tagged w/ concentration
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Toward the end of 2010, a small book by a 93-year-old man unexpectedly reached the summit of the bestseller list in France. Indignez-vous! by Stéphane Hessel sold more than 600,000 copies between October and the end of December, propelling it above Prix Goncourt-winner Michel Houellebecq's novel La carte et le territoire by several hundred thousand copies. Hessel had written other books. His publishers, the independent Indigène Editions in Montpellier, far from Paris, had produced other volumes. But none had reached the public in such numbers. The book both reflected and anticipated the spirit of student demonstrations in France and Britain, as it did the wave of revolt now challenging dictatorships in the Middle East. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/section-table/42999-time-for-outrage-Toward the end of 2010, a small book by a 93-year-old man unexpectedly reached the... more
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1 year ago
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Whether you live in a bustling city or have noisy roommates, studying is that much harder when you can’t fully concentrate.
:http://www.onlinecertificateprograms.org/blog/2010/10-quiet-places-to-study-and-why/Whether you live in a bustling city or have noisy roommates, studying is that much... more
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If you are new to Buddhism or still in training or just interested in meditation, this is for you.If you are new to Buddhism or still in training or just interested in meditation, this... more
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It's a common conceit among Christians that their religion was in opposition to the Nazi regime of Germany. The truth, however, is that most Christians either went along with the Nazis or actively supported them. Just about the only Christian group that opposed the Nazis - and paid for it - were the Jehovah's Witnesses. How many other Christians supported them? http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/393-resistance-to-hitler-It's a common conceit among Christians that their religion was in opposition to... more
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worrg
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In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.
In the wake of the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority, this new decade will have to be about reforming our institutions to reconstitute a more reliable and democratic form of authority. Scholarly research shows a firm correlation between strong institutions, accountable élites and highly functional economies; mistrust and corruption, meanwhile, feed each other in a vicious circle. If our current crisis continues, we risk a long, ugly process of de-development: higher levels of corruption and tax evasion and an increasingly fractured public sphere, in which both public consensus and reform become all but impossible.
For more than 35 years, Gallup has polled Americans about levels of trust in their institutions — Congress, banks, Big Business, public schools, etc. In 2008 nearly every single institution was at an all-time low. Banks were trusted by just 32% of the populace, down from more than 50% in 2004. Newspapers were down to 24%, from slightly below 40% at the start of the decade. And Congress was the least trusted institution of all, with only 12% of Americans expressing confidence in it. The mistrust of élites extends to élites themselves. Every year, public-relations guru Richard Edelman conducts a "trust barometer" across 22 countries, in which he surveys only highly educated, high-earning, media-attentive people. In the U.S., these people show extremely low levels of trust in government and business alike. Particularly distrusted are the superman CEOs of yore. "Chief-executive trust has just been mired in the mid- to low 20s," says Edelman. "It started off with Enron and culminates in Citi."
Such figures show that the crisis of authority extends beyond narrow ideological categories: Big Business and unions, Congress and Wall Street, organized religion and science are all viewed with skepticism. So why is it that so much of the country's leadership in so many different walks of life performed so terribly over this decade? While no single-cause theory can explain such a wide array of institutional failures, there are some themes — in particular, the concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability — that extend throughout.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971117,00.html#ixzz0iQYu4JDjIn the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society —... more
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Here's some excerpts from the link that caught my attention because of my own work on a novel.
RadarOnline.com was first to report that the estranged wife of Kansas City Royals player Jason Kendall was raising questions about his use of Adderall, a drug whose use has skyrocketed among pro players ever since the league banned amphetamines.
Dr. Haraszti exclusively told RadarOnline.com: "The players use this as a performance enhancing drug which allows them to concentrate better and also helps them to get over their grueling 162 game schedule they face during the season."
And despite the fact that players obtain prescriptions for Adderall, Dr. Haraszti believes the prescriptions do not prove the players have a real need for the drug. "The players go to the doctors knowing full well they don't have ADD but the doctors go and prescribe it for them and make the diagnoses for ADD and the question is, are the diagnoses legitimate? ... most likely the majority of them are not," he said.
He also explains the number of baseball players diagnosed with ADD doesn't make sense. "The population incident is about 8% among children ...and about half of the kids diagnosed with ADD outgrow their symptoms by their early 20's so only about 4% go on to have the symptoms into adulthood.
“And among baseball players this statistic jumps to around 8%or 10% which makes no sense because it is more than twice the amount of ADD than in the normal population.
“And these diagnoses all came after amphetamines were banned."
The doctor also points out it is unlikely for such a high percentage of athletes to be diagnosed with ADD as adults. “It is very unlikely to just get ADD,” Dr. Haraszti told RadarOnline.com.
http://lushlost.blogspot.com/2010/03/adderall-and-baseball.htmlHere's some excerpts from the link that caught my attention because of my own... more
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You've seen them: The multitaskers who hang out in coffee shops simultaneously sipping lattes, checking e-mail, having cell-phone conversations, and bouncing from site to site on their laptops.Or they sit in their offices answering e-mails while writing reports and taking phone calls. Maybe you're even one of them. But is this overload of information even good for people? In other words, are Blackberries-those handheld devices that allow you to access your e-mail, the Internet, games and more-actually turning your brain to mush?
