Mid-Mensan The Newsletter of Mid-Hudson Mensa

May 1998

Thanks are gratefully extended to the three local judges of our MERF scholarship contest as well as my co-chair Jean Hicks. Vehig Tavitian, Helen Bassett and Bill Zigo all volunteered to help read and rate 83 entries for this contest. I received 86 entries, but 3 had to be disqualified for not following the rules. It amazes me that people can't follow rules when they are somewhat simple: 550 words, double spaced, with one inch margins and on white paper. Oh, the entrants name can't be on the essay but only on the application. Two individuals put their names on the essays. Then again, Mensans don't like following rules either.

Ron McMurdy is chairing the next round, which is the regional judging. Linda Spellmon, Jim Jelacic and Merrill Loechner are judging that round.

Do you have the need to volunteer for something else? Do you want to volunteer for something else? Please, volunteer for something else. After serving as our gifted children's coordinator, Alison Bentley has decided to become inactive for awhile. If anyone wants to take over this rewarding position please contact me.

Contest... Contest... Contest...
Win absolutely nothing, but you might enjoy entering the Mid-Hudson Mensa name a brick contest. Your chapter has allocated money to buy a brick on the Mensa Walk of Minds. You do know what I'm talking about, don't you? If not, check your Mensa Bulletin where there is a big ad for this. Anyway, we're going to buy a brick. At our last executive meeting, discussion was held as to what verbiage should be put on the brick. So far our thoughts are very pedantic and uninspiring. Do you have any suggestions? If so, send them to the Name the Brick Contest. As usual, the decision of the judges is arbitrary, capricious and final. The prize for this is FAME. Your name will be published (maybe, if ye olde editor agrees) [Sure, why not? - Ed.] as will the winning verbiage for the brick.

Conversation with Another Mensan: One of the joys of helping with the MERF scholarship contest was meeting Helen Bassett who lives in Kingston. Helen graciously volunteered to help but confessed she doesn't like to travel. As she lives in Kingston and I work in Saugerties, we decided that I would meet her for dinner to exchange papers. In the course of our conversation, we discovered we had much in common; but the information I loved the most was when Helen confessed she was glad she was judging the contest in March as she'd just returned from a trip to China. She's also been to Russia several times. This from a woman who claims she doesn't like to travel. I look forward to seeing Helen again.

We have a couple of small changes in our list of contacts on the inside cover. The e-mail address for Alan Hauck, our Webmaster and Columbia County area contact, has changed. Also Ronnie Brown has volunteered to be our Orange County area contact. But we also have Janet Droll as our Monroe area contact. So for the moment, I'm re-listing them as the contacts for Northern and Southern Orange county respectively, unless they decide to draw the line some other way. We also need a new Greene County area contact. If you're interested, please let me know.

And while I'm begging, we're also in need of a new gifted children's contact. If you have any interest, please contact a member of our executive committee. (You are not obligated to write newsletter articles unless you are interested in that sort of thing.)

Did you find April-ish stuff in last month's issue? Well, it turns out our newsletter wasn't the only one to have a little fun. It seems that for their April issue, I was appointed the editor of HMMmm..., the newsletter of High Mountain Mensa (in Colorado). You must be thinking, "Boy, that's quite an inside joke." Well, it isn't really, at least not for them. You see, they also print Tom Rankin's column, "What's Up" in their newsletter (after all, they're that much closer to the heavens in Colorado), and they list that the column comes from our newsletter with me as editor, so their alert readers should have recognized the name. Plus, their editor, Dennis Lanahan, and I exchange our newsletters as part of Mensa's corporate subscription policy. Thank you Dennis, for catching me off guard with that one. But now we need a Colorado area contact, and since you seem to be out of a job...

Reprints: The March "Living Smarter" article, the reprint of Nancy Keyes-Crosby's household "tips" (first printed in the 4/94 issue) was reprinted in the March issue of Mensodak, the newsletter of South Dakota Mensa.

Mensa Mom is on Easter vacation this month. Karen would be interested in any feedback any of you have on her column. If you have any information you'd like to share with Karen, please contact me.

Is Your Name in Bright Colors on Your Label? That means you hadn't renewed as of when we went to print, and this may be your last newsletter.

