Do Penguins Have Knees? (7 page)

The IRS has contemplated staggering the due dates for different taxpayers, but the potential problems are huge (e.g., employers would have to customize W-2s for employees; single filers who get married might end up with extra-short or extra-long tax years when they decided to file a joint return; if a change in the tax rate occurs, when does it take effect?; would states and cities conform to a staggered schedule?) and probably not worth the effort. The same study contemplated extending the filing date (while offering financial incentives for filing early) but also concluded that the potential traps outweigh the benefits.

The IRS knows that many taxpayers deliberately overwithhold as a way to enforce savings, even though they will not collect any interest while the government holds their money. These overwithholders, flouting the advice of any sensible accountant, are most unlikely to be tempted to file early because of a possible $10 bonus from the IRS.

Now that the IRS grants an automatic two-month extension on filing to anyone who asks for it, even tax preparers are generally against changing the April 15 deadline. Henry W. Bloch, the president of H&R Block, has penetrated the very soul of his customer, and in 1976 offered this appraisal in the
Kansas City Times
:

What’s
the Difference Between a Lake and a Pond?

“This is an Imponderable?” we hear you muttering beneath your breath as you read the question. “A lake is a big pond.”

Sure, you’re right. But have you considered exactly what is the dividing line in size between a lake and a pond? And what separates a lake from a sea or a pool? Do you think you know the answer?

Well, if you do, why don’t you go into the field of geography or topography or geology? Because the professionals in these fields sure don’t have any standard definitions for any of these bodies of water.

As stated in the
National Mapping Division’s Topographic Instructions’
“Glossary of Names for Topographic Forms,” a lake is “Any standing body of inland water generally of considerable size.” The same publication classifies a pond as “a small fresh-water lake.” But other government sources indicate that salt-water pools may be called lakes.

And absolutely no one is willing to say what the dividing line in size is between the lake and the pond. In fact, the only absolutely clear-cut distinction between the two is that a lake is always a natural formation; if it is manmade, the body is classified as a pond. Ponds are often created by farmers to provide water for livestock. Some ponds are created to provide feeding and nesting grounds for waterfowl. Hatcheries create stocked ponds to breed fish.

Many communities try to inflate the importance of their small reservoirs by calling them lakes rather than ponds. No one is about to stop them.

What’s
the Difference Between an Ocean and a Sea?

The same folks who are having trouble distinguishing between lakes and ponds are struggling with this one, too. Once again, there is general agreement that an ocean is larger than a sea.

The standard definition of an ocean, as stated in the United States Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information Service, is “The great body of salt water that occupies two-thirds of the surface of the earth, or one of its major subdivisions.” Notice the weasel words at the end. Is the Red Sea a “major subdivision” of the Indian Ocean? If so, why isn’t it the Red Ocean? Or simply referred to as the Indian Ocean?

Most, but by no means all seas are almost totally landlocked and connected to an ocean or a larger sea, but no definition we encountered stated this as a requirement for the classification. Geographical and geological authorities can’t even agree on whether a sea must always be saline: the United States Geological Survey’s Topographical Instructions say yes; but in their book
Water and Water Use Terminology
, Professors J. O. Veatch and C. R. Humphrys indicate that “sea” is sometimes used interchangeably with “ocean”:

The nasty truth is that you can get away with calling most places whatever names you want. We often get asked what the difference is between a “street” and an “avenue” or a “boulevard.” At one time, there were distinctions among these classifications: A street was a paved path. “Street” was a useful term because it distinguished a street from a road, which was often unpaved. An avenue was, in England, originally a roadway leading from the main road to an estate, and the avenue was always lined with trees. Boulevards were also tree-lined but were much wider thoroughfares than avenues.

Most of these distinctions have been lost in practice over the years. Developers of housing projects have found that using “street” to describe the roadways in their communities makes them sound drab and plebeian. By using “lane,” which originally referred to a narrow, usually rural road, they can conjure up Mayberry rather than urban sprawl. By using “boulevard,” a potential buyer visualizes Paris rather than Peoria.

