12 Feb 2006
Videogaming Keeps the Brain From Aging

A bit of anecdotal evidence here: my mom, who's 82 and has a variety of health issues, is also remarkably mentally sharp. She plays video games incessantly: mostly tile games (Mah-Jong) but also Tetris type games, mini-golf games and even a shooter or two. Not to mention more types of Solitaire than I knew existed. And I've thought for a long time that this has helped her ward off the failings of senility. But there is a downside... she doesn't relate too well to the folks who live around her, many of whom consider computers to be the tool of the Devil and most of whom have never touched a keyboard. And many of them, despite being considerable;y younger than mom in many instances, are quite senile.

A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks. A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Bird Flu Detected in Italy and Greece (AP)

EU ChickensWell, it's moving rather inexorably into the heartland of Europe, and it won't be long after that before it travels to the New World as well. Is there anybody out there who actually believes that NAIS would stop this? Or even slow it down? The "experts" are still worried about human pandemics:

The U.N.'s chief bird flu expert said the spread of bird flu, which has been ravaging poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, increased the chance that the virus would mutate into a form transmitted between humans and set off a pandemic. Most human deaths from the disease so far have been linked to contact with infected birds.

and I suppose that they're right. I'm more worried about my girls, and the lack of viable vaccine, and the destruction of my livelihood. Not to mention the roll-through effect this will have on the economy: it'll make BSE look like walk in the park. But there's not much to do at this point other than sit back and wait, and hope for the best.

AP - Bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing Saturday they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus in dead swans.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

RFID Injection Required for Datacenter Access

This is one data center to which I will never have legitimate access. I'd like to say that I find it unbelievable that a company would do this: but I can't. In this day and age, anything to control, manipulate and (ultimately) enslave the individual is de rigueur.

Security Focus reports that RFID injections are now required for access to the datacenter of a Cinncinati company. From the article 'In the past, employees accessed the room with an RFID tag which hung from their keychains, however under the new regulations an implantable, glass encapsulated RFID tag from VeriChip must be injected into the bicep to gain access ... although the company does not require the microchips be implanted to maintain employment.'

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Prosecutors: Kenneth Starr, lawyer sent fake letters

Anybody else remember what happened to this guy's most famous prosecutorial target when he was caught lying? Here's a hint.

Lawyers for a death row inmate, including former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, sent fake letters from jurors asking California's governor to spare the man's life, prosecutors said Friday.

(link) [CNN]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Reform Jews Hope to Unmix Mixed Marriages

I have long considered Judaism as a "heathen" faith - it's tribal and ethnic, has an aversion to proselytizing and concentrates on the family and community. And we Heathens could learn alot from the Jewish struggle to survive as they've weathered a diaspora spanning the centuries.

It will be interesting and instructive to see how this push towards more uniformity works out.

Efforts to encourage the non-Jewish spouses of Reform Jews to convert have mostly been frowned upon, but that may be changing.

(link) [New York Times]

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link