Love, Money, Happiness: Evolutionary Biology

In his book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller examines what dictates our buying and spending decisions from lipstick to cars, from the texts we read to the music we enjoy.

For this book, Dr. Miller asked his readers to do the following exercise:

List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness.

Then he adds: Count how many items appear on both lists.

Here are the things that popped up on both of my lists.

There were five.

1) Travel - It's an indispensable component of my life. While my loved ones joke about my carbon foot-print and I counter that joke by saying, 'oy, I bike hundreds of miles a month. I'm making up for it,' travel has educated me in ways that are indeed incomparable. As I just noted to someone, I like travel because it keeps me honest.

2) Getting a PhD - Graduate work means all kinds of difficult as well as all kinds of happy. My years as a doctoral student were some of the most memorable ones. This is on both lists because, while it is a huge investment, it's also brought me a lot of happiness.

3) Apple gadgets - I'm a Mac-head. I converted over to Mac-ism when I was in college dating a Mac nerd. You've heard the saying, I'm sure, "once you go Mac, you never go back." Now, enlightened and on ship of hip, this is an investment that's yielded both high-frequency use as well as personal happiness. I know. Let it go. It's my list.

4) Indie rock shows. - As if I have to comment on this one! You can blame my interest in it on evolution.

5) Metropolitan Honda scooter - I used it almost as much as I use my Apple gadgets. It made me and mine very happy. Every time.


Which items made it on both of your lists?

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Brian Kilmeade Responds to Study on Marriage, the Swedes

This actually happened live on TV.

Granted, Brian Kilmeade is the comic, but still.

To get a sense of what it is the people involved in this video are talking about, refer to this recent study on marriage in Sweden.

A paragraph notes:

"Inevitably, the subject turns to sex and marriage. I'll never forget asking one group what they thought of marriage in a country where most educated young people (and half go to university) don't get married or bear children until they are well over 30. A young woman gave me a thoughtful answer and so I asked her, "What are you looking for in a husband?" Without batting an eye or pausing for thought, she answered: "Three things. One, he must be good in bed. Two, he must be a good father. Three, when we divorce, he mustn't be bitter."

Read the gripping article in its entirety here.


And drumroll please....

Here is Brian Kilmeade's close reading and insightful interpretation of said article.
BROWN HAIRED GUY: We keep marrying other species and other ethnics--


GRETCHEN CARLSON: Are you sure you are not suffering from some of the causes of dementia right now?

BRIAN KILMEADE: The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.

DAVE BRIGGS: This study does not apply?

BRIAN KILMEADE: Does not apply to us.

[pause]

DAVE BRIGGS: Huh.

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Travel, Mornings, and Routines

My biggest challenge in life is to reconcile myself to other people’s paces and respective speeds.

Slowness is to me what disco was to music: overall, not such a good idea.

Answers like, "Dude, I read that a LONG time ago, like last Wednesday, you know?" are ubiquitous. And the funny thing is, I'm serious when I reply in that fashion. The distance from a Wednesday to a Friday is, to me, a long one.

I suppose, we all have distinctly unique relationships to time and, as of late, I've recognized that I have a different relationship to time during different points of time in the day.

Let me explain.

I take time to get ready for the day in the morning. It usually takes me 1.5-2 hours to reach a ripe state of full alertness. Experientially, this is something that a sleep-economizer would so get. So, if I need to be alert and chipper, well the latter is a stretch, let’s try the former first, by 8:00 AM, then wake-up time needs to be 6-ish.

Here’s why.

I need to inform myself about the news, possibly simultaneously, i.e., by reading the news while having morning cable news commentary shows in the background. I call it information multi-tasking. In layman terms, it rocks my world.
Then, I need to attend to my non-work email, synch my gadgets, eat my high-protein, low-carb breakfast, and take my hot drink.

If/when the routine gets interrupted, I tend to say, I am told, "Let it go. It's my thing."

If I allow myself to ease into the day, I can function most beautifully and accomplish all I need to and more. So, varying speeds do balance themselves out. While I move at a nigh maniacal speed on a regular basis, I do have a couple of hours in the AM which I block off entirely. In the privacy of the BR existence, this is called silent time where I don't have to produce speech and I don't require that it be produced either.

Granted, two hours in the AM sounds pretty luxurious. Well, seen in the right perspective it's not all that flashy. If I need to be up at 5AM, then an optimal day would require that the wake-up/get ready routine start at 3AM. Sleep-economizers are people who want to unwind too, after all.

Now, the economy-informed person in me feels, at times, a tad decadent about this routine. It's after all two hours of a day. Of course, others spend it sleeping, ergo it's fine, I suppose.

And now the story can be recounted.

Recently I found myself on a very busy street of a big metropolis. I couldn’t find my usual travel mug hence I poured my morning drink into a home cup and rushed out as something came up. So, there I was waiting for the stop sign to turn green as I was sipping my morning drink trying to get into a silent time frame of mind as if I were in the comfort of my own home. I chuckled at the stark contrast between the comfort of my place and the uber-busy metropolis and as I was lost in thought, a gentleman approached me smilingly and with a chipper disposition.

“Having a good morning, I hope?” To which I said while sipping my morning drink, “Yeah. Yup. Yes.” As I did so I thought to myself. 'Well, don’t be a heathen. Respond properly to the nice man. He seems to be deserving of a good, solid yes.' So, that I did. We proceed to pass the intersection together and in a space of 40 meters or so I learned about the infrastructure of the city, why there’s a strike that’s having an impact on trash collections, and, more importantly, what time of the year the city is at its best self.

I believe that cities paint, more often than not, a pretty accurate portrait of the overall psychology of their inhabitants. You know you’re in a friendly space when the usual inhabitants of said space, exercise their civic duty and inform their warm-drink-sipping, fast-walking, barely awake visitors.

When I met the kind man, I had only been up for a max of twenty-five minutes. However, an information-jammed space of 40 meters was enough to kick things into gear so I could reach my usual state of alertness.

I should do this more often, I tell myself. I could save myself 1 hour and 59 minutes every AM.

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graph per http://www.markpascua.com/wp-content/coffee-mug-camera-lens.jpg

Thumbs Up for Unwinding

"How do you unwind?" - was the question.
"I watch this 15-second clip a few times in a row." - was my answer.

Those of you who are Entourage fans might especially like seeing Turtle vulnerable.

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Doppelganger

My friend Liam just made me aware of this business out West that sports the same initial logo as my name and blog onomastics.
Hm.
It does look awfully close to me.
(However, I do realize that there is a basic difference, i.e., inversion applies to their R and my B.)

As I noted to Liam, I wonder which one came first, the BR or the BR. Is this a case of two mutually exclusive parties being hit simultaneously by a wave of graphic inspiration, while being thoroughly independent of each other?

Not to be petty or anything, (oh, who am I kidding? For the sake of argument, let’s, let's be a tad petty), the logo with my initials was first conceptualized by designer par excellence and close friend, Camille well over seven years ago. The logo first made it on my business card back in ’03. I suppose I could be even more petty (or is it pettier?) and I could ask to compare design notes with said company and determine which came first. If I end up lower on the hierarchy, I’ll be a man and retire my laurels as holder of BR.
Hm.
Onomastics is, after all, never inconsequential. Or is it?

Tip of the hat, Liam, for keeping an aesthetics-informed eye out.

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Dignity and, um, Tory Burch?

Let me see if I can start on the right foot here.

Generally, the writing of NY Times David Brooks is, to me, like a Tory Burch outfit. It's all fine and dandy when it's out there but I wouldn't quite go out of my way to pursue it, if you catch my drift.
Brooks' today piece on the Times, however, begged for my attention this morning. His summary of some of the recent events made me think about how quickly lexemes shift and acquire new meanings in order to adapt to new cultural modifications.
In today's piece Brooks wonders about the philosophical and social meanings of the term dignity. 'Whatever happened to it, eh?'-wonders Brooks along with a litany of other voices.
A paragraph of note:
" First, there was Mark Sanford’s press conference. Here was a guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who was given to rambling self-exposure even in his moment of disgrace. Then there was the death of Michael Jackson and the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood. Then there was Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust.

In each of these events, one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.

Americans still admire dignity. But the word has become unmoored from any larger set of rules or ethical system."

Read it all here.


graph per tory burch

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My Fill-In-the Blanks. Et Tu?

