When Do Fish Sleep? (11 page)

According to Nelson and Yellow Spots executive Gabe Samuels, initially there was some resistance from the regional phone companies to giving Yellow Spots an exclusive right to sell display ads. But Yellow Spots mustered some strong arguments to convince them, the most compelling one economic: it would provide a windfall. According to Yellow Spots, anywhere from 6 to 20% of the Yellow Pages consist of filler. Adding 5 or 10% more to gross revenues through new display ads would be most profitable.

Some of the publishers were also reluctant to introduce a new type of advertising into a medium that had thrived without it for more than a hundred years. Nelson and Samuels argued that the Yellow Pages were actually used more by consumers as an information source, a magazine, rather than as an advertising medium. The editorial matter of the
Yellow Pages Magazine
are the directory listings. Yellow Spots would deliver the advertising, billboard ads without addresses or phone numbers. The ads that Yellow Spots would solicit were designed to promote a product rather than tell consumers where to buy it, thus not alienating Yellow Pages’ traditional retail clients.

Yellow Spots’ second obstacle was to convince corporations, mostly big, national advertisers, to promote their companies in a medium that had heretofore not been considered. There had never been a category in the Yellow Pages that would allow Coca-Cola to promote the image of its beverage, although local bottlers or distributors might have had their addresses and phone numbers printed.

So how did Yellow Spots attract national advertisers and have the temerity to ask up to $8 million from one potential client? They touted the unique advertising climate that the Yellow Pages presents:

• The circulation of all the Yellow Pages directories in the United States is about 100 million, 10 million more than there are homes in America. The Yellow Pages, of course, is usually used by more than one person.
  
• 50% of all customer references to the Yellow Pages result in a sale.
  
• 18% of all adults use the Yellow Pages at least once on any given day (and they average one and one-half uses per day). This is the equivalent of a rating of 18 on TV, emblematic of a successful show.
  
• Advertisers operate in a nonhostile environment in the Yellow Pages. Whereas the clutter of TV commercials is a bone of contention among viewers, users of the Yellow Pages do not feel oppressed by the number of ads. In a recent survey, 65% of Americans surveyed felt the number of ads in the Yellow Pages were “just about right”; 18% said they wished there were
  more
  ads; and only 8% complained there were too many ads.
  
• Yellow Pages are kept in the home all year long and, in many cases, much longer. Magazines—even those passed around within a family—tend to be thrown out within weeks.
  

Yellow Spots has already signed up Budget car and truck rentals and Sears Discovery card as major accounts, with others soon to follow. Although we admire the ingenuity of Yellow Spots, we’re glad that the homely graphics of the promotional fillers won’t totally disappear. Even Nelson and Samuels concede that they’ll never take over all of the possible remnant space. They will be quite content with about 50 to 60% of it, thank you.

Submitted by Calvin Wong of Chapel Hill, North Carolina
.

Why
Is Flour Bleached?

Wheat isn’t white. Flour is made out of wheat. So why is flour white?

First of all, all of the major flour producers, such as Pillsbury and General Mills, do make unbleached flour, which many breadmakers prefer. But the vast majority of flour sold to consumers is in the form of all-purpose bleached white flour, which is a combination of hard wheat flour (high in protein and best for making breads) and soft wheat flour (lower in protein and the best consistency for cakes and pastries).

Freshly milled white flour has a yellowish tinge, much like unbleached pasta, which consumers reject in favor of a pristine white. Flour processors have two ways to eradicate the yellow from wheat flour. If flour is stored and allowed to age naturally for several months, the yellow disappears as it is exposed to oxygen. But the cost of storing the bulky flour is prohibitive, so commercial flour is bleached artificially with bleaches such as benzoyl peroxide. Artificial bleaching works better than natural aging, which doesn’t yield uniformity of color or maturation.

Mature flour produces better baking results and has a longer shelf life. So along with being bleached, all-purpose flour is artificially aged. While benzoyl peroxide merely bleaches flour, other agents such as azodicarbonamide and potassium bromide artificially age the flour as they bleach. The whole process is performed in twenty-four hours, and the bleach eventually decomposes into a harmless residue called benzoic acid when the flour is used.

Is there a down side to the bleaching process? Certain nutrients are lost, which is why all-purpose flour by law is enriched with nutrients. Some nutritionists are not sanguine about the results. The late Adele Davis was particularly rabid about the subject. She felt the machinery that grinds flour overheats it and gives it a precooked taste “comparable to last night’s chops reheated.” But she was particularly skeptical about the value of enriched flour:

So-called “enriched” flour is my idea of outright dishonesty; at least 25 nutrients are largely removed during refining, and one-third of the original amount of iron, vitamin B and niacin may be replaced. Such flour is “enriched” just as you would be enriched by someone stealing 25 dollars from you and returning 99 cents.

Flour enrichment was mandated by the federal government in the early 1940s to compensate for the loss of nutrients that are eliminated from white flour. The flour industry contends that Adele Davis and other critics’ objections to enrichment overstate the case. Although they concede that the bran and germ of wheat kernels in whole-wheat flour contain more nutrients than white flour, those nutrients lost (e.g., calcium, phosphorus, and potassium) tend to be found in other foods, and few consumers look toward baked goods as a source for these nutrients.

