In "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt claims that the true subject of "The Book of the Courtier" is the perfection of the nobleman at court. He summarizes the skills the courtier must acquire. Apart from mastering the arts of war, which are primary, "the courtier," in Burckhardt's summary, "must be at home in all noble sports, among them running, leaping, swimming and wrestling; he must, above all things, be a good dancer and, as a matter of course, an accomplished rider." For Castiglione the courtier should be acquainted with great literature, know music to the point of being able to play an instrument, be skilled at the arts of oratory, and in conversation employ exquisite tact and apply the art, in his memorable phrase, of "cheating expectations."
Not only must the courtier acquire all these skills, he must display them with a casual air of easy mastery. The ideal courtier, Castiglione writes, "must put every effort and diligence into outstripping others a little, so that he may be always recognized as better than the rest." But he must do so without showing the least strain or hint of affectation. He is to accomplish this through sprezzatura, the art of artlessness, or the art that hides art.
"The Book of the Courtier" is in part a manual of advice on such subjects as seduction, the behavior required of women at court, practical jokes, how to keep love secret, why it is a mistake to learn chess, and more. Some of this advice has a cold Machiavellian flavor. Castiglione writes: "There is an adage which says that when our enemy is in the water up to his waist, we must offer him our hand and rescue him from peril; but when he is up to his chin, we must put our foot on his head and drown him forthwith."
...
Here it becomes clear that Castiglione intends for his ideal courtier to be much more than a Renaissance dandy, a connoisseur in the art of self-presentation; above all, he should instruct his prince on the subject of righteous rule. The point of the courtier making himself so charming, and of his elegant display of mastery of the arts, is that through them he will raise himself in the prince's esteem, thereby seducing him into heeding his advice. If the excellence of the courtier's cultural attainments is "the flower" of his training, "the fruit" lies in helping his prince "toward what is right and to warn him against what is wrong." The courtier, Castiglione holds, is "the whetstone," the prince "the knife"; as the physician is concerned with his patient's health, so the courtier is concerned with the prince's virtue.
Could a sense of fairness be innate among primates?
Pretty funny video, until you start thinking about all the primates among us who, for their entire lives, have been handed the less-valued fruit for doing the same amount of work (or more), and the outrage and resentment that is building up within them. Hopefully, they will sublimate their anger with song:
The country's three biggest jail systems—Cook County, in Illinois; Los Angeles County; and New York City—are on the front lines. With more than 11,000 prisoners under treatment on any given day, they represent by far the largest mental-health treatment facilities in the country. By comparison, the three largest state-run mental hospitals have a combined 4,000 beds.
Put another way, the number of mentally ill prisoners the three facilities handle daily is equal to 28% of all beds in the nation's 213 state psychiatric hospitals, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute Inc.
"In every city and state I have visited, the jails have become the de facto mental institutions," says Esteban Gonzalez, president of the American Jail Association, an organization for jail employees.
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation keeps track of instances of "justifiable homicide," which it defines as "the killing of a felon by a law-enforcement officer in the line of duty," but it doesn't note which of those involve mental illness. While crime rates nationally have fallen almost every year since the late 1990s, justifiable homicides by police officers have risen, from 297 in 2000 to 410 in 2012.
Hidden within that category is what is known informally as "suicide by cop," when a person intentionally provokes an officer into using lethal force. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, in Washington, D.C., which researches law-enforcement issues, said he believes this type of suicide is increasing in frequency.
Jill Harkavy-Friedman, senior director of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said there aren't many studies of suicides that involve law-enforcement officers. A small number of studies, based on police records, have found in at least half the cases the victim had a known psychiatric history, and in at least a fifth the victim was undergoing treatment for mental illness."
HAMLET 31I'll be with you straight. Go a little before.
[Exeunt all except Hamlet.]32How all occasions do inform against me, 33And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, 34If his chief good and market of his time 35Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. 36Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, 37Looking before and after, gave us not 38That capability and god-like reason 39To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be 40Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 41Of thinking too precisely on the event, 42A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom 43And ever three parts coward, I do not know 44Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do," 45Sith I have cause and will and strength and means 46To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me: 47Witness this army of such mass and charge 48Led by a delicate and tender prince, 49Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd 50Makes mouths at the invisible event, 51Exposing what is mortal and unsure 52To all that fortune, death and danger dare, 53Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great 54Is not to stir without great argument, 55But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 56When honor's at the stake. How stand I then, 57That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, 58Excitements of my reason and my blood, 59And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see 60The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 61That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, 62Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot 63Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 64Which is not tomb enough and continent 65To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, 66My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! Exit.
