Things you learn when you’re not really trying

OK. Be honest. Raise your hand if you know the difference between cement and concrete.

You do if you read Jenny Whidden’s front-page story on Monday in which she described efforts among researchers and the cement industry to diminish the role cement plays in climate change.

In fact, in that one story alone, you learned a lot of things you might not have expected to when you dived into a story about concrete — that cement accounts for close to one-tenth of global carbon dioxide emissions, for example; that concrete is second only to water among the world’s most-consumed materials; and that cement’s CO2 emissions are nearly four times those of all those jets flying overhead combined, enough so that were it a country, the cement industry would be the fourth highest greenhouse emitter in the world, following only China, the United States and India.

But this is not a column about cement. Nor do I want to talk about carbon dioxide, pollution or climate change.

Instead, I’m marveling at the number of interesting and important things newspaper readers learn about the world beyond the immediate point of the stories that attract their attention. The Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times legend Sydney J. Harris, one of my column-writing heroes, used to write periodic essays simply listing interesting facts he’d learned while looking up something else. You don’t have to be researching topics for newspaper columns or college term papers, though, to be accidentally educated about things you didn’t realize would interest you. They’re found in newspapers every day, in manners both subtle and striking.

For example, in Steve Zalusky’s Sunday story on covered-bridge crashes like those afflicting the historic span in Long Grove, you got more than just insights into the frequency of such mishaps at structures around the country and even the association of drivers’ reliance on GPS to the phenomenon. You also learned that there are actually multiple levels of GPS apps. Most are designed for drivers of standard-sized vehicles, but another set exists for drivers of trucks and larger vehicles. There’s something useful to know next time you set out cross country in a 13-foot-high U-Haul truck.

Speaking of vehicle information, perhaps you saw a digest item in Tuesday’s Business section about a recall ordered by Hyundai and Kia for 3.4 million vehicles that could catch fire whether they’re running or not. That information itself was interesting enough, but consider what you learned about the recall process when you got to the sentence that said most affected vehicles couldn’t be repaired until June at the earliest, nine months after the recalls were announced.

Not everything you pick up on the side of the news is so potentially consequential. In Wednesday’s Food section, a recipe for mushroom soup from our M. Eileen Brown offered an insight into language, noting that there is in Japan a phrase describing tourists’ complaints about loud slurping noises they hear diners making while eating noodles. The phrase, by the way, is nu-hara or “noodle harassment.”

In addition to Whidden’s story, Monday’s paper was replete with such tidbits. A Sports story by Russell Lissau not only described the career shift of retired White Sox player Donn Pall to professional financial adviser, it also contained the fascinating nugget that Pall, who retired from baseball in 1999, still gets about a letter a day requesting his signature on baseball memorabilia.

A Health & Fitness wire story that day about the hush-hush cancer diagnoses of Great Britain’s Princess Kate and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin showed the impact of celebrity openness as it described the value former Sen. Robert Dole and former first lady Betty Ford had on helping people seek treatment for previously suppressed problems like erectile dysfunction and substance abuse, respectively.

And, a story on Google’s pretend April Fools’ Day joke that became gmail included the intriguing bit of trivia that the project was named for a running gag in the Dilbert comic strip. (You might save that one for your Jeopardy! appearance someday.)

And, Marni Pyke’s front-page story on Boeing’s ongoing quality issues not only showed the many details pilots consider as they prepare for a flight and how much the airlines rely on the FAA for safety guidance, but also described just what that door plug was that blew out of the side of a Boeing 737-9 Max jet so famously. It’s a device on that plane model that replaces an emergency exit door if airlines want to remove seats.

And, of course, there was that distinction at the core of Whidden’s story: Concrete is a mix of water, sand, gravel and cement, that being the substance that holds it all together.

Sure, they’re not all answers to enduring questions about the human condition. But such insights and tidbits are waiting in some form in nearly every story nearly every day. Keep an eye out; you’ll find you get a good bit more out of the news stories you read than just the information or entertainment you originally bargained for.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher.