Remember Nintendo? The original, I mean. I remember when it first came out, it was THE THING. Everybody had to get one. If you weren't playing Nintendo, you were behind the times, man. But now, what has happened? Are games and game systems still that important?

I'd say yes if you're a gamer, but no if you're not. If you're heavy into video games, then of course the newest, coolest system is where it's at. But Nintendo broke down barriers when it came onto the market. Are there systems that still do that?

Sega Genesis came out, and it was a competitor. It took things to the next level, but it wasn't amazing the way the Nintendo was. The NES was outstanding because there wasn't really anything like it (if you weren't into Atari). So all the systems that came after it were really just upgrades, but not earth-shatteringly new, completely unique, never-seen-before inventions. Even the X-Box and PS3 seem just like faster, cleaner, more powerful systems. I guess it depends on the game.

Except the Wii is so unique and different, it looks like Nintendo's changing the face of gaming again. I read that the Wii isn't for hardcore gamers. That means it's one of those things that everybody can enjoy. Which means that we just might be entering a new golden age of gaming.

What if the Wii is just the first step toward a world of active games, where you've got to move to play? How much further can we take it? And will Nintendo be the only brand to explore the potential of active gaming? Or will Sony and Microsoft follow suit? And will Apple finally develop a new system? A devastatingly awesome system? Only time will tell!

Today I had the idea that you could walk into a room and your friends, who were watching TV, were now on the other side of the screen. That would mean that the TV screen is really a portal to another location. Or, it could be a monitor with a feed from a camera somewhere.

It got me thinking: What if in the future, technology is so advanced that it allows us to get complacent, lazy even? Say you want to go see a friend. As it used to be, you'd give him a call. Before phones, you could write a letter or go in person. Now, we can instant message each other. In the future, what if we take things one step further?

Imagine a room in your house in which the walls act as both cameras and televisions. So you enter the room, and say, "Let me see Jenny." Your house calls her house, or apartment, or wherever she is. How does it know where to find her? Maybe she's got a chip in her head. Let's not worry about that. Ok, so the network finds her, and a CGI operator comes on the screen wherever she is, saying, "Your friend Jimmy would like to speak with you. Is that OK?" She says sure, and BAM — you're having a two-way visual meeting, live.

Sounds cool, right? You don't have to do anything when you're in that room except issue voice commands. Now here's where things get scary (unless the chip-in-the-head thing already got to you). Jenny's out and about, right? Maybe at an art museum? Now imagine she's at her house. You're at your house. Everybody is at their own home. Nobody goes anywhere, because they can all link up virtually.

But I don't think that will really happen. I'll bet the technology will reach and surpass that level, sure, but I think we'll have plenty of reasons to keep active.

We'll have to fight the robots!

Lately I've been getting the feeling that we could achieve great or terrible things in the near future. Our economy, our world politics, and our rapidly advancing technology all seem to be coming together to say, "Something big awaits just beyond the horizon." But will it be good or bad?

The Bible says no man shall know the end of days, and maybe that's why things seemed so "normal," even while unprecedented actions were being taken by our President, both at home and abroad. What if we're just accepting it all as not an "end of the world" kind of thing because we simply don't see how it all fits together? I realized that there is a definite possibility that there's a method to this madness, and that everything that's happened in the news has taken place for a reason. But of course, that's how pure paranoia is born. "Everything matters! It's all a massive conspiracy!!" Haha, right.

Ok, so if we forget that road for a minute (the idea that we're already on the path to Armageddon), and focus on a more golden scenario, what do we get? A pretty awesome outlook. That's right, even in the face of famine, war, poverty, climate change, and disease, we can still be optimistic because we've got something that just might have the power necessary to trump all our woes. Technology. We keep moving forward at an ever-increasing pace. Pretty soon, we'll likely have a global wireless network powerful enough to provide poverty-stricken nations with the ability of linking to information and resources that can pull them up and greatly improve and enhance their lives. If we made an effort to do something like that a few years ago, we'd have had to lay a ton of cable. Now, with satellites and new "I'll beam you the movie in 2 seconds" technology, a massive effort like that will be far easier.

But of course, anything that is powerful is not necessarily good, or even bad. It's what is done with it that is good or bad. Sure, we've got incredible technology, but we could seriously screw things over for everybody by not using the foresight to prevent the undesirable scenarios. We might clean up the planet and improve the standard of living for all 6 billion residents…or we could dig ourselves a deep hole of war, omnipresent surveillance, and misery. I guess it's really all up to us. Let's hope we don't blow it!

In life, there can be many changes. Sometimes we move from one place to another. When school ends, we get a job and start living "in the real world." When we finally become adults, our childhood is left behind. But our minds remember it all. And from time to time, we haphazardly get to re-experience the past — in dreams.

