Progress Daily

Primitive musicality is built into our DNA.

• Two-day old infants show a preference for some music over others (N. Masataka, 1999).
• Nearly all infants babble with melody and intonation (Gardner, 1997, p. 251).
• At 1, children can often match pitch (Kessen, Levine & Peindich, 1978).
• At 1 1/2, children engage in spontaneous song (Kessen, Levine & Peindich, 1978)
• At 2 1/2, children show extended awareness of songs by others (Davidson, 1994, in R. Aiello)

Even basic musical development requires some modicum of encouragement and teaching.

• “Musical development continues beyond the age of 7 or so only in an environment that provides some sort of tutelage.” (Gardner, 1997, p. 253; Gardner, 1973; Winner, 1982)
• Absolute (”perfect”) pitch is not a genetic accident or random occurrence, but is developed in young childhood under specific external conditions (D. Deutsch, 2004; Takeuchi & Hulse, 1993).

Advanced musicianship requires methodical training and “deliberate practice.”

• Talent proves of no avail in the absence of thousands of hours of practice distributed over a decade or more, as the youngster gains facility in various first- and second-order musical symbol systems. (Gardner, 1997, p. 256).
• The very best professional musicians practice the most and the smartest compared to the next best group of professional musicians, who in turn practice more and better than the third-best group (Ericsson et al, 1993). Top musicians consistently require about ten years and 10,000 hours of practice to achieve the height of their virtuoso skill-level.
• Among student musicians, the best ones also practice more than the next-best, who practice more and better than the ones who eventually drop out (Sloboda, Davidson, Howe, and Moore, 1996).
• “Deliberate practice” is qualitatively different from ordinary experience. In ordinary experience, an individual is exposed to certain task demands, spends time attaining proficiency at that task and then plateaus, more or less satisfied with his/her level of competence. Under these passive circumstances, more time spent with the same task after the plateau will not significantly increase skill-level. Under a regime of deliberate practice, the individual is never quite satisfied and is always pushing a little bit beyond his/her capability, actively and incrementally expanding that capability. (Ericsson, 2006, chapter 38).

Accomplished musicians have key differences in their brains — as a result of training.

• Right-handers not trained in music show typical right-hemisphere processing, while right-handers trained in music show left-hemisphered dominance (Bever & Chiarello, 1974)
• Cortical representations of fingers of the left hands of string players get significantly enlarged compared to non-musicians — and moreso for those who train earlier in life. (Elbert et al, 1995)

After a thorough review of the research, Lehmann & Gruber state:

“Taken together, it is difficult to obtain clear evidence on the role of innate abilities, despite the fact that giftedness features prominently in everyday discourse. On the other hand, much evidence exists that practice and other environmental factors have a large impact on changes in many variables related to musical performance.” (p. 458.)

“On Musical Talent” by David Shenk

Marion Nestle cautions against taking the diet out of the context of the lifestyle. The Mediterranean diet is widely believed to be one of the most healthful ways to eat, yet much of what we know about it is based on studies of people living on the island of Crete in the 1950s, who did physical labor, fasted regularly, ate a lot of wild greens (weeds), and consumed far fewer total calories than we do. Similarly, much of what we know about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet is based on studies of Seventh Day Adventists, who drink no alcohol and never smoke. People who take supplements are healthier than the population at large, but their health probably has nothing to do with the supplements they take — which recent studies have suggested are worthless. Supplement-takers are better-educated, more-affluent people who, almost by definition, take a greater-than-normal interest in personal health.

Studies suggest that people on average eat between 1/5 and 1/3 more than they claim to on questionnaires. How do researchers know that? By comparing what people report on questionnaires with interviews about their dietary intake over the previous 24 hours, thought to be somewhat more reliable. The magnitude of the lie could be much greater, judging by the huge disparity between the total number of food calories produced every day for each American (3,900 calories) and the average number of those calories Americans own up to chomping: 2,000. (Waste accounts for some of the disparity, but nowhere near all of it.)

People who eat the way we do in the US today suffer much higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity than people eating more traditional diets. (4 of the 10 leading killers in the US are linked to diet.)

Today, a mere 4 crops — corn, soybeans, wheat & rice — account for two-thirds of the calories humans eat. Humankind has historically consumed some 80,000 edible species, and that 3,000 of these have been in widespread use. Humans require somewhere between 50 and 100 different chemical compounds and elements to be healthy.

