Uncle John’s Briefs Read online

  You could make over two million different sandwich combinations from the Subway menu.

  NASCAR 101

  Stock car racing has a rich history…and a complicated set of rules and guidelines. Here’s a quick guide for the uninitiated.

  How did stock car racing begin? During Prohibition (1920–33), bootleggers in the southern United States relied on fast cars to stay ahead of the law. To maintain a low profile, they souped up their engines and shock absorbers but kept the stock, or factory-made, bodies. After a night on the run, the bootleggers would sometimes meet to boast about their cars and race them against each other on oval dirt tracks. This soon became a Sunday tradition, complete with picnic baskets.

  How did NASCAR begin? In 1938 Bill France Sr., a mechanic and amateur race-car driver, began running operations at a track in Daytona Beach, Florida, near a stretch of beach where several early land-speed records had been set. The young sport of racing was in trouble, though: Shady promoters often wouldn’t pay the drivers, and the lack of consistent car guidelines led to frequent disagreements. France worked to legitimize the sport. After a series of meetings that culminated in Daytona Beach on February 21, 1948, he convinced the drivers and promoters to form a single entity—the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. France ran NASCAR until 1972, when his son, Bill France Jr., took over. The younger France ran the organization until 2000.

  What’s the difference between stock cars and other race cars? Race cars such as Formula One are built specifically for auto racing, while stock cars are made by auto manufacturers for use on regular roads. In NASCAR’s early days, the cars were strictly stock. But starting in the 1950s, certain modifications were allowed to the engines and chassis to make the cars faster and safer.

  How fast do stock cars go? It depends on the track. On short tracks, which are less than a mile long, the average speed is about 82 mph. On intermediate tracks, between one and two miles long, the fastest speeds top out at about 150 mph. Tracks over two miles in length are called super-speedways, and there are only two: Talladega, in Alabama, and Daytona, Florida, where the season begins each year. These two tracks boast an average speed of 188 mph. It used to be higher…until a horrific wreck at Talladega in 1987 when Bobby Allison’s car nearly flew into the stands. NASCAR now uses restrictor plates at these two tracks—a device placed over the intake valve to reduce the car’s power.

  A 1792 law made coin defacement, counterfeiting, and embezzlement by U.S. Mint employees punishable by death.

  Why are the cars covered with ads? In 1972, two years after losing the right to advertise tobacco products on television, the R. J. Reynolds Company tried a new marketing tactic by sponsoring the first Winston Cup series (now called the Sprint Cup). In the mid-’70s, partial races were telecast on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, giving NASCAR a wider audience. But it its biggest boost came with the 1979 Daytona 500, the first NASCAR race broadcast live on national television. On a day when the northeastern U.S. was paralyzed by a snowstorm, millions of TV viewers watched the race—which ended in a dramatic wreck on the final lap, followed by a fistfight between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison. After that, more companies jumped on the sponsorship bandwagon, creating a marriage of convenience: Stock cars make perfect blank slates for ads, and stock car racing is so expensive that teams can’t do it week after week without the millions they receive from sponsors.

  How does the point system work? In each race, a driver receives points for every lap in which he or she leads (there have been 17 female NASCAR drivers). The winner of the race gets an additional 185 points, second place gets 170, third 165, and so on. Because this system rewards consistency over winning, fans complained that the racing was getting too conservative. After Matt Kenseth won the 2003 NASCAR Championship with only one victory (but 25 top-10 finishes), NASCAR implemented a playoff system. Now after the first 26 races are completed, the top 12 drivers’ point totals are reset to 5,000, plus an additional 10 points for each race they’ve won. This means that for the final 10 races, now called “The Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup,” the top 12 are far ahead of the pack and battle each other for the championship. Adding to the drama: All of the drivers still participate in the final 10 races, so drivers farther down in the rankings can often act as “spoilers.”

  DIALOGUES WITH

  WORLD LEADERS

  Here are some unofficial exchanges involving heads of state at official state functions.

