Do Penguins Have Knees? (32 page)
Read Do Penguins Have Knees? Online
Authors: David Feldman
We receive thousands of letters every year. Most of them pose Imponderables, try to answer Frustables, or ply us with undeserved praise. But this section is reserved for those letters that take us to task or have something significant to add to our statements in previous books
.
Many of you have written with valid objections to parts of our answers in previous books. As much as it pains us to make a mistake, we appreciate your input. Unfortunately, it can take months or even years to validate these objections. We have made several changes in later printings of our books because of your letters. The letters we include here are not the only accurate comments, just some of the most entertaining
.
In
Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?,
we discussed why there is no Boeing 717. We heard from a pioneer of the Boeing Company, who told us that the version we related was a little sanitized:
I was assigned to the group that prepared the detail specifications for the various airplane models. We put together a Boeing Model 717 detail specification and used it in preliminary configuration negotiations with United Airlines.
William Patterson, who started his aviation career as William E. Boeing’s administrative assistant in the 1930s, was president of United Airlines at the time. He was very pro-Douglas Aircraft, and had stated that he would never buy a Boeing Model 707 and that “Model 717 was too close to 707.”
We obliged him by changing the name to “Boeing Model 720” and he (and many other airlines around the world) bought it. That’s the only gap in the “7-7 Series.” All we had to do to the specification was change the title page. When we sold the 720 to UAL, no engineering drawings had been released, so other than my small wages, the change cost Boeing nothing. End of story.
O
REE
C. W
ELLER
Bellevue, Washington
In
Imponderables,
we discussed why cashews aren’t sold in their shells. We blew the answer. We indicated that cashews are actually seeds and that they don’t have hard shells. Well, the cashews we eat are seeds, but M. J. Navarro of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, humbled us by sending some unshelled cashews that proved our discussion erroneous. He added: “The shell is too hard for people to have any chance at the seed itself. The shell must be thoroughly roasted to get to the seed and the seed must be roasted to make it edible.”
True enough. And there are other reasons why cashews are not sold unshelled in stores. We heard from a reader who spent more than a little time with cashew shells during his childhood:
The mature shell is thick and leathery and contains a corrosive brownish black oil that causes blisters on skin…. The juice of the apple causes indelible stains on clothes…
It would be uneconomical to import cashews in their shells, and that is why they are not sold this way…
As a child, I grew up with cashew trees all around, played with thousands of unshelled cashews (a game similar to marbles), raided the cashew grove near my high school, and watched moonshine cashew liquor being made as well as sold and consumed.
D
INESH
N
ETTAR
Edison, New Jersey
And a special apology to Daniel Pittman of LaSalle, Illinois, who defended our discussion of cashews to his merciless friends
.
In
Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?,
we discussed why a new order of checks starts with the number 101 rather than 1. Walter Nadel of Pembroke, Massachusetts, provides a technical reason why starting with 101 saves checkmakers some money:
When checks are printed, the first sheet through is at the bottom of the hopper, and the last sheet through is at the top. This requires backward-functioning numbering machines, which are set to start at the ending number and finish with the starting number. The order of checks can then be completed and shipped in the proper numerical sequence ready for use by the customer.
As the order is printed, and the numbers recede, they would read 102, 101, 100, 099, 098, etc., unless the press is stopped and the superfluous zero is manually depressed after 100. Again, at the point of 12, 11, 10, 09, the press would have to be stopped again to eliminate the second superfluous zero.
By encouraging the use of starting check orders with 101, the printer has saved the need to stop the press twice, a saving in time and efficiency, not to mention money.
W
ALTER
N
ADEL
Pembroke, Massachusetts
Many readers were not satisfied with the explanation provided in Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? about why IIII, and not IV, is used to signify the number four on clocks. We heard from Alden Foltz of Port Huron, Michigan, who collects ancient coins. Foltz assures us that all of his Roman coins used “IIII” to signify the number four. If coins don’t reflect the proper way to express four, what would? asks Foltz
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Further corroboration comes from Bruce Umbarger, who, like many readers, wondered how our explanation resolved the dilemma of how 9 would be expressed in Roman numerals in ancient times. Bruce consulted a book called
Number Words and Number Symbols,
by Kurt Menninger, which clearly shows “IIII” used to express 4 from as early as circa 130
B.C
. He also enclosed two multiplication tables from thirteenth-century monastic manuscripts: They also expressed 4 as “IIII.” “How can the habit of ‘IIII’ on clocks be traced to illiterate peasants when a copy of a sixteenth-century astrolabe [a device used to tell the time by observing the stars or sun] clearly shows a four rendered as ‘IIII’?
”
So why might the IIII have been changed, eventually, to IV? Reader Tom Woosnan of Hillsborough, California, sent us an excerpt of Isaac Asimov’s
Asimov on Numbers
that provides one possible explanation:
[IV]…are the first letters of IVPITER, the chief of the Roman gods, and the Romans may have had a delicacy about writing even the beginning of the name. Even today, on clock faces bearing Roman numerals, “four” is represented as IIII and never IV. This is not because the clock face does not accept the subtractive principle, for “nine” is represented as IX and never as VIIII.
