Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Marijuana is less dangerous than Email [to your intelligence]

I wonder what the study would say about beer?

Marijuana is less dangerous than Email

Researchers at the University of London's Institute of Psychiatry recently released a report showing that workers bombarded with phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss in IQ than marijuana users.

Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, and his team of researchers monitored the IQ of 80 volunteers while they performed problem-solving tasks, first in a quiet environment and then while being distracted with e-mails and phone calls. The study found that people balancing a steady inflow of messages while attempting to work experienced a 10-point decrease in IQ ” more than double the four-point drop caused by smoking marijuana.

The most damage was done, according to the survey, by the almost complete lack of discipline in handling emails. Dr Wilson and his colleagues found a compulsion to reply to each new message, leading to constant changes of direction which inevitably tired and slowed down the brain.

Wilson's research is no flash in the pan. Computer technology in its modern, interconnected form is dumbing down the population more rapidly than television. A study of 100,000 school children in over 30 countries around the world testified that non-computer using kids performed better in literacy and numeracy schools than PC-using children. Education experts have dubbed it the "problem solving deficit disorder".

Source: http://www.techdo.com/marijuana-is-less-dangerous-than-email/

So I guess this means that those who smoke herb and then check their email are down about 14 IQ points while they're under the influence of both stimuli.

Doesn't this also mean that when a person normally with an IQ of 84 gets high and checks his or her email, that very same person BECOMES mentally handicapped (possesses an IQ of 70) while they remain high and at their computer?

It's a good thing I'm not a smoker - and a damn good thing I don't have an IQ of 84.

How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people

As technology weaves itself more and more into the fabric of human reality, becoming, connecting, extending, and reflecting us - we must remember how vulnerable such a system is.

As fragile as the creatures who created it?

Are we likely to impede our remarkable technological evolution with human deficiencies as old as the Chimpanzees we've come from?

How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people


A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

While tens of millions have been directly affected, the impact of the blackout has spread far wider, with economies across Asia and the Middle East struggling to cope. Governments have also become directly involved, with the Egyptian communications ministry imploring surfers to stay offline so business traffic can take priority. "People who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do," said ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur.

But as backroom staff at businesses across the globe scrambled to reroute their traffic or switch on backup satellite systems, experts said the incident highlighted the fragility of a global communications network we take for granted.

"People just don't realise that all these things go through undersea cables - that this is the main way these economies are all linked," said Alan Mauldin, the research director of TeleGeography. "Even when you're using wireless internet, it's only really wireless back to your base station: the rest is done over real, physical connections."

Read the rest here:

http://www.techdo.com/how-one-clumsy-ship-cut-off-the-web-for-75-million-people/