Tax Tips in Troubled Times

Here We Go

Way back in 2011 I offered some tax tips to help people cope with the angst of filing season (see Tax Tips for Tea Time, 3/1/11).  That seems so long ago and so much has happened in the intervening 12 years that I thought I'd update my advice as we approach this year's deadline.  As noted in the title, this year we are dealing with this chore in the midst of a congressional melt-down over the debt ceiling, debates about lowering/increasing taxes for those who are financially challenged, raising/lowering taxes on the financially fortunate, cutting/increasing government spending on health, education, climate, and military programs, etc., etc., etc.. And since we now live in the age of confrontational, oppositional, post-factual, and post-civility politics, all this is at a volume almost guaranteed to land the average tax payer in scream therapy.

So, what's changed in the past 12 years? Rather than try to present a comprehensive and mind-numbing answer to that question, I'll focus on two aspects of taxes that seem most pertinent: refunds and effective (versus marginal) tax rates.

Refunds

Back in 2011, roughly 76% of tax payers got a refund averaging just under $3000.  That amounted to a total of about $319 billion, which was 34% of the total collected from individual returns. Even now, with inflation over the past 12 years, that's a LOT of money.  At that time, I pointed out that the "windfall" of a refund was actually just a return of people's own money, refunded to them after a year of it not being used for rent, medical bills, groceries, and occasional fun things.  I suggested that anyone in the group receiving $3k or more who believed that taxes were too high should have realized the contradiction of willingly over-paying taxes they thought were excessive on the one hand, and giving the government what amounted to an interest-free loan of $319 billion on the other.

So, what's changed in the last 12 years?  Not much, actually. According to IRS statistics for the intervening years, the average refund over the past 12 years has been about $2800 with the exception of a dip to $2549 for the Covid year 2020 and a rebound to $3252 in 2022. The variation in the average refund amount has been quite small, generally + or - about $250, and the percent of filers receiving refunds has been consistently about 75% , +/- 2%.  In short, most of us have continued to contribute generously to the interest-free government loan that averages about $320 billion each year.

There are two aspects of the yearly trend that have, indeed, shown changes.  First, the percent of returns being filed electronically has risen steadily from 77% in 2011 to 90% in 2022.  I suspect this reflects the growing incorporation of internet technology into many aspects of our increasingly online lives.  More evidence of this is the proportion of refunds that were electronically processed via direct deposit, which has grown from 72% in 2011 to 91% in 2022.  This can definitely speed up the refund process, since it is less reliant on human intervention and physical systems that require time and resources.  The IRS says that about 90% of refunds are issued within 3 weeks after a return is accepted.  However, the other 10% can take much longer, as I've personally experienced for the past couple of years. If there is something missing, incorrect, or if your return is selected for verification (as mine was this year) you will have to wait longer, maybe weeks or months longer (see Saving to Invest).  I submitted my return this year on Feb. 1, and received confirmation that it was "accepted" within a few hours.  My refund is much less than the average (I'm proud to say), but I'd still like to have it. It is now March 15 and my return is still "being processed," even after taking an extra step of providing validation information.

The main way to reduce your refund and keep more money in your pocket during the year is to adjust your withholding via Form W-4.  Another way, for those of us who make quarterly estimated payments, is to make these as accurate as possible, even adjusting them during the year if circumstances change.  Finally, for those who are required to make minimum withdrawals from an IRA, the percent you elect to be withheld can be changed with each withdrawal if necessary.

Although a tax refund can feel like a windfall, it most certainly isn't.  Some argue that overpaying forces them to save money during the year, and that they might not do so otherwise.  This may be true, but there is a hidden price for this forced savings.  Here's an idea that will accomplish the savings and even earn you some money.  Divide the usual amount of your refund by 12, then set up an automatic deposit of that amount each month into a bank savings account, kind of like a Christmas fund. On a specified date take the money plus interest and rejoice at your "refund!"

Marginal Versus Effective Tax Rates

A lot of confusion surrounds the question of how much we actually pay in income taxes.  The tax total in dollars is clear, but how that total is arrived at isn't.  An example of the confusion appeared in a Letter to the Editor recently published in my local newspaper.  The author bemoaned the high tax rate levied on those with incomes greater that $539,000, which placed them in the 37% tax bracket. This forced them, according to the writer, "to pay 37% of their incomes in taxes." 

The confusion here is between a taxpayer's marginal versus effective tax rate.  U.S. income taxes are "progressive," which means that income up to a certain point is taxed at given rate, and income above that level is taxed at a higher rate.  The rates for each increasing portion of a person's income are the marginal rates, the maximum of which was 37% for 2022.  But only the amount above $539,000 would be taxed at that rate -- the income up to that point would be taxed less.  Dividing a person's total tax bill by their total income yields the effective tax rate for that person, the true bottom line -- the proportion of their income that went to taxes.

The difference between the two rates can be dramatic, and a very strong case can be made that it is the effective rate that should be the focus of debates over whether income taxes are too high.  For example, Business Insider presents data for the 2020 tax brackets that shows for the most common bracket of 22% (incomes from $50k to $75k), the effective rate was 7.2%.  For the next most common bracket of 24% (incomes of $100k to $200k), the effective rate was 10%.**  A similar analysis by The College Insider indicated that using 2022 data, a person with an income of $60k (22% tax bracket) would have an effective rate of 9.9%. Finally, a Tax Foundation analysis of IRS data shows that the average effective rate for all taxpayers in 2020 was 13.6%.  For those in the 37% bracket (incomes greater than $539k, averaging $1.7 million) the average effective rate was 26%. 

Effective rates have not remained the same over the past 12 years, but the changes have been less than you might think. A highly-touted tax reform bill that was enacted in 2017 changed the marginal values and adjusted the income cutoffs for some rate brackets with the goal of lowering taxes.  This did indeed lower the effective tax rate for taxpayers in all income categories, as documented by the Tax Foundation.  But their data show that the magnitude of the effect was 1.5% or less for nearly all income categories for 2018-2020).  For the average taxpayer this amounts to a reduction of $250, and a reduction of $69 for those in the most common bracket (Business Insider).  Many people spend more than that in a year for mocha lattes.

Now, we can certainly argue whether the effective rates are too high (or too low), but at least we're focused on the right thing. So, one tip for 2023 is the same as it was in 2011:  concentrate on what your tax rate actually is, not misleading sound bites about marginal values. 

Bottom Line

In summary, I think there are two main points to be taken from the analyses above.

First, the promise of a refund is perhaps the only positive thing about filing your income taxes each year.  But it can't negate the fact that a refund is money that perhaps you shouldn't have parted with in the first place, and there is a hidden cost to what may seem like a "windfall."

Second, the question of how our tax bill is calculated is ambiguous enough to provide politicians with an abundance of opportunities for puffery and hyperbole. The bottom line provided by focusing on effective tax rates is a much more down-to-earth place to begin a discussion of raising or lowering the tax burden. 

Happy filing!

______________________________________________

*I've updated the figures from those given in my original blog using more recent data from the IRS archives.

** To calculate the effective rates the middle income in the tax bracket was used (e.g., $150k for the $100k-200k bracket), which was divided into the average tax paid by people in that bracket.

