Mensa Pakistan is proud to Announce that it has now been recognized as Provisional National Mensa … and is in final stages to claim its full NATIONAL STATUS.
Kindly come to this meeting and also invite any Mensa current or old Mensa member that you know.
Hope to see you at (details as follows):
| Date: |
Saturday, March 7, 2009
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| Time: |
6:30pm – 8:00pm
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| Location: |
F1 Traxx – Mini golf (Bank Al Falah park)
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| City: |
Lahore, Pakistan
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How to Improve Your Memory & Exercise Your Brain – (source: internet)
1. Convince yourself that you do have a good memory that will improve. Too many people get stuck here and convince themselves that their memory is bad, that they are just not good with names, that numbers just slip out of their minds for some reason. Erase those thoughts and vow to improve your memory. Commit yourself to the task and bask in your achievements — it’s hard to keep motivated if you beat yourself down every time you make a little bit of progress.
2. Keep your brain active. The brain is not a muscle, but regularly “exercising” the brain actually does keep it growing and spurs the development of new nerve connections that can help improve memory. By developing new mental skills—especially complex ones such as learning a new language or learning to play a new musical instrument—and challenging your brain with puzzles and games you can keep your brain active and improve its physiological functioning.
8. Create vivid, memorable images. You remember information more easily if you can visualize it. If you want to associate a child with a book, try not to visualize the child reading the book – that’s too simple and forgettable. Instead, come up with something more jarring, something that sticks, like the book chasing the child, or the child eating the book. It’s your mind – make the images as shocking and emotional as possible to keep the associations strong.
9. Repeat things you need to learn. The more times you hear, see, or think about something, the more surely you’ll remember it, right? It’s a no-brainer. When you want to remember something, be it your new coworker’s name or your best friend’s birthday, repeat it, either out loud or silently. Try writing it down; think about it.
10. Group things you need to remember. Random lists of things (a shopping list, for example) can be especially difficult to remember. To make it easier, try categorizing the individual things from the list. If you can remember that, among other things, you wanted to buy four different kinds of vegetables, you’ll find it easier to remember all four.
11. Organize your life. Keep items that you frequently need, such as keys and eyeglasses, in the same place every time. Use an electronic organizer or daily planner to keep track of appointments, due dates for bills, and other tasks. Keep phone numbers and addresses in an address book or enter them into your computer or cell phone. Improved organization can help free up your powers of concentration so that you can remember less routine things. Even if being organized doesn’t improve your memory, you’ll receive a lot of the same benefits (i.e. you won’t have to search for your keys anymore).
12. Try meditation. Research now suggests that people who regularly practice “mindfulness” meditation are able to focus better and may have better memories. Mindfulness (also known as awareness or insight meditation) is the type commonly practiced in Western countries and is easy to learn. Studies at Massachusetts General Hospital show that regular meditation thickens the cerebral cortex in the brain by increasing the blood flow to that region. Some researchers believe this can enhance attention span, focus, and memory.
13. Sleep well. The amount of sleep we get affects the brain’s ability to recall recently learned information. Getting a good night’s sleep – a minimum of seven hours a night – may improve your short-term memory and long-term relational memory, according to recent studies conducted at the Harvard Medical School.
14. Build your memorization arsenal. Learn pegs, memory palaces, and the Dominic System. These techniques form the foundation for mnemonic techniques, and will visibly improve your memory.
15. Venture out and learn from your mistakes. Go ahead and take a stab at memorizing the first one hundred digits of pi, or, if you’ve done that already, the first one thousand. Memorize the monarchs of England through your memory palaces, or your grocery list through visualization. Through diligent effort you will eventually master the art of memorization.
Web is all gaga about a game being launched by Empire Interactive. According to a number of blog posts and press releases Empire Interactive has signed a deal with American Mensa and British Mensa and they plan to bring out a mensa themed game on an entire range of platforms… console, handheld, PC, and Mac! And this video game would be the first such game approved by Mensa.
