Why do Clocks run clockwise? Read online

  238

  WHY does the first puff of a cigarette smell better than

  subsequent ones?

  238

  WHY do women in the United States shave their

  armpits?

  239

  WHY don’t you ever see really tall old people?

  239

  WHY do only older men seem to have hairy ears?

  239

  Acknowledgments

  241

  Subject Index

  248

  Master Index of Imponderability

  257

  About the Author

  Also by David Feldman

  Credits

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  xx / DAVID FELDMAN

  Preface

  If you read the first volume of Imponderables, you now know why you don’t ever see baby pigeons, why women open their mouths while applying mascara, and why people look up when thinking.

  But the last frontiers in human knowledge haven’t quite yet been plumbed. Thus the burning need for Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?

  and Other Imponderables.

  Imponderables are the everyday mysteries of life that aren’t very important—until they occur to you. Then they begin to gnaw at your brain like termites boring through wood. An Imponderable is a mystery that cannot be solved by numbers or measurements or standard reference books. You will sleep better when you find out where flies go in winter, what happens to the tread that wears off tires, and why hamburger-bun bottoms are so thin that they disin-tegrate under the weight of the patty. You will be a better person for knowing this stuff.

  Most of the new Imponderables come from readers of the first book. It is humbling to discover that the readers of Imponderables are at least as imaginative (crazed?) as its author.

  Many readers asked for a subject index in the next volume of Imponderables. Your wish is our command. We’ve also added a new feature, “Frustables,” short for Frustrating Imponderables, a top-ten list of Imponderables whose answers eluded us. We are offering a free copy of the next edition of Imponderables to the first person who provides evidence or referrals that lead us to solutions of these ultimate mysteries.

  And, of course, we still offer a free copy of the next edition of Imponderables to the first person who poses an Imponderable we answer in our next volume. The last page of the book will tell you how you can unburden your soul of the mysteries that plague you and participate in this great intellectual journey. But for now, sit back and enjoy.

  xxi

  What Is the Purpose of the Warning Label on a Mattress? And What Happens If I Rip It Off?

  Here is an Imponderable that happens to be one of the foremost moral issues plaguing our society today. Many transgressors are consumed with guilt over having ripped off mattress tags. Some are almost as upset about impetuously doing in pillow tags, as well.

  We are here to say: do not be hard on yourself. You have done nothing legally wrong. You have not even done anything morally wrong.

  Those warning labels are there to protect you, not to shackle you.

  If you look carefully at the language of the dire warning, there is always a proviso that the label is not to be removed “except by the consumer.” Labeling laws are up to the individual states. Thirty-two of the fifty states have laws requiring mat 1

  tress tags, and none of the states cares whether the purchaser of a mattress rips up the tag.

  So how do these warning labels protect you? Most important, they inform the consumer exactly what the filling material is made of, because the fill is not visible. The label also notifies the consumer that the manufacturer is registered with all of the appropriate government agencies and has fulfilled its obligations in complying with their regulations. There is also manufacturing information on the tag that may help the consumer when and if a warranty adjustment is desired (though this is a good argument for keeping the tag on the mattress, or at least filing it for future reference).

  One of the reasons why mattress warning label laws were imposed in the first place is that some less-than-ethical merchants used to palm off secondhand mattresses as new ones. It is legal, in most states, to sell secondhand mattresses as long as they are properly sterilized. A white tag guarantees a new mattress; a sterilized secondhand mattress carries a yellow tag.

  Submitted by the Reverend Ken Vogler, of Jeffersonville, Indiana.

  Thanks also to: Mike Dant, of Bardstown, Kentucky, and Owen Spann, of New York, New York.

  Why Do Dogs Walk Around in Circles Before Lying Down?

  The most common and logical explanation for the phenomenon is that in the wild, circling was a method of preparing a sleeping area or bed, particularly when it was necessary to flatten down an area among tall grass, leaves, and rocks.

