Maybe Goliath was like 'Irish Giant'

Question: Who was the "Irish Giant" Charles Byrne, and how does his story cast modern light on the defeat of huge Goliath by diminutive David?

Answer: Born in 1761 of normal parents, he "grew like a cornstalk" in youth, which village gossipers attributed to his being born atop a high haystack, says Jan Bondeson in "A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities."

He grew to roughly 7 feet, 10 inches, a "modern Living Colossus." Tall men walk considerably under his arm, it was written, but he stoops, is not well shaped, and his appearance is far from wholesome. When he died, his body fell into the hands of a museum schemer, and the skeleton was put on display.

The question of the etiology of the Irish Giant's growth was not resolved until 1909, when radiographic examination of the skeleton confirmed a pituitary adenoma producing the growth hormone. Typical of this condition, he was weak and sickly in spite of his great stature. "Some have speculated that Goliath also was a sufferer and that the weakness associated with the disease accounts for his ignominious defeat at the hands of David."

Had Byrne lived today, says Bondeson, surgery could have been performed at an early age. "He might never have been a celebrity or gained immortality in a museum. Instead, he might have led a longer and happier life."

Question: Are you afflicted with "aibohphobia"? Then better stop reading this and skip to the next question.

Answer: Since you're still reading, you obviously aren't afraid of palindromes, words that are spelled the same backward as forward, like aibohphobia, meaning "fear of palindromes."

This phobic word is an artificially constructed one since "aiboh" is not an existing or meaningful root, says the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia." Some genuine word palindromes: noon, madam, radar, deified, racecar. The longest palindrome in the Oxford English Dictionary is the 12-letter "tattarrattat," a nonce word by James Joyce in "Ulysses."

Guinness World Records lists the longest known palindrome in any language as the Finnish 19-letter word "saippuakivikauppias," meaning "a dealer in lye" (or a seller of soap stone). That one's enough to throw a little aibohphobia into just about anybody.

Question: Bring a TV to a football game or other televised sports event and how much delay will you notice between real-time and TV-time?

Answer: Satellite transmission delays are about 0.25 second for each up and down link, plus time for video compression, says Mark Fischetti in "Scientific American." For a football game, add in another 0.1 second processing for "the yellow line" that marks off for viewers where the offensive team must advance to gain a first down, and TV-time will lag by about 1.5 seconds.