DALE NEIBURG
Laurel, Maryland
On to a less weighty subject, we heard from Terri Davis, of Newark, Delaware…
Reading your book Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?, I came across the question, “Why do so many mass mailers use return envelopes with windows?” The answer was interesting and reminded me of something I saw at work last year that answered a question I never thought to ask: What happens to the paper that gets punched out of envelopes to provide the window?
Scott Paper, Inc. uses a great deal of recycled fiber during the manufacturing process of its many products—so much so that it buys scraps from many other companies…Can you imagine the sight of 125 cubic feet of compressed envelope windows heading down to a watery grave? There were literally tons more of these windows waiting on the incoming barge to be turned into toilet paper, napkins, tissues, etc.
We’re happy that at least one company is making good use of scrap paper. After all, in Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?, we already chastised doughnut stores for having clerks picking up doughnuts with tissues and then stuffing the same tissues, germs and all, into the bag the customer takes home. Jack Schwager of Goldens Bridge, Bridge, New York, mounts a passionate defense of the practice:
Germs are not the only issue. If they were, then indeed it would make no sense to put the tissue in the bag. Let me suggest a simple experiment, which would make it clear to anyone why it would be desirable to leave the doughnut wrapped in a tissue.
Wait for a hot, humid summer day. Go into Dunkin’ Donuts and order a dozen doughnuts. Make sure they all have icing and that the attendant uses a bag instead of a box. Now go into an unairconditioned car (preferably black in color) and drive around, taking care of several errands before returning home. Upon returning home, separate the doughnuts, giving the one with chocolate icing to the anxious child who loves chocolate but hates strawberry, and the strawberry one to his brother, who hates chocolate.
What? You can’t neatly separate the doughnuts, which have by now turned into a congealed blob? Hmmmm.
Hmmm, indeed. It has been our experience that the tissues do absolutely no good in keeping the frosting separated, since they aren’t large enough to surround the doughnuts and the tissues are far from surgically inserted to minimize friction between icings. We won’t even go into the dreaded powdered sugar crisis, in which every doughnut in the bag becomes sprinkled with the white stuff whether you like it or not. If the stores really wanted to make sure the doughnuts did not mate, they could certainly make a form-fitting tissue for them, a little baggie that covered the pastries, or provide a box with dividers.
Readers are still fuming about the purpose of the balls on top of flagpoles. Everyone seems totally sure of the purpose, but we’ve gotten about ten different explanations. We’ve received a few letters like this one, from Heather Muir of Phoenix, Arizona:
In the military, the ball on the top of the flagpole is referred to as a “truck.” The “truck” contains a gold bullet, a silver bullet, and a match. Buried at the base of the flagpole is a 50mm shell. The bullets and the shells are essentially memorials, in remembrance of the various wars the United States has been engaged in. The match, however, is stored in the “truck” for one purpose—to burn the flag in case the post is overrun by enemy troops, thus preventing the desecration of our national symbol.
Two problems with this explanation. First, the representatives of the armed services we spoke to say that it isn’t true. And second, if your post is being overrun, would you really have time to take off the truck and retrieve a match? Wouldn’t matches be more readily available elsewhere?
We heard from Elsie McManigal of Hercules, California, who said that before World War I, when most flagpoles were made of wood, balls were inserted to prevent water damage to the open grain on the top of the flagpole.
Betsy Kimak of Boulder, Colorado, took us to task for our discussion of why two horses in an open field always seem to stand head to tail. She notes that horses, and other ungulates, use posture to indicate who is the dominant animal:
With only two horses alone in a field, one will always be dominant and aggressive, depending on size, strength, and sex.
Two different postures are applicable here. The first is initiated by the submissive horse, who faces away from the dominant one to announce that it is not a threat and has no intentions of fighting or challenging the dominant horse. The second posture is initiated by the dominant horse and is called the “dominance pursuit march.” The dominant horse crowds in behind the second horse and initiates a march head-to-tail, in which the recipient horse must accept submissiveness or face an aggressive confrontation.
We heard from Bill Beauman, research manager at Ever-pure, Inc., who wanted to add to our discussion in When Do Fish Sleep? about why some ice cubes come out cloudy and others come out clear.
At home, using still (not moving) water in an ice cube tray in the freezer, air entrapment may be a minor cause of cloudiness, but the most common explanation is that the salts and other minerals in nearly all water supplies are gradually forced to the center of the cube by the freezing of the “pure” water around the sides. As the concentration rises and exceeds the minerals’ natural limits of solubility, they precipitate as particles and make an ugly, cloudy center. When the ice melts, the minerals make sediment in the glass.
Commercial cube-type icemakers recirculate water from a sump to cascade over freezing plates. Both dissolved and particulate impurities are readily rinsed away, and only the relatively pure water freezes. Such equipment routinely makes ice which, when melted, contains only about 5 percent of the minerals originally present in the water [so this is why ice cubes often don’t taste like the water they are made out of!]…. Such machines always make clear ice, unless there isn’t enough refrigerant to make the plates cold enough.
