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Death Trap Faces Casual-Dining Industry

Brands across the sit-down, casual-dining industry are trying to claw their way out of a death trap. Their mistake – failing to attract millennials, the generation born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

Chains like Ruby Tuesday, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Chili’s are trying to claw their way out of the casual-dining death trap. All are facing sales slumps and dozens of restaurant closures.

Ruby Tuesday has announced that it will be bought by private-equity firm NRD Capital after four straight years of declining sales.

Fast-casual chains like Chipotle and Shake Shack are on the rise. People are gravitating towards independent restaurants. And, there are simply too many restaurants open in the U.S., with some worrying that the nation is “over-retailed” and “over-restauranted.” Yet casual dining’s biggest failure has been its inability to win over younger millennial customers.

“In terms of casual dining, a lot of it kind of comes down to the brands that are just kind of dated,” Wedbush analyst Colin Radke told Business Insider earlier this year. “Millennial consumers are more attracted than their elders to cooking at home, ordering delivery from restaurants and eating quickly, in fast-casual or quick-serve restaurants,” Buffalo Wild Wings CEO Sally Smith wrote in a letter to shareholders earlier in May.

Smith is stepping down as CEO at the end of the year, after a months-long battle with activist investors over the chain’s declining sales and business strategy.

Applebee’s has announced plans to close between 105 and 135 locations this year. John Cywinski, Applebee’s brand president, said in a call with investors that the closures follow the chain’s failed attempts to win over millennials.

“In my perspective, this pursuit led to decisions that created confusion among core guests, as Applebee’s intentionally drifted from what I’ll call its ‘Middle America’ roots and its abundant value position,” Cywinski said. “While we certainly hope to extend our reach, we can’t alienate Boomers or Gen-Xers in the process.”

Much of the casual-dining industry is in crisis mode, pulling out all the stops to win over millennials, budget shoppers or some combination of the two. TGI Fridays is testing booze delivery. Chili’s cut 40% of its menu items and Applebee’s is going all-out on a $1 margarita promotion.

Winning over millennials isn’t optional – it’s a life-or-death proposition for casual-dining chains.

Age Has Its Privileges and Discounts

Age has its privileges and a goodly variety of discounts. Starting at age 50, the minimum age for AARP membership, seniors may cash in on numerous deals just for being born on or before the date required for the bargain. Simply flash an ID to collect on most discounts. Some discounts apply only to AARP members and some are offered only by select chain franchisees.

AMC – Senior tickets for moviegoers 60 and up cost less than regular admission at AMC movie theaters.

AMTRAK – Hop aboard. Amtrak tickets go for 15 percent less off the lowest fare to travelers who are at least 62 years old.

ANCESTRY WORLD EXPLORER – AARP members eager to dig deep into their roots get a 30 percent price cut on an annual subscription (regularly $299) to Ancestry World Explorer.

BEST WESTERN – Room rates drop at least 10 percent at Best Western for AARP members and guests 55 and up when reserving online or with a company representative.

BONEFISH GRILL – Fans of fresh fish and wood-grilled meats who also belong to AARP get to enjoy their meal, minus alcoholic beverages, at a 15 percent savings at Bonefish Grill.

BUDGET – AARP members can rent a truck from Budget on Sunday through Thursday and save 20 percent, or opt for Friday or Saturday and save 10 percent.

CARRABBA’S – At Carrabba’s Italian Grill, AARP members can save 10% off their entire dining bill everyday (excluding alcohol, applicable taxes, and gratuity).

CHOICE HOTELS – Choice Hotels, which includes Quality Inn, Sleep Inn and Comfort Inn, shaves room fees up to 10 percent for AARP members or travelers age 60 and older. Advance reservations required.

CONSUMER CELLULAR – Consumer Cellular’s deal for AARP members includes rates as low as $10 a month with a 5 percent monthly discount and a 30 percent reduction on accessories.

DENNY’S – Denny’s offers a special menu with lower prices for guests 55 and older.

DRESSBARN – Dressbarn’s senior discount of 10 percent goes to shoppers age 62 and up for in-store purchases on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, depending on the store.

DUNKIN’ DONUTS – AARP members score at Dunkin’ Donuts when purchasing a large or extra-large beverage. The winnings: a free donut.

GOODWILL – Wednesdays are Senior Day at Goodwill, when customers age 55 and up enjoy 20 percent savings.

GRAND CANYON RAILWAY AND HOTEL – AARP members enjoy a 15 percent discount on travel and lodging at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, including the RV park and a two-night “Canyon Explorer” package.

HILTON – Hilton Worldwide offers up to 10 percent off stays at Hilton Hotels Resorts, DoubleTree, Hampton, Hilton Garden Inn, Waldorf Astoria, Embassy Suites, Conrad Hotels Resorts, and other properties owned by the hospitality chain.

HYATT – Hyatt offers senior guests with advance reservations a discount worth up to 50 percent at the brand’s hotels in the Lower 48 and Canada.

IHOP – No need for a coupon at IHOP. A special menu of pancakes, eggs, and French toast is already discounted for senior diners, starting at age 55.

