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Addicted to iPhone? There’s an App for that

September 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Sleep Science Alarm – with iPsychologist is an application for iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch, released this week. Based on the press release I received from creator Brett Galbraith, he’s pretty excited about the launch as you’d expect. 

Press release hype aside, this seems a pretty well fleshed-out alarm / sleep cycle analyser with some psychology-based options as well. One of those psychology sessions is a tongue-in-cheek piece on iPhone addiction -more on the app in the short review below. Back on the press release, some of its claims seemed a little overblown from a science  viewpoint, so I contacted Brett Galbraith to get some more information, which he promptly provided:

CT: You make the claim “A simulated sunrise means that the phone lights up a few minutes before the alarm to naturally increase your cortisol levels and wake you up naturally”. Can you explain how this occurs? My understanding of the research is that waking up in light does increase the cortisol response, but do you believe the level of illumination from the iPhone and its type of light allows that to occur? If so – do you have data to support it?

BG: Any type of light will begin to wake a person after they have been asleep. That of course is a big part of the reason why we awake as the sun comes up and why we find it so hard to get up in a dark room. The white screen (torch) of the iPhone is incredibly bright when in a dark room and is definitely noticeable. I only have circumstantial evidence that it works with an iPhone but it is fairly strong as scientifically it only takes quite a small amount of light to begin the chemical reaction ie the cortisol response, that triggers the natural waking process.

CT: Cortisol levels are higher for people under stress e.g. people of lower socio-economic status experience higher cortisol levels – so the quality of sleep and the quality of waking isn’t necessarily related to cortisol levels. Would you agree?

BG: Yes and no – people get used to or adapt to all sorts of different stimuli such as the sound of a train, snoring, a fan in the room (white noise) etc etc. If there is additional stimuli, i.e. more light, then this will assist the natural process of waking up. In saying this, the “Sunrise Simulator” is not the main method of allowing someone to awake refreshed, it is a mixture of using sleep science data as to sleep patterns in “normal” populations mixed with movement data we get from the iPhone’s accelerometer, to predict as accurately as possible, the optimum time to wake someone up. In future additions we will also change the “settings” based on other data around age, gender and potentially socio economic status – wouldn’t that be controversial!

CT: Are you able to elaborate on the iPsychologist feature. Specifically: which psychologist/s were involved, which approach is taken (I’m assuming CBT) and are you able to share any data on its efficacy?

BG: We used a local Psychologist who is also a University lecturer. They provided advice as to a number of different strategies and theories that could be used. As developers, the challenge for us was to develop a system that was able to be used and was useful, to a large range of users. Obviously some techniques would be better for different “conditions” so we had to go for one that was broadly helpful to all. Obviously self talk or autosuggestion has been around for 100’s of years. The Coue Method features heavily in our methodology. Basically it assumes the person is on the way to full health, they are getting better every day and that soon they will be much better and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” We didn’t try to reconstruct our own research as the Net and medical journals are full of information backing the assumptions of the system we use and that was suggested by our Psychologist. It is also a “popular” method that users hear about every day as they watch a show like Oprah and Dr Phil.

CT: You make the claim that “The biggest problem Doctors face is determining the accuracy of their patients self assessment when it comes to their sleeping patterns and then determining the best course of action based on fairly unreliable data. Now their patients can use our system and the Doctors will be able to determine vastly more accurate sleep and awake times with advanced statistics including; REM sleep, sleep stages 1 to 4 and even how long and how often users awoke during the night. This is obviously pretty powerful and will lead to vastly improved advice and outcomes”.

I was just wondering how you felt the app would fit into a diagnostic regime i.e. if sleep disturbances have got to the stage of seeking medical advice, the current approach would be formalised diagnostics such as sleep studies. How do you see the app fitting into that equation?

Angry Birds addiction you need to beat?

