Note To Music Lovers July 29, 2015July 28, 2015 BRAIN APP I spend way too much time on my iPhone playing Words With Friends. If I were smart — and wanted to get smarter (or at least sharper, as verified by numerous peer-reviewed studies) — I would use at least part of that time to exercise my brain instead. (Turns out, crossword puzzles and stuff like that, presumably including WWF, don’t improve acuity.) Just go to the App Store and search for BrainHQ. It’s free. [Full disclosure: as long-term readers know, I own a sliver (more like a shard, really) of the company.] BEETHOVEN Thanks, Mel! A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source. He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: “Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770- 1827.” Then he realizes that the music is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backwards. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backwards. By the next day the word has spread, and a crowd has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then the graveyard’s caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the music. “I would have thought it was obvious,” the caretaker says: “He’s decomposing.” WASTE NOT, WANT NOT Chris Anderson: “I wonder about what you wrote Friday: ‘I… top the bowl of leftovers with … the plastic bags my shirts come in from the cleaner.’ Do you not have a problem with the chemicals used to dry-clean clothing or the cost per shirt vs. washing and ironing your own? Do you really *need* shirts which can’t be laundered with your 20-year old Costco rags? Does the income and economy-stimulation/job-creation generated by your wearing said shirts actually offset the cost to the environment and your budget? (Some of that last question was possibly slightly sarcastic…) :)” ☞ And someone else wondered whether I wasn’t worried about those chemicals gradually poisoning me. But the bags have no dry-cleaning chemical smell, and, yes, I haven’t bought a Zip-Lock or other commercial baggie in years. As to the drycleaning itself, well, when I have to be a grown-up in a suit and tie, I do wear dry-cleaned shirts. Fortunately, especially in the summer, I can generally get away with being 12. Gray Chang: “I reuse paper towels from the restroom at work. After all, since I’ve just washed my hands, the paper towel is damp with clean water, right? So I take it back to my desk and leave it out to dry, then put it in my pocket to reuse again, and so on. At lunch it becomes my napkin, and later, a spill cleaner. Even when I reuse it just once, I’m cutting my consumption by 50%.”