Skeptic Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison for Fraud

Brian Dunning Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison for Fraud

 

 

Brian Dunning, creator of the Skeptoid podcast and the world’s worst “science” rap video, pled guilty to wire fraud that had allowed him to collect more than $5 million. Sentencing has finally occurred, and the result is 15 months in prison starting on September 2, 2014, followed by three years of supervised release.

This is great news for the skeptic community at large, since it may be a long enough sentence for Dunning to fade from memory and stop publicly representing the very people who are supposedly trying to stop people from defrauding others.

Meanwhile, this case had brought to light an actual skeptical activist who appears to be smart, hilarious, and actually effective at stopping frauds: Assistant United States Attorney David R. Callaway. In the government’s sentencing recommendation to the court last week, Callaway* argued beautifully against the idea that Dunning deserves to be insulated from the consequences of his actions, saying that “There is no “Get out of Trauma Free” card for white-collar criminals or, unfortunately, their families.” In fact, Callaway argues that Dunning should be punished harshly in part because his crime wasn’t motivated by desperate need:

The crime in this case was motivated by pure greed….This was no “smash and grab,” motivated by poverty, hunger, or substance abuse, but rather a clever, sophisticated, calculated criminal scheme carried out over several years by a man who certainly had no pressing need for the money.

Callaway then cites scientific evidence suggesting that harsh sentencing for “white-collar” criminals may present a greater deterrence than “blue-collar” crimes, which tend to be more spontaneous crimes of passion compared to the pre-meditation of something like wire fraud.

Callaway points to Dunning’s “celebrity” in the skeptical community as a further reason to punish him harshly (emphasis mine):

The enhanced deterrence value of a prison term would be all the greater in Mr. Dunning’s case, as he is at least somewhat of a “public figure” by virtue of his podcast, “Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena,” which he claims has a weekly audience of 179,000 listeners. Mr. Dunning has written five books based on the podcast, and he even has a “rap” video.

On the plus side, this prison sentence could potentially do wonders for Dunning’s rap career. But let’s hope not.

FBI’s Secretive Surveillance Unit Can Spy on Skype Communications

FBI’s New Secretive Surveillance Unit Can Spy on Skype and Wireless Communications:

 

FBI’s New Secretive Surveillance Unit Can Spy on Skype and Wireless Communications

 

 

The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications.

The establishment of the Quantico, VA-based unit, which is also staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a response to technological developments that FBI officials believe outpace law enforcement’s ability to listen in on private communications.

While the FBI has been tight-lipped about the creation of its Domestic Communications Assistance Center, or DCAC — it declined to respond to requests made two days ago about who’s running it, for instance — CNET has pieced together information about its operations through interviews and a review of internal government documents.

DCAC’s mandate is broad, covering everything from trying to intercept and decode Skype conversations to building custom wiretap hardware or analyzing the gigabytes of data that a wireless provider or social network might turn over in response to a court order…

Inequality rising in the average household

The One Percent Is Hogging so Much of Our Income That It’s Holding the Economy Back:

inequality has been rising and the average American household

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all know that inequality has been rising and the average American household has been suffering. There is a myth that says all this suffering is necessary, that extreme inequality is the by-product of a rapidly growing economy—or worse, that it’s a good thing because it motivates everyone to work hard and climb the long ladder to the One Percent.

Even a brief glance at the historical record reveals just how perverted this hypothesis is.

For one thing, the economy has not been growing rapidly since inequality started climbing. From 1950 to 1980, “real gross domestic product (GDP)”—the output of the economy, adjusted for inflation—grew by 3.8 percent per year. From 1980 to 2010, it grew by 2.7 percent per year. (Since then, it’s been even worse.)

So income inequality hasn’t been “growth-enhancing” at all. In fact, just the opposite.

The United States isn’t alone in this experience. Economists at the International Monetary Fund recently compiled the most comprehensive data set to date: 140 countries over 6 decades. They consistently found that countries with less inequality experienced stronger, more sustained economic growth and fewer, less severe recessions.

