Evansville Area Mensa

12/27/2025

Rocker becomes physics star, professor, and international lecturer. (He will be lecturing in Nashville in November, 2026.)

Brian Cox once toured as a keyboardist in major rock and pop bands. Now he’s a particle physicist on a new world tour with a dazzling show he designed in an era of science disinformation and denial.

12/15/2025

Let's here it for women in science!

Her high school guidance counselor told her "girls don't do science"—so she went out and discovered how to rewrite the code of life itself, won the Nobel Prize, and now we're wrestling with whether humans should edit their own DNA.
Hawaii, 1970s.
Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade when her father left a dog-eared paperback on her bed: The Double Helix by James Watson.
The book told the story of how scientists raced to discover DNA's structure—the spiral staircase molecule that carries instructions for all living things.
Young Jennifer was captivated. For the first time, science wasn't boring textbook facts to memorize. It was a mystery. A hunt. A puzzle waiting to be solved.
She decided that one day, she would uncover her own hidden code in nature.
But when she told her high school guidance counselor about her dreams, he dismissed them with five words:
"Girls don't do science."
She was furious. And stubborn.
"I don't like to be told that I can't do something," she would say years later. "Sometimes, that can make me all the more determined to try."
Jennifer majored in chemistry at Pomona College, earned her PhD from Harvard, and became a biochemist at UC Berkeley.
While most scientists focused on DNA, she specialized in RNA—DNA's cousin molecule that helps translate genetic instructions. She spent years revealing three-dimensional structures of RNA molecules, building deep understanding of how nature's machinery works.
Then in 2011, Jennifer met Emmanuelle Charpentier at a conference in Puerto Rico.
The two scientists walked the streets of Old San Juan, talking about bacteria and their immune systems. They realized they had complementary skills that could unlock something extraordinary.
Bacteria have an ancient defense system called CRISPR that protects them from viruses. When a virus attacks, bacteria capture pieces of the invader's DNA and store them like "wanted posters." If that virus returns, the bacteria deploy molecular scissors—a protein called Cas9—that precisely cuts up the viral DNA, destroying it.
Doudna and Charpentier wondered: Could they reprogram those molecular scissors to cut any DNA they wanted?
Within a year, they had their answer.
In 2012, they published their groundbreaking discovery: CRISPR-Cas9 could be programmed to target and edit any gene in any living organism with unprecedented precision.
What nature took millions of years to evolve, scientists could now accomplish in weeks.
The discovery changed everything.
CRISPR offered a relatively simple, cheap, and accurate way to rewrite genetic code. It could cure inherited diseases like sickle cell anemia and Huntington's disease. It could improve crops to feed a hungry world. It promised to revolutionize medicine, agriculture, and our understanding of life itself.
But Jennifer Doudna understood immediately that such power demanded restraint.
She had a recurring nightmare that haunted her.
In the dream, someone asked her to teach them how CRISPR works. When she arrived to meet the student, she found herself face to face with Adolf Hi**er.
The nightmare captured her deepest fear: the same tool that could cure disease could be weaponized. The same technology that could eliminate suffering could create "designer babies" and deepen inequality.
In 2018, her fears materialized.
Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced he had used CRISPR to edit the genes of twin embryos, creating the world's first gene-edited babies.
He claimed he was protecting them from HIV, but he had bypassed ethical guidelines, acted in secret, and done the work poorly.
The global scientific community was horrified.
Doudna felt sick to her stomach. "This is the day you feared," a colleague told her.
But instead of retreating, she stepped forward.
She became one of the most vocal advocates for responsible use of CRISPR. She organized international conferences to establish ethical guidelines. She worked with the World Health Organization to create regulatory frameworks. She called for transparency, accountability, and global cooperation.
"Like any new technology, CRISPR comes with risks," she said. "It was clear early on that there were going to be some real ethical challenges."
She didn't oppose all human gene editing—she understood the potential to eliminate terrible suffering. But she insisted that germline editing (changes inherited by future generations) required extensive safety testing, public dialogue, and international consensus.
She argued that scientists had a responsibility not just to discover what's possible, but to help society decide what's appropriate.
When Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020, she shared it with Emmanuelle Charpentier.
They became the first all-female team to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The first all-female team to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences.
In the 119-year history of the Chemistry Prize, only eight women had ever won it.
Standing before reporters at dawn in Berkeley, still processing the news, Doudna said:
"It makes a strong statement that women can do science, women can do chemistry, and that great science is recognized and honored."
But the Nobel Prize was only part of her mission.
For Jennifer Doudna, discovery was never just about what science could do. It was about what it should do.
She continued developing CRISPR therapeutics—safe, effective treatments that could edit genes inside the human body to cure diseases. She launched clinical trials for sickle cell disease. She mentored young scientists, especially women, urging them to follow their curiosity and claim their seat at the table.
Today, CRISPR is being used in hundreds of laboratories worldwide. Researchers are using it to:

Develop treatments for cancer
Cure sickle cell disease
Create disease-resistant crops
Eliminate genetic disorders
Understand how genes work

But every application comes with Jennifer Doudna's voice asking: "Should we?"
That guidance counselor who told her "girls don't do science"?
He was wrong in every possible way.
She didn't just do science. She revolutionized it.
She didn't just edit genes. She edited the story of science itself—writing women into its highest honors and writing conscience into its greatest powers.
From a curious sixth-grader reading about DNA's discovery to a Nobel laureate wrestling with humanity's future, Jennifer Doudna proved that the most important scientists aren't just those who can change the world.
They're the ones who understand they should ask permission first.
The code of life is no longer locked away in nature's vault. We have the key.
Jennifer Doudna is teaching us to use it wisely.

