...The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea...

35.

Most prominent 35, apparently.

But also, 35 is nice enough. I, too, wonder what this is.

Looks like a hurdy-gurdy to me, Kip.

Can I rant, can I, huh, huh?

Couple of days ago I received my first spam from someone claiming to be collecting money for the tsunami victims. But even that was beaten by the spamware sellers who were eager to tell fundreaising organisations that they had really cheap lists of email addresses to send begging spam to...

There are times when I wish I believed in the existence of a literal hell...

Not to be mistaken for a hurly-burly.

35 is a semiprime, by the way. :-)

Ohhhhh, I REALLY want a plush Anubis! I have an image and two mirror-image candleholders (plus a little faiance chachke) of him, but nothing cuddly. By "I really want one" I mean badly enough to give them my email address so they can notify me when it's back in stock.

Let no man* doubt my commitment to my spiritual path.

*Women, of course, are allowed to doubt whatever they want...I'm not stupid.

I don't giving Troll & Toad your e-mail address is a problem - while I've never ordered from them myself I understand them to be reputable.

However, if you want a plush Anubis Right Now (and I think you do), Noble Knight claims to have them in stock (and they're definitely reputable - I've ordered from them).

Thanks, Dan. And it's the same one, too (Toy Vault). Now if I could only find a plush Ganesha, I'd be all set.

Xopher, you HAD to make me look, didn't you?

http://givemetoys.zoovy.com/product/AC_10578

Not plush, but definitely in the same neighborhood.

Thanks TChem. Not cuddly though. Ganesha, of all gods, should be cuddly. Despite his non-cuddly reputation, Anubis is a Comforter as well.

And thanks again, Dan. I ordered the Anubis from Noble Knight. I mistakenly clicked the Add to Cart button twice and it said "You have exceeded our available inventory of this item." I'm pretty sure that means I got the last one they had.

[jumps up and down] I'm gonna have a 'Nubis cuddle toy!!!! Yay!!!!

Troll & Toad's plush Godzilla monsters are also pretty cool.

FIRST PO --

Oh, sorry: not slashdot.

Xopher: I contemplate the orgy of plush lovecraftian horrors on the coffee table in the living room, and my debit card curses your Anubis.

(Middle Kingdom/Lovecraftian slash dioramas, here we come ...)

Anybody have any suggestions of good games for older folks (73), which are memory-oriented?

My father woke up one day in August feeling like he'd been away on a trip for a long time, and having forgotten large chunks of the last 50 years or so. He still has trouble retaining things. I'd like to get him engaged in some sort of activity that would exercise things, in hopes of staving off or slowing down further losses.

Thanks,

Jon

Fourteen pairs of aerial before and after photos of tsunami devastation:

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html

Probably not the sort of thing Jon had in mind, but I was irresistibly reminded of this by Teresa's Sprodzoom link:

http://www.ansible.co.uk/ai/pcwplus/pcwp1989.html#jul

Summary: Dave Langford explains how maths/computer geeks entertained themselves, or at least did severe damage to their brain cells, before Doom was invented.

Xopher:

For a not-so-cuddly and much pricier Anubis, here:

http://www.stuffemal.com/morphs/Anubis.html

More here:
http://www.stuffemal.com/morphs/morphs.html

Charlie, they have a Cthulhu:
http://www.stuffemal.com/morphs/Cthulhu.html

law enforcement agencies in both states have decided to focus on crimes within polygamous communities that involve child abuse, domestic violence and fraud, http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/polygamy.html

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2517264

Article Last Updated: 1/09/2005 10:28 AM

Polygamy guide aims to provide info to outsiders
"The Primer": The manual details history and customs to help law enforcement and social workers
By Pamela Manson
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune
"The Primer" - which was put online Thursday at http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/polygamy.html - includes a history

Charlie Stross wrote:

Xopher: I contemplate the orgy of plush lovecraftian horrors on the coffee table in the living room, and my debit card curses your Anubis.

It took me a while to have people understand that Cthulhu really was my backseat driver... and then he went on a hawaiian vacation, and hasn't been seen since :)

xeger wrote "and then he went on a hawaiian vacation, and hasn't been seen since :)"

Er, which island? I can keep an eye out for him if he came to Oahu. ;)

Xopher, if you find a plush Ganesha, I want one.

The classic memory game is Concentration (or Pelmanism) -- deal out a deck of cards face down, turn them up in pairs, and when you get two cards of the same rank and color (say, both red Queens), remove the pair. Obviously, you can play with a partial deck, and you've probably already got the equipment. There's a computer variant, using mahjongg tiles, that's on the "Buncha Mahjongg Variants Cheap On One Disk" I've got, and there are probably versions on other many-cheap-games collections.

I'm not sure if the inductive-logic games like Mastermind or Black Box would help, but they have the advantage that another person is playing, but in a non-competitive mode (that is, one person sets up the puzzle, and provides answers as the other player tries to solve it -- Concentration can be played with lots of people, but a person with memory loss would lose a lot.

Kate Nepveu wrote:
Xopher, if you find a plush Ganesha, I want one.

I'm not Xopher, but a quick inquiry on an IRC channel yielded this link.

Additionally, these things just look odd.

Bill Blum, that is gorgeous--more than I can afford at the moment, but absolutely gorgeous. Thanks--I will make a note of it should I have the spare cash.

Bill, I'm not Xopher either, but thank you for finding that: I went looking for a bit earlier and didn't find one.

I have Ganesh and three other deities in handy fingerpuppet form, which I bought at an art supply store in Norfolk. They call them "Handy Hindus." Mine occupy a sort of de facto shrine on the mantel, near the glowing aliens and a select collection of small rabbit figures we've happened upon in our travels. Um, and other stuff. I wouldn't want to mislead anyone into thinking I had a tidy mantel.

