DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge today, I did a double-take when I saw a big electronic traffic sign announcing  CAUTION DEBRIS AHEAD!

Oh, I’d have given just about anything to sneak a “.com” in there… anyone know how to hack the Bridge district’s traffic sign controller?

This is one of those things you just need to know. It actually came up in a conversation at a party a few weeks ago, but nobody was certain of the answer, and we were left in that unsatisfying condition of speculation… the sort of thing that drove us all straight home to Google. Well, that’s true in my case, anyway; the rest of the people at the party probably have lives.

Into whichever camp you might fall, the addicted-to-google, or the having-a-life, you can spare yourself from our embarrassing fate! Read on for the fascinating answer to the question: what are the four taste sensations?

Students of science may recall that the tongue can identify only a few basic tastes, and that the rest of what we call “flavor” is comprised primarily of smell (olfaction) and, to a lesser degree, tactile sensation within the mouth. Here are the four taste sensations most folks can recite, if they were paying attention in 7th grade rather than chucking paper wads out the window when the teacher’s back was turned:

• bitter
• salty
• sour
• sweet

Students endowed with robust memories might even recall that specific areas of the tongue are sensitive to each of these four sensations, as illustrated by this nifty interactive taste-region map.

If you didn’t remember the four sensations, or the taste regions of the tongue, don’t feel bad… all the people who did remember were incorrect anyway.

Yes, that’s right: the arcane knowledge they dredged up from the depths of grade-school memory is inaccurate in two respects; worse, it was known to be incorrect at the time those folks’ textbooks were written. (By the way, this is one of the ways I justify my feeble powers of recall — I figure most of the stuff I’ve forgotten was wrong to begin with.)

Here is the straight scoop: scientists now recognize a fifth taste sensation, which at the party I remembered vaguely by saying, “And what’s that fifth one, they have it in Japan…” which shed about .00015 yocto-watts of illumination on the topic, even though my comment was historically accurate.

The sensation is called umami; it was discovered and named by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda in the early 1900s. The chemical that causes umami — that is, the substance that triggers the taste receptors that transmit the message “this isn’t bitter, salty, sour, or sweet, but something else, and by the way I’m kind of enjoying it” to the brain — is glutamic acid, or, essentially, MSG.

What a coincidence, you might wonder, that a known flavor enhancer (monosodium glutamate) would contain the precise chemical that triggers this umami flavor! It is in fact no coincidence at all: Kikunae Ikeda invented MSG.

Finally, in stark contradiction to the taste map referenced above, no less an authority than Scientific American has this to say: Taste researchers have known for many years that these tongue maps are wrong. The maps arose early in the 20th century as a result of a misinterpretation of research reported in the late 1800s. The article is entitled, unambiguously, The Taste Map: All Wrong.

So there you have it: five taste sensations, not four, and no spatial segregation of sensitivities across the tongue. The only other thing you might need to know about the sensation of taste is that there is early evidence of a sixth sort of receptor, the existence of which is demonstrated by a friend of mine who can often be heard to say, “That tastes like ass!” I don’t think anyone has researched that particular component of gustation yet though.

A work crew from the local seamless-gutter franchise came by the house to repair a leaking downspout. The three guys dressed just alike: they wore shorts but no shirts. They had uneven coloration, from standing with their backs to the sun. And they all carried expensive sunglasses.

But for these similarities, the differences were revealing. The crew foreman was a big, fleshy, muscular guy with a deep red-brown sunburn, an intensity of purpose, and piercing eyes. The fancy sunglasses were propped up on his forehead.

His crew was made up of two other guys, the leader of which was muscular but not burly, deeply tan but not burned, and clearly skilled but not in charge. He also had $200 sunglasses, worn on the back of his neck.

The third guy was the rookie. Besides the fact that he was standing around looking clueless most of the time, I knew he was the apprentice because he was scrawny and not very tan. His sunglasses were clipped to his belt.

I stifled a laugh (generally good advice when surrounded by half-dressed men), for this trio looked like nothing so much as a set of animated Matryoshka dolls — if they’d split apart at the waist, they could be nested one inside another.

I had occasion to attend the 2002 graduation ceremony at Sonoma State University, to see my therapist get yet another Master’s degree. The college president made a speech, opening with a well-timed (and well-received) joke in which he took responsibility for the day’s gorgeous weather. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was funny, and people laughed. He seemed likeable, in control, and comfortable.

The president introduced another speaker, who came to the podium, thanked the president for the introduction, and began to ad-lib a comment in response to the president’s weather joke. “It’s great that you were able to arrange this beautiful day for us,” he began, “because if you hadn’t…” I wondered where he’d go with this. I was surprised to hear not only that he would ad-lib an opening joke — which seemed like a bold move given the audience of 3000 people — but that he’d use a form that appeared could only end by insulting the college president.

The speaker paused. Whether the pause was to set up his punchline, or to reconsider whether he had a punchline, was not immediately clear.

It became clear. The speaker’s regret projected clearly through the PA system as we realized that he did not, in fact, know how to complete the sentence he’d started, and which was hanging in the morning air like the body of a convicted cattle rustler. (I didn’t want to look, but I stared in horrified fascination just the same.)

I can only guess what might have been going through his mind: regret at ad-libbing his opener, when no doubt there was a reasonably good one scripted on the first page of his notes… regret at not having thought of a good punchline before he stood up… regret at standing, metaphorically naked, in front of 3000 people, half a sentence into an insult to his host.

Here’s what he finally offered… “because if he hadn’t, his name would be on that terrible list.”

That terrible list? Ahh, of course, he’s referring to the official United States List of California College Presidents Who Don’t Manage To Arrange for Great Weather During Graduation Ceremonies. I think they keep a copy of this in Sacramento, but it’s available for public viewing to any US citizen under the Freedom of Information Act.

The speaker pushed through, though, and continued with what I thought was a very good address, providing good advice and inspiration to the graduating class, as well as anyone with an interest in public speaking.

After two days of restaurant food, including one day where I’d succumbed to the unwillingness of the world outside my kitchen to offer anything to eat that didn’t used to walk around and stink, I was desperate for a salad. The pickings were slim out there along highway 12, thousands of acres of grape vines and walnut trees notwithstanding, so we ended up at Safeway (regional supermarket chain) in Lodi, and I was sent inside to inspect the deli.

This store offered the traditional sandwiches-to-order station, plus, unusually I thought, a China Express takeout counter.

I acknowledged to the sandwich clerk that I’d seen the prepackaged salads, and asked if, in addition, the store offered an open salad bar. The clerk said no. Then, unhelpfully, he offered “But we’re having a special on Asian barbecued spareribs with peanut sauce, just $2.49 with your Safeway Club Card.” Why he felt that was relevant, I have no idea, but I stepped away before he recited any other of the day’s exciting sale events around the store.

We gathered all our food selections, queued for the checkout, and asked the cashier if she knew of a park in the area where we could eat. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not from around here. Let me ask someone else.” She relayed our query aloud to the next cashier, making our request a lot more public than I appreciated, earning me suspicious stares from all the locals in line around me, as if it was a wholly unnatural thing to seek a public picnic area on a Sunday afternoon. Or maybe they were reacting to my T-shirt, which depicted Iron Maiden’s grotesque mascot/gremlin Eddie with middle fingers on both hands raised toward the viewer, and a hand-drawn speech balloon proclaiming in ragged four-inch-high letters “LODI SUCKS!”

Ultimately no one was able to help us, because the entire staff of the Lodi Safeway commutes in from out of town, where they have no parks. But we found a suitable picnic area anyway, thanks to my eagle-eyed wife, who can apparently spot those brown “state park” signs while driving and conversing simultaneously in two languages. So we had a nice lunch, took a brief walk along the river, and, I don’t know, the world exploded or something, preventing me from finding a satisfying wrap-up to what has become a fairly tedious story.