  Queen Elizabeth II: How do you do, Mr. King?

  Alan King: How do you do, Mrs. Queen?

  President Nixon: You dress pretty wild, don’t you?

  Elvis Presley: Mr. President, you got your show to run and I got mine.

  At an old folks home, President Bush approaches an old lady.

  George H. W. Bush: Do you know who I am?

  Old Lady: No, but if you ask in reception I’m sure they will be able to tell you.

  William Gladstone: I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease.

  Benjamin Disraeli: That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.

  At French President Charles de Gaulle’s retirement luncheon:

  English guest: Madame de Gaulle, what are you looking forward to in the years ahead?

  Madame de Gaulle: A penis…. …embarrassed silence…

  Charles de Gaulle: My dear, I don’t think the English pronounce the word like that. It is ‘appiness.’

  George H.W. Bush: Tell me, General, how dead is the Dead Sea?

  General Zayid bin Shakr: Very dead, sir.

  Woman at dinner party: You must talk to me, Mr. Coolidge. I made a bet with someone that I could get more than two words out of you.

  Calvin Coolidge: You lose.

  “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”

  —Thomas Paine

  Motto of Springfield, the town in The Simpsons: “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.”

  LOCAL HEROES

  Here are the stories of ordinary people who were faced with an extraordinary situation… and did something about it.

  SPILT MILK Local Hero: Steve Leech, a milkman in Cornwall, England Heroic Deed: Putting out a dangerous fire

  The Story: Leech was making his regular deliveries one morning when he noticed smoke pouring out of a gift shop along his route. He called 999 (the English equivalent of 911) but then decided not to wait for the fire fighters to arrive. “I saw the row of apartments up above the shop,” he explains, “and I thought, bloody hell, I’d better do something!”

  What did Leech do? He kicked open the door of the shop and started pouring milk on the fire. By the time the firefighters arrived 15 minutes later, the fire was under control—and Leech is credited with saving the row of eight shops, as well as the lives of the people living in the apartments above them. “It was hard work opening all those bottles, since they have tamper-proof lids,” he says, “but it was even harder trying to explain to my boss where all the milk (320 pints) had gone.”

  Update: Leech needn’t have worried about his boss—he not only kept his job, in January 2002 England’s National Dairymen’s Association named him the “Hero Milkman of the Millennium.”

  FIRST-RATE THIRD GRADER

  Local Hero: Austin Rosedale, a third-grader at Sunny Hills Elementary School in Issaquah, Washington

  Heroic Deed: Saving his teacher from choking

  The Story: Austin was in the computer lab one day in November 2001 when his teacher, Mrs. Precht, started choking on a cough drop. She was just about to pass out when he sprang into action.

  Luckily for Precht, Austin’s parents had given him a Day Planner organizer that happened to have an instructional diagram of the Heimlich maneuver printed on the cover. Austin had read it so many times that helping Mrs. Precht was a snap. With two thrusts to her abdomen, he dislodged the cough drop. “I just visualized the pictures,” he says, “and remembered what I
’d read.”

  Surgeons who play video games have 37% fewer operating room errors than those who don’t.

  BLUE’S BROTHER

  Local Hero: Art Aylesworth, a Montana insurance agent

  Heroic Deed: Helping to save the mountain bluebird and the western bluebird from extinction

  The Story: A longtime conservationist, Aylesworth had worked on a few wildlife habitat restoration projects. But in the mid-1970s he became alarmed when he learned that extensive logging in the state was pushing the bluebirds—which nest in the cavities of old trees—toward extinction. So he got some scrap lumber and built some nest boxes for the birds; then he founded an organization called the Mountain Bluebird Trails Group and recruited hundreds of volunteers to do the same thing.

  The organization gave the boxes to anyone willing to put them up and keep an eye on them; it estimates that over the next 25 years, it gave away more than 35,000 boxes. Did it work? Yes—when Aylesworth started handing out the boxes in 1974, only a handful of the bluebirds were thought to still exist; by 1998 the count had grown to more than 17,000.

