The Overlooked Office Space Heater Test

Recently, a research team from the U.S. National Institutes of Health looked into whether men and women have different reactions to hot and cold ambient room temperatures. According to one news report, the study concluded that there were “very slight gender differences in temperature perception of a room at ambient conditions and very few gender differences in physiological response to a perceived chill.”

“Very slight gender differences”? Is this what passes for science these days?

You can read about how the study reached that erroneous conclusion, but all I can say is that they ran the wrong kinds of tests. If they had attempted more practical, real-world analysis, they would have reached the correct conclusion: women tend to be far more sensitive to cold than men, and it really isn’t even a close question. Here are three obvious tests that the research team should have included in their study:

The Office Space Heater Test. Surprisingly, the research team did not ask which gender is more likely to have a space heater in their office. Based on personal experience, I’d say it’s got to be women, by a factor of about 999 to 1. In some of the offices in our firm, space heaters are cranked up to maximum output and it is so hot you could grow African violets in there, and the female occupants are nevertheless complaining of the cold.

The Sweater Test. Another obvious oversight was the failure of the research team to go into the closets of study participants, count the number of sweaters they owned, and evaluate the bulkiness of those sweaters. I think that exercise in the scientific method also would have yielded a clear result: women tend to own more sweaters, and bulkier sweaters, and wear them more often.

The Fleece Blanket Test. In the most egregious omission, the study did not conduct a simple but conclusive experiment: put a study participant on a couch in front of a TV in a reasonably cool room, put a folded fleece blanket on the couch, and see whether men or women are more likely to use the fleece blanket. A reasonable follow-up would be to again look at where the study participants live and count how many fleece blankets they own, and whether they are strategically positioned in every room.

This kind of news story does raise troubling questions about the validity of the scientific research results we are getting these days.

A Shopping Cart Story

We’ll be heading out to the grocery store to do some shopping this weekend. When we get there, we’ll use a device so familiar to Americans that we typically don’t really give it much thought: a grocery cart. We’ll disengage the closest one from the long line, wheel it in, and start heading up and down the aisles.

The humble grocery cart is such an integral part of the whole supermarket experience it’s hard to imagine one without the other. It’s one of those devices that seems so obvious now, viewed in retrospect, that you’d think it wouldn’t even need to be invented.

But it was, of course. The grocery cart was the brainchild of Sylvan N. Goldman, seen above, who was a grocer in Oklahoma. In the 1930s, Goldman bought the Humpty Dumpty grocery store chain and introduced a number of new ideas–including, most notably, the grocery cart. Goldman came up with the idea in 1937, in his carpentry shop, and his groundbreaking invention received a patent in 1939. His first device was a grocery basket that attached to a frame with wheels. The baskets could be removed and stacked and the frame could be collapsed and easily stored. Goldman formed the Folding Basket Carrier Company to manufacture it.

Goldman’s ingenious idea swept the nation and revolutionized the grocery business. Shoppers who formerly were limited to what they could fit into a handheld basket now could buy even more. Throw in the concept of people driving to grocery stores, and you’ve got the two basic elements of the modern American big grocery store run. Goldman’s daintier device quickly morphed into the big, heavy, honker grocery cart that we all know so well. I do, in particular, because my first job, at the Big Bear supermarket, involved going into the parking lot at the end of the day and retrieving every orphan cart that had been left behind by shoppers and returning them to the store.

So when we will be loading up our cart this weekend, we’ll have Sylvan Goldman to thank. Now, if we only knew the back story of the unlucky shopper who got the first “folding basket carrier” with a rogue wheel . . . .

80 Can Be Weighty

On the health front, it can be hard to know what to do sometimes. Confusing and often contradictory studies that can influence lifestyle choices seem to abound.

For example, I’ve always understood that, as you get older, a big part of maintaining good health is working to keep your weight down, because excessive weight is associated with many problematic health conditions that can affect mortality–not to mention causing trouble for aging joints. Now I’ve seen a study that suggests that for people over 80–a group the study, incidentally, refers to as the “oldest-old,” which seems a bit harsh–maintaining more weight and a higher body mass index number is associated with decreased mortality risk.

So, what’s a person who’d like to make it to that “oldest-old” category to do?

Apparently successful, long-term aging is an exercise in threading the needle. In your 60s and 70s, stay focused on the scale and the beltline, and keep that weight off. But, at the same time, don’t get too weak and scrawny, either, because if you make it to 80 you might need to bulk up a bit more. But if you do make it to 80, let the party begin!

