No argument to the idea that there are professions that currently may require multitasking, though I would dispute your examples. Communicating while flying is simply part of the pilot's task - it is a part of the process of flying. Similarly, in a properly run emergency room cases are
treaged as they come in, specifically to allow proper, hierarchical focus from one case to the next. The treage process will typicallly not be handled by the treating physician, but rather by other personnell. When the physician gets to you she will assess you, write her orders for a nurse or PA to carry out, and move on to the next case. Done well its very much like what I described.
If it's not done well then I don't want to be treated there.
Lastly, if you are the sort of person who "loves" or believes in your multitasking oriented job you are probably not looking for any suggestions on how to change it, which is where this thread atarted in the first place. That person is not relevant to the conversation.
Under those circumstances I'd suggest moving on to a different job. For all intents and purposes I already did in my original post.
Move on and let them find some other sucker to perpetually flit from one task to the next. Odds are if you have the mental discipline to do what I describe you have the resources to find yourself another, better job.
The idea that modern life does not allow for periods of extended concentration is really matter of perception and approach. We become very accustomed to being busy on multiple things and begin to assume that we must continue in this fashion. When it all boils down, however, it is a matter of learning to draw good boundaries.
You really don't *have* to respond to each e-mail as it comes in, and you really don't have to have your phone on or your instant messaging client open all of the time. You can set blocks of time during the day during which you minimize distractions like those and focus directly on single projects. Of course, you also set times specifically for responding to communications as well. After a short while those who communicate with you regularly will become accustomed to the fact that you respond at specific times of day. What's more, they will probably come to appreciate the increased focus you are putting into your communiques, since you are no longer distracted by other things while making them.
There may be a couple of folks who try to insist on your immediate availability at all times. Drop them. They are almost certainly more trouble than they are worth.
I find articles like this frustrating because they miss the point of business.
It's the opinion of the article's author that Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win....
What's to win? The objective of a business is to turn a profit for the stockholders. Apple is doing that, and has been doing that for some time. The only time that gaining market share is really relevant is if it contributes to the bottom line. It does not always do so. In Microsoft's case, having a large market share seems to work for them. In the case of General Motors, for example, it does not. The company has a huge (if shrinking) market share, but has not reliably turned a profit for some time.
Thinking that gaining broad market share is the goal shows a general misunderstanding of the function of a business.
I will consider the drop a big deal if it is sustained over the next several years. Gas prices are now back to just above $2.00 per gallon. Odds are that driving habits will return to previous levels (mind you - I hope they do not).
Certainly a larger percentage of people live in urban areas. However, you are correct in that it is important how one defines urban.
Within Illinois, where I live, there are multiple population centers that exceed 150,000 people. Are these "urban" - for the most part, they are not attached to larger cities. Virtually none of these have anything that represents effective mass transit. Those areas are surrounded by still smaller population centers (towns of 75, 50, 25,000 people and smaller). None of these have effective mass transit, nor is there a reasonable system to be used to travel between any of the smaller population centers. Most states, including eastern and western seaboard states look like this.
Increase in mass transit usage is good, but it will not have significant impact until it is more widely available and distributed.
Actually your reference proves my point in a couple of ways:
The reduction in miles driven is down by such a minimal amount (Avg drop from 13711 in '04 to 13657 in '05) in your reference as to potentially be a a statistical anomaly. Secondarily, if we do accept that the change is real and not due to measurement error, then the difference is likely due to the significant increase in gasoline prices following Hurricane Katrina - which would be a change in environmental contingencies, as I mentioned (as opposed to simply being asked to do things).
Finally, it may be the case that mass transit use has skyrocketed somewhere (e.g. in major urban centers), but that presupposes the presence of mass transit. Most of the country is not a major urban center. In the Midwest use of mass transit has certainly has not skyrocketed, as it is so rare (outside of the few large urban centers like Chicago) as to be functionally non-existent.
All that said, I'd love for it to be more available, and for people to change their behavior regarding energy usage. The point is that if we want to see it, we have to do more than ask them to - there must be a change in how the energy usage effects them directly (as in the increase in fuel prices after Katrina - a phenomenon which has now passed).
The reality is that people aren't doing that, and that the USA is not set up to encourage it in any significant way. Outside of very old and large urban centers, the infrastructure in this country is largely set up to nearly require a car for most daily tasks that aren't directly centered in the home.
I agree that increased conservation would be good, and I try to put my money where my mouth is (fuel efficient cars, Compact Florescent's, etc). However, human behavior in general does not respond well to simply being asked to do things. The environmental contingencies have to change for people to actually begin to respond.
It doesn't come down to that because Obama and Clinton will be running against one another in the primary, not the general election. One of them will (possibly) win the primary and run against the republican candidate. It's important to remember that, at this point in the 2004 election everyone thought Howard Dean was going to be the democratic candidate.