BG: We spoke to a number of Doctors about the App without doing it to get information but just because they were friends and we were excited about the App. It came as quite a surprise that they were actually quite excited about how the App could assist them in their day to day jobs. If you ask anyone who grumbles about their sleep how much they have, chances are that they will exaggerate their real circumstances often subliminally and without any real or measurable or recorded data.

At a bare minimum, SSA provides the time they went to bed and the time they got up. This data alone is very useful for Doctors. The amount of times they use the torch is also helpful mixed with the awake or “considerable movement” setting to determine awake time as it shows how often they are getting up during the night. This has a large impact on REM sleep in particular and can mean that people are never reaching the REM phase and this can cause a number of additional issues not easily recognisable by a doctor. The other issue is the expense of diagnostic studies that measure brain wave activity and how unnatural it is to sleep when you are in an unusual place with wires attached to your body.

SSA is just another tool for Doctors and patients and in the future we hope to include some more powerful reporting options to assist users and Doctors further. At the end of the day, any strategy that can be used to educate people about sleeping issues and to provide better data to Doctors is a very good thing.

The app – short review

Having used the app for only a few hours, my impression so far is that this is a very polished piece of code. It looks good, it’s intuitive and it has a real depth of features.  Whether it’ll improve your sleep or mental state is up to you. Like anything, if you maintain the discipline the approach requires, you may see some good results. I’ll certainly be trying it out over coming weeks and will give more impressions then. Kudos to Brett Galbraith as well for his detailed responses on the science behind the app.

Review score: 8/10

Cost: US$4.99 / AU $5.99

Get it here

Filed Under: General Tech, General Tech, Science Tagged With: , , ,

Makes Sense

September 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

-Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
-Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
-We live in a society where pizza gets to your house before the police.
-The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.
-If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.
-Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erec tion, make him a sandwich.
-Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
-Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
-Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.
-Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
-If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining.
-If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhoea… does that mean that one enjoys it?
-If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of payments.
-Some people are like Slinkies … not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.
-I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.
-A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.
-A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
-I saw a woman wearing a sweat shirt with “Guess” on it… so I said “Implants?”
-The shinbone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
-God must love stupid people. He made SO many.
-The sole purpose of a child’s middle name, is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.
-A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
-The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!
-Some people say “If you can’t beat them, join them”. I say “If you can’t beat them, beat them”, because they will be expecting you to join them, so you will have the element of surprise.
-You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
-Laugh at your problems, everybody else does.
-Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
-It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.
-We have enough gun control. What we need is idiot control.
-My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
-Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
-When in doubt, mumble.
-Worrying works! 90% of the things I worry about never happen.
-A little boy asked his father, “Daddy, how much does it cost to get married?” Father replied, “I don’t know son, I’m still paying.”
-Women may not hit harder, but they hit lower. Ugly too.
-My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you’re crazy
-I should’ve known it wasn’t going to work out between my ex-wife and me. After all, I’m a Libra and she’s a b#tch.
-There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t get away.
-I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not sure.
-I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.
-You’re never too old to learn something stupid.
-You are such a good friend that if we were on a sinking ship together and there was only one life jacket… I’d miss you heaps and think of you often.
-To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
-A TV can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.
-Virginity is like a soap bubble, one prick and it is gone.
-If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you!
-Hallmark Card: “I’m so miserable without you, it’s almost like you’re still here.”
-If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?
-Whoever coined the phrase “Quiet as a mouse” has never stepped on one.

