Cognitive Labs

Gravity, that fundamental force explained by Isaac Newton so well, may not be so constant afterall.

Recent probes hurtling across Earth's terminator have not behaved as expected, missing the tightly calculated predicted trajectory by a small margin. The incidence has been measured at least five times in cases around the Earth and also on the outbound slingshot characterizing the departure of Pioneer X and XI from the solar system, billions of miles -- and several light-minutes away.

This troubling occurrence has suggested to some scientists that the law of gravity is somehow incorrect and needs to be modified - if something is mostly true, but not always, than by definition it cannot be a law in the physical sciences, at least as presently conceived. Or, on the other hand, a new principle of physics exists that we have not accounted for up to now.

Attempting to force observation into a law and creating a 'fudge factor' was previously the case with the Ptolemaic system, which defined and expanded the concept of epicycles or tangent circles to account for perturbations in planetary orbits, in particular the planet Mars - until it was realized (by Kepler) that orbits were ellipses. Previously, it was believed that orbits must be circular (perfect).




more at space.com

Labels: epicycles, kepler, ptolemaic

Yahoo's "boomer blogger" says you can raise your IQ with an ipod and that there are 100 quick and easy ways this can be accomplished, besides putting cheese in it and leaving it in the middle of your mouse Algernon's maze and watching.

Labels: blogger, boomer, ipod, IQ

Spock and McCoy in the 23rd century - Tri-D chess

The advocacy group Gene-Watch has an interesting collection of links to academic studies related to IQ, intelligence, and cognitive speed...the genetic component is said to be approximatetly 50% of this measure.

Labels: chess, tri-d

I bet you didn't know that Cognitive Labs was involved in something that involved the U.S. Chess Federation. Well, now you know. It seems that chess may build cognitive skills, and rely on a tendency to strategize that is encoded genetically.

The Federation looked at BrainSpeed (tm) and decided to support it as a neuroenhancer, which came with our testing.

Myself, I like tri-dimensional chess.

More on this story later...

Labels: brain, chess, cognitivelabs.com, federation

Everything was back up by early AM (P.S.T.)

In case you're wondering, a server outage began around 7:15 PST and is still ongoing. The path hosting this blog is not affected, however, most of the pathways and directories on cognitivelabs.com are down. The ETA from engineering on uptime at our host is around 6 AM.

Sorry for the glitch. This is the most prolonged outage since 2005, as our host has been 99.9% reliable over that period. We were headed towards possibly our busiest day yet today with around 30,000 visitors at the time of the crash.

So again, our apologies.

Labels: server, uptime

One time when I was in Korea, an enterprising merchant extolled his collection of leather coats and handbags, striding in front of his store in the crisp winter air, declaiming expansively with a dollop of exuberance and showmanship: "Everything is Free!" He did not fail to get attention. It's the kind of statement you would not hear in Japan.

Web Economics work much the same way. The truth is the web sunders the relationship between markets and hierarchies in the area of theory known as Transaction cost Economics, which seeks to explicate the seemingly rational behavior of actors and agonists in the Economy that march in lockstep to the status quo, even if the tune is flat and overwrought and the relationship dysfunctional.

When an Internet provocateur emerges, endemic industry inefficiencies are revealed like a Hollywood actor sans make-up. Digital economics are driven by increasing returns - at least on the way up, until an alternate appears to steal the thunder, which nevertheless also will operate under the principle of increasing returns. An incumbent's comfortable and predictable profit margins can vanish just like the revenues from classified advertising have.

What should an incumbent do? Adapt as soon as possible to the methods and technologies of businesses that have scale and cost leadership, since it's likely that efficiencies removed from the system will not be recovered or rolled back.



More on the Free Revolution from Chris Anderson (Wired)

Labels: classified, scale, TCE, wired

Say you have a health oriented website or blog (or anything for that matter). How can you create the effects you see on yahoo, aol.com, revolution health, and others. What I am talking about are those nice pictures that fade in and out, usually celebrity-related such as the latest Britney Spears gaffe, tie in with television, or model shot of jolly, healthy-looking people on the home page of a health portal.

You can do it with a Flash slider gadget or you can do it with JavaScript.
I found a site that makes it all easier than coding purely from scratch...here it is.
I don't know that this device is a match for cognitive labs, due to our intentional simplicity, but we may use it on some other websites.

It's interesting that with experimentation, you see that the latest and greatest looks good on first glance but becomes tiresome for repeat users - a particularly bad idea is too many moving sliders and drop down boxes associated with basics like checking email. Losing a half second every time you want to check email becomes irritating eventually. That's why simple, even banal design - well executed may trump fancy templates and complex CSS. I've come to this conclusion just through watching the numbers and activity. There's a fine balance between innovation and disruption of the user experience.

Labels: Ajax, slider

Labels: addicting games, AI, billions, gdc, kurzweil, respirocytes, running, singularity

Designers at CEBIT got much digital ink when they announced this mental typewriter and game controller which let anyone control their computer with their brain alone. Telepathy, stage one.

Just 23 short months later, Emotiv, a San Francisco based company, has improved on the prototype with an actual beta consumer device - letting you control the existence or dissolution of an orange box on your computer's screen - with just your thoughts.



As you can see this is closer to the proverbvial iBrain: no wires, electrodes or swim cap - just pure design, closer to headphones or a svelte racing bicycle helmet.
The entrepreneurs aim to have a product in stores in time for Christmas 2008.





The pace of change is accelerating...

Labels: emotiv, gamer, gdc, mental_typewriter_and_game_controller

Think Faster, Live Longer. It's all Connected.

Labels: AI, longevity, thinkfaster

Some highlights from the 2008 Game Developer's Conference happpening now in San Francisco. Nolan Bushnell, a founder of Atari, demos a system for inserting video ads during breaks in casual games.

Wild Tangent has developed a product called orb that lets any powerful computer play games across a network for free - no need to Wii or Xbox, synchs with widescreen/flatscreen HDTVs.

Labels: Atari, gdc, hdtv, orb, wildtangent

That's the intriguing idea behind some new research published here. Those in immediate contact with peers and colleagues seemingly are prone to groupthink and the proximity to others leads to negation of innovative ideas in favor of seeking approval (an echo of Frederick Herzberg's concept of hygiene to students of management theory)

On the other hand, those in contact with a more dispersed network of thinkers and who themselves are isolated from a commotive environment are more likely to create breakthrough work...

Labels: commotive, dampening, groupthink, herzberg, innovation, peers

Cognitive Labs just reached 800,000 visits in 2008. I created an alert bug that would send a text SMS to my phone when it happened. And it just did. This compares to about 3 million in 2007 - hopefully the growth will accelerate even further. Speaking of accelerate, I just heard about a company called XLR8 Mobile. Funny, because I was affiliated with a company called Accelerate Mobile, both as a professional and a personal investor. It developed packet loss reduction and data acceleration technology and had a successful trial on the KDDI EVDO (Evolution Data Optimization) network in Tokyo. Wonderful things.

Labels: 800000, cognitive, evdo, kddi, xlr8mobile

A recent discovery by two explorers on a survey in the trackless Western Desert of Egypt has pushed the boundary of influence of Egyptian civilization some 650 kilometers further to the west than previously believed.

In a canyon with walls approximately 80 feet high, carved heiroglyphic inscriptions, the name of the king in a cartouche, and an image of the ruler were located.

It was only in 2003 that the previous boundary was "discovered" to the west of Dakhla oasis (pictured above-best reached by Land Rover).

How far did the sphere of influence extend? More discoveries doubtless await.

From the Maltese Independent

Labels: cartouche, dakhla, egypt, explorers, oasis

Q: Longevity is optimized in three distinct communitites on earth.

(1) Okinawa
(2) Ovodda, Sardinia
(3) Loma Linda, CA

Why?

Each boasts a higher percentage of centenarians than anywhere else on earth. Scientists speculate that this is due to both genetic and lifestyle factors. For example, Okinawans practice a form of caloric restriction, consuming only 1,200 calories per day which may fool the body into not releasing hormones associated with excessive cellular tissue growth, inflammation, cellular breakdown, and malignancy. Their "real age" so to speak is lower than their calendar age due to these factors.

In Ovodda, nearly everyone is related since individuals are all descended from the original emmigrants to the island, encapsulating positive as well as potentially harmful genetic code variants.

In Loma Linda, a significant percentage of the population belongs to the 7th Day Adventist organization and it is surmised that faith and ability to manage and weather responses to life's stresses - coupled with a vegan diet in many cases are also associated with longer than normal life.

Labels: bbc, lomalinda, longevity, okinawa, ovodda

Ethical concern for the future: HIPAA vs. the Three Laws of Robotics: Discuss

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has just released their list of the 14 greatest challenges facing humanity.

About 4 of them involve action items/parameters that Cognitive Labs' is also working on (highlighted). The list follows:

-Make solar energy affordable
-Provide energy from fusion
-Develop carbon sequestration
-Manage the nitrogen cycle
-Provide access to clean water
-Reverse engineer the brain
-Prevent nuclear terror
-Secure cyberspace
-Enhance virtual reality
-Improve urban infrastructure
-Advance health informatics
-Engineer better medicines
-Advance personalised learning
-Explore natural frontiers

Among the predictions, not challenges, is the making of a sentient robot by the year 2029. In addition, nanobots will flow throughout the bloodstream, making minor corrections in cellular function to prevent malady. In the brain, the nanobots could prevent the accumulation of amyloid tangles.

Think of it as McAfee ViruScan for your body. There's no reason the Internet will not play a part; in fact application engines might exist that receive inputs from you (body and brain)or your computer (keyboard, voice, etc.) via the Internet 24/7 and collect data like a seismograph.
Blood sample? A nanobot can analyze the blood in real time and submit the data wirelessly to a medical database, either centrally located but more likely on your own computing platform. The era of symptoms and potential misdiagnosis or diagnostic 'dead reckoning' and fear of false positives may be then be at an end.

Labels: 14, coglabs, mcaffee, nanobot

Natrol, Inc., our partner in offering the BrainSpeed (tm) test both online and at retail - has been acquired by Plethico, a healthcare co. based in Mumbai(Bombay) India for $81 million in cash consideration. (details of closing)

The innovative combined test, which represented the first time consumers were able to track their mental state in conjunction with a consumer packaged good (CPG) like they might track something on ups.com or their favorite online retailer, was first launched in 2005 at E3 in Los Angeles; subsequently - more than 50,000 people logged in after purchase. Blogs, specifically weblogs, inc and our own brainspeed.blogspot and our simple javascript game brainSpeed blaster (tm) which has logged hundreds of thousands of plays (developed by me), were used to support the effort, along with standard marketing stuff.

The Natrol blend was scientifically engineered, containing Huperzine A, among other ingredients. Following this launch, the NIH sponsored a large scale clinical trial of Huperzine (ongoing) as a possible treatment for Alzheimer's. At least one company, Neuro-HiTech has gone public as a biotech company on the emerging neurocognitive potential of Huperzine.

Labels: 81, brainspeed, E3, estonia, weblogs

Researchers in Denmark tracked a genetic mutation showing that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor.

Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen and his team examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye color of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey.

"Originally, we all had brown eyes," Eiberg said in a statement. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes."

The switch, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris -- effectively "diluting" brown eyes to blue.

Variation in eye color from brown to green can be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes, Eiberg explained.

"From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor," Eiberg said. "They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA."

The mutations responsible for blue eye colour most likely originate from the north-west part of the Black Sea region, where the great agricultural migration of the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago," the researchers report in Human Genetics.

What's the bluest-eyed nation? Estonia - with 92.9% of the population blue-eyed. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany follow - with 75% of Germans blue-eyed.

Most significantly, this illustrates how fast genetic change can propagate from a single mutation-in practically a millisecond of the human experience. Change is constant. Imagine tomorrow a baby is born with plaid eyes-in a few thousand years this could become the norm! The Blink of an Eye Test:


type="text/javascript"src="http://cognitivelabs.com/cognitive.js">

Labels: blue, blueeyes, dna, estonia

// posted by neurofuture10:35 PM permanent link

tags:   

  tags: help build archive | brain games | more brain games

Excerpt from New Scientist:


The giant planet HD 189733b is too hot for its methane and water vapour to signal life (Illustration: Christophe Carreau/ESA)

Organic molecules – in the form of methane – have been detected on a planet outside our solar system for the first time. The giant planet lies too close to its parent star for the methane to signal life, but the detection offers hope that astronomers will one day be able to analyse the atmospheres of Earth-like worlds.

Astronomers Mark Swain and Gautam Vasisht of Caltech in Pasadena, US, and Giovanna Tinetti of University College London, UK, used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the giant planet HD 189733b, which is slightly more massive than Jupiter and lies 63 light years from Earth.

Labels: 700, alien, HD, methane, o-molecules, organic, world

Scientists have just found that components of junk DNA known as introns perform a very valuable service. Introns are considered as 'noise' in the midst of gene sequences. However, the researchers now say that RNA encoding for a nerve-cell electrical channel, called the BK channel, contains an intron outside the nucleus. The intron assures that the BK channels are made in the appropriate place in the cell.

In nerve cells, some ion channels are located in the dendrite, which branch from the cell body of the neuron. Dendrites detect the electrical and chemical signals transmitted to the neuron by the axons of other neurons. Abnormalities in the dendrite electrical channel are involved in epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, and cognitive disorders, among others.

In 2005, a Penn group first found that dendrites have the capacity to splice messenger RNA, a process once believed to only take place in the nucleus of cells.

When this intron-containing RNA was knocked out, leaving the maturely spliced RNA in the cell, the electrical properties of the cell became abnormal. "We think the intron-containing mRNA is targeted to the dendrite where it is spliced into the channel protein and inserted locally into the region of the dendrite called the dendritic spine. The dendritic spine is where a majority of axons from other cells touch a particular neuron to facilitate neuronal communication" said Dr. James Eberwine. "This is the first evidence that an intron-containing RNA outside of the nucleus serves a critical cellular function."

"The intron acts like a guide or gatekeeper," said Eberwine. "It keys the messenger RNA to the dendrite for local control of gene expression and final removal of the intron before the channel protein is made. Just because the intron is not in the final channel protein doesn't mean that it doesn't have an important purpose."

The group surmises that the intron may control how many mRNAs are brought to the dendrite and translated into functional channel proteins. The correct number of channels is just as important for electrical impulses as having a properly formed channel.

The investigators believe that this is a general mechanism for the regulation of cytoplasmic RNAs in neurons. Given the central role of dendrites in various physiological functions they hope to relate this new knowledge to understanding the molecular underpinnings of memory and learning, as well as components of cognitive dysfunction resulting from neurological disease.

Labels: BK, Eberwine, introns

This shows the stepwise growth of Cognitive Labs - Q4 2007 was more than 300% over Q4 2006, with about 1.5 million visitors. Q1 2006 and Q4 2006 both had number one hits on digg. With the acquisition of brain.com, we've had additional lift.

We're up to 2,319,000 users. I never thought it could get this big, and we're basically in stealth mode. However, it's likely that this is only the beginning. Where should we go from here? We have some ideas, but let's hear yours: michael@cognitivelabs.com or poke me. Spam/shmam - but I do get about 4,000 emails/day, unfiltered.

Labels: cognitive, digg, labs, q4, traffic

In the U.S., both political parties are heading towards their respective conventions. Private equity poster boy Mitt Romney, while looking very presidential and youtubogenic (adjective: the ability of an individual to appear as eyecandy on a small, Flash powered gadget) trails the old warrior John McCain.

For the Dems, babe-in-the-political woods Barack trails the old pro, Hillary Clinton.
There has been talk that figures like Wall St. digitizer Michael Bloomberg and the Inconvenient Guy will run.

Who knows? Time will tell, ol' sport.

However some predict an out of this world, 'life's a beach' ticket (see above)

Labels: hasselhoff, inconvenient, romney, shatner, youtube, youtubogenic

SRI had their latest "watering hole" this morning on anti-aging: which features presentations by scientists and bioengineers....

Labels: antiaging, sri

It is not as if our jobs are anonymous. Our names, after all, are conspicuously slapped above our work. We identify ourselves before we interview people, before we ask for the facts or urge others to bare their souls.

So why has my equilibrium as a reporter, a sportswriter of 25 years, been so thrown out of whack these past three weeks?

It is not the reason that seems most obvious: simply because I turned the proverbial tape recorder on myself.

Related links

*
Alzheimer's hits family hard: 'Something's not right with Mom . . . and now, Dad.'
*
Alzheimer's: Intimacy found after all is lost
*
Scientists can't get their minds around Alzheimer's

Yes, writing about my parents' decline from Alzheimer's disease, in a piece that ran Jan. 13 in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, was an emotional undertaking. But there remained a comfort level there, a familiarity with an audience I had imagined had read my coverage of the Bulls championship runs and the Bears mediocrity, who came with me to Wimbledon and the Olympics. They did not always like what I wrote, and sometimes told me so with brutal candor. But that is where it stopped.

Readers wrote. I wrote back. And we both walked away.

But baring my own soul on a topic that profoundly affects so many people involves a lot more than one story on one day, I have learned.

The sheer volume of mail was enough to set the Alzheimer's story apart from any I had ever written. But it was what people wrote that has perhaps forever changed my relationship with readers.

"The dog got a very long walk this morning," wrote Joan, who told me her mother resides in an Ohio Alzheimer's residence. "I cried ... and that was a good thing. I don't allow myself to cry enough. Your story helped me to know that it will be painful and difficult, but we will all get through the journey. Even though I cried today, I am not feeling so alone."

No longer could we walk away from each other. No longer could I hit delete and move on. How could I not get emotionally involved when a man asks me, as one did, how to tell his father that it is OK to die?

Or when another reader asked if I could persuade her siblings to forgo a feeding tube for their dying mother?

I was left with a headache and a stomachache each night as I read heartbreaking stories; brought to tears by those who told me they were brought to tears; and inspired to do more by those giving so much of themselves.

Younger people wrote of their lingering fear for the future, of dealing with their own aging parents or of perhaps developing the disease themselves. Others, in their 60s and 70s, described a dread that all but leaked through the computer and onto my lap.

There were amazing tales of love, painful honesty and aching guilt.

There was Pat, who described her father, Jim, writing love letters to her mother for the last several years of his life, something she would not discover until her mother shared them with her the night of his death.

In the letters, the family could trace the disease's progression, the early letters "beautiful and sentimental," the later ones apologetic for "all of his forgetfulness and mistakes." He asked for his wife's forgiveness and thanked her for still loving him.

"As the years passed, the letters made less sense," Pat wrote. "By the end, you could not even read them."

I thought of my own mother's letters to me during my first two years of college, a stash I found when we were cleaning out the house. They were so smart and funny and revealing, her voice all but jumping off the page. I thank God I hung on tight to them, like the handful of recipes also written in my mother's own hand -- hilariously imprecise measurements scribbled on paper by a wondrously imprecise cook -- but her voice once again back in my head.

I read the words of Alissa, who was just 23 when her mother developed Alzheimer's at 53.

"[She was] also the sweet, adorable, needlepointing, mah-jongg-playing, newspaper-reading, matzo ball-making, selfless 4-foot-11 Jewish mom who always thought for others, and never herself," the daughter wrote.

"When my mom lost all of her friends to the disease (it was too 'hard' for them to hang out with her ... and 'embarrassing' when she made mistakes)," the daughter wrote, "we joked (because that's how my family also deals with stress), that if she had breast cancer, they would all band together, wear matching T-shirts and walk for three days in her honor.

"But with Alzheimer's, people seem to run away as far as possible."

Finally, there was the man named Robert, who said he stopped reading my story after the third page, calling it "ludicrous and boring."

"My wife has the disease, and it is not the hilarious picnic that Melissa describes," he wrote.

In the past this would have annoyed me, probably angered me. I would have been tempted to whip off a sharp reply. But this time, all I could see was a man's pain. And all I could feel was sadness.

Am I left with closure, to use a word I can't stand? I don't think so. I really don't. What I am left with is a strong sense that even in a cyberspace world of infinite space and time where the story of my parents reached well beyond the audience I had imagined, there is still community. There is compassion. And there is great comfort in that.

Labels: alzheimers, chicago, tribune

It is not as if our jobs are anonymous. Our names, after all, are conspicuously slapped above our work. We identify ourselves before we interview people, before we ask for the facts or urge others to bare their souls.

So why has my equilibrium as a reporter, a sportswriter of 25 years, been so thrown out of whack these past three weeks?

It is not the reason that seems most obvious: simply because I turned the proverbial tape recorder on myself.

Related links

*
Alzheimer's hits family hard: 'Something's not right with Mom . . . and now, Dad.'
*
Alzheimer's: Intimacy found after all is lost
*
Scientists can't get their minds around Alzheimer's

Yes, writing about my parents' decline from Alzheimer's disease, in a piece that ran Jan. 13 in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, was an emotional undertaking. But there remained a comfort level there, a familiarity with an audience I had imagined had read my coverage of the Bulls championship runs and the Bears mediocrity, who came with me to Wimbledon and the Olympics. They did not always like what I wrote, and sometimes told me so with brutal candor. But that is where it stopped.

Readers wrote. I wrote back. And we both walked away.

But baring my own soul on a topic that profoundly affects so many people involves a lot more than one story on one day, I have learned.

The sheer volume of mail was enough to set the Alzheimer's story apart from any I had ever written. But it was what people wrote that has perhaps forever changed my relationship with readers.

"The dog got a very long walk this morning," wrote Joan, who told me her mother resides in an Ohio Alzheimer's residence. "I cried ... and that was a good thing. I don't allow myself to cry enough. Your story helped me to know that it will be painful and difficult, but we will all get through the journey. Even though I cried today, I am not feeling so alone."

No longer could we walk away from each other. No longer could I hit delete and move on. How could I not get emotionally involved when a man asks me, as one did, how to tell his father that it is OK to die?

Or when another reader asked if I could persuade her siblings to forgo a feeding tube for their dying mother?

I was left with a headache and a stomachache each night as I read heartbreaking stories; brought to tears by those who told me they were brought to tears; and inspired to do more by those giving so much of themselves.

Younger people wrote of their lingering fear for the future, of dealing with their own aging parents or of perhaps developing the disease themselves. Others, in their 60s and 70s, described a dread that all but leaked through the computer and onto my lap.

There were amazing tales of love, painful honesty and aching guilt.

There was Pat, who described her father, Jim, writing love letters to her mother for the last several years of his life, something she would not discover until her mother shared them with her the night of his death.

In the letters, the family could trace the disease's progression, the early letters "beautiful and sentimental," the later ones apologetic for "all of his forgetfulness and mistakes." He asked for his wife's forgiveness and thanked her for still loving him.

"As the years passed, the letters made less sense," Pat wrote. "By the end, you could not even read them."

I thought of my own mother's letters to me during my first two years of college, a stash I found when we were cleaning out the house. They were so smart and funny and revealing, her voice all but jumping off the page. I thank God I hung on tight to them, like the handful of recipes also written in my mother's own hand -- hilariously imprecise measurements scribbled on paper by a wondrously imprecise cook -- but her voice once again back in my head.

I read the words of Alissa, who was just 23 when her mother developed Alzheimer's at 53.

"[She was] also the sweet, adorable, needlepointing, mah-jongg-playing, newspaper-reading, matzo ball-making, selfless 4-foot-11 Jewish mom who always thought for others, and never herself," the daughter wrote.

"When my mom lost all of her friends to the disease (it was too 'hard' for them to hang out with her ... and 'embarrassing' when she made mistakes)," the daughter wrote, "we joked (because that's how my family also deals with stress), that if she had breast cancer, they would all band together, wear matching T-shirts and walk for three days in her honor.

"But with Alzheimer's, people seem to run away as far as possible."

Finally, there was the man named Robert, who said he stopped reading my story after the third page, calling it "ludicrous and boring."

"My wife has the disease, and it is not the hilarious picnic that Melissa describes," he wrote.

In the past this would have annoyed me, probably angered me. I would have been tempted to whip off a sharp reply. But this time, all I could see was a man's pain. And all I could feel was sadness.

Am I left with closure, to use a word I can't stand? I don't think so. I really don't. What I am left with is a strong sense that even in a cyberspace world of infinite space and time where the story of my parents reached well beyond the audience I had imagined, there is still community. There is compassion. And there is great comfort in that.

Labels: alzheimers, chicago, tribune

We're just about ready to report on our 4th Quarter numbers which were 'astounding' in the view of one interested viewer that we pinged, especially when compared with Q4 2006. Up, up, and away. By the way, January 2008 beat December 2007 in all categories including visitors, page views, and time on site - now up to 11.5 minutes per session.

It's been a big day, with Microsoft making a $40 billion dollar offer for Yahoo! The powers that be are moving the deck chairs of the clipper that is the Internet. Everyone is looking for a shortcut around Cape Horn in the race for web economies of scale.