ABC Malaysia, viral video: John Gomez.

Yesterday, I shot a "viral video" for ABC Malaysia, the publication circulation assessor. It was a very enjoyable experience. I played the ghost of a publisher, John Gomez. The production house, Reservoir Productions, commissioned a beautiful suit for me, for the shoot. It was just the right touch for the character.

It was a green screen shoot. This means that there was a green backdrop behind me, onto which will be inserted images, in post production, to place my performance in a context. I am very curious as to what the Director Ismail Jamaluddin will put there. It is going to be an interesting surprise!

For me, the most rewarding part of the shoot, apart from the chance to work with the character, until the performance was just what Ismail wanted, was the Director's response to my work. For the second time in a week, a Director has been extremely positive about my work and has spoken of working with me again in future. I am heartened by this. It allows me to understand that I am right to devote the time and energy to acting that I have, in my life, for it very much seems, now, that I have a promising future in this arena. All I have to do, at this time, is keep on working and experimenting. The path ahead looks to be an enjoyable one.

Thank you to Casting Director Richard Goh for putting my name forward for this role. Thanks also to advertising agency Creative Juice, for approving of Ismail Jamaluddin's choice of me for the role.

The ABC Malaysia viral video is expected to be released in August this year. My performance, as John Gomez, should be visible on the ABC Malaysia website. I will let you know when it is out and shall link to it, if I can.

Posted by Valentine Cawley


(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

The death of newspapers.

Newspapers are dying. They are dying much in the way humans die when starved of oxygen, for newspapers are being starved of readers. Quite simply many people seem to be abandoning them.

Now, most people have heard rumours to the effect that newspapers are in decline – but few, I think, are aware of how rapidly that decline is taking place. Today, I stumbled across some statistics from ABC (the circulation assessor), on the Guardian’s webpage. I was stunned by what I read. The figures held the morbid fascination of a car crash and, indeed, are no less dramatic.

I would like you to guess by how much a typical newspaper’s readership has declined between December 2010 and December 2011? Just try to calculate, or intuit, depending on your style, what proportion of people might be abandoning their newspaper.

Well here are the figures: from December 2010 to December 2011, every single British newspaper exhibited a decline in readership. In a comparison between the circulations of December 2011 and December 2010, The Sun lost 6.85 % of its circulation; The Daily Mirror lost 3.64 %; The Daily Star lost 13.61%; The Daily Record lost 5.42%; The Daily Mail lost 1.78 %; The Daily Express lost 4.37%; The Daily Telegraph lost 7.01%; The Times lost 8.79%; The Financial Times lost 14.44%; The Guardian lost 13.11% and the Independent lost a phenomenal 31.69%.

I invite you to consider those figures. To understand them better, imagine if they represented a reduction in your personal income over the last year. How would you feel? Well, each newspaper has lost revenues in proportion to its lost readers. Imagine further, that these losses are going on year in, year out. It is easy to see that newspapers cannot live long, under such declines in readership. What we are seeing here, is, quite possibly, the beginning of the end for newspapers as a medium for the transmission of information – at least in their present form. It won’t take many years of these declines, for newspapers to be unable to support themselves. When that time comes, they will fold, one by one. Perhaps a few will remain after the shakeout...but even that is not guaranteed.

I am left to wonder what kind of world we are building, personal decision by personal decision, such that it may not have newspapers in it, anymore. If not enough readers want newspapers, we simply won’t have any. I am not sure that a world without newspapers is a better one. The Internet, which will, no doubt, be their successor, does not seem to offer the same quality of writing. We could be in for a future in which thoughtful writing of quality is much more difficult to come by. Is that really an improvement?

The future is ours for the making. All we need to do is to buy today what we want tomorrow. If we want our newspaper to exist in years to come...we really should seek it out and buy it, today. Unfortunately, so many people, each year, stop making that decision. Will you?

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Beware the technician.

In this ever increasingly technical world, no-one can be an expert on everything. There are so many different technologies with their own ways and foibles, that, only in the tv series Eureka, can there be a character like Henry Deacon, who knows everything about every technology there is to know. In the real world, we each have time to learn a field, or several (in the case of the very bright) – but we can never master them all, not now, anyway, not in the complex modern world. Thus, it is, that we are at the mercy of technicians, in a way that makes us vulnerable.

