MooPig Brain Industries Department :: "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy -- ACT"

[Picture LINK unknown]

Empirical Status for ACT
Re-directed Articles by Pat Darnell  |  Mar 19, 2015  |  Bryan TX

Thanks to John Franks who posted about ACT on faceBook. Say you have a pet Narwhal, and it never seems to be happy in your pet palace you built for him. As he suffers, you also suffer, and things get all confused.

I think we may be on to something. ACT is a therapy that is being used in cases of PTSD. When my Dad was in his final days, he was at the VA Hospital, checked in for lots of old age ailments. His suffering was not pretty, nor quiet. I in fact suffer PTSD from his agonizing final journey. He used to say he had so many pains he couldn't count that high, and one of the results was that he would lash out at me, or whoever, was with him. He didn't mean it, it just happened. Communication broke down, and I couldn't get him what he needed to overcome his death rattle. He was hurting and what he said to me hurt. I absorbed his trauma.

But it was not a physical hurt, you know what I mean? But I as his son felt like I wanted to escape any of his criticisms of me during that episode. Escapism has been my whole life long journey, now that I have my father's death as a fixed point in time, maybe I don't have to escape anymore.

ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science: "Developed within a coherent theoretical and philosophical framework, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility means contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being, and based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behavior in the service of chosen values."
'via Blog this'

"...Buttressed by an extensive basic research program on a associated theory of language and cognition, Relational Frame Theory (RFT), ACT takes the view that trying to change difficult thoughts and feelings as a means of coping can be counter productive, but new, powerful alternatives are available, including acceptance, mindfulness, cognitive defusion, values, and committed action..."

CONCLUSION
I need this therapy.

_____________________Reference
https://contextualscience.org/act
https://contextualscience.org/about_act
https://contextualscience.org/ACT_RFT_Reader_s_update
https://contextualscience.org/act_faq
https://contextualscience.org/act_in_popular_media
https://contextualscience.org/special_populations
https://contextualscience.org/marketing_materials
https://contextualscience.org/list_of_resources_for_learning_act
https://youtu.be/z-wyaP6xXwE

MooPig Parenting Trap Department :: "What I Say..."

In the Beginning there were no Creations called Parents ...
Retrieved articles by Pat Darnell  |  Dec 28, 2013  |  Bryan TX

[Picture LINK] Pelletier was taken to Boston Children’s Hospital when she got the flu in February. Her parents said doctors at the hospital accused them of medical child abuse – something they vehemently oppose.

The 7 Worst Things You Can Say To Your Child: "Parenting can be so damn stressful. Kids push boundaries and buttons, and it’s a parent’s job to stay calm and steady in the face of it all. But most of us don’t perform this job with absolute perfection. We sometimes and say things to our kids we wish we could stuff back inside our mouths. I’m sure most of us have some cringe-worthy moments to mull over and make up for" (REBECCA ODES | June 30th, 2011. LINK) ..."

Kind-patience, long-suffering, friendly-courtesy, calm-serenity, soft-skills, might not be part of a person's vocabulary before he or she becomes a parent.

The conditioning one receives from perilous parenting supplants all previous learned curricula. One cannot escape a child's adolescence, and the parent usually ends up unable to forgive oneself for all the battles that came out of that "special" time. Action speaks louder than words; at least that is what we thought. Our words are remembered, and remembered, and repeated, for generations.

This linked article gives us at least seven examples of things we say as we resort to incivility in our conversations with our children:

1. "If you don't stop that I'm going to leave you here"
2. "Why can't you be more like your sister or brother?"
3. "You're the reason we got divorced."
4. "Because I said so, that's why."
5. "Here, let me do that for you."
6. "You should be ashamed of yourself."
7. "We never wanted you anyway."

I'm GUILTY of most of these. YIKES!

http://youtu.be/yL9mX4Hbc2Q

READ more BABBLE.com bits on Parenting and Children in these following References:

"... The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting."

__________________Reference
http://www.babble.com/kid/the-7-worst-things-you-can-say-to-your-child/
http://youtu.be/yL9mX4Hbc2Q
http://www.babble.com/kid/car-seat-law-changes-in-2014/
http://www.babble.com/mom/flattery-will-get-you-everywhere-5-ways-to-compliment-a-mom/
http://www.babble.com/babble-voices/ellen-seidman-1000-perplexing-things-about-parenthood/11-mistakes-parents-make-even-the-perfect-ones/
http://www.babble.com/mom/the-20-worst-parenting-overshares-on-facebook/
http://www.babble.com/kid/8-surprising-effects-of-daycare/
http://www.babble.com/kid/12-truths-about-kids-that-childfree-people-want-to-know/
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/21/teen-girl-kept-in-hospital-against-parents-will-to-remain-in-state-custody-judge-rules/

MooPig Toys for Tots Department :: "Poseable Hitler Action Doll"

Retrieved by Pat Darnell  |  July 13, 2013  |  Bryan TX

Someone should take these photos and make a poseable action figure doll from them. Using 3D printers, it would be a snap to do. Would it sell? We don't know, so we decided to ask around?

Would you buy this historically accurate Action Doll of Hitler for your toddler?


These Photos Of Adolf Hitler After Prison Release Are Unbelievable: "Taken by photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, the extraordinary pictures show Hitler rehearsing while listening to a recording of one of his own speeches. They were reportedly taken in 1925, soon after Hitler was released from a nine-month stint in prison during which he dictated his autobiography, Mein Kampf."

'via Blog this'

[Photo LINK]



_____________________Reference
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/hitler-photos_n_3579507.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

MooPig Brain Industries :: Google Zeitgeist 2012

by Pat Darnell | Jan 18, 2013 | Bryan TX

[Picture LINK]

What Google Zeitgeist 2012 Tells Us About Us | News and Opinion | PCMag.com: "Evidently, we really want to know about Whitney Houston, Gangnam Style, and Hurricane Sandy. The 2012 Top Google Searches were: Whitney Houston, Gangnam Style, Hurricane Sandy, iPad 3, Diablo 3, Kate Middleton, Olympics 2012, Amanda Todd, Michael Clarke Duncan, and BBB12."

Is that all there is? Nope.

'via Blog this'

We search the web for answers to our questions; what are our questions? Can they be translated to show our quests? ... Quests beyond just consumerism?

The 2012 Google mind map is too large but not unmanageable. It shows us the way to 1.2 trillion searches; 146 languages. That is roughly the capacity of one human brain; sure you cold learn 146 languages if you had to.

From Scientific American:

" ...The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single memory, running out of space would be a problem. You might have only a few gigabytes of storage space, similar to the space in an iPod or a USB flash drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage. (Paul Reber, professor of psychology at Northwestern University. April 19, 2010. HERE) ... "

A reader comments:

"... I'm sure this is just a mistake in editing; after all, even Neuroscience for Kids gets the number of neurons right: 100 billion neurons and a quadrillion synapses. Since your estimates here are magnitudes of order wrong, though, and if they were used for further calculations, doesn't that make the rest of your calculations in error as well? (ibid.) ..."

It's not yet an exact science, neither brain industry nor Google zeitgeist. the author above, Reber, goes on to explain:

" ..."The human brain consists..." I should have gone with the commonly held estimate of ~100 billion. However, in terms of the numbers of neurons in the brain likely to participate in long-term memory of facts, events and episodes, 1 billion neurons is not a bad estimate. That might be surprising, but if you look into the details, e.g. a report trying to estimate the number of neurons, [Report LINK] (ibid.)... "

The point being a year of Google activity is equivalent to one regular, everyday human brain. There are those who think once the "machine" surpasses the brain's capacity to think and adapt, it will become our ... lord - boss - teacher - owner - maestro ... or what ever supplants the human brain in capacity is called.

MooPig Brain Industries Department thinks that the day you see an aisle in the Walgreen's with the sign "Brain Products" posted, that will be the sign that machines have advanced to the realm of competitor.

Or, when your pet can play BorderLands as well as your teenager, that could be the sign that machines have "evolved."

So, regrettably your mind could be supplanted by terabytes of computer power, before you have a mind. But that is the way of the future; Or is it?

It is hard to believe that the Apollo 11 spacecraft had a computer with only 2k of memory and 32k of storage. Earlier missions had relied upon as little as 24k of core read-only storage, and 1k of main memory.

Moore’s Law ... which originated around 1970 ... simplified version states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers will double every two years. The limitation which exists is that once transistors can be created as small as atomic particles, then there will be no more room for growth in the CPU market where speeds are concerned.

On the other hand, ... perhaps molecular computers, quantum computers can takeover when silicon power is exhausted. But then the question is, what’s the timeframe?

" ... In fact, Intel Corporation is now going to three-dimensional chips, chips that compute not just flatly in two dimensions but in the third dimension. But there are problems with that. The two basic problems are heat and leakage. (MICHIO KAKU. MARCH 7, 2012, 12:00 AM. HERE) ... "

CONCLUSION
Hey, our brains are three dimensional. But, did you, reader, catch that -- "heat and leakage" -- we might want to tweak our brains in this age of techno-barbarism; all that leakage will catch up with us.

Using natural human curiosity and Google search, will we download our brains?

