The Straight Dope 05/04/2007

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

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 05/04/2007

Dear Cecil:

It's widely believed that when one spouse dies the other tends to die
sooner than he/she would otherwise. While this is plausible, I have a
hunch it's one of those beliefs--like the disproportionate number of
babies supposedly born nine months after a blackout, or toilet flushing
during Super Bowl halftime emptying a city's water supply--that's nifty
but untrue. So tell me, if (say) a 70-year-old man dies, is his wife
likely to die sooner than she would if the old guy lived?--Steven
Goldberg, via e-mail

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Cecil replies:

Hold on, ace. While Super Bowl bathroom breaks have never been shown to
play havoc with a town's H2O, the "super flush effect" is real: as we've
previously established, New York City occasionally experiences
water-supply surges due to pressure drops during or after popular
telecasts, most notably the two-and-a-half-hour M*A*S*H finale in 1983.
(See The Straight Dope: Did New York water pressure drop . . .) Likewise,
dying of grief isn't merely romantic legend but a well-documented
phenomenon, verified in a range of studies over the last 20 or 30 years in
several countries. For this you can thank actuaries, who'll stop at
nothing to "substitute facts for appearances and demonstrations for
impressions," a pithy line from John Ruskin that the Society of Actuaries
has adopted as its motto, and a fair description of our theory of
operation at the Straight Dope.

Analyzing spouse deaths is a straightforward exercise in data mining, the
data in this case usually being the mortality info collected by insurance
companies. Most studies compare the death rate for a group of
widows/widowers to that of a control group. Generally, the ratio of the
two death rates is around 1.4--that is, all else being equal, 140 widowed
persons die compared to 100 non-widowed.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070504.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

When they give a phone number in old movies and TV shows, they are read as
"Plaza 56892" or "Circle 8745." What did this mean, and how/why did they
change from that format to what we use now?--Mike N., North Hollywood, CA

SDSTaff Bricker responds:

Thanks, Mike, for making me feel old. 

In the fledgling years of telephone service, the format for telephone
numbers was the name of the telephone exchange followed by (usually) a
four-digit number. A telephone exchange was a central switching office
manned by legions of operators in front of switchboards wired directly to
all the telephones in the neighborhood. In those early days, telephones
were almost completely manual: you made a phone call by simply lifting
your phone instrument. The phone operator in that central office would see
the light and buzzer corresponding to your line, plug in with her
headphones (the overwhelming majority of operators being female, you’ll
forgive the use of the gender-specific pronoun here), and ask you
pleasantly, "Number, please?" You would give her the number you wished to
call, and if that number was served by the same central office, she would
simply plug your line into the destination line on the switchboard. If you
were calling across town, to a number served by another central office,
she'd plug into a "trunk line,' a connection to that other office, and ask
the operator there to complete your call by connecting you to the
destination phone.

Each exchange was given . . .

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mphoneexchange.htm

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 02/19/1992

Dear Cecil: 

If a match is lit in an atmosphere like earth's but outside of gravity's
pull, will it suffocate? Will it snuff out from its own gases faster than
if it had a steady earthbound updraft to refresh it with more oxygen? I
heard the space shuttle astronauts were doing tests with fire in
microgravity. I missed reading any results so all I can do is guess: it
snuffs. My earthist rivals insist fire will burn in zero Gs; some say heat
rising will start a draft which in turn ventilates the reaction. I
immediately ask: which way is up? Duh! --John Inkman, Hodgkins, Illinois

Cecil replies:

It is just this kind of restless curiosity, John, that is at the heart of
all great science. They've been doing a lot of fire experiments on the
space shuttle lately, and while the official line is that they're trying
advance the frontiers of knowledge, etc., one suspects the scientists just
want to know, among other things, whether a flame would smother in its own
smoke. As it turns out, a match is not the ideal experimental medium for
this purpose. The head may contain oxidizers and whatnot that would queer
the results. What you really want is a candle. The space shuttle
astronauts brought a couple along on a mission last summer and lit them
inside a sealed chamber having an earth-type atmosphere.

(This is not something you would want to do in the open space shuttle
cabin, where for obvious reasons an exposed flame is on a par with leaving
the front door open.) One candle burned for about two minutes, the other
for 20 seconds. Then--here's the vindication you've been waiting for . . .

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_360.html

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