Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think.
Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas.
FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites?
ZUCK: yea i’m going to fuck them
ZUCK: probably in the year
ZUCK: *earIn another exchange leaked to Silicon Alley Insider, Zuckerberg explained to a friend that his control of Facebook gave him access to any information he wanted on any Harvard student:
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucksAccording to two knowledgeable sources, there are more unpublished IMs that are just as embarrassing and damaging to Zuckerberg. But, in an interview, Breyer told me, “Based on everything I saw in 2006, and after having a great deal of time with Mark, my confidence in him as C.E.O. of Facebook was in no way shaken.”
Chinese netizens have already started selecting the Internet catchphrases of 2010. (…)
Geili Geili used to be a word only spoken in the northern dialect literally meaning “giving power,” but is now widely accepted as an adjective describing something “cool,” “awesome,” or “exciting.” Its antonym “bugeili” means “far from desirable,” “dull” or “boring.”
Magic horse is just floating cloud. “Magic horse” actually does not refer to a horse, but is rather a homophone of “shen me” meaning “what.” “Magic horse” replaced its predecessor “xia mi” as the most popular phrase in the Chinese Internet community shortly after its emergence. “Floating cloud” here indicates “purely imaginary” or “disappearing quickly.” Altogether, the phrase means “nothing is worth mentioning.”
Memory difficulties such as those seen in dementia may arise because the brain forms incomplete memories that are more easily confused, new research from the University of Cambridge has found. The findings are published today in the journal Science.
Currently, memory problems are typically perceived to be the result of forgetting previously encountered items or events. The new research (using an animal model of amnesia), however, found that the ability of the brain to maintain complete, detailed memories is disrupted. The remaining, less detailed memories are relatively easily confused, leading to an increased likelihood of falsely remembering information that was not encountered.
Dr Lisa Saksida, from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, said: “This study suggests that a major component of memory problems may actually be confusion between memories, rather than loss of memories per se.
photo { Susan Meiselas, Returning backstage, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973, from Carnival Strippers }
Intelligence Hierarchy: Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom
Data: Data is the raw building blocks; it consists of raw numbers, but lack context or meaning. 1,200, 9.6%, and $170k are all piece of data.
Information: Is the application of structure or order to data, in an attempt to communicate meaning. Knowing the S&P500 is at 1,200 (up 5% YTD), Unemployment is at 9.6% (down from 11%), and GDP is 2.5% (revised from 2%) are examples.
Knowledge: An understanding of a specific subject, through experience (or education). Typically, knowledge is used in terms of a persons skills or expertise in a given area. Knowledge typically reflects an empirical, rather than intuitive, understanding. Plato referenced it as “justified true belief.”
Wisdom: Optimum judgment, reflecting a deep understanding of people, things, events or situations. A person who has wisdom can effectively apply perception and knowledge in order to produce desired results. Comprehending objectively reality within a broader context.
photo { Justin Fantl }
Assuming you’re in a heterosexual relationship, which is worse: for your partner to be unfaithful with a person of the opposite or the same sex?
According to a pair of US psychologists, the answer depends on whether you’re a man or woman. Men, they’ve found, are less likely to continue a relationship with an unfaithful partner who’s had a heterosexual affair, as opposed to a homosexual affair. For women, it’s the other way around - they’re more troubled by their male partner going off with another man.
What are we to do when people disagree with one another? Is it possible for one argument to be right while another is wrong? Or is everything just a matter of opinion?
In some cases, there is a way to tell good arguments from bad using what is called informal logic. This name distinguishes it from formal logic, which is used in mathematics; natural language is less precise than mathematics, and does not always follow the same rules. (…)
The distinction between validity and truth is important. Technically, logic cannot establish truth; logic can only establish validity. Validity is still useful. If an argument is valid and the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. Once we know that an argument is valid, the premises are the only possible source of disagreement.
photo { Bob O’Connor }
NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything. (…) NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic.
Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about.
The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.
Scientists said the results, if confirmed, would expand the notion of what life could be and where it could be. “There is basic mystery, when you look at life,” said Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of an institute on the origins of life there, who was not involved in the work. “Nature only uses a restrictive set of molecules and chemical reactions out of many thousands available. This is our first glimmer that maybe there are other options.”
photo { Jackson Eaton }
Men and women have been pairing off since the dawn of humanity. For most of its history, marriage was an economic institution that created advantageous alliances between clans and was arranged, often, without much input from the bride or groom. But by the 19th century, many in the Western world had begun to marry for love, making the relationship infinitely more complicated and divorce a lot more common.
Romantic love assumed a position of high value but even higher vulnerability.
Still, until the second half of the 20th century, these ubiquitous couplings went largely unstudied. What happened behind closed doors generally remained private, unless one had a particularly nosy set of in-laws or a manner of fighting that necessitated police intervention.