Mr. Ford beat me to Concentration, but I'd just like to point out that the statement -- Obviously, you can play with a partial deck, and you've probably already got the equipment. -- when accompanied with the proper facial expression, doubles as a subtle putdown. In its spare time.

Dare I say this? Xopher is correct that 35 is a very appropriate number for this open thread because, as with 2005, it is a semiprime.

Jon H--My mother and her homies at the assisted living facility have a regular game of Trivial Pursuit and seem to enjoy it...

The Anubis that Steve links to bears an uncanny resemblance to my belgian. A bit too chunky to be an authentic Egyptian diety.

I'd get the anubis Teresa linked to, but I'm beginning to suspect that at the gates of the underworld it is not your heart that is weighed against a feather, but the amount of useless crap you leave behind for your relatives to sort through.

Linkmeister offered to lose sanity points:

xeger wrote "and then he went on a hawaiian vacation, and hasn't been seen since :)"

Er, which island? I can keep an eye out for him if he came to Oahu. ;)

He did come to Oahu, but I'm apparently not allowed to say anymore ...

Oh, this is scary:

Little plastic cubicle dweller figures and furnishings.

http://cubefigures.com/home.html

They need to make a Break Room set, with a water cooler and a coffee maker with a carafe left empty by some selfish bastard.

Why, it is indeed a hurdy-gurdy. Says so right at the bottom.

How odd. I'd always thought they were box-shaped things you wore around your neck. With a monkey who wore a vest similar to yours. Never trust cartoons, I guess, is the moral here.

Um, right, xeger. I understand. Well, better Oahu than the Big Island, what with the volcano and all.

Chatter about hurdy-gurdys, and some of the
other things above, like poetry and gods and
whatnot, have reminded me of an amusing quote:

"You've caused such a pandemonium that I'll have to set a radiating disorientation spell to confuse the pursuit you've certainly roused."

[...]

"What's a pandemonium?" whispered one of the men in the rear.

"It's like a calliope," answered a companion. "I heard one played at the Harmony Fair last summer, when I went there to see my sister's boy play his organ."

"His what?"

"His organ."

"Lord. People pay money to see things like that?"

Can anyone name the author being silly
(without resorting to online resources)?

Just got back from talking with Rob Morrow, Judd Hirsch, the passionate David Krumholtz, and the creator/writers of NUMB3RS at a screening with my former teacher, Gary Lorden, professor and executive officer for Math at Caltech, who is NUMB3RS' Math consultant. This is a great TV show! You can find a lot about it online, and I'd like to be brief. So let me say that, although they are not pitching it as Science Fiction, I'd say that it must be as "FBI Special Agent Don Eppes recruits his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes, to help the Bureau solve a wide range of challenging crimes in Los Angeles. Inspired by actual events, NUMB3RS depicts how the confluence of police work and Mathematics provide unexpected revelations and answers to the most perplexing criminal questions." Writer/Creators Cheryl Heuton & Nicolas Falacci set this at a thinly-disguised Caltech, and were inspired both by Richard Feynman and an actual serial rape solved by a Canadian mathematician -- and the equations on the blackboard are real. The Point-of-View FX of the math genius are a great cross between A Beautiful Mind and CSI. Please watch the premier on Sunday 23 January 2005 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS, before moving to its regular Friday 10:00 time period on 28 January 2005. Then deluge David Sperber, the press contact at Paramount Television Network, (323)956-4323 with praise (assuming you like it even half as much as I did, and SF novelist Dr. Tom McDonough did). Deluge was a bad word; there's a Flash Flood Watch mudslide oozing under my North garden door right now, gotta go.

Mentioning television, could I put in a quick AAARRRGHH! and bad thoughts towards our local Network Nine, who suspended West Wing broadcasts (just after Zoe's kidnapping) for about 9-12 months, started them up again about 3 weeks ago, moved them from Monday to Tuesday, started again this week on Monday (yesterday) & announced that they were playing another episode tonight ....

Ganesh, St Anthony, Anubis, or your supra-human being of choice Knows what they plan on for next week! Assuming there's any plan at all; perhaps dice are involved.

Anyway, I'm going off to see Cosi Fan Tutti tonight, along with not having nasty virus, which should cheer me up.

Owlmirror:

Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates. One of his two best (with On Stranger Tides), in my opinion.

How about this, which the opening quote brings irresistably to my mind:

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homeward plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

I don't usually care much for soft toys, but that Ganesha is darned cute. It's probably a good thing I don't have any disposable income at the moment!

I also have a Ganesha finger puppet - he lives on a shelf in my office with Pinky and the Brain. The Brain doesn't seem to have the hang of the mantra, so he hasn't yet been granted the ability to take over the world (phew!).

Yesterday, a friend I hardly ever see sent me a Jane Austen figure puppet - her head (that of the puppet - not my friend) is also a magnet. I am a lucky woman...

From the free-market flu article:

"Dumping more than 8 percent of your output every year is not a good business plan."

Like, say, mass-market paperbacks?

Tis indeed a hurdy-gurdy (French Vielle a Roue -- wheel fiddle). They come in many forms, from plain box to lute to what looks like a round-backed guitar-like body in that picture. The crank turns a rosined wheel under the strings, the keys press lightly against one or two melody strings tuned in unison. There are also drone strings and a trompette string -- that's the one with the little bridge under it at the top of the instrument in the picture. By varying the speed that you crank the wheel, you can make the bridge rattle against the soundboard for a rhythmic element. The drone string at the bottom is hooked away from the wheel to keep it from sounding, it would be used to play music in other keys. With melody over drones, it has sort of a bagpipey sound to it.
Just to confuse things, hand-cranked player-organs have also been called hurdy-gurdys. I don't know where the monkey comes in.

