Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy Read online

  1600s: One of Bedlam’s most famous inmates was Moll Cutpurse (1584–1659). Born Mary Frith, Cutpurse got her nickname from her prowess as a London pickpocket. But her clothing, speech, and mannerisms brought accusations—mostly from men—that she was insane. Instead of wearing conventional women’s clothing—constricting bodices, petticoats, and puffy gowns—Cutpurse wore trousers. She also smoked a pipe, swore in public, and sang risqué songs on stage—something only men were allowed to do. By the 1620s, she was working as a pimp—not only supplying female prostitutes to men but also procuring handsome young men for middle-class housewives. Cutpurse was eventually arrested and confined to Bedlam. She was released in 1644 after being “cured” and went on to live another 15 years.

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  Of the 17% of people who regret getting a tattoo, Republicans are more likely to regret it than Dems.

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  Early 1800s: King George III (1738–1820) is best remembered in the U.S. as the tyrant who imposed unfair taxes that led to the American Revolution. Throughout much of his life, George suffered from mental illness. In 1788 he had a particularly bad episode, causing him to rant nonsensically for hours until he was foaming at the mouth. He addressed his court as “my lords and peacocks,” and it was even rumored that he shook hands with a tree, believing it to be the King of Prussia. Many theories have been put forward as to the cause of King George’s madness. Some suggest it was a result of the genetic disease porphyria, which is known to run in the royal family. But a 2005 study of a sample of his hair revealed high levels of arsenic, a common component of medicine and cosmetics in that era, which may have caused the king and countless others to suffer bouts of insanity.

  TWO DUMB CRIMINALS, ONE FUNNY GUY

  In 2005 two English crooks, Kenneth Speight and Craig Reeves, convinced a friend who worked at a bank to access an account belonging to Ricky Gervais (who is extremely famous in England ever since he starred as David Brent, the obnoxious boss on the hit comedy series The Office). Speight and Reeves then transferred about $320,000 of Gervais’s money to an account at another bank and used it to buy a large amount of gold bullion. When the men attempted to pick up the bullion, one of them showed his passport—in Gervais’s name—as identification. The clerk noticed that the man didn’t look much like Ricky Gervais, and that the passport photo was obviously a cut-out of David Brent from the sitcom’s DVD sleeve. The clerk immediately called authorities; Speight and Reeves were arrested and later sentenced to prison terms. Perhaps no one found the scam more humorous than Gervais himself: “It’s a picture of David Brent sitting at his desk with that little smug look on his face! I tell you what, I was laughing for 10 minutes!”

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  Roughly $700 worth of transactions are made on eBay every second.

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  JAPAN GONE CRAZY

  If you ever decide to make a trip to the weirdest places on Earth, don’t forget Japan. Here are just a few reasons why.

  BIG BABIES

  In April 2009, more than 80 Japanese sumo wrestlers and 80 Japanese babies born in 2008 (along with their parents) showed up at the Sensoji temple in Tokyo for the annual “Baby Cry Sumo Festival.” Two at a time, the sumo giants, dressed in their traditional loincloths, sit on a stage facing each other, each holding a baby. A Shinto priest then approaches and, by making loud noises and scary faces, frightens the babies until they cry. The sumo wrestlers then hold the babies up to make them cry louder—while hundreds of people clap and laugh and cheer. According to Japanese tradition, this is good for infants—their wails are regarded as prayers for health. The baby who cries the loudest is deemed the “winner,” and that baby, so the tradition goes, will lead a long and healthy life (and, presumably, will have a lifelong terror of priests and sumo wrestlers).

  HAVE A BALL WITH YOUR KIDS

  If you’re in the market for a sexually suggestive toy for your child (and who isn’t?), the Hokkaido Marimokkori, a doll made in the northern Japanese state of Hokkaido, may be just the thing. “Marimokkori” is a play on words: marimo is a type of algae that grows in a ball shape and is found on Hokkaido’s shoreline; mokkori means “mound.” That explains the doll’s round, green head (like the algae balls)…and possibly explains the mound: a round, pink ball on its crotch. The pink ball is attached to a string that you can pull. You then let go of the string and, as it retracts, the doll vibrates and emits a giggling sound.

