Driving in Hawaii brings renewed appreciation for GPS navigation

We love to knock technology. To complain that social media is making us all cultivate images. Or to say that emojis are killing actual language or that constant access to information makes us slaves to the moment. We love to state that an overabundance of data makes it difficult to know the truth.

It seems terrible and begs the question of whether there's anything that's made better by technology.

In addition to the obvious answer (Yes. Almost everything is better: Imagine having to turn on a radio to hear music or doing all your banking in person or having to talk to someone on the phone when you just need a quick "OK" from them), allow me to point out my favorite technological tool.

GPS navigation.

The mobile mapping software in your phone (and maybe in your car) is a miracle. It's how we all get around without old-timey directions ("Turn off Village Drive at the white picket fence" was included in the standard directions to find our Suisun City house for more than two decades.)

The beauty of GPS was brought home when Mrs. Brad and I visited Hawaii.

Hawaii is paradise. It's 80 degrees every day. It's a wonderland.

But it's confusing to navigate

Of course, almost every unfamiliar area is difficult to navigate. Try going to Southern California or Seattle or Boise or Vacaville and driving around. It's not easy (especially Vacaville, with different onramps and offramps depending on which direction you're headed on Interstate 80).

But Hawaii? Much harder, even than Vacaville.

For starters, there are just 13 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. Secondly, Hawaiian words are different. There are few Ohio Streets or Travis Boulevards in Hawaii. You know what there are a lot of? Street and city names that seem similar (again, just 13 letters!), with a lot of vowels.

When you're driving, you see Ka'la'aa Street next to Ka'la'ea Street next to La'ka'ea Street next to La'la'ea Street.

Residents can tell the difference. I can't.

Which is why GPS is so great. On our recent trip, we got our rental car, punched in our address (on Ha'le'iwa Road) and followed directions. The GPS told us when to turn. We didn't have to read road signs and discern the differences.

Back in the day, it was different. We bought paper maps and navigated by sight. If this were 40 years ago, I would have told Mrs. Brad, "OK, we just passed Ka'la'ea Street . . . or was that La'ka'ea? If it's the K one, we go three more blocks and turn on . . . Wait a second . . . where we turn is a long word that starts with M."

She would demand better answers. I'd be unable to deliver. We'd fight. I'd say something unfortunate about how stupid I find Hawaiian words. We'd ultimately find the place, but only after being angry at the sign-makers, the Hawaiian language and each other.

Now? We punch in the address and obey.

I still can read maps, so if there's an apocalypse and the GPS systems go down, I'll have a marketable skill – if paper maps still exist. I'll regale survivors with tales of Rand McNally atlases and Thompson Street Guides as I find landmarks and tell them when to turn.

But that seems unlikely. Instead, for the rest of my life, I'll be grateful for GPS navigation.

Especially in Hawaii, where G and S are not part of the alphabet.

Thirteen letters!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

Want to seem younger? Turn on the closed captioning on your TV

If you've ever complained about the sound on movies or TV shows – that the dialogue is too soft or the actors' accents make it difficult to understand them – I've got good news.

You're not old. In fact, trouble hearing characters may be a sign that you're youthful.

Yes!

A survey by research and analytics company YouGov last year revealed this stunning fact: The younger you are, the more likely you are to use subtitles while watching a film on Netflix or Amazon or Max or wherever you watch TV (or movies). Younger people use subtitles the most!

YouGov surveyed 1,000 adults and found that people aged 18 to 29 used subtitles 63% of the time while watching shows in their native language. And the older you get, the less likely you are to use subtitles: Those aged 30 to 44 use subtitles 37% of the time, those aged 45 to 64 use them 29% of the time and those 65 and older use them 30% of the time.

It's a downward slope when comparing use to age, which leads to three possible conclusions:

1. Young people aren't worried that their spouse will think they have a hearing problem if they use subtitles.
2. Young people are smarter.
3. The older you get, the less likely you are to know how to turn on subtitles or even be aware that such an option exists.

