French Women Don’t Get Fat, The Okinawa Diet, The China Study, Dr. Atkin’s New Diet Revolution, and The Best Life Diet are but a few of the the most notable diet books from the last decade, each one acclaimed in its own right, each one later lambasted, and each heavily featured on various bestseller lists. Anyone can argue that one such diet will make you lose weight rapidly, but that another is better for your heart, that this other diet will give you the clearest complexion, but no one can truly say that one diet is better, overall, than another – or, at least, not any one of the modernized diets we see lining our bookshelves today. Many physicians today agree that some generalized form of a Mediterranean diet is the healthiest one to subsist on, if we define healthy in terms of a localized population with a low incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and a host of other modern conditions. The principal aspects of this diet include a high consumption of olive oil, legumes, grains, fruits, and vegetables; a moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), wine and fish; and a low consumption of meat and meat products. Of course, dietary jargon like moderate consumption often fall on deaf ears – how do we define moderate? Everything, after all, both diet and people, is relative to one’s own health and experience. Dietary factors, really, are only part of the reason for the health benefits enjoyed by these cultures – genetics, lifestyle (notably heavy physical labor), and environment are also involved. The putative benefits of the Mediterranean diet for cardiovascular health are primarily correlative in nature: while they reflect a very real disparity in the geographic incidence of heart disease, identifying the causal determinant of this disparity has proven difficult. Here is where my dad would pump a fist in the air and exclaim, with all the enthusiasm of a closet theorist, the correlation between cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and Vitamin D.

One diet book bestseller that has been captivating people around the country doesn’t so much advocate a diet, in the traditional sense, as it advocates a simple substitution method when eating out. Their motto? Eat This, Not That! Rather than require readers to plow through literature on why certain foods are better than others, or vaguely telling readers to eat only moderate amounts of something, Eat This Not That instead takes a visual approach, inundating readers with pictures of food commonly eaten at fast food establishments, or during holidays, common snacks, breakfasts and more. The idea of the book, and its recently released app by Men’s Health Magazine, is to familiarize people with the concept of which foods are healthier – mind you, on a modest scale – than others of seemingly equal caloric value. If anything, the idea is pared down to the simple, but everlastingly true dogma of “calories in, calories out” – if you eat less, you will weigh less. Obviously, this isn’t a diet book that focuses on health, per se; if it were, then it wouldn’t advocate eating at fast food establishments. The meal substitution principle is a good one, though, because many people do dine at these establishment on a frequent basis, and if you can’t deter them from eating there, you may as well steer them toward the better choices.

The Eat This Not That app takes the visual principle a step further by plugging it into a game – a transportable one, at that. I’ve often lamented at how little people read, but the fact of the matter is people are highly visual creatures – when it comes to diet books, or recognizing portions and alternate food options, images are key. There won’t always be nutritional information available for everything you eat, and even with the caloric information now required by law for many places, there’s still no solid verification that people will always be interested, or patient enough to read this information and make better choices. With the Eat This Not That game, users will slowly become adept at recognizing which foods offer them the best bang for their health; they’ll learn, along the way, that mashed potatoes, while heavy in their own right with cream and butter, still make a more well-rounded choice than a slice of sweet potato pie. A shortbread cookie, while smaller in size, and seemingly innocuous and unassuming, has nearly three times the saturated fat of a chocolate raspberry brownie, which clocks in a modest 5 grams with 370 calories. The game presents you with two images, and you must decide, based on appearances alone, which is the better choice based on potential levels of saturated fat, sodium, and calories. As the clock ticks down, nutritional info starts popping up, to help you make a more informed choice, but you’re only docked points if you play in the speed round.

Yikes, the calories.

Many of the foods contained within this game are establishment-specific, like a Wendy’s Frosty or a Double Whopper with Cheese and Fries from Burger King. The game is particularly exceptional in this regard, for sorting out the caloric, sodium, and saturated fat values for these foods because I, personally, find it very difficult to weigh my options at these places. A burger is a burger, to me, so how do I know which one actually has four times the amount of already catastrophic sodium… and why? It never ceases to amaze me the disparity in calories and fat between two, seemingly identical entrees. Other foods featured in the game, however, are a bit more vague in origin, labeled simply as “slice of pumpkin pie” or a “blueberry cheesecake.” A blueberry cheesecake from Lindy’s in New York may very well be a heart attack on a plate, but not all cheesecakes are made in the same ilk. Portion sizes, too, remain vague in the slice arena. A quarter of a pie slice of pumpkin pie could very well rival a small slice of cheesecake; of course, this is making the argument against standard pie slice sizes, which frankly, I’m sure most people are unaware. Some choices make me scratch my head, it being completely obvious to anyone which is the healthier choice, but then I have to remember the general state of the nation: we’re obese, on a cattle scale, and most people probably will choose that deep-fried crab cake with 19 grams of fat and 300 calories over the 12 shrimp cocktail with sauce, averaging around 165 calories and zero fat. Sometimes, you just want that turducken.

