Too many interruptions, as Carr points out, and you lose your ability to move information from working into long term memory, where we can retrieve, contemplate and re-enact it -- in other words, think. Long term memories are for many of us our brain's "savings." They're what we will depend on in life to work and survive. We need such memories for learning, for pleasure and for creativity, and happen far less if we ceaselessly multitask through multimedia.
The new ways we use our brains also provokes hyper-arousal, the nervous, keyed up feeling that comes from doing so many things all at once. Too much arousal and your buzzing brain can't think straight. Without good long term memory and the thoughtful, deeper learning it provides, youngsters may never fully accomplish what they might. They run the risk of spending their lives as flunkies, rather than getting their chance to be the boss.
* * *
The hyperfast interactions of video games and the [inter]net produce a state of overwhelmed sensation, a kind of "can you top this" sensory overload that soon becomes its own reward. The effects are particularly damaging to kids. As they jump from image to image many kids become so over-aroused that they cannot sleep. They soon find vending machines chocked full of energy drinks that keep them awake. As caffeine reduces normal sleep, more teenagers turn to alcohol or pills in order to get any kind of rest. They fall into the "Up-Down Trap" so common to entertainers, performers and workaholic professionals. Soon they're hooked to more than their monitors.So for as long as I can hold out, Mr. M will remain wii-less, the no-gadget lone ranger, walking the street. He'll keep riding his bike and playing with his buddies, drawing chalk figures on sidewalks, collecting rocks, scootering around the neighborhood, and capturing bugs.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Chris Christie is my absolute hero. And I'll bet you he never once goes on "The View."
While it was clear that just days after her nomination Sarah Palin was widely hated by those on the Journolist, at least those who wrote emails had not yet exhibited full blown Palin Derangement Syndrome.
Rather, the focus was on whether to jump on the bandwagon promoted by Andrew Sullivan and many others that Trig was Sarah's grandchild not child, and that Bristol Palin was the real mother. As documented here before, this was a very widespread point of attack immediately after Sarah was nominated, and by no means limited to Andrew Sullivan.
Some of the comments, to be fair, were benign and even protective. For example, Mark Kleiman of the Reality Based Community [sic] was all in favor of attacking Sarah on numerous points, but warned others "But leave the kid alone."
Ezra Klein, founder of the Journolist, wrote: "By all accounts she’s a wonderful mother, and devoted to her fifth son [sic]. Leave this be."
A common point throughout the e-mails was that it was better to leave the issue of parentage alone because it could backfire politically.What more do you want?
"Grand pianos became a currency of sorts as pauperized members of the civil service elites traded the symbols of their old status for a sack of potatoes and a side of bacon. There is a harrowing moment when each middle-class family first starts to undertand that its gilt-edged securities and War Loan will never recover. Irreversible ruin lies ahead. Elderly couples gassed themselves in their apartments.
* * *
Great numbers of people failed to see it coming. 'My relations and friends were stupid. They didn’t understand what inflation meant. Our solicitors were no better. My mother’s bank manager gave her appalling advice,' said one well-connected woman.
'You used to see the appearance of their flats gradually changing. One remembered where there used to be a picture or a carpet, or a secretaire. Eventually their rooms would be almost empty. Some of them begged -- not in the streets -- but by making casual visits. One knew too well what they had come for.'"
"But we should be careful of embracing the opposite and overly-reassuring assumption that this is a mild replay of Japan’s Lost Decade, that is to say a slow and largely benign slide into deflation as debt deleveraging exerts its discipline.
Japan was the world’s biggest external creditor when the Nikkei bubble burst twenty years ago. It had a private savings rate of 15pc of GDP. The Japanese people have gradually cut this rate to 2pc, cushioning the effects of the long slump. The Anglo-Saxons have no such cushion.
There is a clear temptation for the West to extricate itself from the errors of the Greenspan asset bubble, the Brown credit bubble, and the EMU sovereign bubble by stealth default through inflation. But that is a danger for later years. First we have the deflation shock of lives. Then -- and only then -- will central banks go too far and risk losing control over their printing experiment as velocity takes off. One problem at a time please."
"People who want to put their feet up don't come to New York," he added. "Lazy people, you know, who want to just relax in life—there's nothing wrong with that—but this is not where you come."Alrighty then. We won't.
"I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white."At least one commentator says this is the Dems' shot across the bow, a shot they're firing directly at Obama.
Margaret Chan, Director-General for the World Health Organization, praised communist North Korea's national health care system, declaring it "the envy" of most developing nations."Women in labour have been forced to wait while epidural equipment was borrowed from other hospitals, while other patients have been denied chest drains and radiology supplies, according to doctors at South London Healthcare Trust.
Minutes of a meeting between medical staff and the trust's chief executive say "cash flow" problems at the trust which has a £50 million deficit, mean vital equipment is regularly not ordered.So reports the UK Daily Telegraph.
A separate letter sent to managers of the trust, one of the largest in the country, says consultants have been misled into carrying out operations when it was not safe to go ahead because of bed shortages."
On Monday, Andrew Breitbart posted a video of Shirley Sherrod addressing the NAACP in March of 2010. The point of which was to show the reactions of the NAACP audience members -- but that sort of got lost in the maelstrom.
Did their haste have anything to do with the Pigford case (a class action against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in which Ms. Sherrod is a plaintiff)? She is suing her employer, the USDA, for discriminating against her and other black farmers.
UPDATE: Gibbs is flailing at his briefing as I write this. You know it's bad when he says "this is a teachable moment." He says Secretary Vilsack is calling Sherrod to apologize to her for his "disservice."
Credit: Getty
Last night, the NAACP condemned and denounced the Tea Party's racism. The resolution was motivated mainly by the Congressional Black Caucus's claims that one or more Tea Party folks called John Lewis and others the "N" word and spit upon them, when caucus members showed up at a Tea Party rally back in March of this year.
From what I've seen, the video clips of this Tea Party rally show no evidence that any such thing occurred. And there were an awful lot of videos taken that day that would presumably have captured this reprehensible conduct.
Which is not to say the claims aren't true. Indeed, Andrew Breitbart offered to donate $10,000.00 to the United Negro College Fund if anyone had any evidence that anyone said the "N" word. And, if they don't have it on video, that's fine, too. He'll donate the same $10,000.00 if anyone who heard the "N" word being hurled will take and pass a polygraph.
Hillary Clinton's supporters have a documentary out called "We Will Not be Silenced." It's about alleged voting fraud in the 2008 presidential primaries. I'm starting to feel silenced, too. That if I dare to disagree with anything Obama says or does, the NAACP or Hollywood or someone will brand me racist."The existence of the NAACP, and others like it, are threatened by the existence of the Tea Party. The reality is that we colored people no longer require the assistance from other Negros for advancement in 2010. These groups run to the rescue of distressed brown people only when the media deems it newsworthy. Meanwhile, there are inner city black children who continue to grow up fatherless while sharing a neighborhood with stray bullets, drugs and a plethora of liquor stores on every corner.
* * *(emph. added).
The NAACP has been completely ineffective in my lifetime, and the lack of leadership in the black community has contributed to the ability of these groups to speak on behalf of the rest of us.
* * *
They are Democrats who bow to a Democrat master today as they once did two hundred years ago. Once this is realized by the forgotten society, race in this country will be as irrelevant as those who thrive off of it."
Can I put my P.S. at the beginning and say, "skip to the end if you just want to laugh!"?
If they make the seats bigger, how will we ever know we're fat? 
Even women have porn addictions. Christian ones, too. Gawsh!
Photo credit: Corcoran
Alrighty then. At least Polanski can eat, drink, and be merry.
Posts