I don't know about you, but this brings me comfort. While Mrs. Brad and I occasionally use subtitles, it's often on shows where the English is spoken with an accent (I'm looking at you, Great Britain. Not only do you talk funny, but you have a lot of variations, making it complicated for me to understand what you're bloody talkin' about, Nigel!).

However, the explosion of content (the number of TV shows and movies produced annually has exploded during the streaming era, likely leading to a decrease in quality control) and stylistic changes in movies led to two things that irritate this aging baby boomer.

The first is that many shows or movies need better sound mixing. For example, there's often background music that's so loud, it drowns out the dialogue. Somebody didn't do their job!

The second factor is the emergence of actors who mumble their lines. Maybe it's a great affectation if you're an actor ("my character lacks confidence and therefore mumbles"), but it's terrible for the audience, who can't understand what you're saying.

Except those 25-year-olds, who confidently turned on the close captioning so they could follow the plot.

All I know is that I'm in the group that uses subtitles less than the youngsters, but this makes me more likely use the function, even when the show isn't some Brit mumbling about a "dipper in Walham Green."

The next time Mrs. Brad (who won't likely see this column) asks why I want to turn on the subtitles, I'll explain that the actors are mumbling, the accents are hard to understand and that I'm "adulting" like the 25-year-olds who complain about how my generation ruined the world while they use subtitles to watch ancient shows like "The Big Bang Theory."

It's good to seem young, isn't it? What? Can you turn on the closed captioning while speaking? I'm not deaf, I'm youthful!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

Getting older means leaving behind some foods

A few weeks ago, I sat down to eat lunch at my desk, taking a few minutes to fuel up and get a break from working. It was going to be good – I had bought lunches at the grocery store a few days earlier and this one was special: Chef Boyardee canned raviolis, heated in the office microwave.

Those raviolis were a favorite in my childhood and early adulthood. Raviolis are among my top 10 foods and this was simple – microwave the little bowl of them, then sit back and relish the great taste.

Except . . .

That didn't happen.

The raviolis tasted bad. They were lukewarm (I could have reheated them, but the taste was so bad that it didn't seem worth it). I had accidentally bought some sort of "mini" raviolis that would barely stay on my plastic fork.

It was a major disappointment. Food that I had always thought highly of – and considered a treat – was terrible. It turns out my tastes have changed.

As a kid, I was very aware that adults had different tastes than me. Some adults liked things like liver and very few liked Rocky Road candy bars. But had you asked me, I would have assured you that even if I grew to like liver (I haven't), I would always like canned ravioli.

I don't. And it's not alone. As far as I'm concerned, canned ravioli goes with a few other "staples" that I liked (we liked, since I assume you're along with me) years ago that don't work with taste buds later in life.

Before we begin, a caveat. There remain some young-adult foods that I still like. Ramen remains tasty. Taquitos are very good. Macaroni and cheese remains good (although the microwave version is a massive step down from traditional mac and cheese). 

But others? There are some major disappointments:

Pizza rolls. These were fantastic in the 1980s, when you could pull a bag out of the freezer, dump a dozen or so on a cookie sheet and have ready to eat in 20 minutes. Maybe the taste changed, but more likely I came to realize they don't taste like pizza, but more like over-sauced, poorly wrapped biscuits with some sort of pepperoni-ish meat inside. Not great.

Bagel bites. The bagel version of pizza rolls. They aren't really bagels, they take more than a bit and they don't really taste good. But at one point, they seemed great. And kind of exotic, since they were bagels!

Pizza pockets. Mrs. Brad and I ate a lot of Pizza Pockets early in our marriage. A lot. They were cheap and they were a treat. You could microwave them (or cook them in the oven) and you had a slice of pizza! In a pocket! You could dip them in ranch dressing or some other dip and make them even better. Years later, I' tried them and they made me gag. Is it because the food is bad? Or is it that we overindulged in them when we were trying to get by on a few dollars a week? I don't know, but they're awful.

