Imponderables Read online

  1. The skaters must choose music that will please judges. Competitive skaters are mostly in their teens and twenties, but judges are mostly middle-aged and older. Skating to “Stairway to Heaven” or John Cage's last avant-grade symphony is no more likely to score high with international skating judges than singing a Prince medley would with Miss America judges. In some cases, coaches select the music for skaters; some skaters select their own. Usually, it is a collaborative process between the two. But music must always be selected that will impress judges, even if the arrangement is unlikely to bowl over audiences.

  Theoretically, the selection of music should have no bearing on the marks that skaters are given. Judges are only supposed to judge how well skaters interpret the music. But not one of the skating authorities Imponderables spoke to doubted that music selection was a crucial element in building a successful program. One judge we spoke to admitted that an emotional, easy-to-follow piece of music, for example, was much more likely to engage judges than a difficult, abstract, cacophonous one. At the very least, pleasing music can keep the judges’ attention during indifferent stretches of a skating program.

  Skating judges need not have any musical training and are often musically parochial and unsophisticated. In international competition, it might be necessary to please (or at least not offend) judges from Japan, East Germany, and Canada. As a result, the television principle of “least objectionable program” is in force—if you don't want any of the judges to “tune out,” you had better not offend any of them.

  There have been several examples of prominent skaters being punished for their selection of music. The most notable recent example was the United States’ ice dancing pair of Judy Blumberg and Michael Seibert, whose lovely performance of “Scheherazade” was not awarded a medal in the 1984 Winter Olympics because a judge felt that the music was inappropriate for ice dancing. According to Blumberg, this particular judge loved their skating, but didn't feel that any music inappropriate for a dance floor should be used in the ice rink.

  2. Vocals cannot be used in ice dancing and, in practice, aren't used in free skating. Although there is no actual prohibition of vocal recordings in free skating, no one dares defy the common law. The vast majority of popular music contains vocals. The restrictions on vocal selection hinders skaters in two ways. The most obvious is that they are deprived of using what are often the best orchestrated and produced versions of any given song and the versions with which both audiences and judges are most familiar. Even worse, skaters and coaches are forced to become musical archivists, desperately scrambling to find any all-instrumental rendition of a song they select. Judy Blumberg told Imponderables that when she and Michael Seibert were hunting for selections for their Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers routine, there were some songs that they wanted to use for which they could find no all-instrumental versions.

  The skaters and coaches we spoke to were evenly divided about the merits of the vocal restriction. Coach Ron Levington, who has guided the careers of Peter and Kitty Carruthers, feels that the rule isn't necessary and is rather arbitrary. In his opinion, the rule remains in force largely to distance competitive amateur skating events from the professional ice shows. Levington echoed the feeling of others that there is no reason that vocals have to be distracting to the judges.

  Seibert and Blumberg's coach, Claire Dillie, strongly dissents. The purpose of ice dancing, to her, is to interpret rhythms. Dillie feels that there is a strong danger that if vocals were allowed in competitions, skaters would start interpreting lyrics rather than music and that skating doesn't need vocals and lyrics any more than ballet does. Still, Dillie recognizes the problems in finding suitable instrumental orchestrations of popular music, and she encouraged Blumberg and Seibert to use a piece that was specifically written and arranged for them.

  3. There is pressure to have several tempo changes in the long program. The answer to this unstated law, which is meant to assure the athletic and interpretive versatility of champions, is for skaters to splice together up to four different pieces of music. Often, the surgical procedures help to showcase the performers but are musical abominations. There is a maximum of four-tempo changes per long program, but using four selections in as many minutes usually defies any attempt to make the routine an artistic whole. This is why “theme routines” like Blumberg and Seibert's Astaire-Rogers medley makes sense—they combine different songs and tempos but provide a sensible context for lumping together the different songs.

  4. It is important that musical selections provide opportunities for skaters to demonstrate difficult technical moves. One reason icedancing music is usually superior to free-skating music is that the latter competitions include more acrobatic leaps and spins. Music must be found to accommodate these movements, making the selection of appropriate material that much more difficult.

  5. Many arenas that house ice skating competitions have horrendous sound systems. And when you are hearing the lousy sound secondhand via television (which itself has lousy sound), often with Dick Button wailing away, no music is likely to sound celestial.

  6. Too many skaters and coaches just don't care enough about musical selection. Many skaters, with excellent technical skills, are just kids. They don't have the emotional depth to genuinely interpret music. Without a sensitive coach who understands their limitations and strengths, the students can become automatons, oblivious to the music. And if the coach doesn't care about music, the selections can be as banal and the arrangements as overbearing as many of them are today.

  When we first asked experts about this question, we almost expected them to say that there was a special recording studio in West Germany that recorded muddy, ponderous, Euro-pop versions of songs specifically for skaters. Their strategy would be to drain the original song of all vestiges of life to ensure that the music would never distract judges from the skaters.