QR Codes and the Afterlife

They're everywhere -- those little squares with the squiggles inside called QR ("Quick Response") codes.  The Covid pandemic of the last couple of years has accelerated their spread (pun intended)

Links to a relevant article

mainly as a touchless way to obtain information.  For example, in many restaurants the menu can now be accessed by scanning a QR code with your cell phone which opens a web page displaying the items.  No contact with a potentially germy paper menu is required. During the height of the pandemic access by QR code was almost a necessity -- printed menus were provided only by pleading with the wait staff.  For restaurants, the QR-accessed menu has the added benefit of allowing the offerings and prices to be changed quickly, easily, and inexpensively.  Efficient and germ-free, though not particularly elegant, I suspect even after the pandemic many low to moderate-end restaurants will opt to keep the QR menu.

The QR code was invented in 1994 in Japan (see Stazzone, 2021) for industrial inventory and tracking purposes. Unlike the older bar code that we see on products in retail stores, a QR code can be read both horizontally and vertically, allowing it to encode much more information. Confusingly, QR codes are often referred to as 2d "Bar Codes," though they contain no bars.  The name "QR" is actually a trademarked name of a specific form of matrix code.  There are other types of matrix codes, but the QR version has become so common that the name has taken on the status of "Bandaid" to refer to all adhesive bandages, or "Kleenex" to refer to all facial tissues (Stazzone, 2021).

There are a number of advantages to QR codes over standard 1d codes.  The pattern of squiggles allows for increased error correction so that up to 30% of the code can be damaged and still allow accurate scanning. Also, they can store much more information within the code itself rather than having to consult an external data base.  In a retail application this might include colors available, warranty length, or component details. Another advantage is that QR codes can contain a wider variety of information, such as email addresses, geolocation data, names, website urls.

As with all new technology, there are also some potential downsides and misuses of QR codes. Morey Haber of Forbes Magazine has detailed a number of these (Haber, 2020).  Most stem from the fact that  it isn't obvious from the appearance of the code itself what will happen when you scan it.  It could, for instance automatically direct your phone to a website that installs tracking software or even malware, dials a sales-pitch phone number, or sends an email to request more information while also recording and selling your email address.  Ne'er-do-wells may also substitute their own QR code for the original, as happened recently in Australia.  An anti-vaxer pasted his own code over official ones located at the entrances to retail establishments.  The official codes registered shoppers to allow contact tracing if they came into contact with someone with Covid, whereas the substitute code presented misinformation concerning vaccine safety and efficacy.  The best approach to avoiding these problems is to limit our scans to codes offered only by reputable organizations, businesses, and individuals for purposes that are clearly stated, and to be wary of any codes that appear to have been altered or substituted.

The amount and type of information that can be contained in QR codes has led to a wide range of both commercial and personal applications.  For example, my wife and I recently stayed in a hotel where scanning a QR code displayed in the room automatically logged us into the hotel's wifi network. It's even possible to create a code for your own home network for guests to use -- my Android phone has this feature built into the latest operating system, and there are online code-generation services available (for example, see Code Generator or Scanova).  Advertisements for products and services often contain a QR code that will lead to additional information about the product, even to online sales portals.  Some electronic products I've recently purchased have codes that link to the owner's manual. In museums the display tags for items often contain QR codes that play audio explanations.  At the gym where my wife and I exercise, each machine has a QR code that links to a short video demonstrating the proper use of the equipment. Finally, many uses of QR codes occur when the code is stored on your phone and then scanned by others -- airline boarding passes, entertainment tickets, organizational membership information, even vaccination and testing status codes.

Some of these applications are very creative -- even if a bit odd.  My favorite example of this is

From Rome Monuments Co.

something I came across recently that resonated with my somewhat questionable appreciation for graveyards (see My Favorite Cemeteries).  There are now a number of companies that will place QR codes on...wait for it... tombstones (Bhatia, 2020).  Visitors paying their respects, or just curious weirdos like myself, can scan the tombstone code and have access to the deceased's life history, eulogies, photos, or even as one academic has done, a complete list of his publications and citation metrics (Matyszczk, 2020). It can get even more "interesting" if you imagine that the QR code might trigger a video message from the deceased themselves -- parting words of wisdom or a last harangue, perhaps.

The ultimate, though, would be if tombstone QR codes were linked to the latest AI technology that allows conversations with deceased people (Bantham, 2019).  James Vlahos was the first to use AI (but not QR codes) in this way to keep the memory of his father alive.  Before illness overcame his dad, Vlahos interviewed him about his life experiences, attitudes, and philosophy, and had him relate anecdotes and stories about his life. This content was then fed to an AI Chat Bot program that can respond to questions in a naturalistic way,  almost like having a conversation. Vlahos has since founded the company HereAfter, which offers the same service to others for a fee, and has continued to refine the technology.  Other companies have also picked up the idea and there are now a number of platforms which allow interaction with the avatars of people no longer with us.  An informative review of some of these efforts is available in an article by Russ Bantham in "Transformative Technologies."

It seems to my warped mind that it might be easy to connect a tombstone QR code to the deceased's HereAfter avatar. Scan the code with your phone and have a chat with the dead person! Neat, huh? A phone call to the afterlife! And why not go all in by incorporating VR or AR so that the person's image is right there with you! I have little doubt some enterprising coder is working on this right now, and it is simply a matter of time before tombstone QR codes to interact with the dead are available.

One group of people who might not find this idea very appealing are psychics, who make a living contacting the deceased. Another group are those with different sensibilities regarding death. As Bantham notes: "Not everyone will be delighted at the prospect of conversing with the ghostly vestiges of late friends and family members, perceiving it distasteful and maybe a bit creepy."  Of course internet technology, especially social media, is notoriously indifferent to matters of good taste and sensitivity, so I doubt these people will have much effect.

There is an issue here that should at least be mentioned.  Is having AI-mediated conversations with a loved one the healthiest way to grieve or to honor their memory?  The urge to keep the embodied memory of the departed alive is understandable.  But honoring their non-embodied influence on our current everyday lives and the quality of our current experiences is important, also.  This is a matter of living more fully in the present and being mindful of the many ways they affect us in our attitudes, values, and outlooks, rather than being focused on the past.

We live in an age when developments in technology, like AI and QR codes, are increasingly infiltrating what used to be non-technical aspects of our lives -- our beliefs regarding the afterlife, memories of loved ones, and what it means to be "real,"  "true,"  or even "human." Whether the outcome will be positive or negative for society and for individuals is yet to be determined, of course.  But the challenge of figuring this out may be the most important project humans have ever faced.

Me and My Guitar Part 1: A Refrigerator & A Horizontal Landing

[Note:  This is the first in a 3-part series of autobiographical blogs about my unusual encounter with a guitar. The other installments will be available over irregular intervals.]

 

Let me tell you about my accordion, an instrument whose only commonality with a guitar is that they both make sounds. I know, this blog is about guitars and we'll get there eventually, trust me.  But first some context and background.

My parents lived through the Great Depression and WWII.  Their experiences of sacrifice and struggle led them to want the best for their children, particularly those things they themselves had been denied. They did everything within their modest means to enrich my childhood and those of my two sisters. This included the decision that we each should learn to play a musical instrument.

They might have chosen any number of things for me to play:  piano, violin, flute, guitar, drums, alto sax.  I'm not sure how they made the decision, but it wasn't any of those.

LOTS of buttons

The instrument selected for me was a concert-style accordion the size of a refrigerator.  I think I was about 10 at the time, and small for my age, so when I wrestled this thing onto my chest I pretty much disappeared except for my scrawny little arms poking out from the sides, and the top of my head sticking out over the top. You've probably seen examples of this kind of accordion -- a keyboard like a grand piano on the right front, and a grid of about 10,000 tiny buttons on the left which are played blind.  It was so heavy for me I had to play it sitting down, and my practice sessions were as much physical workouts as they were musical experiences.

