- News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking . That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking). Go for long form journalism
- News misleads and is irelevant - A building crashed - it will focus on human emotional tragedy , who owns the building , who was living there instead og concentrating on why the building failed , leads to formation of wrong risk maps .We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk
- We are stuck in the vicious loop of new and irrelevant news , hopping rom one hyper-link to another
- The more "news factoids" you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand.
- News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitisation.
- News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: "What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact." News exacerbates this flaw. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that "make sense" – even if they don't correspond to reality. Any journalist who writes, "The market moved because of X" or "the company went bankrupt because of Y" is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of "explaining" the world
- News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it's worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory's capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.
- News works like a drug . Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books
- News wastes time
- News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is "learned helplessness".It may also be responsible for depression
Apr 23, 2013
News is Bad
Nov 14, 2012
The Contrast
I like Facebook ,It tells me how elitism is sexually transmitted (parents to children , husband to wife vice-verse and across) , the peculiar thing with the rich is they always live behind walls of silence , which they call it as minding their own business, they live aloof in their shells , false worlds inspired by American TV series and lingos .
They holiday in Europe , taste wines ,are generally open on sexual relationships albeit with a high socio-economic bar, they eat little but exorbitantly costly food ,their ambitions are in stratosphere and morality right in the earth's core , burnt and melted ages ago .
With their English and babuji ka contacts they do find hip jobs or niche business opportunity ,which they call merit or hard-work.
meanwhile my people are being butchered as civilians , police and naxals .
Few months back ,
A naxal couple (f-19yrs, m-21 yrs ) was gunned down not far from my village ,they were fleeing the police ,At a time when men in 40s are playing college boys in movies and behaving stupidly ,these kids are dying for a revolution they don't understand but who does.
Few weeks back ,
A police informer was killed near my uncle's home , killed is an under-statement when you strangulate a person with fine wires which cuts deep down the veins it isn't far from beheading and then to instill fear they fully impute the body , legs and arm . Imagine , the trauma of the family , imagine how kids in surrounding villages will soak it in .Imagine ....
And few days back,
A young ASI (assistant Sub Inspector) was picked from bus and killed in cold blood . The guy would have seen death the moment the bus was stopped .Imagine how will you feel if some-one picks you up on the road like that .Imagine..
Custodial tortures , child soldiers ,farzi detentions , rapes by naxals and security men are just a back-drop of this very vulgar malaise .Resource curse it is .
But i hope the sprouting young men and women of Dantewada have an alternative better that what is present as pain of their people won't ever be understood by the delhi-wallahs . They may at best intellectualize it but will also de-humanize it . A proposition entirely unacceptable .
Oct 19, 2012
Smoking@Kgp
Warning :- Smoking is khatra dangerous for your lungs . Quit it Dost , I have :)
Kgp , infact bengal has a special place for sutta , It may be the sole campus where not only students but staff , faculty ,locals all share a comfortable relationship with it .I have even observed women being comfortable around smoking men . I first thought it had to do something with the culture , really , but then bengal is a strangely interesting place ,
However given the fact Bengal is home to the tobacco giant - ITC , it may be something more .
"
The Start
First years are generally wary of it , but then they are first years ,generally a guy in friend circle gets hooked and then slowly do all ,this transition generally spans from 2nd to fourth year, there are obvious exceptions to it .
The First Time
Coarse , your body out-rightly rejects it , and you wonder why and how do people do it . Initially , Logic will guide you to quit , but then the spell of nicotine takes the driver's seat . Once it becomes a habit , people don't challenge it enough .
The Frequency
There is nothing like it , people generally tend to believe they are in control of smoking but most aren't . Generally , availability and economics determine the number of smokes you have .
The Brand & Style
The new guys , do try a lot of fancy (Rs 10 sort of - Black , cigars, B&H , Insignia etc ) and kgp has an insane variety to offer. Regulars generally smoke Classic or Gold Flake.
Frankly , most of the guys don't know how to smoke , they are generally false smokers .But guys with a fitter set of lungs are the best smokers . Ironic indeed
The Kgp Connection
Kgp is like a smoker's capital , you even get cigarettes inside academic complexes . One feels at home when smoking here .You can get cigs here 24X7 , an absolute fact .
Back at home (Raipur) when i used to sneak out for smoke , the buying experience always felt odd , and smoking out in public open used to feel like a professional bad guy .
Bengalis do smoke a lot and so the lung cancer connection is quite prominent (WB reports maximum number of lung cancer cases in India )
The Truth
Most of the smokers know it's bad but they don't exactly how bad it is , how smoke exactly interacts with your lung , how bad are the bad efects and it's dopmine connection .
As a friend puts it , "Ek sutta 5 min kam karta hain , aur woh bhi end sae" . I really liked the line that time but now i feel more from the -'Aap Chutiyein hain types" .
But General Maneckshaw believes a man should have manly qualities and smoking , drinking and having sex comes in that . As you say , a man can rationalize anything :)
The good thing is most of them try to quit it .However , among educated men a smoking guy has a neutral image , successful anti-smoking campaign should revolve around making it dumb and uncool ,so that the teens don't get hooked to it
Shutta Shops in Kgp
( Do tell if i have missed any )
View Sutta @kgp in a larger map
Kgp , infact bengal has a special place for sutta , It may be the sole campus where not only students but staff , faculty ,locals all share a comfortable relationship with it .I have even observed women being comfortable around smoking men . I first thought it had to do something with the culture , really , but then bengal is a strangely interesting place ,
However given the fact Bengal is home to the tobacco giant - ITC , it may be something more .
"
The Start
First years are generally wary of it , but then they are first years ,generally a guy in friend circle gets hooked and then slowly do all ,this transition generally spans from 2nd to fourth year, there are obvious exceptions to it .
The First Time
Coarse , your body out-rightly rejects it , and you wonder why and how do people do it . Initially , Logic will guide you to quit , but then the spell of nicotine takes the driver's seat . Once it becomes a habit , people don't challenge it enough .
The Frequency
There is nothing like it , people generally tend to believe they are in control of smoking but most aren't . Generally , availability and economics determine the number of smokes you have .
The Brand & Style
The new guys , do try a lot of fancy (Rs 10 sort of - Black , cigars, B&H , Insignia etc ) and kgp has an insane variety to offer. Regulars generally smoke Classic or Gold Flake.
Frankly , most of the guys don't know how to smoke , they are generally false smokers .But guys with a fitter set of lungs are the best smokers . Ironic indeed
The Kgp Connection
Kgp is like a smoker's capital , you even get cigarettes inside academic complexes . One feels at home when smoking here .You can get cigs here 24X7 , an absolute fact .
Back at home (Raipur) when i used to sneak out for smoke , the buying experience always felt odd , and smoking out in public open used to feel like a professional bad guy .
Bengalis do smoke a lot and so the lung cancer connection is quite prominent (WB reports maximum number of lung cancer cases in India )
The Truth
Most of the smokers know it's bad but they don't exactly how bad it is , how smoke exactly interacts with your lung , how bad are the bad efects and it's dopmine connection .
As a friend puts it , "Ek sutta 5 min kam karta hain , aur woh bhi end sae" . I really liked the line that time but now i feel more from the -'Aap Chutiyein hain types" .
But General Maneckshaw believes a man should have manly qualities and smoking , drinking and having sex comes in that . As you say , a man can rationalize anything :)
The good thing is most of them try to quit it .However , among educated men a smoking guy has a neutral image , successful anti-smoking campaign should revolve around making it dumb and uncool ,so that the teens don't get hooked to it
Shutta Shops in Kgp
( Do tell if i have missed any )
View Sutta @kgp in a larger map
Oct 10, 2012
What if i shoot you ??
What if i shoot you right through the head, and the time goes slow ,
slow enough to let you realize the pain and analyze your dogmas ,
choices , mistakes and ultimately yourself not in abstract but in
totality in a flash .without any prejudices .