He was born in the summer of his 27th year Comin' home to a place he'd never been before He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again You might say he found a key for every door
When he first came to the mountains his life was far away On the road and hangin' by a song But the string's already broken and he doesn't really care It keeps changin' fast and it don't last for long
But the Colorado rocky mountain high I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye Rocky mountain high (Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado)
He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below He saw everything as far as you can see And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun And he lost a friend but kept the memory
Now he walks in quiet solitude the forest and the streams Seeking grace in every step he takes His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake
And the Colorado rocky mountain high I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky Talk to God and listen to the casual reply Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado)
Now his life is full of wonder but his heart still knows some fear Of a simple thing he cannot comprehend Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more More people, more scars upon the land
And the Colorado rocky mountain high I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky I know he'd be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly Rocky mountain high
It's a Colorado rocky mountain high I've seen it rain fire in the sky Friends around the campfire and everybody's high Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado) Rocky mountain high (high in Colorado)
Dissociative Identity Disorder -- Primal Fear, ft. Edward Norton and Richard Gere
Edward Norton has been arrested for murdering a Catholic priest, apparently in retaliation for childhood sexual abuse. Richard Gere is his lawyer.
The film is well worth watching in its entirety.
The film seems to be inspired, in part, by the case of Kenneth Bianchi (one of the Hillside Stranglers):
While he was in prison, Bianchi's attorney brought in a psychiatrist, Dr. John Watkins, to examine him. Watkins put Bianchi under hypnosis, got him to admit to several of the murders and to implicate his cousin, and then declared he had multiple personality disorder. He had killed as "Steve Walker" and thus was not competent to stand trial. Three more experts were convinced by his condition as well.
This only annoyed the investigators. The prosecution decided to bring in its own expert, Dr. Martin Orne. Detectives had discovered "Steve Walker" was the name of a college student from whom Bianchi had stolen transcripts to set up his fake psychiatric practice, which suggested he knew enough about psychology to fake a personality disorder.
Dr. Orne used a ploy: He suggested to Bianchi that most multiples have more than two personalities, and it wasn't long before Billy emerged. Bianchi also pretended to touch someone who was not there. Hallucinating is not a symptom of MPD, and they knew then Bianchi was faking it. Under pressure he admitted to the deception.
"New Yorkers are rude, Texans are friendly, and Californians are laid back. We all know the U.S. regional stereotypes, but are there really any facts backing them up?
There are now, thanks to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by a team of researchers in the UK. Their goal? To literally map the “American mood” by rating personality and temperament on a state-by-state basis. The 13-year study included nearly 1.6 million respondents from the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia."
This study has been getting a lot of press, and I agree that it is kind of nifty. Time Online has a fun, stupid interactive 10-item personality quiz that will tell you which state you "belong in" (I'm tempermentally Californian, apparently). You are better off with a real Big Five test, however.
The first region features the states of Middle America, including South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa, known as the "red" states. People here ranked highly in levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, moderately low in neuroticism, and very low in openness. Residents of the region tend to be "sociable, considerate, dutiful, and traditional," the researchers write. They are predominantly white with low levels of education, wealth, and social tolerance, and tend to be more religious and politically conservative than people outside of the region. They are also less healthy compared with other Americans.
I would re-write that interpretation, if I was doing the psychological evaluation based on those test scores. I would probably say that people with similar scores have interests that reflect the mainstream; they like what other people like. They prefer jobs that allow them to work with others, doing simple tasks (e.g., Salesperson). They sincerely enjoy the company of others. They care for their old friends and easily make new friends. They are easy to get along with and are always happy to lend a hand. They tend to be cheerful and optimistic. They prefer to focus on the future than to dwell on past disappointments. They have faith in a higher power that will help them through current difficulties. They don't worry; they problem-solve. They forgive and forget. They take frustrations in stride as they work steadily towards their goals. They are productive and efficient in their work. They respect the values and traditions of their families and communities. They tend not to question established practices or beliefs, and they don't encourage questioning by others. They do things "by the book." They are willing to take on difficult or thankless tasks in the service of others.
The "Relaxed and Creative" region.