As you can perhaps tell, I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about learning to play the accordion.  Definitely the best part was that I had a crush on my teacher, Miss Dardano, who gave me lessons each week at the music store where my parents had purchased the accordion.  Every Saturday I would board a bus a few blocks from my house for the 45-minute journey to the store.  I didn't take the accordion because it was way too heavy for me to transport, so I borrowed one at the store for my lesson. Miss Dardano was young and gorgeous, at least to my pre-pubescent eyes.  We were in a tiny recital room that brought us breathtakingly close together, though we were separated by the refrigerator in my lap. I felt uncomfortable in her presence but also thrilled.  I tried hard to live up to her expectations, and felt devastated when I didn't -- which was often the case.  Most lessons ended with her admonition to "practice harder next week."

The pinnacle of my musical prowess was learning to play the wonderfully catchy tune "Turkey in the Straw," which I played as part of a group performance with about 20 other budding accordion artists one Saturday.

My accordion-playing career came to a sudden and welcome-though-painful end one summer when I broke my left wrist while playing with neighborhood kids.  I had been trying a simple trick on a high bar and my dismount ended with a horizontal landing. The wrist had to be reset halfway through the healing process, resulting in it being in a cast nearly the entire summer and becoming extremely atrophied.  It became clear to my parents that this ruled out wrestling with a heavy musical instrument for a long time.  The accordion was sold sometime that fall and no more mention of music lessons was made.

I was relieved. Although I certainly had positive feelings for Miss Dardano,  I never developed much fondness for my refrigerator, and playing Turkey in the Straw for my friends didn't exactly put me on the fast track to popularity.  As I look back on it now, however, there were several very positive aspects of my experience.  First, I learned to read music, an exercise that has made me appreciate that written music is a remarkable human development that enables us to transform the wonders of sound into squiggles of ink.  I also gained a deep appreciation for what good musicians are able to do, and I marvel at the level of mastery some of them have achieved with their instruments. My hours of practice to reach even the pitiful level that I managed to achieve makes me profoundly in awe of those who have combined hard work with natural talent to enable them to produce sounds that evoke emotional and cognitive states that can enrich our lives in unquestionably profound ways.  Finally, I think I unconsciously acquired something hard to put into words -- a seed of intuition about how harmonic structure and progression can be combined creatively to produce music that can be entertaining, as perhaps in the case of "Turkey in the Straw,"  but also music that is intensely personal, as I've recently discovered with my guitar.

Next:  Dick meets guitar.

Suggested Reading:
Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, first published in 1974. 

Mom's Advice for Troubled Times

I'm writing this on September 30, 2020, roughly eight months into the Covid 19 pandemic. Like everyone else, my life has been upended by a tiny virus that I had never heard of a short time ago. On top of that, there is the turmoil of the most contentious, rancorous, and consequential Presidential election of my lifetime.  On top of THAT I see world-wide discord and social upheaval that seems far worse and dangerous that I can ever remember.  And THEN there is the politicization of science and attacks on rationality and evidence-based decision-making by our highest leaders and the acceptance of this denigration by a disturbingly large portion of our populace.  And THEN I'm watching the splintering of our society into fragments defined by self-interest and group identity that are vehemently against unity through compromise.  And I ALSO see tremendous social upheaval in my country that is clearly the legacy of our racist past and present and is leading to excesses on all sides. On top of all THAT I'm watching an economy collapse, putting millions in dire economic straights while others are getting ever richer without lifting a finger. And finally, the daily news is full of stories about hurricanes, fires, floods, record polar ice melting, species extinctions, etc., etc., etc. Have I left anything out?

In short, everyday experience can seem pretty grim in these troubled times.

Like many other people, I find myself wishing that I could just fast-forward to a calmer, gentler, safer, and more just world. You know, just erase the near future and all the negative experiences it will bring.  Even skipping a year or two would perhaps ease my angst -- by then a COVID 19 vaccine will have been deployed to enough of the population to allow a return to "normal" life again. 

But then a small voice in my head insistently and sternly echoes something my mother used to tell me when I would whine that I wished I were older and could just skip the restrictions and unpleasantness of the present and get to the good part of life:  Never wish away time because you can never get it back! 

As with a lot of other advice she gave me, I had to acquire a bit of wisdom myself in order to finally appreciate the wisdom of her words. But I realize now that she was absolutely right.  To wish for a shorter life is not a real good idea for anyone, but particularly not for someone of my age. I simply don't have enough years left to wish the next couple of them away. And the assumption that the future will be peachy-keen and necessarily better than right now is, well, stupid. Most glaringly, it ignores the fact that some of the most challenging times of my life (i.e., full of angst and pain) have turned out in retrospect to have been enriching and enlightening in ways that the easy times can't match. And of course my predictions about the future have often been glaringly inaccurate.  Bottom line: We can't know the future nor relive the past -- we can only truly experience now. 

So I'm trying to follow Mom's advice by buckling up for the ride, looking for and appreciating the many good things along the way as this current maelstrom slugs and churns its way toward the future.  

Oh, and speaking of buckling up, another bit of Mom's advice (also sound) was Always wear clean underwear when you take a trip in a car.  If you are in an accident the people who care for you won't think you're a slob.

 

Please Pass the Antidote

Let's face it.  Ingesting news these days can be hazardous to your psychological health.  Between Trump's latest Twitter tantrum, the pandemic, the breakdown of world order and slide toward authoritarianism, myriad ecological disasters, wars, widespread violence and incivility, and the latest data breach and misuse of our private information for political or monetary purposes, we can be overwhelmed with the relentless negativity of it all unless we come up with a strategy to cope with it.  Here's mine. Please feel free to offer your own strategy in the Comments Section.

I've chosen to get most of my news these days either from online sources or our local West Hawai'i Today newspaper. "Online" doesn't mean Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media, as I'll explain shortly. I deliberately avoid Broadcast news (aka "the talking heads") except on rare occasions when the show offers an in-depth investigation into a particular topic rather than than the usual sound bites and attention-grabbing images.

My usual morning strategy is to meditate for half an hour (an attempt to prepare for what's to come) then I dive in to the news cesspool by scanning online versions of two of the following: Aljazeera, BBC World News, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The limit is just two of these each day because otherwise my head might explode.  My sources are chosen to cover a reasonable range of perspectives presented in a responsible, analytic and thoughtful manner.  It's often interesting to compare the way the same events are reported in two different sources, for example in terms of the importance given to the event and the context in which it is embedded. In the service of cranial defense I don't read every article, just those I consider essential to stay informed.

I also might read one or two op-ed pieces that are by people I respect even though I disagree with them. I do this sparingly and with a fairly high threshold.  Examples of my vetted list include Washington Post columnists George Will, Michael Gerson, Kathleen Parker, Ed Dionne and Fox News Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram.  I've recently added to the list independent commentator and historian Heather Cox Richardson (thanks to SH for suggesting this source), who publishes a well-researched daily analysis of the political scene.  Although the choices here are admittedly limited to more or less the center of the political spectrum, they span enough of a range of viewpoints to hopefully avoid the echo-chamber syndrome.  For example, here are two op-eds that all of us liberals who are convinced Trump is finally on the ropes should read, one by the Post's Kathleen Parker, ("Don't let poll numbers fool you.  Trump could still win."  and the other by Andrew Mitrovica, ("How is it possible that Trump can still win?)