It also means you should keep both the “fat clothes” and the “skinny clothes” in your closet, because you’re probably going to need them all at some time or another.

Cicadas On The Cusp

This year will be a big cicada year in the Midwest.

We live with cicadas every summer, thanks to the “annual cicada” nymphs that emerge from their underground homes, climb the nearest tree, and molt into their adult form. They then make an unholy racket as part of their mating process. Every so often, one or more of the cicada species in the broods that remain underground for much longer periods–13 or 17 years–also emerge, and the cicada love call noise level increases accordingly. This year, multiple species in both of the longer span cicada broods will emerge, for the first time since 1803, so we’ll probably need earplugs.

It will be prime time not only for enduring the calls of the cicadas, but also for studying these interesting–albeit loud–creatures. One of the things scientists are interested in examining is a fungus called Massospora that infects only cicadas. The fungus replaces their abdomens and genitals with fungal tissue and fills their systems with chemicals, causing them to engage in unusual sexual behavior to spread the fungus even more. Among other things, scientists are interested in seeing whether the fungus can be used for medicinal purposes in humans. (Speaking only for myself, I’d be leery of ingesting any medicine created with a cicada fungus that has the effects described above, but then I’m not very adventurous.)

I’ve lived through a number of these periodic cicada brood emergences, and it’s really no big deal. It’s loud at night when the cicadas are getting busy, but they soon die, making for crunchy walks in the cicada zones and helping to enrich the soil. I’d never travel to see even more cicadas, but if you want to get maximum cicada exposure, scientists say that Illinois will be ground zero.

An Overrated Flavor

The other day we celebrated a birthday at the office. The birthday boy had indicated to his friends that he really was a huge fan of cherry pie–so that ended up being the birthday treat, rather than cake. I happily joined in the singing of “Happy Birthday,” but I passed on the pie. I typically like fruit pies, especially apple and blueberry, I’ve never cared for cherry pie, or for that matter cherry anything. I think cherry is the most overrated, and therefore overused, flavor agent in Flavortown.

Pretty much everything comes in cherry flavor. In addition to cherry pie, you’ve got cherry-themed ice cream, chocolate-covered cherries, cherry suckers, cherry popsicles, cherries jubilee, cherry soft drinks, cherry licorice, cherry jawbreakers–the list goes on and on. In fact, cherry flavor is so ubiquitous that they even use it to make cough syrup and other patent medications more palatable. Instead of a spoonful of sugar, it’s cherry flavor that helps the medicine go down.

That overabundance of cherry items hasn’t done the cherry flavor any favors. And have you noticed that the cherry flavor in products is never subtle? Instead, it’s as if they different products are trying to out-cherry each other. The cherry flavoring in often so overpowering it has become cloying and mouth-puckering–almost as bad as grape flavor. Product manufacturers, dessert creators, and confectioners would do us all a favor by dialing back on cherry concoctions, but also on the amount of cherry flavor being infused in the product.

I think the cherry should aspire to be more like the humble apple. The apple has avoided the overexposure that has made cherry flavor so commonplace and over the top. You’ll find apple in a pie or applesauce, and maybe some sour apple gum, and of course a nice, crisp apple a day helps to keep the doctor away, but you’re not going to order an apple Coke or find apple-flavored cough drops at the drug store. Apple has stayed in its lane, and has profited from that exercise of good judgment.

Waiting For The Bats

On our last night in Austin, we decided to check out a unique local form of entertainment: watching bats fly out from underneath the Congress Street bridge. The configuration of that bridge just happens to provide an ideal nesting spot for Mexican bats. Every night, at dusk or later–bats being nocturnal creatures–the bats emerge from their perches in those slots you see underneath the bridge and fly down the river to hunt insects.

And, because a swarm of bats flying out from under a bridge isn’t something you see every day, people started to come to view the spectacle. On Sunday night, bat enthusiasts lined the bridge, while we sat among a group of bat aficionados on a small hill facing the bridge. Boats on the river also gathered for a little bat viewing. It was a kind of carnival atmosphere, and as the designated time for sunset neared a great sense of anticipation took hold.

The sun fell and the skies darkened, and people around us kept predicting that the bats would emerge any moment–but instead it just got darker and darker, to the point where you couldn’t see much of anything, bats or otherwise. The Mexican bats aren’t huge creatures in any event, and they aren’t exactly designed by evolution to be highly noticeable at night. We saw a few bats flitting by on the other side of the bridge, framed against a lighted wall, but no large swarm.