For whatever reason, North Americans seem to like lakes more than seas. We are surrounded by oceans to the west and east. By standard definitions, we could certainly refer to Lake Ontario, which is connected, via the St. Lawrence, to the Atlantic, as the Ontario Sea. But we don’t. And no one, other than
Imponderables
readers, evidently, is losing any sleep over it.

Why
Does the United States Mint Use a Private Firm—UPS—to Ship Its Coin Sets?

Why would anyone, even a governmental agency, want to use the boringly reliable United Parcel Service when it could experience the excitement and sense of danger in using the United States Postal Service to ship its coin sets? By using the USPS, every order’s fate could be a potentially unsolved mystery.

Of course, every governmental agency has its own budget to worry about. If a government office feels it can save money or save time by using private industry, it is under no obligation to throw its business to a government agency.

The U.S. Mint actually does use the USPS to ship some coin orders. Francis B. Frere, assistant director of the Mint for sales operations, explained the Department of the Treasury’s policy:

How
Do Figure Skaters Keep from Getting Dizzy While Spinning? Is It Possible to Eye a Fixed Point While Spinning So Fast?

Imponderables
readers aren’t the only ones interested in this question. So are astronauts, who suffer from motion sickness in space. We consulted Carole Shulman, executive director of the Professional Skaters Guild of America, who explained:

So how are skaters taught to avoid focusing on objects or people in an arena? Claire O’Neill Dillie, skating coach and motivational consultant, teaches students to see a “blurred constant,” an imaginary line running around the rink. The imaginary line may be in the seats or along the barrier of the rink (during layback spins, the imaginary line might be on the ceiling). The crucial consideration is that the skater feels centered. Even when the hands and legs are flailing about, the skater should feel as if his or her shoulders, hips, and head are aligned.

Untrained skaters often feel dizziest not in the middle of the spin but when stopping (the same phenomenon experienced when a tortuous amusement park ride stops and we walk off to less than solid footing). Dillie teaches her students to avoid vertigo by turning their heads in the opposite direction of the spin when stopping.

What surprised us about the answers to this Imponderable is that the strategies used to avoid dizziness are diametrically opposed to those used by ballet dancers, who use a technique called “spotting.” Dancers consciously pick out a location or object to focus upon; during each revolution, they center themselves by spotting that object or location. When spotting, dancers turn their head at the very last moment, trailing the movement of the body, whereas skaters keep their head aligned with the rest of their body.

Why won’t spotting work for skaters? For the answer, we consulted Ronnie Robertson, an Olympic medalist who has attained a rare distinction: Nobody has ever spun faster on ice than him.

How fast? At his peak, Robertson’s spins were as fast as six revolutions per second. He explained to us that spotting simply can’t work for skaters because they are spinning too fast to focus visually on anything. At best, skaters are capable of seeing only the “blurred constant” to which Claire O’Neill Dillie was referring, which is as much a mental as a visual feat.

Robertson, trained by Gustav Lussi, considered to be the greatest spin coach of all time, was taught to spin with his eyes closed. And so he did. Robertson feels that spinning without vertigo is an act of mental suppression, blocking out the visual cues and rapid movement that can convince your body to feel dizzy.

Robertson explains that the edge of the blade on the ice is so small that a skater’s spin is about the closest thing to spinning on a vertical point as humans can do. When his body was aligned properly, Robertson says that he felt calm while spinning at his fastest, just as a top is most stable when attaining its highest speeds.

While we had the greatest spinner of all time on the phone, we couldn’t resist asking him a related Imponderable: Why do almost all skating routines, in competitions and skating shows and exhibitions, end with long and fast scratch spins? Until we researched this Imponderable, we had always assumed that the practice started because skaters would have been too dizzy to continue doing anything else after rotating so fast. But Robertson pooh-poohed our theory.

The importance of the spin, to Robertson, is that unlike other spectacular skating moves, spins are sustainable. While triple jumps evoke oohs and aahs from the audience, a skater wants a spirited, prolonged reaction to the finale of his or her program. Spins are ideal because they start slowly and eventually build to a climax so fast that it cannot be appreciated without the aid of slow-motion photography.