ChiMe Activity Bulletin Deadline. Last day for these submissions to the February ChiMe. Interested in organizing and hosting a virtual or in-person event? Find out how by checking out our guide to hosting events.

ChiMe Editorial and Ad­ver­tising Deadlines. Last day for editorial submissions to the February ChiMe. Please submit original ar­ticles, insights, puzzles, brain teasers, or short poems. Your fellow Chicago Area Mensa members would love to hear from you.

Annual Gathering (AG): Online Registration Rate Increase Alert! Register for the AG, held Wednesday, July 1st through Sunday, July 5th in Fort Worth, Texas, in the Omni Fort Worth Hotel, before midnight EST, Saturday, January 31st, before the next rate increase.

SFRM: Why Everyone Should Read Science Fiction 4:30 PM. Science fiction is not what you think. Since the dawn of the genre, SF has been at the forefront of social-justice debates. If you suppose you know what science fiction is all about because you've seen Star Wars, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning bestselling author Robert J. Sawyer who will show that Star Wars isn't science fiction, and introduce you to real SF.

Robert J. Sawyer—called “the dean of Canadian science fiction” by the Ottawa Citizen and “just about the best science fiction writer out there” by the Denver Rocky Mountain News. He has won all three of the world's top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: Hugo (which he won for Hominids); Nebula (for The Terminal Experiment); John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for Mindscan). He also won the Robert A. Heinlein Award (2017) ( for Quantum Night). Internationally, he the top SF awards in Japan (three times), Spain (three times), France, and China; and a record-setting seventeen Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”).

For more details or to register, visit the SFRM List of Presentations.
Virtual Event!!

AML Leadership Workshop: Level Up! Engineering Empathy In Your Organization 7 PM. We value our employees and we embrace our values. Wait? That's not the challenge! The challenge is that living these values is tough when everyday things get in the way of the leadership basics. Today's leaders make hundreds of decisions that often affect thousands of people daily. These decisions are coupled with developing partnerships, leadership coaching, cost targets, quality expectations, team meetings, project work, and engagement survey action plan deliverables. Given the magnitude of these daily responsibilities, rarely are decisions aligned in a concrete way to the mission and vision of the organization. This lack of focus results in tons of initiatives, much burnout, and marginal results.

Dr. Nicole D. Price believes two things: 1) If work is anything, it's personal; and 2) everyone can be great at what they do. Her session participants give glowing reviews and often request repeat appearances. She'll make you laugh; she'll make you think; she'll make you better. Want to learn more? Visit Lively Paradox.

For more details, visit the AML Event which includes the Zoom link for this event.
Virtual Event!!

SFRM: Plants Misbehaving 4:30 PM. Once upon a time, “weird” referred to the supernatural—anything eerie, fantastic, or mysterious. Today, most plants are viewed as anything but. They are conventionally perceived as passive organisms that serve us as ornamental components of gardens and homes, or as crops that yield food, textiles, medicines, and shelter. But even the most demure, thoroughly domesticated plant is capable of magical behaviors, and nature abounds with truly strange plants that defy our expectations of “vegetation.” Discover some of these weird and wonderful denizens of the plant kingdom.

Sandy Masuo is an editor, educator, author, and conservationist on a mission to enlighten and to inspire wonder in the world around us. She currently serves as the botanical content specialist at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Prior to that, she was the associate editor in the Los Angeles Zoo publications division for 18 years. In 2016, she published her debut novel (as Rosana DuMas) titled Unnatural Selection: Life and Death on the Paper Trail, the story of a horticulturist/detective investigating the dubious death of a zoo docent. She has taught fiction and business writing as well in a variety of classes from succulent gardening to bird watching at local community colleges. She holds a BA from Brown University and an Ed. M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

For more details or to register, visit the American Mensa website.
Virtual Event!!

Theodore Talk: TBA 2:30 PM. The list of all the Theodore talks will be on the American Mensa Events website. Even if you can’t attend the live talk, provided you register, you will receive a link to a recording of the event. Closed captioning enabled.
Virtual Event!!

GOBS Request Deadline Noon. Today is the last day to submit a request for GOBS funds to be approved at this Saturday’s Business Meeting for any planned, eligible event, activity, or class taking place after Saturday, January 31st through Saturday, February 14th and, optionally, later; to be eligible, events involving CAM members must be published in the issue of ChiMe corresponding to the month in which they occur. For CAM events, it’s recommended you submit the GOBS request and get it approved before submitting your event information for publication in ChiMe—so no later than today for events planned for March. March events need to be submitted by the 1st of February to the activities editor to be included in the March ChiMe. An article must be featured in the March ChiMe for GOBS-subsidized April events with an RSVP deadline in March (same 1st of February deadline but article emailed to the editor; see editorial deadline).

MWW: Nonfiction Book Discussion 4:30 PM CDT. Please join us in discussing Change the Recipe by José Andrés. We generally discuss what we liked about the book or found challenging. We also discuss what we would like more or less of, what format we read the book in, and whether it was a recent read.

See the full write-up and find contact info on the American Mensa Events website.
Virtual Event!!

New Zealand Sunday Seminars: The Science Behind the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics - How Experiments on a Chip Revealed Quantum Physics Acting on a Macroscopic Scale 5 PM (Sunday noon NZT). The 2025 Physics Nobel Prize was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis—three experimentalists who demonstrated quantum behavior in an electric circuit. The prize recognizes the important achievement of taking quantum phenomena out of the realm of atoms and elementary particles into the macroscopic world, which enabled current progress in quantum computing and quantum information as part of the second quantum revolution.

In this seminar, Uli Zuelicke professor of physics at the School of Chemical and Physical Science, Victoria University of Wellington, will discuss in a broadly accessible way the basics of macroscopic quantum tunneling, how it was observed by the Nobel laureates, and why this observation eventually enabled the design of working quantum bits (“qubits”).

For more details, including how to register, visit the American Mensa Events website. All attendees must preregister.
Virtual Event!!

Annual Gathering (AG): Online Registration Rate Increase Alert! Register for the AG, held Wednesday, July 1st through Sunday, July 5th in Fort Worth, Texas, in the Omni Fort Worth Hotel, before midnight EST, Saturday, January 31st, before the next rate increase.

ChiMe Activ­ity Bulletin Dead­line. Last day for these submissions to the March ChiMe. Interested in organizing and hosting a virtual or in-person event? There’s bound to be an activity or a restaurant you want to try, but you just want some other people to experience it with you. So invite your fellow Mensans. Find out how by visiting our guide to hosting events.

ChiMe Editorial and Ad­vertising Dead­lines. Last day for editorial submissions to the March ChiMe. Please submit original ar­ticles, insights, puzzles, brain teasers, photographs, or short poems. Your fellow Chicago Area Mensa members would love to hear from you.