Question: Why did ancient Greeks like Plato and Socrates have only one name? Answer: You can search the history books forever and never find a single allusion to little Billy Socrates or his precocious playground sidekick, Leroy Plato. It's just Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Sophocles and Aristophanes, one-name wonders. They might as well be brand names, like Xerox and Lysol and Jif.
The truth is, they had other names. In a formal setting Socrates might be referred to as "Socrates, son of Sophroniscus from Alopece," except they didn't know how to speak English then and had to get by on Greek.Most Indo-European languages use this naming system, with a given name followed by the father's name, says Kurt Raaflaub, co-director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington. Even today, he says, people in the mountains of Switzerland, where he is from, would refer to him as "Kurt, son of Frederick."
We've heard that Plato was actually a nickname. His given name was Aristocles, after his paternal grandfather, but they called him Plato, from "platus," meaning broad, because he had such a broad forehead, broad shoulders and broad intellect.
The thing you need to remember is that these famous Greeks could easily manage being on a first-name basis with their peers, because they were snobby aristo-crats, the country-club set of Athens.
"It's a very tiny elite, like Skull and Bones or something," says Judy Hallett, a professor of classics at the University of Maryland.
But weren't these the folks who invented democracy?
"They were democratic within their elite circle," she says.
Question: Why don't cars have those little triangular side vent windows anymore?Answer: The nearly complete disappearance of the side vent is another American automobile tragedy. They were perfect for flicking ashes. You could use them to defog your windshield without letting much rain inside.
They were called No Draft windows when introduced by General Motors' Fisher Body Division in 1933, according to Jim Wren, manager of the patent department for the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association. Their elimination began with the 1966 Toronados and Rivieras and the 1967 Thun-der-birds.
There were several reasons. Internal flow-through vents were improved by that time, and air conditioning was becoming more commonplace. But the main reason was style. A triangular window has straight lines. In the late 1960s, Detroit went to war against straight lines. The old rectangular brick-with-a-windshield look was out, and in came the aerodynamic, curvaceous, muscular look.
"You were getting into the curves and hidden headlights and they were flaring the bodies," Wren says. The main windows were becoming curved as well. The No Draft vents were no longer sufficiently stylish.
We assume it is mere coincidence that the Japanese car boom occurred shortly thereafter.
Question: Why are automatic teller machines uncannily accurate at counting money, even though fresh, crisp bills tend to stick together?Answer: The opacity test. That's the secret.
When you ask for money from an ATM, several factors ensure that you won't get ripped off or get too much. First, you're dealing with a gadget that costs upwards of $25,000. The most important part of the machine, obviously, is the dispensing mechanism. It first counts out your money, and then tests the length of each bill, in case one bill is stuck to another and the two are imperfectly overlapping.
Then comes the opacity test. The machine simply shines a light through the bill, onto a photoelectric plate. If the light comes through too dimly, there's probably two bills stuck together, and the machine dumps the money into what's called the "purge bin," and starts the transaction anew.
"A lot of time and effort has gone into that dispenser," brags Dave Sacco, a spokesman for NCR, a leading maker of ATMs.
But the system still isn't foolproof. A bank employee could accidentally put $20 bills in a canister meant for $10 bills. The machine has no way of telling a Jackson from a Hamilton, Sacco says, but he adds that the government may someday put magnetic markers in the bills that will allow ATMs to distinguish one denomination from another.
The Mailbag:
Jane C. of Herndon, Va., says she recently bought some Ban deodorant that was "lightly scented" and now wonders, "How can something that smells like the toxic stuff I used to put in my old-fashioned fly-sprayer be attractive to so many people?"
Dear Jane: We are assured by Susan Spedalle, spokeswoman for the Bristol-Myers' products division, that Ban deodorant's scent is a "floral bouquet" that proved pleasing to consumer test panels. "It comes across as a delicate soft fragrance which appeals to a certain customer," she said.
A certain customer named Bruno, probably. Truck driver. When he runs out of Ban, he just splashes himself with a little gasoline. Jane, tell Bristol-Myers about that fly-sprayer analogy. Who knows, they could double their sales with a new slogan: Fights Body Odor and Kills Flies On Contact.
Washington Post Writers Group