Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t! Read online

  Bullsh*t! Most of those statements are true about a different language, Esperanto. Klingon is not an international auxiliary language because it was not designed to facilitate communication between people who have different native languages. Esperanto was designed for this purpose, as were the Universalglot, Solresol, and Volapük languages.

  Klingon is popular in its own right, however: A 2010 production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was performed entirely in Klingon, the heavy metal band Stovokor performs entirely in Klingon, and the opera ‘u’ was written and performed entirely in Klingon.

  You can even Google in Klingon.

  Fact. The fact that Nichols, an African American, played a major role in a 1966 television show was not insignificant. Nichols recalled her encounter with King: “He said, ‘You have the first non-stereotypical role in television. It’s not a maid’s role, it’s not a menial role…. This is something that is the reason we are walking, we are marching.’”

  Uhura’s kiss with Captain Kirk in a 1968 episode is popularly regarded as the first scripted interracial television kiss. Nichols would go on to be recruited by NASA to help encourage African-American women to become astronauts.

  Fact. You can find them all on Google Maps. Clearly, some urban planners are fans.

  TETRIS!

  Tetris was first invented in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, a computer programmer at the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. An early release of the game was called “TETIS: The Soviet Mind Game.”

  Tetris is the most popular video game of all time, having sold as many as 150 million units in its various forms.

  A 2009 study by the Mind Research Network, hoping to prove that playing Tetris was beneficial, actually discovered that playing the game repetitively is harmful to the brain’s development process.

  Fact. Perhaps there is a secret Communist message in Tetris.

  Fact. You could argue the point of Tetris being the most “popular” game, but the numbers certainly don’t lie. From 2005 to 2011 alone, more than 100 million Tetris downloads were sold just for mobile phones. For reference, the original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System was one of the most popular games ever, and sold around 40 million copies. Tetris debuted a year before Super Mario Bros.

  Tetris is the only game to be released on nearly every video game platform in existence, and can even be played on some non-video-game systems, including calculators, Internet radio devices, and oscilloscopes.

  Bullsh*t! Not only did the Mind Research Network for Neurodiagnostic Discovery study prove that playing Tetris on a regular basis improved brain function, the nonprofit was alarmed to discover that playing Tetris regularly can make your brain bigger.

  The study, conducted entirely on adolescent girls, showed markedly improved brain efficiency in the regions of the brain associated with critical thinking, reasoning, and language after three months of regularly playing Tetris. The girls also developed noticeably thicker cortexes in two regions of the brain–the parts associated with multisensory integration and planning complex movements.

  As a result of the evidence, some researchers believe that playing Tetris could also help aging and elderly brains, by slowing down deterioration.

  A half hour of Tetris a day keeps dementia away!

  ZOMBIES!

  Our modern conception of zombies as shambling, flesh-eating creatures is almost entirely due to George Romero’s seminal 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead. However, the word “zombie” never appears in the film.

  Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Dead Head Fred, Zombie Panic in Wonderland, Voodoo Kid, and Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ are all zombie movies that came out in 1987.

  An actual “zombie” named Clairvius Narcisse wandered, glassy-eyed, back into his native Haitian village in 1980, even though he had been pronounced dead in 1962. He was recognized by many relatives and acquaintances who had attended his funeral and witnessed his burial.

  Fact. Before Night of the Living Dead, zombies were typically portrayed in popular media as living people enslaved by witch doctors. Romero’s vision of the malevolent walking dead lay the foundation for most renditions of zombies we see today.

  The word “zombie” is not in the film at all. The creatures are referred to as ghouls.

  Bullsh*t! All of those are zombie video games.

  The year 1987 was still good for zombie movies, however: I Was a Teenage Zombie, Zombie Vs. Ninja, Night of the Living Babes, Zombie High, Revenge of the Living Dead Girls, and The Video Dead are all examples of zombie films that came out that year.