The media are very excited about Hillary Clinton, but unless she gets herself a significant charisma transplant (not an impossible thing in politics, mind you) she isn't going anywhere. She's been on the national stage for a couple of decades now, and she is not even close to universally well liked (not even among women). Her presentation is generally cold and flat. For people who are not "true believers" she really does little to suggest that you ought to move to her camp.
Mind you - this says nothing about her politics one way or another, but how one presents has a significant effect on the likelihood of success in politics.
Genetic studies are showing fairly clearly now that there is no single gene implicated in autism. When different people are tested, it shows involvement in multiple chromosomes, and in multiple different sites on the same chromosome in different people. There is considerably variability from one person to another.
As others have mentioned above, Rett's is different in presentation and likely etiology than other forms of autism. This study likely has limited relevance to treatment of any form of autism other than Rett's.
Kudos to you for pointing out the lack of any evidence of a link between heavy metal poisoning and autism.
For the record, the television study you refer to showed absolutely no link between the viewing habits of children and autism. It was, in fact, a very shoddy study that extrapolated a link by correlating the time frame during which cable came out with the rise in autism by attempting to correlate the weather with television watching (assuming that higher rates of rainy weather meant that children were inside watching cable television). It contains no measurement of the television viewing habits of the children whatsoever. Further, there was no statistical significance, since it was a correlational study. Despite having only correlational data regarding the weather and the onset of cable television, they continued to refer in the text to the "trigger" effect of cable television. Further, it was not a peer reviewed study.
Autism is part of my primary field of study. The Cable TV correlation report was one of the worst pieces of "research" I've ever read.
The question of whether there is free will or not doesn't just come down to genetics. While it is true that genetics come into play, it is only a single variable. It also involves learning history and environment.
When you start to factor in learning history and environment, the possibility of what traditional philosophy, and even lay people, consider "free will" just becomes silly. The decisions you make are not at random, and you aren't "free" to choose things outside of the influence of those variables. You make the choices you make because of your genetic makeup, your personal experience, and the environment you are in. It is not always easy to predict what choices you may make, but this is a question of not having a grasp of enough of the variables - not of those decisions actually being free.
Science, and all human (and animal) learning relies upon a deterministic model. If our will really was "free", and our decisions truly were simply random, nothing that we do would occur in any kind of logical or sensible manner. We wouldn't repeat beneficial behaviors, nor cease harmful ones. We'd simply trundle around our patch of land making random decisions based upon nothing at all except our "will".
For all intents and purposes, having what would truly be "free will" would be so poorly adaptive to the real world as to be truly ludicrous. You show me a species that has evolved free will, and I'll show you a species in it's final generation.
This assumes both that you want iCal running in the background all the time, and that you keep your dock exposed (which is illegal in some states...)
I prefer to have the dock hidden in order to retain that visible screen real estate for program display. Given this, I wouldn't consider that idea a fix.
Also - Since we are talking about fixes to the OS, using a separate program, which you must run in addition to the OS to compensate for it seems an inelegant fix at best.
Well, yes it is!
But imagine if Rosie were the only one who knew how to do the twirl at the end just right - then you'd need her every once in a while just to get... specific results.
Y'know - so you keep dating Hallie, but keep Rosie in the closet for those special occasions.
Okay, I believe I just disgusted myself...
...and here we have another M.D. who thinks he knows something about science... In actuality, the paper is a good example of the way in which social research can take advantage of natural experiments... They made none of the errors you list. I would like to think you might have realized this had you bothered (as I did) to actually read the paper, but based on the evidence of your post, I would be reckless to assume that.
Well I read the damn thing (it was painful, and poorly written to boot), and I can verify they did, in fact, make all of the errors that the parent refers to.
This paper is a good example of nothing other than a poor understanding of what a correlational and regressional analysis can be used to conclude.
The authors repeatedly use the word "trigger" in reference to their correlational data.
They try to indicate that, while autistic kids might be more likely to watch TV, autism can't cause precipitation, and precipitation is related to TV watching, so therefore TV watching causes autism. This monumental leap of faith is used to justify the fact that they are incorrectly ascribing cause when all they have is a relationship. And, of course, there is the terribly minor fact that they don't have any actual data on the television habits of the children.
I think this paper will provide for the doctor an excellent example of what not to do with your correlational data.
Correlation is not causation
This is true - but correlation indicates that there MAY BE a causation. Thus, when things are strongly correlated and there are other reasons to suspect a causal connection, it is well worth researching further.
True enough, but that presupposes a well designed correlational study, which this is not. This study actually examines the relationship between the incidence of children with autism as related to the rate of television watching on the part of adults in the child's home. There is no direct measure here of television viewing on the part of the children in the study, just a poorly supported assumption that, if it's raining, the children are likely to be inside while the adult watches television, which means that they also might be watching television. There are an awful lot of "likely's" and "might's" in there - too many to imply a good correlation between the children and the TV. At best this study suggests there is a relationship between autism in the children and television watching on the part of the adults in the home.
