A day of numerical coincidences.

Today, is a day of numerical coincidences, or hidden relationships between numbers. Today, is the 14th of February...and I am 41 years old: same numerals, different order. This is the only time in my life in which such a thing will happen. It is a crossover point. It is also, curiously, halfway through a typical life, where I come from.

Yesterday, I said to Ainan: "Tomorrow is a special day: can you guess why?"

He paused and then observed: "Well the month is a prime number - and the day is one more than a prime number."

"No, Ainan. It is my birthday."

In a way, I thought the moment characteristic of Ainan, who sees the remote so easily.

So, today I am 41. There are hints of surprises to come, today...but I don't know what they are, since they are surprises. However, personally, I am surprised enough just to know that I am 41. It seems like an awfully big number for the little time it took to get here.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone...I've got a birthday to celebrate.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Lord Valentine the Misplaced.

Lord Valentine the Misplaced, to give him his full title, was a character of my invention in the early 1990s. For a time, this 18th century dandy roamed the late 20th century world and, through no intention of my own, came to the attention of millions of people.

Lord Valentine the Misplaced was interviewed for a London magazine called Time Out, in November 1993, through a chance encounter with a photographer who submitted pieces to it, while I was going about, minding my own business, as any 18th century dandy would, in 20th century London. Then, as is the way of these things, other media read the interview and contacted me through Time Out. I was subsequently interviewed for the Observer newspaper, then Channel One, the new Associated Newspapers TV news channel. Finally, the big boys came a calling - and I found myself on CNN. When I later went to New York in February of 1994, NBC News covered my presence there, with a broadcast. Ironically, it all felt as surreal as Lord Valentine was.

I found Lord Valentine the Misplaced to be a very interesting experience. He consisted of an extended improvisation in character, with a liking for aphorisms. I wore full 18th century attire, including wig and make up. It took as long for me to get dressed as some women are reputed to do. It was great fun. What was not so fun, was the rush to claim credit for my character's invention.

The first photographer of my character, a somewhat "hyper" man of unknown age, but probably in his forties, by the name of Nick Simpson, tried to give everyone the impression that, somehow, I was his invention. This galled me. You see Nick Simpson was particularly SLOW in understanding my character. I had to explain to him, on several occasions, the type of photographs that would work and what should be done. Even this didn't work. On the day we turned up for the shoot, his intended image was all wrong - it wouldn't have been interesting at all. Finally, after further explanation, we managed to get some shots which expressed some of what I had in mind. Unbelievably, this man would later claim that he had created the images in which he had had to be directed. He laid claim to the idea of my own work. I even am given to understand that he sold similar images and ideas in his work as an advertising photographer, letting people believe that he was the origin of this kind of image.

It took a lot of coaching of Nick Simpson to secure the right sort of image from him. Between first meeting me, and the day of the photoshoot, he had done some practice images, with others and they were quite the most horrifyingly garish over-coloured, emetic images I have ever seen. There is just no way this man would have got a decent image on his own. He seemed to lack the basics of good taste.

To sum up his attitude towards me as the creator of my own work, I asked him what he would say if anyone asked him who was in the photographs. "I might tell them." So, he "might" tell them who had had actually thought of the images. Just great. That was my welcome to the world of advertising - a world in which I have never met an honest person.

Lord Valentine was a very influential character. It seemed that just everyone wanted to copy him or lay claim to him in some way. Interestingly, no-one who did this, not a single one of them, ever referred to the origin of their imitative work. None of them gave credit to their "inspiration". I was so appalled that I resolved never to show any more creative work in public - and I didn't for many, many years. In fact, in some ways, I have yet to do so, again. It was just too distressing to see my work imitated, without any credit being given. It was also galling to see people such as Nick Simpson making a lot of money out of my idea, by letting people believe that it was their idea. In all my time in Nick Simpson's studio, I saw no particular evidence that he was a man of ideas. However, he thought he was...but that isn't quite the same thing.