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, General humor

Fun with Puns

September 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

-I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. It’s impossible to put down.
-The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
-I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
-I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
-Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.
-She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
-I couldn’t quite remember how to throw a boomerang, but eventually it came back to me.
-A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
-There was a sign on the lawn at a drug rehab centre that said ‘Keep off the Grass’.
-No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
-It’s not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn’t have the balls to do it.
-A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
-I was going to look for my missing watch, but I could never find the time.
-A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
-He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends.
-Two silk worms had a race they ended up in a tie.
-A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
-Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
-A rule of grammar: double negatives are a no-no.
-A backward poet writes inverse.
-In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
-I didn’t want to buy leather shoes, but eventually I was suede.
-Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: “You stay here. I’ll go on a head.”
-I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
-John Deere’s manure spreader is the only equipment the company won’t stand behind.
-The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
-Police were called to a day-care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
-The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
-To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
-When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
-A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was the nurse said ‘No change yet’.
-I used to have a fear of hurdles, but I got over it.
-What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing – but it let out a little whine.

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, General humor

One click can make all the difference

August 20, 2010 by 4 Comments

Linden Lab is cutting the Second Life Community Gateways programme from August 19 (giving Community Gateway operators just 18 hours notice of the pending termination). If you haven’t been through the Second Life orientation lately, you might not even be clearly aware of what the programme is.

The idea was simple enough. Since the Lab didn’t care to have a full-time employee doing the necessary work on new user orientation, a variety of groups who thought they could outdo the Lab were presented as optional starting areas for new users.

Not everyone was right. Even compared to the standard orientation experience’s very low bar, some of the Community Gateway experiences apparently “stank on ice”.

Some did okay though. There used to be a Google spreadsheet circulating around with various specifics of the CG programme, though I lost the link some time ago. What struck me is how small a number of the total pool of new signups took the Community Gateway option.

Indeed, according to the Lab, many gave up on the Web-site when presented with the choice of going to a Community Gateway or taking the standard orientation experience.

Think about that for a moment.

Presented with the choice, many users chicken out and we may never see them again.

Weekly Second Life signups for week 32, 2010 It’s certainly popular wisdom that 30% of new users don’t actually ever log in. I don’t know if that’s still true now, five years later, or not. I’m not sure if that’s a figure that the Lab would really be all that keen to share lately. There’s between ten and twelve thousand new Second Life signups every day, but it doesn’t seem like more than a couple of hundred actually make it through the proverbial first-hour.

In what seems like a startling digression, there’s an interesting balancing act I can tell you about in writing for the Web. It isn’t really all that startling a digression, as you’ll notice in a moment.

Articles with more than one part are obviously preferable from a page-view perspective. More page-views means more advertising dollars, so if you want more advertising dollars then you want more page-views.

Simple, you think, I will break my article up into parts! Each time the user clicks through, that will be another page-view!

But it isn’t so easy. A lot depends on who you are, who your audience is and what your article is about, but a good rule of thumb is that 25-30% of your readers won’t click through to the second page. 25-30% of those that do won’t click through to the third page. And so on.

It’s easy to watch that process from the Web-traffic logs, and get solid numbers, and they’re numbers that remain surprisingly consistent. It isn’t even as if you’re asking the user to make much of a choice. It’s just “click the link for the next part.”

So, yes, the Lab – while criticized at the time for it – was definitely right to shorten the number of steps in registration. Every click (and every choice) between the start of registration and actually turning up in Second Life with a prefab avatar you’re losing attention, and thus bleeding out audience.

That’s why the whole Second Life viewer in a browser keeps coming up over and over again, hiding software downloads, updates and installs from the user and all of that. For now, the Lab is going to just use its own orientation system, presumably until they follow-through on announced plans to eliminate that as well.

Eliminating even one step could cause a massive jump in retention, if it is done right. Just reducing the number of clicks and choices willy-nilly and without planning isn’t necessarily going to improve matters. You might get more people actually logging in, but who are simply unprepared for the welter of possibilities that the virtual environment then presents to them.

Filed Under: General News, Metrics, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds

Election 2010: virtual worlds make their debut

August 19, 2010 by 2 Comments

As Australia draws to the end of its five-week election campaign, I’d pretty much given up on the political parties doing anything beyond the odd YouTube or Facebook campaign strategy. As I wrote in 2007, Australia has lagged some other countries in the use of virtual environments for politics, and this campaign hasn’t changed that, with the debate over competing broadband policies about as substantive as it has gotten.