  GUN CONTROL

  Local Hero: Dale Rooks, a crossing guard at Suter Elementary School in Pensacola, Florida

  Heroic Deed: Finding a unique way to get speeding motorists to slow down in front of the elementary school

  The Story: For years Rooks had tried everything he could think of to get drivers to slow down in front of the school—including waving his hands and yelling—but nothing worked. Then inspiration struck him—he got an old hair dryer and covered it with gray duct tape so that it looked like a radar gun, and started pointing it at speeders. That did the trick. “People are slowing down, raising their hands at me apologetically,” he says. “It’s amazing how well it works.”

  Update: Inspired by his example, fifth-graders at the school set up a lemonade stand and raised $93 to buy Rooks a real radar gun. “I don’t mean it to be funny,” he says, “but it looks just like a hair dryer.”

  A klaxon is an electric horn. The name comes from a German word meaning “shriek.”

  THE ICEMAN

  COMETH

  Not all mummies are wrapped in bandages. Here’s one who was buried in ice, fully clothed, for 5,000 years.

  SURPRISE ENCOUNTER On September 19, 1991, some people hiking in the Alps along the Austrian/Italian border spotted a body sticking out of a glacier. The corpse was brown and dried out and looked like it had been there for a long time. But neither the hikers nor the Austrian officials who recovered it four days later had any idea how long.

  When scientists carbon-dated the remains, the “Iceman” (as he was dubbed in the press) turned out to be more than 5,300 years old. It was the world’s oldest fully preserved human body, and the first prehistoric human ever found with “everyday clothing and equipment”—including an axe, dagger, and bow and arrows. Other bodies that have been found were either buried following funerals or sacrificed in religious ceremonies…which means they had ceremonial objects and clothing that didn’t shed much light on what everyday life was like.

  CLOSE CALL

  Because no one realized how old or valuable the Iceman was until five days after he was discovered, no one took any precautions to ensure he wasn’t damaged during removal and shipment to the morgue. In fact, it seems they did just about everything they could to damage him. An Austrian police officer tried to free the Iceman from the ice by using a jackhammer—shredding his garments and gashing his left hip to the bone. He probably would have done more damage, except that he ran out of compressed air for the jackhammer and had to quit.

  Next, as word of the unusual discovery spread, locals and gawkers traveled to the site to view the remains. Many pocketed the Iceman’s tools and shreds of garment as souvenirs. And when forensics experts finally removed the body from the ice, they did so using clumsy pickaxes, destroying the archaeological value of the site in the process.

  Longest distance ever traveled in a hang glider: 437 miles, by Manfred Ruhmer (2001).

  By now the Iceman, clothed from the waist down when initially discovered, was buck naked save for pieces of a boot on his right foot and shards of clothing strewn around the body. Even worse, his private parts were missing, perhaps stolen by one of the visitors to the site. They were never recovered.

  MODERN PROBLEMS

  When scientists did get around to studying him, they found a dark-skinned male between the ages of 25 and 40 who stood 5'2" tall. The Iceman surprised archaeologists with his shaved face, recently cut hair, and tattoos; experts thought that humans did not “invent” shaves, haircuts, and tattoos until thousands of years later.

  He also suffered from some surprisingly modern ailments. A body-scan revealed smoke-blackened lungs—probably from sitting around open fires, but definitely not from smoking—as well as hardening of the arteries and blood vessels. He also had arthritis in the neck, lower back, and hip. But he didn’t die from any of them.

  CAUSE OF DEATH

  The fact that the Iceman’s body survived so long may provide a clue about how he died. Most bodies recovered from glaciers have literally been torn to pieces by slow-moving ice. But the Iceman’s wasn’t. He was found in a small protective basin, 10 to 15 feet deep, that sheltered him as glaciers passed overhead. This leads archaeologists to speculate that he sought shelter in the basin when a surprise winter storm hit. “He was in a state of exhaustion perhaps as a consequence of adverse weather conditions,” a team of experts theorized in Science magazine in 1992. “He therefore may have lain down, fallen asleep, and frozen to death.” Snow covered the body, the glacier eventually flowed over it…and the body remained completely preserved and undisturbed for the next 53 centuries.

  FINAL RESTING PLACE

  The Iceman now resides in a freezer in Austria’s Innsbruck University, kept at 98% humidity and 21°F, the same conditions that preserved him for more than 5,000 years. Scientists only examine the body for 20 minutes every two weeks—anything more than that would cause the mummy to deteriorate.

  House dust can vary in composition from room to room.

  FAMOUS TIGHTWADS

  For some bizarre reason, really rich people are often the most uptight about spending money. Here are a few examples of people who’ve gone over the deep end about loose change.

  MARGE SCHOTT, former owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Told her staff in 1995 that she couldn’t afford Christmas bonuses and gave out candies instead. They turned out to be free samples from a baseball-card company…and they came with coupons inviting consumers to “win a trip to the 1991 Grammys.”

  CARY GRANT. Nicknamed “El Squeako” by Hollywood friends, he counted the number of firewood logs in his mansion’s garage and used a red pen to mark the level of milk in the milk bottles in his refrigerator, both to make sure his servants weren’t taking them.

  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. Mooched dollar bills off of his presidential valet to drop in the collection plate at church.

  GROUCHO MARX. Wore a beret, which became one of his trademarks, “so he wouldn’t have to pay to check his hat.”

  CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, American financier. When his doctor told him on his deathbed that a glass of champagne a day would moderate his suffering, Vanderbilt —then the wealthiest man in America—replied, “Dammit, I tell you Doc, I can’t afford it. Won’t sodywater do?”

  J. PAUL GETTY, oil baron. Installed a pay phone in his mansion to keep visitors from running up his long-distance bill, and put locks on all the other phones. “When you get some fellow talking for ten or fifteen minutes,” the billionaire explained, “well, it all adds up.”

  LEE IACOCCA, former head of Chrysler Corp. Threw himself lavish holiday parties and charged the gifts to underlings. Popular saying at Chrysler: “If you have lunch with someone who looks like Iacocca and sounds like Iacocca, rest assured—if he offers to pick up the check, it’s not Iacocca.”

  The red maple leaf on Canada’s flag has 11 points. (The number has no national significance.)
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  UNDERWORLD LINGO

  Every profession has its own jargon—even the criminal world. These terms were compiled by someone else. We stole them fair and square… and we’re not giving them back, and no copper’s gonna make us!

  Walk the plank. Appear in a police lineup.

  Barber a joint. Rob a bedroom while the occupant is asleep.

  Chop a hoosier. Stop someone from betting because they’ve been continuously winning.

  Dingoes. Vagrants who refuse to work even though they claim to be looking for a job.

  California blankets. Newspapers used to sleep on or under.

  Wise money. Money to be wagered on a sure thing.

  Ride the lightning. Be electrocuted.

  Rolling orphan. Stolen vehicle with no license plates.

  Put [someone] in the garden. Swindle someone out of their fair share of money or property.

  Swallow the sours. Hide counterfeit money from the police.

  Frozen blood. Rubies.

  Square the beef. Get off with a lighter sentence than expected.

  Toadskin. Paper money—either good or counterfeit.

  Vinegar boy. Someone who passes worthless checks.

  Trojan. A professional gambler.

  White soup. Stolen silver melted down so it won’t be discovered.

  Grease one’s duke. Put money into someone’s hand.

  Irish favorites. Emeralds.

  Fairy grapes. Pearls.

  High pillow. The top man in an organization.

  Nest with a hen on. Promising prospect for a robbery.

  Trigging the jigger. Placing a piece of paper (the trig) in the keyhole of a door to a house that is suspected to be uninhabited. If the trig is still there the next day, a gang can rob the house later that night.