Friends and relatives pointed out to me the resemblance of the central character Don Juan de Marco in the subsequent New Line Cinema film, of the same name, to Lord Valentine. Indeed, both characters are dandies from the past, living in the present. The film appears to have taken the Lord Valentine character and psychoanalysed him. That is it. That is the film. Rather curiously, Don Juan de Marco's film company, New Line Cinema, is owned by the same company that owns CNN. Thus, it could easily be, that CNN's interview somehow became a film made by a sister company of theirs. I did note that in all interviews the writer of Don Juan de Marco gave, he was particularly unclear about the origin of his film idea. He couldn't have been more vague, elusive or evasive about it.

What was particularly telling about this "coincidence" is that the resemblance between my prior work, of Lord Valentine, and the later Don Juan de Marco project was so close, that many different people pointed it out to me, as something they had, themselves, observed.

Indeed, there are rather too many coincidences in the Don Juan de Marco film. The characters were basically the same kind of person. The film was made by a company that had had access to the character, through CNN, before Don Juan de Marco was written. Furthermore, CNN had delayed the broadcast of the interview for quite a long time, before finally airing it. This was on the order of several weeks of just sitting on it. When you put these facts together, it is awfully hard not to come to the conclusion that Nick Simpson wasn't the only person in a hurry to lay claim to my work. It would seem most unlikely that it was an accident that a film that comes so close to imitating Lord Valentine, should also have been made by a company whose sister had interviewed me.

So, the success of the Lord Valentine character, instead of becoming the beginning of something, became the end of something. I was so disheartened with the rush to plagiarize him by so many different people, all at once, that I resolved to retreat into creative silence - which I did. Lord Valentine the Misplaced was a piece of performance art that could have begun a great career of an unusual nature. However, it did not. It ended one, by being something too many people were interested in imitating - and no-one was interested in crediting.

It taught me something, though: almost none of the people who are in creative professions, are actually creative, most of them are career plagiarists. There are very few people thinking for themselves.

Why, do I write now about Lord Valentine the Misplaced? Well, Valentine's Day is approaching and the last broadcast of Lord Valentine was on February 14th 1994, in New York. Lord Valentine was in an interview on NBC News. I never saw the interview myself, but I rather get the feeling they missed the point.

I wonder if any of my readers remember seeing either the CNN interview or the NBC interview? Did it make enough of an impression to be remembered, today, one and a half decades later? I would be interested in any thoughts or comments from anyone who managed to see it, all those years ago.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. This is not only my birthday, but the birthday of Lord Valentine the Misplaced. We share the same birthday, separated by a couple of centuries. A happy birthday, then, to Lord Valentine the Misplaced, for tomorrow.

Note: Lord Valentine the Misplaced, is frequently just referred to as Lord Valentine, however, this doesn't change the fact that he is misplaced.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Singapore's educational edge.

Singapore has an educational edge, over its erstwhile imperial master. About twenty years ago, the UK dropped the rigorous O level examination, in favour of the more democratic GCSE. By "democratic" I mean that it is an exam meant for everyone, and not for the better students, as O level was. Singapore, however, wasn't fond of the democratic idea of the GCSE and continued to favour the elitist O level. The results are clear.

Twenty years later, Singapore continues to use the O level examination. (This is the one that Ainan took. He is the youngest person to have done so.) I think this is a promising situation for Singapore - and the other former colonies and members of the Commonwealth that use the O level - and a terrible situation for the UK.

The O level challenges the student on two levels: in terms of the level and detail of knowledge required - and in terms of the level of reasoning needed to use that knowledge to solve the problems set. GCSE is much weaker. Less knowledge and less reasoning are required - so much less, in fact, that those who pass the GCSE with good grades probably wouldn't pass the O level at all.

Now, this is a serious problem for the UK. Their students have been set a bar that is too low. This means that the more able students are not being stretched up to the age of 16. The bar was deliberately lowered because only the top 20 % of students were able to handle the O level at 16. This was was thought unfair, so the bar was lowered, with a new exam which more people would be able to cope with. In Singapore (and many other countries around the world), the decision was made to keep the bar high and challenge the students to reach it. Their thinking was not that things should be made easy for the students, but that the students should just get on with meeting the challenge. (However, Singapore did recognize the situation in its own way, not by scrapping O level, but by bringing in a second-tier exam, the N level, for the kind of students who would need GCSE in England. This meant the standard was preserved, at O level, and all were happy.)

I rather think that, in substituting an easier exam, for a harder one, the UK is undermining its own national competitiveness. By lowering the bar, they have lowered the potential of an entire nation.

The rest of the world did not follow the UK's lead. The old style UK exams of the O level (and A level) are still popular around the world. This means that the rest of the world is leading the UK, in educational standards, simply by keeping the standards that the UK once had. It seems somewhat ironic that the rest of the world could overtake the UK simply by aping what the UK once was - but the UK no longer remains.

My sons will take the O level. I don't want them to be underchallenged and I see no point in taking an exam that lowers the bar. There is no achievement in achieving less than they could achieve.

In the UK, however, when Ainan is mentioned, they say that he passed his "GCSE". This is wrong. He took O level - a much harder exam. However, I understand why the newspapers do that. It saves them from having to explain to their readers that the rest of the world did not dumb down by adopting the GCSE when the UK did - and that much of the rest of the world still takes O levels. It would, of course, be rather embarrassing, to have to explain that.

I do not want to see the nation of my childhood go into long-term decline. Yet, I cannot help but feel that by lowering its own internal standard, by dropping the "elitist" O level, in favour of the "democratic" GCSE, it is ushering in age of just such a decline. I rather hope that something is done to reverse it before it is too late.

Isn't it funny that the rest of the world remembers the standards of UK's bygone age...while the UK itself has forgotten them? In that memory, will the rest of the world find success, while the UK finds a long slow decline.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Employee relations, Singaporean style.

Like every country, Singapore has employment laws, however, are they enforced? Do they have meaning beyond the books in which they are recorded?

I am privy to a recent conversation between an employee of a Singaporean company and her boss, who is a Permanent Resident of Singapore from mainland China.

The employee was a Caucasian woman of mature years, but still alert, attentive and diligent at her work. She was concerned that she hadn't been paid and it was already several days past the due date.

She entered her Director's office and addressed him quietly:

"Am I getting paid today?"

Her boss didn't even bother to look up at her.

"No." His word was as empty of warmth, as his unexpressive face.

"You do know that under Singaporean employment laws, you can't pay later than the 7th of the month, for the previous month's work."

"I am not paying you until next Tuesday.", he said, again, not bothering to look up from whatever preoccupied him on his desk. His voice had become rather harsh and irritated.

"That's illegal.", she said, surprised at his tack.

"I am not paying you. Now, if you don't like it, you can resign!" This time he did look at her, and his voice was filled with undisguised anger.

She was stunned. She walked out in silence.

The next day, she resigned.

Now, I wonder how frequently scenes like this play out across Singapore? My network of contacts is limited, so I only get to hear a few of Singapore's stories. That I should hear one such story, therefore, indicates that there may be many others.

Singapore is a land renowned for its stringent laws...but how stringently are those laws enforced which make a difference to the quality of life and working life of its residents? Certainly, this particular employer did not pay attention to the employment laws of the land. Nor did he respect his workers, in even the most basic fashion.

How common is such behaviour? Do you know of similar cases? Please let me know in the comments.

Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The Wisdom of the Spartans.

The Spartans are a fabled people; a people whose entire culture was built around war. So, one would think they would have known something about war, then? They did. They knew something which modern man has forgotten.

King Leonidas of Sparta led what amounted to a suicide mission to defend a pass at Thermopylae from invasion by an army of Persians, under Xerxes, so large that it was clearly incalculable. Herodotus spoke of 2.5 million Persians and as many support staff. Modern sources argue about this, with some guessing 250,000. The numbers are, however, immaterial, for King Leonidas led a force of just 300 men to defend Thermopylae, though he was accompanied by various allies gathered on the way, numbering in the hundreds, each. In all, it was a small force to meet and defend against what could have been millions and may as well have been an infinite horde so unequal were the forces, numerically. The Spartans had a secret weapon, though: they were Spartans.