On a related note, while browsing the British Mensa website while writing this blog post I came across a whole range of Mensa games. Now that sounds interesting.
Way back many centuries ago – in internet terms, of course – we could choose a password that typically had 3 to 4 characters… and were often the same 4 digits that were the ATM pin code, or the 3-digit code of our favorite number lock.
Then we saw the era of minimum 8-character passwords. We moaned and agonised but the many apps and web services forced us to memorise a longer password.
But hackers and online thugs did not give up. And, now, the rules of the game have changed once again.
We have now entered the era where not only your password must contain 8 or more characters, it MUST contain all of the following:
I am told, that with a password that may look like Hy76%@W2 the chances of your account at a web based email or social networking service would be hugely minimised.
But please don’t go to sleep with this gospel. Soon, very soon, in internet terms, of course, the theives and thugs and their merry men will crack this too. And, I hate to wonder what will we have to memorise then?
BRAIN DAMAGING HABITS
1. No Breakfast
People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar
level.
This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing
brain degeneration.
2. Overeating
It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental
power.
3. Smoking
It causes multiple brain shrinkage and may lead to Alzheimer disease.
4. High Sugar consumption
Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients
causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.
5. Air Pollution
The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our body. Inhaling polluted air
decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in
brain efficiency.
6. Sleep Deprivation
Sleep allows our brain to rest. Long term deprivation from sleep will
accelerate the death of brain cells.
7. Head covered while sleeping
Sleeping with the head covered, increases the concentration of carbon
dioxide and decrease concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain
damaging effects.
8. Working your brain during illness
Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in
effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.
9. Lacking in stimulating thoughts
Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulation
thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.
10. Talking Rarely
Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain
Source: Awareness forum, Internet
I agree with the sequence although I already solved this puzzle on my own and formed the same sequence. You are quicker!
Another JK Rowling title? I thought the Harry Potter series was over for good.
But I was so wrong! “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” was the “book” Professor Dumbledore presented to Hermione in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Of course, this “book” had to see the light of the day too. And yes friends, this latest title by J K Rowling has already hit the shelves in the bookstores.
In “Deathly Hallows” this book “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” helped Harry Potter to achieve Voldemont’s defeat. To quote from wikipedia:
The Tales of Beedle the Bard first appeared as a fictional book, used as a plot device, in J. K. Rowling’s 2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final novel of the Harry Potter series. The book is bequeathed to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is described as a popular collection of Wizarding children’s fairy tales, so that while Ron Weasley is familiar with the stories, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had not previously heard them due to their non-magical upbringing.[2]
The book Hermione receives in Dumbledore’s will is a copy of the original edition of the fictional book.[10] It is described as an ancient-looking small book with its binding “stained and peeling in places”. In the novel it is also said the book has a title on its cover, written in embossed runic symbols.[2]
The book acts as the vehicle for introducing the Deathly Hallows.[6] Above the story “The Tale of the Three Brothers”, Hermione Granger finds a strange symbol which later is revealed by Xenophilius Lovegood to be the symbol of the Hallows. The triangle from the symbol represents the Invisibility Cloak, the circle inside the triangle symbolizes the Resurrection Stone, and the vertical line represents the Elder Wand.[10]
These three objects are also mentioned in the story itself (see below), and are said to belong to the Peverell brothers,[10] who are later revealed as being Harry Potter’s ancestors.[11] Towards the end of the novel, Albus Dumbledore also confirms Harry’s connection to the Peverells, and states that the three brothers might in fact have been the creators of the Hallows.[12]
Whenever I come across something ingenious I often wonder how would this guy score on a Mensa test. Same thought comes to mind when I look at the lego bricks.
Watching my 3-year old come up with amazingly sturdy and evenly balanced designs with these bricks prompted me to google “lego designs”. I wont deny my own passion and love for these bricks. I was delighted with tons of resources.
