News Brief March 4, 2011 Information Overload Leads to Bad Objective Decisions

Tags: Information Overload Bad Decisions James Franco Amazing Twitter e-mail interruptions Ads on the Internet Alzheimer's Heart Attacks Strokes

All of us who read extensively and use the internet frequently for information have the problem of information overload. What I do is keep my e-mail closed until later in the day so I am not interrupted, transfer important articles to my word processor before reading to avoid website distractions, do not read all those links provided in articles, do not Twitter or sign up for Facebook, do not have a smart phone, but may buy the new i-Pad with Wi-Fi only, don't answer telephone calls and let the caller leave a message, do not play music or listen to the radio while on the computer or when I read, take a break once an hour to jog briefly or 30 minutes on my tiny rebounder, use dumb bells to prevent muscle atrophy, limit myself to one cup of coffee daily and get enough sleep 8 hours, rarely eat sugar containing foods or drinks, eat three meals daily, and watch tv or a movie at night to rest my brain. Is this sentence too long to absorb all the information? Trying pausing in the middle of a sentence and think!

The trouble with using logic to get answers on everything is that the capacity of our temporary memory is very small about the size of the seven digit phone number. That is why we don't remember the names of people at parties introduced in rapid succession. We need to repeat the name and learn something about the person or use the tricks often promoted on television.

When we sleep, our brain is able to organize information that is important to you and discards many things not that important which helps us in making decisions later. Our brain has trillions of synapses connected to our neurons which disconnect when we don't use our brain often enough.

Amyloids is now thought to come from our liver! All Big Pharma drugs have serious side effects, even Statins, particularly if we use too much. Just use the lowest dose of statin even though it does not bring down your cholesterol immediately. Fresh plaque is what you need to avoid because it breaks loose. Remember cholesterol is used in every cell in our body for the cell walls including our brain.

Too much of a good thing like most things is not good for you. I have concluded that very low density lipoproteins and triglycerides causes both heart attacks and dementia including Alzheimer's Disease. It has to do more with plugging the enzymes used to get rid of excess proteins in our blood such as amyloids and proteins in our muscles.

Common medications such as Detrol and antihistamines can block the enzyme producing sights. Many common medications can also block the electrical signals to make your heart work. Solution: Change your diet and exercise which helps improve our muscles, brains, and heart. Seniors now take 15 medications on average!

The reason that many smart people are devoid of common sense is that they have information overload and do not sleep enough. Recent polls show that if party is not mentioned, the common folks see what is true which is often not seen by we smart folks. Noam Chomsky has mentioned this many times that polls that contradict the elite thinking is often ignored by the corporate press/media. Much of what demands our attention is not necessarily accurate by the clever process of emphasis and deletion of information.

Jim Kawakami, March 4, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Newsweek March 7: Last night I read my Newsweek which seem to always have at least one article I really like. This one was from my favorite science journalist Sharon Begley. Also articles about Rachel Maddow and David Brooks were quite good.

Begley’s article: I Can’t Think! I have been blasting Twitter and Facebook in recent weeks because triviality does not make our lives better or helps us think.

Begley writes about how Twitter or information overload causes our brains to freeze when we have to make important decisions. One example all of us may appreciate is how difficult some of us have in picking the best car for us and our family. The way I pick cars to buy is to first decide what I want a car for.

I am not looking for perfection, but size, ability to carry stuff, millage, acceleration, safety, reliability, and cost. I knew I did not like green cars. Even though American cars have been getting much better, I would have bought Toyota or Honda even after the fake crisis with fraud involved with those suing Toyota.

I remember the Audi fake brake problem too well. Good thing the electronic records just before the accident showed what happened. Most hit the gas and some had the rug problem which most responsible drivers would have noticed and fixed before the accident.

When I make complicated decisions, I let my unconscious brain make the decision. I bought a very light green Prius! Why?

When things get complicated, our small temporary memory has room for only seven different things such as a seven digit phone number. If you don’t concentrate, it will be erased before going to more permanent memory when you get another bit of information.

That is why I have often said that to be creative, the information has to be in your head for complicated questions. Sleep on it. If an explanation for a question in my google search is satisfactory I stop looking. That is why people with great analytical thinking skills often get things wrong in a crisis. President Obama takes his time in making decisions. Often the turtle beats the rabbit. Remember this!

Jim

Academy Awards: James Franco I never knew Franco before the Awards Show, but when I saw the interview in the Green Room, I noticed immediately that he has the very intelligent alert look and a subtle sense of humor. How can critics honestly down play a show on TV that has a billion viewers worldwide and only 37 million here!

I guess the critics who are cynical as a class wanted to hear put down jokes instead of just being nice. Jim

James Franco by Lisa Foderaro, NY Times, March 3, 2011: … Yale has had its share of screen-star students, including Jodie Foster and Claire Danes, who have walked a delicate line between visibility and aloofness. But by all accounts, Mr. Franco, 32, who arrived last fall as a full-time student in Yale’s Ph.D. program in English, has straddled the line like no one else — at once the retiring scholar and the focus of attention. … (Add Streep)

Yale has had its share of screen-star students, including Jodie Foster and Claire Danes, who have walked a delicate line between visibility and aloofness. But by all accounts, Mr. Franco, 32, who arrived last fall as a full-time student in Yale’s Ph.D. program in English, has straddled the line like no one else — at once the retiring scholar and the focus of attention. …

And the fascination is fed by Mr. Franco himself, a self-promoting — and often self-mocking — polymath who is a film director, screenwriter, painter, author, performance artist and actor, with several film projects under way. In addition to the Yale program, which could take several years, he is on track to earn a master’s degree in film from New York University this spring. (“It’s a full-time program,” an N.Y.U. spokesman said. “You can’t do it any other way.”)

Last year, Mr. Franco received a master’s degree in writing from Brooklyn College, and this semester he is co-teaching a course on film editing at Columbia College Hollywood, a private school in Los Angeles. It is called “Master Class: Editing James Franco — With James Franco.”

Even at Yale, home of overachievers, he stands out. He has found time to undertake a multimedia musical production with about four dozen undergraduates that will open on campus in April. He is listed as a producer, but has worked with students on all aspects of the show, “The Stargazer,” including casting, making script revisions and acting in the film elements.

“We’re all really fascinated and awed,” said Cokey Cohen, the columnist at The Yale Daily News who drew Mr. Franco’s ire. “To see someone who has what we all consider to have an ideal life — with a fun, successful career — to be voluntarily doing so much schoolwork all the time is both really admirable and something I can’t even comprehend.” … http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/nyregion/04franco.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general