Imponderables

by David Feldman

  Unlike early prototypes, current olive cans are lined with protective enamel. In plain tin cans, the color of the olives tended to bleach during storage—there is no problem with the enamel-tin can or with glass containers.

  Yes, glass containers. The technology now exists to sterilize glass containers at high temperatures, but it is expensive, and there are only a few producers of ripe olives who do pack ripe olives in glass. The olives are sterilized in water in a retort with superimposed air pressure. With normal air pressure, the lids would blow off the jar.

  California is responsible for the production of more than 90 percent of the ripe olives eaten in the United States (the rest are imported). Although technical and economical factors make tin cans more desirable for packaging of ripe olives, ripe olive makers feel they have lost little, since consumers don't find the dark, musky brine of ripe olives as eye-appealing as the transparent brine of green olives.

  Why are typewriter keys in their current configuration?

  The early developers of typewriters were obsessed with similarities between their keyboards and piano keyboards. Most typewriters therefore had eight to ten rows, since separate keys were needed for capital letters before the invention of the shift key. Most of these pioneer keyboards were arranged in strictly alphabetical order.

  Christopher Latham Sholes, the American inventor responsible for the first production typewriter in 1873, found that the alphabetical arrangement of keys led to jamming when the typewriter bars of fast typists were on the upstrike. Sholes consulted his brother, a teacher, who developed the idea that the bars of letters used frequently in combination should come from opposite directions.

  The brothers Sholes created the “QWERTY” keyboard we have today. The real purpose of this configuration was to avoid key jamming. At the time Sholes introduced the QWERTY keyboard, even the most proficient typists used two fingers—it was thought impossible to learn how to touch-type, even though the letters were arranged in alphabetical order!

  Sholes, aware of consumer resistance toward new configurations of previously standardized products, sold his customers on the “scientific arrangement” of his new keyboard. Sholes claimed that the QWERTY keyboard required the least possible movements of the hands while typing. The exact opposite was the truth. Sholes's QWERTY arrangement necessitates a finger trek of great movement around the keyboard to form the most basic English words. Yet Sholes's misleading advertising is still believed by most typists.

  With the advent of sophisticated typewriters, word processors, and computers that work without traditional bars, the need for the QWERTY configuration is gone. Many theorists have proposed more efficient letter arrangements, and the Dvorak keyboard has gained rabid adherents, but the question remains whether a century of QWERTY keyboard use can be overcome by such a mild force as logic.

  Why does an X stand for a kiss?

  Those cute little XXX's we affix to Valentine's Day cards and mash notes, with or without their companion OOO's, began not as symbols of affection, but as substitutes for signatures in the Middle Ages, when the vast majority of citizens were illiterate.

  But the X was also used by well-educated people, who were quite capable of signing their names, and was found on even the most formal and important documents—wills, contracts, deeds, and proclamations. Even kings and queens signed with the X as a symbol of good faith—an oath that the contents of a document were true. In some cultures, an X became a compulsory binding oath—without it, a contract or agreement was considered invalid and not legally binding.

  It was not an accident that the X was chosen as the substitute for a signature, and contrary to popular belief, it did not gain acceptance because of its simplicity for the illiterate.

  The acceptance of the X had everything to do with Christian symbolism. The X was the sign of St. Andrew, one of the twelve apostles: signing the X implied a guarantee to live up to one's promises in that saint's name.

  The X also had intimate associations with Christ himself. The X was regarded as a visual representation of the Cross of the Calvary and the Crucifixion, and X, as well as an English letter, is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ, Christos. (The Greek letter, of course, is chi.)

  How did this legal and religious symbol metamorphose into a romantic one? To further guarantee the sincerity of intentions, people in the Middle Ages solemnly kissed their signatures, much as we put our hand on a Bible to swear to our veracity in court. This kiss became known as the “kiss of truth,” and because the kiss finalized and bound many agreements, it spawned another saying that many think had romantic origins— “sealed with a kiss.”

  Over the years, as notaries public, literacy, and lie detectors lessened the need for the mark, the X lost its sacred connotations. It reached its peak in popularity in the early and mid-twentieth century. During World War II, the British and American military were so alarmed by its constant use that they forbade their soldiers from putting XXX's in their letters home, fearing that spies might insert cryptic codes into these humble marks, which once stood for truth.

  Why is saffron ridiculously expensive?

  The saffron threads used to color and flavor many dishes, particularly in Indian cooking, are the golden orange stigmata of the autumn crocus, a plant of the iris family. Autumn crocuses are far from rare. So why is saffron so dear?

  There are two reasons. The crocus flowers must be picked by hand to extract the saffron threads. As many as 500,000 flowers (1.5 million stigmata) are needed to collect one measly pound of saffron.

  The flowers are picked immediately after they blossom, and the stigmata are cut with fingernails and then dried by the sun or by fire. During this drying process, the saffron loses approximately 80 percent of its weight.

