I don’t know how you got into this “hairy” situation; but I inherited mine.
In When Do Fish Sleep?, we mentioned that all of the endocrinologists we spoke to begged off this question, claiming geneticists would have the answer (the geneticists, of course, sent us to the endocrinologists). But we heard from one endocrinologist, Dr. Clayton Reynolds of Lancaster, California, who claims the answer does lie within his field:
The explanation for the hair growth in the ear canals of men is that these are the so-called androgenic zones. The hair follicles in the ear canals have receptors that are acted upon by the male hormones, or androgens.
The hair of the human body can be divided into three categories: nonsexual hair (such as that on the arms and legs), which is not dependent upon the gender of the individual; ambisexual hair, which grows during adolescence in the same areas in the body in males and females (such as the axillary and pubic hair); and thirdly, male sexual hair, which grows on the face and chest and between the umbilicus and the pubic area.
Not so well known is the fact that the male sexual hair occurs also in the other androgenic zones, the ear canals.
But why would this hair tend to sprout as we get older? We heard from University of Texas medical student John Chaconas, of Corpus Christi:
There are two types of hair on the body, vellus and terminal. Vellus is present on the parts of the body usually considered hairless, such as the forehead, eyelids, and eardrums. Terminal hair is present on our heads and arms.
Sometimes, as we age, vellus hair follicles are differentiated (transformed) into terminal follicles, and give rise to terminal hair. This transformation usually does not occur at an early age—therefore only older man have hairy ears.
Frustables First Posed in When Do Fish Sleep?
FRUSTABLE 3: How, When, and Why Did the Banana Become the Universal Slipping Agent in Vaudeville and Movies?
In Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?, we announced that we had made no progress at all in answering this Frustable. We’re now a little, and we stress the word “little,” further along in our quest. Most of our mail assumes that the banana’s role as a slipping agent came from burlesque itself. Peter Womut of Portland, Oregon, makes an intelligent stab:
I believe the connection is with the three comedians in a burlesque show and their title of top, second, and third bananas. Perhaps they became known by these names because of slips on banana peels, or perhaps banana peels became the symbol because of their names. Perhaps the solution is in the lyrics to the song, “If You Want to Be a Top Banana,” from the musical Top Banana.
After an appearance on “CBS This Morning,” when we mentioned our frustration about solving this mystery, we received a call from an excited law student who promised to but never did send us information about some cases he was studying in torts class. Lo and behold, the Supreme Court, and Oliver Wendell Holmes himself, rendered several decisions on personal injury cases involving folks slipping on banana peels on the street.
Why were there banana peels on the street? The law student cited the same reason that Les Aldridge, of Milltown, New Jersey, wrote to us about:
My wife reports that her grandfather used to say that when he was young, people would often use banana peels (the soft inner part) to shine their shoes. If they got some of it on the bottom of the shoe and fell, they would say that they had “slipped on a banana peel.”
The banana peel makes an easily recognizable prop for the stage to give comedians the occasion for humorous pratfalls. They needed some slipping agent—an egg might do it but it would be too messy. Perhaps the banana peel suggested itself as the agent due to the shoe shining association mentioned above.
Shannon Arledge, of Livingston, Louisiana, adds an even stranger use for the lowly banana peel: “In olden times, banana peels were often used on boat docks as a way of sliding the boats down to the water. However funny, slipping on those peels was a common occurrence.” We’ll try to track down the Supreme Court cases on banana peels for our next opus.
FRUSTABLE 6: Why Do So Many People Save National Geographics and Then Never Look at Them Again?
We thought we had covered all the possible answers to this Frustable in Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?, but a letter from Laurie Poindexter, of Fowler, Indiana, made us realize we had been negligent:
My mother used National Geographics as booster seats for all of us during childhood, so we could easily reach the table at mealtimes. Once we had all grown sufficiently, we sold them at yard sales.
Now that she has grandchildren, she is subscribing to Smithsonian, which has equal thickness but a wider base for more secure stackability and bottom comfort.
Yes, but do they come with lap restraints and air bags?
But we shouldn’t joke about this matter. Mark Arend of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, was kind enough to send us an article by George H. Kaub, published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. This ground-breaking article, entitled, “National Geographic, The Doomsday Machine,” succinctly states the problem:
Since no copies have been discarded or destroyed since the beginning of publication it can be readily seen that the accumulated aggregate weight is a figure that not only boggles the mind but is imminently approaching the disaster point. That point will be the time when the geologic substructure of the country can no longer support the incredible load and subsidence will occur.
Kaub concludes that the entire country will fall below the sea and “total inundation will occur” unless drastic measures are taken. National Geographic, he is quite sure, is responsible for many of the so-called natural calamities of our time—including activity on the San Andreas fault.
