We are officially closer to spring as we head into March, the month that separates the resolution firm from the maybe next year crowd.  We typically see that best at the local gym; the regulars have it back!  Today we talk about how health and economics can make you taller and investigate new words and happy towns.  Today hump day meets a new month, a reason to celebrate if you need one.. 

Vox Media and the Vox Youtube channel gave us a story about How South Koreans got so much taller over the last 100 years.  The video is only 6 minutes long, and in that time, the data presented is fascinating.  In general, it shows how countries that went through growth periods economically and increased the portion of the population out of poverty and into the middle class experienced physical improvements, including body height.  South Korea is also interesting because you can compare it to North Korea, which has yet to share any growth.

The lowest on the growth chart over the last 100 years were African countries, Europe was in the middle, and the outlier was South Korea, where the average growth was 8 inches over the previous 100 years.

According to Vox, 80% of a person's height is based on genetics, and the other 20% is due to environmental factors and that's where the growth comes from.  Areas with adequate access to food, sanitation, and medical care grow taller over time.  Back to South Korea, after the Korea war and Korea split between the North and the South, the North closed itself off from the rest of the world.  South Korea opened itself up, increased business productivity, and ultimately grew into an industrialized nation with a built-out middle class.  From 1960 to the present, the heights proliferated. 

In hindsight, a country that improves nutrition, healthcare, environmental and economic factors for most of its population will see growth in many areas.  The height of the population wouldn't have been our first thought, but all the ideas that come out of a brief 6-minute video about ways to improve the world one community at a time are significant.

If notes are the building blocks of music, words are the blocks of writing.  Today we read a story about new words added to the digital dictionary – dictionary.com.  Reading the first twenty new entries, it looked more like a slang dictionary, leading to additional research behind Dictionary.Com.  According to Dictionary.Com, they launched in 1995, and the prime source comes from Random House Unabridged Dictionary.  Here is a list of the first 20 new entries of 2023 in Dictionary.Com:

There were 313 new words added to the 2023 winter dictionary, 130 new definitions added to existing words, and 1,140 definitions were revised. 

Further research on Dictionary.Com states that words start with use and end up in the dictionary.  A team of lexicographers (we looked it up😉) – a writer, editor, or compiler of a dictionary – do the hard work of determining; whether a word is used by many people, used in a similar way, likely to stay in the lexicon and is helpful for a general audience.

The process seems democratic, but it is harder to reconcile new words and larger vocabularies in a time of vanishing spelling tests, cursive writing, and thumb-typed morse-code-looking text messages, maybe it's just us?

In another article sponsored by a company, WalletHub produced a report with data on the happiest cities.  We are working on another story that goes into the economics of creating real reporting/journalism and using it to sponsor and drive traffic to your website.  Often a marketing company working with a company will put the research together and write the articles.  Still, they are relevant articles with sourced data, and to make it on a With A Shout newsletter, they have a fascinating angle.  Today we are talking about Happiest Cities in America.

A quick look at the top 5 cities on the list, 3 of the 5 are in the bay area of San Francisco and basically makeup Silicon Valley.  San Francisco is number 5, and we have determined traffic must not be on the list of happiness factors; San Jose is number 2, and we like to call San Jose the Beverly Hills of Silicon Valley, very wealthy, with less traffic than San Francisco.  Fremont is number 1, and Fremont is where you go to live if you are moving from anywhere else and you are going to work in Silicon Valley. 

Number 3 is Madison, Wisconsin.  Besides Butch Vig’s Smart Studios pumping out alternative music for Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and his band Garbage, we aren't sure what's in Madison?  Overland Park, Kansas, comes in at number 4, Madison might have Butch Vig, but OP has the offices of With A Shout!

[Music Notes]

Travis Barker finally drums his finger off, now has to recover from surgery before the big reunion tour. Jane’s Addiction front man and Lollapalooza founder, Perry Farrel reminisces on past festivals.

Adult talk.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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