February 19, 1993
To: The TNS Executive Committee
From: Kevin Langdon, P.O. Box 795, Berkeley, CA 94701; (510) 658-1792
Advertising
I withdraw my motion regarding the details of advertising TNS in the Mensa Bulletin
and the International Journal. I just wanted to get us going with our advertising
program; I don't need a motion if Kjeld can just do it. Kjeld, how is our ad in the Mensa
Bulletin pulling?
I have placed an ad for TNS in the San Francisco Mensa Intelligencer and one in
the East Bay Express [Berkeley/Oakland area]. These were both free ads available
to readers of these publications; I suggest that all of you keep an eye out for free or
low-cost advertising for TNS.
Confirmation of Appointive Officers
I vote to confirm the appointment of Kjeld Hvatum as Membership Officer and John Cooper as
Financial Officer.
With regard to the Editorship of Vidya, the situation is more complicated, as
outlined below. Therefore, I vote to HOLD this appointment for further consideration.
Constitution Revision Committee
Despite the major flaws in our existing constitution, which make it tempting to start
again from scratch, I feel that it would be preferrable to involve the membership to a
greater degree in this process than would be likely to be the case if we present whole
packages of changes for ratification. I would rather see alternatives for each area of
proposed change put to a vote of the members separately, after ideas are solicited from
the membership.
Legal Status of TNS
I believe that a second signature on the TNS account and bonding of the Financial Officer
are required to protect the society and conform to the practices followed by other
associations.
I vote to authorize the Regent to be back-up signer on the TNS checking account.
Past Member List
I have a list of about a thousand past and present members of TNS; I will send a copy to
Larry Jess as soon as I process a few updates on hand.
Psychometrics Committee/SAT Cutoff
In her December 20 memo, Cyd wrote, ``In the previous memo, Kevin Langdon wrote that he
thought the ExCom should have the final word on whether Psychometric Committee
recommendations on qualifying scores are accepted for TNS.''
The TNS Constitution is silent on this subject; it mentions a ``psychometrician'' but not
a psychometrics committee. As no one is empowered to set qualifying scores in the
Constitution, it falls, by default, within the province of the Executive Committee. (My
original constitution draft, on which the draft that was adopted was based, did provide
for a Psychometrics Committee charged with setting qualifying scores.)
I suggested ratification of the Psychometrics Committee's recommendation regarding a
change in our SAT cutoff as a formality, but we aren't stuck with this tedious duty
indefinitely. We can delegate it.
I move that we place responsibility for determining which tests are acceptable for
admission to TNS and for setting our admission cutoff scores on the tests we accept in the
hands of the Psychometrics Committee, and that members of the committee be appointed by
the Regent and confirmed by the Executive Committee.
I feel that this committee should be independent, and not under the Membership Officer,
for several reasons:
1. This important responsibility should be spread out, not concentrated in the hands of
one person.
2. The Membership Officer needs to be willing to put in a lot of time working for the
society and to have an aptitude for details; members of the Psychometrics Committee need
to be knowledgeable in psychometrics. These are not necessarily to be found in the same
person.
3. The Membership Officer has plenty to do without worrying about running the
Psychometrics Committee or passing on its recommendations.
4. The Executive Committee must deal with the month-to-month exigencies of filling
appointive officer posts, but there is no need to add another level of removal from the
will of the membership by having appointive officers appoint or supervise another level of
appointive officers.
In an earlier draft of this memo I made a motion that TNS appropriate $144 to pay for
subscriptions to Ron Hoeflin's new high-range psychometrics journal, Ultra
Psychometrica, for the members of the TNS Psychometrics Committee and alter-nates.
The availability of this journal will greatly assist the members of the committee to do
the job they're entrusted with.
Unfortunately, Ron has decided to postpone this project for six months; Cyd and I have
been talking about a project along these lines since before he announced his proposed
journal, so we may go ahead with it; there's a real need for a peer-reviewed journal in
this area. This is another area where volunteer workers could do something really useful,
not just for TNS, but for the high-I.Q. societies generally.