What is the significance of a number being semi-prime? I understand from the examples given here that that means it has only two prime factors (besides itself and one) -- what is special about such a number?

Oh and would e.g. 175 (= 5 * 5 * 7) be considered semi-prime, or does it have to be the product of first powers of two prime numbers?

I don't know where monkeys come from, John. I don't know how they reproduce, or what they eat...but I know they were born to clean bathrooms.

My mother and her homies at the assisted living facility have a regular game of Trivial Pursuit and seem to enjoy it...

The kind of memory needed for Trivial Pursuit (information learned well in the past) is actually one of the last things to go in older people with memory problems. People hold on to things they learned in school or in young adulthood for a long, long time. It's the recent stuff, and the ability to put new information into memory, that's the problem.

In 1999-2000, I worked doing neuropsychological evaluations at a veteran's hospital. I commonly had interchanges with vets that went like this:

Rivka: So, tell me what you did during the war.

Vet: [gives detailed and well-organized account of Korean War service, including dates, place names, and unit numbers.]

Rivka: Okay, and let's talk a little bit about some recent news. President Clinton got into a lot of trouble last year - what was that about?

Vet: It was, um, I think there was something about a girl.

Or the shorthand version: "Who was the first president of the United States? And who is president now?" To most of us, those are equally easy questions. To someone in the early stages of dementia, the first question is still easy, but the second one is trickier.

Stray thought...

On Friday, Deo volenti, we will learn what the surface of Titan looks like, from the inside.

Has any enterprising reporter thought to ask Kurt Vonnegut what he thinks?

(After all, Ray Bradbury is constantly being interviewed about Mars. Titan belongs to Vonnegut, no?)

My husband likes to get books with brain exercises in it -- is it a bad sign that I can't remember a single title now?
I do remember what one of them said -- learning new things is good. Typical brain exercises it had was doing routine things in a new way -- use your left hand to brush your teeth, dress in the dark, or pick a new route for your commute. Something about building new brain connections.

Dare I say this? Xopher is correct that 35 is a very appropriate number for this open thread because, as with 2005, it is a semiprime.

And here I thought that by mentioning it first I might preempt your mentioning exactly the same thing. Silly me.

The Anubis that Steve links to bears an uncanny resemblance to my belgian. A bit too chunky to be an authentic Egyptian diety.

If I had a dog that looked like that, he'd be named Anpu (best guess as to how Anubis' name was actually pronounced). Gorgeous dog, btw.

I'd get the [A]nubis Teresa linked to, but I'm beginning to suspect that at the gates of the underworld it is not your heart that is weighed against a feather, but the amount of useless crap you leave behind for your relatives to sort through.

Well, since your heart is supposed to weigh exactly the same as the feather (the heiroglyph for Maat, which is the proper balance of life), perhaps leaving just the right amount is a good thing...and I certainly wouldn't call a plush Anubis -- or even a teddy bear -- "useless." But then I have a soft-toy velociraptor, so my judgement may be suspect...

Jeremy Osner, I'm mostly kidding when I say "No, no, nooooooooo! Shutupshutupshutup!!!!!"

Oops, sorry, consider the questions retracted then...

As someone on the wrong end of the distribution curve for familial and non-familial Alzheimers (Volga River German descendant), here's what I recall:

moderate to heavy caffine drinkers have a lower incidence of agressive onset

take those anti-oxidants all you can, especially in fresh food form

there are several experimental drugs that target different neurochemicals and plaques being tested now

games that employ learning new facts and cover new areas of interest, methods of doing things are apparently more effective than quizing on topics or memory games, mainly since everyone learns those games in various forms throughout their lives. The important thing with developing new pathways is not to pressure the person or make them feel like they are failing if they have a bad day.

Honestly though, have you had your father professionally evaluated? There are many faces to the catch-all "dementia". It sounds like he might have had a micro-stroke, and the treatments for stroke patients are different. The sooner you start on a targeted treatment, the better the general prognosis for delayed onset.

The Mayo clinic, NYU Silberstein facility and many others will have better advice. If you are near a research institue, you might have better chance of a tailored treatment.

Hope that helps somewhat.

Jeremy Osner:

Yes, it has "to be the product of first powers of two prime numbers" -- or the square of one prime. 49 is thus semiprime.

175 = 5 * 5 * 7 is a 3-almost prime, and the product of two distinct primes. A semiprime is the product of exactly two primes, not necessarily different. The product of the three different primes is called a sphenic number. Why do semiprimes matter? The RSA algorithm is one of the most important of computer security systems, and the first of the "public key cryptosystems." RSA is based on semiprimes. Specifically, it's easy to multiply together two 1000-digit primes to get a 2000-digit or 2001-digit semiprime, but it's almost impossibly hard to factor a big semiprime even if you know it's a semiprime. Coincidently, I spoke with Adelman (the "A" in RSA) at the 3-day conference this past weekend, "Engineering a DNA World." He was interested in molecular computers solving semiprime problems.

See:
Semiprime -- from MathWorld

Emirpimes -- from MathWorld, one of my goofier yet inexplicably popular inventions of 2004.

RSA Encryption

Almost Prime -- from MathWorld.

I move that the last post be disregarded by the jury, and stricken from the record, with no prejudice to posters of either question or answer. ;-)

Soo -- why does Titan belong to Vonnegut?

Teresa, if you haven't heard this story, I suspect it would please you:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/11/MNG5NAODFA1.DTL

If this were in a book, no one would believe it...

I am very disheartened that there's no streaming feed of Steve Jobs' keynote from Macworld today...

