A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling

I always experienced this!  I’m glad someone else took notice.

Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention.

Asked to remember names they’d heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn’t. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.

“People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate,” said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. “We might not be aware that we’re doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream.”

Andrade’s findings, published Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, are an interesting wrinkle on cognitive load theory: The mind has a limited amount of attention to give and, once occupied, stops processing other stimuli.

Cognitive load is exploited by magicians, whose verbal and physical flourishes distract from sleight-of-hand. It also explains why driving while talking on a hands-free headset is no safer than driving while holding a phone. And it could be the reason why doodling is so much better than daydreaming.

“It takes a large cognitive load to daydream. That has a big impact on the task you’re meant to be doing,” said Andrade. “Doodling takes only a small cognitive load, but it’s just enough to keep your mental resources focused on the main task.”

Andrade’s team asked 40 people to listen to a recording containing the names of people and places. Afterwards the people wrote down the names they could remember.

While listening, half of the test subjects were also required to shade in shapes on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they remembered one-third more names than test subjects who didn’t doodle while listening.

“The exciting thing is that people actually got better while doing two things at once,” said Andrade. “Doodling is not as bad a thing as we might think.”

Citation: “What does doodling do?” By Jackie Andrade. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Feb. 26, 2009.

Rule by fear or rule by law?

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.”

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of “new programs” require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies,” gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.”

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of what the document vaguely calls a “catastrophic emergency.” Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure “continuity of government.” This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic “war on terror.” Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to “examine and report upon the facts and causes” of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it.

A clue as to where Harman’s commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who “engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights” as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters … the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 “terror suspects” with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law.

Health, Calories, Memory

Having a senior moment? A new study suggests that cutting calories may help.

Cutting down on calories could help women retain their memory, according to a study conducted in Germany.

Older adults who cut down on the amount of calories they consume get a two-for-one special: weight loss and better memory.

Healthy women ranging in age from 50 to 80 who reduced their calorie intake by 30 percent for three months not only lost weight, but their scores on verbal memory tests also shot up by 20 percent, according to a study conducted by Dr. Agnes Floel and her colleagues from the University of Munster in Germany, who published the results in the January issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The results seem pretty dramatic,” said Mark P. Mattson, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in Bethesda, Maryland.

“Even though the number of subjects in the study was not really high, they had really high, statistically significant improvements in their performance on the memory test,” added Mattson, who studies caloric restriction and the brain in his role as chief of the Cellular and Molecular Neurosciences Section at the NIA’s Laboratory of Neurosciences. He was not involved in Floel’s investigation.

The study included 50 women, all of whom were either normal weight or slightly overweight. (The average body mass index was 28, which is about 175 pounds for a woman who is 5’6″.) Twenty were assigned to the calorie-cutting group, 20 upped their intake of unsaturated fatty acids (which some studies suggest may help aging brains), and the remaining 10 stuck with their normal diet.

Unlike the women who cut down on calories, the women who ate more unsaturated fatty acids showed no improvement in their memories, nor did those in the control group.

Why the improvement?

The researchers showed that women who cut calories became more sensitive to the blood sugar– regulating hormone insulin and had a drop in the inflammation-associated molecule C-reactive protein. Both factors have been linked to an improvement in brain function.

The findings add to growing evidence that calorie restriction can benefit health and longevity, but this shouldn’t prompt already skinny seniors to start dieting, said Carol Greenwood, a senior scientist and assistant director of the Kunin-Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit at Baycrest, a Toronto academic medical center focused on aging. Older people who lose too much weight increase their risk of falls and fractures, said Greenwood, who studies diet and the brain but was not involved in the current research.

And eating less isn’t the only way to get this effect, Greenwood said. Exercise appears to exert similar effects on brain function by boosting insulin sensitivity and fighting inflammation.

Participants in the current study who reduced their calorie intake met several times with dietitians for advice and were instructed not to eat less than 1,200 calories. “It’s not really a crash diet,” Floel said.

