Surgeon

Shortly after I had my car repaired, the mechanic who fixed it asked me to bring it back. I watched as he opened the bonnet and removed a tool he had left behind. In a conspiratorial voice I said, 'If you were a surgeon, I'd sue for malpractice.' 

'Yeah, but if I was surgeon,' he replied, 

'I'd charge you for having to go back in.'

'Jesus saves.'

Jesus and Satan were arguing over who was better with computers. Finally God suggested they settle it: each would spend two hours using spreadsheet, designing web pages, making charts and tables - everything they knew how to do. 

The two sat down at their keyboards and began typing furiously. Just before the two hours were up, the thunderstorm knocked the power out. Once it came back on, they booted up their computers. 

'It's gone! It's all gone!' Satan began to scream. ' My work was destroyed!'

Meanwhile, Jesus began quietly printing out his work. 

'Hey, he must have cheated!' Satan yelled. 

'How come his stuff wasn't lost?'

God shrugged and said simply, 'Jesus saves.'

Editing

People don't like to look fat in their own snapshots, which is why my husband, a professional photographer, gets a lot of request asking him to retouch photos. So I wasn't surprised when one woman, pointing to a family portrait, asked him, ' Can you take ten kilos off me?' until she added, ' And put it on my sister?'

Online Shopping

In these days of teenage Internet entrepreneurs, it's easy to forget, when shopping online, that you may not be dealing with a large, highly organised corporation. I recently e-mailed one website to enquire why my goods had not arrived a week after I had paid for them. A little later, I received a charming telephone call. 'Sorry for the delay,' said a young male voice. 'I'll check and get back to you. I can't access the Net at the moment because my mum's doing the vacuuming and this room only has one socket,'

Call

While my wife was in the gynaecologist's busy waiting room, a mobile phone rang. A woman answered it, and for the next few minutes, she explained her symptoms to the caller in intimate details, and what she suspected might be wrong. 

Suddenly the conversation shifted, and the woman said, 'Him? That's over.'  'Then she added, 'Can we talk about this later? It's rather personal, and I'm in a room full of people.'  

Why does Caucasion babies' and children's hair get darker as they age?

Our hair colour is determined by genetics, but in some cases Mother Nature chooses to not reveal our ultimate hair colour until well into adolescence. During infancy, the melanocytes, skin cells that mark and deposit pigment, are not fully active and don't understand exactly why hair darkening occurs in fits and starts throughout childhood and adolescence. Dermatologist Joseph Bark, author of Skin Secrets: A Complete Guide to Skin Care for the Entire Family, wrote that the eventual darkening of hair colour seems to be a 'slow maturation process rather than a hormonally controlled process associated with the "juices of puberty", which causes so much else to happen to the skin of kids.'

As is often the case with medical questions that are curious but have no practical application, the definitive solution to this Imponderable is likely to remain elusive. As dermatologist Samuel Selden celebrates: 'I don't believe that much study has been made of this, and until that is done, it means that armchair speculators like myself can have a field day with answering questions like this.'

Why can't hair grow on a vaccination mark?

A vaccination mark is nothing more than scar tissue. A vaccination causes an inflammation intense enough to destroy the hair follicles in its vicinity. Any deep injury to the skin will destroy hair follicles and cause hair loss. One can tranplant hair onto a vaccination mark, but one can never bring a dead hair follicle back to life.

'Scroll up, sweetie.'

My husband, a computer - system troubleshooter, rode with me in y new car one afternoon. He had been working on a customer's computer's all morning and was still tense from the session. When I stopped for a traffic light, I made sure to leave a safe distance from stop line to keep oncoming drivers from hitting the car. 

I couldn't help but laugh when my husband impatiently waved at me to move the car forward while saying 'Scroll up, sweetie.'

Why are tattoos usually blue (with an occasional touch of red?

Most tattoos are not blue. The pigment, made from carbon, is actually jet black. Since the pigment is lodged underneath the skin, tattoos appear blue because of the juxtaposition of black against the yellowish to brown skin of most Caucasians. Although red is the second most popular colour, many other shades are readily available; in fact, most tattoo artist buy many different colourings, premade, from DuPont.

We spoke to Spider Webb, leader of the Tattoo Club of America, about the prevalence of black pigment in tattoos. He felt that most clients, once they decide to take the plunge, want to show off their tattoo; black is by far the strongest and most visible colour. Webb added that in the case of one client, albino guitarist Johnny Winter, a black tattoo does appear to be black and not blue.

Car Alarms

I was with a friend in a cafe when a noisy car alarm interrupted our conversation. 'What good are car alarms when no one pays any intention to them?' I wondered aloud.

'Some are quite effective,' my friend corrected me. 

' Last summer, my son spent a lot of time at the neighbours'. Whenever I wanted him home, I'd go out to our driveway and jostle his car.'

Engineer

As an engineer in an upmarket hotel, I was asked to repair or replace the television in a guest room. When I arrived, the couple was watching a picture one-third the size of the screen. I knew all our spare sets were in use, so I figured what the hell: I struck the side of the TV with the heel of my hand. The picture returned to full size.

'Look darling,' said the wife to her husband. 'He went to the same repair school as you.'  

Why do we feel drowsy after a big meal?

After we eat a big meal, the blood supply concentrates around the digestive organs and intestinal system, reducing the blood supply for other activities. We tend to slow down metabolically and in our ambitions. ('Sure, why not have a fourteenth cup of coffee? They won't miss us at the office.;) Equally important, during digestion, foods are broken down into many chemicals, including amino acids such as 1-tryptophan, which help induce sleep. Serotonins, which constrict the blood vessels, also make us drowsy. Alcohol, if consumed with your meal, often produces sleepiness as well.

Answering machine

My mother, a master of guilt trips, showed me a photo of herself waiting by a phone that never rings.

'Mum, I call all the time,' I said. 

'If you had an answering machine, you'd know.' Soon after, my brother installed one for her. 

When I called the next time, I got her machine: 'If you're a salesperson, press one. If you're a friend, press two. If you're my daughter who never calls, press 000 because the shock will probably give me a heart attack.

Why do we wake up with such bad breath in the morning?

Most bad breath is caused by sulphur-bearing compounds in the mouth. How do they get there? And why is the problem worse in the morning? 

Micro-organisms in the mouth aren't fussy about what eat. They attack:

• Food left in the mouth
• Plaque
• Saliva found in the spaces between teeth, the gum and on the tongue.
• Dead tissue that id being shed by the mouth, gums and tongue.

The micro-organisms convert this food into amino acids and peptides, which in turn break down into compounds with a pungent sulphur odour.

Brushing the teeth helps rid the mouth of all these food sources ot the micro-organisms. But the best defence is a regular salivary flow, the type you get by talking, chewing or swallowing-things that most of us do only when awake.

Eliminating cavities is not only reason to floss. The longer food particles stay in the mouth, the more fetid the breath will e, so these hours of sleep are the perfect breeding time for bacteria and a threat to sensitive noses everywhere.

Impact of Computers

I realized the impact of of computers on my young son one evening when there was a dramatic sunset. Pointing to the western sky, David said, 'I wish we could click and save that,'

TEXT MESSAGE

My sister isn't good with technology. So when she mastered her first mobile phone, she proudly sent the following text message to her daughter:

'Betyouareamazedthatimanagedtosendyouthistextallihavetodonowisworkouthowtogetspaces'. 

WALLET

I heard the following over the PA system in a supermarket: 

'A wallet has been found containing a large sum of cash but no ID. Will those laying claim to it please form a double line at the customer service desk?'

Why do we dream more profusely when we nap than we do overnight?

According to the expert we consulted, we dream just as much at night as we do when we take a nap. However, we recall our afternoon-nap dreams much more easily than our dreams at night.

While we are dreaming, our long-term memory faculties are suppresses. During the night, our sleep is likely to go undisturbed. We tend to forget dreams we experience in the early stages of sleep. The sooner that we wake up after having our dreams, the more likely we are to remember them. Any situation that wakes up just after or during a dream will make the sleeper perceive that he or she has been dreaming profusely. Dr Robert McCarley, the Executive Secretary of the Sleep Research Society, told Imponderables that women in advanced stages of pregnancy often report that they are dreaming more frequently. Dr McCarley believes that the perceived increase in dreaming activity of pregnant women is prompted not by psyshological factors but because their sleep is constantly interrupted by physical discomforts.

CODE

Security and peace of mind were part of the reason we moved to a gated community. Both flew out out the window the night I called a local pizza shop for a delivery. 'I'd like to order a large peperoni, please,' I said, then gave him the address of our house. 

'We'll be there in about half an hour,' the voice at the other end replied, 'Your gate code is still 1238, right?' 

Wrong number

I dialled a wrong number and got the following recording: ' I am not available right now, but I thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes.'

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER

After we got broadband Internet, my husband decided to start paying bills online. This worked well; in fact, all our bill companies accepted online payments except one - our Internet service provider.

What are those twitches and jerks that occasionally wake us just as we are fally asleep?

It has probably happened to you. You are nestled snugly under the covers. You aren't quite asleep but you're not quite awake. Just as your brain waves start to slow and as you fantasise about owning that Mercedes Benz convertible, you are jolted awake by an unaccountable spasm, usually in a leg.

You have been a victim of what is called a 'hypnic jerk', a phenomenon explained in David Bodanis's marvellous The Body Book:

'They occur when nerve fibres leading to the leg, in a bundle nearly as thick as a pencil, suddenly fire in unison. Each tiny nerve in the bundle produces a harsh tightening of a tiny portion of muscle fibre that is linked to it down in the leg, and when they all fire together the leg twitches as a whole'

Sleep specialists have;t pinned down what causes hypnic jerks or why they occur only at the onset of sleep. Although some people experience them more often than others, their appearance is unpredictable, unlike myoclonic jerks, spasms that occur at regular intervals during deep sleep.

Some people just like to hear themselves talk

Our flight was about to take off when the passenger behind me immediately launched into a loud and annoying conference call on his customer lists. Charlie, pull all the data together we have...Bob, can you bring us up to date...' and on and on.

As the flight attendant began the preflight safety instructions, the executive's voice was drowned out by the PA system. While the safety speech continued, I heard him mutter into the phone, 'Hold on a second. Some people just like to hear themselves talk,' 

AUCTION

The auction I attended was selling cars to benefit charity. Vehicles were classified as either 'Running' or 'No Start'. On the block was a No Starter. 

It had a shattered windshield, two missing tyres, a sagging front bumper, a bonnet that was sprung up at an angle, and bumps and dents all over the body.

Before he started the bidding, the auctioneer announced the car's year, make and model, and then read the owner's comments: ' Please note - the radio does not work.'

Why do women put perfume on their wrists?

When we pass through the cosmetics counters of department stores, we see women applying perfume to their wrists and then sniffing intently. Why not on their fingers? The back of their hands? Their arms? Their underarms? What do they know that men don't know?

A cursory poll of some females indicated that most of them had no idea why they put perfume on their wristd. But there is a method to their madness. Irene L Malbin, of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, explains:

'Women put perfume on their wrists because there is a pulse point there. Pulse points are located wherever the pulse of the heartbeat is closest to the surface of the skin. The heat generated by the pulse point will intensify a perfume's impact.'

Malbin lists other pulse point: behind the ears, the nape of the neck, the bosom, the crook of the elbows, behind the knees and at the ankles. Obviously, it is easier for a consumer to apply perfume to the wrist than the back of the knee.

All of this makes perfect sense. But then why don;t men apply cplogne to their wrist? Or do they?

NOISE

Friends and I were chatting over dinner in a restaurant. A man at the next table told his mobile phone caller to hold on. Then he stepped outside to talk. 

