Glider

The time it takes the body to readjust to the absence of nicotine is actually 3-4 weeks. Nicotine has a half-life in the body of about 60 minutes, so you can expect to be nicotine free within a day of stopping. However, if you have been smoking for long enough to establish a physical addiction, then nicotinic ACh receptors will have adapted to its presence (which is the basis of the physiological component of addicition) and it will take that system 3-4 weeks to re-adapt. Individual responses to nicotine withdrawal vary hugely. Some can quit almost with no effort, others can suffer quite badly. Either way, quitting is possible and you need to form a plan based on your own experience. You will need to work both on the physical and behavioural aspects of the habit. The behavioural aspects are the ones that last the longest and need the most work. The physical ones, however bad they get, will be over in a month at most. If you find the physical symptoms of withdrawal intolerable, then I would suggest nicotine replacement therapy (patches, gum, lozenges or inhalator). These will keep the physical symptoms managable and allow you to work on the behavioural aspects. The behavioural side of smoking is based on behaviour reinforcement and habit. Essentially, 'learning' to smoke was a process of performing a behaviour (reinforced by the drug) until it became automatic. Now, the craving is just a trigger and, when a craving occurs, it triggers the smoking behaviour as an automatic (unthinking) response. An effective tactic is to learn a replacement behaviour and, when a craving occurs, perform that instead. Eventually, it too will become habit. It doesn't take as long as you'd think, but it does require some initial effort. The worst thing you can do when confronted with a craving is nothing. Just sitting still is the worst thing. The craving won't let you think of anything else. Essentially, you will be learning a new skill (living without nicotine) and like any new skill, it requires practice until you can perform it without thinking. Some tips: Cravings are triggered by more than the absense of nicotine. Events and situations are the main trigger for cravings. Any situation in which you would normally smoke will trigger a craving. You can try to avoid those situations or, if that's not possible (e.g. eating a meal, which is a common trigger), then you can alter your response deliberately, and that will eventually become habit. For example, the part about a meal that triggers the craving is the end of it, when people sit back after finishing. So, instead of sittinng back, do something immediately. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Just take your plates to the kitchen. That will alter the trigger behaviour and the craving will be averted. Cravings are not constant. They come in waves, but each wave only lasts a couple of minutes. Try to avoid or alter situations that trigger them in the first place. In the cases where you cannot do that, form an alternative behavioural response to the craving, i.e. some action that takes a minute or so to perform. It can be anything. A good example I know of is to have an empty jar at home and, when a craving happens, get up and put 10 pence (or cents) in it. It sounds dumb, but it takes about the same amount of time to do as lighting up a cigarette and by the time you have done it, the craving will have subsided. You get the added benefit of building up in a very visible way, a lump of cash that you would otherwise have spent on cigarettes (which, as time goes on, acts as a reward in itself and helps to reinforce the alternative behaviour). If you are outside and get caught by a craving, you could pull out the loose change in your pocket, count it and put 10p in another pocket for the jar when you get home. It takes a minute or two and again, will avert the craving. These are just examples of something you could to. It can be anything you want. Think of it this way; it's a bit like your mind is a very boring person who is repeatedly trying to start a conversation on a specific topic. Your task is to deliberately change the subject each time. Initially, it is deliberate and takes effort (but not much), but in a relatively short period of time, you will have reinforced the replacement behaviour to the extent that it becomes habit. You will do it automatically and with no thought or conscious effort. You will have extinguished the old response completely. At that point, you will be non-smoker and you should empty your jar and count the large pile of cash you have saved (yay!). Lastly, keep it real. Don't think your whole life has to change. That makes the task too big. The actual change is tiny and easily managable. You are not learning to do nothing in response to a craving (which actually very hard to do), you are just learning to do something else. That's a lot easier. Avoid thinking too far ahead (e.g. 'how will I manage this for a month?'). You only have to learn to avoid or avert the cravings for one day. Then, all you have to do, is repeat it the next day. Repetition is a lot easier than starting again. The days will build up on their own (as will the cash) and you don't need to think about them or bother with counting them. Just let them go. They'll look after themselves. You only need to think about today. -

Mynas are members of the starling family and the behaviour you observed is called 'mobbing' and it is a behaviour common to many kinds of bird, especially those that roost in groups or colonies. It is particularly pronounced in corvids (crows, rooks, ravens, jackdaws, magpies etc.). When presented with a threat, these 'social' birds will produce an alarm call that causes others in the area to come together and, as a group, mob the predator until it leaves the area. It doesn't matter what the threat is either. If you ever get too close to a nest in a jackdaw colony, they will mob you. My cat was mobbed by a pair of crows once. He's never been quite the same since.

I think if one ignores differences in appearance, which in themselves make no difference, then all other differences between people (by which I mean those that actually make a difference to behaviour and attitude) are cultural and so are self-imposed.

Outstanding1 Another super weapon. Just what we needed. Any sign of that cure for cancer yet?

The mug doesn't need to be upside down. If you inflate the balloon in the mug so it's a tight fit, you can lift the balloon and mug by the neck of the balloon.

The non-alcoholic sons of alcoholics (i.e. those males who showed the same neurological differences as their alcoholic fathers), were the same as everyone else. Some drank, but no more or less than those around them (i.e. occasionally and in a controlled way), which was probably due to the social group they drank with (and the social pressures therein) and the circumstances under which they drank. Others didn't drink and didn't show any indication that they felt they were 'missing' something. As well as the genetic propensity, it requires the right social setting or group, e.g. to drink with a social group who tend to get bladdered every friday and saturday night. Under those circumstances, the genetically predisposed would be much more likely to find themselves trapped by the excessive drinking cycle than other members of that group.

I'm not sure I understand your analogy. Each division of the nervous system is separate from the other divisions. It's just a question of remembering these divisions. Things make sense if you can do that. I should have mentioned that the second division (Somatic NS & ANS) are both divisions of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). PS, You mean 'for all intents and purposes'. True.

YT is right, but in answer to the question "Where would this air come from?", the answer is that all body fluids hold gas in solution and it really doesn't take that much force to pull them out of solution. It's not 'air' per se, but nitrogen and other gasses. This is absolutely true, but it's not that exceptional and doesn't actually require that much force. As a demonstration of the principle, take a 5ml or 10ml syringe and fill it 3/4 with water (but leave no air space in it). Wet your thumb and place it over the leur tip to seal the syringe, then draw back on the plunger. You will see dissolved gasses boil out of solution and you'll notice that it reallydoesn't take much force to do it. Consider the leverage and force involved in the movement of a simple hinge joint (e.g. knees). When crouching down, a person is applying their full body weight onto those joints. Given that a comparitively gentle pull on a 10ml syringe is enough to boil gasses out of solution, you can see that there is more than enough force involved. And again, YT is right, insofar as "these [bubbles] return back to their original "size" and state as soon as the condition is no longer met". They do. In fact, they do so extremely quickly, imploding and creating shockwaves. The process of pulling gas or vapour out of solution and the bubbles collapsing, producing shockwaves is known as cavitation. The cracking noise from popping joints is down to cavitation. Some movements of joints result in an increased vacuum in the sinovial fluid between the mating surfaces within the joint capsule. This is often sufficient to bring gas out of solution. When this happens, tiny bubbles form and the sound is produced when these bubbles implode as the joint is moved back relieving the vacuum. A good example in practice should be familiar to anyone who dives (scuba). If you go on a diving holiday and dive regularly for a several days or a week, you have probably noticed that your knees (and other joints) pop a lot more than usual. This is due to the buildup of nitrogen in the body and with the higher saturation of nitrogen, it's pulled out of solution much more easily. It gasses off after a few days without diving and the joint popping stops (my mate was a NAUI instructor and at the end of a weeks' teaching, diving twice a day, he could barely move without something cracking). If the cracking noise of joints was due to the movement of ligaments or tendons, as has been suggested, then we need to explain why the frequency of joint popping increases with increased nitrogen in the system, but with no alteration of ligament and tendon conformation.