Have you ever dreamt you were still back in school or still a kid? There's the kind of dream where you're a person you've never been, doing something you've never done, and you don't think twice about it. Then there's the dream where you are as you used to be, and you don't think twice about it. You don't remember the present. Ever had a dream like that?

What if you dreamed you were reliving college, and then as you were waking up, you realized you were in your old college room? For the first few moments, you'd still think nothing of it, as the dream blended with reality. But how long before it faded and you remembered that you're 37 and supposed to be at home? In your house?

I once wondered if someone could be tricked in such a way, even in the absence of such a dream. Sometimes when I wake up after a vivid and exotic dream, I need a moment to re-acclimate to reality. What if we all do? What if we take the cues from our environment about where and when we are? Could you fool someone into thinking they're living in the past?

Is there someone out there, not crazy, who a team of pranksters could fool? Say the team sneaks into the bedroom when the person is asleep, and changes the surroundings like those commercials where the technicians can easily change the world around a person. They make the room look the way it did between 5 and 10 years ago, when the sleeper was still there, but younger. How long will it take the person, once they get up, to realize something isn't right?

My guess is, depending on whether they are a morning or evening person, it could take up to 15 minutes. Maybe even longer!

This article spells out how inventor Ray Kurzweil, who's been making frighteningly accurate predictions about the future for years, sees our future. His whole take on the level of society's progress differs from your Average Joe's concept of the same in one basic way: Joe sees things moving linearly, but Ray sees them progressing exponentially!

Take for example the human genome project. Originally scheduled to finish up in its fifteenth year, it had only completed mapping 1% of the human genome by year 7. Nobody thought it would be on time. But every subsequent year, the amount of progress doubled, until it did indeed encompass 100% in year 15.

Kurzweil says that most people can't comprehend the nature of the future as he sees it, because they look at things from a point of view ground in the present rate of things. But if you take into consideration things like, "Moore's Law," which says that processing power for computers will double each year (as it has shown to be doing), then within 20 years we should have computers that are smarter than people.

Kurzweil predicted back in the 80's that some sort of computer network would arise to connect us all, and he was right. He also said that a computer would beat the world chess champion in 1998. It did happen, but in 1997!

Among Kurzweil's ideas for the future are the interconnectedness between humans and machines. By around 2045, if you're not hooked in in some way, perhaps with nanobots complementing your brainpower, you may not be able to understand the changing technology. At that point, he says, we'll likely have reached the Technological Singularity, in which AI is coming up with new technology faster than ordinary humans can contribute.

What's the best part? Kurzweil sees nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics reaching a point where human life can be sustained indefinitely. He takes a lot of vitamins, and for good reason. If you take care of yourself, "you may just live long enough to live forever."

Caloric restriction has been shown in mice to be an effective way to extend their lifespans. How does it work? Basically, mice eat half as much as normal, and their bodies go into survival mode, making the most use of what little calories they get. That means that aging, an unessential process, is curtailed. What's really interesting is that there are two distinct methods in which the mice can get the same "live longer" results.

#1) Basic Caloric Restriction — Eat half of what you'd normally eat, day in day out. That means that for every scrap of food a mouse would eat, he or she can only eat every other time. So it's like a diet that you never break from. And that can be tough for some people.

#2) Intermittent Fasting (the cool one) — Eat every other day, but when you eat, eat as much as you want. Yes, that's right. Mice that were only allowed to eat every other day, but could eat as much as they wanted, still gained the same extended lifespan benefit as those that "dieted" every single day. Some would say this is a sort of rapid yo-yo diet, where you trade starvation for binges, and that's exactly right. But the technique has shown that, at least in mice, intermittent fasting can extend an animal's lifespan by 10 to 15 percent. Not only that, it helps keep their brains in good shape, and stave off disease longer.

While testing hasn't been done very much in humans, some people truly believe that various forms of caloric restriction and regular fasting have tremendous health advantages. One further variation of Intermittent Fasting stipulates that an irregular schedule is better for the body, as it shakes things up and keeps things as interesting as they would be if you were a caveman. One day the pickings might be slim, so you wouldn't eat. The next day, score, food! Then for two days, more slim pickings. Some see this kind of "diet" as a means to get back in sync with our bodies' natural rhythms. And who knows? There could be something to this…

Man I'm hungry!

In "The One," Jet Li played a dimension-jumping killer, whose victims all shared one thing in common. They were him! Alternate versions of himself, from different dimensions. Every version was connected by a multidimensional link of power. Whenever one of him died, the dead guy's portion of that link was divided among the rest, causing all of them to become stronger, smarter, and faster. His goal was to kill all the other versions of himself, until he became, "The One," essentially a god.

