• About

Historicalness.com

~ for casual history lovers

Historicalness.com

Monthly Archives: March 2012

Battling Evolution: The Difficulty (And Importance) of Keeping Your Cool

27 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Matt in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

In the dizzying hours following JFK’s assassination, while most were understandably overcome with emotion, the man right in the center of it all who suddenly found himself ascended to the Presidency, was by many accounts extremely calm.

As Robert Caro describes in “The Transition”, his gripping New Yorker article this week, LBJ’s life instantly transformed from a going-nowhere-fast Vice Presidency that was likely about to be embroiled in a kick-back scandal, to the most powerful man on the planet.  Yet in those few hours on November 22, 1963 — when he was whisked away from the shots being fired, to the hospital where JFK was pronounced dead, to Air Force One to be sworn in — he’s described generally as calm, cool, and collected.

LBJ is sworn in on Air Force One, Nov 22, 1963

We know such composure can be valuable.  But according to Laurence Gonzales in his book Deep Survival, “only 10 to 20 percent of people can stay calm and think in the midst of a survival emergency.”

Why?

If being calm is good in emergencies, why doesn’t it come easily to us?  Said another way, why is LBJ’s poise unusual and noteworthy even 50 years later?

Gonzales argues that stress, which releases hormones that interfere with the part of the brain that allows us to perceive our broader environment and make decisions, “causes most people to focus narrowly on the thing that they consider most important.”  Could be fight.  Could be flight.  Could be anything.  The problem is, we live in a modern world where it’s not just all about getting to safety — every day we face an infinite set of “hazards” that evolution couldn’t possibly have forseen to prepare us for.

He continues: “Emotions are survival mechanisms, but they don’t always work for the individual.  They work across a large number of trials to keep the species alive.  The individual may live or die, but over a few million years, more mammals lived than died by letting emotion take over, and so emotion was selected.  For people who are raised in modern civilization, the wilderness is novel and full of unfamiliar hazards.  To survive in it, the body must learn and adapt.”

One of those key adaptations is the ability to control one’s fear, enabling the brain to maintain its ability to perceive and make informed decisions.

Great adventurers have described this necessity in their own way.  Gonzales quotes one of the first South Pole explorers in 1910 as saying the “quality which is perhaps the only one which may be said with certainty to make for success [is] self-control.”

Shear acts of will might be required to extert self-control and overcome our ingrained instincts.  As Teddy Roosevelt wrote many years after his time in the North Dakota badlands:  “There were all kinds of things which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gunfighters; but by acting as I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Some Like it Hot

20 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by Matt in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Today was hot.

Maybe not Ted Stricker hot, but still hot enough that walking around outside qualified as a workout.  In Central Park today, the National Weather Service said it reached 73 degrees.

Let’s put that in context: normally it’s 51 degrees on March 20th in New York.  Fittingly, last year, it was 51 degrees on this date.  Today wasn’t an all time record — that belongs to 1945’s 83 degrees — but safe to say this has been an unusually warm winter in the city, as well as in many other parts of the country.

I was curious what stats are available to help us quantify how mild the season has been, so I headed over to the National Weather Service’s site, which, if you can get past the 1995 look n’ feel, is actually pretty useful (they have NY data back to 1869).

Here’s what I found:

  1. This winter has been the second warmest on record — interestingly, 4 of the top 5 have occured in the last twenty years.
Average Temperature for Dec-Feb (Warmest Rankings)
Temperature Season
41.5 2001-2002
40.5 2011-2012
40.1 1931-1932
39.6 1997-1998
39.2 1990-1991
Normal: 35.1

2.  Over the past 150 years, the average monthly temperature for March has been 40.3 degrees — interestingly, since 2000, that average is 7% higher at 43.1 degrees.

So today’s temperature of 73 degrees is over 80% higher than the usual monthly average in Central Park.

Feels great in the short term.  But if the warming trend is only in one direction, it does make you wonder what are the implications for the long term.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Top Posts & Pages

  • Falling Averages: A-Rod & Baseball's Decline
  • Syria & Russia. And Tartus.
  • How Many Heart Beats Do We Get?
  • Who benefits from a stock-market boom?
  • New York City Property #2: Trinity Church

Recent Posts

  • Falling Averages: A-Rod & Baseball’s Decline
  • Syria & Russia. And Tartus.
  • How Many Heart Beats Do We Get?
  • Who benefits from a stock-market boom?
  • New York City Property #2: Trinity Church

RSS Goodness

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • September 2013
  • April 2013
  • December 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011

Categories

  • Alexander Hamilton
  • Animals
  • Astronomy
  • Biology
  • Books
  • British Royalty
  • Continuing education
  • Events
  • Food
  • Hello world
  • K12
  • Khan Academy
  • Lynda.com
  • Madison Square Park
  • Maps
  • Muffins
  • Museum of the City of New York
  • Names
  • New York
  • Politics
  • Post-secondary
  • PR
  • Queen Anne
  • Queen Victoria
  • Sports
  • Statue of Liberty
  • Trinity Church
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
  • World War II

Blogroll

  • Anne Collier Photography
  • Beach Chair Scientist
  • Emiliano Granado Photography
  • Have Fun With History
  • History Channel
  • The History Blog
  • Vanishing New York

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 12 other followers

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: