Celebrate the new year
well. I admonish you to have a good year!
A minor procedural
note on these messages. I decided
recently that I wanted one hard copy of each of them. In the process of printing them, I realized
that some of the earlier messages were longer than more recent ones. What I do now is cut them off at 10 pages
(plus or minus a page or so) in a Word document and then paste the Word
document into an email. So the length
will be fairly uniform (except for travelogues, which seem to go on forever).
If I haven't made it
clear before, I will now: I welcome and
enjoy any comments, observations, disagreements you may have with what I
write. I'm glad to report them, and as
you know, sometimes I incorporate your comments later.
* * *
This made me laugh.
"Older dads have 'geekier' sons." Researchers jointly from Britain and the U.S.
(King's College London and Mount Sinai School of Medicine) collected
information on 15,000 pairs of twins; the data were for when the twins were 12
years old. (It's not clear to me why
they used twins; the study could have been done with any male offspring with a
wide range of paternal ages at birth of the sons. Maybe it was just an offshoot of other
research on twins.)
When
the twins were 12 years old, they completed online tests that measured
'geek-like' traits, including non-verbal IQ, strong focus on the subject of
interest and levels of social aloofness. Parents were also asked whether their
child cares about how they are perceived by their peers and if they have any
interests that take up substantial majority of their time. Using this
information, the researchers computed a 'geek index' for every child in the
study.
As you would expect in such research, they controlled for
socio-economic status, education, and employment.
What they found was that older fathers had sons who were
"more intelligent, more focused on their interests [,] and less concerned
about fitting in." Those
characteristics are the ones they decided make a boy a geek. In addition, those boys did better on STEM
subject school tests a number of years after their geekiness was ascertained. So while there are disadvantages to being the
child of an older father (e.g., autism, schizophrenia), it seems there may also
be advantages—if you want a son who's a geek.
I'm not sure I accept the definition they use; Elliott and
I have the same sense, that guys who get better grades in school aren't
necessarily considered geeks. But they
had their reasons; they defined the term as they did
based
on considerations of what could be ‘adaptive’ in the modern environment. We hypothesised that high IQ; ability to
retain strong focus on the subject of interest; and some degree of social
aloofness are likely to be particularly beneficial in the knowledge-driven
economy. Although these traits are
continuously distributed in the population, ethnographic literature groups them
under an umbrella-term ‘geek’ (‘intelligent outcast’; ‘labelled because of
their expertise and lack of social skills’; ‘socially awkward and overly
intellectual ( . . . ) prone to obsessive interests. Therefore, we labelled our
composite measure of non-verbal intelligence, restrictive interests and reduced
need to fit in with the peer group as ‘geek index.’
There are
reasons why the environment could play a role:
the older fathers may be further along in a career, a higher income, and
thus able to provide higher quality educational opportunities and a "more
enriched environment." I
suppose—but I've never thought parental income or social/educational/economic
status might be a factor in geekiness.
If anything, at least in my experience, geeks are more likely to come
from slightly lower SES backgrounds (but that's an impression, not data). Moreover, if those 15,000 twins came from
across the economic spectrum, and they controlled for SES, that should have
been eliminated as a factor.
The
researchers hypothesize that there could be a link between geekiness and autism
(i.e., an overlapping genetic effect), on top of the demonstrated link between
autism and higher IQ. Push the geekiness
too far (get a different balance of genes) and you may get autism.
I only
mention this research because it describes Elliott and me to a
"T." I didn't qualify as an
"older" father by their definition because they looked at sons of
fathers who were over 50 (I was 39 when Elliott was born, so probably older
than the American average, but not 50).
The characteristics of the sons fit Elliott, I think: he's above-average in intelligence (we have
no IQ score), he focuses intensely on his interests, and he does well in school
tests (once he got beyond high school).
I have
occasionally expressed regret to Elliott that I wasn't about 10 years younger
when he was born; I would have had more time and energy for him. His response has been something to the effect
that, "that's OK, because if you hadn't had me when you did, whenever it
was, I wouldn't be here." True
enough.
* * *
We all
know that glass is really a liquid and flows, over time, right? It's true—but perhaps not the way we think
(or at least not the way I did). Writing
in the Journal of the American Ceramic
Society (who knew?), Penn State material science faculty took a look at
medieval stained glass (in their case, in Westminster Abbey, glass dating from
1286) and analyzed the flow rate. They
observed that it is a misconception that glass in these windows would
"flow" noticeably in less than a millenium at a temperature way below
that required to make glass liquid.
This
result confirms that the long-lasting myth about the flow of glasses at room
temperature is still just that: a
myth. The thickness variation within the
cathedral glasses is related to the medieval manufacturing methods used before
the modern glass industry developed.
They did
learn, through sophisticated materials science tests, that the estimated rate
of flow for medieval glass was *much* faster than had been previously
estimated. In order to be sure I
understood what they found, I wrote to the corresponding author of the
article. Professor Mauro wrote
back. "We actually found that the
glass flows at a rate 16 orders of magnitude faster, which means 1016
times faster or 10,000,000,000,000,000 times faster. Despite this huge difference, the glass still
doesn’t flow on a human time scale."
