EMPRESS

Regional News

From this month we see the new format Mensa Magazine. This will now be published every two months so therefore not include event listings. They will be included on the main Mensa website, but if you don't want the hassle of logging onto there whilst it's still a work in progress, please remember details of our social events are listed on www.eastmidsmensa.org.uk too where no passwords are required. If you belong to Facebook and don't currently belong to our group on there, I'd encourage you to look up 'East Midlands Mensa' and join as we plan to post our social events on there as soon as available. Unfortunately more and more is going online only but we in the East Midlands want to make it as easy as possible for members to find out what's going on and join in.

Mensa Magazine Editor Brian Page has now retired. Regional Publications Officer, Jenny Gill, thoughtfully put together a lovely book for Brian featuring photos and greetings from former and current office staff, regional newsletter editors, SIG Secs and I was delighted to be asked to contribute too. The first Mensa event Brian attended was the Nottingham Annual Gathering I organised in 1999 and he has always been supportive of our events and said we have the friendliest newsletter. Jenny presented the book to a surprised Brian during a farewell lunch with their partners.

I'm on [Phone Number] or [Email] and always happy to hear from you.

Maxine Bates

Regional Officer

Editorial

We will soon be seeing the new Mensa Magazine which will be fundamentally different from the current version and it will be produced externally. I would like to add my thanks to Brian Page for his efforts for over 20 years to inform and entertain us. For those who are already objecting - the current format is not how it always was - see Empress Extra for how it was 40 years ago (it was bi-monthly then!).

It has been decided that, from July 2023 onwards, Empress, and all the other regional newsletters, will disappear as well. In the place of these publications there will be weekly emails with information targeted by region or some other criteria to be decided. Speaking as a member - and not as an editor - I will miss the newsletter and the personal touch that a Mensan editor brings to the magazine. I can only hope that the newsletters will return one day in some form.

Mark Sloan

Roy Latham

Maria Falces

It's Good To Volunteer

During 2022 I regularly went on guided walks led by staff from the D H Lawrence Birthplace Museum in Notts. (See my event on 7th March 2023.) Having finished the shorter walk in December that concluded with hot chocolate served back at the museum, staff chatted to participants and informed us there would be no walk in January as the museum would be closed for three weeks for the annual deep clean. They asked if anyone would like to volunteer to help. As I'd enjoyed the walks so much I offered as my way of saying thank you. After completing an application form I was given several shifts at mutually agreeable times. Having arrived for my first shift I was surprised all the work would be carried out by only three members of staff and three volunteers, so they were really appreciative that I'd offered to help.

Firstly I was shown around the museum which I'd visited lots of times previously. However, I was surprised to find they have a secret room where many donated artefacts are stored. Like most museums there are more items in storage than can be displayed and this place was no exception. Every single item in the museum rooms and store room had to be inspected, cleaned and catalogued. As most items were over 100 years old this involved special cleaning equipment and solutions. There were separate brushes for ceramics, metal, wood, books and textiles including very soft pony hair brushes. I found myself cleaning framed paintings by D H Lawrence himself so felt very privileged. Due to the age of the bedding and clothes they can't be pushed in a washing machine so had to be vacuumed inch by inch with a special machine. Walls were wiped, metal polished, books dusted, ceramics washed, fabrics vacuumed, peg rugs beaten, etc. I had no idea what some of the items were until checked off the catalogued list. So now I know what a Victorian potato masher looks like!

It was a fascinating experience seeing 'behind the scenes' at such an attraction and felt like being on a cross between The Repair Shop and Antiques Road Show at times! The staff were very welcoming - and trusting with all these old items! I'm ashamed to say I've never read any of Lawrence's books so purchased a couple from their shop before I left to correct that. I'm glad I was in a position to help and am sure I will return next year.

Maxine

The British Mensa Magazine

Mensa Magazine - before it was a magazine!

I've taken the liberty of including this rather lengthy article as it is quite prophetic - look at the first heading! Bear in mind, this was written years before the Internet and before the personal computer became a reality - let alone the smartphone. This is the second part of an article published in the British Mensa Newsletter and appeared in the August/September 1982 - the cover is shown above. The original source was Mensa Journal International, July 1982. Unfortunately, I don't have the first part. Due to the age of the newsletter, scanning was very fraught and the OCR package gave some very odd results. I hope that I've fixed them all.

For those of you who have never come across the two men, the interviewer is Victor Serebriakoff, a leading member of Mensa for over 50 years. He is credited with turning Mensa into a 100,000-member society across 20 countries. He served as newsletter editor in the 1980's, World Chairman of Mensa, and later, a Vice President of Mensa International. To see more about him - this Google search will enlighten you.

Isaac Asimov was credited as being the world's most prolific author. He wrote or edited more than 500 books on subjects as diverse as the sciences, religion and literature. In addition, he was one of the greats of science fiction and developed the Three Laws of Robotics which are still relevant 80 years on. He was associate professor of biochemistry at Boston University and was also a Vice President of Mensa International. His Wikipedia entry has an interesting observation on Mensa members! (the end of the personal life section)

Isaac Asimov: The End of Mass Education?, Part 2

Victor : My next question. Isaac. is:- "Where is education going after the information explosion?" This upsurge of communication is biting into social life and having wider effects. It makes government easier in one way but more difficult in another the more information the government gets. the more complex the model has to be. and the less they understand how to use it. We begin to suspect that the system organises itself, Adam Smith's Hidden Hand-but we cannot see our values being built into it. The system seems to have its own values. to be self-organising, and largely out of our control. So, we come to my question "What do you see at the relationship between the educational system and this growing intercommunicating network which is linking up the world spontaneously and apparently without human planned control. What will be the result of all this on the massive establishment of educational institutions which we have built up.

ARE WE DROWNING IN INFORMATION?

Isaac: One has the feeling that we might choke on all this information, we cannot absorb it all so we seem likely to be buried under a great refuse heap of information pollution. Well; most information is evanescent. Let us look at the exact opposite of what we are talking about. Let us look at the isolated small town where there is no information necessary aside from the local. parochial concerns. What we associate with these small towns of, for instance. the last century before electronic communication brought an incredible avidity for information. Everyone sat around for endless hours picking at unimportant pieces of news called gossip. Endlessly. Sure. there is a great deal of information around today, but the public really wants it. It dotes on it. I am not afraid we shall be drowned by it because all those old gossipmongers in the small towns in the United States in the past never drowned in their endless gossip.

Today it is the same. Most information is thoroughly evanescent. Today's stock prices are replaced by tomorrow's Today's weather. today's football scores. today's stock quotations. They come. They go. Even today's scientific theories become tomorrow's nonsense.

My copies of the Scientific American. which I carefully preserve, of twenty years ago, are strictly antiques. They should never be referred to on pain of being poisoned by misinformation. However rapid and copious information becomes. what is useful information at any particular moment may not be so great in quantity.

Further, different people are interested in different facets. I do not care how rich and copious the information on the financial pages is. I never look at them. It does not matter how copious the sports records become; I never look at them.

DATA VERSUS INSTRUCTIONS

Victor : We are really talking about afferent information, the pre-motor side. the input. There is another side to it - the motor side - the output. I am talking about the other sort of information. that sort we call instructions. What we have been talking about is data, that which we make judgements on. But when we have made judgements. we make decisions. Then we do something, we behave. Now most of the information that is flowing around in our computer systems and in the incredibly complex network of our commercial systems, in billions of different uncontrolled channels, is affecting the way things happen. Those stock exchange figures you do not look at are deciding your life. deciding what factories get built, what institutions get torn down. who gets thrown out of work. Who gets how much money and all the important things like that. Those figures. that mass of information, flowing round the system, is having many big social effects. What I see is that kind of information, as it were, taking over the whole show. The machine is running itself without, it seems to me. much injection of human values at any point. except insofar as they come in via the demands of people in the market.

HAS THE SYSTEM TAKEN US OVER?

Isaac: I see what you mean. A great many of the factors of my life. despite the fact I never look at them, are governed by the tax laws of the United States. If the government changes the tax laws in some way. I automatically change my behaviour in response. I dance to their bidding. Even if I am not aware of what they have done. my accountant instructs me. Now, your feeling that human values are ignored makes me ask what human values are. Some time. in my more despondent moments. I feel that the true human values are greed and fear. and that is what the computerisation of the world will respond to. In other words, you will build factories where it will be most profitable to build them regardless of anything else. You will look for the short-term profit with no look at the long· term loss. This principle will govern because that is what we build into the computer. All over the world we have people grabbing for the next meal, grabbing for the next night's lodging, because they have to. And in that incredible lunge for the short-term survival, we might ensure. perhaps, our longer-term extermination.

THE EFFECT ON EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Victor : If we feel the need to get human control of the system we have to know much more and we have to disseminate that information. Let me turn back to the question of education and the technologically new methods in education that you talked about. We started to build, as you were telling us, these enormous. widespread and very expensive educational institutions all over the world. They were designed for an age when the technology for spreading information and for education was a lot less developed. What is going to happen to the large number of enormous institutions now that we can educate people in a simpler and more direct way. How will it affect the system when we find that our education is tuned to the individual and mass education goes out of the window. What future do you see for these enormous establishments, this great clutter of out-dated mass educational institutions. There are many valuable ones, of course, which must be preserved but there are plenty of very poor ones. There is a worldwide cadre of the intelligent and educated, members of the World Culture locked into a worldwide skein of top-heavy educational institutions which are beginning to be technological and cultural museum pieces. My Question is "What is the new information technology going to do to them?" Our mutual friend, Arthur Clarke, said "Hallo microchips. goodbye Mr. Chips". Now what is your opinion?

