Stupid Question ™
Aug. 9, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: If people keep batteries in the fridge to keep them fresh, why is it bad for car batteries to be out in the cold?
—Frosty, Chicago, Illinois
A: We’re talking about different kinds of batteries kept at different temperatures for different reasons.
There’s actually no need to keep modern batteries in the refrigerator. And back when it may have been a good idea, the concept was to warm them up again to room temperature before using them—something hard to do with a car battery. The same cold that prevents energy from leaking out of a battery also prevents us from extracting it for our own devices.
Batteries slowly discharge tiny amounts of energy even when they’re just lying around, until they finally die. (This is called “self-discharge” or “local action.”) Temperature can quicken or hinder that process, since heat is a key ingredient of the chemical reactions inside a battery.
The point of storing old-style batteries into the refrigerator was to cool them and slow down the chemical reactions, thus slowing down the energy leakage and extending the batteries’ shelf life.
The chill of a winter night (well below your refrigerator’s comfy 45 degrees or so) will similarly extend your car battery’s life, but that’s a negligible benefit. Self-discharge is not the winter problem with car batteries.
A brief primer on batteries: A battery is a series of chemical cells that store energy for later release. The basic elements of a cell are a substance that emits electrons during a chemical reaction (the cathode); a substance that picks up electrons (the anode); and a substance that triggers or serves as the medium for a chemical reaction (the electrolyte). The cathode, anode and electrolyte can be made of a variety of substances, usually some type of metal.
By sticking the battery into an electronic circuit (like any battery-operated machine), we can pull electricity out of it.
The typical car battery is a lead-acid battery. Its cathodes are plates of lead and its anodes are lead dioxide, with water-diluted sulfuric acid as the electrolyte.
Lead-acid batteries have a very high self-discharge rate and usually die within a few years, even though they are quite large. They are also very temperature-sensitive. Their typical peak efficiency temperature is around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. At temperatures in the 100-degree range, the batteries will start self-discharging at even higher rates.
But lead-acid batteries don’t work well in cooler temperatures, either. The electrolyte thickens up and electrons don’t flow as smoothly (in fact, it can actually freeze entirely, damaging the battery). The energy capacity drops sharply when you get around the zero-degree mark. In below-zero temperatures, a car battery will often produce less than half its normal electrical current.
That’s a special problem because car batteries are a special type of lead-acid battery. They are designed to provide a single quick burst of energy to start the motor, and then get recharged by the alternator. There is rarely enough juice for more than a couple more tries. On a cold winter day, when the battery’s capacity has plunged, you may get only one or two cranks before the battery dies—or it might not produce enough juice to start the motor at all.
The first generation of household batteries for flashlights and whatnot did have a fairly short shelf-life due to self-discharge. These so-called zinc-carbon batteries may have benefited from refrigeration, though the self-discharge really sped up at temperatures of about 100 degrees and higher. Like a car battery, their capacity also plunged at low temperatures (below 50 degrees or so) but a quick warming with the hands would fix that.
The standard household battery today has a manganese dioxide cathode, a zinc anode and water-diluted potassium hydroxide as an electrolyte. It operates well under a very wide temperature range, from about 0 to 130 degrees. And even at room temperature, its self-discharge rate is very low. I have a pack of Energizers laying around the house that boasts a 2010 expiration date.
Refrigerating such batteries would undoubtedly lengthen their shelf life by slowing self-discharge, but probably to a negligible degree due to the stability of its materials. No major battery manufacturer recommends refrigerating household batteries; they merely suggest keeping them dry and at room temperature.
Batteries based on lithium operate well in truly incredible temperature extremes, from 40 below zero to 150 degrees. And they have very little self-discharge because of lithium’s tendency to develop an inert, oxidized surface when the battery isn’t being used. Temperature hardly affects that miniscule self-discharge one way or the other.
March 29, 2008
"Jack"
Stupid Question ™
Aug. 2, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: What is the deal with older men named John being referred to as “Jack”?
—anonymous, Chicago, Illinois
A: “Jack” has been a nickname for “John” since the days of Middle English around A.D. 1200.
It’s not only applied to older men, but in some areas may be dying out and retained only by relative old-timers. As a “John” myself, dating to the 1970s, I’ve never been called “Jack.” But President John Kennedy, for example, born in the 1920s, was famously known as Jack.
Originally written as “Jacke” (or any other similar spelling variants), it was initially pronounced something like “Jack-eh,” with two syllables, before settling into its snappy one-syllable modern form.
Where it came from is a matter of scholarly debate. The traditional assumption was that it came directly from the French name Jacques, itself a rendering of the Biblical Greek Jacob (or James, in English usage).
Very early on, “Jack” was used as a generic name to refer to any (usually male) peasant or commoner—just like “Jacques” was in France. (This sense is retained in the more recent US slang usage of “Jack” meaning a generic name to call a male stranger, and in generic workman terms like lumberjack and steeplejack. And, it must be said, in generic names for male animals, such as “jackass.”)
But in English, “John” was also used as a generic name in the same way. So “Jack” could just derive from that.
And indeed, there is a solid case for “Jack” being derived from “John.” In the earliest known uses of “Jack,” it is clearly being used as a nickname for “John.” (It’s worth noting that Jack and John sound much more similar in British pronunciations than they do in American; and that “Jan” was a common rendering of “John” in the era.)
Also, it is known for a fact that one diminutive endearment form of “John” around the same time was “Jackin” (also “Jankin” and other forms). By the same token, “Dickin” was a nickname for Richard and “Robin” a nickname for Robert. Those nicknames became shortened through time to “Dick” and “Rob.” It is logical to think “Jackin” followed the same course to “Jack.” (Though language is rarely logical.)
