Last October, I wrote a post pondering a few random mysteries that were percolating in my head at the time (That was before many of you found my blog, so you may want to check it out). Well, today I’ve finally got a few more questions that don’t seem to have any good answers. Join with me, and in the immortal words of Robert Stack, “you may be able to help solve a mystery.” Like….
What is the generic term for Dr. Pepper?
It’s worth getting your heart ripped out for, apparently.
Dr. Pepper is a wildly popular soda that has been around for a very long time… like since the year Doc Brown and Marty McFly roamed the Wild West, 1885. There are people who absolutely swear by this carbonated concoction… although I am definitely not one of them since I can’t even stand the smell of Dr. Pepper. Because of its legion of fans, every other beverage giant and generic soda maker has had to introduce its own version of the Dr. Pepper formula. And while those generics have no problems slapping names like “Cola” on their Coke imitations, and “Lemon Lime” on their Sprite variants, they run into a little trouble when it comes to how to properly describe what’s in their cans of almost-Dr. Pepper…
Apparently this flavor has something to do with the medical profession….
The best these generic equivalents can do to let their customers know “Hey, this is a knockoff of Dr. Pepper!” is steal the “Dr.” and make sure the can is a dark burgundy color. At least Coca Cola showed a little creativity by naming their Dr. soda Mr. Pibb… but why do these drinks need brand names with human titles in them? Can’t someone come up with a generic term to describe what Dr. Pepper is, so we can keep our store shelves from looking like a list of your health insurance company’s network physicians?
Calling Dr. Pepper, Dr. Thunder, Dr. Howard!
Why does the musical scale start at C?
Whoever invented this should get a C-minus.
Now while I’m not particularly knowledgeable in music theory, and I know there are many other musical scales out there, the one that even non-musicians are all familiar with is the scale of C-Major. You probably learned it in school as “Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do”. The first note, do, is C. The scale then works up alphabetically to G, before starting over at A and that last “do” is when it hits C once again. Why is that? Who chose “la”, 3/4 of the way through the basic scale, to be note A and why? It doesn’t make any sense at all. It reminds me how scoreboards in baseball sometimes look when a game goes into extra innings…
Spinal Tap would want to know why the scoreboard starts at 11.
Looking at a piano keyboard doesn’t give any answers either, since the A note is buried in the middle of the set of three black keys. Not the logical starting place for a lettering system of the notes. Given the fucked up way the letters were assigned to the notes they represent, I guess getting a C in music class would be awesome, while an A would be failing. Maybe this is why VH-1 is having to “Save the Music” in our school system, because one of its basic components doesn’t make a damn bit of sense…
I’ll never get these notes right!!! Never!!!
Do we see the same colors as everyone else?
It must suck to be color blind.
This has really bugged me for a long time. I’ve always wondered if our individual brains don’t all perceive colors differently. For example, what MBRS might see as green…
Angel might see as purple…
And Sandy might see as red!
I’ve been told I’m really reaching to even consider something so absurd, but think about it. We only know of color blindness because those who suffer from it can’t recognize the difference between two colors… yet they “see” those colors much differently than we do, obviously. There would be no way to tell if two people who can distinguish between all different colors actually SEE those colors the same way. Even if we were able to use sci-fi technology somehow project what a person’s brain visually sees onto a monitor, we’d still be processing that through our own eyes and see the colors the way we perceive them. It’s a rather brain twisting thought, but also one we will never ever be able to prove one way or the other…
Now I’ve got a headache…
Well, that’s all the mysteries I have for now. I’ll be sure to drop more of the toxic sludge that sloshes through my brain at some point in the future. But I do have one last thing to say….
Happy birthday, Merby! I put a bow on your present!!!
I also torture myself with questions that there don’t seem to be answers for. If even google doesn’t know the answer it’s not worth pondering!
We need a guru at the top of a mountain to ask our unGoogleable questions to…
I love Dr. Pepper in all his incarnations. Even Mr. Pibb.
The Dr. has a huge fan club. Back when the soda machines in our break room were filled by the store and not outside vendors, we had a manager so addicted to Dr. Pepper, that she made damn sure that machine was always full of cold DP. Meanwhile, me and the rest of the Pepsiites from this area often dealt with red lights on the Pepsi machine because it wasn’t considered as important as the Dr. Pepper machine was. That left the Coke machine, which was always full since hardly anybody around here drank it. Grrr…
I don’t like cola at all. None of it. I don’t drink much soda, but when I do it’s usually Dr. P.
