Now I Know

by Lewis, Dan

  Many of us have experienced it—one study in the British Medical Journal (yes, there’s a study on ice cream headaches) suggests as many as one-third of the population has been so afflicted. Why does it happen? The most common explanation suggests that, in a sense, brain freezes are caused by our brains malfunctioning.

  Your face has a nerve called the trigeminal nerve that contains three parts. One of the three parts carries sensory information from your forehead to your brain while another one does the same for the roof of your mouth. (The third one focuses on the lower mouth, but that’s not relevant to conversations about ice cream headaches.) Eating ice cream causes the blood vessels in your face to contract quickly and, when the ice cream leaves your mouth, those same blood vessels get warm and dilate, or expand. If you eat ice cream too quickly, the blood vessels expand rapidly, and that’s where the trigeminal nerve takes over. The part of the nerve in the roof of your mouth sends a signal to your brain, telling the brain that something’s wrong.

  The brain screws it up. This “mistake” is a phenomenon called “referred pain,” in which the brain misplaces the source of the sensation. It’s not very common, although it’s also seen in heart attacks, during which the brain incorrectly places the pain in the shoulder instead of the chest. In the case of brain freeze, instead of “understanding” the signal for what it is—a change in temperature in your mouth—your brain instead thinks that the signal is coming from the forehead. The brain reacts by turning that signal into a migraine-like headache, although a short-lived one, thankfully.

  Why this referred pain phenomenon occurs is unknown. But we do know that if you do not want to experience it, there’s an easy solution: Slow down when you’re eating a frosted treat.

  BONUS FACT

  The world’s largest ice cream manufacturer and distributor is Unilever. They own Breyer’s, Ben and Jerry’s, Klondike, Good Humor, Popsicle, and … Slim Fast.

  PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

  THE COUNTER-INTUITIVE POWER OF SMILING

  Our brains are very powerful, and many of the things we do happen at a subconscious level. For example, when we are happy, we smile, even without thinking about it. However, what if we did it consciously? What if we were feeling kind of down and smiled anyway?

  As it turns out, that would be a great idea. Smiling can actually make you happy.

  In July of 2012, The Atlantic reported on a study conducted by psychology researchers at the University of Kansas. The research team asked each of the 169 participants to make one of three preselected facial expressions—one showing no emotion or a neutral emotion; one with a standard smile; or a wide, high-cheek smile known as a Duchenne smile. The researchers then outfitted each person’s mouth with chopsticks in order to keep the mandated facial expression in place during the rest of the experiment.

  After the faces were set place, the participants performed a series of stressful activities that, along with keeping the chopsticks in place, required them to multitask. During this process, their heart rates were monitored and they were asked to keep tabs on their emotional states. The researchers compared their heart rates, emotional states, and facial expressions to one another and concluded that the bigger the smile, the more calm and relaxed the person was—even though the stressful activities were the same for each group.

  This isn’t the only study suggesting that smiling more can make you happier. A 2011 article in Scientific American reported on a study of twenty-five women, half of whom were undergoing Botox treatments. The dozen or so Botox users who were chemically unable to frown reported feeling less stressed and less anxious than the other group—even though their responses to other questions (such as how attractive they felt) were nearly identical to that of the control group. Similarly, according to HowStuffWorks.com, in 1989 a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan had test subjects make the long-vowel “e” sound, record their emotional states, then make the long-vowel “u” sound, and record their emotional states again. The subjects, by and large, were happier while making the smile-inducing “e” sound than the frown-inducing “u.”

  So the age-old advice, “Turn that frown upside down,” may actually be worth taking. If you want to be a bit happier, try saying cheese.

  BONUS FACT

  Due to a severe winter in 1948, the mayor of Pocatello, Idaho, issued an ordinance requiring that townsfolk smile. (He probably was unaware that the idea was scientifically valid.) The ordinance went unrepealed but was forgotten for nearly forty years until, in 1987, a local reporter discovered it. The town revived the pseudo-law that year and declared the town the “U.S. Smile Capital.” Pocatello instituted an annual “Smile Days” event. During the Smile Days, authorities make joking arrests of people who don’t smile (and there’s a town-wide party at the end of the week).