An interesting sidelight is the word “jacket,” which indeed came to us from French. It’s the diminutive form of “jaque,” meaning any kind of outerwear for the upper body. Similar terms existed in a variety of European languages, including the Germanic “jacke” and Dutch “jak.” The origin of the term is unknown, but the Oxford English Dictionary says the French term seems to have inspired the rest, and that it may have originated as a reference to some garment typically worn by “the Jacques,” the French peasantry.
This sheds little light on our discussion, however, because no one has found any direction connection between “Jack” and “jacket.” The nickname origin seems persuasive.
Whatever its source, “Jack” was widely used enough to be treated as a name in its own right as early as the late 1200s.
Aug. 2, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: What is the deal with older men named John being referred to as “Jack”?
—anonymous, Chicago, Illinois
A: “Jack” has been a nickname for “John” since the days of Middle English around A.D. 1200.
It’s not only applied to older men, but in some areas may be dying out and retained only by relative old-timers. As a “John” myself, dating to the 1970s, I’ve never been called “Jack.” But President John Kennedy, for example, born in the 1920s, was famously known as Jack.
Originally written as “Jacke” (or any other similar spelling variants), it was initially pronounced something like “Jack-eh,” with two syllables, before settling into its snappy one-syllable modern form.
Where it came from is a matter of scholarly debate. The traditional assumption was that it came directly from the French name Jacques, itself a rendering of the Biblical Greek Jacob (or James, in English usage).
Very early on, “Jack” was used as a generic name to refer to any (usually male) peasant or commoner—just like “Jacques” was in France. (This sense is retained in the more recent US slang usage of “Jack” meaning a generic name to call a male stranger, and in generic workman terms like lumberjack and steeplejack. And, it must be said, in generic names for male animals, such as “jackass.”)
But in English, “John” was also used as a generic name in the same way. So “Jack” could just derive from that.
And indeed, there is a solid case for “Jack” being derived from “John.” In the earliest known uses of “Jack,” it is clearly being used as a nickname for “John.” (It’s worth noting that Jack and John sound much more similar in British pronunciations than they do in American; and that “Jan” was a common rendering of “John” in the era.)
Also, it is known for a fact that one diminutive endearment form of “John” around the same time was “Jackin” (also “Jankin” and other forms). By the same token, “Dickin” was a nickname for Richard and “Robin” a nickname for Robert. Those nicknames became shortened through time to “Dick” and “Rob.” It is logical to think “Jackin” followed the same course to “Jack.” (Though language is rarely logical.)
An interesting sidelight is the word “jacket,” which indeed came to us from French. It’s the diminutive form of “jaque,” meaning any kind of outerwear for the upper body. Similar terms existed in a variety of European languages, including the Germanic “jacke” and Dutch “jak.” The origin of the term is unknown, but the Oxford English Dictionary says the French term seems to have inspired the rest, and that it may have originated as a reference to some garment typically worn by “the Jacques,” the French peasantry.
This sheds little light on our discussion, however, because no one has found any direction connection between “Jack” and “jacket.” The nickname origin seems persuasive.
Whatever its source, “Jack” was widely used enough to be treated as a name in its own right as early as the late 1200s.
"Hail-Fellow-Well-Met"
Stupid Question ™
July 19, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: What is the origin of the descriptive phrase “hail-fellow-well-met”?
—Ron Sumner, from the Internet
A: This pet name for the chronically friendly is a combination of two warm, and now obsolete, greetings—now mostly relegated to fine Renaissance fairs around the nation.
“Hail, fellow!” was a medieval greeting. “Hail” was a Scottish pronunciation of “heal” (which also produced “hale”). At the time, a noun form of “heal” was current, and meant the same thing as our modern “health.” So, essentially, “Hail, fellow!” means, “Health to you, buddy!”
In the 1500s, we start to see “Hail, fellow!” turn into “hail-fellow,” a term for a close friend—that is, one with whom you would exchange this type of very friendly greeting.
Then we see “well-met” getting tacked onto the phrase. “Well met!” was another greeting of the time. It is generally taken to mean, literally, “Good to meet you!” There was also a descriptive phrase “well-met,” which had (and still has) connotations of suitability and propriety. It’s based on a different meaning of “meet,” an adjectival/adverbial usage indicating something is literally or figuratively the right size for a given situation.
In any case, “well-met” was tacked onto “hail-fellow” to create what the Oxford English Dictionary calls a “fuller phrase.” Basically, it served as intensifier to indicate even more friendliness. If someone was your hail-fellow-well-met in the late 1500s, he was a close friend.
I could find nothing that clarifies whether “Hail, fellow!” and “Well met!” were used to together before the coining of the descriptive “hail-fellow-well-met.” My pure guess is the modern, deliberately archaic use of “Hail, fellow! Well met!” by medieval-style performers and the like is a back-formation from the descriptive phrase.
Today, the greetings have faded and the descriptive “hail-fellow-well-met” survives as a sort of deliberately archaic term. It is mostly used to describe someone (almost always a man due to the “fellow” bit) who is easily and readily friendly. It often has connotations of insincerity; the most fitting use of the phrase in that vein I found during an Internet troll was a reference to the actor Tom Cruise.
July 19, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: What is the origin of the descriptive phrase “hail-fellow-well-met”?
—Ron Sumner, from the Internet
A: This pet name for the chronically friendly is a combination of two warm, and now obsolete, greetings—now mostly relegated to fine Renaissance fairs around the nation.
