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 In Rebecca’s own words: I never thought I’d be one of   those obsessive, maniacal, “OME”-ers (“OME”   stands for “Oh My Edward!”), especially since I mocked my sister endlessly when she first started reading the TWILIGHT series. I’d automatically lessened my opinion of people when I found out that they were followers (yes, followers).  But one night, sick of constant mockery, my sister handed me the initial volume. “Read a hundred pages,” she ordered, “and if you don’t like it, you can stop.”  Unfortunately for my pride and self-esteem, I made it far past the first hundred pages. In fact, I finished more than half of the 500-page book that night—and I didn’t start reading until 11:30. But because I found myself so quickly sucked in, I couldn’t stop thinking about why —why these books? Why this fascination for “Edward”? What is it that is so exceptionally obsessing about these books? When Gina asked me to explain my obsession, she asked for ten points. I thought a little bit, and then wrote the number ten at the top of the page. As I started to write, I realized how difficult it was to explain exactly why these books are so beloved. So here are my five best tries at explaining pop culture’s most recent obsession:   5. It is anything but realistic. Reading Twilight , I think of it as an alternate reality that I am a part of in some way or another; and Meyer includes enough specifics and details to make our image of that reality three-dimensional and vivid. For one, half its characters are vampires, but more than that, it ignores most high school or relationship clichés and is something completely different. It abandons, well, common sense, which would (I hope) require the main character to be alarmed, not flattered, if she found out a boy was spying on her every night. Because of the books’ other-worldly nature and the simplistic style of writing, it becomes easy to read them as you might read a trashy magazine—without thinking, without questioning, without making any connection to real life. And this is lucky, since the book really falls apart if you probe it any further. Sure, you can discover some pretty annoying messages without looking too hard—ahem, abstinence—but I found it quite easy not to think about messages at all. The books seem entirely detached from reality and are written, well, like drugstore novels, and thus seem separate from the world of political messages and life lessons.   4. Suspense. Since it is after all a vampire story, we for once don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. I admit that I have atrocious taste in movies, but in most movies I see, I can predict exactly what’s going to happen. And while I clearly enjoy that, since I go back to see new versions of the same movie every weekend, I also like not knowing exactly what’s going to happen—will he kill her? (Doubtful, since there are four books.) Will he leave her? (Again, doubtful, though he flirts with it in the second book.) Will she become a vampire? Yes, I have heard people call it boring, but, personally, I have never read faster—I literally ripped pages as I turned them. 3. One reason why I was so invested in the characters is because I, like every other reader, identified with Bella. I think she has a personality, certainly more defined in the book than in Kristen Stewart’s sullen representation of it in the movie—but I do know how easy it is to project yourself onto her. I read Bella as a more upbeat character, an essentially happy and outgoing girl, while my more quiet friend read her as slightly more brooding and intense. In any case, in uniting myself with Bella in my mind, I became that much more invested in the story—and in what is my next point…   2. Edward. It would be impossible to discuss the obsession with Twilight without addressing the pivotal character of Edward. The obvious explanation for the obsession as that all these girls are in love with this boy–myself included. Why? Besides the danger aspect (bloodsucking, death, eternal condemnation, and so forth), the best reason I can come up with after many months of thinking about this is that he exists solely for the needs and desires of Bella (i.e. the reader). He is rarely preoccupied with his own problems, which you’d think, as he’s a vampire, would be plentiful, and devotes himself entirely to her—exhibit A, he stays with her every night. Oh, and he loves her unconditionally.   1. Finally, it is very easy to see the Twilight -obsessed girls as a kind of cult. And, indeed, that’s a bit what it felt like when I first started reading. I was welcomed in with a “Isn’t he great ?” by my friends who were fellow obsessives—though not , I am proud to say, by any weird, preteen, Edward-devoted websites. Though the hearty welcome didn’t really make me feel any cooler for having read the book, it was kind of a thrill to be joined in this alternate reality by your friends—to discover that what you thought was a private universe that took place in your room was actually shared by people you know (and millions of others, predominantly twelve-year-old girls—though I prefer not to think about that). Ultimately, Twilight becomes more than a book—it is an experience.   (Next post: Five Reasons A Middle Aged Woman Loathes TWILIGHT)

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Five Reasons A Smart Young Woman Adores TWILIGHT (Part 2 of 3)

