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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:18PM   Printer-friendly

Temperatures are set based on formulas that aimed to optimize employees' thermal comfort, a neutral condition of the body when it doesn't have to shiver to produce heat because it's too cold or sweat because it's too hot. It's based on four environmental factors: air temperature, radiant temperature, air velocity and humidity. And two personal factors: clothing and metabolic rate, the amount of energy required by the body to function.

The problem, according to a study in Nature Climate Change on Monday, is that metabolic rates can vary widely across humans based on a number of factors -- size, weight, age, fitness level and the type of work being done -- and today's standards are based on the assumption that every worker is, you guessed it, a man.

Or if you want to be really specific, a 40-year-old, 154-pound man.
...
Kingma and van Marken Lictenbelt's work builds on research out of Japan which found that the neutral temperature for Japanese women was 77.36 degrees (Fahrenheit) while it was 71.78 for European and North American males.

5.58 degrees is a significant difference. Is it better for half the people in the office to be sweaty than half the people in the office to be chilly?


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by K_benzoate on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:08PM

    by K_benzoate (5036) on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:08PM (#218686)

    No, it’s still you who is off base.

    You don’t get to play this game in one direction only. Most men couldn’t vote either throughout the history of democracy, and universal female suffrage followed very closely behind universal male suffrage. Also, you don’t get to ignore that men have had to bear the majority of responsibilities and liabilities to their families and societies. And don’t forget the immense shame, guilt, and in the recent past even corporal punishment that is dealt to men who fail to live up to these duties. Teddy Roosevelt even longed to bring back the whipping post for men who mistreated their wives—the lash having the benefit over a monetary fine or stay in jail that it would not deprive the man’s family of his resources and labor which accepted practice considered them entitled to.

    Feminism is the intersection of systemic, unapologetic, intellectual dishonesty and bitter misandry.

    --
    Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:38PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:38PM (#218797) Journal

    The existence of other crappy forms of governance has no bearing on whether this particular crappy form of governance is "fictional" or not.