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01:31

Projections for the next 20 years

Based on current global trends, financial, military, social, technological, etc... what are your predictions of what the next 20 years will have in store for your country, state, business, world, or all the above??
Compare what you think will happen to what you hope will happen.

The end of this conversation is drawing near. The theme of which has been very much what I thought it would be. Every one of us can pin point the problems of today that will lead us into a dismal future unless rectified. None of us here on TALK has the "power" required to solve these problems. Individually we are far too powerless. Take a look at the size of this online community, there aren't very many of us. We are the people who choose to discuss, debate, and challenge each other. If our need to speak out and communicate about substantial issues was being satisfied completely in our daily lives many of us would not be registered in an online community seeking other like minded individuals who will care about the thoughts we think. An ignorant complacency has been epidemically spreading for too long and feels irreversible which makes the future seem a dark and dreary place. My optimism lies in the fact that we all get "it", we know, we understand, but in order for anything to come out of this understanding of what changes need to be made and what the end result has to be for all of us we need to buckle down and do something. I'm in no way trying to make that a personal attack statement, I don't feel as though we're all standing idly by as everything happens to us.
There were numerous comments suggesting that something big is speeding toward us, a game changer, a war, a revolution, a revelation, a...something. Whatever "it" is I just hope that we can discuss, debate, and challenge each other to become empowered individuals with answers as opposed to a list of problems.
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09:44

 

The true problem with education is ___________?

I don’t want to further complicate the topic of education (as it seems to be more complex than it should be.) My goal is to get a general idea of your personal views on what the TRUE problem is in terms of education. We will go more specific later, but for now please just post your general thoughts on the above question.
Complete this statement: The true problem with education is___________.
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05:56
We tend to think of homework as a necessary part of learning, a practice that teaches children discipline and keeps them from idleness. Yet a growing body of research reveals an astonishing truth: homework has little to no benefit in enhancing learning or performance in elementary and middle school, and only minor benefits, usually in math, in high school. This conclusion comes courtesy of a review of all major homework studies recently highlighted the Washington Post, including an update to a 2001 review conducted by the leading U.S. researcher on homework, Harris Cooper of Duke University.
While this data may seem counter-intuitive to some, many families have already discovered the negative impacts of too much homework, as early as kindergarten, ranging from a loss of quality family time or play time, to middle schoolers with stress induced headaches, anxiety and even ulcers. As a result, more parents are deciding enough is enough, and choosing instead to opt their kids out of homework.
Liz Onstad of Portland, Oregon is mother to a 10-year-old daughter who had no problems with homework until fourth grade. Even though Onstad created a dedicated homework space where she’d be available to help her daughter get her homework done, the tediousness of the assignments led to resistance and fights.
“It turns out much of this year’s homework really is stupid,” Onstad said. “As the year has progressed I’ve seen only increased frustration in my child and I haven’t seen any of the value of the schoolwork. The mental health of my child and the sanity of my household is more important to me than doing the work for homework’s sake.” She partly blames her daughter’s ready-for-retirement teacher, who she says is “pretty much checked out.”
Onstad is herself a formerly high-performing student who attended a respected four-year college, which was once a priority she held for her daughter. Now that value has changed. “A couple years ago I would have said a good college and an education would be a high priority. But now as I see my girl become who she is, the idea of ‘good college, good job’ is less important. My definition of success has more to do with her learning to be a responsible adult.”
This sentiment is echoed by other parents across a variety of experiences. Rene Denfeld, a death-row investigator in Portland, has been a foster and adoptive mother for 20 years. She routinely opted her three adopted children out of homework beginning in elementary school. “Homework takes all the joy out of learning. I want my kids to see learning as the world’s greatest adventure, to feel joy and magic and passion in life. Nothing kills passion faster than a stack of worksheets.”
Denfeld also points out that for kids with non-English speaking parents, working single parents, or other hardships, homework can be especially challenging, since so much of it requires assistance at home (which might, in fact, defeat its purpose).
Too Much of a Not-So-Good Thing
According to Duke homework expert Harris Cooper, students should be assigned no more than 10 minutes of homework per grade level per night, Monday through Thursday. This should equal 10 minutes per night in first grade up to a maximum of two hours per night in high school. Yet many parents report a doubling and tripling of those standards, beginning as early as fourth grade.
This shift in homework — away from project-based homework assignments and toward the kind of busywork that now takes hours — likely began in 2002, when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed under President George W. Bush., according to Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, co-authors of the book The Case Against Homework. “Driven by fear that we’re falling behind in the global marketplace, policy makers have turned to the schools to save us once again,” they write. “They seem to believe that everything will be fine if we can just get American students to pass their standardized tests.”
This focus on standardized testing has become the bane of teachers, parents and students alike. And homework designed to help kids take tests doesn’t provide them with the complex critical thinking and analytic skills required to excel in either college or the workplace.
Margery Bloom of San Gabriel California has been teaching English and Social Science to grades 7 through 12 for over 25 years. She is also a mother of two boys, aged 14 and 10. Her older son has Asperger’s syndrome and weak fine motor skills. “Homework would take hours because he didn’t want to write. In Kindergarten, I wrote a note to the teacher and explained that coloring homework would not be completed. Later on, via a 504 and Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) we negotiated how much ‘practice’ homework he would have to complete,” she says. Bloom also routinely refuses to have her sons do homework over vacations, and puts less emphasis on homework over family or down time.
“The reasons for homework are pedagogically unsound,” she said. “You either ask a student who has already mastered a concept to do more of that concept—which is essentially busywork. Or, you send a child who has not mastered the concept home to practice and they will likely practice incorrectly, unless they have assistance.”
Sentiments of that sort appear repeatedly among teachers, educators and students in the popular documentary The Race to Nowhere,directed by Vicki Abeles, a mother of three. Abeles, who lives in Danville, Calif., launched the film project after a 13-year-old girl in her community killed herself over school pressure. The documentary reveals the disturbing amount of stress kids are under, with some of them forgoing sleep and using the drug Adderall to finish homework and keep their grades high. Some kids in the documentary say they feel deprived of their childhoods, and that they’ve missed out on typical child play time.
“I believe that play should be the only work that kids do as homework,” said Karen Fitch, a Silicon Valley mother of a third-grade boy, and a former teacher. “Children are in school for hours on end; they don’t need to work on school subjects at home.” Fitch opts out of homework assignments for her son when she feels they are “time wasters.” But she always makes it clear to her son’s teacher that their opting out is a decision, not laziness or lack of caring. “My kid isn’t slacking off if he doesn’t do an assignment. The family is making a choice.”
Parents with teenagers can bear witness to the impact too much homework too soon can have on young learners. Tina Ingenthron of Morgan Hill, California, has five children ranging in age from 18 months to 19 years. Her two oldest were in gifted programs in elementary school, but have since received failing marks in their high school classes. “I question, and slightly blame myself, for forcing them to do things in the robotic way of the system, versus stepping in and guiding them in ways that were better suited to their personalities,” she said. “They disengaged completely from their school work, and their marks.” She found it not worth the fight, and almost impossible anyway, to make her highschoolers do their homework, and she is using these hard won lessons to be more lenient about homework with her younger children: she has opted her 7-year-old son out of homework since she becoming familiar with recent homework studies.
Dawn Carr, a San Martin, Calif. mother of two, shares Ingenthron’s perspective. A social science researcher at Stanford University, Carr values education and hopes her children will attend good colleges. But that doesn’t stop her from occasionally allowing her highly motivated 7-year-old son to take a night off homework for family time or better rest. “Homework,” Carr says, should be about giving kids “interactive, personalized learning opportunities that involve creative problem solving and fun.
“Given the projected needs for the kinds of thinkers and doers in the next generation,” she points out, “this is really the only way homework should be employed.”
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08:59 2


In just two short months, I’ll be headed to Spain to go see one of my best friends who is teaching there. It’s a dream come true for me, as aside from paying off debt, traveling is my true passion.
But how is someone who is so focused on paying off debt, able to travel abroad? Through travel hacking! I was able to book my flight to Spain for a mere $63 in taxes, and 40,000 miles.
But, what is travel hacking? And how can you use it to travel while working towards other financial goals?- Melanie Lockert

 

What is Travel Hacking?