This morning I was looking at Carrie Bronstein's blog over at Monitor Mix where I noticed an interesting fill-in-the-blanks music-informed exercise.


Here's HetPer's own version:




1) I've had to defend my love of _____________________ over the years.

2. As far as I'm concerned, ______________________ nearly ruined music.

3. One of my favorite live performers ever? That's easy: _______________________.

4. If I could go back in time and dance like crazy, crowd surf or join a mosh pit, I would do that at a ___________________ show.

5. If I could choose to name a concert that truly changed my life, it would have to be _______________________.

6. The one clothing item that's musically informed and I value above the rest would have to be ___________________.

7. If there is one musician I would choose to see live even though such a choice would mean that I would be skipping out on my loved one's birthday, it would have to be ___________________.

My answers:
1) The Killers
2) Bono. And it doesn't mean that I don't listen to U2.
3) Keane
4) 30 Seconds to Mars. Blame it on Leto. Featured in the picture with C. Farrell
5) Muse. It was a life-changing experience.
6) Easy! My vintage Bob Dylan t-shirt.
7) Kelly Jones. It's true. I'm sorry. I am flawed.

Yours?

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graph per google images

Cowen on the Economy

If questions and anxieties about the current state of the economy are something you know a thing or two about, might I suggest that you read a new bit on the Economist?

Tyler Cowen, a well-known economist and co-author of one of my favorite blogs, marginal revolution, was asked a number of questions about the state of the economy. One of the questions asked:

"What has most surprised you about the current economic downturn?"

To which TC said:

"That it happened with such severity. As an economist I grew up reading and thinking about two formative events. The first was the crash of the real estate bubble in the late 1980s, preceded by the stock market crash in 1987. The second was the Third World debt crisis of the early and mid-1980s. Both were bad, but for the United States neither were like the last two years. I’ve never been a believer in any of the extreme forms of the efficient markets hypothesis, but those events made me overly complacent about how badly crashes and excess leverage can turn out. In the early 1980s I expected widespread insolvency for major U.S. banks and when they muddled through I ended up overrating their ability to do the same again."

Read the rest of it here.

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New Books I Recommend

Welcome to the Urban Revolution by Jeb Brugmann is a detailed and careful exploration of the huge urban shift that has been occurring and how it translates to daily life and reality.

The city has become so much more than it used to be. The city itself, per Brugmann, may be used as a resource to address and solve such problems as how to respond to poverty, how to read globalism, how to react to environmental changes and so forth.
I recommend this highly as Brugmann's research seems to be vast and the form of his argument is easily decodable.


2) Alistair Horne's Kissinger 1973, the Crucial Year. I've always been fascinated by the Nixon era and the text that Nixon stood for. Another character from the time period I've always had an interest to know more about is Henry Kissinger. Something about the voice, I don't know.

In Kissinger 1973, the Crucial Year, Horne details the year most impressively thus providing a fascinating behind-the-scenes of that very important year. The arguments are well-historicized and the story-telling flows well.

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Sarah Barracuda Leaves Alaska for the Big Time

When John McCain announced last August in Ohio that Sarah Palin would be his running mate for '08, I remember thinking, 'Wow. The cameras love her.'
I still maintain that the reason why Palin gets so much media attention is largely due to her aesthetics and how it is captured and translated via the lens. And yet she keeps bashing the media for being unfair to her not seemingly realizing that her refusal to engage them (the media) in a substantial way might perhaps be the main reason for the occasional, ok, not-so-occasional ridicule.

While Palin is seriously uninformed about a lot of issues, she oozes a kind of stamina and tenacity that is rare to see. Now that she's announced that she is resigning as Alaska's governor, she's signaled her actual interest in entering national politics. Vanity Fair has a gripping peace on her. A paragraph of note says:

"In dozens of conversations during a recent visit to Alaska, it was easy to learn that there has always been a counter-narrative about Palin, and indeed it has become the dominant one. It is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. “Remember,” says Lyda Green, a former Republican state senator who once represented Palin’s home district, and who over the years went from being a supporter of Palin’s to a bitter foe, “her nickname in high school was ‘Barracuda.’ I was never called Barracuda. Were you? There’s a certain instinct there that you go for the jugular.”

Read it all here.

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