Underpaid Genius

Novelty-Seeking (Neophilia) Can Be a Predictor of Well-Being - John Tierney via NYTimes.com

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:19:25 -0500

Novelty-Seeking (Neophilia) Can Be a Predictor of Well-Being - John Tierney via NYTimes.com:

I have a deep-seated desire for novelty, and I am happy to learn that it’s not all bad:

John Tierney via NYTimes.com

“Novelty-seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age,” says C. Robert Cloninger, the psychiatrist who developed personality tests for measuring this trait. The problems with novelty-seeking showed up in his early research in the 1990s; the advantages have become apparent after he and his colleagues tested and tracked thousands of people in the United States, Israel and Finland.

“It can lead to antisocial behavior,” he says, “but if you combine this adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it’s not all about you, then you get the kind of creativity that benefits society as a whole.”

Fans of this trait are calling it “neophilia” and pointing to genetic evidence of its importance as humans migrated throughout the world. In her survey of the recent research, “New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change,” the journalist Winifred Gallagher argues that neophilia has always been the quintessential human survival skill, whether adapting to climate change on the ancestral African savanna or coping with the latest digital toy from Silicon Valley.

“Nothing reveals your personality more succinctly than your characteristic emotional reaction to novelty and change over time and across many situations,” Ms. Gallagher says. “It’s also the most important behavioral difference among individuals.” Drawing on the work of Dr. Cloninger and other personality researchers, she classifies people as neophobes, neophiles and, at the most extreme, neophiliacs. (To classify yourself, you can take a quiz on the Well blog.)

“Although we’re a neophilic species,” Ms. Gallagher says, “as individuals we differ in our reactions to novelty, because a population’s survival is enhanced by some adventurers who explore for new resources and worriers who are attuned to the risks involved.”

Good character traits for a world exploding with new, new, new.

harrisfromthepost: Polish artist Paul Marcinkowski has turned...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:11:00 -0500

harrisfromthepost:

Polish artist Paul Marcinkowski has turned his body into a walking infographic.

Photo

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:35:31 -0500

pulmonaire: Lana Del Rey

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:31:37 -0500

pulmonaire:

Lana Del Rey

proustitute: Jos Albert, Snowy Landscape (via iamjapanese)

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:25:30 -0500

proustitute:

Jos Albert, Snowy Landscape

(via iamjapanese)

bbook: Max von Sydow has been making movies since 1949, with...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:10:23 -0500

bbook:

Max von Sydow has been making movies since 1949, with everyone from Ingmar Bergman to Woody Allen. Now, at 82, he could be about to win his first Oscar.

Max von Sydow: god of gravitas

Kate Upton, who got to the cover of Sports Illustrated after her...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:09:49 -0500

Kate Upton, who got to the cover of Sports Illustrated after her Dougie Dance video went viral.

Potato galette (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:28:07 -0500

Potato galette (Taken with instagram)

Inner Net by David Bowden of davidpowdenpoetry.com via Future...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:06:24 -0500

Inner Net by David Bowden of davidpowdenpoetry.com via Future Point of View

Hervé This’ Chocolate Mousse Serves 4 Ingredients 3/4 cup...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:50:00 -0500

Hervé This’ Chocolate Mousse
Serves 4
Ingredients

3/4 cup (6 ounces) water

8 ounces chocolate (we used 70% bittersweet — choose a high quality chocolate you love)

ice cubes

whipped cream for topping (optional)

Directions

Simply pour water into a saucepan (which will be improved from the gastronomic point of view if it is flavored with orange juice, for example, or cassis puree). Then, over medium-low heat, whisk in the chocolate. The result is a homogenous sauce.

Put the saucepan in a bowl partly filled with ice cubes (or pour into another bowl over the ice — it will chill faster), then whisk the chocolate sauce, either manually with a whisk or with an electric mixer (if using an electric mixer, watch closely — it will thicken faster). Whisking creates large air bubbles in the sauce, which steadily thickens. After a while strands of chocolate form inside the loops of the whisk. Pour or spoon immediately into ramekins, small bowls or jars and let set.