Chicken pot pies. No food was more pleasing to Young Brad (I capitalize both in case a rapper tries to take that name) than a Swanson chicken pot pie cooked for 40 minutes in the (avocado-colored) family oven, then eating it while watching TV as my parents were out for a Saturday night of cocktail parties or whatever they did. Try it now? It's overly breaded, the meat is questionable and the taste is subpar.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Thumbs up to ranking our fingers, from 10 to 1

Late last year, I finally had a procedure to fix my trigger finger. I won't bore you with details, I just want to highlight how cool the name "trigger finger" is. The best part was as it was healing, I could tell people I had an "itchy trigger finger."

The affected digit was the ring finger on my left hand, which got me to thinking. How important is that finger?

Which got me thinking. How important is each finger?

Which got me thinking. Could this be another column where I rank things?

Yes it can. Thus, today's list of power ranking fingers. For simplicity, I'll rank them for a right-hander, so if you're a lefty, just flip the script: When I say your right thumb, that means left thumb for you.

Got it? Even a southpaw should be able to understand that (or portsider. I learned all my synonyms for "left-hander" by reading about baseball as a kid).  And by the way, for sake of these rankings, a thumb is considered a finger. We have 10 fingers (unless you're former pitcher Antonio Alfonseca, who had 12 digits.)

The rankings:

10. Right ring finger. It's pretty weak and while it's important for a grip (you can't hold a golf club or tennis racket well without it), you can generally survive without it. A surprisingly low ranking on first glance, but stick with me.

9. Left pinky finger. Mostly for containment of pills or M&Ms or anything you put in your left hand. But it's replaceable and it's not your dominant hand.

8. Right pinky finger. Surprisingly important to hold things (such as pills, as just mentioned) and this is your dominant hand. Also needed for a pinky ring if you're a mobster or to show you're sophisticated while drinking something if you're British.

7. Left index finger. You need it to make a fist. You need this finger to pinch anything in your off hand.

6. Left second finger. Crucial for holding cooking utensils, since we usually need both hands for that. Also a key typing finger, since it's the backup for the left index and ring fingers. This is the Frank Reich of fingers, if you know NFL history.

5. Left ring finger. I experienced the loss of much of the movement of this digit and it was inconvenient but not disastrous. However, it's the finger for a wedding ring and Mrs. Brad may read this. This is an important finger.

4. Right second finger. We all think the same thing with this one and it's true: It's the flip-off finger. But it's also crucial for grip. Gripping and flipping is the second finger's motto.

3. Right index finger. The main pointer, which is important. Also, it's how you indicate you are number one. It's pretty important.

2. Left thumb. Crucial for grip, although if it's your weaker hand, you could probably survive without it. Survive, but not thrive. It's still very important.

1. Right thumb. The king of fingers. Lose this digit and you can't grab things. You can't snap. You can't give anything two thumbs up. You can't suck your thumb. You need this one.

You've got to hand it to our fingers. They're important. I'll let myself out.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Freezer disaster brings back memories of messing up the DR phone system

One of the biggest oversteps of my career at the Daily Republic resulted in me arriving at work the following day to see a phone company truck parked near the front door, a worker tinkering with the switchboard and the switchboard operator giving me a stink eye.

I had broken the phone system and they knew it was me. Yikes.

Decades later, I realize it could have been worse. I could have been the guy at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, back in 2020.

You may not know the story, but it makes my overstep seem mild.

Back in 2020, the folks at RPI were doing "groundbreaking" research on photosynthesis that would assist in solar panel development. The work was expensive and elaborate, but there was a problem. The research samples were intended to be stored at more than 100 degrees below zero, but the freezer had problems. Since this happened during during the pandemic, there was a delay for repairs, so RPI workers did everything they could to keep the freezer as cold as possible and put up a sign that said to leave it alone, even if the alarm was going off. In other words, don't open the freezer, just hold down a button to turn off the alarm.

