I don’t love sweets.

People who prefer sugary snacks actually seem to be more kind, so says a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

I don’t even like chocolate all that much.

What do lobsters and cul-de-sacs have in common?

I like it when perceived extravagances and status symbols are proven to be not so extravagant and rather artificial. A century ago, lobsters were so plentiful and inexpensive that they were routinely fed to domestic servants and other low-wage workers. The servants detested these “cockroaches of the sea” so much that their employment agreements often demanded that lobster be served no more than twice a week.

Until recently, lobster was considered an ill-tasting, ugly-to-look-at, impossible-to-eat food item only suitable for the hired help.

Then, thanks to decades of over-fishing, lobster populations plummeted.

As the scarcity of lobsters rose, prices increased, and before long, the “cockroach of the sea” was considered a delicacy.

Not because they tasted better or were any more appealing, but simply because they cost more.

I do not eat lobster. I don’t mind the taste of lobster but find the process of eating a lobster slightly disgusting and thoroughly unrewarding.

A lot of effort for a small amount of average-tasting food.

Any food that is normally dunked in butter before eaten cannot be that good.

But when I hear people extol the virtue of lobster, I cannot help but think of how their love for this food is not based on the food itself but the time in which they live and the modern-day price of the product.

Nothing more.

I recently read a piece about cul-de-sacs that gives me a similar pleasure.

The cul-de-sac has long been viewed as a suburban ideal, the place where your children can play in the street in relative safety and neighborhoods can once again become the close-knit communities that they once appeared to be on black-and-white television.

Homes located within cul-de-sacs are almost always priced higher than those in less idealized locations, and many home buyers specifically target cul-de-sacs when looking to purchase a home.

And yet data compiled from studies on traffic patterns and the frequency of accidents shows that cul-de-sacs aren’t as safe as you might think.

“A lot of people feel that they want to live in a cul-de-sac, they feel like it’s a safer place to be,” Marshall says. “The reality is yes, you’re safer – if you never leave your cul-de-sac. But if you actually move around town like a normal person, your town as a whole is much more dangerous.”

It turns out that if you live in a one-cul-de-sac town, you’re probably okay.

But if the suburban sprawl of your hometown is littered with cul-de-sacs and similarly designed streets, you’re children are in more danger than those living in the Bronx, at least when it comes to traffic.

Perceived extravagance fails again.

Male self-deception is a beautiful thing. Sincerely.

From a New York Times piece on recent testosterone research:

This is probably not the news most fathers want to hear.

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children.

While the research is interesting, I thought the first line of the piece was shortsighted, misinformed and silly.

Most fathers wouldn’t give research like this a second thought because most fathers are men, and men are imbued with three unique, protective traits:

1. The innate ability to assume that research like this may apply to most men but never to them.
2. The absolutely certainty in the depth and breadth of one’s manliness and corresponding levels of testosterone.
3. The unflinching self-assurance that even if one’s testosterone levels were exceedingly low, he could still overcome any hormonal limitation through sheer force of will.

Dr. Peter Ellison is quoted in the piece as saying, “Unfortunately, I think American males have been brainwashed to believe lower testosterone means that maybe you’re a wimp, that it’s because you’re not really a man.”

Dr. Peter Ellison is an idiot.

American males have been brainwashed into navigating life with blinders on.  We hone in on good news, compartmentalize the bad and think of ourselves as a self-actualized super beings whose flaws and foibles are merely the result of the misunderstanding of others.

My testosterone has been reduced since becoming a father?

Nonsense.

But if true, irrelevant.

And if relevant, ultimately meaningless.

Dodging sleep at an early age

From an article in the Times on napping in children:

Dr. Jenni was one of the authors of a large study, published in 2003 in the journal Pediatrics, which measured sleep duration across childhood. He and his colleagues documented the decrease in daytime napping and the consolidation of nighttime sleep as a group of Swiss children grew up. They also found that individual children’s sleep needs and sleep patterns tended to be consistent through age 10. In other words, children who slept less than their peers as infants grew into older children who seemed to need less sleep.

