Topic: Episode #353

[Stephen Dawson]

Hey Evan, the capital city of India isn't Mumbai, it's New Delhi. (Sort of like Mubai is India's New York to its Washington DC).

Incidentally, the anti-religious-offence laws aren't surprising. First off, the nation was born only 64 years ago in a partition between largely Muslim and largely Hindu areas (the former became Pakistan). Tens of millions of people relocated, many of them forcibly, and up to a million people were killed. Today there are nearly a billion Hindus in India, 162 million Muslims, 28 million Christians, 23 million Sikhs and a stack of smaller religions, many of which have more than a million adherents.

Given that history, and that many of the followers of all those religions are pretty aggressive about the place of their faith in society, it isn't surprising that the authorities have over the decades (probably since even before independence) attempted to try to keep them all out of each others' faces.

I'd say atheists weren't even thought of when those laws were passed!

[Ron Obvious]

I'm happy to say that I don't. I have never read, listened to or watched a single word of it.

But you must!  How else could you enjoy the Harvard Lampoon's marvellous "Bored of the Rings"?

[Chew]

The SGU just uploaded a new video:

Passing Away

[The Dicklomat]

On the matter of medieval laws active in the more backwards part of the world, over here in Qatar we hear about them all the time:

Locally, three psychic swindlers were accused of scorcery - a sereous crime in Qatar - but plead to the lesser crime of pretending to be scorcerers.  So the GOOD news is that in this region they do something about psychics...unfortunately it is for the wrong reasons.  There is a kiosk in one of the malls that sells Power Balance bracelets.  I am tempted to challenge them on how they work and when they cannot explain, I tell them that if they don't admit publicly that it is a scam, I will report them to the Religious Police for practicing magic.  Unfortunately, my wife won't let me do this.

Recently, in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi family was in a market when their daughter went into a tantrum.  Rather than face the shame of their daughter being disrspectful to them in public, they accused a Sri-Lankan woman that happened to be nearby of being a witch that cast a spell on her.  The woman, whom the family had never seen before, is scheduled for execution (if they haven't done it already).

Saudi Arabia has several warrants out for people who have merely questioned the existence of god while either on Saudi soil or as Saudi citizens...and have managed to get out of the country before capture.  For example, one Saudi said merely, "How can there be a god with so much suffering?" in a Facebook comment.  Last I heard on this, he was in self-exile in Indonesia but unfortunately for him the Indonesians have similar laws and therefore he is at risk of being extradited back to Saudi for possible execution.

I'd give more examples but I don't want to take up a whole page. 

So, where am I being assigned next?  You got it - due south to Saudi Arabia.  After 6 years in Qatar I am scheduled to go home to Canada while my visa is processed then be on-site on or about July 15...and I have already gotten a taste of all this: The visa application requires that you state belonging to any one of 5 major religions, and "athiest/agnostic" is not an option.  If you don't pick one, visa is denied.  I blogged about this, complete with scans of the forms and my decision to become a Christian for loads of cash under the title "Declaration of Bornagainptcy" at http://thekazoosutra.com/blog/?p=219

My collegues are already starting a pool on when they should expect to read about me being taken out to the soccer field for "Friday festivities".

[mwilley]

Multitasking I understood to be easier for women than men. It was only this episode where Steve says there is no such thing, just sequential attention, that made me question this myth.
A cursory, and I mean cursory, search yields no less an authority than the Daily Telegraph http://tgr.ph/I5jcVe
I also have hime saying there is no such thing as multitasking on a BBC news report on the subject, which follows what Steve was saying on the topic quite closely.
Seems like a stragne experiment, predicated on some popular myths about the difference between men and women:

Professor Laws said: "Men are supposed to have better spatial awareness than women, so they should have outperformed the women on the map task and the key task.
"But of all the tasks we gave, the key searching task also requires planning and some kind of strategy.
"Men tended to start their search in a less logical place such as the centre of the field and they would not cover the whole area when they were outlining their search. women tended to enter in one corner and search in concentric circles or lines.
"It shows that women are better at being able to stand back and reflect for a moment while they are juggling other things."

Come again?

[Steven Novella]

oleophilic - having a strong affinity for oils rather than water

[Old Hoplite]

Multi tasking seemly works well if it uses different parts of the brain. For example, while I listen to the SGU podcast I also play strategy games. This works well since the input from the SGU is auditory, whereas the input to from the game is visual.  The same applies to reading and listening to music.  Flying is the same the inputs enter at different sensory levels. The feel of the stick, the sound of the engine, the growl of the missile getting  lock, the look of the lights on the board, etc. 


Whet the good doctor discussed as multitasking is also called continous partial attention: "It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. You're paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish."  Steven Johnson, "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter" (New York: Riverhead Books, Inc., 2006), 59

[JD Holwick]

the multitasking bit in this episode was interesting and confirming.  i have a number of friends who tell me how great they are at multitasking and from what i have seen, they are no better at it than anyone else.  when it comes down to it all multitasking seems to be, is the ability to rapidly switch from one focus to another.  am i understanding this ability correctly?  ---  jdh

[Yeargdribble]

The multitasking stuff was interesting.  I do several things at once and I guess I might call it multitasking, but with the caveat that I know that I'm really just adjust my attention quickly.

Music
I'm a career musician and practice a lot of repetitive things every day, and for those I will often listen to podcasts or audiobooks.  It almost makes me wonder if doing so reinforces the automation of these fundamental skills or if I'm giving myself a deficit in my practice by doing so.

