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Mensa Bulletin Features

Too Darn Smart

The truth is, my son was a lot smarter than I was, and you could see that coming before he started to walk or talk. Little did I know that Mike's smarts would get him into a world of trouble.

By Tom Bixby • Illustrations by Linda Hensley
Says You! — A Mensa-worthy Romance

If you’re like me, it gets harder and harder to find the kind of creative, ingenious puzzles that challenge your imagination and mental agility. That changed when I fell in love with a radio show. And what happened when it loved me back changed my life.

By Linda Ferrazzara
The Interplanetary Marshmallow Test

Putting humans in space isn’t about exploration or national pride; it isn’t even about science. It’s about survival. A species that can look past short-term costs to the long-term benefit wins. It wins in the only way the universe cares — by staying alive.

By Paul McKinley
Lafayette, We Are Here, Again

It began with my sixth great grandfather, once a deputy sheriff of Frederick County. There, during the American Revolution, he formed and outfitted a militia company to support the war effort. Almost 250 years later, in August, our story came full circle with my visit to a grave in the French capital containing soil from Bunker Hill.

By Donald C. Sheehan
Multiversal

Our bond forms so tightly that it’s fundamental — a quantum interaction. Over space and time, we are always together, somewhere in the multiverse.

By Chris Coultas
Inside the Network Neuroscience Theory of Human Intelligence

Like the brain, studying human intelligence can be curious, particularly when it comes to correlating quantitative measurements with specific biological factors. That is what makes so impressive the research of Dr. Aron K. Barbey, winner of the 2019 Mensa Foundation Prize.

By Chip Taulbee
Un-Conventional

A constitutional convention held today would be a prime target for influence by those who harbor ambitions of becoming American royalty, running the nation like a feudal kingdom, and further reducing or eliminating the ability of We the People to influence government.

By Lee Helms
Jerome Findlay Quidley III

Jerome Findlay Quidley III was not a man of God. But he was a respected member of Hootlani, a bootlegger’s paradise at the end of the earth. When a viper enters the Garden of Eden, Jerome Findlay Quidley III must make an important decision: where to head from here.

By Steven Levi • Illustration by Michael McKenzie
Everybody Plays the Fool

How do we keep autopilot from kicking in to make us hang with a decision not in our own best interest? And how do we resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance? The key is to be aware of this tendency that exists in all of us and consciously combat it.

By Leonard Gaston
To The Stars Academy: Unafraid to Investigate the Unexplained

Founded by a rock star, a UFO-hunting organization uses serious experts in its search for answers. Can To the Stars Academy’s team, and their backgrounds with legit outfits such as Skunk Works, the National Security Agency, NASA, and the CIA, also find credibility?

By Matt Tiller
The Great Waste

The Pacific Ocean, the largest and deepest water mass on Earth, stretching from Asia and Australia on the west to the Americas on the east, is home to many beautiful creatures swimming in its depths: graceful blue whales, magnificent green sea turtles, and … a soup of swelling waste.

By Abir Faisal
Climbing Mount Rumsfeld

Knowing all the rules doesn’t necessarily tell us how every game plays out. Join me in some wildly inaccurate back-of-the-envelope calculations based on unsupported assumptions and total guesswork as we try to estimate just how high Mount Rumsfeld goes.

By Paul McKinley
Will You Stick to Your New Year’s Resolution?

Your Culture Type provides insight into yours and your colleagues’ tolerance for change and resilience when facing transition. Knowing how to comfortably adapt — and helping others adapt — often depends on these influential traits.

By Dr. Rachel MK Headley
Stabilizers, Fixers, Independents, & Organizers

While behavior is fluid and non-prescriptive, the four different Culture Types — Stabilizers, Fixers, Independents, and Organizers — are designed to identify what is most natural or where a person feels most at home.

By Dr. Rachel MK Headley
Sweet Talk: A Layman’s History of Diabetes

From the Egyptians of antiquity to Sushruta and Aretaeus the Cappadocian, onto the Renaissance, and into the age of modern medicine, we’ve come to learn a lot about diabetes. Understanding its history is understanding the disease.

By Carol Ann Wilson
The Guard Dog of Dury Mill

In spirit, the graves of those felled along the Western Front remain guarded. A century after the Great War, a silent sentinel watches over visitors to the hallowed grounds.

By Donald W. Watts
Bad Mother Suckers

In works ranging from Bram Stoker’s seminal 1897 book Dracula to Blaxploitation-era films like Blacula, vampires have long held a place in popular culture, tied inexorably to the subject of sexuality whether subtly or explicitly.

By Parker Bowling • Illustrations by Jonathan Moore
Letters From the Edge

With a nudge and some notes from his beloved, a widow attempts to move on with his life while again cherishing the life he once had. Husband and wife no more — nevertheless, she attempts to make him whole.

By Randall Noon • Illustration by Melissa Milton
Take Your Car and Drive It

In the future, it is decided that all cars will have to be self-driving. Just before the new mandate is to go into effect, one man wants a last turn behind the wheel — a last turn at real freedom.

By Joshua Ramey-Renk • Illustration by Michael McKenzie
You Are a Language Inventor

Incredible as it may seem at first thought, practically every sentence that you speak and write during your lifetime has never been spoken or written before in human history. Without realizing it, we all spend most of our waking hours inventing language.

By Richard Lederer