Imponderables

by David Feldman

  Why do gas stations use machines to print out the amounts of credit card purchases when other merchants write out the numbers by hand?

  The major oil companies, like Mobil, Exxon, and Texaco, receive literally millions of credit card slips a day. It's no wonder that these corporations have depended upon automation to speed up the processing of these slips.

  Even when their total daily gross is less than other types of businesses, gas stations tend to issue more credit slips per day than any other kind of establishment—more than most restaurants, hotels, or retail stores. Gas companies have historically encouraged credit card sales, believing that a credit card holder will tend to remain loyal to the issuing company. A spokesperson for Mobil estimated that 30-35 percent of its total volume is from credit card purchases. The service station owner does not necessarily lose cash flow when you buy with a credit card. Most oil companies allow service stations to buy their gas and other products from their home company with cash, check, or credit card slips, so the station owner need not wait for you to pay the bill before the station is reimbursed.

  Optical scanning devices became prevalent in the oil industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the good old days of full service, the gas jockey would take your credit card, put it into an imprinter, and move three or four levers to print out each digit in order to encode the price of your purchase. In most service stations today, the technology is the same. With the amount of the purchase printed in purplish numbers, optical scanning devices can read the amount without the need for a keypunch operator to examine each credit slip individually. Although optical scanning devices are extremely expensive, current ones can read slips at a rate of 100 per second, which obviously saves time and money. With the new point-of-sale electronic-magnetic recorders, imprinters are going to become merely backstops in case of problems with the scanning device, since the new technology greatly reduces the amount of time service station employees must spend filling out a credit card slip.

  Some optical scanners are theoretically capable of “reading” handwritten numbers, but at present they are inconsistent in performance. Until these types of scanners are perfected (and brought down in price), the oil industry is content to stick with technology that is reasonably priced and reliable.

  So if the gas stations have such a great deal going, why don't Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and the other big boys come along for the ride? An oil company representative mentioned that one of the initial reasons for using imprinters was that gas stations were less than pristine places, and there were problems with humans, let alone optical scanners, reading numbers with oil smudges on them. Perhaps, he theorized, credit card companies hadn't shared their problems in reading the credit slips and thus had no pressing need to utilize scanning technology. Another oil executive proposed the idea that perhaps the volume of credit card slips processed by even the biggest credit card companies was not sufficient to employ optical scanners.

  Both theories were wrong. The major credit card companies do employ optical scanners, which read all of the information on the slips except for the amount. There are two main reasons the major credit card companies have merchants manually fill out credit card slips. The first, and most important reason, is that many credit card purchases are made in places where a gratuity might be added (in the case of American Express, about 30 percent of the places where a card is used). The credit card companies want to do everything they can to encourage their customers to put the tip on the credit card, since they will collect a percentage of the gratuity as well as the purchase price. If gratuities were added after the original price of, say, a gourmet dinner, it would require two credit slips or tearing up the original slip and imprinting another—in either case necessitating extra work for the merchant and extra time and inconvenience for the patron. Visa, MasterCard, and especially American Express extract their fortunes by eking out huge profits from tiny profit margins (after all, traveler's checks are sold with a 1 percent markup). Losing their percentage of gratuities would offset any gain from using a fully automated point-of-sale device.

  The second reason the major credit card companies might be reticent about using optical scanners is that while the average oil company bill might total less than $20, many credit card purchases on all-purpose credit cards can come to thousands of dollars. If a scanner happens to drop a zero or miss a decimal point, it takes a lot of savings from the wonderful world of automation to compensate for one colossal automated boo-boo.

  What is the difference between “gourmet” popcorn and “regular” popcorn?

  Different species of popcorn have the same flavor, but food technologists can fiddle with other characteristics that make popcorn more appealing to the consumer. There are only two basic types of popcorn: Yellow and white. Yellow popcorn always pops bigger than white and is therefore favored by concessionaires, since it fills up more buckets with no more outlay for kernels. Many popcorn aficionados prefer the white variety, which has a slightly sweeter taste.

  “Gourmet” popcorn is a hybrid. While retaining some of the extra sweetness of white popcorn, “gourmet” popcorn is bred to pop bigger than ordinary yellow kernels. The degree to which a burst popcorn kernel exceeds its original size is known in the popcorn trade as its expansion ratio. “Regular” popcorn averages an expansion ratio of 35-38 times, but the best hybrids average over 40. Makers of “gourmet” popcorn, such as Orville Redenbacher, also claim that their product is less tough than regular popcorn, providing a “melt in your mouth” consistency that consumers covet.

  Why aren't cashews ever sold in their shells?

  Cashews aren't sold in their shells because they don't have a shell. Don't all nuts have shells? Yes. Then what gives?

  Imponderables would never be pedantic, but we must insist that a cashew is a seed, not a nut. The cashew is the seed of a pear-shaped fruit, the cashew apple, which is itself edible. The cashew seed hangs at the lower end of the fruit, vulnerable and exposed. Cashews grow not on trees, but on tropical shrubs, similar to sumac plants.

