Mid Week flies by...

I did get my blog half written yesterday, but I was out last night. It is Winterlicious and I have got to try out as many restaurants as I can! I went to Big Daddy's Crab Shack - which is a New Orleans Restaurant featuring a lot of Creole dishes. I came away completely satiated - in other words I was absolutely filled up and waddled home happily. But too tired when I got home to finish the blog - so here it is 6:30 and I am getting it done now!!!

Obama’s back in my good books. Heard on the news yesterday morning his very humble response to the issues regarding the withdrawl of 2 of his nominated cabinet members due to “issues with their taxes”. He took full responsibility for, in his words, “his screw up” and said it was important to know that there was one rule for all. I was also glad to see that he backtracked on the protectionist stance and indicated that they needed to make sure that their rescue package did not include any measures which might provoke a trade war. Good on him!

I found something in the Globe and Mail yesterday which you might find interesting, particularly if you have young kids. It is a video called “Economy: A bedtime story”, where the reason for the current economic crisis is explained in a bunny themed cartoon story. To see the video go to :
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081223.wvbunny/VideoStory/ It is cute, to the point and absolutely correct!

I found another interesting item on the web in a UK online newspaper. The article reported on the results of studies on what happens in the brain when you read. Apparently the act of reading causes many of the same synapses to fire when you are reading about doing something as if you were really doing the task. The brain is in rehearsal, which suggest that reading may be more than just lying around and accomplishing nothing. Mental note: read more!

From the article:
"There has been good evidence for a while that mental simulation - imagination - can improve performance in sport and other skilled behaviours. This study suggests that readers do mental simulation when they comprehend a story," Jeffrey Zacks, a co-author of the study and director of the university's dynamic cognition laboratory, said today. "It could well be that the simulations we perform when reading function like skilled practice.

So next time you are reading and someone asks you what you are doing you could say that you are practicing!

To find out more go to:
This is your brain on books (The Guardian)