Listen to Yourself

From xkcd.com

 

State Of The Blogosphere: Get To 100K Uniques, Make $75K/year

Technorati, the blog search engine, put out Part I of its sporadic (now-annual?) State of the Blogosphere report this week. This year, it conducted a random survey of 1,079 random bloggers (a statistically significant sample) to paint a more detailed picture of just who exactly is out there blogging. Technorati has indexed a total of 133 million blogs since 2002. In terms of how many are active, 7.5 million blogs have added a new post during the last four months, and 1.5 million have been updated during the last week.

And the average blog that runs ads, according to Technorati, is actually making money:

Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

The $6,000 a year I can believe. The $75,000 figure is harder to swallow, especially with only 100,000 visitors a month. But directionally there is no doubt that blogs are bringing in more cash.

Who are these bloggers? Technorati breaks that down as well. The vast majority of all bloggers (79 percent) write about their personal interests. No surprise there.
But more than half of all bloggers also write about business. While only 12 percent identify themselves as official “corporate bloggers,” a full 46 percent consider themselves “professional bloggers” (meaning that they write about their industries, but not in an official capacity).

Blogs are also mostly a male affair: 57 percent in the U.S. are written by men, 42 percent went to graduate school, and 50 percent earn more than $75,000 a year, and 58 percent are over 35 years old. (Someone call the diversity police).

More than half have a separate full time job. More than half of survey respondents have been blogging for more than two years.Geographically, North America dominates, with 48 percent of respondents living here. San Francisco and the Bay Area has the most bloggers in the U.S., with New York City, Chicago, and LA also having a strong showing. Although, as the map below shows, the geographic distribution is actually pretty wide.

And blogs continue to be read: blogs in the aggregate now attract 77.7 million unique U.S. visitors per month according to Comscore, nearly double the number of people who visit Facebook.

This is just the first day of the report, so get ready for a lot of data over the next four days. Read full By Erick Schonfeld on Technorati

Stanford offers free CS, robotics courses

Stanford University has launched a series of 10 free, online computer science (CS) and electrical engineering courses. The courses span an introduction to computer science and an introduction to artificial intelligence and robotics, among other topics.

The free courses are being offered “to students and educators around the world” under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE). Each course comprises downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts.

The courses are nearly identical to what’s offered to enrolled Stanford students, according to the University. However, those taking courses through SEE are not eligible to receive Stanford credit for them.

Course participants do not register, and have no direct contact with Stanford instructors or professors. They do, however, have the ability to communicate online with other SEE students. A detailed SEE FAQ is available here.

The University says SEE’s initial courses include “one of Stanford’s most popular engineering sequences: the three-course Introduction to Computer Science taken by the majority of Stanford undergraduates, and seven more advanced courses in artificial intelligence and electrical engineering.”

Specifically, SEE’s first 10 courses are…

• Introduction to Computer Science:
  • Programming Methodology — CS106A
  • Programming Abstractions — CS106B
  • Programming Paradigms — CS107
• Artificial Intelligence:
  • Introduction to Robotics — CS223A
  • Natural Language Processing — CS224N
  • Machine Learning — CS229
• Linear Systems and Optimization:
  • The Fourier Transform and its Applications — EE261
  • Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems — EE263
  • Convex Optimization I — EE364A
  • Convex Optimization II — EE364B

Source: deviceguru.com

Will Collider Startup Turn Earth Into a Black Hole?

Will particle physics research lead to humankind's destruction? "That question has been raised by the impending startup of the Large Hadron Collider. It starts smashing protons together this summer at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, outside Geneva, in hopes of grabbing a piece of the primordial fire, forces and particles that may have existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Critics have contended that the machine could produce a black hole that could eat the Earth or something equally catastrophic. To most physicists, this fear is more science fiction than science fact. At a recent open house weekend, 73,000 visitors, without pitchforks or torches, toured the collider without incident." Dennis Overbye's essay appears in the New York Times April 15, 2008.

 

GOD has given society the conscience to "create and destroy" all the things of this earth … what we do with that will be the determination of our judgment. 
 
It is always easier to destroy than create... 

When was your vote counted.

The Dumbing Down Of America

The Chronicle Of Higher Education has a commentary on the sorry state of ignorance that exists in American Universities, noting "Today's college students have tuned out the world, and it's partly our fault". One more example of what Hunter S Thompson called "The Dumbing Down Of America" - So Much for the Information Age. In recent years I have administered a dumbed-down quiz on current events and history early in each semester to get a sense of what my students know and don't know. Initially I worried that its simplicity would insult them, but my fears were unfounded. The results have been, well, horrifying.

Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries — China, Cuba, India, and Japan — not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses — half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn't pretty. Read more here by By Big Gav peakenergy

Techno Crutches make you dumber than a POTHEAD

. . . A study carried out at the British Institute of Psychiatry . . found that excessive use of technology reduced workers' intelligence and that those distracted by incoming e-mail and phone calls saw a ten-point fall in their IQ, over twice the impact of smoking or marijuana use. . .

Programmers [for example ] know that task switches take a long time. It is easier to keep going once you're at full steam . . . than to stop work and finish later. That last hour might take three hours, since you have to retrieve all of the background info from long-term memory and bring it back to the front of your mind.

Studies report that the American worker wastes 2.1 hours per day due to multitasking. When distracted while performing a task, it takes a certain amount of time to begin the new task, complete the new task and get back on track with the original task. Microsoft employees had their computers log their work for a period and found that simply dealing with an e-mail message took an average of 15 minutes and often lead to subsequent distractions, which lead to the employee taking up to an hour to get back to their original task.

The bottom line is that multitasking has been proven to make us less effective, not more. Although our digital assistants can be time savers, they can also be time wasters, if we allow them to break our focus. So for all of you who trouble getting things done . . . turn off your chat, RSS feeds, Google Desktop, Outlook alerts and whatever else keeps distracting you, and see what it would it would be like to simply focus on [ the task at hand ].

The Great Firewall of China

China's Great Firewall is crude, slapdash, and surprisingly easy to breach. Here's why it's so effective anyway.