  YOU’RE VIRTUALLY UNDER ARREST

  In May 2008, a 43-year-old Japanese woman was playing an online virtual-reality game when she found out that her “virtual husband,” played by a 33-year-old Japanese man she had never met, had divorced her. “I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning,” she later said. “That made me so angry.” She was so angry, in fact, that she logged on to the game, somehow figured out the man’s password…and deleted his character. When the man discovered that his virtual self, which he’d been developing for more than a year, had vanished, he called the police. They tracked the woman down, arrested her, and put her in jail for what the media dubbed a “virtual murder.” The woman faces up to five years in a real prison and a $5,000 fine for manipulating electronic data.

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  Within 24 hours, a single bacterium in a petri dish can multiply 1 billion times.

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  THE OTHER DIMENSIONS

  In October 2008, a man named Taichi Takashita launched an online petition that, he said, he would present to the Japanese government when it had one million signatures. What’s the petition for? A change to Japan’s marriage laws—because he wants to marry a cartoon character. He has fallen in love, he says, with the famous Japanese manga cartoon character Mikuru Asahina, and wants to change Japanese law to allow marriage between humans and fictional people. “I am no longer interested in three dimensions,” he wrote. “I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world.” As of January 2010, he claimed to have more than 660,000 signatures and was still gathering more.

  SHE’S DEAD. STILL.

  In September 2008, a couple walking through a wooded area on the island of Honshu came across a grisly sight: a corpse wrapped in plastic. Dozens of investigators were brought in, the body was taken away, and, after several hours, forensic pathologists began to unwrap it. That’s when they found out that it wasn’t a body; it was an extremely lifelike silicone sex doll. Humiliated police officials vowed to catch whoever had pulled the prank, and news of the “sex-doll murder case” spread around the world. A few days later, a 60-year-old man came forward and confessed but said it wasn’t a prank. He had bought the doll after his wife died years earlier, he told police, and had become very attached to it. He’d recently decided to get rid of it because he was going to live with one of his children. “He was confused about how to get rid of her,” a police investigator told reporters. “He thought it would be cruel to cut her up into pieces and throw her out with the trash.” The man, whom police did not identify, was charged with violating waste-management laws and was fined an undisclosed amount. Police said he was very sorry his doll was mistaken for a corpse.

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  In California, it’s illegal to ride a bicycle in a swimming pool.

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  THE DA VINCI TREASURE

  The Asylum is a movie production company that makes blatant knockoffs of Hollywood blockbusters and usually releases them direct to video. Here are some of their familiar-sounding works that you may find at a video store near you (probably in the bargain bin).

  The Day the Earth Stopped

  (a rip-off of The Day the Earth Stood Still)

  Sunday School Musical (High School Musical)

  The Terminators (Terminator: Salvation)

  AVH: Alien vs. Hunter (AVP: Alien vs. Predator)

  Halloween Night (Halloween)

  2012: Supernova (2012)

  Transmorphers (Transformers)

  The Da Vinci Treasure (The Da Vinci Code)

  The Land that Time Forgot (Lan
d of the Lost)

  When a Killer Calls (When a Stranger Calls)

  King of the Lost World (King Kong)

  100 Million B.C. (10,000 B.C.)

  Street Racer (Speed Racer)

  Pirates of Treasure Island (Pirates of the Caribbean)

  Monster (Cloverfield)

  Snakes on a Train (Snakes on a Plane)

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  In Massachusetts, 1% of the construction costs of a prison must be spent on art.

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  SAVED BY SILICONE

  When fake breasts become real heroes.

  BUMPER BUMPERS. In Ruse, Bulgaria, a 24-year-old woman ran a red light at a busy intersection and slammed into a passing car. Although both cars were totaled, the woman escaped with minor injuries. How? According to police, “Her silicone breasts acted as airbags” (although she did require surgery to replace her implants, which ruptured in the crash.)