Following this my wife and I usually take our morning walk through the neighborhood (very calming), then eat breakfast.  At breakfast I scan our local newspaper using the same technique of cranial defense as for my online sources.

As soon as possible after each of these masochistic exercises, I reach for two sorts of antidotes.  The first is my favorite comic strips, both online and in our paper.  Although I enjoy quite a few strips, there are three that for me have the highest antidote level:  Bizzaro, Non-Sequiter, and my personal, all-time favorite, Far Side. Note that these selections are a reflection of my rather warped sense of humor, something I have explored before -- see What, Me Worry?  These creative and odd-ball observations of the human condition are a blessed relief from the relentless negativity in the news of the day, and for a few moments they allow me to think of something else before I start my day.

The second type of antidotes are various accounts of the latest advances in science and technology, testimony to the fact there may be hope for humans after all.  My main sources are a daily email summary of cutting-edge scientific developments presented by the scientific organization Sigma Xi, and news summaries by technology magazines Wired and CNET.  Imagine, people who can communicate in complete sentences and who support their arguments with evidence!

That's it.  I can't say that all these measures are 100% effective, but I'm convinced I would be confined to a rubber room without them. Stay Safe. Stay Sane. Don't let your brain be hijacked.

How To Kill An Oxfart

oxfart, n \'ox-fart\ : An anagram of "fox" and "rat," used frivolously by the author of Snow Crash to denote any creature that is perceived to be despicable and worthy of being killed.

The huge highway billboard depicted a snarling, mangy, furtive creature skulking through some bushes, obviously up to no damn good. The message below the photo urged the public to help control this dire threat to the environment, the economy, and to public health by all means necessary, and showed one of the packets of poison being distributed by government authorities for that purpose.

The photo was of a fox.

Oxfartus Foxus

The billboard was part of a 10-year fox eradication program carried out in Tasmania, Australia from 2006 to 2014. My wife and I were traveling there at the time, and were puzzled by the negative portrayal of an animal we generally regarded very positively. Red foxes were introduced into Australia during the 1800's by the British for sport hunting, but unfortunately the foxes, being hunters themselves, began to prey on many vulnerable native species and have driven a number of them to extinction (Wikipedia). This, of course, is yet another sad example of the negative consequences of human ignorance and arrogance in environmental and ecological matters (see The Curious Case of the Kona Coyote for more). 

As the billboard campaign in Tasmania illustrates, it is helpful to demonize another species in order to provide psychological justification for killing its members and to motivate the public to take part or at least tolerate it. As history shows, when the targets are our fellow humans, additional techniques of dehumanization and dastardization (my term) can be included to make extermination, enslavement, exploitation, and abuse acceptable or even righteously called for as part of the natural order of things.

Cuteus Foxus

The fox is generally considered an attractive, resourceful, and intelligent animal that most of us don't perceive as particularly threatening or dangerous even if it occasionally becomes a nuisance or a pest (raiding the chicken coup, for instance). The Australians therefore had to work fairly hard to change its public image as part of the eradication and control campaign.
 
Rats, on the other hand have been demonized for centuries and no extra public media campaign is needed to make killing them seem justified. Perhaps going back to the days of the Black Plague or earlier, rats have had a very negative reputation despite (or perhaps because of) being our close urban

Oxfartus Ratus

companions for hundreds of years. Traits that have allowed rats to thrive in ecological and evolutionary terms are seen as revoltingly negative.  They are omnivorous, opportunistic scavengers, and they are not too picky in what they eat or where they eat it -- garbage dumps, trash cans, or pet-food bowls. They are very adept at staying near food supplies by utilizing any available shelter, including sewers, attics, and walls. And of course, rats breed prolifically, which increases their competition for food and makes them tenacious seekers of new food supplies. They can be very destructive in their quest for food and shelter -- gnawing through walls and screens and even chewing on automobile wires coated with new environmentally-friendly soy-based coverings (NBC News, 1/26/16).  All of these things lead to the same conclusion  -- like a fox in Tasmania, the only good one is a dead one.

Once demonized, methods of controlling varmints like rats and foxes (i.e., oxfarts) are evaluated primarily on practical and economic criteria rather than whether they are humane. After all, who cares if such a nasty creature suffers a little as long as it dies.  For example, in Tasmania the poison sodium fluoroacetate, or "1080" was widely used in the eradication campaign. This poison is especially lethal to mammals, including canines, rodents, and humans. Though effective, it would be hard to defend it as humane way to kill anything.  According to Wikipedia:

"In humans, the symptoms of poisoning normally appear between 30 minutes and three hours after exposure. Initial symptoms typically include nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain; sweating, confusion, and agitation follow. In significant poisoning, cardiac abnormalities including tachycardia or bradycardia, hypotension, and ECG changes develop. Neurological effects include muscle twitching and seizures; consciousness becomes progressively impaired after a few hours leading to coma. Death is normally due to ventricular arrhythmias, progressive hypotension unresponsive to treatment, and secondary lung infections. Symptoms in domestic animals vary: dogs tend to show nervous system signs such as convulsions, vocalization, and uncontrollable running, whilst large herbivores such as cattle and sheep more predominantly show cardiac signs. Sub-lethal doses of sodium fluoroacetate may cause damage to tissues with high energy needs — in particular, the brain, gonads, heart, lungs, and fetus."  Wikipedia, "Sodium Fluoroacetate"

Sodium fluoracetate is tightly controlled in the U.S., restricted primarily to poison collars placed on sheep so that a predator who eats the sheep (usually a coyote or wolf, not a fox) will either die or develop a mutton aversion. This poison is no longer available in the U.S. as a method to kill rats, but there are a number of others that are, and selling them is BIG business. Worldwide an estimated $45 billion a year is spent on rodent control, about $1.4 billion in the U.S. alone.

According to the authoritative website, Rats in the Attic, here are the major poisons found in products you can buy, and how they work:

• Anticoagulants: Includes warfarin, brodifacoum, flocoumafen, coumatetraly, difenacoum, and bromadiolone. Anticoagulants damage capillaries (the tiny blood vessels), and cause internal bleeding (hemorrhaging). This process takes a few days. Documented cases of human warfarin poisoning record severe pain from bleeding into muscles and joints. In the final phase, the animal dies of hypovolemic circulatory shock.
• Bromethalin: Attacks the nervous system, and causes limb ataxia, extensor rigidity, opisthotonus, lateral recumbency hind limb hyper-reflexia, seizures, hyperthennia, and finally death after 36 hours or so.
• Cholecalciferol: It produces hypercalcemia, which results in systemic calcification of soft tissue, leading to renal failure, cardiac abnormalities, hypertension, CNS depression, and leads to death in 24-36 hours.
• Strychnine: causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion.
• Antifreeze - Ethylene glycol: The liver metabolizes ethylene glycol into glycolate and oxalate, which cause cellular damage in various tissues and organs, especially the kidneys. So after an initial stage of nausea and vomiting and muscle twitches, kidney, liver, even heart failure cause death, usually in about 24 hours.  (Source: Rats in the Attic: How to Poison Rats)

Surely only a true demon deserves to die by one of these poisons, and then only if there are no practical alternatives to protect us from its demonic presence.