Roster/Questionnaire
I'm glad that Paul Maxim and Mark Staton are interested in working on improving our
membership roster.
I think it's a very good idea to include a little more information in our rosters and to
survey our membership. Many members would be interested in some demographics and to know
some basic things about one another. There have been a num-ber of interesting surveys of
the members of the high-I.Q. societies (notably the Four Sigma Survey around 1980 and the
Arrow Project survey in the mid-1980's). I can supply copies of survey forms and some
suggestions regarding interesting things to ask to the coordinator of this project.
I don't think that ``hobbies'' is exactly the right word; we should ask people about their
fields of interest and expertise and about the ways they earn money, but for many members
of our community the things they do without remuneration are not less significant than
their ``professional'' pursuits, as implied by the term ``hobby.''
Vidya
I agree that getting Vidya back on track is vital; I've been getting complaints
from members, too.
Clint Williams has volunteered to edit Vidya; this is good, but I think that we
should have at least two editors, publishing alternately, to protect ourselves the next
time an editor is unable to produce the journal on a timely basis (much past experience
suggests that this is likely to happen in the future). Dennis Wilson has done a good job
of producing a high-quality journal, but hasn't been able to keep up with the publication
schedule; perhaps he would be interested in taking on a less frequent schedule. Two others
also offered their names as candidates (Bob Kopp and Pat Thomas); they might also be
willing to take on a share of the editorial duties. Other members, also, may step forward
if the option of doing an issue as a ``guest editor'' is made known to them.
Kerry Williams telephoned me and suggested that there should be a single editorial
contributions receipt officer who would route things received in the mail to one editor or
another (with, I suggest, a self-addressed return mailer for the rejected submissions, so
that they can be rerouted to another editor; this way nothing will be returned to the
author without being seen by more than one editor, improving accessibility of the journal
to diverse viewpoints).
I'm very much against going to a 6-issues-per-year schedule; it really detracts from the
journal's role as a vehicle for communication among members. For the same reason, I oppose
the various schemes for issues devoted to official business or more formal articles;
high-frequency exchange of ideas is vital for the creation of an intellectual community.
I do think that a scholarly journal such as the sample Triple Nine Scholar
produced by Clint Williams is a good idea, but it probably would be best to make it a
joint project of the ``higher-I.Q.'' (99.9th-percentile-plus) societies.
With regard to Clint's candidacy for Editor, I hope that the pages we see in Vidya
will not resemble the sample columns of biblical text with lots of words run together
contained in the dummy accompanying Cyd's ExCom memo of January 30. Cyd tells me that
she's seen other samples that look much better; I would like to see such samples myself.
I agree with Clint's placing the highest priority on catching up with letters to the
editor. In general, there may be some tidying up of format needed, but I think Clint has a
good approach to the essence of the Editor's job--presenting interesting and
thought-provoking material, packaged attractively, to the TNS membership.
But my most serious concern with regard to Clint's candidacy for Editor is this. I must
object strongly to the following sentence in his Vidya dummy (p. 6, ``Editor's Page''):
``I hope that, again, if the task be mine, no TNS members address personal communications
to the Editor, anticipating replies.'' The Editor is a member of this Executive Committee.
I will not vote for a candidate for a position on this Committee who does not intend to be
responsive to the concerns of the membership. Clint, are you willing to bend on this
point?
While a scanner would save the Editor time, this is not something I'm in favor of spending
the society's money on. Let's make sure we have an Editor who has a scanner or who doesn't
mind a little typing instead. In response to a point in Clint Williams' letter of January
3 (included with Cyd's January 30 memo), there is no difference between a ``graphics
scanner'' and an ``OCR/page scanner''; scanners have different resolutions and contrast
setttings, but the difference in handling text and graphics is in the software (I did the
documentation for Logitech's CatchWord OCR program for their ScanMan hand-held scanner).
I'd like to see us go back to including legible camera-ready contributions (as John Kormes
has suggested) instead of having the Editor put everything into one boring typeface (no
hand-printing--unless the submitter is an accomplished calligrapher--or dot-matrix print,
though; there's got to be a line somewhere).