Do Penguins Have Knees? (12 page)

Sure, the phone company could have simply dropped the last two letters of the alphabet, but in our opinion they selected well. What letters are less commonly used and more easily discarded than the two letters valuable only to Scrabble players—“Q” and “Z”? “Q” would have been a problematic choice at best. How can you make an effective mnemonic when virtually all words starting with “Q” must be followed by a “U”? If “Q” had its “rightful” place on the number 7, 8 (where “U” is located”) would usually have to follow, severely limiting the numbers assignable to the exchange.

“Z,” of course, is the last letter and accustomed to suffering the usual indignities of alphabetical order. Maybe the thought of a phone number starting with “ZEbra,” “ZInnia,” or “ZAire” is overwhelmingly exciting to someone, but for the most part its loss has not been missed.

Why
Is the Middle Digit of North American Area Codes Always a 0 or a 1?

The Bell system introduced three-digit area codes in 1945. Bell was quite aware of the cost savings in direct dialing for long distance calls but also knew that unless it could devise a system to distinguish area codes from the first three digits of ordinary local phone numbers, an operator would have to switch calls.

All ten-digit phone numbers consists of three parts: an area code (the first three numbers); an office code (the next three numbers); and a line number (the last four numbers). We have already explained in the last Imponderable why no office code could start with a 0 or 1. When the Bell system created the area code, it initially extended the “ban” on zeroes and ones to the second digit of the office code as well. By assigning all area codes a second digit of either 0 or 1, automatic switching equipment could differentiate between long distance calls and local or toll calls and route them accordingly. The equipment could also sort calls by the first digit—if the initial digit is a 1, a ten-digit number will follow; while an initial 2-9 means a seven-digit number will follow.

When the area code system was first instituted, all states with only one area code had a 0 as the middle digit; states with more than one area code used 1 for the middle digit of the area code. This practice had to be abandoned when the Bell system ran out of ones as more states needed more than one area code. Now, some populous states have area codes with middle digits of 0.

Because people and telephones have proliferated, the numbering system has had to change several times. The original configuration of office codes yielded a limit of 640 different numbers. To increase the number of office codes available, zeroes and ones have been added to the second digit of office codes, allowing for an eventual expansion of 152 extra office codes.

By the twenty-first century, we would probably run out of area codes if we kept the same numbering method. The phone system is preparing to introduce middle digits other than one or zero in the next century. As long as all long distance calls are preceded by one, it won’t be a problem.

Why
Were Duels Always Fought at Dawn? Or Is This Depiction in Fiction and Movies Not True?

Not true, we’re afraid. Historians assured
Imponderables
that duels were fought at any time of the day. But dawn was definitely the preferred time; a duel fought in twilight could turn into more of a crapshoot than a gunshoot.

Doesn’t make much sense to us. We might be convinced to get up at dawn to go fishing. But if we knew we had an approximately fifty-fifty chance of dying on a particular day, we’d at least want a decent night’s sleep the night before and time for a doughnut or two before we fought.

Historian C. F. “Charley” Eckhardt speculates on this strange predilection of duelists to fight to the death at inconvenient hours:

What
Exactly Are the Liberal Arts, and Who Designated Them So?

Our correspondent, Bill Elmendorf, contacted two four-year colleges and one two-year college for the answer to this question. Despite the fact that they were liberal arts colleges, none of the officials he spoke to could answer this question. Evidently, a good liberal arts education doesn’t provide you with the answer to what a liberal art is.

Actually, a consultation with an encyclopedia will tell you that the concept of the liberal arts, as developed in the Middle Ages, involved seven subjects: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Why astronomy and not biology? Why rhetoric and not art? For the answers to this question, we have to delve into the history of the liberal arts.

Our expression is derived from the Latin
artes liberalis
, “pertaining to a free man.” Liberal arts are contrasted with the “servile” arts, which have practical applications. As educator Tim Fitzgerald wrote
Imponderables
, “the liberal arts were considered ‘liberating,’ enabling the student to develop his or her potential beyond the mundane, to create, to be fully human, to (in the medieval mindset) believe.”

The notion of seven ennobling arts emerged long before the Middle Ages. In Proverbs 9:1, the Bible says, “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” Robert E. Potter, professor of education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, wrote
Imponderables
a fascinating letter tracing the history of the liberal arts. Before the birth of Christ and into the first century
A.D
., Roman writers like Cicero and Quintilian discussed the proper curriculum for the orator and public leader. Varro (116-27
B.C
.) listed in his
Libri Novem Disciplinarum
the seven liberal arts but also included medicine and architecture.

Potter mentions that in the early Christian era, church elders opposed the classical liberal arts. Perhaps the most stirring condemnation was written in the Apostolic Constitutions in the third century:

Later Christian scholars, including Augustine, embraced the study of the liberal arts.

Potter calls Martianus Capella of Carthage’s
The Marriage of Philology and Mercury
the “definitive” work on the liberal arts:

Many people attack the modern liberal arts education, saying that little is taught that pertains to our actual lives now. Little do they know that this lack of “relevance” is precisely what characterized the liberal arts from their inception. In ancient times, servile folks had to sully themselves with practical matters like architecture, engineering, or law. Only the elite freemen could ascend to the lofty plateau of the contemplation of arithmetic.

Today, the meaning of liberal arts is murky, indeed. Art, other hard sciences besides astronomy, foreign languages, philosophy, history, and most social sciences are often included under the umbrella of liberal arts. Just about any school that
doesn’t
train you for a particular profession is called a liberal arts institution.

Why
Do Birds Tend to Stand on One Foot While Sleeping? Why Do Birds Tend to Bury Their Heads Under Their Wings While Sleeping?

In
When Do Fish Sleep
?, we discussed the amazing locking mechanism of birds’ toes that enables them to perch on telephone wires without falling off. In fact, they can perch just as easily while standing on only one leg. Since they can balance as easily on one leg as two, one of the main reasons for perching on one leg (whether or not they are sleeping) is simply to give the other leg a rest.

But birds also seek warmth, and perching on one foot gives them a “leg up” on the situation, as Nancy Martin, naturalist at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, explains:

A corollary: Birds also stick their head under their feathers to preserve heat.

Why
Is a Marshal or Sheriff’s Badge Traditionally a Five-Pointed Star but a Deputy’s Six-Pointed?

The five-pointed pentacle is the symbol of the United States Marshal’s Service. In ancient times, the pentacle was used by sorcerers and believed to impact magical powers. As late as the sixteenth century, soldiers wore pentacles around their necks in the belief that they made them invulnerable to enemy missiles.

But it turns out that even early American lawmen forged a new tradition of forsaking old traditions at the drop of a hat. It just isn’t true that sheriffs always wore five-pointed stars and their deputies six-pointed ones. Charles E. Hanson, Jr., director of The Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, Nebraska, wrote
Imponderables
that one could despair of trying to find logic to the patterns of badges:

Historian Charley Eckhardt has even developed a theory to explain why the five-point might have been inflated to six points: It was simply too hard to make a five-pointed star.