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
No comments:
Post a Comment