12/11/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17RHTGZhqH/
One of the cores of modern computing.. if not the most relevant one.

In August 1991, a message appeared on an obscure computer science forum that would quietly change the world.
"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones," wrote Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
He was being modest. Impossibly modest.
What Linus was building in his small Helsinki apartment would eventually run the vast majority of the world's computers, though almost no one would ever know its name. It would power the internet, enable smartphones, support space exploration, and fundamentally reshape how software gets created.
But in August 1991, it was just a hobby project, and Linus wanted feedback.
The story begins with frustration—the starting point of so many innovations.
Linus had been using MINIX, an educational operating system created by professor Andrew Tanenbaum for teaching operating system concepts. MINIX worked, but it was limited by design. Tanenbaum wanted it simple for educational purposes and deliberately restricted its capabilities.
Linus wanted more. He wanted an operating system he could actually use for real work on his new 386 computer—a machine far more powerful than MINIX was designed to handle.
So he started writing one himself.
Not from scratch entirely—he was inspired by MINIX's design and borrowed some concepts from Unix, the operating system that dominated universities and research institutions. But what he created was genuinely his own: a kernel, the core component that manages a computer's resources and allows software to communicate with hardware.
By September 1991, he had something minimally functional. Version 0.01 contained exactly 10,239 lines of code—tiny by modern standards, but enough to boot up, run a command shell, and perform basic operations.
Most importantly, Linus made a decision that seemed unremarkable at the time but would prove revolutionary: he released it for free on the internet, with all the source code visible and modifiable.
This was the era when software meant proprietary control. Microsoft, Apple, IBM—they all guarded their source code jealously, selling licenses and maintaining tight control over who could see or modify their software. Software was a product you purchased, not something you could examine or improve.
Linus did the opposite. He posted his kernel to an FTP server and invited anyone interested to download it, look at the code, suggest improvements, or modify it for their own needs.
"If you want to use it, here it is," he essentially said. "If you can make it better, please do."
The response was slow at first. Operating system development is complex, requiring deep technical expertise. Most people lacked the skills or interest to contribute.
But some did.
Programmers around the world—students, researchers, hobbyists—started downloading Linus's kernel. They found bugs and fixed them. They added features. They adapted it to work on different hardware. They shared their improvements back with Linus, who incorporated the best contributions into subsequent versions.
A community was forming.
In 1992, Linus made another crucial decision: he re-licensed his kernel under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a free software license created by Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation. The GPL had a clever provision: anyone could use, modify, and distribute the software, but any modifications also had to be released under the same free license.
This meant improvements couldn't be privatized. If a company enhanced Linux, they had to share those enhancements with everyone else. The software would remain forever free and open.
This legal framework accelerated Linux's growth exponentially. Developers knew their contributions would benefit everyone, not get locked behind corporate walls. The incentive to collaborate intensified.
By the mid-1990s, Linux had evolved from hobby project to serious operating system. It gained a graphical interface, networking capabilities, support for diverse hardware, and thousands of applications. Companies began taking notice.
The first major commercial adoption came from server markets. Linux was free, stable, secure, and could run on inexpensive hardware. Businesses that needed web servers, database servers, or file servers found Linux vastly cheaper than commercial alternatives like Unix systems that cost thousands per license.
Internet companies especially embraced it. As the dot-com boom exploded in the late 1990s, startups building websites needed cheap, reliable infrastructure. Linux provided exactly that. Soon, the majority of web servers ran on Linux.
Then came the mobile revolution.
In 2008, Google released Android, a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Every Android phone—which would eventually number in the billions—ran Linux at its core. Suddenly, Linux wasn't just for servers and geeks. It was in people's pockets worldwide.
Today, Linux's reach is staggering:

Over 96% of the world's top 1 million web servers run Linux
All 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers run Linux
Over 3 billion Android devices (running Linux kernel) are in use globally
Most cloud computing infrastructure (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) runs primarily on Linux
Critical infrastructure in finance, telecommunications, aviation, and government relies on Linux
Space exploration: NASA's Mars rovers, the International Space Station, SpaceX systems—all run Linux