  THE PERFECT CRIME SCENE

  THE ONE PLACE IN THE UNITED STATES WHERE THEY CAN’T GET YOU (MAYBE)

  If you live in the United States, you’re probably familiar with some of the basic rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights—for example, freedom of speech, religion, the press; the right against self-incrimination; and the right for alleged criminals to be tried in front of a jury of their peers. But do you know what that last one means? It’s more complicated than you’d think, and because of a strange legal wrinkle involving a very big national park, it may have created the perfect crime scene. At least, that’s what law professor Brian Kalt of Michigan State University College of Law argues.

  How does it work?

  Let’s say you, heaven forbid, are charged with a crime. The Constitution itself (Article III, Section 2 for those who wish to look it up) requires that the “trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed.” Pretty straightforward. The Sixth Amendment requires that the jury must be “of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Again, pretty clear. The only confusing part, unless you’re a lawyer, is probably the term “district.”

  The U.S. Federal Courts are divided into zones called “districts,” which correlate almost perfectly with the states themselves. Connecticut has one district: the District of Connecticut. New York has four, using ordinal directions, e.g., “Southern District of New York,” which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, and six counties in the state. Wyoming has one, as well, which includes the entire state. But for some reason, Congress decided to also include within the District of Wyoming the parts of Yellowstone National Park that are in Idaho and Montana. And that’s where the perfect crime scene appears.

  So that crime you’re charged with? Imagine you committed it in the part of Yellowstone that is actually in Idaho. Where would your jury come from? It would have to be from the state (Idaho) and district (the District of Wyoming) in which the crime was committed. The only area that meets both requirements is that tiny portion of Yellowstone that is in Idaho. The population of that area?

  Zero.

  Good luck finding that jury.

  BONUS FACT

  During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the four major party candidates, collectively, visited forty of the fifty states. Then-Senator Obama and Senator McCain’s campaigns spent, in total, over $1 billion, according to Politico. Neither candidate visited Idaho or Wyoming that year, and Idaho received only $702 total in campaign advertising—$268 from Mr. Obama, $100 from Mr. McCain, and $334 from the Republican Party in support of McCain’s campaign. For comparison’s sake, the candidates spent nearly $2 million in neighboring Montana and more than $50 million in the battleground state of Ohio.

  THE USUAL SUSPECTS

  HOW THE NYPD FILLS POLICE LINEUPS

  The 1995 movie The Usual Suspects won two Academy Awards—screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie won one for Best Original Screenplay and actor Kevin Spacey won one for Best Supporting Actor. The movie centers around five felons who are, inexplicably at the time, brought into the same lineup by the New York Police Department. The odd composition of the lineup strikes one of the five, D
ean Keaton, as a telltale sign that the police have nothing on the quintet of suspects. At one point in the movie, Keaton and another felon, Michael McManus, discuss the peculiar mix:

  Keaton: This whole thing was a shakedown.

  McManus: What makes you say that?

  Keaton: How many times you been in a lineup? It’s always you and four dummies. PD are paying homeless guys ten bucks a head half the time. And there’s no way they’d line five felons in the same row. No way.

  Keaton was right—kind of. The NYPD does pay about $10 per lineup stand-in. But they don’t always pay homeless guys. Often, and especially in the Bronx, they pay Robert Watson.

  Robert Watson is a nondescript man in his mid-forties who, according to a profile in The New York Times in October 2011, has a fondness for coconut-flavored booze. He’s not a police officer but has an informal, working relationship with officers in his neighborhood. Watson got his “job” out of a stroke of luck—he was sitting around, minding his own business, when a police officer offered him a small stipend to sit in on a lineup. The officer then upped the ante, telling Watson that he could make a few extra bucks if he brought some friends along. Realizing that he could parlay this into a meaningful (albeit small) amount of income, Watson began playing headhunter for the PD and agent for the pseudo-actors who sit on stools waiting for witnesses.

