Life lesson comes from Antwerp's tough nest-building birds

The nest built by the tough birds of Antwerp (Photo by Alexander Schippers).

Everyone knows birds are creative when building nests. They'll use almost anything – paper, twigs, dog hair, human hair, Bigfoot hair, leaves, garbage, a copy of TV Guide from Dec. 17, 1977, with the cast of "One Day at a Time" on the cover – to get the structure they want. And birds will be persistent once they find a good place.

At our house, Mrs. Brad resorted to stuffing balls of aluminum foil in the eaves where our neighborhood birds consistently kept trying to build a nest. A few times, I found the foil balls on the ground and wondered (assumed?) that the birds had hired a subcontractor to pull them out so they could build there.

Birds are tough: Anyone who has had a seagull swipe their food or come face-to-face with a turkey or tried to fool a roadrunner with an explosive device purchased from the Acme Co. knows this.

But birds in Antwerp recently took it to another level. They didn't just pull out foil balls. They did the equivalent of what your older sibling did (grabbing your arm and making you hit yourself, then asking you why you were hitting yourself. Although that may just be a flashback that would be better told in a counseling session.)

Anyway, those Antwerp birds. Those tough, rough, fearless Antwerp birds, specifically Eurasian magpies. They're the toughest birds in the world now. They are the Mike Tyson of birds.

Because they built the toughest nest in the history of nests.

Researchers from two natural history museums in Belgium – which all museum experts know are the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the Natural History Museum Rotterdam – discovered the remarkable nests, according to a press release issued by Naturalis.

First some background: Think about anti-nesting spikes that people and municipalities use to keep birds from building nests. I'm talking about the spikes that make it impossible for birds to get comfortable and build a home. That's the only purpose of the nests. They're like aluminum foil balls, but meaner and more durable.

Now the twist: A couple of Antwerp magpies took those spikes – about 1,500 of them – and built a nest with them.

Yes!

They took the thing designed to prevent them from building a nest and used it to build the baddest, coolest, toughest nest in Antwerp. These birds have a metal nests!

The nest isn't solely made out of the spikes: The birds also used regular nest stuff (twigs, Bigfoot hair, leaves, that TV guide from 1977, marble kitchen counters), too. But experts estimate that the birds pulled about 150 feet of the pins to get enough for their punk nest. Even better, the magpies – who always build a "roof" on their nests to keep predators away – used spikes for that reason: To keep other birds away. Remarkable.

Apparently, this is extreme, but not unprecedented.

An article in the scientific journal Deinsea describes other magpie nests made with anti-bird spikes, as well as barbed wire and knitting needles.

Previous articles reported on the use of face masks and plastic plants in bird nests. Also used: condoms, fireworks, cocaine wraps, sunglasses and windshield wipers.

Cool and tough. The sunglasses nests would be pretty tough looking.

But nobody beats those Antwerp birds, making nests out of anti-nesting spikes.

It's time to update the old lemons-lemonade saying to this: When life gives you anti-nesting spikes, make a nest out of them.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

 

 

Extraction of groundwater is harming Earth . . . and dart-throwing

If it feels like you're more likely to stumble now than a few decades ago, there's a reason: The Earth's tilt is shifting.

Really.

The reason? We're sucking out so much groundwater that the globe is leaning to the east at a rate of about 1.7 inches per year. Talk about East Coast bias!

According to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in mid-June, our constant extraction of groundwater has shifted the axis on which Earth rotates. So when you miscalculate while stepping off the curb and stumble, it's not your fault. It's the fault of water hogs. They're really pumping it out!

A CNN report on the study included this: "Between 1993 and 2010, the period examined in the study, humans extracted more than 2,150 gigatons of groundwater from inside Earth, mostly in western North America and northwestern India, according to estimates published in 2010."

I suspect the term "gigaton" is made up, but that seems like a lot. And it's . . . wait, what? "Mostly in western North America?" That's, that's, that's . . . that's us!

We're in western North America! We're making the Earth tilt!

