Furthermore: May 2004 Part 1

May 7, 2004

ID Cards Guide

Very comprehensive piece by The Register.

May 6, 2004

Genius on the BBC

Quite interesting show on BBC2 last night. The main element was Tony Buzan teaching a group of 6 underachieving children for about 6 months. His theory was that this group of people actually tends to contain the future geniuses of our culture. On this rather tenuous hook, the BBC then added some segments on a young man who was born from the “Genius spermbank”, a boy who was being hot-housed by his parents, and other bits and bobs generally on the theme of what makes a genius.

The interesting part of the program, to me, was not really whether Buzan found any geniuses, but simply the reaction of the children to his methods of teaching them. They were tested before and after the project by educational psychologists, and showed marked improvements in many areas (above what you’d expect from just being six months older), with verbal fluency skills showing a five fold increase in some cases.

I’m not sure what lesson we should draw from this - was it being part of a special project (with TV involved lets not forget) that engaged their interest? Was it something about Buzan’s methods? The small group atmosphere within which it was “allowed” for them to be interested in learning - the degree to which peer pressure had switched off the children (in the lower part of secondary school, so maybe 12-13 years old) was very depressing.

It shows what can be done at any rate. Hopefully there’s something here that can be applied more widely.

Plan of Attack

Just saw a good review of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack in the New Yorker. Well worth a read.

May 4, 2004

Other odd links

• Big Ball of Mud - didn’t know someone had actually written a paper on this “design” pattern.


• Wired - short interview with John Poindexter. I didn’t realise he had a techy background.



• Ongoing - Tim Bray on Jython.


• Eric Lippert - writing code on blackboards is hard. Also some good links to Microsoft interview sites.

Three Links

Three terrific pieces from Crooked Timber:

• John Negroponte for Iraq - the comments on this have some of the best analysis of the distinctions between traditional US foreign policy and Neocon thinking that I’ve seen.


• The Right of Return - I learned a huge amount about this aspect of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. Plus, it turns out I ought to read Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation


• Europe and the War on Liberty - just to make my blood boil. More on sneaky back-door data-retention proposals. Time for a faxyourmp session I think.