Do Elephants Jump?

by David Feldman

  Through Web searches, we were able to learn that DKE has a motto that it discloses to the public Kerothen Filoi Aie (“friends from the heart forever”) but also a secret one, D K Chi Epi eye Kai Aie (“right and equity”). Neophytes in the fraternity are warned: “This secret motto should never be uttered otherwise than in a whisper and then only in the presence of those known to be Dekes.” Likewise, during induction ceremonies, neophytes are required to swear “never to reveal any part or parts of the activities upon which I now enter whether or not my initiation is successful.”

  Although different fraternities have adopted different rituals, the dominance of Greek culture continues. Joe Walt, historian of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, wrote to Imponderables explaining why:

  Much of what we incorporate into our names, our patron deities, and indeed our rituals was inspired by the powerful classical influence on education, and indeed much of educated society, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  Most of it comes originally from the Greeks, but much of it uses Roman names and references. During the eighteenth century, English literature referred to the classical deities with their Roman names, for Latin had been preserved and used far more than had Greek during earlier centuries.

  Thus SAE adopted a Greek-letter name, as did virtually all fraternities, but it celebrates Minerva, rather than Athena, as its patron Goddess…. noble Leslie DeVotie, SAE’s founder, who wrote the SAE ritual, was aiming to become a minister of the gospel and did go on to seminary after he graduated from the University of Alabama, and he knew Greek well.

  In any case, we — all the fraternities — have developed with a happy Greek-Roman-Christian ecumenism in our rituals and symbols.

  And what about sororities? Secret female societies didn’t even exist until two were founded at Wesleyan Female College in the 1850s (one of them later turned into Alpha Delta Pi), but then it wasn’t like women were attending college in droves in the eighteenth century. No Greek letters were associated with female societies until 1870, and the first Greek women’s group was Gamma Phi Beta — established at DePauw University in 1870.

  Because of the long traditions of these societies, and their many rituals and vows of secrecy, it’s hard to imagine how they’ll ever move away from the Greek names. Perhaps this represents a marketing window for some new groups. What’s wrong with a social group with an English name and motto? We think “Joe’s Club” and “Sally’s Society” have a certain ring to them.

  Submitted by John Galt, via the Internet.

  Why Are Charcoal Barbecues Usually Round and Gas Grills Usually Rectangular?

  The kettle shape of the famous Weber Grill was initially more a matter of convenience than inspiration. George Stephen worked as a welder at the Weber Brothers Metal Works, and was frustrated by how often his grilling attempts on open braziers were foiled by wind, rain, blowing ashes, and flare-ups. By creating a deep barbecue, he helped protect food from these elements.

  His job was welding metal spheres together to create buoys. According to “The Story of Weber” at www.webergrillrestaurant.com,

  It was in these very spheres that his idea took shape. He knew a rounded cooking bowl with a lid was the key to success. He added three legs to the bottom, a handle to the top, and took the oddity home.

  As public relations representative, Donna Myers, president of the DHM Group, a public relations firm that represents many clients in the barbecue field, told us: “The round kettle was pretty easy to make with no seaming.”

  Stephen designed his first barbecue kettle in 1951, Weber Brothers Metal Works allowed him to stamp the kettles, and they attained success quickly. Most of our sources would concur with Bruce Bjorkman, director of marketing for Traeger Grills, about the reason why most charcoal grills ever since have been round:

  Probably the best answer I can give you is that most [charcoal grills] are round because people are knocking off the Weber charcoal grill, which was one of the first mass-produced charcoal grills in America. The first mass-produced grill was a brazier produced by the BBQ Company. It was a round, open grill…and goes back to the 1940s.

  No one can accuse Traeger of following in the footsteps of George Stephen — it offers barbecues in the shape (and color) of a pig and a longhorn steer (“no bull!”).

