Actually, the styles of Picasso and Van Gogh are pretty well known, so they were easy to pick out and then, with some of the others, the name of the painting helped identify it ... then, just being a good guesser also helps.

I was looking at my niece's Facebook page and she had this snapshot of a meat product label at the grocery store. She said "they should have put a hyphen between "butt" and "whole"

But the funniest remark came as a comment from one of her friends, who said, "Maybe a colon would have been more appropriate."

(Download)

I aced it but guessed on all but 3. Easy test for good guessers.

In the early '80's Mensa was administering the "California Test for Mental Maturity" for qualification. So, if your dad took the Mensa administered test, 143 is at or above the 99th percentile (a 132 on that test was the minimum score needed). He would have actually qualified for several other Hi IQ society clubs that were active back then that had stricter entrance requirements than Mensa.
You've inherited some good genes.
http://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/qualifyingscores/

I was a member for about 10 years and was the president of our regional group for 2 years. Your dad sounds like he was a typical Mensan. I'd hear so many stories about how Mensans would get lost in strange cities because they would "over analyze" all the nuances contained in road and directional signs.

Probably not true, but a nice example of how Mensa social groups love challenges and especially coming up with "out of the box" solutions.

If the waitress had asked why they didn't see the obvious solution that was in front of them, someone from the group would have undoubtably pointed out that the task was not to fix the problem of the mixed up caps, but was, "How they could swap the contents of the two bottles without spilling any, and using only the implements at hand?"

Kind of goes back to the old admonition of, "Be sure to read the directions carefully before trying to solve the problem".

Holy crap !!! Thought I'd seen everything. :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

When I reached age 64, about 3 years ago, I noticed that I could no longer hit the golf ball as far as my playing partners. Each year I'd lose a bit more yardage and I found that, where we used to all shoot about the same, I was now losing an average of 10 strokes to them each round.

Several weeks ago, after much agonizing with my pride, I started teeing off from "the old man tees" which are typically 15-20 yards in front of their tees. We're now all shooting the same scores again.

In golf, you can "play it forward" as you get older. Wish there were a way for you to do that in racquetball Steve.

I lived in Iowa for most of my life and I remember when the original PIK (Payment-In-Kind) program was started in 1983 to help reduce grain surpluses and keep prices stable. In the 90's, when the program was starting to come under fire the Des Moines Register started printing annual reports on who the largest PIK checks used to go to. Perrenial winners were always Karl's Chevrolet in Ankeny and another mega car dealership that would buy large plots land and then let them go fallow to collect checks in the 100's of thousands of dollars.

(Note: Iowa has always been known as one of our country's greatest pork producers. I used to think they were talking about the hogs. :D )

Inspirational is the only word to describe it.

My older brother has had cerebral palsy all his life but is fortunate in that it only effects his right side (right arm and leg). He turned to art as a teenager and has been an artist ever since.

I'll have to show him this link and tell him to "get off his butt and get to work".

:thumbup:
And within those 2 years of national service, there could be a layer of embedded technical or vocational training that would count towards the "2 year technical degrees" that were being talked about last night during the state of the union address.

A universal, 2-year national service program would obviously cost a lot of money but by directing service work towards projects that we are going to be paying for anyway (infrastructure, healthcare, new technology, etc..) it would be a very economical use of resources and if there were vocational/technical training hours that went along with that it would be more savings. Example: A high school graduate goes into a 2-year national service program and when he is done with that service he may already have the equivalent of 1 year of vocational/technical school education under his/her belt.

As a subset of telemarketing, the so-called charities get really annoying at times (example... "Policeman's Benefit Fund raising money to take blind, deaf, and dumb kids to the circus).
I've found that by immediately interrupting their pitch and saying, "Sorry, I've been out of work for 2 years now..." has been 100% effective in ending the call. And I'm not lying either, I retired 4 years ago.

:thumbup: :thumbup:

I got the correct video so it must be working correctly now.

RE. the O'Reilly video, I'm not a great fan of his but he does have his moments. I wasn't expecting much out of this one either but, even being a "card-carrying liberal" like I am, I was impressed with how 100% spot-on he was and also about how well he made the case.

Kudos to Bill O'Rielly . This is where the discussion needs to begin.

I will admit that I am one who had doubts about the "home schooling" model of education, for many of the reasons already cited but it appears that the model has been quite successful. Both in terms of higher average SAT scores and college graduation rates as well as through follow up studies that follow these student's civic participation as adults.

A cautionary guess would be that a lot of that is due to the parent's commitment to the child's education, whereas in public schools that is one of the biggest problems.

Although I was a doubter, it's hard to argue with success.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-homeschoolers-do-well-in-college/