Regardless of personal choices, Eat This Not That is a host of information on things we really don’t want to know about. The true success of this game, and book, lies in the scare tactic when users realize, with horror, that a salad from Wendy’s, with all its innocent iceburg lettuce, can range up to 700 calories, making a burger the unforeseen better choice. It may not be a revolutionary diet plan, and it may not be the most accurate in its representation, but it does fascinate you (albeit in a somewhat horrific and masochistic way) into making wiser decisions… and for a nation that scares itself silly over trite, inconsequential things, that isn’t a bad thing at all.

Though it may not cater to the culinarian, Wisen Up by Global Delight contains a vast array of all sorts of other information, particularly concentrated, it seems, in the physiological spectrum. As noted in this app’s disclaimer, while the information provided in Wisen Up is gathered from various references and public domains, and are all demonstrated as fact, they are meant wholly for entertainment and recreation purposes. The developers were wise in pointing out their intended light-heartedness, because the last thing anyone should grasp from this app is a tone of seriousness – even though, there’s a section titled Types of Doctors that breaks down the different medical fields for you. Who knew bits of trivia would largely comprise medicine?

The app features 12 categories: Personality Quizzes, Ancient cures, Body Language (with illustrations), Body facts, Types of doctors, Medical quotes, Tell me why (covers most bodily functions like sneezing, farting, vomiting, dreaming, etc), Myths (once again, dealing mostly with the human body), Phobias, Weird and Incurable diseases, First aid mistakes, and Be a Doctor (A quiz to test your ability to identify ailments). For each section, there is a tab along the bottom, with different options available to the user for mailing out results, adding to favorites, or linking to facebook (the status quo of all apps today).

My favorite Wisen Up section was, by far, the Phobias. We covered a Phobia app not too long ago on Appstruck, and much in the same vein, Wisen Up details the specifics on certain phobias, notably highlighting the more rare or eccentric or downright ridiculous. I was amused to note many of the phobias had a definite focus on the anal area, a scatalogical sense of humor on the developers part, I’d like to think. For one, Defecaloesiophobia is a fear of bowel movements – a disease, I’ll say with a wry tongue-in-check, most commonly found among the uptight and anal-retentive. Or, who knows, maybe most people suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or flare-ups of Colitis actually have recurring bouts of crippling (literally) bowel movement fear. In any case, Defecaloesiophobia is not a phobia I would wish on anyone. Coprophobia, similarly, is a fear of fecal matter, and probably the next logical phobia to have after Defecaloesiophobia. Another anal phobia, Rectophobia, actually makes sense in a conventional way to me, being how it is entirely plausible and real to have a fear of rectal disease – and, unfortunately, many people suffer from this unfortunate condition. Other phobias in the list are entirely realistic on a large scale, like Cacophobia, the fear of ugliness – so many people suffer from Anorexia and a common sidelong symptom is body dysmorphia, or Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which often revolve around a severe anxiety on a flaw, or ugliness, or otherwise perceived lesser quality of oneself. Others are so specific as to incite ridicule, like Automatonophobia, the fear of ventriloquist dummies (that just goes without saying), and Consecotaleophobia, the fear of chopsticks (now that’s just ethnocentric).

Rather curious, though, is the section on Types of Doctors. I’m not sure I’d consult an app with otherwise humorous intentions for something as serious as looking up the meaning for my Gastrologist. Sure, the information is sound – thorough even, for a layman – but the seriousness of this section stands out sorely from the other, more lighthearted sections. It’s definitely wise to know the difference between an Obstetrician and a Gynecologist, or any physician for that matter, but it’s information I would more readily seek other sources to inform myself. Even with the success of shows like House and Grey’s Anatomy, somehow I think it’s more the medical terminology – words like intubation, hemorrhagic contusion, and whipple – that sinks into the viewer’s daily use than the differentiation between physician and surgeon titles. The X-Files was a hugely popular show, but no one would think to call Scully a Forensic Pathologist, more confusedly thinking “an Autopsy… ist?”

I will forgive the Amazing Body Facts section for quoting John Mayer’s, “Your Body Is A Wonderland” because the random factoids contained in this section are pretty cool.  Apparently, your thigh bone is stronger than concrete, despite it being hollow and filled with a spongy marrow substance. That may surprise most people, and illicit strong retaliatory thoughts – “that can’t be possible!” – but it makes sense when you realize that spider’s silk, so delicate, so seemingly fragile, is stronger than steel on a per weight basis. Don’t underestimate Mother Nature. It’s bad news for the anemic that 2 million red blood cells die every second, and since women have a higher olfactory capacity than men, able to detect far more smells, it’s unfortunate that people, on average, pass gas 14 per day. Woof! The fact that people generally read 25% slower from a computer screen compared to paper seems obvious enough, but it’s nice to read it in print. Other facts were entirely unknown to me, like how left-handed people are better than right-handed folk at sports that require fast reaction rates. I’m sure my left-handed boyfriend would just LOOOOVE that piece of trivia.

As Wisen Up points out in the info section, they are not liable for any outdated information. Good thing they mentioned this disclaimer, because the factoid, “once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing 7,000 brain cells a day, and cannot be replaced” isn’t true, after all. Recent studies have shown it is possible to regenerate and grow new brain cells throughout your life. Another fact listed was, “scientists say the higher I.Q., the more you dream.” My first thoughts were of cocky elation, I recalling vividly every wildly colorful dream I’ve had every night of my life (so much, I sometimes confuse with waking life). Then, I recalled from a college Psychology course that a most prevalent theory is that everyone dreams, every night, and some are just not apt to remember. So, either those who remember have a higher I.Q., or the statement in Wisen Up is just too vague to comprehend.

The Myths section dispels some common myths, mostly surrounding bodily functions again, like shaving creating coarser hair, and plucking a grey hair sprouts up 10 more (all myths, people).  Ladies, I was especially happy to read about the hair brushing myth. You see, brushing the hair damages the cuticle. This is great news for me because I never brush my hair. I’m serious. I wash, I put on a great leave-in conditioner by ABBA called “Nourishing” and then I let it air dry to wavy loveliness. When it’s fully dry, I’ll run a natural bristle brush, no more than five strokes, just to get the tangles out and distribute my natural oils, from my scalp to roots. Then I scrunch just a bit more Nourishing to the ends. Done. No drying, no brushing, no gels, no split ends and coarse hair from too much brushing. Sure, I don’t have immaculately groomed Hollywood hair, but so what?

I was laughing out loud with the Medical Quotes, which is rare for me. I really liked the brutal and succinct Short History of Medicine, but I was really tickled by Dick Wilson’s quote, “As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept saying ‘Relax, you’re not the first doctor to sleep with one of his patients,’ but the other voice kept reminding me, ‘Howard, you’re a veterinarian!” Some of the quotes are vicious, especially taken from the perspective of a physician’s daughter: “the closest most doctors will ever get to empathy is cuddling a hot water bottle; the closest thing to their hearts are usually their wallets.” Sounds like you’ve been wronged in the past, Mr. Swami Rej. Or, “Finish last in your league and they call you idiot. Finish last in medical school and they call you doctor.” Jeeeeez. Don’t go easy on the doctors or anything. They only help you improve your health. However, I do get the sense whoever created this app either has a medical background, or a sidelong interest in medicine. Doctors poke fun within their field like no other.

The Personality Quizzes and Be a Doctor sections are of similar enjoyment, with the latter being of a bit more interest. It’s a Quiz to assess your nascent skills as a Doctor – you are given a list of symptoms and your goal is to diagnose the ailment. I totally aced the test – thank you Dr. Dad -, but it did help that I’ve suffered from some of the ailments. Headache of a pulsating or throbbing quality, pain that worsens with physical activity, pain that interferes with your regular activities, nausea with or without vomiting, sensitive to light and sound? Well, by joe, is that isn’t a migraine, I don’t know what is.

