TW, please don't burst my newly formed bubble. ;-)
Is your desk overflowing with scraps of paper, coffee cups, envelopes and wilted plants? Well, far from being idle, it turns out you might just be a creative genius. How do the dust bunnies behind my monitor factor into this?
In world where ’cleanliness is next to godliness’ is a well-valued idiom, being a messy person can often be mistaken as a hallmark of laziness. But thanks to a recent study, researchers have found there is a method to this madness. Or the crumbs in my keyboard.
Proving that sometimes working in mess is much more productive than precision and order, researchers at the University of Minnesota found that creative geniuses favour a chaotic workspace.
After testing how well participants came up with new ideas when working in both tidy and disorderly work areas, it revealed that while those in the messy room generated the same number of ideas as their clean-room counterparts, their ideas were considered as far more interesting and creative when evaluated by impartial judges.
Furthermore, the data also found that people with a messy desk are more prone to risk taking while those at cleaner desks tend to follow strict rules and are less likely to try new things.
"Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights," researchers said. I'm not sure if my boss will see things that way, but I can try.
But why? Perhaps geniuses have far more important things to do than stewing over complicated filing systems, instead, under that mass of papers there is a sense of organisation that only they can operate through.
Just look at Albert Einsten, Thomas Edison and even Steve Jobs, they all had messy workspaces. Ah, but do they have 10-year old sticky notes everywhere?
In fact, the idea that a clean desk creates a productive worker is very much a construct of the mid-20th century.
Historically, geniuses were always pictured with an unkempt desk with Einstein famously pointing out that, ""If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" Spontaneous "retirement"?
So, if your work space, like many of ours, is usually a mess, stop agonising over how you look to your colleagues and embrace your untidiness for what it is ‐ genius.
#1
If a cluttered desk is an indication of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk a sign of? It's not messy, you just haven't discerned my pattern of organization.
#3
My bosses no longer bother me about my "messy" desk: The secret is getting rid of the parts of the mess that truly belong in the trash can to make room for the mess that doesn't belong there.
[NYPost] One night in the mid-1990s I tried out a computer game called “Civilization.” You started with a screen that was completely black, except for one square of land. As you pushed outward from this base, you’d make discoveries about the land around you and its inhabitants. You’d start to build a society, first primitive stuff like granaries, then advancing to roads and weapons.
Trade-offs would arise: Should I build a library or a cannon? As your world advanced, you’d run into other civilizations. It was disconcerting to discover somebody else had a battleship while you were working with catapults. As I was journeyed through all of these fascinating challenges, I discovered to my surprise that the sun had come up. Something had gone haywire with time. It was already 7 a.m.
If you had asked me at any point in my relationship to “Civilization” whether I was happy, I would have said no. I was ecstatic. I was euphoric. Making simulated granaries. Building simulated roads. Firing simulated cannon. These were my obsessions.
After a while I realized that becoming master of a fake world was not worth the dozens of hours a month it was costing me, and with profound regret I stashed my floppy disk of “Civilization” in a box and pushed it deep into my closet. I hope I never get addicted to anything like “Civilization” again.
Today millions of people, disproportionately young men, are similarly caught in the throes of video games, which are far more enticing than their 1990s counterparts and often involve many players engaging at once. The hand-eye coordination of these men is no doubt impressive, plus they form friendships and learn to work through problems in teams.
Surveys tell us that these men are happy. The 1990s fear that playing first-person shooter games turns you into a violent psycho has been debunked.
The problem is that for many young men, video games have become a substitute for living. They’re so addictive and soul-consuming that they’re unlike other leisure activities. Every hour spent on “Ghost Recon” or “Grand Theft Auto V” is an hour that could have been spent more productively.
Sure, that’s also true of golf — but rarely do you hear that someone has quit his job and is living in Mom’s basement obsessing over putting.
