For middle aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.
A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning.
The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.
The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
The net still forces us to make decisions, which is good for the brain.
Alas, it also makes it darned more difficult to focus your brain power. Sometimes I wonder if I should diconnect my work PC from the net a few hours every day.
I used to be a fan of the webcomic Sinfest, but at one point I found it to be somewhat out of good ideas. However, over the last weeks Sinfest has been on a roll about the bailout and general financial woes.
Click the back and forward buttons; lots of good ones there.
And, yes, I know that Wall Street turned to Manic Monday euphoia yesterday, and Asia has responded by going ecstatic this Tuesday (Tokyo up 13 %). Last week it was a massacre. So what heavy medications are these people really on?
Victor Davis Hanson decries consevatives who are jumping ship on John McCain:
But to believe that truth would be–if we remember that scene in Tolkien’s Two Towers–to trust the grating harsh voice of Gandalf detailing the dangers of Saruman rather than the mellifluous charm of the latter who in soothing tones outlines his own victimhood.
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: I served with Gandalf in numerous D&D campaigns; I knew Gandalf from reading the Lord of the Rings umpteen times; Gandalf was a friend of mine. And John McCain is no Gandalf.
Indeed. And Lord of the Rings-based political parables are just wrong.