What is an Imponderables book without a ketchup controversy? We heard from the president of The Throop Group, William M. Throop, who questioned Heinz’s explanation for the necessity of the neck band on their bottles (they said it was a way to keep the foil cap snug against its cork and sealing wax prior to the introduction of the screw-on cap in 1888).
Sealing wax sticks quite well to bare glass. The real reason for the neck band is that air left in the bottle allowed a black ring of oxidized material to form. The neck band was designed to hide this black ring. Although it did not detract from the product quality, the ring was unsightly.
In 1952, the company for which we worked (Chain Belt Co., now Rexnord Inc.) developed a product called a Deaerator. This removed the air pocket from the bottle when filling and eliminated this black layer at the top of the bottle. The neck band was retained as a signature of Heinz ketchup. However, all other brands of ketchup used similar neck bands prior to deaerating for the same purpose.
Speaking of packaging, we are amazed that we actually heard from someone who defended milk cartons (we wrote about why they were difficult to open and impossible to close in Imponderables):
Your assertion that paper milk cartons are “difficult to open…and close” goes far beyond reality. After a few initial experiments years ago, I found opening and closing such paper containers rather simple.
One need only place the side to be opened facing one, insert a thumb on either side of the rooflike structure under the eaves, twist one’s hands forward and upward, steadying the container with the fingers until the roof portion pushed by the thumbs becomes detached from the roof peak and pressed forward by the thumbs until nearly flush against the carton top. Then hold the carton with one hand while using the other thumbs and one or two fingers to pinch back the edges of the eaves of the eaves the thumbs have just pushed back, and bring them forward, which forms an opening from which to pour the milk.
To close, merely reverse the process. The whole operation should take three to five seconds by the third attempt. No problem!
JERROLD E. MARKHAM
Hansville, Washington
We rest our case.
Jerrold, do you by any chance know Jan Harrington of New York, New York? If not, we think you have the potential for a wonderful friendship based on mutual proclivities. In Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?, we whined that Coca-Cola from two-or three-liter bottles just doesn’t taste as good as from smaller containers. Jan Harrington agrees with us that large bottles have too large an air capacity, but Jan, unlike us, does something about it:
I never buy the three-liter (they don’t fit in the refrigerator door and never cost less per liter than the two-liter bottles), but I have a solution for the two-liter bottles. They are flexible. Once opened, I squeeze the plastic so that the liquid fills the entire volume of the container and keep squeezing more and more air out before closing the cap each time I pour a later drink. I find this preserves the flavor much better than leaving the bottle as a bottle shape.
Try it yourself (if you have small hands you can press the bottle against your chest using one arm until the Coca-Cola has just filled the bottle, then screw the cap on tightly). The bottle will retain the squozen shape. Eventually, you have a plastic bottle that looks as if run over by a car tire.
Heaven knows what Jan does with toothpaste tubes. We prefer just whining about the Coke problem.
Speaking of liquids, we have another theory about why the cold water that comes from the bathroom faucet seems colder than the cold water from the kitchen faucet:
Most kitchen faucets are equipped with water-saving aerators, which decrease the percentage of water in the stream; the stream from the kitchen faucet is actually part water and part air at room temperature and therefore can not be as cold as the stream from the bathroom faucet. Even kitchen water that is dispensed into a glass has been slightly warmed by this phenomenon.
Furthermore, the body parts that encounter water in the bathroom (face and body) are far more unaccustomed and sensitive to cold than the parts that encounter water in the kitchen (usually only hands).
TONY ACQUAVIVA
Towson, Maryland
O.K., but the original impetus for the question was that several readers went to the bathroom to get drinking water because it was colder. And we have experienced the same phenomenon in kitchen faucets without aerators.
Speaking of the kitchen, Rice Krispies are often eaten there:
In When Do Fish Sleep?, you told us how Rice Krispies go Snap! Crackle! and Pop! Now could you explain why in French they go Cric! Crac! Croc!? And in Japanese, they go Pitchi! Patchi! Putchi!?
M. PICARD
Montreal, Quebec
No, M. Picard, we can’t.
Speaking of complex carbohydrates, Ivan Pfalser of Caney, Kansas, took us to task for not including another reason why silos are round in When Do Fish Sleep?:
It’s the same reason that water towers, grain elevators, gas tanks, and barrels are all round. A circle is the most efficient configuration to carry the stress produced by an internal load…. If a square or straight-sided silo is used, the internal pressure tries to bend the side into a hoop shape, inducing a momentary bending…which can cause overstressing in the corners and can cause them to tear apart.
