Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Read online

  Three weeks later, on June 25, 1950, the North Korean People’s Army rolled across the 38th parallel that served as the border between North and South Korea. The Korean War had begun.

  What does the Korean War have to do with shopping malls? Turn to page 230 and mall will be revealed.

  Utah’s state bird: the California gull.

  GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

  Although they might look like it, none of the words or expressions listed below is in any way dirty, and to prove it we’re giving you the correct definitions. (But use them at your own risk.)

  Bed Load: Solid particles, like the pebbles in a stream, that are carried along by flowing water.

  Titbits: The British spelling for the word “tidbits.” Tit-Bits was the name of a British weekly magazine published from 1881 to 1984.

  Loose Smut: A fungus that attacks wheat crops.

  Oxpecker: A small bird native to sub-Saharan Africa. (Also known as tickbirds, they eat parasites that infest the hides of livestock.)

  Dick Test: If your doctor suspects you have scarlet fever, you may be given this diagnostic test invented by Dr. George Dick and his wife Gladys in 1924.

  Vaginicola: A single-celled organism found in pond water.

  Crack Spread: The difference in value between unrefined crude oil and the products that can be made by refining, or “cracking,” the oil.

  F-holes: The f-shaped sound holes cut into the front of violins, cellos, and other stringed instruments.

  Rump Party: In British politics, when one faction of a political party breaks away to merge with or form a new party, the faction left behind is known as the “rump party.”

  Urinator: A person who dives underwater in search of pearls, sunken treasure, or other riches.

  Spermophile: A genus, or grouping, of more than 40 species of ground squirrel.

  Crap Mats: The name of a mountain in the Swiss Alps.

  Fucoid: An adjective that means, “having to do with seaweed.”

  Fucose: A type of sugar found in human breast milk and in seaweed.

  Titubate: To stumble, either in step or in speech.

  Dickcissel: A species of finch native to the central U.S.

  In 2008 psychologists introduced a new diagnosis: Facebook Addiction Disorder.

  STALLS OF TERROR

  Going to the bathroom is usually a pleasant experience…unless you happen to go in one of these bathrooms.

  The Toilet: A restroom on a train in Illinois

  The Setup: Julianna Mandernach was traveling from Chicago to Joliet, Illinois, in January 2009, when she used the train toilet, then flushed it.

  Don’t Go There: As soon as she flushed the toilet, the contents exploded all over her. She sued the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation for an undisclosed amount, saying the exploding commode left her with injuries of a “personal and pecuniary nature.” (If we didn’t know better, we might think “pecuniary” was legalese for “stinky.”) Oddly, the suit wasn’t filed until January 2010—almost a year later. The case is still pending.

  The Toilet: A portable toilet in the city of Gomel, Belarus

  The Setup: A 45-year-old man popped into the toilet to do his business in June 2004.

  Don’t Go There: While the man was still inside the toilet, thieves wrapped a rope around it, loaded it onto a flatbed truck, and drove away. They had not only stolen a porta-potti—they had stolen an occupied porta-potti. The man was unable to escape until the bouncing truck jostled the rope loose enough for him to open the door slightly, after which he jumped off the moving truck and broke his collarbone. He was taken to the hospital and later reported the incident to police, who tracked down the stolen toilet to a home in the area…and arrested the poopetrators.

  The Toilet: The downstairs bathroom in the home of the Bueller family of Rechlinghausen, Germany

  The Setup: In November 2008, Dennis Bueller, 13, had just sprayed the bathroom with a can of aerosol air freshener. Then, being a 13-year-old, he started playing with his dad’s lighter.

  Don’t Go There: The can ignited—and blew Dennis through the bathroom window and out into the yard. “I sprayed the toilet because it smelled,” he later told Britain’s Daily Mail. “Then I began fiddling with a lighter my dad left in there and suddenly there was this big orange whoosh! of flame. I woke up outside with my clothes burned off me and smelling like a barbecue.” Dennis suffered burns over much of his upper body, but he recovered. “He realizes he was a bit dim,” said his father.

  Most common birthday in the U.S.: Oct. 5. (Approximate conception date: New Year’s Eve.)

  The Toilet: A home in Iowa City, Iowa

  The Setup: Nitasha Johnson, 20, was in the bathroom with her sister one evening in March 2010. They were arguing.

  Don’t Go There: The argument escalated—and Johnson grabbed the lid off the toilet tank and bashed her sister with it. The sister was taken to the hospital, where she was treated for injuries to her foot and finger. Nitasha Johnson was arrested on charges of domestic assault…and thrown in the can.

  The Toilet: The great outdoors, near Zagreb, Croatia

  The Setup: Ante Djindjic, 29, was riding his motorcycle on a rural road in September 2007 when he had to pee. So he stopped to take care of business by the side of the road. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in a Zagreb hospital.

  Don’t Go There: Djindjic had been struck by lightning. Doctors think the lightning bolt must have grounded itself through his urine stream. “I don’t remember what happened,” he said later. “One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.” Luckily, all Djindjic suffered were minor burns on his chest and arms.