  Fact. The very word “zombie” is borrowed from West Africa or Haiti or both, and can mean either the walking dead or a person in an entranced state.

  The story of the Haitian zombie Clairvius Narcisse was heavily investigated by Harvard-trained anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis in the ’80s, resulting in his book The Serpent and the Rainbow.

  Davis’s explanation was that, in Haiti, zombies are real. The catch is that they aren’t actually dead. He believes that witch doctors produced zombies by dosing victims with tetrodotoxin, the same poison found in puffer fish. The victims fall into a death-like coma, and are subsequently buried alive. The witch doctor returns to the graveyard within hours, before the victim asphyxiates, and digs him up. The victim is then dosed with a powerful hallucinogen called datura, which can cause delirium, mydriasis (severe pupil dilation–that “dead” look), bizarre behavior, and amnesia.

  MONOPOLY!

  The game of Monopoly is descended from a 1903 game called The Landlord’s Game. The creator of the game, Lizzie Magie, intended the game to demonstrate that monopolies are bad for society.

  A Monopoly game comes with $16,280 in Monopoly money. In 1965 a group of fraternity brothers at the University of Delaware were playing a highly publicized marathon game for a fundraiser and ran out of money. They made their own money to continue the game, and were subsequently sued by Parker Brothers for copyright infringement.

  Special editions of Monopoly were created in 1941 for World War II prisoners of war in hopes to help them escape. Inside the Monopoly game were real money, a file, a compass, and a hidden compartment with a map of the local area with safe houses marked.

  Fact. Though Parker Brothers rarely acknowledges it, historians have proven that Monopoly is descended from The Landlord’s Game. Lizzie Magie was a devout Georgist, which means she believed that land should not be privately owned, but instead belong to all mankind. She wanted her board game to show that rent impoverished tenants and enriched landlords.

  Bullsh*t! First, the game comes with $20,580 in Monopoly money. (This is the same amount as the cash prize in the Monopoly World Championship.)

  A marathon game, taking place in 1961 by a group of fraternity brothers at the University of Pittsburgh, was stalled when the bank ran out of money. The rules stated that the bank never goes broke, and so the fraternity brothers wired Parker Brothers requesting more money.

  Parker Brothers sent an armored car with $1 million in Monopoly money to the game so that it could continue.

  Fact. The British Secret Service approached John Waddington Ltd. (at the time, the manufacturer of Monopoly outside the United States) with the idea. The “special” edition of the game was sent to POW camps by the Red Cross, and some prisoners actually made their escape with the help of the loaded board game.

  OPRAH!

  The Oprah Winfrey Show airs in 145 countries–that’s roughly three-quarters of the world. Both CNN and Time have said Oprah is the world’s most powerful woman. An economic analysis from the University of Maryland suggests that Oprah’s endorsement of Barack Obama may have won the 2008 Democratic primary for him.

  In 1995, Oprah supplanted Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes list of the richest 400 people in the country. She was the first black female billionaire in history.

  The “Oprah effect” describes the postitive influence that Winfrey has on her viewers, partic
ularly in the field of women’s health. Winfrey is widely regarded by the medical community as a profoundly helpful source of medical advice for American women.

  Fact. There are 195 countries in the world (give or take, depending on your criteria). The Oprah Winfrey Show is distributed in 145 of them, just a hair shy of 75 percent.

  Oprah was called “America’s most powerful woman” by Life magazine, and she was listed as the most powerful celebrity in the world by Forbes on multiple occasions.

  The Maryland economists estimate that Oprah’s endorsement (her first ever since her show debuted in 1986) delivered approximately 1 million popular votes to Obama, enough to flip the outcome in the race between Obama and Hillary Clinton in multiple states. You could argue that she won him the primary, and is subsequently the reason he became president.

  That’s power.

  Fact. In 1995, it was estimated Oprah was worth $340 million. Today, she is worth between $2.5 and $3 billion dollars.

  In 2000, the University of Illinois offered the course “History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon.”

