Sometimes you walk past a place you’ve walked past a hundred times before and suddenly notice something special about that place, and find yourself wondering why you’d never noticed it before. Ever had that?

I had that yesterday when I was walking towards my bus stop on my way home. I saw this mural in the Cathedral quarter in Belfast, and for the first time I really saw the mural.

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The mural’s boundaries are made up of countless of small tiles, each inscribed with a drawing or a message. One tile in particular jumped out at me. It said, “I believe in angels”.

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My first thought when I read that was, so do I.

Now that probably needs some explanation. As you most likely know, I’m an atheist. I consider myself to be a sceptic, and my atheism is a result of my scepticism. So as an atheist I naturally don’t believe in angels of the spiritual kind.

I do however believe in a different type of angel, one that I’ve had the immense honour and privilege of having known for almost as long as I’ve been alive.

I am of course talking about mentally handicapped people, specifically people with Down’s syndrome.

My younger sister Monica has Down’s syndrome, and through her I’ve come to be a volunteer at an annual summercamp for mentally handicapped youth.

Now I have to be honest here and admit that I didn’t always like going on that camp. A part of me felt obliged to do it, for my family. The camp was hard work and could be quite challenging at times.

But it was immensely rewarding. Every smile on every participant’s face made it worthwhile. And now that I’ve stopped doing it since I moved to Northern Ireland, I miss it. I miss the kids. I miss their smiles.

Because these people, often considered ‘inferior’, are actually the brightest, happiest, and most intensely alive humans I’ve ever met.

And every time I went on that camp with them, I came back changed. I came back with new knowledge and a fresh perspective on things. A fresh perspective on what’s really important, and what really isn’t important.

From these people I’ve learned more about life and the things that really matter than I’ve learned from any school or any number of books. These mentally handicapped kids have been my greatest teachers. They’ve been my angels.

So yes, I believe in angels.

I’ve been a member of Mensa now for about two years, both Mensa NL and British Mensa. That’s not a very long time, nor have I been a particularly active member, so you can take what I have to say about Mensa as seriously as you’re inclined to.

Mensa, in case you weren’t aware of this organisation - which is entirely plausible so don’t feel bad about it - is the self-described ‘High IQ Society’. There is only one prerequisite for membership in Mensa: your IQ has to fall in the top 2% of the world’s population.

This effectively means one in fifty people can become Mensa members. Not many actually do become members. In a country such as the Netherlands, with 16 million inhabitants, the potential membership number of Mensa is over 300,000. Last time I checked Mensa NL boasts only around 6,000 members.

I joined Mensa for a purely egotistic reason: I wanted to know if I was really as smart as I thought I was. The answer was ambiguous. Yes I passed the Mensa test and can call myself a ‘high IQ person’, but the margin was narrow and I barely made the cut.

Of course I had preconceived notions about Mensa before I signed up to do the test. I bought in to Mensa’s promotional slogans and envisioned it as a society of intellectuals sharing and debating ideas and coming up with notions for the betterment of all mankind.

This was, after all, the concept on which the society was founded.

It didn’t quite turn out that way. The first thing I noticed when I joined Mensa, and orientated myself on its online discussion forums, was that many Mensa members perceived themselves as victims.

Apparently these high IQ people felt persecuted in some way. Misunderstood from a young age onwards, many Mensans saw themselves as left out of ‘normal’ society, unable to connect with their peers and struggling to conform to society’s norms. They felt themselves as being ‘different’ and often bullied because of that.

Now I’ve seen this type of self-victimisation too often to simply accept it at face value. Everyone from teenagers to Christians, from civil servants to top-level executives, are eagerly casting themselves in the roles of victims.

This is readily amplified by humanity’s innate tribal attitudes (’us’ against ‘them’) and you realise how easily people form social groups centred around (often vaguely defined) characteristics that help separate them, in their own perception, from the ‘rest of the world’.

It was disappointing to see this self-victimisation and tribalism in Mensa. I thought that as a consequence of a high IQ, Mensans would be less likely to succumb to such base urges and dangerous social patterns.

Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that Mensans aren’t at all different from the masses of humanity - aside from that high IQ of course.

That high IQ is actually part of the problem. You see, I believe it serves as a shield for people’s convictions, a vindication for their beliefs no matter how strange and deluded.