Illustration by John Ritter
Interview: "Penetrating the Great Firewall"
James Fallows explains how he was able to probe the taboo subject of Chinese Internet censorship.

Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese government's attempt to rein in the Internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted. When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss it—at least with me—they tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the government's approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control people's daily lives.

Disappointingly, "Great Firewall" is not really the right term for the Chinese government's overall control strategy. China has indeed erected a firewall—a barrier to keep its Internet users from dealing easily with the outside world—but that is only one part of a larger, complex structure of monitoring and censorship. The official name for the entire approach, which is ostensibly a way to keep hackers and other rogue elements from harming Chinese Internet users, is the "Golden Shield Project." Since that term is too creepy to bear repeating, I'll use "the control system" for the overall strategy, which includes the "Great Firewall of China," or GFW, as the means of screening contact with other countries.

Breaking it:

A VPN, or virtual private network, is a faster, fancier, and more elegant way to achieve the same result. Essentially a VPN creates your own private, encrypted channel that runs alongside the normal Internet. From within China, a VPN connects you with an Internet server somewhere else. You pass your browsing and downloading requests to that American or Finnish or Japanese server, and it finds and sends back what you're looking for. The GFW doesn't stop you, because it can't read the encrypted messages you're sending. Every foreign business operating in China uses such a network. VPNs are freely advertised in China, so individuals can sign up, too. I use one that costs $40 per year. (An expat in China thinks: that's a little over a dime a day. A Chinese factory worker thinks: it's a week's take-home pay. Even for a young academic, it's a couple days' work.)

As a technical matter, China could crack down on the proxies and VPNs whenever it pleased. Today the policy is: if a message comes through that the surveillance system cannot read because it's encrypted, let's wave it on through! Obviously the system's behavior could be reversed. But everyone I spoke with said that China could simply not afford to crack down that way. "Every bank, every foreign manufacturing company, every retailer, every software vendor needs VPNs to exist," a Chinese professor told me. "They would have to shut down the next day if asked to send their commercial information through the regular Chinese Internet and the Great Firewall." Closing down the free, easy-to-use proxy servers would create a milder version of the same problem. Encrypted e-mail, too, passes through the GFW without scrutiny, and users of many Web-based mail systems can establish a secure session simply by typing "https:" rather than the usual "http:" in a site's address—for instance, https://mail.yahoo.com. To keep China in business, then, the government has to allow some exceptions to its control efforts—even knowing that many Chinese citizens will exploit the resulting loopholes.

Because the Chinese government can't plug every gap in the Great Firewall, many American observers have concluded that its larger efforts to control electronic discussion, and the democratization and grass-roots organizing it might nurture, are ultimately doomed. A recent item on an influential American tech Web site had the headline "Chinese National Firewall Isn't All That Effective." In October, Wired ran a story under the headline "The Great Firewall: China's Misguided—and Futile—Attempt to Control What Happens Online."

Let's not stop to discuss why the vision of democracy-through-communications-technology is so convincing to so many Americans. (Samizdat, fax machines, and the Voice of America eventually helped bring down the Soviet system. Therefore proxy servers and online chat rooms must erode the power of the Chinese state. Right?) Instead, let me emphasize how unconvincing this vision is to most people who deal with China's system of extensive, if imperfect, Internet controls.

Think again of the real importance of the Great Firewall. Does the Chinese government really care if a citizen can look up the Tiananmen Square entry on Wikipedia? Of course not. Anyone who wants that information will get it—by using a proxy server or VPN, by e-mailing to a friend overseas, even by looking at the surprisingly broad array of foreign magazines that arrive, uncensored, in Chinese public libraries.

What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won't bother. Most Chinese people, like most Americans, are interested mainly in their own country. All around them is more information about China and things Chinese than they could possibly take in. The newsstands are bulging with papers and countless glossy magazines. The bookstores are big, well stocked, and full of patrons, and so are the public libraries. Video stores, with pirated versions of anything. Lots of TV channels. And of course the Internet, where sites in Chinese and about China constantly proliferate. When this much is available inside the Great Firewall, why go to the expense and bother, or incur the possible risk, of trying to look outside?

Read more from theatlantic.com

If Darwin and Einstein Had A Web Browser, they would have never achieved there goals...

How can today's wired, multitasking scientists ever compete with the great scientists of the past? One feature of Darwin's work as a scientist was that it proceeded slowly, very, very slowly. He wrote massive groundbreaking books, compiled huge amounts of data on orchids, barnacles, and Galapagos animals, but all over a long period of time. Scientists in Darwin's day had hours to kill on long voyages, took long walks out in the field, and waited while their scientific correspondence leisurely wended its way across oceans or continents.

Even in the first half of the 20th century, great scientists are famous for what they accomplished on long walks, hiking trips, and train rides. Niels Bohr would walk for hours around Copenhagen and come up with groundbreaking ideas, while Werner Heisenberg spent weeks every year hiking in the mountains. Even Richard Feynman, working in our more modern (but still pre-internet) era, insisted on long blocks of time to concentrate; he likened his thought process to building a house of cards, easily toppled by distraction and difficult to put back together.

Does that mean the kind of science we do in our overscheduled, multitasking world will never be the same as it was in the past? Certainly in one sense it won't - earlier generations of scientists had one distinct advantage we don't have today: Servants.

What kind of research is getting done in this kind of world? Surely some really, really great stuff; OK I agree that more good science is being published than ever before. But much of it also follows two trends: big-team science, solving big problems by brute force; and detail-filling science, not especially innovative, but usually useful. Where does this leave the kinds of deep breakthroughs, that in the past have always arisen in the minds of very focused individuals? A new, conceptually difficult and immature field like systems biology, desperately in need of some really good, new ideas, seems to be suffering from this scientific climate.

Read more from  if_darwin_had_a_web_browser_he_would_never_have_written_the_origin

The Dumbing of America

The zombie hordes are outside my window, ho hum, maybe I'll write a piece for the Washington Post.

