Someone’s got the info
September 24th, 2009 | by TJ |So every once in a while, questions pop into my head. I’m sure it’s the same for everyone. With a little research, maybe, I could find the answers, but for some of them, I’m not even remotely sure how to go about it. But that’s the thing about having a blog with an audience – without fail, SOMEONE has known to answer to every question I’ve ever had. So here are some I’ve had lately:
1. How come there’s sometimes two versions of commercials? Like a short version and a long version?
2. I keep hearing about people having their rings “dipped.” What does that even mean? And am I not supposed to wear it to sleep/shower/wash dishes/pet the dog?
3. What kinds of stuff do you think is manufactured in groupings? I mean, for example – I’m looking at a pushpin right now. Is there an entire pushpin factory, just for pushpins, or is it a pushpin-paper clip – soda can pull tab factory? What kinds of things get made together, and do you think there’s any kind of really surprising factory combinations? Like doorknobs and flip flops? And speaking of door knobs, do you think door knobs and doors themselves are made in different places, by different companies? Then which company gets credit for actually making the door? Is it some third company? Is it like claiming a country – if you stick the knob in the door, the door is yours?
4. For nurses – are you just not squeamish people, or is squeamishness schooled out of you? If you’re a little “ehhhh…” on the sight of puke and blood and greivous injury, are you best off just not being a nurse, or does nursing school beat it away?
5. When people do bungee jumps off of bridges and such, how do you know that they’re not going to swing into the side of the bridge or bounce back up high enough to hit the under side of the bridge or otherwise, while not hitting the ground, still fly into some other stationary object? Don’t people of different weights bounce different ways?
ALL insights, comments, advice and answers are welcome on this post.
Unless you’ve sworn dramatically to never comment on this blog again. If that’s the case, up yours.
By Kestrel on Sep 24, 2009
#1: Generally, there are a 30-second and 60-second version; there may also be 15- or 20-sec versions. The ad agency buys “slots” which vary in length. The correct-length commercial airs in the appropriate slot. (Occasionally, you’ll see a commercial get cut short: Someone goofed, and put a longer commercial in a short slot. More rare is the short commercial in a longer slot.)
#5: Physics; specifically, Newton’s Laws of Gravity and Motion. The bungee stores kinetic energy; when the person jumps, that energy is expended. More energy is stored as the bungee stretches, but some of the energy is expended in the form of heat, so not as much is stored, and when the bungee retracts, that lesser amount keeps the jumper from bouncing all the way back up. (There’s a lot more to it than that, but I am not a physicist.)
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By Stop on Sep 24, 2009
#2: Usually dipping a ring means having it coated in a different metal – for example, dipping a yellow gold ring in white gold.
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By Adlib on Sep 24, 2009
I have always wondered about #4 myself! (being one who is extremely squeamish)
As far as I know, most bungee places have to weigh people and adjust the cord length accordingly, but I am not sure about how to avoid the swinging part.
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By Awlbiste on Sep 24, 2009
You can’t bounce further up than the point at which you started.
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By Morrissimo on Sep 24, 2009
(2) In the case of both my wife’s rings and my own ring, having them “dipped” means getting them cleaned and the metal (re)brightened (we both have white gold rings). As I understand it, the “dip” is some sort of special cleaner-mixture bath that etches off any gunky-flibby buildup and even corrosion (if your ring metal/finish is susceptible to that).
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By Tchann on Sep 24, 2009
#1) When a company cuts together an ad that is effective, it’s in their best interest to have several different lengths available to maximize its airtime. Since broadcasting charges by the time used and the popularity of a program, it can be cheaper for a company to buy :15 spots in one program and leave the :30 spots for another one. In some cases that make television traffic directors cry, a company will have one :15 spot that they wish to air twice in the same program…in the same commercial break. Worst case scenario? Back to back. It looks horrible, but that’s what the company wants, and they’re the ones cutting the check!
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By Darby on Sep 24, 2009
#2 – dipping is in reference to a thin coat of Rhodium being electroplated onto your while gold ring. All gold is yellow. White gold is achieved by mixing yellow gold with alloys (nickle, rhodium, platinum). The last step in making white gold jewellery is to add a Rhodium plating – that is what gives us that uber white, shinny look we love. So, when that plating wears thin you can have the look restored by having it dipped aka re-plated. It is easy and quick and a some jewellery stores will do it while you wait. Like my cat, I love shinny and sparkly stuff, so I have mine dipped 1X per year. Between, I simply don’t wear my rings when I am using strong cleaning products or digging in the garden! Hope that helps!