KOHL’S – Starting at age 55, Kohl’s shoppers can show an ID to claim a 15 percent discount on Wednesdays at this department store chain.

LA QUINTA INNS AND SUITES – La Quinta Inns Suites offers AARP members up to 10 percent off room rates, as well as discounts for guests 65 and older.

LENSCRAFTERS – LensCrafters marks down a lenses and frame combo, including prescription sunglasses, by 30 percent for AARP members. Order a pair of Transitions lenses with a frame and save 40 percent.

MARRIOTT – Guests at Marriott hotels save at least 15 percent on room rates worldwide once they’ve reached the age of 62.

MCCORMICK AND SCHMICK’S – Seafood restaurant McCormick Schmick’s gives AARP members 10 percent off food, non-alcoholic beverages, and retail merchandise for up to five guests.

MICHAELS – Hobbyists age 55 and older qualify for a 10 percent price reduction every day at Michaels, the arts and crafts retailer.

MOTEL 6 – Motel 6 gives AARP members a 10 percent price cut in addition to free Wi-Fi and a late checkout at 2 p.m.

OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE – At Outback Steakhouse, seniors with an AARP membership get a 15 percent discount off the tab for lunch or dinner, minus alcoholic beverages, as long as the order isn’t placed online. Some locations may not participate.

PEARLE VISION – Present an AARP membership card at Pearle Vision and pay 30 percent less for a complete pair of glasses (lenses and frames) and up to 20 percent on contact lenses.

RAMADA – Ramada hotel customers age 60 and older are entitled to 10 percent off the best available rate at participating locations.

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES – Travelers age 65 and older are eligible for fare savings and fully refundable tickets on Southwest Airlines.

STARWOOD HOTELS AND RESORTS – The Starwood family of hotels and resorts, including Sheraton and Westin, grant AARP members reductions of 5 to 15 percent off the best available rate.

SUPER 8 – Participating Super 8 hotels discount rooms by 10 percent off the best available rate for guests 60 and older.

UNITED AIRLINES – United Airlines offers reduced fares to select destinations for passengers 65 and older. Ask for details when booking a flight or select the “seniors” category when booking on the company site.

VERIZON WIRELESS – The Nationwide 65 Plus program at Verizon Wireless entitles existing customers 65 and older to 200 minutes for $29.99 a month.

Outdated, Outmoded, Irrelevant

Advancements in technology come in leaps and bounds, so it doesn’t take long for new gadgets to become obsolete shortly after they reach their target market. Some modern technologies, such as mobile phones and computers, offer the ability to do many of the same things that older gadgets were capable of, but in smaller and more portable forms.

Take a nostalgic stroll down memory lane for a look at some of the biggest, best and most memorable gadgets that have been outdated, outmoded or just forced into irrelevance by better, modern technologies.

While you might remember many of these, there are plenty of the younger generation that don’t.

Fax Machines – The humble fax machine was essentially a modern version of the telegram. For many years, it allowed people and businesses to transmit scanned documents from one phone number to another. The recipient would have the joy of a printed copy of the document bursting forth from their machine. This was all done by a transmission of audio frequency tones that were deciphered at the other end. Like many of the technologies on our list, fax machines have largely been rendered obsolete by the invention of email, the internet and advancements in computing technologies.

Floppy Disks – Floppy disks were a type of data storage medium that originally appeared in the 1970s. The first was the 8-inch floppy disc, capable of storing just 80 kilobytes of data. As the floppy disks got smaller, their storage capacity grew and by the mid-1980s the 3.5-inch floppy disk was able to store a respectable 1.44 MB. Unfortunately, floppy disks were vulnerable to magnets and heat and were easily corrupted.
By the 1990s software size meant many disks were required for most applications so CD-ROMs began to take over. The floppy disk now only lives on as a save icon in many software applications.

Cassette Tapes – Audio brothers to VHS and Betamax cassette tapes, the cassette tape used the same magnetic tape technology to deliver affordable audio to the masses. They were introduced in 1968. They were used as either blank tapes that could be recorded onto (via dictaphone or boombox for example) or as pre-recorded cassettes of music albums. Cassettes could also be used to store other data and were therefore used as a storage medium for early home computers. While cassette tapes gained popularity in the 80s, by the 90s they were outsold by compact discs which soon became the standard format. It wasn’t until 2001 that cassette tapes began to die, at least in pre-recorded formats. Blank tapes were still being sold right up until 2012.

Video Home System (VHS) – In the late 80s, VHS cassette tapes became the popular standard for home video. Whether used for recording family videos or rented for the local video store to watch the latest blockbuster, these small reels of magnetic tape wrapped in plastic housing brought joy across the lands. Unless of course, someone forgot to rewind the tape you rented or a sibling recorded over your copy of Terminator 2. The rise of DVD saw to the slow but steady demise of VHS and, by 2008, DVD replaced VHS as the favored video technology both for recording and film distribution.

Betamax – Betamax was the earliest version of consumer-level video cassette tape format, originally released in 1975. Developed by Sony, Betamax was the standard for magnetic videotape until it became obsolete as the VHS format appeared and dominated in the 1980s.Surprisingly, Betamax recorders continued production until 2002 and the cassettes themselves were still available right up until 2016.

