Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

Frankly, you are surrounded by--there is no easy way to say this--too little intelligence and wit.  In general, npr.org can help with the intelligence; Wait Wait Don't Tell Me can help with the wit.  Fight against the general degradation of the spoken word.

You are not reading enough

This is dumbing you down horribly.  You probably have a smart phone, but there is some evidence it is not making you smarter.  Getting a Kindle reader would be a fine thing, but maybe all you need is to download the Kindle app.  Much classic content is free; I have just started Dostoevsky's The Possessed.

Sheep Reaction Game

It doesn't get more brain-stemmish than this: Sheep Reaction Game  I surprised myself by how poorly I was rated.

3d Marble Roll

Even though shoot-em-up, cage fighting games are not, and should not be, your thing, there may still be a need to preserve/improve some of the eye-hand skills they require.  3d Marble Roll is a benign, pacific, spacey kind of compromise.  Did you have one of those wooden cubes through which you propelled a steel ball by manipulating two knobs, trying to steer the ball past holes in its path?  Marble roll uses the iDevice's position sensing capabilities to improve on the knobs.  And your memory will be tested: how did I fail last time?  How have I succeeded before?

Cryptic Crosswords

I have been doing these since the seventies: as they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  Harper's Magazine pioneered them in the US, but the redoubtable classic is the Times of London.  A cryptic gives you clues that are meant to confuse: you must parse them for a primary clue, which is a synonym, and a secondary, which might be a pun, a hidden word, an anagram, another meaning, a homonym, etc.  What am I talking about?  Here is one from the latest edition of The Nation magazine: "Cerf edited article within The Nation (6)."  I miss the 10x10 cryptics The New Yorker published for a few years many years ago: here is their guide to solving cryptics: Guide to Solving Cryptics.  The Nation's cryptics are fairly accessible and manageable, and printed on their inimitable cheap stock--and The Nation might be a good read for those in whom Fox News has instilled brain death.  There are many other cryptics available online.

Khan Academy

I have fallen behind in the Stanford AI course--more detail and mathematical rigor than I want or need--I was thinking more along the lines of Nova.  But Khan Academy was one precursor for the idea of smart online teaching to large numbers of people: the founder asks, Why shouldn't it be free?  More than a thousand lectures, many on math topics, all narrated by the tireless founder.

Flash Fabrica

Do not be intimidated by the Chinese characters on the site.  Feel free to poke around among the sometimes goofy offerings, but do not miss the circles (click them in increasing order of the numbers that have briefly flashed in them), the colored shapes (which one is different), and the simple math equations (does + - x or / make the statement true).