Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Ideas Worth Pursuing

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crazy like Hamlet said...

Multitasking in The Atlantic

some highlights from:
“The Autumn of the Multitaskers” by Walter Kirn
in November 2007, Atlantic Monthly

Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy. One man’s odyssey through the nightmare of infinite connectivity.

To do two things at once is to do neither.
—Publilius Syrus, Roman slave, first century B.C.

Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on.
What does this mean in practice? Consider a recent experiment at UCLA, where researchers asked a group of 20-somethings to sort index cards in two trials, once in slence and once while simultaneously listening for specific tones in a series of randomly presented sounds. The subjects’ brains coped with the additional task by shifting responsibility from the hippocampus—which stores and recalls information—to the striatum, which takes care of rote, repetitive activities. Thanks to this switch, the subjects managed to sort the cards just as well with the musical distraction—but they had a much harder time remembering what, exactly, they’d been sorting once the experiment was over.
Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy.

…

Much of the problem is the metaphor. Or perhaps it’s our need for metaphors in general, particularly when the subject is our minds and the comparison seems based on science.

…

Now, in the heyday of the microchip, the brain is a computer. A CPU.
Except that it’s not a CPU. It’s whatever that thing is that’s driven to misconstrue itself—over and over, century after century—as a prototype, rendered in all-too- vulnerable tissue, of our latest marvel of technology. And before the age of modern technology, theology. Further back than that, it’s hard to voyage, since there was a period, common sense suggests, when we didn’t even know we had brains.

…

Would it be possible someday—through drugs, maybe, or esoteric Buddhism, or some profound, postapocalyptic languor—to stop coming up with ideas of what we are and then laboring to live up to them?
The great spooky splendor of the brain, of course, is that no matter what we think it fundamentally resembles— even a small ethereal colosseum where angels smite demons and demons play dead, then suddenly spit fire into the angels’ faces—it does a good job, a great job, of seeming to resemble it.
For a while.

4:37 PM
crazy like Hamlet said...

Regular Devotional Plan

A) Bible reading or Psalms or Proverbs
To get a broader and more intimate acquaintance with Scripture and to bring self in direct contact with God’s Word.

B) Song of the Week
To obey the Psalm “sing a new song to the Lord”; to put a song in my heart by memory and so go with me throughout the day; to put me in contact with the great body of hymns of the church.

C) Worship
To recognize rightly who God really is; to honor him aright; to remind myself with whom I have to do; Psalms specifically because the Scriptural materials are the best to worship with; Psalms are the traditional mode of worship.

D) Prayer
To come before God; to appropriate his promises. Prayer is commanded in Scripture. Prayer has the potential to change the world. Prayer is an antidote to selfishness.

E) Journaling or written prayers or devotional book;
thematic study with weekly or monthly emphasis
Journal: to record where I’m growing, changing; to keep in contact with myself; a place to account for myself. Writing specifies thinking. Reading: for general stimulation.

F) Memory Work
To hide God’s Word in my heart; to combat sin; a way to purity of mind; a comfort, a companion, an ally for time of need.

G) Daily Planning


At night
>Ask self what new happened or was learned during the day;
>Relate morning time to day;
>Ask God how day could have been better;
>Engage in thanksgiving and/or confession;
>Recite memory material

4:41 PM
crazy like Hamlet said...

The problem with Hillary and Bill Clinton is that neither could say straight out—for fear of public repercussion—about the other or anyone else: “I’d like to have sex with that (woman) (man). What I mean is: intercourse.” As a result, they are both strange and sad. Neither is properly integrated with themselves, with the other, or with the world. Without this fundamental relationship in place, I question their context and agenda.

4:46 PM
Anonymous said...

So does that mean that you are going to stop listening to ball games while you work at your desk? This means a lot for computer use too. I feel as though I am always doing something in at least a few windows all the time. I agree that it makes you more stressed and seems to tire you out quicker than just doing the two tasks separately.

4:53 PM
Anonymous said...

Sleep Dec 07 Atlantic

THE AGENDA DECEMBER 2007 ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Primary Sources
PSYCHOLOGY
How You Sleep Is Who You Are
Being a morning person or a night owl doesn’t just determine when you start or end your workday; your internal clock may help define your psychology as well. A Spanish researcher found that our preference for engaging in activities earlier or later in the day shapes both our perceptions and our interactions. The author gave personality tests to 360 university students, whom he describes as a “proper sample,” noting that the circadian rhythms of students “are not much under the influence of time schedules and social patterns.” (Despite the occasional all-nighter, students presumably can follow their preferred sleep schedules more easily than working adults can.) His results offer new evidence that morning and evening types think differently. Early risers prefer to gather knowledge from concrete information. They reach conclusions through logic and analysis. Night owls are more imaginative and open to unconventional ideas, preferring the unknown and favoring intuitive leaps on their way to reaching conclusions. Social behavior diverges as well: Morning people are more likely to be self-controlled and exhibit “upstanding” conduct; they respect authority, are more formal, and take greater pains to make a good impression. (Earlier research also suggests that they are less likely to hold radical political opinions.) Evening people, by contrast, are “independent” and “nonconforming,” and more reluctant to listen to authority—which suggests that teachers may have several reasons to prefer those students who wake up in time for class.
—“Morning and Evening Types: Exploring Their Personality Styles,” Juan Francisco Díaz-Morales, Personality and Individual Differences

2:22 PM
Anonymous said...