TOMORROW'S DILETTANTIST UNIVERSITIES?

Isaac: An interesting thought. Obviously if education changes, so will the universities, the research institutions and so on. But once people begin to educate themselves computer-style they make missionaries of themselves. I, for instance. would be likely to make a study of Subject A and go into great detail about it because it captured my interest. I am so enthusiastic that I cannot understand why other people do not see the fascination. I buttonhole people and enthuse about my subject. Every person who educates himself, under this system, is not only a student, but he is also a potential teacher, an intellectual missionary. There may be an explosion of creativity as everybody tries to make their own interests as widespread as possible. This is a sort of intellectual imperialism. "I want everybody to be fascinated by this new gambit in chess that I have worked out". "I want everybody to understand the value of keeping a collection of fleas"; "I want everyone to see the interest in this extremely fascinating scale-pattern development on the wings of lepidopterous insects". Then. the whole habitat of humanity is likely to become one big university. Now what do we do with the actual physical structures that support the universities today. Well. perhaps we will build a mass of lecture halls and of exhibition halls. As one particular type of structure declines or at least, one use of such a structure declines, some other use may arise. It is hard to look into the future and see it clearly, one tends to see it fuzzily.

Victor : If Isaac Asimov, the twentieth century seer can say that. who can claim to see clearly?

WHO WILL WANT TO PAY?

You show us a dilettantist picture of educational development. People will follow their own interests absolutely. regardless of any possible social contribution. If that happens, then there is going to be an increasing reluctance to subsidise educational institutions. There is no limit to the number of things you can investigate and there is no limit to the depths to which you can go in finding interesting things to theorise about. But as long as they do not. in the long run. show some promise of contributing to human welfare. there is going to be a greater reluctance to support such dilettantist science. My real question is. when the real job of educating each generation, of getting them up to the current state of the art, is finished, how can we justify further expense? This is usually the main job. When it can be done much more simply by computerized systems. is there not a threat to the whole existing structure of the present educational system? Must we not face this as something we shall have to cope with? Education and science may have to return to being supported out of private funds and private enthusiasms rather than by the state as it is now in developed countries in both the First and Second worlds.

ISAAC'S PRIVATE PARADISE

Isaac: Here is where I have my own private dream oi paradise. There was a time. for instance, in British history, highly idealised in writings. I see It as a time when a few aristocrats. those who had landed estates. who supported themselves on rents, who could rely on the world being run by their tenants and by their staff of servants. Everything was done for them so they themselves could be dilettantes. They could drink themselves to death if they wished, they could be antiquarians, build a library or. as some of them did. spend their entire life writing a particular book.

My dream is to see the whole earth like that. There would not be unfortunate people of the lower classes who worked to support this. Computerised robots would run the world, produce the necessary goods. The population would be. I trust. carefully controlled so that you do not get too many people. In this. my Utopia. human beings are one and all intellectual aristocrats who can count on the world being run smoothly and leaving them to be creative. Now I am not sure that this is in the least possible, but it is my dream.

Victor : A nice dream. It is indeed astonishing how science started. The achievements of those aristocrats, independent, rich people in Europe and America are astonishing. A handful of curious dilettantes produced the world-changing phenomenon of modern science. Most of them. of course. we're throwing away their time. But that is what you need. Scientists have to be expendable. You have to spread a lot of seed to get one plant. But suddenly that generation took to the fashion and the modern world is the result.

Isaac: That is a very important thing to remember, by the way. early science was created by independent gentlemen. by people who did not have to worry about supporting themselves.

Victor : Elitist dilettantes started science. That is a fact. Perhaps egalitarian procrustaen modern scientific institutions will finish it.

20 Questions (No. 257)

The answers to the January competition were Tubthumping, Tawse, Tornado, Ten Hag, Turgenev, Tivoli Gardens, Tocsin, Terry, Tittle, Tamil Nadu, Turkmenistan, Texel, Tic Tac, Tarot, Texas, Toroid, Tunisia, Torbay, Taylor Swift and Tisane. Congratulations to Chris Impey of Grantham who was picked at random from all correct entries and wins the £10 One4All gift card.

As it's St Patrick's Day this month we have an Irish themed quiz. Send your entries by 20th March to '20 Questions (No. 257)', [Address] or [Email]. Don't forget to include your name and address or we can't send the prize if you win.