“Hail, fellow!” was a medieval greeting. “Hail” was a Scottish pronunciation of “heal” (which also produced “hale”). At the time, a noun form of “heal” was current, and meant the same thing as our modern “health.” So, essentially, “Hail, fellow!” means, “Health to you, buddy!”
In the 1500s, we start to see “Hail, fellow!” turn into “hail-fellow,” a term for a close friend—that is, one with whom you would exchange this type of very friendly greeting.
Then we see “well-met” getting tacked onto the phrase. “Well met!” was another greeting of the time. It is generally taken to mean, literally, “Good to meet you!” There was also a descriptive phrase “well-met,” which had (and still has) connotations of suitability and propriety. It’s based on a different meaning of “meet,” an adjectival/adverbial usage indicating something is literally or figuratively the right size for a given situation.
In any case, “well-met” was tacked onto “hail-fellow” to create what the Oxford English Dictionary calls a “fuller phrase.” Basically, it served as intensifier to indicate even more friendliness. If someone was your hail-fellow-well-met in the late 1500s, he was a close friend.
I could find nothing that clarifies whether “Hail, fellow!” and “Well met!” were used to together before the coining of the descriptive “hail-fellow-well-met.” My pure guess is the modern, deliberately archaic use of “Hail, fellow! Well met!” by medieval-style performers and the like is a back-formation from the descriptive phrase.
Today, the greetings have faded and the descriptive “hail-fellow-well-met” survives as a sort of deliberately archaic term. It is mostly used to describe someone (almost always a man due to the “fellow” bit) who is easily and readily friendly. It often has connotations of insincerity; the most fitting use of the phrase in that vein I found during an Internet troll was a reference to the actor Tom Cruise.
Sleep Paralysis
Stupid Question ™
July 5, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: How come when I wake up in the morning I am conscious but can’t hear the TV for a few seconds?
—Chris Walker, Columbus, Ohio
A: As always, I can’t answer about you specifically, but I can talk generally about sleep phenomena that sound much like what you are describing. They may or may not be relevant; you can ask your doctor.
I also must issue the Official Sleep Question Caveat my readers have heard many times before. While I could easily write 100 pages about sleep studies, the fact is that nobody knows why we sleep, and barely anything about how. Just about everything involving sleep is a mystery, worsened by its connection to definitions of the mind and consciousness.
So, I can give a name to the phenomenon you’re describing. And science has made some efforts to quantify its frequency and physical effects. But no one can really give you an explanation at this point, I’m afraid.
It isn’t sexy and exciting, but the strength of science is its willingness to admit its ignorance. (Well, most of the time anyway. You can still find a lot of sleep-disorder discussions that seem to think slapping a Latinate name on something equates an explanation of it.)
I’m going to make a presumption about your condition, and challenge one of your own. I’m presuming your auditory-blocking experience occurs while you’re still lying in bed. And I’m proposing that you are not actually conscious—that is, not fully conscious—when it happens.
These vast presumptions in place, your experience sounds like a mild form of hypnopompic sleep paralysis.
“Hypnopompic” just means “during waking up.” Its flip side is “hypnagogic,” which means “during falling asleep.” (“Hypnagogic” is often used generically to describe both states.)
When we fall asleep, the mind and body seem to shut down in fairly discrete stages. Consciousness wanders and fades, then the body begins a deep relaxation of the skeletal muscles. The process reverses, more or less, upon waking up.
The mind, of course, never stops working completely and in most people produces dreams and so forth. Sometimes, the conscious mind can even become active and self-aware while the body remains deeply relaxed—with the sleeper even looking around at the room and so on. This state is called sleep paralysis, because the body “can’t” move even though the mind is there thinking about it. (This is a stronger version of what almost everyone experiences when they wake up—a period of drowsy, not-quite-awakeness that gradually becomes full consciousness after a few minutes.)
Various studies show that perhaps 5 percent of the population suffers sleep paralysis on a regular basis, and as much as 50 percent experience it at some point in their lives.
People who suffer from narcolepsy are especially prone to it, and it correlates with disrupted sleep schedules and panic attacks. (I was going to make a joke about your propensity for sleeping with the TV on, but on second thought I wonder if it indicates problems getting to sleep, which could produce a sleep paralysis effect.)
The consciousness that becomes active in sleep paralysis is still not full consciousness. (Studies show it sometimes accompanies a Rapid Eye Movement, or deep dreaming, state.) It is most famous for being accompanied by hallucinations (and often a sense of fear or panic) that undoubtedly explain stories of fairies, alien abductors, “night hags,” and the like.
Auditory hallucinations are most common, but visual hallucinations aren’t rare. Most people can open their eyes during the experience.
Hallucinations are colorful and exciting stuff to write about and thus dominate the sleep paralysis literature. However, some people experience a shut-off of some of their senses—including hearing—during the paralysis state. In short, they could lie there and look at the TV, but not be able to hear it.
A less extreme possibility is that for some reason—sleep schedule disruption is the most common cause—you are waking up in the middle of a deep dreaming state, similar to what sleepwalkers experience. You are conscious at a functioning level, but your mind is still shutting out external stimuli and churning away on your dream material.
July 5, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: How come when I wake up in the morning I am conscious but can’t hear the TV for a few seconds?
—Chris Walker, Columbus, Ohio
A: As always, I can’t answer about you specifically, but I can talk generally about sleep phenomena that sound much like what you are describing. They may or may not be relevant; you can ask your doctor.
I also must issue the Official Sleep Question Caveat my readers have heard many times before. While I could easily write 100 pages about sleep studies, the fact is that nobody knows why we sleep, and barely anything about how. Just about everything involving sleep is a mystery, worsened by its connection to definitions of the mind and consciousness.