May be then , death/rape/farmer suicides won't be a stastic for you , May be then you will learn not to defend the indefensible , May be then you will value the invaluable - every single Life on earth .
The point being , we rarely empathize the exceptional pain which others go through .Untill majority of the population in this immensely connected numb world won't , History will repackage itself as tragedy time and again
May be then , death/rape/farmer suicides won't be a stastic for you , May be then you will learn not to defend the indefensible , May be then you will value the invaluable - every single Life on earth .
The point being , we rarely empathize the exceptional pain which others go through .Untill majority of the population in this immensely connected numb world won't , History will repackage itself as tragedy time and again
History's Anonymous
To be born Today and be unaware of yesterday is a sin on humanity . A
crime , utter disregard to the dreams of young men and women of past
,to a generation lost anonymously in the history . .
Our education has a negligible role in making a thinker out of us , we don't trust our young minds and create superficial concepts in society . For instance - non-violence , i don't understand how can a person really appreciate non-violence without understanding violence and its disastrous nature
We are in constant habit of giving god-men status to our history's great and packaging them as something not practical or implementable .
Our education has a negligible role in making a thinker out of us , we don't trust our young minds and create superficial concepts in society . For instance - non-violence , i don't understand how can a person really appreciate non-violence without understanding violence and its disastrous nature
We are in constant habit of giving god-men status to our history's great and packaging them as something not practical or implementable .
Oct 9, 2012
The Dying Statement
My relative was posted in the burn unit of the capital’s
hospital for a month or so. Luckily I had a chance to roam around with him for
few hours for few days. During a conversation, he shared an observation, that
,in most of the burn cases related to domestic violence , the dying declaration
of the victim changes .
Initially, the statement squarely blames the offenders, the man’s family but
later the statement labels the incident as an accident.The reason being, the
victim is emotionally blackmailed on multiple fronts.
- One being, to depart on a good note, the victim is stressed by an array of relatives to believe the event was, a mistake, a momentary lapse.
- Victim is told about the consequences of a police case - elders would be in jail , in that case , who will take care of her kids .If she complains it would have a corresponding effect on her kids . Both implicit and explicit .
Before we go gaga about women, it shouldn’t be ignored, the mother-in-law, a
women herself would have been a partner in crime in all entirety. Also we
shouldn’t forgot the gross mis-use of anti-dowry laws by the urban educated
women .(Recently a SC panel has
recommended to tone down the the law owing to its misuse )
May be this needs to be looked from the paradigm of how and who we abuse. Who is a fair game and what makes the victim so. The Doc also told me, the tribals never come with such cases ( CG being a tribal state , the hospital concerned is in Raipur ) .It’s predominantly a caste specific phenomenon .Also, given the class divide, it being a govt. hospital, only people belonging to lower economic class were coming .,there are a large number of such cases in upper economic social circle and only a miniscule ever get registered.
Add to it the nature of death, don’t under-estimate burns , they are one of the most painful ways to die You die slow , with a lot of pain in case you escape the spot-on death . If some-one gives you an option , keep this at-last . This was suggested by the doc ,as a joke , a deathly sense of humor indeed .
Dowry death is a tragedy , our apathy makes it a statistic
May be this needs to be looked from the paradigm of how and who we abuse. Who is a fair game and what makes the victim so. The Doc also told me, the tribals never come with such cases ( CG being a tribal state , the hospital concerned is in Raipur ) .It’s predominantly a caste specific phenomenon .Also, given the class divide, it being a govt. hospital, only people belonging to lower economic class were coming .,there are a large number of such cases in upper economic social circle and only a miniscule ever get registered.
Add to it the nature of death, don’t under-estimate burns , they are one of the most painful ways to die You die slow , with a lot of pain in case you escape the spot-on death . If some-one gives you an option , keep this at-last . This was suggested by the doc ,as a joke , a deathly sense of humor indeed .
Dowry death is a tragedy , our apathy makes it a statistic
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