Letters Remain

  • Gradual Sleep Deprivation, Obesity and Cognitive Impairment

    By getting less than our required amount of sleep over an extended period of time (two weeks, for example) we are increasing our risk of obesity and impairing our cognitive abilities without even being aware of it.

    That’s the conclusion from a short article summarising the surprising effects of gradual sleep deprivation:

    Researchers […] restricted volunteers to less than six hours in bed per night for two weeks. The volunteers perceived only a small increase in sleepiness and thought they were functioning relatively normally. However, formal testing showed that their cognitive abilities and reaction times progressively declined [until] they were as impaired as subjects who had been awake continuously for 48 hours.

    Moreover, […] too little sleep changes the body’s secretion of some hormones. The changes promote appetite, reduce the sensation of feeling full after a meal, and alter the body’s response to sugar intake—changes that can promote weight gain and increase the risk of developing diabetes. […]

    A recent review […] of the large studies that followed people over time agreed that short sleep duration was associated with future weight gain. […] For example, [one study] showed an inverse correlation between sleep duration and obesity in high-school-age students. The shorter the sleep, the higher the likelihood of being overweight, with those getting six to seven hours of sleep more than two and a half times as likely to be overweight as those getting more than eight hours. […]

    The good news is that these effects can be reversed by getting an adequate amount of sleep. […] Allowing the study subjects to sleep 10 hours for two consecutive nights returned the hormones to normal levels and lowered hunger and appetite ratings by almost 25 percent.

    via @finiteattention

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Argument for Parenthood

    It is often suggested that having children has a negative net effect on the happiness of the parents. Economist Bryan Caplan disagrees, suggesting that studies have missed the evidence suggesting that parents sacrifice more than they need to and overestimate the long-term effects of parenting on a wide range of child outcomes (including education, morality, obesity, and general demeanour).

    Caplan’s next book is the intriguingly titled Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids and in this essay for The Wall Street Journal he outlines his core argument for why we should have children:

    While the popular and the academic cases against kids have a kernel of truth, both lack perspective. By historical standards, modern parents get a remarkably good deal. […]

    It’s also true that modern parents are less happy than their childless counterparts. But happiness researchers rarely emphasize how small the happiness gap is.[…]

    If […] you’re interested in kids, but scared of the sacrifices, research has two big lessons. First, parents’ sacrifice is much smaller than it looks, and childless and single is far inferior to married with children. Second, parents’ sacrifice is much larger than it has to be. Twin and adoption research shows that you don’t have to go the extra mile to prepare your kids for the future. Instead of trying to mold your children into perfect adults, you can safely kick back, relax and enjoy your journey together—and seriously consider adding another passenger.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Political Risk Assessments

    “Safety is never allowed to trump all other concerns”, says Julian Baggini, and without saying as much governments must consistently put a price on lives and determine how much risk to expose the public to.

    In an article for the BBC, Baggini takes a comprehensive look at how governments make risk assessments and in the process discusses a topic of constant intrigue for me: how much a human life is valued by different governments and their departments.

    The ethics of risk is not as straightforward as the rhetoric of “paramount importance” suggests. People talk of the “precautionary principle” or “erring on the side of caution” but governments are always trading safety for convenience or other gains. […]

    Governments have to choose on our behalf which risks we should be exposed to.

    That poses a difficult ethical dilemma: should government decisions about risk reflect the often irrational foibles of the populace or the rational calculations of sober risk assessment? Should our politicians opt for informed paternalism or respect for irrational preferences? […]

    In practice, governments do not make fully rational risk assessments. Their calculations are based partly on cost-benefit analyses, and partly on what the public will tolerate.

    via Schneier on Security

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Letting Go of Goals

    Designed to help you find focus and tackle “the problems we face as we try to live and create in a world of overwhelming distractions” is focus : a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction.

    This is Leo Babauta‘s latest book and he is producing it iteratively online. One issue I have is that if there are two current trends that I’m undecided about and feel have been blow out of proportion it’s the minimalist lifestyle and the notion that modern life is distracting.

    Regardless, I enjoyed the following from the chapter letting go of goals, describing why we should do exactly that:

    They are artificial — you aren’t working because you love it, you’re working because you’ve set goals.

    They’re constraining — what if you want to work on something not in line with your goals? Shouldn’t we have that freedom?

    They put pressure on us to achieve, to get certain things done. Pressure is stressful, and not always in a good way.

    When we fail (and we always do), it’s discouraging.

    But most of all, here’s the thing with goals: you’re never satisfied. Goals are a way of saying, “When I’ve accomplished this goal (or all these goals), I will be happy then. I’m not happy now, because I haven’t achieved my goals.” This is never said out loud, but it’s what goals really mean. The problem is, when we achieve the goals, we don’t achieve happiness. We set new goals, strive for something new.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Scaling Success and Bright-Spot Analysis

    When there is a large-scale and wide-ranging problem that needs a solution, we shouldn’t attempt to solve it with an equally large solution but instead attempt to break the issue down and find outlying successes to replicate.

    That’s the wisdom of Dan and Chip Heath–authors of Made to Stick and Switch–saying that to solve complex problems we should change our way of thinking to ‘bright-spot’ analysis and attempt to scale small successes.