Kaub’s article is a clarion call, warning us that unless the publication of National Geographic is terminated, the North American continent is doomed.
FRUSTABLE 8: Why Do Kids Tend to Like Meat Well Done (and Then Prefer It Rarer and Rarer As They Get Older)?
Several readers have written in to add a third possible answer to the two we tentatively suggested. Most persuasive was Babette Hills of Aurora, Colorado: “I asked my two boys why they don’t like their meat rare and their answers were just what I had observed: Rare meat is harder to chew.” Rare meat, still containing more natural juices and fats than a well-done piece, is chewier. Hills argues that “baby” teeth are not equipped to do the necessary damage to a piece of rare meat with ease or comfort. This also explains why children often like to have their meat cut into small pieces.
Hills assumes that as soon as chewing the meat is no longer a problem, most kids will start preferring rarer meat, which is more flavorful. Her theory would be confirmed, she says, if people with missing teeth or dentures like their meat more well done than those not dentally challenged.
FRUSTABLE 10: Why Are So Many Restaurants, Especially Diners and Coffee Shops, Obsessed with Mating Ketchup Bottles at the End of the Day?
We thought we answered this Frustable definitively. But then we received a startling new reason for this seemingly silly obsession: Ketchup mating saves lives. Waitress Mary A. Taft of Deming, Washington, explains:
As a waitress, I had often asked myself, “What is the object of this tedious chore?” One day, I finally got my answer when a bottle of ketchup exploded when the lid was taken off.
My boss informed me that to prevent explosions of this kind, the bottles low in ketchup must be poured on top of the bottles more full of ketchup. Otherwise, some ketchup can end up perpetually on the bottom of the bottle instead of on someone’s burger.
If the ketchup stays on the bottom long enough, it can ferment, causing a buildup of gas that can create the explosion.
Of course, this explosive effect can better be cited as a reason to eliminate the practice of mating altogether. But we won’t hold our breath until restaurateurs change their practice.
Letters
We receive thousands of letters every year. Most of them pose Imponderables, try to answer Frustables, or ply us with undeserved praise. But this
section is reserved for those letters that take us to task or have something significant to add to our statements in previous books.
Many of you have written with valid objections to parts of our answers in previous books. As much as it pains us to make a mistake, we appreciate your input. Unfortunately, it can take months or even years to validate these objections. We have made several changes in later printings of our books because of your letters. The letters we include here are not the only accurate comments, just some of the most entertaining.
In Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?, we discussed why there is no Boeing 717. We heard from a pioneer of the Boeing Company, who told us that the version we related was a little sanitized:
I was assigned to the group that prepared the detail specifications for the various airplane models. We put together a Boeing Model 717 detail specification and used it in preliminary configuration negotiations with United Airlines.
William Patterson, who started his aviation career as William E. Boeing’s administrative assistant in the 1930s, was president of United Airlines at the time. He was very pro-Douglas Aircraft, and had stated that he would never buy a Boeing Model 707 and that “Model 717 was too close to 707.”
We obliged him by changing the name to “Boeing Model 720” and he (and many other airlines around the world) bought it. That’s the only gap in the “7-7 Series.” All we had to do to the specification was change the title page. When we sold the 720 to UAL, no engineering drawings had been released, so other than my small wages, the change cost Boeing nothing. End of story.
OREE C. WELLER
Bellevue, Washington
In Imponderables, we discussed why cashews aren’t sold in their shells. We blew the answer. We indicated that cashews are actually seeds and that they don’t have hard shells. Well, the cashews we eat are seeds, but M. J. Navarro of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, humbled us by sending some unshelled cashews that proved our discussion erroneous. He added: “The shell is too hard for people to have any chance at the seed itself. The shell must be thoroughly roasted to get to the seed and the seed must be roasted to make it edible.”
True enough. And there are other reasons why cashews are not sold unshelled in stores. We heard from a reader who spent more than a little time with cashew shells during his childhood:
The mature shell is thick and leathery and contains a corrosive brownish black oil that causes blisters on skin…. The juice of the apple causes indelible stains on clothes…
It would be uneconomical to import cashews in their shells, and that is why they are not sold this way…
As a child, I grew up with cashew trees all around, played with thousands of unshelled cashews (a game similar to marbles), raided the cashew grove near my high school, and watched moonshine cashew liquor being made as well as sold and consumed.
DINESH NETTAR
Edison, New Jersey
And a special apology to Daniel Pittman of LaSalle, Illinois, who defended our discussion of cashews to his merciless friends.
In Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?, we discussed why a new order of checks starts with the number 101 rather than 1. Walter Nadel of Pembroke, Massachusetts, provides a technical reason why starting with 101 saves checkmakers some money:
When checks are printed, the first sheet through is at the bottom of the hopper, and the last sheet through is at the top. This requires backward-functioning numbering machines, which are set to start at the ending number and finish with the starting number. The order of checks can then be completed and shipped in the proper numerical sequence ready for use by the customer.
