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Anecdotally, Americans tend to shower more often than Europeans. Perhaps this explains why more tech innovation tends to happen in America these days? I suspec
by math_dandy 4y ago
Anecdotally, Americans tend to shower more often than Europeans. Perhaps this explains why more tech innovation tends to happen in America these days?
I suspect a major cause of the shower gap is energy price gap, leading one to conclude that cheap energy increases innovation!
- CSDude 4y agoSource required.
- math_dandy 4y agoRecent visit to my in-laws in Germany.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoAh so elderly couple in Germany allows you to conclude that the whole of Europe showers less than your household, a household which is also representative of the whole American continent, did I get that right?
- svnt 4y agoAhem… whoossshhh
- kylecazar 4y agoI'm sure like everything else, times have changed and Western Europe and the US are now more similar (if not the same) in their shower habits. But I'd like to provide another anecdote just for fun, from 6 years of living in Spain beginning 20 years ago. It was, at that time, certainly considered unique to shower every day, in a mid-sized northern Spain city. Unless every other friend in my residencia was weird in this regard, which is unlikely. Interestingly, they also had a communal pool. Swimming to them rendered a shower that day unnecessary. Note -- I didn't notice any notable signs of bad hygiene, though. Anyway I'm sure there are studies that show we're all converging on similar routines!
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y agoCurious. I'm from a mid-sized northern Spanish city, always shower once a day, most of my family and friends do as well. People I know from the south of Spain even shower more than once a day (it's hot down there). And in Spain there is the meme that French and British people shower much less than the Spanish. No idea if there is truth to it (although when I lived in the UK, I was shocked at how seldom the British people I was sharing house with showered, but that's a sample size of two).
- tpmx 4y agoMaybe something to do with electricity suddenly being 5-10x more expensive than usual.
- jtbayly 4y agoSkyrocketing energy prices projected to cause unprecedented drop in already dangerously low rate of European innovation!
- tpmx 4y agoEuropean innovation is doing quite well. As usual it's the part where we actually make money off the innovations where we suck. Good trolling effort though! ;)
- tnzk 4y agoIt fails to explain why Japanese people who shower literally everyday don't lead innovations...
- b3morales 4y agoDon't they? In consumer electronics they certainly did for a good chunk of the past 50-60 years.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoIn Brazil two showers a day are pretty common. So access to R&D funding is probably far more relevant for innovation indexes than people's hygiene.
- Existenceblinks 4y agoJapanese people are very creative in my perception. I'm in Thailand where if you aren't taking shower 2 times a day, you are considerably "bad hygiene". In winter, at least 1 time in the morning. You will feel "I'm dirty" outside if you don't.
- hbarka 4y agoThe Global War on Terror (GWOT) revealed remote places where the Toyota Hilux refused to break
- astrange 4y agoJapanese people are very innovative, but aren’t motivated enough to create export-oriented products so you don’t get the end results. It mostly seems to come out in “unproductive” areas like unreasonably good amateur twitter artists.
- nullsense 4y agoHmm... Japan has the most complex economy in the world though?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nanomonkey 4y agoCan you explain the energy price gap portion of your hypothesis? From my personal experience showers take less energy than a bath. For my usage, if I block the drain, take a shower, there will only be about a foot of water in the tub, maybe a 1/3 of what I would need to take a bath. Are you assuming other forms of washing or that Americans shower more frequently? Just curious!
- dsr_ 4y agoYou have a three foot deep bathtub? I'm jealous. Standard American bathtubs are 60" long, 30" wide, and 18" tall -- external dimensions. That's what you'll see in 90+% of apartments and homes.
- myself248 4y agoMaybe they mean ankle deep. A foot turned sideways is only ankle-high, you see... (Metric ain't got nothin' on this kind of versatility, baby!)
- nanomonkey 4y agoYou're correct, its actually considerably less than a foot of depth from one shower. It's probably 1-3 inches from my usage, but I take quick showers. More to my point, a bath's water and energy usage is multiple showers from my experience.
- meindnoch 4y agoAs they say, once you have eliminated all which is impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth! But perhaps there are still a few more probable hypotheses to test before we settle on your shower theory… Would you agree with that, my friend?
- FlyingSnake 4y ago> I suspect a major cause of the shower gap is energy price gap What a funny assertion. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Gulf states etc have bottomless supply of cheap energy, where are their innovations?
- Existenceblinks 4y agoAhh funny my country is very hot, in summer I'd shower 3 times (I wish for 4 sometimes). It's too hot to come up with any idea. It's only thankful to have water run through.
- bertjk 4y agoCan I ask, in places where showering that often is the norm, does one change into a new set of clean clothes each time? And does this basically triple the laundry chore burden?
- Existenceblinks 4y agoI'm in Thailand. Same should be applied with "tropical climate" countries. Basically it's hot and humid. Cloths are usually not thick as it's hot, so 2-3 days per laundry for 2 people is ok. It's only annoying when there's not enough favorite cloths. Smell of sweat / odor happens very soon than those who live in cold+dry area.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoI feel like that has to be cultural rather than price based. The French shower more often than Americans for example and we have higher energy prices.