If you like absorbing knowledge, however commonplace or obscure, you may enjoy Wisen Up. I wish it was more readily organized, so if you needed a fact to look up, you wouldn’t have to cycle through all the other ones just to get to it. But, other than navigation problems, and a generally blah grey background, Wisen Up is a pretty neat and informative app. If you feel like a sprig of entertainment, and feel like learning some random trivia along the way, then download Wisen Up for free, our treat, with the promo codes below:

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Trivial Pursuit by Hasbro has long been a favorite of mine. Nothing like the pursuit of random factoids, general knowledge, popular culture and current events, I say! It’s nice to know that even those who possess little to no skills for those otherwise mentally challenging games of strategy, those who read and retain information on all sorts of seemingly frivolous but still impressive knowledge, can reap winning streaks in Trivial Pursuit.

Released for the iPhone by EA Games this past April, Trivial Pursuit is now portable and more brightly fun than ever, with different gameplay modes to keep you enthralled. Classic mode is self-explanatory, involving the original gameplay of collecting colored wedges more quickly than your opponent, to answer a final question on the center tile to win. Pursuit mode is more like a race, where you quickly make your way to the finish line as you answer questions at lightning speed. Each game board contains a Start and Finish line separated by question tiles of the six different categories. But, beware: the shortest path to the finish line may not be the easiest one, as based on in-game statistics, Trivial Pursuit may arrange the shortest path with questions from the category where you perform the worst. There are also two multiplayer options, one called Pass N Play where two or more players share the same iPhone device, passing it back and forth, or multiplayer through wifi where you join the “bonjour” network..

Generally, Trivial Pursuit is played in Classic mode, where you collect wedges by answering questions correctly, and to win the game, once all the required wedges have been collected, you head back to the center tile to answer one random, final question. Each turn consists of rolling a die and moving to a tile of your choice. Shake the iPhone to roll the die or simply tap the die, then tap it again to land on a number. A cool spinning graphic is shown for the die, and the board itself is resplendent in bright, nearly neon colors.  Choose your destination by tapping on a highlighted tile – all the possible landing spots will be slightly elevated, highlighting your options of travel once your die lands on a number. Answer the question correctly – bright, happy noises will be heard, along with little black Trivial Pursuit icons floating like cherubs -  and you get to roll again, indefinitely, until you choose a wrong answer – where a crunching, crashing sound is heard with smoke and steam angrily coming from the obviously incorrect answer.

The game board contains question tiles of the six, classic trivial pursuit categories (Entertainment, Sports & Leisure, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, Geography, History), along with headquarter tiles, re-roll tiles and a center tile. Landing on a headquarter tile and answering a question correctly rewards you with a wedge of the given category – should you desire a shorter game or simply an easier one, you may adjust this option under the Game settings to have you receive a wedge any time you answer a question correctly, regardless of whether you’re on a headquarter tile or not.

To customize the difficulty of the game even further, you can decide the competence of your AI opponent – ranging from ignorant to lucky genius – and before starting the game you may customize your own player’s look, there being many funny profile pictures to choose from, all of which have a slight LEGO feel to them (I chose the pirate with the moustache, since he slightly resembled my boyfriend had he more defined facial hair and a penchant for wearing pirate hats). You may also customize the length of time to answer a question (6 seconds being the shortest, followed by 9 and 12, with 15 being the longest), and how many wedges it takes to win, just in case you want to play a game that doesn’t make you tear your hair out as much.

There really are no complaints to be had about Trivial Pursuit for the iPhone, unless you had issues with the game to begin with (“SERIOUSLY? WHO WOULD KNOW THAT?”) Frankly, I’ve always loved Trivial Pursuit, it’s great for game nights with friends, and should you not have the board game itself, using your iPhone is easier and just as transportable – perhaps more so – than those unsightly, plastic, digital versions of Trivial Pursuit and other games you find in Target, Toys R Us, and other places.  I can’t think of how the game could be more simple and aesthetically pleasing, and the different play options improve upon the original gameplay. For $4.99, I think it’s a good bargain, since most board games are up in the $40 range, but take this recommendation seriously if you’re an avid fan of trivia and knowledge, and love the original game, because otherwise you may eventually tire of the game and regret the money spent.

