Why do Clocks run clockwise? (21 page)

Why Does Coca-Cola From a Small Bottle Taste
Better Than Coca-Cola From a Large Bottle or
Can?

Scratch any Coca-Cola diehard, and you are likely to find someone who insists that Coke tastes best out of 6½-ounce glass bottles.

While purists can handle the 12-ounce glass bottles, their eyes inevitably become glazed or downcast as soon as the words “plastic” or

“can” or “three-liter” are bandied about.

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We must confess. We have the same conviction. Yet the small Coke bottles are almost impossible to find in many parts of the country. A friend of ours, Chris Geist, who lives in Bowling Green, Ohio, once wrote a letter to Coca-Cola complaining that his family couldn’t find the small bottles anywhere. A representative from Coca-Cola came to his door, one day, like Michael Anthony on
The Millionaire
, with a case of 61/2-ounce glass bottles. The Coca-Cola man bewailed the demise of the small glass bottles himself, but explained that supermarkets refuse to stock them. Grocery stores don’t like the breakability of glass, and they prefer the higher profit margins provided by the larger sizes.

Despite many attempts, we could not get Coca-Cola to respond to this Imponderable, on or off the record, but we consulted several other soft-drink companies and soft-drink technologists and got pretty much the same answer from all. The response of the National Soft Drink Association is typical: “What many people do not realize is that the exact same product that goes into small bottles also goes into large bottles and cans. We have found in the past that most perceived taste preferences disappear when a blind taste test is ad-ministered using a similar sample container such as a paper cup.”

Our guess, however, is that these comparisons were made under ideal conditions; the consumer is not always granted such favorable benefits. For one, the polyester resin material used in two-and three-liter soft drink bottles does not retain CO2as well as glass or aluminum. And although polyester resin provides a decent shelf life in the supermarket, the carbonation retention is not nearly as good as in other containers.

Most important, any amount of air in the head space (the top of the bottle) adversely affects the taste of the liquid. Once a bottle is opened, even if the closure is reapplied tightly, the carbonation and the taste are never quite the same again. Indeed, one of our pet theories is that simply in the time that it takes to fill a three-liter bottle, more air is trapped inside than in a small bottle. The amount of CO2in a bottle affects not only our sense of its carbonation but also our taste perception.

158 / DAVID FELDMAN

We didn’t get far on the can versus bottle argument. We assumed that canned soft drinks didn’t taste as good as bottled ones because traces of the metal affected the flavor. Soft-drink experts insist that in blind taste tests, consumers can’t tell the difference, and buyers like the convenience and durability of the can. Bah humbug!

Submitted by Ronald C. Semone, of Washington, D.C
.

Why and When Was 1982-1984 Chosen to Replace
1967 as the Base Year for the Consumer Price
Index? Why Wasn’t It Changed After Ten Years?

The Consumer Price Index measures the average change in prices over time in a fixed market basket of goods and services. The CPI tracks the prices of food, clothing, housing, utility costs, medical care, drugs, transportation, and many other goods and services, as well as the taxes on all of these items. Prices are collected from 85

urban areas, including about 4,000 food stores, 24,000 rental units, and 28,000 business establishments, both commercial enterprises and nonprofit institutions such as hospitals.

The Consumer Price Index is based on data compiled from WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 159

the Consumer Expenditure Surveys. The accuracy of these data is important not only in the abstract, to economists and researchers, but in the pocketbook, to workers, whose cost-of-living provisions are keyed to the CPI. The reference base year is changed to make comparisons of rates of change easier for the public to understand.

By changing the base year every ten years or so, the numbers don’t get unwieldy. Until 1987, the base year for the CPI was 1967; the index was expressed as 1967 = 100. If the 1972 index had increased by 50 percent since 1967, it would have been expressed as 150. An index rating of 250 would mean a 150 percent jump since the reference base year.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is not under any statutory requirement to change its base year at any particular time, though it strives to do so approximately every decade. Originally, BLS intended to change the base year to 1977, which would have been a fortuitous choice for two reasons. First, the then most recent quinquennial (five-year) economic censuses were taken for 1977, and many economic time series are tied to economic censuses. Second, the expansion of the economy in 1977 after the recession of 1974-1975 was relatively balanced, which meant that there were few extreme conditions in particular segments of the economy that would have made 1977 unrepresentative of the recent period.

The most difficult part of compiling the CPI isn’t the collection of raw data (it is time consuming, but not hard, to find out the cost of, say, dairy products in different localities throughout the country), but rather the weighting of the various sectors that the CPI measures.

In order for the index to be accurate, it must measure not only how much goods and services cost the consumer, but also what percentage of consumer expenses each category represents. It matters little if the cost of maraschino cherries skyrockets if very few consumers buy them in the first place. But if the price of a staple such as oil zooms during an energy crisis, it will have a more substantial effect on the CPI.

In the late 1970s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was in the process of developing new systems to “weight” the different 160 / DAVID FELDMAN

components of the index, so the plan was to wait to implement 1977 as the base year until 1981, after the new weighting system was introduced. No base-year changes can be made without review by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, Office of Management and Budget. According to Patrick Jackman, at the Office of Prices and Living Conditions of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, severe budget constraints led the BLS to ask for a postponement of the change, and they were granted it. Without these budget problems, 1977 would have been the reference base year, at least through the late 1980s. In other words, Reaganomics killed the planned base-year change.