You're welcome, in advance. Yes, you are missing something, but not much. The term 'voluntary' as used for the somatic nervous system (SNS) is to differentiate it from the autonomic nervous system, not to differentiate the efferent division of the SNS from the afferent divisions of the SNS. A review of the main divisions of the nervours system: First division: Central Nervous System (CNS) Vs Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). The CNS includes all that which is encased by bone, i.e. the brain and spinal chord. The PNS is everything outside of that. There are other differences, e.g. collections of nerve cell bodies in the CNS are known as nuclei, but outside of the CNS they are known as ganglia. But essentially, encased in bone (skull or vertebra) = CNS, outside of that = PNS. Second division: Somatic Nervous System (SNS) Vs Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Third division 1:The SNS is divided into the Afferent and Efferent divisions. Efferent (motor) nerves leave the spinal cord via the ventral horn and afferent (sensory) nerves enter the spine vial the dorsal horn. Third division 2:The ANS is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. The sympathetic division is responsible for activation and preparation to expend energy (fight or flight). The parasympathetic is responsible for 'stand-down'; conservation of energy. These two divisions exist in tonic balance with one another. These divisions innervate things like smooth muscle (e.g. GI tract), glands, kidneys, bladder, veins (vasodilation and constriction), pupils, sweat glands etc.. All these are outside of voluntary control The somatic division of the PNS is known as 'voluntary' simply to differentiate it from the autonomic division of the PNS which, eponymously, is autonomic and outside of voluntary control.

I don't think of alcoholism as a disease, I consider it a condition. It has an hereditory component which appears to be necessary, but not sufficient in and of itself to cause alcoholism. Rather, it results only in a predisposition to alcoholism. Environmental factors also play a significant role. There are observable neurological differences in the brains of alcoholics and these can be seen in the brains of non-alcoholic sons of alcolholics. In this, it has a lot in common with schizophrenia, which also has an hereditory component that is necessary, but aetiologically insufficient. Again, environmental factors play a significant part and are necessary. I wonder if there is a PC element, where the term 'disease' is used to try to overcome peoples' inherent fear of mental illness, where people do not have such a fear of physical disease. To call a thing a 'disease' allows people to blame an external agent, whereas in mental illness, the tendency is to blame the individual.

Can you support this? Is it Really? Can you support this? Is there any evidence for this? Evidence? Evidence?

See iNow's response. My source on this particular point is Cristopher Hitchens. He uses this specific example of warped thinking in many of his speeches and debates. He does so because (as he likes to point out, frequently) he is one of the few journalists who as actually visited all seven 'axis of evil' countries and has actually witnessed the bizzare and absurd cruelties that he reports. He also invests a lot of time and effort into thorough research of his subjects. I have yet to be presented with any strong case for doubting him. Your friend is confusing the sources of Islamic law with the implementation of Islamic law. I agree that nowhere in Islamic texts does it state that virgins should be raped before they are executed. However, as iNow points out, under Sharia, it is forbidden to kill a female virgin. So, when a female virgin is sentenced to death (for a breach of some other sharia law), you have a catch 22. To execute her as a virgin would put the the executioner (and court) in breach of the law. The only way around it is to ensure that she is not a virgin when she is executed. It is the self-contradictory nature of Sharia laws (i.e. that allow a death sentence to be applied to a virgin, whilst making it illegal to kill a virgin) that results in such warped cruelty. PS. Your friend forgot the Hadith, which holds equal canonical authority to the Qur'an. I have a friend (who happens to be muslim) who assures me that nowhere in the Qur'an does it state that the penalty for apostacy is death. And he is right, it doesn't. However, it is in the Hadith. Just because my friend shows me that the rule does not exist in the Qur'an, does not mean that it does not exist at all. The hadith is where some of the more bizarre and self-contradictory principles come from. I didn't say the raping of virgins was an Islamic law. It is simply the method by which the courts, the prison guards and the executioners get around breaking Islamic law under which it is illegal to kill a virgin. I would rather not use PM if it's ok with you. I'd prefer to engage in open forum, where my own arguments are open to critical review, for the sake of transparency. I'm just more comfortable that way.