Okay, so maybe that was just my family. I can credit my older brother for instilling a love of early SCUMM games, a wriggling, tickling desire to plough through those insanely difficult Lucasfilm adventure games of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, and who could forget Sam & Max Hit the Road? Max, the cute white bunny rabbit with razor sharp shark teeth and a penchant for getting on the nerves of his partner in crime, Sam the dog? I didn’t hear the word gamer as a regular coined term until maybe 1998, with first person shooters taking the helm, Half Life, Quake, Diablo II being played extensively by my brothers and I, online or through a LAN set up in our adjacent bedrooms, the microphone fashion perched against our salient lips, curses and swearing blaring through headphones. Delicate speech had no stakes in the land of the taunting gamer.

Nostalgia runs deep, and Quiz Game Land by iPhone app developer Undercoders takes some serious note in understanding this. Happy to embrace the pixilated, bubblegum cheery two-dimensional format of early games a la SCUMM, Quiz Game Land takes you through a board game in 8 different worlds, with names like Hero’s Valley, Oriental Fortress, and River City. Being an adventure game of the old ilk, Quiz Game Land is told through a storybook, running through different scenes of increasing rolling-eyes before embarking on the game itself. The game takes an interesting shift by blending turn-based strategy with quizzing – roll the dice to move along the game board, and then defeat your opponent by choosing the correct answer in a multiple choice of four. Kind of like Final Fantasy meets Jeopardy. The twist? The questions revolve around gaming lore, so n00bs, stick with easy mode.

Having played Counterstrike with the boys in high school, and playing a rather pathetic part in the Underground Gaming Club (don’t judge me), not to mention the countless obsessions with the Diablo, Starcraft, and the Command & Conquer series, and actually knowing what Coconut Monkey and Grim Fandango are, had I suspenders I’d be looping my thumbs under them, leaning back in my wood chair and toking off my cigar with the utmost satisfaction of my beyond cool gaming prowess.

Being brazenly bold and cocky, I obstinately chose Hard mode, described as “suitable for hardcore gamers with expert knowledge, who’d stay at home playing rather than go out on a date.” Today, in my 20’s, I definitely prefer going on a date to staying at home (unless, of course, we’re talking about the Elder Scrolls series, but not if we’re talking dessert and apertifs), but I think it was mostly the laugh at seeing the word “hardcore” so seriously being applied that made me choose the most difficult setting – apparently, Quiz Game Land divides players into casual, experienced, or hardcore gamers. At least there isn’t a fourth difficult level of ELITE, because I would sooooo pick that.

You may choose between a male and female character, both of which are heavily rendered in the classic anime style, with sunshiny white, toothless smiles and upside down U’s for eyes, a punch in the air for more of that cute, exaggerated exuberance. I wryly named my female character Annie Mae (once again, don’t judge me), and then the story commences, complete with theatrical drapes, quoted text, and some cheap MIDI synthesizer music befitting of the genre.

As the story goes, Annie Mae finds a strange game in her massively large compendium of – what else – video games. With elbow resting on her arm in that attitude-laden teenage girl body language, and a seriously affronted expression on her face, Annie Mae wonders “Huh? I don’t remember buying this game?” So, like any curious kid, she decides to play it, unaware of the severe, dimensional repercussions (if only she had gone to the movies instead). Your character proceeds to fall into heavy slumber – and, to further illustrate this siesta, the next page says, “ZZZZZzzzzz…” – only to awaken in another world called Quiz Game Land.

A character that looks like a stick figure with the red button off an old Nintendo controller as his head informs you that only the Game Master can return you to your rightful world. I, unfortunately, have yet to meet the Game Master, as even in Easy mode you are given 5 lives before a true and complete Game Over, and some of the questions require knowledge not of games, but of the game equipment, itself. I guess a true gamer knows his technology down pat. I was amused at the self-indulgence of one question in particular, the “who is the maker of this game?” with “undercoders” being the obvious answer.

The enemies you encounter in the game are your garden-variety Japanese evils, with names like Raiden, Mac Plantor, and Scarol, each being evil plants or animals or mythological creatures, and once beating them you can view them under the Bestiary tab on the game’s main screen. During the fighting round, the enemies will taunt you, once insulting my character by saying “You’re uglier than an oscar!” which I’m fairly sure is a derogatory comment, but still, I’m a bit confused who oscar is and if he really is that ugly. After making it past a few checkpoints on the board game, you may also play some minigames (the whack-the-mole), and enter your scores in the Hall of Fame.

