Before I get back to work, I feel I need to take a moment and state openly that I was wrong about the health care reform bill. It is bad, evil and scary. Had I been watching wall to wall coverage of Congress like all good Americans should, I would have know that. Fortunately, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report caught me up to speed last night.

First there was this clip:

continue reading "OK, I changed my mind!"

I love CollegeHumor.com.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been in college, but it cracks me up.  I’m not sure how in touch with college kids it is, though.  I mean, how many 18-22 year olds know the music from West Side Story.  Anyway, here are two clips from the site I’ve particularly enjoyed.  There not new, both from the summer.  But they were brought up today, I looked at them again, and wanted to share.

Web Site Story

Googling With Bing

continue reading "Two Funny Things From CollegeHumor.com"

The text below provides some statistics about “gadget-savvy online individuals” under the age of 35 surveyed on behalf of the website Retrevo.com.  The first percentage is shocking, the second frightening, the third not a bit surprising and the last, well, what’s the big deal?

The younger crowd is also quite keen on tweeting, texting, and checking Facebook after sex (36%), while driving (40%), while at work (64%), and when on vacation (65%).

via Young Social Mediaphiles: 36% Tweet and Check Facebook After Sex.

It isn’t so much the numbers themselves that are surprising.  The survey is, after all, a survey of gadget-savvy people,  so one would expect the numbers to be higher than they might in the general population.  So that 64% of respondents use these tools at work or on vacation seems reasonable.  In fact, it surprises me the number isn’t higher.

Tweeting, texting and Facebook?  That’s a lot of tools.  Increasingly people use one or more of those tools for work.  As for using them on vacation, they are called social networking tools, and socially is how most people started using them.  It is their use for business and professional purposes that is new.  So why wouldn’t they be used on vacation.   I like to be unplugged on vacation sometimes, but that’s because I work online.  Many people are thrilled by the possibility of posting their vacation snapshots while on vacation.  And , if family members went off to do different things during the day of a family vacation, it can be awfully handy to text them if you want to change the meeting place for dinner.

It’s the social networking after sex thing that boggles the mind.  Exactly what message does one post after sex?  Does one provide comments or ratings of the experience?  Or maybe the texting is just a substitute for the post-coital cigarette–something to do with the hands?  The group with this high percentage is under age 35.  Maybe some of the respondents are too young to drive, so they are texting someone for a ride?  I wonder what percentage post or text during?

That leaves only the driving to talk about.  Tell me more please.  Where were those numbers highest?  Certain states?  Cities?  Do they drive more at certain times of the day?  Do they use highways or byways more?  Tell me all you can.  ‘Cause I want to do all I can to be OFF THE ROAD whenever and wherever they are!

Survey Results on a Chart

NB: This entry has bee corrected in response to the comment below. (10/13/2009)

It seemed to me that my local NPR station, WBUR in Boston, had been giving undue attention to the findings of a Stanford University study of “Cognitive control in media multitaskers,” recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. I first heard it reported on one of the news programs, Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Then Talk of the Nation did a show on it. Then a nationally syndicated show produced by WBUR, On Point. Counting them up, that’s only three times the story was featured, but it seemed like more, perhaps because I found it so disconcerting.

Anyway, the study found that “heavy multitaskers” have trouble filtering distractions and switching tasks compared with those who do it less. In other words, those who multitask most are the least proficient at it.

As someone who is myself a heavy but not particularly proficient multitasker, I found that surprising, but possible. I had thought it was just me. But the study also found that frequent multitasking affects cognitive abilities across the board, and this I found worrying. Is multitasking making me stupid? In trying to become more efficient, am I not only being less efficient, but also less able to follow an argument and to construct and argument?

At least that might explain some of the postings in this blog when I go back and read them. Blame it on the multitasking.

Here is the abstract of the article by Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony D. Wagner of Stanford.

Chronic media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous, although processing multiple incoming streams of information is considered a challenge for human cognition. A series of experiments addressed whether there are systematic differences in information processing styles between chronically heavy and light media multitaskers. A trait media multitasking index was developed to identify groups of heavy and light media multitaskers. These two groups were then compared along established cognitive control dimensions. Results showed that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory. This led to the surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set. These results demonstrate that media multitasking, a rapidly growing societal trend, is associated with a distinct approach to fundamental information processing.

Putting my personal anxieties aside and assuming the study replicated and the findings supported by other research, these are obviously findings that have enormous implications for educators. Unfortunately his is not the first study to suggest there are such problems with multitasking.

