Baboul Hair Pullin'

A subject close to my heart is discussed in this month's Walrus (April edition). This Canadian magazine never fails to impress me with its broad range of topics & the quality of its articles, and I rarely mention what I'm reading on the bus, so there you go.



On top of an article about BC's Pine Beetle, slowly annihilating our forests, there's an article by John Lorinc about cognitive overload, Driven to Distraction. Cognitive science specialists have apparently found out that multi-tasking and being constantly interrupted by a never-ending flow of information make it more difficult for us to think for a long time, shortening our focus. If we constantly receive information and don't take enough time to "process" it, or think it through, our brain doesn't "record". Or, in Lorinc's words : "When someone is bombarded by data, the executive processor doesn't have the time or the resources to encode everything and starts to show signs of fatigue."



Another passage states that "Email for many people has become an oppressive feature of work life. MySpace, YouTube, chat rooms, and the blogosphere, for all their virtues as new mediums of political debate and cultural activity, have an amazing ability to suck up time."

Do I need to say I highly recommend this to y'all ?



Another surprising article, this time in the Atlantic - also the April edition - is about the Darfur genocide. According to Stephan Faris, global warming would have a bigger responsibility in the conflict than ethnic hatred !

This sounds so refreshing that I'll have to read it before writing about it any further. And since I'm pretty sauced right now, being hung over at work & all, I'll get back to you tomorrow in a finer shape.