Intriguingly, it has a lot to do with tear gas - or to be precise the protests over the job contract that was supposed to make employers more open to hiring under-26s on the basis that they would also be easier to fire.

For the link, look at the front cover of this week's Economist. It greets readers with a curious sight - an early renaissance painting (that may be a Bosch) where horned and winged devils boil a cauldron of monks on an open fire. More smoke.

The headline reads "Another great week for Europe". Inside (subscription required), the newspaper goes on to explain why it meant this a touch ironically. A majority so slim for Romano Prodi in Italy that Communist coalition members will be able to derail economic reforms; plus the French government's backpedalling over the under-26s CPE job contract.

The Guardian's European editor, Nicholas Watt, wrote on this blog a few weeks ago that France was essentially ungovernable until the 2007 presidential election. The withdrawal of the CPE is certainly adding to the impression that the French government is becoming one giant lame duck.

For evidence of that, just look to the smoking ban. Rather than go into battle against smokers and tobacconists in the manner it took on students and unions over the CPE, the now weakened government has retreated. A Reuters report points out the decision on "delaying" the smoking ban came just two days after it backed down on the CPE.

Yes and no. That is, yes to the former to some degree (if you can define intelligence), and no to the latter. Regardless, dim-witted eugenicists will use the study to advance their cause of breeding super-intelligent humans.

The study, led by Dr. Philip Shaw of the National Institutes of Mental Health, found surprisingly that the brains of smarter kids developed more slowly than the brains of children with average to lower intelligence, based on standard IQ tests.

The scientists conducted a series of MRI scans of these children's prefrontal cortex every couple of years as they grew up. The prefrontal cortex is the seat of memory, language and abstract reasoning. For those with lower measured intelligence, the prefrontal cortex grew thicker with neuron-rich gray matter more quickly and reached a peak thickness at age 8. For the smartest kids, the cortex was thinner early on and didn't reach peak thickness until age 11.

Why the "smart" brains developed differently is an open question. This could have something to do with genes. But this could easily be from intellectual stimuli early in life that guided the brain's development.

At best the study shows that people deemed smart by virtue of a test that some argue is culturally and gender biased have brains that develop differently from people who don't do as well on that test. It's a good study, but that's all it really says about intelligence.

For myth-busters like myself, though, the study rules out the notion that smarter people have bigger brains. Brain sizes in the Nature report had nothing to do with IQ test performance.

Yet simple logic renders the "big brain equals big smarts" argument silly. Women have smaller brains than men, on average. And smaller people, particularly dwarfs, often have smaller brains. Unless you are prepared to defend the stance that women and short people are dumber, case closed.

There have been geniuses with tiny brains and idiots with huge ones. The average brain size is about three pounds, or 1,400 grams. The brain of the French writer Anatole France was only 2.24 pounds, well below average. Lord Byron's brain was nearly twice this amount, over four pounds.

Our heads are swelled if we think humans have the biggest brains.

Whales and elephants have bigger ones. We don't even top the list when comparing brain size and body mass. With our 1:44 ratio, yes, we beat out monkeys with a 1:70 ratio. But we don't come close to mice and rats, at around 1:20, and small birds, at 1:15. An obese human likely has the same brain-to-body ratio as a monkey without suffering from a lack of intelligence. But maybe rats really are smart. They can navigate the New York City subway system far better than I can.

Logic also rules out the genetic argument. Australia was once a penal colony. Today it has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. America was created from the forsaken, hapless classes from Europe and beyond. Today America is a technological leader.

Think of all the cultures that once ruled a good chunk of the known world. Mongolia, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece ... What happened to those genes that gave rise to such intellectual superiority?

Shaw and his colleagues from the National Institutes of Health and McGill University sidestepped the question of genetics in their Nature report. That was pretty smart. As for IQ, I did rather well on an Internet-based test while the two eggs I was boiling for lunch exploded after the water evaporated. What an idiot.

The Pope has not actually composed the prayers for the traditional Way of the Cross, but is certain to have given his blessing to the Good Friday meditations at the Colosseum.

Their author is Archbishop Angelo Comastri, Vicar General at Vatican City. The tone of the meditations is striking in its contrast to the contemporary fashion for feel-good religion.

While some will regard their emphasis on sin and the dark side of human nature as retrograde, others will welcome them as a sign of the strong and conservative leadership that Pope Benedict XVI was elected to provide. All Roman Catholic churches and many others, including Anglican churches in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, celebrate a liturgy around the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.

The 14 stations begin with Jesus's condemnation to death, take Christians through meditations of the "Way of the Cross" and the Crucifixion and end with the laying of Jesus's body in the tomb. The Pope wrote the meditations himself for last year's Way of the Cross in Rome. But today's Catholic prayers, published in Italian this week and in English on the Zenit website yesterday, go further than most in their thorough denunciation of contemporary culture.

At the Third Station of the Cross, where Jesus falls for the first time, Archbishop Comastri has written: "Lord, we have lost our sense of sin. Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolous freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication."

At the Fourth Station, where Jesus is helped by Simon the Cyrene to carry the cross, Pope Benedict and his followers will pray: "Lord Jesus, our affluence is making us less human, our entertainment has become a drug, a source of alienation, and our society's incessant, tedious message is an invitation to die of selfishness."

One of the strongest meditations warns against the attack on the family. "Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family."

There is a moving meditation for the Eighth Station, where Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem, describing the "River of tears shed by mothers, mothers of the crucified, mothers of murderers, mothers of drug addicts, mothers of terrorists, mothers of rapists, mothers of psychopaths, but mothers all the same".

The Pope will also confront the question of evil in the world in a meditation that asks: "Where is Jesus in the agony of our own time, in the division of our world into belts of prosperity and belts of poverty . . . in one room they are concerned about obesity, in the other, they are begging for charity?"