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By Andris on Sep 24, 2009
#3) I can answer the doors and doorknobs one — generally doors and doorknobs are, in fact, sold separately — you can either hang the door yourself or have a contractor do it. Similarly, you can replace a doorknob without needing to replace the entire door (say, if you want to add a lock to a door without one) — usually you can just unscrew the doorknob from the “inside” of the door and pull off the knob on each side to replace.
The contractor or whoever hangs the door probably gets credit for it, unless they’re doing it for free. ;-)
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By Maerdred on Sep 24, 2009
People have already answered the questions I was going to answer. The internet is efficient.
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By Caroline on Sep 24, 2009
The advertising boyfriend agrees with the above statements about #1 but would like to add that sometimes it’s just what the clients demand. Clients sometimes demand silly things just because they can. (He’s not having a good day at work, can you tell??)
As a wanna be nursing student and former medic… you can’t be someone who passes out at the sight of blood if you want to be a nurse, but otherwise, you get over it. Nurses spend 2 years taking nursing classes, with hours and hours of clinicals each semester. I used to be squeemish about handling male anatomy, but as a medic in the army one of my duties was to start/check on foley catheters. Yeah, got over that pretty quick once I started work.
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By Steve on Sep 24, 2009
#5
Exactly what Kestrel said, and then some. I’ve looked into participating in this activity, did a fair amount of research, and came to the conclusion that jump-off locations have a plethora of restrictions in place, such as distance from the ground, length of cord, location of solid objects / impact points. Unless they cord snaps, and then you’re “f’d in the a.” ;-)
~ Steve
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By Julie on Sep 24, 2009
If you are squeamish to an extreme, forget being a nurse, however, the situation usually corrects itself when you have to do something about it. Time does desensitize you to things to a great degree. I had some things that made me go “ewww” at first that don’t bother me now, but some things still make me cringe. For example, a person left in neglect by the family who has bugs in a bedsore. Still grossed me out, but I did what I had to do to help the person. Your desire to help > than the gross factor generally.
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By Luckedout on Sep 24, 2009
#3: generally things that are similar will be manufactured together due to efficiency. It wouldn’t be efficient to manufacture bowling balls and flip flops together because the materials they use to make them are completely different and the process is too different. Generally you’ll find a factory that makes paper clips will also make staples or push pins or something similar because the basic components (aluminum, plastic) are the same. They just stick them in a different machine to get the different item. Also candy is an example, that’s why they have warning about being made in the same place that uses peanuts or coconuts, etc. Because they use the same basic ingredients minus a few things.
#4 I’m not a nurse. I’m a chiropractor, so I don’t deal with a lot of icky things. (of course you’d be surprised what people want to show and tell me….) We had to do a lot of cadaver work in school, including a full dissection with saws, knives etc. At first it can be freaky… after a while it just becomes a job. You don’t think about it, you kind’ve become detached from it. The people who can’t do that probably wouldn’t last long as a nurse. Of course I’m not sure I could ever become used to changing a grown persons diapers….. kids are bad enough.
#5 When you bungee jump they check your weight and can add or subtract separate bands from your cord so that you don’t smack into the ground or so that you actually fall. Or they have pre-made cords that are set for certain weight classes. Also when you fall you don’t have enough momentum, even if you jumped out, to generally swing, so smacking the opposite side would be pretty tough. It’s pretty much just up and down.
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By Alan Quirino on Sep 24, 2009
#5, think of it as a ball. Especially a bouncy one, like a basketball.
Drop it from a certain height, and when it bounces it will only come up to a certain point, but lower than where it started (otherwise basketball would be a funny sport if balls bounced back to their begin point). I’m not sure the theory is correct like with the bungee, but it’s similar I guess…
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By David on Sep 24, 2009
for #1 I’d add that sometimes it’s just a way to “brand” a product into your mind. After you’ve seen the longer commercial for a month, the company will switch to the shorter commercial to a) save money and b) reinforce the message since your mind will “fill in the blanks” from the longer spot.
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By BlueTiger on Sep 25, 2009
like someone said earlier, The Internet is efficient, all the questions have been answered – so I’ll just add that I do the exact same thing! Strange questions that can bug me for days before I can be bothered to find the answer/find someone that knows the answer. But I must say, working in my industry (engineering..I know, vague, but with about 1000 engineers in the building, we do almost everything) there are loads of people here that knows all kinds of strange things.
Like yesterday the big conversation piece was how much a aircraft carrier could cost (22 biljons during it’s whole life). And that lead to how many containers a container ship could carry (biggest: 11 0000 containers).
Wikipedia is da bomb!
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By Ratshag on Sep 25, 2009
#3 doors and doorknobs is done separate – different companies, different factories, different distribution. Generally, they does not get put tagether until they’s installed in a house, either by the contractor or the do-it-yerselfer.
