Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a free lunch

On Saturday, I not only had a free lunch but I was paid to eat my free lunch. I answered some questions as part of a research panel. Three questions, four tops. Over 100 participants in the audience. Fifteen minutes of my time answering questions from the moderators. Twenty minutes max. Myself and two other panelists. We were veterans of two earlier rounds of this research. $150 to wag my tongue. And eat food. We felt like kids in the plastic-balls bin. Oh sure, you can grouse that SOMEONE paid for this free lunch, some entity or entities that awarded the research grant blah blah blah. But that is ever and always the case. Someone pays. Of course.

It's a wide world.

Icelandic ponderings

"Do not travel to other dusty lands, forsaking your own sitting place; if you cannot find the Truth where you are now, you will never find it." Dogen

That is today's quotation on my Zen Calendar.

Point taken.

But I am nevertheless inching closer in my plans for a trip to Reykjavik, Iceland.

1. It's not that "dusty" a land, is it? (Maybe it is, volcanic ash and all.)

2. Hey, if I don't find Truth, at least I can find a Good Time.

previsions of Reykjavik, v. 1.0

So, will there be bubbling hot springs, roasted coffee, Bacchanalian abandon, sobriety, serenity, escarpments, or wind? Some or all? I suspect I will conduct little research beforehand, on Iceland or its most-northern-in-the-world capital. I doubt I will take a camera. My unsmartphone is not camera-adept. I will likely visit that tall church I found out about online before I decided I should let things unfurl, like the sails on the Viking ships. Is it nonsense to go somewhere to find out something about one's own interior spaces? Will people speak English. (Yes, I am sure.) Iceland and Ireland differ by one letter. I could offer a meaning there, but that is a stretch. 

What if I want to stay?

visions of Reykjavik

Reykjavik. Once you learn how to spell it, you're halfway there, right? Iceland. The thought of journeying to Iceland beckons to me on an unseasonably uncold Tuesday night in Syracuse, New York. Go north, and then north of there. Go to the planet's true north, its northernmost capital. While others go to the Cayman Islands (as I once did) or Belize or Puerto Rico or Mexico, you name it, to a warmer clime, I am fantasizing doing deeper, going into the cold, mine and Nature's. Solo. And why not. Just the name of the country invites stoic challenge, though geothermal springs dispel those notions, as do stories of all-night revellers and Nordic, guilt-free abandon. Why not. Having flown to Ireland and Germany and seen the in-flight map of Transatlantic flight progress displayed on the screen on the back of the seat in front of me, and in those instances flying over Iceland, and thinking, wow, we are almost there, in Europe (though not quite; is Iceland in Europe?), I am thinking, Let's skip the continental Europe part and see what Iceland offers, even if no ice is there, literally or metaphorically.

Food for Thought, and Thought for Food

By now, you've heard about the study in today's news concluding that obesity is socially contagious, as is thinness. The study is no Mickey Mouse effort. It covers some 32 years and over 12,000 people. It was conducted by Harvard Medical School and University of California San Diego researchers. (The figure shown is from James Fowler of UC San Diego, and it depicts the close correlation of obesity and social networks. Or so I gather. For all I know, it's illustrating vomit dispersion or aerial demographics of Berlin graffiti artists. It took years to create. Anyway, it's gorgeous, Jim.)

This story fascinates me on many levels.

1. I love the term "socially contagious." It's probably old hat to you hipper academics, but it's new to me. A cursory Google search yields hits related to obesity, homosexuality, gun violence, smoking, organizational misbehavior, substance abuse, and materialism. For starters. I'm sure I'm misstating or intimating core arguments incorrectly for each of those topics. But I predict this study will catapult the term socially contagious into the front lines of discourse, including as a weapon in the U.S. presidential election campaign (which really cannot claim to reach the heights of something called discourse). And then we will grow socially weary of this contagious phrase. (Perhaps you already have done so.)

2. The concept is hardly surprising. After all, sober people choose sober friends; boozers hang out with other drinkers; gangstas congregate with other gangstas; willowy ballet dancers associate with other willowy ones. From what I discern, though, this research says it goes deeper than that. The study seems to say we don't merely reinforce and validate each other's behavior but actually cause it by setting social norms. (I'm only surmising this, based on the linked summary. Don't ask me how or why. What do I look like a sociologist?)

3. This underscores the need for social research on eating. Here's what I mean. My eighth-grade science teacher, Mr. Charles Robinson at Burdick Junior High School in Stamford, Connecticut, extolled the virtues of how we eat, not just what we eat. He pointed out the healthy habits of ethnic and ancient groups who ate as a group. Eating for them was (is) communal, unhurried, and entirely social. Contrast that with modern America: eating is solitary, fractured, rushed, or distracted (or some mixed salad of all those adjectives). There's no doubt in my mind that cancer research should focus more on how we eat at least as much as what we eat. That's why, if I owned the company, no one would be allowed to eat at their desk while working, ever, and a lunch break with real food would be mandated.

Chew on that.