Via: Washington Post:

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

… source cryptogon

Online Parent-Child Gap Widens

...there is an enormous gap between what parents think their children are doing online and what is really happening. 'The data tell us that parents don't know what their kids are doing,' says Lemish. The study found that 30% of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents, that 73% of the children reported giving out personal information online while the parents of the same children believed that only 4% of their children did so, and that 36% of the children admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online while fewer than 9% of the parents knew that their children had been engaging in such risky behavior. Lemish advises that parents should give their children the tools to be literate Internet users and most importantly, to talk to their children. 'The child needs similar tools that teach them to be [wary] of dangers in the park, the mall or wherever. The same rules in the real world apply online as well.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista

Slashdot...being so frustrated with gaming on Windows Vista that he tried comparing gaming on Vista to that on Linux using Wine, with surprising results. "This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't have a huge collection of games to try out, but even still with just a few hours of frustrating work, I have been able to show that not only is Linux a reasonable alternative to Vista for gaming (XP is still king though), but also that Linux handles application failures more gracefully than Vista. Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux."

Multitasking Makes You Stupid, Slow and ADHD

The Atlantic: Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy.

 

"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... 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."

 

Our freedom to stay busy at all hours, at the task—and then the many tasks, and ultimately the multitask—of trying to be free.

 

VIA slashdot.org

Why The Web Tells Us What We Already Know

The Internet is not the font of all knowledge, despite the plethora of information available at your fingertips.

 

"Even if people read the right material, they are stubborn to changing their views," said one of the authors, UNSW Professor Enrico Coiera. "This means that providing people with the right information on its own may not be enough."

 

"Our research shows that, even if search engines do find the 'right' information, people may still draw the wrong conclusions -- in other words, their conclusions are biased."

 

Read full VIA sciencedaily

'dumbing down programs, hoping to make them more accessible and popular.

"A prior article on the damage Java does to CS education was discussed here recently. There was substantial feedback and the mailbox of one of the authors, Prof Dewar, also has been filled with mainly positive responses. In this follow-up to the article, Prof. Dewer clarifies his position on Java. In his view the core of the problem is universities 'dumbing down programs, hoping to make them more accessible and popular. Aspects of curriculum that are too demanding, or perceived as tedious, are downplayed in favor of simplified material that attracts a larger enrollment.'"  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"most people" they usually mean "most of the two dozen sophomores who filled out a questionnaire for beer money.

Many of these moralizations, like the assault on smoking, may be understood as practical tactics to reduce some recently identified harm. But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the "moral" setting isn't just a matter of how much harm it does. We don't show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles. Read more of the "The Moral Instinct"  From NYTimes

"Enjoy the war. Peace is going to be terrible."

The 700 lb gorilla our 2008 presidential candidates are "tip toeing around"

 

RE: Current Credit Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'

 

A tidbit from article:

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS, HSBC and others have stepped forward to reveal their losses. At some point, enough of the dirty linen will be on the line to let markets discern the shape of the debacle. We are not there yet. Goldman Sachs caused shock last month when it predicted that total crunch losses would reach $500bn, leading to a $2 trillion contraction in lending as bank multiples kick into reverse.

"Our counterparties are telling us that losses may reach $700bn," says Rob McAdie, head of credit at Barclays Capital.

 

When we fall, we all fall down alone...

'don't put this in writing but ... ' Deleteing inappropriate e-mail can establish motive

Ever send an e-mail on your corporate account that you regret sending?

Ever think that deleting it from your local folder or from the server will save you from Legal's wrath?

 

Don't.

 

Several software packages that can detect several layers of deletion, which is worse than you might think. Let's say I send an e-mail to Char saying "You're dumb and no one likes you." Then I write another e-mail saying "You smell funny," but don't actually send it; it just stays on my computer in the draft folder. Then I delete it. Well, Johnny Law will see that I wrote it, then deleted it. They'll see my thought process, then throw my in prison for harassing Peter.

 

E-mails, text messages, BlackBerry communications all are potential time bombs if not worded thoughtfully and with discipline. "It just creates the potential for a permanent record for all this type of stuff," Clarke said. "People don't realize that to some degree, if it's in an e-mail, it's analogous to etching it in stone."

 

"My biggest fear with e-mails is not that it can be used against you in some way, but that the assumption is it's telling the whole story, and it's not," said Meece. "It may be the truth but not the whole truth, and there may be some silly stuff in there that's not 'nothing but the truth.'"

 

And above all, said Clarke, never say anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't want to see displayed on a giant screen in a court room in front of a judge and jury even years from now. Because that is exactly where it might end up.

 

Read more from this article: GCs to Employees: Think Before You Send [Law.com via crunchgear.com]

 

 

Buying "another" guilt offset will not make you "happy" with yourself...

FROM NATIONAL PRESS

Happiness Comes Cheap -- Even For Millionaires
In a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Dr Richard Tunney of the University's School of Psychology found that it's the simple things in life that impact most positively on our sense of well being.

 

"It appears that spending time relaxing is the secret to a happy life. Cost-free pleasures are the ones that make the difference — even when you can afford anything that you want."

 

Dr Tunney said: "Modern-day pressures take their toll on everyday happiness. As a result we try to make ourselves feel better and happier through personal rewards and treats. We've all heard the saying 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good', and treating yourself is the ideal way to keep spirits lifted when you're down in the dumps.

 

The research found that happy people — whether lottery jackpot winners or not — liked long baths, going swimming, playing games and enjoying their hobby.
Those who described themselves as less happy didn't choose the cost-free indulgences.

"... there are small lessons we can learn from society's happiest people to help improve our quality of life," Dr Tunney added.

 

Read full via sciencedaily.com

 

 

---

HAASE: My suggestion for the holidays, enjoy time and cost-free indulgences life offers all.

Cheap electronics, hybrids and meals out are not going to make you happy... "buying + consuming less = more happiness"

 

And if you are lucky enough to have quality time, love and health in your life... rejouce!

QWERTY is slow, gives you RSI!

Dvorak convert and he tried to bring me over to the side of sweet reason more than once, without success, I'm afraid. Maybe it's time to try again. Link (VIA Boing2)

GOOGLER AS PATIENT

THE GOOGLER AS PATIENT
TIME - Every doctor knows patients like this. They're called "brainsuckers." By the time they come in, they've visited many other docs already — somehow unable to stick with any of them. They have many complaints, which rarely translate to hard findings on any objective tests. They talk a lot. I often wonder, while waiting for them to pause, if there are patients like this in poor, war-torn countries where the need for doctors is more dire. . .

