'Brainworms' leave when they're ready

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 25, 2009 | by Bill Sones

Question: In his 1876 story "A Literary Nightmare," Mark Twain described his narrator as rendered helpless by his obsession with certain jingle rhymes: "They took instant and entire possession of me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain ... Presently I discovered my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle ... I jingled all through the evening, went to bed, rolled, tossed, and jingled all night long." What's behind today's epidemic of such "brainworms"?

Answer: Although brainworms are no doubt ancient, the term has come into common use only in the last few decades, probably because suddenly music is ubiquitous, says neurologist Oliver Sacks in his book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain."

Many of us are plugged into iPods, immersed in daylong concerts of our own choosing, and for everyone else, there's nonstop and unavoidable music in bars, restaurants, shops and gyms. Much of it is designed to "hook" the listener with "sticky" music or "catchy" tunes that bore their way like an earwig into the ear or mind. Think of the wordless themes of "Mission: Impossible" or Beethoven's "Fifth," or Alka Seltzer's ad "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz" or Kit Kat's "Gimme a break, gimme a break."

Brainworms arrive unbidden, neurologically completely irresistible, and leave only in their own time.

Question:What's the physical force that most determines where the baseball pitcher must aim his pitch? And what's the point of the pitcher's mound anyway?

Answer: Without the pitcher's mound, the game would be plagued with pitches going into the dirt or bouncing off home plate, reports the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The force, of course, is gravity, which tugs every pitch and batted ball downward at an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. For this reason, the pitcher must aim his pitches not directly at the catcher's glove but a couple of feet above where he wants the pitch to come down.

Even the fastest pitcher's smokeball may drop by as much as 2 1/ 2 feet en route to the catcher. Here is where the pitcher's mound, by helping give the pitch extra elevation, is not only critical to the pitcher's performance but also to the greatness of the "grand old game." Gravity in control -- now let's "Play ball!"

Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@cs.com