Many researchers say that these historically low levels of omega-3 (or, conversely, high levels of omega-6) bear responsibility for many of the chronic diseases associated with the Western diet, especially heart disease and diabetes. (Some researchers implicate omega-3 deficiency in rising rates of depression and learning disabilities as well.) Nutritionists argue for taking omega-3 supplements or fortifying food products, but adding more omega-3s to the diet may not do much good unless you also reduce your intake of omega-6.

Americans spend, on average, less than 10% of their income on food, down from 24% in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation.

“Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80% full.

Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians are as healthy as vegetarians.

“Unhappy Meals” by Michael Pollan

In 2001, Deborah Danner, analyzed the handwritten autobiographies of 180 nuns of mean age 22, and compared the positive emotional content of the writings with the nuns’ health six decades later. It turns out that sisters who used words like “joy” and “thankful” lived up to 10 years longer than did those who expressed negative emotions. Michael Marmot, Andrew Steptoe, & colleagues studied the emotions and health of more than 200 middle-aged Londoners in their daily lives. They found that people who reported that they were pretty much happy every day were verifiably healthier. Happiness is associated with reduced neuroendocrine, inflammatory and cardiovascular activity. Their work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The scientists put their volunteers — men and women of white European origin aged 45-59 — through laboratory stress tests and monitored their blood pressure and heart rate over a working day. Saliva samples were taken to measure the volunteers’ cortisol content. Cortisol is a stress hormone related to conditions such as type II diabetes and hypertension.

There was a 32% difference in cortisol levels between the least and the most happy subjects. Happy subjects also showed lower responses to stress in plasma fibrinogen levels, a protein that in high concentrations often signals future problems with coronary heart disease. Finally, happy men had lower heart rates over the day and evening, which suggests good cardiovascular health.

The researchers also used an established method to measure psychiatric disorders that are known to predict coronary heart disease. So they were able to control for psychological distress — and they found that health-related biological factors were independently related to happiness. In other words, people aren’t just happy because they are healthy, they are healthy because they are happy.

In 2005 researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore showed that laughter is linked to the healthy function of blood vessels.

The researchers showed volunteers funny or stressful segments of movies and found that those that provoked laughter apparently caused the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate to increase blood flow.

“Happiness Is the Best Medicine,” by Rowan Hooper

A survey released on January 23, 2007, by Prince & Associates in collaboration with Hannah Grove found that 70% of today’s multimillionaires said being wealthy gave them “better sex.” (You can request a free copy via email here.) A majority also said wealth gave them “more adventurous and exotic” sex lives.The survey polled nearly 600 men and women with net worths of more than $30 million and a mean net worth of $89 million. The survey polled men and women who were the financial “principals,” meaning they were the primary decision makers in their households.

More than 80% of both the men and women surveyed were married, although the women’s wealth was independent of their husbands’. Nearly 3/4 of the women surveyed (about 150) said they’d had affairs, compared to about 50% of the men. While the male numbers are in keeping with findings for the broader American population, the figure for women is almost twice as high as the national average. More than 1/2 of all the men and women surveyed had been divorced at least once.

63% of rich men said wealth gave them “better sex,” which they defined as having more-frequent sex with more partners. That compares to 88% of women who said more money gave them better sex, which they defined as “higher quality” sex.

The women in the survey were almost twice as likely than their male counterparts to have “more adventurous and exotic” sex lives than they did before they were wealthy. 72% of the female respondents said they were “mile-high-club” members (meaning they’ve had sex on an airplane), compared to 33% of the men. (All the survey respondents owned jets or shares in jets.)

“The Rich Libido,” by Robert Frank

According to Indur Goklany’s The Improving State of the World:

Life expectancy, which for much of human history was 20-30 years, increased from a worldwide average of 31 in 1900 to 67 in 2003. For the high income countries it has reached 78 years.

Infant mortality (death of infants before the age of one per 1,000 live births) was typically over 200 before industrialisation. That is over 1/5 of babies died before reaching their first birthday. The worldwide average has fallen from 150 in the early 1950s to 57 in 2003. In the developed world the average is 7.1.

“There is no ‘paradox of prosperity’,” by Daniel Ben-Ami

According to 1990 census data, workers who live in metropolitan areas surrounding cities of more than 500,000 people earn 34% more than workers who live outside metropolitan areas, and 11% percent more than those who live in metropolitan areas with smaller central cities. Within metropolitan areas, on average, individuals who work within the central city earn 17% more than those who work beyond the city limits.

New migrants to cities experience less than a 1% wage gain from their move. But after 5 years, those workers are earning over 10% more than similar workers who stayed in rural areas.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth tells us that young urban dwellers have significantly higher IQ scores on average than young people living in rural areas.

