You’re reading MensaMag, the award-winning newsletter of Mensa Calgary. And Mensa Calgary itself is a double award-winner.

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Interested in joining Mensa? The next scheduled testing is 1:30 pm, on Saturday, January 21, 2011, at the University of Calgary. Please feel welcome to share this information, and contact Marie Wildenborg directly for further details: mensa.proctor@shaw.ca.

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Quote of the Month: “The charm of elegant manners, simplicity, and apparent candour was almost magical. It could never have occurred to him that all that candour and nobility, wit and lofty personal dignity, was perhaps only a magnificent artistic veneer. “ Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

For a great 3d game in which puzzle pieces must be shifted and unstuck, try
http://deadwhale.com/play.php?game=1752 [with thanks to Robert Conn]

How Old is Someone Born on February 29
Consider the position of the Registrar of Vital Statistics: if a birth takes place on February 29th, there’s no difficulty recording that date. From the passport angle, when a child applies for a passport, the birth date simply reads February 29 plus the birth year. In statutes that refer to age, usually the language is “has attained the age of” 16 years, or 18 years, as the case may be; for example the Age of Majority Act. Someone born on February 29 attains the age of one year on the following March 1st, two years on the following March 1, three years on the next March 1, and four years on the next February 29. Every industry in which age is a factor has a well-established means to deal with people born on February 29, because the question can’t be left to individual discretion. The only sensible uniformity exists if February 29 is the birth anniversary in a leap year, pushed forward nominally to March 1st in all other years, because this method counts the years after birth. On the other hand, irrational conduct is the staff of human life…

The following thoughts aren’t necessarily serious. Nor are they the views of Mensa Calgary or any affiliated persons or groups:
If incarceration were reduced in the US, the country’s unemployment numbers would soar, because so many of the imprisoned fall towards the bottom of the nation’s training and education ladders, and because the prison industry employs so many people. A similar principle applies to the defence sector. Simply expressed, following economic models, a modern society has to put people in cages and kill overseas to create jobs. On the other hand, others might argue that many in prison for minor property offences would volunteer to fight in the armed forces to escape a custodial term. If the latter is true, we could – as it were – kill two birds with one stone, and indirectly resurrect the death penalty for minor crimes… Or not.

Canada’s National Resources Minister said on January 9, 2012, that environmental radicals are subverting democracy. But perhaps, in reality, large oil and pipeline interests have bought the ear of our government and are threatening democracy from within, a kind of (could it be true?) quiet and subtle terrorism. A more charitable perspective perhaps is that our Prime Minister has grown too enamored of power and needs a holiday. He may be inadvertently selling the next two generations’ standards of living to fulfill an illusion that comforts can improve indefinitely. What kind of legacy will our Prime Minister leave? He could choose to thrash out with the provinces the mechanism for a national securities regulator, but he isn’t inclined to attempt this worthy effort. He might try to control in advance the inevitable fallout when the Vancouver housing bubble bursts, devastating the banks that have bent to the ground to support it, but he seems willing to allow the taxpayer to foot the bill. He could promote a national debate on soil and air contamination versus growth, acknowledging the need to prevent the first and promote the second, but he won’t lift a finger. Perhaps he is correct to perceive that we want our leaders to be omniscient. Woe is us.

Neil Macdonald of CBC news, a commentator whose photo seems to reflect constipation more than considered reflection, is getting tired and needs a break. His analyses are shopworn. They often weave back and forth between current events and potential conclusion, which is odd – if you care to study his writing – but he rarely touches the nerve at the centre of a debate. An example was January 9, 2012, when he discussed whether there was too much democracy in the US. I think it was John Jay who said it best, around 1793. Jay was the President of the Continental Congress at the time, and became the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, though I may have the sequence wrong. He said that the people who own the country ought to run it. And his wish has been fulfilled. Macdonald doesn’t have to lose sleep about too much democracy in the US, or Canada for that matter. The parameters of debate are set by large corporations, banks and financial institutions, which advertise in our newspapers and guide their content. They make the political contributions that make victory possible for a political party. And they’re largely excluded from control by the Courts (for example, misrepresentation and deception by financial advisors are rampant but rarely punished). No, we needn’t fret. Democracy is in safe hands.