WEBVTT - History’s Worst Coffee, Learning Without Concentrating, and Why America Votes on Tuesdays 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.000 Welcome to House to Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum, 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:10.440 a researcher and writer. Here at House to Works. Every week, 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:12.760 I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.840 weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture. 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.160 This week, we ask could you pick up a new 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:23.720 physical skill without having to concentrate on learning it? We 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:27.120 also answer that question, and spoiler alert, the answer is yes, 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:31.600 and it involves haptic feedback. Unrelated, we peel back the 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.839 veils of time to peer into America's worst cup of coffee, 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:41.040 But first steph editor Christopher hassiotis via freelance writer Patrick J. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.080 Kaiger has an election story for us, and don't worry, 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.880 We're not going to political on you. This one's about 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.879 why u s national elections are held on a Tuesday 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.279 in November and why some people are campaigning to change that. 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.440 Holding elections on a Tuesday in November has been a 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.440 tradition in the United States since the eighteen forties, but 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:05.640 these days, that weekday timing makes it difficult for many 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.399 people to exercise their right to vote. That's why some 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.399 activists want to switch to a better system. According to 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.000 New data from the Pew Research Center, the US ranks 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.040 relatively low among other countries, at only twenty seven in 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.800 the world for voter participation. In the two thousand twelve 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:25.160 general and presidential election, only fifty of eligible voters cast ballots. 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:29.200 That's embarrassingly low compared to Belgium's seven percent participation rate, 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:31.839 and it puts the United States barely above the voting 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.560 rate in former Soviet republics like Estonia and Slovenia, which 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.760 don't even have a centuries old tradition of democracy, and 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.680 participation gets even worse than years when the country doesn't 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.600 elect a president. In the two thousand fourteen mid terms, 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.600 for instance, only thirty six percent of the US voting 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.840 age population cast ballots. So what's up with that? Why 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.440 do so few Americans vote? Well, some simply may not 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.200 like the candidates running in a given year or prefer 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.120 to do something else that day. Hey, maybe some and 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:04.000 forgot that an election was happening despite the bludgeoning media coverage. 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:06.760 But according to the Pew survey of registered voters who 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.040 didn't vote in two thousand fourteen, the biggest single reason 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.720 given was scheduled conflicts with work or school, which kept 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:18.239 thirty of those registered voters from exercising their rights. These 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:21.240 scheduled conflicts occur in large part because of an eighteen 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.320 forty five federal law which designated a week day as 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:29.120 election day, specifically the first Tuesday after the first Monday 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:34.040 of November. But an organization called Why Tuesday is advocating 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.919 a solution that's already being used successfully in other countries 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.720 like Belgium, France, Germany, and India. The group wants to 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.399 change voting law and hold elections at a time that's 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:47.160 better suited for modern day Americans. Ideally, they'd like to 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:49.600 see election day held on a weekend, though as a 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:52.880 fallback option, they'd consider making election day of federal holiday 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:56.000 all its own. Why Tuesday co founder and political scientists 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.400 Norman j. Ornstein says that the current election day is 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:01.519 an outmode and holdover from an age in which the 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.359 country was very different from today, more rural and more pious. 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:09.480 As Ornstein explains it, thety five law was written to 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.560 take into account the needs of a primarily a grarian society. 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.680 There was no uber, no cars, no subway trains. Farmers 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:18.919 had to get their products to market in wagons, which 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.400 usually required a whole day of travel, and for religious reasons, 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.560 they needed to be home for the Sabbath. Additionally, people 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:27.919 settled their accounts in those days on the first day 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.359 of the month, so they couldn't vote then. Given those constraints, 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.160 the first Tuesday that falls after the first Monday in 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.480 November seemed like the best choice at the time, but 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.440 that timing isn't so convenient in a modern, industrialized, technologically 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.480 advanced society like ours. The majority of people who work 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:47.920 typically do so during the day from Monday through Friday, 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.560 and we have to vote near where we live, which 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.320 isn't necessarily near where we work, making it hard to 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:55.840 vote on a lunch break, for instance. If it were 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.640 up to Ornstein, he would switch election day to a weekend, 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.040 more specifically a twenty four hour period from noon on 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.440 Saturday to noon on Sunday. It also holds three days 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.920 of early voting on Wednesday through Friday of the week 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.440 before the Saturday Sunday election. That would allow flexibility for 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.440 people with work, religious practices, or out of town travel 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:17.640 on weekends to vote, and to make voting even easier 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.279 or Innstein would set up remote voting stations where people 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:22.400 could vote no matter where they lived in a city 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.520 or state, using ballots personalized to their home location and 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:28.919 local issues. Instead of moving voting day, why not just 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:31.960 make it a national holiday? Ornstein argues that it would 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.520 be more complicated that way. Setting up a new holiday 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.000 is an expensive proposition for the economy, he explains, and 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:40.520 if you tried to piggyback it on Veterans Day a 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:44.159 week later, as some have proposed, veterans might feel understandably 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.320 short changed. Ornstein suggests, we've stayed with Tuesday more out 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.200 of inertia than resistance. It's changed and how we vote 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:51.880 is something that interests you, and you'd like to learn 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.680 more about Ornstein's organization, check out Why Tuesday dot org 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:58.919 or reach out to your own government representative. Change doesn't 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:05.799 happen by itself. After next up, senior writer Jonathan Strickland 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:10.000 talks about the potential feature of learning particular skills. In 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.279 a recent study, participants were able to learn Morse code 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:20.520 without even trying in less than four hours. What if 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.039 you could pick up a new skill without having to 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:27.000 concentrate on learning it. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.760 Technology have done it with morse code using Google Glass 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.840 and passive haptic learning or PHL. But what does that mean. 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.520 Let's break it down. The approach is passive because the 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.120 user doesn't need to engage with the process in an 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:45.120 active way. Haptic refers to feedback through touch, so a 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:49.520 passive haptic learning system teaches users through touch without them 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.680 having to focus on it. In this case, Google Glass 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.040 provided the touch. Similar to most cell phones, Google Glass 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:59.719 contains a small vibrating mechanism to alert users to notifications. 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.599 In Google Glass, the mechanism rests just behind the user's 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.159 ear and since a low frequency sound that is not 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.919 heard but felt as a vibration. In their study, the 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.240 researchers at Georgia Tech took advantage of this design to 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.200 have the motor tap out characters in morse code while 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.720 users were distracted with another task. Twelve participants wore Google 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.200 Glass while playing an online game for twenty minutes. While 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.520 they concentrated on the game, half the participants would feel 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.200 the vibrating motor tap out each letter of a word 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.360 in morse code. A voice would also say each letter 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.320 through a small speaker on the headset. The other half 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.640 of the participants, the control group heard the audio cues 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:44.960 but didn't receive any haptic feedback. The researchers tested participants 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:47.960 on their ability to write Morse code, input Morse code 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.479 on the glass touch pad, and write letters from morse signals. 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:55.400 They found that in under four hours, the experimental group 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:59.000 displayed greater competence with Morse code than the control group. 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:04.000 In fact, experimental group was accurate when encoding each letter 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:06.680 of the alphabet in a final test, the control group 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.960 was only accurate. The pH L studies group at Georgia 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.160 Tech previously used similar methods to teach people brail or 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.160 to play the piano, but in those cases, subjects felt 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.640 vibrations on their respective fingers. This study showed that you 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.800 can also use vibrations elsewhere on the body, not just 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.720 the fingers, to pick up information. PHL might be useful 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.200 in several practical applications, though the researchers are quick to 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.880 point out that learning Morse code probably isn't one of them. 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.240 It could work well with various text based interfaces, such 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:40.920 as learning to touch type on a standard keyboard or 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.240 smart watch, but the researchers also stressed that it's not 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.720 a magical way to learn anything, You're not likely to 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.280 pick up a deep understanding of quantum mechanics this way. 