The second cluster consists of West Coast states, Washington, Oregon, and California. Its personality profile is marked by low extraversion and agreeableness, very low neuroticism, and very high openness. Cultural diversity and alternative lifestyles are high, and residents are politically liberal and healthy, both mentally and physically. This region is richer, has more residents with college degrees, and is more innovative than other areas. These states cast fewer votes for conservative presidential candidates and are less religious compared with others. Here, the study's authors write, people value tolerance, individualism, and happiness.
Here's my interpretation (drawn from Jerry Wiggins' Paradigms of Personality Assessment): They prefer occupations that afford both challenge and privacy. They enjoy pursuits that can be performed alone. They see others as potential competitors and maintain a certain distance from other people. They "need their space." They maintain a stoic indifference to events that would frighten or delight others. They can see life stress as a source of humor or artistic inspiration. They "don't get mad, they get even." They are critical thinkers and don't rely on other people's opinions or tradition when forming judgments. Truth is more important to them than other people's feelings.
The "Temperamental and Uninhibited" region.
The third and final grouping comprises of mid-Atlantic and Northeast states like Maine, Pennsylvania, and New York—the "blue" states. The region is low in extraversion, very low in agreeableness and conscientiousness, very high in neuroticism, and moderately high in openness. People here, the researchers say, are "reserved, aloof, impulsive, irritable, and inquisitive." Residents are politically liberal and less religious, and are disproportionately college-educated individuals, older adults, and women. A good chunk of the "passionate" and "competitive" residents are leaving the area, according to census data, and heading south or southwest.
And finally: Like the Californians, New Yorkers prefer occupations that afford both challenge and privacy. They enjoy pursuits that can be performed alone. They see others as potential competitors and maintain a certain distance from other people. They "need their space." However, unlike Californians, New Yorkers see life as dark and dreary. They are susceptible to bouts of clinical depression. They are alert to danger and vividly imagine possible misfortunes. They may be prone to nightmares. They may become frightened by their own disturbing thoughts. They are easily angered and may fly into a rage over a small insult. They can seethe with anger for a long time. They lack self-control and easily give in to temptations. They are susceptible to substance abuse. They lack motivating goals. They make decisions for themselves, without considering the input or concerns of others. They are good at starting imaginative projects, but they have a hard time completing them and staying focused. They are more concerned with their own comfort and pleasure than the well-being of others.
A federal judge said the Justice Department routinely abuses its power to bully defendants into giving up their constitutional right to a trial.
Judge John Gleeson, who as a federal prosecutor sent the late mafia boss John Gotti to prison, said in an opinion earlier this month that prosecutors are using the threat of decades or life in prison to extract guilty pleas even if the defendants' alleged crimes fall far short of meriting such long sentences.
Such tactics are "unsound and brutally unfair" and create "the sentencing equivalent of a two-by-four to the forehead," the judge said in a 60-page sentencing opinion on a New York drug case.
"The fact that they are business as usual doesn't alter the fact that these sentences should instill shame in all of us," Judge Gleeson wrote, saying the tactic will force some innocent people to plead guilty.Nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton, Judge Gleeson has been a district court judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., for nearly two decades.
The long-standing practice has helped federal prosecutors garner an enviable conviction record. Currently 97% of criminal charges in all federal jurisdictions end in a guilty plea, which means the vast majority of federal criminal cases never go to trial.
...
[Judge Gleeson's statements are supportive of] "the ever-dwindling few who have the temerity to ask for the trial the Constitution guarantees."
At issue is what lawyers call a prior felony information, or 851 notice—a legal warning that prosecutors intend to lengthen a mandatory sentence for drug offenses based on a defendant's prior convictions. Once prosecutors file the notice, the longer sentence, often life, is mandatory if the defendant is convicted. The law was originally intended to hit narcotics kingpins and hardened criminals, but the judge said it has been abused to coerce pleas because the 851 notice can trigger automatic sentences of decades or life. Prosecutors often threaten to file 851 notices in verbal negotiations conducted without a judge—leaving no trace in a written records.
From left, Adis Mendunjanin, Judge John Gleeson and Najibullah Zazi, seen in Brooklyn Federal Court, Brooklyn NY, April 18, 2012.
Dr. Torrey: We have a grand experiment: what happens when you don't treat people. But then you're going to have to accept 10 percent of homicides being killed by untreated, mentally ill people. You're going to have to accept Tucson and Aurora. You're going to have to accept Cho at Virginia Tech. These are the consequences, when we allow people who need to be treated to go untreated. And, if you are willing to do that, then that's fine. But I'm not willing to do that.
