Information overload
Bookworm on Apr 17 2009 at 3:56 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
When I was pregnant with my first child, I took the obligatory Lamaze class. I mostly found the class creepy and New Age (proving, even then, that I was a nascent conservative). Indeed, the only thing I took away from the class, and the only thing that’s still stuck in my brain was the core point, the point that the teacher admitted was really the only reason for all the fancy Lamaze breathing and New Age wrapping.
During the third or fourth class, the instructor had us grasp a few ice cubes in our hands. As you know, after the initial “oooh” feeling of chill, it quickly gets quite unpleasant to hold an ice cube in your hand. The darn thing is cold, too cold. After we’d suffered through a minute or two of burning cold on our hands, the instructor had our partners do the breathing exercises with us. The pain receded.
Since we all realized that there was no correlation between oxygen flow and cold hands (as opposed to what we presumed was the connection between oxygen flow and a less painful labor), she explained in simple words what was happening: “Your brain can process only so much data simultaneously. When your partner started insisting on you doing the breathing, that information filled your brain and eventually overrode your brain’s ability to be aware of the pain in your hand.” In other words, too much information can even distract you from pain.
As it happened, I discovered that the best distraction from pain during childbirth is an epidural, but that’s another story. (Although I will say that even I was aware of the irony of me — me!! — begging to have a needle stuck in my spine.)
All of the above is not simply a bizarre digression. It goes, instead, to the problems I’ve been having with blogging lately. As regular readers know, I used to be much more prolific, and I’d get going earlier in the day. Some of my slow down is logistical. I have a morning job now, and simply can’t get to the computer. I then have a short of window of mid-daytime, which is often eaten up by errands, etc. I then go into high gear for the afternoon shift, which again drags me away from my computer for the carpools, volunteer work, shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. And, of course, selfishly, I put the dojo ahead of the blog. Blogging is wonderful, but the dojo is good for my health, both mental and physical. Simply put, my time is more constricted than before.
But there’s a bigger problem, and this gets to my Lamaze story. President Obama and his Democrats have been busy, busy, busy, and the rogue nations have been busy too. The news cycle pops with stories, not from day to day, or week to week, but from minute to minute. During my shortened computer time, I’m struggling to process
- biased DHS reports,
- un-American bows,
- non-refundable TARP money,
- economically suicidal cap and trade plans,
- Nork Missiles,
- Green initiatives (even as people are beginning to catch on to the fact that the human factor is a giant Al Gore induced scam),
- tea parties,
- Durban II (to go or not to go),
- surreal deficit spending,
- strong arm threats to Israel’s survival,
- vulgar rants about sweet Miley Cyrus,
- the refreshing and uplifting performance from Susan Boyle (and I was one of the first to post it, since I read the British papers),
- the usual rants and brainwashing from the Islamist bad guys,
- the serious cuts to the American military, even as the bad guys, at home, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in North Korea, etc., line up to slap us,
- the European leader’s monolithic refusal to turn European Obama-mania into any agreements to the things for which Obama went begging,
- Obama’s apology tour in which he, the leader of our nation, informed the world that America is the arrogant and dismissive source of all world woes,
- successfully brainwashed American young people are unable to distinguish capitalism from socialism, so would happily throw their lot in with the latter, and
- the fact that America was almost humiliated before the world by a bedraggled bunch of teenage pirates
And all of that’s just what I could think of sitting here for a minute. Go to my usual haunts, such as American Thinker, Little Green Footballs, Power Line, Michelle Malkin, National Review, Commentary, The New York Times, the SF Chronicle, etc., and there’s more and more and more and more.
In the old days, I used to be a powerful information processor. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always been a good legal writer. I can read a bunch of stuff and start synthesizing it. I see connections. Except that I’m not a whacked out schizophrenic, it’s sort of like that moment in the movie A Beautiful Mind when the Russell Crowe character, having pinned all these articles to the wall, suddenly sees them explode in interconnectedness. Because he was mad, of course, nothing actually connected them but, in my world, things frequently did connect, and I had a good track record of convincing judges that my patterns were correct.
For many years, my blog has been the same. I read the news, and read it, and read it, and then suddenly, I have a wonderful epiphany when a pattern makes sense. Lately, though, I can’t see any patterns beyond the obvious one: Obama told more egregious lies (both in number and in scope) than most politicians have had to tell in order to get elected. He had to, of course, because he had no record on which to run. All he had was the promise he made to credulous voters that he was good enough, smart enough and, gosh darn it!, people would like him.
It’s a good lie. Popularity polls show that, bizarrely, even as people figure out that his policies are inimical to their economic well-being and their values, they still like him. Apparently Lincoln was wrong. If you’re Obama, you can fool all of the people (or at least enough of them) all of the time.