Phonebooks – The simple phonebook is not really a technology, but it is certainly something made obsolete by technological advancements. These chunky paper directories included residential and business listings for all the phone numbers you could possibly need. Now rendered obsolete by the internet, these phonebooks are certainly a relic of a bygone era. Yet we still occasionally see them land in our mailbox or at our front door.

Nintendo N64 – There were many consoles both before and after the Nintendo N64, but it certainly was a great gaming machine and the last of the stubborn cartridge-based consoles to be released by Nintendo. Launching in 1996, the N64 came to market competing with the likes of the original Sony Playstation and the Sega Saturn. Strong competition aside, Nintendo still managed to sell 32.93 million N64 consoles worldwide. The N64 is remembered fondly by many, especially for its big gaming titles that included Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) – Nearly a decade after the Atari 2600 made its way into people’s homes, Nintendo released the first of its successful gaming consoles to the world market. Backed by a number of gaming titles that included names that would become part of gaming history, the NES quickly became the best-selling games console of its time. With the likes of Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros and more being first released on this system, the NES shot Nintendo to the forefront of the gaming industry and turned them into a household name. Production ended in 1995, but Nintendo filled the world with nostalgic joy in 2016 when it announced the release of the NES Classic Mini, the tiny reimagined version of the console with 30 games pre-installed and the ability to work on modern HD TVs.

Overhead Projectors – A classroom classic, the overhead projector was a simple yet wonderful system for projecting images, text and drawings onto an appropriate screen. Transparent sheets of acetate were used in place of paper to enable presenters to transpose their presentation onto the screen in front of the class. Although still in use in some classrooms, these projectors have likely been rendered obsolete by modern projection technology and computers.

Portable DVD Players – With the rise of DVD and the ever falling cost of the technology behind it, as the well as the shrinking sizes of processors and advancements in screen technology, it was no surprise that portable DVD players made their way to market. However, the size of the discs and the quality of battery life meant that DVD players failed to gain widespread popularity and initially their cost was prohibitive. Now, with easy access to streaming video via mobile phones and tablets, the need for portable DVD players is almost entirely negated.

LaserDisc – LaserDisc was one of those niche formats of technology that was mainly popular among videophiles and film enthusiasts. Although it was the first format of optical video storage, available from 1978, LaserDisc failed to gain mainstream popularity due to the expense of the players. LaserDisc offered higher-quality video than VHS and Betamax and the technology behind it was the foundation for compact disc, DVD and Blu-ray in later years. Despite never going mainstream, it wasn’t until 2001 that the last video titles were released in this format and a total of 16.8 million LaserDisc players were sold worldwide.

Typewriters – The humble typewriter, the dumb precursor to the modern computer, was in its day a marvel of technology. A step up from paper and pen, the typewriter opened up a world of possibilities for those looking to craft novels, document history or scribe propaganda. The foundations for the typewriter were laid down as far back as 1575, but it’s rarely used in a modern world of computers, laptops and tablets.

Slide Projectors – A form of projector appeared in the 1950s and became a popular form of home entertainment. These projectors were used to put on slide shows of individual frames of images, one frame at a time. Generally, they were used to show snaps of family holidays or special occasions. Slide projectors were rendered irrelevant when video projectors became more affordable and accessible.

MiniDisc Players – Perhaps one of the least popular formats of optical based digital storage was the MiniDisc. With a high storage capacity of as much as 1GB, these discs could hold up to 45 hours of audio in a compact format. The MiniDisc appeared at a time when CDs were still dominating and struggled to gain popularity in the marketplace. MiniDisc sales began to dwindle when MP3 players started to gain popularity and were finally killed off as a format in 2011 when Sony (the main manufacturer) ceased production.

Vinyl Records – Vinyl records are one of the oldest and most long-lasting formats for storing audio recordings. Available in varying formats since the late 1800s, the vinyl record is still in production today and is another format that’s sworn to be the best by audiophiles and sound enthusiasts alike. The format has even had a sales resurgence of late. Vinyl reaches our list, not because it’s obsolete, but because it refuses to die.

Walkman, Discman and MP3 Players – Several formats of portable music player spawned over time to accommodate the preferred musical medium, these included portable cassette players (most notably Sony’s “Walkman”), portable CD players (the also popular Sony’s “Discman”), Minidisc players and MP3 players. Each of these formats of portable music player eventually fell into obsolescence as other more technologically advanced players appeared.

Analog and Dial-up Modems – In the days before modern broadband and 4G networks, at the initial birth of the internet, we connected to the World Wide Web via analog and dial-up modems. These marvels of technology required an open phone line and a lot of patience to get working. If anyone called while you were connected to the ‘net then you’d immediately lose connection. Browsing the web was slow and painful, but it was a thing of beauty and showed promise for the future that we now live in.

Atari 2600 – One of the ancestors of the modern games console, the Atari 2600 was originally released in 1977 and was a cartridge-based home video game system loved and nostalgically remembered by many. Atari is also well-known for the creation of games such as Pong, Missile Command and Asteroids, true classics that were playable on the console. Although the Atari 2600 was not the first cartridge-based games console (it was the second – the first being the Magnavox Odyssey) it is perhaps the most well-known and most memorable thanks to the games line-up and history behind it. And the fake teak panelling on the front, of course. This early technology quickly became obsolete as game console technology progressed swiftly forward.

