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About meArchives for January, 2007
Win prizes! Live longer!
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s a piece that tells us one way to live longer: be famous, successful, and praised. “Social status helps you live longer,” goes the article title, and it tells you just what sort of status to shoot for:
The researchers studied 524 men – 135 winners and 389 nominees – in the competition for the physics and chemistry prizes between 1901 and 1950 – the cut-off point because the full list of nominees are kept secret for 50 years. . . . “Walking across that platform in Stockholm apparently adds about two years to a scientist’s life-span. How status does this, we just don’t know,” Oswald says.
So another piece falls into place. Be multilingual, win a Nobel. More posts to follow as I flesh out this plan for long and vigorous life.
A long and 健康な life?
Good news for translators: Bilingualism Has Protective Effect In Delaying Onset Of Dementia By Four Years, Canadian Study Shows. This study was a limited one examining medical records from one memory clinic, so nothing’s been proven to be sure. But it isn’t hard to believe that keeping your brain filled with multiple vocabularies, grammars, and even writing systems is a good way to flex that mental muscle more effectively for more years.
“Our study found that speaking two languages throughout one’s life appears to be associated with a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia by four years compared to those who speak one language,” says Dr. Bialystok, Professor of Psychology at York University and Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest.
The study follows on the heels of previous published reports by Dr. Bialystok and colleagues showing that bilingualism enhances attention and cognitive control in both children and older adults.
I saw this linked at Slashdot, where the discussion of course instantly veered off into debate over whether FORTRAN would be a better second tongue than COBOL . . .
McDonald’s takes on the konbini
Awesomeness abounds in the video linked over at Japan Probe. Donald (known elsewhere around the world as Ronald) McDonald does epic battle with representatives of Japan’s convenience stores for . . . I dunno. Maybe he’s trying to keep them from selling those microwaved burgers that I never see anyone buying.
It’s got kung fu, a clown, and the sights of Tokyo. Go for it.
The Apple *yawn* phone
The Los Angeles Times has a pretty good article on the iPhone’s reception in Japan, which to date has been almost no response at all: “In Japan, barely a ripple.” There are a number of reasons why this product announcement just isn’t important in this market, and the article touches on a few of them: phones here already come packed with space-age features, the networks here are already faster than anything the iPhone will run on.
I like the look of the interface on Apple’s new toy. Very slick. Tight integration with the Macs in my life would be nice to have, too. Beyond that, though, this thing does nothing for me . . . I don’t need a PDA, it’s too large to use comfortably as a cellphone, its capacity is anemic compared to the 60GB iPod I already wander around with, I have a better camera. Oh yeah, and it’s a GSM phone that won’t work at all in this country.
Softbank’s Son Masayoshi is off in America now, attending MacWorld (maybe the CES show too?), which leads to rumors that maybe someday his company will be the one to bring the Apple phone to Japan’s market. Who knows? Maybe a few years down the road there’ll be a third-gen iPhone in my pocket that can actually deal with the 4G networks in operation in Japan by then.
That gives me a few years to work on meeting more people I might want to call. Bonus!
Spammers getting tired of it too?
The spam comments on this blog are sort of ridiculous. I don’t go look at the comments queue too often, but when I do there are hundreds and hundreds of bizarre URLs in there. There can’t be this many people on the planet actually interested in phentermine, whatever that is.
A hopeful sign, though: some of these bozos are starting to feel suicidal. Here’s hoping they take that final step!
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