Why do Clocks run clockwise? (4 page)

body all contain good lobster meat, and aficionados covet the green

“tomalley” or liver and the red roe often found in female lobsters.

As Richard B. Allen, vice-president of the Atlantic Offshore Fishermen’s Association, put it, “If they are not eating almost everything except the shell, they are missing a fine eating experience.”

If you find “lobster tails” listed on a restaurant menu, chances are you are ordering rock or spiny lobsters. Unlike Maine lobsters, spiny lobsters do not have big claws, but rather two large antennas. We spoke to Red Lobster’s purchaser, Bob Joseph, who told us that most of Red Lobster’s tails come from Brazil, Honduras, and the Bahamas. Red Lobster buys about two million pounds of spiny lobster a year (as well as a similar poundage of Maine lobster). The nontail meat of the spiny lobster is stringy and watery compared to the tails, and not as good-looking. Consumers seem to prefer the big, steaklike chunks of the tail rather than the shreds of meat found on other parts of the crustacean.

Although some restaurants and fish stores will buy the relatively small claws of spiny (and rock) lobsters, what happens to the nontail meat that isn’t in demand? The claw, thorax, and head meat is sold as “meat packs,” which are used for soups (lobster bisque, gumbos) and reconstituted for seafood salads. Seafood and Italian restaurants often use “meat-pack” lobster for pastas. And, surprisingly, one of the biggest users of lobster “meat pack” is egg-roll makers.

Submitted by Claudia Wiehl, of North Charleroi, Pennsylvania
.

10 / DAVID FELDMAN

Why Do They Need Twenty Mikes at Press
Conferences?

If you look carefully at a presidential press conference, you’ll see two microphones. But at other press conferences, you may find many more. Why the difference?

Obviously, all the networks have access to the president’s state-ments. How can they each obtain a tape when there are only a couple of microphones? They use a device called a “mult box” (short for “multiple outlet device”). The mult box contains one input jack but numerous output jacks (usually at least eight outputs, but sixteen-and thirty-two-output mult boxes are common). Each station or network simply plugs its recording equipment into an available output jack and makes its own copy. The second microphone is used only as a backup, in case the other malfunctions. The Signal Corps, which runs presidential news conferences, provides the mult boxes at the White House.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 11

It’s more likely, though, that a press conference will be arranged hastily or conducted at a site without sophisticated electronics equipment. It is at such occasions that you’ll see multiple microphones, with each news team forced to install its own equipment if it wants its own tape.

All networks and most local television stations own mult boxes.

Of course, the whole purpose of the mult box is to promote pooling of resources, so the networks, on the national level, and the local stations, in a particular market, alternate providing mult boxes.

There usually isn’t a formal arrangement for who will bring the mult box; in practice, there are few hassles.

Some media consultants like the look of scores of microphones, believing it makes the press conference seem important. A more savvy expert will usually ask for a mult box, so that the viewing audience won’t be distracted by the blaring call letters on the microphones from a single pearl of wisdom uttered by the politician he works for.

Why Do Some Localities Use Salt and Others Use
Sand to Treat Icy Roads?

Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, creator of the Fahrenheit temperature scale, discovered that salt mixed with ice (at a temperature slightly below the freezing point) creates a solution with a lower freezing point than water alone. Thus, salt causes snow and ice to melt.

Most localities haven’t found a better way to de-ice roadways and sidewalks than salt. Salt is also effective in keeping hard packs of ice from forming in the first place. While a number of chemicals have been developed to melt ice, salt remains a much cheaper alternative.

So why don’t all localities use salt to treat icy roads? Ecolog 12 / DAVID FELDMAN

ical problems have led some municipalities to ban the use of salt outright. Salt causes corrosion of vehicles, pavement, bridges, and any unprotected steel in surrounding structures. Salt also harms many kinds of vegetation.

The effectiveness of salt as an ice remover also has distinct limita-tions. Salt is best used in high-traffic areas; without enough traffic to stimulate a thorough mixing of ice and salt, hard packs can still develop. Below approximately 25° F, salt isn’t too effective, because ice forms so fast that the salt doesn’t have a chance to lower the freezing point. And salt applied on top of ice doesn’t provide traction for drivers or pedestrians.

Sand, by contrast, provides excellent traction for vehicles when grit comes in contact with tires, whether the sand is exposed on top of the surface of the ice or mixed in with slush or snow. Sand doesn’t require high-volume traffic areas to work effectively, it does little or no harm to vegetation, vehicles, or road, and is (pardon the expression) dirt cheap.

There is only one problem with sand: it doesn’t melt snow or ice.

Salt tries to cure the problem. Sand attempts to treat the symptoms.

Some localities have experimented with sand-salt combinations.

Actually, most sand spread on pavements already contains some salt, used to keep the sand from freezing into clumps when mixed with the snow.

While salt is considerable more expensive than sand, cost is rarely the main criterion for choosing sand over salt. Joseph DiFabio, of the New York State Department of Transportation, told
Imponderables
that salt costs approximately twenty dollars per ton, compared to five dollars per ton for sand. In fact, sand must be applied in a greater concentration than salt, about three times as much. Because maintenance crews must use three times as much sand to treat the same mileage of roadway, they must return to reload their trucks with sand three times as often as with salt. The eventual cost differential, therefore, is negligible.