It’s been widely publicized, for example, that Europe has suffered from higher unemployment than the United States in recent years. Many Americans falsely believe that Europe is more equal than the U.S., but a new data set compiled by the economist James Galbraith and the University of Texas Inequality Project shows inequality between countries and regions across Europe for the first time—and they find that Europe has had higher inequality than us since the 1970s. It’s only within specific countries that inequality is lower than the U.S., and guess what: Those countries tend to have lower unemployment than us.

The reason is quite simple: Those workers are also consumers. When the 99 Percent earn more, they spend more, and the One Percent can produce more and earn more themselves.

“In this sense,” says the wealthy entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, “an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me. […] Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it.”

Or, as the late economist Michal Kalecki used to say, “The workers spend what they get and the capitalists get what they spend.” What he meant by that was that the rich can afford to save more of their income—and, indeed, we find that the One Percent continue to save 15 to 25 percent, while the saving rate of the 99 Percent has plummeted close to zero. If too much money goes to the One Percent and not enough to the 99 Percent, the economy will save more and more and spend less and less, until there isn’t enough consumer demand to justify increasing production and investment. Thus, the economy will slow down.

Palm Oil Companies Start Forest Fire killing hundreds

 

 

Hundreds of orangutans killed in north Indonesian forest fires deliberately started by palm oil firms:

 

Hundreds of orangutans killed in north Indonesian forest fires deliberately started by palm oil firms

 

Hundreds of orangutans are believed to have died in fires deliberately lit by palm oil companies.

Conservationists say the rare Sumatran orangutan could be wiped out within weeks.

‘It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears,’ said Briton Ian Singleton, of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.

Shocking: Hundreds of orangutans are believed to have died in fires deliberately lit by palm oil companies inTripa forest on the coast of Aceh province in northern Indonesia

The apes, which live in the Tripa forest on the coast of Aceh province in northern Indonesia, have had to flee the flames as fires wipe out their habitat – and palm oil companies have been blamed for starting the blazes.

The companies have already been accused of offering a bounty for the heads of orang-utans in Borneo after blaming the animals for destroying their young palm trees – but conservationists say the animals have had to encroach on the plantations because their own habitats have been destroyed.

The Daily Mail revealed the bounty hunt earlier this year with a sad photo of a mother trying to protect her baby as Indonesian palm oil workers moved in for the kill.

Fortunately on that occasion wildlife officials were on hand to rescue the pair and move them to a safe area.

Sad: The apes have had to flee the flames as fires wipe out their habitat and palm oil companies have been blamed for starting the blazes

Now the new threat to the Sumatran orangutan has erupted in the officially protected Tripa forest, which is hemmed in by palm oil plantations.

Land clearing fires have been started inside the forest, resulting in the animals fleeing – but hundreds are feared to have died in the flames because Indonesians in the employ of the palm oil companies have been accused of driving them back into the flames.

Dr Singleton, originally from Hull, said the remaining orangutans will die either in the fires or of gradual starvation and malnutrition as their food resources disappear.

He added: ‘We are currently watching a global tragedy.’

Snopes.com Hoax

Snopes misleads the public, and lies to its readers:

snopes .com lie’s to the public

How can something be a half truth?  Well thanks to snopes.com, you have their personal opinion attached to it.  How is this possible you ask?  I just think it’s great when you research some fact, to find out if a rumor is true, that you get some dude’s personal opinion on top of it.  Maybe they’re cofused on the idea no one is interested in them individually, but just the damn information.  Life is complicated, but I thought this was a yes or no question?  Multiple choice style questions cannot have a half truth. Hasn’t this been ingrained in us at an early age that when we draw cute dinosaur pictures instead of answering a series of true or false question, that you’re going to fail? Oh you might get an additional one point for your prehistoric image, but you fail.