So, I can give a name to the phenomenon you’re describing. And science has made some efforts to quantify its frequency and physical effects. But no one can really give you an explanation at this point, I’m afraid.
It isn’t sexy and exciting, but the strength of science is its willingness to admit its ignorance. (Well, most of the time anyway. You can still find a lot of sleep-disorder discussions that seem to think slapping a Latinate name on something equates an explanation of it.)
I’m going to make a presumption about your condition, and challenge one of your own. I’m presuming your auditory-blocking experience occurs while you’re still lying in bed. And I’m proposing that you are not actually conscious—that is, not fully conscious—when it happens.
These vast presumptions in place, your experience sounds like a mild form of hypnopompic sleep paralysis.
“Hypnopompic” just means “during waking up.” Its flip side is “hypnagogic,” which means “during falling asleep.” (“Hypnagogic” is often used generically to describe both states.)
When we fall asleep, the mind and body seem to shut down in fairly discrete stages. Consciousness wanders and fades, then the body begins a deep relaxation of the skeletal muscles. The process reverses, more or less, upon waking up.
The mind, of course, never stops working completely and in most people produces dreams and so forth. Sometimes, the conscious mind can even become active and self-aware while the body remains deeply relaxed—with the sleeper even looking around at the room and so on. This state is called sleep paralysis, because the body “can’t” move even though the mind is there thinking about it. (This is a stronger version of what almost everyone experiences when they wake up—a period of drowsy, not-quite-awakeness that gradually becomes full consciousness after a few minutes.)
Various studies show that perhaps 5 percent of the population suffers sleep paralysis on a regular basis, and as much as 50 percent experience it at some point in their lives.
People who suffer from narcolepsy are especially prone to it, and it correlates with disrupted sleep schedules and panic attacks. (I was going to make a joke about your propensity for sleeping with the TV on, but on second thought I wonder if it indicates problems getting to sleep, which could produce a sleep paralysis effect.)
The consciousness that becomes active in sleep paralysis is still not full consciousness. (Studies show it sometimes accompanies a Rapid Eye Movement, or deep dreaming, state.) It is most famous for being accompanied by hallucinations (and often a sense of fear or panic) that undoubtedly explain stories of fairies, alien abductors, “night hags,” and the like.
Auditory hallucinations are most common, but visual hallucinations aren’t rare. Most people can open their eyes during the experience.
Hallucinations are colorful and exciting stuff to write about and thus dominate the sleep paralysis literature. However, some people experience a shut-off of some of their senses—including hearing—during the paralysis state. In short, they could lie there and look at the TV, but not be able to hear it.
A less extreme possibility is that for some reason—sleep schedule disruption is the most common cause—you are waking up in the middle of a deep dreaming state, similar to what sleepwalkers experience. You are conscious at a functioning level, but your mind is still shutting out external stimuli and churning away on your dream material.
Purple Heart
Stupid Question ™
June 28, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: What is the origin of the Purple Heart? Why that design?
—anonymous, from the Internet
A: The Purple Heart, the American military’s decoration for receiving a combat wound, is not as morbid as its bloody, internal-organ symbolism might first suggest.
It’s a complex decoration—both a revival of and a tribute to an award invented by George Washington in the twilight of the Revolutionary War.
In 1782, Washington was leading American forces that were both antsy with their all-but-concluded victory and angry about the lack of pay—especially the bonuses due for the promotions Washington handed out like candy as rewards—from the essentially bankrupt Continental Congress.
Historian James Thomas Flexner noted in his “George Washington in the American Revolution (1775-1783)” that Washington was “himself susceptible to the pleasures of dressing up” and tried to boost morale by ordering the wearing of fancy hats and the sprucing up of military tents.
In this atmosphere, Washington hit upon the genius stroke of creating two military decorations for enlisted men—something unheard of at the time. They were both flashy and honor-laden.
One was a chevron, or V-shaped sleeve stripe, that a soldier was entitled to wear for three years of honorable service.
Much more remarkable was the Badge of Military Merit, a kind of cloth medal worn over the left breast. In Washington’s own words, it was “the Figure of a Heart in Purple Cloth or Silk edged with narrow Lace or Binding.”
The Badge was for “any singularly meritorious Action” involving “not only instances of unusual gallantry, but also of extraordinary fidelity and essential service.” Which is to say, it was not just for combat wounds. There are only three known instances of it being awarded and the exact reasons in all cases are unclear, though one soldier had served as a deep-cover spy.
The recipient also got his name inscribed in a Book of Merit, which has not survived if it ever existed. And, perhaps most importantly, the wearer of the Badge could enter areas reserved for officers, making the award a sort of brevet promotion to boot.
“The road to glory in a patriot army and a free country is thus open to all,” Washington said of his new decoration. Only he could award it, and he made eligibility retroactive to the start of the war.
Washington did not explain the Badge’s symbolism. The heart presumably symbolizes loyalty and love of country (it was worn over the traditional position of the heart). Army historians have pointed out the royal connotations of the color purple (especially purple silk). Another pretty ridiculous speculation is that it had something to do with “purple heart wood,” a reputedly strong wood used at the time in building caissons.
The Badge may even have been professionally designed. Several amateur sources attribute the design, without citation, to Pierre (Peter) L’Enfant, an artist, engineer and companion of Washington’s who later planned the city of Washington, D.C. It seems likely this is a confusion with L’Enfant’s designing of a medal for the Society of the Cincinnatus, a post-war veterans’ group that Washington rather reluctantly headed. Prof. Kenneth Bowling of George Washington University, the only reliable biographer of L’Enfant, told me the Badge-designing tale “may be true,” but that he has never seen any source indicating such a thing.