The problem is that for many young men, video games have become a substitute for living.Yet video-game addicts are engaged in a mass retreat from life. Men aged 21 to 30 worked 12 percent fewer hours in 2015 than in 2000. The percent of young men who worked zero weeks over the course of a year doubled in that period, to an alarming 15 percent. Those working hours were largely replaced by gaming, and fully 35 percent of young men now live with their parents or other close relatives, up from 23 percent in 2000. Their unemployment rate jumped by 10 percent. More at the link
The editorialist does not say if the inflection point was in 2009, hard on the heels of the economic meltdown and followed in turn by a severely anemic recovery in which the new jobs reportedly went to illegal immigrants rather than Americans, full time employment was redefined by Obamacare as 30 hours per week, and colleges became blatantly hostile to the men who ventured there. Could it be that young men gaming is an effect of Democratic policy choices rather than merely an addiction to pleasure?
#1
Why shouldn't young men dive into video games, when the world has made it clear they're the problem and getting rid of them is the solution?
Oops, turns out we need these young men to work so we can get that delicious, delicious tax money.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
07/11/2017 3:47 Comments ||
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#2
Nonsense, Herb. I've this problem with Grom Jr, and he (and his friends) are definitely don't suffer from low self esteem. IMO, computer games are (inadvertently) designed to appeal to certain types of introvert, high IQ mentality.
#6
I've seen people playing EVE online
Who are very disabled and for them, it's massively liberating.
Who enter into the economic aspect and learn vast amounts about trade etc.
#7
I play Arma 3 with friends and it teaches you a great deal about working in a team, delegation, roles and communicating swiftly, verbosely and accurately!
Also dealing with differing skill sets.
I think computer games like Europa Universalis also enable kids to learn history vastly better than schools ever did!
#10
Yeah and the generation before was lost to Console games, and the one before that to Television, and the one before that to Radio... Next up is getting lost to Social media and mobile phones.
Its relatively new so people get into it - and later, like the author's experience with CIV, will decide 'meh - back to life.' and it will become a side-item.
1) I fell pray to the allure of Civilization too. It started when I was working on VAX computers and the screen was delimited by different characters or letters for the pieces, armies, ships, land etc. This was literally a follow on to Dungeons and Dragons (You are in a maze of twisty passages....) The challenge wore off as the bit-head in me realized that you could never really beat the machine.
2) Long about the mid '70s I read a study by psychologists that planned to deal with the anti-social inferiority complex ridden computer geeks at IBM. They were shocked, and honest enough to report, that reality did not match their preconceptions. Rather than feeling inferior, the geeks KNEW that they were superior to their run of the mill peer group and that the others weren't worth the waste of time. It was judged to be a result of the mentality necessary to be told constantly by an infallible machine that you had screwed up. Only those with incredible self confidence could deal with that.
3) living in Mom’s basement obsessing over putting. Yeah, well Mom's basement doesn't stimp fast enough.
#13
The problem is that for many young men, video games have become a substitute for living.
TL/DR: My hobbies are ♫Great♫ and Your hobbies are time wasters for LOSERS.
#14
Much safer being a gamer these days. Drugs and alcohol are taking a toll on many people. Many men are not dating because the women are so difficult. Last night all young men were out and about. Not a single female. This is a very difficult world for young men but they stubbornly refuse to change. So they go and do as they wish free of the many constraints of socialization.
Yeah, my son is safe. But he isn't producing any grandchildren for me. The challenge in life is to face its risks, take your lumps, keep going and thrive in spite of the risks.
You try to meet women, you're gonna get rejected a time or two or maybe even three or four. Shake it off and keep trying, dumbass, the right girl is out there somewhere.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/11/2017 11:39 Comments ||
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#16
...unfortunately, today, 'bearing false witness' is rewarded. You taking your lumps may include 5 to 10 in prison. Not worth it.
#17
I loved Civilization back in the day. When Civilization Revolution came out for the consoles I fell in love again, similar game without the super-nit-picky details and designed for a 2 hour game instead of 2 week slog. Yet I don't think it caught on, the typical fan wanted the 2 week slog of minutia. Go figure.
#20
For those of us brought up on ASCII terminals the two week slog was the cat's pajamas. All the high speed super graphics just made it more obvious that the computer was in control, your mind couldn't do the imagination of those "twisty passages" at the same rate.
#23
The problem is that for many young men, video games have become a substitute for living
The problem is that amoral hypergamic young women told themselves that the whole world should worship their ladyparts, and that each and every one of them deserved only the most alpha male and wouldn't give the time of day to any other guy, and told themselves that it was morally acceptable to divorce a guy and take all his stuff the microsecond they were even slightly bored.
Ninety percent of young women in cities and close-in suburbs are having sex with 10% of the most alpha and wealthy young men in a sick carousel, hoping that some day one of those alpha men will blow off all the other women in his de facto harem and want only her, verifying her own notion that only her ladyparts are worship worthy. And of course, if it doesn't work out, out comes the divorce club.
If Chad Millionaire or Brute Billy the Biker doesn't marry them eventually, they'll settle for someone "less", but will always be looking to cheat with an alpha should one become available.
The bottom ten percent of men and women console each other with themselves. Eighty percent of young urban men have little chance at all at companionship, sex, friendship, marriage, etc.
Does that sound harsh? Does it sound like hyperbole? In the postmodern urban world, it describes all but some small single digit percentage of people 18-34. Rural America does a better job of matching up young people, but rural America is shrinking in population.
Given these facts, young men retreating into internet pR@n and gaming is a rational act. I don't think it's ideal by any means - I would advise them to work out, be healthy, develop their vocations and avocations and be patient looking for one of those few young American women who isn't a totally hypergamic sociopath. But the response of these guys as rational actors makes sense in many ways.
Thank God I was born and got through my youth before this stuff blew up in the country's face.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/11/2017 16:59 Comments ||
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#24
Arma 3 coz it teaches you to be a sneaky f*ckin Chernarusian.
#25
no mo uro is correct, but then the gals are only doing as instructed/encouraged by our system. The guys are refusing to take part in a system that demands they 1st confess their original sin of being born male, and that they also spend their entire life making amends for it. And as for that inflection point? That would be the one where for a time, women outnumbered men in the workforce. The only time in the history of the Industrialized West. We have Obama to thank for that.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
07/11/2017 18:30 Comments ||
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#26
Young people do eventually come out of cyberspace and back to earth.
I was helping a friend put in a sink in a bath room and we chose nice faucets, sink, cabinets and after a weekend the half bath looked cool.
My friend had a son who had been an avid gamer for years and he popped in and just couldn't stop talking about how cool his half bath was. He realized reality can be impacted by creativity and soon he was part of the remodeling crew.
[Daily Caller] French president Emmanuel Macron angered fans with his weekend speech at the G20 Summit that suggested Africa has "civilizational" problems which might be related to women having "7 or 8" kids.
The full quote shows that the comment about "7 or 8" kids was just one of many "challenges" Macron attributes to Africa.
"The challenge of Africa is completely different, it is much deeper. It is civilizational today," Macron said, according to one English translation. "Failing states, complex democratic transitions, the demographic transition...One of the essential challenges of Africa...one of the eight countries, that today has seven or eight children born to each woman."
#6
That Colonialism was an unmitigated evil has been one of the unquestioned pillars of modern thought. But as any sentient being who now looks at Africa must ask, How exactly? On the one hand they were provided with roads, railroads, airports. electricity, education, regular courts of law, modern agriculture and regular and regulated access to world markets. This coupled with an end, however temporary to such Africa delights as cannibalism and festive times with some of the lower primates which the WHO quietly admits was the beginning of AIDS. They were colonies for some time, true, but they also got their countries back in a vastly improved state which on balance they could not be bothered to maintain. Not survey, level, drain sweat and build mind you, but maintain. Of the 1,000,000 miles of road in the former Congo, less than 1,000 miles remain. Uganda once grew enough produce to feed itself AND Western Europe. Rhodesia was so abundant they could easily afford to put land into cash crops like tobacco. What exactly has colonialism been replaced with?
#9
Colonialism was the domination of weaker tribes by a stronger one--and the side effects of resource extraction were sometimes almost genocidal.
The "countries" that appeared post-colonialism typically ended up with a stronger tribe dominating weaker ones, with resource extraction that sometimes has genocidal effects.
The colonial powers, when minded to do so (remember King Leopold), had the resources to build infrastructure and institutions. Shaky "semi-countries" usually didn't, especially when engaged in stealing each other blind.
The post-independence history of much of Africa would have been very different if it had been more finely divided into tribal groupings. I suspect that, on the whole, it would have been better.
Posted by: james ||
07/11/2017 21:39 Comments ||
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#10
The post-independence history of much of Africa would have been very different if it had been more finely divided into tribal groupings.
We appear to be headed there now in the U.S. James. Perhaps we shall see.
[Speisa] In a crisis or war, the Armed Forces will collapse in a short time, says Defense Chief Haakon Bruun-Hanssen.
It is evident from a report that the newspaper Klassekampen has gained access to.
The report, entitled "Defense Chief Performance and Control Report for 2016", is marked confidential, and includes the Chief of Defense's assessment by the end of last year.
According to the report, central parts of the Armed Forces are "poorly manned and of low perseverance" and will therefore collapse in a short time in case of a crisis or war, writes Klassekampen.
The preparedness of the Army, the Air Force, the Home Guard, the Cyber Defense, the Armed Forces and the Armed Forces logistics organization are considered to be "unsatisfactory."
The Armed Forces' operational ability is considered "less good", while the special forces (Telemark Battalion) is the only part of the defense that is graded "good", writes Klassekampen.
#7
Norway back in the day gained independence from Sweden and made it stick. Against an airborne or seaborne attack their geography turns from an advantage to a fatal flaw -- like the Greeks they can be carved into bite sized junks at the attacker's pleasure.
The takeaway: their governing elite has spent all of that North Sea Oil money on bread and circuses...
#11
Folks doubting the intestinal fortitude of the Norwegian soldier have perhaps forgotten the 5th SS Viking Panzer Division. What has happened since then? Western Socialists don't much care for national preservation these days
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
07/11/2017 19:49 Comments ||
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#12
...The Norwegian armed forces aren't supposed to defend the country. They're intended to show just enough manpower to make sure the Americans defend Norway.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/11/2017 20:52 Comments ||
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[CurrentAffairs] The Democrats are trying out new campaign slogans, and all of them should leave progressives deeply worried. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) recently sent out a series of proposed bumper stickers, asking party members to vote on which they liked best. The four possibilities included: "Resist, Persist," "She Persisted, We Resisted," "Make Congress Blue Again," and, most tellingly of all, "Democrats 2018: I Mean, Have You Seen the Other Guys?" Many of those on the party’s left have long been concerned that contemporary Democrats don’t seem to actually stand for anything beyond "not being Republicans." The bumper stickers seem to confirm exactly that.
The party’s struggle to offer voters reasons to support Democrats has been going on for some time. Bernie Sanders has said explicitly that he doesn’t know what the party’s political principles actually are these days, and even Vox’s Matthew Yglesias has suggested that the party "could use a substantive agenda." But party leaders seem to have adopted the position that having a "substantive agenda" would be unduly divisive. That could be seen very clearly in the recent special congressional election in Georgia: Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff, funded by tens of millions of dollars from the national party, carefully refrained from advocating any actual policies. His advertising focused on pointing out the (obvious) fact that he was not Donald Trump, and the closest he came to proposing any legislation was in his plan for "consolidating federal data centers," a policy so arcane that it would put even the wonkiest Capitol Hill politicos to sleep. The presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton was similar: Clinton’s strategy was entirely focused on issues of character rather than plans for how to make voters’ lives better, to the point where almost nobody can name a single thing Clinton was promising to do as president. (If you don’t believe me, ask your Clinton-supporting friends what her policy proposals were.)
The bumper stickers are the absurd logical endpoint of this approach. Note that they do not imply anything about what the Democrats’ actual values are. It’s not "Democrats: Fighting For a Humane and Decent World," or "Democrats: Because Your Health and Happiness Matter." It’s just "Democrats: We’re Not Them," a statement that is totally empty of meaning. (It is, after all, true by definition that Democrats are not Republicans.) The differences between the parties are reduced to the fact that one of them is the Red Team and the other is the Blue Team.
This kind of focus, on why Democrats aren’t Republicans rather than what Democrats actually are, is a strategic disaster. Hillary Clinton lost, Jon Ossoff lost, and since 2010 Democrats have been losing catastrophically at every level of government. Formerly safe blue states now have Republican governors, and in red states Democratic opposition has collapsed completely. Worse, there seems to be almost no recognition in the party leadership that there is even a problem: Nancy Pelosi has flatly rejected the idea that the party needs to change, and if the new bumper stickers are any measure of what the DCCC is planning for 2018, the party’s messaging is only going to get worse rather than better. I have a theory. These days, the new pornos that are coming out show us that leftists are really, really into cuckoldry. Like, the fantasies are being tied down while an Islamic invader fucks and impregnates your wife. They like losing. It's a fetish. Hell, if they won, what would they do? They couldn't be "La Resistance".
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
07/11/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I've complete confidence in GOP's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
#4
On top of snatching defeat, the GOP has the amazing ability to both stick both feet in their mouth and shoot themselves in the foot at the same time.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/11/2017 9:54 Comments ||
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#6
"Democrats 2018: I Mean, Have You Seen the Other Guys?"
That one could apply well to the 'other guys' too.
"Repblicans 2018: I Mean, Have You Seen the Other Guys?"
Each and EVERY other concern (diversity, human rights, equality, higher wages, bigger safety net, etc) they sell out time and time again so long as doing so accumulates *power*. But they have NEVER sold out their belief in the unmitigated "right" to destroy babies.
[Don Surber] ABC News reported good news from the G20 summit. The World Bank now has pledges of $325 million toward a billion-dollar fund to help finance women entrepreneurs.
The fund is Ivanka Trump's idea.
Hillary set a record raising $1.2 billion for herself in her foolish presidential campaign last year. I don't recall her giving a dime to or a damn about helping other women.
[Right Scoop] Brit Hume wants to know why the story about Trump Jr. getting duped by a Russian woman who claimed she had dirt on Hillary is getting scandalous coverage when he says it’s "much ado about not much":
How was he duped? He met with a woman who claimed she had useful information, but concluded she did not. Surely that is the opposite of being duped.
Hume says there is no evidence of collusion with Russia anywhere in this story, yet the story is getting widespread coverage all over the MSM.
Hume also hits back at the argument that this woman has ’ties’ to the Kremlin:
Hume said this meeting appears to simply have been an attempt by someone to make some headway with the Trump campaign on the issue of adoption, which he believes hardly suggests improper behavior on her part or the Trump campaign’s part. The Russia story is going flat. We'd better stop for air.
#2
The way they are shopping the story on National People's Radio is that the meeting was illegal because Natasha was offering opposition research on Felonia's campaign and since opposition research has market value, this violates the law against accepting anything of value from foreigners to influence an election. QED, bitches!
#3
There are three possible explanations for the events described by the emails.
They are:
1. This was an attempt by the Russian government to do something.
2. It was an attempt by the Russian attorney or parties she represented to do something
3. It was an attempt by Democratic operatives to do something.
If it was the Russian government the purpose must have been to see if the Trumps could be bribed. But apparently the attorney was not informed of the email message and, whether she was an agent or not, she succeeded only in annoying the Trump people at the meeting. Is Russian intelligence this clumsy? I doubt it.
If she was the instigator of the scheme, I imagine she would have shown some knowledge of the emails, and offered some tale about the people mentioned in them. That she annoyed everyone within five minutes by talking only about other matters would mark her as an idiot, if she was familiar with the emails.
The third possibility is the only one that really makes sense.
Perhaps the Dems were trying to create dirt about the Trumps to help their campaign. The attorney had contacted them about the Magnitsky question, (which was of interest to both the Russian government and others she may have represented), and they decided to foist her on the Trumps by very indirectly getting the email message to them.
The comment by Goldstone "...is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump–helped along by Aras and Emin."
is something that is peculiar. Where did Goldstone get this idea?
It is not implied elsewhere in the email.
Where did it come from?
Did it originate with Goldstone? Or did it come from whoever communicated the message to Goldstone?
Perhaps Goldstone could answer these questions. If he was a loyal friend of Trump, (odd for a British journalist) he would not have invented it.
The simplest interpretation is that the original authors of the message in the email were attempting to plant evidence that the Russian government favored Trump.
The only people wanting to do so were the Democrats.
Why would they want to do so?
Perhaps they wee afraid that the lucrative relations between the Podestas and the Russians would come out, and they were looking for insurance, in evidence that the Russians favored Trump.
Someone should ask Goldstone who told him that the Russians favored Trump?
Posted by: Daniel ||
07/11/2017 17:41 Comments ||
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A strange piece, a bit far afield from our usual fare here at Rantburg, that casts current events in a different light.
[Jpost] Geographically, Israel is just off-center. Why then is it treated with such respect, especially by the likes of Russia and China?
In the new and surprising economic world order, Israel could gain a degree of wealth not seen since the days of King Solomon.
For the Western world, strong new alliances between certain non-Western countries constitute something of a mystery. But while the West is distracted by political uprisings and remains enamored with the idea of its own "manifest destiny," a new world order is emerging, dominated by up-and-coming global superpowers like Russia, China and India.
Over the past eight years, many unexpected diplomatic changes have occurred. The Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran has formed a partnership with the "infidel" nation of Russia. Less than two years ago, Russia moved into Syria, and shows no signs of leaving. And Syria, despite its own problem with radical Islam, has strengthened bonds with Iran’s fundamentalist regime.
Continued on Page 49
h/t Instapundit
...As late as the 80s, California was democratic in a fundamental sense, a place for outsiders and, increasingly, immigrants--roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class. Now, instead of a land of opportunity, California has become increasingly feudal. According to recent census estimates, the state suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the country. By some estimates, the state’s level of inequality compares with that of such global models as the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and the Republic of the Congo.
...Much of this has to do with the changing nature of California’s increasingly elite-driven economy. Back in the 80s and even the 90s, the state’s tech sector produced industrial jobs that sparked prosperity not only in places like Palo Alto, but also in the more hardscrabble areas in San Jose and even inland cities such as Sacramento. The once huge California aerospace industry, centered in Los Angeles, employed hundreds of thousands, not only engineers but skilled technicians, assemblers, and administrators.
This picture has changed over the past decade. California’s tech manufacturing sector has shrunk, and those employed in Silicon Valley are increasingly well-compensated programmers, engineers and marketers. There has been little growth in good-paying blue collar or even middle management jobs. Since 2001 state production of "middle skill" jobs--those that generally require two years of training after high-school--have grown roughly half as quickly as the national average and one-tenth as fast as similar jobs in arch-rival Texas.
#1
Most of the good middle class jobs in the mentioned fields have been lost as businesses flee the hostile environment. The big tech companies only survive as they bribe politicians to get exemptions, otherwise Google and the like would be finished in CA.
Eventually they will be as the need for more of other people's money becomes more and more acute and there isn't a bribe in the world that will keep the politicians from raiding their accounts.
More and more people will flee and the collapse of California is assured.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
![]("https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/51/02/70/51027017ab24ab14f620b531afabd6b6--bubblegum-pink-blowing-bubbles.jpg")
[Daily Caller] French president Emmanuel Macron angered fans with his weekend speech at the G20 Summit that suggested Africa has "civilizational" problems which might be related to women having "7 or 8" kids.
[CurrentAffairs] The Democrats are trying out new campaign slogans, and all of them should leave progressives deeply worried. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) recently 
[Right Scoop] Brit Hume wants to know why the story about Trump Jr. getting duped by a Russian woman who claimed she had dirt on Hillary is getting scandalous coverage when he says it’s "much ado about not much":