60 Minutes did a piece on schizophrenia and violence recently. The video clip is worth watching, and the transcript is worth reading.
I have my doubts about E. Fuller Torrey's statement about 10% of all homicides being committed by the untreated mentally ill. He's a public policy advocate and those folks are known to make up statistics on the fly during interviews (e.g., Mitch Snyder on the number of homeless in the U.S.). The LA County Jail will probably be disappointed to hear that the Cook County Jail has passed them as the nation's largest mental health facility.
Here's the part of the piece I would be most cautious about:
Dr. Lieberman: You can be the most popular student, you can be the
valedictorian of your class. And if you develop schizophrenia it will change the
functioning of your brain and change the nature of your behavior.
Steve Kroft: You could be completely normal at age 20, perhaps a good student
or a gifted student and a solid citizen, and at 21 or 22 be psychotic?
Dr. Lieberman: Absolutely.
Dr. Lieberman, who runs the psychiatry department at Columbia University's
medical school, says that schizophrenia has a genetic component and tends to run
in families, affecting the way the circuits in the brain develop. You can see
the structural abnormalities in a brain scan.
Dr. Lieberman: And you see people, a young adult, with a normal brain, same
age with, who has schizophrenia, and you see that degenerative process has
already begun.
Steve Kroft: This is really a disease of the brain. Not a disease of the
mind?
Dr. Lieberman: Absolutely.
It lies dormant during childhood and usually emerges in late adolescence and
early adulthood, affecting perception and judgment. People see things that
aren't there and hear voices that aren't real.
Elaine Walker's home movie studies certainly challenge the "completely normal" premorbidity hypothesis. The typical course for most people with schizophrenia involves an insidious (i.e. gradual) onset, not a "sudden change." It might seem sudden to us, because we haven't been privy to that person's slow-motion unravelling -- social withdrawal is often one of the first signs of incipient schizophrenia. Dr. Lieberman actually does consider the disease a neurodevelopmental disorder, which it probably is. The point is that the brain abnormalities were already present, years before the bizarre symptoms and behavior emerge. I wouldn't say that they were quite "dormant" -- I'd say that they are "subtle" (which suggests that if one possessed a sensitive enough method, one could detect the abnormalities even before the first full-blown psychotic break).
Lastly -- what is the point of the false distinction between "disease of the brain" and "disease of the mind"? Are they trying to say that schizophrenia doesn't affect your mind? Or that purely mental acts (e.g., learning algebra) aren't associated with physical changes in the brain? Just because a disorder is associated with brain abnormalities doesn't mean that those brain abnormalities caused the disorder (even the formerly much vaunted Genain quadruplets, once thought to be a slam dunk example of genetic inheritance of schizophrenia, turned out to have suffered harsh punishments and sexual abuse during childhood). And it certainly doesn't mean that a disorder with a biological basis must therefore be treated only using biological interventions (e.g., ECT, prefrontal lobotomy, chemotherapy). And when Dr. Lieberman says that "you can see the structural abnormalities in a brain scan," be aware that he is referring to comparisons of group means (schizophrenics v. normals) -- there are no pathognomonic signs or symptoms of schizophrenia. It is not diagnosable by brain scan (nor is any other mental disorder).
"We live in a strange and precarious time that resembles at its heart the
hysteria and superstitious fervor of the witch trials of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Men and women are being accused, tried, and convicted
with no proof or evidence of guilt other than the word of the accuser. Even when
the accusations involve numerous perpetrators, inflicting grievous wounds over
many years, even decades, the accuser’s pointing finger of blame is enough to
make believers of judges and juries. Individuals are being imprisoned on the
“evidence” provided by memories that come back in dreams and flashbacks —
memories that did not exist until a person wandered into therapy and was asked
point-blank, “Were you ever sexually abused as a child?” And then begins the
process of excavating the “repressed” memories through invasive therapeutic
techniques, such as age regression, guided visualization, trance writing, dream
work, body work, and hypnosis."
Okay, not actually a quote. One YouTube commenter suggested a special Academy Award for cinematography for this sequence. If I remember correctly, the producer simply borrowed a division of the Irish Army, dressed them in British and American uniforms, and parachuted them into Holland using vintage WWII aircraft. Nowadays, this would all be CGI, and it would be crap.
The logic for businesses is simple. If you have three employees working 40 hours per week they will produce 120 labor hours. Five employees working 24 hours per week also produce 120 labor hours. Employers must offer the three full-time employees health insurance or pay a penalty. They have no such obligation to the five part-time employees, making part-time employment less costly. Make something more expensive and employers will use less of it; make something less expensive and they will use more of it.
The quote above is from the CEO of CKE Restaurants (Hardee's/Carl's Jr.). He is refering to employers' responses to ObamaCare mandated health insurance for full-time workers (defined as those working more than 30 hours a week). The rational response to this increased cost is to lower workers' hours and divide the work among more (uninsured) workers.
The same applies to minimum wage laws, by the way. If I am paying someone $7.25 an hour to put address labels and stamps on my business mailings, and then Congress tells me that I have to pay them $15.00 an hour because that's the new Federal Minimum Wage, did Congress just double that employee's salary? No, it just put them out of work. I'll put the labels on myself or, better yet, pay my kids a penny an envelope to do the job.
No health insurance premiums for these workers.
What is not discussed by the Hardee's CEO is what is quietly going on in American business -- companies are looking for "employee-free" business models. If government regulations make it more and more expensive to employ labor, then the rational move is to replace labor with automation. You can already see this at Sheetz gas stations, where customers place their food orders through a touch screen (no human order taker required). Applebees and McDonald's are looking at the same systems.
Ah, the Law of Unintended Consequences! Give every worker a "living wage" and "free" health insurance and you end up with a permanent underclass of the chronically unemployed.
If you want to learn how to think clearly about such topics, I have found no better introduction than Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. From an Amazon reviewer: "The one lesson is simply this: economic planning should take into account the effects of economic policies on all groups, not just some groups, and what those effects will be in the long run, not just the short run. That's it. That's the lesson. Fallacious economic policies almost invariably seek to benefit one group at the expense of all others, or to bring about short-term benefits at the expense of long-term benefits."
"Driven to cut ballooning corrections costs, more states are requiring parole boards to make better decisions about which convicts to keep in prison and which to release. Increasingly, parole officials are adopting data- and evidence-based methods, many involving software programs, to calculate an inmate's odds of recidivism.
The policy changes are leading to a quiet and surprising shift across the U.S. in how parole decisions are made. Officials accustomed to relying heavily on experience and intuition when making parole rulings now find they also must take computerized inmate assessments and personality tests into account.
In the traditional system, factors like the severity of a crime or whether an offender shows remorse weigh heavily in parole rulings, criminologists say. By contrast, automated assessments based on inmate interviews and biographical data such as age at first arrest are designed to recognize patterns that may predict future crime and make release decisions more objective, advocates of the new tools say."
It's doubtful that all of the drop in recividism seen in Ohio from 2003 (39%) to 2012 (29%) is attributable to these newly adopted methods, but they certainly seem to be having an impact.
This is an idea that is over half-a-century old, by the way. It was first trumpeted by clinical psychologist Paul Meehl of the University of Minnesota in his 1954 book, Clinical versus Actuarial Prediction. Very briefly, clinical judgment means making a parole decision based on informal data collection: the board asks the inmate some questions, the inmate says something in reply, they look over his record, they form an impression of him, they huddle and discuss, and they make a parole decision. Actuarial decision is formal and mechanical: you enter some objective data into a pre-existing formula (e.g., age of inmate, sex of victim, weapon used?, etc.) and the formula spits out a probability-based prediction of that inmates risk of recividism within a certain time frame (based on actual recidivism rates among inmates with shared characteristics).
The actuarial approach works extremely well, especially when one of the factors is the inmate's psychopathy scores (psychopaths having extremely high recividism rates). Here are the items from the VRAG, one of the most widely used actuarial formulas:
Items of the VRAG and their correlation with violent recidivism in the original sample (taken from Quinsey et al, 2006).
No
Item
Correlation
1
Separation from either biological parent by age 16 (Except for death of parent)
0.25
2
Elementary school maladjustment
0.31
3
Alcohol problems
0.13
4
Never married
0.18
5
Criminal history score for non-violent offences
0.24
6
Failure on prior conditional release
0.24
7
Age at index offence
-0.26
8
Victim injury
-0.16
9
Female victim
-0.11
10
Meets DSM-III criteria for any personality disorder
0.26
11
Meets DSM-III criteria for schizophrenia
-0.17
12
PCL-R score
0.34
So, did the inmate grow up fatherless, having problems in elementary school, abuse alcohol, and never marry? Does he have a long and varied criminal history (e.g., burglary, sexual assault, drug offenses, etc.)? Has he violated parole before? Was he young when he committed the crime for which he is now incarcerated? Was the victim (if any) NOT injured or killed? Was the victim a male? Does the inmate have a personality disorder? Does he NOT have schizophrenia? Is he a psychopath? The more YES responses, the higher your VRAG score gets, and the more likely you are to recidivate.