Susan had neither the trust of a nurse nor the teachability of an engineer. She would ignore no theory of any culture or any quack, regarding her very common brand of knee pain. On and on she went as I retreated further within. I marveled, sitting there silenced by her diatribe. Hers was such a fully orbed and vigorous self-concern that it possessed virtue in its own right. Her complete and utter selfishness was nearly a thing of beauty. . .

I knew Susan was a Googler — queen, perhaps, of all Googlers. But I couldn't dance with this one. I couldn't even get a word in edgewise.

"The web is better when it's social." - Google (who needs information ;-)

 

Your Iphone DOES NOT affect the quality of your image.

"Your equipment DOES NOT affect the quality of your image. The less time and effort you spend worrying about your equipment the more time and effort you can spend creating great images. The right equipment just makes it easier, faster or more convenient for you to get the results you need." Ken Rockwell

US Consumers Clueless About Online Tracking

"A study on consumer perceptions about online privacy, undertaken by the Samuelson Clinic at the University of California and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that the average American consumer is largely unaware that every move they make online can be, and often is, tracked by online marketers and advertising networks. Those surveyed showed little knowledge on the extent to which online tracking is happening or how the information obtained can be used. More than half of those surveyed — about 55 percent — falsely assumed that a company's privacy polices prohibited it from sharing their addresses and purchases with affiliated companies. Nearly four out of 10 online shoppers falsely believed that a company's privacy policy prohibits it from using information to analyze an individuals' activities online. And a similar number assumed that an online privacy policy meant that a company they're doing business with wouldn't collect data on their online activities and combine it with other information to create a behavioral profile."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Parkinson's Law - Why people work till 5.

Just because you push all the work until the end of the day and that spills until the end of the week.... does not mean that the guys who start at 4 a.m. need to stay and wipe your nose or clean up your mistakes.

 

"work will fill the time available for its completion."

The Greening of the CIO

The notion of a corporate chief information officer is fairly new -- less than thirty years old -- but the CIO's role has grown in lockstep with the strategic importance of information and knowledge management inside companies. Their ability to think strategically about information technology can help a company innovate, grow markets, streamline operations, cut costs, and generally improve competitiveness.

Now, the CIO is poised to help companies be greener, too.

The energy use of computers and such is just the beginning. It seems there are other potentially powerful ways in which chief information officers can play a role in the greening of companies

I'm guessing that very few companies are thinking of their CIOs as strategic players on the green scene -- that most companies assume, as I did, that aside from the energy consumption of IT equipment, there aren't many other CIO linkages with their company's environmental performance. That's simply wrong -- and a lost opportunity. As environmental challenges and opportunities continue to spread across company functions -- well beyond traditional environmental departments to include every nook and cranny of business operations -- the information needs and capabilities will loom large. Along the way, CIOs will stand to become key players in the growing world of green business.

And maybe make their companies' sales team a little happier along the way.

Read more By joelmakower

Zombies live and 78% of them report having a social networking profile

"It won't make you dinner or rub your feet, but nearly one in four Americans say that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time, according to a new poll released today by 463 Communications and Zogby International. The poll examined views of what role the Internet plays in people's lives and whether government should play a greater role in regulating it. The online survey was conducted Oct. 4-8, 2007, included 9,743 adult respondents nationwide, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.0 percentage point. From the results blog post: 'More than half of Americans believe that Internet content such as video should be controlled in some way by the government. Only 33% of 18 to 24 year-olds supported government stepping in on content, while 72% of those over 70 years of age support government regulation and ratings. More than one in four Americans has a social networking profile such as MySpace or Facebook. Among 18-24 year-olds, it's almost mandatory - 78% of them report having a social networking profile. Americans may love the Internet, but most are not prepared to implant it into their brain, even if it was safe. Only 11% of respondents said they be willing to safely implant a device that enabled them to use their mind to access the Internet.'"

The 40:60 Rule ;-)

Is creativecommunication.com interested in Dave Wacker?

According to a recent google cached search... they are.

 

A Referrer Search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dave+wacker&btnG=Google+Search

 

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007  (11:38:57)

 

From: 206.176.211.29  (Owned by Creative Communication & Design)

Using Client:Mac OS X  / Safari 4.19

 

When I noticed this floating in the "invisible web".... I wondered.

What's the connection? and why are they using Safari?

Creative Communication & Design of Wausau, WI is a solid NET company that has been around for nearly a decade.

I think Dave would do well working with them.

 

 

Good luck gentlemen.

Lesson: use www.mozilla.org and proxy browser with firewall.

Three Degrees Of IT's Environmental Impact

Businesses need to focus less on how IT contributes to their environmental impact and more on how IT can help lessen the environmental impact of business operations and the supply chain or that of enterprise products and services, according to Gartner Inc.

Analysts warned that although making IT more green must remain a concern, there are areas where deploying more IT can significantly contribute to making an organization more environmentally sustainable.

Chief information officers need to be aware of what constitutes the environmental impact of the whole organization and to what extent IT can be a liability or an asset in this respect. In order to do so they should consider the three degrees of IT's environmental impact.

First Degree Impact - Gartner defines this as the impact of IT itself which includes electronic waste and asset disposition; consumption of non-renewable resources such as energy in the data centre for desktop computers, printers and networking gear; the energy embodied in the full life cycle of each asset; and user behavior.

Second Degree Impact - This is the impact of IT on business operations and the supply chain, regardless of whether the end result is a product, service or combination of the two. This includes the environmental effects of material and energy consumption; emissions or waste from manufacturing and all operational processes; paper consumption for
administrative purposes; lighting, heating, and cooling for buildings; workforce commuting and mobility; vehicle fleets; supply chain impact; waste disposal and so forth. The energy component of this becomes part of the 'embodied energy' in a product or service - that is the total energy used in its manufacture and distribution.

Third Degree Impact - This is the environmental impact in the 'in use' phase or delivery phase of the enterprise's products and services - that is, the direct impacts of procurement and use of products and services.

