Are Lobsters Ambidextrous? (9 page)

What
are the little white particles found on the bottom half of English muffins?

The particles are farina. Farina helps add to the taste of the product, but the main function of farina particles, and the reason why they are placed only on the bottom half of the muffin, is to prevent the ball of dough from sticking to the oven plate during cooking.

 

Submitted by Jessica Ahearne of Madawaska, Maine
.

 

How
do they assemble tall cranes without using another crane?

George O. Headrick, director of public relations and administrative services at the Construction Industry Manufacturers Asso
ciation, was kind enough to direct us to several manufacturers of cranes. While they were uniformly generous in sharing their knowledge of how cranes are erected, they tended to provide us not with more than we wanted to know but a great deal more than we were capable of understanding. So we are indebted for the following explanation to the former secretary-treasurer of the Construction Writers Association, E.E. Halmos, Jr., who is now majordomo of Information Research Group, an editorial consulting group in Poolesville, Maryland:

 

The tall cranes, which often carry booms (known to the trade as “sticks”) of 120 feet or more, are assembled on the ground, at the construction site. If you’ll notice, most of the tall booms are built as steel lattice-work structures, and are thus comparatively lightweight. Usually, the machine arrives on the scene on its own, carrying only the base stub of the boom.

The sections for the full length of the boom usually arrive separately, via trailer-truck. At site, the stub of the boom is lowered to a horizontal position, and the sections of the finished boom laid out on the ground, attached together (much like a child’s erector set), then mounted on the stub, and raised into position by cables attached to the crane body.

 

Likewise, extensions can be added when needed by laying the boom on the ground.

The use of these conventional rigs has been steadily declining, however, in favor of the “tower crane.” These are the cranes that sit in the middle of a site and can be raised after they have been erected. The center column on which the control cab and the moving “head” sit is built up to three or four stories. As the building rises around the crane, added height is built onto the center column, and the whole top assembly is “jumped” upward.

Halmos reports that tower cranes have largely eliminated the need for elevators (known as “skips”) and the lifting of loads from the ground by mobile cranes. “The tower crane operator can see not only what he’s picking up, but can spot the load
almost anywhere on the job, without a lot of elaborate signaling.”

 

Submitted by Laura Laesecke of San Francisco, California. Thanks also to Paula Chaffee of Utica, Michigan; Lawrence Walters of Gurnee, Illinois; James Gleason of Collegeville, Pennsylvania; and Robert Williams of Brooklyn, New York
.

 

What
is “single-needle” stitching, and why do we have to pay more for shirts that feature it?

You’d think that at fifty dollars or more a pop, shirtmakers could afford another needle or two. Actually, they can.

“Regular” shirts are sewn with one needle working on one side of a seam and another needle sewing the other side. According to clothing expert G. Bruce Boyer, this method is cheaper and faster but not as effective because “Seams sewn with two needles simultaneously tend to pucker. Single-needle stitching produces flatter seams.”

 

Submitted by Donald Marti, Jr., of New York, New York
.

 

Why
do dogs wiggle their rear legs when scratched on their belly or chest?

Maybe there is a Labrador retriever out there writing a book of canine Imponderables, trying to answer the mystery: Why do humans kick their legs up when you tap the area below their kneecaps? The leg wiggling of dogs is called the scratch reflex, the doggy equivalent of our involuntary knee-jerk reflex (or, as it is known to doctors, patellar reflex).

Anatomist Robert E. Habel, of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, wrote
Imponderables
that the scratch reflex allows veterinarians to diagnose neurological problems in dogs:

 

Because the same spinal nerves pass all the way down to the midline of the chest and abdomen, you can stimulate the scratch reflex anywhere from the saddle region to the ventral midline. You can test the sensory function of many spinal nerves and the motor function of the nerves to the hind limb (they don’t wiggle
their forelimbs). If the dog moves the hind limb, it means the spinal cord is not severed between the origin of the nerve stimulated and the origins of the lumbar through first sacral nerves, but the cord may be injured above the level stimulated.

 

A dog is not necessarily injured if it doesn’t exhibit the scratch reflex. In fact, Dr. Habel reports that his hound doesn’t respond at all.

What function does the scratch reflex serve? Nobody knows for sure, but that doesn’t stop dog experts from theorizing. Breeder and lecturer Fred Lanting believes that the wiggling might be a “feeble or partial attempt” to reach the area where you are scratching. Just as scratching ourselves sometimes causes the itch to migrate to other parts of the body, Lanting believes that scratching a dog may cause itchiness in other regions.

Dog expert and biology instructor Jeanette Hayhurst advances an even more fascinating theory, which is that the scratch reflex might help dogs survive. The movement of the back legs during the scratch reflex resembles the frantic movements of a puppy learning to swim. The scratch reflex might be an instinctive reaction to pressure on the abdomen, the method nature provides for a puppy to survive when thrown into the water. Newborn pups also need to pump their back legs in order to crawl to reach their mother’s teat.

We’d like to think that our human knee-jerk reflex might also have a practical purpose, but we’ll leave it to the dogs to solve this particular mystery.

 

Submitted by Shane Ellis of Mammoth Lakes, California. Thanks also to Kurt Pershnick of Palatka, Florida; Sonya Landholm of Boone, North Carolina; Alina Carmichael and Pat Kirkland of Lake St. Louis, Missouri; Sherry-Lynn Jamieson of Surrey, British Columbia; Sofi Nelson of Menomonie, Wisconsin; and Scott Wolber of Delmont, Pennsylvania
.

 

Why
do so many sundials have Robert Browning’s lines “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be” inscribed on them?

Although not every sundial has a motto on it, most do; the tradition dates from antiquity. None of the many sundial makers and books about sundials we consulted could explain the reason for putting the motto on the sundial in the first place. Timothy Lynch, president of the sundial maker Kenneth Lynch & Sons, speculates that it was originally put there “for the personal gratification of either the maker or the receiver.”

The sundial makers we spoke to have standard mottoes or will custom-inscribe a customer’s personalized motto. They unanimously agreed with Lee Brown, a designer at Whitehall Products, who told
Imponderables
that virtually all mottoes refer to the passage of time.

Why are Browning’s lines the most popular? (Their only competitor in popularity is
Tempus Fugit
—“time flies”—a
pithier if less poetic motto.) Ben Brewster, president of Colonial Brass, the largest manufacturer of sundials in the United States, has a simple theory with which the other sources agreed: Most quotations about time are depressing, or at least downbeat. A look at some of the suggested inscriptions used by Colonial Brass will give you the idea:

 

“Time takes all but memories.”

“Time waits for no man.”

“You ask the hour, meanwhile you see it fly.”

“Watch for ye know not the hour.”

“Time passeth and speaketh not.”

 

Not the kind of words to send your losing football team bursting out of the locker room in renewed spirits, are they? But Browning’s words are reassuring, making old age seem secure and downright romantic.

In her book
Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday
, Alice Morse writes:

 

One almost unvarying characteristic of the sun-dial motto might be noted—its solemnity. A few are jocose, a few are cheerful, nearly all are solemn, many are sad, even gloomy. They teach no light lesson of life, but a regard of the passing of every day, every hour, as a serious thing.

 

Morse’s book was written in 1922, when most mottoes were biblical quotations. (Her favorite was this far-from-upbeat citation from Chronicles: “Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.”)

For better or worse, we live in a society that has a relentless need to find optimism in any situation. Perhaps our fondness for the Browning quote shows a deep-seated psychological need to evade not only death but some of the hardships of old age. After all, better to spout platitudes than to confront the pain in this actual motto sent to us by Brewster, who remarked that its message was a little less uplifting than Browning’s bromide:

 

What Cain did to Abel

Brutus to Caesar was quick.

What Kip B. and Esther’s sister

Edith did to Esther and me

Was Torture—slow and fatal

May God forgive them.

 

Submitted by Sheryl Aumack of Newport Beach, California
.

For a whole collection of sundial mottoes, see
The Book of Sun-Dials
by Mrs. Alfred Gatty.

Why
do babies sleep so much? Why do they sleep so much more soundly than adults or older children?

This is Mother Nature’s way of preserving the sanity of parents.

And there’s an alternative, less cosmic, explanation. Dr. David Hopper, president of the American Academy of Somnology, told
Imponderables
that sleep is crucial to the brain development of infants. After birth, the average infant spends sixteen to eighteen hours asleep per day. Up to 60 percent of that time is spent in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, more than twice the percentage of adults. What is the significance of their greater proportion of REM sleep? Dr. Hopper explains:

 

REM sleep is the stage of sleep that dreams are associated with. Brain wave activity is very active during this stage and closely resembles an awake state. It is sometimes called paradoxical sleep because the brain is very active as if awake but the individual is deeply asleep. By one year of age, the brains of babies are sufficiently developed to begin cycling of four distinct NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep stages with REM sleep.