I'm not being patronising, but it depends what you mean by 'fail'. Here I'm talking about one particular possibility and it's an error that my students sometimes make. When running experiments for course work, some of them obtain null results. Then, when they write-up, they spend a lot of time in the discussion criticising the methodology and trying to present reasons why their experiment 'failed'. This is because they got fixated on finding an effect (or correlation or difference, whatever they were looking for), and anything other than that must be a failure and due to some flaw in the experiment. I have to explain that an experiment is essentially a question and it has two possible answers (yes or no). It never pays to get too invested in a particular answer (usually 'yes') as neither answer is intrinsically more valuable than the other. Both are answers and, as long as the methodology is sound, either answer has value. By failing to accept the 'no' answer (null result), they end up arguing for a type two error in their report (i.e. 'an effect really does exist, but this experiment was too flawed to find it'). This is a fatal mistake, because they are arguing for an effect for which they have no evidence, and they are trashing their own experiment in writing. The first is very bad science and the second is just foolish. I have to remind them that a null result is still a result and just as valuable in principle as a significant result (albeit harder to publish) because science is about finding true (i.e. valid and reliable) answers, not about finding the answers we'd like, and as long as the methodology is sound and they write it up appropriately, then they have successfully achieved the object of the exercise and will be marked accordingly. You don't get lower marks for a null result. However, this is in Psychology. Your issue in microbiology might be completely different, e.g. some practical problem, like not being able to get some culture to grow, in which case I apologise for appearing patronising, but I thought I'd just cover this one possibility as it seems to come up quite frequently. I do think you need to explain exactly what is 'failing' though. It might help others in their responses to you.

Yeah...and any time you want to provide some support for any of that crap, it'd be really peachy.

Yes, of course I agree with that. I think the best way to achieve it is to acknowledge that emotion plays a part in everything we do and to deny/ignore it is risky. If people acknowledge it, the the sudden flash of anger that can happen in debate can be acknowledged for what it is and dealt with appropriately. If people don't think it can happen to the 'rational mind' then they are more likely to act on that feeling because, of course, it simply can't be emotion...it's just that I'm right! I suppose it depends on the type of person you're talking about. In your first question, I was thinking more of the people who take the "Y'know, there's gonna be a war over this, you know that don'cha?" stance in the pub, or the "That's it, the LHC's gonnna form a black-hole and in four years the Indian Ocean's gonnna start glowing and we'll all be f***ed!" conversation. I suspect that most people are familiar with this kind of person. They seem to take comfort from the prospect of disaster, but as for messianic tendencies? I'm not sure about that. They'd be hard pushed to get people to follow them to the next pub. There is another kind though; those who form liitle cults based on 'end of days' predictions, but I suspect that in those people, the messiah complex came first. I should say that I am just guessing here.

I remember reading a paper on this a while ago, but I realy can't rmember enough about it to comment sensibly. I believe it had something to do with a low threshold of arousal, i.e. where most people find normal, every-day stimuli sufficiently arousing, some people have higher thresholds and require more intense stimuli to achieve the same levels of arousal (a bit like low-level ADHD). Thus, they exist in a kind of perpetual low-level boredom that only unusually intense events and situations can relieve and so they view the probability of such events with some glee. I don't think there is anything malicious about it. I think it's also associated with risk-taking behaviours. However, as I said, it was a while ago and I may well be confusing it with something else entirely.

Dammit!, you can't trust anyone these days. Nevertheless, Dr Cloete must still have felt quite bad about being so targeted. The principle still holds true though; red-top rags stirring outrage and so-on. I have no idea why people seem to like to be angry really. I suspect it's not being angry that people like, it's being right, and papers howling outrage from their headlines that echoes the feelings of the reader is a kind of validation. The anger is just an overt demonstration of their 'rightness', a kind of "Look! I'm right! The papers agree with me! I'm perfectly right to be outraged and (with the implicit support of the media) I can now more freely act upon it! Let's go attack somebody!" You're slightly off. You are right insofar as most negative affective states are functions of (or, in fact, concomitant with) an avoidance motivation, but anger is unique and quite complex as an emotion. It contains elements of other more basic affective states, not all of which are negative (and some of which many people will pay good money to achieve). Anger is a part of one side of the fight/flight arousal response of the sympathetic system, which itself is a tonic thing. It exists in a balance. Fear is one of the states on the other side. But both lead to arousal and lots of adrenaline (why people pay to go on maniacal rides or go sky-diving). Supressed anger is a very unpleasant feeling and people generally know when it's inappropriate to express it, or to what degree they can express it. But justified (i.e. permitted and acceptable) anger is a rush. If you have people around you who agree with you, then it's 'acceptable', you are being given implicit permission to express your anger, and in doing so, you reinforce the same in those around you. You never (or very rarely) see single individuals, or small groups of two or three, screaming in the streets and burning people in effigy, or trampling flags. They'd feel stupid doing so. But once that behaviour becomes 'acceptable' (i.e. is reflected by those around you), then anything goes. It almost becomes a competition to prove who is the most outraged. A similar thing happened with the death of Diana, although it was a different emotion in that case. A single individual weeping uncontrollably in the street would feel like an idiot, but once implicit permission is given by those around them (including the media), anything goes.