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By Asara on Sep 25, 2009
I have to agree with Luckedout and Ratters on #3. Things that have similar “ingredients” are generally made together. Like, I work in a hot dog factory, but besides hot dogs we also make sausage, and slicing bologna/salami, and also liverwurst. The tools and materials are similar (and do not include eyes and stomachs and rats and whatever the hell else rumor says are in hot dogs), so that is what we do. And while I never thought about it before, I realized that I never have seen a door at the stoor that came with a knob. It’s always just the empty hole, and ten bajillion more knob types than anyone would ever need hanging on the wall on the other side of the aisle.
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By Chad-architect on Sep 25, 2009
#3, not only are the door knobs and the doors sold seperately, but the hinges and locks are as well. some doors have two hinges, some have 3, and some are continuous. you would be amazed at the amount of customization you can get into on a door and its hardware.
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By Nebt on Sep 25, 2009
#2: Darby is right on… and you should get it dipped once every 5-6 years at a minimum (I am not sure why, it is what my Jewelry store working mother told me.)
You can wear your ring while doing anything, but when you pet the dog / wash the dished / take a shower (I thought you wore a mitten the whole time…) you build up crap in the holes. Dunk the ring in windex every few weeks and scrub it with a soft bristled tooth brush. It will clean all the crap out of the nooks in the ring and re brighten it.
Better yet… if you have an expresso machine you can just hold it under the steam jet thing… cleans it right up. Although if I had to bet money you don’t have one of those.
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By Pablo on Sep 25, 2009
1) Various times to fit various time slots. One of my current pet peeves are Radio commercials lifted directly from them audio tracks of TV commercials. Sometimes they don’t quite make sense without the visual.
2) I think ‘dipped’ means different things depending on the process. I always heard dipped to mean cleaning the ring, but it apparently applies to the re-plating process as well.
3) Watch ‘How it’s Made’ on the Discovery/Science channel and you’ll see that similar products are made in the same factory.
4) Generally a little of both, I’m not a nurse, but I’ve been married to one for 4 years. They are generally not very squeemish by nature, and the schooling will quickly weed out those that are too squeemish to do the job. Even then you get odd circumstances like my wife being able to take care of critically ill patients and patients recovering from open heart surgery, yet I have to hold her hand when she gets her blood drawn.
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By Nej on Sep 29, 2009
2) I worked as a jeweler for a number of years. Our dip was a mixture of 3 parts Simple Green to 1 part ammonia cleaning liquid. Rings would hang in the dip for an hour (ish) and then cleaned off under a jet of steam.
3) When I was in Korea, the open air shopping malls always interested me. You didn’t go to an office supply store, you went to the pushpin store….the rubberband store. (I know, slightly off question, but your pushpin question made me think of the pushpin store.)
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By Jason R. Peters on Sep 30, 2009
BUNGEE JUMPING: You couldn’t pay me to do it. I say that as someone who has jumped headfirst down a 30′ waterfall in a Honduran rainforest, and who would gladly go skydiving if I could afford it.
Bungee Jumping seems stupider and more dangerous than many other thrilling activities I could name. I tried to search through the above to the physics answer as to how you knew you wouldn’t smack the underside of the bridge, and on this whole page so far, only TJ herself has even used the word “bridge”, and she used it THREE TIMES to describe the concern. Nobody else has used the word bridge since! I have to assume that although people can talk a blue streak, they simply don’t know. I sure don’t.
COMMERCIALS: Answered to death already.
SQUEAMISHNESS: The answer here is simple. The human mind is amazing and can adapt to anything. There are people who simply aren’t squeamish in the first place, but for the rest of us, there’s immersion. The stories told above confirm that even when you’re particularly apprehensive about a thing, with repetition it becomes mundane.
I used to work in a county jail. Day one, I felt an oppressive, choking stench when I walked in: The result of hundreds of men and women living in confined quarters without seperated restrooms, and rarely showering. It stank of sweat, of urine, and of apathy.
Day fifty, the smell had as much impact on me as the color paint of your office building has on most people. You might ignore it or look at it. You might wonder how it was chosen or how old it is. But you don’t really care.
The same could be said for other unpleasant aspects of life as a detention officer. At first I was terrified of having to break up an inmate fight. At first I was disgusted by strip-searching male inmates.
One new officer in our agency was squeamish. So when there was an event where a man blew his own head off, that officer was summoned all the way across the county so he could deliberately view the grisly remains.
When I was much younger, I used to obsess over the opportunity to see a naked woman — any naked woman. It seemed a magical and forbidden event that I personally might never experience.
As a married man, it’s pretty much a daily affair, and as anyone married — or thoroughly cohabitating — knows, nudity is not even as connected with sex as we might once have thought as children.
When you do something enough times, it loses any power it has over you.
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