Different industries will experience the degrees of impact in different ways and this will impact how an organization defines the environmental value of IT. For a car manufacturer, the energy that goes into assembling cars, manufacturing components by its supply chain and having them shipped, performing R&D and testing is all part of the second degree of impact. The fuel used for the cars and their carbon dioxide emissions are part of the third degree of impact and the IT that runs the factory, as well as all other processes constitutes the first degree of impact.

MAC - PC Quote of the week

"This is why I think my next machine is going to be a mac. I'm just tired of having to do all this stuff for myself all the time. "

Learn to use your computer and you won't have to get a Fisher-Price equivalent to do magical stuff.

 

The key to staying productive

Efficiently manage your energy, not your time.... By removing distractions and focusing on our physical well-being, we'd get a lot more work done and we'd feel better about it too.

 

Ironic that I learn this while I should be doing some work ;-)

IT directors losing influence

Fears that IT is no longer being taken seriously are spawning high levels of churn among chief information officers. A survey of over 650 UK CIOs has shown a 15 per cent drop in the number who believe that their boards see IT as a key strategic function, and 58 per cent are planning to move jobs in the next two years. John Whiting, managing director of IT recruitment consultant firm Harvey Nash, said: "It is a concern that the strategic influence of CIOs has eroded in recent years, but even more worrying is the restlessness this creates in the sector. "The most effective and satisfied CIOs are those who are embraced by main boards, and in environments which fully comprehend the critical influence of IT on a company's success. "In return, senior IT professionals clearly have to continue to prove that their contribution is intrinsic to success and growth." Fewer than half of chief financial officers see the CIO role as more than a support function and not worthy of a seat on the board. Over a quarter of the CIOs surveyed would leave to find a role with more involvement in the strategic side of the business, and 27 per cent are actively looking for such a job.   > Read the full article

Anonymous web service that provides you with a temporary email address

GuerrillaMail is an anonymous web service that provides you with a temporary email address—perfect for web sites that you don't want to communicate with you but require email registration. Generate an email address and reload the home page to view any incoming messages. The 15-minute timer displays the amount of time you have remaining until your email address expires, but you can extend your time if necessary.  Whatever service you choose, temporary email addresses can really keep your regular inbox spam-free. Read more at GuerrillaMail

How to downgrade Vista Business/Ultimate to XP Pro? Follow the step by step guide below.

1. Install the Machine with XP PRO Media and get any valid XP Product Key.

2. After finishing the installation, there will be 2 options for you to pick for the Windows Activation. Activate online or activate through Phone Call. Pick activate through Phone Call.

3. The system will show a series of Installation ID for activation.

4. Send an email to SEAPART@microsoft.com, and include all the information below: 1. XP PRO Product Key and COA installed to the machine 2. Vista Business/Ultimate Product Key and COA if possible 3. XP Installation ID that shown in the system 4. Customer information

5. Microsoft will verify the information and respond within 24 hours. (Common case is about 5-6 hours) 6. You will received an email from SEAPA, with the activation key. Key in the activation key.

IT'S THE PARENTS, NOT THEIR CHILDREN, WHO ARE OUT OF CONTROL

MIKE MALES IN NY TIMES - A spate of news reports have breathlessly announced that science can explain why adults have such trouble dealing with teenagers: adolescents possess "immature," "undeveloped" brains that drive them to risky, obnoxious, parent-vexing behaviors. The latest example is a study out of Temple University that found that the "temporal gap between puberty, which impels adolescents toward thrill seeking, and the slow maturation of the cognitive-control system, which regulates these impulses, makes adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability for risky behavior."

We know the rest of the script: Commentators brand teenagers as stupid, crazy, reckless, immature, irrational and even alien, then advocate tough curbs on youthful freedoms. . .

Why do many pundits and policy makers rush to denigrate adolescents as brainless? One troubling possibility: youths are being maligned to draw attention from the reality that it's actually middle-aged adults - the parents -whose behavior has worsened.

Our most reliable measures show Americans ages 35 to 54 are suffering ballooning crises:

- 18,249 deaths from overdoses of illicit drugs in 2004, up 550 percent per capita since 1975, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

- 46,925 fatal accidents and suicides in 2004, leaving today's middle-agers 30 percent more at risk for such deaths than people aged 15 to 19, according to the national center.

- More than four million arrests in 2005, including one million for violent crimes, 500,000 for drugs and 650,000 for drinking-related offenses, according to the F.B.I. All told, this represented a 200 percent leap per capita in major index felonies since 1975.

- 630,000 middle-agers in prison in 2005, up 600 percent since 1977, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

- 21 million binge drinkers (those downing five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month), double the number among teenagers and college students combined, according to the government's National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health.

- 370,000 people treated in hospital emergency rooms for abusing illegal drugs in 2005, with overdose rates for heroin, cocaine, pharmaceuticals and drugs mixed with alcohol far higher than among teenagers.

- More than half of all new H.I.V./AIDS diagnoses in 2005 were given to middle-aged Americans, up from less than one-third a decade ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control. . .

It's true that 30 years ago, the riskiest age group for violent death was 15 to 24. But those same boomers continue to suffer high rates of addiction and other ills throughout middle age, while later generations of teenagers are better behaved. Today, the age group most at risk for violent death is 40 to 49, including illegal-drug death rates five times higher than for teenagers.

Social networks... more Harm or hurtful than helpful?

What is your take on social counter cultures?

The Cult of Us - What MySpace living is doing to our minds (from http://www.newscientisttech.com)

For millions of people, especially among the under-25s, online culture is becoming the only culture that matters. Take the plunge, and the world becomes one massive network in which users band together to share just about everything. Chatrooms and newsgroups have evolved into social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook. Whatever your interest, from biology to extreme sports, there's a website where you can share your thoughts with the like-minded.

But what is the culture really about? Where will it end up? Too early to say, perhaps,

I'll have to ask my friends – Instant messaging, Wi-Fi and cellphones allow us to be constantly plugged into our social networks. Sociologist Sherry Turkle worries this is transforming human psychology

The end of privacy? – You wouldn't tell a stranger on the bus about your sexual habits, so why do people reveal this stuff on websites available to everyone? Will their openness return to haunt them?