I’m off to the city for a panel in recognition of International Women’s Day . Given the theme, I’d like to point readers to a recent piece from The Guardian asking ‘ Where are the books by women with big ideas? ‘ Books like Freakonomics, defining significant cultural or economic trends with a punchy title, never seem to be produced by women. But why? As you can imagine, I have much to say on the topic coming soon, but am first interested in your reaction to the article. Here’s an excerpt to get us started: Julia Cheiffetz, blogging at publishing website HarperStudio, dubs the genre “big think” books – making serious non-fiction subjects accessible and popular. “The point is, all of them promise access to a club whose sole activity is the exchange of ideas; all of them promise, however covertly, to make us feel smarter. And all of them are written by men,” she writes, also singling out The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. “It is hard to know whether women are better at telling stories than propagating ideas (I’m thinking of Susan Orlean, Mary Roach, Karen Abbott), or whether the intellectual audacity required to sell our hypotheses about the world simply isn’t in our genetic makeup.” Genetic make-up , eh? I’m not convinced. So where are the women with BIG ideas? Before I dissect this one, let’s hear from readers… Read the comments on this post…

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Where Are The Women With BIG Ideas? [The Intersection]

Yup, it’s tonight. If you were around here a few months ago, the day after the Fall Back day, you probably read this post . Disregarding the debate over rhetoric of science, that is probably my best, most detailed explanation for what happens to our bodies on those too strange days of the year – Spring Forward and Fall Back day. Spring Forward is much more dangerous, so be very careful in the mornings next week, especially on Monday. Take it easy, get up slowly, be a little late for work if you can afford it. Life and health are more important than a few minutes of work and being punctual on a day like that. And that post also contains a bunch of links at the bottom to other posts on the topic. Read the comments on this post…

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Daylight Saving Time [A Blog Around The Clock]

In the Times Science section today, Natalie Angier discusses a fascinating-sounding new book, by the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy . The book, ” Mothers and Others ,” argues that humans evolved a powerful set of moral instincts – a set of instincts that far exceed those of our primate relatives – because we depend on others to help us rear our helpless infants: As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, “Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding,” which will be published by Harvard University Press in April, human babies are so outrageously dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing. Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not. Human beings evolved as cooperative breeders, says Dr. Hrdy, a reproductive strategy in which mothers are assisted by as-if mothers, or “allomothers,” individuals of either sex who help care for and feed the young. Most biologists would concur that humans have evolved the need for shared child care, but Dr. Hrdy takes it a step further, arguing that our status as cooperative breeders, rather than our exceptionally complex brains, helps explain many aspects of our temperament. Our relative pacifism, for example, or the expectation that we can fly from New York to Los Angeles without fear of personal dismemberment. Chimpanzees are pretty smart, but were you to board an airplane filled with chimpanzees, you “would be lucky to disembark with all 10 fingers and toes still attached,” Dr. Hrdy writes. While stories of Darwinian evolution often stress the amorality of natural selection⎯we are all Hobbesian brutes, driven to survive by selfish genes⎯our psychological reality is much less bleak. We aren’t fallen angels, but we also aren’t depraved hominids. (In my book, I look at what happens when these moral instincts are defective: you get a psychopath.) I’m just so charmed by the hypothesis that human morality – this system of behaviors so often attributed to the Ten Commandments, Kant, etc. – might actually be rooted in the cries and smiles of infants. Babies, in this sense, are the glue that keeps us together – they are so charming that we’re nice to each other (or at least we don’t hurt each other) for their sake. Religion may have helped codify morality – and one shouldn’t underestimate the importance of turning our vague instincts into an explicit set of laws – but our moral emotions existed long before Moses got those stone tablets on Mt. Sinai. Read the comments on this post…

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Babies and Morality [The Frontal Cortex]

Back when I started this, I remarked that one of the reasons I hadn’t read the Origin was that I couldn’t imagine it being essential to a grasp of contemporary science. Regarding evolution, I think you could still make a case for this. But in other ways, that statement shows that you really shouldn’t opine on topics you know nothing about. Specifically, I’m talking about ecology (by which, just to be clear, I mean the study of the interactions of living things with each other and their environment, rather than ‘nature’ or ‘environmentalism’). It’s been said that all European philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Well, all ecology is a series of footnotes to Darwin. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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Chapter 12: Geographical Distribution, continued [Blogging the Origin]

