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You’ve probably heard of Mensa International, that special society designed for extra-smart people (the name means “table,” in case you were wondering), defined as the top 2 percent of the population as ranked by one of a number of standardized IQ tests. So what do super-geniuses think are the top sites on the web?

The U.S. division of the society did a little survey, and has come up with a list, one that contains some fairly low-brow humor sites, including I Can Has Cheezburger (home to many an LOLcat photo) and Cake Wrecks. Even more surprising, one of the top sites under the Science and Technology category is the Popular Science web site — a rather prosaic choice for such an exclusive group (the only other top site is Gizmodo). Shouldn’t there be at least one site devoted to astrophysics or quantum mechanics?

Also on the list are Drudge Report (under the “news and politics” heading) as well as Boing Boing and PBS. And apparently even geniuses need help understanding simple things: another site to make the Mensa Top 50 list was How Stuff Works. But if these selections suggest that Mensa is just too low-brow for you, there are several other organizations that try to be even more exclusive in appealing to the ultra-smart, including the Triple Nine Society and The Genius Society, both of which claim that they’re restricted to people who score in the 99.9 percentile on one of a number of standardized IQ tests (Mensa is accepts anyone who scores in the 98th percentile). Although I’m willing to bet that most of them probably like I Can Has Cheezburger too.


Note: http://gigaom.com/2010/03/23/geniuses-love-lolcats-and-cake-wrecks-too/
Gigaom
By Mathew Ingram Mar. 23, 2010, 11:30am PDT