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google – A short story by Bruce Sterling

The internet could be so much better – Social networking websites like MySpace or YouTube owe everything to the genius of Ted Nelson, who invented hypertext in the 1960s

Chris (WI)  comments:

Social update: While I think the web is a great place for media, data & connecting... it is by design a "anit-social" network. Only on the web will someone have a two hour talk on myspace to a "fictional" person... these social networks will be the erosion of our youth communication & social skills.   Furthermore the web has "dissolved" the need for general knowledge... if someone is not sure or doesn't know... they "google" it with no learning or cognitive thought involved. In the 90's most if the net was "solid" information... now social networks & (unqualified) mass media have fluffed and dumbdown the web to the point of less than 5% is new or relevant information.    I often get "cut n paste" ideas, answers, resume, replies and comments with no thought or creative conscience involved.   As you do in the "online game arena", I meet real people with real names on the science networks, that makes it still a good place to connect with people in a semi social way.    While I grew up on the internet & TV... but, was raised to turn them off and learn. Computers are tools created to enrich life not erode it.

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Chris (ATL)  comments:

Personally, I think that social networks are helpful.  But, there should be limits.  I have joined several groups both for business and pleasure, and they are really only worth what you are willing to put into them.  Age is a factor that scares me about things like MySpace where kids of any age can interact with anyone.  I have a son... , so the internet makes me nervous.  Just knowing that he could possibly hop onto one of the sites while I have my back turned is scary.  One of my co-workers has 2 teenage daughters, and she got a program that records EVERYTHING that happens on her daughter's computers.  She can then see what is happening and talk to her kids.  I think that any parent out there that doesn't have such an animal is just asking for trouble.

 

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Be the part of something bigger than ego's or economics.

"Tap The Glass" The real deal from industry leading scientists & professionals.

 

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."   Martin Luther King Jr.

 

 

Yahoo! HackDay

AMERICA IS THE 'NO VACATION NATION'

REUTERS - As Europe's workers take a few weeks of holiday this summer, their American colleagues will be lucky to get a few days off work, says a report published by the European Trade Union Institute. Finland, followed by France, offers working people the most statutory vacation, at more than six weeks per year, the report, an international snapshot of how much paid leave people get by law and in practice in 21 countries, says. The United States is the only country where employees have no statutory leave, and they get about half as much time off in reality as Europeans get, according to the report, compiled by the Washington-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. "The United States is in a class of its own," the report says. "It is the no-vacation nation."

"In other words, they combined a lousy performance with a high sense of self-esteem,"

A quarter of a century later, a comprehensive new study released last February from San Diego State University maintains that too much self-regard has resulted in college campuses full of narcissists. In 2006, researchers said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory evaluation, 30 percent more than when the test was first administered in 1982.

 

...a yawning gap in self-perception between East and West. Asian students outperformed their American counterparts, but when they were asked to evaluate their performances, American students evaluated themselves significantly higher than those from Asia. What's Happening in the States", in an essay called "The Self Esteem Fraud."

 

Since the 80s, self-esteem has become a movement widely practiced in public schools, based on the belief that academic achievements come with higher self-confidence. Shokraii disputes that self-esteem is necessary for academic success. "For all of its current popularity, however, self-esteem theory threatens to deny children the tools they will need in order to experience true success in school and as adults," writes Shokraii.

Why Your Top Performaning Employees Quit

It's like clockwork. Every year a portion of our top 20% of the employees from a performance standpoint decides it's time to move on.

 

You and your co-workers know you would never fire them but here is why you could lose them...

 

It's not that the remaining 80% is unimportant, however, from a productivity, growth, and brainpower perspective, the top 20% of any group is critical. Moreover, these are the employees that are very difficult to replace.

 

Reasons in order...

 

#1 Money: This one was obvious

 

Roughly 46% of the employees that left did so because of money concerns. To be honest, I thought this would be a much higher percentage. I think the most alarming stat to me here is that only 9%  had maxed out their pay potential.

 

Just because a engineer was hired 3 years ago at $70K and currently makes $77K does not mean that is the going rate simply because you built the comp plan that way. If your HR group is not benchmarking what these positions are really making in the world, you better.

 

#2 Unchallenged: At what point does workplace monotony kill someone's drive?
      The Stats: 23% showed this was their #1 reason for leaving.

 

One of the forms was completed by an employee that had the exact same job function for 3 years. He is a great example of this point. This employee was in the 20% tier because he had mastered his position and was viewed by many as someone literally doing the work of 2 people. His performance reviews were flawless. BUT - and here is the killer, he didn't feel that way. He thrived on pressure and having a huge workload was natural to him. Although his manager didn't see it, this guy was bored out of his skull and wanted more. Year after year he exceeded every expectation on his review and he was compensated for it but that was it. In this case, it wasn't a matter of compensation, it was strictly responsibility.

 

#3 Too Challenged: Toss 'em in and see if they swim.
      The Stats: 21% showed this was their #1 reason for leaving.

 

Remember we are only talking about the 20% tier so the people that listed this reason, are not the lazy people of the bunch. They are the ones fed up with bureaucracy, hiring freezes, lack of cooperation, undefined goals, and poor technology. You cannot ask someone to complete 20 tasks and then give them inferior tools and personnel. A lot of employees will struggle through these problems because of their dedication to the company, however, at some point, the fight is no longer sustainable. The employee will either leave, OR , become so unmotivated that they lose their star status and become a normal employee and thus under perform.

 

#4 Dead Company: AKA Death by Boredom
      The Stats: 38 records (21%) showed this was their #1 reason for leaving

 

If the leadership team of your company is constantly drab regardless of the company's growth or the goals achieved, you are in trouble. All employees want money and to be challenged but they don't want to have to self-motivate 100% of the time. For example, I worked for a small company that hadn't created a new product in 10 years. Nothing ever changed and to make matters worse, the executives were all stiffs.