Note: Three things can go wrong. Here’s how to fix them. If your chocolate doesn’t contain enough fat, melt the mixture again, add some chocolate, and then whisk it again. If the mousse is not light enough, melt the mixture again, add some water, and whisk it once more. If you whisk it too much, so that it becomes grainy, this means that the foam has turned into an emulsion. In that case simply melt the mixture and whisk it again, adding nothing.

Serve immediately, or refrigerate. Top with whipped cream if desire

Greek Parliament Passes Austerity Plan as Riots Rage - Niki Kitsantonis and Rachel Donadio via NYTimes.com

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:10:00 -0500

Greek Parliament Passes Austerity Plan as Riots Rage - Niki Kitsantonis and Rachel Donadio via NYTimes.com:

Huge unrest in Greece after technocrats manage to coerce the Parliament to agree to more austerity measures demanded by the troika — European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund — even when many believers the austerity is being imposed as a way to get northern Europeans to accept the costs of salvaging Greece, even while the austerity measures are not linked with turning Greece’s troubled economy around. And, even after all that, consensus seems to be shifting toward the inevitable failure of these measures:

Niki Kitsantonis and Rachel Donadio via NYTimes.com

The new austerity measures include, among others, a 22 percent cut in the benchmark minimum wage and 150,000 government layoffs by 2015 — a bitter prospect in a country ravaged by five years of recession and with unemployment at 21 percent and rising.

But the chaos on the streets of Athens, where more than 80,000 people turned out to protest on Sunday, and in other cities across Greece reflected a growing dread — certainly among Greeks, but also among economists and perhaps even European officials — that the sharp belt-tightening and the bailout money it brings will still not be enough to keep the country from going over a precipice.

Angry protesters in the capital threw rocks at the police, who fired back with tear gas. After nightfall, demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, setting fire to more than 40 buildings, including a historic theater in downtown Athens, the worst damage in the city since May 2010, when three people were killed when protesters firebombed a bank. There were clashes in Salonika in the north, Patra in the west, Volos in central Greece, and on the islands of Crete and Corfu.

Greece and its foreign lenders are locked in a dangerous brinkmanship over the future of the nation and the euro. Until recently, a Greek default and exit from the euro zone was seen as unthinkable. Now, though experts say that the European Union is not prepared for a default and does not want one, the dynamic has shifted from trying to save Greece to trying to contain the damage if it turns out to be unsalvageable.

“They’re trying to lay the ground for it, trying to limit the contagion from it,” said Simon Tilford, the chief economist at the Center for European Reform, a research institute in London. Still, he added, letting Greece go would set a dangerous precedent, and it would be “fanciful” to think otherwise.

Greece’s limping economy yields large trade and budget deficits, and none but the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund — known collectively as the troika — are willing to lend the nation the money it needs to stay afloat. The troika is demanding more concessions to placate Germany and other northern European countries, where the bailout of Greece is a hard sell to voters. For its part, Greece is trying to preserve social and political cohesion in the face of growing unrest, political extremism and a devastated economy that is expected to worsen with more austerity. And the feeling is growing here and abroad that the troika’s strategy for Greece is failing.

The likely outcome — because the alternatives are completely unsustainable for the presumed duration of the big payback of all these loans, devalued or not — is that the technocratic government will be voted out of office in April, and a populist movement will win office on a platform of default and exiting the Eurozone (and probably the EU). And continued riots and unrest until then.

At least with a default, and the return to a devalued Drachma, the Greeks can begin to turn their economy around. This will immediately increase productivity and exports. And while there will be enormous disruption in the economy, it will be a disruption of their own making, and one that will force a great deal of the pain onto investors and banks, and will not solely be borne on the backs of Greek citizens.

Bill Marsh/The New York Times “Measuring Mate...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:08:27 -0500

Bill Marsh/The New York Times

“Measuring Mate Preferences: A Replication and Extension” by Christine B. Whelan, University of Pittsburgh, and Christie F. Boxer and Mary Noonan, University of Iowa

"No one can sing a Leonard Cohen song the way Cohen himself can’t."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:03:25 -0500

“No one can sing a Leonard Cohen song the way Cohen himself can’t.”

- cited by Jesse Kornbluth in Leonard Cohen, King of Pop?

Gwendoline Christie by Jez Tozer

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:27:01 -0500

Gwendoline Christie by Jez Tozer

"Today’s [Egyptian] revolutionaries and activists have precisely the same demands for social justice,..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:14:14 -0500

“

Today’s [Egyptian] revolutionaries and activists have precisely the same demands for social justice, national dignity and representative government as the opponents of military rule did six decades ago.

After a brief honeymoon with a political class and public that regarded Nasser and his collaborators as saviors, opposition to the Free Officers emerged over suspicions that the commanders were reneging on their promises to clean up a corrupt political system and quickly hand power back to civilians.

In response to the determination of organized labor, the left, political parties and students to resist the Free Officers, the commanders used a combination of coercive measures — outright force and military tribunals — to subdue the opposition, followed by a variety of rules, decrees and regulations to prevent further challenges to the Free Officers’ authority. These institutions were authoritarian and constituted the foundation of Egypt’s nondemocratic politics for the ensuing 60 years.

The world has changed dramatically since the Free Officers whipped up instability in the streets of Cairo to justify their rule. Still, understanding the political patterns of the past provides insight into why and how leaders thwart popular demands for democratic governance. It can also help today’s activists, party leaders and average Egyptians write a new and considerably brighter political history for their country.

This is particularly important because even as Egypt’s current military rulers promise that they are preparing the ground for democracy, their actions belie this claim.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who currently holds executive authority, and his senior commanders have a compelling interest in salvaging as much as they can of the old political order, which made them the source of legitimacy, authority and power; provided the military with the benefits of vast business interests; and, to the minds of the officers, ensured stability and social cohesion.

These interests clearly contradict the basic features of a democracy — in which the people are the source of legitimacy, the military’s activities are subject to civilian oversight, politics are unpredictable and power changes hands.

”

- - Steven Cook, Egypt’s Never-Ending Revolution

Cook thinks the military will try to retain power, resisting democratic rule.

"The dark side of China’s economic rise has been a shocking widening of the gulf between the..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:54:00 -0500

“

The dark side of China’s economic rise has been a shocking widening of the gulf between the prosperous coast and the poverty-stricken interior, a flourishing of corruption among local officials and, by such data as we can gather, widespread anger and discontent. The government has acknowledged tens of thousands of yearly “mass incidents,” which can range anywhere from a handful of elderly widows protesting a corrupt real estate grab to communities in open revolt (like the southern village of Wukan) to murderous ethnic rioting, as occurred in the last few years among Tibetans and in western Xinjiang Province and Inner Mongolia.

In that sense, it is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, making it the bloodiest civil war in history, suggests caution for those who hope for a popular uprising — a Chinese Spring — today.

The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt; the Beijing government was so distant as to barely seem to exist. The uprising was set off by bloody ethnic feuds between Cantonese-speaking Chinese and the minority Hakkas over land rights. Many Hakkas had joined a growing religious cult built around a visionary named Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. When local Qing officials took the side of the Chinese farmers, they provoked the Hakkas — and their religious sect — to take up arms and turn against the government.

