Michigan | Michelin | The New York Times | Antarctic

Oh, yeah? How does the windchill factor know what the cold feels like to me? Maybe the day feels like 7 degrees, or 13 degrees, or maybe, like the ac-tual, real temperature says, 26 degrees. Or maybe it doesn't even matter because cold is cold and, already so bundled up in my parka and ski mask that I look like the Michelin man on my way to stick up a convenience store, I can't feel anything anyway.

You know where the windchill doesn't matter? In places where it's cold. I spent my adolescence in Michigan. Michigan is to cold what freezers are to refrigerators. In Michigan, nobody talks about the windchill factor. The measurement they use for how cold it feels involves the juxtaposition of the true temperature to how long it takes the car to start. People don't say, "The temperature is 23 degrees but the windchill makes it feel like 7." They say, as they turn the key in the ignition over and over and pump the gas, "Twenty-three degrees my @$$. It is colder than %&$@ out here."

That, in really cold places, is your windchill factor.

Given my strong and long-standing feelings on the issue, you might think that I was happy upon hearing that they changed the way the windchill factor is calculated. I wasn't. I was upset.

Calculation was never the point. If anything, I prefer the old way, which, according to The New York Times, involved "measuring how fast warm water in plastic containers froze under varying Antarctic conditions." The new formula involves clinical tests on people.