Perhaps 'increased awareness' of autism means that we discover more cases that were not previously recognised? Perhaps, but I don't think it is very likely. Full-blown autism is not something you overlook. It is a serious disorder that in most cases means lifelong disability, and it is unlike any other psychiatric disorder. The increased awareness, I suspect, mostly means that now we spot more of the milder cases, but it is not my impression that this is what this research is about.
In point of fact, autism is a difficult diagnosis for people unfamiliar with it to detect. It is a syndrome, a "spectrum disorder", which means that it is a collection of symptoms that occur in conjunction. No one has all of the symptoms at one time, and different people have different collections of symptoms. I work with adults with developmental disabilities, and I have met many, many adults in their 30's, 40's, and 50's who have never been diagnosed, but clearly have symptoms of autism.
The increased prevalence is almost certainly directly related to better detection.
Slashdot Mirror
No argument to the idea that there are professions that currently may require multitasking, though I would dispute your examples. Communicating while flying is simply part of the pilot's task - it is a part of the process of flying. Similarly, in a properly run emergency room cases are treaged as they come in, specifically to allow proper, hierarchical focus from one case to the next. The treage process will typicallly not be handled by the treating physician, but rather by other personnell. When the physician gets to you she will assess you, write her orders for a nurse or PA to carry out, and move on to the next case. Done well its very much like what I described. If it's not done well then I don't want to be treated there. Lastly, if you are the sort of person who "loves" or believes in your multitasking oriented job you are probably not looking for any suggestions on how to change it, which is where this thread atarted in the first place. That person is not relevant to the conversation.
Under those circumstances I'd suggest moving on to a different job. For all intents and purposes I already did in my original post. Move on and let them find some other sucker to perpetually flit from one task to the next. Odds are if you have the mental discipline to do what I describe you have the resources to find yourself another, better job.
The idea that modern life does not allow for periods of extended concentration is really matter of perception and approach. We become very accustomed to being busy on multiple things and begin to assume that we must continue in this fashion. When it all boils down, however, it is a matter of learning to draw good boundaries.
You really don't *have* to respond to each e-mail as it comes in, and you really don't have to have your phone on or your instant messaging client open
all of the time. You can set blocks of time during the day during which you minimize distractions like those and focus directly on single projects. Of course, you also set times specifically for responding to communications as well. After a short while those who communicate with you regularly will become accustomed to the fact that you respond at specific times of day. What's more, they will probably come to appreciate the increased focus you are putting into your communiques, since you are no longer distracted by other things while making them.
There may be a couple of folks who try to insist on your immediate availability at all times. Drop them. They are almost certainly more trouble than they are worth.
What's to win? The objective of a business is to turn a profit for the stockholders. Apple is doing that, and has been doing that for some time. The only time that gaining market share is really relevant is if it contributes to the bottom line. It does not always do so. In Microsoft's case, having a large market share seems to work for them. In the case of General Motors, for example, it does not. The company has a huge (if shrinking) market share, but has not reliably turned a profit for some time.
Thinking that gaining broad market share is the goal shows a general misunderstanding of the function of a business.
I will consider the drop a big deal if it is sustained over the next several years. Gas prices are now back to just above $2.00 per gallon. Odds are that driving habits will return to previous levels (mind you - I hope they do not).
Certainly a larger percentage of people live in urban areas. However, you are correct in that it is important how one defines urban.
Within Illinois, where I live, there are multiple population centers that exceed 150,000 people. Are these "urban" - for the most part, they are not attached to larger cities. Virtually none of these have anything that represents effective mass transit. Those areas are surrounded by still smaller population centers (towns of 75, 50, 25,000 people and smaller). None of these have effective mass transit, nor is there a reasonable system to be used to travel between any of the smaller population centers. Most states, including eastern and western seaboard states look like this.
Increase in mass transit usage is good, but it will not have significant impact until it is more widely available and distributed.
Actually your reference proves my point in a couple of ways:
The reduction in miles driven is down by such a minimal amount (Avg drop from 13711 in '04 to 13657 in '05) in your reference as to potentially be a a statistical anomaly. Secondarily, if we do accept that the change is real and not due to measurement error, then the difference is likely due to the significant increase in gasoline prices following Hurricane Katrina - which would be a change in environmental contingencies, as I mentioned (as opposed to simply being asked to do things).
Finally, it may be the case that mass transit use has skyrocketed somewhere (e.g. in major urban centers), but that presupposes the presence of mass transit. Most of the country is not a major urban center. In the Midwest use of mass transit has certainly has not skyrocketed, as it is so rare (outside of the few large urban centers like Chicago) as to be functionally non-existent.
