the 941

How can those America’s Cup yachts sail faster than the wind? Here’s what the San Francisco Chronicle has to say: “It’s physics.” Come on, Cecil, I know you can do better. —P. McCartney, Oak Harbor, Washington

I should hope. To give the Chronicle some credit, though, “it’s physics” was preceded by an accurate if somewhat murky explanation that, unfortunately, you didn’t get. Let’s try again.

The America’s Cup, for those whose taste in sports runs more to bowling, is the most prestigious prize in sailing. First awarded in 1851 and later named after the first ship to win the race, the ornate silver cup is pursued by sailing fanatics racing the most high-tech yachts in the world. The boats used in the original America’s Cup races were wood-and-canvas schooners, but over time they’ve evolved into computer-designed craft made of carbon fiber and epoxy. One thing hasn’t changed, though: all that makes them go is the wind.

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How is it that, in places without natural features such as a river or mountain range to mark a border, U.S. states could establish a nice, even line over hundreds of miles before GPS? —Granite-Morale

The lines aren’t always nice and even. Study a U.S. atlas and you’ll find many supposedly straight boundaries with slants and zigzags in them, the work of surveyors who were, and it pains me to say this, borderline incompetent. Still, the remarkable thing isn’t how often the surveyors screwed up but how often they didn’t. You never know when we might be called on to lay out another virgin continent, and Lord knows you can’t always count on modern technology. So here’s a primer on the old-fashioned way to draw a straight line on a bumpy planet.

First a question: Why straight lines? Mostly because the distant authorities who decreed borders — royalty before 1776, Congress and treaties after — were ignorant of local geography. Straight lines also had the virtue of simplicity. There are many Potomac branches for Virginia and Maryland to argue over. But there’s only one 42nd parallel, limiting the recreational disputation opportunities for folks in Pennsylvania and New York.

Now let’s get to work.

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I’ve often heard people say “the camera adds 10 pounds” when they’re photographed. Is that just an excuse or is there any truth to it? —Emma

No question there’s an element of denial here. Since you’re not looking at yourself most of the time, it’s easy to maintain a self-image reflecting the svelte physique you had 10 years ago, as opposed to the corpulent wreck you’ve become. But that’s not the whole story. For reasons having to do with optics and the way your brain works, the camera can in fact make you look heavier than you are.

The main difference between a camera’s view of the world and yours is that the camera has a single “eye” whereas you have two. That subtly changes the way things look. Here’s an experiment. Pose a round object in front of a varied background — a coffee cup in front of the computer monitor worked well enough for me. From a distance of two or three feet, look at the object alternately with both eyes, then one. You’ll notice that, seen with one eye, the object looms larger in your field of vision, and obscures more of what’s behind it. It seems bigger and bulgier. In other words, it looks fat.

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Following the 2007 murder-suicide involving pro wrestler Chris Benoit and his family, many asked if this was a case of ’roid rage. However, nobody seems to question whether ’roid rage actually exists. What’s the straight dope? —Bart Zimmer

You know, there was a time, back when Cadillacs had fins and people sang along to Burma-Shave commercials, that ’roid rage meant heading to the bathroom with a tube of Preparation H. Times have changed, haven’t they?

Steroids, in the common sense of the term, are synthetic hormones. Administered in high doses, they produce an exaggerated version of the physiological changes caused by natural hormones. The type we’re talking about here are anabolic androgenic steroids — synthetic testosterone. The most obvious physical effect of these artificial male sex hormones is Incredible Hulk-sized muscles. One commonly cited psychological effect is increased aggressiveness, also known as ’roid rage.

Does ’roid rage really happen? Yes, but not to everybody — research to date indicates most steroid users experience little or no psychological effect. But some do report mood swings and increased aggressiveness, and a few flip out. For example:

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When I buy over-the-counter pharmaceuticals from our local drug store, I always buy the house brand. The active ingredients and dosages in Tylenol (acetaminophen) are identical to that of the copy. The same is true of the Motrin alternative, the Sudafed clone, and so on — and they’re all much cheaper. However, my wife insists on buying a brand name — she thinks I’m some kind of cheapskate. If the active ingredients in these drugs are the same, is there any difference in the quality of a brand name versus a house brand? —Dave C., Wisconsin

Let’s put it this way: the differences are small. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important. It also doesn’t mean they are.

