Time For A New Thread On Rec.org.mensa
Just in case you don’t read Michael, PZ Myers, Maru, Misty, Digby, Rook, or Steve, I would like to mention that being a member of Mensa¹ is no guarantee of common sense or even logical thought processes.
It would take one of the Solons of UseNet to decide if Godwin’s Law was violated, as the violator himself invokes the comparison about his own views on a matter.
What makes this obscene suggestion that the US invoke The Final Solution to deal with immigration problems even worse, is that the commission that oversees the official records of the concentration camps has just announced a change to make them more widely available.
The BBC reports on the Punctilious Nazi archive of death:
Archivist Udo Jost showed us the book from the Matthausen camp, which showed that hundreds of Russians termed “political prisoners” by the Nazis had died on 20 April, 1942.
The cause of death was filed as “shrapnel from bombing”. But the fact that the men died precisely every second minute, on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, suggests they were really killed on the commandant’s orders.
The archive contains records on 17 million people, men, women, and children, who were swept up throughout Europe. These people were “guilty” of being Jewish, Rom, disabled, homosexual, or dissenting.
Update: Steve Gilliard has Vox Day’s attempt to respond using the standard “reading comprehension” ploy, i.e. “you are too stupid to understand what I wrote.”
Poor Vox is in full “cat on a tile floor” mode, and I would note that the Matthausen camp is in Austria, so the Russian prisoners were imported, not deported. This was part of the Nazi “guest worker” program.
1. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a recovering Mensan. I left because they redesigned the Mensa Bulletin to make it more “modern”. This was accomplished by decimating the letters section to make room for worthless graphics and the use of a sans serif font that I found uncomfortable to read. The other members were good, bad, and indifferent. About the only difference from the common run of people was an insistence on citing sources for any claim made, just like blogs.
4 comments
I haven’t met a Mensan yet who hasn’t made me quite satisfied with my wisdom; I’ve always thought that the whole idea of Mensa (Hey! Let’s create a club for people who can score at or above a certain percentile on one of a number of standardized tests!) was incredibly stupid. (And for the record, yes, I would qualify for Mensa based on my LSAT score; I’m not indulging in sour grapes.)
I’m not counting you among those Mensans since you’re recovering. But I’ve never met an active Mensan I particularly wanted to associate with on a regular basis (i.e., once a year, at most, if and only if I was related to them by blood or marriage and therefore couldn’t get out of it).
…I did also, for the record, qualify (recruited by a coworker), but I didn’t stick around long enough to require the 12-step program to get better. Such an absurd connection to the “final solution” is grounds for dismissal from civilized society and clearly demonstrates the huge gulf between raw intellect and the capability for critical thought. Mensa should get a restraining order against this guy to prohibit him from mentioning its name…
Actually Mensa was founded in Britain as an excuse for people to ignore the normal class barriers by creating new ones, but the letters to the editor were a real hoot. It was definitely a place where the Religious Reich was a persecuted minority and you had better be able to support your claims.
Jack, one of the constant discussions is the meaning of IQ tests and the consensus is that it means you can take tests, which is not a marketable skill. While well known people like the late Isaac Azimov and Geena Davis have admitted to being members, they don’t exactly highlight the fact.
“Vox Day” is a “professional” member, using it as a crutch to support flawed conclusions.