Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? (35 page)
Read Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? Online
Authors: David Feldman
Mitchell has much more to say about this subject and we’ve included his thoughts on our Web site. If you want to find out how the countdown leader continued to change in television, 16mm and 35mm, and about what the various beeps before films start mean, go to
http://www.imponderables.com/countdown_leader.php.
If silent movies aren’t old-school enough for you, let’s go back in time a little further. How about to ancient times and the origin of the word “Xmas” to signify Christmas? We received a fascinating e-mail from Ramesh Chitnis, posing an alternate theory:
In the old Roman calendar, before Pope Gregory introduced two more months in 1552, there were ten months in the year. Leaving aside the earlier six months, the names of the other four months were September, October, November, and December [in order].
These are nearly the exact words in the Sanskrit language—
Sapt, Ashta, Navam, and Dasham
…You will note that “ten” is written in Roman as “X.” Again, the word for month in Sanskrit is “
Mas
.” Thus “Xmas” means tenth month.
Sanskrit is the Mother of all the Indian languages. As a matter of fact, Will Durant, the great American historian and philosopher, said: “India is the motherland of our race and Sanskrit is the mother of Indo-European languages.”
Speaking of mothers, we made a whopper of an error in
How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch?
Reader Colin Hall writes:
In your question about sticking your finger in carbonated drinks driving the bubbles down, your expert says that soap increases water’s surface tension. This is not the case! This little experiment will prove it.
Fill a sink with water. Then, very carefully, set a paper clip on the surface. Yes, the surface. If you put it in gently enough, it’ll float. You may have to try this once or twenty times. Now put a drop of soap in the water. The paper clip sinks. The soap reduced the surface tension enough to cause the paper clip to sink.
Right you are, Colin. Our source made a careless mistake and we should have caught it.
Colin also had a comment about a letter in the same book referring to an old Imponderable—the ludicrous impossibility of opening and closing the milk carton:
I recently took a trip to Washington, D.C. During breakfast one day, I noticed how hard the milk cartons were to open. Now, I’m from Minnesota, and I had never had problems opening them there. I’m assuming that there are regional differences in how much adhesive is put on the carton. I’ve never had the opportunity to visit New York City, but since it was put into one of your books, it’s a problem there. My advice: if you’re sick of milk cartons being hard to open, move here.
’Nuff said! We’re moving to Minnesota
posthaste.
Colin warned us to mention these points in our next book:
I’ll be watching.
That’s precisely what we’re afraid of! We don’t have to ask for readers to point out our dumb mistakes—they’re more than happy to let us know.
But we still love you to pieces. Until we meet again, let’s all stay healthy and keep our dumb mistakes to a bare minimum.
T
his book is already dedicated to my readers, so I don’t want to swell your heads
too
much. If I thank you one more time, do you promise to keep sending me your e-mails and letters full of Imponderables, praise, and even the occasional criticism? You do? Then I still love you.
But readers don’t get
all
the credit for this enterprise. It has been delightful to move across the hallway from HarperCollins to Collins Reference, especially because my editor and publisher, Phil Friedman, has been so enthusiastic and supportive. He hasn’t known me
quite
long enough to know how annoying I can be.
The same can’t be said for my agent, Jim Trupin, who has plenty of reasons to be irritated, but has stuck with me through thick, thin, and weird. And how many artists have to face the challenge of illustrating forlorn cabooses and baffled slices of bread? Kassie Schwan has been more than up to the challenge for twelve books.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Frenchman for her invaluable research help with several Imponderables and to Mark Sinclair for his yeoman work as Webmaster at Imponderables.com.
My friends and family deserve bouquets for putting up with me while I toiled over this book, but they’ll have to be content with a crummy and considerably less expensive acknowledgment. Mucho thanks to Fred, Phil, Gilda, and Michael Feldman; Michele Gallery; Larry Prussin; Jon Blees; Brian Rose; Fraya and Eli Berg; Ken Gordon; Elizabeth Frenchman; Merrill Perlman; Harvey Kleinman; Pat O’Conner; Stewart Kellerman; Michael Barson; Jeannie Behrend; Sherry Barson; Uday Ivatury; Laura Tolkow; Mani Ivatury Tolkow; Terry Johnson; Christal Henner; Roy Welland; Judith Dahlman; Paul Dahlman; Bonnie Gellas; James Gleick; Cynthia Crossen; Chris McCann; Nancy Schwantes; Prakash Kumar; Karen Stoddard; Eileen O’Neill; Joanna Parker; Maggie Wittenburg; Ed Swanson; Ernie Capobianco; Liz Trupin; Nat Segaloff; Mark Landau; Joan Urban; Diane Burrowes; Virginia Stanley; Marjan Mohsenin; Dennis, Heide, and Devin Whelan; Ji Lu; Alvin, Marilyn, Audrey, and Margot Cooperman; Carol Williams; Dan Fuller; Tom O’Brien; Susan Thomas; Tom and Leslie Rugg; Stinky; Sara Walker Bosworth; Matt Weatherford; Amy Yarger; Alona Amsel; Jenny Kraft; Simone Cox; Steve Narow; Julia Covino; Jack Estes; Jennifer Fish Wilson; Jeni Nielsen; and Erin Podolsky.
