inkbluesky

Dull jobs really do numb the mind

Boring jobs turn our mind to autopilot, say scientists - and it means we can seriously mess up some simple tasks.

Monotonous duties switch our brain to “rest mode”, whether we like it or not, the researchers report in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

They found mistakes can be predicted up to 30 seconds before we make them, by patterns in our brain activity.

The team hopes to design an early-warning brain monitor for pilots and others in “critical situations”.

The scientists say the device would be particularly suitable for monotonous jobs where focus is hard to maintain - such as passport and immigration control.

Maybe they can put a big hat with rotating light and siren on your head so the whole world can see that you’re bored out of your skull. Once we get over a certain learning curve most of us find our jobs rather predictable. Predictable is boring’s first cousin. There does seem to be a good side to the cycle of learning and the excitement about doing something new followed by settling in. We feel more comfortable less on edge, less like we might screw up. Unfortunately for those outside of the tech sector, most companies still operate much along the very structured lines that corporations have for years thus not allowing for much in the way of employee empowerment and the control over their work that would make it marginally less boring. For all their pep talks and seminars about thinking outside the box, that is where most of corporate America wants to keep things - the moldy old top down power pyramid.

chinese hideaway. note that the occupants are still in touch with the world with multiple large antennas.

Pardon me for gloating a little, Networks continue to ignore NY Times’ military analyst story, but all find time for Hannah Montana

Since The New York Times reported on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on April 20, the three major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — have still not mentioned the report at all, according to a Media Matters for America search* of the Nexis news database. Times reporter David Barstow wrote that “the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform” these military analysts, many of whom have clients with an interest in obtaining Pentagon contracts, “into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.” As Media Matters noted, the three networks also reportedly declined to participate in a segment on the April 24 edition of PBS’ NewsHour regarding the Times story; Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC also refused to appear in the PBS segment.

By contrast, during their April 28 evening newscasts, all three broadcast networks reported on the Vanity Fair photo of Miley Cyrus, star of Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana: ABC devoted about two and a half minutes to that story, while CBS and NBC each devoted about two minutes to it.

By reporting on the analysts the networks would be admitting they participated in deceiving the public. By reporting about M’s Cyrus all they do is push that easily accessible little button that is America’s inner Puritan; which also happens to sell the beer and cars that pay the talking heads multi million dollar salaries.

early 20th century acrobatic act. ‘adaptive logic: A behavior has adaptive logic if it tends to increase the number of offspring that an individual contributes to the next and following generations. If such a behavior is even partly genetically determined, it will tend to become widespread in the population. Then, even if circumstances change such that it no longer provides any survival or reproductive advantage, the behavior will still tend to be exhibited – unless it becomes positively disadvantageous in the new environment.’ which explains a lot about modern culture.

banana wallpaper

Intrigue. Power. Corruption. Death. Sex. The history of oil has nothing on that of the yellow fruit

The mass-produced banana first came to the United States in the 19th century. As the next century rolled on, buccaneering banana men pioneered such innovative business practices as propping up puppet heads of states throughout Latin America, keeping them in power through corporate largesse, and exploiting local workers, when not actually encouraging local governments to enslave or kill them. By building railroads, in exchange for land for plantations, United Fruit tightly entwined itself with the economies of many countries, and came to own huge swaths of Central America. Its reach was so extensive that it became known as “the Octopus.”

I paraphrase , but someone once said that real democracy seemed like a forever unfulfilled promise. The point was that as much as people like Jefferson and Madison had great put down some great principles in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights we have struggled literally from day one to live up to those ideals. Many of those that have twisted and perverted those ideals were corporations like United Fruit/Chiquita. In their guest book were the names of United States senators, scientists, CIA agents and Honduran presidents. All for money, power and in this case so Americans and Europeans could have a nice bowel of perfect yellow bananas on the table.

United Fruit was not to be crossed. In Colombia in 1928, 32,000 banana workers went on strike, demanding such niceties as toilet facilities at plantations. In a massacre later immortalized in literature by Gabriel García Márquez in “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the military killed 1,000 unarmed striking workers and their families in the town square in Cienaga after Sunday church services.

Innocent until proven guilty. If someone declares that there will be no acquittals they don’t buy into that bedrock principle of justice, From Chief Prosecutor To Critic at Guantanamo

Air Force Col. Morris Davis instead took the witness stand to declare under oath that he felt undue pressure to hurry cases along so that the Bush administration could claim before political elections that the system was working.

[  ]…Davis said he wants to wait until the cases — and the military commissions system — have a more solid legal footing. He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

“He said, ‘We can’t have acquittals,’ ” Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. ” ‘We’ve been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.’ “

Legal prosecutions can be tricky, but if you haven’t coerced information from a suspect through torture and the evidence is on your side the odds are in the prosecutor’s favor. The torture and evidence part seems to be a little problem for the Bushies, but never the less there will be “no acquittals”.

beach work. a favorite saying is work smarter not harder. the plan, should circumstances and time permit is to buy the beach cottage. get up, put the clothes in the wash. have a little breakfast. then with ample supplies and wet, but clean clothes head out to the waiting chairs. a brief stop at the clothes line to hang the laundry then enjoy the surf while the clothes dry. that’s working smart. might even work in a blog post at lunch.

This according to both TV and the net is the biggest story of the day, Revealing Photo Threatens a Major Disney Franchise

Beth Kseniak, a spokeswoman for both Vanity Fair magazine and Ms. Leibovitz said, “Miley’s parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley.”

Whatever. It seems Ms. Cyrus feeling the wrath of the Puritan Squad is back tracking and apologizing. I sincerely wish her luck with much ado about not much. I hate having my photo taken, but if Annie Leibovitz was the photographer I’d make an exception. This story on the other hand is getting no coverage on the morning news, Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World

“Food is traveling because transport has become so cheap in a world of globalization,” said Frederic Hague, head of Norway’s environmental group Bellona. “If it was just a matter of processing fish cheaper in China, I’d be happy with it traveling there. The problem is pollution.”

Complicated issue with no pictures of cute young actresses so just skip it. Maybe this John McCain’s Serious Foreign Policy ?

Is there anyone outside of Lieberman and John Bolton who thinks that what we need are more cartoon-like imperial threats to the world about how we’re going to pummel and smash everyone if they don’t step into line? Is that mentality going to reduce complex religious and geostrategic threats or severely worsen them? McCain’s foreign policy approach actually seems to be a less restrained and less complex rendition of Bush’s “Bring-em-on” swagger that has really worked miracles in Iraq. Whatever adjectives might describe McCain’s barren, cliched tough guy decrees, Serious — or “moderate” — isn’t it.

We can’t have CBS, ABC or whoever take a long hard look at the wacky ramblings of some guy that could be the nest president; that wouldn’t attract the stiff necked finger swagging hypocrites that actually watch the commercials and go out and buy a piece of crap Chevy Suburban to adhere their bumper stickers proclaiming how righteous they are. I’m not a pacifist. There are situations that require taking names and kicking ass. Though I have what has become an outmoded idea that when you’re out gunning for the bad guys you don’t kill a lot of innocent people in the process,

Man gets shot that’s got a gun, there’s room for reasonable doubt. Man gets shot that hasn’t got a gun, what would you call it? But, you knew that already otherwise you wouldn’t have set things up the way you did. - Rio Bravo (1959)

The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)

desert waves

Administration Propaganda  Worse Than We Thought

Clarke (Victoria Clarke, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs) and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger, eventually signed up more than 75 retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Times ran Barstow’s story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War.

Barbara Bush, George Sr’s wife once said of the occupation of Iraq, “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” Maybe that was the mentality at work here. Why bother the American public with the truth. They’ll just spoon feed the public some rhetorical Zanex and let them go back to eating their dinner.

red thread

It makes you wonder if Bill O’Reilly is part Japanese,  Nose-picking lawmaker to shout his last good-bye

Taiwan’s cabinet will soon lose one of its more colorful members who was notorious for sleeping in parliament, shouting at legislators, picking his nose in public and shoving a journalist.