Maino says that her company knows of no “English muffins” that are marketed in England today, but “We have learned that a product very similar to our Thomas’ English Muffins did exist in England until about 1920.” Why an item would fade in popularity in England while gaining popularity in the United States is anybody’s guess. An explanation of the gustatory preferences of the English—a culture that deems baked beans on white toast a splendid meal—would require an exegesis far beyond our mortal powers.
Submitted by Rosemary Bosco of Bronx, New York.
What are those beanbaglike packs found inside electronics boxes that warn, “DO NOT EAT”?
We’ve always thought that instead of having “DO NOT EAT” plastered on them, a little self-disclosure would help. Why not identify what is inside? (Come to think of it, what is inside regular beanbags?) Most of us don’t go around eating beanbags, after all.
It didn’t take much digging around to find out that inside those packets is silica gel. Silica is the dioxide of silicon. (Did you know that there is more silicon in nature than any other element except oxygen? You do now.) The “gel” part of the equation is a little more puzzling, since the stuff inside the bag is actually in the form of crystals, but heck, we’re not purists.
The sole purpose of the silica gel packet is to absorb moisture (silica gel’s most common industrial use is as a drying agent in air conditioning equipment) and help keep your electronic gear in top shape. So that it can fall apart, dependably, the day after your warranty runs out.
Randy Acorcey, of Diversified Electronics Corporation, told Imponderables that silica gel isn’t used much by American manufacturers. Most often, you will find them inside boxes of goods manufactured in the Far East, because the merchandise is shipped by boat, where it can be exposed to high humidity (and in some cases, water) for weeks.
Submitted by Megan Baynes of Richmond, Virginia. Thanks also to Mary Warneka of Perry, Ohio.
What is the purpose of the sign “THIS DOOR TO REMAIN UNLOCKED DURING BUSINESS HOURS” found atop many doors in retail establishments?
This sign, long present on the West Coast, is spreading throughout the United States. Surprisingly, most of the retail trade associations and architects we consulted didn’t understand its purpose. The signs never made much sense to us, since they are often placed aside clearly marked EXIT signs.
The key phrase in the sign, for our purposes, is “business hours.” Fire codes specify how many exits are required for each business during operating hours. The required number of exits, and the width of those exits, are based upon the hypothetical stress created by an emergency when the place of business is at maximum occupancy.
But what about when the business is closed and a few employees are working inside? Does a K Mart store have to open every fire exit while a skeleton crew is conducting inventory? Absolutely not. Bruce Hisley, of the National Fire Academy, said that in many localities, doors that are ordinarily used as exits can be locked when only employees are present if the door is marked with these signs. The sign serves as a reminder to store owners and managers to unlock the doors when the store opens.
Mike Fisher, vice-president of sales and marketing at door manufacturer Besam, Inc., told Imponderables that these signs are also a reminder to the public to remember their rights. If a door sporting this sign is closed when you are in the store, blow the whistle—unless you are an employee doing inventory, of course.
Submitted by Bryan J. Cooper of Ontario, Oregon. Thanks also to Derek King of Huntington Beach, California.
What causes the clicking sound inside a car when you put your turn signal on? Why don’t some turn signals make that clicking noise?
The mechanics of the turn signal are simple. Frederick Heiler, public relations manager for Mercedes-Benz of North America, explains the technology:
The electrical current to make turn signals blink usually comes from a relay—a small box enclosing an electromagnetic switch. Whenever the electromagnet is energized, it mechanically pulls together a pair of contacts, sending a pulse of current to the signal lights and, at the same time, making a clicking sound.
Why do some cars not have clicking turn signals? It’s all up to the manufacturer. Most car makers choose to make the clicking noise loud and obvious just in case the driver leaves the turn signal on unintentionally.
What’s the big deal if the turn signal is left on too long? If a pedestrian is thinking of jaywalking and sees an oncoming car signaling for a right turn, the pedestrian is lulled into a false sense of security. Oncoming cars and pedestrians often make their decisions about when to proceed based on turn signals, and a little gratuitous clicking is a small price to pay for added safety.
Submitted by Michele Al-Khal of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Why is there a white paper band around the envelopes in a box of greeting or Christmas cards and not the cards themselves?
Would you be shaken to your core to find out that the band exists for the manufacturer’s benefit, not yours? We got this less than startling response from Hallmark spokesperson Barbara Meyer:
The white paper bands are put around our envelopes to speed up the packaging process. It is much more efficient to work with one bundle of envelopes instead of 20 or 21 single ones. The reason a band is not put around the cards is because damage to the cards could occur in this process of banding.
Gibson Greetings doesn’t use a band around their envelopes, but Sherry Enzweiler, manager of their Fall Seasons division, says that
many card companies buy envelopes from outside vendors already counted out and banded. They are then placed in the box, precounted and banded, by an assembly line worker.
Submitted by Rev. Ken Vogler of Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Where do computer files and programs go when they are erased?
Not to heaven. Not to hell. Not to Silicon Valley. Not even to Dubuque. For the sad story is that deleted files go nowhere at all. David Maier, professor at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science & Technology’s department of computer science and engineering, elucidates:
The bits and bytes representing the programs and files on the computer disk are generally unchanged immediately after an erase (or delete) command. What changes is the directory on the disk. The directory is a list of the names of all the files and programs on the disk, plus a pointer to the portion of the disk where the contents of the file or program are actually stored. When you issue an erase command, all it generally does is to remove the file or program name from the directory and to record elsewhere that the storage space on the disk formerly used for the file or program is now “free”—that is, available for reuse.
The mechanism for changing the directory is amazingly simple. Although the deleted files remain on the disk, programmer Larry Whitish told Imponderables that the first letter of the file name is deleted and replaced with a symbol that looks like “,” (ASCII character number 229):
This signals the computer that the disk space the files occupied is available for use by new files and programs and simply ignores their existence…
When new files are copied to or created on a disk, they seek the first available space not being used to begin writing their data. If this space is occupied by a file that has been erased, then kiss your old file goodbye! The old file will be overwritten by the new file.
Erased files and programs can be recovered easily if they have not been overwritten. A program like the Norton Utilities can restore these files simply by replacing the symbol “” in their name with any letter of the alphabet.
So the “deleted” files are no more erased than the music on an audiotape or television program on videotape that hasn’t been recorded over.
Submitted by an anonymous caller on the Jim Eason Show, KGO-AM, San Francisco, California.
When did wild poodles roam the earth?
The thought of wild poodles contending with the forbidding elements of nature makes us shudder. It’s hard to imagine a toy poodle survivi
ng torrential rainstorms or blistering droughts in the desert, or slaughtering prey for its dinner (unless its prey was canned dog food). Or even getting its haircut messed up.
For that matter, what animals would make a toy poodle its prey in the wild? We have our doubts that it would be a status symbol for one lion to approach another predator and boast, “Guess what? I bagged myself a poodle today.”
If something seems wrong with this picture of poodles in the wild, you’re on the right track. We posed our Imponderable to the biology department of UCLA, and received the following response from Nancy Purtill, administrative assistant:
The general feeling is that, while there is no such thing as a stupid question, this one comes very close. Poodles never did live in the wild, any more than did packs of roving Chihuahuas. The present breeds of dogs were derived from selective breeding of dogs descended from the original wild dogs.
Sally Kinne, corresponding secretary of the Poodle Club of America, inc., was a little less testy:
I don’t think poodles ever did live in the wild! They evolved long after dogs were domesticated. Although their exact beginnings are unknown, they are in European paintings from the fifteenth century [the works of German artist Albrecht Dürer] on to modern times. It has been a long, LONG time since poodles evolved from dogs that evolved from the wolf.
Bas-reliefs indicate that poodles might date from the time of Christ, but most researchers believe that they were originally bred to be water retrievers much later in Germany. (Their name is a derivation of the German word pudel or pudelin, meaning “drenched” or “dripping wet.” German soldiers probably brought the dogs to France, where they have traditionally been treated more kindly than Homo sapiens. Poodles were also used to hunt for truffles, often in tandem with dachshunds. Poodles would locate the truffles and then the low-set dachshunds would dig out the overpriced fungus.
Dog experts agree that all domestic dogs are descendants of wolves, with whom they can and do still mate. One of the reasons it is difficult to trace the history of wild dogs is that it is hard to discriminate, from fossils alone, between dogs and wolves. Most of the sources we contacted believe that domesticated dogs existed over much of Europe and the Middle East by the Mesolithic period of the Stone Age, but estimates have ranged widely—from 10,000 to 25,000 B.C.
Long before there were any “manmade” breeds, wild dogs did roam the earth. How did these dogs, who may date back millions of years, become domesticated? In her book, The Life, History and Magic of the Dog, Fernand Mery speculates that when hunting and fishing tribes became sedentary during the Neolithic Age (around 5000 B.C.), the exteriors of inhabited caves were like landfills from hell—full of garbage, animal bones, mollusk and crustacean shells and other debris. But what seemed like waste to humans was an all-you-can-eat buffet table to wild dogs.
Humans, with abundant alternatives, didn’t consider dogs as a source of food. Once dogs realized that humans were not going to kill them, they could coexist as friends. Indeed, dogs could even help humans, and not just as companions—their barking signaled danger to their two-legged patrons inside the cave.
This natural interdependence, born first of convenience and later affection, may be unique in the animal kingdom. Mery claims our relationship to dogs is fundamentally different from that of any other pet—all other animals that have been domesticated have, at first, been captured and taken by force:
The prehistoric dog followed man from afar, just as the domesticated dog has always followed armies on the march. It became accustomed to living nearer and nearer to this being who did not hunt it. Finding with him security and stability, and being able to feed off the remains of man’s prey, for a long time it stayed near his dwellings, whether they were caves or huts. One day the dog crossed the threshold. Man did not chase him out. The treaty of alliance had been signed.
