A short one!

I will confess an untested bias: my view is that being observand and anylitic, once a generally lauded combination, is considered 'unkewl' and nerdy in this era of hyper-specialization.

Here is my mostly unscientific way to test this theory. I would ask readers to rcomment on this post—briefly is fine—in answer to three questions:
1) Have you ever consciously noted that manhole covers are always round?
2) Have you thought about why, and/or made any efforts to get the answer?
3) When were you born?
3a) OPTIONAL, but I suspect also interesting: Are you male, or female?

NOTE: I would ask that you NOT give the actual answer to the question of WHY the covers are round; we will come back to this later.