So even though it flows 10 quadrillion times faster than earlier
thought, it still only flows about a nanometer every billion years.
This
conclusion applies equally to the glass in old houses that's thicker on the
bottom than on the top, Professor Mauro told me. It's the manufacturing process, not flow.
* * *
No surprise to me, but I imagine that to some outside
higher education it could be: that there
is a professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan who focuses
on the politics of health policy in Europe.
Professor Greer wrote an article this year, in the (British) Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,
about the impact of "populist" politics on public health policy. According to the sciencedaily.com summary,
his conclusion isn't positive.
The
populist radical right is a threat to core values of medicine and public
health, even within a functioning democratic system. . . . Populism, he says, sits badly with the
evidence-based style of public health, citing comments made by Mike Pence, the
new United States Vice President, who has endorsed "gay conversion"
therapy that purports to make patients heterosexual and has said that
"smoking doesn't kill."
The
so-called populists don't like social (that is, taxpayer) support for health
care or adopting laws to promote public health.
They incline to "welfare chauvinism" in order to exclude
coverage from people they do not like, people who don't fit in their idea of
populism (such as immigrants or people who have a different skin color). Professor Greer notes that public health
professionals around the world have been committed not only to health but also
human rights; he "warns medical and public health professionals to be very
careful about working with radical right parties and governments" because
doing so would likely contradict "our commitments to human rights."
At least
as far as health policy played out in Congress in 2017, I would say Professor
Greer is correct. I'm not sure, however,
that the health care debate here is colored by xenophobia as much as by a total
misunderstanding on the right about how health care works and to what extent
it's about the health of the society, not just individuals.
* * *
Related to the forgoing, 2020 is a mildly worrisome year
and 2040 even more so. In 2020,
"20% of the population of the world’s richest countries will be older than
65—a magic number because, starting in the mid-1900s, it’s the age when people
stop working, . . . collect pensions, and consume lots of health
care." It's the latter fact that
bulks large in the calculations of economists in particular; in 2040 the
percentage of the population at or over 85 in developed countries will grow to
nearly 6% (up from about 1% in 1990).
Here's a bar graph on health-care spending (U.S.).
What
creates fears is that cause of death is evolving, from cancer/cardio/strokes to
degenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer's.
As more and more people are afflicted, in much older age, with varieties
of dementia, the cost of care skyrockets.
Here's
from British
Politics and Policy at LSE (London School of Economics) for Britain:
Over
the last 20 years, men’s life expectancy at age 65 has increased by 4.7 years
and women’s by 4.1 years. However, not
all of these extra years are ones spent independent. Indeed we have seen from the Office for
National Statistics that trends in healthy life expectancy and disability-free
life expectancy are not keeping pace with gains in life expectancy with a
resulting increase in the years with ill-health and disability. But it is difficult to equate these measures
with the amount of care that older people may need.
Our
recent research is the first to be able to show that only about a third (36%)
of the increase in men’s life expectancy was spent independent whilst for women
it was only 5%. Most of the gain in
women’s life expectancy (58%) was with low level dependency, requiring care
less than daily. More worryingly 20-30%
of the increase in life expectancy at age 65 over the last 20 years has been
years requiring 24hr care. So the social
care crisis is not just an issue of more older people but also that those older
people are requiring significant amounts of care for longer than their
counterparts 20 years ago.
What those of us advancing in age worry about: we may live longer, but the increase in
life's length isn't necessarily accompanied by an increase in independent
living.
At the
same time, these changes in demography have implications for retirement.
Otto von
Bismarck, the minister-president of Prussia 1862 – 1890, was worried about the
rise of Marxism in Germany. As one way
to forestall support for it, he introduced a plan to provide an income to the
elderly (defined as age 65). The average
lifespan at the time in Germany was 58, so it wasn't much of a benefit for
most. What it did do, however, was two things: set the modern state on the path to providing
old-age benefits and (arbitrarily) set the retirement age at 65.
There are
examples of retirement benefits earlier, as far back as the Romans, especially
for soldiers. The U.S. provided
retirement income to military personnel after the Civil War. The widespread adoption of
state/worker-funded retirement plans bloomed after Bismarck, and as lifespans
increased, more and more people reached retirement age and could receive the
benefits of these plans.
Some would
argue that we (industrialized, developed countries) can't afford
state-sponsored/funded retirement benefits, or at least that they have to be
reduced. Some would argue the tax should
be increased to continue to fund the benefit at a reasonable level. I'm squarely in the latter camp.
* * *
(There are
spoilers here, if you don't know the plot lines for two murder mysteries.)
We went to
see the latest iteration of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express with the detective Hercule Poirot. I liked it; Kathy was ho-hum about it. This is the second "major" filming
of her novel, and starred Kenneth Branagh as Poirot, with Johnny Depp, Michelle
Pfeiffer, Penélope Cruz, Dame Judi Dench, Leslie Odom Jr., Daisy Ridley, Willem
Dafoe, and others.
