Of course, commercial plants don’t make corn tortillas by hand. Tortilla presses are capable of flattening a ball of masa in a second or two, making perfect six-inch circles of corn, and are even available for home use.
The dough of flour tortillas has a different consistency from corn — it is too soft and sticky to be patted between the hands or even to be subjected to the tortilla press (although we heard tales of a few skilled Mexican women who have made paper-thin flour tortillas the size of Nebraska). Home bakers use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into a pancake on a heavily floured board. Unlike corn tortillas, these wheat flour cakes can be made into various sizes. You can get an even consistency without cracks, whether the pre-flattened ball is the size of a golf ball or a tennis ball.
Why is the consistency of the flour dough more flexible and resilient than corn? The answer is gluten, a protein found in wheat doughs (and in some others, such as barley, rye, and oat). The kneading process used in tortilla preparation enhances and strengthens the formation of gluten, and Rolando Flores, research-food engineer at the United States Department of Agriculture, explains why gluten is so important:
The major difference between the dough for corn tortillas and the dough for wheat tortillas is the difference between the corn and wheat proteins. The wheat gluten is the protein that gives the flexibility necessary to the tortilla dough so that it can be extended by manual or mechanical means. In some cases, bakers add up to 15 percent wheat flour to the corn tortilla.
Presumably, the wheat flour is added to strengthen the integrity of the corn tortilla dough, to avoid dreaded taco spillage.
So we have arrived at the inescapable conclusion that flour tortillas are larger because they can be made larger! In Mexico, the most popular size for flour tortillas is six inches, the same size as corn tortillas. But in the United States, restaurants always think about super-sizing. Why offer a burrito the size of a taco when you can serve a gigante burrito, a quesadilla on steroids, or a taco salad served in a fried-flour tortilla “bowl” the size of a soup tureen? Surprisingly, flour tortillas outsell corn tortillas in Mexico and corn bests flour in the United States, according to Samuel Rodriguez, national sales manager of Olé Mexican Foods. In Mexico, the six - inch - diameter flour tortilla dominates the market, but even in the United States, the small size bests the large ones in sales, even if this doesn’t jibe with our experience in restaurants.
The solution to this sub-Imponderable is that the Mexican market within the United States tends to buy the small-sized flour tortillas for home use, while Anglos tend to buy the large sizes. Tortillas are literally the biggest thing since sliced bread, since only sliced bread out-sells tortillas in the United States. The Tortilla Industry Association proudly boasts that tortilla sales now exceed those of bagels and muffins, and tortillas now constitute a $6 billion industry in the United States alone, which does not even include the consumption of tortilla chips.
Submitted by Roger G. Reese of Los Alamitos, California. Thanks also to Douglas Watkins Jr. of Hayward, California.
Why Do Our Noses Run in Cold Weather?
In How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch?, we discussed why kids get more runny noses than adults. The explanation lay mostly in the greater propensity of children to catch colds and infections. But sharp-eyed Imponderables readers noted that our noses run during cold winters even when we are feeling terrific, and wondered why even graybeards dab their noses in the winter.
Otolaryngologist Dr. Steven C. Marks, on behalf of the American Rhinologic Society, explains the physiology:
The nose and sinuses are lined by a mucous membrane that contains both mucus-secreting glands and small cells called goblet cells, which also secrete a component of mucus. This mucus is produced in normal mucous membranes and in those that are infected or inflamed.
Many medical problems, such as viral or bacterial infections or allergies can cause your nose to run. But the nose’s response to cold is a little different, as Marks explains:
The nasal and sinus mucous membranes are innervated [stimulated] by nerves which control, to some extent, the rate of mucus secretion. The response of the nose to cold air is in part a reflex mediated by these nerves. The cold air is sensed by the mucosa [mucus membrane], which then sends a signal back to the brain, which then sends a signal back to the mucosa: the result is a secretion of mucus.
What good does a runny nose do anyone but Kleenex? Keith Holmes, an ear, nose, and throat specialist from Dubois, Wyoming, believes that it is “a natural physiologic phenomenon of the organ to protect the warm lining of the nose,” as cold irritates the mucous membrane. Marks speculates that “the increased mucus flow may be necessary to improve the humidification and cleaning of the air in the cold environment.”
Submitted by John Miller of Lacona, New York. Thanks also to L. Gualtierie of Brampton, Ontario.
Why Do Bulls in Cartoons Have Nose Rings? And Why Don’t Cows Have Them?
You give cartoonists far too much credit for imagination, David and Valerie. Long before there were punk rockers, bulls sported genuine brass rings.
The expression “bull-headed” wasn’t pulled out of thin air. Bulls are among the most stubborn and least accommodating of farm animals. When a human wants a bull to move and a bull wants to sit for a spell, verbal commands are unlikely to work. Neither will a friendly little shove on the rear. Bulls’ hooves have been known to crush the feet of owners who made them “see red,” and they love to kick, too. Those rings are inserted to allow owners to “lead them around by the nose.” As Richard Landesman, a University of Vermont zoologist, puts it, “Any tension on the ring will produce pain, and this can be used as a means either to train or restrain the bull.”