There must be something, because I can't connect to the Mac World Expo website at the moment.

However: my spies are everywhere, so I wait patiently.

Actually, Bill, it may be for the best. I, for one, will have an easier time of looking busy at work today now that I won't be going "ooh" and "aah" at the computer screen every few minutes.

Of course, hanging out around here does nothing for my productivity either.

Xopher: I have a soft-toy velociraptor.

Oooh, where'd you get it?

--Mary Aileen

Alas, Mary Aileen, I cannot recall. Perhaps at the Museum of Natural History? It was a long time ago.

Anybody have any suggestions of good games for older folks (73), which are memory-oriented?

Based on Rivka's explanation, I'd say that if your father wants to play something more engaging than Pelmanism, just about any standard card game would be good for exercising short-term memory - rummy, gin, pinochle, skat, bridge, etc. Some of these (such as bridge) require more memory work than others, but they all require some to play well.

NonObSF - Simon Illyan playing a tarot game as light therapy after losing his eidetic memory chip.

Okay, I am about to ask for someone to find me the truly impossible - but since we've had plush Anubis and plush Ganesha (I want one!!!) crop up, I feel oddly confident that if anyone can find this, someone who reads Making Light can.

Does anybody know if there exists any classic-rock style music (Or, in a pinch, modern top 40 pop will do), sung in Lithuanian?

No, I'm not joking. It's petty and it's silly, but oh, so ideal.

On other topic: If someone else ASKS JVP for a math comment, I don't object to him bringing one up. It was the unasked-for ones that were the problem. Unless of course, Teresa disagrees.

Does anybody know if there exists any classic-rock style music (Or, in a pinch, modern top 40 pop will do), sung in Lithuanian?

This place appears to have some, although you should check on any particular CD you want to buy, as some appear to be sung in English.

Lenora Rose:

I agree, again willing to be corrected by Teresa. Rather than pushing my own agenda, I do want to be a resource for legitimate questions from this community. If the answer would be too long or too technical, I would NOT post it here, but put it somewhere else, or request that the person who queried contact me by email. In this rare case, semiprimes have evolved from an extremely obscure backwater of Number Theory into a billion dollar industry, very important to the internet. I am trying to learn proper blog manners, like a grizzled prospector stumbling through the boomtown that grew up around the mines he'd worked alone for decades, and I am genuinely grateful to Teresa and Patrick for their time and patience in teaching me.

Sam Dodsworth wins an all-expenses-paid round-trip
to the past (or future); certain restrictions do
apply.

Alas, I did not know who the parodist was, but
Google found him easily enough.

Tangentally to the memory issue, one of the
substances believed to slow or halt Alzheimer's
is curcumin, one of the main ingredients in
curry powder. India apparantly has very low
instances of Alzheimer's.

The stuff is currently undergoing clinical
trials, so it is still unproven as a therapy.
But I think I shall eat more Indian food -- if I
can remember to do so.

Oh, forgot to mention, when I was growing up the curfew signal was a siren, not a bell ... ah, the good ole days.

Mary Aileen, Xopher, we have a soft T-Rex that we definitely got at the American Museum of Natural History, along with a plushie squid.

Re - living in a store - shades of "Evening Primrose" which I heard as radio drama on an old time radio program (broadcasts of classic American radio shows.)

OK, I'm glad I wasn't watching the keynote live.

I would have screamed my bloody head off when they rolled out the Mac Mini.

Owlmirror, that's interesting! I went to the spice pages linked to in the particles a while back and found that curcumin's what's in turmeric. So I wonder if pickles made with turmeric would also help? Last time I made pickles with my own spice mix, many moons ago, turmeric featured in the recipe.

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions.

I'll see if I can get him interested in playing some concentration.

Owlmirror: We heard about curcumin/turmeric a couple of years ago, from a family friend who's a PhD AIDS researcher at NIH. I've been trying to get my folks to use it, but it ain't easy. New tricks, etc.

Dru: It's pretty sure it's not alzheimers, because it was sudden, not gradual. We think it's "multiple-infarct dementia", but it's hard to say, because any damage was too small to show up on an MRI. After his regular doctor and neurologist were a little baffled, we took him to a gerontological center at UCONN's medical center. Who were also a bit baffled, I think.

Nerts is a good memory game as well and is fast paced, especially with four players.

How to play Nerts:

Each player has their own deck. They need to be distinct enough so that you can tell them apart as you'll be mixing them together and need to separate them back again at the end of each round. Decks with cartoon character backings are useful.

Basically, the game is competitive solitaire. Lay out four cards face up in front of you. Deal out thirteen cards, also face up and set them to one side. This is your Nerts pile.

With the rest of the deck in hand, you flip over three cards and either place them in front of you, as you would in solitaire (descending order, red on black on red, etc.) or place them in the center of the table between players, starting with aces. Everyone builds suits on these aces, (hence the need for distinct decks) drawing either form the deck in your hand or from the four lines in fornt of you or from the Nerts pile.

The face down deck in your hands is slowly shuffled as you turn over every third card. Every so often, a stalemate is reached this way when no one can do anything. So you flip the top card which shuffles the deck and start anew, flipping three cards at a time.

The first person to place all thirteen of their Nerts cards either in line in fornt of them or in the suit piles calls out "Nerts!" and the round ends. Points are tallied form the comunal piles in the center of the table, one point for each card laid down. The cards are separated into their decks, shuffled and the game starts over. First person to reach 75 wins.

Bill Blum enthused:

OK, I'm glad I wasn't watching the keynote live.

I would have screamed my bloody head off when they rolled out the Mac Mini.

No kidding! The first description I could come up with about the effect that had on me wasn't at all PG-13. Hot Damn. Apple (between all of the announcements) really made my day today.