A quick perusal of your local hardware or homestore's large section of pest control products will reveal a number of possible alternatives to poisons.  One that is more environmentally friendly but hardly more humane than poison is the glue trap, sold for controlling a number of pests, including rats and mice. These devices guarantee a long, lingering, and painful death by inhibiting the animal's movements so that dies from starvation, self-inflicted injury or from the stress and exhaustion of trying to free itself. At least one animal protection organization has called for a ban on glue traps -- not an unreasonable position it seems to me (see PETA's statement, for example).

Snap Trap

There are two devices that can kill rats humanely, and the first of these is strongly recommended by professional exterminators at Rats in the Attic. The simple snap trap, invented in the late 1800's, is still considered perhaps the most effective, reliable, environmentally friendly, safe, and humane way to deal with rodent demons (see Wikipedia for details).  The mechanism is straight-forward, though the result sounds a bit gruesome.  A spring-loaded wire bar is released when the rat touches the bait, descending with enough force to kill the animal almost instantly by crushing its skull, ribs, or spinal cord.  Death is usually very quick, so the animal's suffering is much less than with poison or glue traps. Fancier versions come with a lever that makes disposing of the body fast and clean.

Electronic Trap

The second device is more high-tech and costs a lot more, but is equally humane and has certain aesthetic advantages that I find appealing.  It is the method I've used successfully around my own
home when repelling and live-trapping have failed (note: for those who believe live-trapping and relocating are the most humane techniques you might consider assessments by both PETA and by Rats in the Attic which propose otherwise).  This battery-powered device delivers an electric shock to the rat that instantly renders it unconscious and kills it by stopping its heart. The current is high enough to cause cardiac arrest but not so high that it creates a rat-kebab.  To the extent you are willing to infer that the rat feels no pain while unconscious, this method is very humane.

Despite the appeal of killing things that we regard as pests, the best way to handle rats, foxes, and other oxfarts is to prevent them in the first place. As the example of the Tasmanian fox illustrates, the real cause of a pest problem may in fact be human behavior, not innately demonic characteristics of the pest. In Australia humans deliberately imported a non-native animal and released it so they could hunt it for sport. The extinction of animals the foxes preyed upon for food is very negative, of course, but it could be argued that humans are as much to blame for the extinctions as the foxes.

In the case of rodents, human behavior may also be a large part of the cause. The way we often provide open access to garbage around homes, restaurants and public spaces, for instance, produces an irresistible buffet for rats & mice, and an endless supply of delicious, nutritious food for them. Our buildings are often designed and maintained without regard to the fact that they provide excellent shelter in the form of unsealed nooks, crannies and hidden spaces. And in poor neighborhoods with substandard housing and minimal city services these conditions are even more prevalent.  If even a small portion of the $1.4 billion spent annually on poisons and traps went to better sanitation and waste-handling the population of rats would drop considerably.

But by far the most effective way to reduce the numbers of rats is to stop them from reproducing.  A very promising method to do this has recently been developed by the biotech company Senestech. When rats consume a patented liquid bait both the males and females become infertile. They live out the rest of their lives without side effects, though they may be puzzled as to why they aren't producing any little oxfarts. The natural lifespan of a typical urban rat is about 8-12 months, during which a mating pair can produce up to 15,000 pups. The math is pretty clear -- by preventing reproduction in a rat colony the number of rats will start to decline within a very short time.  In one test case in New York subways the decrease was 40% in just 3 months (The Guardian, 9/20/16).  The product is called ContraPest, and has recently won EPA registration so it will likely become commercially available soon.  Besides being effective and humane, ContraPest is environmentally friendly because the ingredients quickly break down, both within the rat's body and in water or soil.  Since it metabolized quickly, if the rat is eaten by another animal the sterilization effects are not likely to be transferred.  Sounds like a big win for everyone and everything -- except for the rats, of course.

Cuteus Ratus

Humans are unique in that we are the only animal that has invented new and creative methods of killing other creatures and even members of our own species. We are also the only animal that can deliberately choose which of those methods to use, when to use them, and whether to kill at all.  Hopefully our unique qualities as a species can include empathy, compassion, and sympathetic kindness in making those choices, even for oxfarts.

____________________
Sources and Resources:
"The Curious Case of the Kona Coyote:"  Snow Crash, 5/6/14
"Red Foxes in Australia:" Wikipedia
10-year fox eradication program: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service 
"Sodium Fluoroacetate:" Wikipedia
"How to Poison Rats Effectively:" Rats in the Attic
"Mousetrap:" Wikipedia 
"Trapping Mice & Rats:" PETA
"Humane Live Trapping:" Rats in the Attic
"Man v Rat: Could the Long War Soon Be Over?" The Guardian, 9/20/16
"Rodent Control: Our Product:"  Senestech

Trump's Truthiness And Post-Factual Politics In A "Demon-Haunted World"

In 2005 humorist Stephen Colbert introduced the term "Truthiness" on his political satire show, "The Colbert Report."  Although the origin of the word goes back to the early 1800's to refer to truthfulness, Colbert used it to parody current political discourse, referring to the "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.  Colbert's explanation of the word that he gave a decade ago in a 2006 interview seems even more applicable to today's political scene, and in particular to current Presidential campaign rhetoric:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word ...
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love ... [insert D.T instead of then President G.W. Bush] because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country [emphasis added].  I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?...
Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality. (A.V. Club Interview, 2006)

Conservative columnist George Will uses the related but not nearly as humorous term "Post-factual Politics" to describe what he sees as an age in which political decisions and strategies often ignore demonstrable facts and instead follow a worldview largely uninformed by reality (see, for example, Will's 9/29/16 analysis of Trump's position on Ukraine ("Trump's Shallowness Runs Deep") and his 9/14/16 discussion of Putin's Orwellian rewriting of history in the service of "making Russia great again."

George Will's observations aren't as entertaining as Colbert's, but their implications are equally sobering and alarming. It is very disturbing to think we are heading for a society in which facts don't matter and truthiness is more important than truth.

A possible antidote to this trend is for citizens to make use of the several politically neutral fact-checking services that are available online, such as Politifact.Com, Factcheck.Org, or the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column. All three allow for degrees of factual distortion, from leaving out important contextual details, to over- or under-stating numerical data, to making totally unsubstantiated factual claims. The potential benefit of consulting such sources is that they allow current issues to be assessed more rationally, and though interpretations may differ as to what the facts imply for political action, at least these disagreements can begin with a common, realistic referent.

Unfortunately, the beneficial impact of fact-checking may be limited in the climate of extreme divisiveness we are now experiencing.  As Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post has noted,

...there are limits to what fact-checking can achieve. Those who have tried to measure the impact of fact-checking have found that there are many kinds of audiences, and that fact-checking affects each of them differently. All people are more likely to believe in “facts” that confirm their preexisting opinions and to dismiss those that don’t. But those with unusually strong opinions — those who are more partisan — are less likely to change their views, more likely to claim that fact-checkers themselves are “biased,” and even more likely to spread their views aggressively to their friends. This has always been the case, but social media now multiplies the phenomenon: In a world where people get most of their information from friends, fact-checking doesn’t reach those who need it most [emphasis added]. (Applebaum, 5/19/16)

For those at the political extremes (such as D.T.) truthiness wins because the truth reported by fact-checkers must be a lie if it contradicts what the extremists already believe and feel in their gut is correct: "What I say is right, and nothing anyone else says could possibly be true." The manifestations and consequences of truthiness and post-factual politics are far-reaching, dire and ironic -- at a time in history when astonishing discoveries are being made in medicine, biology, physics, space exploration, and other fields the world is simultaneously gripped by war, global political and economic instability, internal political discord, and ethnic conflict fueled by intransigent religious beliefs and extreme ideological intolerance.