Of course, you might be able to explain the tilt otherwise. The Earth spins on its north-south axis at about 1,000 mph, which explains why your ears sometimes pop and you get carsick while sitting on a couch (or are both those just me?). Plenty of things can affect the rotation of the Earth: Changes in glaciers, changes in air pressure, changes in attitude, changes in latitude, as Jimmy Buffet fans can attest.

However, this one seems significant and tough to change, since it's not like humans are extracting water from the top layer of the Earth's crust for giggles. We need water for food, we need water to survive. Can you imagine making Ramen, for instance, without water? Or making coffee without water? I'm sure there are other uses of water, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Oh yeah – imagine a world where you can't make Tang. Nightmarish.

According to the study, this has been going on for a while. Redistributing groundwater has shifted the rotational axis by more than 31 inches in less than 20 years, according to models created by the study's authors. Thirty-one inches! No wonder it's harder to shoot a basketball now than it was in the 1990s: The hoop has moved nearly three feet. No wonder we're so terrible at darts now: The board is 31 inches to the east! (the science behind my claims has not been verified by independent sources).

There are important long-term effects of changing the angle of the Earth, such as changes from season to season (for instance, how we experience summer). And the aforementioned dart throwing.

Since we're taking too much water out of the Earth, I propose simple solution: We just pump more back in.

Seriously. Let's all turn on our sprinklers and let the water soak into the Earth. We can return things to their natural state and improve our dart-throwing and basketball-shooting at the same time.

Where will we get this water? Simple: Just turn on the sprinklers. We can save the future of Ramen, Tang, dart-throwing and return the Earth to its normal axis.

You're welcome, Earth.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How AM radio shaped me: NBA from Seattle, MLB from Anaheim, music from Portland

In late elementary school and junior high, my nighttime ritual was simple: I'd go to bed, turn on my Panasonic radio and begin searching for sports.

I lived in Humboldt County, about five hours north of San Francisco and seven hours south of Portland. Other than Giants and 49ers games broadcast on a Eureka radio station, there was no sports on local radio. We got two TV stations (no cable for my family), so I'd see national sports broadcasts on weekends only.

Laying in bed, I would find AM radio stations from far-off cities and tune in. Play-by-play of the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle SuperSonics. Baseball games involving the Oakland A's, Seattle Mariners, California Angels and even the hated Los Angeles Dodgers. University of Southern California football and University of San Francisco basketball. The Denver Bears, then the top minor-league baseball affiliate of the Montreal Expos. Even the Bay Area Golden Gaters of World Team Tennis had games broadcast on a radio station I could pick up.

Those cities were hundreds – sometimes thousands – of miles from my bedroom, yet I could listen in. The broadcasts faded in and out, but I could hear them.

I also listened to a Portland station play the most-requested of the day every night. I listened to Ronn Owens host his talk show on San Francisco's KGO radio, unaware that I was hearing the early stages of arguably the greatest local talk show host career in radio history.

Those were – for me, at least – the glory days of AM radio.

I wrote a week ago about car manufacturers removing AM radio from many models. It made me sad because I loved AM radio. As a kid, it was my window to the rest of the world.

The AM signal travels farther (and has lower sound quality) than FM radio. Thus I could hear stations in Denver or Salt Lake City or Los Angeles or Seattle.

In 2023, it seems quaint. It sounds like how when old people used to talk about going to silent movies. In the internet era, when you can stream almost anything to your phone, the idea of a 13-year-old searching the radio band for a far-away baseball or NBA game seems ancient.

Yet AM radio had an impact. My favorite NBA team was the Sonics, not the Warriors (whose broadcasts I couldn't find). My dream job was being the play-by-play announcer for the Giants. My musical tastes were cemented by listening to the top-40 station in Portland playing the most-requested songs every night (which eliminated the chance for me to ever like hard rock).

AM radio is fading. Why listen to talk radio when you can hear a podcast? Why listen to static-filled music when you can stream it to your phone or car? Why find a distant radio station for baseball when the MLB app has all the broadcasts?

I don't believe childhood was better in the 1970s than it is now. I don't believe technology is ruining the world. I don't believe we were better off without the internet.