YT is right on, avoiding or getting rid of indigestion (acid reflux) is more about getting the food moving. Simply put; laying about after a meal = bad. Going for a short walk = good. Swallowing antacids or bags of chalk will neutralise acid, but it won't help digestion.

Ah, I see. Yes, you're quite right. As I said, the event creates a state, which the media usually cannot, but the media feeds it and can often direct it. A good example was the episode in the Daily Star a few years ago, with their 'name and shame' idea concerning paedophiles. It only takes one widely but accurately reported incidence of a paedophile attacking a child to evoke a state; outrage and anger (also anxiety and paranoia if you're a parent), but once that state exists, it can be fed and manipulated by the media. In the case of the Star, it was a cynical move, pandering to the outrage they percieved in the population, and their campaign created a mob mentality that resulted in a paediatrician having their house burned down (which clearly indicates the mentality of the people who read the Star). You are quite right. Given that the media (any journalist worth their salt) can broadly judge the likely public response to any particular event, they should also know that the way they report it over the subsequent days can have a large effect and sometime even determine how people express their emotional responses to the event. Nope. I was just taking the micky there It is the norm to speak in general terms in Psychology though, because the things known about human cognition and behaviour are generally true (i.e. can be applied accurately to the vast majority of people). The problem with Psychology is that the data are extremely noisy, and due to individual differences and within subject varience, there will almost always be exceptions to a rule. However, the closer you get to the 'wetter' end of the science (e.g. cognitive neurosciences), the smaller this margin of error becomes, which is why I prefer to study Psychology at least up to my knees in wetness. Yes, in this case you are quite right. As I said, the media cannot usually create a state, but over the subsequent days/weeks of reporting on it, they can influence what people do about it. Responsible reporting is important (cf the Daily Star and that poor bloody paediatrician), but there are limits. Imagine, for example, the likely public response to a newspaper that, on September 12th, reported something like "But the scale of the tragedy has to be considered in the face of the number of deaths caused on the roads by Americans themselves". People will have their own response to any particular event and, I would suggest, no amount of calm reporting will prevent that (it's more likely to cause people to stop buying the paper, and editors are quite aware of that). However, remaining objective in subsequent reporting would help. You will always have rags like the Star though, screaming outrage from WAR sized headlines, pandering to the immediate public shock in a cynical attempt to boost sales and so whipping up mob mentality (which is always dangerous). There is a fine line in reporting huge events between congruence with the public response (which is what responsible editors aim for), and leading the public response, e.g. being far more outraged, and leading the public to think they should be too (e.g. the Star and other crappy red-tops). However, most editors will try to avoid reporting that is too incongruous with public mood as that has a negative impact on sales. People generally don't want to pay to read that with which they disagree, or that they consider insulting or in other ways fall short of what they consider 'right'. It's a bit like TV. We can bitch and moan about the programming schedules and damn the producers for vomiting out yet another 'Big Brother' or endless cycles of 'When Sheep Go Mental' as cheap, tawdry ways of filling airtime whilst pandering to the lowest common denominator, but the truth is that TV is ratings driven (as is all media). They produce and regurgitate this crap because people watch it; many, many people. Is it the fault of the media, or the veiwers?

