Why Do Pirates Love Parrots?

by David Feldman

  Most men who think about using a hair color just want to get rid of their gray hair and not change the color of the hair that has not gone white yet, because they want the result to look like their own hair color. Just For Men is a “Deposit-Only” Hair color, which means that it does not bleach out hair’s natural pigments and then deposits color molecules—it just deposits color. Since it does not bleach the hair, the only visible change to the user’s hair color is the change from white hair to colored hair. The color of the previously pigmented hair stays virtually unchanged (unless, of course, someone with light hair uses a very dark shade).

  How else is Just For Men designed for guys? Let us count the ways:

  1. Just For Men is placed in the shaving and grooming aisles of stores, rather than in the land of Clairol and L’Oréal, an area as baffling to most men as the cookie section of the supermarket is to Marilu Henner. Subliminally, this also assures men that use of the product is part of their grooming and not a flight of vanity.

  2. Men are not usually as patient as women when using cosmetics. Just For Men takes about two minutes to comb in and about five minutes to set, compared to the usual 30 to 40 minutes for women’s packaged hair coloring products.

  3. Unlike many women’s products, Just For Men contains no ammonia, which, according to Marburger, “can damage hair and smell bad.”

  4. Although Just For Men isn’t advertised specifically for men with short hair, there is less coloring in a Just For Men bottle than most women’s dyes.

  5. Combe also offers a Just For Men product for eliminating the gray in sideburns, beards, and mustaches, designed especially for coarse hair.

  Never one to cede dominance in any area of hair coloring, Clairol has introduced Natural Instincts for Men (nothing says “Natural” more than artificial coloring, evidently), the only direct competitor to Grecian Formula and Just For Men in the mass market. Like Just For Men, Natural Instincts contains no ammonia and boasts reduced peroxide compared to Clairol’s women’s products.

  Combe, playing tit-for-tat, has introduced Just 5, a product marketed to women, whose benefits and technology sound awfully close to Just For Men. We spoke to a consumer resources consultant at Combe who admitted that Just 5 hasn’t caught on with women as they had hoped. Perhaps women cannot believe that a product that works so quickly can be effective? No time drain, no gain?

  That’s why we’re happy to announce that some women are enterprising enough to cross the gender divide and use Just For Men. According to the same consumer resources consultant at Combe, they sure do, especially for touching up gray hair at their temples. As far as we know, none of these women spontaneously combusted.

  Submitted by Marty Flowers of Weirton, West Virginia.

  Drug Labels List Active and Sometimes “Inactive” Ingredients. What Are Inactive Ingredients and Why Are They Used If They Don’t Do Anything?

  Sitting next to the Imponderables Central keyboard is a bottle of CVS “generic” ibuprofen tablets. Under “Drug Facts” on the label, it states that there is one active ingredient: Ibuprofen 200 mg. Coming after sections called Uses, Warnings, Directions, and Other Information, is a list of Inactive Ingredients: colloidal silicon dioxide, corn starch, croscarmellose sodium, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, iron oxides, microcrystalline cellulose, stearic acid, and titanium dioxide. As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration defines it, active ingredients are any component of a drug that is intended to

  furnish pharmacological activity or other direct effect in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or to affect the structure of any function of the body of humans or other animals.

  Inactive ingredients are any component of a drug product that isn’t an active ingredient.

  The FDA has approved almost 800 chemical agents as inactive ingredients for drugs, and although these inactive ingredients must be labeled for topical preparations and eye treatments, no such requirement is issued for drugs taken orally. Most of the major pharmaceutical companies list the inactive ingredients, but even some of these companies leave out “trade secret” components that may tip other companies to a competitive advantage of a particular drug.

  If inactive ingredients don’t help in the treatment of the condition of a patient, why are they included at all? Most commonly, they add to ease of manufacture of the drug, the stability of the finished pill or liquid (so that the tablet or capsule holds together), and its palatability to the user. Some ingredients, such as starches, are often used just as a filler, to keep the components of the drug solid. Dyes are added to improve the appearance of the drug, and sometimes to give it a distinctive brand identity. Inactive ingredients, also known as “excipients,” are designed not to interfere with the delivery of the active ingredients to the end user.

  The ingredients included in our ibuprofen tablets turn out to have these benign purposes. The scary sounding croscarmellose sodium is not toxic, and helps tablets to dissolve in the stomach. The silica and stearic acid are used as lubricants so that the tablet doesn’t stick to manufacturing equipment. Cellulose is used as a binder to hold the tablets together, as well as filler. Titanium dioxide is used as a thickener.

  But not everyone is so sanguine about the safety of inactive ingredients. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long lobbied for compulsory listing of all inactive ingredients on prescription and over-the-counter drug labels. Pediatricians report that saccharine and aspartame, used as sweeteners in chewable tablets for children, can induce headaches. Some children respond adversely to dyes found as coatings of pills; without labels, parents can’t easily tell whether their children will react.