Cathode Ray Tube Televisions – The scientific technology behind cathode ray tube televisions dates back to 1869, but it wasn’t until the mid-1920s that the technology was first put into an actual television set. These chunky televisions became the mainstay of TVs for decades until technology advances and the release of LCD and plasma flat screen televisions pushed CRT sets, also known as VDTs – Video Display Terminals, into obsolescence around 2007.

Daisy Wheel and Dot-Matrix Printers – Before the times of laserjet and inkjet printers, we had a number of different black and white printers that were essentially a short step up from typewriters. These printers were slow and cumbersome, but they did the job, even if they did make a lot of noise in the process.

Digital Audi Tapes (DAT) – The digital audio tape was the brainchild of Sony and offered a digital recording capability but with a similar design style to the compact cassette tape in a smaller format. DAT was capable of recording at a higher quality than CD and also boasted the ability to number tracks and skip right to them much like a CD. However, due to the cost of this format it never really caught on at consumer level but was used in various professional markets and as a computer data storage medium. With lacklustre sales of around 660,000 sales since 1987, Sony announced it would stop production of DAT machines in 2005. The format was essentially superseded by hard disk drives and memory cards but is still in use in some areas.

Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) – DVD was the evolution of the digital video format developed by tech giants Panasonic, Philips, Sony and Toshiba. With a high storage capacity, it became a medium for computer files, software and high-quality video. DVD had many benefits over that of previous magnetic storage formats, including larger storage space, but also durability that meant that in theory, the discs could have a lifespan of up to 100 years. With faster internet speeds, video streaming technology and other superior formats such as Blu-ray – even 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray – on the market, DVD is likely nearing the end of its lifespan. Meanwhile, other formats of DVD such as the 1080p-capable, Blu-ray rival HD-DVD never really even took off in the first place, much like the fabled LaserDisc.

Game Boy and Game Gear – In 1989, Nintendo released another gaming console that would help it dominate the gaming market. The Game Boy was a classic handheld gaming system, with a monochrome green and black screen and a simple design. Big gaming titles like Tetris helped the Game Boy to sell over a million units in the first year alone. A short while later, Sega released the Game Gear, its color competitor to the Game Boy. Backed by a strong catalog of games from the Sega Master System, the Game Gear should, in theory, have dominated the market, but struggled to compete with the Game Boy, mainly thanks to poor battery life. Both have long since become obsolete with the invention of newer devices, but Nintendo still leads the market with its various DS systems.

Smartphones Changed the World

Advancements in technology come in leaps and bounds, so it didn’t take long for smartphones to render a wide variety of everyday things obsolete. Smartphones offer the ability to do many of the same things that older gadgets were capable of, but in smaller and more portable forms.

Take a stroll down memory lane for a look at some of the things rendered obsolete by the rise of the smartphone.

Not-So-Smart Phones – In a world of smartphones, these old fashioned mobile phones basically did nothing but call, send text messages and perhaps, if you were lucky, allow you to play a cheeky game of Snake. They are now thoroughly antiquated and more or less obsolete. The precursor to the modern mobile phone, they were extremely useful in their time and happily ran for days without needing a charge.

Film Cameras – The traditional film camera has basically long since been pushed from the mass market by the modern age of the digital camera. No longer do we need to rely on reels of film or trips to the local shop to get them processed. Digital cameras, SD cards, smartphones and modern computing systems mean we can snap away happily and see the results of our photos instantly with far less hassle and expense. Pro photographers and retro snappers still use film cameras for certain artistic purposes. But few others do.

Pagers and Beepers – Pagers were originally designed and built in the 1950’s but they didn’t really take hold in terms of popularity until the 1980’s. These one-way communication devices were often used by emergency services, doctors and safety personnel who needed to be reachable at all times, even when away from a landline telephone. The rise of smartphones in the early 2000s saw the decline in the use of pagers and beepers but due to the durability, resilience and better coverage they continued to see use for several more years and, as an example, Canada was still paying as much as $18.5 million for its pager service in 2013.

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) – The forefather of the modern mobile phone, the personal digital assistant offered limited access to a lot of modern capabilities we’ve come to expect, including internet access, word processing, touchscreen functionality and more. They quickly became obsolete when smartphones started to gain favor, but before that time they were a firm favorite with businessmen across the world.

Polaroid Instant Cameras – Polaroid cameras originally came to market in the mid-1960s and at the time presented a marvel of technology that allowed people to see the photos they were taking seconds after they were snapped without having to wait for someone else to develop them. For years, Polaroid instant cameras were a wonderfully expensive marvel of photographic convenience.In recent years, the rise of the digital camera and smartphone photography has meant that Polaroid’s technology essentially became an unnecessary nicety and declining sales forced the company to file for bankruptcy twice. You can still find Polaroid cameras and films on sale, but it’s niche at best.

Public Telephone Booths – The iconic phone booth is essentially a monument to telephone history and now just a tourist attraction or somewhere to shelter from the cold. The public phone booth has been rendered obsolete by the rise of the mobile phone. There’s rarely any need for a coin-operated telephone when you have a phone in your pocket.

Rotary Telephones and Wired Landlines – The wired telephone is another piece of technology that nears obsolescence after being replaced by a computer that we carry around in our pocket. The wired telephone dates back as far as 1844 and it has seen many iterations over the years. One variation was the rotary dial telephone which featured a dial arranged in a circular layout so the user had to turn the dial for each digit off the phone number they were trying to call. Except perhaps as a novelty, rotary phones are long since a thing of the past. Wired landlines are following close behind as modern smartphones have become ubiquitous.

Portable Dictation Devices – Dictation devices, often referred to as “Dictaphones” after the company name that became synonymous with them, came in various formats and used several different data mediums that included both cassette tapes, mini and micro-cassettes. These gadgets were mostly used to record interviews, conversations and lectures for later note taking or write ups. Each became obsolete as time passed by and the storage medium fell out of popularity. Digital dictation devices still exist, but even they are verging on extinction as most mobile phones are capable of offering the same functionality without the need for another standalone device.

GPS Navigation Systems – Many car manufacturers still choose to install them in new vehicles, but as a standalone unit, GPS navigation technology is nearing the end of its lifespan. Current smartphones are more than capable of getting the modern human from point A to point B with the use of navigation apps like Google, Bing and Apple Maps. Once again, advancements in mobile technology have forced other older technology into obsolescence.

Calculators – Although no doubt still used in some schools and offices, the humble calculator is a simple technology that’s surely reaching the end of its lifespan. With calculator apps available on smartphones and tablets, as well as easily accessible calculators on computers and laptops, there’s barely any need left for these independent devices.

Unmarried Folks Are Changing Everything

It wasn’t long ago that being single after a certain age was considered a recipe for lifelong misery. Up until 1970, the average woman married before she was legally old enough to have a drink at her wedding, and the average man married at 23. A woman still single at the ripe old age of 26 was what the Japanese call Christmas Cake – past her pull date and destined to spoil. A man not married by the end of his 20s was considered irresponsible, if not “deviant.”

As late as 1976, 93% of women aged 25 to 29, and 90% of men that age, had already married. By 2014, that was true of only 46% of women and 32% of men in that age group.

The rising age of marriage since the 1980s has worried many. In 1986, Newsweek darkly warned that a woman unmarried at age 35 had only a 5% chance of ever finding “Prince Charming,” while a single woman aged 40 was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband. According to a chorus of marriage promoters in the 1980s and 1990s, singles were lonely, unhappy unproductive members of society. Only marriage could turn them into useful citizens, reliable employees and happy, healthy individuals. Many believe this today.

So it was a radical idea in the 1980s when the Buckeye Singles Council of Ohio called for a National Singles Week to celebrate the lives and achievements of single Americans. It’s called Unmarried and Single Americans Week now, and takes place in the third week in September.

But as researcher Bella DePaulo notes, things have changed – slowly but radically – for unmarried and single people. New research shows that most never-married individuals, whatever their age, lead happy, healthy and helpful lives. On average, unmarried individuals have a wider network of friends than married couples and visit more frequently with neighbors. They also provide more practical help to parents, other relatives and coworkers than do their married counterparts.

And it is no longer true that marriage delayed is marriage foregone. Marriage has not become obsolete. It just takes up less space in our lives and in society as a whole than it used to. Today unmarried people comprise more than 45% of the adult population in the United States. They head more than 47% of our households and make up fully half of our workforce.

These figures are sometimes taken to mean that Americans are turning their backs on marriage. In 2014, the Pew Research Center predicted that one in four adults might never marry at all. But most Americans still marry, although at older ages. As of 2014, 80% of Americans had married by age 45, the same percentage of that age group as in 1976.

Many marry even later. Sociologist Philip Cohen estimates that 85% of white women and 78% of black women will marry. This is a smaller racial difference than is usually reported, because, although black women have significantly lower marriage rates than white women until their early thirties, they actually marry at slightly higher rates after about age 33.

Cohen calculates that a white woman who reaches age 45 without marrying has a 26% chance of marrying at some later point, while a never-married black woman aged 45 has a 49% chance of doing so.
The fact is, marriage is alive and well, but it has become only one of a series of living arrangements and interpersonal entanglements that most Americans will experience in the course of their lives. Cohen notes that back in the 1950s, Americans could, on average, expect to be married for three-quarters of the prime years of their adult work and family lives, from age 18 to 55. By 2015, marriage occupied “only about half of those 37 years.”

Alternatives to marriage have multiplied in the later years of life as well as the earlier ones. For people in the middle years of life, marriages have actually become more stable over the past three decades. Marriages begun in the 1990s are lasting longer than those that began in the 1970s and 1980s, and those begun in the 2000s seem on track to last even longer.

But the divorce rate of people over age 50 has doubled since 1990, and the rate for people 65 and older has tripled.