As it turns out, my first hit of Apple was free - we were gifted with a tibook as a wedding present... but we've been paying ever since :) Still - really good stuff all the same :) [0]

[0] Allow me to accompany this with the note that my usually blue Apple koolaide does have occasional green tendancies - but I'm trying to ignore all that today.

Epacris: It's worse than you think! This is the second week they've broadcast The West Wing on Monday and Tuesday nights. This means you probably missed last Tuesday night's episode. If you e-mail me I may be able to lay hands on a tape for you.

Bathroom Buddies:

http://www.richardwho.com/collections/collection177.asp

mayakda wrote at 11:03 AM:

Soo -- why does Titan belong to Vonnegut?

but later, at 1:57 PM:

Oh, forgot to mention, when I was growing up the curfew signal was a siren, not a bell ... ah, the good ole days.

Is this a hint that you no longer need your question answered?

This is awful . . . yesterday, I found myself *looking for fruitcake*. The low-end, brick-shaped, plastic-wrapped fruitcake sold as gift items around Christmas.

The only ones I found were selling for six bucks and were easy to pass up . . . but what if I find a joint selling them cheap?

Please, someone tell me that those cherry things are full of dioxin.

We've bought a number of things from the Stuffe & Nonsense people someone linked to above. Including a stuffed echidna and a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater. We also have a marvelous plush T rex acquired at the National Zoo gift shop. Jill will have to confirm as I can't find it in their online shop.

MKK

And if you need cute alpaca-wool dolls made to order:

From Jay Lake's blog

Is it just me, or does the third one look like a cross between the Big Bad Wolf and Kosh from Babylon-5?

Lenora Rose, I emailed your request to a friend of mine who I expected to be able to help, and I include her reply below:

"Although there isn't a whole group of classic rock in Lithuanian, as Lithuanians are more metal and goth fans when it comes to rock, I can give you a few places to start:

http://www.mikesradioworld.com/eu_lt.html
lists a lot of Lithuanian radio stations that mix Lithuanian rock and pop in with other international groups.

http://www.siela.info/siela.htm
SIELA (which translates to "Soul") is a Lithuanian goth band. I was friends with these guys when I was in college.

http://digihara.com/adamkus/mokslas/pagan.html
is an article written in English that may help serve as a springboard for what you're looking for."

Hope this helps.

Crossword puzzles are also good for memory stuff, and widely considered therapeudic.

Anybody have any suggestions of good games for older folks (73), which are memory-oriented?

My dad's about that age and has what may or may not be early Alzheimers, and he seems to do well with Shanghai. It uses a lot of the same skills as Concentration but it's more challenging as a strategy game and seems more adult/less therapeutic or at least more fun.

I should say (in case Shanghai is obscurer than I think) that it's a single-player form of computer Mahjongg

Well, it's an open thread ...
I just got hold of v.3 of Lord Chesterfield's Letters, wherein he nags his son to suck up only to the higher-ranking young sprigs in Paris. And I seek the wisdom of anyone with a grounding in 18th c. vulgarity, please.
On p.6 of my edition, he cautions to be on one's guard against "Monfieur le Comte or Monfieur le Chevalier in handfome laced coat, et tres bien mis" (usually to be found in the company of "fome ladies of condition")
"Well, if you were to accept of this kind offer ... you would find au troifieme a handfome, painted and p--d ftrumpet, in a tarnifhed filver or gold fecond-hand robe ..."

Any guesses what "p--d" might stand for? I looked at Partridge's Slang dictionary, and "pissed" or "pissed-up" meaning drunk is 20th c. though "pissing" means paltry from 16th-19th c. - but the word is definitely p--d, not p--ing. I've looked through Grose's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, but nothing looks terribly obvious in the P chapter.

If this is an inappropriate post, apologies and please delete.

I would guess p--d to mean "poxed".

I think Dave Luckett has it in one; poxed. See the OED:

trans. To infect with the pox (i.e., usually, with syphilis). Also in imprecations (cf. prec. 3). Also transf. and fig. Hence poxed (p{rfa}kst) ppl. a.

1682 DRYDEN Medal 266 And the pox'd Nation feels Thee in their Brains. 1710 SWIFT Jrnl. to Stella 29 Sept., The dean friendly! The dean be pox't. 1712 ARBUTHNOT John Bull III. iii, Jack..persuaded Peg that all mankind, besides himself, were poxed by that scarlet-faced whore. 1766 T. AMORY Buncle (1770) IV. xiii. 249 She..lives..to ruin the fortune, pox the body, and for ever damn the soul of the miserable man. 1784 PRINCE WILLIAM Let. 23 July in P. Ziegler King William IV (1971) iii. 51 Oh, for..the pretty girls of Westminster..such as would not clap or pox me every time I fucked. 1802 G. GALLOWAY in Admirable Crichton 70 Tho' we were pox'd wi' poverty and law. 1846 Swell's Night Guide 45 These kens are tenanted by a blackguard..school of pugging shakes, whose chief fame is in..poxing a swaddy. 1933 M. LOWRY Ultramarine i. 51 That boy got all poxed up to the eyeballs, voyage before last... Yes, he was poxed all away to hell.

The only other possible fit I can think of is "pimped." It's OK in terms of the era, but I don't think it fits as well (pimped could mean to pimp for someone, also, to act as a voyeur; which is what made me think of it).

On my computer, the single-player Mahjongg game is called Taipei.

Re Apple minimac (Mac Mini, whatever) -- <whimper> -- a friend who's an Apple convert has been wafting various tempting experiences & objects before me. He trailed this link across my email this morning ... mmmmm ... I still, aesthetically, prefer a cuboid form to this one but, practically, this looks very good indeed. [Beats back surge of technolust by looking at elbow-deep drifts of legal paperwork I need to get on with before a looming deadline.]