King Leonidas and his minute force delayed the Persians for a full seven days including three days of battle, before the Persians, informed by a betrayer, Ephialtes, how to outflank the Spartans, killed every last Spartan and ally remaining.

King Leonidas had died, and all his men, but a legend had been born: that of a tiny force holding off a vast horde and winning a moral victory, of a kind, even if it was a terrible loss. King Leonidas' last stand gave the Greek world a chance to prepare for the invasion - a chance that allowed them to be victorious ultimately, over the Persians thus saving their entire culture from being overrun. No doubt this changed the course of the history of the Western world, which owes so much to Greek culture.

Now, what struck me about this tale of great bravery was not the bravery, itself, which would impress anyone who paused to imagine what those Spartans faced. No. What struck me was the wisdom of King Leonidas in how he chose his warriors. King Leonidas specifically ordered that NO MAN WHO DID NOT HAVE A LIVING SON COULD BE IN HIS FORCE. The idea was simple. All who were to join him on the battlefield faced certain death and King Leonidas wanted to make sure that all who fought that day, had male heirs to look after their families and carry on the family name. None of them would die without issue, since they had already raised children.

King Leonidas' view touched me. You see, I have spoken to modern military men (US) and, generally speaking, the men fighting and dying in American wars are young, single men. When they die, they die without issue. They have no sons. They have no family to carry on their "name" and lineage. When they die, all dies with them.

Why have we forgotten this? How is it that the Spartans - a race that founded its entire culture on war - should have known this: no man should die, without having fathered descendants. King Leonidas ensured that, whatever happened at the Battle of Thermopylae, that no family line of a Spartan would die out because of it. There is great wisdom in that - a wisdom modern men have forgotten.

One in four American soldiers serving in Iraq ends up on disability benefit. One in four has permanent health consequences as a result of a short stint on the battle field. Many are disfigured. Many have brain injuries. Some lose organs in explosions that a man would least want to lose. Many of these men will never father children. Their family line dies with them. All because modern men have forgotten what the Spartans so clearly knew: a single man should not go to war, but only those who have descendants to look after those they leave behind.

I find it strange that we see it as the other way around, now. There is the idea that the family man should not go to war because if killed he will leave his family without him. That is tragic, true...but is it not more tragic when a single man dies and leaves no-one behind?

Generous insurance packages would ensure that the families of departed soldiers were looked after, if they were family men. At least, they would have descendants.

I wonder what the Spartans would have thought of modern armies and their strange practice of sending single men to the slaughter, without thought of the consequences? I doubt that they would be impressed by our "advanced" ways.

King Leonidas knew he was going to die on that battlefield, but he faced the prospect with a certain equanimity. His last words to his wife, Gorgo, Queen of Sparta were: "Marry a good man who will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life." His concern, as ever, was with the continuity of life, even as he went to his death.

A child who pulls.

There is the widespread view...and a poisonous view it is, too...that the parents of gifted children must somehow be pushing the child. Now, this view is based on nothing but people's assumptions, but it is a view that does great harm throughout the gifted community.

I have seen some very worrying comments, on the internet, levelled at the parents of gifted children. Some of the commenters were clearly angry at the parents. They assumed that the parents were somehow bullying the child into high intellectual performance. Some even threatened violence towards the parents. It is really quite mad.

Now, in an effort to understand why people often think such things of the parents of gifted children, I can only think that the accusers are trying to understand the situation from their own limited experience. In their experience, it is impossible for a child to do the things that the gifted child or prodigy is credited with. Those things simply cannot be. Therefore, they conceive that the situation must somehow be "forced". They think that the child must be under some kind of huge pressure to perform, from the parents, and that is why they are able to perform in this way.