Travel hacking is the term used for people that use reward-based credit cards to receive a sign-up bonus in order to redeem free travel.
Oftentimes these sign-up bonuses are enough for a free trip, and smart consumers are reaping the rewards quite often. Then they simply cancel the card before the annual fee is due (most cards waive the annual fee for the first year).
If you are curious about getting started with travel hacking, here are some tips to get started.

Check Your Credit Report

Before you even apply for a new credit card, you should check your credit score as well as your credit report. Your credit is an important factor in determining whether you get approved for a card, so you’ll want to verify that you are in good standing and that there are no errors on your report.
You can check your credit report for free once a year at AnnualCreditReport.com, and get your free credit score at Credit Karma.com. And yes, these are completely free options that don’t need your credit card information. Plus, I personally use and like them.

Assess Your Situation

As great as travel hacking is, it isn’t for everyone. If you already have credit card debt, or if you know that you spend more with a credit card, then travel hacking isn’t a good fit for you. It won’t be worth it!
The key to travel hacking’s success is to assess your situation beforehand and truly know yourself and your spending habits. It’s easy to get lured into spending more for the rewards, but that doesn’t really make sense, does it?
Assess your financial situation as well as your consumer behavior to determine if travel hacking is something that you are comfortable with. Travel hacking does affect your credit in a few ways, but maybe not in the way you think. Any time you apply for a credit card, your credit score will drop a few points because of an inquiry.
If you get approved, you may find out that over time your credit actually improves. If your credit limit is higher, and you only use 10-30% of your available credit, your credit utilization will be low, which can have a positive impact on your credit.
However, if and when you close your card to avoid the annual fee, your credit score is likely to take another hit. If you have excellent credit, a few points won’t make a huge difference, but it’s important to know the ramifications of travel hacking on your credit.

Pick the Right Card

I have to admit that I didn’t get my first credit card until 2 years ago, at age 28. I abhorred debt and didn’t understand why people would buy things on credit, and pay for it later. But as I got older, I wanted to improve my credit (it was good from student loans, but not excellent) and also learn more about this travel hacking business.
I didn’t want to detract from my debt repayment, but I also didn’t want to wait several more years to travel — so I found a way to continue paying off debt and travel for free/cheap through travel hacking.
The first credit card I got was a Venture card from Capital One with no annual fee. The reward bonus wasn’t great, but it was also my first credit card, so I wanted to proceed cautiously with something easy. After months of paying the balance back on time, I redeemed my points for a hotel stay. It felt so nice!
The card that’s getting me to Spain for $63 is the American Airlines credit card card. I don’t spend that much, so I opted for the card with a 30,000 mile bonus, after spending $1,000 in three months. I knew I could do that and still be safe with my budget.
I received my bonus, flew to New Orleans for a conference, and ended up with 40,000 miles — enough to go abroad off-season. I didn’t feel like I had to spend a lot and didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary.
It’s important that you sign up for the right card for you. Make sure it’s for a reward you like (such as airline miles or cash back), with spending requirements that are in your budget, etc. You want this to be pretty painless and not feel like work — after all you should only be spending money on things you are already planning on buying, like groceries, insurance payments, etc. The card defeats the purpose if you use it as a buy-anything-I-want-card!
It’s also crucial that you understand what those bonuses can get you. I did my research beforehand, so I knew I could go abroad for as little as 40,000 miles between October and May.
In a nutshell, here’s what you need to look for in a credit card:
  • Annual fee. How much is it? Be sure to mark in your calendar when you got the card, and put in the calendar when you want to cancel, if you choose to avoid paying the annual fee after the first year.
  • Rewards. Is it miles, cash back, or something else? Make it something fun that you enjoy!
  • Blackout dates and restrictions. Be sure to see if there are any red flags that would dash your dreams.
  • Spending requirements. Many of the cards with bigger bonuses require you to spend $3,000+ in the first three months. As I mentioned, I don’t spend a lot and I didn’t feel comfortable doing that, so I got one with a smaller spending requirement. Yes, it took me longer to accrue the necessary miles, but I had peace of mind.
  • Interest rates. Know them well! To avoid any issues, pay off your balances in full every month.
If you are curious about travel hacking, use these steps to get started. But be careful and watch out for any credit card creep, and always pay off your balances in full.
Most importantly, once you accrue enough miles book that dream trip, or get that cash back, don’t just sit on rewards. Actually use them, as they may expire soon.
Have you tried travel hacking with credit cards? How have you used it to save money on travel? 
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07:41

Regaining Resilience: 7 Methods To Become Mentally Stronger

Stress affects people in all different ways – or at least, different people respond to it very differently. For some, it rolls off quickly, and they rebound in a reasonable amount of time. For others, it “sticks” and it takes much longer to recover, if ever. This is because people’s mental “resilience” varies enormously, which itself is based on both genes and environment. For people who aren’t so good at coping with stressors, it may be that they’ve never been particularly good at it—or it could be that they were once good, but the losses and blows of life have worn their resilience away over time. Luckily, it’s possible to build resilience back up.
“We all experience terrible loss and hurdles at some point in our lives; the death of a loved one, a divorce or painful breakup, being fired from a job, suffering from an illness, or any number of life events that can be overwhelming and terrifying to confront,” Shannon Kolakowski, PsyD, author of When Depression Hurts Your Relationship. “Some people are better able to bounce back, whereas others struggle longer, with higher incidences of depression, anxiety, and long term effects of stress that take a toll on their lives.”
Whatever the reason, the good news is that resilience is in large part learn-able. It may take a lot of practice and a number of different strategies (and perhaps work with a psychologist), but it can be improved upon over time. If you’re among the crowd who’s feeling less-than-resilient right now, knowing that you can “grow” your resilience may be the first step in doing so.
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Stretch your mental muscle
People often have a go-to coping method, which may or may not be effective in every life event. The thing that resilient people know is that different challenges require different strategies. So learning how to pick and choose your response in a given situation is key. “People who are resilient have an ability to adapt to all kinds of situations that life throws at us,” says Kolakowski. “Flexibility means you approach any given hurdle with a variety of strategies. Sometimes you need to lean on others and get emotional support; other times you need to give yourself space to heal or grieve or let things cool off; and other situations need swift and strong action to advocate for yourself or confront a situation head on. You can practice this by noticing your go-to method of coping, and then deliberately taking a step back. You’re then in a better position to chose how you move forward with a conscious plan of action.”
Most people know at least intellectually that first reactions aren’t always the best ones—it usually takes some space to fully digest the situation before you can settle on the best response. Make sure you give yourself adequate time to do this, so that you can come up with the best method, rather than just using the first one that comes to mind.
Train your mind to see positive AND negative
Negative things, however small, always grab our attention more than the positive ones—that’s just how we’re built. But when you’ve lost some psychological resilience, you tend to become even more adept at finding the negatives in a situation without even trying. This is natural (and can be helpful), but it needs to be balanced out with some conscious practice at picking out positive elements.
“Research shows that on average, negative events impact people five times as much as positive events do,” says Heidi Reeder, Ph.D., author of Commit To Win: How To Harness the Four Elements of Commitment To Reach Your Goals, and professor at Boise State University. “Resilient people, however, keep the negative from having such a powerful impact by focusing on what’s positive in the situation. Rather than just focusing on the downside (e.g., “I made a fool of myself in front of the whole team”) or just the upside (e.g., “The team got to see that I am human, which will deepen our relationship”) they are able to hold both the positive and negative equally. This kind of emotional balance allows you to move forward with more confidence and less stress.”
You can practice this during calm times (in other words, don’t wait for a crisis) by thinking of events in the past that were hard, and by pulling out some of the elements that turned out to be positive in retrospect. Practicing this will build a kind of reflexive ability to see the next challenge as what it is – a challenge – rather than a catastrophe.
Focus on learning
This is an extension of the one above, and requires a bit of a mental shift. When something bad happens that *may* be your fault, try to use it a means to learn what you could do better, rather than proof that you failed. It may sound cheesy, but it’s a key way to get through hard events and disappointments in life. “During tough times and difficult moments,” says Reeder, “you have a fundamental choice to respond with your old-patterns (e.g., defend, protect, attack, hide) or to open yourself to learning. Making the choice to see challenging circumstances as a learning opportunity rather than a time to protect yourself makes a big difference in your level of resiliency.”
