Starvin Larry

Multitasking is a delusion. Its premise: that the human mind can, like a computer, parallel process and perform multiple tasks effectively. No, it can’t. Each new task undertaken diminishes efficiency across all tasks. For those who need empirical proof, read this article, make a phone call, prepare a meal, do a crossword puzzle, and paint a picture. How’s it going? Multitasking usually involves less demanding tasks, but people who drive and talk on their phones represent a heightened risk on the road, and that is performing only two fairly simple functions. On a conscious level, the human brain best operates as a serial, one-by-one processor rather than parallel processing, although the subconscious and conscious apparently work in tandem.

Delusion prompts multitasking and superficiality is the result. Like an invasive weed, delusion and superficiality crowd out and eventually eliminate more desirable mental flora. Deluded and superficial minds are unable to form…

It’s very hard for people born and raised in a country to actually see it as it is.  It is even harder for people in a country and in a culture to have a dispassionate view of their own culture and the state of it.

This is particularly hard for the US because we’re such a great big country, (as a friend said about my older son, once “larger than life in all directions.”)  Our pop culture even projects outward, appealing to people who frankly don’t get most of it save for the fact that it’s “new” and “cool.”  Our language is spoken — for varous values of spoken, and particularly UNDERSTOOD — the world over.  We can leave our enormous country and still be home, as the people talking to us are to a great extent influenced by the image the US has created of itself in the media…