[Paleopsych] Fwd: Tortured Souls & Eunuchs at Orgies...

Sun Mar 6 06:19:08 UTC 2005

In a message dated 3/3/2005 8:08:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
joe at quirk.net writes:

Mark: 
This is amazing!  And hilarious, when it gets to the bit about  writers.  I'm 
going to send this to my friend Howard Blooom, because it  fits in with his 
theory.  An average of almost 4 years of life added to  life expectancy awarded 
to winners among 762 individuals I'd say is  statistically significant.  Of 
course we run into that same old  correlation-is-not-causation problem:  How do 
we know people who are  naturally "vivacious" aren't more likely to win 
Oscars and live longer?   Maybe vivacious people tend to exercise more, live 
longer, and win more  Oscars.   
Judith Rich Harris, who wrote "The Nurture Assumption", talks about this in  
terms of broccoli.  She says an article will come out:  "Broccoli  eaters live 
7 years longer!"  So reader assumes:  "Broccoli can  extend my life."  She 
points out that this is faulty logic.  Maybe  people who eat broccoli also tend 
to be people who jog and don't smoke, and  broccoli has nothing to do with 
extending life.  She says that when these  kind of correlations confirm existing 
biases, they are published as if they  prove something.  But when a 
correleation is demonstrated that  contradicts existing biases, like, say, "Prayed for 
outlive other cancer  patients" or "Adopted kids more violent if biological 
parent was violent,"  then we all say, "Well, that doesn't mean... " 
Still, a great little study report.  Thanks for sending it. 
The question is, if I stop writing now, will it extend my life? 
See what I mean? 
Joe

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark L."  <emdls at pacbell.net>
To: joe at quirk.net
Subject: Tortured Souls  & Eunuchs at Orgies...
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 17:17:57 -0800

I read the following article... and nearly pee'd myself laughing at the  
middle when I got to the part about the cruel but predictably cosmically  ironic 
fate of Oscar winning writers.  You know, I would never want to be  an Oscar 
winning actor - I value my sanity, privacy and introversion too  much...  but it 
thought it might be nice to win an Oscar in writing...  till I read below...;)

-mark.

______________

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/02/26/international/i
174807S72.DTL&type=printable www.sfgate.com 

____________________________________

_Study:  Oscar Winners Outlive Other Actors_ 
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/02/26/international/i174807S72.DTL) 
- By ROB  GILLIES, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, February 26,  2005

(02-26) 17:48 PST TORONTO, Canada (AP) --

A Canadian professor of medicine argues that actors who win  Academy Awards 
on Sunday night won't only boost their chances of other  box-office hits, but 
will likely live longer than their fellow  nominees.

Dr. Donald Redelmeier, a professor at the University of Toronto,  says his 
research shows that Oscar winners live nearly four years longer  than other 
actors.

And multiple winners, he says, live an average of six years  longer. Want 
proof? Katharine Hepburn, who won a record four acting prizes,  lived to the ripe 
old age of 96.

Redelmeier says the study proves that Oscar success has a  powerful influence 
on a person's health and longevity.

"Once you've got that statuette on your mantelplace, it's an  uncontested 
sign of peer approval that nobody can take away from you, so  that any subsequent 
harsh reviews, it leaves you more resilient," Redelmeier  said. "It doesn't 
quite get under your skin. The normal stresses and strains  of everyday life do 
not drag you down."

The study, funded by the Canadian Institute of Health and  Ontario Ministry 
of Health, included all 762 actors and actresses ever  nominated for an Academy 
Award in a leading or supporting role. For each  nominee, researchers also 
identified an actor of the same gender and roughly  the same age who appeared in 
the same film as the nominee.

On average, award winners lived to the age of 79.7, while  non-winners lived 
to be 75.8.

"Once you win, you've got a reputation to live up to, even if  you weren't so 
inclined, you get surrounded by an entourage that's also  heavily invested in 
your reputation," said Redelmeier. "So you end up  sleeping properly every 
night, eating well, exercising regularly every  day."

An extra average of 3.9 years of life is significant, says  Redelmeier, 
adding that if all cancer patients in North America were cured,  life expectancy 
would grow by only 3.5 years.

The ongoing study, which was initially published four years ago  in the 
Annals of Internal Medicine, also found that the effect of winning an  Academy 
award is about the same for men and women, comedies and dramas, and  leading and 
supporting role winners.

The only Oscar winners that don't get the benefit of longevity  are 
screenwriters. In fact, the reverse is true. The tortured souls live on  average 3.6 
years fewer than those who don't win.

"We find a survival gain for the actors, the directors but we  find a 
survival loss for the writers," said Redelmeier, who suggests that  writers aren't 
coddled and are prone to bad habits, such as smoking and  drinking. "Writers do 
not lead such exemplary lives. They don't have to eat  properly, sleep 
properly or exercise at all so, as a consequence of that  they don't receive any of 
the monitoring that other notable individuals  do."

Redelmeier said he was inspired to study the movie industry  after watching 
the Oscars on television. He noticed the people on stage  looked nothing like 
his patients.

"It's not just the wardrobe and the plastic surgery and makeup,  it's the way 
they walk and speak, they seem so much more vivacious, much  more than just 
skin deep," he said. "So I thought, this is really an amazing  way to look at 
social gradations at the upper echelons of  society."

URL:  
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/02/26/international/i174807S72.DTL

____________________________________

©2005 Associated Press    

----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution  of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate  Psychology Department, New York University; Core 
Faculty Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango  Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, 
Academy of Political  Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human  Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; 
executive editor -- New  Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology  Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer  Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see  www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of  Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

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