Many original TV tunes become so popular that recordings of them make it to the top of the pop music charts. For example, Henry Mancini became popular due to his TV and movie work. Here is a list of TV shows. Which of these theme songs made it to Billboard's Top 10 list?

1. Greatest American Hero
2. Happy Days
3. Peter Gunn
4. SWAT
5. Hill Street Blues
6. Rockford Files
7. Cops
8. Dragnet
9. Hawaii 5-0
10. Welcome Back, Kotter

Answers near the end of this newsletter.

Here are this month's entries:

• Cosmetics companies who distribute products with faux French names. How many of you received a set of samples in your 4/5 Sunday newspaper of products billed as "Shampooing Hydratant" and "Baume Revitalisant"? On the back, the instructions were printed both in English and French. But the product seems to be made in Ohio.
  
  
• "Lost In Space" figures. The figures themselves are fine. But it seems interesting that for all the write-ups the newspapers provided emphasizing the fact that the female characters in the movie were the equals to the men, the commercials for the action figures during Saturday morning cartoons never once gave any hint that the female action figures even existed.

Here are a bunch of one-liner puns compiled by Tom Rankin:

Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.

A mushroom walks into a bar, sits down and orders a drink. The bartender says, "We don't serve mushrooms here." The mushroom says "Why? I'm a fun guy."

When she told me I was average, she was just being mean.

A neutron goes into a bar and asks the bartender, "How much for a beer?" The bartender says, "For you, no charge."

Two molecules are walking down the street and they run into each other. One says, "Are you all right?"
"No, I lost an electron!"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."

Send your favorite groaner to PUNS c/o Jim Jelacic.

This is the time of year when many of us start buying produce in larger quantities because it's fresher and because the price starts coming down. Unfortunately, if you're like me, you may wind up buying more than you can consume before it spoils. This is especially true if you live alone - you may buy produce for some number of days, but then you might have to work late, or you might get an offer to eat out, or you might just want to take an evening off from cooking.

Good preservation of the vegetables you purchase helps prolong their life, and in past issues, I've presented tips for some fruits and vegetables. But sometimes that isn't enough. Then there's also the leftover parts, like stems or peels you might not otherwise use.

One practical application I've found is to make homemade vegetable broth out of the spare vegetables. The recipe I use is adapted from the cookbook, "Great Main Dishes Without Meat" from Betty Crocker.

The basic recipe calls for 6 cups of chopped vegetables, one sliced onion, ½ cup of parsley, 8 cups of water, a couple of bay leaves and spices to taste. Combine the ingredients in the water, bring it to a full boil briefly, reduce heat, cover, and let the mixture simmer for one hour. Strain and cool the mixture. It produces about 8 cups of vegetable broth. This will keep in your refrigerator for about a week or can be frozen for a couple of months.

I use this broth instead of plain water when making soups from scratch. It has a better flavor, and it is completely salt free. I would not, however, recommend the broth for a soup which is to be relatively clear, such as many of the oriental soups.

Certain vegetables are considered "strong" in flavor. If you do not want a strongly flavored soup, you should avoid these vegetables. If you would like a stronger flavored broth, you should use only one of these vegetables, as a combination of them may be overpowering or may cancel each other out. The vegetables listed in my cookbook as strong are: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips and rutabagas.

Send your smart tips to: Living Smarter, c/o Bill Zigo. As always, if you don't send me your tips, you'll have to put up with mine.

Easy:

UXDIGTBB XB CWOC OSIXDOQPT AFOPXCM

XG HFDBTPJTB CWOC XB ITDTPM

BCFQQHDGGTBB XG HCWTDB.

Hard - no punctuation, grouped in 5:

TCYLR LCRXL GULTC RLTTS YSTNS JNQLE

KJCYR XGSZG HCBNN QLZCS TLSMC RRCUN

BZSNE WZCJW LK

Answers near the end of this newsletter.

Greetings, Fellow Trivians! Here are the answers to March's questions:

Q1: What do Singapore, Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio, Bali and Hong Kong have in common?
A1: Actually they have three things in common: Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. These are the destinations to all of their "Road" movies.

Q2: In cribbage, what is a 19 point hand worth?
A2: Nothing. It is impossible to get a combination of cards that totals 19.

