P.S. A Column On Things

How wide a spousal pool?

On a BBC quiz show, I heard that the median distance between spousal birthplaces rose sharply after the invention of the bicycle. I had previously heard the same was true of the automobile in the U.S. But my best Internet search efforts yielded no proof.

The most scientific study I could find was of spousal birth distance in the Netherlands. “The increase in the distance between the birthplaces of brides and grooms in nineteenth century Holland increased significantly at a rate of approximately 300 meters per decade, from about 4 kilometers in 1829 to 7 kilometers in 1922. Thus over time brides and grooms came more often from different municipalities, and the distance between the municipalities increased.”

I would think the Internet would increase the acceptable physical distances in the dating pool, but research indicates that proximity is a major factor in online dating sites. I know my daughter only met her spouse when he widened his area of interest.

Of course Internet Dating is about the person’s current location. And yet, while I couldn’t find the answer to my actual question, I did discover that the typical adult lives only 18 miles from his or her mother (true of both my daughters, but not true of my wife and I when our parents were alive).

Two Types of Depression/A Societal Approach

I was told back in my 20s that there were two types of depression: endogenous and exogenous, that endogenous came from within and exogenous was the result of external circumstances. The two bouts of clinical depression I suffered in my 20s were both exogenous, the result of broken love affairs.

Here's more detail from the Internet:

“Endogenous depression may be primarily caused by genetic and biological factors… “biologically based” depression. Exogenous depression happens after a stressful or traumatic event takes place. This type of depression is more commonly called “reactive” depression.”

Interesting news on the subject just arrived from the Friends of Positive Psychology Listserv (to request membership in the listserv, send an e-mail to Jer Clifton: cliftonj@ sas.upenn.edu).

“British Psychological Society Report: Understanding Depression & building a Less Depressing Society—Addressing Poverty, Racism, Inequality, Unemployment, & Childhood Stress & Disadvantage.” If you download the full report, the executive summary is on page 16.

In short, it’s not always you and your chemistry that makes depression. We need to build an anti-depressant society.

Science Made Simple

From the PBS Newshour on Oct. 15:

Dr. Celine Gounder:

Well, think of it like maybe a mug shot of a criminal. If you have two different photographs, one from the front, one from the side, you have a better chance of recognizing that person out in public than if you only had one snapshot.

And, similarly, these vaccines give your immune system different ways of looking at the virus. And so your immune system has a better shot at recognizing it down the line.

What Your Genes Predict

I always thought it was simple: your genes set your limits, your environment determined if you reached them. If you had 6-foot genes and shit nutrition, you turned out to be 5-5. If you had 5-5 genes, it didn’t matter what you ate, you weren’t ever going to be taller than 5-5.

Turns out that, like everything in life, it is more complicated than that. Here’s a New Yorker profile (behind the pay wall) that ran on Sept. 13, 2021:

Can Progressives Be Convinced That Genetics Matters?

The behavior geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden is waging a two-front campaign: on her left are those who assume that genes are irrelevant, on her right those who insist that they’re everything.

For me, the nut graf was half-way into the story. A GWAS is a study that tries to correlate MANY genes with single traits:

“The largest gwas for educational attainment to date found almost thirteen hundred si+tes on the genome that are correlated with success in school. Though each might have an infinitesimally small statistical relationship with the outcome, together they can be summed to produce a score that has predictive validity: those in the group with the highest scores were approximately five times more likely to graduate from college than those with the lowest scores—about as accurate a predictor as traditional social-science variables like parental income.”

We need to find a way to use a predictor that accurate to equalize results. IMHO: people with the (many) genes don’t need help. People without them need extra help. Or, as one expert noted, we need to de-emphasize the need for education in some cases.

How You Got To Be You

Andy Singer’s Web Site

CPAP Dry Mouth Solution

Here’s a public service announcement. I know a few of you use CPAP machines, and some of the men may be forced by their facial hair to use nasal pillows, as I do. I was having a terrific dry-mouth problem in the morning, as my mouth dropped open at night. The two side effects: bad for your teeth, bad for your marriage (snoring). I think every CPAP kit should include an Anti-Snoring Chin Strap for Men and Women CPAP Users. Its been great for me; maybe it will be great for you. I believe it would even reduce snoring among non-CPAP users. It is quite comfortable.

Share With Your Denier Friends/Acquaintances

Neurons

I noted here recently that the heart has neurons which send more information to the brain than they get back. My wife recently noted that the gut has neurons as well. Here’s the breakdown:

Brain: 100 billion neurons

Gut: 500 million neurons (0.5% of the brain)

Heart: 40,000 in the heart, but they send more data to the brain than the brain sends back. (.00004% of the brain)

AI: Researchers now have AI with 1 billion neuron equivalents: about 1% of your brain. There has been talk on the Internet that when they hit 10 billion, AI may be able to write rough drafts of fiction. It’s already written passable imitation Kafka. One company is hoping to offer writers an AI assistant for $300 a month in a few years.

Global Consciousness Project

If you haven’t heard about this project, read the article: Global Consciousness Project - Wikipedia. If you subscribe to an early warning earthquake site, why not find a place on your desktop for https://gcpdot.com/

To summarize: the GCP is a worldwide network of random number generators is being observed for incidents of non-random number generation. It is a proven fact that human beings can influence these hardware generators with their minds, at a distance. Basically, this project is trying to measure disturbances in the force (to use the Star Wars terminology), or the quantum field (physics) or the worldwide human consciousness. GCP found disturbances on 9/11 and the day Princess Diana died, among others.

I learned about it from a movie I can, literally, only half recommend. SKIP SKIP SKIP the first 40 minutes of Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind on Amazon: it is pure tin-foil hat. But the last hour and 20 minutes is about meditation and global consciousness, and includes the clearest explanation of quantum entanglement I’ve ever seen, with a graphic reminiscent of the best of the Bell Telephone Science Hour. While the discussion of consciousness is in the context of contacting extra-terrestrial life forms, the science is sound―including the observation that the heart contains 40,000 neurons.

Why Buddhism is True

Kevin Sullivan suggested Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by journalist Robert Wright. It is an amazing and impressive work, using evolutionary biology to demonstrate the wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings about not-self and meditation. My favorite quotes:

“It is possible to argue that the primary evolutionary function of the self is to be the organ of impression management (rather than, as our folk psychology would have it, a decision-maker).”

“You may find it useful to think of meditation as a process that takes a conscious mind that gets to do a little nudging and turns it into something that can do a lot of nudging—maybe even turns it into something more like a president than a speaker of the House.”