Submitted by Laura Stone Bell of University Heights, Ohio. Thanks also to Howard Kim, via the Internet; and Jeanne Salt of Tualatin, Oregon.
Where Is the Donkey in Donkey Kong?
For those of you who didn’t have anything better to do than obsess about Nintendo in the early 1980s, Donkey Kong is a game created by Shigeru Miyamoto, the most famous video game creator on the planet. Donkey Kong featured a diminutive hero, Jumpman (whose name was later changed to Mario), who had a much larger pet, a gorilla. The gorilla did not exactly bond with his “master,” and conveyed his wrath by kidnapping Jumpman’s girlfriend, Pauline, climbing a building, and hurling barrels and other missiles as our hero attempted to rescue his sweetheart. If the little man managed to reclaim her temporarily, the gorilla snatched Pauline away again. As the game progressed, each level made it harder for Jumpman to succeed. But regardless of what level the player progressed to, nary a donkey was seen.
So why the donkey in the title? Although some fans insist that the “donkey” was a misheard or mistranslated attempt at “Monkey Kong,” Miyamoto has always insisted otherwise. On his tribute site to Miyamoto (http://www.miyamotoshrine.com), Carl Johnson includes an interview with Miyamoto at the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, where the game’s creator addresses this Imponderable:
Back when we made Donkey Kong, Mario was just called Jumpman and he was a carpenter. That’s because the game was set on a construction site, so that made sense. When we went on to make the game Mario Brothers, we wanted to use pipes, maybe a sewer in the game, so he became a plumber.
For Donkey Kong, I wanted something to do with “Kong,” which kind of gives the idea of apes in Japanese, and I came up with Donkey Kong because I heard that “donkey” meant “stupid,” so I went with Donkey Kong. Unfortunately, when I said that name to Nintendo of America, nobody liked it and said that it didn’t mean “Stupid Ape,” and they all laughed at me. But we went ahead with that name anyway.
In some other interviews, Miyamoto indicates that “donkey” was chosen for its usual connotation in English — stubbornness. In his book on Nintendo, Game Over: Press Start to Continue, David Sheff writes:
When the game was complete, Miyamoto had to name it. He consulted the company’s export manager, and together they mulled over some possibilities. They decided that kong would be understood to suggest a gorilla. And since this fierce but cute kong was donkey-stubborn and wily (donkey, according to their Japanese-English dictionary, was the translation of the Japanese word for “stupid” or “goofy”), they combined the words and named the game Donkey Kong.
At least one party wasn’t happy with Nintendo’s name — Universal Studios, which owned the copyright for King Kong. Universal sued for copyright infringement, claiming that the video game mimicked the basic plot of the movie (man climbs building to save his girlfriend from the clutches of a giant ape). Universal lost on the most obvious of grounds — the judge ruled that the movie studio did not own the rights to King Kong. Nintendo won the suit without, unfortunately, having to justify the nonexistence of a donkey in Donkey Kong.
Submitted by Darrell Hewitt of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Why Don’t the Silver Fillings in Our Mouth Rust?
The fillings don’t rust because there is no iron or steel in the amalgam, or “silver” fillings. Without iron, there is no rust.
But we understand the tenor of the question. Combine metal with constant exposure to air and liquid and you’d think your fillings would be devastated by corrosion. Here’s why it isn’t. There is silver in silver fillings, but it isn’t the dominant component. Most amalgam fillings consist of approximately 50 percent mercury, with the rest silver, tin, copper, and zinc. Depending upon the alloy, the silver content can range between 2 and 35 percent, usually on the higher end of the scale.
Why is there more mercury than silver in fillings? Mercury has the ability to alloy with other metals. If you combined, say, silver, copper, and tin, you’d end up with a powder without any tensile strength. Mercury helps combine the other liquids to form a solid mass that is strong and yet can be compressed into a cavity and seal it effectively. Although the silver amalgam filling is inexpensive to manufacture and easy to install, the metal does corrode, which is one of the reasons why fillings sometimes have to be replaced. But the corrosion has a positive side, too, as Brooklyn dentist Philip Klein explains:
When the restoration is inserted, a corrosive layer begins to form at the metal-tooth interface. This layer mechanically seals the restoration and prevents leakage that would ultimately lead to recurrent cavities and failure.
The corrosion actually prevents bacteria and other chemicals from entering the cavity-laden tooth.
All well and good, you might be saying, but isn’t mercury a dangerous toxin? Yep, it sure is. Many countries in Europe, for example, have outlawed the use of amalgam fillings, yet the American Dental Association, the World Health Organization, and most mainstream health organizations maintain that the minimal amount of leakage of mercury from fillings is within acceptable guidelines for risk. Alternative and holistic dentists argue that mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings can cause everything from kidney damage to brain damage. Suddenly, a little corrosion in your mouth doesn’t seem like a big deal.
Submitted by Claire Badger of Augusta, Georgia.
Why Do Beavers Build Dams?
Watch any nature documentary about beavers, and you’ll see the giant rodents working furiously to construct their dams. Of course, if they weren’t working furiously, they wouldn’t deserve their hard-earned sobriquet. No one wants to be as busy as a sloth.