Marriages, with the power to affect everything from personal income levels to mental and physical health, remained a hazy mystery. But with the advent of the affordable video camera in the late 1960s, psychologists began recording couples’ interactions. The scientists hooked up their subjects to monitors that detected changes in blood pressure or stress hormones, and then coded even their slightest movements — an eye roll or a knuckle crack. The couples were interviewed about their marital satisfaction and were, in some cases, tracked for years.
{ Washington Post | Continue reading }
Unhappy couples in New York have long gone to extremes to throw off the shackles of matrimony—in the worst cases, framing their spouses, producing graphic testimony about affairs, or even confessing to crimes they did not commit. All this will fade into the past if, as expected, Gov. David Paterson signs a bill making New York the last state in the country to adopt unilateral no-fault divorce.
Their counterparts in other states have had it much easier. California adopted the first no-fault divorce bill in 1970; by 1985, every other state in the nation—but one—had passed similar laws. In New York, the miserably married must still charge each other with cruel and inhuman treatment, adultery or abandonment—or wait one year after a mutually agreed legal separation—in order to divorce.
Why does a child grow up to become a lawyer, a politician, a professional athlete, an environmentalist or a churchgoer?
It’s determined by our inherited genes, say some researchers. Still others say the driving force is our upbringing and the nurturing we get from our parents.
But a new child-development theory bridges those two models, says psychologist George W. Holden at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Holden’s theory holds that the way a child turns out can be determined in large part by the day-to-day decisions made by the parents who guide that child’s growth.
Parental guidance is key. Child development researchers largely have ignored the importance of parental “guidance,” Holden says. In his model, effective parents observe, recognize and assess their child’s individual genetic characteristics, then cultivate their child’s strengths.
In 2005, the French city of Lyon introduced a shared bicycle system called Velo’v that has since inspired numerous other schemes around the world.
Velo’v differed from earlier schemes in its innovative technology, such as electronic locks, onboard computers and access via smart cards. The system now offers some 4000 bikes at almost 350 stations around the city. (…)
Since its introduction, the system has kept track of the start and finishing location plus travel time of every journey. Today, we get a detailed analysis of this data. (…)
Some of what they found is unsurprising. Over an average trip, cyclists travel 2.49 km in 14.7 minutes so their average speed is about 10 km/h. (…) During the rush hour, however, the average speed rises to almost 15 km/h, a speed which outstrips the average car speed. (…)
Curiously, the Wednesday morning speeds are systematically higher than on other days, even though there is no change in other factors such as the number of cars. This, say Jensen and co, is probably because women tend to stay at home and look after their children on a Wednesday in France. So the higher proportion of men pushes up the average speed.
My last post said teen males want more sex than teen females. Older men also often complain of women withholding sex, while women complain of men demanding too much sex. From a typical top ten complaints list:
[Women About Men:] 3. They are not affectionate enough. 4. They tend to bypass sexual foreplay.
[Men About Women:] 1. Women complain, criticize and nag too much. … 4. They tend to withhold sex as a punishment or blackmail.
This is often explained in part via women just caring less about sex than men.
Stuxnet is an incredibly advanced, undetectable computer worm that took years to construct and was designed to jump from computer to computer until it found the specific, protected control system that it aimed to destroy: Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.
Intelligence agencies, computer security companies and the nuclear industry have been trying to analyze the worm since it was discovered in June by a Belarus-based company that was doing business in Iran. And what they’ve all found, says Sean McGurk, the Homeland Security Department’s acting director of national cyber security and communications integration, is a “game changer.”
The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield,” says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet. (…)
The target was seemingly impenetrable; for security reasons, it lay several stories underground and was not connected to the World Wide Web. And that meant Stuxnet had to act as sort of a computer cruise missile: As it made its passage through a set of unconnected computers, it had to grow and adapt to security measures and other changes until it reached one that could bring it into the nuclear facility.
When it ultimately found its target, it would have to secretly manipulate it until it was so compromised it ceased normal functions.
And finally, after the job was done, the worm would have to destroy itself without leaving a trace.
Here’s how it worked, according to experts who have examined the worm:
–The nuclear facility in Iran runs an “air gap” security system, meaning it has no connections to the Web, making it secure from outside penetration. Stuxnet was designed and sent into the area around Iran’s Natanz nuclear power plant — just how may never be known — to infect a number of computers on the assumption that someone working in the plant would take work home on a flash drive, acquire the worm and then bring it back to the plant.{ Fox News | Continue reading | Thanks Cole! }
unrelated { San Francisco bans Happy Meals. The city’s board of supervisors votes to forbid restaurants from giving away toys with meals that have high levels of calories, sugar and fat. | LA Times | full story }
