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I’m as much of a tech addict as anyone.  I do carry two Blackberries, Blog and spend a lot of time on line.  I spend my whole day at work on a laptop.  But, this makes one stop and think…

Another disturbing article from today’s New York Times.  Here is an excerpt and a link to the full story.

When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it.

Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up.

“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”

The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens alive with e-mail, instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and the computer code he was writing. (View an interactive panorama of Mr. Campbell’s workstation.)

While he managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal after apologizing to his suitor, Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

This is your brain on computers.

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

And

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

The resulting distractions can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone-wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for millions of people like Mr. Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain offcomputers.

Click below for the full article…

Your Brain on Computers – Attached to Technology and Paying a Price – NYTimes.com.

A compelling article from today’s New York Times about the steep price Chinese workers pay to produce cheap goods.

I’m increasingly disturbed by the situations in these Chinese factories.  It reminds me of America and England at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Something is very wrong in this dynamic.  These workers are paying a heavy price to produce cheap products so Americans can have a lot of stuff they don’t need.

Here is an excerpt from the article.  I encourage you to click the link, at the bottom, and read the entire article.

The body of a 19-year-old worker named Ma Xiangqian was found in front of his high-rise dormitory at 4:30 a.m. Police investigators concluded that he had leapt from a high floor, and they ruled it a suicide.

His family, including his 22-year-old sister who worked at the same company, Foxconn Technology, said he hated the job he had held only since November — an 11-hour overnight shift, seven nights a week, forging plastic and metal into electronics parts amid fumes and dust. Or at least that was Mr. Ma’s job until, after a run-in with his supervisor, he was demoted in December to cleaning toilets.

Mr. Ma’s pay stub shows that he worked 286 hours in the month before he died, including 112 hours of overtime, about three times the legal limit. For all of that, even with extra pay for overtime, he earned the equivalent of $1 an hour.

After Foxconn Suicides, Scrutiny for Chinese Plants – NYTimes.com.

Very interesting op-ed in the NY Times from Charles Blow about the changing opinions about Gay people in the US.  The Republicans and the Religious Wrong are in trouble.  Their main wedge issue seems to be going away.  Thank God…

A couple of interesting excerpts with the link to the full column at the bottom:

Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:

1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)

2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.

3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.

I warned you: stunning.

And:

As for the aversion among men, it may be softening a bit. Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but … the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.

It’s worth going to the link below and reading the entire article.

I don’t normally like country music, but Patsy isn’t really country music.  She was unique.  A Virginia girl with a voice that defies categorization.

I just saw this great tribute video of her singing “Crazy” and thought I would share it:

Interesting article from Mark Halperin in “Time”.  I’m always fascinated by how the media is now in “silo’s” of opinion instead of dealing in a fact base environment.

But with Corporations controling the media and the general breakdown in competence across American society,why should I be surprised?

Here is an excerpt. Link to full story at the bottom:

The late, longtime New Yorker critic Pauline Kael was said to have expressed confusion over Richard Nixon’s landslide re-election in 1972 — because no one she knew had voted for him. To borrow that notion, conservatives today imagine that everyone views the current occupant of the White House as they do: Barack Obama is the worst President ever. Conventional wisdom posits that this potent right-wing, anti-Obama sentiment will diminish the President’s power — enough for Republicans to vanquish Democrats in November, regain control of Congress and weaken the incumbent for 2012.

But this myopia has been created within an electronic cocoon of Fox News, talk radio, conservative websites and rhetoric from Republican leaders, all passionately reinforcing the message that the Obama Administration is disastrous on a historic scale. It’s a message that is being transported as gamely by rank-and-file Republicans as it is by erudite conservative columnists with national readerships.

How Obama Haters May Help Democrats in Midterm Elections – TIME.

I just happened to be in the mood for this…Since we all become our parent’s parents…Always loved this Stones song and seems appropriate tonight for many reasons!

I’m glad people are noticing the hypocrisy of some of these folks– especially Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.  These “conservatives” lambast “big governement”, then expect it to fix everything while they take the credit.  Amazing…

Jindal is a fiscal conservative who made headlines last year by rejecting some federal stimulus money, then distributing other stimulus funds by handing out oversized cardboard checks to local officials.

More to come on this oil spill, it’s environmental impacts and cultural repercussions.  This is really showing how incompetent everyone involved is– Mostly BP, the federal government-starved and battered by Bush and not yet recovered from his neglect, state governments, the media and just about everyone else involved…

Gulf Oil Spill: Conservatives Seek Government Solutions To Problem.

Since I seem to have been stuck in the 1960’s for the last couple of posts, I thought it might be nice to say good-bye to the 60’s with a little bit of Jack Jones.

