20 cups of select fluids a day will make you live forever.

You Are Also What You Drink: NYTimes Article (Subscription Required)

A run down of several studies based on beverage consumptions and their health effects.

First of all, if you're going to bitch about having to sign up with NY Times online, you're silly. I've been a member since 1999 (8 years) and have had zero problem with spam (unlike the Chicago Tribune membership, which thinks I should attend colleges in Illinois). Secondly, there are ways around registering, such as using a shared log-in or if the article is archived/retained elsewhere. But seriously, sign up and keep reading. I only wish I had $1,000 to spend on the annual paper subscription. MADNESS.

FIVE CUPS A DAY is key to your health.

According to the article, "Mice prone to an Alzheimer’s-like disease were protected by drinking water spiked with caffeine equivalent to what people get from five cups of coffee a day." It also mentions a human study that suggested that memory deficiencies can also be prevented with three cups. I can only hope that they mean the literal measurement of cup.

And if five cups to keep you from going senile isn't enough fluid, get five more cups of black tea to keep your arteries open! Bone density, kidneys and teeth are also eligible for benefits with black tea.

Hold on before you start reaching for you 5 cups of red wine, though. Red wine is no better than beer, vodka or rubbing alcohol when it comes to having perceived health benefits. Daily, one serving for women, two servings for men (how predictable that men get all the fun and luxuries!) have a whole grocery list of benefits (unless you're drinking for two, which at that point, you're cut off completely. bitches) regardless of what the original ingredient was before distillation. But those are all nulified if you're, surprise, a heavy drinker. Oh, moderation, what can't you be applied to?

Other beverages covered in the original article include sugar drinks, water and milk if you're curious how they all rank on the list of "you ought to be drinking to save your life".

Conclusion: Water is better than soda and kids are getting obese and gross because this lesson is lost on American consumers.

Digital Crack

My co-worker was introduced to the Wii-citement that I exuded in the later half of last November, and begged for one for Christmas. I think I have Nintendo-Luck (and only Nintendo-Luck), for everyone who has wished for a Wii upon hearing my glee has obtained one. Also, I rock at tipiing people off as to where to get.find these babies.

The Wii is backwards compatible, and she has now received/playing Animal Crossing (the original). All at once, the original excitement of the game came back to me: the surprises of 15,000 Bell fish, not knowing what a goldon shovel was, Sports Week! She told me about her boyfriend's desire to destroy her game because of how little she's seen daylight in playing AC.

It brought me back to... yesterday. I'll admit Yorkelet an Yorke have not had a whole lot of visitations from me (Yorke will get some action when I lend it out to the co-worker) for at least a month, but Puzzle Quest... Oh, Puzzle Quest.

I really don't know what to say that hasn't been said: if you like RPGs and you're hooked on PopCap, this game is digital crack. Puzzle Quest follows Trioncube in puzzle games that make my eyes go crossed for hours on end, but Puzzle Quest has at least three or four different styles of play (one is an solvable puzzle, one is combative puzzle, another is strategy, etc.) with the same pieces! Trioncube, while fun, had minimal things to unlock (50 sound effect, 10 backgrounds). Puzzle Quest is pure unlocking.

So, what's your addiction?

Why Old People in Business Should Be Considered Obsolete

A question of whether or not consoles are obsolete.

I will agree that PCs are becoming cheaper and more likely to be in the home, but to have a graphically powerful computer that is capable of playing to top of the line games (or even anything new), you will constantly be upgrading the hardware. Considering the life span of a console (5-10 years), without any significant upgrades (microphones, dance pads and internet connectivity aside), programmers are given a set of stats they are to work with for an allotment of time. PC gaming, while allowing for independent programmers with low budget and even lower graphic resolutions to produce (which is starting to happen to console gaming as well), has a near-endless limit. Which, as awesome as infinity is, it's hard for a casual gamer (as the author of the above article mentions), to just say "I really want to play that new PC game" without having knowledge of their video card, RAM, O/S or hard disc space remaining. I think this kind of acknowledgement is important. Yes, our culture is geekier and more tech savvy, but ask the majority of those 35 to 55 year old women casual gamers what their processor speed is and they're likely to hit you with their purses.

I am not saying the casual gamer is incapable of knowing what their computer does while they are asleep (although this is also true), I am suggesting that these casual gamers are less likely to invest the large amounts (still) of capital required into casual gaming (computer + every damn upgrade when things aren't to the specs of a required game). If it comes preloaded on their Palm, BlackBerry or PopCap is emailed to them, they'll probably enjoy it and may seek out other online games. Ask them to pay $20, and some will. MacMommies will probably be livid that you need a PC, and PCGrannies will be upset that their grandson's old (and I mean old) computer doesn't have enough "sheeps or goats or rams" on her email box.

And here is where the console will thrive: no upgrades, no tech talk, plug it in (or sometimes, throw in a few batteries), put in cartridge, play.