For instance, she says, if you pitched a new idea at work that turned out to be a big flop, see it as a way to do better (and learn what actually went wrong), rather than some sort of confirmation that you’re no good at your job, or that the people you’re working with are inept. “Instead of going into protection mode (e.g., ‘They don’t know what they’re missing, those idiots’), you can go into learning mode (e.g., ‘What can I learn from this that will help me do better next time?’).” You’ll be a lot more resilient if, instead of flinging out anger and blame, you learn to go with it, and use it as a way to step up your game.
Become physically tougher
Getting in physical shape can do volumes for your mental well-being, resilience included. Part of being resilient is that you feel, at least to some degree, that you have control over your response to a situation (even if not the situation itself), and that you can problem-solve whatever challenges come up. When you’re out of shape physically, it can feel like you’re not in control of your body, let alone the stressors in your life. So just the act of getting in shape can be extremely empowering. “It may seem counter-intuitive,” says Ben Michaelis, PhD, a psychologist in New York City, “but you can become mentally tougher by becoming physically stronger, through cardiovascular exercise. The data indicating the link between physical and emotional health is airtight at this point. This is why I often suggest that people who want to build their emotional resilience begin by strengthening their endurance either through running, which I personally believe (and there is data to support me on this) is the most natural form of exercise for human beings, swimming or cycling.”
Keep some fuel in the tank 
This is a tough one because life can be incredibly exhausting, especially if you’re dealing with a series of stressors, and it’s very easy to put your other commitments ahead of yourself. Work, spouse, kids, family all tend to get the better part of your energy. But taking care of yourself in a day-to-day way replenishes your mental energy stores so you can deal with stressful times better. “It’s difficult to be resilient to personal and professional challenges if you are already drained,” says Reeder. “Some people don’t decide to take care of themselves—in terms of sleep, good food, fresh air, and time to just reflect—until they are well into a difficult time. Resilient people know that you need to keep a little fuel in the tank at all times. They know this isn’t being selfish or lazy, but is a strong choice to put yourself in the best physical and emotional state for when inevitable challenges arise.”
So take care of yourself, even if you find it hard to do at first: Exercise, do yoga, meditate, listen to music – whatever you feel builds up your mental/emotional stores, do it.
Stay social, always
The research over the past several years on the importance of social interactions for our mental and physical health is incredibly convincing. And social ties are clearly key in staying a sane and resilient person. “We can all tap into this magic if we just do one thing,” says Craig Malkin, PhD, psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School and author of Rethinking Narcissism. “Open up and depend on others more emotionally, sharing vulnerable feelings, like sadness or fear or loneliness, and trust that the people we care about will be there for us. People who share in this way come to see themselves, and the world, in a better light—and it makes them stronger.”
It’s easy to isolate during tough times, by the logic that you’ll just plow ahead and deal with things by yourself. But this really doesn’t work. Much healthier is keeping in close touch with friends and family—it helps get your mind off things, but even more critical is that it can help you trouble-shoot more effectively. There’s something intrinsic about talking things out, vs. just thinking about them, that helps us work though problems and come up with solutions. And the social contact itself will make you realize that you’re not in it alone.
Write about yourself
This is always a hard one, since it can feel weird to write about yourself, but studies keep showing that it’s extremely good for mental health. “Those who see themselves in a positive light tend to be more resilient than their more self-effacing peers,” says Malkin. “They even recover from tragedy and loss more quickly….. you can increase your resilience by boosting your ego in direct ways. In one study, researchers simply asked people to record in detail, over the course of a week, what they’d done to express the traits that they most value—say, being honest and patient; after just one week of this, people not only felt better about themselves than they did at the start of the study; they had a greater sense of well-being—one important indicator of increased resilience.”