You know for certain that our politicians are truly lagging in this area when the mainstream media beat them to the punch. Channel 9 have announced that their election coverage on Saturday will be centred on a bunch of ‘virtual sets’. As the video below shows, it’s fairly standard green-screen technology, but its an evolution all the same.

Although the interactivity will be limited to manipulating election data, and the communication will be one-way (presenter to audience), it’s a step forward for a couple of reasons. First, it’s provides an in-your-face example of virtual environments as a collaborative and/or information-sharing tool. Second, its use will be a major eye-opener for the strategists in each of the parties, who still appear to be wedded to 2D technologies for campaigning at the expense of everything else. The reaction of the public to Channel 9’s coverage is likely to be mixed, with some pointed criticism likely at gimmickery over substance. That doesn’t matter to a large extent: the cat is out of the bag over at the Fourth Estate. Two of the other Estates (‘the Church’ and the public) already have a good sense of this technology. There’s only one left looking backwards – the one that should be leading the debate or at least actively contributing to it.

Watch the Channel 9 spiel for yourself:

Filed Under: Australian News, General News, Politics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Linden Lab CEO starts to turn the ship

August 15, 2010 by 4 Comments

For Second Life residents, this time of year usually generates a lot of interest due to the Second Life Community Convention. There’s no shortage of that interest this year given the tumultuous year to date and the return of Philip Rosedale to the CEO role. In a fairly relaxed presentation, Rosedale laid out Linden Lab’s plans for the remainder of this year and into 2011. Some of it he’d covered previously in communications on the official Lab blog and in-world, but there was also plenty of new information. Highlights included:

  • A rebuttal of press and resident perceptions that Linden Lab are financially challenged, emphasising that the Lab have been profitable “for years” and that they remain on a “stable footing”
  • An outline of the strategy-setting process undertaken on Rosedale’s return to the CEO role (not surprisingly there was no substantive comment on the previous CEO or layoffs) – the aim is now to make Second Life “Fast, Easy and Fun”. There was an admission that currently the platform isn’t meeting those aims on a regular basis
  • The tactical plan for delivering the faster, easier and more fun Second Life involves:
    • a “back to basics”  approach to identify fundamental flaws in user experience and to fix them – lag being the biggest target.
    • a focus on “winning back the lead” that involves further innovation in-world around content creation, with the promise of software updates as often as weekly, to deliver a much-improved Viewer in addition to background improvements
    • working on “the economy” in a way that ensures growth and makes digital content delivery easier – removing the ‘box on the head’ syndrome that new residents can experience
  • Specific improvements promised by end of 2010:
    • Fixing latency of group chat and problems with region crossings / teleports
    • The time from logging in to being able to effectively use Second Life will be improved by a factor of two
    • Reducing crash rates further
    • “Markedly change” the number of avatars per region – the actual increase isn’t being committed to at this stage, but the intention for 2011 is to deliver “big, big jumps”
    • Controls on avatar complexity in order to help deliver the previous four points
  • A second list of longer-term commitments:
    • Second Life mesh-based content now that bandwidth and highly complex prim constructions make it an option performance-wise (a beta-version will be available for testing by year’s end)
    • A more sophisticated naming system including elimination of the surname restriction and further name customisation options
    • Background downloading of Viewer update
    • Teen Second Life is officially on schedule for termination, with 16 and 17 year-olds allowed to access the main grid given the clearer boundaries around adult content
    • A nod to the iPad as a potential Second Life delivery platform

You can watch the full 45-minute presentation plus all the follow-up questions below – it’s worth listening to the Q&A session as it covers key areas like Search problems, interoperability :

The take-home message from the presentation? Philip Rosedale is certainly back in the company with a vengeance, and the announcement of the roadmap and proposed changes is encouraging. That said, the Teen Grid closure and avatar complexity controls are likely to generate significant debate.

Rosedale said himself in the presentation that delivering the promises is what counts – there’s been no shortage of promise previously, with some of it delivered. The ratio between the two needs to get to 1:1 for Second Life to have a fighting chance of long-term survival. The most encouraging aspect is that Linden Lab’s CEO seems to understand that this is likely the last big strategic route change they can make before concerns on Second Life’s viability become an urgent issue for the company.

Over to you: what stands out for you as the positive and negative aspects of the Lab’s proposed direction?

Filed Under: Business, General News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

July 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

1. Want to win 140-thousand Linden dollars? Then make a machinima and submit it to the University of Western Australia’s competition.

2. Veteran platform OLIVE has announced new pricing and a perpetual licensing model.

3. The dynamos at ReactionGrid have launched Jibe, a web-based world based on the increasingly popular Unity3D engine.

4. Frenzoo are now offering 3D chat rooms.

5. Kzero have an excellent summary of a piece of research conducted on children’s play in virtual worlds: do take the time to have a read. 52% of those young children surveyed used virtual worlds regularly and there’s some incisive discussion on the interaction between marketing, parents and children.

6. Relay for Life 2010 in Second Life was once again a big suspense. Get a glimpse here. 53 million Linden dollars were raised, which is 221-thousand US dollars: an amazing effort by any standard.

Filed Under: Events, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

June 25, 2010 by 1 Comment

1. Fashion-centric world Frenzoo continues its evolution, announcing the ability to create furniture.

2. The veteran OLIVE platform continues development, this time announcing it will demonstrate the use of its platform to deliver clinical behavioral therapies, including “engaging clients and maintaining their active participation, efficiently overcoming individual emotional barriers to therapy and accelerating the therapeutic progress” to name three.

3. The rumours have started flying that Linden Lab CEO may be in for the chop, with former CEO Philip Rosedale to return to a more hands-on role. It seems a little strange that a CEO would oversee a significant reduction of staff and then be removed / replaced a matter of days later. Unless they weren’t calling the shots on the restructure in the first place…..

4. Want to win a premium Second Life avatar for yourself? Then contact ABC Island admin, Wolfie Rankin.

5. Paisley Beebe’s 3rd anniversary show is happening this weekend. That’s a lot of virtual worlds TV hours!

Filed Under: Events, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , , ,

Second Lie: small business, good sex and humour in SL

June 15, 2010 by 3 Comments

It’s been a while, but it’s time for the latest segment with our resident agony aunt, Second Lie. It’s all about sharing insights, finding common ground and a healthy dose of cynicism.

Remember, if you want to get your own slice of wisdom, you just need to contact us and we’ll forward your question on. Pretty much any issue is up for discussion, as long as it’s legal and potentially interesting.

It’s a win-win-win scenario: you get enlightened, Second Lie gets to spread his love and magic and we get to fork out money to Relay for Life. Does it get any better than that?

=====

Three questions for Second Lie:

Q1: Henrietta: I run a fairly successful small business in SL and I get approached by virtual world developer people and the odd ‘social media consultant’ via Twitter. How do I work out how knows what they are talking about?

Q2. NotStroker: “What do you see as the next natural evolution of good sex in Second Life?”

Q3. Anonymous: “Who do you find funny in SL? There seems to be a lot of try-hards but I’d love some help in finding those who are truly funny and who maybe perform in SL or have a group I can join. Any ideas?”

First off, it’s great to be writing again for the Metaverse Journal. Despite my log absence, they’ve been keeping their fingers squarely on the pulse of virtual worlds development.

(I’m not sure where on virtual worlds they’re getting such a strong pulse, but I’d insist on asking them to wash their hands before shaking hands with them, okay?)

I’ve got to ask Henrietta about this whole “successful business” thing in SL. I thought we got rid of all those years ago. There’s still some out there?

