Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 21, 1991 TAG: 9103210054
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
While the rest of us shrug and accept what we Joel Achenbach cannot explain, Achenbach goes after the answers, which he writes in "Why Things Are," a syndicated column that begins today in the Extra section.
The weekly column uncovers the reasons behind all sorts of complicated - and silly - things and makes them simple.
"It's not just a wacky version of Dear Abby," Achenbach says. "We try to be a little bit more informative and talk about things I'm, frankly, interested in."
Achenbach, a 1982 Princeton University graduate in political science, has investigated why women wear high heels, why no two snowflakes allegedly are alike and why certain presidents are known by their 3 1 ACHENBACH Achenbach initials (FDR, JFK and LBJ) but others, like Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, are not.
The column derived from a 1985 feature story Achenbach and his colleagues produced for the Miami Herald's Tropic magazine. The piece was called "How Things Work."
"It just came to us because no one on the paper understood how a refrigerator or a telephone worked," says Achenbach, who four months ago joined the Style staff of The Washington Post.
"We called up some experts and wrote little funny explanations of how telephones, microwaves, matches and refrigerators work. We expanded it to explain how to build a nuclear weapon. We did a little item on the history of the world in about six paragraphs, from the Big Bang to the election of Ronald Reagan."
Reaction was strong and favorable. "We realized people really are hungry for information that explains how the world operates, and they particularly like it if the explanation is funny."
In a sequel called "Why Things Are," the writers explained why the moon looks big when it's low on the horizon, why fish just sit in the water when they see a fellow fish being yanked out with a hook in its mouth and other mysteries.
The response again was good, so the Herald instituted a regular column, which it still carries, even though Achenbach, its author, has moved on. The Roanoke Times & World-News is the 22nd newspaper to pick up the syndicated feature. Among the others are the Detroit Free Press, the Arizona Republic and the San Jose Mercury News.
Now Achenbach spends two days per week on each column. The rest of the time, he reports and writes feature stories for Style, though he professes some reluctance to admit it.
"The impression we try to give is that not only do I work full-time on the column but I have 75 researchers on the `Why Things Are' staff," he says. "We operate from the `Why Things Are' command bunker, designed by German engineers, deep beneath the earth. It's radiation-proof, it operates 24 hours per day and there's always a couple of people sticking little red pins in a big map of the world."
All questions must be why questions, he says. Very few come from readers, and "some are tortured into shape, I must admit."
He recently explored why people who have surgically severed hemispheres of the brain are not considered two separate human beings. "It was an excuse for me to write about some interesting reading I'd done on commissurotomies," he says.
Another recent subject: Why rap singers use pseudonyms.
Achenbach stresses the serious explanations behind the odd questions and playful style.
For him, the hard part - tracking down the experts who can give the answers - is also the pleasurable part.
"Often I find, when I talk to scientists, they enjoy the real simple question because it disciplines them a little bit," he says. "They have to sit down and figure out the bottom line instead of doing arcane research.
"I've gotten better at understanding what the heck these people are saying. A lot of them talk like machines. They're not human. That's the real challenge - to listen to what they say and try to understand the issue for myself."
He has dug into such unscientific mysteries as this week's topic, why the weasel goes pop and why Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni. "We have the answers," he says, adding, "Sometimes we just sound smart and pretend we've answered the question when we really didn't."
One simple question still puzzles him: Why are plants green?
"Everybody thinks they know," Achenbach says. " `It has chlorophyll in it and chlorophyll is green.' The Why staff scoffs at such an answer. Why is chlorophyll green? WHY IS IT GREEN? The answer at the moment is I still can't find anyone who knows."
The issue involves plant development and light. The problem, he says, is that botanists know about plants but not light, and physicists know about light, but not plants.
Not to worry. He'll come up with something, and then go on to something else.
"I've learned so much doing this column, stuff I always wanted to know - like what the heck is gravity? What is that stuff? You can't see it. I think I know now."
by CNB