  ROCKET DEFENSE. In 2006 a young Israeli woman was hit in the chest by shrapnel during a Hezbollah rocket attack near the Lebanese border. Her silicone implants absorbed the impact of the metal fragments and kept them from reaching her heart. “This is an extraordinary case,” said her doctor. “She was saved from death.”

  BODY ARMOR. Jane Selma Soares of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was on her way home when she got caught in the crossfire of a shootout between police and a gang of drug dealers. She tried to duck out of sight, but a bullet caught her in the chest. Doctors later found the bullet…lodged in one of her breast implants. Soares, who suffered no serious injuries, eventually got new, larger implants. “I’m twice as happy,” she declared. “First, because my prosthesis saved my life, and also because now I look even more beautiful!”

  THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. In 2003 Denise Leblanc and Mark Marzoni were deep-sea fishing off the coast of Panama when Marzoni hooked a 1,000-pound marlin. Marzoni was trying to reel in the fish as Leblanc, leaning over the side of the boat, filmed the catch. The marlin was nearly in the boat when it began thrashing—and suddenly impaled Leblanc with its sharp sword-like snout, spearing through her right arm, her right breast, and her side. The fish fell back into the water; Leblanc collapsed on the deck. Marzoni rushed to her aid and noticed that her right breast was…gone. Later, at the hospital, doctors made an astonishing discovery: The marlin’s bill had shoved Leblanc’s silicone implant through her ribcage and into her chest cavity, preventing the sharp snout from puncturing her lung and possibly killing her.

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  In the United States it’s a federal crime to imitate Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl.

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  GHOSTOLOGY 101

  Whether you believe in ghosts or not, isn’t it fun to think that a spirit might be hovering near you right now? Wait—you’re in the bathroom? Eww…well, maybe not.

  BOO!

  Ghosts are as popular as ever—just look at hit television shows such as Medium and Ghost Whisperer, countless accounts of “real-life” hauntings on cable TV, and the steady stream of scary movies from Hollywood. In nearly every U.S. city, you can take a ghost tour or hire a team of “ghost hunters” to investigate your attic. In fact, a 2007 Associated Press poll reported that 34% of Americans believe in ghosts and 23% say they’ve seen one. Are all these people crazy? Or are ghosts real? If so, where’s the evidence? We’ll tell you everything you need to know to hold your own in this spirited debate.

  SOUL CALL

  Any phenomenon that can’t be neatly explained by science is deemed paranormal. Those who study this field are called parapsychologists, but it’s not something you can get a degree in at your local university. Most “ghost hunters” don’t consider themselves parapsychologists, calling themselves paranormal investigators instead. Here are a few of the supernatural things they look for.

  • Spirit: From the Latin spiritus (“breath”), this is a blanket term for any discarnate being, one that lacks a physical body. There are many forms that a spirit can theoretically take on.

  • Ghost: A person (or animal) who is no longer living, but exists nonetheless, just not in the physical realm.

  • Entity: Any disembodied consciousness that can be classified as a ghost. The two terms are often used interchangeably, along with phantasm, phantom, wraith, spook, sprite, and specter.

  • Apparition: How a ghost appears visually. It can manifest in many different forms, from a “full-bodied” apparition to a mist to what are called “shadow people”—small, dark masses that take on a loosely human form. (Interestingly, ghosts rarely appear as a white sheet with two eyeholes.)

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  If all U.S. ships that serve as memorials were a separate navy, it would be the world’s third largest.

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  • Orb: A self-illuminated ball of light that travels through the air with some kind of intent. There are several theories as to exactly what they are—many people think of them as simple spirit forms.

  • Poltergeist: The German word for “noisy ghost,” this phenomenon is believed to throw objects, bang on walls, and slam doors. Poltergeists are often believed to be connected to adolescent females (perhaps it’s all the hormones).

