The Darkest Town In America Is In Nevada, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: Where the stars shine the brightest in the US, what those little dots on your windshield are for and why America is getting weaker.
The Stars Shine Brightest Over Gerlach, Nevada
Oliver Roeder's dispatch from the darkest place in the US for FiveThirtyEight, is both about light and the lack thereof. It's less concerned with Gerlach, Nevada — which is, in fact, so dark that you can see not only the Milky Way galaxy, but also the Andromeda and Pinwheel galaxies — but rather asks if more places should be like Gerlach.
Civilization and light seem inseparable. And yet some see it as a symptom of the ugly machinations of society. The brighter our skies, they feel, the less in touch with we are with the planet — a ruined glimpse of the sky being the most visible, but least harmful effect. Under all those lights must lurk pollution, vice and the downfall of civilization.
Are dark sky advocates right? Is darkness next to godliness? Just over 200 people live in Gerlach, and by Roeder's observations, they're hurting. There might be plenty to see in Gerlach if one looks up, but if one looks down, there's not much going on.
Those Black Dots On Your Windshield Do A Lot
Perhaps, while sitting in the passenger seat or washing the car, you've noticed that along the edges of an automobile windshield there is a pattern of black dots that get increasingly small. "Why are they there? What do they do?" you've probably wondered and then immediately forgot about.
Well, Jalopnik's David Tracy held onto that thought long enough to actually ask a windshield expert about those dots.
Apparently, the dots, called frit, serve multiple purposes! You see, your windshield is held in place with a sealant. The frit provides a surface for that sealant to stick to (glass being very non-textured), and protects the sealant from the sun's damaging rays.
So, yeah, there are very good reasons they are there. Which just goes to show, fallible and stupid as humanity may be, there are some things we've definitely thought through.
[Jalopnik]
America Is Losing Its Grip
As it turns out, that stupid hyper-masculine test of giving someone a "solid" handshake sort of holds up amongst a pile of medical studies. Grip strength, Nautilus's Tom Vanderbilt reports, is actually tied to a whole slew of wellness markers. Mortality risk, length of time spent in the hospital, cognitive performance and even the will to live has been linked to grip strength.
That said, humanity's grip has been slowly weakening over the past three millennia. Which isn't surprising: our ability to survive lies in our tools, not to hang out amongst the branches and out of reach of predators.
Still, we as a society constantly come back to the "hand shake test." Just last year, a small panic arose after a study found that grip strength had dropped some 20 percent in the span of a generation. But should we panic? Vanderbilt points out in his piece that mortality hasn't dropped as our grip has, so maybe this is all a bit overblown?
Currently, the average human types around 50-80 words per minute. Might we see that grow within the next generation? That's probably far more important than a handshake.
[Nautilus]
Leaving Your Burner On Is Not The End Of The World
Fire, in of itself, is not dangerous. When you start to combine things with fire, however, that's when you get into trouble.
So it follows that if you leave a burner on, and nothing is on that burner, then nothing will, probably, happen. If something is on top of that burner, most likely this is because you are trying to cook something, then leaving that burner on unattended is going to end poorly.
Which is why, if you're out of the house and you get a pang of panic from the realization that you left the burner on, maybe you shouldn't be that worried? Were you reheating some soup and totally forgot the soup and then left the house? Okay, then yes: Panic. But if you just put the kettle on and then took it off without shutting off the stove, well, there are worse things that could happen. Like if you turned a burner on but it didn't ignite and then you forgot about it all afternoon. That would be bad.
[Digg]
Previously on What We Learned This Week
Kickstarter Ripoffs Are Extremely Lucrative
The Best Chicken Nugget Is At Wendy's
For more Internet distillations like this, check out our back catalog of Digg Roundups. And for more stuff from Digg, check out our Originals archive.