And so I’m having trouble blogging. There are too many ice cubes. There’s too much mental pain. I can’t blog out the noise, dull the pain and see the patterns. Just when it’s most important that the opposition keep to its message, I’ve lost my focus. I assume I’ll get it back, but you’ll have to bear with me for a few days (weeks?!) if my blog is a bit discursive, or if it relays information without much comment. Right now, in my brain, there’s no there there.
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24 Responses to “Information overload”
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BW – I appreciate your ability to bring a lively personal spark to your mostly political blog by your effective and sometimes unusual synthesizing! Give yourself a spring break for a while.
A comment on tea parties: If conservatives are not able to set aside the green eye shades and connect every American’s very liberty to lower taxes and spending we will lose the battle. For example (not a very good one but I can’t think of another one right now) at our rally, there were many signs saying Taxed Enough Already. But I thought the one that said Legalize Capitalism Now made a more personal appeal because it goes to the philosophy of the free market picking winners and losers and not the President.
Don’t feel bad – it is a lot to absorb these days. it is amazing that so many people are still fans of this new fascist. But you can’t blame them entirely – they are probably your everyday working class that catches a few minutes of the evening news or reads the local paper or periodical during a break at work, all of which are full of nothing more than a barrage of misinformation and/or propaganda by the “mainstream” media…
Great suggestion and example Marguerite!
I am feeling like the whole country (especially the heartland) is being compressed like pushing a dart into a dart gun (remember those?) and the recoil is coming…
Marguerite…
I agree with you that wanting the lower taxes – at the moment – is not really the critical issue. The issue is that the government through Congress is exploding the size of government way beyond their scope as defined by the Constitution and expecting the people to pay for it no matter how far they expand, without the consent of the people. We seem to have lost _all_ control of congress. They’re indulging in an expansion with no oversight. They have cast aside all pretense of being limited by the constraints of the Constitution and have set about to establish a new form of government with no permission from us, the governed. Taxes are a symptom, not the real problem.
But if you’ve read my comments already, you know my opinion…!
I like that sign – “Legalize Capitalism” – though…very good.
Re: losing control of congress – did US Term Limits v Thornton put paid to any hope of every imposing congressional term limits?
Book said,
>> Obama told more egregious lies (both in number and in scope) than most politicians have had to tell in order to get elected.
Marguerite said,
>> BW- I appreciate your ability to bring a lively personal spark to your mostly political blog by your effective and sometimes unusual synthesizing! Give yourself a spring break for a while.
And I agree! Your life has its interests, and each will wax and wane and change as you grow and change. Your kids are growing and changing as well.
In addition, I offer this: Perhaps the synthesis is more difficult to achieve because either events are far more complex, or because you’re blocking? We haven’t seen anything like this since Carter, and what we’re seeing with Obama is actually at this point so much worse. American society and its civilization is much decayed compared to then as well, despite our advances in technology and efficiency.
So perhaps events require a synthesis so complex that it’s going to take a lot of time to fit the pieces to the pattern(s). As to possibly blocking: Perhaps the synthesis fits a pattern so dark and gloomy, that you’re resisting going there. No one likes to be a prophet of doom and gloom. Optimistic people, or those with a sunny outlook on life, naturally resist accepting a pattern that is dark and gloomy. “It can’t be that bad, not really!” is the conclusion they arrive at, rejecting the pattern they’re seeing.
Carter was mostly just a completely naive and ineffective person – making him an incompetent president. Only in the case of Israel did he seem to be actively malicious. Obama is a whole nuther ball of wax. He’s not naive. It remains to be seen, in the long term, whether he’ll be ineffective.
To this point (thankfully!) watching his administration has been like watching someone rake leaves in a windstorm. Everything’s everywhere, with not much actually accomplished, though they are furiously trying. If they succeed, I fear for our country, so I’m watching all this furious plan-mounting and mouthing, and feeling quite grateful that so far there’s been little concrete actual accomplishment. They’ve managed to spend our children’s and grandchildren’s money, bad enough, but that’s the easy part for them.
In the military, what you are describing, Ms. Bookworm, is know as a “target rich environment.” As to Obama’s continuing popularity, just to put it into perspective, his numbers are actually below those of Jimmy Carter at this same point in his presidency. I hold out little to no hope of the current congressional Republicans effectively responding to Obama. But the tea party phenomena may in fact actually change the current congressional republican paradigm. Not likely, but a pleasent thought I intend to cling to, along with my bible and guns, for the next few years.
If the franchise is not limited to those who have “skin in the game”, in Obama’s words….that is, only those who actually PAY *income taxes* get to vote, then it’s hard for me to see how we are going to turn things around. It appears that the center of gravity has shifted from the producers over to the tax-suckers. They will vote for the guy who promises to give them the most, and together with the young and idealistic (stupid), that’s a majority at this point.
Hate to drop a downer on the party, and I’d love to be convinced I’m wrong……
I was thinking about that same thing today, Earl, as I drove home — namely, the fact that we’re becoming a binary nation composed, on the one hand, of people who work and pay and, on the other hand, of people who neither work nor pay. I guess they’re our lilies of the field. In a weird inversion of serfdom, it’s the upper class now who labor to support the lower. That medieval wheel of fortune took a few hundred years, but it certainly rolled around.
In any event, what I wondered was whether the lilies out there are going to vote. That is, will they become so inert that they can’t get to the polls to protect their new status as official government freeloaders? No matter how easy states try to make it, with drive-through voting and grocery store registration, there is still some minimal effort required to vote. I wonder if those who have been removed from any obligation to the government whatsoever will have the momentum to make that effort. If they don’t, that’s the only way we’ll be able to rejigger the balance so that all Americans have to participate economically in the government.
There is no question that the number of different loud signals are becoming an almost impossible noise to properly process. And personal concerns demand attention. But it is also a proof that the other side is over reaching far beyond any ability to control or complete.
As an example of the left’s lack of control, look at the lib’s response to the Tea Parties. They are nearly frozen with anger. And there were a lot more than anyone knows. I organized a small one here. There were small Tea Parties all over southern NJ.
Our side needs to engage, motivate, educate, and prepare for 2010.
Al
Book,
I’m suffering from information overload too. I used to read one or two German newspapers a day plus 3 weeklies and watch TV news. I can’t do it anymore. First, there is really very little news that is communicated with enough depth to help you get a handle on the situation. I’m tired of ending every broadcast by telling my husband, “They didn’t explain why this is a bad idea” or “Those people don’t know what they are talking about.” I am just sick of the superficiality and spin.
Second, I am sick of Obama. He is everywhere, all the time. Yet nothing I see or read makes me trust him or his abilty to guide our country through some difficult times. I am tired of the apologies made by a man who thinks his words will change the world and yet is too provincial to know that while he grovels, the rest of the world is unwilling to even begin their own examination of conscience. I don’t want to hear him apologize one more time just so he can stand apart from me as the enlightened one. I’m tired of sweaters and puppies and vegetable gardens. Been there; done that. I’ve knitted my own sweaters; had dogs, cats, steers, and rabbits; and harvested and canned enough beans, tomatoes, and corn to fill the WH pantry for a while. Obama, stop projecting the ignorance of you and yours onto me.
Like you, Book, I am skimming the news more, looking for a nugget that may be worth pursuing. But I am getting noise and equivocations and self promotion. It is only in a my favorite blogs that I find authentic seekers and people I can respect. Thank you so much for helping this community come together.
In any event, what I wondered was whether the lilies out there are going to vote. That is, will they become so inert that they can’t get to the polls to protect their new status as official government freeloaders?
They already are. That’s why ACORN sends around buses and makes payouts.
Book #7:
>> In a weird inversion of serfdom, it’s the upper class now who labor to support the lower.
In a democracy, when one faction comes to control 55% of the vote, it’s all over but the shouting. In this case, Obama and the Statists are trying to create that permanent majority bloc. It *can* certainly happen. The political rape of the minority can then commence.
The courts are supposed to prevent this, but when the courts are also controlled by that bloc…
My initial response to this idea was that politics, economics and voting patterns are fluid, and it couldn’t happen. But the pernicious problem with the case of the permanent underclass, being on the government dole, is that they almost never come off the dole once they’ve been on it long enough, and they lose all sense of individual freedom and responsibility.
Our vote system is opaque enough that a well-organized fraud effort can succeed in any close election. Have we been seeing such a well-organized fraud effort recently? It’s too early to be sure, but one hell of a lot of close elections have been consistently sliding in the Statists’ favor recently.
“Get out the vote” efforts have a long tradition of paying people to vote. With such modern organization efforts and money, and the ability to deliver via fraud any close election, a 55% majority can remain in complete control.
If Obama is capable of *anything*, I think that via community organization dirty tricks he is capable of creating that 55% majority.
If revolution becomes the answer, then the changes I’d make would be to limit government by limiting the power to tax, but require tax to be paid in order to vote. No tax, no vote. Sort of like the founding fathers limiting voting to owners of property…never should have given that up! I’d settle for just paying tax, though.