I just know I still have fond memories of listening to Bob Blackburn broadcasting Sonics games on KOMO radio and Bob Clarke presenting the most required songs of the day on KEX radio from Portland. In my childhood, AM radio brought the world outside my small town to my bedroom every night.

Decades from now, someone will talk about how obscure podcasts and TikTok shaped their childhood and it will seem similarly old-timey.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

AM radio in cars may soon be a thing of the past

Another staple of Americana could soon go away, joining the trash compactor, mustard-yellow appliances, Mary Tyler Moore, cars with stick shifts and a TV universe with just three networks.

Many car manufacturers will no longer offer AM radio, limiting their audio options to FM, satellite radio and streaming apps.

The first blow was struck by electric car manufacturers, partially because electric motors interfere with AM radio signals. Tesla, Mazda, Volkswagen, BMW and other electric car manufacturers removed AM from some models over the past few years and it kind of makes sense: There is a constant buzz while listening to AM radio when driving an electric car. At least that's my experience: When we bought our first Prius about 15 years ago, I couldn't listen to Giants games (available then only on AM radio) or most talk radio. It was FM or CDs or (later) streaming via Bluetooth.

So AM radio doesn't work well with electric cars (although that seems like it's fixable, right? They figured out how to make a car run on electricity, but can't they get it to stop interfering with the AM signal? Come on, man). But the snuffing out of AM radios in cars won't stop there.

A May article in the Detroit Free Press revealed that Ford would eliminate AM radios from its fleet. Next year.

My first thought was it was Ford's payback for the old AM radio jingle of, "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet." Revenge is a dish best-served cold.

AM radio is a part of our history. Radio and cars emerged around the same time and by the 1940s, about 40% of cars had radios. Within a few decades, virtually every car had an AM radio. Some had FM, some had cassette (or 8-track) players, but all had AM.

Car AM radios were how we heard traffic reports and news and music. "Morning drive time" and "evening drive time" were a crucial part of the radio universe – formats built around the fact that people were driving to or from work while listening to the radio. AM radio stations dominated ratings until at least the turn of the 21st century (KGO radio, an AM powerhouse, was the Bay Area's top-rated radio station from 1978-2008. Thirty years!).

With the emergence of FM radio (with much better sound), music moved away and AM stations became the world of talk radio, sports, religious and non-English-speaking radio. The format has increasingly struggled to keep listeners.

But . . . auto manufacturers who elect to drop it are finding resistance. There are still 4,000 AM radio stations in the U.S. and they emphasize that AM radio remains the front line of the Emergency Alert system, which seems an old-timey reason, but maybe it's good enough.  Anyway, there were protests. And they worked: In the days following that report that Ford would discontinue AM radios in many models, elected officials protested the move. Ultimately, Ford relented and said AM radios will be part of its entire fleet in 2024.

But the first shot was fired. AM radio's decline continues. We're seeing the beginning of the end.

Someday soon, we'll look back on AM radio like we do celebrity-hosted TV variety shows and "The Lone Ranger" on radio and pre-Starbucks coffee shops. It already is something that we have warm memories of, but don't use anymore.

AM radios will still be in many cars for a while, but is anyone listening?

I hope so, if only for our memories.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Mrs. Brad and I catch up with the world by finally getting COVID

It took a while, but we finally caught up.

In the same way Mrs. Brad and I were late to cell phones, using streaming-only for Netflix and watching "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," we were late to COVID.

By the time we were hit with the pandemic-causing virus in mid-June, three years had passed since our first friends got sick. Two years had passed since masks largely disappeared from public places.

No one worries about COVID anymore. We're vaccinated multiple times. Most people have had the virus. COVID is so 2021.

Mrs. Brad and me getting COVID in 2023 was like falling in love with "Saturday Night Fever" in 1981 after everyone else was sick of Bee Gees music. We had Saturday Night Fever when everyone else had Stars on 45 Mania. (That is the greatest reference you'll see this year to 1981 pop culture.)

