But two years ago, a pair of social scientists named Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler used the information collected over the years about Joseph and Eileen and several thousand of their neighbors to make an entirely different kind of discovery. By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people. By keeping in close, regular contact with other healthy friends for decades, Eileen and Joseph had quite possibly kept themselves alive and thriving. And by doing precisely the opposite, the lone obese man hadn’t.
via Are Your Friends Making You Fat? – NYTimes.com.
FRB: Speech–Bernanke, Commencement address–May 22, 2009
In planning our own individual lives, we all have a strong psychological need to believe that we can control, or at least anticipate, much of what will happen to us. But the social and physical environments in which we live, and indeed, we ourselves, are complex systems, if you will, subject to diverse and unforeseen influences. Scientists and mathematicians have discussed the so-called butterfly effect, which holds that, in a sufficiently complex system, a small cause–the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil–might conceivably have a disproportionately large effect–a typhoon in the Pacific. All this is to put a scientific gloss on what you probably know from everyday life or from reading good literature: Life is much less predictable than we would wish. As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”
Our lack of control over what happens to us might be grounds for an attitude of resignation or fatalism, but I would urge you to take a very different lesson. You may have limited control over the challenges and opportunities you will face, or the good fortune and trials that you will experience. You have considerably more control, however, over how well prepared and open you are, personally and professionally, to make the most of the opportunities that life provides you. Any time that you challenge yourself to undertake something worthwhile but difficult, a little out of your comfort zone–or any time that you put yourself in a position that challenges your preconceived sense of your own limits–you increase your capacity to make the most of the unexpected opportunities with which you will inevitably be presented. Or, to borrow another aphorism, this one from Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
When I look back at my own life, at least from one perspective, I see a sequence of accidents and unforeseeable events. I grew up in a small town in South Carolina and went to the public schools there. My father and my uncle were the town pharmacists, and my mother, who had been a teacher, worked part-time in the store. I was a good student in high school and expected to go to college, but I didn’t see myself going very far from home, and I had little notion of what I wanted to do in the future.
Chance intervened, however, as it so often does. I had a slightly older friend named Ken Manning, whom I knew because his family shopped regularly at our drugstore. Ken’s story is quite interesting, and a bit improbable, in itself. An African American, raised in a small Southern town during the days of racial segregation, Ken nevertheless found his way to Harvard for both a B.A. and a Ph.D., and he is now a professor at MIT, not too far from here. Needless to say, he is an exceptional individual, in his character and determination as well as his remarkable intellectual gifts.
Anyway, for reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, Ken made it his personal mission to get me to come to Harvard also. I had never even considered such a possibility–where was Harvard, exactly? Up North, I thought–but Ken’s example and arguments were persuasive, and I was (finally) persuaded. Fortunately, I got in. It probably helped that Harvard was not at the time getting lots of applications from South Carolina.
We all have moments we will never forget. One of mine occurred when I entered Harvard Yard for the first time, a 17-year-old freshman. It was late on Saturday night, I had had a grueling trip, and as I entered the Yard, I put down my two suitcases with a thump. I looked around at the historic old brick buildings, covered with ivy. Parties were going on, students were calling to each other across the Yard, stereos were blasting out of dorm windows. I took in the scene, so foreign to my experience, and I said to myself, “What have I done?”
At some level, I really had no idea what I had done, or what the consequences would be. All I knew was that I had chosen to abandon the known and comfortable for the unknown and challenging. But for me, at least, the expansion of horizons was exactly what I needed at that time in my life. I suspect that, for many of you, matriculation at the Boston College law school represented something similar–a leap into the unknown and new, with consequences and opportunities that you could hardly have guessed in advance. But, in some important ways, leaving the known and comfortable was exactly the point of the exercise. Each of you is a different person than you were three years ago, not only more knowledgeable in the law, but also possessing a greater understanding of who you are–your weaknesses and strengths, your goals and aspirations. You will be learning more about the fundamental question of who you really are for the rest of your life.
via FRB: Speech–Bernanke, Commencement address–May 22, 2009.
rePost::Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on our fascination with excess | Books | The Guardian
When we are greedy, the psychoanalyst Harold Boris writes, we are in a state of mind in which we “wish and hope to have everything all the time”; greed “wants everything, nothing less will do”, and so “it cannot be satisfied”. Appetite, he writes in a useful distinction, is inherently satisfiable. So the excess of appetite we call greed is actually a form of despair. Greed turns up when we lose faith in our appetites, when what we need is not available. In this view it is not that appetite is excessive; it is that our fear of frustration is excessive. Excess is a sign of frustration; we are only excessive wherever there is a frustration we are unaware of, and a fear we cannot bear.
via Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on our fascination with excess | Books | The Guardian.
Some VPN Lovin
Use to hate our need to VPN to our servers in the US, It was always cumbersome and I always felt it added a layer of uneeded complexity; That was then, and all it took was The Office episodes on the NBC website. hehehe, now i get to watch The Office online because I had a Us ip address hehehe! South Park/ The Daily Show /The Colbert Report too of course!
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rePost::Quantum computing may actually be useful, after all
cool!
Quantum computers with maybe 12 or 16 qubits have been built in the lab, but quantum computation is such a young field, and the physics of it are so counterintuitive, that researchers are still developing the theoretical tools for thinking about it.
Systems of linear equations, on the contrary, are familiar to almost everyone. We all had to solve them in algebra class: given three distinct equations featuring the same three variables, find values for the variables that make all three equations true.
Computer models of weather systems or of complex chemical reactions, however, might have to solve millions of equations with millions of variables. Under the right circumstances, a classical computer can solve such equations relatively efficiently: the solution time is proportional to the number of variables. But under the same circumstances, the time required by the new quantum algorithm would be proportional to the logarithm of the number of variables
via Quantum computing may actually be useful, after all.
rePost::Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate
Article on Mahatma Gandhi never winning a nobel peace prize.
May I just say that this is like a Hall Of Fame without Michael Jordan.
I didn’t know this till today, you just tend to assume these things, and I always assumed he had one, this is saddening, but Gandhi was bigger than the Nobel.
Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate
by Øyvind Tønnesson
Nobelprize.org Peace Editor, 1998-2000
1 December 1999
introduction
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) has become the strongest symbol of non-violence in the 20th century. It is widely held – in retrospect – that the Indian national leader should have been the very man to be selected for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was nominated several times, but was never awarded the prize. Why?
These questions have been asked frequently: Was the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee too narrow? Were the committee members unable to appreciate the struggle for freedom among non-European peoples?” Or were the Norwegian committee members perhaps afraid to make a prize award which might be detrimental to the relationship between their own country and Great Britain?
via Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate.
Obama's Nobel Musings
a thought occurred to me. One of the hallmarks of the Bush 2 administration is the total lack or disregard for it’s allies and neighbors.
I’d like to think of Obama’s Nobel as a way for the nobel committee to give and anti nobel to the other George Bush!
rePost::Aquino, Roxas get pop star welcome in Negros – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
Noynoy needs to differentiate himself , his volunteers, his friends and followers otherwise, this is just another popularity contest. He must not only try to rise above Philippine Electoral Politics but he needs to take us along, he must be the tide upon all our boats rise! People go with the tide , Leaders are the Tide!
Aquino, Roxas get pop star welcome in Negros
By Carla Gomez
Inquirer Visayas
First Posted 17:47:00 10/08/2009
BACOLOD CITY, Philippines—Senators Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, who have announced their candidacies for president and vice president under the Liberal Party in next year’s elections, got a pop star welcome from a sea of yellow crowds in three cities in Negros Occidental on Thursday.
People shouting “Noy-Mar Na!” surged forward to touch the two, get their autographs and have their pictures taken as the duo went on stage in Talisay, Bacolod and Bago cities.
Aquino said the crowds were overflowing because people want to see change in government.
“If we continue with this momentum, we will make change a reality,” Aquino said.
Butch Abad, campaign manager of the two, said it was not very hard to campaign for Aquino and Roxas because of the spontaneous outpouring of support from the people.
“This is a normal reception for them everywhere they go because they have made it very clear that this is a people’s campaign,” Abad said.
via Aquino, Roxas get pop star welcome in Negros – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
rePost::The Norway Post – The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 awarded to President Obama
Congratulations to President Obama, though I have a feeling health-care reform would have been a much loftier achievement!
The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 awarded to President Obama Print E-mail
Image The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2009 to US President Barak Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons..
The Nobel Peace Prize is an international prize which is awarded annually by the Norwegian Nobel Committee according to guidelines laid down in Alfred Nobel’s will. The Peace Prize is one of five prizes that have been awarded annually since 1901 under the auspices of the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm for outstanding contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Starting in 1969, a Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has also been awarded.
Whereas the other prizes are awarded by specialist committees based in Sweden, the Peace Prize is awarded by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Storting. According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize is to go to whoever “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. The prize includes a medal, a personal diploma, and a large sum of prize money (currently 10 million Swedish crowns).
The Nobel Peace Prize has been called “the world’s most prestigious prize”. The Prize is awarded at a ceremony in the Oslo City Hall on December 10, the date on which Alfred Nobel died.
(NRK/Nobel Committee)
Rolleiv Solholm
via The Norway Post – The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 awarded to President Obama.
rePost:: Letters of Note: The word God is the product of human weakness
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong … have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
….
A. Einstein
via Letters of Note: The word God is the product of human weakness.
read the whole letter from the link