Yet most people have never heard of it.
This is Linux's paradox: it's everywhere and nowhere. It powers the digital world invisibly, running in the background while users interact with applications and interfaces built on top of it.
The modern Linux kernel contains over 27 million lines of code—an almost unimaginable expansion from those original 10,239 lines. It's been contributed to by over 19,000 developers from 1,400+ companies across every continent.
It's the largest collaborative project in human history.
But what made Linux revolutionary wasn't just the technology—it was the philosophy.
Before Linux proved otherwise, conventional wisdom held that complex software required centralized control, proprietary development, and profit incentive. How could quality software emerge from volunteers scattered globally, contributing in their spare time, with no boss or business plan?
Linux provided the answer: extremely well, actually.
The open-source development model that Linux pioneered—or at least popularized—demonstrated that collaboration could outperform corporate control. When thousands of expert developers can examine code, bugs get found and fixed faster. When diverse perspectives contribute improvements, innovation accelerates. When everyone benefits from enhancements, the incentive to contribute increases.
This model inspired countless other projects. Apache web server, Firefox browser, Python programming language, Wikipedia—these and thousands of other projects adopted open-source principles, creating an ecosystem of freely available, community-developed software that powers modern computing.
The cultural impact extends beyond software. The idea that complex, valuable things can be created collaboratively, without traditional corporate structure or profit motive, influenced thinking in fields from science (open-access journals) to content (Creative Commons licensing) to hardware (open-source hardware designs).
Linus Torvalds himself became an unlikely icon. Unlike typical tech billionaires, he never tried to monetize Linux directly. He works for the Linux Foundation, earning a comfortable salary to coordinate kernel development, but he's not wealthy by Silicon Valley standards.
He's famously blunt, technically brilliant, and uninterested in business politics. He still reviews code submissions and makes final decisions on what goes into the official kernel, maintaining the same role he had in 1991—just on a vastly larger scale.
His approach to leadership has been studied by management experts: decentralized coordination, technical meritocracy, and letting the best ideas win regardless of source. It's leadership by facilitating rather than controlling.
The anniversary of Linux's release—whenever you date it, whether August's announcement, September's initial release, or October's first usable version—celebrates more than software history. It celebrates proof that alternative models of creation work.
You don't need corporate ownership to build something world-changing. You don't need profit motive to inspire excellence. You don't need closed development to ensure quality.
You need talented people, shared purpose, and freedom to collaborate.
Linux proved that 10,239 lines of code, released freely by a 21-year-old student who insisted it was "just a hobby," could grow into the foundation of global digital infrastructure.
It proved that sharing makes things stronger, not weaker.
It proved that the best way to compete with proprietary control is often to simply open everything and invite collaboration.
Every time you use Google, check your Android phone, stream a video, or access a website, there's an excellent chance Linux is silently working in the background, managing the servers and devices that make it possible.
All because a Finnish student decided his hobby project might be useful to others and shared it freely rather than trying to profit from it.
The world's most successful operating system is also its most generous—built by thousands, owned by no one, available to everyone.
That's Linus Torvalds' legacy: not just brilliant code, but proof that openness, collaboration, and generosity can build things that closed, competitive, and proprietary approaches cannot match.
From 10,239 lines in 1991 to over 27 million today. From one student's hobby to billions of devices worldwide. From "won't be big and professional" to the backbone of modern computing.
Linux didn't just change software. It changed what we believe is possible when people work together freely.
And it started with a modest post on an internet forum, a small download on an FTP server, and a young programmer who thought someone else might find his code useful.
They did. Three billion of them, at least.

07/04/2025

Great new about growing new neurons as an adult! Let’s build those brains!

Neurogenesis may be happening in a brain region essential for memory and learning.Your body is constantly generating new cells. In your digestive tract, the colon’s lining turns over every five to seven days. Your red blood cells replace themselves every few weeks, skin cells about once a month. B...

08/07/2017

How precious solar eclipses proved Einstein's general theory of relativity.

99 years ago marked the last coast-to-coast solar eclipse across the United States. It almost changed the course of science history, and almost made the USA a world leader in physics back in 1918.

07/01/2017

This is a remarkable article that Mensans should enjoy. It deconstructs stereotypically "bad behaviors" into neurochemical and receptor pathways. All kinds of things here to learn.

Modern humans have designed the perfect environment for drug and food addiction.

05/07/2017

MENSA MEETING!

Please join us for a Mensa dinner at 6:00 pm on Thursday May 25 at the Olive Garden restaurant near the Eastland Mall, 1100 N Green River Rd, Evansville, IN 47715. We’ll meet in the bar from 6:00 to 6:30 and then head into the dining area. Ask for the Mensa group or simply look for the table with an owl on it. Guests are of course always welcome.

If you haven’t attended a Mensa event lately, they can be a lot of fun. We’d be delighted to meet you!

Reservations are not required, but it would be helpful to have a general idea how many people might be coming. If you intend to join us, please let me know.

Questions? Simply post a question here or PM me. You can also call/text Mensan Jon Gruebele at +1 309 693 1359, or find hime on Facebook.

Hope to see you there!
Louis Cady & Jon Gruebele

05/05/2017

Upcoming AG in Hollywood, FL. Great program lineup. http://ag.us.mensa.org

Tradition since 1963, the Annual Gathering has grown from a two-day meet-and-greet at the New York Belmont to a sprawling and diverse collection of programs, talks, games and entertainment typically spanning the July 4 weekend.

12/30/2016

Includes download links to full sized wallpaper!

It's a galaxy like a laser, emitting microwaves instead of light.

12/21/2016

Leondardo daVinci's To Do list. Remarkable.