For someone who enjoys the nostalgia of old pixilated games, Quiz Game Land is just quirky and cheesy enough to satisfy, and proves to be just as challenging as games from that genre. It’s not terribly pretty to look at with its muted tan-brown and red palette, and the synthesizer music may be a bit too old-school, but I find something deeply enjoyable about rolling a dice and answering questions about games. Maybe it makes me feel like I still know something  about games, or maybe it just feeds my trivia hungry persona. Either way, Quiz Game Land is a puzzling chore to finish, and unless you enjoy old style gaming trivia, maybe not be as exciting to some.

Studio Avante, an iPhone app developer based in Brazil, created Maya 3D for the iPhone so that users may grasp every in and out of the Mayan Calendar, using it like a more advanced horoscope for their daily lives, and thus become familiarized with its benign and spiritual use.

Upon initial viewing, Maya 3D is a beast to behold, prettily rendered, but difficult to understand even with the lengthy diatribes on the Info Pages of the app – it’s, unfortunately, a bit difficult to understand the info pages due to some broken English. When you load the app, the first thing you see is a three-dimensional view of the Mayan calendar with the current date, much like a clock’s face display. As you observe, the calendar is constructed of three moving parts representing different cycles, each cycle being one gear in the clock. If you touch a gear, you can see the name of the cycle and drag it forward and backward in time. The figures, known as glyphs, at the point where the gears intersect display each cycle’s current day. The current day will always correspond with the current date and time registered on the iPhone. For navigation purposes, four tabs are located at the bottom of screen – 3D clock, Mayan glyphs, daily oracle, date explorer – and they will return you to the main screen showing the 3D calendar, elucidate on what specific glyphs mean, give horoscope projections for the day, and provide a date calibration device for the calendar, respectively.  A Datebook is also available to keep record of commonly used dates, like birthdays and historical events related to the Mayan calendar, which you may access with a tab in the upper right hand corner of the main screen.

Since interpreting the Mayan calendar is no small feat, I will write a quick overview. The Mayans used many different calendars and viewed time as a meshing of spiritual cycles. While the calendars had practical uses, such as social, agricultural, commercial and administrative tasks, there was a very heavy religious element. Each day had a patron spirit, signifying that each day had specific use. This contrasts greatly with our modern Gregorian calendar, which primarily sets administrative, social and economic dates.

Most of the Mayan calendars were short. The Tzolk’in calendar lasted for 260 days and the Haab’ approximated the solar year of 365 days. The Mayans then combined both the Tzolk’in and the Haab’ to form the “Calendar Round”, a cycle lasting 52 Haab’s (around 52 years, or the approximate length of a generation). Within the Calendar Round were the trecena (13 day cycle) and the veintena (20 day cycle). Obviously, this system would only be of use when considering the 18,980 unique days over the course of 52 years. Using the Calendar Round is great if you simply wanted to remember the date of your birthday or significant religious periods, but what about recording history? There was no way to record a date older than 52 years.

The Mayans had a solution. Using an innovative method, they were able to expand on the 52 year Calendar Round. Up to this point, the Mayan Calendar may have sounded a little archaic – after all, it was possibly based on religious belief, the menstrual cycle, mathematical calculations using the numbers 13 and 20 as the base units and a heavy mix of astrological myth. The only principal correlation with the modern calendar is the Haab’ that recognized there were 365 days in one solar year (it’s not clear whether the Mayans accounted for leap years). The answer to a longer calendar could be found in the “Long Count”, a calendar lasting 5126 years.

I’m personally very impressed with this dating system. For starters, it is numerically predictable and it can accurately pinpoint historical dates. However, the Mayan numeral system is vigesimal, meaning it depends on a base unit of 20 (where modern calendars use a base unit of 10). So how does this work?

The base year for the Mayan Long Count starts at “0.0.0.0.0″. Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. So, for example, the first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. On the 19th day we’ll have 0.0.0.0.19, on the 20th day it goes up one level and we’ll have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years). Therefore, if I pick an arbitrary date of 2.10.12.7.1, this represents the Mayan date of approximately 1012 years, 7 months and 1 day. Phew! Good thing all of this is covered in the Maya 3D app, just make sure you read over it and give yourself a crash course to shed light on the beautiful industrial gear click clacking that is the 3D rendered Mayan calendar.

