I'm curious myself about the difference between mnemetics and a radical-based approach when it comes to character memorization. Are they really that different in practice? It strikes me that one advantage of explicitly learning the radicals as Xiao Hu recommends is that a certain amount of this stuff comes automatically: the 谢 in 谢谢 becomes a prostrated apology ("speaking with your body bent an inch"), 學 can be seen a child with its arms out grasping for something (knowledge?).

Either way, what this seems to be telling us is that we need a more structured database of character information here and some kind of interesting way for people to work through it.