You’ve been working hard on a project on the computer, and it’s time for at treat. You’ve been holding off, waiting for the delicious taste of – here, please fill in the blank. Coffee ice cream? a piece of dark chocolate? a donut? an onion bagel? some fresh strawberries? .         For me, it would be a creamy, sweet-sour lemon tart. You take the first bite. Very yummy! You take the second bite. Still yummy, maybe a little less yummy than the first bite, but never mind. You glance at the computer and something catches your eye. A Hollywood scandal, a political gaff, a weird and wacky video. You click on it, watch, and continue eating. Disappearing food! Suddenly you look down. Where did that treat go? Your fingers are sticky and there’s still a trace of flavor on your tongue, so it must have disappeared down the hatch while you weren’t looking . . . or smelling, or tasting, or enjoying. Disappointment and dissatisfaction set in. "That one just vanished! I’d better have another one." Next the internal critic voice pipes up "What are you thinking? One treat is enough. You know you’re trying to lose weight/eat better/stop grazing/etc." Thus begins the struggle over the simple, biologically natural, pleasurable act of eating. When I tell people that I’ve written a book on Mindful Eating*, and describe what it is, almost everyone will relate some difficulty they have with food, from an embarrassed confession of an addiction to chocolate to the palpable misery of binging and purging. How is it that food and eating have become such a common source of unhappiness? And why has it occurred in a country with an abundance of food? The fundamental reason for our imbalance with food and eating is that we’ve forgotten how to be present as we eat. We eat mindlessly. Food, fat cells and the stomach are not the problem We decided that the problem was in the food, so we’ve used chemical technology to take the calories out, the fat out, and to substitute chemical sweeteners and artificial fats. Food is food. It is neither good nor bad. Then we decided the problem was our fat cells, so we liposuctioned them out. Fat cells are just trying to do their job, which is to store energy for lean times ahead or for famine. For most of our evolutionary history, starvation was one snowstorm or drought away. Our fat cells are there to help us survive! When I lived in Africa I discovered that skinny women there have trouble finding spouses. They aren’t considered good marriage material —- they’ll get sick and die on you! Then we decided that the digestive system was the problem, so we staple the stomach or surgically by-pass the small intestine. The digestive system is just trying to do its job, breaking down food, absorbing nutrients and excreting what’s not needed. (There’s no question that bariatric surgery can be an emergency life-saving measure for some people. It works by forcing people to eat mindfully, causing pain and vomiting if they don’t. It is very expensive, has lots of side effects, and is not a long-term solution for the majority of people or for children with out-of-balance eating.) The problem is not in the food, the fat cells or the stomach and intestines. The problem lies in the mind. It lies in our lack of awareness of the messages coming in from our body, from our very cells and from our heart. Mindful eating helps us learn to hear what our body is telling us about hunger and satisfaction. It helps us become aware of who in the body/heart/mind complex is hungry, and how and what is best to nourish it. Mindful eating is natural, interesting, fun, and cheap. In this blog I’ll explore many aspects of Mindful Eating and Mindless Eating.** I’ll include interesting research on eating, cross cultural observations, and personal stories from our Mindful Eating workshops. I’ll also include Mindful Eating "Homework" at the end of each blog. These are suggestions for how to weave mindful eating into your life. People who take our mindful eating workshops really enjoy doing the homework. Don’t give yourself a grade. Of course you won’t do it perfectly. Just give it a try. What Is Mindfulness? Let’s start with what Mindfulness is. It is deliberately paying attention, being fully aware of what is happening both inside and outside yourself – in your body, heart and mind – and outside yourself, in your environment. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgement. The last sentence is very important. In mindful eating we are not comparing ourselves to anyone else. We are not judging ourselves or others. We are simply witnessing the many sensations and thoughts that come up as we eat. The recipe for mindful eating calls for the warming effect of kindness and the spice of curiosity. What is Mindful Eating? Mindful eating involves paying full attention to the experience of eating and drinking, both inside and outside the body. We pay attention to the colors, smells, textures, flavors, temperatures, and even the sounds (crunch!) of our food. We pay attention to the experience of the body. Where in the body do we feel hunger? Where do we feel satisfaction? What does half-full feel like, or three quarters full? We also pay attention to the mind. While avoiding judgement or criticism, we watch when the mind gets distracted, pulling away from full attention to what we are eating or drinking. We watch the impulses that arise after we’ve taken a few sips or bites: to grab a book, to turn on the TV, to call someone on our cell phone, or to do web search on some interesting subject. We notice the impulse and return to just eating. We notice how eating affects our mood and how our emotions like anxiety influence our eating. Gradually we regain the sense of ease and freedom with eating that we had in childhood. It is our natural birthright. The old habits of eating and not paying attention are not easy to change. Don’t try to make drastic changes. Lasting change takes time, and is built on many small changes. We start simply. Pick your mindful eating homework (1) Try taking the first four sips of a cup of hot tea or coffee with full attention? (2) If you are reading and eating, try alternating these activities, not doing both at once? Read a page, then put the book down and eat a few bites, savoring the tastes, then read another page, and so on. (3) At family meals, you might ask everyone to eat in silence for the first five minutes, thinking about the many people who brought the food to your plates. (4) Try eating one meal a week mindfully, alone and in silence. Be creative. For example, could you eat lunch behind a closed office door, or even alone in our car? Enjoy your meal! Further Reading and listening: * Mindful Eating : A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food, by Jan Chozen Bays, with an introduction by Jon Kabat-Zinn, released February 3, 2009 by Shambhala Publishing. (Includes a CD of 14 mindful eating exercises and meditations.) ** Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, published 2006 by Bantam Books. (A very funny look at very interesting research about how we all eat mindlessly.) © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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Mindful Eating