In any case, the Badge didn’t last long, disappearing after the war to become utterly forgotten. That was at least partly due to American suspicion of medal-wearing, which evoked European monarchy and aristocracy.
Around 1927, Washington’s Badge orders were rediscovered by archivists preparing for the 1932 bicentennial celebration of Washington’s birth. The Army, which had been kicking around the idea of creating a minor merit decoration for about a decade, seized the opportunity to revive the Badge.
The effort stalled until 1931, when the famously pushy Gen. Douglas MacArthur really got the ball rolling on a revived Badge that became known, both in slang and officially, as the Purple Heart. It was indeed activated in 1932, in time for the bicentennial.
(With the richest of irony, that was the same year MacArthur led Army troops against poverty-stricken World War I vets who, much like Washington’s Revolutionary troops, were squatting around Washington, D.C., demanding back pay and a promised bonus that never came; MacArthur burned their huts and drove them out of the city at gunpoint.)
The Purple Heart is a gold-colored heart with purple enamel on the front, over which is a profile bust of Washington. At the top is Washington’s coat of arms, attached to a purple ribbon. Inscribed on the back is, “For Military Merit.”
What that means—besides a tribute to Washington—has changed over the years.
While Washington’s Badge was forgotten, the general idea of merit awards was not. A Certificate of Merit was invented in 1847 for the Mexican-American War and lasted through WWI. The Civil War also saw a profusion of higher merit awards such as the Medal of Honor.
The chevron idea stuck around, too. At the time the Purple Heart was invented, there was a meritorious service chevron soldiers could get for about three months’ overseas, and a “wound chevron” specifically denoting the honor of taking a hit in the line of duty.
Originally, the Purple Heart tied together all of these meanings. It could be (and was) awarded for both meritorious service and combat wounds. (All the aforementioned awards could be exchanged for a Purple Heart; even some Civil War soldiers got retroactive Purple Hearts.)
It was in 1942 that the Purple Heart became a combat-only decoration, the idea being that getting wounded by the enemy is essentially meritorious. (That year, it was also expanded to cover all branches of the military.) Less tangible forms of merit, such as bravery under fire, were pushed onto higher awards like the bronze and silver stars and the Medal of Honor.
Since then, the tendency has been to broaden the reasons for granting the decoration while limiting who can get it. For example, soldiers are now eligible for the Purple Heart if they’re passively wounded in a terrorist attack or while serving as a peacekeeping force. And while regular civilians were eligible for a time under combat and terror situations, they no longer are.
June 28, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: What is the origin of the Purple Heart? Why that design?
—anonymous, from the Internet
A: The Purple Heart, the American military’s decoration for receiving a combat wound, is not as morbid as its bloody, internal-organ symbolism might first suggest.
It’s a complex decoration—both a revival of and a tribute to an award invented by George Washington in the twilight of the Revolutionary War.
In 1782, Washington was leading American forces that were both antsy with their all-but-concluded victory and angry about the lack of pay—especially the bonuses due for the promotions Washington handed out like candy as rewards—from the essentially bankrupt Continental Congress.
Historian James Thomas Flexner noted in his “George Washington in the American Revolution (1775-1783)” that Washington was “himself susceptible to the pleasures of dressing up” and tried to boost morale by ordering the wearing of fancy hats and the sprucing up of military tents.
In this atmosphere, Washington hit upon the genius stroke of creating two military decorations for enlisted men—something unheard of at the time. They were both flashy and honor-laden.
One was a chevron, or V-shaped sleeve stripe, that a soldier was entitled to wear for three years of honorable service.
Much more remarkable was the Badge of Military Merit, a kind of cloth medal worn over the left breast. In Washington’s own words, it was “the Figure of a Heart in Purple Cloth or Silk edged with narrow Lace or Binding.”
The Badge was for “any singularly meritorious Action” involving “not only instances of unusual gallantry, but also of extraordinary fidelity and essential service.” Which is to say, it was not just for combat wounds. There are only three known instances of it being awarded and the exact reasons in all cases are unclear, though one soldier had served as a deep-cover spy.
The recipient also got his name inscribed in a Book of Merit, which has not survived if it ever existed. And, perhaps most importantly, the wearer of the Badge could enter areas reserved for officers, making the award a sort of brevet promotion to boot.
“The road to glory in a patriot army and a free country is thus open to all,” Washington said of his new decoration. Only he could award it, and he made eligibility retroactive to the start of the war.
Washington did not explain the Badge’s symbolism. The heart presumably symbolizes loyalty and love of country (it was worn over the traditional position of the heart). Army historians have pointed out the royal connotations of the color purple (especially purple silk). Another pretty ridiculous speculation is that it had something to do with “purple heart wood,” a reputedly strong wood used at the time in building caissons.
The Badge may even have been professionally designed. Several amateur sources attribute the design, without citation, to Pierre (Peter) L’Enfant, an artist, engineer and companion of Washington’s who later planned the city of Washington, D.C. It seems likely this is a confusion with L’Enfant’s designing of a medal for the Society of the Cincinnatus, a post-war veterans’ group that Washington rather reluctantly headed. Prof. Kenneth Bowling of George Washington University, the only reliable biographer of L’Enfant, told me the Badge-designing tale “may be true,” but that he has never seen any source indicating such a thing.
In any case, the Badge didn’t last long, disappearing after the war to become utterly forgotten. That was at least partly due to American suspicion of medal-wearing, which evoked European monarchy and aristocracy.
Around 1927, Washington’s Badge orders were rediscovered by archivists preparing for the 1932 bicentennial celebration of Washington’s birth. The Army, which had been kicking around the idea of creating a minor merit decoration for about a decade, seized the opportunity to revive the Badge.