When he returned, I said, 'That was very thoughtful,'

'I had no choice,' he replied. 

'You were making too much noise.' 

PARKING

While walking through a car park, I tripped and fell flat on my face. As I was lying there, a woman motorist stopped and called out from her vehicle, 'Are you hurt?'

'No, I'm fine,' I said, touched by her concern. 

'Oh, good,' she said. 

'Does that mean you'll be leaving your parking space?'   

Why do people seem to be immune to their own body odour?

How can so many otherwise sensitive people expose others to their body odours? Surely, they must not know that they (or their clothes) are foul-smelling, or they would do something about it. Right?

Right. Compared to most animals, human don't have an acutely developed sense of smell. According to Dr Pat Barelli, Secretary of the American Rhinologic Society, 'The olfactory nerve easily becomes "fatigued" in areas where there are odours.' In order not to be overloaded with information, your nervous system decides not to even try being 'bothered' by your body odour unless it changes dramatically. Whether you regularly smell like a spring bouquet or like last night's table scraps. you're unlikely to notice-even if you're sensitive to the body odour of other people.

Dr Morley Kare, Director of the Monell Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, adds that this fatigue principle applies to many of the senses. Workers at automobile factories must learn to block out the sounds of machinery or risk being driven insane.

And students often can't discriminate the taste of different dishes that are served in their school cafeteria. Of course, this phenomenon might be explained by the fact that all the cafeteria dishes do taste alike, but we would need a government grant to confirm the thesis.

SOUND

'What sound does a dog make?' my friend, who is a teacher, asked her class.

'Woof woof,' came the reply.

'And a cat?'

'Meow,' said the children. 

'And what sound does a mouse make?' she asked. 

'Click,' chorused the class. 

Why do fingernails grow faster than toenails?

This  is not the kind of question whose solution wins Nobel Prizes for scientists or garners prestigious grants for research hospitals, yet the answer is not obvious. The average severed fingernail takes four to six month to grow back to its normal length. The average toenail takes nine to 12 months.

Dermatologist Dr Fred Feldman says that although nobody knows for sure why toenails lag behind fingernails in growth, there are many possible explanations: 

1. Trauma makes nails grow faster.
2. All nails grow faster in the summer than the winter, which suggests that the sun promotes nail growth. Even during the summer, most people cover their toenails with socks and shoes.
3. Circulation is much more sluggish in the feet than in the hands.

BRAILLE

A phone company representative called to ask if I was interested in caller ID. Since I'm blind, I asked, 'Does it come in Braille?'

The rep put me on hold. When she returned, she replied, ' I'm sorry, sir, but but the caller ID box doesn't come in that colour.'

CD

After I bought my mother a CD player and some CDs, she was excited to discover she no longer needed to rewind or fast-forward tapes or move the needle on her record player.

Knowing she was not that technically astute, I called her a few days later to see how she was managing, 'Fine, I listened to Shania Twain this morning,' she said.

'The whole CD?' I asked.

'No,' she replied, 'just one side.'

What is the purpose of the white half-moons on the bases of our fingernails and toenails? Why don't they grow out with the nails?

Those white moons are called lunulae. The lunula is the only visible portion of the nail matrix, which produces the nail it self. The matrix (and the lunulae) never moves, but new nails continually push forward, away from the matrix.

Why does a lunula appear white? Dermatologist Harry Arnold explains:

'The nail beds distal to the lunulae look pink because capillaries with blood in them immediately underlie the nail plate. The lunulae look white because the thin, modified epidermis of the nail bed is three of four times thicker there, being the busy factory where nail plate is manufactured. The lunula is avascular [without blood vessels], so it looks white.'

SWEETS

A friend of mine always carries sweets with her and offers them to anyone she feels has been particularly helpful. Going through a supermarket checkout, she put a sweet down on the counter in front of the friendly man at the cash register. He refused politely, but she insisted and pushed the sweet back towards him and he accepted it. When my friend arrived home, she checked her receipt and found she'd been charged for confectionery from the pick-and-mix selection.

What causes the ringing sound you get in your ears?

Unless you are listening to a bell, a ringing sensation means you are suffering from tinnitus. Someone with tinnitus receives auditory sensations without any external auditory source. It is a chronic problem for millions of people.

Tinnitus is a symptom, not a disease in itself. Virtually anything that might disturb the auditory nerve is capable of causing tinnitus. Because the function of the auditory nerve is to carry sound, when the nerve is irritated for any reason the brain interprets the impulse as noise.

Some of the most common causes for temporary tinnitus are:

1. Reaction to a loud noise.
2. Vascular distress after a physical or mental trauma
3. Allergic reaction to medication. (Many people who take more than 20 aspirin per day are subject to tinnitus attack.) Luckily, the symptoms usually disappear upon discontinuance of the drug.

Causes of more chronic tinnitus conditions are myriad. Here are some of the most common: clogging of the external ear with earwax; inflammation of any part of the ear; drug overdoes; excessive use of the telephone; vertigo attack; nutritional deficiencies (particularly a lack of trace mineral); muscle spasms in the ear; infections; allergies.

Chronic tinnitus sufferers have to live not only with annoying buzzing, but usually with accompanying hearing loss. Unfortunately, there is no simple cure fot the condition. Much research is being conducted on the role  of nutrition in helping treat tinnitus, but for now, the emphasis is on teaching sufferers how to live with the problem.

Why do our noses run in cold weather?

Otolaryngologist Dr Steven C Marks, on behalf of the American Rhinologic Society, explains the physiology:

'The nose and sinuses are lined by a mucous membrane that contains both mucus-secreting glands and small cells called goblet cells, which also secrete a component of mucus. This mucus is produced in normal mucous membranes and in those that are infected or inflamed'

Many medical problems, such as viral or bacterial infections or allergies, can cause your nose to run. But, Marks says, the nose's response to cold is different:

'The nasal and sinus mucous membranes are innervated [stimulated] by nerves which control, to some extent, the rate of mucus secretion. The response of the nose to cold air is in part a reflex mediated by these nerves. The cold air is sensed by the mucosa [mucous membrane], which then sends a signal back to the brain, which then send a signal back to the mucosa: the result is a secretion of mucus.'