Notice something? These items are mostly "static" -- good luck with that Time Machine and going back into the past and convincing your dad to stick around just so you can get a lower VRAG score. And once a psychopath, always a psychopath -- it's your personality and your personality doesn't change. That prior parole violation is never going to go away either, get it? The VRAG isn't about "giving someone another chance" -- it's about accurately and CONSISTENTLY identifying the most dangerous and prone to recividism inmates and keeping them incapacitated in a controlled environment for as long as possible in order to limit the damage they do to society.
By the way, in the WSJ article, they actually talk about a sort of hybrid decision making system, in which the "clinicians" (e.g. parole boards; judges) are free to override the formulas. Well, that is as good as having no formula at all. How can you know when the formula is not applicable? How can you know the weights of the various variables that you are suggesting are more important than the variables in the formula? We think that we are smarter than the formulas, but we are wrong. My life insurance company isn't going to lower my rate because I'm such a charming guy and I've got cute kids -- all they care about is my age, my gender, my BMI, my blood pressure, my cholesterol, and whether I smoke.
For an excellent review of the difference between the two approaches to decision making, read this article from Science. (If you are really into this topic, next read this journal article.)
Dr. Michel Lucas and colleagues1 leveraged three large studies of US men and women—the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1988–2008; n=43,599 men), the Nurses’ Health Study (1992–2008; n=73,820 women), and the NHS II (1993–2007; n=91,005 women) in which consumption of caffeine, coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was assessed every 4 years by validated food-frequency questionnaires. (Although the researchers looked at caffeine consumption from other sources such as tea, soft drinks, and chocolate, they found the major caffeine source was coffee.) In total, there were 277 deaths as a result of suicide.
In examining the pooled multivariate relative risk, Lucas et al. found that drinking caffeinated coffee actually decreased the risk of suicide. Specifically, drinking at least two to three cups (8 oz) of caffeinated coffee per day seemed to reduce the risk of suicide by about 50% as compared to those participants who consumed 1 or less cup of coffee per day. Lucas and colleagues found only small increases in benefits for drinking more than 3 cups of caffeinated coffee per day.
“Unlike previous investigations, we were able to assess association of consumption of caffeinated and non-caffeinated beverages, and we identify caffeine as the most likely candidate of any putative protective effect of coffee,” Lucas said in a press statement.2
Previous research has suggested that caffeine boosts such neurotransmitters as serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline in the brain, which have mild antidepressant effects. This may be the reason behind the apparent reduced suicide risk. Nonetheless, there are negative effects associated with caffeine, so the researchers cautioned patients and clinicians about large amounts of caffeine intake.
First of all, the coffee consumption didn't prevent the suicides -- it was associated with lower risk of suicide. Potential confounds include being employed -- you can't take a coffee break if you don't have a job, and you are more likely to die by suicide if you are unemployed.
"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour.""
I'm not scared of dying, And I don't really care. If it's peace you find in dying, Well then let the time be near. If it's peace you find in dying, And if dying time is near, Just bundle up my coffin 'Cause it's cold way down there. I hear that its cold way down there. Yeah, crazy cold way down there.
Chorus:
And when I die, and when I'm gone, There'll be one child born In this world to carry on, to carry on.
Now troubles are many, they're as deep as a well. I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. Swear there ain't no heaven and I pray there ain't no hell, But I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell. Yes only my dying will tell. Yeah, only my dying will tell.
(Chorus)
Give me my freedom for as long as I be. All I ask of living is to have no chains on me. All I ask of living is to have no chains on me, And all I ask of dying is to go naturally. Oh I want to go naturally.
Here I go, hah! Hey Hey! Here comes the devil, Right Behind. Look out children, Here he comes! Here he comes! Hey...
Don't want to go by the devil. Don't want to go by demon. Don't want to go by Satan, Don't want to die uneasy. Just let me go naturally.
and when I die, When I'm dead, dead and gone, There'll be one child born in our world to carry on, To carry on. Yeah, yeah...
