[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4276
Set by Leonora Casement
Last November, BBC Wales reported that police had identified a man who had stolen a CCTV camera from a garage using the machine’s final moments of recording. The 27-year-old was ordered to carry out 40 hours of unpaid work and was sent on a “thinking skills” course. We asked you to send in details for such a course.

This week’s winners
The winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Rob Stuart.

Eyes wide shut
Module one
Face a blank wall for 30 minutes with your eyes shut. You will experience a sense of frustration or impatience. This is unfocused thinking.
Module two
Stare at a blank wall for 30 minutes with one eye open and one eye shut. You will feel that you could see more, were it not for the one-eye rule. This will cause serious irritation, fuelling your reaction to module one.
Module three
Stare at a blank wall for 30 minutes with both eyes open. Observe cracks, imperfections, the nature of the materials. This will be interesting for about three nanoseconds, after which you will become angry.
Module four
Using a camera, for 30 minutes, take experimental photos of a blank wall, yourself or anything nearby and ask (out loud) how successful they are as pictures. Your brain will feel exercised. This will, in time, prevent you from reoffending.
Bill Greenwell

Getting physical
The course will begin with physical tips to help participants think more clearly. We will practise brow-furrowing and head-scratching, before moving on to more advanced techniques, such as stroking one’s chin with one’s index finger and thumb.
We will then move on to little tricks to demonstrate that the offender’s brain is receptive to new ideas. Phrases such as “Hmm, that’s interesting . . .” and “Paradoxically . . .” will help elevate his or her standing in academic society.
Candidates will then be introduced to unfamiliar concepts with multiple choice questions to follow. “The social ramifications of crime”, “Why impressionist paintings look splodgy” and “What complements a good Chardonnay” are all possible subjects.
The course will end with participants holding a debate on a matter of current social controversy. Points will be awarded for thought process and logical argument but not for punching the instructor’s lights out.
Annette Field

Smoother criminals
The organised crime community has welcomed the Ministry of Justice’s initiative of a “thinking skills” programme for inept lawbreakers. “These people are clueless,” one major figure said. “They’re making us look bad.”
The programme, which has been described as “MBA-lite”, includes areas of study such as organisational behaviour, risk and operations management and entrepreneurial strategy. Rumours that it extends to firearms training are denied.
Some of the initial recruits, all with multiple convictions behind them, appeared at a press conference to launch the scheme. One of them explained, “I made a mistake. I thought I could wing it through a career of crime, doing it all ad hoc. But now I realise that you need planning, structure and things like that to make it pay. I’m grateful to the ministry for giving me this opportunity, which I won’t waste.”
G M Davis

The universal’s here
This week’s lesson You may be surprised to learn that you are already a thinker. Whenever some kind of representation or interpretation of the world pops into your head (or, more accurately, your “brain”, the organ of thought contained inside the head), you are having a “thought”. Some popular thoughts include: “He/she is quite attractive,” and “I’m tired.”
Thinking is very much like going to the lavatory – it’s a universal human experience but not everyone is equally good at it. This course aims to help you develop both the frequency and the quality of your brain activity, including the ability to distinguish positive or neutral thoughts (“Ooh! A puppy!”) from negative or potentially harmful ones (“I wonder what that lady would look like without a head?”) for a calmer, happier, less incarcerated life.
Next week: are superstrings really the key to a quantum theory of gravity?
Rob Stuart