I find their view and understanding quite horrifying. In my experience, I just don't think it is remotely possible to force a child to perform at a high level intellectually. Either such performance is in the child, or it is not. Either the child will naturally gravitate towards such a level of performance or they will not. There is no possibility of force in the situation. Indeed, I think force could only be counter-productive in that it would produce resentment by the child, of the parents, which would lead to resistance to co-operation.

The only situation, in my view, in which a child will perform at a prodigious level, is if the child is not pushed, but PULLS. It is the child who pulls the parent towards their own, inner objectives and not the parent who pushes the child towards theirs.

If the child exhibits a pull towards a subject which arises naturally in themselves, then that child will, naturally, perform at a high level in that subject. It is possible that such a child will become a prodigy. However, when that child does become a prodigy, many people will assume that the child was pushed into achieving what they achieved. So, instead of receiving approval from others, for being a supportive parent who has enabled the child's interests to flourish, the parent of a prodigy, will more often receive hostility, sometimes very extreme hostility, from people who believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that the child has been pushed into it.

Of course, this is all very sad. The more the parent helps the child achieve their goals, the more others will insist on misunderstanding their support and malignly characterizing their nature. The more the child is parented successfully, the more others will come to be unfriendly towards the parents. It is really quite bizarre. What is happening is actually very different from what people assume. What is happening is that the parents are being better parents, in enabling their child to grow, than parents typically are. The parents are being MORE caring, MORE supportive, MORE present for their child. It is, in fact, a scenario opposite to the one people assume. The parent of a prodigy, or any gifted child, is, more often than not, making more of an effort to be a good parent, than the parent of a typical child. A prodigy demands more support. If that prodigy is flourishing then, usually, the parent is providing that support.

It seems to me, that no parent should be censured for having a gifted or prodigious child. They should be accepted as the caring parents they almost always are.

There is an irony in this, of course. The ones who accuse the parents of gifted children of pushiness, are the ones with poison in their hearts. The parents are being what the accusers are not: supportive of their children.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The value of persistence.

One of the qualities I admire in Fintan, 5, is his persistence. This quality shows through in everything that he does.

A couple of days ago, he was given a wooden helicopter kit. It was, as you might imagine, a box filled with fiddly little pieces and not so little pieces. As is customary with such things, it came with an unhelpful bit of paper that might as well have been written in a dead language for all the sense it made. So, the instructions weren't much help. However, Fintan didn't seem to need them, for he had a secret weapon, two in fact: patience and persistence.

He set about his task with a quiet focus. He picked up the pieces, one by one, examining their shape and imagining their eventual position in the structure. Then he started putting pieces together, like some great 3-d puzzle (which, of course, it was).

When he liked the look of a particular arrangement the pieces were duly glued together, initially using transparent tape, for fear of him harming himself with the superglue that would eventually do so.

It wasn't an easy thing to build. It was a complicated machine of many pieces. Yet, there he sat, at the table, quietly building it, piece by piece. It was getting on in the evening and it really was time for bed...but still he laboured on.

Finally, he put the rotors, which he had first assembled on the top. It was done: Fintan had built the helicopter.

It was time to go to bed, so his mother took him by the arm and lead him away, the moment he had finished.

Ainan, who had been waiting, proceeded to take the rotors off, again, so as to begin the task of super gluing everything together firmly. Fintan struggled in his mother's arms: he misunderstood and thought that Ainan was disassembling his lovely helicopter. He only relented and went to bed, mollified, once he understood that Ainan was just doing what he should not: using the superglue.

I felt a peculiar happiness to see Fintan do all this. He had persevered, in a difficult task, until the end and without the benefit of instructions. He had actually built the helicopter from an unpromising pile of wooden bits and pieces. What made me even more happy was seeing his reaction to Ainan interfering with his work: there was a sense of investment in his work, in Fintan, a sense of pride, achievement and ownership. These are all the basic attitudes of someone who will do meaningful things, in life - for things done have meaning for them.

I think I have caught a glimpse of the adult Fintan will become: one who perseveres until the job is done, who doesn't give up until all obstacles have been overcome and who feels pride in his achievements. Now, that is a young man I would like to meet one day.

Well done Fintan.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)