For example, I was appalled at how many Mensans are in to what we collectively term ‘New Age’ spirituality. From astrologers to energy healers, from psychics to homeopaths, Mensa boasts a frightening abundance of people who have thrown every last remnant of rationality and common sense overboard and have committed themselves entirely to plainly ridiculous ideas.

Not only that, I got the distinct impression that these people felt that their membership of Mensa - their high IQ - was a vindication of their beliefs. “I’m smart,” they seem to argue, “so what I believe is right.”

This extends all across the spectrum of beliefs, from spirituality to ideologies and political convictions. Climate change deniers on the Mensa forums are as ferociously delusional as anywhere I’ve seen, as are blatant Islamophobic racists (more commonly referred to as PVV/BNP voters). And they see their high IQ as validation, a protective shield that allows them to ignore or discard any criticism.

Rational thought and skepticism (real skepticism - i.e. not taking any proclamation at face value), which I’ve always associated with intelligence, is no more common on Mensa’s discussion forums than it is on the Daily Mail’s comment section.

So I’m fairly disillusioned. I thought Mensa would bring me great joy, that membership of this high IQ society would help me grow as a person and enlighten me.

Unfortunately Mensa does no such thing. If anything it allows its members to dig themselves deeper in to their own personal convictions, warding off any challenge with the protective blanket of a high IQ.

I’d renounce my Mensa membership today, if only it didn’t look so damn good on my CV….

Remember about a year ago when I declared my support for Geert Wilders?

I still stand by most of what I said then - free speech is under threat and we need to oppose censorship in all its forms.

But I will not be voting for the party of Mr. Wilders, the PVV. You see, I’ve read their election programme, their ‘manifesto’ if you will.

And it’s stuffed full of rather, well, silly ideas. No, scratch that, ’silly’ doesn’t quite cover it. It’s stuffed full of plain stupid ideas.

Some of their ideas are even downright dangerous, direct threats to the freedom of Dutch citizens (which is ironic for a movement that calls itself the Freedom Party), such as preventative personal inspections and ethnic registrations.

And some of their ideas I just principally oppose, such as the PVV’s intention to repeal the smoking ban, their general anti-EU attitude, and their support of Christian and Jewish education - but not Islamic education. Is that distinction even legal? If you allow some religions but not others, isn’t that a classic example of religious discrimination - something that is outlawed in our constitution?

The PVV doesn’t seem to be in favour of free speech either, which is doubly ironic. They want to severely cut back spending on state media (the only source of genuinely independent news without any commercial incentives to bias their reporting). Additionally the PVV seems to think that everyone is not equal. If you’re white and speak Dutch you’re somehow a better person. And that, simply stated, is fucking bullshit.

I know what you’re thinking: “Barry, you should have known that was coming!” Yes, I should have. I was blinded by my own ferocious opinions on free speech, and I thought the PVV were fighting the good fight.

But they’re not. They’re probably the most anti-free-speech party in the whole country. They’re anti-freedom and anti-equality. They are, as I now realise, a truly dangerous political movement.

I was wrong. Fortunately I realised this before the election in June. Looks like it’s going to be another left-wing vote for me after all.

P.S. Before you vote, read the election programmes of the parties you’re considering. Please. Understand what you’re voting for. There’s no excuse for ignorance.

Last week I wrote a perfectly respectable article for the Belfast Telegraph which got published under the unassuming headline ‘The changing face of SEO’. That original version of the article contained no images and only one reference to Britney Spears to illustrate a point.

Then the digital editor of the Belfast Telegraph decided to ’sex up’ the article a bit. On Friday he added a Beyoncé Knowles reference and a bunch of pictures of Beyoncé and Britney.

Obviously not content with this minor assault on my reputation as a serious (*cough*) search engine optimiser, the editor decided on Monday to spice it up even more and added Angelina Jolie in the article’s headline.

The end result is this:

My article on the Belfast Telegraph site

By virtue of the Belfast Telegraph’s status as an official and respectable news site, the article has since shown up consistently in Google search results for the term ’seo’, both under its old headline and the various sexed up versions:

Now I could claim this was all done without my knowledge and consent and that I severely object to this abuse of my professional reputation just to score pageviews.

But then I’d be lying.

I was informed of these changes beforehand and I wholeheartedly agreed. Having one of my articles serve as a live test case on a high traffic news site is a wet dream come true. I love this stuff.

I go on a short holiday to visit my family and friends back in the motherland, and what happens? My Twitter account is suspended.

Why? No fucking clue. If I were to hazard a guess I’d say my account was flagged by some automated (and deeply flawed) spam-detection script and suspended without further human interference.

