Overheard Argument Against Universal Healthcare:

Patients may be subjected to extremely long waits for treatment, especially if they are residents of the planet Formalhaut in the Piscis Austrinus constellation, which is 25 light years away from Earth.

 

Quoting from this site:

LONDON (Reuters) – Keeping a full social calendar may help protect you from dementia, researchers said on Monday.Socially active people who were not easily stressed had a 50 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared with men and women who were isolated and prone to distress, they reported in the journal Neurology."In the past, studies have shown that chronic distress can affect parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, possibly leading to dementia," Hui-Xin Wang of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the study, said in a statement."But our findings suggest that having a calm and outgoing personality in combination with a socially active lifestyle may decrease the risk of developing dementia even further."An estimated 24 million people worldwide have the memory loss, problems with orientation and other symptoms that signal Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.Researchers believe the number of people with dementia may quadruple by 2040, underlining the importance of better understanding the condition.The Swedish study involved 506 elderly people who did not have dementia when first examined. The volunteers were given questionnaires about their personality traits and lifestyles and then tracked for six years.Over that time, 144 people developed dementia with more socially active and less stressed men and women 50 percent less likely to be diagnosed with the condition."The good news is, lifestyle factors can be modified as opposed to genetic factors which cannot be controlled," Wang said. "But these are early results, so how exactly mental attitude influences risk for dementia is not clear."(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Alison Williams)

 

I finally broke down and bought an iPod Nano.  Now I've entered the world of digital downloads.  I resisted for so long because I fancied myself as a quasi-luddite, who preached the virtues of the good 'ole vinyl album (and later the CD).  

 

It doesn't help matters when I am now faced with this empty device staring at me, saying: "Feed me music."  I did what was necessary and I fed my Nano a healthy 3.5 GB meal of bossa nova, rock and roll, pop, and classical music. 

 

Listening to my Nano with ear buds was not good enough, so I then purchased an m-Station to dock it and to share my selections with my household. 

 

 

It's amazing how schizophrenic my musical tastes seem when I use the "shuffle" setting.