Its amazing what you can learn from the internet

[patrick]

Dear Cecil:

I have a fear of, yet a morbid curiosity about, execution by electrocution. How does one get in to see an execution? What preparations go on before an execution? What happens to the prisoner before and after? What physically happens to the prisoner during an electrocution? Has anyone ever been strapped in, then taken out? Are there tours of Death Houses at prisons? Please try to be as detailed as possible. --Scared Stiff in the Chair, Chicago

Dear Scared:

Great. Another nut case. Ordinarily I try to avoid inquiries from the mentally unbalanced, but this time I'm going to make an exception, in hopes of stamping out any incipient enthusiasm for the barbaric practice alluded to above. The squeamish are advised to avert their eyes.

Now then, clown, suppose we wish to electrocute somebody. Suppose it is yourself. Around midnight (this schedule for purposes of illustration only; times vary from state to state) we transfer you from Death Row to a cell next to the death chamber. At 5 AM or so we shave the top of your head and the calf of one of your legs, so as to permit better contact with the electrodes. A couple hours later we read you the death warrant. A few hours after that we take you into the electrocution chamber and strap you into the chair at the wrists, waist, and ankles, in the presence of witnesses. (Again, the exact number varies from state to state. Sometimes the witnesses view the proceedings from behind a one-way window.) Electrodes are clamped to head and leg.

At the designated hour, an electrician throws a switch and a high-voltage alternating current surges through your body for two or three minutes--typically starting at 2,000 volts at 5 amps, with the voltage varied periodically. Your muscles will instantly contract to a state of absolute rigidity, causing your heart and lungs to stop immediately. Some medical observers go so far as to say your blood will boil. If the guards have been careless and bolted you in too loosely, an arc may jump from the electrode to your body, searing your flesh. If you're lucky, you die promptly. If not, you get another jolt. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever survived this process. By and by the doctors examine your remains and certify your decease.

Many years of scientific experiment have gone into making electrocution the refined art it is today. First suggested in the 1880s as a humane alternative to hanging, the practice figured prominently in the dispute between Thomas Edison and George Westinghuse over the merits of direct vs. alternating current. Claiming the latter was too dangerous, Edison thought to prove his point graphically by equipping Sing Sing's new electric chair with one of the competition's AC generators, an application for which it proved to be admirably suited. Unfortunately, upon being presented with their first prospective victim, one William Kemmler (he had murdered his girlfriend), the executioners seriously underestimated the amount of juice required. They burned him for a mere 17 seconds, at the conclusion of which Kemmler was still twitching slightly. The current was thereupon reapplied for another 70 seconds, causing one of the electrodes to smoke. Westinghouse later commented, "They could have done better with an ax." Still, Kemmler could safely be said to have expired, and a new era was born.

Offhand I can't think of anybody who was strapped in only to be taken out later, although I do know of a prisoner in California who had been placed in the gas chamber when a reprieve was phoned in--too late, as it turned out. Another guy in Texas got a reprieve while on the gurney with an IV in his arm waiting for a lethal injection. (He was executed six months later.) I am not aware of any tours, and I am not particularly interested in learning of any. Witnesses, incidentally, are usually reporters, officials, and the like; persons who are assholes, such as yourself, are not permitted to participate.

 

[patrick]

I know its not Kylie Friday, but let this be a warning

Dear Straight Dope:

When I was a teenager, I heard that masturbation, or maybe excessive masturbation, may result in shrinking of the *****. I masturbate about once every day or two . . . what can I say, I'm a guy. But anyway, I have noticed a slight size difference of my *****. About a half an inch--a little more. I'm worried that masturbation was the cause of my ***** seeming to shrink. So obviously, my question is, does masturbation result in shrinking of the *****? --Kyle, CA

SDSTAFF Jill replies:

I'll take a whack at this one (ho ho ho). You think 1/2 inch shrinkage is a problem? Many men in Southeast Asia are convinced that the ***** can telescope back into the body under certain conditions. Which, strictly speaking, it can. I discussed this in a staff report a while ago about genital shrinkage due to cold weather (www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpenis.html) so I'm kind of the ***** Shrinkage Expert around here. (Cecil also covers the topic in www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_083.html.) Reassuring anxious males is also just part of my altruistic nature. Okay, sometimes I like to scare the pants off them, too.

In short (heh), no. Masturbation does not cause the ***** to shrink (well, except back to normal size after it makes the ***** grow), nor does it cause acne, mental illness or hairy palms. In her brief stint as Surgeon General of the U.S., Jocelyn Elders pointed out (with ill-advised common sense) that masturbation is a normal part of human sexuality and about the safest sex there is. You won't contract any sexually transmitted diseases or cause an unintended pregnancy, and you don't have to worry about performance anxiety or ever leaving your partner unsatisfied. And really, there's no need not to respect yourself in the morning, unless you didn't respect yourself before.

People have been warning of dire health effects from masturbation for centuries. It's all myth. Here's a frightening list from the works of Ellen G. White, early leader of the Seventh Day Adventists (thanks to www.proaxis.com/~solo/pleasbsh.htm):

1. Brain weakened
2. Cancerous tumors
3. Catarrh
4. Dropsy
5. Eye-sight weakened
6. Headache
7. Head decay
8. Insanity
9. Kidney disease
10. Liver disease
11. Lung disease
12. Memory loss
13. Nervous system damage
14. Neuralgia
15. Pains in the system
16. Premature death
17. Rheumatism
18. Spinal weakness/problems

This website's purpose is actually to promote the joys of masturbation, including a section on "jack-off/jill-off jokes" and another section on "boning up on your technique": www.proaxis.com/~solo/hme.htm.

So anyway, stop worrying. Go ahead and poke fun at yourself.

--SDSTAFF Jill
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board

 

[patrick]

How to slow down your car

Dear Cecil:

My wife and I are at somewhat of an impasse. We debate (intermittently) whether or not braking a manual-shift car should be done solely with the brakes (meanwhile putting the car into neutral) or by gradually slowing down the car by downshifting--that is, shifting from fifth to fourth to third, etc., and allowing engine compression to slow the car. Which is better for the car? Downshifting and braking, or braking while in neutral? I guess what I am trying to determine is, which will need to be replaced first, the brakes or the clutch? --Gearheads, East Brookfield, Massachusetts

Dear Gearheads:

We have a problem here. On the one hand, the pretty much unanimous opinion of people in the automotive business is that downshifting to slow the car is a completely stupid and pointless practice that increases the risk of a premature (and expensive) clutch job. On the other hand, I always downshift myself. So you have to ask yourself who you're going to believe: (a) the massed weight of expert authority, or (b) those automotive schmucks. I'll merely lay out the facts, and you can decide for yourself.

Among the more vocal exponents of the don't-downshift school are Tom and Ray Magliozzi, hosts of the radio show Car Talk. These guys admit you should downshift when driving down a long hill; otherwise your brakes heat up so much that the brake fluid boils and you lose your ability to stop the car. But on all other occasions, they argue, downshifting does nothing but wear out your clutch faster. A clutch job is expensive; a brake job is cheap by comparison. The proper way to stop is to rely solely on the brakes. Don't put the car into neutral right away, though. Wait till you get down to 10 or 15 miles per hour or just before the engine starts to lug, then throw in the clutch and shift into second in case you need to accelerate. When you come to a full stop, shift into neutral and release the clutch.

Numerous mechanics, auto engineers, and auto buffs echo this view. They say downshifting may have made sense in the 60s and earlier, when many cars had manual drum brakes. These were much less effective than today's power disk brakes and you needed all the help you could get stopping the car. But not any more.

OK, fine. But let's consider the advantages of downshifting:

It's fun. Face it, this is the main reason anybody drives a stick-shift car in the first place, as opposed to an automatic like a normal person. You get to shift gears like Al Unser Jr. and tame a hurtling hunk of steel, even if all you're doing is going to the corner for a box of baby wipes.
You have more control over the vehicle. This is the fallback contention of most downshifters once they realize how feeble the conserve-the-brakes argument is. By downshifting you're always in the appropriate gear for the speed you're traveling. Suppose you were a brakes-only type of guy doing 40 miles per hour in fourth gear. You see a red light ahead and brake down to 20. Suddenly in the rearview mirror you notice a runaway concrete truck bearing down on you. You want to accelerate out of harm's way, but you lose precious time shifting from fourth to second and get creamed. Whereas if you'd been downshifting and were in second already, you could accelerate immediately and plow into the car in front of you. All right, so maybe this isn't the ideal illustration. But you see what I'm getting at.
Besides, we have to ask ourselves, how much harm can downshifting do? Sure, you're putting twice the wear on your throwout bearing and other critical clutch parts. But it's not like they make these things out of plastic. Why, I've been downshifting my Toyota since the day I drove out of the new-car showroom and . . . well, come to think of it, I had to get the clutch rebuilt at 85,000 miles. But everybody knows '87 Corollas had clutch problems.

OK, I'm not claiming I've got an airtight case. Tell you what: I won't hassle you about tapping the top of your Coke can to keep the fizz from exploding, and you don't hassle me about my idiosyncrasies with the clutch.

 

[patrick]

More or less M.P.G.?

Dear Cecil:

No doubt this query won't have the same mass appeal as some of your other columns, i.e., sneezing after orgasm, but I feel it merits a moment of your time. On a recent excursion across the highways of this state, my traveling companion posed a perplexing problem. She contends that the average automobile is much more efficient with the windows down and the air conditioner off. I, on the other hand, maintain that the aerodynamic drag created by having the windows down makes the savings marginal at best. Help us, Cecil, as our discussions are getting rather . . . heated. --Maintaining My Cool, Phoenix

Cecil replies:

You'd think it would be pretty easy to get to the bottom of a question like this. Just call up Detroit and ask, right? Guess again. All you get for your trouble is loads of contradictory doubletalk.

But never fear. Cecil recently arranged (at no little expense, I might note) a cross-country expedition for the express purpose of determining which gives you the bette gas mileage: having the air conditioner off and the windows down, or the AC on and the windows up. For purposes of comparison, we also checked the mileage with the AC off and the windows up, which theoretically would give you the best mileage of all. In between these tests, we spent some time contemplating the Atlantic in lovely Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

The car was a four-door Pontiac 6000 LE with 1,600 miles on it at the start. We drove 300 miles in each of the combinations described above, maintaining a 60 MPH speed on more or less level interstates throughout. Here's what happened:

Windows up, AC off: 35 MPG
Windows up, AC on: 34.4 MPG
Windows down (all four), AC off: 33.8 MPG

These figures are preliminary, of course, but interesting all the same. We got slightly better mileage running the AC with the windows up than we did with the fresh-air method--a surprising result, some may feel, but there you have it. Still, the difference was slight, and in my humble opinion, statistically insignificant. I should point out that it wasn't very hot outside, and we didn't have the air conditioning on at full blast. If we'd run it at arctic maximum, I suspect the mileages would have turned out to be identical.

Unfortunately for you, M., I ran out of vacation before I was able to prove this idea conclusively. Pending further investigation, the best I can do is declare your argument a draw.

THE ARGUMENT HEATS UP

Dear Cecil:

As researchers at the Florida Solar Energy Center, we have conducted an experiment that sheds some light on whether running the car air conditioner during freeway driving has less effect on fuel economy than turning the AC off and rolling down the windows, which increases drag. Our answer, which was obtained using a VW GTI under repeated testing with fairly accurate instrumentation, is contrary to yours. Although rolling down the windows reduced mileage, the reduction at 67 MPH (3%) was not as great as that caused by running the AC (12%). The answer could vary depending on the automobile. One would assume that a different answer might be obtained using a very aerodynamic car with a large power plant (engine load from AC is a smaller fraction of overall power output). --Danny S. Parker, Florida Solar Energy Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida

Cecil replies:

As scientists, Dan, we accept calmly the possibility that our results may not be replicated by other researchers. So you won't hear us saying you guys are lying scumbags. We note that our car had a bigger engine than yours, and that we were doing our testing in Ohio in May, not (as in your case) south Florida in July. Obviously more research is called for. Unfortunately, by the time we get around to it, we'll probably all by using air cars powered by nuclear reactors.