Submitted by Daniel A. Placko, Jr., of Chicago, Illinois
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 13

Why Is the Telephone Touch-Tone Key Pad
Arranged Differently from the Calculator Key
Pad?

Conspiracy theories abound, but the explanation for this Imponderable reinforces one of the great tenets of Imponderability: when in doubt, almost any manmade phenomenon can be explained by tradition, inertia, or both. A theory we have often heard is that the phone company intentionally reversed the calculator configuration so that people who were already fast at operating calculators would slow down enough to allow the signals of the phone to register. It’s a neat theory, but it isn’t true. Even today, fast punchers can render a touch-tone phone worthless.

Both the touch-tone key pad and the all-transistor calculator were made available to the general public in the early 1960s. Calculators were arranged from the beginning so that the lowest digits were on the bottom. Telephone keypads put the 1-2-3 on the top row. Both configurations descended directly from earlier prototypes.

Before 1964, calculators were either mechanical or electronic devices with heavy tubes. The key pads on the first calculators actually resembled old cash registers, with the left row of keys numbering 9 on top down to 0 at the bottom. The next row to the right had 90 on top and 10 on the bottom, the next row to the right 900 on top, 100 on the bottom, and so on. All of the early calculators were ten rows high, and most were nine rows wide. From the beginning, hand-held calculators placed 7-8-9 on the top row, from left to right.

Before the touch-tone phone, of course, rotary dials were the rule.

There is no doubt that the touch-tone key pad was designed to mimic the rotary dial, with the “1” on top and the 7-8-9 on the bottom. According to Bob Ford, of AT&T’s Bell Laboratories, a second reason was that some phone-company research concluded that this configuration helped eliminate di

14 / DAVID FELDMAN

aling errors. Ford related the story, which may or may not be apo-cryphal, that when AT&T contemplated the design of their key pad, they called several calculator companies, hoping they would share the research that led them to the opposite configuration. Much to their chagrin, AT&T discovered that the calculator companies had conducted no research at all. From our contacts with Sharp and Texas Instruments, two pioneers in the calculator field, it seems that this story could easily be true.

Terry L. Stibal, one of several readers who posed this Imponderable, suggested that if the lower numbers were on the bottom, the alphabet would then start on the bottom and be in reverse alphabetical order, a confusing setup. This might have entered AT&T’s thinking, particularly in the “old days” when phone numbers contained only five digits, along with two exchange letters.

Submitted by Jill Gernand, of Oakland, California. Thanks also
to: Lori Bending, of Des Plaines, Illinois, and Terry L. Stibal, of
Belleville, Illinois
.

What Is the Difference Between a “Kit” and a

“Caboodle”?

Anyone who thinks that changes in the English language are orderly and logical should take a look at the expression “kit and caboodle.”

Both words, separately, have distinct meanings, but the two have been lumped together for so long that each has taken on much of the other’s meaning.

Both words have Dutch origins: “Kit” originally meant tankard, or drinking cup, while “Boedel” meant property or house WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 15

hold stuff. By the eighteenth century, “kit” had become a synonym for tool kit. For example, the knapsacks carried by soldiers that held their eating utensils and nonmilitary necessities were often called

“kits.” “Boodle” became slang for money, especially tainted money.

By the nineteenth century, “caboodle” had taken on connotations of crowds, or large numbers.

Yet the slurring of meanings occurred even before the two terms became inseparable. The
Oxford English Dictionary
quotes from Shelley’s 1785
Oedipus Tyrannus
, “I’ll sell you in a lump the whole kit of them.” In this context, “caboodle” would seem more appropriate than “kit.”

By the mid-nineteenth century, “kit” had found many companion words in expressions that meant essentially the same thing: “kit and biling”; “whole kit and tuck”; “whole kit and boodle” and “whole kit and caboodle” were all used to mean “a whole lot” or “everything and everyone.” The
Dictionary of Americanisms
cities a 1948
Ohio
State Journal
that stated: “The whole caboodle will act upon the recommendation of the
Ohio Sun
.”

16 / DAVID FELDMAN

The expression “kit and caboodle” was popularized in the United States during the Civil War. The slang term was equally popular among the Blue and the Gray. Although the expression isn’t as popular as it used to be, it’s comforting to know that old-fashioned slang made no more sense than the modern variety.

What Is the Purpose of the Ball on Top of a
Flagpole?

We were asked this Imponderable on a television talk show in Los Angeles. Frankly, we were stumped. “Perhaps they were installed to make the jobs of flagpole sitters more difficult,” we ventured. “Or to make flagpole sitting more enjoyable,” countered host Tom Snyder.

By turns frustrated by our ignorance and outwitted by Mr. Snyder, we resolved to find the solution.

According to Dr. Whitney Smith, executive director of the Flag Research Center in Winchester, Massachusetts, the ball may occasionally be combined with a mechanism involved with the halyards that raise and lower a flag, but this juxtaposition is only coincidental.

Much to our surprise, we learned that the ball on top of a flagpole is purely decorative.

Actually, the earliest flaglike objects were emblems—an animal or other carved figure—placed atop a pole. Ribbons beneath these insignia served as decoration. According to Dr. Smith, the importance of the two was later reversed so that the design of the flag on a piece of cloth (replacing the ribbons) conveyed the message while the finial of the pole became ornamental, either in the form of a sphere or, as the most common alternatives, a spear or (especially in the United States) an eagle.