(Note: This is almost certain to come across as vain seeing as how I play goalie.  Know that it was written with lighthearted intent 🙂 )

Some people are more attractive than others.  I know, big surprise: like wealth, beauty is a relative measure.  The great news?  On sports teams, goalies are the lookers!

Yes, there is a correlation between positions played in sports and the attractiveness of the players.  A well-written 2007 study (“Does the Face Reveal Athletic Flair? Positions in Team Sports and Facial Attractiveness” by Park, Buunk, and Wieling) took up this issue.

In the study, the researchers had women rate the attractiveness of faces of male soccer and ice hockey players.  The hypothesis was that certain positions in team sports depend more on heritable traits than others, and those preferential traits would manifest as improved attractiveness.

The study authors showed female students at the University of Groningen photos of faces of professional soccer and ice hockey players, which were selected to provide samples from the various positions in those sports (i.e., goalies/goalkeepers, defensemen/defenders, midfielders, and forwards/strikers).

The results were clear: of the soccer players, the goalkeepers and strikers were rated as significantly more attractive than the midfielders and defenders.  Similarly, of the hockey players, the goalies were rated as significantly more attractive than the forwards, who in turn were rated as significantly more attractive than the defensemen.

The authors went on to hypothesize that physical and psychological demands placed on goalies/goalkeepers and forwards/strikers depend on traits that are associated with heritable fitness.  However, they were unable to establish a causal relationship: are good-looking people pushed into more prestigious positions, or is it the natural talent that drives them there?

As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational, objective beings, emotion and subjectivity still drive many of our choices.  It’s hardly surprising that we should base some of our decisions on looks given the ubiquity of such behavior in non-human species.  If lions, peacocks, and banana slugs all use looks as proxies for virility and athletic prowess, why not humans?  If certain positions on sporting teams require more of those traits, it seems intuitive that selection should occur based on them.

Reference:

Justin Park, Bram Buunk and Martijn Wieling (2007). Does the face reveal athletic flair? Positions in team sports and facial attractiveness. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1960 – 1965.

Looks like the competition is getting even more fierce at the country’s elite universities.  In a follow-up to an old post about the admission rate, I took a new look at the undergraduate numbers:

As you can see, these three schools have become increasingly selective over the past ten years.  What’s driving this?  Well, it isn’t a change in the number of admittance offers:

Instead, the trend can be seen in a stark rise in the number of applications:

Why the increase?  I’m not sure.  It’s well known that graduate school applications track the unemployment rate, but I’m not sure about undergraduate applications.  One possible explanation is that while the population continues to grow, the number of slots available at the super-selective universities remains relatively constant.  Another is that self-selection might not be as strong an influence, i.e., that less-qualified students are giving it a shot.

(I would also like to note that acceptance rates have been declining for universities in general, not just the so-called elites.)

Where will it end?  Will the crushing cost of a year of university education finally halt the rise? (Unlikely, given the generous financial aid packages these well-endowed schools are offering “low” income students.)  Will fewer students bother applying once they see the bleak odds of gaining admittance?  Will students decide to apply to fewer universities, thereby decreasing the total number of applications and increasing the university yield rates?  Time will tell.

(Data collected from press releases from the individual schools)

I have a weakness for baked goods.  Muffins, scones, breads… mmm.  It would be really nice to be able to enjoy a warm muffin after hiking through the woods.

Unfortunately, the minimalist backpacking style of which I am so fond is in opposition to such luxury.  My skin-out dry weight is less than 20 pounds, so throwing in a 15-pound Dutch oven is a non-starter.  Sure, there are gizmos like the Outback Oven that are designed to convert stoves into ovens, but they’re not compatible with my backpacking stove, expensive, bulky, and heavy.  The Bakepacker looks promising, but it seems expensive, and I’m not fond of the idea of heating foods in Ziploc-type plastic bags.  What to do?

The solution: steam baking.  I ran across the instructions and had to give it a try.

There are just a few simple steps.  Get two small (about 1″ tall) pieces of aluminum foil, put a small slit in each of them, and put them together to form an “X”.  Place the X in the bottom of a small pot (I used an 850 ml MSR titanium kettle).  Pour water into the pot until the X is nearly covered.  Place a foil muffin cup on top of the X.

Fill the muffin cup about 2/3 full with your favorite “just-add-water” mix (to which you should have added the usual amount of water).  Put the lid on the pot, put the pot on a stove, and fire up the stove.  Let the water boil about 5 minutes, then turn the heat off and let eveything sit for at least another 10 minutes.  After that, open and enjoy!

I tested this on my backpacking trip at Big Basin Redwoods State Park last Friday night.  The blueberry muffin tasted fantastic after a long day on the trail, and there was no mess.  True, the muffin wasn’t as brown as it would have been in a conventional oven, but it was warm and fluffy.

Delicious.

I was reading yet another article about the going-out-of-business sales at Circuit City stores.  Even though they’ve been trying to clear out the merchandise for several weeks — heavily discounted, no less — there’s still a bunch of junk sitting around.

Sure, it’s difficult to predict what will sell and what won’t.  It can be even harder to find the appropriate price.  Regardless, Circuit City seems to have done a rather poor job on both accounts.  Might the fact that the stores carried large amounts of undesirable merchandise have had something to do with the failure of the chain?  Might the fact that the stuff is still around indicate that even the lowered asking prices are still far too high?