What was so remarkable, and so troubling, about the Taiping Rebellion was that it spread with such swiftness and spontaneity. It did not depend on years of preliminary “revolutionary” groundwork (as did the revolution that toppled the monarchy in 1912 or the 1949 revolution that brought the Communists to power). And while Hong’s religious followers formed its core, once the sect broke out of its imperial cordon and marched north, it swept up hundreds of thousands of other peasants along the way — multitudes who had their own separate miseries and grievances and saw nothing to lose by joining the revolt. Out-of-work miners, poor farmers, criminal gangs and all manner of other malcontents folded into the larger army, which by 1853 numbered half a million recruits and conscripts. The Taiping captured the city of Nanjing that year, massacred its entire Manchu population and held the city as their capital and base for 11 years until the civil war ended.

”

- - Stephen Platt, Is China Ripe for a Revolution?

The Hippies Were Right

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:49:00 -0500

Liz Setterfield looked back on the contributions that hippie counterculture has made to the modern world, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Outpost Food Coop in Milwaukee:

40 things the hippies were right about - Liz Setterfield via ThirdCoast Digest

How did the so-called hippies contribute to the culture we live in now? In what ways are we benefiting from struggles that well-meaning people took on 40 years ago?

How about this — in 1970s Milwaukee, a small group of residents gathered in a Riverwest house and started a natural foods co-op. They believed that people deserved access to fresh, organic, locally grown produce. It turns out they were onto something; Outpost Natural Foods Cooperative is 40 years old this month (though we have several, larger homes now).

So here, in honor of 40 years of a hippie-dreamt business that continues to serve its community and live up to its stated mission, is our list of 40 things the hippies were right about

1    Make love, not war.
It’s a cliché, but it’s as sensible as anything anyone ever said anywhere. The Vietnam of the past is the Iraq of the present. We’re still at war, and would prefer not to be.

2   Natural foods are a way of life, not a lifestyle.
Natural foods are not a fad diet. When people eat natural foods, and eat slow food and cook at home, those people enjoy better health. We know that people are committed to eating healthy, natural food because Outpost owners stick around, even during a recession.

3   Buying bulk saves money & the planet.
“Unpackaged,” a new store in London recently opened its doors, marketing itself on this premise: customers buy empty containers, fill them in the store and return to re-fill them when they are empty. This keeps prices down, and keeps bottles out of landfill. We agree, and it’s why we’ve been offering bulk grains, soup, tea and spices for decades.

4   Pesticides are harmful.
We instinctively know this. A pesticide kills bugs, so why would we want to eat it?

5   Cooperation is better than corporation.
It works for Outpost, of course, but consider others. Think about the recession. Think about the banks. Then think about the credit unions. The credit unions fared better because of their cooperative, less risky business model.

6   Knowing where your food comes from makes sense.
“Know your farmer, know your food,” is the mantra from the Obama administration. Whether it was a slogan on a sandwich board in 1973 or a clever piece of copywriting out of Washington in 2009, the fact remains that consumers are less likely to suffer from food-borne illnesses if they know where their food comes from. This isn’t just about touchy-feely community relations. Recall the October 2009 New York Times article exposing how ground beef products can be made up of different cuts of meat from different slaughterhouses — impossible to trace. The reporter told the story of dance instructor Stephanie Smith, whose E.coli-tainted hamburger meat put her in a coma for nine weeks. How can we keep food safe when we don’t know where it came from? We can’t.

7   Herbs are nature’s pharmacy.
If a natural remedy can cure what ails you, why use anything else?

8   Logo t-shirts are cool.
Just ask Alterra or Milwaukee’s Teecycle Tim, who runs a business selling vintage logo shirts.

9   So are Red Wing boots with vibram soles.
It’s how you wear ‘em.

10   Freedom.
People everywhere just want to be free.

11   Yoga.
People everywhere  just want to be flexible,  strong, calm and pretty.

12   Composting.
Even hip NYC urbanites are composting in their teeny kitchens these days. And the mayor of  San Francisco made it a rule. If you don’t compost your food scraps, they smack your legs. Of course, San Francisco officials are now coming under attack for supplying residents with toxic composting material, so I guess they’re the ones getting their legs smacked. Lesson learned: It pays to research your compost.