Yes, I accept your point, but even then, factors other than ultimate death toll influence level of 'shock' as it were. The novelty, surprise and personal nature still influence more the ultimate reaction. The twin towers were an iconic image in New York. New York is an iconic city, even in America. An attack that devastate the twin towers in the heart of an iconic American city will shake people right to the heart of their sense of reality and security, death toll aside. Of course it does, just not the extent you think it does. I agree with you that the way the media present something will certainly have an effect, but most people's emotional reaction to an event like 9/11 will be decided by other things; e.g. how they feel about America/being American, how secure they felt in America prior to the attack, and so on. The psychological magnitude of that event comes from the degree to which it damaged people's ideas concerning reality and the reality of life in America, not from the number of people who died, although that was certainly a compounding factor.. Remember, since the civil war, Americans have no experience of attacks on (or in) their homeland. In neither of the two world wars did that ever happen (apart from a few baloon bonbs from the Japanese). During the cold war, there was only the threat of such an attack, and that was enough to trigger huge amounts of fear and paranoia (look at the McCarthy witch-hunts and so-on). But America had never actually suffered a direct attack. I think many people did, certainly older people. The elderly lived through a blitz. In my lifetime we lived through the IRA mainland attacks, of which London took its fair share. My uncle was caught in the Old Baily bombing. A friend of mine was caught in the Cavalry Bombing in Hyde Park. I watched two go off in 1993, one in John Lewis (Oxford St.) and the other in a bin in Cavendish square. I think the British have a different attitude towards such attacks, largely due to their familiarity with them. I must admit, a very small but cruel part of me has thought, after 9/11, that after funding the IRA for 35 years, the moral high ground held by Americans in the 'war against terror' isn't really that high. Yes, but we really are our limbic brains. Our limbic brain defines us as individuals probably more than the neocortex. Yes we are capable of behaving rationally, but don't confuse that with rationality being the 'default' psychological setting. It really isn't. The continued existence of (among many other things) war, religion and religious wars should tell you that. We are capable of behaving rationally, but that is usually the result of pre-response 'editing' which occurs after primary decisions have been made. I.e. we get the immediate bahavioural urge, which is edited (morderated) by post hoc processing which results in 'Oh, I'd better not do that actually...'. No, fear of X is not phobia of X. A severe irrational and involuntary fear response (both physiological and psychological) when confonted with an innoccuous stimulus (X) is a phobia. The media can feed a state, but usually, they cannot create one. In the case of 9/11 the state was created by every individual who saw the event, present or not. The media, being what it is, pandered to that state and fed it, but did not determine it. Sorry if you got the imprerssion I'm talking in absolute terms. It's not really my way. As a Psychologist I really talk in general terms, i.e. what is generally true of behaviour and cognitioon. Yes, there are exceptions (there always are if you talk in general terms), but these are the minority, or such things would not be considered 'generally true'. People always (generally speaking) respond to events 'naturally' rather than rationally. It's only post-perceptual processing that alters the initial behavioural response motivation from the 'natural' to the rational.

It's because such beliefs are based on emotion, not logic. They are based on the 'feeling' of being right. It is this feeling that people are defending (rather than the belief itself) and as there is no evidence, it can't be defended by logic. A logical criticism on the tenets of the belief will always 'feel' to the believer like an attack on the 'feeling of being right' and so is always personal, even though that is usually not how it is intended. As the feeling is an emotional thing, so is the defence of it. A defence based on emotion is never going to be rational. It's obviously more complex than that. You have other things like the reinforcers of in-group identity (and its downside, the defining of out-groups based on an arbitrary set of beliefs) and so-on. There are many psychological reinforcers of such beliefs (both internal and external), but essentially, it boils down to having to defend ones' 'feeling of being right', without any solid tools (such as evidence) with which to do it. Any defence has therefore to be based on the only things left, emotional argument combined with a ritualised deliberately self-reinforcing sense of certainty wherein any 'attack' on the belief simply reinforces the out-group membership of the attacker, and by extension, reinforces the in-group identity (i.e. it further polarizes the groups) and in a bizzarre way acts as 'proof' that the in-group is right (they have to be, otherwise the heathen out-groupers wouldn't be attacking them).

