Title: The Wall

Dear Editor

I was interested by your editorial concerning the brain typologies, though I would personally disagree with some of your assertions - for instance (and I paraphrase because my son ate the magazine), that a good programmer would make a lousy childminder. Not in my experience, though I suppose it is possible that none of the people I would class as good programmers are, in fact, any cop. I was also struck by both the similarity and the dissimilarity of your thesis to the Sheldonian physical typology, which is used as a leitmotif in the late, great Robertson Davies' novel "The Rebel Angels". I don't have the book to hand, but from memory the concept is that people can be broadly split into three distinct physical types - Endomorphs, who have a tendency to be fat, or of rounded shape, and strongly emotional; Mesomorphs, who are typically athletic in appearance and are concerned with physicality, and Ectomorphs, who are generally attenuated, and are primarily concerned with the intellect. However, the categorisation is not absolute, but on a graduated scale; so that, on a scale of 1 to 7, a score of 4-4-4 would be the ideal human being. 1-1-7 would be a cold and probably dysfunctional brainiac, while a 7-1-1 would be an obese and illiterate couch potato. The ideal reader of C Vu? I would hazard 4-4-6. Any other offers?

Best regards

Edward Collier

<colliere@techop.co.uk>

I do not think I was quite that assertive. However, one desirable ability for childminding is to be aware of several things at once. Then you will find that your child is not poisoned by eating indigestible editorials.

I am also familiar (from my earlier days as an athlete) with the Sheldonian physical typology. I do not think it allowed mixes such as those you suggest. A '7' would be someone who exhibited that characteristic to the exclusion of the others. And, yes, there is a dissimilarity because the Sheldonian physical typology handles a continuum, the brain typology does not appear to be like that, however I guess there are some intermediates, just that the distribution is either 'U' shaped or bi-modal.