Now to the old phrase, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It makes sense that surviving a life-threatening scenario will strengthen you. You'll be more experienced, more aware, and better prepared to escape a similar deadly event in the future. However, let's take the argument behind "The One" into account.

According to scientists, for every possible outcome of an event, there is a distinct, separate universe in which that specific outcome comes to fruition.

So, if you're in a car crash, and you barely survive, that's great — you made it. But you could have died. Which means that you did die, in some other universe.

If there really were a multidimensional power link between all the versions of a person, that would mean that you just became stronger, with the relinquished power of your now-deceased alternate counterpart.

However, there is one hitch here. In "The One," there were a limited number of universes, 125 to be exact. So that would mean that there wouldn't have been a separate universe for each version of a scenario.

In our scientists' way of thinking, though, there is a separate universe for each outcome, meaning there is an infinite number of universes. So if a multidimensional power link does exist, it is divided an infinite number of times. In the car crash, you might have died a million different ways, meaning that in a million different universes, you did die, so theoretically you would become a million times stronger, right?

Well, maybe for the question of "Does a multidimensional power link really exist?", this universe is for the outcome, "No."

When Pete and Pete first came on, I didn't really like it. I found it hard to identify with any of the characters. Near the end of its run, when some episodes were replayed, I was able to sit down and enjoy some of it. After it was canceled, I realized there was more to it than I originally thought.

Endless Mike — What a cool concept. An individual so powerful, so legendary, that they are endless even when standing right over there. I remember one episode where the older Pete was trying his hand at wrestling, and was ultimately pitted against Endless Mike. That was a threat he wasn't prepared to face, so he desperately tried to lose as much weight as possible. Problem was, Endless Mike followed him down the weight class ladder. Whatever Pete did, Mike went one step further. I think Pete ended up yanking out a molar at one point. Endless Mike gave up a kidney. He was that nuts.

One day when I was channel surfing I saw that Pete and Pete was on. It was an episode in which (I think) older Pete had become the Bus Driver's apprentice. I never really appreciated the Bus Driver until that episode. Even after seeing the one where he almost drove the bus off a cliff with all the kids inside because of a woman, I didn't really "get" him. But then apprentice Pete disobeyed his teacher, and the Bus Driver lost it. He was holding a cake, and a wire whisk, and said something like, "Carrot-top Judas, thou hast forsaken me!!" He started screaming, stabbing the cake until it was a shadow of its former self. Then he went on to hunt down his disrespectful protégé. Simply Awesome.

All the other characters were brilliant in their own right. Artie, The Ice Cream Man, and the rest. I couldn't believe it when I realized that Steve Buscemi had been a guest character in various episodes. That's just one more piece of evidence of the genius that was Pete and Pete.

And the Principal played by Adam West? Years ahead of its time…

Here's a fun way to spice up your game of monopoly. If you've ever gotten frustrated by a player who seemed to own the entire board, you'll love this. Before you start, make a rule that all players agree to, which stipulates that at any time, any player can "nuke" another player out of the game. That's all there is to it. Start the game and let the chaos ensue!

The way Nuclear Monopoly works is that it will prevent any one player from making an enemy out of another by becoming a "have" in the midst of "have-nots." One way to avoid being nuked in Nuclear Monopoly is to make sure you're never the #1 richest player. If you stay #2 or #3, you can wait and watch as #1 grows more and more powerful, until finally someone nukes him or her out of the game.

Nuclear Monopoly creates a balance between players, because when all the standouts get nuked, everybody will try not to stand out. It's kind of like a reality show, like "Biggest Loser," where you can vote off the contestant you think will be the greatest threat to your victory. When a shoo-in arises, a contestant who is performing at a much higher level than everyone else, he or she will be quickly voted off, even by his or her own teammates. So the trick is not to do too well, and pretend that you're worse off than you really are. Put on your Poker Face, or risk getting Nuked!

Today is Thursday, October the Eleventh, in the year of our Lord, two thousand and seven. And tomorrow's Friday the 12th.

Ooh! So close. A Friday the 13th in October is perfect! Just like Monday, February 13th is perfect for Garfield. The next Friday the 13th in October comes in 2017. That's pretty far off. Why not worry about simpler dates? Like the next Friday the 13th, of any month? When's that going to happen again…?

That would be June 13, 2008. That's the earliest Friday the 13th of any month, from this day forward. I wonder what it will be like? Probably boring. Unless you're graduating around that time. For all you really hardcore Fri-13ers out there, maybe you'll plan some "Halloween In June" extravaganza to close out another school year with all your friends. A Halloween party in June — sounds like fun! Just make sure to wear light, breathable costumes in the summer heat…