It’s time to read this article on procrastination.

Scientific American Mind published a well-written article on procrastination back in December 2008, but I keep putting off writing a little note on that article.    Today, however, I decided to get to it because the stark irony of putting it off anymore was annoying me to no end. I should re-emphasize: I really do suffer from procrastination, and I have really put off writing about this article. The article was written by Tricia Gura, and it is titled "I'll do it tomorrow." What is procrastination? It's not the mere tendency to schedule some tasks for later times. The term more properly applies where someone puts off tasks that have greater urgency than the tasks they are going to do instead. Gura explains that procrastination "carries a financial penalty, endangers health, harms relationship and ends careers." Yet many of us continue to procrastinate-- the article estimates that 15 to 20% of adults "routinely put up activities that would be better accomplished right away." Procrastination can also be seen as a symptom of a deeper problem: "Procrastination is about not having projects in your life that really reflect your goals." [More . . . ]

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Unhealthy remembering of 9/11.

I'm all for remembering, but only as long as remembering is emotionally healthy and oriented to an optimistic future. About 15 years ago, I met a young man in a civil war museum in Virginia. Unprovoked, he stated that he was angry at "the North" because the North had defeated the South--and his great great great [great?] grandfather had  "fought bravely for the South. He was visibly angry as he told me these things. It was pathetic to see someone so consumed and defined the American Civil War. His way of remembering had trapped him in an endless cycle of anger. In an article in Harper's Magazine (August 2011) titled "After 9/11: The Limits of Remembrance," David Rieff has expressed concern that many Americans are "remembering" 9/11 in accordance with the official George W. Bush explanation from 2001: We were attacked "because the terrorists hate our freedoms--our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." This form of "remembrance" has no room for any possibility that the attack was provoked, even in part, in response to the constant meddling in the Middle East by the United States, going back at least as far as 1953's "

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How Fox “news” manipulates its viewers

Here is a comprehensive list of the techniques Fox News uses to manipulate its viewers, compliments of Dr. Cynthia Boaz. It seems to me that responsible thinkers would anticipate these techniques, recognize them and turn this drivel off. Here is the list of techniques, but I would highly recommend visiting the main article for clear explanations of each. 1. Panic Mongering. 2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. 3. Projection/Flipping. 4. Rewriting History. 5. Scapegoating/Othering. 6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. 7. Bullying. 8. Confusion. 9. Populism. 10. Invoking the Christian God. 11. Saturation. 12. Disparaging Education. 13. Guilt by Association. 14. Diversion. I freely admit that FOX News is not the only "news" channel that employs these techniques--I've seen most of these used on other networks, though FOX is famous for proudly using these techniques.

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Republican firecrackers

From Huffpo:

Children who attend July 4 celebrations are more likely to identify themselves as Republicans later in life, a new Harvard University study finds. [T]here is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," they write.

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Music is like sex to the brain

New study on the pleasures of music reported by Discover Magazine:

[M]usic can activate the same reward circuits in the brain as food and sex. Participants listened to their songs of choice in a PET scanner, which detects the release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, and again in an fMRI scanner, which measures brain activity. The scans showed that just before feeling enjoyable chills in response to the music, listeners experienced a dopamine rush near the frontal striatum, a brain region associated with anticipating rewards, followed by a flood of dopamine in the rear striatum, the brain’s pleasure center. “It’s like you’re craving the next note,” Salimpoor says.
Here's the study. I've also noted from my "anthropological" visits to Christian churches (here, for example), that people tend to sense the presence of Jesus during those emotional peaks that occur in the middle of religious music.  You can tell, because people start waving their hands in the air during those emotion-inducing parts of the music.  I've also noticed that Jesus becomes more intense when a song modulates to a new key.  Seems that Jesus likes the same aspects of music as his human worshipers.

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