I'm your density

jrae:

“Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.”

Wow!  The most soul-satisfying science I’ve read in a while!  And a terrific step towards de-stigmatizing mental illness and behavioral issues.  This makes me want to get back into psychology!  :P

“During the early, pre-clinical years, conscientious individuals do much better than those who display lower levels of this trait. However, as the curriculum changed over the years, interpersonal aspects (for example, performance during internships or patient interaction) became more important for success.”

Presumably applies to other disciplines as well. Bad news for introverts? Well, (at least in my experience), not if you can learn to fake it.

mattonrails:

Article from Forbes. Interesting stuff :)

Summary:

1. They think first, talk later
2. They focus on depth
3. They exude calm
4. They let their fingers do the talking
5. They embrace solitude

“For years, physicians and researchers thought about individuals as isolated creatures,” said Stanley Wasserman, who studies social networks at Indiana University. “We now know that the people you surround yourself with can have a tremendous impact on your well-being, whether it’s physical or psychological.”

The findings suggest that if you help “the people on the margins of the network, you help not only them but help stabilize the whole network ,” Christakis said.

wisdomofwine:

Farmers — the kind of people who have “their feet in the soil,” as described by Margrit Mondavi, the 84-year-old matriarch of the Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa Valley — once dominated grape-growing and winemaking. But the Halls are part of a recent wave of M.B.A.’s, bankers, architects, engineers and others who are taking over or starting wineries and infusing small boutique labels with a level of business expertise usually found only at big brands.

“In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.

“It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Dr. Hobson said in an interview. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tuned up. It’s the same idea here: dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”

Drawing on work of his own and others, Dr. Hobson argues that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking. The idea is a prominent example of how neuroscience is altering assumptions about everyday (or every-night) brain functions.”

“Because when the ink on the pen hits the paper, the fiber of the paper reaches out and grabs the ink, pulling it in. The ink soaks into the wood fibers, and then you have this continuous, living connection between paper and pen. The flow of the ink into the paper pulls more ink from your pen, to be guided along whatever path you choose. As long as you keep the pen moving—not too slow or too fast—you’ll have a beautiful, smooth, clean line. It’s a giddy sensation, sort of like driving a car that only goes sixty miles an hour. You know disaster looms if you can’t keep up. The possibilities are frightening and exhilarating, and you can practically touch them. You will create something, the paper says; I can feel it. Don’t let go.

Take the tip of the pen off the paper, however, and you break the connection. Pen and paper are two separate things again. Your ideas, if you have any, are stuck in your head like so much backwash. You have to start all over if you want to get your line flowing, your ideas coming out. Printing single letters involves many such stops and starts. So when you use an old-fashioned pen, longhand is much less frustrating. You don’t have to re-connect as often; you don’t leave as many little scratches and blots and half-completed lines where your words cling stubbornly to the pen, afraid to commit to the paper once more.

I don’t suppose everyone needs to learn to write in cursive with a dip pen, but I think anyone can see the lesson in the process: Commit, and keep going. Life requires us to start new lines over and over again, and for some of us it never gets any easier. Sometimes every day is a fight to commit, connect, make something happen.

…

I suspect my great-grandmother was not just disgusted with her family or her homeland; she was annoyed with herself for forgetting what a very hard life had taught her: Go on, go on. And keep going. Going on justifies itself. If you are brave enough to touch your pen to the paper, the paper will do half the work for you. If, like Columbus or my great-grandmother, you step aboard the ship, the ocean will take you far. Like a spindle pulling yarn from a distaff, it is the motion itself that generates. When you enter a new space, find new teachers, take new partners, you can transform yourself and others, now and for generations to come. That powerful, frightening void, drawing ink from your pen, movement from your limbs, possibility from your misery, is your partner in creation, as long as you stay with it. Once you connect to the nothingness, it will pull life from you that you never knew you had.

It takes courage to do this; to reach out your hand, ill-trained and shaking though it may be, to the blank page, the waiting opponent, the silent instrument, the empty life, and say: Come dance with me.”

From Susan Schorn’s excellent “Bitchslap” column in McSweeney’s. I haven’t written in cursive since grade school, but I thought this was a powerfully moving description.

“Foer’s position is that all such arguments are, finally, bogus. We eat meat because we like to, and we devise justifications afterward. “Almost always, when I told someone I was writing a book about ‘eating animals,’ they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism,” he says. “It’s a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.” What we know about eating animals is that we don’t want to know.”

… the study found that “the extent of social isolation has hardly changed since 1985, contrary to concerns that the prevalence of severe isolation has tripled since then.” Pew said that 6 percent of the entire U.S. adult population currently has “no one with whom they can discuss important matters or who they consider to be ‘especially significant’ in their life.”

6 percent.

“At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.”

“It turns out love really is infectious, and it’s a good thing too.”

Evolution can be so romantic.