In 1950, 34% of US workers had manufacturing jobs; by 1990 this proportion had declined to 17%.

José Scheinkman, Andrei Shleifer, & Edward L. Glaeser found that every 20% increment in a city’s 1960 concentration of employment in manufacturing corresponded with a 16% decrease in population between 1960 and 1990. That same 20% increase in dependence on manufacturing in 1960 led to a 50% decline in manufacturing employment and a 13% decline in non-manufacturing employment between 1960 and 1990.

Cities that had a high proportion of college-educated workers in 1960 grew in population over the subsequent 3 decades, while those that didn’t, shrank.

Between 1950 and 1970, one additional year of schooling on average in a city increased its growth rate by 3.8%. For the 1970 to 1990 period, that figure soared to 8.1%.

James Rauch and David Maré have both marshaled overwhelming evidence that higher average education levels in a city translate into higher wages for everyone — not just the well-educated themselves.

Glaeser, Scheinkman, Shleifer and Hédi Kallal found that as the concentration of employment in a given city’s largest 5 industries fell by 10% — that is, as the city’s economy became more diverse — that city’s rate of growth in employment rose by 9% between 1960 and 1990.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, male college graduates’ earnings advantage over male high school graduates doubled from 37% in 1979 to 74% in 1992.

“Why Economists Still Like Cities,” by Edward L. Glaeser

In America around 20m jobs, or about one in seven, are lost involuntarily every year. Only a small fraction of those, some 2m-3m a year or 2% of all jobs, are permanent “displacements,” where workers have little or no prospect of returning to their old industry. The displacement rates for Europe are broadly similar. Only a small share of these permanent job losses can be directly attributed to globalization, rather than, say, to technological change.

A study by Lori Kletzer found that only 14% of displaced manufacturing workers are in industries facing intense international competition. To judge by the number of people receiving Trade Adjustment Assistance, the figure is even lower: fewer than 120,000 workers were deemed eligible for it in 2005.

“Trade’s Victims,” The Economist

The rate of urbanization is currently about 1.3 million new city dwellers a week, 70 million a year, still apparently accelerating. The world was 3% urban in 1800, 14% urban in 1900, 50% urban in 2007, and probably headed in the next few decades to around 80% urban, which has been the stabilization point for developed countries since the mid-20th-century.

Almost all the rush to the cities is occurring in the developing world (though the countryside continues to empty out in developed nations). The developing world is where the greatest poverty is, and where the highest birthrates have driven world population past 6.5 billion.

Women liberated by the move to a city drop their birthrate right on through the replacement rate of 2.1 children/woman. As a result, there will be another billion or two people in the world total by midcentury, but then the total will head down.

“Cities — Global Population Shrinkage And Economic Growth,” by Stewart Brand

Rich countries are mostly trading with each other. China, with about 1/4 of the world’s population, produces less than 4% of the world’s exports. Mexico exported less than Belgium in 2000. India, with a billion people, produced less than 1% of world exports. And these figures are for physical merchandise: developing countries contribute even less to the trade in commerical services.

North American imports from the least developed countries were only 0.6% of total imports in 2000, down from 0.8% in 1980. And 0.5% of Western Europe’s imports in 2000 were from these countries, down from 1%. For Japan, the figure is 0.3%, down from 1%. For all the major world traders put together, the percentage of their imports from the least developed countries is 0.6%, down from 0.9% 20 years before.

The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford

Between 1990 and 2000, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States grew from $5.8 to $9.8 trillion – an increase of nearly 70%. At the same time, exports grew from $393 billion to $780 billion. This period also saw an increase in employment in the U.S. from 109 million to 132 million non-farm jobs. In the high-tech sector alone, exports reached $180 billion in 2003, supporting an estimated 1.4 million jobs in the United States. 95% of the world’s customers and 70% of the world’s economic product lie outside the US.

Export-related jobs pay, on the average, 18% more than jobs unrelated to exports or trade. Between 1983 and 2002, higher-paying managerial and professional jobs in the US expanded from 23% to 31% of total employment.

Between 1993 and 2002, total private sector employment increased by almost 18 million jobs. Yet during this time, almost 310 million jobs were destroyed – while 328 million new jobs were created.

Over the last decade, according to the World Bank, per capita incomes grew 5.1% in developing countries with high trade and investment flows, while more isolated countries experienced income declines of 1.1%.

“International Trade,” Electronic Industry Alliance