Well, the alarm went off. It was irritating. It kept going, so a contract nighttime cleaner solved the problem.

He threw the breaker switch to turn off the entire thing, then went back to cleaning. Blessed silence!

Well . . . maybe not blessed.

By the time the RPI folks realized what happened, the temperature in the freezer had risen enough to spoil the samples. About $1 million worth of work and decades of research went down the drain.

Imagine his feeling when he came to work and saw researchers pulling out their hair, wondering what happened, while he knew there was video surveillance.

That's worse than my experience.

Back in the day, I merely liked sneaking onto the newspaper's overarching phone system and making announcements to the entire building in the hours after most workers had gone home. Mostly just the newsroom and the press workers were there, so I'd sing, I'd pretend to be a stadium announcer, I'd tell people to call their mothers.

There was no purpose to it, which is why it was slightly horrifying when I came to the office on a Wednesday morning to see all the hubbub, having messed around Tuesday night on the system. Donna, the beloved switchboard operator who was always nice, just looked at me and said, "Don't ever do this again." She wasn't smiling.

I didn't. And I never really got in trouble. I don't even know if the bosses knew it was me (Donna, of course, had innocently shown me how to do it when I asked her weeks earlier), although my role in such activities as chair racing and what we called "border-tape golf" made me a prime suspect.

Unlike the guy at RPI, I didn't cost the newspaper millions of dollars (hundreds of dollars? Maybe). I didn't have the media covering me. There was no lawsuit (unlike RPI).

The closest I got to payback was months later when someone had snuck a series of CDs onto a building-wide music system they had installed. I came in another morning and found the CDs on my desk, broken, with a note to stay out of the CD system.

I hadn't done it. But it seemed fair since I'd gotten away with the PA system shenanigans.

But let the record state: I think it was co-worker Matt Peiken who did it, not me.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Springing into action to change seasons to make sense

Spring officially begins March 19 this year, about five weeks after baseball spring training started.

That makes no sense. Because our seasons – which are based on how much daylight we get – don't sync with how we really view the seasons. Sure, March 19 will be the vernal equinox, when there will be 12 hours of daylight. Sure, summer will begin June 20 this year – the day with the most hours of daylight. Of course, fall starts when we get back to exactly 12 hours of daylight and winter starts on the shortest day of the year.

Hogwash.

We should be in the middle of spring right now. All our seasons should start at appropriate times on the calendar. It's time for the Stanhope Seasons Plan.

By the way, this is not necessarily connected to my longtime New Year's Day proposal, when we move that holiday to the first day of spring. But it could be.

So go with me on this as I propose new definitions for the four seasons (not for Frankie Valli, though. Hah hah hah). The good news? This plan fits with what your brain already knows.

Spring: Spring begins on the first day of baseball spring training, which is so obvious it's hard to believe no one has promoted this as an idea earlier. For the uninitiated, that's usually around Valentine's Day. I'd even be willing to push the first day of spring to the first day of baseball spring training games,  which is near the end of February. By early March we all think it's spring, right?

Summer: Everyone knows that summer runs from the Friday of Memorial Day weekend through the Monday of Labor Day. That's when we camp. That's when we take vacations. Ask a kid when summer starts and they'll tell you: That three-day weekend just before school gets out. When does summer end? Either when they return to school or after Labor Day. I'm old school. It's after Labor Day. Summer is simple.

Fall: Autumn obviously starts the day after Labor Day and goes until Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the last gasp of fall, with Black Friday just sneaking in (I'm open to having fall end on Thanksgiving night if you think Black Friday is winter). We all know that Dec. 1 is really part of winter. It's absurd that Dec. 20 is still fall under the current calendar. No one thinks that's autumn.

Winter: If you're keeping score, you understand this. Winter goes from the day after Black Friday until baseball spring training opens. It covers the main winter holidays (unless my proposal for New Year's Day goes through), but ends shortly after the Super Bowl. That makes sense, right?

Want more proof? Under my proposal, here is the length of each season in days. You'll notice it makes sense: Spring is 100 days, summer is 100 days, fall is 89 days and winter is 77 days. That's as it should be, right? Spring and summer should be a little longer than fall and winter. 

We can keep our calendar (with the needed switch for New Year's Day), but let's change the seasons. Ignore that the Four Seasons had a hit with the chorus, "Let's hang on to what we've got." That's not only redundant (it should be "Let's hang on to what we have."), it's wrong in the case of seasons.

Change the seasons.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Hypochondriacs study is enough to make me feel seriously ill

A recent study from Sweden showed that people who have an excessive fear of getting sick – now called "illness anxiety disorder" rather than hypochondriasis – are more likely to die early than are those of us without the disorder.

Is that good news or bad news for hypochondriacs? 

On the bad side, if you have the disorder, you'll likely die earlier. On the plus side, at least you were right. Now everyone will feel guilty about snickering every time you got a cold and feared it is a symptom of a more serious illness.

What a quandary!

And is this conversely significant news for those who have excessive confidence in their health despite evidence to the contrary?

First the details: A study published in JAMA Psychiatry used data from the Swedish medical classification system, one of the few in the world that has a separate code for hypochondriasis . . . or "illness anxiety disorder." Researchers studied thousands of people from 1997 through 2020.

The study included more than 4,000 people with IAD and more than 40,000 others who were otherwise similar but didn't have the disorder. It turns out that people who constantly (and irrationally?) worry about illness died early at a higher rate and at an average of five years younger than those without the disorder. They were four times more likely to commit suicide and also died at a higher rate from circulatory and respiratory diseases.

We can assume this tendency has gotten worse in the internet age since we can all look up our symptoms on Google and find out that in some circumstances, we have symptoms of cancer or heart failure or the bubonic plague.

While ignoring the statement that they're likely symptoms of a cold.

But the question remains: Were the people in Sweden with IAD right after all? It seems like they were correct at least the final time (right before dying), but the question is how to address this.

An article on the study by The Associated Press highlighted a key challenge in addressing this issue: To be treated for IAD requires a medical professional to recognize it and tell the patient, who can be easily offended because they think the doctor is dismissing their suspicion of legitimate, serious illness. So IAD patients will often ironically disregard a specific diagnosis because they believe they're really sick and the doctor thinks they're lying. (Or they could be like the person in the old joke who is told they're a hypochondriac and tells the doctor, "Oh no, that too?")

My earlier question is about the flip side of this study. Does this study also mean that people who assume that symptoms are temporary and they'll be fine will be correct? Is the real finding of the Swedish study that people without IAD live five years longer?

I'm not suggesting that you should avoid going to the doctor, but does it help if you (like me) find yourself saying, "It's just a cold," every time you're sick and delaying treatment to see if something will just go away (which it often does)?

Medicine is complicated and our bodies are not machines. We know that smoking cigarettes increase the chance of cancer, that eating well and exercising is helpful, that vegetables help us and that sugar and simple carbohydrates aren't great for us.

But what about that cough? Or that new ache in your back? Are you embracing IAD if you worry that it's something serious – and perhaps contributing to your own early demise?

My conclusion: Who knows? I'm not Swedish, so it doesn't apply to me. And I'm sure this cough is just temporary.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Annual survey show how inflation has hit the Tooth Fairy business

Reason No. 341 that I'm glad my kids are grown: I'm not sure the Tooth Fairy at our house could keep up with the Joneses.

(And I say that both generally and specifically. Because our next-door neighbors and friends were literally the Jones family in Suisun City.)

During my childhood, the Tooth Fairy would leave a coin under my pillow in exchange for me giving him a tooth. Maybe there would be a dime. Possibly a quarter.

(Side question: What – if any – gender do you assign the Tooth Fairy? I have always assumed the Tooth Fairy was a male, but Mrs. Brad considers the Tooth Fairy female. It doesn't have to be one or the other, since fairies probably aren't limited in their genders. But I'm starting to go into an area of discussion for which I'm unqualified and I might make someone mad, so back to the column . . .)