I sometimes think about the colour thing as well. I’ll call something sky blue, someone else will swear it’s grey. Are we seeing exactly the same but assigning a different name to it, or are we seeing a different colour?
Spooky.
I’m with you on the Dr Pepper. Frightful stuff. Possibly even worse than Cherry Coke.
That’s actually what Dr. Pepper reminds me of is cherry soda… if I can smell the soda before I can get it in my mouth to taste it, I’m probably not going to like it. Probably also explains why I hate coffee….
WOW – these are some deep mysteries. I can even wrap my piggy brain around some of them. WOW – I think I’ll go get mom a Dr Pepper out of the cold box and take a nap to reflect on some answers :) Happy Sunday. XOXO – Bacon
Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too?
Snorts. Yep! XOXO – Bacon
I can answer one mystery for you. The reason that the CM scale is so popular is because it’s the only key that doesn’t have any sharps or flats. In other words, it’s all the white keys (the only other one is its relative minor, which is the key of Am), so that’s the one that people are started out on because they don’t have to remember which notes are white and which are black.
You’re welcome.
And I had no idea that Mr. Pibb was a version Dr. Thunder! I’ve always thought it was root beer, which I guess means that I’ve never had one…..
I had a feeling you would respond to the music question…. but that really didn’t answer the root question of that mystery and has now brought up a new one. I guess what I really want to know is “Why were the notes so assigned as they are?” and now that I’m aware of the existence of A-minor, why is that not the scale everybody knows since it actually runs from A-G?
Pibb was what Dr. Pepper drinkers (reluctantly) always went to when there was no DP to be had, so I figured that’s what it was. Then it clicked with the Mr. = Dr. I always wondered by Pepsi never got on the Dr. Pepper bandwagon with their own version…
Aarrgh! I could explain every mystery you have, all of your answers lie in musical theory. But I have a feeling it’s more of a rhetorical mystery and I don’t think I can make a reply that long, I’d have to start my own blog and make it a column!
If you really are interested, let me know. Once we finish with the major and minor ones, we can start on diatonic scales! If C and A make you crazy, you’ll absolutely love Lydian and Aeolian……ha!
That may be a discussion for you know where, should the opportunity ever arise again….
now my mind is really reeling – p.s. what is the name for those plastic tips on the end of shoelaces?
Aglets!!! The only mystery there is why anybody bothered to name them at all….
so true, plus the name is so stupid, and when would you ever refer to them? does anyone ever replace their aglets?
If I did feel the need to replace one, I would just use duct tape. Of course, I guess it would still be considered an aglet…
The colour thing isn’t a silly question. Many smart people have wondered about that too. The guy from xkcd has done a lot of work exploring this question. It doesnt totally solve the mystery but it should be interesting to you … http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Thanks for passing that along. I’m really bad at knowing the names of colors that aren’t among the basics anyway, so I’d have probably flunked that test….
Also, this … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08
That’s probably more like what you were talking about actually.
YES!!! Thank you! That’s exactly what I was wondering, and as always, an informative take from vsauce!
Thanks for that link andytallman101 and for introducing us to vsauce. :)
I too have pondered the color thing…..it is a really interesting question. :)
I don’t think it’s something I thought of until I started doing this art, since I’m so big on using bold and bright colors…. and it occurred to me that maybe my bright reds might look like blues to someone…. or perhaps some color I couldn’t even imagine because my brain can’t process it!
Hmmmm …
Yes. I think there was once a hip hop song called “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm?”
So the color thing is really interesting, especially when we are trying to communicate with people. Recently at work, I had to get a Pantone book (think of a whole bunch of paint chips organized and numbered) that was the same one as someone at another location was going to buy. That way when I was trying to make the product I am working on a particular color (Blue = Pantone 300 C for example) we could talk about the EXACT color even though we were not in the same location. Someone I have to work with on occasion has a much less discerning eye and think things I find very different are all the same. Those discussions can be very frustrating even if we are in the same room. Happens alot when it is just shades of the same color.