  Not everyone jumped on the bandwagon, though. Many other manufacturers have and still do produce non-round charcoal grills. J. Richard Ethridge, president of Backyard Barbecues in Lake Forest, California, recalls that his company made large rectangular charcoal grills in the 1960s. But Ethridge has moved on to round barbecues with a difference — Backyard offers grills in the shape of a golf ball (perched on a tee) and an eight-ball nestled on a “cue” stand. Both of these models are available with your choice of fuel — propane, natural gas, or charcoal.

  And the reverse is true as well. You can find round gas grills, such as the space-age model offered by Evo, a Beaverton, Oregon, company, which makes round gas grills with a flat, solid cooking surface. George Foreman’s outdoor grill is a propane-powered round model that looks not unlike a Weber Grill.

  Bruce Bjorkman believes that the domed top of round charcoal grills might aid in creating a “convection radiant dynamic,” so that food cooks a little more evenly as heat is bouncing back in all directions. Donna Myers notes that after Weber’s success, plenty of other non-round charcoal grills, especially square-covered cookers, became quite popular and performed well:

  I don’t believe that the roundness and depth were ultimately essential. What was probably discovered was that a lid with any shape would do the job.

  Myers notes that the rectangular form of gas grills was almost certainly a matter of economics: “I’m not sure whether gas grill manufacturers would tell you that it was the cost that led to that shape, but I’m quite sure that was the motivation.”

  We found one who was more than happy to share exactly this experience. J. Richard Ethridge points out that gas grills are more complicated to manufacture than charcoal grills:

  I think the manufacturing process pretty much dictated the shape of gas grills…. It is very difficult and expensive to manufacture a big round grill. Our grill is twenty-four inches in diameter and it takes a 650-ton press (1.3 million pounds of pressure) to stamp out that big a round grill. Metal (cold-rolled steel) will only “stretch” so far. There are not many factories in the U.S. or Asia that have a 650-ton or bigger press — they are very expensive.

  If you look closely at the Weber charcoal grill, you will see that it is, indeed, round if you look at it from the top. But if you look at it from the side, you’ll see that the top is flat at the top, and the bottom is oval. It is not truly round-ball shaped. On the other hand, square box or rectangular grills are very easy to make in any size. It is much easier to bend straight edges on a large piece of metal than to make a box shape.

  Ethridge pointed out other issues that make it less difficult to manufacture rectangular gas grills. For technical reasons, it is easier and cheaper to craft rectangular burners, and it is difficult to disperse heat evenly when you use a rectangular burner in a round grill. Most gas grills also have attached lids, while charcoal grills do not. While it is easy to manufacture a hinge for a rectangular grill with a flat back, Ethridge found when he first manufactured the 8-Ball and Golf Ball grills, that Backyard had to design a special hinge for the round grill so that it would lift up the lid first and then open. Even Weber, whose round kettles dominate the charcoal grill market, manufactures rectangular gas grills, presumably for economic reasons.

  We were curious about whether Weber claims any advantage to the round shape of its charcoal grills, and were a bit stunned when our query was met by this response from the legal department:

  As Weber is a privately held company, our policy is not to provide any information regarding the federally protected shape of our kettle grill. Although interesting to others, we consider the subject to be a trade secret, and highly confidential.

  We did
n’t realize that the Weber’s spherical form was a secret, but the guarded response is proof positive that in the barbecue world, it’s the steak, and the sizzle, and the shape that matter.

  Submitted by Jonathan McPherson of Richland, Washington.

  Why Do We Rub Our Eyes When We’re Tired?

  If the first sign of wisdom is knowing what you don’t know, then many of the physicians we contacted could put owls to shame. This is precisely the kind of Imponderable that we often have trouble answering. Patients don’t run to doctors demanding that their eye rubbing be eliminated; doctors don’t learn about eye rubbing in medical school — it’s not a clinical problem. Researchers don’t receive grants from the government to research eye rubbing. Somehow, it was reassuring to hear so many doctors respond honestly, with “I don’t know.” More than one offered a speculation with the proviso, “Please don’t quote me on it.”

