The Power of Place

The Power of Place by Winifred Gallagher (ISBN 9780061233357)
Rating: 6/10

This is a very intriguing book about the power of context and environment on our psyches. The subtitle is How our surroundings shape our thoughts, emotions, and actions. There's a good bit of the book which discusses Alaska and the effect of light on the psyche (all night or all day, every day). It dips into the psychological issues which impact people in these areas. Personally, I wouldn't do well in Alaska - I'd be depressed six months of the year with no sunlight to speak of. Different people react differently to the stimuli - some people have problems with Seasonal Affective Disorder, which would make the endless night so hard to deal with. Interesting also is the discussion of the all-day summers. These are the most productive parts of the year, where people work a lot more, and their social drive is kicked into high gear.

Then there's temperature. Some people are born cold and some are born hot, with all the gradations in between. That much be the reason why it's so damn cold in my office - the evil mastermind who sets the temperature was born a hot person. Some people naturally feel more awake and alive when it's cold, or when it's hot. And when it's the opposite, they can get a kind of seasonal affective disorder also, or just not feel quite right.

She also gets into discussions about the environment of the womb and the effect of outside stimuli (Mozart, anyone?) on a fetus. An interesting aspect of this discussion is her discussion of premies, how they are overstimulated in the NICU, they hear tons of noise around them, yet there is no visual stimuli to go with the noise, so they don't learn to associate noise with action (for example, someone says something, and you turn and look at them talking).

One of her most interesting topics is about territoriality and the power of community. When people in a community are invested in their surroundings, upkeep their area, interact with neighbors, etc, there tends to be a much lower crime rate. Take, for instance, the small town where everybody knows everyone else. It's much harder to get away with anything in a town like that, because there are more social pressures to conform because there are more personalized interactions between neighbors.

In a city, however, this becomes more difficult. The author stipulates that in areas with people of different financial means (lower class and middle class together, in an area which may be gentrifying, or on the other hand, going downhill), it can be much harder to create a sense of territory. She points to homogeneous societies (like Tokyo and Hong Kong) that she says run fairly smoothly, whereas melting pots like New York, Chicago and LA have a much bigger crime problem. Having never been to either of those Asian cities, I can't speak to the veracity of that. Any idea whether this is actually the case? What could be other factors which could make Hong Kong and Tokyo less crime-filled? Japan, at least, definitely has a culture founded politeness and respect, and because everyone comes from the same culture, perhaps this encourages lawfulness. America was founded on rebellion and encourages free-thinking and independence. This can be a positive thing in many respects, but perhaps also leads itself to more crime.

She points out the snowball effect - one person has a broken window and it creates a sense of disrepair and lack of care for the territory. So perhaps someone else doesn't have the cash (or the time or the inclination) to paint their house and it starts peeling. Fairly soon, the street starts to look more run down. And crimes moves in. On the flip side, on a run down street, one neighbor might put out a flower box, another clean up their garden. And fairly soon it starts looking more cared for and less like a forgotten street where crime won't be noticed.

It was a very interesting book - a bit slow to read, but with many thought-provoking ideas. I'm glad that I read it, though it wasn't as much of a page turner as, say, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics or Blink.

Deer Sushi

Given the shocked faces I get when I tell people I ate horse meat in France, imagine what they'd look like if I had (raw) horse meat sushi!

Japan is known around the world for its sushi - if you ask the regular person on the street what Japanese food is, odds on they're going to say sushi. The increasing rarity of high quality tuna has got to be greatly unnerving for the restaurant industry, rather like it would be for Boston to run low on lobster.

This opens a couple of cans of worms. First, there are the environmental ramifications. With the world's population soaring, people packing tighter into cities (after this year, the majority of people will live in cities). With continued advanced in medical technology, people are living longer and healthier than ever before. As we have more mouths to feed, we put even more strain on the environment (can we say carbon emissions and global warming, anyone?). It's only to be expected that we start to stress our current stocks of fish (both by overfishing and through the mercury contamination from power plant waste). The old adage "survival of the fittest" just isn't appropriate anymore. Seriously, with the technological resources at our disposal, can you honestly tell me that cattle in an abattoir have a fighting chance, and would survive if only they were fit to?

Animals (and plants, for that matter) are becoming endangered right and left. It's impossible to know whether their endangerement, or extinction, will go out quietly, or whether there will be a Butterfly Effect). So, as much as I love eating maguro at my local sushi bar, the fact that it's become harder to come by will perhaps have a positive effect - sushi chefs will start to focus on other fish, meat, and vegetables and help to keep the tuna stock in control and not overfished. Sounds like they've had a good start by passing the lows to reduce fishing already.

The other major issue is one of innovation. And this is huge. Malcolm Gladwell gave a fascinating talk on innovation (as pertaining to spaghetti sauce). If you don't recognize his name, he is the author of two of my favorite books - The Tipping Point (ISBN 0316346624) and Blink (ISBN 0316010669).

The fact that tuna is less available will force sushi chefs to seek out new interesting maki. While I'm not totally convinced about raw horse meat or venison rolls, I'd be very interested to try it, because it's so different. The same things all the time create stagnation of creativity. Granted, sushi is an art form and it's often about simple and clean flavors (I think it's just us crazy Americans who create all these wacky rolls like the Red Sox Maki and Matrix maki). But it seems that any chef who doesn't keep up with the times and strive to innovate will often fall by the wayside (see my blog post on the French haute cuisine environment). While people will always enjoy the classics, it is important to keep the menu fresh and new, the make people cock their heads and go "oooh!" Without innovation, we would not have made the huge strides in nearly every field (especially technology) in the past century.

It's refreshing to see a country taking positive measures to protect the resources it uses, rather than just turning a blind eye and saying "the fish will always be there if we will it to be so." I hope that the rest of the world (especially the US) follows their lead to prevent the mass extinction of the vast number of resources we consume (or waste) on a daily basis.