The pitch in the linked-to promotional pages is a good one, with it fitting into existing peripherals & systems, and doesn't seem to threaten the higher-end user market too much. It looks like there'd still be a reasonably marked difference that would allow those dedicated Mac-users who wish to, to stay feeling superior.

Having used WinXP in other places, I don't want it. Over the weekend I tried to install a 'cut-down' Adobe image organizer version which simply, and quite rudely, refused to run on such an untermensch of a system. I don't have much use for music, but with my personal photos & historical records image archive, there would be between 15,000 and 20,000 files only part-classified that need better handling. Apple has always slanted more that way; iPhotos tempting.

I wonder what ratio the $AU/$US will be by the time one can obtain them here? (Whenever that is. There are 16 countries with iTunes stores right now. Australia is not one of them.) At the moment a straight conversion makes a price in $AU half as much again as in $US -- a big improvement on nearly double as it was not long back. I think that makes the price between 10 and 14 pre-tax day's pay on an "average" income -- less than a month after-tax.

Jonathon re West Wing -- Life has been so scrambled (hoped-for catching up over Christmas-New Year break fell well below hopes); see note above on "elbow-deep drifts of legal paperwork" -- that I've lost track of much.
West Wing is probably one, but with the [unsure, uncertain] hope of a) possible repeats; b) possible borrowed tapes; c) renting DVDs in the future (perhaps even borrowed Region 1 DVDs, with many extra features not found on Region 4 ones), in the way of resurrections, I am curling my lip in the general direction of the contemptible fleawits who apparently intend to make us all get pay-tv in despair at what they deign to allow to dribble out on free-to-air. [I am not addicted; I can give it up anytime I want!]

Does any of that make sense?
Cup of tea, I think. Then back to the paperwork

Epacris, regarding photo organization: I don't know if iPhoto will handle that many images and still be useful. At 4,000 photos it was slow and it became nearly unusable as I approached 8,000. About 6 months ago I finally gave up (I was using the most current version at the time—4.something) and started using iView Media, which works on Macs and PCs. It's fast, even with 13,000 or so photos and can leave images where you put them (iPhoto likes to copy them into its own filing system) and catalog items on removable media. Plus the annotation and organization functions are nothing short of amazing.

Addendum about iView Media: the standard version (US$50) has a limit of 8,000 items per catalog (a catalog similar to an iPhoto library file). But you can have multiple catalogs. The pro version (US$200) boosts the item limit to 128,000 per catalog and you can search multiple catalogs simultaneously.

Edo - which version of iPhoto were you using? The last version (the last one announced before yesterday, that is) introduced incredibly zippy picture scrolling and resizing, even for my now-creakily-slow iBook.

I can confirm that MKK and Jordin procured a plush T-Rex from the National Zoo. I can also add that its plushy fur was not green or brown or blue, but jazzed up in multicolored tie-dye. Perhaps when she is feeling better she can somehow incorporate it into a Friday kitty blogging episode?

Two places online wherein much plush lust may be slaked -- or, alternatively, stirred -- including dinoplush desire. Approach with caution. (Isn't a beanie a type of hat?)

Is this a hint that you no longer need your question answered?

I guess, although I confess I never read any of Vonnegut's books. Not sure why ...

... back to photo organisation ... (For current use, would still have to be PC-Windoze based, but. And Mac needs at least current 80Gb for programs & data storage.)

In the release of the new Apple stuff today, these are the mentions of specific numbers (dont know what size images) on the apple.com site in relation to image organisation.

"With iPod photo, you can carry up to 25,000 of your favorite photos in your pocket."
"... iPhoto finds a photo or group of photos you’re looking for as quickly as iTunes can find a single song or album ... Even if you have ten thousand — or more — photos to search through."

Stefan - fruitcake is *good*! Why is searching for it a bad thing?

(Unless it's that you're specifically hooked on the very cheap Christmas ones - in which case, go make some homemade cakes. They taste much better. :)

For those of you who aren't interested in excruciating technical detail about photo management, please skip over this post.

I don't think I was completely clear about iPhoto. I found that for my needs, on my system (1Ghz Aluminum Powerbook with 1Gb of RAM), that iPhoto (Jill, it's version 4.04) became unusably slow when my photo library grew to about 8,000 images. It may have been a couple of thousand less, though—it was a gradual process that started in the low thousands. My 8,000 photos took approximately 14Gb of space including the iPhoto-generated "changed" files from all of the photos I rotated to portrait orientation in the program.

I started looking for alternatives when a 50-image slideshow with a simple transition and no music took upwards of 10 seconds per image when specifically set to show each for 3 seconds. I would routinely see my processor load stay at 100% for minutes at a time, just scrolling through the library or watching the spinning beachball. With no other applications running. I did all the usual troubleshooting.

In any case, I found iPhoto to be very useful early on because it is very snappy and fun with a small library. However now that I store a lot of my photos offline but still need easy access to them, I can't live with one iPhoto feature. When importing photos, it copies everything to its own library with its own folder hierarchy on my hard drive. I am simply running out of room! Plus I like to keep my photos organized by event or project rather than by date.

As for capacity, iPhoto may not have a documented upper limit for the number of images it can handle but I'm talking about usability rather than theoretical limits. It just plain got bogged down when I threw too many images at it, kind of like gridlock: the route and end result were the same, I was just crankier by the end of it because it took so much longer than it should have and I spent so much time waiting and wondering when things would start moving again. In iPhoto's defense, I will say that iView Media does take its time sorting 15,000 images by date. But simply scrolling through thumbnail images doesn't summon the spinning beachball.

I've been watching the iPhoto upgrades hoping that Apple will add some of the features iView Media has. If they offer user-controllable image importing (as in "No, don't copy these to my hard drive, just build a thumbnail and let me tag them."), I'll consider switching back.

And I repeat: iView Media's annotation features are amazing.

Jon H:

You might want to take a look at www.boardgamegeek.com. They helpfully break down games (of all sorts, not just board games) by mechanic.

The memory and pattern related categories have hundreds of games. Reviews and commentary for each game are common, so you might be able to find something that would build new pathways while still being, well, fun.

The added bonus being that the games might might hide the "work" aspect for others in the family, while involving multiple people in a positive manner.

The impact of having family around in these situations has shown to be very positive, especially when multiple members can socialize. The stigmas of age and disability leave a lot of people struggling alone.

Anyhoo, just though that the site might be a place to start.

re: poxed

Shakespeare’s Writings Indicate He May Have Had Syphilis
Shakespeare’s name usually inspires thoughts of kings, fairies, lovers, wars and poetic genius--not syphilis. However, some passages in his plays and sonnets indicate that the Bard may have suffered from one or more venereal infections, according to an article in the Feb. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.

Sigh. Xopher gets a plush Anubis. I would have liked a plush Set, but the one at Stuffe and Nonsense is a little pricey. Sigh.

However, some passages in his plays and sonnets indicate that the Bard may have suffered from one or more venereal infections, according to an article in the Feb. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.

Unless there's a lot more to the original article than is indicated in the Science Daily piece, I call bollocks. The passages certainly indicate that Shakespeare was aware of the symptoms of syphillis and other STDs, but it's a big leap from that to the assumption that he had the symptoms himself. It reminds me of the arguments that use a few references to legal matters or whatnot in the plays to prove that he must have had more education than his background indicates and therefore was Bacon or de Vere or whoever - as if no one could ever learn about anything outside of school or their profession.

Laura, wow, those ARE pricey. But Setesh isn't exactly a Comforter...I mean, if I had one of those in the house I'd not only not keep it on the bed, I'd lock it outside whenever I needed to sleep!

Plush caltrops? PLUSH caltrops? Plush CALTROPS? PLUSH CALTROPS? The world reels on its axis. Or something.

MKK--who would love the plush shoggoth

Xopher - it's true that he's not cuddly. But somehow I've always had a soft spot for him.

As the info page at Stuffe & Nonsense explains, Set wasn't necessarily seen as evil - more of a Trickster. Some Pharaohs named themselves after him.

But what really fascinates me is that nobody knows what animal he's supposed to be.

Mary Kay:

I'm a little weirded out by the plush caltrops in the same way I'm weirded out by this very realistic-looking brick made from small flecks of glued-together foam, sort of like particleboard but brick-shaped, colored, and squishy. It's realistic-looking enough that people stumble when picking it up because they brace for the mass of a brick. Cruel people then immediately look for an unsuspecting acquaintance to throw at and watch them duck.

I have the plush shoggoth, it's cute, at least to me, and it has enough flexibility and traction to stay on top of one's head like a thick small cap with large fringes. I keep meaning to make the beanbag chair shoggoth I designed a couple of years ago.

Oh hey, Mac people here -- query:

How can I get the "software update" to quit telling me every few days that there's an iPod upgrade? How can I tell it "I don't have one, I'm not going to get one, so please F'KOFF!"? I hide the update each time, but that's all it lets me do, and it's as irritating as the non-endings on slasher movies, because I know the stupid thing is going to be back again and again.

So.
Help.
Thanks.

Ohhhhh, they have a Sekmet! I like Bast, Horus, and Anubis, but I'm very drawn to Sekmet. Although she looks a little too friendly as a plushie!

Kip W:

Try the following:
Run Software Update. The iPod Update should show up in the Software Update window.
If there's more than one update shown, click the iPod one to select it.
From the menu bar, choose the command Update>Ignore Update.

That should hide that iPod Update. If they release another one later, it'll appear, and do the same Ignore Update to that one.

Hope this helps.

If you have any luck getting the iPod Update to become inactive, let me know. I would make the update inactive, but it kept coming back until finally I said "hell with it" and installed it anyway.

Also, does anyone have any idea if iTunes will continue to be updated by Software Update or if I'm going to have to go to the iTunes website to download new versions?

(And yeah, my reaction to the miniMac, too, was so not PG-13.)

it's true that he's not cuddly. But somehow I've always had a soft spot for him.

Me too.

As the info page at Stuffe & Nonsense explains, Set wasn't necessarily seen as evil - more of a Trickster. Some Pharaohs named themselves after him.

But what really fascinates me is that nobody knows what animal he's supposed to be.

Hmm. I think he was definitely seen as evil a lot of the time...though "good" and "evil" aren't really concepts that translate into Egyptian. The only word for "good" that they had really means "what Pharaoh loves," for example. Or so I'm told.

I expect that the reason no one knows what the Set-Beast was is that it's extinct. Hunted thereto, would be my thesis. But I have no evidence for this.

On fruitcakes: bake one.

Jo Walton had a lovely recipe on her blog on December 23rd: Cousin Beryl's Fruit Cake Recipe
http://www.livejournal.com/users/papersky/

(I'm sorry I don't know how to link it to the specific entry)

I tried it and it was easy, and my partner Martin was extremely happy with it. I hope I can find more of the necessary candied fruits when I want to do this again. I found that a 7 inch tin (Brit.) equates to a standard American loaf pan.

Jo, thank you!

Xopher:

It is hard to believe that there was never any such animal. Although maybe the point is that Set doesn't belong to the ordinary world? And yes, sometimes he was pure evil. But he just doesn't look evil to me, no matter what.

I like your Dark God thing - will have to meditate on it. My conception of him has a lot to do with dreams - the dream world - as well as death. I also think it's important that Hades/Pluto was known as the god of riches (hidden treasure?)

I don't believe the animal never existed, just that it's now extinct. I think that its association with Setesh and therefore evil made Egyptians hunt it until it was wiped out. As I said, though, I have no evidence for this; it's just wild speculation on my part.

Pluto is "the wealthy one" because all beings come to him at last; therefore he has more than any other god. Oh, and: out of all the (many) sites on the net that have it, I couldn't find one that had the whole Charge correctly; that one has "Lakchos" instead of "Iakchos," but it gets the grammar in the last sentence right, so I went with it.

The Joy of Cooking has a fruitcake recipe or two, which I've enver tried, since I don't cook or bake much. But I do admire TJoC's writing style-- so unabashedly authoritative and superior.

PinkDreamPoppies - I ran Software Update this morning (manually) and it downloaded the latest iTunes.

Jonathan Vos Post: thanks for the answer, and the links. Interesting stuff.

Jon H---
If it's memory loss and it's baffling doctors, demand that your dad be blood-tested for Lyme disease. "Alzheimer's" is just one of the many diseases Lyme can be and is mistaken for.
I still have huge holes in my memory from my long undiagnosed case of Lyme but I've been treated and I'm now recovering and more comes back every day. Good luck to you and your dad.
---Janet
P.S. Old server went belly-up; please note COAs.

To Make Software Update Ignore an Update
N.B. This works on a file-by-file basis; you will have to do this again, for instance, to ignore the next update for the iPod.

1. Open Software Update
2. Select the name of the file to be ignored in the file list.
3. Select Update menu and then select Ignore Update.

Since I suspect I'm telling you something you tried only it didn't work, I'll also point out that in the same menu you can chose to Download only, or Download (and keep) and install, which is a Smart thing to do, sometimes.

If you've tried this and it didn't work, it may be because of a permissions issue; repair permissions. It may also be because of a corrupt plist; there are free utilities to repair these, or locate them, if you're terminal shy.

Why shouldn't Set be made up? Were the ancient egyptians really unable to make up the equivalent of a Hephalump or a Boojum?

Another possibility:

Set wasn't based on an extinct animal. He was an alien, like in that episode of Dr. Who.

hey just a quick question, a short story positing that bush, rumsfeld, cheney, and wolfowitz were serial-killing pederasts who invaded iraq so as to supply their secret orgies with easily disposable arabic boys - would this be considered too extreme for polite society and might i get in trouble? i thought it sounded quite good but what do i know, i thought a secret agent elvis presley with a vampire howard hughes and a homosexual love affair with j. edgar hoover was a surefire concept.

oh, and i don't see how Set wasn't evil, considering the whole sibling-killing body parts spreading thing. hmm, i wonder if the cheney character could do something similar....

Xopher said:

I couldn't find one that had the whole Charge correctly; that one has "Lakchos" instead of "Iakchos"

Now see, when I read that I thought, "Shouldn't it be Iakchos? Or maybe this is some god I've never heard of."

Also, I didn't mean to imply that you said the animal never existed.

Stephan said,

Set wasn't based on an extinct animal. He was an alien, like in that episode of Dr. Who.

Yes, I was thinking of that episode, in which Set is referred to as "Sutekh." Set, Seth, Setesh, Sutekh . . . why does he have so many names.

Off topic (but this is an open thread, right?), I was earlier today directed to this essay, by Ronald Sider, about the hypocrisy of American evangelicals. A fascinating read, but while I think we'd all be better off if more evangelicals were as thoughtful and committed as he claims to be (and apparently is), I have to admit that the whole thing makes me more than a bit uncomfortable. I wonder if anyone else has a similar reaction?

Jonathan Vos Post:

If the answer would be too long or too technical, I would NOT post it here, but put it somewhere else, or request that the person who queried contact me by email.

But how would you tell that it was too long or too technical? Oh, well, I guess you're learning.

This reminds me that I once mentioned the inverse Wythoff array, and suggested that anyone who wanted to know more send me e-mail. The followup from JVP failed to convince me of sufficient interest among the readership of Making Light and did not include a usable e-mail address.

In case the top of this message is hard to decipher, my e-mail address is haoyuep@aol.com, which might be useful for anyone who looking for an effective way of requesting more information. Yow, am I huffy yet?

Theresa: Have you considered putting a Particles link to your spectacular contribution on Neil Gaiman's site?

Yes, I was thinking of that episode, in which Set is referred to as "Sutekh." Set, Seth, Setesh, Sutekh . . . why does he have so many names.

Because heiroglyphic only writes consonants, and we only have theories (based on other languages writing Egyptian and vice versa, and on Coptic) as to what the vowels were. Also the sounds changed over time -- remember the civilization of Ancient Egypt lasted thousands of years -- a hell of a lot longer than ours has so far!

And bryan, the theory wasn't that Set didn't do anything wrong, just that he was changed in the womb so that he would. I.e. it wasn't exactly his fault. I think he counts as pretty evil, even though he established the maat we live in today -- with Osiris in the underworld and like that.

Jeremy Osner:

You're welcome!

Dan Hoey:

You're right. At risk of being spammed by someone harvesting this, I can be reached offline at:
jvospost2(AT)yahoo.com

Can We See This Prehistoric Man-Bites-Dog-In Plush Department:

Dinosaur Fossil Found in Mammal's Stomach

Math Puns Left as Exercises for Readers:

Fill in one here on "Set Theory" and
"Egyptian Fraction.", Eric W. Weisstein. From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource.