EXERCISE YOUR BRAIN

The brain puzzles the Apple store showed me are incredibly boring. Perhaps total math geeks find them interesting. I prefer art and stories as part of my puzzle solving.

In the games I play, I get to pretend to walk into a cartoon landscape, look for stuff, find clues, stop the bad guys, and solve often hard puzzles.

I think these games are also really good for young persons, as they might actually learn some math, etc., while playing.

Originally, these virtual cartoon games, often called IHOPs, were for 9 year old girls, full of fairies and evil sorcerers. Which, of course, I LOVED. But at a game habit of several $6.99 Apple ap games per week, I soon began running out of games. This problem is made worse by some of the best games not upgrading for new operating systems.

So I expanded into games with real pretend murders, detectives seeking ghosts or werewolves, ships sinking due to evil, skulls coming to life.

My main search criteria for these games is the amount I have to pay. I pay less than $10 total per game, and I do not even look at games that charge per hint or object. Almost all of these games allow a free download of the first chapters so you can know what you are buying.

These are the kinds of games that kept my children and their friends busy for hours. They would show friends the game, and laugh as the friends could not do some of the puzzles. The puzzles can be a fun 'right brain, left brain' test as no one can easily do all of the puzzles. I never play the puzzles on HARD. I always go for easy and then can not do some of the math, plumbing, and gear puzzles.

I play the IHOP games without looking at the list of objects. Sort of a, what would the game designer choose, puzzle just for me. I like a fast hint and skip recharge because I find searching scenes to be tedious. I turn off the computer generated music. The sound effects make the game more immersive anyway.

To get you started, let me recommend a few game series from my favorite publisher.

Big Fish Games. Grim Tales. Dark Parables. League of Light.

My kids and I did gaming weekends where we all three together, at the same computer, played the first run through of the game. Remember Seventh Guest?

MIDSUMMER BREAK

Today is both midsummer and the beginning of summer. I stayed up until midnight last night, but alas, I had no bonfire to jump over. Not that I could jump over a bonfire.

I am going to take some time off and celebrate that I have finished a difficult task. Celebration is a very important part of life.

The world is changing, and change is very upsetting.

But there are good changes happening as well as bad changes. If you live in the US and object to any proposed government policy, please do NOT broadcast anger. Societal anger can cause the mentally ill to do horrible things, like shoot up baseball games.

If you are angry, do what US citizens have the absolute right to do. Send a letter outlining the policy to which you object and what you think would be a better plan. Send a copy of your letter to YOUR US Representative, YOUR two US Senators, to the President of the US, and to the head of the US Department in charge of implementing any policy change. Make certain that your voting address is in the letter.

There is something magical about letters. Lawyers and courts use letters as legal notification of an event. A letter is an undeniable physical manifestation of your objections. Before the internet, rock stars based their assessment of popularity by the sacks of fan mail that arrived.

BE POLITE in your letter.

Your letter can look like:

Your name and address at the top.

The names of all people who were sent the letter come next.

Open with Dear Sir or Madam:

Then put ONE issue into the body of the letter.

Sign it, "Sincerely, Your name" Sign the letter.

Put a return address on the envelope. If you want, you can put the subject of your letter in the lower left hand corner where many people put the ATTN: ____________. Doing this will help sort the letters.

Roomfuls of letters will have a greater effect than streets full of protestors.

Feel free to send multiple letters if you are concerned about more than one issue.

DO NOT PUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN SEVERAL PIECES OF PAPER INTO YOUR LETTERS.

Do not give up the good fight. But please go to the beach or pool or hiking. Touch base with the nature that we are committed to saving.

JAMES BOND VILLIANS

Terrorists are like James Bond villains, all of whom wish to destroy the world, so that they can rule the mess that is left.

I intend to keep asking everyone to run the world as if the terrorists had not just attacked another stomach churning target.

Islam is doing a good job in trying to stop the crazy murderers from using Islam as their excuse. No religion can stop every single crazy person from using religion as their excuse to do violence.

The current attacks in Britain are intended to affect the British elections.

I have a strong belief that Putin's operatives are encouraging crazies to do horrible acts.

In his Megan Kelly interview, Putin implied that he had nothing to do with trying to affect the U.S. elections. Smirking like a James Bond villain, he said that there was no real proof and that Western intelligence services could not be trusted.

I am certain that he would also deny that his psyc bots* affected the Brexit election.

I believe that Putin wants all the territory the old Soviet Union used to have.

I believe that Putin wants to destabilize Western democracies. His psyc bots support candidates who truly believe in austerity. Since austerity results in overwhelming social problems, he believes the resulting social problems will keep those governments from interfering with his agenda.

All of this sounds like he is in control.

But Bond villains are always out of control.

* Many "people" on social media are not real people. If the postings are to look like real people, the posting have to have variety. This variety is written by the kind of computer programs that were experiments in whether computers could write books, or be mistaken for a human. The plan was, and is, to amplify the voices of racism, intolerance, and selfishness. I figure it is now about 1 human per 1000 pretend humans, (A bot is a computer program that can do internet things, like buy tickets.)

UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

Amazon is surprised that the sale of ebooks has declined by 20%. I think it is because they intrusively follow how you read a book. Worse, they actually interact with readers of young adult books.

I think that they thought that young adults would welcome a chance to interact about their reading.

We all expect that Amazon would keep track of the books we read. But keeping track of the when, how and if, we actually read the book is intrusive beyond belief. Reading a book is one of the truly private things that people do.

I would go back to real books, but my hands can no longer hold a book open. Kindle is the only book app that offers white letters on a black background, which is way easier on the eyes.

So I ignore Amazon's intrusions into my privacy. But I will not encourage my grandchildren to read ebooks, because of Amazon's intrusions into the privacy of children who read ebooks.

I think part of the reason that Theresa May is going down in the polls is because she tried eating in public.

I still remember my first taste of fish and chips. I was appalled at the smell of vinegar, and the greasy newspaper it was wrapped in. "Just try it," said my friend from Blackpool.

YUM! I did refrain from licking the newspaper as I thought the ink might be bad for me.

Minister May ate her chips with CATSUP! And the look on her face indicated that she had not enjoyed her chips.

Then she had the same look on her face as she contemplated eating a cheese sample.

This could be dismissed as the reactions of a skinny person who only eats rabbit food.

But Brexit will badly affect the British farmer. Continental foodies have discovered the joys of artisan cheese. (You should try Cheshire cheese, a taste to almost die for.)

By looking at Brexit as a task to complete, she is not paying attention to the very real harm Brexit will cause to fishers, farmers, and artisan cheesemakers. For small operations, losing even 10% of their customers could be a death sentence to their business.

Readers of my blog know that I am against almost all austerity measures. I think that protecting the rich at the expense of the poor is both immoral and stupid.

Remember that the French revolution started over a shortage of their fabulous bread.