As the order is printed, and the numbers recede, they would read 102, 101, 100, 099, 098, etc., unless the press is stopped and the superfluous zero is manually depressed after 100. Again, at the point of 12, 11, 10, 09, the press would have to be stopped again to eliminate the second superfluous zero.
By encouraging the use of starting check orders with 101, the printer has saved the need to stop the press twice, a saving in time and efficiency, not to mention money.
WALTER NADEL
Pembroke, Massachusetts
Many readers were not satisfied with the explanation provided in Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? about why IIII, and not IV, is used to signify the number four on clocks. We heard from Alden Foltz of Port Huron, Michigan, who collects ancient coins. Foltz assures us that all of his Roman coins used “IIII” to signify the number four. If coins don’t reflect the proper way to express four, what would? asks Foltz.
Further corroboration comes from Bruce Umbarger, who, like many readers, wondered how our explanation resolved the dilemma of how 9 would be expressed in Roman numerals in ancient times. Bruce consulted a book called Number Words and Number Symbols, by Kurt Menninger, which clearly shows “IIII” used to express 4 from as early as circa 130 B.C. He also enclosed two multiplication tables from thirteenth-century monastic manuscripts: They also expressed 4 as “IIII.” “How can the habit of ‘IIII’ on clocks be traced to illiterate peasants when a copy of a sixteenth-century astrolabe [a device used to tell the time by observing the stars or sun] clearly shows a four rendered as ‘IIII’?”
So why might the IIII have been changed, eventually, to IV? Reader Tom Woosnan of Hillsborough, California, sent us an excerpt of Isaac Asimov’s Asimov on Numbers that provides one possible explanation:
[IV]…are the first letters of IVPITER, the chief of the Roman gods, and the Romans may have had a delicacy about writing even the beginning of the name. Even today, on clock faces bearing Roman numerals, “four” is represented as IIII and never IV. This is not because the clock face does not accept the subtractive principle, for “nine” is represented as IX and never as VIIII.
An alternate explanation is that the expression of Roman numerals was not standardized throughout the Roman Empire, let alone throughout Europe.
Speaking of clocks, we heard from someone who was presented with a copy of Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? for his eighty-third birthday:
The title struck a tender chord with me, for I was asked to reset a friend’s wall clock last fall, when folks were going from daylight savings time to the daylight wasting time.
I had pulled the clock’s cord from the wall outlet to make the change. When I returned the connection in the wall’s electric outlet, the clock was running backwards!
I pulled the cord from the outlet, turned the male fitting of the cord over, and plugged it in again. It ran forward, properly.
Why? God only knows. And he won’t tell.
VERNE O. PHELPS
Edina, Minnesota
For some reason, we tend to make exactly one really stupid mistake in each book. In Imponderables, it was the cashew question, but in When Do Fish Sleep?, it was this one:
For shame, young man…Crickets do not produce chirps by rubbing their legs together. They have on each front wing a sharp edge, the scraper, and a file-like ridge, the file. They chirp by elevating the front wings and moving them so that the scraper of one wing rubs on the file of the other wing, giving a pulse, the chirp, generally on the closing stroke.
On a big male cricket, the scraper and the file can often be seen by the naked eye. You can take the wings of a cricket in your fingers and make the chirp sound yourself.
CLIFFORD DENNIS PH.D. ENTOMOLOGY
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
In Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?, we discussed why dogs circle around before lying down. Although we stand by our answer, several readers wrote to us with an additional possible reason: to determine which way the wind is blowing. In this way, they can sleep with noses into the wind, in order to be warned of a predator approaching. Being on the “right” side of the wind may also help them hear predators.
In Imponderables, we discussed who is criminally responsible when an elevator is illegally overloaded. One reader indicates that the answer might be…a restaurant:
A few years back, I was in a building in Washington, D.C., with passenger elevators that might be accurately de
scribed as cozy. The building had an Italian restaurant on the ground floor, and as I arrived, four secretaries from an upstairs office were just getting on the elevator to go back to work, having had lunch together downstairs.
Every time they tried, though, the same thing happened: the doors would close, but as soon as they pressed the button for their floor, the doors would open again. They became rather angry at me, thinking I was doing something to keep the elevator from working properly.
I finally suggested that it appeared to me that they had overloaded the car and that it would probably work if one of them got out. One did leave the elevator, and the other three women were able to return to their floor immediately.
What amused me, though the women were rather embarrassed about it, was that the four were able to ride down together for their lunch, but their group weight gain during the meal was enough to trip the overload protection.
Do Penguins Have Knees? Page 20