  Some experts also believe that circling is a way for dogs to map territory, to define an area of power. Dog writer Elizabeth Crosby Metz explains the habit this way:

  I believe it also has to do with spreading their proprietary scent around their nesting site, to say: “Keep away, this is MY nest!”

  2 / DAVID FELDMAN

  In fact, as a breeder I know that mother dogs will circle many times before lying down to feed their sightless, deaf newborns as a way of spreading her scent and indicating to them exactly where she is and how far they have to go to reach her. Think about it: How else can blind, deaf newborns so surely find the milk bar?

  Submitted by Daniel M. Keller, of Solana Beach, California. Thanks also to: Joanna Parker, of Miami, Florida.

  If Nothing Sticks to Teflon, How Do They Get Teflon to Stick to the Pan?

  “They,” of course, is Du Pont, which owns the registered trademark for Teflon and its younger and now more popular cousin, Silverstone.

  G. A. Quinn, of Du Pont, told Imponderables that the application of both is similar:

  When applying Silverstone to a metal frypan, the interior of the pan is first grit-blasted, then a primer coat is sprayed on and baked. A second layer of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is applied, baked and dried again. A third coat of PFTE is applied, baked and dried.

  About the only thing that sticks to PTFE is PTFE. So, the 3-coat process used in Silverstone forms an inseparable bond between the PTFE layers and the primer coat bonds to the rough, grit-blasted metal surface.

  Du Pont has recently introduced Silverstone Supra, also a three-layer coating that is twice as durable as conventional Silverstone.

  Submitted by Anthony Virga, of Yonkers, New York.

  Why Is the Scoring System in Tennis So Weird?

  Tennis as we know it today is barely over a hundred years old. A Welshman, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, devised the game WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 3

  as a diversion for his guests to play on his lawn before the real purpose for the get-together—a pheasant shoot. Very quickly, however, the members of the Wimbledon Cricket Club adopted Wingfield’s game for use on their own underutilized lawns, empty since croquet had waned in popularity in the late eighteenth century.

  Long before Wingfield, however, there were other forms of tennis.

  The word “tennis” first appeared in a poem by John Gower in 1399, and Chaucer’s characters spoke of playing “rackets” in 1380. Court tennis (also known as “real” tennis) dates back to the Middle Ages.

  That great athlete, Henry VIII, was a devotee of the game. Court tennis was an indoor game featuring an asymmetrical rectangular cement court with a sloping roof, a hard ball, a lopsided racket, and windows on the walls that came into play. Very much a gentleman’s sport, the game is still played by a few diehards, though only a handful of courts currently exist in the United States.

  Lawn tennis’s strange scoring system was clearly borrowed from court tennis. Although court tennis used a fifteen-point system, the scoring system was a little different from modern scoring. Each point in a game was worth fifteen points (while modern tennis progresses 15-30-40-game, court
tennis progressed 15-30-45-game). Instead of the current three or five sets of six games each, court tennis matches were six sets of four games each.

  The most accepted theory for explaining the strange scoring system is that it reflected Europeans’ preoccupation with astronomy, and particularly with the sextant (one-sixth of a circle). One-sixth of a circle is, of course, 60 degrees (the number of points in a game).

  Because the victor would have to win six sets of four games each, or 24 points, and each point was worth 15 points, the game concluded when the winner had “completed” a circle of 360 degrees (24×15).

  Writings by Italian Antonio Scaino indicate that the sextant scoring system was firmly in place as early as 1555. When the score of a game is tied after six points in modern tennis, we call 4 / DAVID FELDMAN

  it “deuce”—the Italians already had an equivalent in the sixteenth century, a due (in other words, two points were needed to win).