  A hard or leathery shell is what differentiates a nut from a seed. Kernels with thin, soft shells, such as pumpkins and sunflowers, are properly called seeds.

  Why do the minute hands on school clocks click backward before advancing?

  How we remember the torture inflicted on the boy in the above cartoon. During the last period, we waited impatiently for that last tick of the clock that would bring the school bell that would signal our freedom from school. And just when we heard that jolt of electricity hit the clock, the minute hand would go backward instead of forward. For a split second, we feared that our principal had figured out how to reverse time.

  Our paranoia was heightened by our knowledge that the master clock—which sent the impulses to the clocks in our classrooms—was housed in the principal's office. The master clock sends commands to the secondary clocks located throughout the school to advance every minute, sending an electrical charge that lasts approximately two seconds.

  The back-tick of the minute hand is the result, not the purpose, of the design of impulse clocks. John Evans, of the Lathem Time Recorder Co. in Atlanta, Georgia, was kind enough to draw a diagram of the back of a secondary impulse clock, the

  type that would be in the average classroom. The ratchet wheel that you see in the diagram moves one tooth at a time, which assures that the minute hand on the face of the clock moves precisely six degrees every minute. To ensure that the minute hand moves properly, a locking pawl also engages the teeth of the ratchet wheel to prevent a reverse rotation. For the locking pawl to do its job, it must momentarily allow clearance for the wheel to move while the coil is being energized—otherwise, the wheel couldn't advance one tooth at a time. While the clearance is in effect, the locking pawl drags the ratchet back a tiny bit (perhaps as little as one-tenth of a degree). This effect is magnified, however, many times over by the movement of the much larger hands of the clock.

  Most synchronized clock systems a
re self-correcting. Usually, they can make minor corrections of a minute or so on an hourly basis, often at one minute before the hour; when a classroom clock is running too fast and gets corrected at 2:59 P.M., school kids are tortured even more. Major corrections are executed automatically every twelve hours (usually, in schools, at 6:00 A.M. and P.M.). Some school systems have computerized their clock systems, with the principal's master clock automatically tripping off the school bells.

  If only some people are susceptible to hypnosis, how can stage hypnotists confidently ply their trade?

  While on one of our extremely rare breaks from work on this tome, we happened to flip on the television and watch a nationally syndicated talk show. The special guest was a hypnotist, who proceeded to put three members of the studio audience “under.” The three subjects, all women who wanted to quit smoking, were put in a trance. The hypnotist told one of them that when he signaled her to wake up, she would have an urgent craving for a cigarette, but when she smoked it, it would taste like common sludge.

  Like a trained seal, the subject, when awakened, furiously lit a cigarette and, after inhaling, did a take with as much finesse as a consummate comedienne. What had been the object of her desire only a second ago now repulsed her. The very brand of cigarette she chain-smoked now tasted like a combination of chalk and paste.

  You've probably seen other stage hypnotists at work. Perhaps the most famous is Pat Collins, the “Hip Hypnotist,” who has starred in many Showtime specials and in her own night-club on the Sunset Strip. She can effortlessly transform seemingly normal spectators into would-be opera singers and burlesque stars.

  Textbooks on hypnotism assure us that not everyone can be hypnotized and that even among those who can, there is a wide range of susceptibility and suggestibility. Yet stage hypnotists have been popular entertainers for over a century, relying on unknown volunteers from the audience as their subjects, and one rarely sees a hypnotist fail at his or her appointed task. When we see a stage magician, we assume trickery. We buy our ticket specifically to see trickery. Is stage hypnosis fakery in the same sense, or do stage hypnotists know something clinical hypnotists do not?

  To find out more about this Imponderable, we used many sources. Not surprisingly, no stage hypnotists would talk to us on the record—or much, for that matter, off the record. But we unearthed quite a bit of material written by stage hypnotists for their fellow practitioners, as well as enough medical and scholarly material to piece together much of the story.

  Most skeptics believe that stage hypnotists use confederates who pretend to be hypnotized. Actually, in the days of burlesque this was sometimes the case. Most hypnotists, even then, preferred to find confederates who could be put into a trance, for their most popular tricks involved physical stunts, such as placing the subject's head and feet on separate chairs and having the subject's body lie as rigid as a corpse. Why didn't the subject's body collapse without support? Because these confederates were predisposed toward falling into hypnotic catalepsy, a condition in which consciousness is temporarily lost and the muscles become rigid. Epileptics, during severe seizures, are cataleptic, and some schizophrenics during psychotic episodes are similarly impervious to pain and suffering. With a cataleptic confederate in hand, at least one segment of the entertainment was consistently foolproof.

  Other bogus hypnotists used props to achieve their effects. Some “stopped the blood from flowing” by placing a golf ball under the armpit of the subject. The confederate simply pressed his or her arm against the ball and circulation suddenly stopped.

  These crude tricks might have worked for barnstormers who performed one-nighters in small towns, but they are dangerous and needlessly expensive today. Unless the hypnotist can find a different stooge at every performance, the confederate runs the risk of being discovered, discrediting the reputation of the hypnotist. Even the best confederate is a financial liability—an unnecessary mouth to feed. Props are also dangerous, especially in television performances, where close-ups are a fact of life. Stage hypnotists don't need confederates or props to successfully ply their trade, but they do need to follow some of the procedures described below to ensure a successful act.