Experts believe that, as Floel’s study suggests, increased inflammation and a drop in insulin sensitivity (which is known as insulin resistance) may help explain why obesity and type 2 diabetes have been linked to worse mental performance and a greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Meanwhile, studies in animals dating back to the 1980s show caloric restriction can extend lifespan and slow aging. The current findings are “another piece of evidence that what we see in laboratory rodents on caloric restriction translates to humans,” said Richard Weindruch, of University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has studied caloric restriction since 1975 but did not participate in Floel’s study. “I find it somewhat remarkable that such a brief period of [caloric restriction] actually would have these effects.”

Most studies in humans have looked at people who choose to sharply reduce their calorie intake long-term, he noted. This research has found clear signs of reduced cardiovascular disease risk, and perhaps slower aging, in these individuals. But this kind of lifestyle change isn’t easy and is best done with professional help, Weindruch said.

“The whole trick here is to create a state of undernutrition without malnutrition, and it’s not a completely straightforward thing to do,” he said.

Jeffrey Keller, a professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who studies aging, metabolism, and neurodegeneration, agreed that seeing results after such a relatively short period of calorie restriction was surprising. It provides more evidence that what’s going on in the rest of the body, from inflammation to belly fat, can have major effects on the brain, he added. “It may very well be it’s the aging of the body that promotes the aging of the brain.”
Health Library

Researchers who study caloric restriction have two main theories on how it might slow aging. One argument is that eating less slows down metabolism, so that the body produces fewer free radicals, which are byproducts of oxygen metabolism that can harm body tissues. Another is that reducing calorie intake keeps cells under a constant low level of stress, which makes them better able to cope with higher levels of stress when it comes along similar to how the moderate stress induced by exercise can improve people’s health.

Floel said she and her colleagues are now planning larger studies of calorie restriction and mental function and will perform MRI brain scans on participants before and after they reduce their food intake in order to better understand what’s happening in the brain’s gray matter.

In the meantime, the findings offer yet another reason for people to try eating a little less, Floel added. “It’s probably a good idea anyway, and you might also do something for your brain.”

(Source)

What more could the heart of a man desire?

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor – such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of a man desire?”

Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness

Too Fat

We have wrongfully conceived ourselves as bodies possessing souls, whereas just the reverse is true. We are souls empowered to build for ourselves temples—bodies–out of the “dust of the ground.”

Too Fat

There is one lesson that, above all others, I desire to drive home to readers of this book, and that is that the mental, moral and spiritual states are largely controlled by the physical state. To be and remain upon an elevated mental, moral and spiritual plane, and yet be in a depressed physical state requires constant effort. On the other hand, to the physically perfect individual, mental, moral and spiritual attainment is automatic. The physical bankrupt finds it easier to descend mentally, morally and spiritually—it is a struggle not to do so—while the physically perfect person has a fight on his hands to make himself do wrong.

So positive am I that the moral and spiritual states are largely dependent upon the physical state that I am bound to say: those to whom the argument for elevating the moral and spiritual states, through improving the physical state, does not appeal are already far sunk in physical deterioration; and they had better be advised in time to set about putting their physical house in order.

Today I end my support of Israel

I do this with great pain in my heart, but nonetheless with the overwhelming conviction that it is the only right thing to do. I was patient: I tolerated the destruction of the Oslo process by refusing to end or slow down the constant and criminal construction of settlements. I held my nose and stood my ground when Barak killed the final status negotiations at Taba 2001. I even remained loyal after Sharon’s massacres in the West Bank, the brutal Annexation wall, the illegal “selective assassinations” and Olmert’s war crimes in Lebanon.
I had to defend Israel and Israelis with my friends and others who demanded I be consistent with my progressive views and oppose a country that was responsible for horrible crimes against innocent human beings. “Israelis are scared, they are traumatized, you have to understand…”, “Israel is responding to attacks on itself, tell me one other country that wouldn’t respond when attacked…”, I demanded understanding, I pleaded for a fair and comparative analysis.

