The most recent issue of New York magazine featured an article by Sam Anderson called “In Defense of Distraction.” It’s a thorough study of our modern Poverty of Attention, diving in to the science of it and looking at what the problem might mean in the whole evolutionary scheme of things. This is a problem that fascinates me right now, writing more and more prescriptions for neurological performance-enhancing drugs.

He starts off the long eight-web-pages article by trying to focus in the attention the reader:

I’m going to pause here, right at the beginning of my riveting article about attention, and ask you to please get all of your precious 21st-century distractions out of your system now. Check the score of the Mets game; text your sister that pun you just thought of about her roommate’s new pet lizard; …refresh your work e-mail; …upload pictures of yourself reading this paragraph to your “me reading magazine articles” Flickr photostream; and alert the fellow citizens of whatever Twittertopia you happen to frequent that you will be suspending your digital presence for the next twenty minutes or so…Good. Now: Count your breaths. Close your eyes. Do whatever it takes to get all of your neurons lined up in one direction…Now it’s just you and me, tucked like fourteenth-century Zen masters into this sweet little nook of pure mental focus.

The ironic thing is, just reading his humorous introduction, and then trying to read through the whole article made me realize just how hard it is these days to focus and get through an article like this. Especially reading it on the computer. Several times I thought of pausing and checking Facebook, or checking a baseball score (Braves, NOT Mets). The kids interrupted me and their Wii game tempted me as well. But I made it through. Here are some of the highlights, though I suggest that–even if it is just a test to see if you yourself still have the power to ignore the distractions around you and get through a scholarly article like this–go and read it yourself.

…our attention crisis is already chewing its hyperactive way through the very foundations of Western civilization. Google is making us stupid, multitasking is draining our souls, and the “dumbest generation” is leading us into a “dark age” of bookless “power browsing.” Adopting the Internet as the hub of our work, play, and commerce has been the intellectual equivalent of adopting corn syrup as the center of our national diet, and we’ve all become mentally obese. Formerly well-rounded adults are forced to MacGyver worldviews out of telegraphic blog posts, bits of YouTube videos, and the first nine words of Times editorials. Schoolkids spread their attention across 30 different programs at once and interact with each other mainly as sweatless avatars…We are, in short, terminally distracted. And distracted, the alarmists will remind you, was once a synonym for insane.

***

The most advanced Buddhist monks become world-class multitaskers. Meditation might speed up their mental processes enough to handle information overload.

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A quintessentially Western solution to the attention problem—one that neatly circumvents the issue of willpower—is to simply dope our brains into focus. We’ve done so, over the centuries, with substances ranging from tea to tobacco to NoDoz to Benzedrine, and these days the tradition seems to be approaching some kind of zenith with the rise of neuroenhancers: drugs designed to treat ADHD (Ritalin, Adderall), Alzheimer’s (Aricept), and narcolepsy (Provigil) that can produce, in healthy people, superhuman states of attention. A grad-school friend tells me that Adderall allowed him to squeeze his mind “like a muscle.” Joshua Foer, writing in Slate after a weeklong experiment with Adderall, said the drug made him feel like he’d “been bitten by a radioactive spider”—he beat his unbeatable brother at Ping-Pong, solved anagrams, devoured dense books. “The part of my brain that makes me curious about whether I have new e-mails in my in-box apparently shut down,” he wrote.

***

It’s possible that we’re evolving toward a new techno-cognitive nomadism, in which restlessness will be an advantage.

***

Which brings me, finally, to the next generation of attenders, the so-called “net-gen” or “digital natives,” kids who’ve grown up with the Internet and other time-slicing technologies. There’s been lots of hand-wringing about all the skills they might lack, mainly the ability to concentrate on a complex task from beginning to end, but surely they can already do things their elders can’t—like conduct 34 conversations simultaneously across six different media, or pay attention to switching between attentional targets in a way that’s been considered impossible…The neuroscientist Gary Small speculates that the human brain might be changing faster today than it has since the prehistoric discovery of tools. Research suggests we’re already picking up new skills: better peripheral vision, the ability to sift information rapidly…Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t—a sense of the way ten projects all dovetail into something totally new. They might be able to engage in seeming contradictions: mindful web-surfing, mindful Twittering. Maybe, in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction.

