Why is a square boxing area called a ring? (Article from July 2009)
The answer is that “ring” was first applied not to the boxing area but to the spectators who formed a ring around the combatants, according to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Although hand-to-hand combat was probably invented by the first two-year-old boy to discover he had a younger sibling, the first public boxing matches took place in early 18th century England. These were bare-knuckled affairs with no time limits, no ropes and no referees. The winner was the last man standing. The ring of bloodthirsty fans formed an enclosure for the pugilists.
Eventually, as boxers started to make more money for their efforts, small arenas were built that featured rings demarcated by wooden barriers or heavy ropes. The current ring, with four (or occasionally three) ropes tied to turnbuckles on corner posts, is the descendant.
Why does a horrible drug like heroin have a heroic name? (Article from March 2009)
Yes, heroin derives from the same Greek word, heros, that gave us the English hero and heroine. Although heroin's manufacture and distribution have long ago been outlawed around the world, the morphine derivative was developed as a legitimate painkiller.
Heroin was originally a legitimate trademark taken by a German pharmaceutical company, so the brand name was consciously designed to evoke only positive associations. Not only was heroin effective as a painkiller, it also had the ‘bonus' of giving patients a euphoric feeling, and as we now know, delusions of grandeur. Although these side effects can be deadly in an illicit drug, it was at first a distinct selling point in marketing heroin to physicians as a painkiller.
How did the phrase "spelling bee" originate? (Article from February 2009)
The word ''bee'' has three meanings, according to the Collins English Dictionary. Besides it being the name of the insect family called Apoidea and a marine equipment used for reeving outhauls, it's also defined as a social gathering for a specific purpose. The origin of the term ''spelling bee'' has never been satisfactorily accounted for, says the Scripps National Spelling Bee, also known as the Bee.
''Spelling bee'' is apparently an American term that first appeared in print in 1875. However, they are certain the term was used orally years before that. The Bee also points out some scholars have rejected the social gathering explanation and have suggested this ''bee'' is a different word. One possibility is that it either comes from the Middle English word ''bene,'' which means prayer or favour, or a dialect form – ''been'' or ''bean,'' which refers to voluntary help given by neighbors towards the accomplishment of a particular task. No-one is entirely certain, the Bee concludes.
Why is the letter "W" called double "U" when it looks more like two "V"s put together? (Article from January 2009)
According to the experts at AskOxford.com, English uses the Latin alphabet of the Romans but the latter had no letter suitable for representing the phoneme ''w'' used in Old English. The earliest form for ''w'' was probably the ''uu'' that was used by scribes in the seventh century. Some of the scribes later replaced the ''uu'' with the runic symbol known as ''wynn.''
European scribes continued to use the ''uu'' term and this usage was brought back to England along with the Norman Conquest in 1066. Early printers sometimes used ''vv'' for the lack of a ''w'' in their type but the pronunciation ''double u'' stuck around till now.
Do starfish have faces? (Article from December 2008)
Starfish are not fish. They are properly known as sea stars, and are classified as Echinodermata (spiny skinned), the same phylum of invertebrates as sea cucumbers and urchins.
It's hard to have a face when you don't have a head. Sea stars, like all echinoderms, are radially symmetrical with a top side, but no front and back. They have five - or more - arms and absolutely no notion of forwards or backwards.
Sea stars have a groove running along the bottom of each arm that contains hundreds of tiny "tube feet". These not only enable sea stars to move, but are also equipped with suction cups, which allow them to grip surfaces with some of the tube feet and propel themselves forward with others. Each arm contains a single tube foot that is longer than the other feet and does not have a suction cup. When a sea star moves, this special tube is able to sense chemicals in the water.
Sea stars have no eyes, noses, ears or heads, but they do have mouths, usually located right in the centre of the bottom of the sea star. They feast on oysters, clams, mussels, coral, fish and other animals that live near the floor of the sea. While it takes some skill for us to pry open an oyster, sea stars have mastered their technique; they wrap their arms around the oyster and use their tube feet to pry apart the oyster shell. Once there is the slightest crack in the shell, the sea star extends its jellylike stomach out of its mouth and inserts the stomach inside the shell of the oyster. The digestive juices of the stomach move into the crack of the shell while the inside-out stomach of the sea star digests its prey.
Why don't cats like to swim? (Article from November 2008)
Many people think that cats are afraid of water. They're not. Occasionally, one can see a cat pounce spontaneously into the water. Nature documentary fans can attest to the fact that many of the cats' larger relatives, such as tigers and jaguars, love to swim.
So why isn't your cat likely to stick a paw into the pool? For the same reasons it always drives you nuts: it has a cleanliness fetish, and it's lazy. Your cat refuses to have a good time.
It won't get wet because it figures it isn't worth the effort needed to dry and clean itself with its tongue to enjoy something as superficial as marine frolic. Unless you starve it and stock your pool with fish, your cat is likely to remain landlocked.
Why is saffron ridiculously expensive? (Article from October 2008)
The saffron threads used to colour and flavour many dishes, particularly in Indian cooking, are the golden orange stigmata of the autumn crocus, a plant of the iris family. Autumn crocuses are far from rare. So why is saffron so dear?
There are two reasons. The crocus flowers must be picked by hand to extract the saffron threads. As many as 500,000 (1.5 million stigmata) are needed to collect just 500g of saffron.
The flowers are picked immediately after they blossom, and the stigmata are cut with fingernails and then dried by the sun or by fire. During this drying process, the saffron loses approximately 80 percent of its weight.