Rather than software commanding the hardware market, consoles have established hardware that the software must conform to. If we look at Nintendo alone's journey into the software demanding hardware upgrades, we'll see the roadside littered with Super Nintendo's mouse & SuperScope, the 8-Bit's Power Glove, GameCube's microphone, GameBoy Advance's E-Card Reader and even the original light gun. But if we look at the DS & the Wii, we find two "gimmicky" ideas requiring software to adhere to the demands of the hardware; and two very large successes in casual gaming.

I won't pretend my readership knows me, so I will tell you now, I have never turned anyone a gamer by using a PC or Mac. I'm sure I could set up a casual gamer, but I sure as hell do not want to deal with the call about why World of Warcraft won't install.

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This rant comes courtesy of my father who, when having difficulties with his computer (likely because it's heavily fragmented and he would've installed Bonzi Buddy if it were still around), decided that it was time to buy and install Windows Vista in the opening weeks. The only reason my father even has a computer was because he wanted a camcorder that he could edit home movies on my mother's Mac. He bought one that was only compatible with a PC (although the salesman said otherwise). It was a Sony camcorder, so his solution was to buy a Sony Vaio. I hate these people, but love my father. A real dichotomy here. The amount of tech crap he's bought and installed (thank god he stopped buying Sony only products and has moved onto the Kodak line of thinking--diversity is good) reminds me of a Threadless shirt...

Back to the Windows Vista saga, his video card won't support Vista. His motherboard won't support a newer video card, and his solution? Buy a new computer.

Ask him about his Wii and he'll tell you it's never given him any troubles. Which is good for a toy.

Seven Months Later...

So, I've drank more Coca-Cola products than PepsiCo. brand, but I blame cherry flavouring for that. But PepsiCo. is the better company.

I have yet to be asked if I wanted to be on a test circuit for PD-1 suppressants, but I have learned that foreskin increases men's chances of HIV infection, and may lower a woman's odds. There's another argument for male genital mutilation for mysogynists to use. That, my friends, is called "irony".

Special juvenille bonus: The director of the World Health Organization's AIDS department is named Dr. Kevin De Cock.

The Crane Wife rose to the top of my favourite albums of 2006, but in doing so also put Decemberists fans at the bottom of my favourite list of 2006. How did they manage to get into the high schools? We must ban mixed tapes, CDs and iPods immediately to prevent good music from falling into immature hands! [/curmudgeon]

Another argument against the glass ceiling was released at some point in the past month: Boys are just as good at quitting as women. Take that Human Resources Departments! Equality in job hating! We have to start somewhere.

If you didn't think you were gonna get cancer before...

You probably should now.

I don't find the pictures as esthetically pleasing as I do REALLY KIND OF SCARY. So much radiation.

PD-1 and Me!

CBC's article on HIV advancement has piqued my interest in its other applications.

First of all, the article is simplified, but I'm going to run under the premise that it can be taken literally and logically. Second, if you're too lazy to read the really short article: Harvard, the US National Institute of Health and the University of Montreal (I had no idea they had such a facility!) have all found that a protein called PD-1 is over-produced in HIV patients. The more PD-1 in the system, the less active the white T cells are (those are essentially your immune system).

That aside, now to get to the "me" aspect. For absolutely anyone who knows anything about my health record and nothing about my sexual record, I probably have the HIV (I don't). When I get knocked down, I go down hard. Frighteningly so (remember the CDC incident?). I don't just get sick, I go to the hospital (although I loathe almost all doctors and hospitals; no offense to all the MDs in the house!). The idea of a PD-1 suppressant sounds as delicious as candy. If I could get my T cells to do their job more often I'd have half as many medical mysteries as I do now (probably wouldn't assist in the cerebral or hormonal inflictions, though). I think my T cells are just slow swimmers, so to speak. They are the couch potatoes of my system.

If PD-1 is the cause of lazy immune systems, I want mine suppressed.

Making "men" technophobic?

Wired's Sex blog has posted a comment about robots that I found to have an interesting observation.

To suggest that men would fear being replaced by robotic counterparts seems rather unusual. Why would women not harbour the same "fears"? We've lived in a world dominated by sexvertising that has generally sold out the female form to everything from car parts to the very common toilettries market. Not to say that men have not been, but let's face it, men have done way more to "replace" women sexaully than women have of men. I don't imagine the first robots off the line for sexual purposes will be robots with phalluses. Call me crazy, but I have vivid, hauting images of men with too much money purchasing RealDolls (that link is not safe for work, even though I just clicked on it at work--thank god I'm a woman, I can probably get away with it).

Sure, a robot will do more household chores than the average man and be way more of a subservient (literally) slave, but do most people endure relationships for their use-purpose? I highly doubt that. I think the primary reason I, personally, stick to a relationship (without many of the robotic enhancements) is the companionship. An andrioid will represent a fiction; the human, non-fiction. Just as we can do some serious tweeking to fiction to fit our needs and ideals, an android's negative behavior can be reprogrammed. Human lives, on the the other hand, are required to live in a linear line and while some behavior can be modified, the majority will be met with comprimise and endurance (or disaster and heartbreak).

So, fear not the robots, men. Embrace them, as I imagine some will do.