Positive emotions and risk

The June 2009 Atlantic has a long piece by Joshua Wolf Shenk, "What Makes Us Happy?" Shenk looks at the Grant Study, a longitudinal study (begun in 1937) of 268 Harvard men, and talks with George Vaillant, professor at Harvard Medical School and psychiatrist. Vaillant is the longtime director of the study, associated with it for more than forty years.

I find the following passage especially resonant. Shenk is recounting Vaillant's explanation to a group of graduate students of why "positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones":

One reason is that they're future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs — protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections — but in the short term actually put us at risk. That's because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.

To illustrate his point, he told a story about one of his "prize" Grant Study men, a doctor and well-loved husband. "On his 70th birthday," Vaillant said, "when he retired from the faculty of medicine, his wife got hold of his patient list and secretly wrote to many of his longest-running patients, 'Would you write a letter of appreciation?' And back came 100 single-spaced, desperately loving letters — often with pictures attached. And she put them in a lovely presentation box covered with Thai silk, and gave it to him." Eight years later, Vaillant interviewed the man, who proudly pulled the box down from his shelf. "George, I don't know what you're going to make of this," the man said, as he began to cry, "but I've never read it." "It's very hard," Vaillant said, "for most of us to tolerate being loved."

Voluptuous Full-figured

Before: "Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman Is Found."

After: "Full-Figured Statuette, 35,000 Years Old, Provides New Clues to How Art Evolved."

The New York Times has changed its voluptuous headline.

Deer on a wet red roof

[Fake deer atop a pawnshop, somewhere in East-Central Illinois, May 13, 2009. Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Stormy weather

David Foster Wallace, writing of life in East-Central Illinois:

Most days from late March to June there are Tornado Watches somewhere in our TV stations' viewing area (the stations put a little graphic at the screen's upper right, like a pair of binoculars for a Watch and the Tarot deck's Tower card for a Warning, or something). Watches mean conditions are right and so on and so forth, which, big deal. It's only the rarer Tornado Warnings, which require a confirmed sighting by somebody with reliable sobriety, that make the Civil Defense sirens go.

David Foster Wallace, "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley," in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (New York: Back Bay Books, 1997), 15.

Our siren — I mean my town's siren — went this morning, at around 1:00. Elaine and I went downstairs, turned on the television, and watched the one station with a weatherman (not a crawl) until the storm passed about a half-hour later. No signs of damage in the daylight, only water, water everywhere, and more rain expected today or tomorrow.

Wilco streams Wilco (The Album)

Wilco is now streaming Wilco (The Album), scheduled for June 30 release. My knowledge of Wilco is not great, but I know enough to say that I like them. A first impression: this album seems to grow more Beatlesque as it goes on.

Voluptuous headline

An arresting headline: "Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman Is Found." Voluptuous: from the Latin voluptas, pleasure. See what you think:

Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman Is Found (New York Times)

Bonus songs

In the news:

As the music industry adapts to a changed marketplace, the album is no longer simply a discrete collection of songs but a package that changes size, shape and price depending on how it is sold. And promotion, once the relatively straightforward process of making a video and visiting radio stations, has also been transformed, as labyrinthine exclusive deals are struck with an array of retail and media companies — from Amazon.com and iTunes to Rhapsody, Wal-Mart and Verizon Wireless — eager to make an association with top talent.

For Bands, Bonus Songs Become New Norm (New York Times)

I find it odd that this article makes no mention of how such marketing undercuts independent record stores (they're not dead yet). Nor does the article consider that such marketing might encourage illegal downloading as an alternative to buying one album two or three times.

I first became aware of the absurdity of bonuses with Brian Wilson's That Lucky Old Sun, which appeared in at least five versions: Best Buy, Borders, extra mayo, iTunes, and plain. The Best Buy and iTunes versions had extra songs; the Borders version, stamps.

The cost of college

How much work might be needed to work your way through college?

According to one observer, in 1964, all of the expenses associated with a public university education, including food, clothing, and housing could be had by working a minimum-wage job an average of twenty-two hours a week throughout the year. (This might mean working fifteen hours a week while studying and forty hours a week during summers.) Today, the same expenses from a low-wage job require fifty-five hours a week fifty-two weeks a year.

At a private university, those figures in 1964 were thirty-six minimum-wage hours a week, which was relatively manageable for a married couple or a family of modest means and would have been possible even for a single person working the lowest possible wage for twenty hours a week during the school year and some overtime on vacations. Today, it would cost 136 hours per week for fifty-two weeks a year to "work your way through" at a private university. In 2006, each year of private education amounted to the annual after-tax earnings of nearly four lowest-wage workers working overtime.

Marc Bousquet, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York University Press, 2008), 152.

Bousquet goes on to note that faculty salaries are not the cause of rising tuition:

The plain fact is that many college administrations are on fixed-capital spending sprees with dollars squeezed from cheap faculty and student labor: over the past thirty years, the price of student and faculty labor has been driven downward massively at exactly the same time that costs have soared.

[Bousquet is relying on a spreadsheet by Tom Mortenson, "I Worked My Way through College. You Should, Too. 1964–65 to 2002–03," available to subscribers only at Postsecondary Education Opportunity.]

Jinx (children's game)

An e-mail from my friend Stefan Hagemann got me looking up the rules of the jinx. They are complicated and hilarious. Look and see:

Jinx (children's game) (Wikipedia)

(Stefan, do I owe you a Coke?)

Venetia Phair (1918-2009)

A 1930 telegram:

Naming new planet, please consider PLUTO, suggested by small girl Venetia Burney for dark and gloomy planet.

Venetia Phair (née Burney), namer of Pluto, has died. Read more:

Venetia Phair Dies at 90 (New York Times)
Venetia Phair (Wikipedia)