Gathering, Mensa’s annual national convention. Held in Boston this year, from July 2nd through July 6th, the AG will attract more 2,000 Mensans for four days and nights of games, workshops, speakers, dancing, partying, and general merriment. You can still be one of them. See your copy of the Mensa Bulletin for more information, or check the AG website (www.ag.us.mensa.org).

And, for those of you planning to attend the AG, if you are a local group officer of some kind, and you think you might want to be the Local Secretary, or President, or whatever the office is called in your group, I encourage you to register for this year’s Leadership Summit, to be held on July 2nd, the first day of the AG. American Mensa will pay $75 toward the cost of your hotel room for Tuesday night, so you can be there bright and early for the beginning of the Summit on Wednesday. Ask your local group to designate you as their representative at the Summit, and you can also request that they pay the remainder of your hotel room for Tuesday night. Attendance is limited, so apply right away. You’ll learn best practices and helpful hints for running a local Mensa group from experienced local leaders from all over the country. Register for the Leadership Summit at http://www.us.mensa.org/lead/leadership-workshops/leadership-summit-registration/.

Another Regional Gathering comes up over Labor Day weekend in Round Rock, TX, just north of Austin, where Lone Star Mensa will put on the 2014 version of LoneStaRG. Shorter and smaller than the AG, but featuring many of the same opportunities to interact with your fellow Mensans. Details will be available soon.

Then, at Thanksgiving, you can attend North Texas Mensa’s RG, Feast of Pleasures and Delights XXXIV. One of the oldest and largest RGs in this part of the country, the North Texas RG returns this year to the Sheraton D/FW in Irving, where we will continue to provide the same non-stop hospitality and fun as always. More information will be coming along in the near future.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns regarding your local group or American Mensa, please do not hesitate to contact me by email, RVC6@us.mensa.org.

New Orleans Mensa Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Members present:

Meeting called to order at 5:05 p.m.

Old Business:

New Business:

  1. Bart reported that we have 48 lapsed members, of a total of 214 members, leaving a total of 166 current members. National has a lapsed member tracking tool on the website. They are offering some incentive to the chapters in the form of a percentage of renewal dues, if we can get any lapsed members to re-join. Bart will work on this by sending out the standard reminder letter and email.
  2. How do we get new members to join? We continue to offer testing every two months. Summer McKnight has offered to place advertising flyers at the local universities. Also trying to contact Gambit for a story.
  3. Bob Myers asked Bart last month if it would be possible for him to receive the membership email list, in his capacity as Assistant Loc Sec. (The official alpha list from National). Bart agreed to send it to him, and also to Phil.
  4. Editor Kevin Chesnut reported that he has been able to set up bulk mailing with the USPS again, so we will be able to mail the newsletter this way. We still have about 100 print copies to mail each time.
  5. The Science Fair was held on February 19. We awarded first and second place prizes in the junior and senior divisions. Awards were $100 to each first place winner and $50 to each second place winner.
  6. Treasurer's report: Current balance: $10,569.62 as of April 7. The annual report (Fiscal Year Ending March 31) was sent to National.
  7. Culture Quest was held on April 27. We had one team. Still waiting for results.
  8. We are now offering each member who attends NOM night one beverage at our expense. The first occasion was last month, and was successful; we hope this will encourage attendance.

All business being concluded, the meeting was adjourned at 6:00 p.m.

Submitted by

Claudia D'Aquin, Secretary


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Last edited: 12-May-2014. Webmaster Bart J. Geraci can be reached at BJGeraci@aol.com