ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 14, 1995 TAG: 9512140002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: WHY THINGS ARE COLUMN
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
Q: Why are we going to kill off the Why column, even though it's wonderful?
A: Fourscore and seven years ago, it seems like, the Why staff founded a new column, conceived in curiosity, and dedicated to the proposition that all questions are created equal, except some have funnier answers.
The column's success is a journalistic legend. You've read our books, heard our radio programs, seen our major motion pictures, bought the board game. For the Why staff, the column was always more than a weekly adventure in explanatory journalism. It was a cash cow.
Unfortunately, in recent months the Why staff has experienced a creeping sensation of been-there, done-that. Increasingly we find that, when people send us questions, we already know the answers without even having to call up one of our geeky expert sources.
This is an alarming trend. When we started this enterprise, we knew nothing. We couldn't so much as identify a salad fork. Ignorance was always the greatest strength of the Why staff. Stupidity was the secret to our genius. It drove us. Now we have this entirely new dilemma: Omniscience.
The truth is, the Why column has served its function. We set out to explain the world. That's what we did. If we kept going it would just be mop-up duty.
A compelling reason to abandon the Why crusade is that other journalistic challenges beckon. We haven't begun, for example, to figure out where things are.
In any case, we've decided that the column must expire. The last column will run in early February.
We know what you're thinking: First, the Beatles breakup. Now this.
No one is sadder about it than we are. This was fun. We learned why we haven't been sucked up by a black hole; why people used to wear monocles; why there are no wild cows; why everyone breaks the speed limit; why altruism exists; why dreams are metaphorical minidramas; why people close their eyes when they kiss.
Our job has importuned us to read countless scholarly articles with titles like ``Implications of the Copernican Principle for our Future Prospects'' (the implications were that we're all going to die), and ``Hospital Birth as a Technocratic Rite of Passage'' (but so's taking the drive-thru lane at McDonald's, we'd argue), and ``Face-Selective Cells in the Temporal Cortex of Monkeys'' (which answered the burning question of why monkeys are so good at remembering faces).
We are most grateful to our readers for indulging this column, through good weeks and bad. The letters have sustained us. No foolin', we still have most of them in boxes in the Why bunker (which, FYI, is slated to be converted to a Wal-Mart).
Everyone has a final chance to write (c/o The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071), and maybe we can squeeze your question into one of the last columns.
Then it'll be over. And the planet will simply have to return to ignorance, superstition and barbarism.
Q: Why do we eat things that used to be alive, instead of eating rocks, sand, raw minerals, iron ore and stuff like that?
A: It would be so much easier to feed yourself if you were not technically limited to the organic world.
You could just go outside with a shovel. Dig up some good grub. Instead of going to fancy restaurants you could head to demolition sites and eat bricks and mortar. Nothing quite sticks to the ribs like rubble.
The fact is, we do eat some raw, inorganic material whenever we take mineral supplements, like potassium or calcium. The iron in a vitamin pill is just old-fashioned, always-been-dead iron.
There are huge advantages, though, to eating things that used to be alive, says Michael Kay, a Stanford biochemist. Living things pre-assemble for us the things we need to survive.
Indeed, we'd argue that this is the essence of the food chain: It is a mechanism for the efficient circulation of complex molecules in an environment where the raw materials of life would otherwise be scattered. (We realize there are other reasons why there are varieties of plants and animals on Earth; but we like the notion that it's all a distribution concept, a flowchart for complex molecules.)
We need amino acids in our diet, because strings of amino acids, folded various ways, create proteins. Amino acids exist inorganically, ``in the wild,'' so to speak, and theoretically we could scavenge for amino acids individually. But let's not. Let's eat things that are organic that already contain giant collections of amino acids in the form of proteins. The animal and plant proteins break down in our guts, into amino acids, which we then reassemble to form our own proteins.
The best reason to eat once-living things is that they have vitamins. Unlike amino acids, you can't find vitamins under a rock or in swamp water. Vitamins are big, hairy, complex molecules that are only created through the genetic genius of living things. Unlike proteins, vitamins don't get broken down in your innards for their constituent parts. They are used precisely as they come in.
And finally: It is so hard to find the right wine to go with dirt.
- Washington Post Writers Group
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Richard Thompson.by CNB