  For about fifteen years since, Watson has been on call, ready to provide the NYPD with lineup fillers—guys who aren’t guilty of anything other than looking vaguely like the man accused of a crime. The people Watson provides sit, shoulder to shoulder, with the accused and other fillers, while the alleged victim or crime witness looks them over, deciding which (if any) is the person he or she believes committed the crime in question. If the accused is selected, that’s good news for the prosecution; if not, that’s excellent news for the defense.

  Watson’s informal relationship with the NYPD is his main source of income. He earns about $10 for each lineup filled, with the other monies going to the stand-ins themselves. (He sometimes sits in the lineup himself to make a bit extra.) On a good day, he’ll fill four lineups; on a slow day, he’ll come up empty. His annual earnings from his lineup filling business are, as one would expect, unreported, but probably hover around $10,000 a year. And—absent a public intoxication arrest—he stays out of trouble, lest he lose his marginally lucrative business.

  According to the Times, he has a wide network of African Americans and Hispanics of both genders and can even provide men based on their facial hair or lack thereof. But as good at filling a lineup as Watson is, he’s not perfect. When it comes to white people, Watson is of no help. He told the Times that “they call me for that, and I don’t have that.” Instead, Watson notes that the exchange from The Usual Suspects rings pretty true: “They go to the homeless shelter for white guys.”

  BONUS FACT

  Another way to ID criminals, of course, is fingerprints. If you ever want to mask yours, consider getting a pet koala. Why? Because koala and human fingerprints are so similar that even experts have trouble telling them apart.

  PRUNING UP

  WHY OUR FINGERS WRINKLE WHEN WET

  Spend enough time in a bathtub or a pool, and without fail your fingers will start to resemble raisins—pruned, wrinkled, etc. It’s happened to all of us, many times. But why? What makes our fingers wrinkle when wet?

  For a long time, the consensus involved absorption. As the theory goes, most things, when exposed to (or submerged in) water for a long period of time, tend to wilt or weaken. If that were to happen to our fingertips, we would probably lose their function temporarily if not permanently—and, of course, experience a huge amount of pain.

  Wrinkling stops this. As noted by Wired, the puckered skin retains its cohesiveness, thereby avoiding that outcome. Your skin is not drying out; quite the opposite. It is actually absorbing a relatively large amount of water—Wired calls it a “tremendous” amount—while maintaining its function as the barrier between your other organs and the harsh environment around you.

  Although this reasoning may be true, it may not be the only reason. One recent study reported on by Discover magazine concludes that pruney fingers have an evolutionary component—our fingers wrinkle so that we can grip things in wet conditions. Anecdotally, that makes a lot of sense—if our hands are submerged in water for a long period of time, there’s a good chance the rest of our bodies are too. That means we may be in distress, unable to get ourselves out of the water and onto dry land. In theory, everything grabbable around us would also be wet, and therefore slick to the touch. Having smooth fingers would make it more difficult to grab hold of those would-be anchors, but when our fingers prune, so the theory goes, it is like having a personal set of rain treads.

  A really interesting tidbit buttresses this theory: If your fingers’ nerves are somehow severed from the rest of your nervous system (and therefore your brain), they no longer prune up in water. This almost certainly means that the pruning effect is triggered by the brain and is not simply related to absorption.

  But other wrinkles (pardon the pun) remain. So far, we have not yet been able to determine whether pruney fingers do, in fact, help us grip wet things better. Also, there is demonstrable evidence of the first theory occurring—blood vessels contracting, skin absorbing water, etc.—which again suggests that there is a lot more going on there than we know.

