Category: Psychology

The “Deliciously Guilty Pleasure” and “Disorienting Joy” of California Skiing in August

(p. A20) This weekend, . . . hordes of Californians are smearing pink and yellow zinc oxide on noses, shoving feet into hard plastic ski boots and gliding over to the lifts at Mammoth Mountain for yet another day on the slopes. A reminder: It’s August.

. . .

Unpredictable change is the new status quo.  . . . it can also, in a rare instance like the chance to ski in the dog days of summer, bring a disorienting joy.

. . .

In mid-July [2023], well after all the hot dogs and fireworks, I headed up to the Sierra and ran into so much lingering snow that the road through Yosemite National Park hadn’t yet opened for the season. I took an alternate route, 108 over Sonora Pass, and saw people parking in turnouts, carrying skis up dirt trails through trees, stepping onto sunny snow slopes and linking turns back down to ice chests full of cold drinks before, you know, maybe going for a swim. When I finally got to Kelly’s place, the creek on her high desert property frothed in a fabulous white and clear torrent through sage lands sparkling with superblooming yellow mule’s ear, red paintbrush and white phlox. The big peaks, meanwhile — in the dead heat of a California summer — remained so heavily blanketed in snow that I felt I was seeing them the way Indigenous people must have during the Little Ice Age, 500 years ago.

The premise of California’s secular faith in nature is that water plus sunshine equals enlightenment. In high school I was transfixed by a description on the jacket of Bank Wright’s classic “Surfing California” of “skiing Mount Baldy in the morning and surfing Hermosa Beach in the afternoon.” That struck the teenage me as the absolute perfect way of snatching healthy peace and giddy fun from the predictable maw of adult misery.

. . .

. . . when I drove to Mammoth, put on my favorite cowboy hat against the sun and sipped iced coffee while watching tiny black figures ski down blinding white slopes, the experience was perhaps best likened to the queasy adrenalized thrill of an oncoming manic episode after a long and dark depression — worrisome, yes, bound for nowhere good but, as long as we’re just talking here and now, a deliciously guilty pleasure.

For the full commentary, see:

Daniel Duane. “The Upside of Climate Chaos? Skiing in August.” The New York Times (Monday, August 7, 2023): A20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 6, 2023, and has the title “It’s August. Californians Are Still Skiing. Don’t Ask.”)

Simple Beeping Pagers Tell Patients a Doctor’s Distraction Is Work-Related

(p. A10) Pagers, those pre-cellphone, one-way devices that alert the carrier that someone is trying to reach them, can seem like something out of a time capsule.

. . .

There are people who just refuse to let their pagers go, including some doctors and bird watchers. They say pagers allow them to separate parts of their life in a way phones don’t, and that the lower-tech one-way communication of a pager is less distracting than looking at a phone full of alerts and apps.

. . .

Another advantage of the pager? It’s easy for staff to throw one in frustration instead of turning on each other, according to Dr. Colm McCarthy, an orthopedic surgeon in Fall River, Mass.

Tired during a busy on-call night once, he chucked his pager in a closet where it broke.

He gave up his pager when he got his current job, and transitioned over to the apps on his phone. Now, though, when he gets a message on his phone, it’s awkward to answer it, he says. If he’s looking at the phone, he worries patients might wonder what he’s paying attention to while with a pager, it’s obvious it’s work.

He has multiple apps on his phone. Last year, his hospital adopted the fourth app that connects him to patients. When a patient wants to reach him, he gets a message with a phone number. He then has to call that number to get a message with the patient’s phone number.

The mute function on the apps is easily overridden by alerts, so to separate work from home life, he keeps his phone on silent altogether, he says. He often misses messages from family and friends because of that.