The tendency to reject evidence-based reasoning extends beyond politics and includes a growing resistance to scientific approaches to knowledge and decision-making, as illustrated by controversies over climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research.  In many areas of life that could be usefully informed by the methods and findings of science, people instead seem willing to accept unfounded explanations of events and solutions to problems that rest on intuition, superstition, and pseudoscience. Add to this the growing tendency to deny scientific evidence because it doesn't fit our politicized beliefs.

Carl Sagan, the astronomer and tireless advocate of science education explored the extent and causes of this phenomenon in his 1996 book, The Demon-Haunted World.  He suggests that one reason for the rejection of scientific evidence -- and by extension the reliance on truthiness -- is a misperception of the self-correcting and probabilistic nature of science, two features which distinguish science from ideological approaches to determining truth.  By insisting on repeatable, objective evidence to support empirical claims, science builds on past knowledge by correcting and extending conclusions in light of the most recent reliable evidence.  Unfortunately this can lead to the false inference that truth is as malleable as opinion and therefore scientific evidence has no greater claim to validity than one's gut feeling.  Furthermore, since science explicitly acknowledges that any scientific conclusion is possibly false, some people believe this means any two explanatory claims (such as Darwinian Evolutionary Theory versus Creationism) have equal standing.  However, they have failed to appreciate that science carefully assesses the degree of certainty in any claim, and these can vary widely based on the amount and consistency of available evidence -- some explanations are far more credible than others.

A second possible reason for rejecting scientific evidence focuses more on the emotional basis of the phenomenon, and as a social psychologist I find it very compelling.  Sagan notes that superstitious and non-scientific reasoning are often appealing because they promise to remove the distress of uncertainty of everyday life in a world full of perceived threats. But this comes at a high price:

"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly ignorance about ourselves.  I worry that ... pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive ....Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to our national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up all around us -- then habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls" [emphasis added].

The desire for certainty -- even if the certainty is an illusion created from the truthiness of post-factual political rhetoric -- is a powerful psychological motivation in times of social upheaval such as we are now experiencing.  But in contrast to the measured certainty of science, the illusory kind is not amenable to moderation by consideration of factual evidence.

Carl Sagan died in 1996, the same year he finished writing The Demon-Haunted World .  I am certain he would be thrilled by the scientific advances of the past 20 years.  But I think he might also be very disappointed and saddened to find so many demons still haunting us.....

 ___________
Sources & Resources:

"Truthiness,"  Wikipedia (Includes a transcript of the interview with Stephen Colbert)
George Will: "Trump's Shallowness Runs Deep," Washington Post 9/29/16,  "Putin Goes Full Orwell," Washington Post 9/14/16,
Anne Applebaum:  "Fact-Checking in a 'Post-Fact World'" Washington Post, 5/19/16
Carl Sagan:  The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996).  Ballantine Books.

Cats: Unifiers Of The World

Maybe after my nap.....

Yeah, yeah,  I know.  All you dog lovers out there are thinking that dogs, not cats, are humanity's best friend.  But I didn't say anything about cats being our slobbering, leg-licking, obsequious friends -- I will make the case that cats are unifiers of the world, which is way different.  This will require some of my usual twisted logic, so be patient as you hear me out.

Anything I can do for you??

The first fun fact is that according to several surveys, there are many more people who identify as dog lovers than cat lovers. This certainly fits my informal observations that dog lovers seem to be a dime a dozen. For example, in one large-scale study by Gosling et. al. (2010) people were asked if they were a "dog person," a "cat person," "both," or "neither."  An important strength of this study is that it surveyed a wide range of people who weren't necessarily pet-owners to begin with, and therefore they were representative of a broader and more neutral population.  Forty-six percent of the respondents self-identified as a dog person, whereas only 12% identified as a cat person.  Twenty-eight percent said their were both a cat and a dog person, and 15% chose neither. 

Another interesting poll reported by Stanley Coren in Psychology Today focused on the intensity of people's feeling toward dogs and cats.  The results showed that 74% of the respondents said they liked dogs "a lot," whereas only 41% said the same of cats. You'll note that the two percentages add to more than 100, meaning that there are some people who a strong liking for both animals, but not many.  Dogs and cats also stimulate negative feelings to different degrees.  The same survey asked the respondents whether they disliked each type of animal "a lot."  Only 2% said they disliked dogs, but 15% said that of cats. My guess is that cats really don't care. Dogs on the other hand have that genetically programmed plaintive look designed to soften up even the 2% who reject them -- you know, head down on paws, big sad eyes looking up expectantly, often with an audible sigh....

The differences in preferences and feelings toward dogs and cats are undoubtedly tied to the ways each species behaves toward humans, with those behaviors rooted in the nature of the animal and how they each were domesticated.  According to Stanley Coren:

"In the wild, cats are usually solitary hunters and often are active mostly at night. In contrast, wild canines are usually sociable pack animals that work in groups and are active between dawn and dusk. Our domestic dogs retain this need for social interaction to the degree that without a master and a family, a dog seems unhappy--almost lost. Dogs will intrude on a person's ongoing activities if they are feeling lonely and want some company or play. Cats, on the other hand, are often invisible during the day, seeming only to appear in the evening, especially if that is when they are fed. Cats will occasionally engage in social activities or play with people, but their interest is limited." (Coren, 2010)

Because of the innate social nature of dogs they have been more intensely domesticated than cats, and the traits we find attractive have been intentionally encouraged.  The independent and solitary nature of cats, however, led to a different quality of domestication. As the BBC's Henry Nichols recently put it,

"We might expect that the process of domestication would root out that spirited independence. But cats were not domesticated in the same way as other animals, with humans carefully choosing which ones to breed from and which traits to encourage. Instead, cats were probably responsible for their own domestication. (Nicholls, 2015)

When cats first encountered human settlements, their wariness and instinct for self-preservation served them well. Sensing opportunity, they were drawn into an urban niche by an abundance of easy prey and an absence of big predators. As quoted by Nicholls, geneticist Carlos Driscoll at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes that "All these animals had to do was become behaviorally adept at living with people" But importantly, "there was no selection against them hunting, or against them finding their own mates, or against them finding places to build their own nests in a rubbish heap."

The dramatically different behaviors of dogs and cats toward humans may make them attractive to different kinds of people, an idea that has been verified scientifically. The large scale study by Gosling et al, (2010) described earlier included a widely used and highly regarded measure of the major dimensions of personality, and the differences between the respondents identifying as dog versus cat people were assessed.  I should note before telling you the results that a danger in presenting personality differences between groups of people on measures like these is that the differences are often over-generalized -- it is incorrectly assumed that everyone in Group A is higher or lower on dimension X than those in Group B.  Not true. It's better to think of the differences in terms of trends, or tendencies.

Gosling et al. found that dog lovers were higher than cat lovers on the personality dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.  Cat Lovers, on the other hand, were higher than Dog Lovers on the dimensions of Openness and Neuroticism.  Similar patterns have been found by Coren, (2010), who notes that the Openness dimension "involves a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. People high on openness are more likely to hold unconventional beliefs while people with low scores on openness (dog people) tend to have more conventional, traditional interests."  This, along with cat people's higher neuroticism, suggests quirkiness and aloofness, both of which fit nicely with my thesis in the following admittedly convoluted way:  It's harder to tell on the surface a person is a cat lover, and so when you do find out they like cats you are likely to be surprised -- and pleased, if you are a fellow cat fancier. This common bond may transcend (or at least weaken) the existing social barriers between you, thus contributing to the unification of the world. Peace, harmony and utopian happiness are sure to follow.  (Ouch, I think I sprained my brain on that last one.)

