Do Penguins Have Knees? (21 page)
Read Do Penguins Have Knees? Online
Authors: David Feldman
Is it harmful to eat a green-tinged chip? Not at all. Chlorophyll stains are as harmless as the green beer or green bagels peddled on St. Patrick’s day, and chlorophyll contains no artificial ingredients.
Submitted by Dr. John Hardin of Greenfield, Indiana. Thanks also to Ed Hirschfield of Portage, Michigan
.
Why
Are Tortilla Chips So Much More Expensive Than Potato Chips?
In the supermarket, potatoes are more expensive than corn. And potato chips are less expensive than corn tortilla chips. Doesn’t anything make sense anymore?
Faced with our whining, snack food representatives remain unbowed. Expense of raw food supplies isn’t the only determinant of food costs, they explained with patience and a tinge of exasperation. It’s the processing of tortilla chips that makes them more expensive.
Even before it is cooked, the corn must be soaked for hours prior to processing. And then the fun begins. Al Rickard, director of communication for the Snack Food Association, explains:
To make a tortilla chip, a snack manufacturer must cook the corn, grind it into a corn flour, mix it into the proper consistency, and send it through a large machine that rolls the dough into large sheets and cuts out the tortilla chips. The chips are then baked and fried before moving to the seasoning and packaging operations.
By contrast, potato chips are made by simply washing, peeling, and slicing potatoes, which then move through a continuous fryer before moving out to the seasoning and packaging operation. Tortilla chip manufacturing requires more equipment and more labor, so the final cost is higher.
Frito-Lay’s Beverly Holmes mentions that tortilla chips vary more in price than potato chips. Frito-Lay’s Doritos brand is priced higher than potato chips, but in many markets, “restaurant-style” tortilla chips have been introduced.
Restaurant-style tortilla chips are often sold in large, clear bags. They tend to be larger in size and are made with less salt, oil, and seasoning since these chips tend to be eaten with dips and sauces.
Submitted by John Morgan of Brooklyn, New York
.
If there is any radio show that we fear appearing on, it’s Ira Fistel’s radio show in Los Angeles. Fistel, a lawyer by training, has an encyclopedic knowledge of history, railroad lore, sports, radio, and just about every other subject his audience questions him about, and is as likely as we are to answer an Imponderable from a caller. Fistel can make a “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions winner look like a know-nothing.
So when we received this Imponderable on his show and we proceeded to stare at each other and shrug our shoulders (not particularly compelling radio, we might add), we knew this was a true Imponderable. We vowed to find an answer for the next book (and then go back on Fistel’s show and gloat about it).
Robert Burnham, senior editor of
Astronomy
, was generous enough to send a fascinating explanation:
Even the biggest lakes are too small to have tides. Ponds or lakes (even large ones like the Great Lakes) have no tides because these bodies of water are raised all at once, along with the land underneath the lake, by the gravitational pull of the Moon. (The solid Earth swells a maximum of about eighteen inches under the Moon’s tidal pull, but the effect is imperceptible because we have nothing that isn’t also moving by which to gauge the uplift.)
In addition, ponds and lakes are not openly connected to a larger supply of water located elsewhere on the globe, which could supply extra water to them to make a tidal bulge. The seas, on the other hand, have tides because the water in them can flow freely throughout the world’s ocean basins…
On the side of Earth nearest the Moon, the Moon’s gravity pulls sea water away from the planet, thus raising a bulge called high tide. At the same time on the other side of the planet, the Moon’s gravity is pulling
Earth
away from the
water
, thus creating a second high-tide bulge.
Low tides occur in between because these are the regions from which water has drained to flow into the two high-tide bulges. (The Sun exerts a tidal effect of its own, but only 46 percent as strong as the Moon’s.)
Some landlocked portions of the ocean—the Mediterranean or the Baltic—can mimic the tideless behavior of a lake, although for different reasons. The Mediterranean Sea, for example, has a tidal range measuring just a couple of inches because it is a basin with only a small inlet (the Strait of Gibraltar) connecting it to the global ocean. The Gibraltar Strait is both narrow and shallow, which prevents the rapid twice-a-day flow of immense volumes of water necessary to create a pronounced tide. Thus the rise and fall of the tide in the Atlantic attempts to fill or drain the Med, but the tidal bulge always moves on before very much water can pour in or out past Gibraltar.
Alan MacRobert, of
Sky
&
Telescope
, summarizes that a body of water needs a large area to slosh around in before tidal effects are substantial, and he provides a simple analogy:
Imagine a tray full of dirt dotted with thimbles of water, representing a land mass with lakes. You could tilt it slightly and nothing much would happen. Now imagine a tray full of water—an ocean. If you tilted it just a little, water would sloop out over your hands.
Submitted by a caller on the Ira Fistel show, KABC-AM, Los Angeles, California
.
The main purpose of the social security card seems to be to prove that we exist. And laminating a card hampers the ability of the government to ascertain whether a card has been tampered with or counterfeited. If your card doesn’t pass muster, you don’t exist, so we’re talking about important stuff here.
John Clark, officer of the Social Security Administration, told
Imponderables
that the social security card incorporates several security features to foil would-be card defacers:
The [card] stock contains a blue tint marbleized random pattern. Any attempt to erase or remove data is easily detectable because the tint is erasable.
Planchets (small multi-colored discs) are randomly placed on the paper stock and can be seen with the naked eye.
Intaglio printing of the type used in U.S. currency is used for some printing on the card and provides a raised effect that can be felt.
“A laminated card hampers the ability of the government to utilize these security features,” Clark summarizes.
Sure, the Social Security Administration would love us to keep the same social security card until we die, but it is used to doling out replacements for lost or damaged cards.
And there’s good news to report. Sure, the government won’t let you laminate your social security card, but it will replace it for free. Trish Butler, associate commissioner for public affairs for the Social Security Administration, asked us to remind
Imponderables
readers that “there is
never
a charge for any service we provide.”
Now if only the IRS would adopt the same policy, we’d be happy campers.
Submitted by Kristi Nelson of Vancouver, Washington. Thanks also to April Pedersen of Edmond, Oklahoma
.
Why
Are Nonsweet Wines Called “Dry”?
“Sweet” makes sense. Sweet wines
do
have more sugar in them than dry ones. The main purpose of the sugar is to combat the acidity of the tannic and other acids found in wine.
Consumers may disagree sharply about how much sugar they prefer in wines, but can’t we all agree that “dry” wine is just as wet as sweet wine?
Surprisingly, few of our wine experts could make any sense of “dry” either, but two theories emerged. Spirits expert W. Ray Hyde argues that the terminology stems from both the sensory experience of tasting and more than a little marketing savvy:
Sugar stimulates the saliva glands and leaves the mouth wet. Acids, on the other hand, have an astringent quality that leaves the mouth feeling dry. Winemakers know that the consumer prefers a “sweet” wine to a “wet” wine and a “dry” wine to an “acidic” wine.
But Irving Smith Kogan, of the Champagne News and Information Bureau, wrote
Imponderables
about an intriguing linguistic theory:
…the explanation is in the French language. “
Sec
” is a synonym of lean, and means
peu charnu
(without flesh), without softness or mellowness. This image appears in the English expression “bone-dry.” “
Sec
” also means neat, as in undiluted, pure, bare, raw (“
brut
” in French), i.e., unsweetened.
The issue of “dry” versus “sweet” is not the same for Champagne as for still wines. In the case of Champagne, the wine was originally labeled “
doux
” which is the French word for sweet. But in the mid-nineteenth century a Champagne-maker named Louise Pommery decided to make a less-sweet blend and called it “
demi-sec
” (half-dry), which is still quite sweet but less so than the
doux
.
Since her day, Champagnes have been blended progressively dryer (i.e., less and less sweet). So, today we have a range of Champagnes in ascending order of dryness, demi-sec, sec, extra-dry, brut, and extra-brut. The doux is no longer commercially available.
Kogan adds that the above etymology of “dry” does not apply to still wines, for which “dry” simply means not sweet. Notice our current bias for dry champagne. Now the “driest” champagne you can buy is half-bone-dry.
Submitted by Bob Weisblut of Wheaton, Maryland
.
Why
Do the Rear Windows of Taxicabs (and Some Other Cars) Not Go Down All the Way?
Although we associate this Imponderable with cabs, everyone we spoke to in the taxi industry assured us that they didn’t modify the back windows of their fleet cars. Nor was the movement of back seat windows of any concern when considering which models to buy (although it can be of great concern to passengers—when is the last time you’ve ridden in an air-conditioned cab?). They provide the rear windows for their fares that Detroit (or Japan) provides them.