Memory Loss - USA Today Coverage

Mary Brophy Marcus has an excellent series of articles this week in USA Today on Alzheimer's disease.
If you have followed this theme in my blog, what's new and exciting to me is the recent reports relating memory loss to depression and diabetes.

Here are links to the articles.  First is a report on the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Paris.  I think the article is one of the best written I've seen on any topic.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/alzheimers/story/2011/07/Early-lapses-in-memory-shed-light-on-Alzheimers/49506150/1

Second is an article that shows images of the kind associated with treatments described in the book, "Pictures of  the Mind", by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald.

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/alzheimers/2011-01-19-alzheimers19_ST_N.htm?csp=obinsite

Kindle Is a Gift

I received a Kindle 2 as a gift from my daughter and her husband. I'm impressed with it, and not ready to declare the death of bookstores and libraries.

The first purchase I made was Alan Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence". It's a good example of a book I'll read once. I can save a tree and my own shelf space by reading the book electronically. I made the book purchase decision the same way I browse our public library or Barnes & Noble. The Amazon.com Kindle Store allowed me to download a free sample of the text. I liked the book, and bought it.

Greenspan's book is a memoir. The sample provided is the "Introduction". He starts the book with a well-written story, his experience of September 11, 2001, when his flight to Washington, D.C., was ordered to return to Zurich. I am just as interested in his experience of economics during my lifetime, and his introduction suggests it will not be a dry story.

The Kindle Store has free books, others cost as little as 99 cents. Most current titles and those on the best seller lists are $9.95.

I downloaded a free selection called, "The Game of Logic", by Lewis Carrol. I recalled that Carrol had published a 19th Century periodical for young people that included games of logic. I haven't spent much time with it, but what I read can be useful for proofreading your own blogs. Ask yourself if your text says what you mean.

While in Chicago I had browsed the shelves of a used bookseller, and saw a dog-eared copy of a book of Ovid's poetry. The Kindle Store had several variations that I had not seen elsewhere. For $2.39, the book I bought included translations by Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Chaucer. Those more familiar with ancient works might have expected it, but for me it was an unexpected find.

Not everything I found in the Kindle Store was what I wanted. I ordered a free trial subscription to Investor's Business Daily. I was familiar with the print edition and the online edition, and had paid hundreds of dollars for an annual subscription. I dropped my subscription a few years ago to try other publications. The Kindle edition is $5.99 a month. Unfortunately, the content was not what I expected, not the same sets of daily charts and graphs I wanted. Canceling my free trial the same day was no problem.

Most useful, we can use the Kindle and our PC's in tandem to work with the Kindle Store and manage the Kindle itself.

Kindle is more expensive than gifts we usually exchange. I was reluctant to buy Kindle myself, because I wasn't convinced that I would pay to read electronic books with such a device. Much of what I read in USA Today, and heard on CNBC was negative about the profitability to Amazon.com. Negative news about Amazon came again as Apple released the iPad a couple of weeks ago.

I gave the Kindle a day-long test from our hotel room at the Palmer House in the Chicago Loop. Charging the battery took three hours. The brief printed instructions that came with the Kindle said I could register the product online, and I could browse and make purchases from the Kindle Store on Amazon.com while the battery was charging.


First I explored the electronic User Guide. I already had an account on Amazon.com, so registration of the product was easy. More than twenty five years ago I bought my first IBM PC, and quickly learned the importance of "Read the manual!" One of my 3M coworkers chastised me for failure to learn MS-DOS before using the PC. How many PC users remember the disaster that was the DBase II User Guide, probably the poorest ever written? The Kindle electronic User Guide is easy.


My understanding was that AT&T wireless service was required to use the Kindle online. The signal in our 18th floor hotel room was at maximum strength, five bars, and not a hint that it was AT&T providing the service. Amazon manages the service.

Here at home in Little Marais, on the North Shore of Lake Superior, AT&T has minimal, sporadic service, but there is a cell phone tower with AT&T on it a mile to the west. I get only three bars signal strength, but that's good enough. I don't have a service contract with AT&T, and we don't need it to use Kindle. Our Internet service provider is Verizon National Access Broadband.


I have much more to learn about the Kindle 2. Occasionally, I download PDF files to the PC. Kindle provides a USB cable to transfer such files from the PC to the Kindle. It's the same cable that charges the battery, and the power plug pulls apart from the USB connector. I didn't know such a cable existed.

What Happened to the Golden Compass Sequel?

Why haven't I seen or heard any news of a sequel to the movie, "The Golden Compass"?

The Golden Compass was released in late 2007. My wife and I watched it for the first time last week, January 22, 2010. The final scenes strongly suggest a sequel is forthcoming, wherein Lord Asriel would break through the barrier between parallel universes. The corrupt Magisterium would prevent him from doing so.

My favorite character was Lyra Belaqua, played by Dakota Blue Richards, who will soon be too old to play the same role in a sequel? She's such a strong, young actress, I hope to see her in more movies. A sequel to "Avatar" would be perfect.

"The Golden Compass" is a good movie to watch immediately after viewing "Avatar". After that, go back and watch "The Lord of the Rings" movies. The underlying theme of good vs evil obviously is similar, as are the mystical symbols, mythical characters, and magical devices.

"Avatar" was the most expensive movie ever made? Critics in USA Today panned the movie before it was released, and said it would never make a profit. After three weeks in the top 10, a friend in Israel said the theaters in Haifa were still sold out, even at the late night showings.

Critics said "Avatar" had no story. I think the story is fantastic. Esoteric spiritual themes are heresy to many conservative Christians, and just as unbelievable to atheists. (Read "the Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova to explore that subject). The final battle to destroy the Tree of Spirits, symbolic of the Kabala, and symbolic of the eternal Living Word of God through which all physical and spiritual creation comes into existence, somehow got a sexual interpretation from Robert Colbert.

"Avatar's" personification of evil is the military industrial complex, with no recognition of God, and no need for support by a religious authority. Some critics said "The Golden Compass" is an atheistic presentation, where oppressive domination by church and state ultimately are defeated by a common, innate understanding of moral good.

I disagree. I think every age faces a catastrophic end. Leaders and institutions corrupted by self-interest destroy themselves. Outmoded laws and traditions are abrogated. A fresh impulse of Divine Will sends forth a Chosen One and heroes. Root principles of Faith are renewed and exalted. A new world comes into being. I think "Avatar" and "The Golden Compass" are exciting presentations of current events.