I recently contacted Snopes in response to a attack on one of my articles. The title is “Coca Cola Phosphric Acid”, and it is a brief description of the weird alternative uses you can use with coke in a pinch. Nothing in my article is incorrect, but somehow they managed to reference my article as incorrect. Confused, well me too but let’s carry on.

The article:https://frontview.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/coca-cola-phosphoric-acid-cocaine-2/

I had contacted Snopes.com about their winded article on how Coca Cola is safe to drink, and that it indeed contained many types of acids, including Phosphoric Acid.  This is their response:

“Nothing in the Wikipedia article you reference states that ingesting
Phosphoric acid in the small amounts commonly found in soft drinks
such as Coca-Cola is harmful. In fact, the article notes that
Phosphoric acid is a common food additive, which demonstrates that it
Obviously isn’t harmful to ingest in moderate quantities.”

This was my reference to Wikipedia:

Reference:

Food-grade phosphoric acid (additive E338) is used to acidify foods and beverages such as various colas, but not without controversy regarding its health effects.[6] It provides a tangy or sour taste, and being a mass-produced chemical is available cheaply and in large quantities. The low cost and bulk availability is unlike more expensive seasonings that give comparable flavors, such as citric acid which is obtainable from citrus, but usually fermented by Aspergillus niger mold from scrap molasses, waste starch hydrolysates and phosphoric acid.[7]

(wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphoric_acid

You know its funny, even if the article says, ” Food-grade phosphoric acid (additive E338) is used to acidify foods and beverages such as various colas, but not without controversy regarding its health effects.” My question wasn’t about if it was safe to drink but that it only contained Phosphoric Acid.  If they could add this important rumor to their collection of urban lies. They didn’t even answer my question properly. Well, That just simply doesn’t matter.

Snopes is a HOAX

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it guys, I was totally wrong all these years, time to pack it up.  My doctor, nutritionist, and health professional was all wrong. Its Damn safe, sorry for the confusion. Let alone what my dentist would say about this.  Even with small amounts, these professionals would have a field day. I could go on for hours referencing just about any other profession in the world. Well you see where I am going with this.

Since then, I have attempted to contact them, stick to my guns and ask them to update one little simple fact that Coca Cola does contain these dangerous chemicals. No response! Very typical when you have something to hide. Really suspicious when you do some investigation into their Coke lore section. Very one sided, like they are trying to promote the health benefits of coke, I mean coca cola.  Are you guys being paid to promote cola’s? I mean how can you say Coca Cola used to contain Coke, that it is only a half truth?  Either its true or not, enough with your bullish% opinions!  True or False, or close down your site. No one needs to be more confused after visiting your misleading urban legends. Busted!

SNOPES-GETS-SNOPED

Global Engine of Deceit, Lies and Control Are Ending

Here are 5 signs that the era of deception and duplicity is coming to an end:

5 Big Signs The Global Engine of Deceit, Lies and Control Are Coming To End

Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex Has Been Exposed
Perhaps one of the biggest controlling entities of the world is the pharmaceutical industrial complex who has deceived billions for almost two centuries. Their corruption, fabrications and outright deceit has enveloped almost every nation on Earth. In the last decade alone, millions have outcasted drugs and vaccines from their circle of trust. More people are coming to discover that this powerful group of criminals will stop at nothing to sell their snake oil to the public. Over the last several years, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis — and all other pharmaceutical giants, which once seemed unassailable are slowly drowning. Drug discovery jobs have disappeared by the thousands in the United States and by the hundreds in Europe as the industry has cut costs in order to adjust to what is widely perceived as the end of the blockbuster-drug era.

People are getting it. From the H1N1 scandal to HPV….from Lipitor toVioxx, the public is catching on that most modern day diseases are man-made to sell us more poison in a vicious cycle which perpetuates until our death. Research is now showing that natural health products are as effective as man-made drugs and for the first time in history, the natural health industry is aiming to amend legislation to allow physicians to include natural health products in their practice–a change that could revolutionize the allopathic treatment model.

2. The Media Is No Longer Capable of Instilling Trust

Recent polls now show that an overwhelming 80% of the population no longer trusts mainstream newscasts. From the lies and promotion of wars to our health, the mainstream media is incapable of generating any unbiased newsworthy content without corporate or government propaganda. Conan O’Brien easily revealed how mainstream media’s scripted taking points are just a farce. This happens almost everyday on any issue you can imagine, across all networks at any time. The media, as they say “is a joke” branded to program the minds of millions though manipulation and deception. But their dominion and monopoly has been thwarted by the alternative media who are now fully engaged in exposing every lie one at a time….and we are achieving great success.

3. The Conventional Food Industry is Collapsing
By observing the chess match between anti-GMO camps and Monsanto (and their lobbyists), we see a clear indication that big agriculture, biotech and the entire food industry is in turmoil. Trade agreements currently being drafted in developed nations are attempting to secure legislation dictating all GMO labeling as illegal. Resistance against GMOs are being defined as “anti-free trade practices” that governments are attempting to enforce in the form of economic sanctions against nations that attempt to ban GMOs. Labeling initiatives spawned by various groups are being exposed as controlled opposition and the true intentions and transparency of these organizations is inevitable. Food giants are being held accountable for their manufacturing processes, toxic ingredients and lack of credibility.

All of these things are sure signs that the biotech industry is losing control as the entire world is awakening to the dangers of genetically modified foods and the conventional food supply. Technology is coming forward that will soon allow on-the-spot tests for environmental toxins, GMOs, pesticides, food safety and more with their smartphones and other hand-held devices as a defiant public will stop at nothing to regain independence within the food supply.

4. The Freedom Movement Is Gaining Momentum
De facto foreign administrations of unelected industrialists, financiers, academics, military leaders along with representatives from our elected government officials have been very busy the past century implementing changes into nations who were once sovereign and free. However, they have no real authority to restrict public mobility, free trade or limit access to anything. That means that everybody is free to drive without insurance, driver’s license, license plates, free to trade any articles of exchange including vitamins, supplements, healing modalities and free to consume and ingest anything they wish without restriction. This is a right of all people born on any land, and the movement to educate millions on these issues is rising across the globe. Mass populations are starting to see the reality that there is no longer sovereignty within nations. The people of these nations have lost their ability to write their own laws, avoid arrest, injury and damage from corporations which seek to remove all the freedoms from the people.

The elite societies of the world are now petrified of the awakening of these fundamental human rights. This is the fear of every official who deems their opinion can be enforced over others through artificial laws that don’t hold any weight in the highest courts. We are now declaring those rights more than ever and every beneficiary of the corrupt system is sending the police to insist that we are in wrong and they are right. It is about knowing what absolute sovereignty truly is and embracing the power to express that right regardless of anybody else’s interpretation. Police are being held accountable for these injustices and their homes and possessions are being taken from them in the highest courts as the people fight for their rights to be free and will accept no damage by illegal enforcement (the police) in the interim.

5. The Liberation of Nature and Abolishment of All Things Toxic Is Now Inevitable

More than a dozen U.S. states have now completely decriminalized the act of possessing marijuana and both Colorado and Washington have made it legal to possess, sell, transport and cultivate the plant. But soon it may be legalized across the entire country. That is quite the 180 from the federal government’s tune in 2011 when they decreed that marijuana had no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. Nobody has the right to criminalize or restrict anybody from possessing a plant or smoking it for that matter. The rights of people to interact with nature are being recognized on all levels and cannabis liberation is a amazing step forward.

The restoration of clean drinking water through the removal of toxic fluoride is another example of how governments can no longer contain their lies, in this case the 60-year old deception of fluoride. Almost the entire world is now coming full circle to the health consequences of poisoning the water supply with fluoride. Most developed nations, including all of Japan and 97% of western Europe, do not fluoridate their water. Israel was recently added to that list. Many communities, over the last few years, stopped fluoridation in the US, Canada, New Zealandand Australia. Recently, both Wichita, Kansas and Portland, Oregonrejected fluoridation 60% to 40%. Hamilton, NZ, councilors voted 7-1 to stop 50 years of fluoridation after councilors listened to several days of testimony from those for and against fluoridation. Windsor, Ontario, stopped 51 years of fluoridation. Sixteen regional councils have halted or rejected fluoridation in Queensland since mandatory fluoridation was dropped there in Nov. 2012.

The news is spreading and a renaissance is blooming worldwide. There is no stopping it. The potential war in Syria which has no support from the American public, is a beautiful reminder that people are tuning into their own hearts and wisdom as they come to understand that war will never accomplish anything but create more war.

Internet kill’s brains

Does The Internet Make You Dumb? Top German Neuroscientist Says Yes – And Forever:

Does The Internet Make You Dumb? Top German Neuroscientist Says Yes – And Forever

Dr. Manfred Spitzer knows that people find his arguments provocative. In his first book, he warned parents of the very real dangers of letting their children spend too much time in front of the TV. Now, in a second book called Digitale Demenz [Digital Dementia], he’s telling them that teaching young kids finger-counting games is much better for them than letting them explore on a laptop.

Spitzer, 54, may be a member of the slide-rule generation that learned multiplication tables by heart, but his work as a neuropsychiatrist has shown him that when young children spend too much time using a computer, their brain development suffers and that the deficits are irreversible and cannot be made up for later in life.

South Korean doctors were the first to describe this phenomenon, and dubbed it digital dementia – whence the title of Spitzer’s book. Simplistically, the message can be summed up this way: the Internet makes you dumb. And it is of course a message that outrages all those who feel utterly comfortable in the digital world. In the aftermath of the publication of Spitzer’s book, they have lost no time venting their wrath across Germany.

And yet Spitzer has accumulated a wealth of scientific information that gives his thesis solid underpinnings, and the studies and data he draws on offer more than enough room for consternation.

Everything leaves traces in the brain

According to his study, many young people today use more than one medium at a time: they place calls while playing computer games or writing e-mails. That means that some of them are packing 8.5 hours of media use per day into 6.5 hours. Multitasking like this comes at the cost of concentration – experiments by American researchers have established this. And to Spitzer, those results mean just one thing: “Multitasking is not something we should be encouraging in future generations.”

Because everything a person does leaves traces in the brain. When development is optimum, memory links are formed and built on during the first months and years of life, and the structure adds up to a kind of basic foundation for everything else we learn. Scientists call this ability of the brain to adjust to new challenges “neuroplasticity.” It is one of the reasons for the evolutionary success of the human species. Spitzer also sees it as a source of present danger.

When drivers depend exclusively on their navigation technology, they do not develop the ability to orient themselves, although of course the brain offers them the possibility of learning how to do so. The same applies to children who use electronic styluses on a SMART board instead of learning how to write — the brain is kept in check. And because computers take over many classrooms and other functions that are actually good practice for kids, “it inevitably has a negative effect on learning,” Spitzer argues.

Digital media should be banned from classrooms

Stating that there have so far been no independent studies “that unequivocally establish that computers and screens in the classroom makes learning any more effective,” Spitzer goes so far as to recommend that digital media be banned from the classroom. Even more drastically, he writes: “In reality, using digital media in kindergarten or primary school is actually a way of getting children addicted.” Strong stuff for the generations who take computers and the Internet for granted, using them as a source of information and a space to communicate via social networks — and who enjoy doing so. The Internet has become the fourth cultural technology, alongside reading, writing and arithmetic.

Spitzer quotes Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), who wrote that the process of learning involves the heart along with the brain and the hands. He believes it would be better if kids learned finger games to help them deal with numbers, instead of relying on computers. In a country like Germany, whose major resource is smart people and innovative ideas, maybe we should be taking Spitzer’s warnings more seriously.

What the internet is doing to our Brains:

Analytics engine will read your mind

Computation knowledge engine will soon be able to read your mind:

COMPUTATION KNOWLEDGE ENGINE

Wolfram Alpha will soon be able to read your mind, its creator Stephen Wolfram said at the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin today.

Speaking at the US technology conference on Monday, Wolfram predicted that his analytics engine will soon work pre-emptively, meaning it will be able to predict what its users are looking for.

“Wolfram Alpha will be able to predict what users are looking for,” Wolfram said. “Imagine that combined with augmented reality.”

Speaking during a talk on the future of computation, Stephen Wolfram – the creator of Wolfram Alpha and the mastermind behind Apple’s Siri personal assistant – also showed off the engine’s new ability to analyse images.

Wolfram said, “We’re now able to bring in uploaded material, and use our algorithm to analyse it. For example, we can take a picture, ask Wolfram Alpha and it will try and tell us things about it.

“We can compute all sorts of things about this picture – and ask Wolfram Alpha to do a specific computation if need be.”

That’s not the only new feature of Wolfram Alpha, as it can also now analyse data from uploaded spreadsheet documents.

“We can also do things like uploading a spreadsheet and asking Wolfram [Alpha] to analyse specific data from it,” Wolfram said.

He added, “This is an exciting time for me, because a whole lot of things I’ve been working on for 30 years have begun converging in a nice way.”

This upload feature will be available as part of Wolfram Alpha Pro, a paid-for feature where Wolfram hopes the analytical engine will make most of its money. Wolfram Alpha Pro costs $4.99 per month, or $2.99 if you’re a student.

Wolfram also showed off Wolfram Alpha’s ability to analyse data from Facebook, a feature that was announced last August.

News will kill you

News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier:

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether

 

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether. In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What’s relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That’s the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it’s dramatic, it’s a person (non-abstract), and it’s news that’s cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.

News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognise what’s relevant. It’s much easier to recognise what’s new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organisations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we’re cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have.

News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists’ radar but have a transforming effect. The more “news factoids” you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand. If more information leads to higher economic success, we’d expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That’s not the case.

News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitisation.

News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” News exacerbates this flaw. We become prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that “make sense” – even if they don’t correspond to reality. Any journalist who writes, “The market moved because of X” or “the company went bankrupt because of Y” is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of “explaining” the world.

News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it’s worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory’s capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.

News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. Scientists used to think that the dense connections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we know that this is not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It’s not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It’s because the physical structure of their brains has changed.

News wastes time. If you read the newspaper for 15 minutes each morning, then check the news for 15 minutes during lunch and 15 minutes before you go to bed, then add five minutes here and there when you’re at work, then count distraction and refocusing time, you will lose at least half a day every week. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that irresponsible with your money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind?

News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can’t act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is “learned helplessness”. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.

News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don’t know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don’t.

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don’t have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.

I have now gone without news for four years, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first-hand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, more insights. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Police analyze Facebook to catch you

Researchers are interested in analyzing Facebook and social media to see how you score on a Self-Report Psychopathy scale:

The researchers are interested in analyzing what people write on Facebook or in other social media. By analyzing stories written by students and looking at how the text people generate using social media relates to scores on the Self-Report Psychopathy scale.

Psychopaths appear to view the world and others instrumentally, as theirs for the taking, the team, which included Stephen Porter from the University of British Columbia, wrote. As they expected, the psychopaths’ language contained more words known as subordinating conjunctions. These words, including “because” and “so that,” are associated with cause-and-effect statements. “This pattern suggested that psychopaths were more likely to view the crime as the logical outcome of a plan (something that ‘had’ to be done to achieve a goal),” the authors write. While most of us respond to higher-level needs, such as family, religion or spirituality, and self-esteem, psychopaths remain occupied with those needs associated with a more basic existence. Their analysis revealed that psychopaths used about twice as many words related to basic physiological needs and self-preservation, including eating, drinking and monetary resources than the nonpsychopaths, they write. Jeffrey Hancock, the lead researcher and an associate professor in communications at Cornell University said, “the nonpsychopathic murderers talked more about spirituality and religion and family, reflecting what nonpsychopathic people would think about when they just committed a murder”. Police and researchers are interested in analyzing what people write on Facebook or in other social media, since our unconscious mind also holds sway over what we write. By analyzing stories written by students from Cornell and the University of British Columbia, and looking at how the text people generate using social media relates to scores on the Self-Report Psychopathy scale. Unlike the checklist, which is based on an extensive review of the case file and an interview, the self report is completed by the person in question. This sort of tool could be very useful for law enforcement investigations, such as in the case of the Long Island serial killer, who is being sought for the murders of at least four prostitutes and possibly others, since this killer used the online classified site Craigslist to contact victims, according to Hancock. Text analysis software could be used to conduct a “first pass,” focusing the work of human investigators, he said. “A lot of time analysts tell you they feel they are drinking from a fire hose.” Knowing a suspect is a psychopath can affect how law enforcement conducts investigations and interrogations, Hancock said.

Speech patterns give away psychopaths

Psychopaths prone to using the past tense, making cause and effect statements and using ‘uh’ and ‘um.’

Speech pattern gives away psychopaths

 

 

Psychopaths are known to be wily and manipulative, but even so, they unconsciously betray themselves, according to scientists who have looked for patterns in convicted murderers’ speech as they described their crimes. The researchers interviewed 52 convicted murderers, 14 of them ranked as psychopaths according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a 20-item assessment, and asked them to describe their crimes in detail. Using computer programs to analyze what the men said, the researchers found that those with psychopathic scores showed a lack of emotion, spoke in terms of cause-and-effect when describing their crimes, and focused their attention on basic needs, such as food, drink and money. While we all have conscious control over some words we use, particularly nouns and verbs, this is not the case for the majority of the words we use, including little, functional words like “to” and “the” or the tense we use for our verbs, according to Jeffrey Hancock, the lead researcher and an associate professor in communications at Cornell University, who discussed the work on Oct. 17 in Midtown Manhattan at Cornell’s ILR Conference Center. “The beautiful thing about them is they are unconsciously produced,” Hancock said. These unconscious actions can reveal the psychological dynamics in a speaker’s mind even though he or she is unaware of it, Hancock said. Psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the general population and as much as 25 percent of male offenders in federal correctional settings, according to the researchers. Psychopaths are typically profoundly selfish and lack emotion. “In lay terms, psychopaths seem to have little or no ‘conscience,'” write the researchers in a study published online in the journal Legal and Criminological Psychology. Psychopaths are also known for being cunning and manipulative, and they make for perilous interview subjects, according to Michael Woodworth, one of the authors and a psychologist who studies psychopathy at the University of British Columbia, who joined the discussion by phone. Criminal Minds Are Different From Yours, “It is unbelievable,” Woodworth said. “You can spend two or three hours and come out feeling like you are hypnotized.” While there are reasons to suspect that psychopaths’ speech patterns might have distinctive characteristics, there has been little study of it, the team writes. To examine the emotional content of the murderers’ speech, Hancock and his colleagues looked at a number of factors, including how frequently they described their crimes using the past tense. The use of the past tense can be an indicator of psychological detachment, and the researchers found that the psychopaths used it more than the present tense when compared with the nonpsychopaths. They also found more dysfluencies — the “uhs” and “ums” that interrupt speech — among psychopaths. Nearly universal in speech, dysfluencies indicate that the speaker needs some time to think about what they are saying. With regard to psychopaths, “We think the ‘uhs’ and ‘ums’ are about putting the mask of sanity on,” Hancock told LiveScience.