Here’s another interesting article in The New Yorker magazine about “cosmetic neurology” and performance-enhancing drugs like Adderall.

Quite the house for sale. Perfect as long as you don’t have a frustrated teenager and a Ferrari.

This is a little geeky (in fact, I found it in the excellent Geekdad blog), but this is jaw-dropping cool when you realize it marries the Victorian clockwork automaton with modern cheap computation and precision Lego skills. And it’s got pirates!

Here’s a fabulous post by Dartmouth College student Owen Jennings who, just prior to entering college suffered liver failure, for no clear reason. This meant that he entered college with a really, really good reason to avoid the all too common campus poison, alcohol. He even pledged a fraternity, and yet, “not even a sip.”

Some highlights:

Even though no one cares that I don’t drink, they still see it as bizarre. But being alcohol-free has given me a unique vantage point from which to observe college life and culture. It seems to me that alcohol might be the only drug that everyone is expected to use.

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At Dartmouth, and at every other college campus I have been to, the consumption of alcoholic beverages is common. But the word “consumption” is an understatement. I’m not talking about the casual sipping of a few beers. Here, alcohol consumption means the rapid and repeated gulping and guzzling of beer after beer after beer. Often, students will drink upwards of 15 or 20 beers. On any given night, a frat brother or a sorority sister will spend hours vomiting. Sometimes a classmate will wind up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. And often, these people wake up unable to remember anything that happened the night before.

My sobriety has shown me how mindless my friends’ drinking has become. The question shouldn’t be, “Why aren’t you drunk?” Rather, we need to start asking, “Why are you drunk?”

***

I realize that drinking is a way to rebel and revel in the newfound freedom that college brings. But it’s also a veil, a way to manipulate, distort and enhance who we really are. If anything, being sober at the Animal House has taught me just to be myself.

Check out the reviews for the following products on Amazon.com.

Sample reviews:

One of the insurmountable obstacles in my life has been how to get a gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk from Gristedes back to my apartment without finishing it first. Up until now it was necessary to buy a second gallon. Amazon has changed all that. Now I can get my Tuscan Whole Milk at my apartment in a sealed cardboard box that will protect it at least as far as the elevator. From that point the “No Milk Guzzling” sign in the elevator holds me back. In the short walk to my apartment door I may down a pint or two but for the most part the gallon stays intact. This has changed my life immeasurably for the better.

***

I had a problem where my roof was leaking. I poured some Tuscan Whole Milk over it to seal it up and it just flowed right into the hole and didn’t do anything. I now have milk constantly dripping down from the ceiling and it has stained the drywall as well. The milk trapped in the ceiling is now rancid and smells horrible. It has also induced a pest infestation problem. The pest control company won’t deal with it because of the odor is unbearable in the house. My wife and children are now leaving me as well. This product has ruined my life. Do not buy this product, I suggest some roof caulking or tar instead.

***

At first I was struck with despair when my cat got into my gallon of Tuscan whole milk, but what was once consternation quickly turned to joy as seconds later my cat became Halle Berry dressed in a black leather cat outfit. I cannot thank the creators of Tuscan whole milk and Gristedes Supermarkets of New York for the limitless pleasure which ensued.

Sample reviews:

Worked fine with my right hand, but when I came to use my left hand my writing came out looking like the work of a complete imbecile. I can only assume Bic have created a right-handed only pen, and would caution left-handers to “try before you buy”.

***

Since taking delivery of my pen I have been very happy with the quality of ink deposition on the various types of paper that I have used. On the first day when I excitedly unwrapped my pen (thanks for the high quality packaging Amazon!) I just couldn’t contain my excitement and went around finding things to write on, like the shopping list on the notice board in our kitchen, the Post-it notes next to the phone, and on my favourite lined A4 pad at the side of my desk.

My pen is the transparent type with a blue lid. I selected this one in preference to the orange type because I like to be able to see how much ink I have left so that I can put in another order before I finally run out.

When the initial excitement of taking delivery of my new pen started to wear off I realised that I shouldn’t just write for the fun of it, this should be a serious enterprise, so by the second day of ownership I started to take a little more care of what I wrote. I used it to sign three letters, and in each case was perfectly happy with the neatness of handwriting that I was able to achieve.

I have a helpful tip for you that you might not know about – if you let the ink dry for a few seconds you can avoid the smudging that sometimes happens if you rub the ink immediately after writing. Fortunately the ink used in this particular Bic pen seems to dry very quickly.

On the third day of ownership I went on a trip to London and took my pen carefully packed away in my brief case, but I needn’t have worried, this isn’t some temperamental ink pen that leaks when you store it at the wrong angle. I sat at my meeting and confidently removed the cap from my pen and it wrote flawlessly, almost immediately.

I notice that the barrel of the pen has been crafted very carefully to fit in the pen holder down the edge of my Filofax. It’s not so grippy so that it is hard to remove when I want to make a quick note, and yet not so loose that it falls out too easily when I open my Filofax in a hurry. Maybe the choice of surface texture on the pen has some part to play here, because it seems that the inside of the leather grip on the pen holder in my Filofax has just the right level of adhesion that I can be confident when I need to reach in and get my pen it’s going to be just where I left it!

Today is the fourth day of ownership of my pen, and I have to say I’m starting to treat it like an old friend. I walk around the office with it clipped in to my shirt pocket and someone in the accounts department actually asked to borrow it while we were both standing at the photocopier. Would you believe it, they actually tried to walk away with my pen! They were very embarrassed when I called after them as they walked down the corridor and asked for it back. You will be happy to know that it is now back, safe and sound in my top pocket, ready and waiting to start writing again.

In summary, I would happily recommend this pen to anyone who is planning on writing on paper. If you are considering a writing implement for some other surface such as writing on a CD, or other non-porous substances then another pen might be better suited, but if it’s just plain old paper then I think you will probably be well served by this particular model.

Sample reviews:

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

***

So I got this wolf shirt because of, you know, the sweet wolves on it.

However, having owned this shirt for three weeks now and having tried it out in a variety of situations, both formal and informal, I’m beginning to believe that some of the benefits —- as described by other reviewers —- are exaggerated. For example, not ONE supermodel has approached me. Some of you may be used to having supermodels approach you on a regular basis but, believe me, I am not: I would notice one should she appear in my vicinity.

Similarly, I have not been invited to a vision quest, even though I wore my wolf shirt in New Mexico.

There is one thing, though, and that is that whenever I wear the wolf shirt I have a lot less issues with involuntary urination. I have not studied it long enough, however, to establish a cause/effect relationship.

Once, however, while wearing the wolf shirt I was mistaken for Schneider, the building superintendent on “One Day at a Time.”

So I guess the jury is still out.

EDIT:  And now I learn that the manufacturer (someone with Nantucket summer ties) of the Three Wolves shirt is not that amused (although they should be thrilled).

I found a new object to buy oinline, something that would be an investment in my kid’s future.

The Study Ball gadget is a prison-style ball and chain that you can program to keep track of how much time you spend studying. Once you’ve selected the desired duration, you chain the ball to your ankle and the manacle won’t come off until the schedule study time is up.

Trying its hand at viral marketing, the Social Security Administration has made a video to announce this year’s most popular baby names, featuring an infant Elvis impersonator with bad fake arms, and a plug for Medicare Prescription Drug benefits.  Click here and cringe.

At first glance, not too big a deal, right? Until you notice the spots in the bottom, left quadrant. Those are not sunspots. Look closer:

That’s the Space Shuttle Atlantis AND the Hubble Telescope seen in silhouette, as captured by the exceptionally gifted astrophotographer Thierry Legault just minutes before the crew of Atlantis caught up with and captured Hubble for its very last servicing mission on May 13, 2009.

Check out this other Shuttle+Sun image he took, posted by NASA on Flickr.