Stuck in the airport returning home from an emotionally exhausting day, tired and fighting an awful chest cold, my flight delayed to the wee hours of the morning, I stretched out on the seats in the waiting area with Randy Pausch’s book, "The Last Lecture." His lecture, his life, has some important messages regarding our goal pursuit. I had seen Randy’s lecture on YouTube , but not read the book. By the time I finished the book on the plane, I was in tears of course. I too am the father of very young children, and I’m older than Randy. His story touched on some of my deepest fears of loss. His story clearly speaks of time as a limited resource, something that 20-somethings rarely grasp, but by middle-age becomes painfully obvious to many people. As Randy puts it, "Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think" (p. 111). Randy, a self-admitted intensely focused person, understood the importance of time management long before his terminal cancer diagnosis. It is, as he called it, "one of my most appropriate fixations" (p. 108). He also was good at it, so he offered up advice from his experience that is worth sharing on this "Don’t Delay" blog. I have quoted each of his main tips below with an explanatory comment or example in parentheses after each, as necessary. Time must be explicitly managed, like money. You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. (Make manageable, concrete task lists and take one step after another.) Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? (Make sure your to-do-list tasks, your goals, are really worth pursuing.) Develop a good filing system. (Organization saves time in the long run.) Rethink the telephone. (Don’t waste time on "hold" – be prepared to do other things as you wait.) Delegate. (Many hands make light work, and everyone needs autonomy.) Take time out. (Everyone needs a break, and not all delay is procrastination.) Randy concludes his advice by writing, "Some of my time management tips are dead-on serious and some are a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I believe all of them are worth considering" (p. 111). So do I, particularly where he begins, "time must be explicitly managed" and where he ends, "Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think." Are you spending your time on the right things? Procrastination is the thief of time.   © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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The last lecture: Wisdom about time management

I am an unabashed lover of Scientific American. Well, ok, I’m also a grad student. So I can’t AFFORD Scientific American. But luckily, Scientific American has podcasts! There’s a regular weekly one that is around 40 minutes long, and then there are daily ones, called ’60-second science’. 60-second science represents the latest science tidbits as they come out, and, most endearing to Sci, they cover the good, the bad, and the weird. So I was very excited when I found out that Scientific American, specifically 60-second science, was putting out a BOOK! And when I found out that is was about BRAINS, and that I could review it, I got even happier. And it’s got a forward by Steve Mursky, who does the main Scientific American podcast. That is a sexy, sexy guy. And HINT: If you read to the bottom, there could be something good for you in it!! Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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Are you an Egghead? The Instant Egghead Guide to the Mind [Neurotopia]

There’s a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton’s new book The Art Instinct . He was on the Colbert Report last week, he’s reviewed in the Times , and he’s featured in this week’s Bloggingheads Science Saturday : While it’s kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I’m kind of skeptical about the book. Dutton’s argument is that human aesthetics are, contrary to the claims of the academic art establishment, more universal than socially constructed, and can best be understood through evolution. Or, to be more precise, through evolutionary psychology. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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Denis Dutton Goes On About Art [Uncertain Principles]

Science is fun. Now, I know that someone telling you a thing is fun is usually a guarantee that it isn’t. And I know that people who tell you science is fun usually do so in strained and pleading tones, and expect you to believe them because they have spiky hair and can play the harmonica. But it’s true. To see what I mean, read chapter 6 of the Origin, ‘Instinct’. Despite, or because of, having its share of ‘are you sure about that?’ moments, it’s a delight, because it shows Darwin doing the most fun thing in science: mucking about with reality, sometimes called experimentation. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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Chapter 7: Instinct [Blogging the Origin]