That’s insane to me. Growing up in sunny California, I’ve never experienced anything below 40°F. And 68° is freezing cold to me. Maybe I’m just unhealthy.
The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
61–70 of 178 posts
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#62As it happens I'm leaving for a camping trip in the snow tomorrow morning. It's the sierras (relatively warm) and I'm leading a bunch of inexperienced scouts (so not a particularly grueling trip) but still with opportunities for danger. I was surprised how many of these SV kids signed up and were then pulled by their parents -- 50%! Only a few years ago these trips were immediately oversubscribed, with nobody getting…
Scout trips have been known to go wrong. This discussion brought to mind this very old incident: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/06/fatal-hike-bec...
That's tragic--but let's keep it in context. It happened before WWII. Some of these young boys were wearing shorts and sandals (without hats) in a blizzard, climbing up a mountain slope with a 70% gradient (black diamond ski slopes start at 40%), without any sort of topological or detailed map, no lights, no ability to communicate with the outside world and one adult to supervise 27 students. I can't imagine any of those things are true for Gumby's trip.
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#63You can acclimitize to the cold, up to a point.
I occasionally swim in lakes and don't like to swim below 15C, even with a wetsuit. But some people who swim all year round can handle much colder.
I remember having a BBQ with some British and Brazilians guests here in the UK. The British people were wearing t-shirts and shorts and saying how lovely it was. The Brazilians (who came from the very hot North of Brazil and were only visiting the UK briefly) were wearing jackets and shivering.
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#64I do wonder how much of this is genetic. My ancestry is Celtic (Scottish on one side, Irish the other) and I have a high resistance to cold, until I lived with my partner I’d have the the windows ajar even in winter and rarely put the heating on, I’m rarely cold even when cycling long distances on days with the temperature around zero and I wear t-shirts year around, I find jumpers and shirts stifling in any normal t…
For any other confused Americans: "jumper" = "sweater"
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just the style of modern story writing. Words, a lot of words. Just too many of them. I have tried to read such stories and most of the time there are just words and not much substance.
It's amazing how we used to read entire stacks of bound leaves of paper. Some contained dozens of events and interwoven narratives. I don't have time for that.
The problem isn't too many events; it's too many words.
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fellow runner here. For God's sake man, carry an emergency blanket with you at least. https://www.amazon.com/Emergency-Blanket/s?k=Emergency+Blank...
The article mentions that plastic bags work better than emergency "space" blankets since they block moisture and thus evaporative cooling. A large industrial trash bag is part of my emergency supplies on cold backpacking trips. It's cheap, weighs almost nothing, and provides protection from both radiative and convective cooling.
I'm surprised. I've lined up before races in the cold and I've found an emergency blanket keeps me warmer than a trash bag. I've tried both. Neither beats used sweats from Good Will, but that's too much to run with.
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#67You can acclimitize to the cold, up to a point. I occasionally swim in lakes and don't like to swim below 15C, even with a wetsuit. But some people who swim all year round can handle much colder. I remember having a BBQ with some British and Brazilians guests here in the UK. The British people were wearing t-shirts and shorts and saying how lovely it was. The Brazilians (who came from the very hot North of Brazil and…
As a Brazilian from the Northeast who loves cold, this is funny to me because I just moved to somewhere cold (The Netherlands), and my coworkers (many even from Russia) sometimes get surprised to see me going out for lunch (in January/February) without a coat.
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#68There is a lot of interesting information. However, is it only me, or the style of writing is chaotic (almost as if every paragraph was shuffled)?
This is the current fad in magazine-style journalism. You essentially take two narratives: * A personal anecdotal account to provide human interest and color. * A relatively dry scientific narrative that explains the larger context. And then you weave the two together. The human interest side keeps readers engaged enough to wade through the otherwise tedious sciency part. The sciency part makes readers feel they are…
I have an affinity towards the second one. I cannot bear ones, which start as novels... and you need to go through a few sections to understand what it is about, if it is a true or fake story, etc.
In this case, the problem is not with the balance between facts and narration (for my taste, it is fine) but with stories being shattered. I read a paragraph and need to guess if it is a new story, if it relates to the previous one, did it happen before or after, etc.
BTW: I did enjoy Memento the movie. But in this one the order was designed carefully.
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#69I do wonder how much of this is genetic. My ancestry is Celtic (Scottish on one side, Irish the other) and I have a high resistance to cold, until I lived with my partner I’d have the the windows ajar even in winter and rarely put the heating on, I’m rarely cold even when cycling long distances on days with the temperature around zero and I wear t-shirts year around, I find jumpers and shirts stifling in any normal t…
You’re one of them!
“They're almost like normal humans, except they have no knowledge of what it means to be cold.”
— http://absurdnotions.org/F1992.html
Of course, there are those other people as well…
Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold
#70I do wonder how much of this is genetic. My ancestry is Celtic (Scottish on one side, Irish the other) and I have a high resistance to cold, until I lived with my partner I’d have the the windows ajar even in winter and rarely put the heating on, I’m rarely cold even when cycling long distances on days with the temperature around zero and I wear t-shirts year around, I find jumpers and shirts stifling in any normal t…
On that point, I wanted to share something you may relate to: my Filipino wife is always freezing in SF. I'm from Scandinavian descent, I could live as naked as a jaybird in the Bay Area weather.
Where can't I find a blanket thick on the left, thin on the right? :)