It turns out that bats aren’t slaves to the clock, and will leave their roosts under the bridge at unpredictable times after sunset. In short, they come out when they’re good and ready. If they’re especially hungry, the swarm might fly out right after sunset, but if they’re not, they might cool their heels for an hour or two. And the bats don’t particularly care if the humans gathered to watch them are there are not. You’ve got to respect them for that.

Coffee Juggling

We’re in Austin for a short visit, staying in one of the hotels in the downtown area. In these circumstances, one of my spousal duties is to get up first and go down to the service area and get two cups of hot coffee for us. This crucial responsibility inevitably requires me to employ the fine art of coffee juggling.

Coffee juggling involves a few important considerations, and a few even more important skills. The considerations involve exercising judgment on how full to fill the cup from the self-service coffee station, and what additional items, if any, you can reasonably bring along with you and the two cups of coffee. A banana, for example, can safely be carried in a pocket, but a muffin would be crushed in a pocket and therefore must be carefully balanced on a coffee cup lid. This dramatically enhances the coffee juggling challenge, so the question becomes: is a tasty muffin worth it? (The answer, incidentally, is always “yes.”)

The skills kick in after you fill your cups and make your additional food selection. The first skill is properly affixing one of those plastic lids to the brimming cup of java, and making sure it is fully engaged, so it won’t fly off on the return journey and lead to hot coffee armageddon. The next skill is figuring out how to shift the full cups of hot coffee in your hands so that you can safely stab the elevator button, and then do so again when you reach your room and have to fish the room key out of your pocket, unlock the door, and then use one hand to open the door knob while precariously balancing two cups of coffee with the other. The fact that the piping hot coffee has fully heated the paper cups and is probably burning your hand by this point just adds to the challenge.

But if your coffee juggling skills remain sharp, and you make it into the room without a drop or a spill, you can start your morning with a welcome feeling of first thing in the morning accomplishment. With the knowledge that you’ve capably performed your first important task and a hot cup of coffee for fuel, you are ready to face the day.

Billboard Bouquet

We’ve reached another dubious frontier in the ever-changing world of outdoor advertising. In the Netherlands, McDonald’s has rolled out billboards infused with “the distinct aroma of McDonald’s French Fries.”

The campaign–which goes by the somewhat ambiguous name “smells like McDonald’s”–features plain yellow or red billboards that emit the aroma of McDonald’s fries when you get within a few feet of them. They are strategically located within a few hundred feet of McDonald’s outlets, in the hopes that after you take a whiff you’ll be motivated to get an order of the real thing. Each of the billboards apparently contains a compartment where actual fries can be stored, as well as internal heating and ventilation systems that amplify the smell and direct it out to passersby.

I associate McDonald’s fries with lots of grease and salt, so I’m not exactly eager to inhale that odor. Nor would I be particularly desirous of hanging out somewhere that “smells like McDonald’s.” But on a more general level, I bemoan the fact that in addition to billboards assaulting our visual senses, now they’ll be intruding into our olfactory senses as well. And I’m not quire sure how the greasy, salty aroma of McDonald’s fries–or for that matter, Domino’s pizza, or Axe deodorant, or the current hot perfume would interact with the other smells that you often encounter in a big city. In my view, the fewer smells, the better.

Icon Language

Lately I’ve been in the midst of a surge of new technology. I’ve got a new laptop, one with a pristine keyboard and new functionality and new ways to connect to my desktop monitor. We’ve also rolled out some new programs recently that I’ve been trying to use. And yesterday I had to delete and replace some apps on my phone because of weird glitches they were experiencing. It’s been tech immersion time.

Whenever new tech is involved, there are new icons to master. The top row of keys on my new laptop, for example, are all identified exclusively by icons. Fortunately, most of them are self-evident, and clearly address things like screen and keyboard brightness, airplane mode, volume controls, and a mute button–but some are squarely in unknown territory. One button has a rectangle between two lines, and another features three diamonds. Their meaning is not intuitive–to me, at least. What could three diamonds signify? Beats me, but that’s a button I’ll never touch for fear of potentially devastating unintended consequences. Its function is as much of mystery as that of the three shells in Demolition Man.

New icons also mean new reflexes need to be developed. The meaning of the new icons might be puzzled out if you can study them at your leisure, but they aren’t well-suited for a snap decision. Yesterday I was on one Teams call when I received another Teams call. I didn’t want to have the second call’s beeping interfere with the first call, but when I looked at the icon options, with the interlocking Venn diagramesque circles with red and green phone receivers, it wasn’t clear which option I should choose to disconnect the second call and proceed with the first. Alas, I choked and selected the wrong icon, rudely putting the first call on hold and moving to the second call, which required me to apologize all around.