Marriage is no longer the only, or even the chief, place where people make most of their major personal, occupational, residential and financial decisions, or where they incur obligations to others. More than a third of women who give birth in any given year are now unmarried. And at the other end of the age spectrum, older adults are the fastest growing group of cohabitors in the country.

This is a game-changer, both for our emotional lives and our social policies. As a society, we can no longer act as though married couples are the only people who need support for their caregiving obligations, from employer-provided healthcare for dependents to legal recognition of their interdependencies.

We need to stop treating every unmarried person as an incomplete half of a married-couple-in-waiting. Certainly there are lonely and depressed singles out there. But often these are divorced or widowed people who depended too much on marriage as their support system and failed to maintain the friendships and reciprocities that singles tend to cultivate more carefully than their married counterparts.

New Bike Extends Commuters’ Reach

Whether considering living in the heart of the city or nearby suburbs, many folks enjoy or depend on bikes for recreation and commuting. New technology can widen the horizon.

A number of companies make e-bikes, with electric motors that typically have a range of 30 miles or so, but curbed.com says Delfast plans to introduce a new model with a range of 236 miles, potentially offering a week’s worth of commutes on one charge. Curbed describes the bike as “a hybrid between a mountain bike and a motorcycle” that features GPS tracking and a remote starter. It’s expected to launch on Kickstarter for less than $2,500.

New lighting options can keep you safer. The Laserlight attaches to handlebars and projects a bike icon about 20 feet in front of the cyclist to warn pedestrians and drivers of its presence. The Lumos Helmet uses dozens of LEDs to increase a bike rider’s visibility and offer turn signals. And WingLights are small LEDs that attach to the handlebars to provide turn signals as well.

A rider who’s truly committed to the cycling cause might check out cargo bikes. More common in Europe but starting to gain fans here, cargo bikes offer a large, safe basket between the handlebars and front wheel that can handle an infant’s car seat or the groceries for a week for a small family.

Too Little Sleep May Lead To Risky Decisions

A new study, published in the journal Annals of Neurology, suggests that chronically shorting ourselves on sleep may trigger impulsive risk taking, and we may not even realize it’s happening.

The study observed a group of participants, ages 18-28, while they slept only 5 hours a night for a week, as compared to another group getting 8 hours a night. Twice a day they were given a decision-making task with two outcomes: either receiving a set amount of money for certain, or gambling for a higher amount and getting nothing if they lost.

The results became more pronounced as the week went on. At the start, less sleep didn’t influence the participants’ decisions, but as the sleep-deprived nights added up, more and more of them took the bigger risk. Eventually almost all of them did.

The researchers were also interested in how the participants perceived their decisions – if they saw them as more risky than they’d otherwise be, given a few more hours of sleep. Most of the participants said they didn’t see any difference. “We therefore do not notice that we are acting riskier when suffering from a lack of sleep,” said Christian Baumann, study co-author and professor of neurology.

While occasional risk-taking has its benefits, the results from this study are concerning because the participants’ risk-taking seemed to become impulsive, and their awareness about why they were taking more risks was phased out along with their lost hours of sleep.

The study had a few shortcomings worth mentioning. First, it was a small study that serves best as a pilot for future research to replicate. And the participants were all young males, who, some evidence would suggest, are prone to making riskier decisions even under stable conditions. But the way their decision-making changed as the effects of sleeping less took a toll suggests that the results can’t be written off to gender or age.

Sleeping too little is already linked to attention deficits, especially in younger people. Recent research is pointing to a possible reinterpretation of ADHD as a sleep-related disorder. Attention and decision-making are abilities that operate from a shared axis in our brains, so it’s no surprise that something affecting one would also affect the other.

The good news is that for most of us this is a problem with a solution, although we’re up against some tough distractions to reach it. A diet of streaming, social media and video games is eating up more of our evening hours, along with the traditional sleep erasers like stress.

We can choose to put a positive spin on findings like these and use them as incentive to reclaim the nighttime territory we’ve ceded to distractions. The science is clear that the benefits of sleeping a little more are hard to overstate.

Recognizing Our Worst Fears

One of the most terrifying segments in George Orwell’s novel “1984,” published in 1949, centered on Room 101 in the Ministry of Love. The dreaded room was the final destination for anyone opposing the ruling party. It was the place where those rebelling against the party were forced to confront their worst fears.

Room 101 would not be a great place for anyone with a phobia – an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. It is natural for humans to have some sort of fear and no matter what the fear is, it can dramatically impact someone’s daily life.

Be warned, some of the following most common fears may illicit strong emotions.

1. Arachnophobia – fear of spiders. This may be the most common fear for both males and females. While some spiders are considered to be harmless and good for nature, many individuals still see spiders as being creepy and crawly insects that can kill us when they bite. The fear of spiders generally starts when we are young children, it is something that many adults fear and the fear tends to be quite strong.

2. Trypanophobia – fear of needles. For many, going to the doctor can be stressful, especially when we are due for a vaccination. Trypanophobia usually is something that is learned over the years. Many adults who do not like needles tend to express their emotions in such a convincing manner that those around them tend to pick up on this fear, thus leading to more individuals not liking needles.