For the full story, see:

Ariana Perez-Castells. “What the Beep? Die-Hards Refuse to Let Go of Their Pagers.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, May 20, 2023): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 19, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

In Blackberry Movie “The Excitement of Disruption and the Thrill of Creation Become Tangible”

(p. C9) In Matt Johnson’s “BlackBerry” — a wonky workplace comedy that slowly shades into tragedy — the emergence of the smartphone isn’t greeted with fizzing fireworks and popping champagne corks. Instead, Johnson and his co-writer, Matthew Miller (adapting Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s 2015 book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry”), have fashioned a tale of scrabbling toward success that tempers its humor with an oddly moving wistfulness.

. . .

. . ., we’re in Waterloo, Ontario, in 1996, where Mike Lazaridis (a perfect Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Johnson) — best friends and co-founders of a small tech company called Research in Motion (RIM) — are trying to sell a product they call PocketLink, a revolutionary combination of cellphone, email device and pager.

. . .

The corporate types don’t understand Mike and Doug’s invention, but a predatory salesman named Jim Balsillie (a fantastic Glenn Howerton), gets it. Recently fired and fired up, Jim sees the device’s potential, making a deal to acquire part of RIM in exchange for cash and expertise. Doug, a man-child invariably accessorized with a headband and a bewildered look, is doubtful; Mike, assisted by a shock of prematurely gray hair, is wiser. He knows that they’ll need an intermediary to succeed.

Reveling in a vibe — hopeful, testy, undisciplined — that’s an ideal match for its subject, “BlackBerry” finds much of its humor in Jim’s resolve to fashion productive employees from RIM’s ebulliently geeky staff, who look and act like middle schoolers and converse in a hybrid of tech-speak and movie quotes. It’s all Vogon poetry to Jim; but as Jared Raab’s restless camera careens around the chaotic work space, the excitement of disruption and the thrill of creation become tangible.

For the full movie review, see:

Jeannette Catsoulis. “When Geeks Clash With Suits, They’re All Thumbs.” The New York Times (Friday, May 12, 2023): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the movie review has the date May 11, 2023, and has the title “‘BlackBerry’ Review: Big Dreams, Little Keyboards.”)

The book that is the basis of the movie under review in the passages quoted above is:

McNish, Jacquie, and Sean Silcoff. Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of Blackberry. New York: Flatiron Books, 2015.

An Hawaiian Wants Land She Can Own and Control, Even if Not in Hawaii

(p. 1) When Pauline Kauinani Souza was a child in Hawaii, she spent early mornings watering her grandfather’s watermelons and papaya trees.

Her family lived frugally, eating homemade bread and heating water over a fire for bathing. But the no-frills life came with the ultimate perk: living near the beach and drifting off to sleep at night to the sound of waves gently crashing on the shore.

Now, at 80, Ms. Souza lives in Las Vegas, a desert city of neon reinvention far from the ocean and her ancestral home. It is not paradise, but it is full of Native Hawaiians like her who have flocked there in recent years for the endless entertainment, reasonable cost of living and something few people can find in Hawaii: a house they can afford.

“I own it outright,” she said proudly of her two-bedroom, ranch-style home in Las Vegas. “In Hawaii, there aren’t many people who can say that.”

Increasingly, Las Vegas is drawing Hawaiians who came to visit and decided to stay, convinced that an affordable faux version of the islands is better than an endless struggle to make ends meet in the real thing.

Between 2011 and 2021, the population of Native Hawaiians and (p. 19) other Pacific Islanders in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, grew by about 40 percent, for a total of nearly 22,000 people. That was the greatest number of newcomers in that demographic in any county outside Hawaii, according to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. In that same period, the total population of Clark County grew by about 17 percent.

For many, the draw is real estate: Houses in the Las Vegas area have a median listing price of about $460,000, compared with about $800,000 in Honolulu, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data.

Americans migrating for cheaper housing is not unusual, as seen most dramatically in the decades-long shift from the Northeast to the Sunbelt. But this migration from the impossibly lush natural landscape of the islands to the brash desert of Las Vegas is a particularly vivid glimpse of how the search for housing remakes the country in sometimes surprising ways.

. . .

