Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310100283
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A. Benjamin Franklin. The yarn goes like this: Franklin was the ambassador to France. He noted that most of his French friends liked to stay out and party all night, and that they also were very frugal people. He theorized that they would save a lot of money on candles if they moved the clocks so that they could party while the sun was out.
Q. When did the United States start daylight-saving time?
A. We tried it as an energy-conservation measure during World War I. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1967, which stated that all states would set clocks ahead an hour on the first Sunday in April and set them back an hour on the last Sunday in October. A state can opt not to take part in daylight saving. Arizona, Hawaii and parts of Indiana don't take part.
Q. Why do we have daylight-saving time?
A. Mainly to coordinate the hours that most people are awake with the hours of daylight. Studies show the time shift reduces traffic fatalities, reduces crime and saves energy.
Q. Are there any common standards from state to state for calling in the National Guard?
A. No, each state National Guard, plus the National Guards of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia, operate under the state's own particular set of military laws. In Massachusetts, that set of rules extends to the local level, and a mayor, sheriff or other designated official has authority to call in their local guard in an emergency, whether they can get through to the governor or not. That practice is kept in check partly by the fact that if they call them in, they pay the bill.
Q. I heard that Hillary Clinton was only the third first lady to address a congressional committee. Who were the first and second?
A. Eleanor Roosevelt went before a congressional committee in the 1940s to discuss the District of Columbia's welfare institutions. The other was Rosalynn Carter, testifying about mental-health funding in 1979.
Q. What is the Queen of England's last name?
A. England's Queen Elizabeth II is a member of the royal family of Windsor. If she were not royalty, she would be just Elizabeth Windsor. Or she might want the family's original German name of Guelf-Wittin. The family name of Windsor was dreamed up in 1917 by King George V's secretary, Lord Stamfordham, who believed the public might think Guelf-Wittin less than patriotic in view of Britain's war with Germany.
Q. Why is it we don't seem to have major flu outbreaks during the summertime in the United States?
A. Dr. Henry Balfour, a professor of laboratory medicine and pathology, said science doesn't know for certain why influenza flourishes in the winter, although there is a theory that makes some sense.
The Minnesota virologist said the theory is that the influenza virus needs fairly close contact - respiratory transmission - to flourish, and that happens when large numbers of humans are forced by colder weather to be together . . . inside.
The doctor said the theory sees the nation's classrooms as incubators of whatever new strain of flu will visit the Northern Hemisphere this winter. "The kids are the ones that really spread it around," he said. "Schoolchildren are the vectors, spreading it to adults . . . very explosive.'
Reservoirs of old flu strains hang around in such animals as ducks, pigs and horses and can be retransmitted when conditions are right. Balfour said there is a theory that because ducks are prominent in Asia and close to the people there, new flu strains spring from those birds and work their way around the world.
Q. Do veterans get any extra Social Security allowance if they have served in the Korean conflict and have an honorable discharge?
A. A Social Security information officer thought the word "allowance" was not specific enough for the wage "credit" given to veterans who served between Sept. 16, 1940, and Dec. 31, 1956.
Servicemen didn't pay Social Security during that period, which includes World War II and the Korean police action. But if you were honorably discharged after 90 or more days of service or released because of injury received in the line of duty, your Social Security record will be credited with an additional $160 a month in earnings for the period served.
Those earnings could be important, because the amount of retirement benefit is based on earnings averaged over much of a working lifetime. The officer said all applicants for such benefits are routinely questioned about military service.
Q. George Bush says, "Don't cry for me, Argentina," and people laugh. What's the joke?
A. The line is the name of a song from the Broadway musical "Evita," and while there's no hidden joke, it was a classic example of "Bushspeak" - the former president's often garbled and disjointed speaking style, sometimes sprinkled with baffling non sequiturs. In Palo Alto in 1989, he said: "High tech is potent, precise and, in the end, unbeatable. The truth is, it reminds a lot of people of the way I pitch horseshoes. Would you believe some of the people? Would you believe our dog? Look, I want to give the high-five symbol to high tech."
It was in a speech on the importance of prayer on Jan. 15, 1992, that Bush said: "You cannot be president of the United States if you don't have faith. Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial and the Civil War and all that stuff. You can't be. And we are blessed. So don't feel sorry for - don't cry for me, Argentina."
Q. What does the word "maven" mean and what is its derivation? I couldn't find it in my dictionary.
A. It is not listed in many dictionaries, but the elusive noun can be tracked to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language. A maven (also mavin) is defined there as an expert or connoisseur and is derived from the Hebrew or Yiddish word for connoisseur. In popular use, the word has tended to connote an ardent authority or guru in a specific field.
Q. Which weighs more in the human body . . . muscle or fat?
A. If you could place equal volumes of fat and muscle in identical containers and weigh them, you would find that muscle actually weighs more than an equal volume, or mass, of fat.
Dr. Arthur Leon, a physiologist at the University of Minnesota's kinesiology division, explained that the lean tissue of muscle has greater density than fat and thus is heavier. That density and relatively higher weight also can be attributed to the fact that muscle is 80 percent water, while fat contains little.
In the human body there are more than 300 muscles, bundles of contractile fibers, each sheathed in a membranous envelope called a sarcolemma.
by CNB