My final piece of evidence is the surprising range of people who are cat people, covering a wide spectrum of political, religious, and cultural orientations. Consider these examples from a list of 45 Famous Cat Lovers compiled by Rachael Mulliss:  Mohammed...Cardinal Richelieu...Kim Kardashian...Sir Winston Churchill...Abraham Lincoln...Mark Twain...and Ricky Gervais. If there is any common ground among these folks then maybe there is still hope for the world...

I rest my case. 
_________
Sources & Resources:

Gosling, S. D., Sandy, C. J., & Potter, J. (2010). Personalities of self-identified “dog people” and “cat people.” Anthrozoös, 23, 213-222.

Stanley Coren, 2010:  Psychology Today.  Personality Differences Between Dog and Cat Owners. 

Henry Nicholls, BBC.Com, 2015:  Cats are Utterly, Irredeemably Selfish:  True or False?

45 Famous Cat Lovers:  Rachael Mulliss. 

Sweet Sweat, Part 2: "Never Let Them See You Sweat"

We humans are built to sweat.  And we do, up to a gallon per hour under extreme circumstances. To accomplish this prodigious feat, each of us has 2-4 million sweat glands.  These are spread all over our bodies, but with greater concentrations in regions with more hair, such as armpits, groin, scalp and yes, probably eyebrows (see Part 1).  Among mammals only primates and horses cool their bodies by evaporating large amounts of sweat from these glands, and they are the only two mammals who perspire in their armpits.

Being efficient sweaters means that we humans are very good at regulating the core temperature of our bodies. This ability has given us at least two evolutionary advantages over our less sweaty brethren.  First, it allowed early humans to engage in endurance activities like running down and killing other animals for food. Second, the heat generated by our big brains burning a lot of calories can be managed through the evaporative cooling produced by sweating. In other words, Big Brain <==> Big Sweat. (Note to you heavy sweaters out there -- no, it doesn't follow that you are smarter that someone who doesn't sweat as much as you do.....)

Mayo Clinic's Depiction of Sweat Glands

There are two kinds of sweat glands: eccrine and apocrine.  Eccrine glands open directly onto the skin and are found over most of the body, with higher concentrations in the hands, feet, forearms, forehead, chest and back. Apocrine glands open into hair follicles and so are found in areas where follicles are abundant, such as armpits, groin, scalp, and yes, even eyebrows (see Part 1).  There is considerable variation from person to person in the total number of sweat glands, but the region-to-region relative differences are the same. Thus, one person might have few glands in say, the eyebrows, whereas another has more in that region.  But both people have more glands in their arm pits than in their eyebrows.  You might say it's more normal to have fewer glands in the eyebrows (again, see Part 1)....

The sweat from the two kinds of glands differs in composition and in potential stinkiness.  Eccrine glands produce perspiration that is mostly water, with some salt and trace elements. In most people this sweat is odorless, both as it emerges and after it has dried. Apocrine glands, on the other hand, are a boon to the $3 billion a year deodorant industry because they produce a milky, chemically complex sweat that is 20% proteins and fats, and skin bacteria love it.  The bi-products of their digestive process are odoriferous -- and we have been conditioned to regard the smell as offensive.  Nearly 90% of adult Americans are proactive about body odor by taking frequent showers and baths and using commercial deodorants and antiperspirants.  An interesting paradox is that many soaps increase the natural pH level of the skin, making it more friendly to bacterial growth. Thus, frequent showering may actually encourage higher concentrations of bacteria and therefore make chemical deodorants even more necessary.  One way around this dilemma besides going back to the "once-a-week-bath-whether-you-need-it-or-not" routine is to use pH-balanced bath soap.

Perspiration is triggered by three primary sources:  environmental heat, exercise, and stress.  Oh, and "power surges" brought on by hormonal changes in women -- definitely a topic worth a whole other blog and so it won't be considered here.  Stress has a strong social component, as indicated by a recent survey of American & Canadian adults in which 62% of the participants reported stressful work situations brought on sweating, and nearly half said this occurred when interacting with their boss or with colleagues.  In the same survey,  2/3 said they perceived someone who was sweating as being nervous and uncertain.  Thus the adage "Don't ever let them see you sweat" to avoid the attribution that you are unsure of yourself and not in control. Probably the most famous historical case of this was the first Kennedy/Nixon debate in which Nixon was visibly perspiring, leading to a widespread belief that he lost the debate.  Stress sweat comes on suddenly and almost always activates both kinds of glands, which means it often produces the most odor -- stress stinks, literally.

Heat and exercise are perhaps the two most "natural" sources of sweating, and they illustrate our somewhat ambivalent attitudes toward perspiration.  On the one hand we spend $3 billion a year on antiperspirants and on the other we deliberately seek out certain situations where the objective is to sweat buckets.  For instance, in terms of hot environments, consider saunas, steam baths, and "sweat lodges" as examples where sweating is desirable, healthy, and even sacred.  Vigorous physical exercise, with its inevitable liquid result, is eagerly sought after in natural environments as well as in fitness centers with hi-tech equipment.  In the U.S, alone, people spend about $ 22 billion per year on health clubs, where if you aren't seen sweating, you're regarded as just not working hard enough, an evaluation applied equally to men and women in that context.

This brings us full circle in this exploration of perspiration, back to the question whether there is really a sex difference in sweating.  We can easily dismiss the romantic notion that ladies "merely glow," but do women and men perspire at the same level under the same conditions?  Fortunately, there is some pretty solid scientific evidence that addresses that question in a recent experimental study by several Japanese researchers published in the journal Experimental Physiology (Ichinose-Kuwahara et al., 2010).  A less technical but more readable presentation of this research is in a New York Times article by Gretchen Reynolds.

The researchers compared the sweating rates of healthy men and women who were either very fit (amateur endurance athletes) or who exercised very little.  The average age of the participants was about 21, which unfortunately doesn't allow confidently generalizing the results to geezers, but is still informative.  The sweat output of the participants was measured while they rode a stationary bike under increasingly higher pedaling intensity.  The temperature of the room was held at 86d, pretty toasty.  The researchers measured both the number of sweat glands that were activated and the amount per gland at several sites on each participant's body.

For both men and women, those who were very fit sweated more during exercise than those who were less fit, a finding that has also been found in other research studies.  The functional importance of this is that the body's core temperature can be kept below a critical level longer if sweat glands start pumping earlier during strenuous exercise.  Regular work-outs condition the body to do this.

Now for the question at hand. The sweat rate for men was higher than for women in both the fit and unfit groups, although the difference was small for less fit groups.  Men achieved this soggy superiority by sweating more per gland, not by having more glands activated. This same result has been found in other studies that didn't involve exercise and instead looked at sweating under different temperature and humidity conditions -- i.e., "passive sweating."  The bottom line appears to be that men's sweat glands pump out more perspiration, period.  The best evidence to date is that this is associated with testosterone levels, not a structural difference between men and women.  For instance, prior to puberty when hormones begin to run amok, both boys and girls sweat at the same rate and from the same number of glands.

