TAKING A SECOND LOOK, ON SEPTEMBER 8

DOES HUMAN NATURE EVER CHANGE.......?

Who says cliches and catch-phrases are silly...?

The reason they're still around is they somehow encapsulate a powerful piece of the truth. Take a pair of Chicago newspaper stories this week which bring a pair of age-old sayings right up to date: "I've got mine," and "Generals are always fighting the last war."

* A front-page story in the Tribune reports that local residents approve of neighborhood traffic cameras, only not in their neighborhood. Pretty consistent with our discouragingly consistent human nature. Ask the people about any bold new idea, and likely they'll react the very same way. A new health reform...? a new tax proposal....? a new environmental initiative...? I love it -- only not in my neighborhood. I've got mine, so stick somebody else with this.

* A sports story in the Sun Times reports that Mike Ditka and Dick Butkus are predicting the Bears won't be divisional winners this year. Why? Well, the two old pros are essentially saying: Because this year's Bears aren't doing it like we did it." They may be right, but the eternal risk of old age is instead of becoming smarter we only become stubborner.

Reading this stuff makes your recall Charlie Brown's little burst of wisdom: "I love humanity, it's just people I can't stand..."

WHAT TO DO WITH SOMETHING NEW....?

Now here's a thorny issue our species has been tangling with for eons. What best to do with something new....?

There's a long history to this question. No doubt including our first encounter with fire, the wheel and the alphabet. And it continues today. Only today, the rapidity with which the question slams into our lives is exponential. Never before have there been so many scientists and so many discoveries. They estimate, 90% of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. And the rate of their published research is 60,000 a day throughout our website world.

Which raises the question about trying to manage today's avalanche by multi-tasking. Like all thorns, this either produces beauty or blood. For the last many years, the consensus has been beauty -- the beauty of smarter work and greater efficiency. Only now Stanford researcher Eyal Ophir reports to BBC News: "Multi-taskers consistently score poorer than others. They are less able to ignore distractions, have more fallible memories, and can't switch to new tasks as readily."

Co-researcher Clifford Ness adds: "The shocking discovery is that multi-taskers are lousy at everything that's necessary for multi-tasking. What's more they're suckers for irrelevancy."

Perhaps all this comes down to another conundrum in our modern world: If you want to get more done, try doing less.