Phantom owner gets public recognition
Mr. Know-it-all
Q: I don’t get an opportunity to watch many baseball games on TV, so when I do, it’s a treat. St. Louis was playing the Philadelphia Phillies the other night, and I noticed the Phils were wearing a “CB” patch. What does that represent? — K.F.G., St. Louis
A: The patch stands for Claire Betz, who died Feb. 6, 2014, at age 93. She inherited 33 percent of the team when her husband died in 1990. Betz was one of the “Phantom Five,” a group of the owners so named for their lack of involvement in the team. LET’S LEARN ENGLISH In the U.K., they say, “fish finger”; in America, we say, “fish stick.”
You’d walk on “fitted carpet” in the U.K., while in America, we have “wall-towall carpeting.”
Q: At the end of some of my computer cables is a small cylinder. What is this for? — M.L., West Side, Florida
A: That clunky cylinder of hard plastic is called a ferrite bead. Inside the cylinder is a piece of ferrite-infused ceramic designed to suppress high-frequency noise. The majority of this high-frequency energy is absorbed by the bead and then released as small amounts of heat. Eliminating this energy is important so there is no interference with the performance of your computer, and it also prevents energy from interfering with your television and radio.
Q: On a cloudless night with a full moon there is often enough light to carry on many outdoor activities. How many full moons would you need to light the sky as much as the sun? — D.K., Woburn, Massachusetts
A: The ratio of brightness of the sun and moon is nearly 400,000 to 1; in other words, you would need nearly 400,000 moons to create the brightness of the sun. So even if you could come up with 400,000 extra moons, what would you do with them? Experts tell me the sky would be completely full at 200,000 moons.
DID YOU KNOW? Sophia Loren turned down the title role in “Barbarella” (1968), which went to Jane Fonda.
Q: The question was, “What is the largest desert in the world?” The answer is Antarctica! Was I asleep during geography class? — J.F.C., Altoona, Pennsylvania
A: From the dictionary: “A desert is a barren area of land where little precipitation occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life.” Although Antarctica is a far cry from the scorching heat and sand of the deserts we imagine, Antarctica is referred to as a cold desert. It has extremely low temperatures as well as low humidity and low annual precipitation — just like a traditional desert.
Q: I have heard the phrase, “Methinks the lady protests too much.” I assume it’s Shakespeare, but I’m not sure. What exactly does the phrase mean? — D.E.N., Stillwater, Oklahoma
A: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” is from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” act III, scene II. It means that a shadow of suspicion might be cast if someone is insisting too much about something; the opposite of what he or she is saying must be true.
Q: By any chance do you know the first book sold by Amazon.com? — E.N., Santa Rosa, California
A: The first book sold by Amazon was Douglas Hofstadter’s “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought” on April 3, 1995.
Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra on July 5, 1994, and it went online as Amazon in 1995. The reason for the name change is that he thought Cadabra sounded too much like cadaver, and moving to the top of the alphabet made sense.
SUPER TRIVIA: I have had several queries asking for an explanation of the Amazon logo. The curved arrow leading from A to Z represents that the company carries every product from A to Z; the arrow is also in the shape of a smile.