Saturday, July 04, 2009

Isn't it Ironic?

How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion
In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices; production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load is minimized.

Hurricane Prediction

There appears to be a connection between Central Pacific Warming events and the severity and pattern of hurricanes in the North Atlantic. Central Pacific Warming events occur around the international dateline and are apparently distinct from Eastern Pacific Warming events - El Nino: Impact of Shifting Patterns of Pacific Ocean Warming on North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones and Predicting El NiƱo's Impacts.