  Bullsh*t! In general, the “Oprah effect” refers to her ability to increase an author’s book sales by several orders of magnitude. Sometimes the phrase is used to describe her influence in general, but it does not always have a positive connotation. In fact, Winfrey’s selections of “medical” guests and the issues she’s championed in the field of women’s health have been roundly attacked by scores of medical professionals, and some of them have been called downright “dangerous” for women, including the assumption that childhood vaccines cause autism (no proven link), and the endorsement of injecting hormones into your vagina in order to stay young (dramatically increases the risk of cancer).

  DUNGEONS & DRAGONS!

  The Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin banned the playing of Dungeons & Dragons by its inmates in 2004, giving the reason that the game could lead to escape fantasies and gang activity.

  Tiny Hut, Gentle Repose, Touch of Idiocy, Warp Wood, Glibness, and Sepia Snake Sigil are all legitimate spells that magic-using player characters can “cast” in a revised version (3.5) of the “d20 System” Dungeons & Dragons.

  Action-movie star Vin Diesel suffered the ire of nerds everywhere in 2009 when he publicly referred to Dungeons & Dragons players as “losers.” In response to the outcry, the buff actor issued a half-hearted apology on Twitter.

  Fact. When the ban went into effect, “offending” materials were confiscated, such as miniature goblin figurines and dungeon master rule books. The ban was challenged with a lawsuit by a dedicated gamer, Kevin T. Singer, who is serving a life sentence in Waupun. The lawsuit failed, and the prison’s decision was upheld. In court, prison officials said they had banned Dungeons & Dragons on the advice of the prison’s gang specialist, and that the game could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence, and escape behavior.”

  Fact. The “d20 System” is a version of Dungeons & Dragons that relies on twenty-sided dice to determine game action.

  In any role-playing game such as Dungeons & Dragons, players imagine the actions of their characters. While science suggests that such spells cannot be legitimately cast in real life, it is truthful to say that characters can cast them. All the spells mentioned here are listed in the rule book.

  Bullsh*t! That’s a cock-and-bull story. Vin Diesel was an avid Dungeons & Dragons player for over twenty years, and to this day lights up like a giddy kid when he’s asked about his former character “Melkor,” a half-Drow witch hunter. Diesel wrote the forward to the book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.

  THE WEDGIE!

  A ten-year-old boy from Grimsby, England, had to undergo emergency surgery to reattach his testicle after he received a wedgie from his classmates.

  Salt Lake City had to deal with the “Wedgie Bandit” from 2007 to 2009. The Bandit, later identified as Frederick Baze, would pounce on unsuspecting women in public places and yank their underwear before dashing off on foot. He was finally arrested after being caught and pinned to the ground by a local veterinary technician.

  The Rip-Away 1000 is the name of “bully-proof underwear” invented by Jared and Justin Serovich of Columbus, Ohio. As the name suggests, the underwear is designed to tear free if a malicious person yanks on it.

  Fact. The English boy did not blame his friends for his injury, and, in fact, admitted to the media that he himself had been in the habit of doling out wedgies. He underwent an hour-long emergency operation to reattach his testicle to the lining of his scrotum. The boys all admitted to having gotten the idea from seeing wedgies performed on The Simpsons.

  Bullsh*t! The Wedgie Bandit doesn’t exist, but a law-abiding citizen used a wedgie to good effect: When Salt Lake City thief Frederick Baze tried to steal a car, vet tech Yvonne Miller chased him and managed to stop him by giving him a wedgie. After the wedgie, she switched to a headlock and waited for the police.

  Fact. The Rip-Away 1000 is real, and Jared and Justin Serovich really invented it, but I neglected to mention that, at the time, the twin brothers were eight years old. Their invention got them to the finals of a 2007 Ohio invention competition, but it didn’t win first prize.

  HARRY POTTER!

  In one of J. K. Rowling’s early outlines for the Harry Potter series, the working title for the first book was Harry Potter and Bao Zoulong, referring to the character Harry and his potential sidekick: a talking porcelain doll.