[Lawrence has just extinguished a match between his thumb and forefinger. William Potter surreptitiously attempts the same] William Potter: Ooh! It damn well 'urts! T.E. Lawrence: Certainly it hurts. Officer: What's the trick then? T.E. Lawrence: The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.
The big winners in the economy he foresees will be those who can work with and harness machine intelligence and those who can manage and market such people.
Such "hyperproductive" people, about 15 percent of the population, will be wealthier than ever before. Also doing well will be those providing them personal services. [College professors and psychotherapists?]
For jobs lower down on the ladder, there will be a premium on conscientiousness. That's good for women and bad for men, who are more likely to do things their own way. [Meaning that men are more likely to have ADHD, alcoholism, and authority problems.]
Middle-level jobs, Cowen says, are on the way out. He argues that many of those laid off after the financial crisis were "zero marginal product" workers. They weren't producing anything of value and employers won't replace them.
Upward mobility will still be possible, he says, thanks to machine-aided education, which can spot talent in unlikely places. But I think he overestimates how likely that will be. [The SAT was created to spot talent in unlikely places, e.g. Nebraska farm kids.]
Assortative mating (people marrying similar people) and the considerable hereditability of intelligence means that many or most of those with the talents to get to the top will start out there. A fair society, ironically, may have less social mobility.
How will this society handle the pending fiscal shortfall? Cowen's prediction: by raising taxes a bit (but it's hard to get more out of rich, clever people), cutting Medicaid (the poor are a weak constituency) [I suppose that means Obamacare, too], maintaining aid to the elderly (a strong constituency) and squeezing employees (by imposing mandates on employers that will reduce cash income).
Those at the bottom will move to cheaper places like Texas. He recommends beans and tortillas as a delicious and nutritious diet (as in "An Economist Gets Lunch").
Much of this is already happening to some extent. Our most liberal areas (New York, the Bay Area) have the greatest income disparities. Drive down Middlefield Road in Silicon Valley and in one mile you go from $4 million walled mansions to what looks like rural Mexico.
Barone digresses a bit here, for no apparent purpose. He seems to agree with Cowan's predictions but wants to temper them with an insouciant "don't worry about the bottom 85% -- they might be desperately poor, but they'll be happy with their families and tortillas."
People get satisfaction out of more than just earning money. They get satisfaction out of what American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks calls earned success.
Earned success can come from high earnings or from simply doing a job well. It can come from raising children and meeting family obligations.
It can come from working with people in your community or your church, or with others with common interests. Even people of very limited abilities can earn success and live fulfilling lives.
Cowen predicts the masses won't revolt. They will have comfortable lives and good entertainment -- bread and circuses.
Young Man Reading by Candlelight -- Matthias Stom (c. 1600-1650)
Here's a report on a series of studies that purport to show that reading a few minutes of "literary fiction" improves scores on a test of emotional empathy ("Reading the Mind in the Eyes"), compared to reading non-fiction. Reading popular fiction did nothing to improve scores over those of non-reading controls.
People ranging in age from 18 to 75 were recruited for each of five experiments. They were paid $2 or $3 each to read for a few minutes. Some were given excerpts from award-winning literary fiction (Don DeLillo, Wendell Berry). Others were given best sellers like Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” a Rosamunde Pilcher romance or a Robert Heinlein science fiction tale.
In one experiment, some participants were given nonfiction excerpts, but we’re not talking “All the President’s Men.” To maximize the contrast, the researchers — looking for nonfiction that was well-written, but not literary or about people — turned to Smithsonian Magazine. “How the Potato Changed the World” was one selection. “Bamboo Steps Up” was another.
After reading — or in some cases reading nothing — the participants took computerized tests that measure people’s ability to decode emotions or predict a person’s expectations or beliefs in a particular scenario. In one test, called “Reading the Mind in the Eyes,” subjects did just that: they studied 36 photographs of pairs of eyes and chose which of four adjectives best described the emotion each showed.
Is the woman with the smoky eyes aghast or doubtful? Is the man whose gaze has slivered to a squint suspicious or indecisive? Is she interested or irritated, flirtatious or hostile? Is he fantasizing or guilty, dominant or horrified? Or annoyed that his tech stock dropped half a percent on the Nasdaq in a round of late trading after news from the Middle East? (Just kidding — that last one isn’t on the test.)