Saffron could be cultivated in the West and still is grown in parts of the Mediterranean, but where could affluent countries find labour inexpensive enough to produce saffron as cheaply as the ‘ridiculously expensive’ price we pay today?
Why do other people hear our voices differently than we do? (Article from September 2008)
We have probably all had this experience. We listen to a tape recording of ourselves talking with some friends. We insist the tape doesn’t sound at all like our voice, but everyone else’s sounds reasonably accurate. According to speech therapist Dr Mike D’Asaro, there is a universal pattern of rejection of one’s own voice. Is there a medical explanation?
Yes. Speech begins at the larynx, where the vibration emanates. Part of the vibration is conducted through the air – that is what your friends (and the tape recorder) hear when you speak. Another part of the vibration is directed through the fluids and solids of our heads. Our inner and middle ears are parts of caverns hollowed out by bone – the hardest bone of the skull. The inner ear contains fluid, the middle ear contains air, and the two press against each other. The larynx is also surrounded by soft tissue full of liquid. Sound transmits differently through the air than through solids and liquids, and this difference accounts for almost all of the tonal differences we hear on a recording of our own voice.
When we speak, we are not hearing our voice solely with our ears, but also through internal hearing, a mostly liquid transmission through a series of bodily organs. During an electric guitar solo, who hears the “real” sound? The audience, the guitarist or a tape recorder located inside the guitar?
The question is moot. There are three different sounds being made by the guitarist, and the principle is the same for the human voice. We can’t say that either the tape recorder or the speakers hear the “right” voice, only that the voices are indeed different.
Dr D’Asaro points out that we have an internal memory of our voice in our brain, and the memory is richer than what we hear in a tape playback. Listening to a recording of our own voice is like listening to a symphony on a bad transistor radio – the sound is recognisable but a pale imitation.
Why does GPS sometimes fail to pinpoint my location? And who owns the satellites in the sky? (Article from August 2008)
Because of issues with national security, only the military and other approved agencies have access to the Precise Positioning
Service that nails you to the spot.
There are about 800 satellites snagged in Earth’s orbit, from 150 to 40,000 kilometres away, circling us as we spin. Geostationary ones rotate at the same speed as Earth and appear fixed in the sky.
Some of those 800 satellites are no longer working – others have been turned off. NASA reports that they may drop back towards Earth or not, depending on their orbit. Some burn fully upon re-entry; others don’t. The US tracks unburned bits of their spent satellites that, happily, usually land harmlessly in the ocean.
Aside from feeding information to your GPS, satellites are involved in high-speed internet connections, international phone calls and package tracking. They facilitate ATM transactions, help ships navigate, monitor the world’s weather (including tracking hurricanes), and register climate change by measuring sea ice and ozone thickness.
Dozens of satellites are devoted to the task of navigation, a benefit discovered by scientists monitoring the world’s first man-made satellite, launched by Russia in 1957. By using a pair of synchronised clocks – one on the ground, one in the satellite – distance is calculated by the amount of time it takes a radio signal to travel between the two. Four satellites can precisely triangulate latitude, longitude and altitude.
Governments may wholly own satellites or operate ones jointly with commercial interests. Major federal owners include the US, Canada, Russia, Japan, Europe and India. Several of the roughly 300 commercial satellites feed information to major news outlets such as CNN and the BBC. A typical working satellite costs about $390 million to build, launch and insure.
If peanuts are part of the legume family, then why must you steer clear of tree nuts – not beans – when you have a peanut allergy? (Article from July 2008)
While people with a peanut allergy are often counseled not to eat tree nuts – such as almonds, pecans, pistachios and walnuts – the allergies are not the same, nor are they linked. Except, explains Dr Scott H. Sicherer, author of Understanding and Managing Your Child's Food Allergies, for the fact that sensitive people are prone to multiple allergies.
Science has not yet answered why peanuts, which are classified as legumes, provoke such a swift, strong reaction in so many. One theory is that some peanut proteins evade digestion better than do the proteins in other legumes. Sicherer notes that undigested proteins ''show themselves more'' to the immune system. Another theory is that roasting the peanut makes it more allergenic.
Interestingly, allergies to tree nuts pair up: if you react to walnuts, then pecans are also more of a problem, and almond allies with hazelnut.
Why do we sometimes cry when we laugh? (Article from June 2008)
Weeping with laughter, sobbing in sorrow: Our bodies react similarly when emotions run high. A few scientists have explored the physical pathways of emotional tears, but none have categorically stated why these tears exist. Tom Lutz, author of Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, notes Darwin published snapshots of laughing and crying people to demonstrate that the same expression accompanies both behaviours. ''Some tears are squeezed out of the ducts simply because the face is scrunched up,'' explains Lutz. ''But tears also accompany the body's return to homeostasis after extreme excitation. So after a big laughing jag, tears are a sign that the body is returning to normal.''
What tears are made of, however, may offer further clues about why we cry. Unlike tears that well up when you chop onions, emotional tears are unusually rich in protein-based hormones that spike when you're stressed. This fact led one US biochemist to theorize that releasing tears – and thus the hormones in them – may be the body's attempt to reduce stress. Regardless of its cause – be it pleasure or pain – people do tend to feel better after a good cry.
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This was just some examples of articles you can see in "FACTS" section of Reader's Digest. I intentionally skip some months and if you're like me who often read the magazine, you know that most of time there were two anonymous question about something. Again, I intentionally include only one. If you want for more article, visit "FACTS OF LIFE" section of the magazine site.