What good does a runny nose do anyone but Kleenex? Keith Holmes, an ear nose and throat specialist, believes that it is 'a natural physiologic phenomenon of the organ to protect the warm lining of the nose', as cold irritates the mucous membrane. Marks speculates that 'the increased mucus flow may be necessary to improve the humidification and cleaning of the cold environment.'

WHY don't people get goose bumps on their faces?

Be proud of the fact hat you don't get goose bumps on your face. It's  one of the few things that separate you from chimps. We get goose bumps only on parts of our bodies that have hair. The purpose of body hair is to protect us from the cold. But when our hair doesn't provide enough insulation, the small muscles at the bottom of each hair tighten, so that the hair stands up.

In animals covered with fur, this means that a protective nest of hairs is formed. Cold air is trapped in the hair instead of bouncing against delicate skin. The hair thus insulates the animals against the cold.

Although humans have lost most of their body hair, the same muscular contractions occur to defend against the cold. Instead of a mat of hair, all we have to face the elements are a few wispy tufts and a multitude of mounds of skin. When a male lion gets goose bumps, his erect hair makes him ferocious; our goose bumps only make us look vulnerable.

DO we really need to put thermometers under our tongues? Couldn't we put them above our tongues if our mouths were closed?

Anyone who has ever seen a child fidgeting, desperately struggling to keep a thermometer under the tongue, has probably wondered, Why do physicians want to take our temperature in the most inconvenient place?

   

No, there is nothing intrinsically important about the temperature under the tongue or, for that matter, in your rectum. The goal is to determine the 'core temperature', the temperature of the interior of the body.

The rectum and tongue are the most accessible areas of the body that are at core temperature. Occasionally the armpit will be used, but the armpit is more exposed to the ambient air, and tends to give colder readings. Of course, drinking a hot beverage, as many schoolchildren have learned, is affective in raising one's temperature. But barring tricks, the area under the tongue, full of blood vessels, is almost as accurate as the rectal area, and a lot more pleasant place to use.

So what are the advantage of putting the thermometer under the tongue as opposed to over it? Let us count the ways: 

Accuracy. Placing the thermometer under the tongue insulates the area from outside influence, such as air and food. As Dr E Wilson Griffin III told Imponderables, 'Moving air would evaporate moisture in the mouth and on the thermometer and falsely lower the temperature. It is important to have the thermometer under the tongue rather than just banging around loose inside the mouth because a mercury thermometer responds most accurately to the temperature of liquids of solids in direct contact with it.'

Speed. The soft tissues and blood vessels of the tongue are ideal resting spots for a thermometer. Dr Frank Davidoff, Associate Executive Vice-President of the American College of Physicians, says that compared to the skin of the armpit, which is thick and nonvascular, the 'soft unprotected tisues under the tongue wrap tightly around the thermometer, improving the speed and completeness of heat transfer'

Comfort. Although you may not believe it, keeping the thermometer above the tounge would not be as comfortable. The hard thermometer, instead of being embraced by the soft tissue below the tounge, would inevitably scrape against the much harder tissues of the hard palate (the foor of your mouth). Something would have to give - and it woul't be the thermometer. 

Davidoff concedes that, in a pinch, palcing the thermometer above the tounge might not be a total disaster:

'In principle, you could get a reasonably accurate temperature reading with a thermometer above your tounge if you hadn't recently been mouth breathing or hadn't recently eaten or drunk anything, if you held the thermometer reasonably firmly between your tounge and the roof of your mouth, and if you kept it there long enough.'      

Telephone

My mother began getting calls from men who misdialled the similar number of an escort service. Mum, who had her number for years, asked the telephone company to change the organisation's number. They refused. The calls kept coming day and night.

Finally, Mum began telling the gentlemen who called that the company had gone out of business.Within a week, the escort service voluntarily changed its number.

WHY do many elderly people, especially those missing teeth, diaplay a chewing motion?

Dr John Rutkauskas of the American Society for Geriatric Dentistry consulted with two of his geriatric dentistry colleagues, Dr Saul Kamen and Dr Barry Ceridan, adtold Imponderables that his chewing motion is found almost exclusively in people who have lost teeth. On rare occasions, certains tranquilisers or antidepressants (in the phenothiazine family) may cause a side effect called tardive dyskinesia, an inability to control what are ordinarily voluntary movements. These movements are as likely to involve the nose as the mouth or jaws,though.

In most cases, Rutkauskas believes that the chewing motion is a neuromuscular response to the lack of teeth: an attempt by the oral cavity to achieve some from equilibrium. In particular, sufferers can't position their upper and lower jaws properly. With a full set of ivories, the teeth act as a stop to keep the jaws in place.

Of course, most people who lose teeth attempt to remedy the problem by wearing dentures. And most people adapt well. But 

Ike House, a dentist and Imponderables reader (we're sure he is prouder of the first qualification), told us that a significant number of elderly people have lost the ability to wear dentures at all because of an excessive loss of bone:

"They can close their mouth much fuller than they would with teeth present, resulting in the "nose touching skin" appearance of many elderly people. Since the normal "rest position" of about 2 or 3  mm between the upper and lower natural or artificial teeth is not able to be referenced, they may be constantly searching for this position"

Many elderly people who wear dentures feel that the prostheses just don't feet normal and restlessness leads to 'chewing in the air', as House amplifies : 

"If you had two objects in your hands, such as two coins, you would probably manipulate them in some way. When not using a pen or pencil, for example, but holding it passively, we usually move it in our hand. It may be that people wearing dentures constantly manipulate them in some way just because objects being held but not used are often moved by unconscious habit. 