  Somewhere along the line, however, the geometric progression of individual game points was dropped. Instead of the third point scoring 45, it became worth 40. According to the Official Encyclo-pedia of Tennis, it was most likely dropped to the lower number for the ease of announcing scores out loud, because “forty” could not be confused with any other number. In the early 1700s, the court tennis set was extended to six games, obscuring the astronomical origins of the scoring system.

  When lawn tennis began to surpass court tennis in popularity, there was a mad scramble to codify rules and scoring procedures.

  The first tennis body in this country, the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association, first met in 1881 to establish national standards. Prior to the formation of the USNLTA, each tennis club selected its own scoring system. Many local tennis clubs simply credited a player with one point for each rally won. Silly concept. Luckily, the USNLTA stepped into the breach and immediately adopted the English scoring system, thus ensuring generations of confused and intimidated tennis spectators.

  There have been many attempts to simplify the scoring system in order to entice new fans. The World Pro Championship League tried the table-tennis scoring system of twenty-one—point matches, but neither the scoring system nor the League survived.

  Perhaps the most profound scoring change in this century has been the tie breaker. The U.S. Tennis Association’s Middle States section, in 1968, experimented with sudden-death play-offs, which for the first time in modern tennis history allowed a player who won all of his regulation service games to lose a set. The professionals adopted the tie breaker in 1970, and it is used in almost every tournament today.

  Submitted by Charles F. Myers, of Los Altos, California.

  WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 5

  Why Have Humans Lost Most of Their Body Hair?

  Anthropologists have debated this issue for a long time. Hair on most creatures is an important means of maintaining heat in the body, so the reasons for humans losing this valuable form of insulation are unlikely to be trivial. Here are some of the more logical theories advanced about why hair loss made sense for humans, along with the opinions of Desmond Morris, whose book The Naked Ape derives its title from this very Imponderable.

  1. Hair loss allowed primitive people to cope better with the myriad of skin parasites, such as ticks, mites, and vermin, that bothered them. Parasites were more than a nuisance; they spread many potentially fatal infectious diseases. Although this theory makes sense, it doesn’t explain why other relatives of man, equally bothered by parasites, have not evolved similarly.

  2. Naked skin could have been a social rather than a func 6 / DAVID FELDMAN

  tional change. Most species have a few arbitrarily selected characteristics that differentiate them from other species—what Desmond Morris calls “recognition marks.” Morris doubts the validity of the

  “recognition mark theory,” for hair loss is a far more drastic step than is necessary to differentiate humans from other primates.

  3. Hair loss might have had a sexual and reproductive basis. Male mammals generally are hairier than their female counterparts. This type of sex-based physiological difference helps make one sex more attractive to the other. Morris also mentions that hair loss served to heighten the excitement of sex—there is simply more tactile sensation without fur. Now that we are in the midst of a worldwide population explosion and trying to slow the birth rate, it is easy to forget that nature has built into our species characteristics to help increase our numbers.

  4. Some anthropologists believe that before humans became hunting animals, stalking the savannas of East Africa, we went through a phase as an aquatic animal, seeking food at tropical sea-shores rather than on the more arid open plains. Without hairy bodies, humans became more streamlined in the water, able to swim and wade effectively. This is also a possible explanation for our hair being so plentiful on the head: if we spent much of our time wading in the water, only the top of the head need be covered, as protection against the sun. According to this theory, man left the water only after he developed the tools necessary to hunt.

  5. Even if the aquatic phase never existed, hair loss helped humans regulate their body temperature after they moved from the forests to a plains-based hunting culture. Morris questions this theory: after all, other mammals, such as lions and jackals, made a similar switch of terrains without accompanying hair loss. Furthermore, the loss of body hair had a negative effect in that it subjected humans to dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

  6. Hair loss kept primitive humans from overheating during the chase when hunting. This is Morris’s pet theory. When our WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 7

  ancestors became hunters, their level of physical activity increased enormously. By losing their heavy coat of hair, and by increasing the number of fat and sweat glands all over the body, humans could cool off faster and more efficiently. Sweat glands could not could not deliver their cooling effect nearly as effectively if fur trapped perspiration.