This may explain a lot. 

It is well known amongst my friends and family that I do not require much sleep.  I normally sleep for about five hours every night, but I can easily sleep less than that for a day or two without any noticeable repercussions.

My mother said that as a child, it seemed as if I never slept.  I slept fitfully as an infant, abandoned naps at an early age, and became so difficult in terms of keeping me in bed at night that in lieu of a bedtime, I was simply sent upstairs with the expectation that I could do whatever I wanted as long as I did not come downstairs again.

By the age of 5, I was deciding upon my own bedtime. 

I remember sleeping over a friend’s house for the first time in second grade and being put to bed by his mother at bedtime.  After she shut out the lights and closed the bedroom door, I rolled over in my sleeping bag and asked, “Are we being punished for something?”

The thought of being required to go to sleep was ludicrous to me.  

So perhaps there is something to the finding that children who sleep less than their peers as infants grow into older children who seem to need less sleep.

Perhaps this pattern thankfully extends into adulthood as well.

If I had to sleep 8 hours a night, I don’t know how I’d ever get anything done.

I don’t agree with him, but I can respect his answer

Did I just hear an Evangelical Republican candidate admit that he does not know if the Bible should be taken literally?

Did I just hear him say that the seven days of Creation might represent different periods of history rather than seven rotations of the planet? 

Did he just acknowledge that metaphor may have existed in Biblical times?

I still think it’s narrow-minded to reject the overwhelming scientific evidence that supports evolution, and I still would not vote for the man, but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect him.

And with this intellectually honest answer, Mike Huckabee has earned my respect.  

What is your favorite number? Favorite color?

Want to know how to annoy kids of all ages? When they ask you for your favorite number or color are, tell them that you don’t have one. It completely disrupts their understanding of the world. For some, it’s as if the entire planet has shifted on its axis and the apocalypse is near.

What makes it even better is I’m not lying when I say this.

I have no favorite number, and I have no favorite color.

I tell the kids that my preferences are based upon context.

Am I playing blackjack? Then my favorite number is 21.

Am I eating hotdogs? In that case, two is just right.

Are we talking salary? If so, my favorite number is the largest one available.

It all depends on the situation.

Same goes for colors.

If I’m trying to hide in the forest at night, black is my favorite.

If I’m choosing a color for my wife to wear, white is best.

If we’re talking about my front lawn, I prefer green.

But say this to a class of elementary school students and watch many of them lose their minds. They will argue, complain, whine, plead and insist that I choose one.

A student once wrote an essay on why I should have a favorite color.

But I hold firm on my lack of preference.

NPR’s Robert Krulwich has been writing about a mathematician’s recently project to collect the favorite numbers of people from around the world.

You can participate in the survey here.

Krulwich’s latest post includes some of the more interesting reasons why participants in the survey have chosen their favorite number. As always when it comes to Krulwich, it’s worth a read.

And just for the record, there is a box that I was able to check in the survey indicating that I do not have a favorite number, so I’m not alone in my lack of preference.

The office jerk. Death by television. The curse of the agreeable worker. All good news for me.

Three recent studies that bode exceedingly well for me, and perhaps for you. Study #1 

Research published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that people who are regularly stressed out by the office jerk are more likely to take that stress home with them — and pass it on to whoever is unfortunate enough to be cohabiting with them.

Whether or not I am the office jerk is debatable. I suspect that there might be at least a few previous colleagues who could think so.

Regardless, few who know me well would disagree that I am impervious to the actions of most office jerks thanks to my previous and rather unique history with them. Think of it this way:

If the office jerk has, at some point in the past, used the office jerk equivalent of nuclear weapons in an attempt to annihilate you, the actions of the average, everyday office jerk become meaningless and irrelevant.

Silly, even.

As in all things, perspective is everything.

I survived Armageddon. And it’s hard to top Armageddon.

Study #2

Every hour of TV you watch after age 25 shortens your life by 21.8 minutes, says a study by researchers in Australia.