They say that when you reach a certain age, learning a new language is a good exercise, because it builds new neural pathways, enhances mental flexibility, and might even fend off dementia. Perhaps learning the new icon language will have the same effect.

Net’s Up

This morning the work crews had blocked off the intersection of Gay and High Streets and were busy putting up Current, the sculpture that hangs over that intersection during the warmer months of the year. The sculpture isn’t designed to withstand the weight of accumulated snow, ice, and freezing rain, so they take it down over the winter months. It’s actually a bit aggressive to put it up in early April, because Columbus has been known to get April snowstorms from time to time. None are in the short-term forecast–but April weather is notoriously fickle and can turn on a dime. We’ll just have to hope it stays above freezing.

As I watched the workers and cranes hoist Current into place, I was briefly tempted to go up to one of the guys in a hard hat and say, with a serious expression on my face: “Aren’t you hanging it upside down?” They probably wouldn’t have thought that was very funny, however.

Neck Betrayal

You might think you look younger than you actually are. You might initially focus on your face and think it really doesn’t look all that bad, given the mileage–but then your eyes travel down to the neck and all pretensions vanish. The neck is the great betrayer of age, with the truth revealed in the saggy skin that makes you wonder why you haven’t started gobbling.

Why does neck skin sag? A lot of the answer has to do with basic wear and tear on your skin and the hard work put in over the years by the platysma muscles, which are the thin layer of muscles that run from your jaw down the neck to your collarbones. The California Skin Institute website has a pretty good description of what happens:

“As with all skin, factors like genetics, extreme weight loss, collagen and elastin breakdown, and sun exposure can affect how your neck ages. However, there are additional factors that can act specifically on the neck to make it look older than the rest of you.

Thin, weak and delicate skin and muscle cover the neck. Year after year, twisting, stretching, and the pull of gravity and any pockets of subcutaneous fat have a cumulative aging effect. Most people notice neck skin beginning to significantly sag and wrinkle around the age of 40. That’s also when underlying platysmal muscles start to detach and loosen, their edges showing through thinning skin as vertical bands from the chin to collarbone.”

In short, by the time you’re into your 40s and beyond, the cake is baked. When you think about it, the area directly under the chin has done a lot of work by then, fiercely resisting the direct downward pull of gravity and engineering years of vigorous nodding and head turning. By then, your platysma muscles and skin are exhausted and unable to snap back as they did when you were younger. There’s really not much you can do about it, either, other than try to avoid excessive sun and cycles of significant weight gain and loss that stretch the layer of skin out even more and put you ever more firmly into turkey neck territory.

The California Skin Institute passage quoted above says your neck may “look older than the rest of you.” I’d guess your neck would beg to differ, and might argue instead that it is the most accurate reflection of the years you’ve logged.

Cupboard Campers

Have you ever noticed that some items in your cupboard, once purchased for some long ago, now-unknown reason, never get used? To be sure, they will be moved from time to time, as you search for other things that you know are somewhere in the cupboard, but you’ll never fully haul them out and access the contents. Instead, in the shifting of items, they will inevitably migrate to the rear of the cupboard, where they will camp out and remain forever.

Other items in the cupboard–jars of peanut butter, cans of tomato paste, boxes of pasta, canisters of seasonings, a bag of almonds–are temporary occupants of cupboard space that get consumed and depart, creating a healthy cupboard rotation. There are always a few items that become long-term constants, however, that will be with you until the end of time. And they are misleading, too. They’ll make your cupboard look like it is full, but then when you start sifting through the items you realize there’s really nothing to eat.

For us, the two primary long-term tenants are two bottles of vinegar. The only thing that, to my limited knowledge, vinegar is used for is making pickles–which I hate. The white wine vinegar has never been opened, and the apple cider vinegar looks like it was used once. Most recipes involving vinegar–like this collection–involve using only tiny amounts of it. And that raises another question: why is vinegar sold in such big bottles? It’s as if Heinz wants its vinegar to hang out in your cupboard forever. If you matched container size to actual recipe needs, vinegar would be sold in portions no larger than the tiny liquor bottles you get on airplanes when you order a drink.

All of this raises a question of why we haven’t thrown out that big honker bottle of vinegar. That’s because I’m a big proponent of “waste not, want not” and can’t bring myself to throw out something that could conceivably be useful. Because it’s remotely possible that we could make use of the vinegar at some point, it will remain in the cupboard, stolidly occupying its space in the rear corner, until that improbable day comes.

