Do Elephants Jump? (27 page)

In our first book,
Imponderables,
we explored why we can’t tickle ourselves, and noted that the neural pathways that control tickling are identical to those that cause pain. So the experts who tackled this Imponderable focused on serious benefits that ticklishness might bestow on us mortals, all agreeing that what we now consider a benign tingling sensation at one time in our evolution might have warned us against serious trauma.

San Francisco biophysicist Joe Doyle notes that some parts of our body are more richly endowed with nerves than others — including such tickling meccas as the bottom of the feet, the under-arms, and the hands and fingers. Evolutionists, notes Neil Harvey, of the International Academy for Child Brain Development, “would say that the reason for the heavier concentration may be whatever survival benefits we derive from being more sensitive in those places.”

How could, say, the armpit possibly be necessary to survival? “The axilla warns of a touch that might progress to a wound of the brachial plexus, which could paralyze an arm,” answers University of Chicago neurosurgeon Sean F. Mullan. Other sensitive sites such as the nostrils, ear canals, and eye sockets are all subject to invasion by foreign objects or creeping or flying insects.

What about the underside of the foot, then? Mullan is slightly more tentative:

Imagine that you are a zoologist stationed at the South Pole. You are studying the nighttime migration patterns of Emperor penguins, which involves long periods observing the creatures. But you realize that while you watch them waddle, you are in danger of missing a very special episode of
The Bachelor
on television unless you set that VCR for the right time. What’s a scientist to do?

Well, maybe that scenario doesn’t play out too often, but those vertical line markings on globes do reflect the reality. All the time zones do meet at the two poles, and many
Imponderables
readers wonder how the denizens of the South Pole (and the much fewer and usually shorter-term residents of the North Pole) handle the problem.

We assumed that the scientists arbitrarily settled on Greenwich Mean Time (the same time zone where London, England, is situated), as GMT is used as the worldwide standard for setting time. But we found out that the GMT is no more! It is now called UTC (or Coordinated Universal Time — and, yes, we know that the acronym’s letter order is mixed up). The UTC is often used at the North Pole as the time standard, and sometimes at the South Pole.

We veered toward the humanities in school partly because the sciences are cut and dried. If there is always a correct answer, then teachers could always determine that we came up with the wrong answer. Science students were subjected to a rigor that we were not.

But when it comes to time zones, the scientists at the poles are downright loosey-goosey: They use whatever time zone they want! We spoke to Charles Early, an engineering information specialist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who told us that most scientists pick the time zone that is most convenient for their collaborators. For example, most of the flights to Antarctica depart from New Zealand, so the most popular time at the South Pole is New Zealand time. The United States’ Palmer Station, located on the Antarctic Peninsula, sets its time according to its most common debarkation site, Punta Renas, Chile, which happens to share a time zone with Eastern Standard Time in the United States. The Russian station, Volstok, is coordinated with Moscow time, presumably to ease time-conversion hassles for the comrades back in Mother Russia.

Early researched this subject to answer a question from a child who wondered what time Santa Claus left the North Pole in order to drop off all his presents around the world. Based on our lack of goodies lately, we think Santa has been oversleeping big time, and now we know that time-zone confusion is no excuse.

You think time zones are a problem, how about giving directions to a pal at the South Pole. By definition, every direction would start with “Head north.”

In practical terms, though the distances aren’t great at the science stations, and it’s not like there are suburbs where you can get lost. But scientists do have a solution to this problem, as Nathan Tift, a meteorologist who worked at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station explains:

Catherine Clay, of the State of Florida Department of Citrus, offers advice that is hard to refute:

Flawless advice, Catherine, but where’s your sense of danger?

For those of you who have never walked on the wild side, you’ve probably experienced a lesser version of the “toothpaste-OJ syndrome.” Perhaps you’ve followed a heaping portion of sweet cake with lemonade and thought that someone forgot to put sugar in the lemonade.

The toothpaste-OJ syndrome works in reverse, too. We’ve always found that oranges taste particularly sweet after we’ve crunched on a pickle. These kinds of “flavor synergies” can work for bad or good (oenologists would argue that a Bordeaux and a medium-rare steak work together to enhance the taste of each), but aren’t the same phenomenon as an actual chemical reaction. Toothpaste contains a chemical base, such as baking soda, while orange juice and other citrus fruits contain citric acid. The experts we spoke to were not sure of whether there might be a chemical reaction that would affect the taste of orange juice so drastically.

Clay cited the mint flavorings of most toothpastes as an offender as well:

The most likely culprit in the particularly awful toothpaste-OJ synergy, though, is an ingredient in all of the biggest brands of toothpaste: sodium lauryl sulfate, or SLS. You’ll find SLS not only in toothpaste, but in shampoo, shaving cream, soap, and, ahem, concrete cleaners, engine degreasers, and car wash detergents. What do all of these products have in common? The need for foam. SLS, a derivative of coconut oil, is a detergent foaming agent used to break down the surface tension of water and penetrate solids while generating prodigious gobs of foam.