All that said, I'd love for it to be more available, and for people to change their behavior regarding energy usage. The point is that if we want to see it, we have to do more than ask them to - there must be a change in how the energy usage effects them directly (as in the increase in fuel prices after Katrina - a phenomenon which has now passed).
The reality is that people aren't doing that, and that the USA is not set up to encourage it in any significant way. Outside of very old and large urban centers, the infrastructure in this country is largely set up to nearly require a car for most daily tasks that aren't directly centered in the home.
I agree that increased conservation would be good, and I try to put my money where my mouth is (fuel efficient cars, Compact Florescent's, etc). However, human behavior in general does not respond well to simply being asked to do things. The environmental contingencies have to change for people to actually begin to respond.
It doesn't come down to that because Obama and Clinton will be running against one another in the primary, not the general election. One of them will (possibly) win the primary and run against the republican candidate. It's important to remember that, at this point in the 2004 election everyone thought Howard Dean was going to be the democratic candidate.
The media are very excited about Hillary Clinton, but unless she gets herself a significant charisma transplant (not an impossible thing in politics, mind you) she isn't going anywhere. She's been on the national stage for a couple of decades now, and she is not even close to universally well liked (not even among women). Her presentation is generally cold and flat. For people who are not "true believers" she really does little to suggest that you ought to move to her camp.
Mind you - this says nothing about her politics one way or another, but how one presents has a significant effect on the likelihood of success in politics.
Genetic studies are showing fairly clearly now that there is no single gene implicated in autism. When different people are tested, it shows involvement in multiple chromosomes, and in multiple different sites on the same chromosome in different people. There is considerably variability from one person to another. As others have mentioned above, Rett's is different in presentation and likely etiology than other forms of autism. This study likely has limited relevance to treatment of any form of autism other than Rett's.
Kudos to you for pointing out the lack of any evidence of a link between heavy metal poisoning and autism. For the record, the television study you refer to showed absolutely no link between the viewing habits of children and autism. It was, in fact, a very shoddy study that extrapolated a link by correlating the time frame during which cable came out with the rise in autism by attempting to correlate the weather with television watching (assuming that higher rates of rainy weather meant that children were inside watching cable television). It contains no measurement of the television viewing habits of the children whatsoever. Further, there was no statistical significance, since it was a correlational study. Despite having only correlational data regarding the weather and the onset of cable television, they continued to refer in the text to the "trigger" effect of cable television. Further, it was not a peer reviewed study. Autism is part of my primary field of study. The Cable TV correlation report was one of the worst pieces of "research" I've ever read.
The question of whether there is free will or not doesn't just come down to genetics. While it is true that genetics come into play, it is only a single variable. It also involves learning history and environment.
When you start to factor in learning history and environment, the possibility of what traditional philosophy, and even lay people, consider "free will" just becomes silly. The decisions you make are not at random, and you aren't "free" to choose things outside of the influence of those variables. You make the choices you make because of your genetic makeup, your personal experience, and the environment you are in. It is not always easy to predict what choices you may make, but this is a question of not having a grasp of enough of the variables - not of those decisions actually being free.
Science, and all human (and animal) learning relies upon a deterministic model. If our will really was "free", and our decisions truly were simply random, nothing that we do would occur in any kind of logical or sensible manner. We wouldn't repeat beneficial behaviors, nor cease harmful ones. We'd simply trundle around our patch of land making random decisions based upon nothing at all except our "will".
For all intents and purposes, having what would truly be "free will" would be so poorly adaptive to the real world as to be truly ludicrous. You show me a species that has evolved free will, and I'll show you a species in it's final generation.
This assumes both that you want iCal running in the background all the time, and that you keep your dock exposed (which is illegal in some states...) I prefer to have the dock hidden in order to retain that visible screen real estate for program display. Given this, I wouldn't consider that idea a fix. Also - Since we are talking about fixes to the OS, using a separate program, which you must run in addition to the OS to compensate for it seems an inelegant fix at best.
Well, yes it is! But imagine if Rosie were the only one who knew how to do the twirl at the end just right - then you'd need her every once in a while just to get... specific results. Y'know - so you keep dating Hallie, but keep Rosie in the closet for those special occasions. Okay, I believe I just disgusted myself...
This paper is a good example of nothing other than a poor understanding of what a correlational and regressional analysis can be used to conclude.
The authors repeatedly use the word "trigger" in reference to their correlational data.
They try to indicate that, while autistic kids might be more likely to watch TV, autism can't cause precipitation, and precipitation is related to TV watching, so therefore TV watching causes autism. This monumental leap of faith is used to justify the fact that they are incorrectly ascribing cause when all they have is a relationship. And, of course, there is the terribly minor fact that they don't have any actual data on the television habits of the children.
I think this paper will provide for the doctor an excellent example of what not to do with your correlational data.