Fast forward a generation to my two sons. As they lost teeth in the 1990s, we . . . uh, I mean the Tooth Fairy would leave either coins (we were not wealthy and we were bound by tradition. Just ask the boys, who more likely would use the word "cheap") or perhaps a $1 bill. More likely coins. That was the 1990s and I worked at a newspaper.

Well, things have changed. If you think the cost of homes has gone up, wait until you hear about teeth!

According to an annual survey by Delta Dental, the average value of a single tooth last year – as judged by the amount left by the Tooth Fairy – was $6.23.

Six dollars and twenty-three cents!

That was a jump of nearly a dollar from the figure in 2022 and was up from $1.30 in the first survey, 25 years ago (when my sons were getting 50 cents or maybe a dollar. They are right, we were cheap).Teeth are going up in value: According to the Delta Dental people, at this pace, the average tooth in 2048 will be worth $30.

I'm shocked by this in the same way I'm shocked at the price of child care and by how much people spend on their kids' shoes. It makes me feel like one of those people in my childhood who talked about how they'd go to the movies and get popcorn for a dime then play kick-the-can on the way home to listen to "The Lone Ranger" on the radio.

But six dollars a tooth? It seems outrageous.

A couple of other notes of significance from the study: 

• The Tooth Fairy is welcome in 81% of homes.
• Among parents, 27% say their kids go to bed early in anticipation of the Tooth Fairy's visit.
• In 33% of households, the first tooth gets the most money (an average of $7.29. Which begs the question of how the kids react when their second tooth gets less money?).

I'm glad information from this survey wasn't public knowledge when my sons were growing up. Of course, they knew their parents were cheap (their dad, for sure), but this might have made them think the Tooth Fairy was also cheap.

And I would hate for them to think that about him. Or her. Whatever. Never mind, I will stop talking about the Tooth Fairy's gender and focus on how generous he or she or they are now.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How you organize you books is like love and oxygen

There are few hobbies people love to brag about (and exaggerate) more than how much they read.

The truth is that most of us don't read much. But those of us who do tend to want to tell everyone how much we love it. How we read 85 books last year. How nothing beats snuggling up with a good book. How all you need is books. (Or maybe that's love. Or oxygen. Or maybe love is like oxygen, you get too much and you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die–as Sweet warned us in their 1978 song that has little to do with this discussion.)

Back to books, or more specifically, ownership of books. According to a survey by the folks at YouGov.com, 85% of Americans say they own at least one book (the physical kind, not one on an electronic device). The other 15% is made up of 9% who don't own a book and 6% who don't know (which means they don't own a book, right?).

Twenty-four percent of us own at least 100 books. And 7% of Americans own at least 1,000 books.

One-thousand!

The most interesting question in that survey wasn't even about how many books people owned. The best question (which dives deeply into how our brains work) is how we organize our books.

For starters, the obvious outcome: People who own 10 or fewer books don't really have an organizational method because they don't need one. That's true in the same way I don't organize my phones or thumbs. I have so few that they don't need organization (although I prefer to keep my thumbs on the opposite end of my hand from my little fingers).

People probably need to organize books when they get to 100 or so.

So think again: If you had 200 (or 800, 15,000) books, how would you organize them?

By title? Author? Color? Genre?

Well, according to the survey, the most common way for people with many books to organize their collection is by genre or subject matter (another word for genre, right?). That's by far the leading way: 37% of people with 100 or more books use that system. The next most common way for people with 100 or more books to organize is alphabetically by the author's name, which is tied with . . . by size.

Really? By size? That seems like something an 8-year-old would do, not something a 50-year-old would do. I apologize to 50-year-old readers who organize their books by size. If that's you, remember that the "Where's Waldo" books are big, so they go on the end.

There are other ways that a few people use: Alphabetically by title, by color, by another system (possibilities: Alphabetically by the first word on Page 8, by the attractiveness of the author, by the order they were acquired).

