We create technology and technology changes us.

I played guitar at a local coffee house last night ( Hartford Coffee ) In my haste to pack up to go, I forgot my electronic guitar tuner. Last night, then, I realized how dependent I have become on the tuner. I've played for many decades and, until 5 years ago, tuned by ear. I've fallen out of habit since then because these cheap tuners are incredibly accurate. All you need to do is watch the read-out--you don't even need to hear the guitar while tuning (one of my tuners attaches to the head of the guitar and picks up vibrations). I made it through the night, of course, but I found myself having to focus on what exactly the tuning problem was (which string or strings was out of tune, and which direction). People who don't play stringed instruments don't realize that even when you get the guitar tuned, it might not last for long. Even two songs later, it could require another adjustment. My point is that I had offloaded a skill to an electronic device. This is a common phenomenon these days. A lot of us don't know the phone numbers of our friends--no need to, with smart phones. Many of us are terrible spellers, but no problem, because the word processor will signal problems. My Google calendar and smart phone seem to organize me, rather than me organizing them. I find myself shooting out short texts and emails to get right to it, rather than calling, which requires some social graces--younger folks avoid calls like the plague, it seems. This makes me wonder whether they are thus losing some conversational skills. Robin Dunbar has researched the number of friends we have in our social group (it tends to be close to 150), but people who watch a lot of TV have fewer friends, and they might be losing the skills necessary to maintain a robust social group. This is not a criticism of technology. It can be immensely useful. For instance, I've used Meetup.com to connect with folks with keen interests in photography and urban exploring, people I would never have encountered without technology. My misplaced tuner last night reminded me that we create technology but that technology also changes us, for good and bad.

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The failure of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous)

What would it seem like if ONLY those who successfully completed a program were featured in the media? What would we think about a school where 85 out of 100 students flunked, but only the graduates showed up to say how good the program was? That is the starting point for Dr. Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes' article in Salon: "The pseudo-science of Alcoholics Anonymous: There’s a better way to treat addiction."

Rehab owns a special place in the American imagination. Our nation invented the “Cadillac” rehab, manifested in such widely celebrated brand names as Hazelden, Sierra Tucson, and the Betty Ford Center. . . . The fact that they are all extraordinarily expensive is almost beside the point: these rehabs are fighting the good fight, and they deserve every penny we’ve got. Unfortunately, nearly all these programs use an adaptation of the same AA approach that has been shown repeatedly to be highly ineffective. Where they deviate from traditional AA dogma is actually more alarming: many top rehab programs include extra features such as horseback riding, Reiki massage, and “adventure therapy” to help their clients exorcise the demons of addiction. . . . Why do we tolerate this industry? One reason may sound familiar: in rehab, one feels that one is doing something, taking on a life-changing intervention whose exorbitant expense ironically reinforces the impression that epochal changes must be just around the corner.
Who is studying the effectiveness of these programs? Not the programs themselves or, at least, they are not making their data open. That makes these authors suspicious:
Efforts by journalists to solicit data from rehabs have also been met with resistance, making an independent audit of their results almost impossible and leading to the inevitable conclusion that the rest of the programs either don’t study their own outcomes or refuse to publish what they find.
What is the solution? Rather than preach to addicts about a "Higher Power," the authors suggest that they need something far more personally empowering: sophisticated self-awareness."

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Carrying a guitar makes a man more attractive

Because I play the guitar, I read about this study carefully. Simply carrying around a guitar case makes it more likely that a woman will give a guy her phone number. The study merely concerned a guy carrying a guitar case. This makes me wonder how much more attractive a man looks to women when he displays an ability to play a guitar proficiently. And then there is this companion article by the Onion: "Guy Carrying Guitar Case On Elevator Envied By Everyone On Elevator, Imagines Guy."

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