The idea that what we read might influence our social and emotional skills is not new. Previous studies have correlated various types of reading with empathy and sensitivity. More recently, in a field called “theory of mind,” scientists have used emotional intelligence perception tests to study, for example, children with autism.
But psychologists and other experts said the new study was powerful because it suggested a direct effect — quantifiable by measuring how many right and wrong answers people got on the tests — from reading literature for only a few minutes.
“It’s a really important result,” said Nicholas Humphrey, an evolutionary psychologist who has written extensively about human intelligence, and who was not involved in the research. “That they would have subjects read for three to five minutes and that they would get these results is astonishing.”
Dr. Humphrey, an emeritus professor at Cambridge University’s Darwin College, said he would have expected that reading generally would make people more empathetic and understanding. “But to separate off literary fiction, and to demonstrate that it has different effects from the other forms of reading, is remarkable,” he said.
Caveat: When your results are "astonishing" and "remarkable," be prepared for when they do not replicate. It would be interesting to see a study of college students enrolled in a literature course (to see if their scores improve from Time 1 to Time 2) and also their roommates not taking a literature course that semester. I would also like to see a study of the reading habits of graduate students in clinical psychology who are rated as excellent psychotherapists by their supervisors versus those rated as average.
Vocabulary skill is a potential moderator of Reading the Mind in the Eyes scores, but I doubt that reading for just a few minutes affected vocabulary enough to account for the effect -- unless reading passages with more emotional/interpersonal vocabulary temporarily activated those cognitive networks, thus making those vocabulary words more accessible during the test.
As I have suggested before, I would rather engage in psychotherapy with a therapist who reads Dostoevsky and Melville than with one who reads books about the brain. It would be lovely if a case could be built that shows that the reading of literature can make you a better (e.g., more empathetic) person.
WASHINGTON — An Ohio man pleaded guilty Friday to rigging his Jeep so that it would crash, unoccupied, near a White House Secret Service guard booth in June.
Joseph Reel of Kettering, Ohio, pleaded guilty to the charge on Friday — just one day after a Connecticut woman was shot to death by police in a car chase that began when she tried to breach a barrier at the White House.
Reel faces 35 months in prison under a plea agreement with prosecutors, but U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras will make the final determination. Reel will also pay $5,345 in restitution to the U.S. Park Service for the damage he caused. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 10, and he will remain jailed without bond until then.
At Friday’s hearing, Contreras alluded to the previous day’s car chase and killing. The judge said he didn’t know if Reel has heard the news, but said Reel was “lucky to be alive” following the June incident— and lucky no one else was injured.
Reel pleaded guilty to assaulting, impeding, intimidating and interfering with an officer or employee of the United States with a dangerous weapon.
According to a statement of offense signed by both sides, the 32-year-old man wanted to spray-paint a “don’t tread on me” snake on the White House residence. He believed that would lead others to “stand up against government.” Reel rigged his Jeep by affixing a wooden block on the accelerator and shifting the car into drive, sending it down Pennsylvania Avenue in the direction of a Secret Service guard post at the White House complex. The Jeep was traveling 40 mph when it hit a light post, a steel bollard and a steel bike rack around 3 a.m.
Just before launching the vehicle, Reel called 911 to report a threat against the president, with the goal of creating a distraction that would help him get to the White House residence so he could spray-paint the “don’t tread on me” snake. After the crash, he jumped the fence of the courtyard of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex. He was arrested soon after.
Authorities found hundreds of rounds of ammunition, eight knives of various sizes, two machetes and a hand-held spotting scope in the Jeep.
Reel told Contreras that while he was in the District of Columbia jail, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for which he is currently being treated.
Somehow I missed this story back in June. He posted a YouTube video just before his thwarted stunt. I wouldn't advise watching the whole 8+ minutes, but he does make an important, Travis Bickle-type statement at 2:45 ("I'm just a regular guy, with nothing to lose, whose gonna do something about it.") I don't doubt his post-arrest bipolar disorder diagnosis, but the video is actually strong testimony against a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity acquittal. The level of organization of his attack differentiates him significantly from Miriam Carey, the manic and unarmed driver gallantly shot dead in DC last week.
We should all be very concerned about just how many "regular guys with nothing to lose" we have hatched in our society. Joe Reel might have a major mental disorder, but his motives are more likely rooted in his alienation, his loneliness, his boredom, and his awareness of the profound meaninglessness of his life.
