https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-thinking-hard-wears-you-out/
Oh maybe this explains it!
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Stat(s) of the Week
Driving around the UK tends to give one the impression that the country is crowded, built-upon and even ‘full’. However, the proprtion of the UK classified as “continuous urban fabric” is just 0.1% while another 5.3% is classified as “discontinuous urban fabric” in which 50-80% of land is built upon. The rest, let’s be generous and call it 94%, is rural and not built upon in any form.
It’s much the same story with the USA, with under 5% being “developed” (see map). This all feels counter-intuitive, but I think it’s a good example of how our persoanal experience and ‘view’ – if you can call it that – effects our thinking.
Purpose
What if people really could see the future?
I’ve heard of the CIA and suchlike conducting experiments around everything from mind control (The Men Who Stare at Goats) to Telepathy, but until just now I’d never heard of The Premonitions Bureau, a real life Twilight-zone style bureau set up by the British psychiatrist Dr John Barker and the UK Evening Standard Newspaper’s science correspondent Peter Fairley. A new book by Sam Knight digs into this real-life ‘laboratory’ that dug into facts and checked people claiming supernatural powers or premonitions. Sounds totally nuts, but Dr Barker was a Cambridge educated head of a mental health hospital. In total he looked at 723 premonitions provided by the public, 3% of which he claimed were accurate. Pure chance? Almost certainly. Then again, don’t some animals have the ability to sense things before they happen? (e.g. incoming storms). There’s a big difference between divining meterological events (or water for that matter) and human-driven events such as assasinations or bridge collapses, but never say never in my book.
Time Out?
The more I think about it, queueing tand booking echnology might be a business to be in?
Weak signal?
But what’s the signal? Thanks to ‘no name’ as always for these great images. I wonder if there’s any research about whether people are more aggresive to people wearing such things?
How to start an article
Now that’s how you open an article or a book in my view. Great article on inequality in the Atlantic – a fine read if you donlt know it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/asset-economy-high-interest-rates-inflation/661323/
Running the numbers
Size of British Army = 73,000. Number of employees at UK, HM Revenue & Customs = 76,890. (Just worked that out myself, so you read this here first!).
It isn’t over until it’s over – part 2
I should possibly be more of a Pollyanna presently, but I just have an unhealthy tendency to think about the opposite of conventional wisdom. Case in point is Covid-19. It’s over right? Finished. Finito. Probably. But cases are still significant all over the world. This includes the US and the UK and while the overall trend is undoubtedly downward, but you should know by now what I think about trends when it comes to predicting the future. Bit useless.
I might also add that in China the situation is a bit dystopic. The natives are getting restless (can you still say that?). Putting aside global supply chain disruption and the possibility of a significant global economic downturn (caused as much by worker absences than by covid-per se) there’s the whole Russia/Ukraine situation (which appears to have accidently created a united Europe and a warp-speed green energy revolution – who saw that coming?)
But my main worry currently is that there’s a remote possibility that the virus might significantly mutate again (and again). I must say I was relaxed about this until a virology Professor pointed out to me that the ever-weaker strain theory is just that, a theory. There is no proof of this being the case (note to self: stop talking to virology Professors). The bottom line is that IF a seriously nasty mutation occurs, we may have to start all over with vaccines and lockdowns, although I very much doubt whether there’s much appetite for the latter.
And China. I’ve always talked about China being much more fragile than many people imagine. They have a significant demographic imbalance in terms of the number of young men in their population.
If China has economic growth in high single digits or teens and these men have jobs, apartments and what have you, then all is fine.
Dream of getting rich, but just don’t criticise the ruling party.
But if an economic slowdown occurs (caused either by internal issues or, more likely, external factors – remember China is still currently beholden economically to external demand – then these young men might get mightily pissed-off.
T2. (You’ll have to work out what T2 means for yourselves. Suffice to say that if I spelt it out, this post might piss certain people off).
What’s going on in China?
Putting aside the imapct of China’s lockdowns on global supply chains and indeed China’s own econoimy, what is China up to? Clearly Xi’s zero Covid-19 policy is doomed to fail, but is that all that’s going on? Is there something (a nasty new variant perhaps?) that they are keeping quiet about in just the same way that they kept news of the first outbreak quiet?
Let’s hope not…