In 2022, Hawaii had the highest cost of living out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to data from the Council for Community and Economic Research. The state imports the vast majority of its food, making everyday groceries especially expensive. And strict regulations on building have contributed to housing shortages and prices out of reach for many.

For the full story, see:

Eliza Fawcett and Hana Asano. “Priced Out of Paradise’ But Hawaiians Thrive in Desert.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 21, 2023): 1 & 19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 20, 2023, and has the title “There’s No Ocean in Sight. But Many Hawaiians Make Las Vegas Their Home.” The online version says that the print version has the title “Desert Provides A New Paradise For Hawaiians” but my national print version has the title “They’re ‘Priced Out of Paradise’ But Hawaiians Thrive in Desert.”)

Growing Research Suggests Neanderthals Were More Similar to Homo Sapiens in Behavior

(p. A16) Neanderthals might be getting a bad rap. In the movie “Night at the Museum,” when the exhibits come to life after sundown, the Neanderthals are depicted as dimwitted cave men who grunt and bash rocks together in futile attempts to generate a flame. When Ben Stiller’s night-guard character gives them a lighter, one promptly sets himself on fire.

Popular culture has often depicted our Neanderthal cousins much like these museum cave men—also-rans and unsophisticated brutes whose nomadic-hunter lifestyle precluded them from social gatherings and might have contributed to their demise.

But the past decade or so has changed our understanding of Neanderthals. A growing body of research shows these extinct relatives—who overlapped in time and space with anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens—were similar to us in many ways. Recent studies suggest Neanderthals altered the landscape around them with fire and were sophisticated hunters who could exploit a variety of prey in groups larger than paleoanthropologists once thought.

Studies show the species used fire to cook, constructed tools to manipulate meat and stone, built structures and made jewelry. They swam and dove for shells, which they used as tools and beads, and distilled birch bark to make tar. Neanderthals decorated and engraved bones and used red ochre—a natural clay pigment—to alter surfaces.

“The more we learn about Neanderthals, the more similar they look to us behaviorally,” said Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London.

For the full story, see:

Aylin Woodward. “Scientific Discoveries Elevate the Minds and Skills of Neanderthals.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 11, 2023): A16.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 10, 2023, and has the title “Neanderthals and Us: We’re More Alike Than Once Thought.” The wording in the last sentence quoted above is from the print version, rather than the shorter online version, of the sentence.)

Firing an Actor “Early Could Be a Motivator for the Remaining Cast”

The ability to fire at will gives the entrepreneur (and the movie director) the ability to put together the right team for a project. Keeping those employed who are not doing their jobs, can be demoralizing for those who are doing their jobs.

(p. C1) When the writer and director Mike Nichols was young, he had an allergic reaction to a whooping cough vaccine. The result was a complete and lifelong inability to grow hair. One way to read Mark Harris’s crisp new biography, “Mike Nichols: A Life,” is as a tender comedy about a man and his wigs.

. . .

(p. C5) Harris is the author of two previous books, “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood” and “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.” He’s also a longtime entertainment reporter with a gift for scene-setting.

He’s at his best in “Mike Nichols: A Life” when he takes you inside a production. His chapters on the making of three films in particular — “The Graduate,” “Silkwood” and “Angels in America” — are miraculous: shrewd, tight, intimate and funny. You sense he could turn each one into a book.

Nichols was an actor’s director. &nbsp. . .  But he had a steely side.

He fired Gene Hackman during week one on “The Graduate.” Hackman was playing Mr. Robinson and it wasn’t working, in part because, at 37, he looked too young for the role.

Sacrificing someone early could be a motivator for the remaining cast, he learned. He fired Mandy Patinkin early in the filming of “Heartburn,” and brought in Jack Nicholson to play Meryl Streep’s faithless husband.