I have a great -uncle who lets his upper teeth fall down between words and pushes them back up against his palate. This is a most disconcerting habit to his family!

I know some elderly patients cannot tolerate dentures in their mouth unless they are eating because they can't leave them alone."

Barnet B Orenstein, Associate Clinical Professor of Dentistry at New York University's College of Dentistry, told Imponderables that the tongue is often the culprit in creating the chewing motion:

"Elderly people often display a constant chewing motion because, having lost their lower teeth, their tongue is no longer confined to the space within the dental arch. The tongue spreads out and actually increases in size. What appears to be chewing motion is actually a subconscious effort to find a place for the tongue."

The last time we were at the Imponderables staff's official dentist, Phil Klein, we asked him to wrestle with this mystery while he mauled our molars (and we pondered whether we could deduct the office visit from our income tax as a the research as well as medical expense). Much to our relief, Dr Klein concurred with the theories stated above but raised the possibility of a few others, including rare neurological condition and grinding of teeth to the point where the lower and upper jaws can't mesh comfortably.

Klein also mentioned that problems with salivation, and particularly dryness, is a constant problem for numerous elderly people, and many with this problem move their mouth and jaw in response to the dryness. 

And then he told us we had no cavities.          

'The new process is ineffective today.'

The memo about the company's revised travel policy dictated that we were no longer allowed to buy cheap tickets via the Internet. Instead, we were instructed to use the more expensive company travel department. Furthermore, to show how much money we were saving, we were asked to compare fares - by looking on the Internet. 

I thought the typing error in the last line of the memo summed it up accurately: 'The new process is ineffective today.'

Handbag

One Saturday night my boss and her family came to our house. As they were driving away at the end of the evening, I discovered that she had left her handbag in a corner of the dining room. I was about to call her house, intending to leave a message on the answering machine, when my son reminded me that they had a mobile phone.

As I dialled the number, I marvelled at the technology that would alert them before they had driven all the way home. A few seconds later the handbag began to ring.

WHAT is the purpose of the little indentation in the centre of our upper lips?

You'll be proud to know that we have a groove running down our upper lip for absolutely no good reason, as William P Jollie, of the Medical College of Virginia explains :

"The indentation in the centre of our upper lip is a groove, or raphe, that forms embryonically by merging paired right and left processes that make up our upper jaw.

It has no function, just as many such midline merger marks, or raphes, have no function. We have quite a merger-lines on our bodies: a raphe down the upper surface of our tongues; a grooved notch under the point of our chins; and a raphe in the midline of our palates. There are also several in the genital area, both male and female.

Anatomically, the raphe on our upper lip is called the philtrum, an interesting word derived from the Greek word philter, which even in English means a love potion. I confess I don's see a connection, but many anatomical terms are peculiar in origin, if not downright funny." 

Scary Man

I was browsing in a military surplus shop when a young couple walked in with a little boy in a stroller. I couldn't help noticing the father was in full punk regalia: spiked hair, black leather gloves, snake tattoos visible on his arms. Later I spotted him running through the shop, frantically calling for his son. Relieved when he found the boy in another aisle, he embraced him and admonished, 'Don't go where Mummy and Daddy aren't able to see you. A scary man might grab you.'  

What purpose do wisdom teeth serve

They serve a powerful purpose for dentist, who are paid to extract them. Otherwise, wisdom teeth are commonly regarded as being useless to modern man. But because nature rarely provide us with useless body parts, a little investigations yields a more satisfying answer.

Primitive man ate meats so tough that they make beef jerky feel like mashed potatoes in comparison. The extra molars in the back of the mouth, now known as wisdom teeth, undoubtedly aided in our ancestors' mastication.

As humans have evolved, their brains have gotten progressively larger and the face position has moved farther downwards and inward. About the time that primitive man started walking in an upright position, other changes in the facial structure occurred. The protruding jawbone gradually moved backwards, making the jaw itself shorter and leaving no room for the wisdom teeth. Most people's jaws itself shorter and leaving no room for the wisdom teeth. Most people's jaws no longer have the capacity to accommodate these now superfluous teeth.

'Yes Dear'

I provide technical support for the computer software published by my company. One day, over the phone, I was helping a customer install a product on a Macintosh. The procedure required him to delete an old file. On the Mac there is an icon of a trash can that is used to collect items to be permanently deleted. 

I told the customer to click on the old file and drag it to the trash. Then I had him perform a few other steps. As a reminder, I said. 'Don't forget to empty the trash.'

Obediently he replied, 'Yes, dear.'

WHY DO WOMEN TEND TO HAVE HIGHER VOICES THAN MEN? WHY DO SHORT PEOPLE TEND TO HAVE HIGHER VOICES THAN TALL PEOPLE?

Daniel Boone, a University of Arizona professor and expert on vocal mechanisms, providers the answer: 'Fundamental frequency or voice pitch level is directly related to the length and thickness of the individual's vocal folds [or vocal cords]'. 

The average man's vocal-fold length is approximately 18mm; the average women's is 10 mm. The tall person of either gender is likely to have longer vocal cords than a shorter person of same sex.

Psychologist

The lift in our building broke down one day, leaving several of us stranded. Seeing a sign that listed two emergency phone numbers, I dialled the first and explained our situation. 

After what seemed to be a very long silence, the voice on the other end said, 'I don't know what you expect me to do for you; I'm a psychologist.'

'A psychologist?' I replied. 'Your phone is listed here as an emergency number. Can't you help us?'

'Well,' he finally responded in a measured tone. ' How do you feel about being stuck in a lift?'

Manual

Soon after arriving at our holiday cottage, my wife discovered a problem with the oven. I consulted the manual but had no joy. So, we contacted the owner , who in turn consulted her husband.

After he had been reading the instructions for a few minutes I joked that you'd need a degree in nuclear physics to understand them.