Q3: Which field of study do you find doric, corinthian and ionic orders?
A3: Architecture - These are types of columns.

Q4: Who was Tippecanoe of the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too?"
A4: William Henry Harrison.

Q5: If you were told a person won a "Hugo", what is this person's profession?
A5: Science fiction writer. The "Hugo" is an award given by science fiction fans similar to an "Oscar".

Q6: What river does the Grand Coulee Dam control?
A6: Columbia River in Washington state.

It looks like you've been reading the past issues! The winners are Dave Cardall, Ed Quinn and Bill Zigo with perfect score of 6 correct answers. The Langevin family had 5 answers. Les Herring, ineligible this year for winning last year, had a perfect score of 6 correct answers. Best Off-the-Wall answer was Les' on cribbage: "With 50 cents, a cup of coffee."

And now, this month's questions:

Q15: Formerly known as the New Hebrides, what is today's name for the archipelago of some 80 islands lying between New Caledonia and Fiji?

Q16: Although he wrote "Beechwood 4-5789" and "Dancing in the Streets", who is better remembered for singing "How Sweet It Is" and "What's Going On"?

Q17: He was not allowed to enter the US in August 1987 due to his participation "in activities amounting to persecution" of Jews in World War II. What president of Austria and former secretary general of the United Nations was the first head of state to be excluded from the US?

Q18: He was condemned to be shot as a socialist in 1849 but the sentence was commuted to 4 years of hard labor in Siberia. Who went on to write "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov"?

Q19: Don't be glum. Much sought for uses in optical disk storage, high resolution printers and undersea optical communications, scientists, happily after years of research, have recently constructed a commercially useful laser of what color?

Q20: True or false: When they conquered the Incas, the Spaniards destroyed hundreds of manuscripts detailing the activities of the empire.

Q21: Identify the world's oldest wind instrument. (Submitted by Dave Cardall)

Q22: Peter Piper picked a peck of peppers. If they were jalapeños, how many were there? (Submitted by Dave Cardall)

Q23: What magazine once published a Monopoly Cheating Kit, which included fake instructions, fake properties, and fake cards such as "You have just won 1st prize in a beauty contest, collect $5000?" (Submitted by Bill Zigo)

Q24: What did "Queen Dolly" save from a famous landmark and why? (Submitted by Vehig Tavitian)

Send your answers and questions (with answers and references) to TRIVIA CONTEST c/o Jim Jelacic by May 31.

He wondered how a hen hatched chicks,
   And so one day he took a batch
Of eggs, and then he sat on them
   To see if any chicks would hatch.

Balloons fly when they're fill with gas;
   And since he'd often wondered why,
He gave his friend a laxative
   To see if gas would make him fly.

At 7 years he started school.
   The teacher thought it was a crime
To ask too many questions, so
   He left the school in three month's time.

He was a newsboy on a train;
   And when he could not find a buyer
He'd play with chemicals on the job--
   That's how he set the train on fire.

His new boss was a telegrapher.
   "Send an hourly signal," he said.
Our lad tied a string to the wall clock's hand,
   So the clock would send the signal instead.

Could you be parent to such a lad?
   Would his antics your anger inflame?
Perhaps it really wasn't so bad--
   For Thomas Edison was his name.

One of the oldest types of social games is the parlor game, and one type of game which is practically synonymous with the parlor game is "Categories", also called "Guggenheim" in most Hoyle game books. In the classic game, each player draws a 5 by 5 grid on a piece of paper. Along the top of each column, a category is selected, usually by majority approval. Then a 5-letter word is suggested (with no duplicate letters), and one letter is put at the left side of each column. The players then have some amount of time to find an item which fits each of the categories starting with each of the 5 letters. Since then, several variations on this game have become popular, and this month I will describe two of them.