In a 2001 study Joshua Rubinstein, Ph.D., of the Federal Aviation Administration, and David Meyer, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Evans, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan raised questions about the efficiency of multitasking. They used the metaphor of a “mental CEO” to describe brain’s prefrontal cortex and other key neural regions establish priorities among tasks and allocate the mind’s resources to them. They found that this process of allocation of resources reduces efficiency and slows down processes.

Earl Miller, a neuroscientist based at MIT dismisses multitasking as a myth, saying that what we are really doing is task switching. “People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves…The brain is very good at deluding itself.”

Yet there is no question that multitasking is a fact of life, an increasingly unavoidable fact of life. March Prensky argues that the minds of those who are being raised with technology are changing (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do they Really think Differently? pdf file).

Technology has become such a major part of our lives that we sometimes forget how new it is. In 1991, the year that an 18 year-old first year college student was born, Microsoft had just released MS DOS 5.0, the internet was first made available for public use, and the first web browser was introduced. Windows 3.0, the first version of Windows to be widely accepted by the buying public wasn’t introduced until 1992. The participants in the Stanford study were college students. Some say the Digital Native was born after 1980, others say 1990. But if we use the analogy of language acquisition, today’s colleges students became fluent early, but still aren’t native speakers. Between 1990 and 1997, the percentage of households owning computers more than doubled, increasing from 15 percent to 35 percent, and in in 2000 that number was still only 60%.

Moreover, the capacity of computers to run multiple applications at the same time really efficiently is relatively recently. Remember how often Windows 95 crashed? AOL Instant Messenger only came into being in 1997, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005. Text messaging via mobile phones, while possible for quite some time, is a very new phenomenon in the United States, not really taking off until 2004-2005. So perhaps the generation now in college are not yet digital natives. Or maybe they are, but they are the children of immigrants, and thus not quite acculturated.

Not matter what, the findings give me pause. Maybe I need to turn of my IM client and email notifications. It’s a start. I’ll be out of touch for the next hour or so.

YouTube – A very short video about the NHS.

Facebook, for better or worse, is like being at a big party with all your friends, family, acquaintances and co-workers.

There are lots of fun, interesting people you’re happy to talk to when they stroll up. Then there are the other people, the ones who make you cringe when you see them coming. This article is about those people.

via The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers – CNN.com.

This article is brilliant.  So which type do you find the most annoying?  And let’s face it, most of us tend toward one or two of these though of course none of us reading or writing this post reach the point of being annoying, of course.  Still, which do you come closest too?

Here is yet another funny post from the Indecision Forever blog.  But it’s laughter to keep from crying.  Because the statistic below isn’t part of the joke.  It’s real.

39% of voters think government should stay out of Medicare, compared to 46% who disagree. Among Republicans, 62% say the government should stay out of Medicare, compared to only 24% of Democrats and 31% of independents who agree.

Yes, 39% of voters do actually believe government should stay out of a federally funded, federally administered program.  And lest we liberals get smug, it may be more than six out of ten Republicans who believe this, but it’s almost one in four Democrats, too.  That’s no great shakes, either.

If there is one thing these numbers should clearly demonstrate it is that logic left this debate LONG ago.  But before you get to depressed, check out the blog.  At least you’ll get a laugh out of it.

New Poll Shows That People Like Expressing Opinions in Polls | Indecision Forever | Comedy Central.

WARNING!:  Wow! That dog is so smart. So smart he must be on to something. Follow his lead. If some old lady offers you carrots saying they’re from Barack Obama, DON’T eat them! I can’t stress this enough people.  You can’t tell how good the disguise of the lady in this video is, but if she sounds like an old white lady, it’s not Barack Obama offering you treats!  You’ve heard his voice on TV, so pay attention, don’t be fooled.

Turning America socialist apparently wasn’t enough for him — now President Obama is trying to make old people kill themselves, callously deny important medical procedures, funnel tax dollars to abortion clinics and wiggle the government’s way into every doctor’s office in America.

via Obama wants to kill your grandma | Salon News.

Go Obama!  LOL!  My fellow Americans, just make a choice: If you want government in your doctor’s office, vote Democrat.  If you want government in your bedroom, vote Republican.

Who is this man who we have given the keys to the White House, made Leader of the Free World, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and given veto power over Congress?  Did we forget to check his birth certificate?  OMG!  Our President isn’t American!  He’s Hawaiian!

The Born Identity | The Daily Show | Comedy Central.