Bunny show-jumping

Via "suited" at the Guardian's YouTube roundup, we have this exercise in, well, bunny exercise:

The Christmas tree is a lovely touch. Read more!

No string this time

At the moment I'm teaching a course in Mustiala, in central Finland (well, central compared to Helsinki). This is why I haven't been blogging much (and what I have has been odder than usual). My web addiction took a severe test on Monday, after a tractor drove over the cable connecting the university's web servers to the world.


Some photos from the course have been put on the web by this guy:


Most are, of course, fairly meaningless if you don't know who the people are, and have far too much meaning if you do know who the people are. But there are also a few that can be appreciated by everyone (I now have the swamp landscape as my desktop wallpaper).
Read more!

Exceptional article in the Observer

Today's Observer tells us this:

Gifted pupils: too many are just ordinary, say teachers
Whitehall estimates that one-in-10 children have exceptional talent are far too high, reveals study
Well, um, yes.

The obvious question is why 10%? There will be a lot of student who are just below this threshold, so are only marginally less exceptional. Why leave them out?

Of course, there are some children who certainly do not have exceptional talent (e.g. special needs pupils), so not every pupil should be categorised as exceptional. But with a judicious bit of mission creep, we should be able to include the top 99%.
Read more!