How yummy does this look?
MIT has put ALL of its course materials online for ANYONE to use completely FREE of charge in their own time.
There are more than 2400 courses available - from computer programming to quantum mechanics and anthropology. See the full course list here.
(I've got my eye on a few of the Astronautics and Earth Sciences courses.)
From Mail Online: Older DOES mean wiser: Brains of over-55s work more efficiently as experience of age beats speed of youth
In my 'Get the Retirement You Deserve' Home Study Course, one of the things I ask the reader to do is to give some consideration to their non-financial legacy - in other words, what they want to leave behind and/or be remembered for after they've shuffled off this mortal coil. Some of the examples I give to get people thinking about this subject are: registering for organ donation, compiling a family tree to help future generations know their roots, and leaving their body to medical science. Which is why a Mail Online article caught my eye this morning...
Have you ever considered leaving your body to medical science? Here in the UK, there is, apparently, a national shortage of cadavers - it's estimated that only 600 bodies were received in 2008 and there are more than 45,000 trainee doctors, dentists and surgeons at any one time.
After reading this article by Tessa Dunlop, whose father decided to donate his own body after he was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow cancer, I'm persuaded to investigate this subject further. After all, as Tessa points out, "Students have to learn somewhere – better surely to make mistakes on the dead rather than the living?".
What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below...
Can an old brain learn and, probably more importantly, remember what it learns? Find out in this New York Times article by Barbara Strauch. (I thought I was the only one who, when faced with one of those 'tip of the tongue' moments when you can't quite remember someone's name, runs through the alphabet until landing on the first letter of the name I'm looking for.)