The thing is, it's never just the event itself that determines the perception of it. Other factors play a significant role. One of the most significant (and a determinent of PTSD by the way) is novelty. The trauma is not caused simply by the number of deaths (and that isn't what I meant by magnitude), it's caused by the impact it makes on the individual (death toll is actually a minor factor, because it often isn't known till well after the fact). One of the predictive criteria for PTSD is that the traumatic event is usually outside of the general experience of the person. Yes, the annual toll from vehicular accidents is comaparable and the toll from gun crime is also large (I don't know the statistics for the US), but the point is, the limbic brain is not rational and does not base it's conclusions concerning the potential for harm on statistics. Americans are used to cars and guns. These things are familar to most people in the US, and so both these things have ceased to be percieved as presenting a threat (cars more than guns), even though the statistics suggest otherwise. The significant factors in 9/11 were that a) it was completely novel. The event was outside of the general experience of the vast majority of Americans. b) It was a directed and personal attack and was percieved as such (wereas e.g. RTAs aren't). The overall death toll was almost incidental to these two factors, so presenting comparative statistics would have made no difference. If presented with statistics on the annual death toll from vehicles or guns, I seriously doubt any individual would have felt anything like 'oh...well, that's not so bad then'. The magnitude of the event was psychologically huge, not just because it was a physically huge event, but because it was completely novel, unexpected (by most), personal and out-of-the-blue, leaving people with a feeling that they actually could be attacked 'at home' and at any time. That's what makes the long-term impact, the undermining people's personal sense of safety/security. The impact would have been similar (although obviously not the same) even if the towers had been empty at the time. Not really. As I said, the limbic brain is responsible for contunually calculating the potential for harm in the environment, but it is not rational and does not base its evaluations on statistics. There is a huge difference between knowing a thing intellectually, and believing that thing on an emotional level. For example, if you ask somebody with a arachnophobia to describe the actual threat froma common garden spider, they will tell you there really is none. Intellectually, they know there is no actual threat. However, if you present that person with a common garden spider, their response will be very different. That response is emotional. In 1982, the British government produced a series of adverts for TV, warning people about the threat of HIV/AIDS. The edverts were pretty grim and were aimed at an emotional level (lots of images of tombstones and suchlike). The result was that suicides by young males (in their 20s) quadroupled. I was an undertaker at the time (one of my weirder jobs) and cutting down these guys who had hanged themselves got almost mundane. Post mortem tests showed that almost none of them were HIV positive. There is a huge difference between percieved threat and actual threat. Presenting statistics on actual threat really has very little impact on percieved threat. However, after time, HIV became a 'popularised' term (I don't mean popular, I just mean common). Celebrities were all banging on about it and so-on, and so it lost a lot of it's mystery (not that people knew any more about it, just that it became an almost every-day term) and so its fear factor went down. People are not really scared by it now, because, like guns, knowledge of its existance has become familiar, it's no longer novel and thus no longer so scary.

Rubbish. One fear is rational and the individual would be able to explain its origin clearly. The phobia is not rational and the individual would not be able to explain it in the same way. Rubbish. People are familiar with lightning, cancer, RTAs, etc.. Familiarity reduces fear even though it does not reduce the potential severity of the danger. Also, these sources of danger lack a 'personal' component; they are not deliberate and not directed. 9/11 was different in that it was a completely novel event and completely outside of the experience of most Americans (unlike lightning, cancer and RTAs). Further, it was a personal and deliberate attack, aimed at them with purpose (unlike, lightning, cancer and RTAs). It's a completely different thing and not at all comparable. Total rubbish. People who saw 9/11 drew their own conclusions concerning the magnitude of the event. They didn't need the media for that. Imagine what would have happened if the media had subsequently reported "...but the death toll is not so bad compared to annual road deaths" Rubbish. First off, Mr Spock is a fictional character FFS! Second, it's not possible to disengage emotion. All animals with a brain are driven by basic affective-motivational states (including humans). The capacity for reason comes much later and behaviourally, provides the means to modify or 'edit' the primary behavioural drives. The limbic brain is evolutionarily older and more advanced than the neocortex and the number and nature of the connections between the two show that the limbic brain has more input into the cortex than the cortex does into the limbic brain. In short, you can't just 'turn off' limbic function. Rational thought and emotion are not two discrete things, even though they may often be discussed as such. In discussing the comparative qualities of 'blue' (rational thought) and 'red' (emotion), people often forget that what is actually being discussed is 'purple' (behavour). You need to learn something about Psychology and please stop posting rubbish.

Ahh, I see, thanks for sharing, but no real point to it then.

I never suggested he was, but there is better material out there, at all levels. It took less than two minutes to find a brief outline of alzheimer's here and a more in-depth view here. Both better presented and more informative. But again, what is your point with this post, particularly with the other two links?