Over time I’ve come to rely on Twitter for a lot of things - keeping up to date in my field of employment, maintaining my network of professional and personal contacts, finding new viral content early, and generally keeping my finger on the pulse of the internet.

Now my account is suspended for no apparent reason. I’ve looked at Twitter’s rules and can’t find anything I’ve done that would incriminate my account. Twitter hasn’t provided a reason for this suspension either - the account has simply been closed. I didn’t receive any email. I had to find out about my account’s suspension from a friend who dropped me an email during my holiday.

Naturally I’ve contested this with Twitter’s support department, but to say they’re not very quick on the draw is a ridiculous understatement. Continental plates move faster than Twitter support. It’s been 6 days since I submitted a support ticket, and aside from an automated response I’ve received no word, despite two further requests from my side.

Even worse, Twitter’s standard text on account suspension states an account may be suspended for a minimum of 30 days pending ‘research’. This means I could be disconnected from a large part of my personal and professional information stream for over a month.

Creating a new account and starting from scratch isn’t really an option. Not only would I lose the valuable network I’ve built up over more than a year of Twitter usage, the rules also bluntly state that any account created to replace a suspended account faces permanent suspension.

It’s a good thing this has happened though. It has made me realise the amount of power a single social network can have over your day to day routines. This account suspension has made me feel disconnected from the internet as if I wasn’t online at all. I’m out of the loop. I’m not up to date on what’s happening any more. It’s somehow liberating and suffocating at the same time.

And it’s made me understand that Twitter, as a victim of its own popularity, is thoroughly incapable of handling its own success. Automated processes to detect and suspend spam accounts obviously don’t work, and Twitter seems reluctant to invest sufficient human resources to handle the emerging problems in an acceptable manner.

I suppose since Twitter is a free service I really shouldn’t complain. Yet most social media sites are free to use and that doesn’t stop us from revolting en masse when something goes wrong. Twitter however is unique in that despite its massive success has failed spectacularly in monetising its sudden ubiquity.

So I’ll give Twitter a bit of leeway. Another week, maybe. If they haven’t fixed my account by then, they can fuck off and I’ll start using FriendFeed instead.

UPDATE: After 17 days my account was re-activated. I never got an explanation for it, but I suspect it was because I was a little careless with my password and my account got taken over by a spammer during my holiday. Serves me right I suppose, but a little quick action from Twitter would’ve been appreciated.

It’s been a mad week here with little time for individual blog updates. So instead I’ve collected the interesting stuff of last week in one post:

• Ireland Retreats To The Dark Ages
  Not content to join the rest of the world in the 21st century, Ireland decides to make time go backwards and heads for the Dark Ages at full speed by passing a law against Blasphemy. It’s now illegal in Ireland to take the name of the Lord in vain. Well, Goddammit.
   
• Sauron’s Evil Eye Burns In The Night Sky
  Well, it’s not really the Eye of Sauron, it’s just an eye-shaped galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. But it’s still cool.
   
• Toygasm Overwhelms Adamus
  I have a new toy to replace my once-slick-but-now-clunky Tytn II: the HTC Hero. Like many of my new toy acquisitions, it is made of Pure Awesomeness until I get tired of it. Which in this case is likely not to happen for a while. Seamless integration with my Gmail, calendar and contacts, loads of cool apps, smooth interface, and most of all: open source. Fuck you, iPhone.
   
• U2 Still Rules
  I went to see U2 on their 360° tour in Croke Park, Dublin last Friday and it rocked.

That is all.

Especially for newcomers to this blog, here are some of my own favourite blog posts from the past 7 years (in no particular order):

• I feel like Ctrl+Alt+Deleting myself
• Web 2.0 Bullshit Bingo
• The Europeanization of America
• I Hate Flying
• More Politics
• Confirmation Bias
• Is Google Making Us Stoopid?
• Geek Epitaphs
• Online Community Map, D&D Style
• Good looking hippies with fairies on their spines
• Web 2.0 doesn’t exist. Eh, wait, what?

My one-year old godchild Jackson, son of a white mother and African father, watches the inaugural speech of President Barack Obama. The pictures in the background show his grandparents.

I’m off to magic land for a week, populated by sunshine children, goodhearted trolls, kind sages and all kinds of magical creatures (and some scary ones too).

I’ll be back in the dull and gray ‘real’ world in 10 days. Stay safe.