3. Hemophobia – fear of blood. For some, the intense fear of blood can cause a wide range of problems. Those with intense fears of seeing or touching blood tend to lose consciousness and pass out and even become weak. Blood can harm an individual, but the blood is just fluid that transports oxygen inside our bodies. Without it, we could not live.

4. Nosophobia – fear of having a certain condition or disease. This one actually can lead to many issues. Many medical students at some point may experience these feelings. Closely related to hypochondriasis, some people truly think they have a particular disease so much that they have died. Usually this phobia is first caused from intense study and researching diseases and health and it spreads from there.

5. Mysophobia – fear of germs and general contamination. You may know this common condition as germophobia. Mysophobia can affect individuals in different ways. What starts as a generalized fear of contaminations can lead to extreme anxiety of contact with others and the outside to where the person may avoid everyone at all costs. In addition, those with mysophobia tend to shower and bathe multiple times every day, sanitize the skin often and avoid any type of sharing of any kind.

6. Astraphobia – fear of thunder or lightning. Children have many fears, in part because they are startled quite often due to lack of experience. Astraphobia is one of the most common fears among children. For those who experience strong summer storms, the fear becomes real at a young age. Usually with this phobia come anxiety and the tendency to want to hide under or within things that protect the body for overall comfort. With more exposure, this fear has been known to vanish.

7. Cynophobia – fear of dogs. Phobias tend to develop at very young ages and while many tend to resolve at young ages, some can linger into adulthood. The fear of dogs is a common phobia that starts at a young age and is usually a result from a negative experience with a dog as a kid. This can linger into adulthood and cause the adult to avoid dogs at all costs.

8. Pteromerhanophobia – fear of flying. This common condition affects most adults and children at some point. This fear is usually developed through a movie, news story or some fear that an aircraft will fall and crash from the sky. While many fears tend to be irrational, this is quite possibly the most common fear that adults can have.

9. Nyctophobia – fear of the dark. Most children face this fear at a young age. Sometimes it can follow into adulthood. When kids are young, there is no surprise that the mind can wander and cause this fear. Darkness tends to lead to unknown territory for many kids and it can take years before this phobia resolves itself. This phobia generally is resolved once adulthood sets in, but some adults experience this fear.

10. Claustrophobia – fear of small or enclosed spaces. This very common phobia can last well into adulthood. Some studies have estimated that up to seven percent of the world’s population suffers from claustrophobia.

There are many other phobias that afflict children, adults or both. These include agoraphobia – fear of crowded and open spaces, ophidiophobia – fear of snakes, acrophobia – fear of heights, gerontophobia – fear of getting older, and glossophobia – fear of public speaking.

It’s probably a good idea for anyone with a phobia to avoid the Ministry of Love, and particularly Room 101.

Great Inventions from the Heartland

From agriculture to high tech, sports to personal comfort, inventors from America’s heartland and Canada have given us great inventions.

A Canadian gym teacher from Almonte, Ont., James Naismith, is credited with creating the game of basketball in 1891.

St. Louis, Mo., native John S. Thurman devised the world’s first powered vacuum cleaner in 1898 and named it the “pneumatic carpet renovator.” The enormous gadget had an internal combustion engine and traveled from house to house on a horse-drawn cart as part of a mobile cleaning service.

In 1913, aviation pioneers William Purvis and Charles Wilson were awarded a patent for the world’s first helicopter which they developed in Goodland, Kan.

Quebec-born Arthur Sicard produced the first snow blower in 1925, and today he is hailed from January to March by Canadians trying to clear their driveways.

And probably no one gave the world such a lift as Moses (Moe) Nadler. The Montreal-born Nadler invented the Wonderbra. Nadler was the founder and majority owner of the Canadian Lady Corset Company.

Women have been using improvised tampons for thousands of years – for instance, soft papyrus was the material of choice in ancient Egypt – but the first modern tampon featuring a tube within a tube applicator was invented by Dr. Earle Hass in Denver,Colo., in 1929.

One of the most notable and important Canadian inventions ever, insulin, was created by Dr. Frederick Banting, an Alliston, Ont., native and Nobel laureate. He shared credit with his colleague Dr. Charles Best.

A colossal 90% of land in Iowa is dedicated to farming, so it’s only fitting that the gasoline-powered tractor was invented in the state. John Froelich built the very first one in Clayton County back in 1892.

Next time you take out the trash, thank Winnipegger Harry Wasylyk, the man behind the modern-day garbage bag. He, along with Larry Hansen of Lindsay, Ont., invented a disposable green polyethylene garbage bag – they were first intended for commercial use at places like hospitals and quickly became a household must. The invention was marketed by Union Carbide as the Glad bag.

In 1936, Omaha’s James Michael Curran invented the first ski lift, without which the modern ski industry couldn’t function. Before Curran’s invention, skiers had to use tow ropes powered by horses or engines to get up the mountain. Seems strange that this one comes from a flat-lander!

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s Superman, a hero across the globe but one who was created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster in 1932.

Heart patients the world over have engineer Earl Bakken of Minnesota to thank for developing the implantable pacemaker. The battery-powered device was invented by Bakken in 1957 at the Medtronic workout in Fridley, following a blackout that killed one of his patients, who was dependent on a large, mains-operated pacemaker.