 

Read full list from the dumblittleman

Why Top Employees Quit

In a large company this is a problem that we have with our IT groups in particular. I reached out a to a few peers with other companies (one is an IT exec and one is actually a Group President) and as an exercise, we took a bunch of historical data and started identifying the factors that led to the annual exodus. We focused only the top 20% of the employees from a performance standpoint. It's not that the remaining 80% is unimportant, however, from a productivity, growth, and brainpower perspective, the top 20% of any group is critical. Moreover, these are the employees that are very difficult to replace.
To do this, we reviewed notes from exit interviews, cross referenced annual reviews and ultimately came up with 178 voluntary terminations from people that would have been considered in the top 20%.

To try and keep focused on macro issues, we consolidated the responses and placed them into categories:

• Money
• Unchallenged
• Too Challenged
• Dead Company
• Watch your Levels (and the BS)

Here is the breakdown of the categories. I know someone is bound to ask why it doesn't add up so... Please keep in mind that this will not add up to 178 because several people insisted on listing 2-3 reasons when the question only asked for 1 reason.

Read on: http://www.dumblittleman.com/2006/09/why-top-employees-quit.html

There is hope for the world

Best news I read this week: Whoohoo!

In TV's worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show.

 

Maybe they're outside in the garden. They could be playing.

 

 

"Metacrap" is a very strong, coherent, pointed critique of the dream of metadata.

Cory Doctorow - People are lazy, so they misclassify because they can't be bothered to properly classify.  We can't all agree; everything is miscellaneous, as you say, so we can't all agree on the best way to classify information, and so on.  So, that's a kind of sampler of the reasons that the idea that we'll all make it all work is so flawed.

They are just a lot of categories of information that we can't draw lines between. . .

 

Read more here

The Web destroys categories, disciplines and hierarchies

"IT" Has Made Everything Miscellaneous 

It's a powerful idea: from org charts to science, from music to retail theory, from government to education, every field of human endeavor is tinged with hierarchy, and every hierarchy is under assault from the Internet.

 

And unlike many business/tech books, whose simple thesis could be stated in a single New Yorker article, but which are nevertheless expanded to book-length for commercial reasons, every chapter in Everything is Miscellaneous brings new insight to the subject. This is a hell of a book. Link

Higher education industry is becoming a racket...

Buy our product or be condemned to life of penury, and our product can easily cost well over $100,000.

Higher Education Conformity - Is a college degree really a sign of competence? Or is it chiefly a signal to employers that you've mastered the ability to obey and conform? College degree chiefly as mark of one's ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you'll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end -- whether in library carrels or office cubicles -- does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned -- although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.

Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-"team-player." You will do anything. You will grovel.

College can be the most amazingly enlightening experience of a lifetime. I loved almost every minute of it...

 

Read more from:

http://www.alternet.org/story/51316

 

Employees waste two days per month surfing the Internet at work.

"irrelevant Web browsing." Known as "wilfing," and apparently people are wasting two days a month at work doing it.

 

Tens of millions of Internet users waste time surfing online at work and at home. And one-quarter of those time wasters spend as much as 33 percent of their time doing it.

 

There's a generation gap, too – those aged 25 and under were three times as likely to wilf away the hours as those over 55.

 

Wilf stands for "What was I looking for?" – as in "I went online to look up stock prices for the boss but found this really funny story at the Onion.com. And did you see that editorial at the Monitor site about Iraq? And then there was a super deal on iPods at apple.com, and I had to buy a few tunes when I was there … ah, hmmm, what was I looking for?"

 

"It's part of what I call the rise of the miscellaneous," he writes in an e-mail.

 

"The big disadvantage is that we get lost all the ... time," Weinburger continues. "It's artificial befuddlement, but we're being befuddled by abundance. That strikes me as better than never being able to lose your way because there's such a scarcity of ways to go." … now what was I doing again?

Human brain a marvel? Not if you ask this guy.

Newsweek: human brain from a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist: "A mouse brain with extra toppings,"and for that matter, the mouse brain is a lizard brain with some extra stuff, and the whole lot is a cobbled-together mess. That's evolution for you. The story is essentially a book review plus profile, and a refreshing break from the usual wonderful-mind stuff one reads. It also seeks to explain why dreams seem, sort of, to make sense. Thank reptiles for that, perhaps.

Is The Term Paper Dead?

The Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-paste plagiarism: "Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers." The author argues that in the era we're entering, schools need to rely far less on term papers in assessing students.

Thin Clients are the New Black...

 ... on the ledger sheet, that is. Because according to a new report, it turns out that using these "super slimmed down" alternatives to the PC could reduce your cost of ownership by up to 25 percent, as compared to an office equipped with traditional desktops. Thin clients have been around for years; they are simply a computer that uses a central server for processing activities, where you send your keystrokes and mouse clicks to the server, and you see what is happening on a monitor at your desk. It's very much like having a desktop PC, except that thin clients typically have no almost no moving parts and little memory. This reduces their power consumption dramatically; according to the report, they can use up to 50 percent less energy than a typical PC. No word on the global impact of switching to thin clients, but if just the 10 million or so PCs in operation in the UK would be switched out for thin clients, businesses could save £78m a year and cut CO2 emission by 485,000 tonnes.

http://www.webitpr.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=5616

 

30 Days With Vista - Shot me now

"Hardocp.com has published "30 days with Vista" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" doing the evaluation. And he doesn't like it. From the article: 'Based on my personal experiences with Vista over a 30 day period, I found it to be a dangerously unstable operating system, which has caused me to lose data [...] Any consideration of the fine details comes in second to that one inescapable conclusion. This is an unstable operating system.'"

 

From: slashdot.org

PowerPoint Bad For Learning

"This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on research done at The University of NSW suggests the use of Microsoft PowerPoint (and similar products) in lectures and meetings actually makes it harder to absorb facts, rather than being a reinforcement of key points."

 

From slashdot.org

PayPerPost - Ethics of Paid Blogging

There-goes-the-least-common-denominator ..
The LA Times accuses PayPerPost of paying bloggers to make up fictional testimonials. For instance, the Times reports that a law firm is using PayPerPost to pay bloggers to write that a certain birth control patch is killing and injuring young women. Rua does not deny these claims, but simply states they are the exception and not the rule. How long before the FTC follows through on their promise to enforce blogger disclosure?"