  Saffron could be cultivated in North America and still is grown in parts of the Mediterranean, but where could the U.S. or other affluent countries find labor inexpensive enough to produce saffron as cheaply as the “ridiculously expensive” price we pay today?

  Why are there so few women pilots on commercial airlines?

  Have you ever entered a commercial aircraft, fastened your seat belt, and heard a female announce, “Hello, this is your captain speaking”? Chances are, you haven't.

  There are very few women captains piloting commercial planes, and the situation is not likely to alter much in the near future, even though there are more women who are first or second officers today. The demand for pilot jobs is immense, but there is a finite number of opportunities.

  The founders and present-day executives of most of the major airlines have military backgrounds. Many of them saw and see their companies as paramilitary organizations. Traditionally, the talent pool for commercial airplane employment has been the military. The airlines were able to pick the cream of the crop from air force, navy, and marine ranks, pilots with thousands of hours of pilot-in-command time and experience with aircraft more sophisticated than they will probably ever be asked to fly as civilians. The academic curriculum of the military also tends to be more comprehensive than civilian education. Given an “all else being equal” alternative, how could the airlines be criticized for selecting the right stuff when the competition is mostly (male and female) flight instructors and corporate pilots?

  Ever since the WASPS of World War II, women have flown transport planes for the military, but they have not seen combat action. There is no pressure on the military to change this policy. As a result, women (and nonmilitary men) are usually forced to pay for their own training, and to receive flight education that might be perfectly adequate, but less wide ranging and glamorous than their military counterparts.

  WASPS from World War II did not break into commercial piloting. It wasn't until the late 1960s that a woman attained the rank of captain at a large commercial airline, when Emily Howell broke the ranks at Frontier Airlines.

  Obviously, cultural gender stereotypes are an important reason why there aren't more women pilots. There are many other physical, hands
-on technical jobs that have not attracted women. Women haven't traditionally flocked into the ranks of civil engineers, for example. But when affirmative action legislation was passed, the airlines were on shaky grounds on their hiring history of all minorities, and greater attention was given to all minority applicants. With the opening of doors to nontraditional candidates, the mix of military- to civilian-trained pilots also changed, so that now about half of all commercial airline pilots are trained outside of the military. Although it may be harder, financially and psychologically, for women to achieve the same level of piloting training as men, qualified women, if anything, have an advantage over men. The airlines look for qualified women—if not for altruistic reasons (they could face the prospect of government and class action discrimination suits), then for practical ones.

  Some sources, off the record, indicated that the airlines think that customers feel insecure with women pilots. Passengers, so the theory goes, feel queasy when they hear a female voice announcing she is commanding the plane—some out of sheer sexism, others because they assume that no female could have enough experience to warrant having their lives in her hands.

  In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe talks about how pilots everywhere emulated test pilot Chuck Yeager's verbal bedside manner. Pilots still imitate him. If our plane plummets thousands of feet, we can expect a husky male voice to drawl nonchalantly, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing mild turbulence. I'd recommend you keep your seat belts fastened until we correct this inconvenience. Isn't that a lovely view of Lake George on the right?”

  This is our image of pilots. They are daring and macho, but also comforting and endlessly secure and confident. The notion of women pilots clashes with all sorts of cultural stereotypes. With far fewer opportunities to receive comparable training and little incentive or pressure on airlines to change hiring practices, the prospect for rapid change is small. Airline companies may now encourage men to hand out complimentary macadamias in the aisles, but women aren't particularly wanted in the cockpit.

  Why do some Baskin-Robbins stores charge 5 cents more for an ice cream cup than for an ice cream cone?

  Baskin-Robbins stores are all franchises. Although the B-R headquarters provides guidelines, it is up to each storeowner to set the price structure for his or her establishment.

  Many years ago, it was common for Baskin-Robbins and other ice cream emporiums to charge five cents more for a cup than for a cone. At a time when a single scoop might cost twenty cents, a nickel toll for a cup and a plastic spoon seemed like an excessive penalty. Now that a single scoop at many stores costs a dollar or more, the nickel surcharge is still around, but not nearly as prevalent.

  Could the cup and plastic spoon actually cost the store owner more than a sugar cone? The answer: yes. Ten years ago, the cup and spoon (mainly the cup) cost a couple of cents more than the sugar cone (which costs considerably more than the cup cone favored by kids who don't know any better). The B-R franchisees created the five cents' surcharge to cover their extra cost for the “packaging” of the cup. Inflation in the cost of cones has greatly exceeded the rate for plastic and paper products of late, and though your Baskin-Robbins dealer still pays a little more for cups than for cones, the difference is negligible.

  Baskin-Robbins would prefer its franchisees not to charge extra for cups. The two-tier price structure might have had some justification years ago, but doesn't now, and consumers tend to feel they are, literally, being nickeled (and dimed) when they have to pay five cents extra for a cup when they have already laid out an investment of a dollar or so for one scoop.

