Read Do Elephants Jump? Online
Authors: David Feldman
Do Elephants Jump? (6 page)
Although we now mourn dignitaries by flying the flag at half-mast on dry land, all of our sources agree that the custom has British naval origins. Prior to half-masting, ships would sometimes fly a black flag to honor a death. No doubt the old custom had at least two disadvantages: it necessitated bringing two sets of flags, one of which was unlikely to be used; and it failed in its primary purpose of signaling to others — a ship in the distance was much more likely to recognize a flag sailing at half-mast than to discern the color of a flag.
Although there are reports of flags at half-mast as early as the fourteenth century, the first recorded instance of half-masting occurred in 1612. An Eskimo killed Englishman William Hall, who was searching for the Northwest Passage (in what we now call Canada), and the Royal Navy lowered its flags at sea to honor him.
By the mid-seventeenth century, the Royal Navy had adopted the custom more formally, and its fleet flew its flags at half-mast annually to honor the death of King Charles I. Later, a commanding officer’s death would lead to flying a ship’s flag at half-mast, but eventually any crew member’s passing would prompt a tribute.
Why honor the dead by lowering the flag? In his 1938 book
Sea Flags,
British Commander Hillary P. Mead speculates that the origins of half-masting date back to a deliberate attempt to make the boat as slovenly as possible, the opposite of shipshape:
Untidiness and slovenliness of appearance were supposed to be the signs of grief, and this writer refers to biblical customs (amongst which may be mentioned sackcloth and ashes), and to the fact that in the Merchant Service ropes are left trailing and yards are scandalised in furtherance of this principle. This idea of slovenliness, at any rate in modern times, has no counterpart on land.
Another theory speculates that in the seventeenth century, regimental flags were placed on the ground when the Royal Family or foreign heads of states were saluted; merchant ships dipped their ensigns to warships. As Mead puts it:
It naturally follows that national flags should be lowered as a salute to the departed, and remain lowered for a length of time proportionate to the importance of the deceased person.
As more and more countries mimicked the British custom at sea, half-masting became common on land throughout the world. But not everywhere. The Flag Research Center, based in Winchester, Massachusetts, mentions one exception in its
Flag Bulletin
:
Because the religious inscription appearing on the national flag of Saudi Arabia is considered holy, the etiquette of that country forbids the flag being flown at half-staff, vertically, or upside down. Other forms of mourning have been used for national flags, including the addition of a black stripe at the fly end, a border of black on the three free edges, and the placement of black streamers on the pole above the flag.
| Submitted by Laura Stone Bell of University Heights, Ohio. Thanks also to Howard Kim, via the Internet; and Jeanne Salt of Tualatin, Oregon. |
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. |
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. |
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 onto
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. |