Special thanks to my pals at Starbucks #839 for keeping me vertical; to John DiBartolo, Annette Matejik, and my step-pals for keeping me ambulatory; to Jim Leff and Chowhounds for making sure I’m well fed; to PSML and Spectropop, for keeping the musical faith; to my Popular Culture Association pals, for getting academia right; and to Bill and Saipin Chutima, Ali El Sayad, China Bushell and David and Shirley Fuentes for feeding the soul.
I had a ball talking to hundreds of experts in every conceivable field for this book. The most fun part of my job is when I find
the
expert or experts on some field I know nothing about and hearing them talk about the subject they are passionate about. Without their willingness to share their knowledge with us,
Imponderables
would not be possible. More than in most of my books, many sources came up blank when faced with some of the Imponderables in this book (amazing how few sock manufacturers have studied up on tissue paper insertion!); there isn’t room to include all of these willing experts here. Instead, we’ll list all of the sources who were willing to go on the record and whose expertise led directly to answers in the book:
Lucinda Ayers, Campbell’s Soup.
Rick Baldwin, Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors; Brenda Bates; Paul Bates; Ruth Bavetta; Kris Becker, Northcoast Thunderbikes; Roy Benson, Running, Ltd.; Fraya Berg,
Parents
;Dr. Jerry Bergman, Society for the Study of Male Psychology and Physiology; Dr. Andy Blockmanis, Pacific Center for Sleep Disorders; Rachel Bolton, Hallmark Gold Crown Stores; Matt Bragaw, National Weather Service; Sam Brookbank; David Brown, Cornell University; Sylvia Browne; Sandy Burton, Barbecue Industry Association; Joan Buyce, Masterfoods USA.
Bob Camara, K-Jack Engineering; Maria Milagros Castro, Orchard Management; Marie Cavanagh; Suzanne Clothier, Flying Dog Press; Prof. W. Rory Coker; Louis Coletta, Tony’s Ice Cream; Lisa Comegna, Lord & Taylor.
Pamela Davis, Rak Systems, Inc.; Alison Day, Santa Barbara Olive Company; Bill Deane, Baseball Hall of Fame Museum; Jerry DeBene; John DiBartolo, Polytechnic University; Bob Dietzel; Dr. Sunny Dong; Dr. Joe Doyle; Pierre duP Fourie, Baron’s Palace Hotel.
Dr. Gordon Edwards; Tracy Elbert, PCBexpress; Niles Eldredge, American Museum of Natural History; Todd Lee Etzel.
Phil Feldman; Louis Ferrara, Jr., Service Station Dealers of America; Paul Fiori, Service Station Dealers of America; Martha Fischer, Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Robert Fontana, TDK Electronics Corp.; Steve Fulkerson, Saint-Gobain Containers.
Sally Garrelts, Pure Fishing; Brian Gearhart, CO
2
Advertising; Bob Geis; Sharon Gerdes, S.K. Gerdes Consulting Dairy Management, Inc.; J. Giambroni, California Dairy Research Foundation; Ken Giesbers, Boeing Company; Joe Giordano; Todd Glickman, American Meteorological Society; William D. Gordon; Richard Gualtieri, Lord & Taylor; Lori Gunter, Boeing Company.
Robert Habel, Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine; Hazel Harber; William R. Harts; Louise Hauck; Maurice Helou, Citgo of Lyndhurst; Prof. John Hertner; Dr. Myron Hinrichs, Hasti Friends of the Elephant; Sam Ho; Fred Holabird; Holidays in Africa; Richard H. Hopper; Brian Edward Hurst; Jason Hunsaker; Cheryl Hyde, White Dolphin Inc. and Academy Fitness.
Clay Irving.
Michael Jackson, Vogel’s & Foster’s; Dr. Keith Jones, Pure Fishing.