  An informal survey of several Baskin-Robbins franchisees, none of which now charges extra for cups, revealed that the pricing of their ice cream is based upon what their market can bear. There are regions of the country where customers would balk at not being able to get two scoops of ice cream and change for a one-dollar bill. Said one dealer, who stopped his cup surcharge five years ago, “I could no longer get away with it.”

  Many people believe that the reason for the higher cost of cups is that the serving of ice cream is larger. At Baskin-Robbins, at least, that is not the case. All scoops are supposed to be two and a half ounces, but generous dippers are the bane of ice cream profit ledgers. One franchisee estimated that he loses $25,000 a year because employees lay too heavily on their scoopers. Some ice cream dippers do tend to give bigger servings in cups, probably because a scoop is wider in diameter than a cone, but doesn't come close to filling the cup (this is undoubtedly why Häagen-Dazs cups are tiny—they feel that there is a marketing advantage to overfilling a small container rather than partially occupying a larger one).

  One reason customers might tolerate a higher price is that cups are particularly popular with two age brackets: adults and little children (whom experienced parents are too savvy to entrust with a cone and any edible substance). In both cases, the purchase is generally made by over-25 adults, who might be less price resistant than kids, teenagers, or young adults. Cups also sell best during the colder months of the year, when serious eaters aren't deterred from purchases merely because the streets are as frozen as the ice cream, let alone by an extra five cents.

  Baskin-Robbins does not conduct system-wide research on this topic, but our poll indicates that almost half of all scoops that Baskin-Robbins serves are in cups, so that the loss of the potential five cents' gross on the cup surcharge is significant and must be absorbed by raising the price of the other products. The cup surcharge was never really a consumer rip-off. If anything, B-R franchises were fairly passing along extra costs directly to the people who used the “frill.” And now that cups don't cost the retailer more, they have stopped a practice that made some customers perceive them as cheap or usurious.

  For another food, the cup surcharge is back. Many frozen-yogurt stands charge more for a cup than a cone. They, too, have justification for the practice. They put more yogurt into a cup than a cone. To anyone who has ever attempted to eat a large frozen-yogurt cone and keep his clothes and body stain-free, the reason yogurt cones tend to be small is no Imponderable.

  How do they determine on which corners of intersections to put street-name signs?

  The actual placement of street signs is usually left to local governments, but the guidelines laid out in the federal government's Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices is almost always respected. This manual is amazingly specific. It specifies, for example, that the lettering of street-sign names should be at least four inches high. Supplementary lettering, such as “St.” or “Ave.,” must be at least two inches high. It commands not only that all street signs should be either reflectorized or illuminated, but that the legend and background of the sign should be of contrasting colors and that it should have a white message and border on a green background.

  The manual recommends that all intersections should be equipped with street-name signs. In residential areas, the minimum is one street-name sign per intersection, but no guide-lines are stated for which corners to place the signs on.

  For business districts and principal arterials, however, the manual is much more precise and answers our Imponderable specifically:

  Street name signs should be placed at least on diagonally opposite corners so that they will be on the far right-hand side of the intersection for traffic on the major street. Signs naming both streets should be erected at each, located and mounted with their faces parallel to the streets they name.

  If a busy intersection has signs on all four corners, it is probably the judgment of a local engineer that the traffic load justifies the added expense.

  Why does Roger Ebert receive top billing over Gene Siskel on At the Movies?

  Why did Gene Siskel originally have top billing over Roger Ebert on At the Movies?

  Why did Roger Ebert receive top billing over Gene Siskel on Sneak Previews?

  Billing in motion pictures and television has become such a crucial issue for performers and their agents that all sorts of devices hav
e been invented to avoid the ultimate confrontation: Who will receive top billing?

  With a large cast, the most common tactic to indicate equality of billing is to list the cast in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order suggests an ensemble troupe bereft of ego or petty jealousies. Many actors who wouldn't dream of accepting second billing in a movie will gladly lose themselves deep into the alphabetically ordered credits of an off-Broadway dramatic production.

  It is more of a problem to signify equality between costars. No production yet has stooped low enough to list two stars with the caveat, “in alphabetical order.” But one solution has been devised to display equality graphically—the left-down/right-up configuration, currently used on Cheers:

  Shelley Long

  Ted Danson

  Since we read from top to bottom and left to right, our eyes presumably become gridlocked directly between the two stars. One wonders how they decided which actor's name would go where if there was no distinction in status between the two positions. (Note to Ted Danson: An unscientific survey indicates that most people see Shelley Long's name first when reading the credits. Call your agent.)

  Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel are both respected film critics. On their PBS series Sneak Previews, Roger Ebert received top billing over Gene Siskel. When Ebert and Siskel left PBS for the greener pastures of syndication with At the Movies, Siskel assumed top billing. Was there a bloodless coup? Did Siskel triumph after a protracted, bitter contractual wrangle?