Where did reality go?

Everyday I am bombarded with information. Not including the regular daily lectures, I am bombarded with emails from the university, news from the BBC and all the other notices we are required to heed.  How much do we really take in, and how much do we really need to know?

From 6-9:15 every day the BBC show their award winning Breakfast show. Despite the fact its a loop of about half an hour of news, many people sit down to watch this every morning. We are told the exacting details of every war we are currently engaged in, the most recent world disasters, and how we are all inevitably going to die.  I can appreciate the need to publicize certain events in order to raise public awareness, but it is not the best start to the day. I would enjoy an experiment to see how changing what you watch in the morning changes how you feel at the end of the day. I might make it an effort these next few weeks. Instead of being socially aware, I will try and do something positive every morning in an attempt to lighten my day. It might just make a day that much more relaxing. I'll report my results in the Easter. There might even be graphs...

Excessive emails. We all have them. Anyone who's attempted to contact a lecturer knows the pain that can ensure (Steve Watts). But I can't blame them, every day I blatantly disregard the numerous emails from university on gigs, some course material and almost everything that doesn't immediately grab my attention. Those which need responding get put on hold. I can only guess that this is some kind of self defence mechanism we have to protect us from the array of different information presented to us, we disregard everything that doesn't immediately stick in our head. But this isn't always a good thing, so much important stuff gets filtered out. And sometimes these filters go on overkill and also remove real information in the real world. Like an over zealous anti-virus software. 

Is lecturing a good method anyway?

There is only one way to solve this problem. Well. Apart from using size 36 RED ARIAL for emails, and shouting something at people so they remember it. We need conciseness, an email should merely be the abstract of the full paper. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." A quote by Albert Einstein. For example, the listings of university events should not be emailed round, nobody reads them. Instead the external links should be available, and readily searched. The news should be brief and to the point, with statistics collaborated. And maybe sometimes we email we should try to make ours more concise and clear too. Shame that this principle is not applied by so many at the moment. It would certainly make Coronation street an easier place to live...

Today I learnt all about... urm... the different applications of Hartree theory. Something that has been very useful in finding out stuff. Like chemistry. And that's just one of the amazing facts I learnt today. Not that I can remember it all. My brain has only so much room for stuff. If we want to live in the modern era we need to summarise stuff, not try and remember all of it, or none of it. Summaries are the way forward. Rant over...