Unscientific Americans

From a National Science Foundation's biennial report on the state of science understanding, research, and education, of 1,574 adults surveyed:

* 54% knew long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. In other words, 46% did not know.
* 51% knew that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses.
* 48% knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as the dinosaurs. So, an astounding 52% did not know.

What kind of information are Americans likely to know? Lindsay Lohan's lapses with the law, the domestic discord of Tiger Woods, or and who Brad Pitt was married to before Angelina Joli…

makes me weep for the state of our collective intelligence.

Bogus Information for the Masses

For at least the last six years, several times a day, I've received various ridiculous "help me move my fortune from my third-world country" email letters. How can the same transparent tactics be employed more than 6,000 times unless there are legions of recipients who actually respond to such letters?

How difficult can it be for email account users in 2010 to figure out that these bogus claims are perpetrated by career criminals whose thievery is largely untraceable?

It's Official: Multi-tasking Sucks

Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in Time Magazine: "Decades of research, not to mention common sense, indicate that the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks.”

Antidotes to Racing the Clock

A read says, “No matter how conscious I am of saving time throughout the day, I still find myself racing the clock. What, if anything, am I doing wrong?

Answer: Consider the following example: any one-hour activity that you undertake in the course of the day will consume one solid year out of the next 24 years of your life. One hour is to 24 hours as one year is to 24 years. With this realization, consider the cumulative effects of reading junk mail for only 30 minutes a day, or of spending 15 minutes a day in line at the bank which could be avoided if you judiciously used mail, phone, or email services. Make each 30 or even 15 minute segment count.

Processing New Info at any Age

Matthew Blakeslee writing for Discover says, "If old dogs haven’t been able to learn new maybe that’s because no one has known how to teach them properly. Until quite recently orthodox neuroscience held that only the brains of young children are resilient, malleable, and morphable—in a word, plastic."

"This neuroplasticity, as it is called, seems to fade steadily as the brain congeals into its fixed adult configuration. Infants can sustain massive brain damage, up to the loss of an entire cerebral hemisphere, and still develop into nearly normal adults; any adult who loses half the brain, by contrast, is a goner. Adults can’t learn to speak new languages without an accent, can’t take up piano in their fifties then go on to play Carnegie Hall, and often suffer strokes that lead to permanent paralysis or cognitive deficiencies. The mature brain, scientists concluded, can only decline."

"It turns out this theory is not just wrong, it is spectacularly wrong. Two books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Ballantine Books, $24.95) by science journalist Sharon Begley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psychiatrist Norman Doidge, offer masterfully guided tours through the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity research. Each has its own style and emphasis; both are excellent.".

Manage Info with Helpers

When you have good help on board, your ability to manage information increases. For example Christie Ray Harrison who has helped me in various capacities is a conscientious worker who gets the job done. She reads instruction guides and tells me the handful of things I need to know, registers me for certain sites, handles inquiries, and keeps information organized. Among 100's of her peers who I have known, she is among the best of the best! Christie is a self-starter who stays focused on the task at hand, which free me to focus on speaking and writing. When I need to tackle a tough information-laden project, with Christie on my side, I have a lot going for me. With her broad-based education, determination, and grit, she is destined to be a leader in her field. So, look for the Christie's of the world and watch your ability to manage information and communication-related tasks grow.

Magazines Come and Go

Watsonville, CA - “Hundreds of new magazines are launched every year in the United States and Canada but most cover the same topics as what's already available on the newsstand,” according to a study by Wooden Horse Publishing reveals.

"Magazine publishers seem content to follow each other like lemmings," remarked Meg Weaver, owner of the Wooden Horse Magazines Database, an online magazine resource for publicists, writers and researchers with information on over 2,000 US and Canadian consumer and trade publications. "And over the proverbial cliff most of them go as 60% of all new magazines fail in the first year."