" ... Our brain is a learning machine. It encounters tasks and then learns how to overcome these tasks, one by one. So that's going to be the basic problem. Simply digitalizing information, that's easy, we can simply scan information into a computer. But, you see, our brains learn. We learn to adapt new ideas, we begin to learn new tasks and new things. And that's going to be a lot more difficult to replicate by computer. So, I personally don't think we're going to see that in our lifetime. (MICHIO KAKU. JANUARY 19, 2011, 12:00 AM. HERE) ... "

Let the wild rumpus continue. And, be good to your brain, it's got a lot on its mind!

Keywords:
brain scaling, number of neurons, human, encephalization

_____________________________Reference
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413146,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/07/20/how-powerful-was-the-apollo-11-computer/
http://www.mooreslaw.org/
http://bigthink.com/ideas/42825
http://bigthink.com/ideas/26541
http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuroscience/10.3389/neuro.09/031.2009/abstract

Report from the Middle :: Have We Come Full Circle Yet ??

According to what Metric Measure has Humanity Progressed?
by Pat Darnell

I choose faceBook, and the recently abandoned, felon-infested, mySpace, as suitable measuring tools this morning.

Note; I was a member of mySpace when a friend asked me to aid in an experiment on "social" network possibilities. His venture into the surrogacy of mySpace led him to many avenues... See Here:

"[On mySpace, eventually] ... artists would also share in the ad revenue. But…only the major label affiliated artists.
But…at some point indie artists would get the same opportunity. You know…big things around the corner type jive.

"And really, it would only be right because there is so much of an indie presence on MySpace," says the author Pribek. [HERE -- MySpace Sucks Even More Than You Think!!]!

"Anyway, MySpace Music has now, finally, started to fulfill that promise and guess what? They found an easy, sleazy, cheesy way to do it. [ Note: Every time a "thing" is posted on a social network, it is already "old news" or "old business" (pdaf)]
Continues author Pribek:
"They [mySpace] are working in partner with TuneCore. Now, as far as I know, this only goes for the ad revenue part of it not the spins. In short, in order to ever have a ghost of a chance to see any dough, an artist has to have a TuneCore account and every song has to be distributed through TuneCore. Doesn’t matter if you’ve had your stuff up for years driving traffic to and filling MySpace’s pockets; you would need to re-upload them and distribute through TuneCore." (Pribek.net)

So basically we are faced by faceBook and mySpace to work within their corporate structure, probably not a social network too. It must be a major stumbling block to our Entrepreneur-ically Insane IT Goth Bots, that for tax evasion purposes, or for lower tax rates, it behooves the company to spin-off a TuneCore Corp to handle the culture-aid promised by the Mother mySpace ... YIKES!!!

I no longer am a member of mySpace, but do vivaciously tour the annals of faceBook. I am looking for ... er ... looking for ... uh ... *[cursor blink blink]* ... well we should get back to that later.** D. C. al Coda [dal Capo al Coda]


I find I most often interject my Middle-aged Authentic Blues into discussions in faceBook -- which is what I mostly did in mySpace. This is peculiar because I never debated verbally, but now think I can graphically. [??]

I have found that my "Code" is now [already] vernacular, and my views are "Old Humor." This I can live with, no problem. The daily problem is that my same-age buddies, who would never tour the sites mentioned, do not see any of this, and show angst when I try to explain "This is our role in social networks today."

** Coda [dal Capo al Coda," or "from the beginning, to the tail]
*[cursor blink blink]*  Let's return to the above question: "I am looking for ... ." Suppose you are boiling some potatoes, and they have just started to boil. You walk away for a few seconds only to return to the pot all madly foamy, and boiling over ... It's a mad dash to move the pot or turn down the temperature... but always a mess that could have been avoided with a little more stirring and watching, or Tender Loving Care.

We all know a watched pot never boils... but this pot is the metaphor of middle-age angst of menopausal men of pause -- that is my group. And Dang 'it anyway.

If you are still reading in this drift with me, you will notice that this boiled-over mess always means "clean up -- now, or afterwards," but guaranteed there will be "clean-ups and burns."

Ante-Conclusion:
What patterns most often encountered in mySpace and faceBook show lukewarm pots of water about to boil over? Adolescent behavior is the Key phrase. The surrogacy of IT social networking finds its kinship in incompleat logic of adolescent human ideology that short circuits every time the pot of potato's boils over. My minority group of crusty old men, is not targeted. Naivety is targeted.

As the spirit of social networking grows older will it banish adolescent behavior? We shall see fifty years from now if so. Good luck with that.
*
And that is our Report from the Middle this icy morning. Here in the plush Brazos Valley, where the Men are good-looking; Women are strong, and the children are all above average.
*

*