    That’s the first step to fixing everything from addiction to corporate malaise to malnutrition. A problem may look hopelessly complex. But there’s a game plan that can yield movement on even the toughest issues. And it starts with locating a bright spot — a ray of hope. […]

    Our rational brain has a problem focus when it needs a solution focus. If you are a manager, ask yourself, What is the ratio of the time you spend solving problems versus scaling successes?

    We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing. […] Even in failure there is success. […]

    These flashes of success, these bright spots, can provide our road map for action — and the hope that change is possible.

    via @Ando_F

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Why Science Needs PR

    Scientists needing to persuade society at large shouldn’t be relying on their data alone to persuade but instead should employ PR tactics, suggests Wired‘s Erin Biba (and a number of PR company employees, natch).

    I don’t totally agree with the idea (scientific integrity and all that jazz) but some of the thoughts/suggestions are entirely valid and scientists could go far by listening to some of the advice and criticism.

    For instance, this suggestion to remove science’s holier-than-thou attitude, replacing it with personal stories of those at its core (the scientists themselves):

    It didn’t even occur to the [American Association for the Advancement of Science] panelists [at a recent climate change symposium] that someone might find that here’s-the-data-we’re-right attitude patronizing—and worthy of skepticism. “Until scientists realize they need us, we can’t help them,” [Kelly Bush, founder and CEO of PR firm ID] says. “They have to wake up and say: ‘I recognize it’s not working, and I’m willing to listen to you.’ It’s got to start there.” Science increasingly must make its most important cases to nonscientists—not just about climate but also evolution, health care, and vaccine safety. And in all of those fields, the science has proven to be incapable of speaking for itself. It’s time for those with true passion to get over the stigma, stand up, and start telling their stories.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Cryptic Crosswords and Face Identification

    A study comparing the effects of various leisure activities on the recognition and identification of faces has concluded that eyewitnesses should not be permitted to do cryptic crossword puzzles prior to an identity parade.

    The study, conducted by Cardiff University’s Michael Lewis, compared logic puzzles (sudoku), crossword puzzles (both cryptic and standard) and mystery novels (Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code) and found that performing cryptic crosswords reduced the reliability of recognising and identifying faces.

    “The identification of an offender by a witness to a crime often forms an important element of a prosecution’s case. While considerable importance is placed by jurors on the identification of the offender by a witness (such as a suspect being picked out from an identity parade), research tells us that these identifications can often be wrong and sometimes lead to wrongful convictions.”

    “It would be undesirable,” he writes, “to have witnesses doing something before an identity parade that would make them worse at picking out the offender … Consider what witnesses may do before an identity parade. It is possible that they might be doing something to pass the time (eg read or do a puzzle). It is possible that some of these potential activities may lead to a detriment in face processing.”

    via @noahWG

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Learning to Concentrate and Media Dieting

    Stating that “one of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate”, Alain de Botton‘s short essay for City Journal looks at our “obsession” with current events and how this distracts us from… everything.

    The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds. We leave a movie theater vowing to reconsider our lives in the light of a film’s values. Yet by the following evening, our experience is well on the way to dissolution. […]

    The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

    via Intelligent Life

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Media Consumption and Current Events

    As part of their series on ‘media diets’, The Atlantic Wire is asking a number of media luminaries how they manage the deluge of information we all encounter online.

    Some names you’ll recognise include David Brooks, Ezra Klein, Tyler Cowen and the following from Clay Shirky discussing his distaste for ‘breaking news’:

    In general, there’s no real breaking news that matters to me. I don’t have any alerts or notifications on any piece of software I use. My phone is on silent ring, nothing alerts me when I get a Tweet and my e-mail doesn’t tell me when messages arrive.

    I also don’t read any of the big tech aggregators. Knowing that, for instance, Google just bought Blogger, isn’t that useful for me to hear today rather than tomorrow. Some of Michael Arrington’s stuff I think is an example of the worst kind of breaking news. The kind of Apple Insider stuff where they publish something every day to satisfy the news cycle. It’s gossip coverage like following movie stars and it distracts me from thinking longer form thoughts. […]

    What are my guilty pleasures? Given the fact that media’s my job—I don’t feel much guilt. There’s no equivalent of eating Häagen-Dazs out of the box. […] That’s the thing about this job. If you think about it, I suppose the guilty pleasure is gardening or cooking. It’s about getting away from media consumption and making linguine instead.

    Of all of the articles in the series, Shirky’s is the ‘diet’ my own is closest to.

    via @cojadate

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • HTML5 Forms: A Fun Guide

    It’s been a while since I’ve read a technical(ish) article that is as accessible and fun as Mark Pilgrim’s guide to using new HTML5 markup in web forms.

    I’m not sure if it’s the doing of ‘Professor Markup’ or this slightly nerdy quip, but I fell in love with Pilgrim’s style:

    Asking for a number is trickier than asking for an email address or web address. First of all, numbers are more complicated than you might think. Quick: pick a number. -1? No, I meant a number between 1 and 10. 7½? No no, not a fraction, silly. π? Now you’re just being irrational.

    Mark Pilgrim–developer advocate for Google, “specialising in open source and open standards”–has recently released a book on the subject, HTML5: Up & Running. I hope it’s as entertaining as this.

    via @rands, who is asking the same question as me: “How the hell does Pilgrim make web forms entertaining?”

    Note: Mark Pilgrim no longer maintains the Dive Into HTML5 project. The old site has been removed.

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    Lloyd Morgan