We returned from a brief work-related trip to Washington, D.C. feeling great. I got sick and tested positive for COVID-19 two days later. She followed shortly three days after me.

Illnesses are always worse for Mrs. Brad than me, so it was unsurprising that her symptoms – cough, fever, headaches, tiredness – were worse. But since I'm a Type 1 diabetic, I'm considered at risk, so my doctors put me on medication while she soldiered through.

The good news? My symptoms were mild. The bad news? I got "rebound COVID," and tested positive again after going through an entire isolation/masking/testing cycle. It meant a second week of isolation and wearing a mask.

Two weeks of isolation. I felt like I was in prison – if prison involved working from the kitchen table, watching TV and taking naps every afternoon on the deck. Still, I didn't leave our house for six days, meaning a lot of TV and naps and reading and naps.

Unlike the darkest COVID days of March and April 2020, we were doing this alone, which was good news and bad news:

The bad news was that we didn't have friends going through the same thing with whom to commiserate.

The good news was that all sports continued: We watched a lot of baseball and cycling and Formula 1 and even some USFL football. We watched a lot of Netflix and "Shark Tank."

The bad news was we couldn't even play games (first because Mrs. Brad was afraid of infection, then because she was too sick to play, then because my doctor advised me that my rebound COVID was possibly contagious to Mrs. Brad again).

The good news was we survived, of course.

Nearly everyone survives COVID now, which is why it's no longer such a big thing. We were appreciative of our vaccines. We were grateful for the advances made over three-plus years. We were reminded how difficult it can be to be sick and isolated and unable to leave your house.

But we also joined the majority. We're now part of between 52% and 82% of Americans (depending on your source) who have had COVID.

Like listening to "Stars on 45" on repeat, it's not very pleasant.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

America's little-known history shows today is really the Fourth of July (kind of)

If we practiced a facts-based celebration of history, today would be Independence Day.

Yep, we should celebrate the Fourth of July on July 2 (or something like that. I'm starting to get confused), because the Continental Congress actually declared independence from Britain on July 2, 1776.

Yes. July 2, not July 4.

The reason for the two-day mistake (which is the working title of a country music song I'm writing) is that the authors of the Declaration of Independence postdated their document like they were writing a postdated check. They voted on the resolution for independence July 2 and "ratified the text" July 4.

The actual reason for the delay is lost to history. One theory is that the absence of laptops, electric typewriters, manual typewriters, ditto paper or telegrams forced them to wait. Some scholars believe that the lack of affordable cable TV for early Americans made C-SPAN unavailable for most residents, so the Founding Fathers were forced to wait.

The "why" is unclear, but the "what" is obvious: They voted for independence July 2, and they dated the document July 4.  And nobody signed the Declaration until Aug. 2, 1776, according to the National Archives.

It turns out that the Fourth of July should really be the Second of July (again, I may be slightly confused between the date and the holiday).

I'm not here to overthrow Independence Day. I don't suggest we go to the parade in Fairfield, the waterfront in Suisun City, set off fireworks and eat hot dogs on July 2 (although the waterfront isn't the worst idea, right? And your crazy neighbors will set off fireworks today).

We can keep the Fourth of July on July 4, because details behind holidays sometimes change as we get more information, but we don't need to eliminate the holidays or even change the way or time we commemorate them.

For instance . . .

People often act as if they're winning an argument when they say Jesus Christ likely wasn't born on Christmas day, as if Dec. 25 is mentioned in the Bible and to admit that the date is just a commemoration would discredit Christianity. The specifics of the date pale in comparison to what it commemorates.

Same thing with Thanksgiving. It's now widely accepted that the version of the first Thanksgiving that I learned in school – Pilgrims joining happy Native Americans around a table to enjoy turkey and dressing after watching NFL games in Detroit and Dallas – was wrong. The original Thanksgiving is more about a short-lived peace, with a dark cloud of disease and upcoming conflicts that would wipe out civilizations. However, we can still celebrate a holiday of being thankful and gathering with friends and family and watching the Lions and Cowboys (the only part of the first Thanksgiving story that is true).

