As IF Times

link  Driving may shorten life.

Some of these stories are so preposterous that I first have to check to see whether they were first posted on the Onion.  Sadly no, for in this case, like many others, a questionable study is foisted upon the public again as a news story.  In line with the campaign to make illegal the use of cellphones in cars, now we have a study that purports to show that driving in and of itself  is  harmful to you. 

Just doing the math in the article is enough to make you want to avoid your car like a caterpillar sandwich, until you reallydo the math.  You will notice the article refers to “complex models” whatever that means, but you can be sure that no one understands them. So, using these complex models, every hour of driving decreases your life expectancy by 20 minutes??  Maybe in Iraq or Afghanistan or in Vancouver where rules of the road are viewed as mere suggestions. 

But if this model is to be believed, for simplicity, an average commuter, driving an hour a day going back and forth to work yields 2 hours, or 10 hours a week.  This means his life expectancy was reduced by 200 minutes a week or just a little over 3 hours.  Let’s not count the time spent driving to pick up cigarettes or beer on the weekends.  So in a year, discounting statutory holidays, our hero loses 150 hours of his life.   In an average work life of 45 years, he has lost 6750 hours of his life or 281 days, not quite a full year.  If you add in the time driving to the lake house, to Disneyland or the Grand Canyon, a year disappears for sure.  So, for the convenience of accessing far flung places by car, you “give up”  a year in your life.

Still sounds reasonable.   How about long haul truck drivers who drive 8 to 10 hours PER DAY? Applying the same calculation reveals that these poor guys lose about 31 days of their lives PER YEAR.  Not exactly motivation to get into the long haul business.  Heck, it’s enough to discourage people from being soccer moms.  If you had to think about these statistics while driving, you’d have to smoke to calm your nerves and talk on the cell phone to your pals for comfort.

So? So the point is, there seems to be a popular past-time, organized or coincidental which aims to remove all vestiges and conveniences of our modern society for fear of harm to self or to everyone else.  Typically, to back up assertions are “scientific studies” which show the desired conclusions.  All this junk science is reminiscent of the old joke about a researcher studying the ability of bugs to respond to stimulus.   He plucks out the legs of the insect one by one while issuing commands to it and of course the bug moves after each such incident.  Eventually, the bug runs out of legs and when it does not respond to the sound of the researcher’s voice, he concludes that when you remove all the legs of a bug, it goes deaf.

In the case of all the hazards associated with driving a car, I actually tend to agree with people who claim that distractions are dangerous when driving.  So is cooking with bare feet in the kitchen.  So are backyard barbecues.  The real problem with drivers is that licenses are too easy to get.  In the controlled environment of a driver’s exam, anyone breathing can pass, as Vancouver proves.  The test should be reconfigured to simulate real life examples.  In this case, the candidate has to talk on a cell phone, have the radio on and have friends in the car pointing out pretty chicks on the street while successfully and safely navigating a car.   If they can pass these real life situations, then they show some normal human skills and driving for them is not the equivalent of an IQ test.  If they fail, public transport is the way to go for every one’s sake and the world is safer. 

Long haul drivers can thank me later.

‘Feminized’ Japanese Men Boost Kao Sales as Women Pamper Less – Bloomberg.com.

Hidden among this development is a fundamental sea change for men everywhere.  Japanese men have always carried the reputation of the most chauvinistic of nationalities.  In what other culture is it  institutionalized that the men shall go forth during the day to work, then regularly go out with the boys at night to drink in bars, then stagger home to a compliant wife.  The chauvinism of Japanese men is so legendary, that over the past generation, Japanese women en masse have decided to forego the idea of marriage at all, preferring to live with other gals, or in many cases, opt to move out of the country.  It seems marrying into another culture, especially to compliant north American men, was preferable to enduring life as irrelevant chattel in Japan.

Big news then, that girly men are emerging in Japan, for it is only a matter of time before this phenomenom hits these shores with much bigger impact.  In north america, the gay population of men have always led the way as far as personal grooming and in fact, much of their influence is reflected in the male ideal today.  When was the last time you saw a picture of a hairy chest on the cover of any men’s magazine?  If the market for men’s cosmetics, moisturizers, bronzers and  depillitators takes off in north america, it will single handedly be able to re-ignite GDP growth. 

As we all know, men are a competitive bunch and you can bet that there will be bruising competition to get access to the best personal grooming products.  Think of the money spent on trophy items such as Porsches or Ferraris and you can extrapolate the degrees to which men will pay for the “rarest of  face creams” no doubt harvested from an obscure Himalayan plant which only blooms once every 8 years and then, only at night…in a month that ends with a ‘t’.

Naturally, we will see some changes in our society.  In contact sports for example, much more care will be taken so as not to disturb a carefully coiffed hairstyle or freshly manicured nails.  Ultimate fighting fans will hear shouts of “not the face, not the face” by the fighters, who in fact essentially just slap each other around  before someone gives up when given one too many purple nurples.   Thankfully, because of regular waxing, the audience will not be disgusted by the view when the fighters are bent into compromising positions.

Strip bars and such may suffer, but the spa club business will mushroom.  Men being men, exclusive clubs will open with big initiation fees to distinguish the better ones from the daily pay clubs.  Men will hoard 5, 10 or even vintage 12 year old bottles of skin softener to be brought out only on special occasions to be shared with their best buddies.  At restaurants, we will see the phenomenon of men going off to the bathroom in pairs.

Not all will be good unfortunately.  Women will be crowded out of the medicine cabinet by the gaggle of men’s products.  In addtion, no one will be on time for anything anymore because “getting ready” will have a few more steps for both sexes.  At least they’ll look fabulous when they arrive.