Do Penguins Have Knees? (10 page)
Read Do Penguins Have Knees? Online
Authors: David Feldman
The command “sic” comes from a corruption of the German word
such
, which means to seek or search. It is used by Schutzhund [guardian and protection] and police trainers as well as by people training dogs for tracking. If the command “sic” is issued, it means that the dog is to find the hidden perpetrator or victim. In German,
sic
is pronounced “sook” or “suk,” but like many foreign words, the pronunciation has been altered over time by those not familiar with the language.
“Sic” has developed from [what was originally] a command to find a hidden bad guy, who [in training exercises] is usually covered by a box or hiding in an open pyramidal canvas blind. Because in police and Schutzhund training the bad guy is attacked if he tries to hit the dog or run away, the word has become associated with a command to attack.
Lanting’s answer brings up another Imponderable: If “sic” is a misspelling of the German word, should it be printed as “‘sic’ (
sic
)”?
Submitted by Annie Lloyd of Merced, California
.
In
Baseball Scoring, Why Is the Letter “K” Chosen to Designate a Strikeout?
Lloyd Johnson, ex-executive director of the Society for American Baseball Research, led us to the earliest written source for this story,
Beadle’s Dime Base-Ball Player
, a manual published in 1867 that explained how to set up a baseball club. Included in
Beadle’s
are such quaint by-laws as “Any member who shall use profane language, either at a meeting of the club, or during field exercise, shall be fined—cents.”
A chapter on scoring, written by Henry Chadwick, assigns meaning to ten letters:
A for first base
B for second base
C for third base
H for home base
F for catch on the fly
D for catch on the bound
L for foul balls
T for tips
K for struck out
R for run out between bases
Chadwick advocated doubling up these letters to describe more events:
H R for home runs
L F for foul ball on the fly
T F for tip on the fly
T D for tip on the bound
He recognized the difficulty in remembering some of these abbreviations and attempted to explain the logic:
The above, at first sight, would appear to be a complicated alphabet to remember, but when the key is applied it will be at once seen that a boy could easily impress it on his memory in a few minutes. The explanation is simply this—we use the first letter in the words, Home, Fly, and Tip and the last in Bound, Foul, and Struck, and the first three letters of the alphabet for the first three bases.
We can understand why the last letters in “Bound” and “Foul” were chosen—the first letters of each were already assigned a different meaning—but we can’t figure out why “S” couldn’t have stood for struck out.
Some baseball sources have indicated that the “S” was already “taken” by the sacrifice, but we have no evidence to confirm that sacrifices were noted in baseball scoring as far back as the 1860s.
Submitted by Darin Marrs of Keller, Texas
.
What
Are the Skins of Hot Dogs Made Of?
Our correspondent wondered whether hot dog skins are made out of the same animal innards used to case other sausages. We recollect when we sometimes used to need a knife to pierce a hot dog. Don’t hot dog skins seem a lot more malleable than they used to be?
Evidently, while we were busy chomping franks down, manufacturers were gradually eliminating hot dog skins. Very few mass-marketed hot dogs have skins at all any more. Thomas L. Ruble, of cold-cut giant Oscar Mayer, explains:
A cellulose casing is used to give shape to our hot dogs and turkey franks [Oscar Mayer owns Louis Rich] during cooking and smoking, but it is removed before the links are packaged. What may have seemed like a casing to you would have been the exterior part of the link that is firmer than the interior. This texture of the exterior of a link could be compared to the crust on a cake that forms during baking.
Submitted by Ted Goodwin of Orlando, Florida
.
Why
Is Comic Strip Print in Capital Letters?
The cartoonists we contacted, including our illustrious (pun intended) Kassie Schwan, concurred that it is easier to write in all caps. We’ve been printing since the first grade ourselves and haven’t found using small letters too much of a challenge, but cartoonists have to worry about stuff that never worries us. Using all caps, cartoonists can allocate their space requirements more easily. Small letters not only vary in height but a few have a nasty habit of swooping below or above most of the other letters (I’s make a’s look like midgets; and p’s and q’s dive below most letters).
More importantly, all caps are easier to read. Mark Johnson, archivist for King Features, reminded us that comic strips are reduced in some newspapers and small print tends to “blob up.”
