I know, you might be a bit underwhelmed by this news, but scientists have found that
found that the baby’s intellectual development is influenced by both genes and environment or, more specifically, by the interaction of its genes with its environment.
Apparently, nine out of ten children have a particular gene. When this gene is present breastfeeding increases their intelligence. When it’s not present (one child in ten, the breastfeeding doesn’t make a difference)
The thing that really grabbed my attention however was in the conclusion –
“We’re more interested in proving to the psychiatric community that genes usually have a physiological effect,” Moffitt said. “When looking at depression or intelligence, the key bit that’s often left out here is the environmental effects.”
Surely this is where the future discoveries will lie – in understanding the way in which genes and the environment (and I include nutrition here) interact to affect mental functioning.
Here’s to more joined up thinking!
Heroes Not Zombies 
This is something that I had “felt” to be true. I have an interest in crime, the “hows” and “whys” behind events. (Yes, sometimes I peer too deeply into the fetid crevices of a criminal’s mind and recoil shuddering.) I think it is important to look at these things and not flinch away, to better understand what went into “making” criminals and work to try to at least mitigate the development of future criminals sometimes. I think this is possible, but it will take time and lots of studying.
We, as a society would do well to not sweep the darker elements under the carpet. We need to pull the carpet back and examine what is there, so we can gain insight and learn what “makes it tick” and what “made it grow that way” and what “will calm some of the beasts” and what “preventative measures can lessen or prevent future occurances”? I realize though, that it takes a strong stomach, and a person who is strong in themselves to be able to look very deeply at such things. Even then, it isn’t healthy to dwell on them too long without taking a break lest your heart and mind be warped.
I’m an introvert as it is, (I tested INFJ on some test or other…) but I can tell when I need a break when I start really feeling “I don’t trust *PEOPLE*”. Individuals I can deal with, but groups of people are more prone to pack mentality. Also predators hide in crowds. I’m not always so fearful, thankfully. (I actually like going to events with large attendance, I like “people watching”.) It is an odd dichotomy, because I can trust individuals fairly well, but I find myself stiffening and growing wary and putting emotional walls up with large groups of people. So many times I have seen what people do when in groups being led.
Example: Most of my High School Senior class (and part of the Junior class) lost their drivers licenses because they all trashed a farmhouse while drunk. Not only were they under the legal age to drink, but they tried to claim they thought the house was un-occupied so that is why they demolished everything. I got the impression that most of them were just “following the leader” and doing what everyone else did. Yeah, I was a weird art student, the only goth in my class. Appolonian goth, not Dionysan, I’ll get you a link to an archived essay that explains my Creed. Here: http://web.archive.org/web/20060503071930/http://blood-dance.net/goth/origins.html
Gah. Take the link to the WayBack machine, (otherwise known as the Internet Archive, a search will easily find it) take off the first part, and just search the archives for blood-dance.net/goth/origins etc. That should pull it up for you. Hopefully it won’t time it, it is a well written essay.
Ah, also, you want the May 03, 2006 entry on there. Apparently that is where I got the archive in the first place. I notice though, it loads more slowly from my bookmark than it does directly from the archive, so maybe you’ll manage to open it? It’s the background and graphics that slows the loading I think. If needful I can swing you the text from the site somehow, swing a comment to my about page with your e-mail and I’ll get it to you that way. I won’t publish the e-mail.
And, for those who have read the essay, and also Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, you will know what I mean when I say “I am Ged, and so are you!”
Ged/Sparrowhawk is pursued by the shadow he set loose on the world in A Wizard of Earthsea. The shadow wounds him horribly, and disfigures his face. He lives in fear of it for some time until Ogion advises him to turn around and pursue the shadow. The shadow flees, and Sparrowhawk/Ged chases it across the world seas. Finally he corners it, and names it gaining power over it. I will qoute a few passages of the culmination to explain my cryptic remark:
“Then the thing that faced him changed utterly, spreading out to either side as if it opened enormous thin wings, and it writhed, and swelled, and shrank again. Ged saw in it for an instant Skiorh’s white face, and then a piar of clouded, staring eyes, and then suddenly a fearful face he did not know, man or monster with writhing lips and eyes that were like pits going back into black emptiness.
At that Ged lifted up the staff high, and the radiance of it brightened intolerably, burning with so white and great a light that it compelled and harrowed even that ancient darkness. In that light all form of man sloughed off the thing that came towards Ged. It drew together and shrank and blackened, crawling on four short taloned legs upon the sand. But still it came forward, lifting up to him a blind unformed snout without lips or ears or eyes. As they came right together it became utterly black in the white mage-radiance that burned about it, and it heaved itself upright. In silence, man and shadow met face to face, and stopped.
Aloud and clearly, breaking that old silence, Ged spoke the shadow’s name and in the same moment the shadow spoke without lips or tongue, saying the same word: “Ged”. And the two voices were one voice.
Ged reached out his hands, dropping his staff, and took hold of his shadow, of the black self that reached out to him. Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one.”
Ged defeated the darker side of him that he unleashed that night on Roke Knoll by admitting it existed and was a part of him. I know I have the ability to build, or tear down, and that sometimes both are needful. I choose to be careful with my actions, but I don’t deny I’m human, and flawed.