Same thing with Columbus Day (the real one, Oct. 12), which people historically considered as the day Christopher Columbus went ashore in the Bahamas. We now know that he brought European colonization, disease, enslavement and genocide to people who were already living in the Americas and would be surprised to hear the land had just been "discovered." The pushback against Columbus in recent decades led to the growing commemoration of Indigenous People's Day on or around Oct. 12, which also happens to be my birthday. Columbus Day? Indigenous People's Day? Either is fine, as long as it's celebrated with a birthday cake at my house.

Which somehow brings us back to today and the lesson of that first Independence Day. The takeaway is that today is July 2, which is our nation's 247th birthday.

That means both today and Tuesday are the Fourth of July. Kind of.

Reach Brad Stanhope at BradStanhope@outlook.com.

Back scratchers, graduation kudos, A's fans and more

Of all the devices created by humanity over time – clothing, eyeglasses, cars, smartphones, shoehorns, tennis rackets – it's difficult to find something that more perfectly fulfills its mission and is more accurately named that the humble back scratcher.

Oh, sure, you've got the toilet plunger and the lawnmower. You've got the toaster and the bike rack. But the back scratcher?

This is an item that is designed for one specific purpose: To allow we pathetic, short-armed humans the chance to scratch those hard-to-reach places on our backs and simply scratch them.

When we don't have a back scratcher in our possession, we're reduced to one of two potential approaches, both of which are sad. One is to ignore the itching and hope it goes away (which just makes it worse). The other is to rub up against a wall corner like a cat or bear or dog and look strange.

Alas, the $5 (or less) back scratcher does the job perfectly and remains viable for years, maybe decades. If you buy a back scratcher, it will probably last you 20 years or more.

Is there a better tool? Is there a tool that has a better name? I say no.

On to the topics du jour . . .

• • •

It's been a few weeks since many high school and college graduations, but let me add my two cents: This year's graduating class likely endured a tougher road than any class since the Class of 1945.

If you graduated in 2023, you were a freshman when the COVID-19 pandemic hit hardest. The end of your freshman year and most of your sophomore year were dominated by the pandemic, costing you the opportunity to build the crucial relationships and skills that are so helpful to navigate those four years. A sense of normalcy came back for your junior and senior years, but the absence of that formational period undoubtedly affected your experience.

The Class of 1945 similarly had World War II start during their freshman year — and continue throughout high school or college. Kudos to those who made it through. You had a rough time, but you'll always have great stories.

• • •

I have incredible respect — and pity — for fans of the Oakland Athletics.

The A's are having a historically bad season (on pace for one of the worst records in modern baseball history), they have an owner who appears to be deliberately trying to lose, they play in the worst ballpark in baseball and the team has announced a plan to move to Las Vegas.

Yet A's fans continue to show up. Sometimes it's 5,000 fans or fewer. Sometimes (like on the recent "reverse boycott game, when fans showed up to prove a point) it's more.  Regardless, how loyal do you have to be to go watch a franchise that doesn't try to win and plans to leave? For my money, while there aren't nearly as many A's fans as Giants or Warriors or 49ers or even Sharks fans in the Bay Area, those A's fans are the most loyal.

They deserve better. They won't get it with the current ownership, who will prove that they can be terrible in Las Vegas, too.

• • •

One request for people who create television commercials: Can you quit putting the QR code on the screen?

Am I supposed to always have my phone ready, then sprint to the screen and capture that code so I can then go to your website and get confused?

The use of QR codes for restaurant menus has largely failed. Do they seriously think it will work on a TV commercial?

It won't. Unless, of course, it's to get a free back scratcher. Then I'm all in.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Father's Day questions answered by dear old Dad

It's Father's Day, the also-ran of holidays that is also the day of a decades-old tradition in this space.

It's time for a dad to step into the shoes of Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Miss Manners and Dear Prudence.

Following are fake letters from artificial residents of real towns, seeking advice from a dad.