In performance situations I often have to deal with either distractions or sudden adjustments.  When playing with my band we may spontaneously go back to the chorus or bridge on the fly and so while playing the keyboard I also have to be listening to drum cues or something else.  For playing trumpet in a musical theatre situation I often have to be listening to cues of the group around me or from the stage that change from night to night.  Sometimes and actor may actually jump several bars ahead and the entire ensemble has to compensate (and does so) very quickly.  The same can be said for improvising to some extent in that I'm surveying sensory input with my ears while performing and making changes on the fly. 

Gaming
This episode made me wonder if gaming conditions people to be better at this ability to survey large amounts of information both visually and aurally and make decisions on the fly.  I can also certainly tell that some games are much more difficult without audio.  I often feel like the skills I use in music and fast paced games almost benefit one another and it's really just being able to very quickly take small sips of information from many cups in quick succession and get and a baseline of what's going on well enough to be able to function and respond.


My wife, the oddity
Another interesting thing is about differences between my wife and myself that run contrary to this study's findings (specifically about the non-multitaskers being able to focus while heavy media multitaskers could not).  I'm admittedly a heavy media multitasker and will often watch shows with my wife while browsing the internet (because I don't really have time to do both separately more often than not). 

The odd thing is, my wife virtually always does one thing and simply can't do multiple things.  She actually gets frustrated with her inability to do something like play WoW and watch Star Trek simultaneously.  Even if it's a very automated task, she can't do it while do something else.  I often clean while listening to podcasts, but if she were to do something like vacuum with headphones on, she wouldn't be able to pay attention to what was being said.  The problem is, she can't focus on one thing very well at all (except when reading).  On the flip side, I, the heavy media multitask, am very good at paying very solid attention to a single thing while getting frustrated at her wandering attention.

She thinks she might have adult ADD because she is so bad at focusing.  I will often have to restart a piece of a conversation 2 or 3 times because even when she's diligently trying to focus, she's extremely easily distracted.  I thought women were supposed to be better at filtering?

She listened to this episode and thought I was some freak of nature because she feels that I'm uncannily good at multitasking and even parsing fairly detailed information from multiple streams.  I personally don't feel that good at it because I know I'm only getting a cursory bit compared to if I actually paid full attention, but it is an odd combination of ill fitting data points we have.

[Beep Boop Boop]

On the matter of medieval laws active in the more backwards part of the world, over here in Qatar we hear about them all the time:

Really someone from Saudia Arabia or Iran that I know summed up why those laws exist and it really has nothing to do with it being backwards more than it is being a totalitarian regime who wants to exert control over its people.
EDIT:
Also where the hell did this dinosaur paper come from? The only press release that I have seen was perfectly normal.  Ironically its also 4 years old but still its perfectly normal.
http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=WPCP_008807&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=7d9126cc-53b6-4d7d-93b7-3df569606622
EDIT:
Apparently the corrections to this article idiotically started citing this as a journal when its in actuality a perspective.  You really don't take it all that seriously in the field because its the equivalent of a newspaper editorial. 

[Sporefrog]

To me, it seems multitasking is great when you're doing things that don't require full attention. For example, while listening to music, I was keeping my eye on lunch that was cooking, and working out. Since none of these things demand full attention, I feel like the obvious choice is to do all three at once rather than one at a time. My 10 weight reps get done regardless of whether or not I'm glancing at the stove or not, and it certainly doesn't take me >3 times as long to do them (nor do I do them <33% as efficiently if I were only doing that).

Furthermore, the idea that doing this sort of thing "categorizes one as a multitasker" and "makes them worse at focusing" seems a bit silly to me. I'm also a PhD microbiology student and I often spend 6+ hours straight thinking about one problem, and doing a single assignment or lab experiment. I also spend a large chunk of time playing a video game while listening to a pocast and tabbing out between various conversations.

Intelligently managing your downtime might throw a wrench into these multitasking calculations. Say I'm doing one activity that has a break for an undetermined amount of time. While tabbing in and out writing an email while I wait for the break to end might lead to writing that email a bit less efficiently, it's still a giant net positive overall because the alternative is doing nothing. In these cases it's easy to see how multitasking is very much positive.

Anyway, it seems to me that multitasking for activities that don't require full attention really isn't detrimental in any way. This goes against Steve's interpretation of the studies which, to me, amounted to simply grouping people as either "multitaskers who are in general worse at focusing and for whom the negatives likely outweigh the positives", or "people who focus on one thing at a time and for whom the positives likely outweigh the negatives." These seem like broad generalizations that are probably too extreme to draw from such experiments.

Now driving while talking on a cell phone, on the other hand, or listening to a lecture while browsing facebook... sure, don't kid yourself, you need your full attention for these things.

[macronencer]

Could someone help me out here regarding the answer to last week's "Who's that noisy?"? I have no idea what a "shop vac" is (or whatever was being said). This may be because I'm not American

Thanks!

[Yeargdribble]

Shop Vac

Video of the noisy

[Caffiene]

"The shop" is slang for an industrial workspace (or sometimes a garage or similar if you have it set up for DIY), and "vac" being short for vacuum.

So "shop vac" = a heavy duty vacuum cleaner meant for use in an industrial workspace.

[macronencer]

Of course. Got it now! Thanks yeargdribble and caffiene! Much obliged. I realised it was a vacuum cleaner but thought it might be some other kind, or maybe that it was a brand name or something.

Yours divided, as ever, by a common language,

Mike (UK)