  Of course, rubbing the eyes isn’t good for you. At best it does no harm. At worst, it can infect or damage your cornea. Adults know this, which might be one reason why babies and small children seem to rub their eyes more often than adults. The tendency of even the youngest babies to rub their eyes when tired indicates that eye rubbing is not a learned response.

  Our medical experts were in three main camps:

  RUBBING SLOWS DOWN YOUR METABOLISM AND HELPS YOU GET TO SLEEP

  If you rub your eyes, you apply pressure to the rectus muscles that control eyeball movement, which in turn stimulates the vagus nerve, the long parasympathetic nerve that supplies motor and sensory fibers to much of your body. By stimulating the vagus nerve, you actually lower your heart rate and metabolism, making it easier to sleep. Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve is used to treat some medical problems, particularly epilepsy and psychological disorders, in order to calm the body.

  But when we’re already sleepy, why do we need to rub our eyes to slow down our system even more? We’re more sympathetic with this camp:

  RUBBING IS AN ATTEMPT TO WAKE YOU UP

  Most babies aren’t exactly guilt-ridden about catching some shuteye, but sometimes try valiantly to stay awake, and this is one time when they’re prone to rub their eyes. Are adults any different? Look at adults in a library, trying to study, and clearly headed toward torpor. Many of them take off their glasses and rub their eyes, valiantly (often futilely) trying to jerk their eyes, their brain, into refocusing. Dr. Arif Khan, associate professor of ophthalmology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, concurs:

  Sorry, there is no “scientific” explanation for this phenomenon. I could say that the reason is to provide stimulation to the sleepy eyes to keep them from going to “sleep.” But this is just an educated guess.

  RUBBING HELPS KEEP CIRCADIAN

  RHYTHMS ON AN EVEN KEEL

  “Circadian” refers to our daily cycles, and one of the most important “Circadian rhythms” is the ebb and flow of our metabolism that promote or discourage sleep. One part of the brain that controls our sleep-wake cycles is the “suprachiasmatic nucleus.” One expert we consulted, Lenworth N. Johnson, a neuro-ophthalmologist at the Mason Eye Institute in Columbia, Missouri, offers a theory that might embrace and encompass the two above:

  Not everyone rubs the eyes when tired. Nonetheless, there are neurons (nerve cells) in the retina of our eyes that are involved in transmitting information on light-dark conditions. These are important in sleep-wake cycles, with projection of these nerve cells to the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the brain. I suspect rubbing the eyes may help to manipulate this signal.

  In other words, the casual rub might be our attempt to micromanage our Circadian rhythms, as futile as that pursuit might be.

  Submitted by Christopher T. Doody of Shortsville, New York.

  Thanks also to Wayne Good of Madison, Alabama; Aaron Burke of Saranac Lake, New York; and Ronit Amsel and Avi Jacobson of Montreal, Quebec.

  Were Roman Chariots as Wobbly and Flimsy as Depicted in Movies? If So, How Could They Be Used Effectively in Wartime?

  If the defense of Rome was dependent upon the stability of its chariots, no wonder the mighty empire fell. The Romans may have been decadent, but they weren’t dumb: the chariot was far from a potent weapon of war.

  Chariots were created almost two thousand years before the Roman Empire, and were suitable only for flat terrain. Earlier, ancient armies used them only because horses were not bred large and strong enough to withstand the weight of an armored soldier with weapons. The Roman legions rode on horseback, and reserved chariots for ceremonies and games such as the infamous Roman circus. According to military historian Art Ferrill, author of The Origins of War,

  Caesar’s troops were amazed by the British use of them. For all practical purposes, chariots were last used in ancient Near Eastern warfare by the Assyrians.

  What were the problems with using chariots for transportation? Let us count the ways. Carol Thomas, professor of history at the University of Washington, acknowledging research by J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World, which addressed these issues directly, wrote to us:

  The wheels of chariots probably were not flimsy. They were either spoked (in one of a couple possible arrangements) or solid. They may well have been wobbly, though, because any of the three or four possible arrangements for attaching the wooden wheels to the wooden axles of the vehicles led to grooves being worn on the bearing surfaces, which give the components more freedom of play.