So why have they finally made the decision to adopt the three-year 1982-1984 period as the reference base? Historically, the reference base period has tended to be three years (before 1967, 1957-1959 and 1947-1949 were the reference bases), mainly because it was believed there would be less volatility in the index if it reflected a fairly lengthy time period. Then a government interagency task force decided that the Bureau of Labor Statistics should designate a
single
year as the reference base period, and 1967 was chosen. The intent was to key several economic indexes to the same base year.

The Office of Management and Budget abandoned this attempt and reverted to a three-year period—1982-1984—largely because this particular period was already being used in determining the expenditure base weights.

Submitted by Daniel Marcus, of Watertown, Massachusetts
.

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Why Do Firehouses Have Dalmatians?

Although today dalmatians serve primarily as firehouse mascots, back in the days of horse-drawn hose carts, they provided a valuable service. Dalmatians and horses get along swimmingly, so the dogs were easily trained to run in front of the carts and help clear a path for the firefighters to get to a fire quickly.

The breed eventually became so popular in New York City firehouses that the Westminster Kennel Club offered a special show class for dalmatians owned by New York Fire Department members.

In their book,
Dalmatians: Coach Dog, Firehouse Dog
, Alfred and Esmeralda Treen tell the story of a Lieutenant Wise of the NYFD

who had such a close attachment to his firehouse mascot, Bessie, that she followed him home on his days off, literally hopping on the streetcar to accompany him. If Bessie missed the car, she knew where to stand to catch the next one. Bessie also followed Lieutenant Wise into burning buildings but stayed one floor below the fighting line, “for fear a dog might cause a man to stumble if retreat was ordered.”

Dalmatians have been used throughout history for serious work: as sentinels on the borders of homeland Dalmatia and Croatia, during wars; as shepherds; as draft dogs; as hound dogs; as retriev-ers; and as performing dogs (dalmatians not only are intelligent, but have excellent memories). Dalmatians’ speed and endurance and lack of fear of horses enabled them to become superb coach dogs for fire carts. As the Dalmatian Club of America puts it, the breed was able “to coach under the rear axle, the front axle, or most difficult of all, under the pole between the leaders and the wheelers.”

The death knell of the dalmatian as a coaching dog for fire departments sounded with the introduction of motorized cars. Dalmatians like Bessie lost their function, as we can see from this sentimental lament from Lieutenant Wise:

For five and a half long years Bessie cleared the crossing at Third Avenue and Sixty-seventh Street for her company, barking a warn 162 / DAVID FELDMAN

ing to surface-car motormen, truck drivers, and pedestrians, and during all that time she led the way in every one of the average of forty runs a month made by No. 39. Then like a bolt from the sky the white horses she loved were taken away, even the stalls were removed, and the next alarm found her bounding in front of a manmade thing that had no intelligence—a gasoline-driven engine. Bessie ran as far as Third Avenue, tucked her tail between her legs and returned to the engine house. Her heart was broken. She never ran to another fire.

Today’s dalmatian is as likely to help in quashing fires as is Smokey the Bear. But firehouse mascots still abound, and the dalmatian is still often chosen by many firefighters in honor of its heroism in the past.

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Doughnut-Shop Employees Always Pick Up the
Doughnuts With a Tissue So That Their Hands
Never Touch the Doughnuts. Why Do They Then
Put the Same Tissue in with the Doughnuts for
the Customer to Carry Home—Germs and All?

Imponderables
must have the most discerning readership in the cosmos. Who else but an
Imponderables
reader would raise such an important health issue, hitherto hidden in obscurity?

We contacted all of the biggest doughnut-store companies. Those that responded sheepishly admitted that the tissue, usually Sav-R-Wrap tissue, is used by employees for sanitary reasons, but couldn’t explain why the tissue, “germs and all,” is stuffed in the bag, except that it is, as Carl E. Hass, president of Winchell’s says, “placed on top of the donuts so that the customer may use it to remove the product from the bag.” The director of product marketing at Dunkin’

Donuts, Glenn Bacheller, agreed that perhaps the custom isn’t the greatest idea, and said that the Dunkin’ Donuts training department is looking into the possibility of not stuffing in the “used” tissue. Our reader may have earned a niche in doughnut history.

Submitted by Karen Simmons, of West Palm Beach, Florida
.

164 / DAVID FELDMAN

Why Is Scoring Three Goals in Hockey Called a
Hat-Trick?

“Hat-trick” was originally an English cricket term used to describe the tremendous feat of a bowler’s taking three wickets on successive balls. The reward for this accomplishment at many cricket clubs was a new hat. Other clubs honored their heroes by “passing the hat”

among fans and giving the scorer the proceeds. The term spread to other sports in which scoring is relatively infrequent—“hat-trick” is also used to describe the feat of scoring three goals in soccer.

According to Belinda Lerner, of the National Hockey League, the expression surfaced in hockey during the early 1900s: “There is some confusion about its actual meaning in

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hockey. Today, a ‘true’ hat-trick occurs when one player scores three successive goals without another goal being scored by other players in the contest.”

Submitted by Ron Fishman, of Denver, Colorado
.

What Are the Names on the Bottom of Grocery
Sacks?

The kraft paper grocery sack celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1986. Innovation is necessary to keep most venerable products fresh and appealing. But aren’t designer grocery sacks a little much?

What will we have next—generic paper sacks?

The largest manufacturer of grocery bags, Stone Container Corporation, of Huntington, Long Island, makes over 25 billion bags and sacks every year (a “sack” is technically a large grocery bag).