Today, I tested the broadband speed on my Maxis connection. For several months, now, we have suffered from an unbelievably slow connection. It would, for instance, take up to 45 minutes to log in to Yahoo.com. Other sites, too, would take a very long time to load, though Yahoo held the record. It was almost as if we were having to print out a letter and walk to our correspondent with it and give it to them personally – that is how slow it was. I was rather shocked to learn that my Maxis broadband connection was just 0.04 Mbps (Megabits per second), for both upload and download. That is slower than a twenty year old dial up connection would have been.

I duly called Maxis and asked them why my connection was so slow. At first, they trotted out the story we have heard every time I have complained before: you must have exceeded your data limit for the month. I pointed out that the new month began yesterday and that there was no way on this Earth I had exceeded it in one day.

“In that case…”, he began and then directed me to check my type of connection.

“GSM only.”, I said, reading the screen before me.

He almost spluttered. “GSM only?”, he repeated, to check what he had heard.

“Yes. GSM Only.”

“Change it to WCDMA only.”, he said, his voice a little tense, “GSM is 2G, this is 3G. 2G is a very slow connection – it is GPRS.”

He spoke in acronyms which seemed to mean something special to him. However, I gathered his essential meaning.

“That is strange.”, I said, to him, recalling: “One of your technicians told us to put it to GSM only.”

“When was that?”, he countered, somewhat defensively.

“Several months ago.”

His only answer to that was an uncomfortable silence.

So, now I understood why we had had to endure such an abominably slow connection these past several months – it was the direct result of mistaken advice from a Maxis technician.

I changed the connection to WCDMA. Then I tested the speed again. This time it was over a Mbps…much quicker.

The incident made me understand, though, how much we have to place our trust in those who take care of our technical needs. Very few of us are in a position to know whether a particular piece of technical advice is good or bad. We have no way of determining whether the technician is solving a problem, or making one. We just have to trust that they know what they are doing. The problem is, that sometimes they don’t know what they are doing – or they make a poor judgement call. It is then that we suffer from our technologies, without ever really knowing why.

This leads to another thought. How would the world run, if all the specialized technicians suddenly disappeared? What would happen if there were a widespread loss of knowledge about how these systems work? Very soon, the entire technical infrastructure of our society would begin to fail, irreparably. All that we take for granted, would soon disappear. Given this, then, how odd is it that technicians, generally are not a respected element of society? They are looked down upon, as being of lower status than, for instance, managers, or lawyers. Yet, without the technicians, managers would soon have nothing to manage, and lawyers would have great difficulty communicating with their clients.

Our society is held together and depends upon people who may not be much regarded, whose contributions may be overlooked – yet, without them, nothing that we take for granted would be, at all.

So, I have to thank the Maxis technician today, one “Jay”, for correcting the problem created by another Maxis technician whose name I do not know. Without that correction, I would have to spend a very long time indeed, waiting for my internet connection to allow me to post.

It is easy to forget that everything in life conveys its own lessons. Today, I learnt of the value of technicians, by being shown what happens when they don’t know their work, well. So, what lesson have you learnt today? Who taught you it, and how?

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Second donation from Singapore.

I have received my second donation from Singapore. This is from Lee Li Jen, of Singapore, amounting to 20 US Dollars. Thank you, Li Jen for your kind support.

It is interesting to note that both donations, so far received, have come from Chinese Singaporeans. In notes from both donors, they made it clear to me that they enjoy and value my writing. This is gratifying to learn. It seems that they feel there is some importance to what I write. Thanks for letting me know.

So, Singapore is in the lead by far, compared to all other nations, so far, in this donation drive. I wonder whether any other nation will put in a showing? My intention is to tally up the totals for each nation, at the end of one year, from the start of the drive, to see how each nation compares. Interestingly, Singapore is presently No.1 (where it always likes to be, of course). Thank you to those Singaporeans who have donated.

I will keep you informed as to how it progresses, throughout the year. In the meantime, I will carry on blogging as usual.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Wikileaks' paradoxical secrecy potential.

Wikileaks. There, I have said it. I have actually mentioned the biggest news story of the decade. It had to be...I have watched on the sidelines too long.