  • Residual haunting: If a person performed a specific act over and over during life—such as putting wood into a stove—it can leave a psychic impression that plays over and over, like a tape recording. In a residual haunting, the ghost doesn’t realize it’s dead; it just keeps performing its task obliviously. (Sometimes, in reports of ghosts walking through walls, the original blueprints of the building reveal that a door once stood there.)

  • Intelligent haunting: If the ghost crosses in front of you and you say “Hello,” and it stops and looks at you, that’s an intelligent haunting—a dead person that interacts with you.

  HOW TO BECOME A GHOST

  In the 1970s, Dietrich Dörner, a German psychologist, introduced the “Psi-Theory,” the idea that combinations of behaviors and emotions create “Psi energy,” also called psychic energy, which Dörner claimed can exist separate from the body. This theory was later promoted by Loyd Auerbach, one of today’s leading parapsychologists. He believes that after someone dies, their Psi energy can remain intact.

  According to Auerbach, some causes of death are more conducive to keeping that energy intact: A sudden, violent end is one way. Another possibility is that people who die with nagging, unfinished business are more likely to “hold” that thought and spend the afterlife trying to finish it. Yet no matter what led to the death, a disembodied energy field is very faint by modern measuring devices. But it can theoretically last for years, even centuries.

  WHY AREN’T GHOSTS NAKED?

  According to parapsychologists, a ghost either consciously or unconsciously remembers what he or she looked like, and some choose how they will appear to the living. The theory goes that your Psi energy contains information about you, including how you look and the clothes you wear. Ghosts whose Psi energy is still intact after death probably hold on to some of that information.

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  1st person to run the Boston Marathon while in outer space: NASA astronaut Sunita Williams aboard the International Space Station. (She ran on a treadmill.) Her time: 4:23:10.

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  But ghosts aren’t necessarily shaped like humans. Here’s what one ghost looked like, according to what Auerbach says the ghost actually told him:

  A deceased woman who was in constant communication with a young boy (and seen by others, as it happens) said that as far as she knew, she was a ball of energy, of consciousness, though she also said she really didn’t know that “ball” was the right word, since she felt kind of formless. How she pictured herself was how others perceived her—she noted that she was more or less connecting mind-to-mind to the boy (and others), and projecting the idea of her form, clothing, and her voice to him.

  HOW CAN GHOSTS MOVE OBJECTS?

  Again, it’s all about energy, say parapsychologists. Spirits gain strength by drawing energy from electromagnetic fields (EMFs), or concentr
ations of charged particles in the air. These can be either natural or man-made—emitted by, among other things, electrical appliances, copper wiring, and static in the air on a stormy night. Paranormal investigators have also discovered that reports of ghost activity are more abundant in areas that have high concentrations of limestone, copper, chalk, iron, and rushing water. Why? They act like batteries and create strong EMFs.

  Ever heard of cold spots? Those are created when a spirit draws heat energy from the air. A room can be 65°F, except for one small area where the temperature is 30° colder. When a spirit obtains enough energy, it can manifest into an apparition, control the air around it, and even move objects, talk, sing, or make footsteps. There are even accounts of ghosts recreating smells like cigarette smoke, flowers, blood, and perfume.

  PSEUDO OR SCIENCE?

  All these ghostly theories, say skeptics, are just that—theoretical. What concerns skeptics the most is when parapsychologists, ghost hunters, psychics, and laypeople talk about ghosts as if they’re real, even though they offer no scientific proof to back it up. One of the world’s most famous skeptics, James Randi, is a former stage magician who once relied on illusions to entertain, so he knows what it takes to fool people. To prove his point, Randi formed a foundation that sponsors the “One Million Dollar Challenge.” Paid for by donations from scientific and charitable trusts, the prize of $1 million will be awarded to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal (ESP or ghosts) in a laboratory setting. “Our $1 million is safe,” maintains Randi. “Believers will insist on believing despite the evidence no matter how strong that is.” He says that skeptics aren’t necessarily out to prove that ghosts don’t exist—their goal is to curb the rampant lack of critical thinking among the people who say they do.