the digger, and you were operated on by this fugitive human being with a blunt surgical instrument (but without a soil surgeon’s license), and if you were addressed as so much “dirt” to boot? I am suggesting that a self-respecting soil would flee the spot and not be all there for you to manipulate back into hole.
So there’s the answer: The soil is offended by you calling it dirt, Loren, and has flown the scene of your crime against it.
We promised Grant and Hole we would treat soil with all the respect it was due, and temporarily suppress the use of the “d” word, if they would answer our question. They provided several explanations for why you might run out of soil when refilling a hole:
1. Not saving all the soil . Dr. Hole reported one instance, where in their excitement about their work, a team of soil scientists forgot to lay down the traditional canvas to collect the collected soil: “We had lost a lot of the soil the forest floor, among dead branches and leaves.”
2. You changed the soil structure when you dug up the dirt . Grant explains:
Soil is composed of organic and inorganic material as well as air spaces and microorganisms. Soil has a structure which includes, among other things, pores (or air spaces) through which water and plant roots pass. Within the soil are worm, mole, and other tunnels and/or air space. All of this structure is destroyed during the digging process.
Hole confirms that stomping on the hole you are refilling can also compact the soil, removing pores and openings, resulting in plugging the hole too tight:
It sounds like a case of poor surgery to me. You treated the patient (the soil) badly by pounding the wound that you made in the first place.
3. Soil often dries during the digging/handing/moving Grant reports that the water in soil sometimes causes the soil to take up more space than it does when dry.
Both of our experts stressed that the scenario outlined by our correspondent is not always true. Sometimes, you may have leftover soil after refilling, as Dr. Hole explains:
It is risky to say that “you never have enough soil to refill.” Because sometimes you have too much soil. If you saved all your diggings on a canvas and put it all back, there could be so much soil hat it would mound up, looking like a brown morning coffee cake where the hole had been.
…you loosened the soil a lot when you dug it out. When you put the soil back, there were lots of gaps and pore spaces that weren’t there before. It might take a year for the soil to settle back into its former state of togetherness. A steady, light rain might speed the process a little bit.
Submitted by Loren A. Larson of Orlando, Florida .
Why Was Twenty-one Chosen as the Age of Majority?
Has there ever existed a teenager who has not wailed, loudly and frequently, “Why do I have to wait until I’m twenty-one until I can (fill in the black)?” To a kid with raging hormones, the number seems totally arbitrary.
And of course, the age is arbitrary. Now that some states have lowered the drinking age to eighteen (“If we are old enough to fight in Vietnam, we’re old enough to vote and drink ourselves silly,” went the argument), the number twenty-one seems downright capricious. How did this tradition begin?
Michael de L. Landon, professor of history at the University of Mississippi, provided us with the proper ammunition to blame the appropriate party: the British.
Of course, twenty-one is approximately the age when both young men and women complete their full physical growth. More specifically, in medieval times in western Europe, young men of noble and knightly families normally left their homes to enter into service in the household of someone of equal or higher rank (as compared to their parents) around the age of nine to eleven. Until fourteen, they served as pages, mostly under the
So there’s the answer: The soil is offended by you calling it dirt, Loren, and has flown the scene of your crime against it.
We promised Grant and Hole we would treat soil with all the respect it was due, and temporarily suppress the use of the “d” word, if they would answer our question. They provided several explanations for why you might run out of soil when refilling a hole:
1. Not saving all the soil . Dr. Hole reported one instance, where in their excitement about their work, a team of soil scientists forgot to lay down the traditional canvas to collect the collected soil: “We had lost a lot of the soil the forest floor, among dead branches and leaves.”
2. You changed the soil structure when you dug up the dirt . Grant explains:
Soil is composed of organic and inorganic material as well as air spaces and microorganisms. Soil has a structure which includes, among other things, pores (or air spaces) through which water and plant roots pass. Within the soil are worm, mole, and other tunnels and/or air space. All of this structure is destroyed during the digging process.
Hole confirms that stomping on the hole you are refilling can also compact the soil, removing pores and openings, resulting in plugging the hole too tight:
It sounds like a case of poor surgery to me. You treated the patient (the soil) badly by pounding the wound that you made in the first place.
3. Soil often dries during the digging/handing/moving Grant reports that the water in soil sometimes causes the soil to take up more space than it does when dry.
Both of our experts stressed that the scenario outlined by our correspondent is not always true. Sometimes, you may have leftover soil after refilling, as Dr. Hole explains:
It is risky to say that “you never have enough soil to refill.” Because sometimes you have too much soil. If you saved all your diggings on a canvas and put it all back, there could be so much soil hat it would mound up, looking like a brown morning coffee cake where the hole had been.
…you loosened the soil a lot when you dug it out. When you put the soil back, there were lots of gaps and pore spaces that weren’t there before. It might take a year for the soil to settle back into its former state of togetherness. A steady, light rain might speed the process a little bit.
Submitted by Loren A. Larson of Orlando, Florida .
Why Was Twenty-one Chosen as the Age of Majority?
Has there ever existed a teenager who has not wailed, loudly and frequently, “Why do I have to wait until I’m twenty-one until I can (fill in the black)?” To a kid with raging hormones, the number seems totally arbitrary.
And of course, the age is arbitrary. Now that some states have lowered the drinking age to eighteen (“If we are old enough to fight in Vietnam, we’re old enough to vote and drink ourselves silly,” went the argument), the number twenty-one seems downright capricious. How did this tradition begin?
Michael de L. Landon, professor of history at the University of Mississippi, provided us with the proper ammunition to blame the appropriate party: the British.
Of course, twenty-one is approximately the age when both young men and women complete their full physical growth. More specifically, in medieval times in western Europe, young men of noble and knightly families normally left their homes to enter into service in the household of someone of equal or higher rank (as compared to their parents) around the age of nine to eleven. Until fourteen, they served as pages, mostly under the
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