An alternate explanation is that the expression of Roman numerals was not standardized throughout the Roman Empire, let alone throughout Europe
.
Speaking of clocks, we heard from someone who was presented with a copy of
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?
for his eighty-third birthday
:
The title struck a tender chord with me, for I was asked to reset a friend’s wall clock last fall, when folks were going from daylight savings time to the daylight wasting time.
I had pulled the clock’s cord from the wall outlet to make the change. When I returned the connection in the wall’s electric outlet, the clock was running backwards!
I pulled the cord from the outlet, turned the male fitting of the cord over, and plugged it in again. It ran forward, properly.
Why? God only knows. And he won’t tell.
V
ERNE
O. P
HELPS
Edina, Minnesota
For some reason, we tend to make exactly one
really
stupid mistake in each book. In Imponderables, it was the cashew question, but in
When Do Fish Sleep?,
it was this one
:
For shame, young man…Crickets do not produce chirps by rubbing their legs together. They have on each front wing a sharp edge, the scraper, and a file-like ridge, the file. They chirp by elevating the front wings and moving them so that the scraper of one wing rubs on the file of the other wing, giving a pulse, the chirp, generally on the closing stroke.
On a big male cricket, the scraper and the file can often be seen by the naked eye. You can take the wings of a cricket in your fingers and make the chirp sound yourself.
C
LIFFORD
D
ENNIS
P
H
.D. E
NTOMOLOGY
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
In
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?,
we discussed why dogs circle around before lying down. Although we stand by our answer, several readers wrote to us with an additional possible reason: to determine which way the wind is blowing. In this way, they can sleep with noses into the wind, in order to be warned of a predator approaching. Being on the “right” side of the wind may also help them hear predators.
In
Imponderables,
we discussed who is criminally responsible when an elevator is illegally overloaded. One reader indicates that the answer might be…a restaurant:
A few years back, I was in a building in Washington, D.C., with passenger elevators that might be accurately described as cozy. The building had an Italian restaurant on the ground floor, and as I arrived, four secretaries from an upstairs office were just getting on the elevator to go back to work, having had lunch together downstairs.
Every time they tried, though, the same thing happened: the doors would close, but as soon as they pressed the button for their floor, the doors would open again. They became rather angry at me, thinking I was doing something to keep the elevator from working properly.
I finally suggested that it appeared to me that they had overloaded the car and that it would probably work if one of them got out. One did leave the elevator, and the other three women were able to return to their floor immediately.
What amused me, though the women were rather embarrassed about it, was that the four were able to ride down together for their lunch, but their group weight gain during the meal was enough to trip the overload protection.
D
ALE
N
EIBURG
Laurel, Maryland
On to a less weighty subject, we heard from Terri Davis, of Newark, Delaware
…
Reading your book
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?
, I came across the question, “Why do so many mass mailers use return envelopes with windows?” The answer was interesting and reminded me of something I saw at work last year that answered a question I never thought to ask: What happens to the paper that gets punched out of envelopes to provide the window?
Scott Paper, Inc. uses a great deal of recycled fiber during the manufacturing process of its many products—so much so that it buys scraps from many other companies…Can you imagine the sight of 125 cubic feet of compressed envelope windows heading down to a watery grave? There were literally tons more of these windows waiting on the incoming barge to be turned into toilet paper, napkins, tissues, etc.
We’re happy that at least one company is making good use of scrap paper. After all, in
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?,
we already chastised doughnut stores for having clerks picking up doughnuts with tissues and then stuffing the same tissues, germs and all, into the bag the customer takes home. Jack Schwager of Goldens Bridge, Bridge, New York, mounts a passionate defense of the practice
:
Germs are not the only issue. If they were, then indeed it would make no sense to put the tissue in the bag. Let me suggest a simple experiment, which would make it clear to anyone why it would be desirable to leave the doughnut wrapped in a tissue.
Wait for a hot, humid summer day. Go into Dunkin’ Donuts and order a dozen doughnuts. Make sure they all have icing and that the attendant uses a bag instead of a box. Now go into an unairconditioned car (preferably black in color) and drive around, taking care of several errands before returning home. Upon returning home, separate the doughnuts, giving the one with chocolate icing to the anxious child who loves chocolate but hates strawberry, and the strawberry one to his brother, who hates chocolate.
What? You can’t neatly separate the doughnuts, which have by now turned into a congealed blob? Hmmmm.
Hmmm, indeed. It has been our experience that the tissues do absolutely no good in keeping the frosting separated, since they aren’t large enough to surround the doughnuts and the tissues are far from surgically inserted to minimize friction between icings. We won’t even go into the dreaded powdered sugar crisis, in which every doughnut in the bag becomes sprinkled with the white stuff whether you like it or not. If the stores really wanted to make sure the doughnuts did not mate, they could certainly make a form-fitting tissue for them, a little baggie that covered the pastries, or provide a box with dividers
.