ENOUGH. I’m done justifying crimes against humanity by a country that claims to be an illuminated western democracy. I’m done defending a country that is unwilling to grant self-determination to a neighboring people because it won’t let go of a few settlements and divide a city. I’m done tolerating the slaughtering of innocent kids, the murderous and barbaric occupation of an impoverished people, the utter disregard for human life.
Fuck them.
If they think their daily peace of mind is worth the lives of hundreds of innocent people, Fuck them.
If they think the best way to go right now would be to vote for Natanyahu (who is so far winning in the polls), Fuck them.
If they won’t bat an eye before keeping millions without electricity or water, before bombing civilian neighborhoods at exactly the time when kids are leaving schools, before breaking every standard of international law or moral decency, Fuck them.
It’s time for every true progressive in this country and around the world to do the only thing that our consciences should allow us to do, the only thing that can keep us consistent with our supposed beliefs that human life is precious and that unnecessary violence is always criminal, barbarous and unacceptable. We must demand that Israel stop violence and immediately put an end to its colonialist military occupation of Palestine.
And until they do so, we must organize and do everything we can to make sure our money is not financing mass murder and oppression.
It is time for the progressive movement to demand immediate Divestment from Israel, just like we divested from other oppressive states like South Africa.
The only reason not to do so is willful hypocrisy.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m done being a hypocrite.
Unnecessary murder of innocents is always wrong.
Selfish and unjustifiable occupation is always wrong.
Inaction in the face of massive suffering and injustice is always wrong.
It is thus our responsibility to make sure Obama and the rest of our leaders understand that this time we will be relentless, this time we mean business and this time we will honor our pledges.

NEVER AGAIN!

DIVEST NOW!

Peace
Salaam
Shalom

Global Interest Rate Cuts

For the first time ever, interest rates were cut globally.

This is the first step in creating a world financial system, which I suspect is coming.

Such a system would be a first step towards global currency, which would lead eventually to global government system.

Good or bad, I suspect we’re close to such things happening.

Subsidized Sterilization?

Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

“We’re on a train headed to the future and there’s a bridge out,” LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. “And nobody wants to talk about it.”

LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.

“What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare,” he said.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University.

He is serving his second term in the Legislature, where he drew attention this year for advocating the controversial legislative pay raise and for trying to abolish the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Commission and its Police Department.

His 81st House District runs from Old Metairie north to Bucktown and west along Lake Pontchartrain to the Suburban Canal. In a somewhat different configuration, it is the same district that sent white supremacist David Duke to the Legislature in 1989.

LaBruzzo described the tube-tying incentive as a brainstorming exercise that has yet to take form as a bill for the Legislature to consider. He said it already has drawn critics who argue the idea is racist, sexist, unethical and immoral. He said more white people are on welfare than black people, so his proposal is not targeting race.

LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he’s a racist,’ ” LaBruzzo said. “The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions.”

LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe.

He acknowledged his idea might be a difficult sell politically.

“I don’t know if it’s a viable option,” LaBruzzo said. “Of course people are going to get excited about it. Maybe we’ll start a debate on it.”

(Source)

I’m not sure how I feel about this.  Seems like it could be a slippery slope towards mandatory sterilzation.

However, it’s also possible that people who would fall for this, might not be people we want reproducing.

Regardless, it’s interesting.

Predictions

I only include such things because I like to record predictions to see if they come true.

The highlights are Massive change in financial structures (ongoing, see next item) then whatever the October 7th events are, then a series of release or emotions events till March 2009. Something with a lot of ‘military’ aspect to it on October 15th, or thereabout. Then one big earthquake, likely Pacific Northwest around December 10th, with another one within days (Dec. 12th in model space).

Then we get rising discontent/talk of rebellion/revolution through the spring, the Summer of Hell in 2009, and strange disappearances – but it ain’t the Rapture – think more like ‘the harvesting’ starts in late summer 2009.