May 18
– Originally I intended to write an unneccessary and predictibly boring post to poke fun at all the fuss being kicked up for the release of The DaVinci Code. I came across an article at work yesterday describing the demands of Thailand’s censorship board to cut the final ten minutes of the movie and change some of the subtitles. The reasons given for these changes were amusingly ridiculous and at the time I thought it might allow for some entertaining commentary. As it were, the article that I had bookmarked can ‘no longer be found on the server’ and so my plan has fallen apart. The closest I could find to the original article was this supplemental piece written after the censorship board reconsidered it’s position. I find it routinely amazing that a great many people adamantly profess to be ‘unshakable’ in their faith, and yet when faced with even the vaguest of dissenting opinion they race to crush that opinion lest it be heard. It’s even more amazing in the case of the DaVinci Code because the movie is so obviously fictional (in contrast to The Passion of the Christ, for instance). The chief justification that religious groups have been offering for their demand that the movie be banned – not just censored – is that it will confuse and mislead viewers, causing Christians to question their faith. God forbid anyone question their fath; and apparently if God won’t forbid it, the government of Thailand will.
– Last night I watched American Idol with my family. I was a bit shocked to learn that my entire family loves Katherine and hates Elliot (seriously, they hate him… don’t ask me why). They all seem fairly ambivolent towards Taylor (again, don’t ask me why). After watching Katherine’s second performance my sister grabbed for the phone and hit redial, she waited for a few seconds and then hung up. I was curious, “Who did you just call… wait… you didn’t… did you?…!” It’s embarassing to admit, and I can’t defend their actions, but my family not only watches American Idol… (gulp)… they vote for American Idol. My argument was quickly shot down.
“Mom, doesn’t each of those calls cost like 89 cents?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Uh… nevermind.”
My mom and sister repeatedly voted for Katherine, a phone in hand throughout the show, and apparently it paid off. Katherine survived by only a few thousand votes, no doubt due to my mother, my sister, and other similary devoted and aurally misguided viewers. The good news for me is that no number of mothers and sisters will be able to stop Taylor’s express train to victory. Wooo! Soul Patrol! Hooo!
– During a quick trip to Best Buy today I picked up season 3 of Scrubs, the New Mario Bros, and a DS game called Brain Age. I use the word ‘game’ pretty liberally as Brian Age isn’t so much a game as it is a mental treadmill. It’s a game in the way that crossword puzzles and cryptograms are games. The idea behind the game is to make you gradually smarter by stimulating parts of your brain that you wouldn’t otherwise use a whole lot (they mention the prefrontal cortex a lot). There are various minigames within the game which are linked together to constitute a mental training regimen. One of the games involves reading through a list of 4-letter words and memorizing as many as you can in 3 minutes. You then have to recite as many of the memorized words as possible in 2 minutes. Another game involves running a gauntlet of 100 mental math problems (6×7, 3-1, 8+6, etc), answering the questions as quickly as possible. The game records your accuracy and speed in each game and uses neuroscience theory to assign your brain an age. The ideal brain age is 20 and presumably with practice you become much better/smarter and your brain age will drop. My initial brain age assessment put me at 40 but that test was bullshit as I was unable to ‘remember’ more 4-letter words because the text recognition software couldn’t tell that I wanted to write the letter T. As a result I used up a lot of my time rewriting the same words over and over. My strongest game by far is the mental math where I can complete 100 calculations in less than 90 seconds without any mistakes. I perform that test “at train speed” – the game displays an animation of a train rolling across the screen: somehow it’s very satisfying. Along with the training games there is also a library of 100 Sudoku puzzles to play. Brain Age is a game that I don’t expect many people to buy on impulse, but for those of you with a DS it’s definitely worth checking out (and only $20).