I have been thinking about what Wikileaks are doing and, it seems to me, that they may achieve the exact opposite of what they intend. Wikileaks has the parodoxical potential to usher in an era of much greater secrecy in the USA.

The problem is this: the more Wikileaks exposes the USA, the more the USA will wish to protect itself from exposure. At this time, they are attacking Wikileaks, for releasing the information and persecuting them in whatever way they can. However, this does not address the true problem here: Wikileaks is not the origin of the information: the USA government is. Some state employee - perhaps PFC Bradley Manning - perhaps not, has given Wikileaks all of its information. Indeed, Wikileaks is only able to function because there are US citizens (and those of other countries around the world), disgruntled enough to reveal "state secrets" to an outside organization. Wikileaks is not the problem, here: US internal security of information is. Quite simply, as it is presently organized, the USA is congenitally unable to keep secrets, because it is entrusting them to the wrong people.

Once the USA has destroyed Wikileaks - which it is clear it intends to do, it will have to turn its attention to the real problem: the USA itself. The only way the USA will be able, logically, to protect itself from a Wikileaks style problem, is if it massively upgrades the security on information within the USA. This means, essentially, one thing: restricting the number of people who have access to that information and vetting those people more carefully. At present, I have read in various online newspapers somewhere in the region of two to three million US government employees, in various functions, had access to the information that has been leaked to Wikileaks. That strikes me as far too many to have any measure of security. So, it seems inevitable that the USA will begin to restrict access to "secret" information, in the wake of Wikileaks. However, this creates its own problem. You see, if state employees do not have access to the information they need to make decisions, then the state itself cannot function effectively. Thus, the USA is stuck between two needs: to maintain security of information - and to be able to function as a state. The only way to resolve this would be to increase the height of the hierarchy and to centralize decision making, more. This means deciding upon a limited number of layers who have, perhaps varying access, to information - and cutting off large numbers of people who presently have access. Now, those who have been placed in the dark need to refer to "higher ups" for advice on matters on which they would previously be able to proceed themselves.

Clearly, what I have described is a logical consequence of seeking to reduce the chances of further leaks. It is also a culture of much enhanced secrecy. It is the kind of culture that, on the outside, America is not supposed to represent. Yet, that is precisely the kind of culture which Wikileaks may force America to become: one paranoid about secrecy, extremely hierarchical and compartmentalized. It would also, incidentally, be inflexible, slow to respond and may, at times, be paralyzed, by the inability of a small number of people to make a large number of decisions. In some ways, such a change in structure, would weaken America, in ways that would do more damage to America than, perhaps, a constant stream of Wikileaks revelations. Either way, America loses...

However, if America chooses the path to greater secrecy as a way to protect against Wikileaks and similar endeavours then, in a fundamental way, Julian Assange and Wikileaks, will have failed. They would have provoked a shift towards secrecy, when, in fact, they had sought a shift towards open-ness. Wikileaks may, in fact, create a much darker world than the one it seeks to usher in. Wikileaks may lead to a world steeped in virtually unbreachable secrecy, a world in which almost no-one knows what is going on - because access to that information has been restricted as much as it is possible to do so, and still have a functional State.

Yet, if Wikileaks loses, in this way, we all lose. America would become an even less pleasant place to live in, than it already is - and the world would know even less about its conduct, than they do now.

Whatever happens, this much is sure: long after President Obama has been forgotten (and he shall be, on a long enough timescale), Julian Assange and Wikileaks will be remembered, for what they sought to achieve, even if they never achieve it. Another thing is sure, too: America cannot win in this situation - indeed, they have already lost. They cannot suppress the flow of revelations - and they will only be able to prevent future ones, by changing the entire character of their nation, in ways that would be detrimental to it. Thus, it is not untrue to say, that, in this information war, one man has defeated the world's supposedly greatest superpower. History will never forget that...though future American textbooks, might leave that information out, if their present behaviour is extrapolated. Never mind...other countries will remember for them.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

On my blogging regularity

Accessing the internet, from Malaysia, has certain quirks. Sometimes, I just can't do it.

