Improving Your Brain

Are you smart now? Do you wish you were smart? Do you want to keep from, ya know, losing it? Then give this article a good lookover because it has some awesome tips for improving your noggin. Admittedly, some of the things don't guarantee results, but many of them make sense. It's common knowledge that exercising regularly makes you happier in general, but did you know that it also fuels the development of brain cells? And not just in kids, but also adults can apparently develop more cells in their brains as well! Now I can give my mom a better explanation for why I work out I suppose. Another big factor is how well-rested you are. Apparently, being awake for 21 hours is equivalent to being drunk, which explains my late night fits of laughter whenever I stay up much later than usual. For all of you who pull all-nighters: don't do it! Your brain hones new skills and creates new memories and everything overnight. Another favorite of mine was the fact that gainful employment also makes you smarter because of the importance of our working memory in our IQ. Anyway, the other reccomendations including eating right, listening to the right music, and controlling your thoughts so be sure to check it out.

There's more nerd news yet. One security expert put up an editorial about how his company switched to Mac because they were tired of Wintel's instability. Ouch, Windows. Ouch. There's another accurate opinion piece here about how the showing from the Xbox 360 and the PS3 at E3 was really overdone and he reflects upon all the broken promises of the PS2 and Xbox and their E3. It's a little depressing so if you got all hyped up last week then avert your eyes from it. It would appear that Sirius is in talks with Apple about a satellite radio enabled iPod. Now that would be pretty sweet, but the price would probably only make it affordable to yuppies I'm afraid. I'm sure that ultraportable notebooks would be cheaper than the cost of the device and the service associated with it. The French, in their neverending effort to piss of American businesses, have decided that they're going to release those convicted of mp3 swapping with suspended sentences. I thought that that was pretty funny and strange. Lastly, I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the Das Keyboard, which is a keyboard that has no printing on the keys whatsoever! It's meant for expert touch typists and at an $80 price tag comes with weighted keys to enhance the experience. Now that's geeky and fancy.

There's an impressive amount of multimedia I'd like to share. We now have the final theatrical trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which requires some strange plug-in, and it's pretty awesome so I reccomend checking it out. Yahoo! Movies seems to have gotten its hands on an exclusive trailer for Four Brothers about a group of adopted brothers who investigate the death of their mother, and I was impressed with how intriguing it looks. Another movie that was new to me that has a trailer up is Revolver, but it was quite ambiguous and sans dialogue. The trailer for A History of Violence has been put in Quicktime format and now you can also see a clip from the movie as well over here. Directorial geniuses Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have decided to team up to make two 60 minute horror movies on their own and attach old trailers and footage from other filmmakers into one project called Grind House. I'm not positive when this will come out, but supposedly it's Tarantino's next pet project. George Lucas apparently doesn't want to let go of the overdone Star Wars series and is considering a prequel to The Phantom Menace, but thankfully does not plan on helming it himself. Enough is enough, Lucas! Lastly, Michael Bay seems to think he can handle a remake of Birds at some point down the line, and I think he's lost his mind. But luckily, he's being humble about it.

And now for the 3X Thursday meme:

1. At what point do you finally decide it's time to move forward with your life (like, major changes)? How do you know? What do you do?
Up to this point, I've had most of my life planned out. I suppose it's just a gut instinct and is marked by the end of something else big.

2. When is it time to just let it ('it' can be whatever you choose) go? How do you know? What do you do?
When you realize that it's not what God intended. I'm taking 'it' to be some sort of argument or something that you believe is right but is displeasing others. Of course if you really are right, like gay rights or something, there is no stopping point. But for day-to-day issues, it's where you can look in the mirror and laugh and say, "What are you doing?"

3. How many times must someone push your buttons before you've just had enough? Why?
It's the point where I freak out and am ready to scream my head off. I don't get that tempermental that often, but when I do I have the anger of my father so please people, don't piss me off. As long as you're honest it shouldn't happen, but I think everyone has an inherent breaking point.