Taste researcher Linda Bartoshuk, of the Yale University School of Medicine, notes that the active layer in the taste system is a phospholipid layer:

SLS will also affect your perception of salty foods. If you eat salty snacks such as potato chips or pretzels after brushing your teeth, the salt taste will be faint or missing, but any bitter taste will be magnified.

If toothpaste-OJ syndrome is ruining your life, you can always search for a toothpaste in a health food store that doesn’t contain SLS. Although we don’t know of any country that bans SLS’s use in toothpaste, a search on the Internet indicates that some folks are concerned about its harmful properties. Warnings abound that SLS can harm the skin, the eyes, the hair, and the immune system. We found expensive health-store brands that trumpet their lack of SLS, but even “homeopathic-style” Tom’s of Maine toothpaste contains SLS.

Although SLS does help clean the teeth, there are many detergents that are as effective. But consumers believe that the more suds they can generate in anything from bar soap to shampoo to toothpaste, the more effective the cleaning will be. If that were true, we would all take daily bubble baths.

You can’t blame someone for wanting to know more about the back-story of Casper. Restless ghosts are a dime a dozen. Poltergeists are scary. But you don’t run into many friendly ghosts, and none so relentlessly affable as Casper.

We thought the billowy puff of friendliness originated in comic books, but we were wrong. Casper first appeared in a Paramount Pictures short cartoon in 1945, although at that point he didn’t have a name. Casper might have been friendly, but his co-creators, Seymour V. Reit and Joe Oriolo, fought over who thought of the story of the “Friendly Ghost.” Reit insisted he did, since Casper was based on an unpublished short story of his, and Oriolo was “only” the illustrator (Oriolo later went on to illustrate and produce 260 Felix the Cat cartoons for television).

By all accounts, the first cartoon didn’t set the world on fire, but the second, “There’s Good Boos Tonight,” was released in 1948, and several more were created in subsequent years. Although Casper never gave Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny a run for their money, the chummy spook was Paramount’s second favorite cartoon character after Popeye in the 1940s and 1950s. In these early cartoons, nothing whatsoever was said or implied about how Casper became a ghost at such a young age. As Mark Arnold, publisher of the
Harveyville Fun Times,
puts it: “They introduce Casper as a friendly ghost who doesn’t want to scare people.” Arnold adds that in the children’s book that was a prototype for the cartoon, Casper’s origins are undisclosed.

In 1949, Paramount sold the comic book rights to all of its cartoon characters, Popeye excepted, to St. John Publishing, which issued five Casper titles with a resounding lack of success. In 1952, Harvey Comics picked up the license. Harvey became Casper’s comic book home for more than three decades. It was at Harvey where Casper was given a cast of sidekicks — his trusty ghost horse, Nightmare, and his antagonist, Spooky, the “Tough Little Ghost.” Casper also became pals with Wendy, the “Good Little Witch,” who spun off her own titles. The success of the Harvey comic books goosed the interest in made-for-television cartoons — more than 100 episodes were syndicated.

But despite the need for storylines for all these outlets, Casper’s origins remained shrouded in mystery, and as it turns out, this was no accident. Sid Jacobson, who has been associated with Casper for more than fifty years, told
Imponderables
that when the company bought the rights to the Paramount characters, Harvey was more interested in the then more popular Little Audrey (a not-too-subtle “homage” to Little Lulu). Casper was thrown in as part of the deal, and he and other editors at Harvey went to work “rethinking him.” Why the need to rethink? It turns out that Jacobson was less than thrilled with the original animated cartoon: “It was so ugly, and so stupid, I never forgot it. If we used the original premise for our books, it would have been a failure.”

Ever mindful that Casper was meant to appeal to a younger segment of the audience, the editors at Harvey wanted to banish elements that would frighten children or give parents an excuse to ban their kids from reading about even a friendly apparition. Jacobson says:

Considering the treacly nature of the comic book, inevitably a few impure types have speculated about the secret origins of Casper. Mark Arnold reveals a particularly startling one:

In 1991, during
The Simpsons
’ second season, the episode “Three Men and a Comic Book” speculates that Casper was actually Richie Rich (another bland comic book star of Harvey’s stable) before he died. As Arnold puts it, “Richie’s realization of the emptiness that vast wealth brings caused his demise.”

Most recently, in the feature film
Casper,
there are allusions to the ghost’s past (his father dabbled in scientific spiritualism), but no real explanation for what makes Casper so damned friendly and why he was snuffed out before his prime. Maybe the best theory comes from comic book writer and author of
Toonpedia
(http://www.toonpedia.com), Don Markstein: