They don't have to be very funny; they're smart

DATE                  6/29/90
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               METRO
EDITION               EVENING
PAGE                  B01
STORY LENGTH          10 INCHES
HEADLINE              They don't have to be very funny; they're smart
BYLINE/CREDIT         Dan Froomkin:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         CONFERENCES:ORGANIZATIONS:UNUSUAL:OC
  KEYWORD-HIT

    Rene Descartes walks into a bar, see. He orders a glass of wine and
  drinks it. The bartender says, "Would you like another?" Descartes
  replies, "I think not." And he disappears.
    That was a Mensa joke.
    Mensans, you see, are very bright. They would know that Descartes was
  a French philosopher and mathematician known for his statement: "I
  think, therefore I am." Get it?
    If you are still scratching your head over this one, you are the
  reason there is a Mensa.
    About 1,500 members of Mensa, a national group for people who can
  show they are smarter than 98 percent of the general population, are
  gathered at the Anaheim Marriott for a five-day convention that ends
  Sunday.
    Most Mensans say they join the group because people in it understand
  their jokes.
    Take Walt Patrick, a farmer from rural Washington who was carrying
  around a baby goat he brought to Anaheim for the Mensa auction. He says
  "gifted kid" and his fellow Mensans double up in laughter.
    Mensans fight the notion that they are elitist eggheads.
    "It's a social group," said Signe Belden, a Mensan dentist from
  Tustin. "We don't get together and talk about nuclear physics every
  week."
    And indeed, for every seminar on quantum mechanics at the convention,
  there are two better-attended ones on topics such as channeling, making
  balloon animals and sexual bondage.
    For instance, when Mensans said they were headed to Thursday's
  Chekhov seminar, they didn't mean the playwright. They meant Walter
  Koenig, the guy who played Ensign Chekhov on "Star Trek."
    "Those of the highly intelligent who are able to deal with society do
  so," said Russ Bakke, a Mensa officer. "And the rest of us join Mensa."

    Mensans must be testy bunch
    To become a Mensa member, you have to score in the top 2 percent on
  any one of a number of intelligence tests, or score well on college
  entrance exams. There is also a Mensa test. Here are a few sample
  questions from it:
  1. If two typists can type two pages in two minutes, how many typists
  will it take to type 18 pages in six minutes?
  2. If it were two hours later, it would be half as long until midnight
  as it would be if it were an hour later. What time is it now?
  3. Pear is to apple as potato is to ... a) banana b) radish c)
  strawberry d) peach e) lettuce.
  4. Find the pair of numbers that best continues the series:
  1 10 3 9 5 8 7 7 9 6 ...
  a) 11 5 b) 10 5 c) 10 4 d) 11 6
  Answers: 1) Six typists. One types one page in two minutes. 2) 9 p.m.
  3) b. Both grow in the ground. 4) a. Alternate numbers go up by 2 and
  down by 1, starting with 1 and 10.
  Source: American Mensa Ltd.