Although health-food advocates tend to belittle the nutritional value of white flour, the flour companies stress that bleaching in itself has never been a health hazard. The alternative to bleached flour, they say, is vastly more expensive flour.

What
Is Goofy?

Goofy can’t be a dog, claims our correspondent, or else he would look like Pluto, wouldn’t he? Goofy is indeed a dog. Chihuahuas don’t look like Doberman pinschers, so why should Goofy look like Pluto? Although we must admit that we don’t know too many dogs who speak English and walk on two feet.

Pluto appeared several years before Goofy, in a tiny role in a Mickey Mouse short called “Chain Gang.” Pluto’s original name was Rover, and he was Minnie’s dog, not Mickey’s. But Mickey soon gained ownership, and Rover was renamed Pluto the Pup. Animator John Canemaker observes that Pluto’s lack of speech and doglike walk were used to emphasize that Pluto was Mickey’s pet and not his equal.

Goofy, on the other hand, was nobody’s pet. His dogginess is indisputable, since his original name was Dippy Dawg. But Dippy had to pay his dues before he reached the summit of Goofyness. Dippy first played small roles in Mickey Mouse shorts in the early 1930s, and it wasn’t until he was featured in the syndicated Mickey Mouse newspaper cartoons that he gained prominence in animated shorts.

Although Goofy was as loyal and loving as Pluto, he was not subservient. As his popularity grew, Goofy became a part of “The Gang,” with costars Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in a series of twelve cartoons in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Few remember that Goofy was married (to Mrs. Goofy) and that he was a proud parent (of Goofy, Jr.).

This Imponderable has been thrust at us many times since the release of the movie
Stand By Me
, in which a character muses about this question. How people can accept that a duck can survive being squashed by a refrigerator and then not believe that Goofy can be a dog, we’ll never understand.

Submitted by Ashley Hoffar of Cincinnati, Ohio
.

How
Did the Toque Become the Traditional Chef’s Hat? Does It Serve Any Functional Purpose?

Most men, in their daily lives, wear neither rags nor haute couture. We don a pair of pants and a shirt—maybe a sports coat or suit and tie if the occasion warrants it. But in the kitchen headware has always been schizophrenic. Cooks wear either ugly but functional hair nets or
toques blanches
(“white caps”), smart-looking caps with tops long enough to camouflage the heads of the entire Conehead family. Isn’t there a middle ground? Why can’t a chef wear a baseball cap or a derby? Can there possibly be a logical function for the shape of toques?

As early as the Roman and Greek Empires, master chefs were rewarded for their achievements by receiving special headware. For the ancients, laurel-studded caps were the honor.

In France up until the seventeenth century, chefs were awarded different colored caps depending upon their rank. Apprentices wore ordinary skull caps. During the early eighteenth century, Talleyrand’s chef required his entire staff to don the toque blanche for sanitary reasons. The toque blanche was designed not only to keep the chef’s hair from entering food but to register any stains upon the white background.

But this original cap was flat. The high hat gradually gained popularity not as a fashion statement, not to hide Mohawk hairdos, but to provide some ventilation for the head, as chefs frequently work under extremely hot conditions.

Viennese chef Antonin Careme, not willing to leave well enough alone, decided that the toque blanche needed still more oomph. He put a piece of round cardboard inside his toque to give the cap a stiffer, more dashing appearance. The cardboard has been replaced today by starch.

The toque blanche is no more functional than a hair net, and almost as silly looking. But as Shriners or Mouseketeers can testify, any hat bestowed upon someone as an honor is likely to be worn proudly by the recipient, regardless of how funny it looks.

Submitted by William Lickfield of Hamburg, New York
.

When
and Where Do Police Dogs Urinate and Defecate?

Our fearless correspondent, Eric Berg, notes that he trains his eyes for police dogs whenever he is in a big city and has yet to see nature call one of our canine protectors. “Have the police bred some sort of Bionic Dog?” Eric wonders.

Natural urges dog police dogs just as often as any Fido or Rover, but the difference is in the training; police dogs are much more disciplined than other dogs, or for that matter, most dog owners. Before the animals go on duty, trainers allow police dogs to run and go to the bathroom (well, not
literally
a bathroom) in the area where they are kept.

Part of the training of police dogs involves teaching the dog to control itself while on patrol and when in front of the public. The dog is taught to signal when it has to “go,” but is trained to keep itself under control in all circumstances.

Gerald S. Arenberg, editor of the official journal of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, alludes to the fact that “the dogs are given walks and care that is generally not seen by the public,” the only hint we received that occasionally a dog might relieve itself while on duty.

Let’s end this discussion here, before we run out of euphemisms.

Submitted by Eric Berg of Chicago, Illinois
.

How
Can Hurricanes Destroy Big Buildings But Leave Trees Unscathed?

Think of a hurricane as heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, a powerful force of nature. A building in the face of Liston’s onslaught is like George Foreman, strong but anchored to the ground. Without any means of flexibility or escape, the building is a sitting target. A building’s massive size offers a greater surface area to the wind, allowing greater total force for the same wind pressure than a tree could offer.

But a tree in a hurricane is like Muhammad Ali doing the rope-a-dope. The tree is going to be hit by the hurricane, but it yields and turns and shuffles its way until the force of the hurricane no longer threatens it. In this case, the metaphor is literal: by bending with the wind, the tree and its leaves can sometimes escape totally unscathed.