meanderings

Work got canceled today, so an early post for once. Apparently cross-border reproductive care is being a large issue for parents with fertility issues, fertility clinics, and of course bioethics committees. Taking your wife to a different country (as close as the US) where they allow you to implant eggs and sperm like you're choosing your favorite flavor of Skittles is apparently all the rage now if you can afford the $30,000 US tab that accompanies it. Is this law evasion for Canadians who are otherwise unable to purchase or implant eggs in Canada? Is this playing God, when one of the primary concerns for donor components is that the parents be attractive? Vanity, fertility, and ethics combine in this beautiful concern - what would you do to have a child?

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I love crosswords. This is a fact, like how Garfield loves lasagna. Recent research has deemed simple brain exercises like Sudoku, crosswords, and even reading aloud to children as positive means of mental acrobatics. They say it's equally effective when compared to the programs you pay for that exercise your mental skill (i.e. Brain Age). I guess we don't have to worry about any of this right now because none of us are old or senile, but there's never an earlier time to push your skill in memory, attention, etc.

Well since we're on the topic of memory, most people have what you call the Magic Number 7 +/- 2. That is, you can only memorize up to a string of 7 items, plus or minus maybe 2 items. You can train yourself to increase this capacity, but even if you did so for like 4 hours a day, you'd probably never get past 15. Of course, it's always interesting when you find autistic savants, or just savants in general, whose memory is undeniably wired to perform these kinds of functions. Of course, only the great Vilayanur S. Ramachandran would study this. Check out the video, it's wonderful.