The effort stalled until 1931, when the famously pushy Gen. Douglas MacArthur really got the ball rolling on a revived Badge that became known, both in slang and officially, as the Purple Heart. It was indeed activated in 1932, in time for the bicentennial.
(With the richest of irony, that was the same year MacArthur led Army troops against poverty-stricken World War I vets who, much like Washington’s Revolutionary troops, were squatting around Washington, D.C., demanding back pay and a promised bonus that never came; MacArthur burned their huts and drove them out of the city at gunpoint.)
The Purple Heart is a gold-colored heart with purple enamel on the front, over which is a profile bust of Washington. At the top is Washington’s coat of arms, attached to a purple ribbon. Inscribed on the back is, “For Military Merit.”
What that means—besides a tribute to Washington—has changed over the years.
While Washington’s Badge was forgotten, the general idea of merit awards was not. A Certificate of Merit was invented in 1847 for the Mexican-American War and lasted through WWI. The Civil War also saw a profusion of higher merit awards such as the Medal of Honor.
The chevron idea stuck around, too. At the time the Purple Heart was invented, there was a meritorious service chevron soldiers could get for about three months’ overseas, and a “wound chevron” specifically denoting the honor of taking a hit in the line of duty.
Originally, the Purple Heart tied together all of these meanings. It could be (and was) awarded for both meritorious service and combat wounds. (All the aforementioned awards could be exchanged for a Purple Heart; even some Civil War soldiers got retroactive Purple Hearts.)
It was in 1942 that the Purple Heart became a combat-only decoration, the idea being that getting wounded by the enemy is essentially meritorious. (That year, it was also expanded to cover all branches of the military.) Less tangible forms of merit, such as bravery under fire, were pushed onto higher awards like the bronze and silver stars and the Medal of Honor.
Since then, the tendency has been to broaden the reasons for granting the decoration while limiting who can get it. For example, soldiers are now eligible for the Purple Heart if they’re passively wounded in a terrorist attack or while serving as a peacekeeping force. And while regular civilians were eligible for a time under combat and terror situations, they no longer are.
English Gas Prices
Stupid Question ™
June 21, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: Why is gas so expensive in England?
—Petrol Huffer, Chicago, Illinois
A: Despite the recent whining about the cost of refueling our national SUV fleet, gas is a lot more expensive just about everywhere else than in the U.S.
The reason it’s more expensive everywhere else is high tax rates—the kind of taxes most environmentalists think the U.S. should have to curb its beastly oil appetite and resultant pollution plague.
But U.K. gas is notoriously expensive, even by international standards. The main reason is its even beefier tax system.
A week ago, the U.K.’s average gas price for basic unleaded was 82.15 pence per liter, according to the British Automobile Association (which is, incidentally, owned by a giant energy conglomerate). That’s about $5.65 per gallon.
For direct comparison, April data for all of Europe shows that’s the same price as the continent’s highest for the month, which was the Netherlands. The cheapest was Poland, at about $3.52 per gallon. At the same time, the U.S. averaged $1.78 per gallon. (For further contrast, the cheapest milk at my local supermarket right now is $3.75 per gallon.)
Roughly 75 percent (depending on grade) of U.K. gas price is taxes. That’s about $4 out of the $5.65 per gallon price of a week ago.
The biggest chunk of that (60 percent) is, or at least was originally intended as, a punitive tax to discourage driving—just like cigarette taxes. (Unlike the U.S., the U.K. has signed onto treaties pledging to reduce production of greenhouse gases.) The taxes also include a sales tax and a “value-added tax,” a tax levied on a product at each stage of “value” added to it, as in oil refining.
The U.K. gas tax is pretty much in line with the rest of Europe, where taxes typically make up 50 to 80 percent of the price. By contrast, about 30 percent of the U.S. gas price is tax.
But U.K. gas is still, on average, the most expensive in Europe. One reason is because the government regularly hikes the tax rate to keep up with—in fact, to outpace—inflation.
The U.K. has had a gas tax since the 1920s, when automobiles became popular on a large scale. But the real price squeeze began about a decade ago, when the government established the “fuel tax escalator”—an automatic rise in the gas excise tax amounting to about 3-5 percent per year. The purpose was to discourage driving and lower pollution.
Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, the government has ditched the escalator in recent years, but has gone on raising the tax rate anyway.
However, the recently sky-rocketing gas prices gave the government pause. A 1.9-pence per liter rise due this year has already been delayed until September, and may not go through if gas prices aren’t lower by August, government officials promise.
That’s a good reminder that taxes aren’t the only element of gas prices, and not the cause of the recent price spike. Most economists attribute that to increasing Asian (especially Chinese) demand and the limited production capacity of the OPEC countries. The Iraq war doesn’t appear to be helping, either. (Warning: Oil prices are never simple; for example, the U.K.’s import price is pegged to North Sea crude prices as a benchmark.)
While the British and Irish tend to be much more environmentally conscious than Americans, the high gas prices are certainly controversial. There’s already been at least one price protest in the U.K. this year, in Scotland.
For one thing, there’s no consensus on how much high gas taxes have reduced driving, pollution and traffic congestion. The only absolutely clear result has been a major rise in the popularity of cars that use diesel fuel, which is generally cheaper and is in some ways less polluting. (However, in May in the U.K., it was more expensive than regular gas.)
For another thing, the gas tax money doesn’t go directly to public transportation, anti-pollution measures, or other visible trade-off programs. It just goes into general government funds. And it is extremely profitable—knocking even a penny off the tax would cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
In fact, these days Blair talks more about the social programs the gas taxes fund than the environmental benefits.