There are admittedly some problems with the methodology used in this study, and I have my doubts in terms of its findings as well. After all, if these results are accurate, I have friends who should've been dead ten years ago.

I might even know a few people who watch so much television that their lifespans should register in the negative numbers by now.

But putting aside my doubts, my wife and I watching remarkably little television, averaging less than an hour a day. Although even this amount is apparently shortening my life by 22 minutes each day, I am at least well ahead of the 4-5 hours per day that the average American watches, and the 80-100 minutes of lifespan that they are sacrificing in the process.

Study #3

A new study finds that agreeable workers earn significantly lower incomes than less agreeable ones. The gap is especially wide for men. The researchers examined "agreeableness" using self-reported survey data and found that men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts.

I have saved the best for last, at least in terms of its application to me.

It is in my nature to be disagreeable, and it does not take a person long to discover this about me.

My former boss referred to me as a curmudgeon.

My mother called me The Instigator.

A college professor, in front of the entire class, once said hat I was like a minefield when comes to class discussion. “Eventually one of your classmates steps in the wrong place and you blow up.  You don’t exactly promote discourse.”

Colleagues once conducted a strategy meeting in order to plan for the likelihood that I would disagree with (and therefore be disruptive to) a new initiative.

Being disagreeable is one of my most defining attributes.

If this study is accurate, I should be rich any day now.

Um… climate change is not real because the Moon has volcanoes, too. Right?

Did that Fox news anchor just attempt to link the presence of volcanoes to global warming? They really are just talking hair. Aren’t they?

Watch Bill Nye’s reaction upon hearing it.

Priceless.

The world is a strange, strange place

Things like this remind me of how little we perceive of our world:

This list totally sucks

Here is a list of the eight most common stroke triggering behaviors, excluding persistently high blood pressure.    

• Coffee consumption (10.6%)
• Vigorous physical exercise (7.9%)
• Nose blowing (5.4%)
• Sexual intercourse (4.3%)
• Straining to defecate (3.6%)
• Cola consumption (3.5%)
• Being startled (2.7%)
• Being angry (1.3%)

This sucks.

Angry and startled are my two default states of being.  Having suffered from PTSD for years, I am the most easily startled person I know.  My nervous system, according my therapist, has literally been trained to startle easily.

And angry?

I can’t tell you the number of things that annoy me.

Not to mention that when I’m not startled or angry, vigorous physical exercise, sex, and drinking Diet Coke are three of my favorite things in the world.

gauld-diet-coke

For those not keeping track, that’s five out of the eight triggers.

Thankfully, my normal blood pressure is exceedingly good (they always check it twice, assuming the first reading was incorrect), and I don’t drink coffee, but this list does not make me happy.

In fact, it makes me quite angry.

See what I mean?

Not the friends I want

“Carrying a $10,000 Birkin bag by Hermès will make you the envy of your friends. It could also help you snag a higher salary and better job recommendations.”

This is the lead to a TIME article about recent research that suggests, much to my horror, that fashion choices, and specifically designer labels, influence earning potential.

"The present data suggest that luxury consumption can be a profitable social strategy because conspicuous displays of luxury qualify as a costly signaling trait that elicits status-dependent favorable treatment in human social interactions."

While I find the results of this study unfortunate and sad, I like the idea of  designer labels being “conspicuous displays of luxury.”

Not “quality merchandise” or a “sound investment” as has been suggested to me by brand name mavens.

A conspicuous display of luxury.

Specifically, the researchers cite the ridiculous Lacoste shirts that I have criticized in the past as being an example of a conspicuous display of luxury. Though I understand how a purposeful demonstration of wealth can serve as an indicator of success (and probably low self-esteem), I am still stunned that so many people, so many years out of high school, still operate with these beliefs.

Make hiring decisions based upon these beliefs.

Find value in an embroidered reptile or an expensive watch or a series of interlocking G’s on a handbag.

It saddens me to think that all things equal, the guy with the embroidered reptile on his left breast is more likely to get the job than the guy without a reptile.