We wish that our books were set in all caps. It would automatically rid us of those pesky capitalization problems. While we’re musing…we wonder how
Classics Illustrated
would handle the type if it decided to publish a comics’ treatment of e. e. cummings’ poetry?
Submitted by Carl Middleman of St. Louis, Missouri
.
Why
Are Peanuts Listed Under the Ingredients of “Plain” M&Ms?
We’ve always felt that “peanut” M&Ms weren’t as good as “plain” ones—that the synergy between Messrs. Goober and Cocoa just wasn’t there. As lovers of chocolate and peanuts and, come to think of it, hard candy shells, as well, you could have knocked us over with an M&M when two readers brought it to our attention that “plain” M&Ms contain peanuts.
We contacted the folks at M&M/MARS to solve this troubling Imponderable and we heard from Donna Ditmars in the consumer affairs division. She told us that peanuts are finely ground and added to the chocolate for flavor. The quantity of peanuts in the candy is so small that “labeling laws do not require that we list this small amount of peanuts as an ingredient, we do so voluntarily so that consumers will know that it is in the candy.”
Why is listing the peanuts so important? Nuts are the source of one of the most common food allergies.
FLASH: Just after the publication of the hardcover edition of
Do Penguins Have Knees?
, we heard surprising news from the external relations director of M&M/MARS, Hans S. Fiuczynski. Starting in January, 1992, the company no longer includes any peanuts in its plain candies. Even so, this Imponderable will not become obsolete. M&M/MARS will continue to list peanuts as an ingredient on the label, just in case a small amount of peanuts inadvertently appears in the plain candies.
Submitted by Martha Claiborne of Anchorage, Kentucky.
Thanks to Susan Wheeler of Jacksonville, North Carolina
.
Anyone with an itchy hand and a remote control device that can control volume levels knows how often one must adjust the volume control when flipping around stations. Anyone without a volume control on a remote control device has probably walked the equivalent of 892 miles in round trips from the La-Z-Boy to the TV set to keep the Pocket Fisherman commercial from blasting innocent eardrums.
We were confronted with a lot of shilly-shallying about this Imponderable from folks in the cable television industry until we heard from Ned L. Mountain, chairman of the subcommittee on Quality Sound in Cable Television of the National Cable Television Association. Mountain doesn’t offer any quick solutions, but he does explain the historical and technological problems involved. He lists three advantages that broadcast stations have over cable outlets in transmitting even audio levels:
1. The FCC mandates strict standards for broadcast maximum peak audio levels.
Most TV stations also employ sophisticated and expensive audio processing equipment to maintain a consistent level for their station. Since they only have one channel to worry about, they can afford it.
2. At the point where signals originate for a community (called the “head ends”), broadcast stations have personnel to monitor the levels. Most cable head ends don’t. Humans can make “subjective audio level control” adjustments as necessary.
3. Most broadcast stations have converted to stereo; while they did so, they took the opportunity to upgrade their audio facilities. The result: a more uniform sound among broadcast outlets.
Cable operators must also conform to the FCC standard for peak program levels, but are under numerous handicaps, as Mountain explains:
A cable operator must attempt to achieve this standard on as many as 30 to 40 channel simultaneously from sources over which he has no control.
The problems start at the sources. Most cable programs are satellite delivered using various technologies where there are no standards, only “understandings.” The programmers themselves may or may not use the same type of audio processing as that employed by over-the-air broadcasters.
The cable operator many times compounds this problem by inserting locally generated commercials on these channels. The sound of these may or may not match the network on any given day.
This equipment is automated, and the head end is generally unattended. Without standards or expensive “automatic gain control devices, the levels can and do vary from channel to channel.”
Mountain’s subcommittee consists of programmers, satellite transmission experts, cable operators, and equipment manufacturers. Their first task is to get the programmers and satellite delivery systems to coordinate the quantification of their audio standards, so that operators at least know how to set levels.
Even though this problem annoys us no end, we can’t help being won over by Mountain’s sincerity and a hook that is going to compel every reader of this book to buy the
next
volume of
Imponderables
:
David, I wish there were an easy answer to your question. I can assure your readers, however, that there are significant efforts being expended within our industry to investigate and solve these problems. Perhaps by the time your next issue is in print, we will have made significant inroads and I can give you an update.