Perhaps, shows a recent study out of Stanford University. After recruiting 100 students and putting them through several memory tests, scientists there claim that folks who have several electronic media going at once around them lose focus and attention, don't remember things as well, and have trouble switching from one task to another compared with people who concentrate on one thing at a time. The proof? The students were shown a string of alphabetical letters and asked to note when a particular letter was repeated. The students who normally did a lot of electronic multitasking found it much more difficult to realize when a letter was being repeated. They also were shown sets of red rectangles either alone or surrounded by a number of blue rectangles. The images were flashed twice, and the students were supposed to let researchers know if the red rectangles had changed position the second time. They were instructed to ignore the blue rectangles. The non-multitaskers completed the task easily, but the multitaskers were constantly distracted by the blue rectangles. The more images they were shown, the worse they did. The third portion of the study had the students look at letters and numbers simultaneously but focus on only either numbers or letters. When focusing on numbers, they had to say whether they were odd or even. When looking at letters, they needed to determine if they were vowels or consonants. The multitaskers were much more distracted than the single focusers and performed poorly.You've seen them: The multitaskers who hang out in coffee shops simultaneously... more
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Stereoscopic audio-visual meditation session where binaural sound beats presented as a combination of Alpha and intense Theta Brainwave Stimulation combined with subliminal visual stimulators in Anaglyph 3D.
Designed to help you develop PSI abilities, this allows the viewer to experience sensations that are normally not apparent in every day life. In theory this connection to a higher plane often gets established when we experience something unique , something that everyone can now experience though our meditation sessions.Stereoscopic audio-visual meditation session where binaural sound beats presented as a... more
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Featured on BBC’s Dragon’s Den and Discovery Channel’s What’s the Big Idea, among others, Concentrate is a new UK-based company that has spent the past couple of years studying the design of classroom furniture and equipment used by students in an attempt to enhance student concentration. Over the course of Concentrate’s studies they cataloged reasons why children might be distracted, uncomfortable or unfocused in school and set out to design some products that might address these issues.Featured on BBC’s Dragon’s Den and Discovery Channel’s What’s... more
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Parents need lessons in how to cope with their children's unruly behaviour, new guidelines on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder say.
Drugs should be avoided if possible and not given at all to the under-fives, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises.
Teachers would also benefit from training to recognise and help children with this condition, it says.
Any primary school class is likely to have a child with ADHD, experts say.
Most of the estimated 365,000 children in Britain with ADHD receive no treatment at all.
But of those who do, most - about 37,000 - are prescribed stimulants like Ritalin (methylphenidate).
Children with ADHD have extreme difficulty sitting still, learning or concentrating.
At school they may find it hard to keep friends and suffer from bullying because of their behaviour. Looking after affected children can be exhausting for parents.
Parenting classes
The guidelines, which cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland, say parent training and education programmes should be offered as a first-line treatment for ADHD, both for pre-school and school age children.
The programmes teach parents how to create a structured home environment, encourage attentiveness and concentration, and manage misbehaviour better.
Drugs remain a first option for children over five and young people with severe ADHD, say the guidelines, but only as part of a comprehensive treatment plan that includes psychological and behavioural interventions.
Dr Tim Kendall, a consultant psychiatrist from Sheffield who is joint director of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and helped draw up the guidelines, said: "There is an over-reliance on medicines.
"Quite commonly, people tend to revert to offering methylphenidate or atomoxetene. When they do that it's not always because there's a good balance of risk and benefits. It's because the child has got what appears to be ADHD and that's what's available.
"Its easier to prescribe a drug when other options like parent training programmes are not available."
Dr Kendall said it was important to diagnose ADHD correctly, rather than label all bad behaviour as ADHD. The symptoms of ADHD persist in all settings - both at school and at home - and cause real impairment.
Andrea Bilbow, chief executive of the ADHD charity ADDISS, welcomed the NICE recommendations but questioned how helpful the parent training programmes would be to parents.
"Parenting programmes are extremely important, but they need to be specific for ADHD.
"The ones that NICE are recommending were designed for the parents of children with conduct disorder, which is completely different from ADHD," she said.
The Scottish InterCollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) is rewriting its guidelines on ADHD diagnosis and treatment and will take the NICE guidelines into consideration.
Their new guidance will come out in the first half of 2009.
ADHD symptoms
Easily distracted
Restlessness
Difficulty remaining seated when required
Difficulty awaiting turn in group situations
Difficulty following instructions
Difficulty in playing quietly
Often shift from one incomplete activity to another
Often interrupts others
Often engages in physically dangerous activities without considering the consequencesParents need lessons in how to cope with their children's unruly behaviour, new... more
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