Most bulls are “ringed” before they are a year old, in a procedure that isn’t as delicate as a human ear piercing. For some reason, bulls don’t welcome a veterinarian driving a steel rod through their septum, so they are given a local anesthetic and placed in a “head bail” to keep them from moving at an inopportune time.
Nose rings come in various sizes, and it is not uncommon for bulls to graduate to a larger-sized ring (as big as three inches in diameter) as they grow. Dan Kniffen, of the National Cattlemen’s Association, told Imponderables that there are even temporary clip-on rings, called “bugs,” the bovine equivalent of clip-on ties, that don’t pierce the nostrils. Bugs can be used to shepherd the recalcitrant bull that needs to be moved occasionally.
It behooves the prudent farmer not to make permanent enemies of five- or six-ton creatures. Once the ring is inserted, vets urge owners to restrain the bull with a halter around his head, with a lead rope fed through the ring. Yanking on the ring directly is quite painful, and bulls have been known to carry a grudge. Hudson, New York, veterinarian Andrew S. Ritter also warns of the dangers of tethering a bull by the ring, lest it rip through the cartilage of the nose attempting to get free.
Why don’t cows have nose rings? Although the occasional delinquent cow (and horse) sports a nose ring, the distaff bovines generally have a sunnier, more docile disposition than their bull-headed mates.
Submitted by David Ng of Capiague, New York. Thanks also to Valerie Valenzo of Chicago, Illinois.
Why Is Salt Sold in Round Containers?
If the more specific question, “Why is Morton Salt sold in round containers?” is answered, all will be revealed, for Morton has always dominated the sales of household table salt. Until the twentieth century, Morton sold its salt in cloth bags. Moisture infiltrated the bags with ease, leading to hard lumps. Consumers had to break up the caked salt (pounding the bag on countertops and pummeling the lumps with mallets were two preferred methods), and then put the salt into their own glass jars.
Morton experimented with square cartons at the turn of the century, which were more durable than cloth, but still didn’t solve the caking problem. Plus, salt stuck to the corners of the square box. The first round carton was introduced in 1900, but it had its own nuisance — a wood
en spout that had to be plugged in between uses. Not until 1911 did Morton’s research discover the wonders of adding a smidgen of magnesium carbonate, which absorbed moisture and allowed the free flow of salt even in humid conditions (Morton now uses calcium silicate for the same purpose).
The only downside to the spiffy round container was that it cost more to manufacture than square ones, and the expense had to be passed on to consumers. The solution? Advertising.
The Morton Salt Girl, complete with umbrella, was introduced in a 1914 Good Housekeeping ad trumpeting the company’s primary product benefit (“When it rains it pours”), and consumers proved willing to spend more money for free-flowing salt in the spiffy, blue round containers that Morton calls “cans” internally. Morton has held on to a dominant market share, the slogan, and a similar-looking container ever since. The shape has become so identified with table salt that other brands, including generic and store-brand competitors, have copied the packaging.
But there’s no inherent advantage to the round shape. In fact, Morton representative Don Monroe told Imponderables that the company still sells bales and bags of salt for institutional uses. For example, a pickler might buy a twenty-five-pound bale of salt and dump the whole bag into a vat to brine cucumbers. Morton and other companies sell specialty products, such as kosher, pickling, and tenderizing salt in rectangular packages.
Submitted by Venia Stanley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Thanks also to Ronald C. Semone of Washington D.C.; and Kathy Farrier of Eugene, Oregon.
Why Is There a Two-Minute Warning in American Football?
We almost didn’t research this Imponderable because we assumed that the two-minute warning was instituted at the behest of the television networks, who wanted to make sure there were plenty of opportunities to plaster a block of commercials at critical points in the game — right before the climax of the first half and the end of the game. But we were wrong.
We regret ever thinking that the fine executives of professional football and broadcasting might ever be motivated by anything as crass as the mighty dollar. The two-minute warning debuted in 1942, and was created to remedy a nagging problem that threatened the fairness of the game. Until 1942, the official time was kept on the field, and scoreboard clocks often bore little resemblance to the official time. According to Faleem Choudhry, a researcher at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, before the two-minute warning, scorekeepers had to notify each team when there was somewhere between ten and two minutes left in the game.
The looseness of the rules constrained coaches. Bob Carroll, executive director of the Pro Football Researchers Association, e-mailed us about the implications:
Obviously, it was important for a team in the closing minutes to know exactly how much time was left so it could make critical substitutions, stall, try to run out the remaining time, etc. Although the players on the field could ask the official, it took time to notify the bench.
On the other hand, taking time after each play to go over to each coach would have required stopping the clock after each play — possibly to the detriment of one team. I think the two-minute warning was a compromise that allowed the coaches to know exactly how much time was left and then keep a relatively accurate record on the bench.
These days, teams spend a part of most practices running their “hurry-up” offenses (sometimes known as a “two-minute offense”), a prearranged sequence of plays that require no huddle and are designed to burn off as little time as possible. Often the hurry-up offense will commence with the first play following the two-minute warning — after the more than two minutes of TV commercials, of course.