I have both a Maxis connection and a Streamyx connection. I must say that, of the two of them, the Maxis connection is better. However, both have a problem. Sometimes common sites display broken links. By this I mean that it is not possible, often for hours or a day or so, at a time, to connect to particular sites. These are sites as well known as yahoo.com and blogspot.com. This means that sometimes, I can't check my mail. It also means that not infrequently, I cannot post to blogger, when I wish to. Thus, please be patient if I haven't blog posted for a while. It could be that I am not able to from my computer. This phenomenon has, in fact, prevented me from posting on several days, now.

So, my intention is to post regularly. However, this may not be possible, at times. So, just check back another time. The post will come eventually.

Thank you.


(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

All quiet on the Blogosphere front

Some of the commenters on my Xiaxue post, have remarked that the Singaporean Blogosphere has quietened since the NLB announced its remarkable choices for archiving. Some notable bloggers have, it seems, set their keyboards aside, in a mute protest at being thought unworthy of selection - at least, it seems that way. Either that, or their sudden silence is an inexplicable coincidence.

I am somewhat surprised at this reaction. My own thinking on the matter is that if an external body, handing out approval and recognition - which is what the NLB is doing in this case - does not approve or recognize one's work, the proper response is to plow on and continue to write. The writing itself is its own justification - and it needs no official approval to make it worthy.

I can understand that it is disheartening to see others of lesser worth - some might even say, utterly worthless, in fact - to be chosen, when one's own carefully chosen words are ignored and considered not worth noting. However, one should not be disheartened. Those who do not choose to recognize one's words say nothing about those words - their action speaks only of themselves, and their values. Through the NLB's choices, is the nature of the NLB's criteria revealed. So, by their choice, we learn of them. We do not learn of the merit or otherwise of a particular blogger. The blogger remains as good as the blogger actually is. So, I would not fall silent, simply because an authority failed to notice one's efforts. I would urge all those bloggers who have fallen silent, to resume writing and express once more, the thoughts that, before the Blogosphere, would not have been known.

The Blogosphere is here to allow you to speak your mind - so do so.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and six months, and Tiarnan, twenty-three 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, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

50,000 blog visitors and counting

Today, this blog passed a bit of a milestone: it broke the 50,000 visitor mark. As of 7.55 pm, December 29th 2007, I have had 50,030 visitors to this blog since September 19th 2006 (Day 1).

I don't know how that compares to other blogs, but for me it is a satisfactory outcome. To have had 50,000 readers in every country of the world, is a fair introduction to the internet. Of course, though appreciable, it is a small number compared to the number of people in the world. By that measure about one person in 120,000 has read at least one article from this blog.

Thank you all for taking an interest. Happy reading!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

International Olympic Committee blog visit.

There is nothing more likely to remind one how small the world is, than starting a blog. Yesterday, I wrote about the Youth Olympic Games planned for 2010. Today, someone from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) read the article I had written about them: amazing.

More specifically, someone whose IP address is called Comite International Olympique, from Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland, with the domain name: "Olympic.org", read the article in question. What I find even more incredible is the manner in which they were alerted. Someone who had read the article in the twenty four hours after I wrote it, sent an email to someone they knew at the International Olympic Committee, enclosing a link to the article - and they opened it and read it. That, to me, is rather surprising. It just goes to show how small and interconnected this modern world we live in, is.

I posted an article, from Singapore, addressed to no-one in particular, leaving it to chance who might see it. Twenty-four hours later, the organization I spoke of - the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had been notified of it and had read it. Phenomenal.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Does anyone think anymore?

We live in a time when more people have more access to more information than ever before...but does that mean more people are reading and thinking?

I have evidence that suggests otherwise. All I need to do is look at the searches that people have made to arrive on my site. One particular search was surprising the first time I saw it some weeks ago - but what really surprised me is the fourth time I saw it. This is a search that several people, in different parts of the world have made...people who all share something in common: a lack of the ability to think for themselves.

Each of these searchers used a variation on: "A sentence with child prodigy in it." I found that unnerving in its implication for the searcher's level of creative ability. Clearly, they were unable to write a sentence, for themselves, that used those two words meaningfully - and so searched the net for such a usage, which they could then copy.

It is likely that they are students, or other people, who have been assigned a writing task regarding child prodigy - but who are unable even to construct a single sentence that uses the terms.

It is all rather worrying. Are people forgetting how to think for themselves?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)