Beavers are industrious creatures, and we don’t want to belittle their achievements, but we also don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming that beavers cogitate deeply about how to solve their problems and build dams as a result. On the contrary, Dr. Peter Busher, professor of biology at the Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology at Boston University, told us:
Most (if not all) beaver scientists would say that construction behavior is instinctual and not learned behavior. Thus construction behavior appears to be hard-wired into the beaver genome.
By damming small rivers and streams, beavers create ponds, still and deep bodies of water. Beavers create the pond by amassing dams with bases of mud and stones, and piling up branches and sticks. Beavers reinforce the dam by using mud, stones, and vegetation from the water as “plaster.”
Scott Jackson, a wildlife biologist at the Department of Natural Resources Conservation at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told Imponderables that while some dams are less than 100 feet long, others have been recorded at over 1,500 feet in length. According to Jackson, beavers are constantly on the lookout for leaks, and will fix any defect by plugging leaks with mud and sticks.
Why do these rodents, who are not fish, after all, bother constructing ponds? Ponds help provide beavers with three of the necessities of life:
1. Food. Beavers are PETA-friendly strict vegetarians. Not only do they not eat other mammals, but they disdain fish and insects, as well. They do eat leaves, barks, and twigs of trees, and make meals from the vegetation that grows around the ponds they construct. By creating a pond, beavers increase the supply of aquatic vegetation, such as water lilies, that they prefer. As Dr. Busher notes,
The higher water table favors plants that are water tolerant (many of which are eaten by beavers) and drowns species that are not water tolerant. Beavers “feel” safer in water and the dams create ponds that allow them to have better access to food without leaving the water.
Why might beavers feel safer in the water? Because…
2. Protection. Most of beavers’ predators, such as wolves, coyotes, and occasionally bears, are more comfortable on land than water (young beavers, called “kits,” are also vulnerable to owls and hawks). Beavers are adept in the water: With their webbed hind feet and large paddle tails, beavers are built for swimming. Beavers are awkward on land, and most of their forays o
nto terra firma are to chew down trees and bushes both to eat and to use as construction materials. They are unlikely to wander far afield from the shoreline, where they are prone to be attacked by land-based predators.
3. Shelter. Obviously, beavers can’t sleep under the water, so it is necessary for them to build a place to sleep safely atop the water. A family of beavers will frequently build a “lodge,” a tepee-like structure usually made from tree branches, twigs, and aquatic vegetation sealed together with mud. Usually, lodges feature a bed of grass, leaves, and wood chips on which the beavers sleep and their young are raised — it’s not Martha Stewart, but it’s home.
The upper part of the lodge is built above the water line, and there is an opening at the top, so that breathing air and ventilation are available. According to Jackson, these lodges may be fifteen to forty feet across at the base and protrude three to six feet above the water. To stabilize the lodge, the beavers anchor the sides deep into the water and attach them to a solid structure such as an island in the water, a large underground branch, or sometimes even the side of the river. Beavers build tunnels from the air chamber of the lodge down to the water. These tunnels provide the only entrances to the lodge, as the thick walls of sticks and mud provide protection from both predators and the weather. By damming the river so that the pond is sufficiently large, the beavers create a sort of moat around the visible, above-water part of the lodge.
In the winter, if the pond freezes, the mud on the lodge freezes as well, providing more resistance to predators and bad weather. Even if a wolf were to walk on the frozen pond, it would struggle to penetrate the lodge, and beavers usually have plenty of time to swim through one of the tunnels to escape.
Even after a lodge is built, beavers must often perform repair work on the dams, as the water level of the pond is crucial to the safety of the lodge. If the water level gets too high, the lodge can submerge; if it gets too low, the lodge would become exposed at the bottom and predators could infiltrate the lodge more easily.
Whole families live in these lodges. Beavers are monogamous (they’re too busy being busy as beavers to be promiscuous, we surmise), usually “marrying” for life barring the death of a mate. Females give birth inside of a lodge, usually producing four kits, but occasionally as many as nine. One family unit, called a “colony,” usually consists of the two parents, that year’s kits, plus the young from the previous year. As beavers are far from petite (North American adult beavers range in weight from thirty-five to eighty pounds), there’s plenty of tail staying in one lodge at any given time.
Most animals adapt to their surroundings, but except for humans, no animal alters its habitat to suit its needs more than the beaver. The beaver may be able to convert part of a flowing stream into a still pond and base for its home, but it can’t keep the same pond forever. Eventually, the beavers plunder the vegetation on the shoreline — what they don’t eat, they use for building materials. If dams break, ponds can drain off. Where beavers live, silt tends to form, rendering the ponds too shallow. Any of these problems can cause beavers to abandon their lodges and seek other opportunities.
But all is not lost, as Scott Jackson reassures:
In the nutrient-rich silt, herbaceous plants flourish, forming beaver meadows. Over time, shrubs and trees eventually come to dominate these areas, setting the stage for the beavers’ return.
Submitted by Nathan Trask of Herrin, Illinois.
