![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/mbrain.jpg\")
As I sat
\n the other night blogging, writing brief posts in between paying bills
\n and correcting student essays, with a baseball game on the potable TV
\n with the sound turned down and the legendary lost King Crimson album
\n on the speakers, Norma Yvone wanted to have a conversation. Fine. As
\n a progressive male, I fully accept the desirability of regular and open
\n communication between partners in a relationship. The problem was she
\n expected me to stop doing the other things in order to devote my undivided
\n attention to our conversation.<\/p>\n
“You can’t pay attention to more than one thing at a time. When you
\n try to do so many things at once you end up doing all of them badly. That’s
\n why you do such a bad job vacuuming while you watch sports on TV.”<\/p>\n
Be that as it may, I am utterly certain that my brain works BETTER when
\n it is working on several, or even many, things at once. Concentrating
\n on just one thing may work fine for the Dalai Lama, but in the real world
\n it is not behavior geared to survival.<\/p>\n
Since reading John Lilly’s<\/a> seminal Part of my mind, for example, is at all times thinking about my next While driving, I get my best ideas for blogging. I have narrowly In that vein, a substantial part of my brain, which in fact I would Not to mention Sex. If I am not playing some stupid mental game And So don’t tell me to do one thing at a time, Norma Yvone. Now <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I sat the other night blogging, writing brief posts in between paying bills and correcting student essays, with a baseball game on the potable TV with the sound turned down and the legendary lost King Crimson album on the … Continue reading
\n 1967 paper “Programming
\n and Meta programming in the Human Biocomputer<\/a>” in college I have been
\n interested in analogies between computers and the human brain. Whatever
\n version of system software I am currently using, it was designed for multi-processing.
\n On the surface, I am fully aware of my surroundings and capable of seemingly
\n intelligent interaction with other people. But this occupies only
\n a small percentage of my available processing power.<\/p>\n
\n meal. It may be planning it, or imagining it, or actively lobbying
\n for pursuing it. Another part is thinking about why no food is
\n colored blue, and if it is true that an experiment proved that if you
\n give people perfectly healthy food in unusual or unexpected colors they will get sick.<\/p>\n
\n avoided many accidents as I try to just notes on the backs of envelopes
\n or the margins of periodicals with one hand and half an eye on the road. But
\n part of my mind, perhaps due to my felonious past, is always scanning
\n the horizon for cops (and not just when driving, this is a sixth
\n sense one never loses). Another part is continually composing and
\n erasing justifications and explanations to be used in case of an accident
\n that (hopefully) never happens. On the theory that if it DOES happen
\n you better have your story ready because in all the excitement you’ll
\n never be able to improvise.<\/p>\n
\n seriously like to reduce, is constantly thinking of snappy comebacks
\n and rapier-like repartee to be used in conversations that have already
\n taken
\n place. Things I SHOULD have said. Conversely, I would like to increase
\n that portion of my brain working on making and accumulating money. Some
\n people’s brains seem to do this almost exclusively.<\/p>\n
\n like “The ten hottest babes in the Supermarket…” then at least some part
\n of my brain is thinking about sex with women I know, sex with women I
\n don’t know, sex with fictional women from literature, etc.<\/p>\n
\nthis entire phantasmagoric mental cacography has a soundtrack, composed
\nmostly of classic rock and industrial house imperfectly remembered and
\nmushed together as if by a demented DJ high on some psychedelic downer.<\/p>\n
\n please go over one more time everything you just said, I’m not sure I
\n really understand. Of course, I was LISTENING. I just need to hear
\n it again to decide what I really think…<\/p>\n