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[cimorene]

bilingualism protects the brain, may slow development of dementia. the UK alzheimer's society welcomes the findings, but their remarks that "the results of this particular study need to be interpreted cautiously as they were comparing groups of individual of different nationalities, educated in different systems" seems like a fairly big caveat. however, the findings are suggestive and exciting anyway!

i totally didn't chicken out on an opportunity to come out today. it pretty much always comes up when people ask me about coming to finland - it's either how i like it here or how long i'm staying or why i came in the first place and then it always comes back to wax, but she'd already come up in class as the appropriate swedish term, "my cohabitor", which is gender-neutral, so the girl i was chatting with said "it was a boyfriend, right? did you meet here or there?" and i miraculously produced the requisite "girlfriend actually" as part of my answer! not in front of a whole classroom of people though, just three girls named laura, mirjo and stampan whom i quite liked.

mirjo sits directly in front of me in two classes, and i had her pegged from the first glimpse last week as half japanese, but then i was like, "you're probably crazy. there are very few half-japanese people in finland, let alone half-japanese and half swedish-speaking finn, and finns themselves are already known for slight 'mongoloid' facial features". i couldn't get rid of the suspicion, though, and today it turned out that i was totally right. i suppose in that kind of question (eg name the nationality of that asian person!) i should trust my instincts!

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

if you read the link you see it doesn't actually look like they were intending to study dementia - that looked to me like a theory they drew as possibly credible on the basis of their findings. but i guess they could have intended to go for dementia all along, and just studied people of all ages to establish a control. but if they were worried about scientific control? using all indian immigrants as the bilinguals and all native canadians as the monolinguals = not so smart. so yeah, as the alzheimer's society said, i suppose we have to wait around for someone else to do some research on the subject.

wax is hoping to get me out of her hair so she can watch war movies while i'm gone, and she likes this coming sunday or the friday following that, if the idea appeals to you. you always have to come out here, and i know you don't really like that, but especially without chi my place isn't central and we don't need the space... so i could go to your place if you like. if you don't we can pick some other time and do it here, still. or

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the article seems to be full of those age-old fuzzy statements like 'music / puzzles / reading may help guard against dementia but we can't really prove it'.

And. I'd be happy to save you from war movies! Sunday sounds good to me, it'd leave me ample time to recuperate from Friday's Big Giant Exam. I have to warn you, though - my computer screen's been behaving even more unpredictably than usual, so it may occasionally try to stop our Q fun. But there's no way to tell, as it has good days and bad days. :]

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i keep trying to talk to wax about what time on sunday is good, but the conversation never seems to get off the ground, so i guess we just decide. what do you think?

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm free all day, although obviously I prefer evenings. You pick. :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

afternoon then, i think. not too early, because i'm sure at the beginning of the afternoon i'll barely hve gotten up. but early enough that i won't be tempted to stay awake all night...