  AUTHORS ON FILM

  The top five authors whose works have been made

  into films (with the number of films made)

  Stephen King: 86

  W. Somerset Maugham: 64

  Ernest Hemingway: 29

  John Grisham: 10

  J.K. Rowling: 7

  U.S. city with the most lightning: Tampa, Florida (100 “thunderstorm days” per year).

  FACT-OPOLY

  Thimble-size tidbits about Monopoly, one of the world’s most popular board games.

  • There are hundreds of versions of Monopoly, themed for sports teams, cities, movies, and TV shows, including Seinfeld, Star Trek, The Simpsons, American Idol, Family Guy, and Planet Earth. (That game’s “Boardwalk,” or most expensive property, is Antarctica.)

  • There are also dozens of unofficial “opoly” games, including Bible-opoly, Dogopoly, Cocktail-opoly, Dinosauropoly, Ghetto-opoly, Pot-opoly (about growing marijuana), and Make Your Own-opoly.

  • A luxury edition sold by Dunhill of London in 1974 included a leather game board, nine-karat gold hotels, and silver tokens. Only one was made. It sold for $25,000.

  • Longest game ever played in a moving elevator: 384 hours.

  • Often-overlooked rule: If a player lands on a property and opts not to buy it, the property must be auctioned off.

  • Each game comes with $15,140 in play money.

  • The first sanctioned Monopoly tournament took place at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961. Four days in, all the money had been dispersed to the players. But according to the rules, the game isn’t over when the bank is broke, so they wired a request for more money to Parker Brothers, the game’s publisher. The company sent $1 million in Monopoly money via chartered plane and armored car.

  • Only musical groups with a Monopoly version: The Beatles and KISS.

  • Monopoly was popular in Cuba before the rise of Fidel Castro, who banned the capitalist game and ordered all copies destroyed.

  • Neiman Marcus sold a Monopoly game made out of solid chocolate in 1978.

  • In 2009 Kenneth Reppke of Fraser, Michigan, was arrested on an assault charge for hitting a friend in the head because she wouldn’t sell him Boardwalk and Park Place during a Monopoly game.

  Official record for the longest game of Mo
nopoly played in a treehouse: 286 hours.

  DON’T BE AFRAID…

  …of these quotes about being afraid.

  “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

  —Bertrand Russell

  “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

  —Dorothy Bernard

  “Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”

  —Shirley MacLaine

  “It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.”

  —Aesop

  “Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.”

  —Marian Anderson

  “If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.”

  —Chief Seneca

  “Whatever you fear most has no power. It is your fear that has the power.”

  —Oprah Winfrey

  “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity for action despite our fears.”

  —John McCain

  “No one is afraid of yesterday.”

  —Renata Adler

  “Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  “There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.”

  —Aeschylus

  “Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small.”

  —J. Ruth Gendler

  “Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death.”

  —Betty Bender

  “Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.”

  —Earl Wilson

  “There was never any fear of failure for me. If I miss a shot, so what?”

  —Michael Jordan

  U.S. city with the worst per-capita credit score: Corpus Christi, TX. Best: Sioux Falls, SD.

  JERSEY NUMBERS

  Uncle John always wore #2, for obvious reasons. Here are the reasons some other athletes wore the jersey numbers they did.

  • SIDNEY CROSBY, captain of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, wears #87. Reason: His birthdate is August 7, 1987, or 8/7/87.

  • DAN MARINO wore #13 as the Miami Dolphins quarterback, the same number he wore as a kid in Little League baseball. His dad, who was the coach, let the rest of the team choose their jerseys first. By the time Marino got to pick, all that was left was #13.

  • PENNY HARDAWAY wore #1 when he played in the NBA—because his first name is Penny, or one cent.

  • WAYNE GRETZKY wore #9 in kiddie hockey leagues in tribute to his favorite player, Gordie Howe, who was also #9. When he joined his first semipro team in 1978, #9 was taken, so he opted for #99 and wore it throughout his NHL career.

  • JAN STENERUD, an NFL kicker, was #3 because a team gets three points for a field goal, and because he had a ritual of tapping his foot on the ground three times before every kick.

  • BILL VOISELLE pitched for three Major League baseball teams from 1942 to 1950, and wore #96 because he was from the town of Ninety Six, South Carolina.

  • JORDIN TOOTOO, who plays for the Nashville Predators of the NHL, wears #22…to match his last name.

  • DWAYNE WADE, star of the NBA’s Miami Heat, sports #3 because: 1) He’s a devout Christian (so he believes in the Holy Trinity), 2) he dribbles the ball three times before every free throw, and 3) he played in the NCAA basketball championship in ’03.

  • PAUL DADE of the Cleveland Indians wore #00 because no team would draft him initially.

  • JAROMÍR JÁGR, veteran Czech-born hockey star, wears #68 to commemorate 1968, the year of the Prague Spring, a brief period of liberal reform in then-Communist Czechoslovakia.

  Sammy Sosa had his swimming pool built in the shape of his jersey number: 21.

  EGG ADDLERS

  AND PAJAMA POLICE

  And a few other jobs that are out of the mainstream workforce—but someone has do them.