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.280 In previous work, the research group found that people would 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:57.600 forget skills learned with PHL over time, but that it 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.040 didn't take long for them to become competent agin in 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.880 once they picked the haptic technology back up. But there's 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.320 a lot that remains mysterious. What's the threshold we need 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.840 to meet to learn a new task with PHL and 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:12.880 how long would we retain that skill. We don't have 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.239 answers to those questions yet, but it's clear PHL could 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:22.440 have multiple applications and augment the way we learned. Finally, 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.360 this week, senior writer Robert Lamb tells the tale of 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:30.040 food industrialization gone wrong in the American Civil War. Demand 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.800 for coffee on the front lines led to an infamously 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:39.080 terrible cup of show. War is hell, and sometimes the 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.200 coffee is to consider the American Civil War, a four 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:45.000 year blood bath that divided the nation and claimed the 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.400 lives of between sixty and eight hundred and fifty thousand 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.240 Union and Confederate soldiers. Looking back on such dark times, 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.479 there's a certain solace to be found in moments of humanity, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.920 like sweeping acts of moral responsibility, or just the small 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.720 fragments of everyday life that are sprinkled amongst the madness, 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:07.920 such as complaining about wretched coffee. Food industrialization has always 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:11.720 progressed alongside modern warfare. An army, as the saying goes, 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.800 marches on its stomach, so the streamline production, preservation, and 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:20.400 delivery of food offers a definitive military advantage. Evaporated milk 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:24.000 is a fantastic example of a successful industrialized food product. 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.240 It's essentially just milk dried into a paste and in 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.960 the process pasteurized. All you have to do is add 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:34.280 water and behold, you've got yourself some reconstituted milk. Condensed 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:36.760 milk is roughly the same idea, only with a whole 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:39.640 lot more sugar added. It's not perfect, but it gets 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.520 the job done, which is why the US government purchased 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.679 bookoo's of condensed milk for Union Army field rations. But 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.920 great ideas often lead to terrible ones. In this case, 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.600 the essence of coffee food engineers wondered, hey, if we 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.240 can successfully evaporate a glass of milk, and why not 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.280 an entire cup of joe? This was no trivial matter. 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.160 As John Grinsman explains in his New York Times article 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.680 how Coffee fueled the Civil War. The Union Army thrived 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:08.160 on coffee. It was their nerve tonic, their sustainer, General 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:12.440 Benjamin Butler, even considered it a decisive strategic factor. The 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:15.880 modernization of coffee was nothing short of the modernization of 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.600 the war effort itself, and so George Hummell unleashed the 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:24.239 essence of coffee on an unsuspecting world, evaporating vast quantities 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.160 of the stuff, complete with boardings, condensed milk and sugar 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.679 into what is often described as a thick brown sludge 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.880 or a noxious black grease. By all accounts, Union soldiers 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.920 abhorred the stuff. And these were men who, according to Grinsman, 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.640 would brew coffee with water from quote brackish bays and 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.000 Mississippi mud liquid their horses would not drink if that's 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.760 what it took to sharpen their nerves and minds on 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.880 the wet stone of holy caffeine. Despite the labels insistence 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.840 that the product was celebrated and more wholesome than pure coffee, 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.160 the essence of coffee tested even the standards of these 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:02.240 hardened soldiers, and if that weren't bad enough, the men's 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:07.000 already supercharged bowels were sometimes further corrupted by spoiled milk 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:11.040 sold by sketchy dairymen. According to writer David A. Norris, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.800 so attempts to cut the reconstituted essence with fresh milk 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:17.880 could prove a risky gamble. The essence of coffee was 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:21.520 soon removed as a ration, but its reputation lingered. A 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.000 few determined and potentially massochistic Civil War rean actors have 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:28.480 recently attempted to recreate the stuff. While some claim to 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.120 have improved on the recipe and concocted something really quite good, 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:35.080 others report the creation of a tough caffy that must 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.000 be broken up with a rifle butt on cold days 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.160 before boiling. Can anything good be said for the essence 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.240 of coffee? Well? According to historian James T. Hickey, First 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.720 Lady Mary Todd Lincoln may have incorporated the stuff into 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:51.400 a high caffeine molasses sweet and concoction to treat her 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.440 frequent migraines. Plus Union soldiers who could stomach the stuff 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.640 undoubtedly got their fix a jolt of psychoactive stimulation, and 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.640 that helped push them toward victory in the War between 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.959 the States. So think about that the next time your 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:09.080 barista serves you a less than perfect pumpkin spy soy latte. 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:16.960 At least you're not forced to endure EF. That's our 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:19.320 show for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:21.600 And hey, if you're listening to this on the day 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.679 that the episode comes out, go vote tomorrow for whoever 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.520 and whatever. Just vote. If you're not subscribed to this 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.559 podcast yet, do that thing and send us links to 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:33.800 anything you'd like to hear us cover, plus a photo 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:36.200 of your Halloween costume. You can send me an email 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.360 at now Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:41.840 of course, for lots of more stories like these, head 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.600 on over to our home planet now dot how stuff 0:12:44.640 --> 0:13:01.960 works dot com.