A word about highly sensitive people
Highly sensitive people often seem to have a harder time bouncing back from stressors, which makes sense, since the impact of certain events tend to be magnified for them. But there’s good news for the highly sensitive among us: They also tend to be very good learners when it comes to coping strategies. So they may ultimately have a leg up with resilience, once they learn exactly how to deal with it.
“Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) tend to be both more negatively impacted by stress,” says Michaelis, “and yet, when they are given the right degree of support, in my experience, they can be extremely effective at mastering their anxiety and are actually unusually resilient.  It just seems to take them a little longer to get comfortable with stressors.”
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07:26

 



The Neuroscience of ISIS


The gap is widening between visions of a brilliant future and one of deliberate Apocalyptic destruction.
 
This is the first of a series of columns for The Daily Beast about the intersection of medical technologies on the cusp of changing our lives, and how they fit into the real world. Join me every other Saturday.

Call it a tale of two brains: the extreme dichotomy of human behavior that runs the age-old gamut between evil and good.

Recently this duality has manifested in the rise of the so-called Islamic State (also the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) set against an accelerating pace of technological breakthroughs. One worldview wants to burn people alive, the other to regenerate damaged cells, engineer advanced artificial limbs, and send tourists to the moon.
Put another way, it’s Homeland versus TED.

For those optimistic about the future this is an exciting time to be alive. They believe we are on the cusp of an era when millions and possibly billions of people will be connected, vital, well fed, entertained, and so healthy that some may live extra decades in youthful bodies free of many diseases that now afflict us.

Contrast that with the likes of ISIS and Boko Haram, the Charlie Hebdo gunmen in Paris, and the Tzarnaez brothers in Boston. They remind us with a jolt that not everyone sees a bright tomorrow. Not for themselves. Nor for a society that they want to first return to the brutality of the seventh century and then annihilate in a sea of blood. For the Islamic State this is literal, as Graeme Wood reported in his recent Atlantic cover story, “What ISIS Really Wants.”

According to Wood, the tens of thousands of young men (and a few women) flocking to Syria and Mesopotamia yearn to leap back to a time when torture, rape, beheadings, and other brutalities were commonly deployed by Muslims, Christians, and others under the guise of religious purity. Led by self-proclaimed “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the followers of ISIS eagerly await their demise in an Armageddon that could not be more antithetic to techno optimists who yearn for a future where pain, suffering, and even death may be eliminated.

In this column, I will be writing about a moment in history when thousands of inventions and discoveries, from big data tracking our every move to editing DNA like you would a Microsoft Word doc, are rapidly expanding and converging. Poised to profoundly change how we live, they may also change what it means to be human.

Where this convergence—I call it “fusion”—will lead is anyone’s guess. Nor do we fully understand the pluses or the minuses of this Age of Fusion. The impact, however, will be felt at every level of society—in politics, business, law, philosophy, ethics, advocacy, and the arts. We already have seen the effects, both beneficial and not, of rapidly accelerating technologies over the past century on our environment, lifespans, transportation, communication, and ethics—and how people live.
Science has very little to say about what exactly causes some brains to embrace such extremes of evil and violence, or such a vehement rejection of change.
People’s response to new technologies is equally critical. Reactions range from fear and suspicion to exhilaration; from “I can’t figure out this dang app” to eagerness for a day when humans and machines merge into a super intelligence—what futurist and Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil calls the Singularity.

For instance, are drones that sell for $399 cool or dangerous? Will Amazon use them and others to more efficiently deliver groceries and Google to bring Internet transponders to the poor, or will governments use them to spy on us and to continue to drop bombs?
In the context of the ongoing “technology: is it good or bad” debate it may seem far-fetched and even farcical to talk about villains that seem drawn out of Hollywood thrillers behaving like barbarians on the other side of the Earth from where most of us live. Indeed, ISIS’s penchant for running about swathed in black like the Dread Pirate Roberts and their rejection of 1,300 years of change is so astonishingly extreme that it’s hard for us to process. So are the images of beheadings and auto-de-fés conveyed, ironically, via the 21st technology of social media.
ISIS and the others should hardly be dismissed, however, as distant anomalies or blood-soaked curiosities. Like good, evil has a nasty predilection to reappear across history and across peoples and ideologies, including in recent decades the likes of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.

Regrettably, science has very little to say about what exactly causes some brains to embrace such extremes of evil and violence, or such a vehement rejection of change—a gap in science that should be addressed.
Biologists have identified a handful of genetic mutations that seem to portend violent behavior. For instance, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden recently discovered two genetic mutations that seem to correlate with the violent criminal behavior, including murder. First is the gene Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA), which is linked to dopamine levels in the brain, associated with people feeling happy and adjusted. The second is Cadherin 13 (CDH13), which has a strong correlation to controlling impulses. Both need further study to confirm and better understand.

Neuroscientists are also working on using Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans that measure activity in the brain to better understand and perhaps predict who might commit a terrorist act. So far, however, no one has identified a telltale terrorist gene or brain profile.
Nor do scientists have a deep understanding of the mechanisms of belief, extreme or otherwise, in the brain. One study I have written about previously, conducted in the lab of neuroscientist Jordan Grafman when he was the National Institutes of Health, measured the blood flow to locales in one’s head associated with religious belief. “The purpose of the study has been to discover the underlying cognitive structure of religious beliefs—to find out what cognitive processes take place when religious and nonreligious people think about religion,” said Dimitrios Kapogiannis, a postdoc in Grafman’s lab at the time. “Then we want to identify brain regions that become active with each such process.”
Kapogiannis and Grafman have tested only a few dozen subjects, however, and much work remains to be done, including studies on the combination of belief and violent behavior. (Kapogiannis’ and Grafman’s most recent results appear in the journal Brain Connect).
I have no doubt that various national security agencies are working in secret to better understand the genetics and biology of extremists—something I plan to write more about. I also want to look into the interplay of genetics and the environment to try to better understand the tale of two brains—the environment including the influences of ideology, unemployment, abuse, and lack of purpose that likely interact with genetics to produce extremists, and are likely to keep producing them until we understand this toxic interaction better.

Those of us already enjoying the burgeoning world of the future—that live lifestyles and have opportunities that no one in the seventh century could have dreamed of—need to understand with some urgency that not everyone shares their enthusiasm. Whether it’s genetics or environmental factors, or both, the human impulse to fret and dither about change—or to abhor it to the point of blowing up people and dreaming of world destruction—can be as powerful as the impulse to innovate.
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07:17

Don’t Stop Daydreaming: Why a Wandering Mind Is Good for You

If you can’t get through this article without checking your Facebook, walking to the fridge, scrolling through your phone, and choosing something on Netflix, don’t worry. 
 
I am one of those people who will be unlikely to finish writing this paragraph without checking my Twitter account, staring out the window blankly, changing my mind about what to have for dinner, and mentally rewriting what I will say three paragraphs from now. Once I ordered a book called Mindfulness to try to conquer my eruptive mind. I eagerly tore open the cardboard package, only to realize that I had bought the book several months before and forgotten about it.
According to many studies, mind-wandering saps our attention and makes us worse at performing a given task. Unsurprisingly, science supports the intuitive notion that it’s a bad idea to fantasize about snuggling with a warm, squirmy dachshund while operating heavy machinery. Much more tenuous data show that mind-wandering makes us unhappy, although that may have something more with what our mind wanders to—and our frustration with our poor performance at the task at hand.
For my fellow daydreamers, however, who only experience “flow” when floating down a river, there is some consolation. Other studies show that when our minds wander, we may be doing our planning and perhaps having creative moments.
In a new study, researchers at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University in Israel were actually able, for the first time in a laboratory setting, to cause subjects’ minds to wander. When they applied transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the frontal lobes of subjects’ brains, the tendency to mind-wander increased (my mind reels, jumps, and shimmies at the thought of increased mind-wandering).
“When the situation is appropriate—for example, not during exam or intensive traffic while driving—mind-wandering is important and beneficial.”
“Just think about it, mind wandering is something very personal and individual. A person himself or herself does not know when and how she starts to mind wander,” Vadim Axelrod, lead researcher of the study, wrote in an email. “Here, by using electrical current, we temporarily changed something in the brain circuitry in such a way that a person decided to mind-wander more. And all this happened unconsciously because subjects did not feel that they were stimulated.”
“We also showed that performance on external task also increased. The result was not significant, but the trend was clear in all experiments,” Axelrod continued, noting how his study differed from most other studies that show that mind-wandering detracts from task performance. The best explanation for the difference in his study, he suggested, was that we use the same cognitive systems for attention to external activities, such as driving or cooking a meal, that we do for mind-wandering.
“I don’t think that mind wandering is inherently good or bad, although several theorists have argued pretty convincingly that we do it so much that it’s unlikely to be overwhelmingly costly and perhaps likely to be quite beneficial—whether for personal problem solving, planning for the future, imagining life’s possibilities, or simply escaping the realities of the here-and-now,” Michael Kane, a professor of psychology at University of North Carolina, Greensboro, told me via email. Kane’s research includes mind-wandering.
“Some ongoing activities are so cognitively demanding, or have such dire consequences when errors occur, that most people would agree that mind wandering should be avoided at all costs—think about auto racing or brain surgery,” Kane pointed out. “In thinking about the costs and benefits of mind wandering, though, we really have to take the perspective of the actor or thinker. For a given person at a given time, it may be much more important to think through a personal concern, mentally rehearse an argument, or solve a creative problem, than it is to perform their ongoing task perfectly.”
Axelrod agreed with Kane (and all my irritated elementary school teachers) that there are situations where mind-wandering is inappropriate or downright dangerous. Axelrod also thought, perhaps more emphatically than Kane, that there were times and places where mind-wandering could be beneficial. “I think that when the situation is appropriate—for example, not during exam or intensive traffic while driving—mind-wandering is important and beneficial,” he said. “To this extent, modern technologies decrease the amount of time people mind-wander because people always have a gadget to play with, instead of being with their own thoughts. Just look what passengers in the buses are doing.”
Axelrod is excited about the possibilities indicated by his research. “First, it might be interesting to combine tDCS stimulation with fMRI, so that we can see more directly and precisely what regions in the frontal lobes were influence using tDCS,” he said. “Second, it is interesting to test whether tDCS stimulation can not only enhance mind-wandering, but also to improve creativity and future planning. So, probably, one future day by applying tDCS we will be able to solve the problems that could not be solved before!”
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