Once dogs were allowed “in the house,” it became natural to breed dogs to share in other human tasks, such as hunting, fighting, and farming. It’s hard to imagine a poofy poodle as a retriever, capturing dead ducks in its mouth, but not nearly as hard as imagining poodles contending with the dinosaurs and pterodactyls on our cover, or fighting marauding packs of roving Chihuahuas.
Submitted by Audrey Randall of Chicago, Illinois.
What does the “Q” in “Q-tips” stand for?
Most users of Q-tips don’t realize it, but the “Q” is short for “Qatar.” Who would have thought a lone inventor on this tiny peninsula on the Persian Gulf could have invented a product found in virtually every medicine cabinet in the Western world?
Just kidding, folks. But you must admit, “Qatar” is a lot sexier than “Quality”—the word the “Q” in “Q-tips” actually stands for.
Q-tips were invented by a Polish-born American, Leo Gerstenzang, in the 1920s. Gerstenzang noticed that when his wife was giving their baby a bath, she would take a toothpick to spear a wad of cotton. She then used the jerry-built instrument as an applicator to clean the baby. He decided that a readymade cotton swab might be attractive to parents, and he launched the Leo Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Co. to manufacture this and other accessories for baby care.
Although a Q-tip may seem like a simple product, Gerstenzang took several years to eliminate potential problems. He was concerned that the wood not splinter, that an equal amount of cotton was attached to each end, and that the cotton not fall off the applicator.
The unique sliding tray packaging was no accident, either—it insured that an addled parent could open the box and detach a single swab while using only one hand. The boxes were sterilized and sealed with glassine (later cellophane). The entire process was done by machine, so the phrase “untouched by human hands” became a marketing tool to indicate the safety of using Q-tips on sensitive parts of the body.
Gerstenzang wrestled over what he should name his new product, and after years of soul searching, came up with a name that, at the time, probably struck him as inevitable but, in retrospect, wasn’t: “Baby Gays.” A few years later, in 1926, the name changed to “Q-Tips Baby Gays.” Eventually, greater minds decided that perhaps the last two words in the brand name could be discarded.
Ironically, although we may laugh about the dated use of the word “Gays,” the elimination of the “Baby” was at least as important. Gerstenzang envisioned the many uses Q-tips could serve for parents—for cleaning not just babies’ ears but their nose and mouth, and as an applicator for baby oils and lotions. But the inventor never foresaw Q-tips’ use as a glue applicator or as a swab for cleaning tools, fishing poles, furniture, or metal.
Even though Chesebrough-Ponds, which now controls the Q-tips trademark, does nothing to trumpet what the “Q” stands for, the consumer somehow equates the “Q” with “Quality” nonetheless. For despite the best attempts from other brands and generic rivals, Q-tips tramples its competition in the cotton swab market.
Submitted by Dave and Mary Farrokh of Cranford, New Jersey. Thanks also to Douglas Watkins, Jr., of Hayward, California; Patricia Martinez of San Diego, California; Christopher Valeri of East Northport, New York; and Sharon Yeh of Fairborn, Ohio.
Why do deer stand transfixed by the headlights of oncoming cars? Do they have a death wish?
Although no zoologist has ever interviewed a deer, particularly a squashed one, we can assume that no animal has a death wish. In fact, instinct drives all animals to survive. We asked quite a few animal experts about this Imponderable, and we received three different theories, none of which directly contradicts the others.
1. The behavior is a fear response. University of Vermont zoologist Richard Landesman’s position was typical:
Many mammals, including humans, demonstrate a fear response, which initially results in their remaining perfectly still for a few seconds after being frightened. During this time, the hormones of the fear response take over and the animal or person then decides whether to fight or run away. Unfortunately, many animals remain in place too long and the car hits them.
The self-defeating mechanism of the fear response is perpetuated because, as Landesman puts it, “these animals don’t know that they are going to die as a result of standing still and there is no mechanism for them to teach other deer about that fact.”
2. Standing still isn’t so much a fear response as a reaction to being blinded. Deer are more likely to be blinded than other, smaller animals, such as dogs and cats, because they are much taller and vulnerable to the angle of the headlight beams. If you were blinded and heard the rumble of a car approaching at high speed, would you necessarily think it was safer to run than to stand still?
3. The freeze behavior is an extension of deer’s natural response to any danger. We were bothered by the first two theories insofar as they failed to explain why deer, out of all disproportion to animals of their size, tend to be felled by cars. So we prevailed upon our favorite naturalist, Larry Prussin, who has worked in Yosemite National Park for more than a decade. He reports that deer and squirrels are killed by cars far more than any other animals, and he has a theory to explain why.
Are Lobsters Ambidextrous? Page 18