For the full review, see:

Dwight Garner. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; The Wit and Wigs Of a Star-Studded Life.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 26, 2021): C1 & C5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Jan. 29, 2021, and has the title ‘BOOKS OF THE TIMES; ‘Mike Nichols’ Captures a Star-Studded Life That Shuttled Between Broadway and Hollywood.”)

The book under review:

Harris, Mark. Mike Nichols: A Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2021.

Toddlers Spontaneously Understand and Aid Puppies

(p. C4) A new study from Rachna Reddy at Duke University, Henry Wellman at the University of Michigan and their colleagues suggests that the special link between people and dogs runs deep. Even toddlers spontaneously treat dogs like people—figuring out what they want and helping them to get it.

. . .

Dr. Reddy and her colleagues enlisted the help of three canine experimenters—kid-friendly small dogs. The researchers showed nearly a hundred 2- to 3-year-olds the dogs in an enclosure, with a platform that was just out of reach. There was a treat on the platform, and the dogs naturally turned to the children and strained toward the treat, gazing at the kids with those notorious puppy-dog eyes. The toddlers spontaneously got the treat off the platform and gave it to the dogs or asked a grown-up to do it for them. Toddlers who had pet dogs at home helped the dogs out on 60% of the trials, but even toddlers without pets helped 40% of the time. The children helped more when the dogs were more engaged with them and were more enthusiastic about getting the treat.

. . .

The study suggests that humans succeeded in domesticating dogs because they spontaneously extended their abilities for cooperation and care to other animals. But this was a two-way street; dogs became adept at using signals that even very young children could understand.

For the full commentary, see:

Alison Gopnik. “MIND & MATTER; Our Deep Understanding Of Dogs’ Needs.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 4, 2023): C4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 2, 2023, and has the title “MIND & MATTER; The Deep Bond Between Kids and Dogs.”)

The study discussed in the passages quoted above is:

Reddy, Rachna B., Margaret Echelbarger, Natalie Toomajian, Taeah Hammond, and Henry M. Wellman. “Do Children Help Dogs Spontaneously?” Human-Animal Interactions (Jan. 16, 2023) https://doi.org/10.1079/hai.2023.000.

78% of Americans Not Confident Children Will Be Better Off

(p. A2) An overwhelming share of Americans aren’t confident their children’s lives will be better than their own, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NORC Poll that shows growing skepticism about the value of a college degree and record-low levels of overall happiness.

The survey with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization that measures social attitudes, showed pervasive economic pessimism underpins Americans’ dim hopes for the future. Four in five respondents described the state of the economy as not so good or poor, and nearly half said they expect it will get worse in the next year.

. . .

For more than three decades, NORC has asked Americans whether life for their children’s generation will be better than it has been for their own using its General Social Survey. This year 78% said they don’t feel confident that is the case, the highest share since the survey began asking the question every few years in 1990.

. . .

Some 56% of respondents said that a four-year college degree wasn’t worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with heavy debt.

For the full story, see:

Janet Adamy. “In U.S., Most Doubt Their Children Will Be Better Off, a New Poll Finds.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 25, 2023): A2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 24, 2023, and has the title “Most Americans Doubt Their Children Will Be Better Off, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds.”)

The poll mentioned above can be viewed at:

WSJ/NORC Poll (March 2023).

Exercise Can Beat Meds in Countering Anxiety and Depression

(p. A15) . . . a new paper evaluating studies of the impact of exercise on mood shows that physical activity, of any kind, is just as effective as antidepressants at reducing feelings of anxiety and depression—and sometimes more effective.

Dr. Ben Singh, a research fellow at the University of South Australia, was the lead author of the study, which appeared in February in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. He and 12 other scientists combed the research literature for all randomly controlled studies published before 2022 that involved adding exercise to a person’s “usual care,” to see how physical activity might relieve psychological distress.

. . .

“Any type of movement is effective: a bike ride, yoga or Pilates” said Dr. Singh. He mentioned that resistance training (like my Zoom workout) was best for reducing symptoms of depression, while yoga and Pilates were best at tamping down anxiety. “The higher the intensity, the better,” Dr. Singh said. “But just a walk around your neighborhood is effective, too.”

