okay, one more

My brother and I have this long-running gag involving quills, fountain pens, "real" writing, not the scribbly-scrabbly junk that flows out of Bics. My brother's handwriting is atrocious; mine is passable but cartoonishly printed. We're about equally smart, and have similar personalities, so take that, graphology.

So, he couldn't resist linking to this little note by Mark Olson of Pseudo-Polymath. Sez my bro:

I was told by an Oxford professor from Bavaria that all Bavarian students are required to write with quills through the eighth grade (equivalent). She praised them for helping her develop the fine motor skills that allow the good handwriting Olson and I lack.

Always the contrarian, I offer this.

All those years on the couch playing Nintendo and PlayStation appear to be paying off for surgeons. Researchers found that doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and performed the task 27 percent faster than their counterparts who did not play video games.

Don't be distressed when you can't read your doc's prescriptions. She's saving her fine motor skills for Madden 2005 and triple bypasses, the things that really matter.