Pub night at the Artful Dodger - Sept 5 2002 - found me being quizzed at some length on the probability of my being able to interact with the general public "in a positive manner" in my capacity as a Mensan volunteer for "The Word on the Street" upcoming on September 29th 2002.
This could be the result of my published opinion that IQ scores are merely a nonsense interpretation of the effects of literacy.
It could also have something to do with my opinion that the ideal job applicant in Canada and the United States cannot match eleven year old children on literacy tests.
Then again, it may have to do with my opinion that the successful are none too literate and the literate are none too successful.
I assured the gentleman on my right that I had been an employee of banks for about twenty years, that I was well aware that I had never had a politically correct thought in my head, but believed that I could nonetheless parrot company propaganda and dogma as the occasion required. If pressed I could recall that a Mensan had been chairman of the Ford Motor Company and that I knew several who actually played Euchre to strengthen the mind.
Then I allowed to the lady across the table that if need be I would say that the race was to the swift, aver that the medium was no longer the message and in extreme circumstances even claim that the bell-shaped curve was a mere figment of my imperfect imagination.
She confessed then to some PollyAnna tendencies and proclivities. This prompted an enquiry from the gentlemen on my left as to how a bell-shaped curve got connected to this and the gentleman diagonally across from me expressed his surprise that the distribution of vocabulary recognition throughout the territory had any bearing on the matter. For a moment or so the possibility that a full-fledged reading war would break out concerned me greatly. Such a conflagration could easily spread beyond the patio and bring traffic to a halt at Wellesley and Church, but the whole thing quickly dissolved into a panel of enquiry two steps below a full congressional inquisition.
Now I'm not sufficiently naive enough at all to believe that my belief that 'The Power of Positive Thinking' has many serious negative side effects is going to benefit humanity immensely in the immediate near future.
Why I'd be surprised if anyone at all ever finds out that I think "Education is the Science of Not Knowing Who Can Read."
Or that "Multiculturalism is the Result of Not Knowing Who Can Read" Or that "Success is the Leading Indicator of Mediocrity With Words."
Nosiree!
I just want to point out that the opinions of the brightest half of Her Majesty's advisors tend to be neutralized by the half that is the most dim-witted.
Of course, if I was a half-wit, I would think that people who can read were born mentally gifted too.

This item by George Noviss was included in MC2(Mensa Canada Communications), October/November 2002

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