'No,' he lamented. 'I'm afraid it doesn't help.'

Yes or No

It is so rare to be offered a meal on airlines these days that I was surprised to hear the flight attendant ask the flight attendant ask the man sitting in front on me.

'Would you like dinner?'

'What are my choices?' he responded.

'Yes or No,' she said.

Why does your voice sound higher and funny when you ingest helium?

The kiddie equivalent of the drunken partygoer putting a lamshade on his head is ingesting helium and speaking like a chipmunk with a caffeine problem. Many Imponderables readers want a know to know the answer to this question, so we contacted several chemist and physicists. They replied with unanimity. Perhaps the most complete explanation came from George B Kauffman:

'Sound is the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other mediums. Low-frequencies as correspondingly higher pitch. The frequency (pitch) of sound depends on the density of the medium throungh which the vibrations are transmitted; the less dense the medium, the greater the rate (frequency) of vibration, and hence the higher the pitch of the sound.

The densities of gases are directly proportional to their molecular weights. Because the density of helium is much less then that of air, a mixture of about 78 per cent nitrogen and about 20 per cent oxygen the vocal cords vibrate much faster in helium than in air, and therefore the voice is perceived as having a higher pitch.

The effect is more readily perceived with male voices, which have a lower pitch than female voices. The pitch of the voice can be lowered by inhaling a member of the noble gas family (to which helium belong) that is heavier than air...'

Brian Bigley, a chemist at Systech Environmental Corporation, told Imponderables that helium mixtures are used to treat asthma and other types of respiratory aliments. Patients with breathing problems can process a helium mixture more easily than normal air, and the muscles of the lungs don't have to work as hard as they do to inhale the same volume of oxygen.

McDonald

Splashing out on a luxury holiday, my wife and I arrived at our five-star hotel. When we walked into the marble foyer, we began to feel out of place, as the other guest all looked so wealthy. 

'McDonald,' I said to the receptionist when we checked in. looking us up and down in disdain. The receptionist answered, 'Down the road, first street on the right.'

   

Neighbour

Having lived in our house for four years we were moving on. My husband had backed the car up to our garage door so we could start loading all of the boxes. At that moment, one of our neighbours came walking across the yard carrying a plate of cakes. 

'Isn't that thoughtful?' my husband said to me. 'They must have realised we've packed away our kitchen stuff.'

The neighbour stuck out his hand and boomed, 'Welcome to the neighbourhood!'

Questions

I was preparing lunch for my granddaughter when the phone rang. ' If you can answer one questions.' a young man said. 'you'll win ten free dancing lessons.' 

Before I could tell him I was not interested, he continued, 'You'll be a lucky winner if you can tell me what Alexander Graham Bell invented.'

'I don't know,' I replied dryly, trying to discourage him.

'What are you holding in your hand right now?' he asked excitedly.

'A sandwich' 

'Congratulations!' he shrieked.

'And for having such a good sense of humour ...' 

what are DIMPLES? And why do only some people have them?

Dimples are  a generic name for indentations of the skin. The are produced when muscle fibres are attached to the deep surface of the skin, such as in the cheek or chin, or where the skin is attached to bones by fibrous bands, such as the elbow, shoulder and back.

Dimples are most likely to appear where the skin is most tightly attached to underlying bone. Dr William Jollies, Professors and Chairman of Anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia, says 'dimples probably are due to some development fault in the connective tissue that binds skin to bone.' So those dimples we've long envied are actually an anatomical flaw! And the tendency toward dimples seems to be hereditary. You have your father to blame, Michael Douglas.

'Come on, be serious. These are paper aeroplanes.'

I purchased a new desktop-publishing program that surprised me by containing a make-a-paper-aeroplane option. I decided to give it a try. After I selected the plane I wanted, the software gave me a choice of accessories available for my plane, including a stick up tail, adjustable flaps and an AM/FM radio. Out of curiosity I chose the AM/FM radio.

The program responded with a message box stating: 'Come on, be serious. These are paper aeroplanes.'

'this is like we're living back in the 20th century.'

Our newer, high-speed computer was in the shop for repair, and my son was forced to work on our old model with the black-and-white printer. 

'Mum' he complained to me one day, 'this is like we're living back in the 20th century.' 

Locked

When my car broke down, I got out-and found to my horror that I had locked the vehicle with my two-year old son and his baby sister inside. I ran to a nearby house and used their phone to call my husband. 

The baby was crying when I returned, so I yelled to my son to put her dummy in her mouth to pacify her. ' What did you say, Mum?' he asked - then wound the window down to hear better. I'd forgotten he knew how to do that.

Home-improvement

A DIY experts on one of those home-improvement TV programs suggested putting coffee granules into pale beige paint to give it a 'kick'. Indeed, on the wall he painted it looked lovely, so I decided to give it a try.

My wall looked great, but there was a catch. The room I'd painted was the bathroom - and I had possibly used too many granules. for weeks afterward, whenever we took a shower, the steam condensed on the wall, sweated out the addictive, and thick black coffee ran down on to the floor.

What causes bags under the eyes?

Let us count the ways, in descending order of frequency:

1.  Heredity.  That's right. It wasn't that night on the town that makes you look like a raccon in the morning. It's all your parents' and grandparent's fault. Some people are born with excess fatty tissue and liquid around the eyes.
2. Fluid retention. The eyelids are the thinnest and softnest skin in the entire body, four times as thin as 'average' skin. Fluid tends to pool in thin portion of the skin.
3. Ageing. The skin of the face, particularly around the eyes, loosens with agr. Age is more likely to cause bags than mere sleepiness or fatigue.
4. Too many smiles and frowns. They not only can build crow's feet but bags.

A less fascinating explanation for many sightings of bags under the eye was noted by Dr Tom Meek of the American Academy of Dermatology in The New York Times:' The circles are probably caused by shadows cast from overhead lighting.'

