News is bad for you

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-colored candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be.

News misleads. Take the following event. A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That's the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it's dramatic, it's a person (non-abstract), and it's news that's cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. Kenyan Politicians are over-rated. Teachers are under-rated.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching a building being blown off by terrorists on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.

News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognize what's relevant. It's much easier to recognize what's new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we're cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have.

News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists' radar but have a transforming effect. The more "news factoids" you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand. If more information leads to higher economic success, we'd expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That's not the case.

News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitisation.

News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: "What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact." News exacerbates this flaw. We become prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that "make sense" – even if they don't correspond to reality. Any journalist who writes, "The market moved because of X" or "the company went bankrupt because of Y" is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of "explaining" the world.

News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it's worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory's capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.

News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. Scientists used to think that the dense connections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we know that this is not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It's because the physical structure of their brains has changed.

News wastes time. If you read the newspaper for 15 minutes each morning, then check the news for 15 minutes during lunch and 15 minutes before you go to bed, then add five minutes here and there when you're at work, then count distraction and refocusing time, you will lose at least half a day every week. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that irresponsible with your money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind?

News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can't act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is "learned helplessness". It's a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.

News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don't.

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too. If you find this article too long to go through, you are a victim of news….

Talking Tom VID 20140704 WA0000

How Kenya has Fallen Prey to the Terrorist's Strategies

Terrorist attacks are useless if no one knows about them. A terrorist's goal is to spread fear, panic and instability through a populace. Without a media to inform the public about terrorist attacks, a government can simply suppress news of the incidents and negate the terrorist's strategy. A terrorist act in and of itself is often not nearly as significant as the public and government reaction to it.

The propagation of televisions and the television media, particularly international news services like CNN, have proved a boon to terrorism. This is what is happening in Kenya today. Remember the West Gate Attack, Mpeketoni and Mandera massacres. All the major news stations assembled the so called experts to have their say. The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" serves to illustrate this point very well. Images, especially video images, of bombed buildings, bloody corpses and frightened hostages are much more memorable than print or audio reports of those same incidents. In a nation where the government maintains tight control of the media, terrorist tactics are nearly useless Uganda is a good example in our case.

Media coverage of terrorist incidents invariable draws world attention to the group which perpetrated the attack, along with its cause, demands and grievances. Committing a terrorist attack is one of the most effective ways to obtain free, global publicity for one's cause.

Democratic nations are the most fertile settings for terrorist insurgencies. A free media ensures widespread coverage of terrorist attacks and therefore ample publicity for the perpetrator. Secondly, democratic governments are constrained in their response to terrorism by having to respect individuals' civil guarantees of privacy and protection from illegal search and imprisonment. If security forces disregard these guarantees, the media will certainly publicize that fact leading to a public backlash against authorities. So democratic governments like Kenya faced with terrorist insurgencies are forced to decide what is more important—civil liberties and freedom of speech, or public safety, Mr President, it is for you to decide!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

212^0 the extra degree

At 211 degrees water is hot

At 212 degrees, it boils

And with boiling water, comes steam.

And steam can power a locomotive

One extra degree makes all the difference,

And the one extra degree of effort

In business and in life..Separates

The good from the great

The average margin of victory for the last 25 years in all major events combined was less than three strokes

The margin of victory between an Olympic gold medal and no medal is extremely small

At the infamy 500 the average margin for video for the past 10 years has been 1.54 sec

Winner took home US$ 1278814

Second US$  621321

The difference was US$  657492

It’s your life

You are responsible for you results

It’s time to turn up the heat

To get what we have never had we must do what we have never done

The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it possible

It is one of the most beautiful compensation in life

We can never help one another without helping ourselves

Belief fuels enthusiasm and enthusiasm explodes into passion

It fires our souls and lifts our spirits

Having a simple clearly defined goal can capture the imagination and inspire our passion.

It can cut through the fog and beacon in the night.

Perseverance is not a long race: it is many short races one after another

You are now aware

You now have a target for everything you do

Social media verses Mainstream media

Social media have helped many news agencies gain traction around the world. However, news organisations are becoming increasingly worried about the potentially disruptive effect of social media on their business models. To keep up, the mainstream media have been forced to embrace social media to disseminate information to the world. 

The effect of social media is overestimated in the short terms and underestimated in the long term. Mainstream media are adopting social media especially with blogging and Twitter in order to keep up with a wide array of Internet users. Gone are the days that mainstream media owned news and would release it to the public when they deemed fit to do so. There is a transformation for journalist from being the gatekeeper of information to sharing it in the public space (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et.). The mainstream media has to embrace citizen journalism in order to keep up with the growing number of online users who rely on the internet for news. 

Despite the influx of information on the social media platform  we cannot say that the end of journalism has come more sooner than we expected. This is because information is not journalism. The social media provides a lot of things but not journalism. Journalism requires discipline, accountability, analysis, explanation, and context. Journalism adds explanation, analysis and judgement to the news. However, despite all these, journalist should never compete with the internet. This is because the internet has no operating protocols. Information is propagated from one blogger to another, one mask to another. 

The social media might win the battle but this does not mean that the mainstream media is dead. We still require the mainstream media to account the information. The social media should express remorse when it comes to posting some information. Imagine receiving news about the death of your relative from the social media. Though it is a fast way of diffusing information, the bloggers and other users should contemplate the consequences of what they post. 

Life!!!!!!!!!!!

I have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair. I have always had to work

beyond the limit of my strength. As I look back upon my life, I see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions-a battle in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me, and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old before my time.

Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone sorrows; no envy for the men who have been spared all I have gone through. For I have lived. They only existed. I have drunk the cup of life down to its very dregs. They have only sipped the bubbles on top of it. I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are blind. It is only the men whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little brothers to the entire world. I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no man who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading the morrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. I put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given me. Little annoyances no longer have the power to affect me. After you have seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about you, it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put the doilies under the finger bowls, or the cook spills the soup. I have learned not to expect too much of people, and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn't quite true to me or the acquaintance who gossips. Above all, I have acquired a sense of humour, because there were so many things over which I had either cry or laugh. And when a man can joke over his troubles instead of having hysterics, nothing can ever hurt him much again. I do not regret the hardships I have known, because through them I have touched life at every point I have lived. And it was worth the price I had to pay>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Kenyan New On-Line Business

The Kenyan on-line business community is growing at an alarming rate day by day. This has been contributed largely by the high connectivity of internet to many. Access to internet is much easier than never before. The presence of on-line telecommuters is also increasing day by day. This has been contributed greatly by the flexibility of tele-working. 

The internet has also been converted as a source of avenue to most university students. A good example is the use of the internet by university students to earns extra money to complement the little they get from the infamous "BOOM" A good example where this business of on-line research has infiltrated at a high rate is Kahawa an estate located on the Newly constructed Thika Superhighway. The business is so good that i know of people who have converted their living quarters into business enterprises. Rumour has it that some of them are earning as much as $1500 in a span of two weeks. I know to an amateur this is hard to believe but trust me because I have been there and seen it all go down. 

This is a nice business venture because all one needs is a computer and an Internet access. And to the unlucky ones, working from the many cyber cafes costs only 50 cents per minute. Lets hope and trust this business will uplift the living standards of many unemployed youths in our beloved country.