June 21, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: Why is gas so expensive in England?
—Petrol Huffer, Chicago, Illinois
A: Despite the recent whining about the cost of refueling our national SUV fleet, gas is a lot more expensive just about everywhere else than in the U.S.
The reason it’s more expensive everywhere else is high tax rates—the kind of taxes most environmentalists think the U.S. should have to curb its beastly oil appetite and resultant pollution plague.
But U.K. gas is notoriously expensive, even by international standards. The main reason is its even beefier tax system.
A week ago, the U.K.’s average gas price for basic unleaded was 82.15 pence per liter, according to the British Automobile Association (which is, incidentally, owned by a giant energy conglomerate). That’s about $5.65 per gallon.
For direct comparison, April data for all of Europe shows that’s the same price as the continent’s highest for the month, which was the Netherlands. The cheapest was Poland, at about $3.52 per gallon. At the same time, the U.S. averaged $1.78 per gallon. (For further contrast, the cheapest milk at my local supermarket right now is $3.75 per gallon.)
Roughly 75 percent (depending on grade) of U.K. gas price is taxes. That’s about $4 out of the $5.65 per gallon price of a week ago.
The biggest chunk of that (60 percent) is, or at least was originally intended as, a punitive tax to discourage driving—just like cigarette taxes. (Unlike the U.S., the U.K. has signed onto treaties pledging to reduce production of greenhouse gases.) The taxes also include a sales tax and a “value-added tax,” a tax levied on a product at each stage of “value” added to it, as in oil refining.
The U.K. gas tax is pretty much in line with the rest of Europe, where taxes typically make up 50 to 80 percent of the price. By contrast, about 30 percent of the U.S. gas price is tax.
But U.K. gas is still, on average, the most expensive in Europe. One reason is because the government regularly hikes the tax rate to keep up with—in fact, to outpace—inflation.
The U.K. has had a gas tax since the 1920s, when automobiles became popular on a large scale. But the real price squeeze began about a decade ago, when the government established the “fuel tax escalator”—an automatic rise in the gas excise tax amounting to about 3-5 percent per year. The purpose was to discourage driving and lower pollution.
Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, the government has ditched the escalator in recent years, but has gone on raising the tax rate anyway.
However, the recently sky-rocketing gas prices gave the government pause. A 1.9-pence per liter rise due this year has already been delayed until September, and may not go through if gas prices aren’t lower by August, government officials promise.
That’s a good reminder that taxes aren’t the only element of gas prices, and not the cause of the recent price spike. Most economists attribute that to increasing Asian (especially Chinese) demand and the limited production capacity of the OPEC countries. The Iraq war doesn’t appear to be helping, either. (Warning: Oil prices are never simple; for example, the U.K.’s import price is pegged to North Sea crude prices as a benchmark.)
While the British and Irish tend to be much more environmentally conscious than Americans, the high gas prices are certainly controversial. There’s already been at least one price protest in the U.K. this year, in Scotland.
For one thing, there’s no consensus on how much high gas taxes have reduced driving, pollution and traffic congestion. The only absolutely clear result has been a major rise in the popularity of cars that use diesel fuel, which is generally cheaper and is in some ways less polluting. (However, in May in the U.K., it was more expensive than regular gas.)
For another thing, the gas tax money doesn’t go directly to public transportation, anti-pollution measures, or other visible trade-off programs. It just goes into general government funds. And it is extremely profitable—knocking even a penny off the tax would cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
In fact, these days Blair talks more about the social programs the gas taxes fund than the environmental benefits.
Dead President Stamps
Stupid Question ™
June 14, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: How did President Richard Nixon end up on a stamp so quickly after his death? When Elvis Presley died, fans were told they would have to wait at least 10 years before his face could grace a stamp.
—Sean Scheiderer, Columbus, Ohio
A: Nixon’s stamp actually came nearly five months late, compared to standard United States Postal Service (USPS) policy.
But yes, he and the other presidents do not have to wait 10 years like everybody else. That’s because of a different corrupt president—Warren Harding.
No matter who you are, you have to be dead to be honored by a stamp. In most cases, that means dead at least a decade.
The origin of the 10-year figure is unclear, but it seems like a decent interval. There are similar traditions in place for other government memorials, all linked to America’s original caution against establishing a monarchy by over-honoring living people. (Alarmists may note the erosion of this tradition; the CIA headquarters is now named for President George H.W. Bush, who is so not-dead he was most recently seen skydiving.)
However, under a separate tradition, presidents get a stamp on their next birthday following their death. Thus, recently deceased President Ronald Reagan will be so honored on his birthday, next Feb. 6.
The birthday celebration is because modern presidential stamps are “commemoratives”—special, limited-edition stamps that at least nominally celebrate some kind of anniversary. (So are most other famous-dead-people stamps; thus, Elvis’ 1993 stamp commemorated the 10th anniversary of his death and was issued on his birthday.)
U.S. federal postage stamps didn’t exist until 1847. President George Washington was honored on the first series (along with Benjamin Franklin)—a lot more than 10 years after his death.
Actual commemorative stamps marking significant anniversaries began in 1893 (somewhat belated celebrations of Columbus “discovering” America).
It took a while for presidential commemoratives to get going. Abraham Lincoln got a stamp in 1866, rushed into production after his assassination the year before, but it was technically a “definitive,” or regular, stamp, not a commemorative. A 1909 Lincoln stamp marking his 100th birthday, however, was a commemorative, and perhaps the first official presidential commemorative.
After that, commemoratives quickly became political. The USPS had a hard time saying no to political pressure and to the money commemoratives raked in.