Mr. Microphone Messages

The ’70s were a curious time that left a mark on everyone who lived through them. People who were around at that time inevitably sported bad ’70s hair, wore bad ’70s outfits, and know that somewhere out there multiple bad photos provide evidence of those embarrassing facts. Deep down, ’70s survivors carry a lingering fear that some day those photos might be unearthed and shared with their current co-workers and friends–and no one wants that.

But the ’70s impact runs even deeper than just photographic proof of the worst hairstyles and fashion in the last 100 years. Our personalities and psyches have been shaped and scarred by the messages that the ’70s inflicted on people during that strange time.

Consider, for example, the commercial for the Ronco “Mr. Microphone” product, which you can watch here. Once you get past the hair and clothing–which is admittedly difficult–think of how that commercial might have distorted the sensibilities of an innocent yet credulous viewer. Was it considered appropriate, even welcome, to bring a Mr. Microphone to a party and start handing it around to loudmouth partygoers? Would frazzled parents really want you to give a Mr. Microphone to an already loud roomful of raucous kids? Did “professional entertainers” really use Mr. Microphone during rehearsals? And, perhaps most importantly, how would a young woman–who is never seen on camera, incidentally–react if some guy with a bad haircut passed by in a slow-moving convertiblel and said, in a voice amplified by the car radio: “Hey, good lookin’! Be back to pick you up later!”? Was that the kind of smooth banter that was expected of a participant in the ’70s dating scene?

To this day, if you say “hey good lookin’! Be back to pick you up later!” to people of a certain age, you’re likely to get a rueful chuckle and a shake of the head. The messages we received then are still there, buried deep, and no one can really say with confidence whether or not they continue to exercise influence on our conduct and behavior. In view of that, is it any wonder that younger generations think we’re weird and might have difficulty understanding our perspective on life and work?

An Appeal To Headline Writers

You may have seen this regrettable headline recently: “Ohio women put dead man in car’s passenger seat, try to withdraw money at bank drive-thru, police say.”

The accompanying article is about an 80-year-old man who owned a house in Ashtabula and allowed two women to live there. When the old-timer unfortunately died at home, according to one of the women who described what happened in a phone call from jail that was recorded by authorities, the women put him in the passenger seat of their car where he could be seen and then went through the drive-thru line at his bank where they withdrew $900 from his bank account. The women then drove to the hospital where they dropped off his body, allegedly without identifying the dead man or themselves. They’ve since been identified, arrested, and charged with theft and gross abuse of a corpse.

I want to make this appeal to headline writers everywhere: when one of these weird stories about appalling misconduct arises, can we please stop identifying the actor’s state of residence in the headline? It’s not as if, in this case, living in Ohio had anything to do with the women’s decision to take advantage of a dead man. Having lived in Ohio for most of my life, I can assure you that the Buckeye State does not condone or encourage that kind of activity. And in that time I’ve gotten to know many “Ohio women,” and I feel confident that none of them would have done what the two women did in this case. Headlines like the one quoted above improperly smear the reputation of both Ohio and the women who live here.

We’ve all seen countless “Florida man” news stories about random guys in Florida doing something strange. I’d hate to see “Ohio women” stories become a similar staple of the clickbait news websites. Can’t we just agree to leave the states where people happen to misbehave out of it?

World Sleep Day

Yesterday wasn’t just the Ides of March–it was also “World Sleep Day.” I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing, but when I learned that it existed, I decided to celebrate the day by sleeping in this morning. I awoke refreshed and feeling great.

The concept of World Sleep Day is that a good night’s sleep is essential to good health, and we should encourage people to make sure that they get enough shut-eye. According to the website linked above, “World Sleep Day delegates and sleep health advocates across the world are taking action in their local communities, clinics, and countries to raise awareness of sleep health.” (I’m not sure what steps were taken as part of that coordinated effort, but if you saw somebody dozing on a park bench yesterday you may have seen a sleep health advocate in action.) The website explains that this year’s theme was “Sleep Equity for Global Health,” because “measurable differences in sleep health persist across populations across the world, creating additional burdens and reinforcing health inequities.”

I shouldn’t poke gentle fun at the concept of World Sleep Day, because scientists and medical practitioners are definitely waking up to the health benefits associated with sufficient sleep. And apart from the mental and physical health benefits of sleep, you can’t help but notice that bad things often happen when people are up and about during the late-night and early-morning hours. They, and we, would be better off if they were at home, sawing logs.

World Sleep Day is a concept I can definitely get behind. The world would be a better place if we all made a commitment to getting forty winks. You don’t have to decide today–feel free to sleep on it.