How we organize things is fascinating. If you don't think it's personalized, try going into someone's kitchen sometime and look at their spice rack. Or time travel to when people other than hipsters had record albums and look at their album collections. Where would you find the album by Sweet that had "Love is Like Oxygen" on it? Was it by genre (New Wave? Glam rock? Pop?)? Was it by the name of the band or album ("Level Headed" in this case)? Was it randomly?

Organization is so personalized that it's impossible to know what to expect from anyone, which is why the Dewey Decimal system, launched in 1876 and used in libraries is so brilliant.

Without the Dewey Decimal system you could go into a library and discover that the books are organized by whatever seemed right to the librarian: "Oh, you need 'Grapes of Wrath?' I think that's a paperback, so it's either in the green section or next to books that are the same size. Good luck."

Maybe we should organize books at our home by the Dewey Decimal system, too. Make it mandatory.

That would be sweet.

Like the band that performed "Love is Like Oxygen."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Data provides a scientific prediction for today's Super Bowl

Today is the ultimate game: Super Bowl 58 (I refuse to use Roman numerals. I haven't used them since I was forced to learn about them when I was XIV years old. They're II hard II remember, like trying to remember what you VIII for dinner a week ago).

Today's game matches two of the NFL's preseason favorites, the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is: The teams met in the Super Bowl four years ago, when the Chiefs stole a 31-20 victory that was (according to a rumor I just made up), the decisive moment in the spread of the COVID-19 virus that hammered the globe a month later.

It really should be called the Chiefs virus.

So who wins today? As a longtime sports fan and former sports editor, I rely on the same tool that I trusted to help us deal with the pandemic that the Chiefs released on us four years ago: Science. Or  more accurately, data, which isn't science, but play along with me.

Numerous factors will determine today's final score and they're listed here. Experts have analyzed the information and provided a specific point total for each category. Ready? Here are the factors for today's game:

Regular season wins: We start simple. The 49ers won 12 games, the Chiefs 11. We multiply that by six and it's six points for the 49ers.

Commercials: This is ranked on a scale of one to seven. The Chiefs have those Patrick Mahomes (and Andy Reid) State Farm commercials that are pretty funny. Add Travis Kelce (see below) and then compare it to the 49ers' local commercials. This is a blowout. Chiefs get seven.

City image: San Francisco is one of the world's most famous cities. It's the Golden Gate. It was the center of the Summer of Love. There are probably a dozen songs about it. Even people who claim San Francisco is overrun with homeless drug abusers know about the city. Kansas City? It's where the Chiefs play. That's all we know. 49ers get 11 points for this. It's not even close.

Star players: Patrick Mahomes is the biggest star in the NFL and Travis Kelce is famous for football and other reasons (see below). Even though the Niners have their share of stars (Christian McCaffery, Nick Bosa, Deebo Samuel, Brock Purdy), it's a win for the Chiefs. Four points for Kansas City.

History: The Chiefs won two of the past four Super Bowls and are playing in their fourth Super Bowl in five years. But . . . the 49ers are in their eighth Super Bowl and have five championships. Tradition says the 49ers get six points for this.

Players' significant others: Kristin Juszczyk, the wife of 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, became famous when she designed a jacket for a blonde woman who is somehow related to or friends with someone on the Chiefs and that woman got on TV. People loved the jacket. Nobody on the Chiefs has a wife or girlfriend even half as famous as Kristin Juszczyk. Four points for the 49ers.

Famous brothers: Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is famous because of a relationship: He is the brother of All-Pro center Jason Kelce. Nick Bosa's brother Joey is an NFL player, but he's not Jason Kelce famous. Six points for the Chiefs.

That's it. That's the data. Add up the points and get the final score. This would have been a blowout, but Travis Kelce has a relationship with someone famous. His brother.

San Francisco 27, Kansas City 17

Reach Brad Stanhope at brad.stanhope@outlook.com.