Pointless Questions with Aaron Mucciolo

More people are sending in questions, which is good. Still more people are coming up to me and saying ‘Damn, I forgot what my great question was…’ which really just tells me that there are a lot of lonely people out there just looking for someone to talk to.

Can someone be elected president more than twice if the terms are not consecutive?
Nope. The twenty-second amendment specifically states “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” What’s more, someone who has acted as president or assumed someone else’s presidency (such as a vice president taking office after the resignation of the president) for more than two years of a term can only be elected to the office once. For example, Gerald Ford, had he won the presidency in 1976, could not have run for re-election in 1980.
There is, as always, a loophole. Professor of Politics Ron Kahn, the campus constitutional scholar, was not aware of any laws — and certainly nothing in the Constitution — which prevent someone from assuming a position in the order of presidential succession even if they have already been elected to two terms as president. So a Gore-Clinton ticket (or Bush-Reagan) in 2004 could still be in the cards.

How do combination locks work? —Reginald Patterson, double degree sophomore.
Inside a combination lock are a series of flat disks (called cams) equal in number to the number of numbers in the combination (Catch that? To clarify — the mailroom locks each have three cams). Each cam has one notch (or gate) cut into its rim and one peg sticking out from each face. That makes for two pegs and one gate per cam. And you thought you’d never learn anything in college…
One of the cams is fixed to the dial you turn. The pegs on each disk all line up with one another so turning the dial eventually engages all three cams. Turning the dial the other way will only turn the top cam until it catches the second disk’s peg. (Turning it too far in this direction will engage the third cam and undo that part of the combination.) Once the second number is in, turning the dial in the original direction will only turn the top disk.
Picture your lock from high school — remember the notch on the end of the hasp (the U-shaped bar that you clicked into the body of the lock)? Inside the lock is a latch that fits into the notch, preventing the lock from opening. If the numbers have all been entered correctly the notches on all three cams will line up, allowing the latch to spring back and release the hasp.

How do they get minute rice to cook faster than regular rice? —Adam Sorkin, College sophomore
Simple: it’s not rice. It’s actually rice meal (ground rice mixed with water) cooked to solidify the mixture, formed into long, spaghetti-like strands and then chopped into individual ‘grains.’ The processing and ‘pre-cooking’ breaks down much of the starch so the rice requires less time to fully cook.
As a health teacher of mine once pointed out, this process makes instant rice one of the most pointless foods on the planet. The nutrients in rice are found primarily in their brownish husks or coats. These coats are removed to make white rice and it is this white rice that is formed into the meal. So unless Uncle Ben’s enriched the meal, you get neither nutrients nor starch from your ‘rice.’

Unfortunately, the piece on those orange ladybugs cannot be run this week due to classified reasons.
Put and end to your lonely ways (and mine too). Email aaron.mucciolo@oberlin.edu, or write to Mooch, c/o The Oberlin Review, Wilder Box 90. Names published only with permission.