The Straight Dope 12/23/2005

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 12/23/2005

Dear Cecil:

I have never read the book Alice in Wonderland and am afraid
to do so. I have read that during psychological tests for
law enforcement agencies a usual question is whether you
have read/like this book. In Christopher Whitcomb's book
Cold Zero about the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team he mentions
that one of the questions in a test was if he had read Alice
in Wonderland. I had a friend who interviewed for the Denver
Police Department and they asked if he liked Alice in
Wonderland. Have you ever heard this? If you have read the
book what does that say about your character? --thewazir,
via e-mail

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Cecil replies:

Let's clear up one thing off the bat: the question isn't
whether you've read Alice in Wonderland, it's whether you
liked it. (To be precise, you're supposed to respond true or
false to some variant of the statement "I enjoyed reading
Alice in Wonderland.") This slightly sinister query was in
the original edition of the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI), a well-known personality test
commonly, if inappropriately, administered to job
applicants. It was dropped from a newer version of the test,
MMPI-2, which was published in 1989, but still appears in
another test, the California Psychological Inventory (CPI).
Your paranoia about such things is understandable--what's a
question like that supposed to gauge? Whether you like
fantasy? Hookah smoking? Little girls?

I've gotten several answers. William Poundstone in Bigger
Secrets (1986) writes that, on the MMPI, "Liking the story
suggests femininity in a man; disliking it suggests
masculinity in a woman." However,. . . 

For more,see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/051223.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

My father is currently in intensive care for an incident
that most involved think is due to a spider bite and I'd
like to know your thoughts. He's a respiratory therapist at
a hospital in Louisiana that's undergoing major renovations.
He went to work at 7:30 AM and at about 2 PM noticed a large
bump right above, and about as large as, his elbow. He had
no idea where it came from but said it didn't hurt, it just
itched. Around 6 PM, he started feeling dizzy and weak. At 2
AM, he decided to go to the emergency room because he felt
as though he were about to faint, and he also had severe
back pain. When he got to the hospital, sepsis had set in.
Cultures have been done, but so far nothing has been
determined as this only happened two days ago. No puncture
wounds were visible on the bump once it was noticed, but it
was already extremely swollen. My father didn't notice
anything biting him. What is your opinion about this mystery
wound?  --Jennifer Fontenot

SDSTAFF Doug replies:

It may seem strange to you, after watching all those TV
shows and movies where doctors or forensic investigators
solve mysterious cases from the tiniest of clues or
symptoms, but in reality there's one major class of symptom
that is in fact nearly impossible to diagnose accurately:
mystery "bites." The best-trained doctors in the world can't
diagnose the source of a "bite" based solely on the
symptoms. In fact, most doctors are never trained--in any
manner whatsoever--regarding the world's venomous animals,
and accordingly it's more common for a doctor to misdiagnose
such cases than to get them right. The most glaring example
is the brown recluse spider, which in the U.S. is found
exclusively east of the Rockies--yet doctors on the west
coast, where the spider doesn't dwell, routinely diagnose
necrotic wounds as brown recluse bites, simply because the
patients assume they were bitten, and the doctors don't know
enough to question their assertions.

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspiderbite.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 03/23/1990

Dear Cecil: 

What is the origin of Uncle Sam, the cartoon character
symbolizing the U.S.? Any relation to Sam Hill, as in what
the S.H.? -- Anonymous, Denver

Dear Anonymous:

Hill, no. Sam Hill is just a soundalike euphemism for "hell"
once used by macho American frontiersmen in the presence of
women, children, and other sensitive souls. Uncle Sam is a
whole different story.

A widely held belief, reported as fact in supposedly
reliable reference books, is that the original Uncle Sam was
one Sam Wilson, a meat packer in Troy, New York, who
supplied rations to the U.S. military during the War of
1812. Wilson was a subcontractor to one Elbert Anderson, and
the letters "E.A.--U.S." were stamped on all the pair's
army-bound grub. On being asked what the letters stood for
(the abbreviation U.S. supposedly was unfamiliar at the
time), one of Sam's workers joshed that it stood for "Elbert
Anderson and Uncle Sam," meaning the jovial Wilson himself.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_003.html

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