  Find the Right Subject

  Most stage hypnotists call for volunteers from the audience. If the subjects onstage were a random sample of the general population, the hypnotist would be in trouble. But they aren't, for several important reasons:

  1. Volunteers are self-selected candidates to be good subjects. People who go to a hypnotist for treatment are more likely to be hypnotizable than the average person, if only because their mere presence confirms their belief in the efficacy of hypnosis. Attendees at hypnotic demonstrations are even more susceptible, and volunteers, except for the professional skeptics, who deliberately try to undermine the stage hypnotist (more on them later), are likely to be extremely hypnotizable.

  Psychologist Martin T. Orne points out in an article in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology that “… much hypnotic behavior results from the subject's conception of the role of the hypnotic subject as determined by past experience and learning, and by explicit and implicit cues provided by the hypnotist and the situation.” To extend Orne's thesis, if a subject, before going onstage to volunteer, believes in the power of the hypnotist, presumably because of past exposure to or experiences with hypnosis, the subject is going to be more willing to suspend customary behavior and, perhaps, more importantly, is going to feel no responsibility for his or her behavior onstage when “under” hypnosis.

  2. An effective stage hypnotist chooses subjects by carefully determined criteria. Almost every hypnotist does a “demonstration” before commencing his or her act. Usually, the ostensible purpose of the demonstration is educational—to inform the audience a little bit about how hypnosis works or to allay audience fears about what the hypnotist will maintain is not a mystical process. The actual purpose of this demonstration is to search for susceptible prospects for the act.

  Most hypnotists use a couple of old chestnuts for this demonstration. They may put the audience as a whole “under” and inform them they have just eaten a tremendously sour lemon. By carefully scrutinizing the reactions of an audience with its eyes closed, the hypnotist can easily spot promising prospects. Even more commonly, the hypnotist will ask audience members to squeeze their eyelids together. Then the audience is informed that have been shut and can't be opened. The hypnotist asks the audience to try to open their eyes. Those who can't open their eyes have passed the test.

  The hypnotist is likely to socialize a bit with the crowd, encouraging verbal interaction, which serves to loosen up the audience for the act, but more importantly allows the hypnotist to observe other behavioral traits that determine successful volunteers. In general, the hypnotist is looking for highly sociable people, uninhibited types who will not fear looking foolish in front of other people. People who are terrified at the prospect of losing control of their emotions are the worst candidates for hypnosis. The hypnotist wants to find friendly but trusting types, who will be willing to subordinate their egos while on stage. These psychological factors are as important in scouting prospects as the lemon or eye tests, and audiences rarely have an inkling that the hypnotist's repartee is masking crucial preparatory work. Although you won't see this part of the act on a television program, stage hypnotists use this type of warm-up on talk shows before proceeding with their act—it is a crucial diagnostic tool for the hypnotist in screening subjects.

  The hypnotist is faced with one more major problem in selecting subjects. Even if the hypnotist discovers the best prospects in the audience, it doesn't mean they will volunteer. Folks tend to be skeptical when the hypnotist selects subjects; they are much less suspicious when volunteers are sought. Further more, there is another advantage to selecting “real people” from the audience—they will be friends of others in the crowd, heightening audience interest and enthusiasm.

  So how does the hypnotist get to work on the most susceptible
audience members while supposedly asking for any volunteers? Obviously, if enough people volunteer who passed the pre-tests, the hypnotist should select them. If some of the most promising prospects are recalcitrant, the solution is to allow volunteers to come onstage, but to perform difficult tricks only on those who have shown a disposition toward susceptibility. Several manuals for stage hypnotists suggest that the hypnotist diplomatically but firmly approach those who are not susceptible and simply ask them to leave the stage. Many hypnotic stunts do not require the entire group of subjects. In the talk show we watched, for example, only one of the three subjects was used for the most demanding stunt. When group stunts are needed, the hypnotist has many tricks in order to induce subjects to conform to the behavior of the rest of the group (see below).

  Pressure the Subjects to Behave in the Desired Manner

  The hypnotist is at a tremendous advantage over the subject during the show. A volunteer mission is a submissive one. It is amazing that so many people are willing to go onstage and risk losing control in front of hundreds (or in the case of television) millions of people. Yet, there is no problem hiring recruits for shows like Let's Make a Deal or Truth or Consequences, the latter of which didn't even provide much financial compensation for fans willing to humiliate themselves. It is impressive what good sports the “bargainers” are on Let's Make a Deal, dressing and acting outlandishly in order to attract Monty Hall's attention and then smiling as they trade boats they have won for a basket of hard-boiled eggs. The same contestant might cry buckets if she lost a wallet with fifty dollars in it. It is unclear whether game show contestants are in a trance, but hypnotists have many tricks to make their subjects as compliant as Monty Hall's contingent. Here are some of the pressures, usually exerted by the hypnotist, that encourage volunteers to become docile subjects.