  Acccording to Landels, there’s no evidence of any swiveling mechanism in two- or four-wheeling vehicles, which would have allowed a chariot to corner with all wheels turning. Thus a driver had to skid at least one wheel around a corner, which also would have added to wear on the wheel-axle joints, reduced efficiency of the use of the animal-derived motive power, and also reduced stability of the vehicle.

  Lest you think that these fits and starts would be handled with the finesse of a Lexus, think again. Stanley Burstein, professor of history at California State University and former president of the Association of Ancient Historians, wrote:

  My guess, for what it is worth, is that chariots were every bit as unstable as they appear, since they had no suspension systems and would react violently to any surface unevenness. They would also have been hard to control because ancient western horse harnessing techniques were extremely inefficient.

  Abandoned as a war vehicle, the Romans adopted chariot racing as the ancient equivalent of a NASCAR race: the danger was half the fun.

  Submitted by Gregg Cox of Wichita, Kansas. (For more information about the harnessing systems for Roman chariots, see http://www.humanist.de/rome/rts/index.html.)

  Why Are New CDs Released on Tuesdays? Why Aren’t New Books Released on a Particular Day?

  Some things you can count on. Movies are released on Fridays. Diets start on Mondays. CDs are released on Tuesdays.

  The Friday release of movies makes sense. A sizable majority of filmgoing occurs on the weekend, and studios can point toward a huge opening weekend by coordinating advertising and talk-show appearances by stars during the week. One of the reasons why Thursday night has become a battleground for young-skewing shows on the television networks is that movie studios spend huge bucks advertising their new films on that night to maximize attendance on the first weekend. The TV networks want to extract higher fees for those ads, which are based on the number of eyeballs tuning in.

  Diets on Monday? The perfect time to work off the pounds you gained overindulging in food (tubs of popcorn at the movies?) and drink over the weekend. And self-sacrifice might as well coincide with the beginning of the dreaded school- or workweek.

  But Tuesday seems like a colorless choice to launch new music (and videotapes and DVDs), especially when traffic in stores is highest on the weekends. Why was it picked? We had a theory, which was that the change occurred so that new releases would be given seven full days of sales history in order to attain the highest position possible on the Billboard charts, the bible of the music industry. But no le
ss than the director of charts for Billboard, Geoff Mayfield, fingers another source:

  The culprit was not our charts, but the UPS man. As more and more chain stores received their new-release shipments directly from the labels’ distributors, rather than from chain headquarters, stores at the end of a delivery route were at a competitive disadvantage to those which received their product earlier in the day on the dates when important titles came to market.

  The uneven pattern of distribution occurred because UPS and other delivery services didn’t provide service on Sunday, and the big chains were leaning on distributors to get new product as early as possible on Monday. All things being equal, the record labels would prefer a Monday launch, as Nielsen SoundScan, the company that measures record sales that form the basis of the Billboard charts, tracks sales from Monday through Sunday.

  But four different sources, independently, used the expression “even playing field” to describe the relative fairness of Tuesdays for laying down new releases, and Tuesday seems to hit the “sweet spot” of providing maximum time for new recordings to hit the charts while satisfying the demands of retailers. Jim Parham, of Jive Records, elaborates:

  Most independent music stores buy from wholesalers called one-stops. The extra day, Monday, allows these wholesalers to ship to these accounts for the product to arrive on street date [i.e., Tuesday] or only one day prior. If street date were on a Monday, these stores would have to have the product delivered on the Friday before street date. When this happens, the label loses control of the release date, especially on stores not honoring street dates and selling the product early. This creates a chain reaction and you can lose a significant amount of sales that will not count toward the first-week chart position, as SoundScan sales are measured from Monday to Sunday.