The classic breakfast cereal Cream of Wheat was first manufactured in 1893 by wheat millers in Grand Forks, N.D., and the semolina-based porridge fast became America’s most popular breakfast staple, enjoyed in homes up and down the country.

South Dakota-born nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for the cyclotron, the particle accelerator he patented in 1935, and the precursor to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Known as the “Space Suit Father,” innovator Siegfried Hanson of Wisconsin developed the early Mark I space suit during the 1950s, playing an important role in the Space Race, which began in August 1955 and continued up until the early 1990s.

Illinois engineer Engineer Martin Cooper developed the first handheld mobile phone in 1973 while working at Motorola in Schaumburg, Ill. Dubbed “the brick,” the bulky device measured 10 inches and weighed a hefty 2.5 pounds.

Fake ‘Facts’ You Learned

Think back to everything you learned as a kid. Think harder and you’ll probably realize how inaccurate a lot of those “facts” were. Much of what we’ve always assumed as common knowledge is flawed. Here are a few of the lies many of us have believed since we were kids.

Chameleons camouflage to blend in. Nope. The real reason chameleons change color is to control their body temperature and to express mood. As you can guess, darker colors absorb more light, so they’ll swap to a lighter color to stay cool. In terms of emotion, they’ll darken their shade when they’re scared and brighten when they’re excited.

Vincent van Gogh cut off his own ear. Probably not. But historians believe the real story is that van Gogh actually lost his ear in a heated argument with his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin. Apparently Gauguin, also a fencer, severed his ear off with his sword. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam stands by the original story, but several books dedicated to the artist’s life support this lesser-known theory.

Dogs have cleaner mouths than humans. Really? Dogs do not brush their teeth or floss, so no, their mouths are not cleaner than ours. You won’t find humans eating trash or licking out of toilet bowls, either. It is true, however, that the healthier the dog, the cleaner they are. It’s believed the clean mouth myth comes from the fact that dogs’ wounds heal after they lick them. It’s not their mouths are especially clean, it’s just a similar practice to us washing a wound to prevent infection.

You know the expression, “Blind as a bat” but did you know bats can see almost as well as humans. In fact some larger nbats see much better than humans. However, at night, their ears are more important than their eyes – they use a special sonar system called ‘echolocation,’ meaning they find things using echoes.

Pluto isn’t a planet. Don’t believe that, the ninth rock from the sun was reclassified in 2006 as a dwarf planet, but that nonetheless is still a planet.

Goldfish only have a three-second memory. Bull. The evidence shows that fish are just as smart as birds and mammals. According to studies, they can remember things for three to five months.

Isaac Newton discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head. Not quite. It is somewhat true that he discovered the law of gravity one day when he was sitting beneath an apple tree. But the revelation didn’t come to him because of one hitting him on the head. He did see one fall from a tree, which made him wonder why apples fall straight to the ground instead of sideways.

The blood in your veins is blue. Nope, it’s red, like all blood. Despite what you see when you look at your forearms, blood is red. Your veins may appear blue because of how light reflects and how it’s absorbed by your tissue. Your veins pump deoxygenated blood, which absorbs more red light and as a result appears more blue. The deeper the vein, the bluer it looks.

Bulls get angry at the sight of red. No, they are aggressive to a waving object of any color.

Camels store water in their humps. The humps are fat which provides them with about three weeks of energy. Camels’ kidneys and intestines do retain water.

Your nails keep growing after you die. Fingernails can only grow if new cells are produced, which is not possible long after death. Once the heart stops beating, nerve cells die within three to seven minutes.

The North Star is the brightest star. Nope, the North Star, aka Polaris, is actually 46th in brightness. But it is the closest brightest star to the north celestial pole.

You can see the Great Wall of China from space. While parts of the man-made structure can be seen with radar imagery taken from space, the Wall’s materials are too similar in color and texture to its surroundings to be distinguished from space.

Dogs are color-blind. If Rover could talk, he’s call that a fake fact. Man’s best friend can see the world in more than just black and white. Dogs can actually see in combinations of blue and yellow, which includes a lot of grayish-brown varieties. Their sight can be compared to a human with red-green colorblindness.

Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. He was the one who filed a patent for it, but several others contributed to its invention before him.

Christopher Columbus thought the world was flat. Contrary to what you were probably taught in elementary school, Christopher Columbus was smarter than what we give him credit for. The Italian explorer knew the world was round even before embarking on his expedition. The fact that the world was a sphere was actually known 1,300 years before Columbus set sail. It is true, however, that many Europeans started to believe the flat earth rumors during the Middle Ages.

Fortune cookies were first made in China. Only if you spell China as California. Fortune cookies were an American invention, not Chinese, though there are debates about who was the originator. One well-known version is a Chinese immigrant living in Los Angeles created the cookie, while another claims that a Japanese immigrant started it in San Francisco.

Heat mostly escapes your body from your head. Your parents probably told you to wear a hat so you don’t get sick. While it can help keep you warm, your head doesn’t allow for any more heat loss than any other part of your body does. Any exposed part of the body will release heat equally.