I don’t love the lead to the Time magazine article either, which begins with the sentence:

“Carrying a $10,000 Birkin bag by Hermès will make you the envy of your friends.”

While I realize that any handbag is unlikely to generate envy from any of my friends, I don’t think any of them have ever experienced envy based upon my clothing or any other of my physical possessions.

I can’t remember the last time I was envious of a friend over something he or she owned.

Nor can I remember a time when a friend expressed envy over something that someone else owned.

I am admittedly envious of friends over their skill on the golf course, their ability to repair an car’s engine and the ease with which they can install a dishwasher, but I can’t remember a time as an adult when I looked at a friend’s clothing or car or jewelry or home and wished it were mine.

Frankly, if TIME magazine was right and a designer label would make the envy of my friends, I might have to question the future of the friendship.

I have no time for such nonsense.

I graduated from high school a long time ago.

First time in history that “Cleanest teeth” isn’t so great

Here are two maps revealing how each state shines and suffers in regards to science, nature, public health or social justice. The first map indicates the area in which each state fails to excel to the greatest degree, and the second map indicates the areas in which the state excels the most.

I live in Connecticut.  In terms of the area that my state does not excel, we have the highest rate of pancreatic cancer in the country.

Not good.

And the area that we excel:

Cleanest teeth.

With all of the possible outcomes impacted by science, nature, public health and social justice, the best we can manage is clean teeth?

Why can we be a state like Washington? Most organic apples (which sound delicious) and most invasive snails.

Snails. A hell of a lot better than pancreatic cancer. Easily squished.

Or how about Colorado? Lowest obesity rates and most avalanche deaths.  Presumably the fat people are the ones who cannot outrun the avalanches, thus keeping their numbers low.

Or Hawaii? Least smog and most endangered species. If a species of animal is going to cease existing, it’s at least nice to be able to take one final, smog-free look at them. Right?

But at least we’re not Tennessee.

They have the most caves and also the most sewer runoff.

If you’re wondering which of the two is supposed to be a positive, it’s the most caves.

I know. I’m not sure why this is a positive either.

A cave-filled, sewage-filled state.

A hell of a lot worse than clean teeth and pancreatic cancer.

I get irradiated by my wife every night.

I stared at this radiation dose chart for hours. Well, maybe not that long. But too long.

I have a full and complete understanding of the amount of radiation I am exposed to on a daily basis now, at least in my mind (though my iPhone is conspicuously missing from the list).

It has turned me into one of those exceptionally annoying people who thinks he knows something that everyone else doesn’t know but must know.

Which is why I have posted it here.

Only Ann Coulter could make Bill O’Reilly sound incredibly reasonable

How far does your field of expertise actually stretch?

Since when did meteorologists become the lead experts on earthquakes and tsunamis? 

I just spent my workout at the gym watching the coverage of the Japanese earthquake on CNN, and a meteorologist was repeatedly questioned as if he were an expert on earthquakes and tsunamis.  In one segment a professor of seismology from Purdue found himself sitting alongside a meteorologist, answering questions about subduction zones and the propensity of aftershocks in the coming year. 

And the same thing happened last night on the local news.  For reasons I cannot understand, the meteorologist played a key role in discussing the impact of the earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan and along the west coast. 

Have I missed something in my understanding on meteorology? 

And turn to the Weather Channel and you will find almost nothing but earthquake and tsunami coverage, with almost nothing centered on any weather-related concerns in Japan or anywhere else.

Thunderstorms, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards and now earthquakes?

I don’t get it.

Growing meat

The thought of growing meat on plants is thrilling enough, but if they can get said meat to qualify as a vegetable (preferably green and leafy), my life will nearly be complete.

From the book of “No duh”

Scientific American reports on a study dealing with bird communication.

"Similar to us, birds learn to sing by mimicking the adults, and the early chirps are akin to a baby's babble. They learn through practice alone or with other birds. But what this study of young zebra finches found, is that if the teen, even in the midst of his singing education, is near a female he is able to throw down the best version of the song. And this best version typically has a similar syllable structure, variation and sequence as the final adult version of the song.