'I use my daytime minute on you.'

Picking what felt like a good moment, I asked the man I was dating if he was serious about our relationship. Looking hurt, he said, 'Do you know how special you are?' He held up his mobile phone. 'I use my daytime minute on you.'

'We meant you to pray for us.'

Missionary friends of ours e-mailed my husband and me about their hopes and dreams of going to Africa for a year. They mentioned the amount of money they would need and asked if we would pay for them.

Somewhat surprised, we replied that we didn't appreciate their bluntness. Mortified, they hastily wrote: 'We meant you to pray for us.'  

'Translation not found.'

I returned from Russia after living there nearly two years. My sister decided to surprise me by creating 'welcome home' signs in Russian. She went to a website that offered translations and typed in 'Welcome Home,Cole'. She then printed the translated phrase onto about 20 coloured cardboard signs. 

When I got off the plane, the first thing I saw was my family, excitedly waving posters printed with a strange message. My sister gave me a big hug, and pointed proudly to her creations. 'Isn't that great?' she said. 'Bet you didn't think I knew any Russian.' 

I admitted that I was indeed surprised-and so was she when I told her what the signs actually said:'Translation not found.'

WHY do your eyes hurt when you are tired?

Couch potatoes are busier than you might imagine. While lying on the sofa perusing a comic book or studying the impact of televion violence on children by viewing bugs Bunny cartoons, they are actually exercising what ophthalmologist James P McCulley calls 'among the most active muscles in the body'.

Actually, your eyes contains three sets of muscle groups:

• Each eye has six extraocular muscles attached to the outside of the eyeball, which turn the eyes in all directions. The extraocular muscles must coordinate their movements so that both eyes look in the same direction at the same time. 

• The sphincter and dilatory muscles open or close the pupils, defining how much light is allowed into the eye.

• The ciliary muscles attach to the lens inside the eye. When these muscles contract or relax, they change the shape of the lens, altering its focus.

Concentrated reading or close work provides a workout for these muscle groups strenuous enough to make your aerobics instructor proud. Unfortunately, as in all aerobic programs, the saying 'no pain, no gain' applies, as optometrist Steven Mintz explains:

'The human eye is designed so that, if perfectly formed, it will form a clear image on the retina (at the back of the eye) of any distant object without having to use any ot the muscles. In order to see closer objects clearly, however, each set of muscles has to work. The extraocular muscles must turn each eye inwards: the sphincter muscles must turn each eye inward; the sphincter muscles must work to make the pupil smaller; and the ciliary muscles must contract to allow the lens to change to a shape that will produce a clearer image.

This minimal muscular effort is significant in itself. However, no human eye is perfectly formed and these imperfections will increase the amount of effort required. Virtually every person, as [he or she] approaches or passes the age of 40, suffers from a stiffening of the lens inside the eye, which forces those ciliary muscles to work even harder.'

Eye specialist are finding that people who work on computers experience descreased blinking. This is one reason most consultant recommend stepping away from the computer at least once an hour. While most of us are more than happy to rest our muscles after doing a few pusp-ups, we expose our eyes to a marathon just about every day.

'born of the Virgin Edna'

A minister I know of uses a standard liturgy for funerals. To personalize each service, he enters a 'find and replace' command into his word processors. The computer then finds the name of the deceased from the previous funeral and replaces it with the name of the deceased for the upcoming one.

Not long ago, the pastor told the company to find the name 'Mary' and replace it with 'Edna'. The next morning, the funeral was going smoothly until the congregation intoned the Apostles' Creed. 'Jesus Christ,' they read from the preprinted program, 'born of the Virgin Edna.'

Fix Things

When my printer's type began to grow faint, I called a local repair shop, where a friendly man informed me that the printer probably needed only to be cleaned. Because the store charged $125 for such cleaning, he told me, I might be better off reading the printer's manual and trying the job myself.

Pleasantly surprised by his candour, I asked, 'Does your boss know that you discourage business?'

'Actually it's my boss's idea, 'the employee replied sheepishly. 'We usually make more money on repairs if we let people try to fix things themselves first.'

What causes floaters, or spots, in the eyes?

The innermost part of the eye is a large cavity filled with a jellylike fluid known as vitreous humour. Floaters are small flecks of protein, pigment or embryonic remnants (trapped in the cavity during the formation of the eye) that suspend in the vitreous humour.

The small specks appear to be in front of the eye because the semitransparent floaters are visible only when they fall within the line of sight. Most people might have specks trapped in the vitreous humour from time to time but not notice them. Eyes have a way of adjusting to imperfections, as any eyeglasses wearer with dirty lenses could tell you. Floaters are most likely to be noticed when one is looking at a plain background, such as a blackboard, a bare wall or the sky.

What should one do about floaters? An occasional spot is usually harmless, although sometimes floaters can be precursors of retinal damage. Most often, a home remedy will keep floaters from bothering you. The American Academy of Ophthalmology suggests:

'If a floater appears directly in your line of vision, the best thing to do is to move your eye around, which will cause the inside fluid to swirl and allow the floater to move put of the way. We are most accustomed to moving our eyes back and forth, but looking up and down will cause different current within the eye and may be more effective in getting the floaters out of the way'

Although you may be aware of their presence, it is often surprisingly difficult to isolate floaters in your line of vision. Because the floaters are actually within the eye, they move as your eyes move and seem to dart away whenever you try to focus on looking at them directly.

'How big was the mouse?'

Trying to explain to our five-year-old daughter how much computers had changed, my husband pointed to our brand-new computer and told her that when he was in university, a computer with the same amount of power would have been the size of a house.

Wide-eyed, our daughter asked, 'How big was the mouse?'

'its fleas was bright and slow.'

Learning to use a voice-recognition computer program, I was excited about the prospect of finally being able to write more accurately than I type. First I read out loud to the computer for about an hour to train it to my voice, then I opened a clean page and dictated a nursery rhyme to see the magic.

