anamnesis

An addictive little genre that is a spinoff of a particular element in larger strategy games. These little suckers are very easy to dive into and very addictive. There, I warned you. Many variations exist, but this is the grandaddy and still the primo exemplar of the mix. It may not look like much, but it has some solid game play. The goal is to build little towers to keep the meanies from getting to the other side. The towers have different capabilities and you can drag them onto the board to construct your uber defense line. As your towers destroy meanies, you get money for more towers and tower upgrades. You can sell your towers if you want to reposition. BTW, the group ger-beans setup to submit your maps/scores to if you play the "medium" version of the game is "backer spit" (without the quotes.) Have no idea why ;-)

Sort of. Two entertaining essays, recently read. This kind of stuff passes for "news" in my world sans the papers and tv ^_^ What would happen if you bought 25 bottles of Nyqui l? How the world works: Inside the MonkeySphere.

Here's the thing: Alcohol and Dementia Risk A drink a day could slow the progress of dementia in older people with memory problems. That's the finding of an Italian study published in the journal Neurology. The study involved over 1,445 healthy adults age 65 and older and 121 adults the same age who had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. The participants were followed for about four years, during which time they were given memory tests to detect mild cognitive impairment or dementia. The seniors were asked about their drinking habits. Those who already had mild cognitive impairment and who drank a small to moderate amount of alcohol daily -- as little as half a glass of wine -- appeared to get some protection from further memory loss. The study did not determine what type of alcohol offered the most protection. Previous studies have suggested that moderate drinking may prevent dementia and heart disease, USA Today reports. However, the newspaper quotes experts who

Taken with my ultra-leet 2mega pixel with powerful 1x zoom. And, of course, the centerpiece of the meal, the orgasm roll. Which came late, as they sometimes do:

I've got lots of stuff to do, a lot that I'd like to do and a lot that needs to be done. I have no illusions about ever getting everything completed. But I like to capture ideas for when I may have time and energy to develop them further and I like to organize projects, todos, etc. in ways that I don't have to think about them much and can just pick-up and work on a task at any time without worrying about where I am in the big picture and without frittering away activity in the 80% of the stuff that only produces 20% of the results. I also don't like to keep all this in my head, I like open sky up there. Or at least wide expanses of rolling plains that doesn't obscure the view of sunsets and the occasional orangutan. Being a firm believer in strategic delegation, I've cajoled, beaten, modified and, as a last resort, written software to bundle various aspects of organizing these ideas and activities. Initially I did it with notebooks, and I have boxes and boxes o

Just hypothetically, if one's spouse made some boiled eggs and put them in a little bowl in the fridge; then probably they wouldn't expect someone to see these shiny brown eggs and think about a rock in her collection that looked a lot like them. And put the rock in the bowl with the eggs. But would probably kick him if he started laughing too hard when she was trying to figure out why there were now 5 eggs instead of 4, and one looked kind of funny. Just hypothetically. My stomach hurts.

An entertaining and enlightening lecture about happiness, and the psychological immune system, by the author of the book (snippet of a review) below. Follows up on some thoughts in Miswanting . Can NOT getting what we want make us as happy as GETTING it? Some compelling evidence about things we don't (typically) know about ourselves. "Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrib

Thinking back on various points of life, there were always obstacles, always areas of myself that I wanted to improve, resources I felt important to pursue. A map I toyed with at times laid out the geography as the 20's as an age of desire, the 30's of expedience and the 40's of judgment. Some touch-points lined up with this, but it was always more textured. Fueled by a couple of slugs of espresso, and stimulated by another blogger exploring this, I thought about my list, for this snapshot in time. What did I feel were important destinations from where I stood today? No earth shattering wisdom or insight here, just a little personal inventory of things that came up as significant for me and the mile-markers on my own journey. Smile at strangers Listen more than talking Judge less, criticize less Spend more time doing stuff and less time thinking about doing stuff Listen to more music Do more important stuff, less urgent stuff Remember daily that we're not here foreve

Found this pretty interesting on a couple of levels. The University of Alberta discovered a substance called DCA appears to cause regression in several types of cancer. Cancer has a curious property of shutting down the mitochondria; DCA reverse this process specifically on cancerous cells and doesn't effect normal cells. It's been used in other treatments for years and has proven relatively non-toxic. Now you would think this would be pretty exciting stuff. The problem is, DCA is not patented and not owned by a major pharmaceutical. It's inexpensive and can be administered by mixing with normal drinking water. Two major strikes against it because it doesn't seem profitable to either the major pill pushers or to the commercial medical complex. What I find even more curious is some of the responses to this research. Besides the trouble they are having getting funded for the reasons above, there are responses like this article on cancer.org . They've been flooded wi

Sonic cruised by Saturday to accompany his Mom and I for sushi and drop some books off (the rest of the Ender's series . Something ger-beans and I are working our way through.) He'd spent the night before out with his gf and her family at a musical on Wicked (yet another book in my reading queue.) It's the Wizard of Oz story as told by the "Wicked" witch of the west. Seems like she had some bad press with the whole Dorothy do-gooder contingent. Not to mention she was constantly picked on at school because her skin was green. And it turned out to be a musical weekend after all. Bright-eyes and I headed up into the mountains Sunday for an intimate concert with Ash Dargan , an aborigine musician. It was a lot more fun than I anticipated. After navigating some steep mountain roads and hairpin turns we parked above a lodge with a breath-taking view. The sun was setting and the wind had already started its own concert through the pine trees. The smells and sounds of t

Was thinking about Tao's post this morning, and I tend to agree. It's not just the specifics, about video games or gun control or fast food that makes people crazy, but a flaw in our whole orientation. Media often looks for the singular cause of a particular behavior. Exciting stories polarize issues, portrays them as black and white to incite maximum emotion. And emotion sells copy, spin sells copy, not raw information (whatever that might be.) But behind the economics of attention lies an insidious assumption, in most cases: that we are robots. If drugs, guns, violent games are available ---then they will push our buttons and we have no responsibility for our actions. So we rally for a course of action that will sanitize our environment, so nothing can push these buttons. We seem to be tacking towards a society where an individual is not empowered to make any decision which could affect their own safety, or the safety of the group. We are plundering and exchanging our freedom