Facts In Five, "The Game of Knowledge" was originally produced in 1976 by Leisure Time Games, a division of The Avalon Hill Game Company. While designed ideally for 5 players, any number may play. The structure is very similar to that of Guggenheim. However, instead of selecting categories among the players, a deck of cards is provided. Most cards have a class and several subdivisions, or categories. 5 cards are dealt to players, and each player selects a class and optionally a category from the card. Some cards have only a list of classes, and some cards are wild cards. If children are also playing, to balance the game adults are suggested to be assigned a category while the children are not. After these have been selected, 5 letters are drawn at random from a pile (which includes wild cards). Each player then has 5 minutes to provide an entry for each square. Once complete, each player passes their scoresheet to the player on the left, who evaluates it. A unique scoring method rewards players who can come up with many entries in a row or column. A game is 5 rounds; the highest point total wins.

Scattergories, first produced by Milton Bradley in 1988, has also become very popular (especially at my games nights). Instead of a 5 by 5 grid, each player is given a card with a list of 12 categories (there are 12 lists). A 20-sided die containing the 20 most common letters of the alphabet is rolled, and players have approximately 3-4 minutes to come up with something which fits each entry in the list starting with the letter rolled. When time is up, each player reads aloud their selection for each item on the list. The catch here is that you must come up with a unique entry in order to receive score - if anyone else has the same answer, none of you receive credit for it. So, for example, if there are only a limited number of answers (such as U.S. states), you sometimes have to second guess your opponents. Your score for a unique entry can also be doubled or tripled if you provide an alliterative answer, i.e. a 2 or 3 word answer where each word begins with the target letter. For example, if the entry is "Famous People" and the letter is "J", you would get 1 point for "Jesus", but 2 points for "Janet Jackson" or 3 points for "James Joseph Jelacic". A game is 3 lists, but most Mensans I know typically want to play off all 12 lists for the combined total.

In April, I mentioned the planets and a meteor shower as observing projects. Did you try any of these?

May Planets: There are no planets in the evening sky this month. However, this is made up for by the fact that there are 4 planets in the morning. Jupiter and Venus are very easy to see all month long, and Saturn rises higher every day, meeting Venus on the 28th. Even Mercury gets in the act, making a brief appearance early in the month. Mars is behind the sun, reaching 'superior conjunction', the point directly behind the sun, on the 12th.

Other May Events:
05/12 - Mercury is very close to Saturn.
05/20 - The Cetid Meteor shower is visible in the morning sky
05/22 - The moon is very close to Venus
05/23 - The moon is very close to Saturn

Astro News: The Milky way, and by extension, the Universe, may be 10% smaller than previously believed, according to a group of British Scientists.

Thanks to Bob Naborney for sending me a copy of a special issue of Scientific American, all about Astronomy. It was chock full of detailed articles about cosmology, the Sun, the planets, and much, much more! If you'd like to borrow it, let me know.

Using SOHO, astronomers have determined why the solar corona is so hot. Energy from the Sun's magnetic surface is channelled into the corona by a process called "magnetic reconnection". In the corona, the magnetic field is broken down, releasing heat and raising the temperature of the gas to millions of degrees.

Upcoming MHAA Events (for Southeastern New York State):
05/19 - 7:30 PM  Indoor meeting at SUNY - Alan French - Astrology Debunked
05/02 - 8:00 PM  Outdoor meeting at Bowdoin Park
05/29 - 8:00 PM  Outdoor meeting at Wilcox Park

Call (914) 473-7602 for the MHAA Hotline: Information, Astronomy News, and more! Would you like to borrow a telescope from the Club for a month? Let me know! We've got several "loaner" scopes that are very easy to use. We have lots of other Astro stuff to lend as well.

Next Time: June brings the start of summer! I'll explain it astronomically.

Tom Rankin

MHAA Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/5679

Cryptogram Answers:

Easy:
Firmness is that admirable quality in ourselves that is merely stubbornness in others.

Hard:
Some people are so pessimistic, they'd complain about the noise if opportunity knocked.

TV Musical Trivia Answers:

All of them made Billboard's Top 10.

1. Greatest American Hero, #2 in 1981 as Believe It or Not
2. Happy Days, #5 in 1976
3. Peter Gunn, #8 in 1959
4. SWAT, #1 in 1975
5. Hill Street Blues, #10 in 1981
6. Rockford Files, #10 in 1975
7. Cops, #8 in 1993 as Bad Boys
8. Dragnet, #3 in 1953
9. Hawaii 5-0, #4 in 1969
10. Welcome Back, Kotter, #1 in 1976 as Welcome Back