Pretty shocking Chart of the Day today. The decline this year has been larger than that of 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression.

Is the situation now worse than back then? Are the prospects for the future worse off? I’m not sure, I’m inclined to think not, if only because of the relatively fast action being taken around the world by governments and central banks. But you never know, history repeats itself but curved balls and black swans make sure it’s never quite in the same way.

This post is primarily a note to myself to keep some parts that stood out to me in this interesting research.

New Book Examines German Fanaticism in World War II | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 17.07.2008

A monumental war history in German, which has just been completed after 30 years of work, explores a question that preoccupies modern Germans: why Nazi Germany fought on, defying all military logic, to the bitter end.

It took more than two years of fighting to establish that Hitler’s war aims were unachievable. Hitler probably realized that himself.

Yet it took nearly three more years to end the war. The Wehrmacht did not capitulate until after the Fuehrer had committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in April 1945.

To the very end, the Nazi regime required Germans to recite their belief in “ultimate victory.” But in the final years of the war, part 8 suggested, Hitler’s mind gradually focused on staging a vain but heroic last stand.

Hitler’s all-or-nothing approach has been described by his biographers as a key to his rise, and an exiled German writer, Sebastian Haffner, suggested as early as 1940 that the method was also the mark of a “potential self-killer.”

The volume’s account of the war on the western front in 1944 and 1945 describes the German military fighting on towards self-destruction under mottoes such as “for honor” and “for the fatherland,” believing they were “doing their duty.”

“That was their common denominator with a majority of the Germans, who had been simply sticking to what they were doing, or had not sought any alternative, or had not been able to visualize any other way,” the book says.

On their own responsibility and often risking execution for treason, some of the German military openly disobeyed orders or subtly wasted time so that the Allied invasion of Germany could proceed quickly without even more loss of lives and property.

“To the Germans, no alternative appeared feasible, other than the unconditional surrender demanded by the enemy,” the book adds.

Most of the rest of the world was needed to defeat the most efficient fighting machine of its generation, which had battled on despite Hitler’s strategic blunders.

Explaining modern Germany’s reluctance to fight the Taliban and its focus on collective defense, the last part says the war taught post-war Germans an abiding lesson and they deliberately renounced any capacity to wage a war of their own ever again.

 

Germany’s submission to NATO [note: why is this considered a submission?] has meant that the Second World War was the “last war of the Germans” in history. [note: I think the entire world sure hopes so]

Some interesting concepts and ideas in this artcile. Most aren’t new but some have an interesting twist like the following approach to circumventing our primal instincts.

Does your brain have a mind of its own? - Los Angeles Times

Consider, for example, the difficulty that most people having in sticking to abstract goals like “I intend to lose weight” or “I plan to finish this article before the deadline.” Nice thoughts, but not formulated in terms that your ancestral, reflexive brain might understand. The work-around? Translate those abstract goals into a form your ancestral systems — which traffic largely in dumb reflexes — can understand: if-then. If you find yourself in a particular situation, then take a specific action: “If I see French fries, then I will avoid them.” As Peter Gollwitzer, my colleague in New York University’s department of psychology, has shown, even simple changes like these can markedly increase the chances of success.

If the brain has a brain of its own, might that brain also have another brain of it own… :-)

An interesting research on the relationship between what we eat, self control and cognitive abilities. I wasn’t too surprised to hear about the effects of sugar in helping cognitive abilities. I experienced this first hand years ago when I was on a low carb/high protein diet that at some point resulted in a state of ketosis. But I was surprised to hear that you can deplete blood glucose levels just by exercising self control and consequently lower your cognitive ability.

Here’s an excerpt.

How to Boost Your Willpower - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

Last month, Dr. Baumeister reported on laboratory studies that showed a relationship between self-control and blood glucose levels. In one study, participants watched a video, but some were asked to suppress smiles and other facial reactions. After the film, blood glucose levels had dropped among those who had exerted self-control to stifle their reactions, but stayed the same among the film watchers who were free to react, according to the report in Personality and Social Psychology Review.The video watchers were later given a concentration test in which they were asked to identify the color in which words were displayed. The word “red,” for instance, might appear in blue ink. The video watchers who had stifled their responses did the worst on the test, suggesting that their self-control had already been depleted by the film challenge.

But the researchers also found that restoring glucose levels appears to replenish self-control. Study subjects who drank sugar-sweetened lemonade, which raises glucose levels quickly, performed better on self-control tests than those who drank artificially-sweetened beverages, which have no effect on glucose.

The findings make sense because it’s long been known that glucose fuels many brain functions.

..

“You want to look good in a bikini next summer but you’re looking at a piece of chocolate cake now,’’ said Dr. Vohs. “When we get people to think about values we move them to the long-term state, and that cools off the tempting stimuli.’’

Finally, some research suggests that people struggling with self-control should start small. A few studies show that people who were instructed for two weeks to make small changes like improving their posture or brushing their teeth with their opposite hand improved their scores on laboratory tests of self-control. The data aren’t conclusive, but they do suggest that the quest for self-improvement should start small. A vow to stop swearing, to make the bed every day or to give up just one food may be a way to strengthen your self-control, giving you more willpower reserves for bigger challenges later.

“Learning to bring your behavior under control even with arbitrary rules does build character in that it makes you better able to achieve the things you want to achieve later on,’’ said Dr. Baumeister. “Self-control is a limited resource. People make all these different New Year’s resolutions, but they are all pulling off from the same pool of your willpower. It’s better to make one resolution and stick to it than make five.’’

Ah I love my coffee.. but it’s not necessarily the pick-me-up drink if you’re on too little sleep.

Developing Intelligence : Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired

Another study indicates the same is true of caffeine’s effect on the medial prefrontal cortex. In that study, sleep deprivation-related decrements on the Iowa Gambling Task were not mitigated by caffeine.

The article has lots of other interesting facts and research on the effect of coffee.

Boring day in the market. Don’t see anything of interest to me. But check out this story:

KnowledgeNews :: You vs. The Chimp

A new study says that young chimpanzees can significantly outperform you at some short-term memory tasks. Scientists even have the video to prove it. Read on, then watch that video.

The video.

There was no way I could remember and point out the numbers this fast.

Pretty astonishing little fish.

The fish that can survive for months in a tree | the Daily Mail

Hidden away inside rotten branches and trunks, the remarkable creatures temporarily alter their biological makeup so they can breathe air.

The discovery, along with its ability to breed without a mate, must make the mangrove killifish, Rivulus marmoratus Poey, one of the oddest fish known to man.

Around two inches long, they normally live in muddy pools and the flooded burrows of crabs in the mangrove swamps of Florida, Latin American and Caribbean.

The latest discovery was made by biologists wading throughswamps in Belize and Florida who found hundreds of killifish hiding out
of the water in the rotting branches and trunks of trees.

The fish had flopped their way to their new homes when their pools of water around the roots of mangroves dried up. Inside the logs,
they were lined up end to end along tracks carved out by insects.