A new study in the April 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience shows that people who drink moderately have increased activity in the part of their brains involved in rewards—and less activity in the parts used to detect threats.
Here’s what happened: 12 healthy people lay down at the National Institutes on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Half were given IVs with alcohol. Half were given saline solution. (This study could have been much more fun than it was, admittedly.) Afterwards, while hooked up to brain imaging equipment, they all looked at pictures of people who looked afraid (images that traditionally bother human beings). In response to the scary pictures, the buzzed subjects showed less anxiety—and more excitement in the brain’s reward-system.
In fact, just getting free stuff period been shown to decrease people’s sensitivity to risk. That’s another reason to give free drinks to gamblers at casinos. But enough about casinos. They clearly get this already. The larger point is that our risk calculus is probably more malleable than we think—which could be an asset if we exploited it in pursuit of our own best interests.
The Unthinkable will hit stores in Brazil in June 2008, just after the US release. The publisher is Globo.
The Unthinkable hits the UK on July 3, 2008.
This is exciting since so much of the book relies on the wisdom of British researchers and survivors. The UK has long been way ahead of most places, including the States, when it comes to fire safety. That’s partly because London burned down twice—in 1212 and 1666. Nothing focuses the research funding like a mass-casualty disaster.
To understand computer models of crowd behavior in fire, I met with Ed Galea, director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich in London. Galea is a smart guy who stubbornly insists we can get better—much better—at designing buildings, ships and airplanes with real people in mind. We met in his office one summer day and spoke without interruption for four hours, surrounded by piles of videotapes, books and photos of tragedies gone by.
Today’s New York Times has a story about the lack of good options for FEMA disaster housing. The tainted trailers obviously won’t work, and many other ideas are too expensive, too big or too nice, believe it or not.
Stories like this remind me how money does not always beget resilience. This country has enough talent and resources to build a house-in-a-box that keeps people safe and healthy (but is cheap to replace if a truly nightmarish storm comes in—and the people have to evacuate). But three years after Katrina, the options are slimmer than they should be.
I recently met a woman who has spent the past six years living and working in Ghana. She told me a story of watching a Hurricane Katrina documentary with some of the locals. The film detailed how diapers, strollers and bottles had to be rushed from around the country to help the babies in the storm’s path.
In Ghana, this detail seemed a little strange. There, infants don’t use diapers. Women carry babies on their backs and learn to detect the signs of an imminent excretion. Then they hold the babies over the side of the road. I am glad we don’t do that here; the downside of raw sewage on the street obviously outweighs the upside. But it was a reminder of how developed countries are sometimes more vulnerable to certain, smaller risks than underdeveloped countries.
Americans used to build their houses themselves. We knew how to do it, and we knew what kind of weather the houses would withstand. Luckily for us, we’ve forgotten. We now spend more time watching TV shows about remodeling our bathrooms than we do learning how to harden our houses against storms that happen every year.
I love diapers. I thank God for diapers. But I suspect I could learn something from the resilience of people who have never bought Pampers.
One day, you could get a text message from the president telling you to evacuate your home because of a chemical spill—or to take shelter in your basement because of a radiation attack. Today, the feds adopted rules for a nationwide text-message alert system. (Don’t panic: the messages would be free, and you could opt out if you wanted.)
A sensible idea. Regular people have been using text messages to save themselves and find loved ones for years. After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of kids taught their parents to text—and it was the only way to communicate for days.
But like most hi-tech emergency tools, texting creates new problems while fixing old ones. Putting aside the logistical challenges, which are formidable (as is, the program isn’t expected to be in place until 2010), there is the problem of mission creep.
I get emergency alerts from Washington, DC, on my cell phone and over email. You would be stunned by how many messages I have gotten. Judging by quantity alone, you would think I lived in the middle of an interplanetary war. I once got 7 messages in one morning because of…rainy weather.
Weather is the obsession of the Alert DC people. It’s a legitimate concern, of course. Weather kills a lot of people nationwide every year. But slightly above-average winds or a potential threat of hail send these guys into hysterics.
Naturally, I’ve stopped paying a huge amount of attention to the alerts. Which is a shame, because I might need them one day.
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