As a follow-up, even Charles knows there are still lines to be drawn. He’s absolutely right about this one.
Another ‘sickening’ thing was listening to Nadine Geraffalo (I know that’s not the correct spelling) righteously accuse tea party supporters of being racists – to quote my daughter ‘. . . listening to her made me feel like I had vomit in my mouth.’
Book:
I have an idea that might help you relax for a bit and take a break.
You’ve got some great contributors here—Mike, suek, Danny, Ymarsakar, and so on (forgive me all you other fine writers who didn’t pop immediately into this old man’s head). What if they were each to take one day of the week when they are responsible for doing the blog?
Since there are security issues—I’m sure you wouldnt want people to have direct access to the innards of your site—perhaps their blogging could be in the form of an e-mailed contribution the night before or in the early morning. You could pop them in quickly before starting your madcap day.
That would give you continuity via people you trust and an opportunity to relax and only contribute when there’s a topic that really grabs you. When you’ve caught your breath again, return full-time. You’ll be both rested and reassured that whenever you do need to take a break, there are loyalists who’ve got your back.
Re: Charles idea…
The problem of information overload is a real one…
I think what we’re witnessing is the result of infiltration of liberals in all sorts of influential places over the years, just waiting for the opportunity to put their solutions – or maybe that should be changes – into effect. As a result they’re “everywhere” – and that’s extremely distracting.
Different people have different interests – specialities. They no doubt frequent different blogs in line with their interests. Maybe each would offer to cover a slightly different area and email articles to you? Not just links (my weakness) but actual articles that are within their area of expertise. You could use them on certain days of the week, or just when you needed a break…
Wolf…
Glad to see you here…at least it’s a sign of life!
Will you be able to get back blogging again? or is it something that will be indefinitely on hold? I notice your name doesn’t raise a url…
the fact that we’re becoming a binary nation composed, on the one hand, of people who work and pay and, on the other hand, of people who neither work nor pay. I guess they’re our lilies of the field. In a weird inversion of serfdom, it’s the upper class now who labor to support the lower. That medieval wheel of fortune took a few hundred years, but it certainly rolled around.
In any event, what I wondered was whether the lilies out there are going to vote. That is, will they become so inert that they can’t get to the polls to protect their new status as official government freeloaders? No matter how easy states try to make it, with drive-through voting and grocery store registration, there is still some minimal effort required to vote. I wonder if those who have been removed from any obligation to the government whatsoever will have the momentum to make that effort. If they don’t, that’s the only way we’ll be able to rejigger the balance so that all Americans have to participate economically in the government.
sorry i don’t do HTML stuff so I don’t know how to use Italics.
Book: what will happen is what happens in all countries that have repressive tax systems. The economy will go underground out of the reach of taxation. A black/gray market will develop.
I live with it here in Israel.
And then a “Margaret Thatcher” type politician will have to re-vamp everything in an effort to get the economy to restart.
>>The economy will go underground out of the reach of taxation. A black/gray market will develop.>>
Agreed. Either that or they’ll “go Galt”…
suek #18:
>> Wolf… Glad to see you here…at least it’s a sign of life!
I agree completely! I was wondering if our “Wolf Howling” was the same Wolf Howling of the now quiet blog.
If you are he, Wolf, welcome back! The “Wolf Howling” blog used to be on my top ten list that I read every day, and I’d love to see it return!
It’s the new SHock and Awe, Book, for Obama’s enemies.
Honing our arguments…
This morning, I asked a question about the sexual innunedo behind the word “teabagging” (since other bloggers have noticed a sneering, locker room quality to MSM reports on the Tea Parties). To date, there have been 94 comments on that……
Ms. Bookworm, I agree with you and others that there is not only an information overload, but that the ubiquity of idiocy-in-control makes it difficult to know where to start.
This is probably key here: one thing I have enjoyed about this blog is the eclectic nature of the critique. In the current environment, that is very overwhelming. You might try limiting yourself to one or two topics per day.
—————-
I do not believe that the motto “Legalize Capitalism” strikes a chord with many–if not most–people, who have no idea at all what is meant by the term.
I think that Legalize Free Markets would be a better motto, and Legalize Liberty (or “Legalize Freedom”) would be better yet.
As Al noted: Our side needs to engage, motivate, educate, and prepare for 2010. (Out side does not equal “Republicans”, although they may be the party of choice in more places than not.) That will include a lot of steady, painful, grunt-work, keeping at it even when success looks ephemeral.
———–
So . . . keep up the good work. Each person do his part in making corrections and stating the truth—and pointing out the mis-use of words by those seeking to control others.
As the British once said, “Trust in God and dread nought.”