Speaking of tearing apart, the issue of “Where are the missing socks?” is evidently ripping apart the fiber of the Western world. We received letters from smug individuals who pin their socks together when they throw them in their laundry hamper and claimed they never lose a sock. In our opinion, they are merely shrugging off the challenging and character-building exercise of trying to preserve the sanctity of sock coupling. We were a little ironic in our treatment of this issue in Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?. So we’ll let an expert, Sam Warden of Portland, Oregon, who describes himself as a “multifarious mechanic and not-bad-housekeeper-for-a-guy,” provide pretty much the same answer we do when confronted with this question by investigative reporters and talk-show callers:
Yes, Virginia. Socks do abscond in the wash. I have watched plumbers pull socks out of blocked laundry drains; I have done so myself. I have retrieved them in midflight from my laundry sink, and found them (not surprisingly) inside jammed washing machine pumps. Every plumber and repairman wherever washing machines are used must know about this.
The great majority of fugitives are children’s sizes and short-length sheer stockings. (Handkerchiefs jump ship, too; they just aren’t kept in pairs.) The cheaper models of washing machines and front loaders seem to be the main offenders.
And may we add the other major culprit. We have found many a sock clinging fervently to the drums of dryers.
And in reference to clinging of the static variety, several readers wrote to us about an additional reason why television sets are measured diagonally (we discussed this Imponderable in Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?):
The early TV picture tubes were all circular, so that the size of the tube was the diameter of the circle. A rectangle was masked on the front; thus, the diameter of the tube became the diagonal of the picture. In order to make the picture as large as possible, the corners of the picture were curved.
When the first rectangular tubes were produced, they were measured on the diagonal, since this was equivalent to the diameter of the round tubes that they were meant to replace.
ROY V. HUGHSON
Stamford, Connecticut
Speaking of technological devices throwing off light, Douglas S. Pisik of Marietta, Georgia, read our discussion in Why Do Clock Run Clockwise? and says that he learned in driver education (and you know how reliable driver education teachers are) why the red light is on top of a traffic signal—if you are coming over a hill, you will see the red light first. This won’t help you pass a driver’s test, but it makes a little sense.
We don’t usually discuss letters about our word book, Who Put the Butter in Butterfly?, in these pages, but we couldn’t resist sharing the information we were seeking about the origin of our favorite English euphemism for sex, “discussing Uganda””:
“Discussing Uganda” was popularized in England following an incident at Heathrow Airport when the (female) Ugandan ambassador was caught using the restroom for uses other than those for which it was intended [how’s that for a euphemism].
Private Eye, a British magazine dedicated to humorously exposing such stories, ran this piece and then continued to discuss similar incidents using the euphemism, “discussing Ugandan relations,” helping the magazine avoid many potential lawsuits from those who were exposed.
MARTIN BISHOP
Marina del Rey, California
And what would a letter column be without the “mother of all Imponderables,” which we first discussed in Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? and then have discussed in every subsequent Imponderables book: Why do some ranchers hang old boots on fenceposts?
Since we first wrote about the subject, it has become en vogue among the literary set. Lance Tock of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, sent us an excerpt from a book called Farm, written by Grant Heilman, that endorses one of the theories we’ve mentioned—that boots were put on top of fences to prevent rainfall from rotting post ends. We received a copy of a newsletter called Nebraska Veterinary Views that includes a regular column by Dr. Larry Williams entitled “Old Boots & Fence Posts.” He was shocked to find that only half of a group of forty Nebraskans he had spoken to had seen old boots on fenceposts, “let alone wonder[ing] about the[ir] meaning. They claim to be Cornhuskers, but can they be ‘real’ Nebraskans until they have seen and held in reverence old boots and fence posts?”
Paul Kotter of Lebanon, New Hampshire, informed us that in Tony Hillerman’s novel Talking God, page 28 contains the sentence, “An old boot was jammed atop the post, signaling that someone would be at home.” We don’t buy this theory, because the boots observed in Kansas and Nebraska, anyway, stay on the posts all the time.
Duane Woerman, who lives in Kearney, Nebraska, near the epicenter of boot-fencepost activity, has strong opinions:
In Nebraska, the shoe is placed upside-down so that the cowboy’s souls [get it?] will go to heaven. The toes of th
e boots are always pointed towards the house. In a snowstorm, the cowboys can always find their way home by following the direction in which the toes are pointed.
If it’s that bad a storm, the cowboys may end up at someone else’s home, but we get the point. At least a poet with the same answer admits that there are many possible explanations. Roger Hill of Vandalia, Ohio, sent us a poem called “Roadside Riddle” by Faye Tanner Cool, who writes about the boots along the prairie highways near her home of Fleming, Colorado. The last five lines of the poem:
The local folk
offer up two dozen explanations,
but the one to ponder on:
as reward for miles of walking
those soles face heaven.
Veterinarian Lucy Hirsch of Smithville, Missouri, suggests that shoes and boots are put on metal fenceposts for a most practical reason: “Metal fenceposts known as ‘T’ posts are sharp. Many horses have impaled themselves on them. Boots and shoes on top can protect the horses from the sharp points.” But they do things differently in South Carolina. Amanda Stanley writes to inform us that we are wrong to be worrying about the fence-posts. We should be worrying about the boots:
Do Penguins Have Knees? Page 21
