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A New Disease - Affluenza A New Way To Say "Spoiled Brat" Posted on December 26, 2013 The trial and resolution of the 16 year old teen whose accident resulted in the deaths of four people is still a major topic among us. I am not young anymore, but I once was. Back in the day, I logged many miles under the influence. It was different then with respect to the volume of traffic we have today. The point I want to make is that the 15 year old didn’t do anything different from most young men except for the fact that his intoxication caused the death of four people. I will not speak to the tragedy of the loss of life and sorrow suffered by the families of the victims. No, as heart rending as the tragedy was to them, I want to speak out about why it was important to not sentence that boy to prison. To begin with, intoxication causes behavioral changes. Being intoxicated blurs judgment, reaction, and coordination. There is also the problem of personality adjustment that sometimes accompanies intoxication. Normally docile people can become boisterous and obnoxious. The changes to a person who is intoxicated are well documented with most aberrations commonly known. Most of the feedback against the judge who decided the fate of the 16 year old fell into two categories. The first was aimed at revenge, the second; setting an example for future ‘would be’ drunk drivers. Revenge is one of those actions that ‘evens the score’ for those who were most affected by the tragedy. A person can’t help but feel for those whose loved ones were taken for no other reason than being innocent victims. I know that it is somewhat cold to say this, but nothing the state could do to that boy would bring those victims back. Scoping out for a broader picture, we have to look at society and the general acceptance of alcohol consumption. Consuming alcohol is strongly associated with pleasure. The thing to do when you want to meet with friends or make new ones is to go to a bar. If you attend a party, you can safely bet that there will be alcoholic beverages to ‘lighten up’ the party. We are bombarded with the message that the only way to enjoy a sporting event is by drinking beer. Beer is sold at most sporting events. In other words the social message everyone receives is that life is just more enjoyable if we just consume alcohol. But along with all the fun from drinking comes the problem of intoxication. I maintain that a drunk who has a wreck is no criminal; there is no malice or intent to do harm. We live in a permissive society that encourages drinking for pleasure. Socializing with alcohol is a de facto standard. Turning 21 is a highly anticipated event for a young person. Twenty-one is the age when a person is recognized as an adult and expected to take their place as a responsible citizen. One of the privileges of adulthood is the ability to buy and consume alcohol. Being able to legally consume alcohol is looked upon by the young as a major event in their life. How many of you can remember the anticipation of turning 21? In the case of the irresponsible young teen, his parent’s income was well above average and they did a poor job in monitoring their son’s activities or teaching him about life’s pitfalls that can arise from reckless behavior. He was not schooled by his parents in the importance of self-discipline, so he pretty much did what he wanted. Affluenza needs no explanation. It may not reside in the halls of accredited diseases, but is another way of expressing the term “spoiled brat”. He is not a criminal in the sense of intent but may, with a little help, yet be salvageable. The judge was faced with the option of sending him to prison where he would undoubtedly develop negatively because of his age… or not add to the casualty list yet another tragedy to the list of tragedies already being suffered. I would argue that there are merits to setting an example, but with that said; it is doubtful if those already at risk would heed the warning. Hopefully, the boy’s parents will have learned a lesson from this tragedy and that other parents will also learn from this tragic event. The real crime in this whole episode is poor parenting. I whole-heartedly support restitution for the victims making it abundantly clear that parents everywhere will be made responsible for their children’s actions. Restitution would also be a remedy for the victims’ loss of any income or expenses derived from such tragedies. My wife has suggested that the enablers who provided the sixteen-year old boy with alcohol should also be held responsible. Hitting them in the wallet would go a long way towards convincing others to not give alcohol to minors. Her point is specifically aimed at the friends of the minor who were old enough to buy booze and either bought some for, or shared the booze with minors. Parents can also have booze in their homes that the minor can pilfer. Her viewpoint stresses that without consequences, we will all pay the price for future tragedies. This writer thinks the judge got it right. We as a society are very lucky there aren’t more episodes of this nature because of the prevailing systemic attitude about alcohol consumption. When we quit treating drinking with reverence, and stop allowing drinking from being a rite of passage, then we will have made progress. In closing, I want you to at least think about criminal justice. Justice is not some tactic to ‘get even’. Criminal justice is the determination of guilt or innocence and punishment for purposeful acts. Not all accidents are criminal, but rather the sad result of unintentional consequences arising from poor judgment. It makes sense to not criminalize unintentional acts. Civil courts do a pretty good job at ‘leveling the playing field’ for non-criminal acts. A special thanks to the previewers of what I write. I use a lot of their suggestions. I often rewrite these articles upwards of five to six times. It should also be noted that all six of those with suggestions thought that the teen should have been given a heavier sentence, with only one suggesting the use of civil suits. Support Modern Conservatism! "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Unknown, quoted by Jim Horning, Will Rogers and others" Top of Page

Memory Limits Memory Limits May Create Forgetfulness Posted on July 21, 2013 Just how big is our memory? I am only addressing a healthy normal brain status. There has got to be a limit to how much we can cram into our cranium. I ask this because it seems as the older I get, the foggier my memory gets, short term especially. There is the moment an older person walks into a room and has to think about why. Being naturally curious, I brought the subject up about memory size. Because of the passage of years, we accumulate a lot of visual and non visual information. Normally we can recall these memories with just a little coaxing or concentration. For instance I can still see my mother through the eyes of my younger years. I can conjure up images from the past at will with no problem, so that means that the information was stored. So again I ask, “How much storage is in a normal brain?” Could our learning curve level out as we get older because we have used up our available memory? If we insist upon adding information into our brain, does our brain have to ‘dump’ older memories to make room for the new information? If new information crowds out the old information, do we get any willful say-so about what gets jettisoned and what stays? I would just think that we do choose the memories that stay and what memories go by how frequently we use them. The so called short-term memories would have the fewest ‘hits’ simply because they haven’t been called upon as much as some of our older memories. I don’t want to confuse anybody about this piece because I certainly do not have answers, just questions. But if the brain selectively drops the least called upon memories to dump, then it follows that the most recent memories would have to go first. At my age, learning is a much more daunting task than just a few years ago. I have to read and re-read stuff to make sense of it. By repeating to myself what I am trying to learn, say HTML5, I eventually get the idea of what is expected. Does that mean that I have crowded out memories to make room for the new information? That is the question. Presumably, I will never know if certain memories are gone – I won’t remember! Support Modern Conservatism! "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Unknown, quoted by Jim Horning, Will Rogers and others" Top of Page

Memory Limits Information Overload Image from http://www.gfktechtalk.com/ Posted on November 24, 2013 This is the follow up part to the article I wrote about memory. I have questions that gnaw at me about the limits to our learning process. When a person dedicates his life to a special skill; would the accumulation of that knowledge use so much of a person’s memory and cognitive skills that additional skills become marginalized? Can a person become extremely competent at more than one skill? If not, why not? Is it a false assumption that our brains can get information overload? Skill sets are divided into different categories. There are literally thousands of specialties that a person can pursue. There are a lot of engineers specializing in specific disciplines, and it is probably safe to say that anybody who acquires the knowledge necessary for that discipline would be only mediocre at an additional skill set. Then there are the ‘jacks-of-all-trades’ that know a smattering about a lot of different skill sets but generally, not really an expert at any of them. The point is that there aren’t many experts in one skill set that is equally proficient in another. Why not? We have a lot of very smart people, some have a large mental capacity, but few can master more than one unrelated discipline. Humans can learn a lot about a specific subject, but only rarely do we find a person capable of expertise in more than one category. Progress creates additional information. The amount of information gained by the many disciplines is growing exponentially. Specialties are becoming more divided as discovery and research branches into even narrower, more focused specializations. In the not-too-distant future, as our knowledge base continues to expand, we will become more dependent upon our computers to make sense out of even simple abstracts. Our brains will also have to evolve if we are to solve evermore complex problems. As things progress, without more brain development, there will be no human that will be capable of absorbing enough information to fully understand the new working abstracts. Group think will pass for a while but soon even group think will be surpassed as the various mysteries of the different sciences reveal themselves. And, new discoveries will create a demand for a greater information base than even a group will be able to master. Our learning curve for understanding a particular subject still has to start with the basics. The learning curve for a particular subject is lengthening all the time because of the incremental advances made. We have to learn much more about a given subject than just a decade ago. Everything is much more complex than it once was. Understanding any technology requires the learning of its basics for an initial understanding of that technology, and also the conceptual understanding of the developments of that technology. As a technology gets more complex, the amount of material that must be absorbed to stay current pushes our ability. Our lifespan is increasing, and that is fine for giving us more time to hone our skills if only our brains were increasing their capacity to go along with our increasing lifespan. The future does not look bright for humans. Science fiction writers have been on to this problem for years. They have written many stories about mankind’s dependency on their machines and even suggested that we will turn to our machines to devise even smarter machines to solve ever increasing complex problems. It inevitably will become a world where the machines are smarter than humans – and that isn’t good. When that time comes, we will be relegated to the status of curiosities taking up space in a world that we don’t and can’t understand because it will have been designed by machines that are smarter than we. Go figure! Support Modern Conservatism! "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Unknown, quoted by Jim Horning, Will Rogers and others" Top of Page Unique Visitors