For the full commentary, see:

Susan Pinker. “MIND AND MATTER: Exercise Can Be the Best Antidepressant.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 25, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 23, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “new paper” mentioned above is:

Singh, Ben, Timothy Olds, Rachel Curtis, Dorothea Dumuid, Rosa Virgara, Amanda Watson, Kimberley Szeto, Edward Connor, Ty Ferguson, Emily Eglitis, Aaron Miatke, Catherine E. M. Simpson, and Carol Maher. “Effectiveness of Physical Activity Interventions for Improving Depression, Anxiety and Distress: An Overview of Systematic Reviews.” British Journal of Sports Medicine (Feb. 16, 2023), DOI:10.1136/bjsports-2022-106195.

Elon Musk Got Rich the Old-Fashioned Way, He EARNED It

(p. B4) Elon Musk is tired, his back hurts and his mom wants him to get some sleep.

. . .

A self-described nanomanager, Mr. Musk has long waded deeply into the weeds of the companies he runs, including SpaceX and Tesla Inc., green up pointing triangle routinely working late into the night and sleeping little. His tenacity has led to superhuman-like accomplishments, such as landing space rockets and making electric cars sexy.

. . .

Since taking ownership of Twitter Inc. in late October [2022], Mr. Musk’s workload has exploded to more than 120 hours a week from as much as 80 hours before, he told investor Ron Baron in November at a conference.

“I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, go to sleep, wake up, work—do that seven days a week,” Mr. Musk said.

. . .

Even before buying Twitter, Mr. Musk wasn’t a “chill, normal dude,” as he once joked on “Saturday Night Live.” Mr. Musk has said he usually goes to sleep around 3 a.m. and typically gets six hours of shut-eye before waking and immediately checking his phone for any new emergencies.

These days, Mr. Musk has said he is sleeping at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. He has even provided beds for employees.

. . .

Concerns about Mr. Musk’s health had circulated a few years ago, ignited by photos of him that appeared to show a new scar on his neck. In 2020, he confirmed he had two surgeries, the first a failure, to address neck pain.

His pain, Mr. Musk has said, traces to a birthday party thrown years ago by his second wife that was attended by a sumo wrestler.

Mr. Musk took to the ring and—according to him—managed to throw the 350-pound opponent, resulting in an injury to his spine. “It cost me smashing my c5-c6 disc & 8 years of mega back pain!” Mr. Musk said on Twitter last year.

. . .

Entrepreneur Arianna Huffington at one point in 2018 pleaded with Mr. Musk to take better care of himself.

. . .

He responded with a tweet sent at 2:32 a.m.: “Ford & Tesla are the only 2 American car companies to avoid bankruptcy. I just got home from the factory. You think this is an option. It is not.”

For the full story, see:

Tim Higgins. “Musk’s Frantic Schedule Comes at a Personal Cost.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Feb. 6, 2023): B4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated February 5, 2023, and has the title “When Does Musk Sleep? He Speaks of Limits to Fixing Twitter, Back Pain.”)

A Form of Environmentalism that Seeks Human Extinction

(p. A20) PORTLAND, Ore. — For someone who wants his own species to go extinct, Les Knight is a remarkably happy-go-lucky human.

. . .

Mr. Knight, 75, is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, which is less a movement than a loose consortium of people who believe that the best thing humans can do to help the Earth is to stop having children.

. . .

While the United States saw an increase in births during the coronavirus pandemic, reversing the country’s declining birthrate, a 2020 poll found that one in four Americans who had not had children cited climate change as a reason.

For the full story, see:

Cara Buckley. “Movement That Insists Best Thing for Us to Do Is to Slowly Go Extinct.” The New York Times (Friday, November 25, 2022): A20.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 29, 2022, and has the title “Earth Now Has 8 Billion Humans. This Man Wishes There Were None.”)