It’s not just Circuit City.  The same phenomenon can be seen in after-holiday clearances.   Bags upon bags of disgusting Halloween candy, 50% off.  Hideously tacky Christmas tree ornaments.  Revolting Easter-themed sweatshirts, invariably in size XXXL.  I can’t fathom what must have been running through the store buyers’ heads.  Were they stoned?  Stuck in the 1980s?  Doing a favor for a mob boss?

The mind boggles.

There I was in Target, picking up some mundane supplies, when a display on an aisle end cap caught my eye: four-bottle packs of Pepsi Natural.  Having ventured out from under my rock every once in a while, I was familiar with regular Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Max, and even Crystal Pepsi, but Pepsi Natural was new to my eyes.  Curiosity was running through me like so much caffeine. What was this Pepsi Natural?  How would it compare to the standard, plebeian product?

In one swift move, I snapped up a four-pack, swung around, and snagged a bottle of regular off of the nearby shelf.  It was time for a new Pepsi Challenge, Pepsi on Pepsi.

The first thing I noticed, other than the fact that the “natural” variant was housed in glass bottles while the regular was in plastic, was the price difference.  Including the CRV, the traditional Pepsi 2-liter rang up at $1.89, while the four 12 fl oz bottles of Pepsi Natural set me back $4.69.  Scale that, and you’ll find that regular runs $3.69 per gallon, while super-ultra-premium-natural goes for an astonishing $12.50 per gallon.  $12.50 per gallon!  For sugar water!  Yes, yes, I realize that bottles might affect the price, but should the glass privilege be worth that much?  I mean, that price is in the bottled-beer neighborhood.  Perhaps the contents would justify the difference.

Pepsi Natural is billed as being “all natural” and made with “sparkling water, sugar, and kola nut extract.”  Indeed, the ingredient list has all that and more.  Compared to the normal Pepsi, we find a different sweetener, a different type of fizzy water, an additional color source, different acids, and the addition of the kola nut extract.

Pepsi Natural ingredient list

The most noticable difference is the exclusion of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in favor of sugar alone.  Some people have made a ruckus in recent years about the virtues of soft drinks sweetened with sugar instead of HFCS.  Most major cola manufacturers made the switch to HFCS in the early 1980s, but some still have small production runs with the old-fashioned sweetener.  Supposedly, Mexican Coca-Cola is sweetened that way, as is some Coke imported for Jewish customers.  Supposedly, the taste is different (better), and possible health effects from HFCS are avoided (never mind the phosphoric acid).  Would the difference be noticable here?  Perhaps not, as regular Pepsi includes both regular sugar and HFCS.

One must also be aware that “natural” doesn’t mean “direct from a plant” or even “organic”; rather, for natural flavors, the chemicals were derived from something that was alive at some point rather than a source like petroleum or coal tar, which are “artificial.”  Either way, you can bet that they went through a lot of processing and refinement before they met the bottle.  Most of the minor ingredients in Pepsi Natural seem to have fairly straightforward routes from plants to bottles, but “natural flavors” remains unappealingly ambiguous.

Enough of that. Time for the taste test.

I let both the regular and natural Pepsi colas chill in the refrigerator overnight.  The next day, I brought them out and poured a glass of each.  Temperature at consumption: 57° F.

The first difference I noticed was the color.  Both were brown, caramel-colored, and clear.  However, the natural Pepsi was much lighter than the regular.  Presumably, the difference was intentional, as they both contain coloring agents.

Pepsi colors: regular on the left, natural on the right

The next difference was the smell.   While the regular cola had a sweet, somewhat acidic scent, the natural version had barely any smell at all.  Perhaps that was related to the relative effervescence of the drinks: the regular appeared far fizzier, which might have released more aromatic compounds into the air.

Time for a sip.  While the regular version had a biting, acidic feel, the natural felt smoother and more mellow.  The regular mouthfeel was inferior, being somewhat astringent.  There was a grittiness on my tounge and teeth with the regular version that seemed absent with the other.  Overall, the taste profile was very similar.  I think that the natural version had hints of cognac, but even in the non-blind test the two drinks were difficult to distinguish.  Later, a couple of my friends also used the adjective “smoother” when describing Pepsi Natural versus regular Pepsi.

To take carbonation and the differing acids out of the picture, I added 1.2 g of sodium bicarbonate to 180 ml of each soda.  The liquids fizzed madly, then went silent.  I tried each of the now-flat drinks, and they tasted virtually identical: two cloyingly sweet, syrupy brown liquids.  The underlying chemistry and provenance of the sweeteners are very different, but the tastes are pretty much the same.

Regardless of the form, the drinks contained what seemed to be an unhealthy amount of sugar.  Pepsi Natural has slightly less sugar in a 12 fl oz serving, with 38 g versus 42 g for regular, but that’s still nearly a quarter of a cup by volume of crystallized sugar:

Amount of sugar in 12 fl oz of Pepsi (42 g)

Will Pepsi Natural find a permanent home in the market?  Hard to say.  History is littered with failed soft drink sub-brands.  The price differential could be an issue, too: when money is tight, who is going to blow the budget by buying “natural” soda?

Frankly, I find all soft drinks to be far too sweet, and the fizziness is unappealing.  I probably consume no more than a quart of soft drinks of any type in a given year.  In fact, I could finish neither of the sample glasses, so most of the carmel-colored gold went down the drain.

In this Pepsi challenge, I’ll choose option (c): still water.  Tastes better, much healthier, and a lot cheaper.  And all natural, too.