Dear Dad: I love my daughter and I love my son-in-law, but every time I go to their house to visit, it makes me crazy. The house is an absolute mess! My daughter was always messy, but now she has a child and the house looks like it was hit by a hurricane! I've offered to help her clean, but she says that's not needed. I'm concerned for my 2-year-old grandson. How can I convince my daughter that her house shouldn't be a total pigsty? – Concerned in Fairfield

Dear Concerned: The old saying is, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." Speaking of that, do you remember the business that used to be next to Food Maxx? On the side by Beck Avenue? It seems like it was a soccer store or something. I always planned to check it out because I like sports jerseys. Or was it a video game store? Maybe I'll check it out the next time I'm over there, in case it's still in business. I hope I answered your question.

Dear Dad: I'm a 35-year-old single man and I'm interested in settling down, but I don't use dating apps and I don't like going to bars. However, there's a woman in my office who I speak with regularly and I'm pretty sure there's mutual attraction. How do I approach her in a modern workplace? We have constant training on sexual harassment and I don't want to do anything that makes her uncomfortable. Is there a way I could approach her to see if she's interested in going on a date without making it awkward for both of us if she says no? – Respectful in Vacaville

Dear Respectful: Dating is tough. But you know what else is tough? Working on modern cars. Back in the day, if your engine needed some work, you could just go out to a junkyard, find the parts and do the work yourself. Now, cars are more like computers and you need special equipment to even understand the problem. Give me a good old 1970s American-made sedan anytime. I hope I answered your question.

Dear Dad: I'm a 16-year-old incoming junior in high school and my parents are overbearing. They always want to know where I'm going and when I'll be home. I have a 10 p.m. curfew on weeknights and 11:30 p.m. on Fridays. It's crazy! My friends' parents are all less strict. I'm an A student and don't use drugs or alcohol. How can I get my parents to realize that they're suffocating me and get them to loosen up? – Frustrated in Suisun City

Dear Frustrated: You're 16? When I was 16, my best friend Rudy had a 1976 Chevy Nova (which we could work on when we wanted) that we used to take when we cruised up and down Texas Street. One time, a group of us went to the old drive-in and Martin Nightengale (who was a year younger than us, but was always willing to do crazy things) hid in the trunk to sneak in and save $4. When we got inside, Rudy convinced the rest of us to leave Martin in the trunk. After about 15 minutes of him yelling, we let him out. It was hilarious. I hope I answered your question.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

 

Science answers life's mystery: Can you split Oreo cream evenly between the wafers?

What you've always thought is true: It's virtually impossible to twist apart an Oreo cookie and have evenly distributed cream.

How do I know? Science! The kind of science we need, done by the smartest people in the country: researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sportswriters used to call boxing "the sweet science," for reasons unknown to anyone. (Irony? Did they not know what "sweet" and "science" meant?) But this? This is sweet science.

While other researchers were trying to create vaccines for deadly viruses or gain a deeper understanding of DNA or discover how life began, some folks at MIT were doing populist science: Creating what they called an "Oreometer" that used rubber bands and weighted coins to create enough force to twist apart cookies. Specifically, of course, Oreo cookies.

Rubber bands! Weighted coins! Science!

As a member of the pancreas-challenged community (I'm a Type 1 diabetic), Oreos are an element of my past, not my present or future. But being human for decades has taught me that Oreos are the greatest store-bought cookie (edging out either those Mother's circus animals or Chips Ahoy, depending on your preference) and what makes them special is the thing that the scientists tried to measure: The cream filling, which is almost universally consumed after the two cookies are split apart.

If we ate hamburgers like Oreos, we'd pull apart the buns and then lick the hamburger until it dissolved. Which would be gross, but remains a good definition. It's rumored that only sociopaths eat an Oreo without splitting it first (and only sociopaths eat hamburgers that way).

Anyway, the folks at MIT used the Oreometer to pull apart cookie after cookie. After, of course, writing a bunch of scientific gobbledygook to describe the plan and reason:

"Scientifically, sandwich cookies present a paradigmatic model of parallel plate rheometry in which a fluid sample, the crème, is held between two parallel plates, the wafers. When the wafers are counter-rotated, the crème deforms, flows, and ultimately fractures, leading to the separation of the cookie into two pieces."

