The Heat Question

I noticed this over the weekend, in some health report.....that a couple of researchers at Harvard University went out asked the question....are you more stupid during heat-waves?

Well...yes.

What they say is that your brain is about thirteen-percent slower in extreme heat.

Naturally, you'd ask how this worked for an experiment.  Well, they found 44 college kids who were willing to be part of this experiment, and they were used in the summer of 2016.

Course, you would reflect upon this and ask....is your brain faster in cold weather?  And they didn't say that occurs.

Being from Bama, I reflected upon this.  You see, being around a number of folks in the summer months....I came to this idea of slower thinking way back in the early 1970s.  Although in my thinking....I put the blame on dehydration. 

But this ought to make you wonder...are we making more bad decisions in June, July and August?  Are we accepting more risks in these months?  Are we exposing ourselves to more hazards?  Are we accepting a higher potential for disaster in these summer months? 

My dad often operated with three mental stages....there were fun-to-risk situations....there were extreme-risk situations....and there were intense-to-ultimate risk situations.  On a farm, you could get away with things like this.  Looking back, it could be that these intense-to-ultimate risk situations all occurred in July and August....amid the summer stress of heat. 

So the question comes up in my mind....is civilization different today because a couple of guys sitting around in the African heat  for thousands of years....get up one day and just start walking north, and get out of the hot zone?  Did we advance as a society....because 'Marvin' and 'Larry' for the betterment of society....left the heat, for a more preferred climate?

It might be worth asking the question.