  But it turns out not to be true. The skaters and their coaches really are trying to find the best music possible for their performances. But fate has conspired to make this a difficult task indeed.

  Why are so many measuring spoons inaccurate?

  The next time you strain to measure exactly one level quarter teaspoon of oregano for your stew, do yourself a favor. Relax. Chances are your measuring spoons aren't accurate anyway. Watch Julia Child throw spices around on television. She doesn't know from measuring cups.

  For eons, home economists have told us that recipes in cookbooks refer to level measures. And for just as long, we amateur cooks have decided to throw a little extra in anyway. If two tablespoons of oregano is good in a spaghetti sauce, wouldn't two and a half be better? Or two heaping tablespoons (which can measure more than three tablespoons)? Occasionally, a stingy cook can actually be seen using level measurements for liquid, but no one can seem to resist using heaping measures of dry things. So it isn't like the inaccuracy of measuring spoons is a burning issue in America. Still, the nagging question remains: Why do kitchen measurement gadgets fail at the one and only task that they were created to do, the sole purpose of their existence?

  If you have more than one set of measuring spoons or cups, try comparing them and see if they hold exactly the same amount of liquid. Chances are, they won't. The most obvious explanation for their failure to provide accuracy is shoddiness in craftsmanship and apathy from the manufacturer. This is probably true, especially since manufacturers have no federal testing standards to meet. A second hypothesis, equally valid, is that consumers never bother to test the accuracy of their measuring instruments. Also true. Do you even know who manufactured your cups and spoons? Who do you complain to? Woolworth's? A third possibility is that these instruments get altered and warped by contact with hot water in the dishwater. A possibility.

  But notice something strange. Inaccurate measuring equipment almost always errs on the low side. Imponderables found measuring spoons that held as much as one-third less liquid than specified. Might this be the manufacturers' way of getting back at us cretins, who a
lways use a heaping measure of anything we dump into a recipe?

  Why don't we ever see the money from pay phones being collected?

  A quick survey of twenty friends throughout the country revealed the startling information that a grand total of one had ever seen a pay phone being emptied. Do coins from pay phones roll down the slot and collect in underground passages? Are pay phones emptied at 4:30 A.M., when only cockroaches and Bianca Jagger are awake?

  No such luck. This Imponderable has a rather mundane answer, one that doesn't totally explain this mystery. It turns out that almost all localities have their pay phones collected during normal business hours, from 9:00 A.M.—5:00 P.M., usually only on weekdays.

  The operation itself is not a complicated one. There is a cash compartment on the right-hand side of pay phones. Each has a faceplate with a separate key, and the receptacle that holds the coins is removed. It should take the telephone company worker only about three minutes to empty a pay phone and leave, one reason why your chances of seeing a phone emptied, unless it is in a cluster of phones, is small.

  Like jukeboxes that keep a tally of which records are played most often, the pay phone has a mechanism to keep track of usage patterns. The Coin Operation Information Network keeps a history of the last fourteen collections and predicts the optimum time to next empty the phone. The number of times a pay phone has to be emptied obviously depends upon the traffic pattern of its location—airport phones must be emptied much more often than one in a secluded street—but many phones need to be emptied as infrequently as every other week.

  If anything, pay phones will have to be emptied less in the future. An increasing majority of pay phone revenue comes not from local calls but from credit card calls, collect calls, third party calls, and long distance calls through other carriers, all requiring no coin outlay from the patron.

  Perhaps the reason we see so few phones emptied is that they tend to be isolated, whereas parking meters tend to be in rows—with phones, there is simply less of a chance of finding a worker unloading the apparatus. If you stood in front of one pay phone (that is emptied once every other week) for a minute, the odds are 6,720 to 1 against seeing a worker in any phase of emptying the phone. Stiff odds. Still, the sheer rarity of finding a pay phone being emptied seems a tad mysterious. We hung around street corners quite a bit in our youth, for more than a minute at a time. Where was the phone company?

  Why do yellow lights in Washington, D.C., traffic signals last longer than those in New York City?

  Setting the timing of green, yellow, and red lights at traffic signals is a crucial job, not only does this decision regulate traffic flow, it can save lives. Miscalculation of traffic flow can lead engineers to set the wrong timing on traffic lights, causing at least four potentially serious problems:

  1. Unnecessary delay: If the less busy street on an intersection is given the green light as long as the major road, the traffic on the busy street is likely to stack up with traffic. The more traffic on a street, the longer its green light should shine.

  2. Disobedience: It might be assumed that the longer the yellow light and the longer the lag time between a red light switching to green, the slower (and the safer) the traffic will flow. This is simply not the case. Traffic-flow engineers have conclusively proved that drivers become attuned to the timing of traffic lights and will take advantage of any patterns that will slow them down. Some drivers will crane their necks to look at the traffic light for the cars going the other way. If they know that the traffic going perpendicular to them has a red light, they will start edging into the intersection even if their light has not yet turned green. If drivers know that yellow lights last for a longish six seconds, they will run any yellow lights they encounter, knowing that they have a long “grace period.” Disrespect for yellow lights can be a major cause of accidents, especially if the yellow light jumper happens to encounter a red light craner coming the other way.

  3. Bad traffic signal timing can induce drivers to use less adequate routes: Traffic flow is planned to encourage drivers to take already busy streets, especially during peak hours. If drivers know that the lights have been set to create constant stop and go traffic, they will find alternate routes, overtaxing streets that were not meant for such extensive use.

  4. Accidents: Particularly if the transition between green and yellow lights or yellow and red lights is too abrupt, rear-end collisions can result.

  Many intersections are set up to maintain six different sets of timing for traffic signals:

  AM Peak Period Demand (morning rush hour);

  PM Peak Period Demand (evening rush hour);

  Average Daily Demand (in between the two rush hours and immediately after the PM Peak Period Demand);

  Nighttime Low Flow Demand (on major streets, it can be nearly impossible to hit a red light at night);

  Weekend Demand (depending upon the area, traffic might increase or decrease during the weekend);

  Special Function Demand (streets near ballparks, for example, would have radically different traffic patterns while a football game was in progress).

  There is a seventh alternative. If traffic flow from opposite directions is greatly disproportionate some or all of the day, signals can be set to flash red in one direction and yellow in the other.

  Even the number of flashes per minute is specified. A light should flash not less than 50 or more than 60 times per minute. According to the federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, “The illuminated period of each flash shall be not less than half and not more than two-thirds of the total flash cycle.”

  How are all of these times determined? It isn't easy, but there are certain rules of thumb that engineers can use. For example, fifteen seconds of a green signal is generally recognized as the minimum time to accomplish major movement in an intersection. Thirty-second green lights are not uncommon.

  Engineers must also consider the plight of pedestrians at an intersection, so pedestrian flow is measured as rigorously as automobile movement. The minimum period for a walk signal to flash, four seconds, is used when less than ten pedestrians are expected to cross (from both directions) on that green light. If ten to twenty pedestrians are expected to cross, seven seconds would usually be allowed, and longer if there are more pedestrians anticipated. Of course, pedestrians have a habit of stepping off the curb even when the DON'T WALK sign is flashing, the equivalent of the yellow light for cars. And just like a too long yellow light, if the DON'T WALK sign flashes forever, pedestrians will treat it like a green light, not only endangering their lives, but also slowing traffic wishing to make turns into the street they are crossing.

  The situation is even more dangerous when determining the duration of yellow lights—clearly, the crucial timing decision on traffic signals. The first decision that must be made is how long the yellow light should be on. The usual range is three to six seconds. The longer interval is used when approach speeds coming up to the intersection are high, such as on undivided highways with traffic signals.

  The next important decision is whether the yellow interval should be followed by a short all-way red interval, so that no new traffic will enter the intersection for a brief period. The purpose of having a four-way red signal is to clear out the intersection entirely before releasing cross traffic. The advantage of this strategy is that speeding cars will not encounter a just-turned green light and assume that they may blithely enter the intersection without looking for cross traffic. The disadvantage to using the four-way red strategy is that it slows down traffic and encourages the aforementioned red light craners to disrespect the meaning of the red light that they know will be turning green any second.

  It is assumed that the reaction time of the average driver is one second. Thus, theoretically, if engineers allowed the signal for one direction to receive a green light at exactly the same time the opposite direction gets a red light, it should allow for a little more than a second to clear the intersection. Engineers in most urban areas,
however, have found that with red light creepers, this strategy simply cuts it too close and have chosen a four-way red as the lesser danger.

  The only way, then, to answer why Washington, D.C., yellow lights last longer than New York City lights (or any other major city that we have ever seen) is to note that D.C. drivers simply have a different psychology than New York drivers. Our capital's drivers will not enter and block an intersection even if they have a green light (it might be added that this behavior isn't all altruism—D.C. cops ticket drivers caught in the middle of an intersection, even if they had a green light). By eliminating gridlock, the D.C. police have created a situation where they can afford to allow drivers to “run” yellow lights. As long as the driver does not block the intersection, the yellow light can be “blown” without blocking perpendicular traffic when the light turns green. Ironically, then, the longer yellow light in D.C. promotes faster traffic flow than the shorter yellow light in New York.

  Why does Wendy's have square hamburgers?

  By the time that Wendy's International incorporated, in 1969, McDonald's was already a giant in the fast-food industry. Burger King was number two in the hamburger was and was only beginning to market its product effectively. McDonald's had already secured so many desirable locations and could afford so much more national advertising than any of its competitors that Wendy's never seriously contemplated overtaking McDonald's in sales volume.

  The Ohio-based Wendy's at first concentrated its efforts east of the Mississippi River and tried to find ways to differentiate its product from McDonald's. Right from the start, Wendy's signs read “Old-Fashioned Hamburgers.” Many first-time customers must have been shocked to find that Wendy's considered an “old-fashioned” hamburger to be a square one.