One last point. Sweating cools the body and lowers core temperature.  This means that women in the exercise study tended to be hotter than men in both the fit and less fit groups.  A possible inference from this result is that if you sweat less, you may perceive the same environment as warmer than someone who sweats more because your body is actually hotter.  Of course it is also possible that people who don't ordinarily sweat much may reverse the direction of attribution --  "If I'm sweating, the environment and me must be really hot."  I suspect this attributional method of assessing comfort level is quite common. Either way, this could account for many marital disagreements, present company included.

For me the conclusion of all this is that sweating in humans has important implications in terms of economic impact, physiological functioning, evolutionary processes, and social relations.  And it is a prime example of the common feature of our species to elevate something that is basic and essential to something that is a complex phenomenon with additional qualities that are to a fairly large extent the product of our big brains.  Whew!  I think it's time for a shower......
_______________________
Sources & Resources

Perspiration, Sweat Glands, Deodorants, Sweat Lodges, Hot Flashes  - Wikepedia
Sweating and body odor - Mayo Clinic
The science behind sweating - The California Aggie
Sweating: - MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia 
Statistics and Facts on Health and Fitness Clubs - Statistica
Sex differences in the effects of physical training on sweat gland responses during a graded exercise - Ichinose-Kuwahara et. al.-  Experimental Physiology (2010)
Do Women Sweat Differently Than Men? - The New York Times
Sweating Survey - International Hyperhidrosis Society
Stress Sweat - YouBeauty.com
Body Odors & pH Balances | Livestrong.com

Sweet Sweat: Part I - Liquid Gold

Wife:  My eyebrows are sweating.

Me:  What??

Wife:  It's so hot my eyebrows are sweating. They always do.

Me:  What?

Male readers who have been married for a while will recognize this is a time to shut up.  The correct response, if any, is to acknowledge the discomfort and then quickly move on.  However, I made not only one mistake but two.  First, I denied that it was particularly hot.  Then I questioned whether eyebrows were a normal place to sweat.

My penance was to do some research into the topic of perspiration and possible differences among people in where and when they sweat.  I found that there is a wealth of information about this topic, and to someone as warped as me it turned out to be very interesting. There was so much material that rather than share it in one long blog I've decided to torture you with two shorter installments.  Here goes.  Oh, and be patient -- we'll eventually get to that eyebrow thing....

"Horses Sweat, Men Perspire, 

                  But Ladies Merely Glow......"

This Victorian-Era euphemism captured the view in the early 1900's toward perspiration -- a gross aspect of animal nature, found in restrained and diminished form in male humans and quite incompatible with the ethereal sensibilities of Victorian gentlewomen. This idea now seems rather quaint, given the more accurate perceptions available to us in coed fitness centers and in athletic venues.  Men and women sweat, not just horses.

Although we may have a somewhat more realistic view of perspiration these days, we are still quite ambivalent about it, as indicated by the lucrative $3 billion a year deodorant and anti-antiperspirant industry in the U.S. (Euromonitor Marketing Research Report, 2014).  We know we sweat but we pay a lot of money not to do so, and we pay to make sure we don't stink even if we do.  The fact that perspiration and odor are big business should make us suspicious that at to least some degree our attitudes might be the result of Madison Avenue manipulation.  A recent article by Sarah Everets published in the venerable Smithsonian Magazine offers considerable evidence that this is correct:

"In the 1910s deodorants and antiperspirants were relatively new inventions. The first deodorant, which kills odor-producing bacteria, was called Mum and had been trademarked in 1888, while the first antiperspirant, which thwarts both sweat-production and bacterial growth, was called Everdry and launched in 1903.  But many people—if they had even heard of the anti-sweat toiletries—thought they were unnecessary, unhealthy or both." (Everets, 2012).

What do you do if you have a product that people don't perceive they have a need for, and even regard it negatively?  The answer is that you create a market for the product by convincing people they really do need it, and that it is perfectly safe.  The first advertising campaign for anti-antiperspirants began in 1912, designed by James Young, a copy writer for a New York advertising agency and former traveling Bible salesman.  Directed at women, the campaign promoted a product named Odorono, stressing its healthfulness and also suggesting that perspiration was a problem needing to be solved:

"Young’s early Odorono advertisements focused on trying to combat a commonly held belief that blocking perspiration was unhealthy. The copy pointed out that Odorono (occasionally written Odo-ro-no) had been developed by a doctor and it presented “excessive perspiration” as an embarrassing medical ailment in need of a remedy." (Everets, 2012)

The campaign worked -- sort of.  The sales of Odorono jumped initially but flattened out after a few years.  It seems that while the campaign led many women to be familiar with the product, 2/3 still didn't think there was a need for it.  Young switched to what has become a time-honored way for advertisers to manipulate perceived need --- focus on fear of social embarrassment that the product can take away.  Here's a sample of Young's 1919 sales pitch for Odorono in Ladies Home Journal: "A woman’s arm! Poets have sung of it, great artists have painted its beauty. It should be the daintiest, sweetest thing in the world. And yet, unfortunately, it’s isn’t always." The advertisement went on to explain that women may be stinky and offensive, and they might not even know it.  "The take-home message was clear: If you want to keep a man, you’d better not smell" (Everets, 2012).   Although the ad was considered offensive by many readers because it dealt with a socially taboo topic, Odorono sales jumped 112 percent by the next year.

Other companies copied the Odorono marketing approach and over the years the ads became much bolder.  A particularly blunt example is a 1937 advertisement for Mum (now Ban):

"You’re a pretty girl, Mary, and you’re smart about most things but you’re just a bit stupid about yourself. You love a good time—but you seldom have one. Evening after evening you sit at home alone. You’ve met several grand men who seemed interested at first. They took you out once—and that was that. There are so many pretty Marys in the world who never seem to sense the real reason for their aloneness. In this smart modern age, it’s against the code for a girl (or a man either) to carry the repellent odor of underarm perspiration on clothing and person. It’s a fault which never fails to carry its own punishment—unpopularity."  (Everets, 2012)

Campaigns to convince men that they needed these products began in 1935, with the introduction of the first deodorant for men called Top-Flite.  These ads, too, focused on insecurities -- in this case of men trying to obtain and keep depression-era jobs.  But why was there a 20-year delay in developing and pitching these products to men? Could it be that men don't sweat as much as women or that they stink less?  Doubtful. The more likely reason is that advertisers viewed women as more likely to adopt these products because our society had primed them to respond to a fear-based pitch that emphasized the possibility of social rejection.  The insecurities of the Great Depression changed men's attitudes and made them more susceptible to a fear-based appeal for a product that promised to make them more successful in white-collar jobs -- thus opening a huge new market for deodorant products (Everets, 2012). Ads stressed how lack of personal grooming could ruin a career and threaten a man's role as successful family provider, as well as his general "macho" attractiveness to women, by being unknowingly stinky at the office.

Of course, the advertisers first had to go to great lengths to disassociate the male version of the product from the female version, even though the active ingredients and their strengths were exactly the same. Thus the name "Top-Flite," a clear reference to the game of golf, which at that time was seen as a "man's" game. Other strategies included using containers in the shape of whiskey jugs and blocky black bottles and incorporating scents like "leather," "pine," and "old spice." 

So, are the advertisers right, are we humans naturally drippy, stinky creatures?  Is perspiration the nemesis of advanced civilization?  Do men sweat more than women? Do eyebrows really sweat?  Answers to these and other questions will be in Part 2:  "Don't Ever Let Them See You Sweat"