How Do They Keep Staples in Their Packages Clumped Together?
Ah, the irony. Although their product is used as a fastener, staple manufacturers must turn to a competitor to fasten the staples together. Those clumps of staples, more properly called “strips,” are kept together by glue.
Staples are made out of wire. A machine called a “wire winder” wraps the wire around a spool. According to Lori Andrade, of staple manufacturer Stanley Bostitch, the cement is applied while the wire is wrapped around the spool. Then the flat wire is rolled off the spool, is cut into strips, and is pressed into that lovable staple shape.
Submitted by Karen Gonzales of Glendale, Arizona. Thanks also to Carlos F. Lima of Middleton, Wisconsin.
Why Did Pilgrims’ Hats Have Buckles?
Would you be heartbroken if we told you that just about everything they taught you in elementary school about Pilgrims was wrong? We at Imponderables Central remember being forced to draw pictures of Pilgrims during elementary school, presumably to obscure the food stains on our families’ refrigerators during the Thanksgiving season. We remember not liking to draw Pilgrims, because they wore boring black and white clothing, and the men wore those long black steeple hats sporting a gold or silver buckle.
So it is with more than a little feeling of righteous vengeance that we report that we were sold a bill of goods. Pilgrims might have worn hats, and those hats might have even been tall. But they were rarely black and never had a buckle on them.
How were generations brainwashed into thinking that Pilgrims wore buckled hats? For many Americans, there is confusion between the Pilgrims and Puritans. The two groups weren’t totally unrelated: Both were early settlers in America in the early seventeenth century, and both groups fled England to escape what they considered to be an authoritarian and tyrannical Anglican Church, the state-sponsored religion of their government.
But in spirit, the two groups were far apart. The Pilgrims were separatists, who wanted to practice a simple religion without the rituals and symbolism that they felt had spoiled the “Protestant” church. Pilgrims first tried emigrating to Holland, but the poor economic conditions there, along with some religious intolerance, led one contingent to come to America. Approximately sixty of the one hundred passengers aboard the Mayflower were separatists (i.e., Pilgrims), and they settled in or near Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.
Puritans, on the other hand, did not want to sever their relationship from the Anglican fold completely, but sought to “purify” the church. Puritans wanted to eliminate many of the reforms of the Protestant movement, and return the church to more traditional practices. Several hundred Puritans moved to America in 1629, and settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in what is now Cape Cod.
Both Puritans and Pilgrims have reputations as authoritarian, humorless, and conformist in their beliefs, but this stereotype characterizes the Puritans (who later in the century went on to conduct the Salem witch trials) more than the Pilgrims, who were much more democratic and inclusive in style. For example, the Pilgrims did, indeed, befriend local Native Americans, although it is unclear whether this pact was motivated by feelings of brotherhood or an arrangement for mutual self-defense.
Both Pilgrims and Puritans would probably be appalled that they are lumped together in Americans’ consciousness today. Puritans would probably consider Pilgrims to be hopeless idealists, and too tolerant of dissent; Pilgrims would probably have deemed Puritans intolerant of others, and too timid to sever their links to the Anglican Church.
The two groups’ different attitudes toward religion and democracy were reflected in their apparel choices. It was the Puritans who dressed the way Pilgrims are often depicted — with dark, somber clothing. Pilgrims, on the other hand, dressed much like their counterparts in England at the time. They did not consider it a sin to wear stylish or colorful clothing — indeed, several of the men who made the original trip on the Mayflower were in the clothing or textile trade. Many dyes were available to the Pilgrims, and they favored bright clothing — wills, provisions lists, written inventories, contemporaneous histories, and even sparse physical evidence all indicate that male Mayflower passengers wore green, red, yellow, violet, and blue garments along with the admittedly more common white, gray, brown, and black ones. The Pilgrim men wore many different types of hats, including soft caps made of wool or cloth, straw hats, and felt hats with wide brims. Wealthier Pilgrims might have worn more elaborate silk hats with decorative cords or tassels — but nary a buckle in sight.
We contacted Caleb Johnson, a Mayflower d
escendant who has written the 1,173-page book The Complete Works of the Mayflower Pilgrims and hosts a Web site devoted to all things Pilgrim at www.mayflowerhistory.com. Johnson confirmed what we had read in other histories:
The Pilgrims did not have buckles on their clothing, shoes, or hats. Buckles did not come into fashion until the late 1600s — more appropriate for the Salem witchcraft trials time period than the Pilgrims’ time period.
So if Pilgrims didn’t wear buckles, why have we always seen depictions of Pilgrims wearing what turns out to be nonexistent doodads on hats that they never actually wore? Johnson implicates writers:
I am not sure I can pinpoint a specific reason as to why the popular image developed. I would suspect that authors and poets such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, even Arthur Miller [in The Crucible], might have contributed to the “popular culture” image of a generic New England Puritan, which then got backward-applied to the early seventeenth-century Separatists — many not consciously realizing that 70 years separated the arrival of the Pilgrims and the more “traditional” Puritan we see portrayed at, say, the Salem witchcraft trials.
Do Elephants Jump? Page 5