Submitted by Jim Welke of Streamwood, Illinois.
Why Does the Japanese Flag Sometimes Have Red Beams Radiating from the Sun?
Americans pledge allegiance to the flag. We salute the flag. We burn the flag. We try to pass constitutional amendments to criminalize burning the flag. We fight for the flag. We die for the flag.
A flag is an icon, imbued with emotions, dreams, and fears that extend far beyond its cloth and dyes. You can tell quite a bit about a country by its attitudes toward its flag. Case in point: Japan.
You are probably all familiar with the Japanese flag, the Hinomaru (“sun disc”), which some trace back to the time of the Emperor Monbu in the early eighth century.
According to Dan Scheeler, librarian at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA Library in Washington D.C.:
Legend has it that a priest named Nichiren presented a sun flag to the shogun at the time of the Mongol Invasions [launched by Kublai Khan] in the late thirteenth century.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when various clans and military figures were vying for control of Japan, Hinomaru were displayed as military insignia (sometimes with different color schemes to designate particular factions, but the red sun on white background was most common).
For almost 300 years, Japan isolated itself from the West, but in 1853, the militias of two feudal lords fought and killed some sailors from the Royal Navy of England. One of the clans, the Satsumas, fought under the Hinomaru, and the English mistakenly assumed that this was their national flag. In order to avoid being mistaken for foreign vessels, a shogun agreed that it might be advisable for Japanese vessels to all carry the same flag, as Richard Allen Jones, of the Japan Information Center of the Consulate General of Japan, explains:
The flag, in its present form, was suggested by Lord Narakira Shimazu, head of the powerful Satsuma clan in southern Japan. The first display of the sun flag as the symbol of the nation was on the occasion of the trip to the United States, in 1860, of the first diplomatic delegation ever sent abroad by the Japanese government. The Powhatan, a United States Navy cruiser, was placed at the disposal of the Shogunate for this purpose. The ship flew the American flag at the stern and the Japanese flag at the bow.
None of this activity likely had the slightest effect on the average Japanese person. But things were about to change. In 1868, the Tokugawa Shogunate was stripped of power, and the Emperor Meiji assumed power. In January 1870, the prime minister proclaimed that all ships must fly the Hinomaru, and mandated the dimensions of the flag, which still remain the same today. According to Richard Allen Jones, the first time the Hinomaru was flown at a national ceremony was in 1872, on the occasion of the opening by Emperor Meiji of Japan’s first railway. For more than a hundred years after the beginning of the Mejii era, Japanese citizens might fly the flag on important holidays, yet the Hinomaru did not possess great iconic value, possibly because it wasn’t officially the national flag of Japan.
Soon after Meiji’s reign, a special flag for the Imperial Navy was introduced. Beginning in 1889, naval vessels flew a sun disc flag with sixteen rays extending to its borders:
Masahiko Noro, executive director of the Japan Foundation in New York, wrote Imponderables:
This flag was used by the Japanese military, particularly the Japanese navy, from the Meiji era until the end of World War II. The Japanese have not used this flag to represent their country since 1945.
The naval flag, then, is not another version of a national flag. Indeed, there really was no official national flag to be a variation of! So this Imponderable was based on an understandable misconception. We mistakenly assume that the “ray” flag is a variation of the national flag, when it is not related. Most Americans are familiar with the “ray” flag because so many depictions of the Japanese flag we have seen come from war movies, specifically World War II movies, where the naval flag is (realistically) depicted as the military ensign of the Japanese warriors. Even more confusing, the Treaty of San Francisco, which settled the conclusion of World War II, mandated that Japan eliminate its armed forces, so there wasn’t much need for the naval flag after 1945. But in 1952, Japan started to build up “self-defense” forces, which looked suspiciously like a navy to most foreigners. In 1954, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces reclaimed the naval ensign as its own, and it still flies today.
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p; Ironically, while the military flag’s reemergence stirred little passion in the West, the Japanese exhibited deep ambivalence about the Hinomaru. To leftists, intellectuals, and union members, in particular, the flag represented a period (1931–1945) of xenophobia and unjustified military aggression. Even those without such strong political feelings tended not to be preoccupied with displaying the flag — even government buildings often did not fly the sun disc.
It was not until 1999 that the Hinomaru was officially proclaimed the national flag of Japan, and even then, only a particularly sad incident prompted the change. In Hiroshima, a high school principal was unsuccessfully attempting to use the Hinomaru and a patriotic song, the “Kimigayo,” in the school’s commencement ceremony. Teachers objected not just to the flag, but also the song, which they thought glorified the imperial system, which was responsible for abhorrent military practices during the war. The lyrics do give credence to the grievance:
May the reign of the emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss.
The principal, caught between a school board that wanted the flag to be flown and the song to be played at commencement and faculty that was balking, committed suicide the day before graduation. Within days, the government pushed for legalizing the Hinomaru as the official national flag (and the “Kimigayo” as the national anthem) of Japan, and within six months, accomplished the task.
Do Elephants Jump? Page 14