  As divorced as we are from the problems of our primate forebears, Morris believes that human genetics will always countermand our attempts to elevate our culture. “[Man’s] genes will lag behind, and he will be constantly reminded that, for all his environment-moulding achievements, he is still at heart a very naked ape.”

  Submitted by Sean S. Gayle, of Slidell, Louisiana.

  Why Don’t People Get Goosebumps on Their Faces?

  Be proud of the fact that you don’t get goosebumps on your face.

  It’s one of the few things that separate you from chimpanzees.

  We get goosebumps only on parts of our bodies that have hair.

  As you have learned from the exciting previous entry, the purpose of body hair is to protect us from the cold. But when our hair doesn’t provide enough insulation, the small muscles at the bottom of each hair tighten, so that the hair stands up.

  In animals covered with fur, the risen strands form a protective nest of hairs. Cold air is trapped in the hair instead of bouncing against delicate skin. The hair thus insulates the animals against the cold.

  Although humans have lost most of their body hair, the same muscular contractions occur to defend against the cold. Instead of a mat of hair, all we have to face the elements are a few wispy tufts and a multitude of mounds of skin, which used to support 8 / DAVID FELDMAN

  an erect hair and now must go it alone. When a male lion gets

  “goosebumps,” his erect hair makes him ferocious; our goosebumps only make us look vulnerable.

  Submitted by Pam Cicero, of Madison, Ohio.

  Why Doesn’t Countdown Leader on Films Count All the Way to One?

  Remember watching the leader on sixteen-millimeter films in school, waiting for the countdown to go 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-whoops? It never got down to one.

  Countdown leader, of course, is there to help the projectionist time when a film is going to start. Each number is timed to appear precisely one second after the other. The projectionist usually uses the number two as the cue to allow the proje
ctor light to hit the screen and begin the show. What would be number one is simply the start of the picture.

  Wouldn’t it work just as well to have zero represent the beginning of the movie, so that frustrated audiences could have the satisfaction of counting down from ten to one? Of course it would. But as in most areas, tradition and inertia rule. As Bob Dylan wrote, “Don’t follow leaders.”

  Submitted by Ronald C. Semone, of Washington, D.C.

  When a Company Sells Lobster Tails to Restaurants and Stores, What Do They Do with the Rest of the Lobster?

  The American or Maine lobster is usually delivered to stores and restaurants whole and served in the shell. The claws, legs, and WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 9

  body all contain good lobster meat, and aficionados covet the green

  “tomalley” or liver and the red roe often found in female lobsters.

  As Richard B. Allen, vice-president of the Atlantic Offshore Fishermen’s Association, put it, “If they are not eating almost everything except the shell, they are missing a fine eating experience.”

  If you find “lobster tails” listed on a restaurant menu, chances are you are ordering rock or spiny lobsters. Unlike Maine lobsters, spiny lobsters do not have big claws, but rather two large antennas. We spoke to Red Lobster’s purchaser, Bob Joseph, who told us that most of Red Lobster’s tails come from Brazil, Honduras, and the Bahamas. Red Lobster buys about two million pounds of spiny lobster a year (as well as a similar poundage of Maine lobster). The nontail meat of the spiny lobster is stringy and watery compared to the tails, and not as good-looking. Consumers seem to prefer the big, steaklike chunks of the tail rather than the shreds of meat found on other parts of the crustacean.

  Although some restaurants and fish stores will buy the relatively small claws of spiny (and rock) lobsters, what happens to the nontail meat that isn’t in demand? The claw, thorax, and head meat is sold as “meat packs,” which are used for soups (lobster bisque, gumbos) and reconstituted for seafood salads. Seafood and Italian restaurants often use “meat-pack” lobster for pastas. And, surprisingly, one of the biggest users of lobster “meat pack” is egg-roll makers.