The 1974 version had Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and
starred Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Vanessa
Redgrave, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins and Wendy Hiller. There have been other film/TV versions as
well, none of them all that good, with the exception of David Suchet's
performance in the long-running British TV version that included every Poirot
mystery written.
The other Christie mystery that's been filmed repeatedly is
And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians). Kathy and I watched both the 1945 and 1965
versions of And Then There Were None. The 1945 version was, by today's lights,
pretty hokey; the 1965 version somewhat less so. The cast of the 1945 film didn't have many
leading actors and actresses (at least not that I recognized): Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis
Hayward, Roland Young, June Duprez, Mischa Auer, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith
Anderson, Richard Haydn and Queenie Leonard.
The 1965 edition (titled Ten
Little Indians), however, was another all-star cast: Hugh O'Brian, Shirley Eaton, Fabian, Leo Genn,
Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Daliah Lavi, Dennis Price, Marianne Hoppe,
and Mario Adorf.
I wonder what it is about murder mysteries that attracts
such well-known actors and actresses to play bit parts in these movies. Maybe it's just those murder mysteries.
It occurs to me that Christie sort of flipped the plot
between the two. In the train mystery, a
whole group of people murder the bad guy.
In Ten Little Indians, one guy
gathers a group of bad people on an isolated island and kills them, one by one,
including himself at the end.
As with Pygmalion and
"My Fair Lady," the movies of And
Then There Were None changed the ending to make it happier. In the book, everyone dies. In the movie, a nice youngish couple
survives. Phooey. (As I have probably mentioned before,
Professor Ed Fogelman, in a first-year poli sci course I took in 1970, commented
that the English knew that Professor Higgins would never become romantically involved with Liza Doolittle—the English
class structure is far too rigid for that.
It was the Americans who changed the ending for the movie. In the case of the murder mystery, however,
it was Agatha Christie herself who changed the ending when the novel was
re-done as a play.)
As I suppose I must expect from time to time, Ten Little Indians reminded me of
Krystin. (I mentioned this trip and
books on tape in my memorial statement for Krystin.) On a road trip the two of us took many years
ago to join Pat and Elliott for one of Pat's family gatherings on the East
Coast (Pat and Elliott flew out), we drove from Minneapolis to Lexington, KY,
the first day. During that very long
drive, we listened to books on tape, and the first one (and the only complete
one) was Ten Little Indians. I believe that started Krystin's lifelong
interest in reading murder mysteries; she was reading a series by Camilla
Lackberg at the time she died. One of
the books I took from Krystin's bookshelf was Ten Little Indians. (We
started but did not finish Huckleberry
Finn and Little Women. Neither of us liked either one.)
I'm debating whether to order the DVDs of Suchet playing
Poirot; there are 33 disks, it costs $165, and has 86 hours of viewing. There appears to be general consensus that
Suchet is by far the best Poirot.
* * *
Following
up on my discussion of Legos, this image captures the experience of every
parent whose children have had Legos.
* * *
On that
recurring question of whether money can buy happiness: more recent social science research says it
can. It has been known for some time
that spending on experiences rather than material objects results in
longer-lasting happiness. As one writer
put it, "a new table is easier to get used to than a trip to
Chile." Moreover, it appears that
it's easier to get over a bad experience than the purchase of an object one
later regrets buying. Maybe that's
because the experience can fade in memory while the damn object reminds us
daily of the mistake we made (unless, of course, we get rid of it—or put it in
the basement).
The more
recent take on spending suggests that using money for social experiences brings
more happiness than spending on solitary activities. In the case of the latter, it turns out they
bring no more happiness than the purchase of objects. Even introverts like being with other people;
extraverts more so. The two groups spend
differently, but if they spend according to type, they'll be happier.
The lesson
seems to be that money can indeed buy happiness if you know how to spend it
right. That said, "more than
income, investments, or debt, the amount of cash in one’s checking account
correlates with life satisfaction"
(clearly a first-world, middle/upper class circumstance). So if the checking account is reasonably
healthy after the holidays, spend socially according to your personality
type. If you know what it is—and believe
it to be true.
* * *
I've
prattled on about de-Christmasing the house in earlier years and won't repeat
the thoughts here. But we had one sad
story (not really) this year. Many, many
years ago, my partner Ann Sonnesyn and I won the traveling trophy in our bridge
group (which "trophy" must always be a white elephant). That year it was an electric poinsettia, made
with plastic leaves and pipe cleaners, stuck in styrofoam. Really tacky.
In honor of our rare bridge victory, however, I have proudly displayed
it every year at Christmas since we won it (probably in the late 1970s or early
1980s).
I realized
this year, after I'd set it on top of the grandfather clock, that the wiring
for the red light bulbs was a little frayed—and that the darn thing could
probably burst into flames at any moment.
So down it came, and after a futile attempt at re-wiring it, into the
garbage it went. I told Pat that it had
bitten the dust; she responded "Can't say I'm shocked. It lived a somewhat
static life but created many bright memories." Uff da.
Gary
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