When the patents on a name-brand drug expire and competitors flood the market with knockoffs, prices can drop to astounding depths. In a quick survey of 10 common drugs, my assistant Una found generics offered savings of 15 to 94 percent off name-brand prices, with the average around 60 percent. (The most dramatic difference, for you anxious types: Valium versus generic diazepam.) That’s in line with an FDA analysis, which found that having just two competing manufacturers for a drug chopped the price in half. Not surprisingly, generics are used for nearly two-thirds of all U.S. prescriptions.

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What’s the deal with getting a song stuck in your head? Why does it happen, especially if it’s a song you don’t like or don’t even know well? Yet all you can think about is that stupid tune. Please enlighten me; I’m getting really sick of “Tainted Love” running circles through my brain. —Meg

You think you’ve got problems? My assistant Una claims she had the same tune running through her head off and on for 27 years. Only after laborious research online was she able to establish what it was: a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, which at least has some class. Can you imagine 27 years of “Achy Breaky Heart”?

As is all too often the case with the interesting parts of science, we don’t know much about this phenomenon but we have a good name for it: earworm, a translation of the German Ohrwurm. (Use the German if you want anyone to pay attention to you in the faculty lounge.) People have been interested in earworms for a while now — Mark Twain used one as a plot device in his 1876 story “A Literary Nightmare.” They’re the most common type of what’s called “involuntary imagery,” sounds, pictures, smells, and even tastes that repeatedly come to mind unbidden.

One theory is that earworms are a form of mild musical hallucination (normally a rare experience), the distinction being that with an earworm you (a) usually aren’t on drugs or suffering from schizophrenia and thus (b) are fully aware there’s no actual music being played outside of your skull. Another theory is that earworms are a side effect of your brain trying to consolidate memories, akin to what happens in REM sleep. Yet another possibility is pondered by neurologist Oliver Sacks in his book Musicophilia: earworms might simply be a consequence of our being surrounded by music in our lives whether we want to be or not.

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I play poker with this guy on a fairly regular basis at the casino. He’s got this medical alert dog he brings with him everywhere. Apparently the dog will warn him 20 minutes prior to having a medical emergency that he needs to seek help. How does the dog know something is wrong with him? —R.K.

Not that I would ever doubt what somebody told me in a casino, R. But how do you know the pooch’s alerts aren’t more along the lines of “This guy’s holding three of a kind”?

Fact is, there’s no such thing as a general-purpose medical alert dog. Closest I know of is a dog that recognizes seizures, due either to epilepsy or, in diabetics, low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). The experts distinguish two types of canine assistant. The first is a seizure response dog, trained to summon help or the like if its owner has an episode. Research suggests dogs do well at this task. The second is a seizure alert dog, which provides advance notice.

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Some years ago I read about a slightly loony “garbologist” who liked to go through people’s trash, including that of one person in particular — Mr. Robert Zimmerman of Woodstock, New York, aka Bob Dylan, rebel poet of a generation, blah blah blah. One day when said garbologist was busy in the trash cans in front of Dylan’s Woodstock home, the songwriter supposedly spotted him, came tearing out of the house with the first blunt object that came to hand — a bicycle pump — and whacked the researcher upside the head with it.

If this story is true, it increases my already considerable respect for Bob Dylan. But it also brings up a question: What’s the ownership status of trash? When I put it out in front of my house for pickup, is it still my property and is someone rifling through it guilty of trespassing and theft? Or is it abandoned and, as such, fair game for any passing “researcher”? Does it belong to the outfit that hauls it away? If I accidentally discarded a sack of hundred-dollar bills, would the trash company be required to give them back? —Alex Skovan, Clinton Corners, N.Y.

We’ll get to the legalities in a moment, Alex. First, however, we need to review the fact situation, as the lawyers say.

