Development of Strategic Thinking Driven by Sexual Maturation?

Tonight I met Rob Maher - an inspiring and dear friend of mine. We discussed the art of designing a teaching environment where we can ignite the curiosity of kids and leave them in the state of flow. The art of embedding tools allowing kids to discover for themselves while maintaining structure of the acquired knowledge and skills.
While discussing we came into the issue of delayed and instant gratification. We found out that it is related somehow to curiosity. We observe kids staying in flow for 35 - 40 minutes once ignited. Same kids, who are procrastinating and not focusing when faced with solving math problems.
Pre-adolescent kids who have been told about the importance of making decisions to prioritize on their long term goals state their conscious motivation but still do not cope well despite their understanding of the future benefits.
We theorized that delayed gratification is developed as a functional capability later in kids' life. As babies and toddlers socialize actively it seems socialization itself is not dominant factor igniting such functional development. Looking briefly at the literature, I was surprised to find out evolutionary theorists spent time arguing the opportunity cost of delayed gratification in food selection. No one seemed to have looked at another reason - mate choice.
It is in puberty when the pre-frontal cortex undergoes its most significant development. We know delayed gratification develops at that age. Sex drive and priming requires capacity to plan and wait. To delay gratification. Does selection would prefer individuals having better abilities in delaying gratification? In a species where sex is a tool for social interaction and evolution, mate selection could play a role in the evolution of the complex strategic thinking.
The capacity to delay gratification is developed in puberty as part of the strategic (long term) thinking ability connected with the need to reproduce.
One way to test the hypothesis is to look for effects of age in decreasing the symptoms of ADHD. ADHD should decrease mostly among children aged 12-18. Indeed literature supports this fact.
It is up to the professional scientists now to develop experiments to test this.

Violation of laws of Physics or skipped Physics classes at high-school?

I was puzzled by a Bulgarian Offnews piece stating that High frequency trading companies might have used insider trading to gain an estimated $600 mln of profits. Or that the laws of Physics has been possibly violated. HFT traders somehow managed to start trading immediately upon U.S. Federal reserve announcement at exactly 2 p.m. on Sep 18, 2013.
The puzzle comes from the fact that the distance between Chicago and Washington D.C. is 960 km. Theoretically light needs 3.2 ms to travel that distance (in air!). However, trading has started 3 ms after 2 p.m. So, what has happened?
I've started some news research. I found this one, talking about possible neutrino line of communications, that might shave few parts of milliseconds off the route between Chicago and D.C. Then I found a post in Washington Post blog, stating that travel time is 7 ms, and that the trading might have violated the laws of physics. The CNBC publication is addressing the issues in the right direction.
The talk here is about Physics. More precisely, the basic high-school physics education of journalists.
Author of the Offnews piece had obviously done some "research". He found out on Google that the distance between Chicago and D.C. is 960 km (based on the airline travel routes data), has calculated that light would travel this distance (when in air/vacuum) for 3.2 ms and offered a lot of speculation around that. He obviously used the MJ material and wrongly interpreted that neutrino travels faster than speed of light.
The WP journalist Neil Irwin speculated that the travel time is 7 ms, obviously he has heard it from somewhere. And based on that - he also speculated that someone has violated the laws of Physics.
Poor laws of Physics. Everyone trusts them, and everyone wants them violated. Well, not everyone, journalists in those publications at least.

First, the cities are not point objects and their sheer size could shave or add few parts of a millisecond, so 3, or 3.2 ms is practically one and the same, given that data centers of those bad HFT companies might have been optimized to be on the smallest possible distance between the cities.

Second, speed of light is indeed an absolute limit, however, in medium, it travels much slower. In glass fiber it travels almost 30% slower to around 208 000 000 m/s. So indeed in fiber this distance would require around 7 ms.

Another possible explanation (if there is a delay at all because it seems there was none) might be that fact that HFT are busy installing low-latency microwave links between major financial hubs, in order to take advantage of exactly the difference of the speed of light in air and and in glass. I like the articles here and here
So, fellow journalists, please, do not discontinue the laws of Physics just yet. Einstein has yet to be proven wrong!

Forcing a decision upon yourself

We all know (do we, all?) - sometimes deciding on time is preferred than delaying a decision. Our fear to take a wrong one often lets us wait. Life tells us though - majority of our everyday decisions are reversible, and corrective actions - possible.
I usually prefer to act on time, and correct later, if needed. Waiting to see if the best alternative will uncover itself, or the things to "just happen" is a decision making strategy no better than any other.
A lesson I teach my kids is that to do something means to agree and accept all of the consequences of your actions.
If you are running out of time, or you are forced by others or by circumstances to take a decision - then what?
If you know you have to take a decision, but still not dare to?
Sometimes it happens to me. Especially when outcomes of any of the alternatives are so blurred or fuzzy, that, despite of the clear choices, the results are unpredictable.
What I usually do in such case is to force the decision making upon myself. There are few ways to do that.
You design an action which, once performed, is changing the probabilities of the decision alternatives, or the possible outcomes. The action might enable some of the alternatives. Or you might do something that still leaves all the outcomes equally probable, but you just gather more information in the process to help you decide. Whatever it is, the important element is that by such an action, you try to make the decision making a finished fact. You make the decision making process (not the decision itself) irreversible. You act as if you have taken the decision already.
Let's take two examples.
A trial decision: Suppose you want to decide whether to leave you dog to stay with a friend while you are away. All thinking and weighting pros and cons aside, you are still indecisive. Go visit your friend and bring the dog with you for a while, telling him you want to leave the dog with him when you go away in few days. See what happens. And decide, or rather, the decision will be forced on you.
A decision already taken: Suppose you believe you have to decide whether to leave your longtime girl- or boyfriend. A way to do it is to announce to a common friend that you, in fact, left them already. The simplest scenario is to get an objective comment about your relationship. If you go and say "I am thinking of leaving", this calls for an advise, and it is judgmental by nature. If you talk of it as if in the past - "I left her" - you get much more. And open your eyes - somewhere there - you might find the answer you need. What if the information that you "left" bounces back to your dear one? This certainly could speed up any of the possible outcomes.
When the time comes - do not wait - make sure you are on the path of deciding, and taking that path will reveal the proper decision.
What is proper decision - only the future will tell.

Еspecially for you

A simple sample post, especially for the reader I want to read this :)