[mike777]

Who is the smartest person you know? Albert Einstein? Bill Gates? Well, a 16-year-old girl with an IQ of 161 makes those guys look like complete morons.

Ok, maybe not morons. But according to the Daily Mail teenager Lauren Marbe has a higher IQ than Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Albert Einstein. (Einstein never actually took an IQ test but experts predict that he would have scored a 160.)

http://www.inquisitr...ures-and-mensa/

[kenberg]

160 for Einstein seems pretty low, I can't recall seeing that estimate before.
At
http://en.wikipedia....ilyn_vos_Savant
we find

Quote

In 1985, Guinness Book of World Records accepted vos Savant's IQ score of 190 and gave her the record for "Highest IQ (Women)." She was listed in that category from 1986 to 1989.^[6] She was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame in 1988.^[6][7] Guinness retired the category of "Highest IQ" in 1990, after concluding that IQ tests are not reliable enough to designate a single world record holder.^[6] The listing gave her nationwide attention and instigated her rise to fame.^[6]

Which leads to my favorite IQ story: Ms. Savant had discussed a problem in probability that I mentioned to a freshman class, and I mentioned who she was and that she wrote for Parade magazine. I no sooner finished the sentence after which a young woman piped up "She has the highest IQ in the world and she writes for Parade magazine?". Indeed.

Then there was the girl I asked out in high school. She accepted and early on in the date she explained that she had a part time job at the courthouse that gave her access. probably not approved access, to records and that she had looked me up. Her IQ was one point higher than mine, she informed me. This was a weird start to a date and it got weirder.

[mike777]

Ken we should ask why your local courthouse had you in their records?

[blackshoe]

mike777, on 2013-February-12, 21:38, said:

Ken we should ask why your local courthouse had you in their records?

And why they had his IQ in there.

[chasetb]

So guys, I am starting up a band, where I am lead singer. I am changing my last name to 'Singer' and my middle name to 'the', so I can be Chase the Singer. I have a buddy whose last name is Sitar, and he is going to play the sitar. Any other people want to jump in?

[chasetb]

Speaking of bands, I can't be the first one to mention Tommy Tutone and 867-5309 (ask for Jenny)

[kenberg]

mike777, on 2013-February-12, 21:38, said:

Ken we should ask why your local courthouse had you in their records?

blackshoe, on 2013-February-12, 22:19, said:

And why they had his IQ in there.

Yes, now that you mention it. Good question. And why was a part time employee of high school age able to access it?

All of which reminds me of another story. This is the hijack thread after all, so I'll tell it.

A few years ago a local gealogy society gave a series of free or low cost (I forget which) talks on how to find your family tree online, so Becky and I decided to go. Early on they asked for someone to volunteer a name to track. I suggested Anton Perekovic. This was my father's name when he came over on the boat in 1910. No luck, not surprising since he was ten years old and pretty much disappeared into the masses after he arrived. Ok, I said, try Thomas R. Berg. This was his name after he went through Ellis Island. No luck. Some with in the audience suggestged we try searching witness protection. However when we switched to myu mother his software came thorough. We found an online picture of my mother on a boat in a swimming suit, ca.1930.

Government records have a lot. And apparently had a lot even back when I was young. I was adopted at birth, and with this genealogy course as motivation I decided to see what I could find. People who are squeamish would be well-advised to let sleeping dogs lie but it can be a kick. Really I am far more interested in tracking down some early history of my (adopted) father's life. I think it qualifies as a true adventure but it was also difficult and he very much avoided talking about it. It's been tough finding much. Ellis Island says that he and his older brother who came with him were headed for Wisconsin. No trace there that I have found.

[Cyberyeti]

My family came out of Eastern Europe in the 1890s. A couple of stories emerged when we did some chasing.

1. We always thought that part of the family came from Krakow, they actually came from Lvov, but if you got sent back from further down the line it was eminently preferable to be sent back to Krakow than Lvov so you claimed to come from there.

2. A father put his 3 sons on boats, one to South Africa, one to New York, one to London. The one headed to "New York" got off the ship having been told he was in New York and realised some time later he was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

[kenberg]

Cyberyeti, on 2013-February-13, 07:31, said:

My family came out of Eastern Europe in the 1890s. A couple of stories emerged when we did some chasing.

1. We always thought that part of the family came from Krakow, they actually came from Lvov, but if you got sent back from further down the line it was eminently preferable to be sent back to Krakow than Lvov so you claimed to come from there.

2. A father put his 3 sons on boats, one to South Africa, one to New York, one to London. The one headed to "New York" got off the ship having been told he was in New York and realised some time later he was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The adventures of those times, carried out by just folks, seem stunning to me. I can well understand my father's reluctance to relive the details, but I wish that he could have done so.

[blackshoe]

Genealogy is a fascinating subject. There were four Reppert brothers (and their mother, and their wives, and the widows of two other brothers) who came to this country from Scotland in the mid to late 1700s. I think there are other Reppert descendants here, but we'd have to go farther back in time to find a common ancestor. The family from which I'm descended, before Scotland, came from what is now the Alsace-Lorraine area of France. There's a Reppert Hotel on Reppert Mountain in the Black Forest, in Germany. And I was told years ago that there was a Pomeranian nobleman named Reppert (or perhaps Rapphardt) who moved from Pomerania to the Black Forest region in the 12 century. Pomerania is, if I'm not mistaken, now part of Poland. The same guy who told me about the nobleman told me his name meant "fast horse". Don't know how much of that I believe - the dude ran one of those shops (in San Francisco) which claims to be able to tell you who among your ancestors was entitled to display an achievement of arms — i.e., was of the nobility. He had some old book in German in which he looked the information up. Possibly a version of the Almanach de Gotha. That's about all I know - my sister's the genealogist.

[mike777]

I just wonder if the records were leftover parts of an eugenic's program that was really big in this country for a time.

[Aberlour10]

The postings above remind me of my grandpa's odyssey during the IIWW. Was it possible to be in 3 different armies during these years? Yes, it was....my grandpa lived in Upper Silesia after the 1939 campagne and helped over two years the soldiers of the polish underground army, He has been never unmasked by the germans, but 1944 he was recruited forcibly to the Wehrmacht like a x thousends of silesian men in those days. No escape for them, Wehrmacht or KZ, that was the choice. His regiment was moved to France and after the chaos of the D-Day he renegated by occasion to the british forces. After the verifing he joined to the polish units of the british army late in 1944 and stayed there until those units have been demobilized 1947 in South England.
They all had to make a hard decision: return to Poland or one-way-tickets from Southampton to Halifax or Melbourne. My grandpa spent one year in Canada and decided there to return to his family in Silesia despite of fact that the communists had there all the power.

[ggwhiz]

Aberlour10, on 2013-February-13, 15:59, said:

The postings above remind me of my grandpa's odyssey during the IIWW. Was it possible to be in 3 different armies during these years? Yes, it was....my grandpa lived in Upper Silesia after the 1939 campagne and helped over two years the soldiers of the polish underground army, He has been never unmasked by the germans, but 1944 he was recruited forcibly to the Wehrmacht like a x thousends of silesian men in those days. No escape for them, Wehrmacht or KZ, that was the choice. His regiment was moved to France and after the chaos of the D-Day he renegated by occasion to the british forces. After the verifing he joined to the polish units of the british army late in 1944 and stayed there until those units have been demobilized 1947 in South England.
They all had to make a hard decision: return to Poland or one-way-tickets from Southampton to Halifax or Melbourne. My grandpa spent one year in Canada and decided there to return to his family in Silesia despite of fact that the communists had there all the power.

Great and credible story but for leaving Canada.

I grew up with a friend of Lebanese descent who's family arrived here via Uganda and South America. He told me that it was a family tradition that when the shooting starts, they f***ck off. He proved it by teaching at the University in Riyadh during the first Gulf War and returning to Canada in a hurry.

Makes me feel good not to have to face those choices and kudos to them that gave me such a comfortable life.

[jjbrr]

LEONARDDDDDDDDDD

[y66]

"I would still eat these meatballs. No Problem." -- Zuzana Navelkova

[y66]

Solving the Puzzles of Mimicry in Nature


The wing patterns of two unpalatable butterfly species, Heliconius erato, top row, and Heliconius melpomene, show striking similarities. DNA studies suggest that some species generated similar patterns independently; others share color-controlling genes.

[blackshoe]

"unpalatable"? I don't think you mean that - I suspect you mean "incompatible".

[Cyberyeti]

blackshoe, on 2013-March-12, 09:13, said:

"unpalatable"? I don't think you mean that - I suspect you mean "incompatible".

No he means unpalatable - tasting bad to predators (or indeed possibly poisonous). If you read the article, the hypothesis is that the species mimic each other because predators then only need to eat one not one of each to know they taste bad (hence natural selection is in their favour). They have got the same pattern by shared DNA, whether this is common ancestor or interbreeding at an earlier stage is unknown.

[gwnn]

I only scored 7/10, barely better than random guessing: Prof or Hobo??

http://individual.ut...omody/quiz.html

[jjbrr]

gwnn, on 2013-March-15, 10:21, said:

I only scored 7/10, barely better than random guessing: Prof or Hobo??

http://individual.ut...omody/quiz.html

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