I remember vividly the first time I walked down the gravel path that led into the ruins of Palenque. Surrounded by vine-shrouded bushes filled with the sounds of playing children, barking dogs, of the chest-deep thumps of tom turkeys, I walked down that path past broken buildings shaded under vine-draped trees until at last I came to the grass-filled plaza in front of the Temple of the Inscriptions. As I walked through the lichen-painted ruins of that magic place, I felt my imagination stirred by the pathos of a lost world. The enchantment of the forest with its emerald green light and towering trees shrouded in a rich world of orchids, bromeliads, and liana vines produced a kind of exotic beauty I had never imagined. The mystery of calcium-heavy water, tumbling down the rocky streams to the plain below Palenque’s escarpments, to encase rock, leaf, branch, and broken temple alike, spoke to my mind in metaphors of creation and destruction.

For this reason alone I was immediately intrigued by the Maya 3D iPhone app. It may not be terribly exciting, and requires thorough reading to understand, but being able to interpret the glyphs and formulate some meaning from this highly ornate system acts like a gateway into the ancient Mayan culture. Even if you do not find much use for the app, perhaps, you too, will feel an eagerness to explore the ruins of Palenque.

*I recommend reading A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of The Ancient Maya by Linda Schele and David Friedel for those interested in a more elaborate discussion of the Mayan culture and calendar.

*information garnered from various Anthropological sources, including Anthropological Essays by Oscar Lewis, Maya History and Religion (Civilization of the American Indian Series) by J. Eric Thompson, and the aforementioned title.

Years later I still hold a great fascination for the human body, for both anatomy and physiology. While it was never my ambition to suffer through the MCAT, plough through years of medical school and residency and become a doctor, simply spending 20 years of my life with a doctor – an influential one at that – was enough to give me a solid interest in medical terminology and anatomy. For me, the iPhone app Speed Bones MD by Benoit Essiambre is a giant refresher course in the basics, and a tongue-twisting educational foray into the much more difficult skeletal anatomy that Med students have to know. Speed Bones MD is a great educational asset – a digital flashcard system, if you will – that any student studying physiology or anatomy or biomechanics could benefit from using, even if they’re not pre-Med.

Speed Bones opens with a wryly humorous drawing of a skeleton casually leaning against what looks to be a bovine skull, as if just daring you to begin the test. To start from the very beginning, tap the word Start near the top of the screen; otherwise, for those wanting a refresher course, you may choose from any of the 18 levels to practice. For the daredevils cracking their knuckles in breezy nonchalance over the difficulty of Speed Bones, to not underestimate so quickly. The game – I like to call it as such – covers many, many, many bones and their in-between spaces, and allots you roughly 10 seconds to label each identifier given. To select an answer, tap the screen on the bone part that corresponds with the name, and Speed Bones will award you points based on your precision and will even give you bonus points for a quicker response. For better accuracy, hold your finger down where you tap to enable a zoon function, so that you may better see where exactly your finger is pointing. All your high scores will be saved.

At first I was cocky, speeding through all the basic bones (a Fibula here, a Metacarpal there, now gimme an Ilium!), but once I hit Level 6 and started seeing phrases like Facet for Occipital Condyle, I started feeling a little out of my league. On the first level you have the entire skeleton pictured before you so you may identify larger bones like the humerus, the ulna and radius, the femur, the tibia and fibula, the patella, and various smaller bones in the hands and feet (tarsals, metatarsals, phalanges and so forth). The second level shows different sections of the spine, including a lateral view of the spinal column, and different vertebral cross-sections of the thoracic and lumbar regions, and other parts like the axis and atlas. The subsequent levels delve deeper into the more specific anatomical portions of the skull, back, arms, and so on. For anyone with a prior background – or plain common sense – in medical latin or basic biological viewpoint indicators like “lateral,” “medial,” “orbital” and “anterior” may be able to logically guess his way through a few levels. However, Speed Bones MD is definitely not a guessing game, and it takes serious practice and dedication to remember everything from start to finish.

For only $0.99, Speed Bones MD offers a course in skeletal anatomy for a much better price than those overpriced, high gloss, and colorfully laminated flashcards you find in college bookstores and Barnes & Nobles. These ones also won’t get lost, or crumpled, or put out of chronological order for ease of use. While the zoom feature and accuracy points can take some adjusting to – and curiously enough, may not be as accurate as the image on your test – Speed Bones MD is a great app for anyone on the high school, university, or medical school level who is seriously, or casually interested in learning about the skeleton and its many mysteries.