Man, do we need to change our policies again to make sure that everyone fails equally in SL. Can’t have winners and losers wrecking the curve.

The reason why you’re approached by odd social media types is because that’s the only type of social media consultant out there: odd. They never could quite fit in with the rest of their business school mates or selling-knives-door-to-door classes, so they ended up dorking around with Twitter and Facebook and MySpace on their mother’s phones to the point that they actually thought they were experts in this stuff.

None of them know what they’re talking about, or they’d be doing business in Real Life with social media, not cruising around the shallow end of the pool, bothering successful avatars like yourself.

My advice to you is to avoid them on Twitter and stick to your old pal SecondLie. I’ll shoot it to you straight, and at a price you can’t beat!

NotStroker, on the other hand, makes an assumption that many people do: that there’s good sex at all in Second Life.

When I last checked, the only thing Second Life brings to the table is a digital replacement for the nudie magazines under your dad’s mattress.

It doesn’t matter if it’s plain guy-on-chick animated poseballs or a wild dance-orgy with Linden alts at P-Squared after midnight: it’s still you, your hand down your pants, and the overwhelming clouds of loneliness and failure circling overhead.

Know what the next natural evolution is? Getting away from all this weird perverted stuff and trying for something that’s actually natural.

You know, an actual DATE. With SOMEONE REAL.

Feel free to rejoin the human race when you’re ready. We’ve got plenty of room available, and our standards are horribly, horribly low.

Heck, there isn’t even a dress code to get into this club.

Finally, I get asked who I find funny in SL.

Every. One. Of. You.

Especially those of you who take all this stuff so seriously. Or believe all the crazy mindjunk that M Linden pours out in the trough for you to slurp up every time he rings that bell.

Yeah, I know you’re roleplaying all those weird and twisted roles and such, but it’s just so damn funny and silly to watch you bumbling around thinking this all matters on some level.

It doesn’t. It’s just one big Renaissance festival with cheap plywood booths selling overpriced handcrafted trinkets by people with bad fake British accents.

Just hand me my turkey leg, pass me a beer, and keep this ballet of the brain-damaged going.

It’s showtime.

Well, that’s all the letters I have for now. I suspect that the mailman is keeping the rest of them for himself when he’s not banging my wife.

I wish he’d stop that. It’s a federal offense not to deliver the mail, you know.

Filed Under: General News, Humour / Satire, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

The Old Timer

June 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment

An old prospector shuffled into town leading an old tired mule.

The old man headed straight for the only saloon to clear his parched throat.

He walked up and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there, brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger stepped out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.

The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, “Hey old man, have you ever danced?”

The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, “No, I never did dance… never really wanted to.” A crowd had gathered as the gunslinger grinned and said, “Well, you old fool, you’re gonna dance now,” and started shooting at the old man’s feet.

The old prospector –not wanting to get a toe blown
off– started hopping around like a flea on a hot skillet. Everybody was laughing, fit to bust. When his last bullet had been fired, the young gunslinger, still laughing, holstered his gun and
turned around to go back into the saloon.

The old man turned to his pack mule, pulled out a double-barreled shotgun, and cocked both hammers.

The loud clicks carried clearly through the desert air.

The crowd stopped laughing immediately.

The young gunslinger heard the sounds too, and he turned around very slowly. The silence was almost deafening.

The crowd watched as the young gunman stared at the old timer and the large gaping holes of those twin barrels. The barrels of the shotgun never wavered in the old man’s hands, as he quietly said, “Son, have you ever licked a mule’s ass?” The gunslinger swallowed hard and sa id, “No sir….. but… I’ve always wanted to.”

There are a few lessons for us all here:

Never be arrogant.
Don’t waste ammunition.
Whiskey makes you think you’re smarter than you are.
Always, always make sure you know who has the power.
Don’t mess with old men; they didn’t get old by being stupid.

Filed Under: Age, Email Joke Graveyard

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