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I have been given special privelege in the past to be able to read books on a daily basis. Even more special, that privelege has been taken away from me. It was then that I started to realize how much books affect your memory and daily thoughts, and adversely when taken away. Here's why:

1) There are three types of memory in the human brain: short-term, middle-term, and long-term memory. Books help stimulate your brain's ability to constantly convert short-term memories into middle and hopefully long term memories.

Short-term takes place immediately after learning a new fact. Generally, the average human can remember 7 +-2 facts before being unable to remember more things. This also has been shown to be the deciding factor in how people remember things more than others: those who can tend to put images next to facts. Books help conjure those images.

Go ahead and try to read a list of 30 items, and then recite them in order. By the same token, read that list again but put yourself in a story mode in your head, thinking of places and things where the list of those 30 things make sense in your mind, and recite the order. I will guarantee that the latter method works umpteens better.

This is what books do: they force you to conjure up images to push short-term facts into middle and long-term territory. Biologically, we think that a short-term memory is formed from a chemical response in our brain, linking a synapse formation with the ability to complete detailed memories. Books are an excellent source of mental stimulation to initiate that chemical response.

There is no known limit to the long-term memory, a.k.a., people are thought to be able to remember ungodly amounts of data. There are now 4 or more people confirmed to have such a gift as remembering every date, time, and detail of every event in their life, dubbed and ultra- rare "super memory". They are currently being scanned and tested to help under the biological differences between "normal" people and themselves.

2) Depending on what you read, you will have the book topic fresh in your head for days, if not, weeks afterward. The written word tends to have the keen ability to pour fresh loads of story and intellect into a person's long term memory. This is the key.

3) If you read a non-fiction story, or a cookbook, or a book about sharks, the stimulation differs. This is a great way to mix up the brain's response to factual data (ie. prevent brain boredom).

4) Alzheimer's patients have no ability to learn new facts via the short-term memory. Yet, their long-term memories remain intact. Their brains no longer have the ability to make new memories. Books help make new memories.

5) If you don't use it, you lose it.

This is the most important thing to understand: making memories cannot be taken for granted. It is an ability. Some people have a greater ability than others. Like the ability to throw a baseball, or shuffle cards, making memories get better with practice.

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It's as simple as that. The game plays perfectly. From the creators of Mythos and Diablo 2 (no shit) comes this awesome 1-player action RPG. I will go out on a limb and say that Torchlight has more action than Diablo 2 ever did. It plays faster, smoother, and has a bit more depth. Not only do your characters have skill trees like in Diablo 2, but you also have the ability to purchase spells of incremental levels. For example, my Destroyer has a heal spell, the ability to summon zombies (for distraction), haste, and refraction (like thorns). But, you only have 4 spell slots, so this adds a bit more depth to the way you build your characters. In addition, you have a pet from level 1, similar to a merc in Diablo 2, but it really doesn't have the same abilities (that I've found yet...) as the merc did. In Torchlight, you find random fishing holes, catch some fish, and feed it to your pet a la a Boy and His Blob to transform your pet into different types of monsters. They can range from melee spiders to range attack fire elementals. You have the same core gameplay that Diablo 2 had plus these additional few things. It is so much like Diablo 2, in fact, that as you play it, you'll recognize some of the areas, from Act 3 to Worldstone Chamber. This video definitely looks like Act 5 of Diablo 2:

     

Click here to download:

If_you_love_Diablo_2_youll_lov.zip (1272 KB)

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The Sydney Aquarium has 3 huge fish tanks, each with two glass tunnels to walk through. As you walk, you'll see dozens of fish in the first one, more fish and dugongs in the second one (the main attraction), and sharks in the third. The shark tank was my personal favorite.

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Testing posterous

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We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Richard Dawkins

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This animated series of images of Saturn’s F Ring was acquired by Cassini on June 10, 2009. Shepherd moons Prometheus (inner) and Pandora (outer) pass by, alternately smoothing and disturbing the particles that make up the ring. Kinks, knots, wakes and disturbances are apparent in the thin ring as it rotates.

Can you see the swirling that the gravity creates to the ring dust? It is pretty awesome to see how gravitational fields affect things around them.

From http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

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I came home last night and Eva was waiting for me in the kitchen, setting up a bowl of my favorite dish of hers: curry chicken with rice and flatbread. To complete the imminent orgy of flavor I was about to experience, I popped open a bottle of 2007 Reisling from our recent trip to Atwater Winery in Hector, NY, right at Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes region.

Music filled the air. I heard Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and other probably-famous-yet-unknown-to-me singers, to name a few. I’m glad we have those computer speakers and decent neighbors because we were able to enjoy the tunes for quite some time. I even caught Eva singing some oldies, in a cuter way than me, for sure.

It was marvelous, romantic, and delectable: I had the view, the atmosphere, and the girl.

I couldn’t have asked for a better evening.

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Last Thursday, I decided to take the long way home from the train station. It was a beautiful day; the sky was blue and most of the birds were still chirping from lunchtime. I even notice smiles on people’s faces as I meandered through the exit hall from the train station to the street.

Beer crept into my head. It came to my attention that Rob and I haven’t hung out in a while, so I rode past The Waiting Room and checked it out. There was a DJ setup outside — it looked precarious but I suggested it forlater anyways.

On my way home, I went through the center of town to find policemen blocking a variety of roads. My immediate thought was, “Has there been an accident?”, since it wouldn’t exactly be uncommon during rush hour.

I rode through the barricade, however, to find an old-fashioned car show. One of the cars immediately caught my attention: the Delorean (pictured). I have never seen one in person, yet always found them to have a fascinating design.

Sold in the 1980’s, Deloreans were shortly discontinued due to the fact that their doors opened vertically. This presented problems for people who wanted to park in supermarket parking lots, unable to get out of their vehicles.

Ironically, the rest of the car show featured vintage Mustangs, Corvettes, and variously gorgeous muscle cars with “lambo” doors, doors customized to be opened vertically. Apparently, the Delorean was never intended for practical use, but it fits right into show boutiques.

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NYC has some crazy fog

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Friendly turtle

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