  EGG ADDLER

  If you have too many Canada geese in your yard, or in your pond, or on the roof of your building, or for any goose overpopulation problem in general, you might want to call a “goose egg addler” to help control further growth. Here’s how they do it: First, the addler approaches a nest (when the geese aren’t around) and places the eggs in a bucket of water. If an egg sinks, he coats it with vegetable oil, which prevents oxygen from entering and gases from escaping. That stops the embryo from developing further. The eggs are then placed back into the nest, which fools the mother into thinking she’s nesting on live eggs—otherwise she’ll lay more eggs. If the eggs float, it means an air sac has developed in the egg, and the embryo has developed beyond the point where it can be killed humanely, so those eggs are replaced in the nest and allowed to develop into goslings. Egg addling is regulated by wildlife services in Canada and most of the United States, and you must have a permit to do it.

  PAJAMA POLICE

  Authorities in Shanghai, China, spent billions of dollars preparing to host World Expo 2010, a cultural and trade fair designed to show off the “new” Shanghai as one of the most modern, forward-looking cities in the world. But the fact that a lot of Shanghainese like to wear their PJs on the street didn’t quite jibe with that image. How did pajama-wear become the fashion of choice in Shanghai? For years, people lived in shikumen—cramped communal houses with shared toilets and kitchens. The concept of personal space grew to include first the courtyard, then the street, and finally shops beyond. In the 1970s, that led to people young and old wearing their pajamas wherever they went. It wasn’t uncommon to see middle-aged couples in matching sleepwear strolling in the evening, or young housewives in Pretty Kitty prints buying produce at the market. So, in late 2009, the government began a campaign to make people get dressed. Bright red signs were posted in neighborhoods with the message, “Pajamas don’t go out the door; be a civilized resident for the Expo.” Pop stars appeared in TV ads warning that wearing PJs to the mall was a fashion no-no. Finally, teams of “pajama police” were dispatched to patrol the city for outlaw pajama wearers, although enforcement leaned more on shaming the scofflaw into compliance rather than with actual arrests. Did it work? Not really. There may have been fewer people in pajamas during the Expo, but there were still plenty…and the cherished Shanghai pajama tradition lives on.

  Brine shrimp can survive in water that is six times as salty as seawater.

  AIRPLANE REPOSSESSOR

  When private jet owners fall behind on their payments, somebody has to repossess their flying machines. Enter the airplane “repo” men. These people have to be certified pilots capable of flying many different types of aircraft. They also have to be courageous: Nick Popovich, president of an airplane repossession company based in Indiana, was once called to repossesses a Gulfstream jet from an airport in South Carolina. When he arrived, he was met by a group of neo-nazis, armed with shotguns, who had been hired to guard the plane. One held a pistol to Popovich’s temple and told him to leave or he’d “blow his f***ing head off.” Popovich told him to go ahead. Then he boarded the plane and flew it away. Pay: Popovich says he makes as much as $900,000 per job. And he’s one of only a few airplane repossessors in the world.

  MORE WEIRD JOBS

  Monument crack filler: These workers use gallons of silicone caulk to plug the cracks in massive stone monuments like Mt. Rushmore.

  Diener: In the undertaking world, a diener is someone who cleans and prepares a dead body for autopsy at the morgue. It comes from the German leichendiener, which means “corpse servant.”

  Hot walker: If this conjures up an image of someone tippy-toeing across a bed of hot coals, think again. A hot walker is the stable hand who cools off a horse after a race by walking it up and down the paddock. This job can be a matter of life—thoroughbreds can suffer kidney failure if they aren’t “hot-walked.”

  World’s largest democracy: India, with more than half a billion voters.

 
; THE PEE-MOBILE

  We wrote a paragraph about this in Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader and it fascinated us so much that we wanted to share more details. It’s real science…and it could be coming to an automobile near you soon.

  BACKGROUND

  Dr. Gerardine Botte is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Ohio University. She’s also the founder and director of the school’s Electrochemical Engineering Research Laboratory (EERL). Among its many projects, the EERL develops technology for devices known as fuel cells.

  Fuel cells are devices that convert a fuel of some kind (Botte’s group was working on hydrogen) into electricity. They’ve been around for a long time—NASA used them for the Apollo moon landings in the late 1960s and early ’70s. But they’ve never been commercially viable, thanks in large part to the high costs associated with obtaining and storing the hydrogen.

  STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  One way to obtain hydrogen is to pass an electric current through water to separate the hydrogen atoms—the “H”s in H2O—from the oxygen atoms—the “O”s—using a process called electrolysis. Because the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are bound together very tightly, it takes a great deal of electricity to break these bonds.

  Another problem with this technique is that fresh water works best for the fuel-cell conversion…and it’s scarce. Only three percent of the water on Earth is fresh; the rest is salt water. And very little of that three percent is available to humans for drinking, crop irrigation, and other uses. So it’s doubtful that hydrogen will ever be extracted from clean, fresh water on a large scale.

  But what about dirty fresh water? That’s the idea that came to Dr. Botte several years ago when she was driving home from a conference on fuel cell technology: Why not extract hydrogen from wastewater, which is widely available, virtually free, and not in great demand? Botte soon narrowed her focus to one waste stream in particular: urine.