13   Fair trade.
It’s only fair.

14   Collecting rainwater.
While this is outlawed in some western states, this makes common sense here. Protect that lake, people!

15   Growing our own food.
There’s an amazing amount of satisfaction to be gained from eating food you grew out of your own spot of earth.

16   Meditation.
This is going to keep on growing in popularity. We are information-saturated; imagine being able to empty your mind!

17   Earth Day.
Someone has to take care of this planet — it may as well be us.

18   The art of the home brew.
Mmmm, beer. We’d even argue that the rise of home brewing helped birth the microbrewery movement, too.

19   Outdoor concerts.
It’s summertime and the cicadas are chirping, the band walks on stage and … yeah, that’s just great.

20   Jeans.
Imagine life without jeans.

21   Joplin, the Stones and the Beatles.
Love them or not, there’s no denying the influence.

22   Tofu.
Oh, come on – it takes on the taste of whatever you cook it with – it’s the perfect protein!

23   Doc Bronner’s for everything!
All-one. Magical. Organic & fair trade.Peppermint. We’re tingling just writing this.

24   Ponchos.
My six-year-old daughter’s vote. She loves ponchos.

25   Acoustic guitars.
Ever hear anyone say they don’t like the sound of a guitar?

26   Flowers.
Well, of course. We like to think Flower Power today is best expressed by natural landscaping.

27   Free press.
Well, of course.

28   Religious, sexual and gender acceptance.
Well, of course.

29   Humane treatment of animals.
How many times can I write ‘well, of course’?

30   Saving the whales.
Apply this to dolphins too, please. “The Cove” didn’t win the Oscar for naught.

31   Peace.
Well, of course. In the world at large; in our personal lives. Peace be with you.

32   Organic cotton.
Ask Kate Agarwal, founder of Milwaukee’s Bella & Boo – the organic baby e-boutique. She founded the company because of her daughter’s skin reactions to the chemicals in regular baby clothes.

33   Reclaimed wood.
For floors of character and beauty.

34   Group transportation.
Maybe not a VW bus, but light rail would be great.

35   Small is beautiful.
McMansions, Hummers, big box stores be gone! Our planet doesn’t need them, and neither do we.

36   Local is good.
For every dollar spent in a local store, 68 cents stays in the community, versus 43 cents or less from a dollar spent in a national chain store.

37   Community works.
Our Milwaukee is a working example of this. Small, Milwaukee-based businesses coming together as a community have pooled their talents and resources to promote themselves, each other, the city and the shop local ethos.

38   Outpost will be a pioneer in bringing natural foods to Milwaukee.
The management told me to write that. But the hippies back in 1970 were right; we were – and still are!

39   Surfing.
If only the lake were warmer…

40   Whole grains.
All those pesky high-sugared cereal makers are clamoring over this one now. We knew it all along.

So there you have it, 40 things the so-called hippies were right about. And we’re glad they were because life is better for these things.

I think she missed ‘you are what you eat’.

h/t to lelapin

"@stoweboyd: In a ‘08 meta-analysis of 313 studies, personality similarity has no correlation..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:02:57 -0500

“@stoweboyd: In a ‘08 meta-analysis of 313 studies, personality similarity has no correlation with relationship well-being http://t.co/8MoRCzLX”

- February 12, 2012 at 04:56AM — http://bit.ly/zQesTP

"Doubt sometimes comes across as feeble and meek, apologetic and obstructionist. On occasion it is...."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 04:45:13 -0500

“Doubt sometimes comes across as feeble and meek, apologetic and obstructionist. On occasion it is. But it’s also a powerful defensive instrument. Doubt can be a bulwark. We should inscribe that in marble someplace.”

- Cullen Murphy, The Certainty of Doubt

"Apatheism (a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic atheism or..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 04:38:50 -0500

“Apatheism (a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic atheism or (critically) as practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief or lack of belief in a deity.”

- Apatheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (via brianafahey)