  The seven Harry Potter volumes make up the bestselling book series of all time, with well over 400 million copies sold. The books have been translated into more than sixty-five languages, including Luxemburgish, Occitan, Faroese, and Ancient Greek.

  The first Harry Potter film was the 1986 movie Troll. In the movie, young Harry Potter is forced to wield a magic staff and battle an evil troll to save his sister, Wendy.

  Bullsh*t! J. K. Rowling never intended to use that title.

  However, for a time, you could buy both Harry Potter and Bao Zoulong and Harry Potter and the Porcelain Doll in China. The books were quickly recognized as fakes. Bao Zoulong primarily featured text lifted from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, with character names changed to those of Harry Potter characters.

  Similarly, legal pressure convinced an Indian publishing house to stop printing copies of the fraudulent Harry Potter in Calcutta.

  Fact. While single-volume books have outsold Harry Potter (the Bible has sold billions upon billions of copies), there is no series of books that have performed as well as J. K. Rowling’s stories about the teenage wizard.

  It’s hard to imagine that there’s much demand for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Ancient Greek, but there you have it, they’ve gone and translated it anyway. (It’s called ρειος Ποτ ρ κα το φιλοσόφου λίθος.)

  Fact. J. K. Rowling claims to have had the idea for a young wizard named Harry Potter in 1990, but a young boy named Harry Potter was already engaging in magical battles in this 1986 cult dark fantasy film. Coincidence? You decide. Harry Potter was played by Noah Hathaway (he was also Atreyu in The Neverending Story), and the movie featured a young Julia-Louis Dreyfus. Thanks to Rowling’s Potter series, the movie has enjoyed a recent surge in public interest, and a remake is rumored to be in the works.

  LOL!

  Expressions such as “LOL” (an acronym for “laughing out loud”) has been proven to be beneficial for e-communication: A study at the University of Tasmania found that using Internet shorthand is twice as efficient for both sender and reader.

  LOL is an airport in Nevada. Lol is a place in France. Lolol is a town in Chile. “Lol” Tolhurst was the first drummer for the English band The Cure.

  The French equivalent of “LOL” is “MDR.” Coincidentally, lol is a real word in both Welsh and Dutch, meaning “nonsense” and “fun,” respectively.

  Bullsh*t! First of all, “LOL,” like “ROFL,” “
LMAO,” and “BRB,” is not an acronym. It is an initialism. An acronym is pronounced as a word (e.g., “RADAR” or “AIDS”), and an initialism is not (e.g. “FBI” or “NAACP”).

  Such initialisms actually hinder communication. The University of Tasmania study found that using shorthand, such as “c u ltr b4n” (“See you later. Bye for now.”), does save the sender time, but takes twice as long for the receiver to understand, even if they are super-tech-savvy texters (like my thirteen-year-old cousin Jenny).

  Fact. The IATA code for Derby Field in Nevada is, in fact, LOL. The very small town of Lol is in Dordogne, France. Lolol is a town in Chile, not far from Santa Cruz.

  There have been several musicians who have gone by “Lol,” including Laurence “Lol” Tolhurst of The Cure, the saxophonist Lol Coxhill, and my favorite, the guitarist from the band 10cc, whose name is Lol Creme.

  Fact. “MDR” stands for mort de rire, which is an expression that means “laughing,” or, more literally, “died of laughter.”

  When I learned that lol means “nonsense” and “fun” in Welsh and Dutch, I literally laughed out loud.

  LOL!

  YOUTUBE!

  YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who had all been employees of PayPal. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for the equivalent of $1.65 billion in Google stock. As of January 2011, YouTube was the third-most-visited site on the Internet, and over thirty-five hours of video were being uploaded to the site every minute.

  The first video ever uploaded to YouTube was called “Roundhay Garden Scene.” It depicted four people walking around in a garden, and it was only two seconds long.