Haha! Just kidding. Trying to upset Greg… :) Looks like 24 this season is going to be a family affair. Who knew that bald guy with the glasses would turn out to be Jack’s brother? (I wondered why his identity was so shrouded in mystery last season. I kept asking “who IS that guy?” and they never told me…) And what a family Jack has! Remember those games you used to play with your brother? You know, when you were just fooling around and having fun? Like the one where you’d tie him to a chair and choke him and throw a plastic bag over his head? Yeah, Jack and his brother were playing that game last night. They seem close. It was a poignant reunion. And apparently next week, Jack will be reunited with his father (played by the farmer from the “Babe” pig movie – “that’ll do, Jack. That’ll do.”).
But moving on… I was just reading about a “study” conducted by a bunch of researchers – who, I guess, we’re supposed to assume are “smart” – in which they concluded that people tend to daydream when they have nothing else to think about. Apparently, although they weren’t certain what sorts of things were happening in the minds of their fellow man, the researchers were able to agree on one thing: when there is nothing terribly important to think about, the mind does not simply go blank. Instead, the mind continues to generate thought, even when no direction to the thought is given. The amazing, groundbreaking group of researchers decided to call this unbelievable phenomenon “stimulus-independent thought,” or “mind wandering.”
And all I can say is THANK GOODNESS someone finally conducted this research… because it’s certainly nothing we all knew in the first place, and it’s definitely going to change the way we, uh… it’s going to change the entire… um, it’s really, really important because… well, it just IS, and that’s all there is to it. I mean, up until now, I’ve never known WHAT to call it when my mind starts to wander. And now, at long last, I have an official, clinical term – mind wandering. Usually when my mind wanders, I call it “potato peeling” or “Hungarian folk dancing,” but I can see now that “mind wandering” probably makes more sense. I used to get some pretty strange looks during our Tuesday morning meetings at my proofreading job, when I’d apologize for Hungarian folk dancing during my boss’s boring reiteration of the previous week’s projects… (Side note to brilliant researchers: this is called “sarcasm.” Maybe you could conduct a study on how often ridiculous, useless research results in sarcastic comments from the general public.)
And something else about this “study” confuses me – the researchers concluded that “mind wandering” occurs “when people are not specifically thinking about” something. Not SPECIFICALLY thinking about something. But when would a person not be specifically thinking about something? Even if you’re just thinking about what you want to make for dinner on Wednesday night – you’re specifically thinking about what to make for dinner. Or if your mind “wanders” to an island in the Caribbean, where it’s warm and sunny – you’re specifically thinking about a place you’d rather be. What constitutes “specific” and “non-specific” thought? Is it simply the difference between thought connected to ACTION and thought connected to nothing in particular? So thinking about what you want to make for dinner tomorrow would be non-specific, but thinking about making dinner WHILE you’re making dinner would be specific?
All these questions are hurting my brain… I think I’ll go stare out the window and engage in some stimulus-independent thought…
Shhhh… leave me alone – can’t you see I’m potato peeling?
2 comments:
Actually...I did think it was a tad bit slow last night...wasn't THAT impressed.
Well, it's only been an hour since they nuked LA... they probably didn't want to overwhelm us with too much action. Not that Jack Bauer couldn't handle it, of course... :)
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