Neophily: Exuberence for Novelty predicts well being

Article From Deric Bownds' MindBlog at

http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2012/03/neophily-exuberance-for-novelty.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mindblog+%28MindBlog%29
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I've been meaning to point to John Tierney's interesting piecein the NYTimes that emphasizes the work of Robert Cloninger, the psychiatrist who developed personality tests for measuring the trait of novelty seeking:

...a trait long associated with trouble.. problems like attention deficit disorder, compulsive spending and gambling, alcoholism, drug abuse and criminal behavior...After extensively tracking novelty-seekers, researchers are seeing the upside. In the right combination with other traits, it’s a crucial predictor of well-being. Winifred Gallagher's new book “New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change” ...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....she classifies people as neophobes, neophiles and, at the most extreme, neophiliacs...

...adventurous neophiliacs are more likely to possess a “migration gene,” a DNA mutation that occurred about 50,000 years ago, as humans were dispersing from Africa around the world, according to Robert Moyzis, a biochemist at the University of California, Irvine. The mutations are more prevalent in the most far-flung populations, like Indian tribes in South America descended from the neophiliacs who crossed the Bering Strait.

...These genetic variations affect the brain’s regulation of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the processing of rewards and new stimuli (and drugs like cocaine). The variations have been linked to faster reaction times, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a higher penchant for novelty-seeking and risk-taking.

Cloninger...has.. tracked people using a personality test he developed..looking for traits in people..who reported the best health, most friends, fewest emotional problems and greatest satisfaction with life...they scored high in novelty-seeking as well in persistence and self-transcendence (which he describes as the capacity to get lost in the moment doing what you love to do, to feel a connection to nature and humanity and the universe).

Advice from Gallagher and Cloninger:

..both advise neophiles to be selective in their targets. (Neophilia spurs us to adjust and explore and create technology and art, but at the extreme it can fuel a chronic restlessness and distraction.).. Don’t go wide and shallow into useless trivia...Use your neophilia to go deep into subjects that are important to you.

Library Card

I have one. In Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

It feels good. And it feels like a step toward semi-permanence.

I'm officially based out of the ranch until October now, so it was time.




My first set of books checked out with my new card yesterday:

A Basic Book of Amphibians Look-and-Learn by Mara
The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift by Andrew R. Edwards
Colorado's Dinosaurs by John T. Jenkins, Jr. and Jannice L. Jenkins
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

Mardi Gras

Tonight´s sky

My first knitting pattern (for lilttle hands)

As usual, the cold weather has resparked my (k)need to knit.

Usually I think that a successful knitting project is just a sign that a person is good at following directions. So when I wanted to make fingerless gloves last week, my first reaction was to search for a pattern that I liked online.

No luck. I didn´t want a cable stitch because I was planning to use a self striping yarn and thought a simple pattern would look better. All the simple patterns were approximately twice the size of my child-sized hands.

So I tried combining two patterns I had seen with intuition to make my first Kristen-sized fingerless glove pattern.



My pattern:

Cast on 27 stitches in the round on size 5 or 6 double pointed needles

Knit 6 rounds in seed stitch

Knit 18 rounds in stockinette stitch



To set up for Gusset, Knit around until 2 stitches from the end of round. Place stitch marker. SM. M1. K1. M1. Place a second marker. SM. K1. You should be at the end of the round.

For Gusset:
Round 1 - K around
Round 2 - K around
Round 3 - K to first marker. SM. M1. K to next marker. M1. SM. Knit to end of round.

Repeat Gusset rounds 1-3 until there are 15 stitches between the stitch markers. K one more round, slipping these 15 stitches onto a stitch holder or safety pin.

Knit 10 more rounds in stockinette.

Knit 8 rounds in seed stitch. Cast off.


For Thumb:
Slip stitches from stitch holder onto 3 double pointed needles. K one round and pick up two stitches across the thumb.

Knit around and knit the two picked up stitches together.

Knit 6 more rounds in stockinette (knit in the round). Cast off. Weave in ends of yarn.



Here´s what they look like:

Voice

Sound is naught but broken air: and
every speech that is uttered, aloud or
privily, good or ill, is in substance nothing
but air.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)


Currently Reading:
http://assets.booklocker.com/pdfs/3026s.pdf


Tonight I´ll be singing and playing the ukelele in front of a room full of staff and guests for the indoor campfire. Thankfully I´ll be one of between 3 and 5 people singing, and there will be some guitars, so there´s less pressure.

I haven´t sung in public in a performance setting since I dropped out of the Kalamazoo Children´s Choir in fifth grade.

Maybe this is the world´s way of telling me to get over myself and my secret fear of singing in front of people.

There was a need for people to perform since most of the usual ¨band¨ members are out of town this week. I can harmonize. Not particularly well, but I can do it. Apparently none of the other girls on staff feel comfortable harmonizing, so here goes nothing.





Even before this all came up, I´d been thinking about voice especially after a series of conversations with a guest here a few weeks ago. The role of voice in communication, in determining what story is passed down as history, in teaching and correcting, how a person´s voice changes in different languages, in singing, in laughing, in yelling, in whispering, and the role and power of rhetoric in society. (I just began reading The Praise of Folly by Erasmus.) She´s a retired speech language pathologist who also worked teaching English as a Second Language for some time. She left me her copy of A People´s History of the United States by Zinn after I asked her about it and expressed interest. Fascinating woman. Here´s an idea of its content from the back cover:

¨There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged.¨ - Howard Zinn



For today I´ll just be focusing on the physical voice. Practice is at 4. Performance is at 7:30. Songs include but are not limited to Wagon Wheel, I´ll Fly Away, Angel from Montgomery, She´ll Be Coming Around the Mountain with segway into You are my Sunshine, and Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Let it snow........

It´s been coming down all day. All the Colorado natives here at the ranch have been complaining about how little snow we´ve had. To me it´s seemed fine most days, but now I´m getting a taste for it.

It looks like a snow globe outside. A little unpleasant to walk from cabin to cabin in the bitter cold with huge snowflakes falling down the back of your neck, but it´s so lovely, and I can´t wait for it to stick and stop falling inside my jacket while I walk between cabins so I can go SKI.

One of the guests told me that she did a snow dance last night. Apparently it worked marvelously. Best snow we´ve had yet.