The computer recorded: 'Murry fed a little clam, its fleas was bright and slow.'

A phone that stays connected to its base so it never gets lost,'

I was visiting a friend who could not find her cordless phone. After several minutes of searching, her young daughter said, 'You know what they should invent? A phone that stays connected to its base so it never gets lost,' 

WHO put E on top of the eye chart? And WHY?

Hermann Snellen, a Dutch professor of ophthalmology, put the E on top of eye chart in 1862. Although his very fisrt chart was headed by an A, Snellen quickly composed another chart with E on top.

Snellen succeeded Dr Frans Cornelis Donders as Director of the Netherlands Hospital for Eye Patient. Donders was then the world's foremost authority on geometric optics. Snellen was trying to standadise a test to diagnose visual acuity, to measure how small an image an eye can accept while still detecting the detail of that image.

Donder's complicated formulas were based on three parallel lines; of all the letters of the alphabet, The capital E most closely resembled the lines that Donders had studied so intensively. Because Donders had earlier determined how the eye perceives the E, Snellen based much of this mathematical work on the fifth letter.

The three horizontal limbs of the E are separated by an equal amount of white space. In Snellen's original chart, there was a one-to-one ratio between the height and width of the letters, and the gaps and bars were all the same length (in  some modern eye charts, the middle bar is shorter).

Lounne Gould of Cambridge Instruments says that the E, unlike more open letter like L or U, forces the observer to distinguish between white and blanck, an important constituent of good vision. Without this ability, Es begin to look like Bs, Fs, Ps or many other letters.

Of course, Snellen couldn't make an eye chart full od only Es, or else all his patients would have 20-10 vision. But Snellen realised that it was important to use the same letters many times on the eye charts, to ensure that the failure of observer to identify a letter was based on a visual problem rather than the relative difficulty of a set of letters. Ian Bailey, Professor of Optometry and Director of the Low Vision Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley, says that it isn't so important whether an eye chart uses the easiest or most difficult letters. Most eye charts incorporate only ten different letters, ones that have the smaller range of difficulty.

Today, many eye charts do not start with an E - and there is no technical reason why they have to - but most still do. Dr Stephen C Miller of the American Optimetric Association suggest that the desire of optical companies to have a standardised approach to the production of eye charts probably account for the preponderance of E charts.

And we're happy about it. It's a  nice feeling to know that even if our vision is failing us miserably, we'll always get the top row right.

'Do you mind? I'm on the phone.'

During a visit to the ladies' room, my friend Addy heard the woman in the next cubicle suddenly ask, 'So how are you?'

Startled, Addy said that she was fine.

'So what's new?'  the woman continued.

Still confused, Addy said, 'Not much.What's new with you?'

It was then that the woman snapped, 'Do you mind? I'm on the phone.'

This is not the Internet

I am what would be called pleasingly plump. After I had a minor accident, my mother accompanied me to the emergency department. 

The triage nurse asked for my height and weight, and I told her 158cm and 57kg. 

While the nurse pondered this information, my mother leaned over to me, 'Sweetheart,' she gently chided, 'this is not the Internet.'

WHAT does it mean when we have 20-20 or 20-40 vision?

The first number in your visual acuity grade is always 20. That's because the 20 is a reference to the distance, in feet, you are standing or sitting from the eye chart. The distance is not a coincidence. Rays of light are just about parallel 20 feet (about 6m) from the eye chart, so that the muscle controlling the shape of the lens in a normal eye is in a state of relative rest when viewing the chart. Ideally, your eyes should be operating under optimal conditions during the eye test.

The second number represents the distance at which a normal eye should be able to see the letters on that line. The third from the bottom line on most eye charts is the 20-20 line. If you can see letters on that line, you have 20-20 ('normal') vision. A higher second number indicates your vision is subnormal. If you have 20-50 vision, you can discern letters that 'normal' observers could see from more than twice as far away, 50 feet (15m), if you achieve the highest score on the acuity test, a 20-10, you can spot letters that a normal person could detect only if he were 50 per cent closer.

We also got the answers to another imponderable we've always had about the vision test: are you allowed to miss one letter n a line and still get 'credit' for it? yes, all you need to do is identify a majority of the letters in a line to get full credit for reading it. it only our schoolteachers were such easy graders.

WHY do many people wear dark glasses?

Every year, the Braille Institute issues a list of the 10 most unusual questions it receives. We are proud to report that this imponderable made number nine on the 1993 list (edging out number 10: 'Do blind babies smile?').

The Braille Institute's answer to this question stresses that the majority of legally blind do have some vision: 

"Not everyone who is legally blind is totally blind. More than 75 percent of people who are legally blind have some residual vision. Blindness is the absence of sight, not necessarily the absence of light"

Alberta Orr, of the American Foundation for the Blind, adds, 'Many visually impaired persons are extremely sensitive to bright light and glare and wear  sunglasses to reduce the amount of light on the retina.'

 Some blind persons wear dark glasses for cosmetic purposes, because they are self-conscious about the physical appearance of their eyes. Increasingly, blind people are forgoing dark glasses, but we tent to associate dark glasses with blind people because so many of the high-visibility blind celebrities, such as Stevie Wonder, usually wear them. Even this is starting to change-the last time we saw Jose Feliciano perform on television, he was shadeless, despite the glare of the spotlights.

 

'Save Our Tree"

Kids have a greater need for speed than classroom computers can deliver. Impatient to turn in his essay, one restless student kept clicking the 'Print' command. The printer started to churn out copy after copy of the ten-page report.

The topic?"Save our Trees'.

'I just used a normal 56K modem.'

My boyfriend and I met online and we'd been dating for over a year. I introduces Hans to my uncle, who was fascinated by the fact that we met over the Internet. He asked Hans what kind of line he had used to pick me up. 

Ever the geek, Hans naively replied, 'I just used a normal 56K modem.'

Welcome

Welcome