  Adverse reactions to inactive ingredients are not confined to children. About 20 percent of all drugs contain lactose (milk sugar), used as a filler or a diluting agent in tablets and capsules, and to provide bulk to powdered remedies. Those with dairy allergies or extreme lactose intolerance can suffer from side effects worse than the conditions the pills are meant to treat. Many folks are allergic to corn, and might be shocked to learn that their adverse reaction to some drugs might be caused not by the active ingredients, but by starch used as filler.

  So despite the adjective “inactive,” one of these ingredients can “get busy” for the unlucky few. If you worry about this happening to you, consult the Physicians’ Desk Reference, which usually has a complete listing of inactive ingredients.

  Submitted by Scott Schuetze of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

  Why Do Peanut Butter Cookies Have Crisscross Marks on Them?

  We don’t know where, when, or who came up with the brilliant idea of topping a peanut butter cookie with fork marks, but that won’t stop us from speculating why. Let us consider the possibilities:

  1. Watch-Out! Theory

  Take us as an example. We love peanut butter. We love cookies. But we don’t like peanut butter cookies. The telltale crisscross has become a warning for us to “stay away” and a convenient way for both sales clerks and customers at bakeries and pastry shops to differentiate between peanut butter cookies and other confections. Peanut allergies can be deadly, so the crisscross is the equivalent of a skull and crossbones to those so afflicted, although we doubt that allergies had anything to do with the origins of the crisscross markings.

  2. Just Following Orders Theory

  Recipes call for the crisscross markings and most cooks are nothing if not obedient! Jeff A. Zeak, pilot plant manager of the American Institute of Baking, adds:

  Some people put the marks on the tops because that was what someone else (Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, or Dad) may have taught them to do and they never thought as to why they were doing it.

  We’d guess that this theory best explains why most home bakers adorn their cookies with the crisscross. But how did the practice start in the first place? We place our bet on…

  3. The Fork Was In Our Hands Anyway Theory

  Read just about any peanut butter cookie recipe and you will see nary a word about spoons. But forks ha
ve a way of appearing once, twice, or three times in the directions. Commercial bakers stir cookie batter by machine, but many recipes for home bakers call for the dough to be stirred with a fork rather than a spoon if a mixer isn’t available. Zeak explains why:

  Some peanut butter cookie dough recipes can be quite stiff and sometimes almost dry in appearance. By using a fork to mix the dough (mashing the dough between the tines), a greater mixing action is achieved that is very much like the action that is accomplished when using some type of mechanical mixer (with dough being forced, chopped, or smeared through the beaters).

  If you look at recipes for chocolate-chip cookies, you’ll see that after the dough has been mixed, you are asked to put a spoonful of batter on the cookie sheet. You needn’t worry about the blob flattening and turning into a nicely-shaped finished product. Peanut butter cookie dough is not as cooperative—if left as a ball, the stiffer and stickier peanut butter dough tends not to flatten out—it’ll look more like a doughnut hole than a cookie. So even if the dough is mixed by hand (a sticky proposition) or a spoon, every peanut butter cookie recipe we’ve seen calls for the baker to flatten the balls with the tines of a fork before putting them in the oven. Different chefs have varying techniques to prevent the batter from sticking to the fork when flattening. Zeak rolls the dough balls in granulated sugar. Others dip the fork in sugar or flour, while still others grease the fork with butter or PAM cooking spray.

  Our guess is that the origins of the crisscross markings came when a chef decided that as long as the tines of the fork were required to flatten the dough before baking, why not make an artistic statement at the same time? Some bakers even add a little flair by scoring the cookies after they are baked.

  Given the Feldman theory of housekeeping, we wouldn’t be shocked if the anonymous but oft-imitated baker who invented the cross marks figured: The fork is already dirty and sticky with peanut butter—why not postpone washing the fork until the last possible moment?

  Submitted by Brent Detter of Landisville, Pennsylvania. Thanks also to Cheryl-Anne Smith, via the Internet, and “Barbara,” via the Internet.

  Do Starfish Have Faces?

  Starfish are not fish, and experts tend to get testy if you call them “starfish,” anyway—they are properly known as sea stars, and are classified as Echinodermata (spiny skinned), the same phylum of invertebrates as sea cucumbers and urchins. We tend to think of sea stars as unmoving lumps that lie on the ocean’s floor, when they are actually voracious carnivores, and usually prowling for food.

  It’s hard to have a face when you don’t even have a head. Unlike most animals that have a head, sea stars, like all echinoderms, are radially symmetrical with a top side and a bottom side, but no front or back. They feel comfortable moving in any direction, as well they should: they have five—or more—arms and absolutely no notion of forward or backward.

  With the naked eye, it isn’t easy to see the sensory organs of a sea star, but they have many of the skills of animals with heads. One thing they don’t have is ears or a sense of hearing. And although they don’t have eyes, they do have eyeholes on each arm that can sense light. Sea stars often lift an arm in order to uncover the eyespot, so they can perceive light or movement in the water. Most sea stars crave the dark, as they escape predators by taking refuge underneath or behind rocks where they cannot be seen.

  Seas stars have a groove running along the bottom of each arm that contains hundreds of tiny “tube feet.” These tube feet not only enable sea stars to move, but also are equipped with suction cups, which allow sea stars to grip surfaces with some of the tube feet and propel themselves forward with the others. Each arm contains a single tube foot that is longer than the other feet and does not have a suction cup. When a sea star moves, this special tube foot is able to sense chemicals in the water. Even if sea stars don’t have noses, they do have a highly developed sense of smell, which comes in handy when they are seeking food—their “vision” doesn’t help them much to find prey.

  No eyes. No nose. No ears. No heads. Do we come up blank? We are happy to announce that they do have mouths, usually located right in the center of the bottom of the sea star.

  We are not so happy to describe how they use these mouths to devour their prey. Bivalves, especially oysters, clams, and mussels, are their favorite food source, but sea stars also feast on coral, fish, and other animals that live near the floor of the sea. While it takes some skill and protective gear for us to pry open an oyster, sea stars have mastered their technique; they wrap their arms around the oyster and use their tube feet to pry apart the oyster shell. Once there is the slightest crack in the shell (one estimate is that it need be open only 1/100 of an inch), the sea star extends its jellylike stomach out of its mouth (yes, its mouth) and inserts the stomach inside the shell of the oyster. The digestive juices of the stomach move into the crack of the shell while the inside-out stomach of the sea star digests its prey. It can take twenty-four hours for a sea star to fully digest a feast of a single oyster, and all of this time the stomach is having an “out of body” experience. Only when the food is fully digested does the sea star’s stomach return to its mouth. If your eating habits were this appalling, you wouldn’t show your face either.

  This Imponderable was submitted by two children, but the strange makeup of the sea star has inspired even experts in the field to ponder. While we were researching this question, Echinoderm scholar John Lawrence of the University of South Florida was kind enough to pass along a poem written by the renowned, late biologist from Stanford University, Arthur C. Giese. While Giese’s verse might not achieve poet laureate status, and some of the vocabulary might be obscure (“sessile” refers to animals that live attached to another object its whole life, such as sea sponges), we found it charming. Here’s an excerpt:

  Do echinoderms have a face?

  The echinoderms are the strangest race

  That on our World the Lord did place.

  One wonders, do they have a face?

  and how kissing between them takes place.

  They’re built on a pentameral plan

  Figure that out, please, if you can.

  Well, their structures are built in multiples of fives

  Instead of in pairs as in our lives.

  Perhaps because in the evolutionary hassle

  The original echinoderms were sessile.

  And Gregory writing about the face

  Says there is no face in a sessile race.

  Their larvae, however, tell a different story

  Because bilateralism is there in full glory

  The sessile habit was a later phase

  That permitted pentamerism to take place.

  Please will you now at a sea star look

  Or turn to the picture in your invertebrate book

  You’ll see not two but five little “eyes”

  Looking at you and up to the skies.

  Submitted by Jake Itzcowitz of Highland Mills, New York. Thanks also to Maya Itzcowitz of Highland Mills, New York.

  Why Do We Often Find a Folded-Up Piece of Tissue Paper Inside One of a Pair of Men’s Dress Socks?

  We have been mildly bemused when buying a pair of dress socks and finding an interloper inside the sock: a folded-up piece of tissue paper. Like the pins and cardboard that must be excised from new dress shirts, we’ve always looked upon the tissue removal as a “cost of doing business” when we forsake athletic socks for dress socks—but their presence never made much sense to us. When a couple of readers wrote in, wondering what the deal with the tissue paper was, we got cracking on solving the mystery.

  Like good parents, we love all our Imponderables. But like rotten parents, we love some more than others. Although we weren’t obsessed with this mystery when we started researching it, we became possessed. Right off the bat, we spoke to more than twenty people in the hosiery business and not one of them knew the answer, even folks responsible for the placement of the tissue paper in the socks.

&n
bsp; For example, the fifteenth person we spoke to was the director of packaging for a major sock company. To protect her identity, we’ll call her DoP. Here is the relevant excerpt from our conversation:

  DF: I have two questions for you. Why do you put a piece of tissue paper in men’s dress socks? And why in only one sock of the pair?

  DoP: Let me start with the second question first. We put the tissue only in one sock to save money.