This led to the frenzied tribute to Harding, which changed the presidential rules forever. Harding died on Aug. 2, 1923 and had himself a stamp by Sept. 1—still one of the fastest stamp commemorations in U.S. history.
Commemoratives were already coming on pretty fast at the time, but Harding shattered the stamp speed record. For example, President William McKinley, who went to the trouble of getting assassinated in 1901, still had to wait about 2.5 years before showing up on a stamp. That was a standard presidential wait until Harding kicked the bucket.
Harding’s effect was twofold. On the one hand, it allowed popular presidents to be commemorated very rapidly. (Today commonly viewed as either mired in corruption or incompetently oblivious to corruption around him, Harding was beloved in his time.) Thus, President Franklin Roosevelt was on no fewer than four stamps within three months of his 1945 death.
On the other hand, it allowed unpopular presidents to go stampless for a long time. The first victim was Woodrow Wilson, who died shortly after Harding and was forgotten for about a year, then only got a definitive stamp. Calvin Coolidge’s stamp came more than 5 years after his 1933 death.
Following decades of fitful clamor to rein in this highly politicized stamping, the USPS finally adopted the birthday-after-death system, and has adhered to it since President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.
The one exception was Nixon, who died April 22, 1994 and was commemorated on April 26, 1995, missing his Jan. 9 birthday by miles. The official reason was to avoid the chaos of a January rate increase, but many philatelists believe the Watergate president’s massive unpopularity played a role. Likewise, the USPS has always declined to verify stories that the Nixon stamp was one of the worst-selling commemoratives ever.
Meanwhile—proving that sooner isn’t always better—the Elvis stamp is reportedly one of the best-selling commemoratives in history. It was also the first democratically-elected stamp artwork ever. (The American public famously voted for “young Elvis” over “old Elvis.”)
June 14, 2004
By John Ruch
© 2004
Q: How did President Richard Nixon end up on a stamp so quickly after his death? When Elvis Presley died, fans were told they would have to wait at least 10 years before his face could grace a stamp.
—Sean Scheiderer, Columbus, Ohio
A: Nixon’s stamp actually came nearly five months late, compared to standard United States Postal Service (USPS) policy.
But yes, he and the other presidents do not have to wait 10 years like everybody else. That’s because of a different corrupt president—Warren Harding.
No matter who you are, you have to be dead to be honored by a stamp. In most cases, that means dead at least a decade.
The origin of the 10-year figure is unclear, but it seems like a decent interval. There are similar traditions in place for other government memorials, all linked to America’s original caution against establishing a monarchy by over-honoring living people. (Alarmists may note the erosion of this tradition; the CIA headquarters is now named for President George H.W. Bush, who is so not-dead he was most recently seen skydiving.)
However, under a separate tradition, presidents get a stamp on their next birthday following their death. Thus, recently deceased President Ronald Reagan will be so honored on his birthday, next Feb. 6.
The birthday celebration is because modern presidential stamps are “commemoratives”—special, limited-edition stamps that at least nominally celebrate some kind of anniversary. (So are most other famous-dead-people stamps; thus, Elvis’ 1993 stamp commemorated the 10th anniversary of his death and was issued on his birthday.)
U.S. federal postage stamps didn’t exist until 1847. President George Washington was honored on the first series (along with Benjamin Franklin)—a lot more than 10 years after his death.
Actual commemorative stamps marking significant anniversaries began in 1893 (somewhat belated celebrations of Columbus “discovering” America).
It took a while for presidential commemoratives to get going. Abraham Lincoln got a stamp in 1866, rushed into production after his assassination the year before, but it was technically a “definitive,” or regular, stamp, not a commemorative. A 1909 Lincoln stamp marking his 100th birthday, however, was a commemorative, and perhaps the first official presidential commemorative.
After that, commemoratives quickly became political. The USPS had a hard time saying no to political pressure and to the money commemoratives raked in.
This led to the frenzied tribute to Harding, which changed the presidential rules forever. Harding died on Aug. 2, 1923 and had himself a stamp by Sept. 1—still one of the fastest stamp commemorations in U.S. history.
Commemoratives were already coming on pretty fast at the time, but Harding shattered the stamp speed record. For example, President William McKinley, who went to the trouble of getting assassinated in 1901, still had to wait about 2.5 years before showing up on a stamp. That was a standard presidential wait until Harding kicked the bucket.
Harding’s effect was twofold. On the one hand, it allowed popular presidents to be commemorated very rapidly. (Today commonly viewed as either mired in corruption or incompetently oblivious to corruption around him, Harding was beloved in his time.) Thus, President Franklin Roosevelt was on no fewer than four stamps within three months of his 1945 death.
On the other hand, it allowed unpopular presidents to go stampless for a long time. The first victim was Woodrow Wilson, who died shortly after Harding and was forgotten for about a year, then only got a definitive stamp. Calvin Coolidge’s stamp came more than 5 years after his 1933 death.
Following decades of fitful clamor to rein in this highly politicized stamping, the USPS finally adopted the birthday-after-death system, and has adhered to it since President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.
The one exception was Nixon, who died April 22, 1994 and was commemorated on April 26, 1995, missing his Jan. 9 birthday by miles. The official reason was to avoid the chaos of a January rate increase, but many philatelists believe the Watergate president’s massive unpopularity played a role. Likewise, the USPS has always declined to verify stories that the Nixon stamp was one of the worst-selling commemoratives ever.
Meanwhile—proving that sooner isn’t always better—the Elvis stamp is reportedly one of the best-selling commemoratives in history. It was also the first democratically-elected stamp artwork ever. (The American public famously voted for “young Elvis” over “old Elvis.”)