  BONUS FACT

  Water can be used to check patients for brain damage, using something called the caloric reflex test. Typically, when cold water is inserted into a person’s ear canal, his or her eyes will reflexively “look” toward the opposite ear. But when warm water is put in the person’s ear, he or she will “look” toward the ear with the water in it. People with significant damage to the brain stem do not have the same reaction.

  TEMPORARY BLINDNESS

  THE ONE THING YOU CAN’T SEE IN THE MIRROR

  Go to a mirror and look at either of your eyes. Then, while keeping your head still, look at the other one. As you do this, your gaze will change targets, as you are now looking at something different than before. But your eyes will not appear to move.

  Now, go find a friend and repeat the experiment. Ask him or her to tell you if your eyes move as you glance from one eye to the other. Invariably, your friend will tell you that your eyes did indeed move—and obviously so. Switch roles and the illusion becomes obvious: Your friend, staring into the mirror, is moving his or her eyes—but unlike the rest of the world, sees no movement.

  What’s going on here? Our brains are protecting themselves from the fuzzy, blurry imagery we’d otherwise “see” as our eyes glance quickly from point to point. That movement—called a “saccade” (pronounced “sah-COD”)—is simply too quick for our brains to deal with. So the brain, in effect, ignores what the eyes see, in a phenomenon called “saccadic masking.” Instead of processing and recording the blurred image otherwise caused by the eye movement, the brain replaces that milliseconds-long moment with a still image of the second item your eyes look at. This image replacement can create an eerie effect if you quickly dart your eyes at an analog clock, causing the clock’s second hand to appear momentarily frozen in time (known as the “stopped clock effect”).

  During these saccadic masking moments, we are, effectively, blind. According to some, these tiny moments of time lost down the memory hole add up to as much as thirty to forty-five minutes a day—leaving us temporarily blind for roughly 2 percent of our lives.

  BONUS FACT

  The eyes of most birds do not move. In order to keep their world from bouncing around as they move, these birds have developed the ability keep their heads in the same place, relative to the rest of the world, even if the rest of their bodies are in motion. That’s why chickens, turkeys, pigeons, and other birds bob their heads as they walk—they’re trying to keep their eyes parallel to the ground. It also helps them with depth perception. Turkeys, for example, have eyes on opposite sides of their heads, and therefore
have no natural 3-D vision; the bobbing provides extra visual information so they can estimate relative distances. However, this does not mean they have worse vision than us humans. Turkeys can turn their necks much farther than people can, allowing them to see things a full 360 degrees around.

  THE BIRD IS THE WORD

  HOW THE TURKEY GOT ITS NAME

  Every November, many American families gather around the table, feasting on a Thanksgiving meal—the centerpiece of which is a turkey. It’s a celebration of many things but historically stems back to 1621, when European settlers (“Pilgrims,” as American elementary school children will surely tell you) marked the harvest with a similar celebration.

  Turkeys are indigenous to the United States and Mexico; in fact, Europeans only first came into contact with turkeys roughly 500 years ago, upon discovery of the New World. So how did the turkey (the bird) end up with the same name as Turkey (the country)? Let’s follow that bird’s history from the New World to the Old.

  As far as we can tell, the first European explorers to discover (and eat) turkey were those in Hernán Cortés’s expedition in Mexico in 1519. Spanish Conquistadors brought this new delicacy back to Europe and by 1524 it had reached England. The bird was domesticated in England within a decade, and by the turn of the century, its name—“turkey”—had entered the English language. Case in point: William Shakespeare used the term in Twelfth Night, believed to have been written in 1601 or 1602. The lack of context around his usage suggests that the term had widespread reach.

  But the birds did not come directly from the New World to England; rather, they came via merchant ships from the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Those merchants were called “Turkey merchants” as much of the area was part of the Turkish Empire at the time. Purchasers of the birds back home in England thought the fowl came from the area, hence the name “Turkey birds” or, soon thereafter, “turkeys.” To this day, we’re simply carrying on the mistake of a few confused English-speaking Europeans.