Monday, January 28, 2008

Today's Intellectual Puzzle

Today, I am pondering some ideas for the Daughter, and her IB extended essay. In Toronto, IB is the best scam going and all my kids have gone through it. It stands for International Baccalaureate and it basically a high school curriculum designed and monitored internationally.

All the fancy-schmanzy private schools are going this way, but in Toronto, there are 'boutique' schools that have a small IB program tucked inside a big ugly high school. If you qualify, it's all covered! And you stay away from things thought up by local provincial government people!

It's not for everybody, since most kids get killed by the compulsory French program. But my kids went through another scam, which is the totally French-French school board, mandated by something Trudeau thought up! So their French is good.

Now, the IB has this extended essay thing, which is due in the last part of Grade 11. The two boys did theirs already, but now the youngest has to do it. She chose Biology, and I've been racking my feeble brain for some good ideas that a student could do. I don't want the house overrun by mice, or fruit flies, and most genetic stuff is out of reach. Difficult to think of something simple in biology that hasn't been done millions of times.

My initial idea was synthetic evolution, with those little creature that evolve on your computer screen. Holy crap, that stuff is complicated! Played with a cutsie program, but didn't know what was going on. Back to the drawing board for another idea. However, my daughter is very hostile to any ideas that come from 'somebody so stupid!' :)

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