Children born today with a diminutive level of worry--those whose emotional physiology underreacts to stress, novelty, and threat--grow up to become criminals much more often than average. Criminality has long been known to be partially heritable, and a worry volume set to "low" in the reptilian brain is part of the mechanism.
--Lewis, Amini and Lannon in A General Theory of Love p49

What interests me in their assessment of the value of risk aversion and its opposite as mentioned above, is that these physicians note no value in being a risk taker, only increased criminality. They mention that "Many of our ultralow-anxiety ancestors were bitten by snakes, gored by tusks, and fell out of trees. Those premature deaths shifted the gene pool toward higher trepidation." By my own observation, people who are less risk averse are more likely to be found in sports such as whitewater kayaking, backcountry skiing and paragliding. This is where I've found several of my dearest friends, and they are not, by and large, criminals. Also, Dr Thom continues to tell us that entrepreneurs are risk takers, much different from the rest of the population. The statistics show us that most entrepreneurs are male, which begs the question, are men more likely to be risk takers? I think so. And I don't think that this disposition is any guarantee of criminality, though it certainly does increase the odds that rules and laws will be taken with a grain of potassium. Another question: if it is so, then why are males less risk averse? I think evolution offers answers to that one also.

Pouring rain out there. I got up at 5:30 am because the cat woke me up, and I knew I had only one more hour until my alarm lit up....and would not sleep anyway. I have a quiz at 7:30am every Monday. Today it is on the Clinical Physical Diagnosis of heart pain, palpitations, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and more broadly atherosclerosis. Interesting stuff.
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Well I never thought I would live to report it, but today we had our second significant snowfall of the winter. This afternoon I was able to go cross country skiing in the streets of Portland. I covered our entire neighborhood. There was about 3" on the ground when I went, not quite enough to cover curbs but otherwise enough to ski freely in the street, sidewalks or grassy areas. There were quite a few other people out on XC skis, and in the park there were at least 100 people sliding down the hill on everything from plastic discs to cardboard boxes. I sat on a bench and watched for a while, laughing at the wrecks. Most people ignored me and the boys who wrecked the most spectacularly seemed embarrassed that I was laughing at them. I thought they did it to make a show.
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Today I covered the whole mountain. I started out at Sunrise Lodge, and worked my way to the edge of the resort I hadn't seen yet. It was wandering intermediate runs with still fresh new snow along the edges. I started bouncing on my skis and pretty soon remembered the joy of powder. The neat thing about skiing powder is that YOU MUST have equal weight on both skis to ski it. For me, if I start the day on powder, even if I can't find any powder later in the day, I retain that both-ski feeling and ski better.
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We have wireless internet at the rental house so I get to post! We're in a housing development called sunray, and the nearest city is Bend. The ski area Mt Bachelor is a midsized ski area, nicely arranged with two lodges at the bottom and one at the top of the dividing line between the beginner terrain and the advanced terrain.
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The wind started yesterday, and the snow started this morning. It is supposed to continue to snow throughout the day. Because it is so blustery, the snow is drifting. My window is wet from melting flakes. The roads are very slippery.
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