No matter how many legos you pick up, there’s still one more to step on

Ow ow ow!

A rant is not a speech or text a well-researched and calm argument, rather rants are typically written in response to provocation.

Rants directly attack an idea, person or an institution, and they very often lack claims that are proven. The attacks are usually personal attacks. Comapre with a dialectic.

In some cases, there is statistical or concrete information expressed, but the key ideas expressed are what the individual personally feels.

However, in some cases a rant is not always attacking something: it may be in defense of an individual, idea or organization but a rant of this type predominately occurs after the subject has been attacked by another individual or group

Wreck on the way back from Mt. Hood Meadows on Saturday

odot employees help car at mt hoododot employees help car at mt hood

 

I got the chance to see some ODOT employees hurry to assist a car that had flipped over on the way back from MT. Hood Meadows this past Saturday. The snow fell heavily on Friday night but most traffic incidents happend Saturday, December 15th, 2007. Everyone got out of the car safely. Good work guys!

The Secret to My Success

Brain ‘irrelevance filter’ found

Memory capacity may be linked to filtering out irrelevant information Scientists believe they have located a new brain area essential for good memory – the “irrelevance filter”. People who are good at remembering things, even with distractions, have more activity in the basal ganglia on brain scans, the Swedish team found. The work in Nature Neuroscience could help explain why some people are better at remembering things than others. Clinically, it could also aid the understanding of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The ability to hold information in the mind so that it is immediately accessible is known as working memory. We use working memory all of the time – for example, when doing a simple maths calculation in our head or recalling a telephone number. There will be many brain regions that filter irrelevant information, so it is too early to tell if these findings will have a bearing on conditions such as ADHD John Duncan Medical Research Council scientist Working memory is important because it gives a mental workspace in which we can hold information whilst mentally engaged in other relevant tasks, which is crucial for learning. Its capacity is limited and seems to vary from person to person. These variations are not just due to having a larger or smaller memory store, but also due to differences in how effectively irrelevant items are kept out of memory, the Karolinksa Institute researchers believe. Distracters Dr Torkel Klingberg and colleague Fiona McNab used a special brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track what was happening in the brains of 25 healthy volunteers. The volunteers were asked to perform a computer-based task that required them to respond to target visual images, with or without distractions. A noise informed subjects when an upcoming visual display would contain irrelevant distracters along with the targets. When this cue occurred, neural activity increased in the basal ganglia and the prefrontal cortex before the visual display appeared, suggesting the brain was preparing to “filter out” the upcoming distracters. Also, greater activity in a specific part of the basal ganglia – the globus pallidus – correlated with less unnecessary storage in another part of the brain, the posterior parietal cortex, which is sensitive to the amount of information held in memory. The team is currently investigating methods of improving attention and working memory in children with ADHD and monitoring any changes with fMRI. Medical Research Council scientist John Duncan said: “This is very interesting work and gives a window on important parts of the brain. “The basal ganglia are very strong candidates for involvement in brain disorders where people have difficulty with attentional control. “But there will be many brain regions that filter irrelevant information, so it is too early to tell if these findings will have a bearing on conditions such as ADHD.”