Translation: You twist the cookie to get to the filling.

Their study found that regardless of how the cookies were twisted, the creamy filling tended to stay primarily on one wafer. And in those rare occurrences when the cream was split 50-50, it tended to chunk up on each wafer, not be spread around in an equitable manner: A glob on the bottom a glob on the top.

But since they are scientists, the MIT folks didn't settle with the idea that it's impossible to separate Oreos and get a 50-50 split on cream, which is where most of us would finish.

They hypothesized why: The researchers say that the manufacturing of Oreos involves machines dropping the cream on the bottom wafer, then adding the top wafer. That few moments of adherence to the first wafer is likely enough that it stays there for good.

In other words, the cream imprints on the first wafer. Like a baby bird.

So next time you split an Oreo to eat it (presuming you're not a sociopath), realize most of the cream stays with the wafer on which it imprinted.

Then scrape it off – but with your top teeth or bottom? I guess the folks at MIT have more studies to perform.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

We were born into a world of Susans; now it's a world of Mavericks

Kindergarten in 2027 will be dramatically different than it was for me.

Technology will be different. Students won't take naps on towels brought from home nor eating graham crackers. The academic standards will surely be higher than in Mrs. Sherman's class at South Bay Elementary School.

But the biggest difference? No Susans. No Karens. No Donnas or Todds or Carls.

The names that crowded my childhood classroom lists – and likely crowded yours – are no longer in use. There aren't any 5-year-olds named Cindy or Glenn.

The list of the most popular baby names in 2022, published by the Social Security Administration, provided plenty of fodder for those of us who like to make fun of modern names: Asher is the 19th-most popular boys name? Maverick is 40th? Luna is 10th and Mila 19th among girls?

We scoff because we know no one with those names. And it's true, because the names of our childhood – the Donalds and Rogers and Pamelas and Brendas – have disappeared. Almost literally, because the SSA also publishes the most popular names by decade.

In the 1960s – the decade in which Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, Barak Obama, Jennifer Lopez and I were born–the top girls name was Lisa.

By 2022, Lisa had fallen to No. 933 on the list of the top 1,000 girls names. That was better than the aforementioned Susan, Karen and Donna – all top-10 names in the 1960s that didn't even make the top 1,000 in 2022. Other top 100 girls names of the 1960s that fell entirely out of the top 1,000 by 2022 are Pamela, Lori, Brenda, Diane, Carol, Cindy, Janet, Carolyn, Connie, Judy, Beverly and Darlene.

Boys names similarly dropped, but not to the dramatic extent (I only count Todd, Carl and Glenn in the top 100 of the 1960s that weren't in the top 1,000 in 2022). Still, these names were top-100 in the 1960s and ranked below No. 500 in 2022: Donald, Gary, Keith, Larry, Dennis, Roger, Wayne and Harold.

What does it mean, other than that times changes and various things influence naming patterns? Karen is now shorthand for a complaining baby boomer; Donald was the name of a not-so-beloved president; Roger sounds like a 60-year-old guy.

Here's the takeaway: Modern names are pretty cool (my granddaughters' names ranked eighth, 137th and 235th in 2022, so I like them) and reflect modern tastes. In six decades, we'll have a bunch of senior citizens named Maverick and Grayson and Kai and Aria, Nova (including my great-niece!) and Willow. Alas, I won't be here to marvel at that fact.

But here's a tip if you're expecting a child or will have a child in the next decade. If you want to be "different," don't name your child Liam or Olivia (the top names in 2022).

Go back to the old-school favorite that will come back over time. Consider naming your child Nancy (26th in the 1960s, 997th in 2022), Linda (seventh in the 1960s, 807th in 2022), Larry (35th in the 1960s, 889th in 2022) or even Bradley (72nd in the 1960s, 349th in 2022).

If you want a classic name for your child, try Wayne or Brenda. If you pick Luna or Asher, your child will be just another in a series of kids with that name.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.