Motley Moose – Archive

If you knew you were damaging your brain….would it help if you were having a blast while doing so? (Let’s ask some crackheads for their opinion!) (Yes! Yes, it does help!) Is it possible that our time spent online is actually weakening our abilities to concentrate and solve complex problems? Or is that not the case after all? Maybe we’re actually strengthening our minds in this fast-paced, virtual world. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. It’s a puzzle scientists have been trying to solve for years, and researchers are sharply divided…but I find the idea that we are altering our brains on a cellular level with our high tech, fast-paced lifestyles to be mad cool (and, if being honest….a bit creepy). I want to touch on a couple of the more recent studies on the topic…and perhaps test the limits of Moose distractibility while at it. /grin

[Warning: If you are epileptic or have any other kind of seizure disorder, you need not view this diary.

No, really….not kidding.

People with dial-up should also be wary, as it is image heavy.

All others…make sure you’ve allowed flash…buckle your seatbelts…and join me below the fold!]

I think nowadays most informed people realize that privacy on the Internet is an illusion. There is no real secrecy in cyberspace, and if you live in the States — unless you are born of a jackal, raised by wolves, and currently residing in a hut somewhere in the woods of Arkansas and have never so much as seen a light bulb or a sharp stick — then records of your existence are somewhere online. Your information may not be easily accessible to the public, but with enough money, diligence, and tech savvy, someone out there can find you. You can only hope that you either aren’t worth the trouble, or that no one with the means and determination to find you intends you any harm. And to some extent, that was true even before we were all linked together on this vast series of tubes. But there’s no disputing that it’s a whole lot easier to find people than it once was.  

In 1989 the Chinese government had enough of the protesters occupying a huge square in the middle of its national capital, so they kicked out the foreign press, shut down communications and rolled in the tanks.

Well, they almost shut down communications…

In 2009 the Iranian government tried the same thing.  It didn’t work any better.

Arbor Networks provides a good view on Iran’s connection to the Internet via the Internet Observatory.  The fat healthy traffic to the left of the dropoff is what Iranian Internet traffic looks like at normal times, the cliff denotes the election and to the right of that you see traffic increasingly “leaking” past the imposed restrictions.