The part about the garbologist, A.J. Weberman, going through Dylan’s trash is true, although as far as I can tell the scene of his garbage-picking exploits wasn’t Woodstock but Greenwich Village, where Dylan lived on and off in the ’60s and ’70s. The two men have definitely had words, and allegedly had worse. In a 2001 Rolling Stone article Weberman says he had made peace with Dylan sometime around 1971 but still craved publicity and so soon returned to Dylan’s trash. Was Dylan understanding? Weberman says no: “Dylan’s wife comes out and starts screaming about me going through the garbage. Dylan said if I ever fucked with his wife, he’d beat the shit out of me. A couple of days later, I’m on Elizabeth Street and someone jumps me, starts punching me. I turn around and it’s like — Dylan. I’m thinking, ‘Can you believe this? I’m getting the crap beat out of me by Bob Dylan!’”

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I love to go to the steam room (or if there isn’t one, the sauna) after a workout. But I’ve always wondered: Do they really help? Or rather: I sweat a lot in the steam room, and it’s obviously doing something to my body, but what exactly are its benefits? Or is it actually damaging my body? —Ricardo Cámara

You know I like to be emphatic in these columns, Ricardo, so I wish I could tell you that, yes, steam rooms and saunas will cleanse your body of noxious substances and, when combined with regular steak dinners, orgasms and chocolate cake, will enable you to live to 126. Or, alternatively (I’m not fussy, I just want something definite to say), that the sauna is a cabinet of death. Once again, however, I find myself stymied by intransigent reality. The scientific evidence, sorted into piles, breaks down as follows:

1. Steam rooms and saunas are good for you.
2. Steam rooms and saunas are bad for you.
3. We can’t decide about steam rooms and saunas. Give us another hour, and see if you can rustle up some baby oil and a lava lamp.

My drab elaboration on these conclusions is provided below. You’ll notice I treat saunas and steam rooms together, although they’re two separate things. Saunas typically operate at 176 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of 10 to 20 percent, whereas steam rooms involve lower temperatures and much higher humidity (i.e., steam). Now, most of the research out there focuses on saunas, and one ought not to assume that what’s true of saunas will in all cases be true of steam rooms. Nonetheless, the two share a key feature, namely, they both make you sweat — perhaps insufficient commonality for a peer-reviewed journal, but good enough for me. We proceed to the results:

Good. “Very few sudden deaths take place during or after sauna bathing” (American Journal of Medicine, 2001). This may not strike you as a ringing endorsement, but at one time saunas were thought to be associated with sudden death, arrhythmia and heart attacks. Sudden death and heart attacks are now off the list. I hope this fills you with a golden glow.

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Ed. note: This piece, by Cecil Adams, will appear in this week’s issue of Creative Loafing.

Did Clarence Darrow distract a jury by using wire to keep his cigar ash from falling?

I’m sure you’re familiar with the tale of Clarence Darrow hiding a wire in his cigar to keep the ash from falling and thus distracting the jury during the DA’s closing statement. Do you have any thoughts on what type of wire (gauge, material, etc) was or would be used? —John Kregel, Santa Cruz

John, have you no sense of system? We have, in fact, established the type and gauge of wire and other details needed to pull off this classic stunt. (Actually, my assistant Una established them, with my distant supervision.) However, if you don’t mind, we need to tackle the big picture first.

Clarence Darrow, as everybody ought to know but probably doesn’t, was the most famous defense attorney in America a century ago. Quick-witted and eloquent, he was renowned for his impassioned arguments on behalf of unpopular figures. His clients ranged from pioneering labor leader Eugene Debs to thrill killers Leopold and Loeb.

Darrow is perhaps best remembered for his unsuccessful defense of schoolteacher John Scopes, and by extension the theory of evolution, in the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. (Scopes was accused of violating Tennessee law by teaching evolution.) Some say this was the trial at which Darrow, described by the New York Times as a man of “wicked zest and mordant humor,” employed the cigar-ash trick. Other accounts merely say it was a favorite tactic, without citing a particular case.

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