"Texting While Walking": The New Epidemic

So we've all heard of all the dangers associated with talking and texting on phones while driving.  Recently, they realized that banning texting while driving hasn't come close to solving the root of the problem: most people can't multi-task to save their life.

Even simple tasks such as walking without serious injury have proven too  complex when paired with the important task of texting someone on your phone.

In 2008, over 1000 people in the US went to the ER for injuries resulting from texting while walking.  This is double the rate of 2007, and 4 times as much many people as 2006.  While 1,000 people in a country of over $3 million may sound insignificant, it's increasing at an astronomical rate (doubling every year).

One must also realize that these 1000 people are a small subset of those injured or embarrassed for mishaps from texting while walking: all those people who walked into poles or parked cars, but were not injured enough to go to the ER.  All of this came from an Ohio State study (yes, they are now studying it) which found the injuries to include concussions, broken appendages, and sprained ankles.

Gizmodo adds that this is part of an increasing problem of multi-tasking and information overload in today's society.  Scientists are studying the effects of this "grey matter" on our activities.  Their current results are bad: talking or texting on cell phones takes up so much of our attention we lose our survival instincts.

It's sad that texting or talking to a friend is more important to us then staying alive.

Stack Master for iPhone Review

So I was lucky enough to get a promo code from zinc Roe, Inc.'s twitter to test out one of their newest iPhone games, Stack Master, over the weekend.  Obviously I've been playing it non-stop all weekend, and truthfully I've been loving it.


The game has a pretty simple premise:
You have crazy mind-control powers, and you can balance objects in the air.  Your goal is to stack as many objects on top of your platter without having them fall.  The catch, you lose your mental power over time, and you gotta keep the stacks balanced too.  Just to make things worse, they have a spiral-thingy that makes you lose your powers even faster, and a crazy huge black cat that's meant to distract you like crazy.

I really enjoyed the game, and found that it was fairly reasonable since you could get to around 8 or 9 objects within your first few tries.  It was a challenge, though possible (as you can see from my awesome high score!).  I personally am not one to just sit around and play video games or games on my iPhone on a regular basis since I am not obsessed with them, and I'm not really too good at them (this is part of why I'm shocked at how I'm so high in the world standings and don't really believe it).

Pretty much all video games I play on my phone fall into two categories.  1) Commute games: games that I can play on the train or bus and do not need extreme precision/balance.  This includes 1to30, Flood-It!, Hangman, etc.  2) Waiting Games: games that are fun and don't take too long to play since I often have to end them really quickly or suddenly.  This includes BikeOrDie, Labyrinth, MazeFinger, Archers, etc.  Stack Master definitely falls into the "Waiting Games" category although that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I just sadly cannot play it while on transit.

This isn't a bad thing, it's really important to have good games to play while you're waiting for your really late or irresponsible friends.

I just had two complaints.  A lot of the control buttons (such as the ones on the leader board) were two small for my fingers.  Also, in the beginning there were a ton of energy boosters (many more than I needed), but I found that at a certain point my problem was just that the replenishers just didn't come often enough, no matter how high my stack was, and I constantly died at around the same time-point which was fairly annoying.

I've attached my high score just to prove I was number two in the world!!!

My analysis:  totally buy this game, it's a bunch of fun, and I would recommend everyone buy it!