Not only does this study provide insight into how communication develops it’s another example of the powerful influence mating can have on social behavior.”

Male birds perform better in the presence of women?

I’m willing to bet the same is true for grizzly bears, Komodo dragons and cockroaches, too.

We needed a study for this?

A joyous response to the misery of others

A study released by Stanford University shows that Facebook users often perceive their friends as having more fulfilling social and emotional lives. As a result, people end up feeling more lonely, isolated and depressed.

My reaction to Facebook has always been the opposite. Given the propensity to complain or allude to vague personal problems (with the hope that someone will engage), I always find Facebook rather uplifting.

Joyous even.

Admittedly, I often access Facebook through other platforms, so I don't spend as much time reading my Facebook feed as it might seem, but still, it never takes long to find someone who is upset.

While not all status updates are littered with whining and complaining, there are generally enough moans and groans related to the weather, work, children, the lack of sleep, travel snafus and illness to send me from my computer with a genuine skip in my step.

Facebook is my daily pick-me-up. A reminder of why I am so happy to be me.

Perhaps I’m just friends with the right people.

Or the wrong people.

Or the right people.

Mammoths, octopi and a whole bunch of spoons

Three random observations: 1. Anyone who criticizes Alanis Morissette’s song "Ironic" for its lack of irony is an intellectual douchebag. It’s a four minute pop song. It need not be held up to a literary standard.

And sure, “...ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife” is not ironic by the truest definition of the word, but it seems pretty damn ironic to me.

2. I know it was based upon the Ian Fleming novel, but how does the movie Octopussy get made with its original title?

3.  Woolly mammoths returning to the world? It’s about time.

Vampire bats and me

Vampire bats are believed to be the only species of bats in the world to adopt another young bat if something happens to the bat's mother. They share a strong bond with members of the colony even though they may not be genetically related, which is believed to be why they are the only bats and one of the only animals to possess this adoption characteristic. Vampire bats cannot live more than two days without food, and so when a bat of any age cannot find food, a member of the colony will share food with the needy bat in what naturalists have cited as one of the only examples of reciprocal altruism in nature.

It’s not uncommon to find animals helping one another, but in almost all circumstances, these animals are genetically related. As a result, assisting in the survival of a sibling or cousin serves to preserve one’s own genetic material, which makes the survival of a relative of primary importance to any organism.

This is what makes the vampire bat’s willingness to help non-related members of the colony so unique.

In fact, it’s this preservation and promotion of genetic material that scientists have used use to explain the development of human familial bonds.

Even though you may not like your brother very much, and even though he may have tormented you for most of your life and driven his car through the window of the local liquor store last week, you are still more likely to assist him in times of need rather than a stranger or even a close friend because your brother shares a large portion of your genetic makeup, and to assist in his survival helps to promote the advancement of your own genetic material.

I know this sort of debases the idea of unconditional love that family members share, but just think of it as unconditional love with a unconscious, genetic underpinning.

You still love your idiot brother. Now you have a reason why.

This is why I like vampire bats so much. Coming from a less-than-functional family and having lived on my own without an ounce of family assistance since the age of seventeen, I have come to depend on friends in place of family, and I have come to value these relationships at least as much as the relationships I have with family, and in most cases, much more.

Like vampire bats, I have rejected the notion that similarities in genetic material should serve as the basis for relationships. Relatives receive no preferential treatment from me. If I am related to you but do not like you, do not come knocking on my door at the time of the apocalypse.

If I am going to have to struggle to survive in a lawless world, I’d prefer to do it with people I actually like and respect rather than those who I am simply attached to through blood and marriage.

Of course, the fact that it’s the bad-ass, bloodsucking vampire bat that shares this belief with me is also important.

Had bunnies or chinchillas or sparrows embraced friendship over family, I may have been decidedly less enthusiastic about our commonality.