Link http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/27/2153205&from=rss

 

Unfocused multitasking makes you less productive and dumb

Beyond IQ: Focus on the Task at Hand, "Attention span and reasoning" may get higher marks than intelligence...

© Jorge Delgado/iStockphoto

Turns out that sheer intelligence is not enough.... It also takes a good attention span and training your mind to "self regulate" or focus on the task at hand.  This month's "Scientific American" article by Christie Nicholson points out,  "The measure for academic success for decades has been a person's intelligence quotient, or IQ. But new research published in the journal Child Development says that a thought process called "executive functioning," which governs the ability to reason and mentally focus, also plays a critical role in learning, especially when it comes to math skills."

Inhibitory control is the ability to halt automatic impulses and focus on the problem at hand. For example, people use inhibitory control when they decide to take different routes to their jobs, because they have to make a conscious effort to override the regular route they otherwise would almost automatically follow.

Children with good inhibitory control are able, in essence, to multitask, or use known solution strategies in new ways. In this study 141 healthy children between the ages of three and five years took a battery of psychological tests that measured their IQs and executive functioning. Researchers found that a child IQ and executive functioning were both above average was three times more likely to succeed in math than a kid who simply had a high IQ.

"[The fact] that executive function, even in children this young, is significantly related to early math performance suggests that if we can improve executive function, we can improve their academic performance," says Adele Diamond, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia.

 

The key to successful "multitasking" and executive functioning at any age is to "tune" out multiple distractions and "self regulate" or focus on the task at hand. 

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"When people divide their attention, they react more slowly and make more mistakes, scientists say."  New York Times beats the whole "multi-tasking reduces productivity" horse to death,  citing that studies show young people are not better equipped to handle interruptions having grown up with digital distractions.... jumping every time their phone buzzes or a new message appears in their inbox, straying off to reply to messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.  Based on surveys and interviews with professionals and office workers, concluded that 28 percent of their time was spent on what they deemed interruptions and recovery time before they returned to their main tasks... estimating the cost of interruptions to the American economy at nearly $650 billion a year.

 

 

 

 

Want a higher I.Q. Hint: Start Playing Grand Theft Auto...

Why I don't think like Char....

Rising trend line in intelligence test scores. And that, in turn, suggested that something in the environment - some social or cultural force - was driving the trend.

FROM WIRED - "The best example of brain-boosting media may be videogames. Mastering visual puzzles is the whole point of the exercise - whether it's the spatial geometry of Tetris, the engineering riddles of Myst, or the urban mapping of Grand Theft Auto."

Twenty-three years ago, an American philosophy professor named James Flynn discovered a remarkable trend: Average IQ scores in every industrialized country on the planet had been increasing steadily for decades. Despite concerns about the dumbing-down of society - the failing schools, the garbage on TV, the decline of reading - the overall population was getting smarter. And the climb has continued, with more recent studies showing that the rate of IQ increase is accelerating. Next to global warming and Moore's law, the so-called Flynn effect may be the most revealing line on the increasingly crowded chart of modern life - and it's an especially hopeful one. We still have plenty of problems to solve, but at least there's one consolation: Our brains are getting better at problem-solving.

But something else in the data caught his eye. Every decade or so, "Every time kids took the new and the old tests, they did better on the old ones," Flynn says. "I thought: That's weird."

Flynn dug up every study that had ever been done in the US where the same subjects took a new and an old version of an IQ test. "And lo and behold, when you examined that huge collection of data, it revealed a 14-point gain between 1932 and 1978."

The classic heritability research paradigm is the twin adoption study: Look at IQ scores for thousands of individuals with various forms of shared genes and environments, and hunt for correlations.


This is the sort of chart you get, with 100 being a perfect match and 0 pure randomness:

The same person tested twice: 87
Identical twins raised together: 86
Identical twins raised apart: 76
Fraternal twins raised together: 55
Biological siblings: 47
Parents and children living together: 40
Parents and children living apart: 31
Adopted children living together: 0
Unrelated people living apart: 0

What part of our allegedly dumbed-down environment is making us smarter?
It's not schools, since the tests that measure education-driven skills haven't shown the same steady gains. It's not nutrition - general improvement in diet leveled off in most industrialized countries shortly after World War II, just as the Flynn effect was accelerating.

"And then I realized that society has priorities. Let's say we're too cheap to hire good high school math teachers. So while we may want to improve arithmetical reasoning skills, we just don't. On the other hand, with smaller families, more leisure, and more energy to use leisure for cognitively demanding pursuits, we may improve - without realizing it - on-the-spot problem-solving, like you see with Ravens."

When you take the Ravens test, you're confronted with a series of visual grids, each containing a mix of shapes that seem vaguely related to one another. Each grid contains a missing shape; to answer the implicit question posed by the test, you need to pick the correct missing shape from a selection of eight possibilities. To "solve" these puzzles, in other words, you have to scrutinize a changing set of icons, looking for unusual patterns and correlations among them.

This is not the kind of thinking that happens when you read a book or have a conversation with someone or take a history exam. But it is precisely the kind of mental work you do when you, say, struggle to program a VCR or master the interface on your new cell phone.

Over the last 50 years, we've had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies, and interfaces, from the TV clicker to the World Wide Web. And every new form of visual media - interactive visual media in particular - poses an implicit challenge to our brains: We have to work through the logic of the new interface, follow clues, sense relationships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the very skills that the Ravens tests measure - you survey a field of visual icons and look for unusual patterns.

The ultimate test of the "cognitively demanding leisure" hypothesis may come in the next few years, as the generation raised on hypertext and massively complex game worlds starts taking adult IQ tests. This is a generation of kids who, in many cases, learned to puzzle through the visual patterns of graphic interfaces before they learned to read. Their fundamental intellectual powers weren't shaped only by coping with words on a page. They acquired an intuitive understanding of shapes and environments, all of them laced with patterns that can be detected if you think hard enough. Their parents may have enhanced their fluid intelligence by playing Tetris or learning the visual grammar of TV advertising.

But that's child's play compared with Pokmon.

Intellectual breakthroughs are what happen when you're busy making other plans. (J.Lennon)

Read full here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/flynn_pr.html