How to Get Kids to Sleep More
New York Magazine
October 15, 2007
By Ashley Merryman
Source = http://nymag.com/news/features/38979/

Asking sleep experts for advice on how to put children to bed often feels like an exercise in futility. The standard tips are banal and predictable: avoid caffeine; remove the TV from their bedroom; don’t sleep on a full stomach; put up dark blinds. You have the feeling the experts are holding out on us – there has to be something more. And there is. Here’s the stuff they’d love to tell you, if they weren’t afraid of overwhelming you with science.
• Ever wonder why most people sleep better when their bedrooms are cool? It’s because the circadian rhythm system that helps regulate sleep cycles is not just light sensitive, it’s temperature sensitive. Anything above a neutral air temperature both slows the body’s initiation of sleep and changes sleep patterns – a hotter room means an increase in non-REM sleep.
• 77 percent of children use television as part of their pre-bedtime routine. Sitting still and vegging out for half an hour should, theoretically, help a child unwind, as long as they’re not watching a show that excites them too much. However, the brightness of the screen undermines the theory. The light from a television or computer can delay both the necessary drop in core body temperature and melatonin production – and thus delaying sleep onset – by two hours.
• We’re all familiar with the agony of being super exhausted, yet not being able to fall asleep for hours. What gives? It’s because after just a few days of shortened sleep, the brain starts making extra stress hormone cortisol. It takes six times as long for this stress hormone to drop to a low-enough level that sleep is possible.
• In one study of 170 children, those in white collar families tended to be in bed later and get up earlier than those in working class families. Yet they actually got more actual sleep. How is that possible? It’s because their bedtimes and wake-times were more consistent; they stuck to their routine. This made their sleep more efficient – they rolled around in bed far less.
• Inconsistent bedtimes are, for all practical purposes, homemade jet lag – the desynchronization of the two systems that regulate sleep, the circadian rhythm and the homeostatic pressure system. Staying up three hours later on weekends is equivalent to flying across three time zones every weekend.
• With children averaging three hours of television per day, it’s hard to make the case children are universally overscheduled. But the most driven children are the most overscheduled – and the most sleep deprived. In some ways, these busy overachievers are those who concern the experts the most. According to University of Minnesota’s Dr. Kyla Wahlstrom, a motivated student can sacrifice sleep to maintain high GPAs, but she may pay for that success with higher levels of depression and stress. Teen boys who have a high number of extracurriculars are significantly more likely to be involved in a fall-asleep car crash. And those with part-time jobs both sleep less and have lower grades.
• For the majority of kids, rather than thinking it’s a choice between sleep and activities, the opposite is true: students who sleep more are involved in more afterschool activities – with no detriment to their grades. They have the energy to be involved. Schools that have delayed start times have seen their students sleep more and increase their participation in sports and extracurriculars.
• Naps are not quite the salve we imagine. They appease the homeostatic pressure system, but not the circadian. You wake up feeling better – a two hour nap is equivalent to 150 mg of caffeine – but naps do nothing to repair diminished cognitive functioning. The intellect is just as dulled after the nap as before. Kindergartners who take long naps, for instance, do worse on puzzle-solving.
• 16 percent of kids snore a few times as week. As recently as 2002, the American Academy of Pediatrics opined that children’s snoring was a benign condition not warranting treatment. Just five years later, researchers now caution that kids’ snoring is not like adult snoring at all – even a little snoring is a major cause for concern, because their developing brains can be deprived of oxygen.
• Common sleep disorders such as nightmares, restless leg syndrome, and frequent night waking can have a startlingly negative impact on children’s development – from using drugs at 14 to having clinical-level anxiety as adults. Research by University of Michigan’s Dr. Ronald Chervin indicates as many as 25% of kids diagnosed with ADHD have an underlying sleep disorder causing their symptoms. If treated for their sleep disorder, the ADHD would magically disappear. Despite the risks posed by sleep disturbance, the number of children treated for them is “vanishingly small.” Parents should consult a qualified sleep specialist – few pediatricians have expertise with sleep problems. Waiting to see if a child grows out of a sleep problem isn’t the answer.

12:30 PM

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