Then let’s move back to the 21st Century…

“Wives and Lovers”

Then, “Lollipops and Roses” plus some more scenes from “The Judy Garland Christmas Show”:

Okay.  This is going to be a rant…and I have the feeling only one of many.  I’ve been visiting my hometown of Danville, Virginia.  I haven’t posted as much lately as I’ve been tied up working with my sister to manage my Mother’s transition to Assisted Living.  That’s yet another future post.  But, this means I have had to spend much more time in Danville than I have in the last 30 years.  From what I have experienced so far, I have never been more aware of living in an upper-middle class, well-educated, liberal bubble in Greensboro than I am at this moment.  Greensboro is not perfect by any means, but it sure has Danville– and most other cities I know– beat.

Thomas Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again.  And if you  can, and you are from Danville, Va, you shouldn’t want to once you see it as it is today.  I remember coming home from College and my uncle telling me: “You used to be one of us, but you aren’t anymore”.  I took- and take-that as a compliment.

What amazes me, as a History major, is that 150 years ago, Danville and Greensboro were the same size towns.  Both dependent on tobacco and textiles.  The difference that I see is that Greensboro has always looked to the future and the outside world, whereas Danville has always been about maintaining the status quo and looking to the past.  Also, the Mill Owners in Greensboro looked outward and tried to improve the community while the Mill Owners in Danville sought to use prejudice to keep folks in line and maintain things as they were-for their own profit.

Greensboro values Education and is the home to numerous Colleges and Universities- UNC-G, NC A&T, Bennett College, Guilford College, Greensboro College, GTCC.  Danville has Averett and DCC.  Greensboro had the influence of the Quakers and other thoughtful denominations.  Danville is a hot bed of religious fundamentalism.

Greensboro has thrived on the forces of knowledge and religious and social tolerance.  Danville has closed itself off in ignorance and religious self-righteousness.  Danville is also known as the “City of Churches.  They have so many because they are always have inter-congregational battles and splitting off to start new ones.  I’ve lived a lot of places and I’ve never been anywhere where people spent so much time gossiping about and judging other people. As Jeannie C Reilly once sang, “well this is just a little Peyton Place…”  Harper Valley PTA always makes me think of Danville…

Danville has never looked forward– only backwards –to it’s glory days as the Last Capital of the Confederacy, and that “fact” is arguable.  For a few days Jefferson Davis hid out in Danville.  Or as they would say, “heroically established a provisional government” , as he was being pursued by the Union Army in the last days of the Civil War.  Danville has used this as their claim to fame ever since…

Once Danville was one of the worlds biggest tobacco markets.  It used to claim to be the “Worlds Best Tobacco Market”.  Dan River Inc was one of the premier textile companies.  But Dan River Inc was destroyed by NAFTA– which the short-sighted Danvillians supported with their votes to the then Republican Congress that passed that treaty.  God knows, tobacco is no longer a force in US agriculture.  But they never planned for this eventuality.

Danville is also losing it’s beauty and character.  It was once a very pretty little town.  Now they are tearing down the old Mills to sell the bricks and floor planking for scrap.  New chain stores are springing up every where and look like what you see in every other town.  The local businesses and some once excellent local restaurants are disappearing.  I have never seen so many ugly aluminum shell buildings and bad architecture as I see driving up Piney Forest Road.

If you want to conduct a case study of how big box stores, profit hungry corporations and short-sighted leadership destroyed a town, look no farther than Danville, VA.

This does make me sad.  I knew I would never stay there, but I hate to see what was once a pretty nice little town become a homogenized, isolated mess.  I wonder where the decent jobs are now.  How can people live as well as we once did?  I fear they are also losing their future as the kids go off to school and can’t or won’t come back.  Just like I did…

What is still fashionable in Danville?  Prejudice.  I have never heard so many blatantly sexist and racist remarks as I have heard since I’ve been traveling back there.  When I went to my mother’s bank and they typed up some forms on an IBM Selectric Typewriter with Carbons, as in Carbon Paper, I knew I was in a time warp in the technological sense.  It seems it is also in a time warp socially.  They seem to have missed all the major social movements since 1963.  They even seem to be working on getting back to segregation as most of the white money has moved to the County, the other whites go to religious schools and have left the public schools mostly to the African-American population.  This is a town that thrives on walls and fences.  People there only want to socialize and work with people as much like themselves as possible.  Diversity is a dirty world in Danville.

This does help me understand why Danville is mentioned so much in stories about the Tea Party.  They think it’s still 1776.

I know there are still some great people in Danville.  Some of them are my friends.  Sorry if this offends them, but I call it as I see it…

Enough for now.  I just had to vent…