Terry Kennedy, St. Peter’s College; Larry Khazzam, Echo Lake Industries, Ltd.; Karen Anne Klein; Kathryn Kranhold,
The Wall Street Journal
; Lucille Kubichek, Chihuahua Club of America; Meredith Kurtzman, Otto; Stamatios Kyrkos, Le Moyne College.
Fred Lanting; Tania Lategan, Cango Ostrich Farm; Prof. John Lawrence, University of South Florida; Thomas A. Lehmann, American Institute of Baking; John Levine; Mike Lombardi, Boeing Company; Mike Lopez, Prototron Circuits; Mort Luby,
Bowlers Journal International.
Dr. Mansoor Madani, Center for Corrective Jaw Surgery; David Maier, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology; Ralph Marburger, Combe Incorporated; Mars, Inc.; Sgt. Sean McCafferty, New York Police Department; Greg McMillan, McMillan Running; Gloria McPike Tamlyn; Dale Miller, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; Dr. Steven Mintz; Paul Morgan, K&F Electronics; Pat Moricca, Gasoline Retailers Association of America; Stephanie Moritz, The Hershey Company; Cecil Munsey; Sean Murtha, American Museum of Natural History.
Prof. Kang-Yup Na, Westminster College; Willie Ninja; Tom Nosera; Dr. David Nye, Midelfort Clinic; David Nystrom, Eastern Mapping Center, U.S. Geological Survey.
Dr. Richard O’Brien; Kirk O’Donnell, American Institute of Banking; Digger Odell.
Christina Parker, Bruster’s Ice Cream; Carroll Pellegrinelli, about.com; Dr. Irene Pepperberg, MIT; Kim Piper, Bruster’s Ice Cream; Carole Price, American Ostrich Association; John Pritchard, Simi Winery; Prof. Robert C. Probasco, University of Idaho; Tom Purvis; Betty Pustarfi, Strictly Olive Oil.
James Randi; Bruce Reed, Bruster’s Ice Cream; Steve Reichl, American Natural History Museum; Erroll Rhodes, American Bible Society; Joseph Richardson, Diebold, Incorporated; Ronnie Robertson; Joy Robinson, Combe Incorporated.
Frank Schifano; Tim Schmitt; Steve Scorfidi; Arthur Seeds, Barbecue Industry Association; Rory Sellers; Bill Sherrard, Long Island Lighting Company; Peter Sherry; Hezy Shoshani, Elephant Interest Group; Carole Shulman, Professional Skaters Guild of America; Dean Sommer, Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research; Dan St. Louis, Hosiery Technology Center; Gregg Stengel; Jeff Stevenson, American Essentials; LCDR J. Carl Sturm; Jack Suber, American Financial Printers; Daniel Sutton; Ed Swanson; Julie Swift, Michigan Bell.
Susan Thomas; Charlie Tomlin; Josh Trupin; J. Donald Turk, Mobil Oil Corporation; Ken Tyler.
Prof. Martin Uman, University of Florida.
Gerhard Verdoorn, Birdlife South Africa; Mike Vevea; Doreen Virtue; Paul Vossen.
Tom Wagner; F. Michael Wahl, Geological Society of America; Steve Warrington, Ostrich.com; Steve Webster, Monterey Bay Aquarium; Dianna Westmoreland; Pamela Whitenack, Hershey Community Archives; Robert Wilbur, Pet Food Institute; Richard Williams, National Weather Service; Jennifer Fish Wilson; Frederick Woodruff.
JP Yousha.
Jeff Zeak, American Institute of Baking.
And to those sources who wished to remain anonymous but provided valuable research, we thank you for your contribution to the vanquishing of Imponderability.
P
irates can keep parrots. We prefer Imponderables. We certainly prefer solving Imponderables to cleaning up after parrots.
But we can’t ponder without you, so please keep sending in your Imponderables and your comments (regardless of which direction your metaphorical thumbs are pointing). If you’re the first person to send in an Imponderable we use in a book, you’ll receive an acknowledgment and an autographed copy as a thank-you for your contribution.
Although we accept snail mail, we strongly encourage you to e-mail us if possible. Because of the high volume of mail, we can’t always provide a personal response to every letter, but we’ll try—a self-addressed, stamped envelope doesn’t hurt. We’re much better about answering e-mail, although we fall behind sometimes when work beckons.
Come visit us online at the Imponderables Web site, where you can pose Imponderables, read our blog, consult the master index of Imponderability (including all eleven
Imponderables
books), and find out what’s happening at Imponderables Central. Send your correspondence, along with your name, address, and (optional) phone number to:
http://www.imponderables.com
or
Imponderables
P.O. Box 116
Planetarium Station
New York, NY 10024-0116