Not bored

Greetings. It's been another ~week since I last wrote - it seems these weekly posts are sort of meshing with my life for whatever reason.
I guess the theme for this post, if posts do in fact have themes, is board games. Though thought of as the the fodder for Rockwellian portraits of Family, they are quite splendid. Specifically scrabble. I have been in a Scrabble-fix ever since facebook added the Scrabulous application. The ability to play simultaneous, auto-dictionarying, no-time-limit games with friends all over the world is a treat that will no doubt cause me to flunk out of school. Over the last 2 weeks, at any given point in time I will have at least 7 active games. There have been triumphs, there have been wrecks. Like in one game I got two 7-letter words and at the end, laid down all but one letter for the exact score of 400 - my first time ever. However, the guy finished and so I got my letter subtracted and won with a lousy 399. The online form isn't the only that has been taking my time, as I have been interacting in Real Life with people too. Friday night was dinner at Ben's with his housemates, drinking cheap wine, and playing scrabble and cards into the wee hours of the night. For some, this may sound like an abysmal, Machiavellian way to spend a weekend night but for me it's heaven. I hate clubs, I don't like bars, I barely like people. What better way, I ask?
The other game I played recently was Pictionary. Some of us in my discussion group had dinner together and with a bit of wine to open up the creative juices, settled in to some lively pictionary. I can't remember the last time I played but it was really fun. Especially when afterwards we settled into medical pictionary, with gems such as these (recreated, of course):Other than those gaming feats, the past week has been alright, flying by fast to be sure. Wednesday my housemate had a dinner party and was kind enough to include the house. She cooked some awesome shit and I had my fill of company and food. The rest of the week was alright. The weekend, besides for Friday night, was very unspecial. Saturday was typically typical: markets, eggs, study, movie (the excellent Dog Day Afternoon). Sunday I studied a bit and then went to the gym where they were offering their semi-monthly free trial days. I did some weights, some steps, and some steam-rooms. The dinner and a movie (the less excellent Pacino film, Serpico).
Sunday marked the end of a rainy week. This being a blessing, of course, since we've had a drought here for a while and are forced to take 4 minute showers (who takes longer than that, I don't know). The dams that provide the whole Brisbane-metro area have depleted to like 20% and they expect us to not have sustainable water within 1 year. You know what that is? That's a great segway to
Smarmy Environmental Diatribez
People waste a lot of water. A lot. 1/3 of the world's population doesn't have access even to drinkable water, yet the wealthy few take it for granted.
Toilets - jesus, what a waste. When you flush your sterile urine down the toilet, you waste about 1 gallon of clean water. Here, they have double-flush toilets, so you can chose a half flash for a pee. Better. Yellow = mellow is the best policy. Seriously, urine is completely sterile and if you close the lid, there's no offensive odor to worry about. A patented Michael trick: take a pee when you're brushing your teeth: this a) ensures that you don't leave the tap on while you're brushing b) makes it so you brush your teeth for longer than just staring at your stupid reflection in the mirror c) builds up a nice froth of clean minty goodness that you can spit into the toilet and neutralize any smell! What a win-win if I've ever heard one.
Waste yes, why not - this mentality really shits me to tears sometimes: there is no X shortage where I am, therefore I can use as much as I want. Waste = waste, no matter how you rationalize it. You don't need to take a slow shower if you live in the northern part of the US, but that doesn't mean you have to take a long shower. Turn off the tap while soaping up, for instance, and save 2.5 gallons/minute of fresh clean water (that you can drink instead of that bottled shit... don't get me started on bottled water, I'll save that for a different post)
Beef - it's only what's for dinner because of marketing! God bless advertisers for creating a market for daily-meat consumption, unnecessary diamonds, and everything else. 1 pound of beef uses 12,000 gallons of water to bring to your plate - this includes feeding, cleaning the feces and entrails from the floor of the abattoir and all the water needed to transport the food halfway across the country. There's a statistic out there about 1 gallon of soy milk vs 1 gallon of regular milk with respect to how much less water goes in to (not to mention land area, pollution from slaughter equipment/cow's anuses)
This could go on for ever but, like most content on the internet, is effectively pointless and, like most posters on the internet, I'm tired and on a rant.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
While we're on the topic of milk, bones are an interesting little specimen. The way they develop is nutso and we still aren't sure quite how they do it. The whole bone-organism is an ever shifting structure: bones are a source of calcium and phosphate that our body requires, and so it's stored and removed all the freakin' time. In fact, your whole skeleton is completely rebuilt every 7 years. For babies, it's closer to every year. By walking, merely existing, you cause microfractures in the bone that needs to be excavated and rebuilt - at any given point around 10% or so of your skeleton, right now, is being broken down (reabsorbed) and built up. Blew my mind, it did.
Something that came up but I am unable to find a source to it and so am skeptical is apparently it's proven that men are less able to detect tone - vocal nuances - then women. The butt of much humor and annoyance (the whole "I'm fine" shit), apparently this discrepancy has its origins in the fact that women were much more social - staying back and doing community stuff whilst the men where huntering and gathering and so they needed to develop their social skills better. Interesting if true. This article has some interesting stuff about the differences between men and women based on historical sex selection: men typically left home to conquer new lands and whatnot because it gave them better odds at procreating. And so, this dude hypothesizes, all of us are descendants of the risk-taking guys who left women behind and this is why men are more aggressive and competitive and women are more social, open, etc.
Also, randomly, we learned about the Codes of Hammurabi: the first written laws ever. There are some cool ones, like if a slave bites his master, the master can kill him. Etc.