But my biggest joy came from the horse’s mouth: The official lego website.
Check these links:
All in all, this should be a wonderful treat. Even though I have played with Lego since childhood, there are several things I learnt at the Lego school mentioned above.
Gerald Celente has been monitoring and forecasting trends for a long time. Since mid 80s to be precise. I recently received the following text from Asim Basra, a fellow Mensan who works in the banking industry. When I googled about it, I found that it has been echoing across the blogosphere.
The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting a revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions – all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.
Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.
Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important then putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.
“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.
Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 percent.
The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.
The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”
In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.
“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”
“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”
“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”
“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”
But that’s not all. Youtube is loaded with his interviews and appearances in talk shows. One of them, as reported on Daily Newscaster was on Alex Jones Live. Listen to this one.
Simply google “Gerald Celente” and you will be inundated with content he has been forecasting and what the public has been saying.
My question to the world wide Mensa community is this: With all the intelligence and knowledge bestowed upon the members of Mensa, and for that matter, all the others with similar levels of IQ, are we all simply going to watch the world fall into this spiral and philosophize about it, OR, is there anything that can be done and will be done to prevent it, or perhaps at least reduce the impact of this collapse?
I don’t know about you, but my love of the big RR, the angel-mascot car will probably never be taken over by any other car. Its not to say that no other car is as beautiful or as “wow”, but Rolls Royce is something special, very unique, in a class of its own.
And, then, to suddenly come face-to-face with a mint condition 1922 model was a real heart-stopper. Enjoy this collection, friends:
Rolls Royce Mascot
This beauty is currently owned by the Hashoo Group, or most probably by the Pearl Continental, and was on display in the hotel lobby in June, 2008. But the history of this car is far more royal. Its original owner was one of the nawabs, and later it was also honoured to be used by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
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For the photography minded, the collection was shot with the iphone.
On a recent shopping trip I visited four shops, spending 5$, $10, $15, and $20 but not in that order. The items I bought in the last two shops totalled $30 while those from Lewis Johns and Wellys came to $20. I spent less in S&M, which was not my last shop, than I did in Lewis Johns and $5 more in Nick Harveys than I did in the first shop. How much did I spend in each shop and in what order did I patronize them?
Mensa Pakistan website is powered by wordpress, and today, it has been upgraded with the latest release, version 2.7.
The new version sports a snazzy, very professional looking interface. This is the last time (and frankly the first as well) I would use the plugin WordPress Automatic Upgrader, becuase now automatic upgrade has been incorporated in wordpress itself.
Whew! What a relief!
But this is not the only attraction for upgrading to 2.7. To read the full list of exciting new ingredients, read the official blog.
Recently I set up a google alert for the keyword “mensa”. The intention was to receive a comprehensive alert of whats new related to Mensa… well, Mensa as we know it.
I must admit I was ignorant. The alerts started rolling in promptly. After all, its a google service! But, surprisingly, there were sites with the word “mensa” being used without any relevance to the Mensa I was expecting. Today, while surfing the net I came across this entry in wikipedia. And, suddenly it dawned on me that this is rather diversely used term with very different meanings and connotations.
The legend of Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational continues to circulate on the internet, according to ESPN’s Page 2. In this article, the Page 2 folks have come up with a hilarious twist of the Mensa Invitational adapted for the sports world.
Hasan Zuberi concluded a hilarious communication between us with the remark:
no wonder you are a Mensa brain
It suddenly hit me with the question: Are there any Mensa jokes online? And guess what? Yes. There are tons of them. Some, not surprisingly, were non-veg. But, funny enough, a website claiming to be “Probably the Web’s largest resource for euthanasia information and informed comment” features a rather large webpage captioned:
Here’s some other answers to the question, “How many Mensans does it take to change a lightbulb?”
Despite being a Mensan, I am not offended but at the same time, I am not sure whether the pun is on Mensans, or on Euhtanasia itself!!! Some of the answers, though, are interesting.
What would be YOUR answer to the the question:
How many Mensans does it take to change a lightbulb?
Microsoft has finally decided to call the next version of Windows ‘Windows 7′.
This is good since the name is small. So much for the collective laziness of the world.
Official: Introducing Windows 7
My idea: Are they trying to capitalize on the name of Intel’s upcoming CPU range ‘Core i7′. (I remember AMD did the same, capitalizing on Windows XP by naming their CPU range AMD Athlon XP in 2000/2001).
Somewhere I read this as somebody’s signature (may be pakwheels.com):
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
With the ongoing fashion of specialization, people are getting so specialized that they can’t even polish their boots or spread jam on bread slices, even though they’re PhD in some subject or the other. Us oldschool people think that there are some basic skills everyone should have. Kids of the current generation are missing out on too much. I remember which parts of my house I’ve painted myself, which fans I’ve installed, and what sized bit was used to drill the two holes that bulb-holder is screwed into. Nowadays kids don’t know how to wash dishes or dust their own room. And how can we then teach them to become independent and self-sufficient?
Currently using Vista on a borrowed laptop. (My own is WinXP).
I find there’s a lot of red tape. You simply have to press too many buttons to get a job done.
In XP, connecting to Mobilink was easier: Start > Connect > Mobilink > Dial.
In Vista, it is: Start > Connect To > Mobilink USB > Connect > Dial > Close.
It’s similar for all other things. I think in near future I’ll have to buy a replacement mouse.
What do you people think?
Once there was a little island country. The land of this country was the tiny island itself. The total money in circulation was 2 dollars as there were only two pieces of 1 dollar coins circulating around.
It describes how an ‘asset bubble’ builds up and what are its consequences. Read it even if it confuses you a bit… things will be clear as you reach the end…
Don’t forget to share your thoughts and comments!
The net asset of the country = 3 dollars.
“A” has a loan to “C” of 1 dollar, so his net asset is 1 dollar.
“B” sold his land and got 2 dollars, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
“C” owned the piece of land worth 2 dollars but with his 1 dollar debt to “A”, his net asset is 1 dollar.
The net asset of the country = 4 dollars.
2 dollars cash (which he borrowed) and cancellation of the 1 dollar loan to “C”.
As a result, “A” now owned a piece of land that is worth 3 dollars. But since he owed “B” 2 dollars, his net asset is 1 dollar.
“B” loaned 2 dollars to “A”. So his net asset is 2 dollars.
“C” now has the 2 coins. His net asset is also 2 dollars.
The net asset of the country = 5 dollars. A bubble is building up.
As a result, “A” has got his debt cleared and he got the 2 coins. His net asset is 2 dollars. “B” owned a piece of land that is worth 4 dollars but since he has a debt of 2 dollars with “C”, his net asset is 2 dollars.
“C” loaned 2 dollars to “B”, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
The net asset of the country = 6 dollars. Even though, the country has only one piece of land and 2 dollars in circulation.
“A” also thought the same.
“C” has a loan of 2 dollars to “B”. But it is a bad debt. Although his net asset is still 2 dollar, his heart is palpitating.
The net asset of the country = 3 dollars again.
Who has stolen the 3 dollars from the country?
Of course, before the bubble burst “B” thought his land worth 4 dollars.
Actually, right before the collapse, the net asset of the country was 6 dollars on papers. His net asset is still 2 dollar, his heart is palpitating.
The net asset of the country = 3 dollars again.
“A” owns the 2 coins, his net asset is 2 dollars. “B” is bankrupt, his net asset is 0 dollar. (“B” lost everything) “C” got no choice but end up with a land worth only 1 dollar (“C” lost one dollar) The net asset of the country = 3 dollars.
There is however a redistribution of wealth.
END OF THE ANECDOTE
“A” is the winner, “B” is the loser, “C” is lucky that he is spared.
ANALYSIS TIME
Few points worth noting: