Sunday Newscape Magazine

It’s good to be a researcher, especially  if you are a researcher studying topics crucial to the well-being of humanity. Take, for example, a recent study from “experts” at a university in New Zealand who bravely took on the task of studying whether men stare at women’s breasts. Yes, they really did spend serious scientific time studying this, and shockingly, these experts discovered that a majority of men do indeed gaze at the girls when they first meet a woman.

I feel really good knowing that such scientific knowledge is out there to assist future researchers, who will undoubtedly need to do follow-up studies. But you may be surprised to find out I’m more interested in another recent study which concluded that we’re all becoming a nation of idiots. You might also be surprised to find out these two studies are not linked. Apparently, we are not becoming a nation of idiots because half of us don’t realize the other half have faces.

It’s because of all the time we spend online, where we tend to skim through a lot of trivial data instead of actually absorbing worthwhile information. I'm especially interested in this, because I have recently embarked on an experiment in which I try to read a book for one hour each day. You remember books. Smart people used to put worthwhile information in them before all those smart people were recruited to conduct research on boob boys.

I don't know whether reading for an hour a day is making me smarter, but it is at least relaxing. I had missed the leisurely experience of immersing myself in a book. I’d never actually given up reading books altogether, but most of my reading has been done in little snippets of time I would steal here and there for the printed page. Now, at least, I make a concerted effort to sit down with a book.

But I can tell that my once spongelike mind has been marred by my Internet habit. My mind wanders after a few minutes of sustained reading, and I feel a strong urge to flip over to something else, such as checking out the latest in silly scientific studies or reading the newest SPAM email in my inbox. I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate and absorb all the knowledge so painstakingly amassed by those primitive, pre-Internet people.

If everyone else is like me, we could be in real trouble, folks.

I think what I really need is an artificial brain that is attached to my faltering real brain so that I can’t go off and leave it in the grocery cart. Then I could offload all the worthless information clogging my head into the artificial brain and reserve space in my real brain for important things like reading good books. Or maybe I should store all the stupid stuff in my real brain - which is probably past repair anyway - and turn over all important thinking to the fake brain.

Of course, if I get a fake brain, I might as well install other fake body parts as well. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about what my face looks like.

© Jackie Papandrew, All Rights Reserved www.jackiepapandrew.com