Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (79 page)

President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed to heat water in the White House. President Ronald Reagan had them taken out.

A democracy is only as weird as the people who participate in it—and you know what that means: anything can happen in an election. Here's proof.

“During the 2002 campaign for Chancellor of Germany, the DDP news agency quoted an image consultant suggesting that Gerhard Schroeder, aged 58, should admit that he dyed his hair to keep it looking dark. It would be better, she suggested, for his ‘credibility.' It became a campaign issue when members of the opposition Chistian Social Union party demanded a scientific test of his hair. ‘Someone who touches up his hair,' said CSU leader Karl Josef Laumann, ‘also touches up statistics.'”

—BBC News

“In 2001, the ruling Alliance of Democratic Forces party tried to manipulate the Bulgarian parliamentary election by having all parties using the name ‘Bulgaria' banned from the election. Since the word ‘Bulgaria' is a national symbol, they said, it should not be used for political purposes. Among their opposition: Bulgarian Socialist Party, Civic Party of Bulgaria, Empire of Bulgaria, and Forward Bulgaria! Common sense prevailed—the idea was later modified to pertain only to parties which have the designation ‘for Bulgaria' as part of their name.”

—
AIM

“In Sultan, Washington, in 2001, Rob Criswell was trying to unseat incumbent Cindy Broughton in a very close race. Even after two recounts the result was still a 501–501 tie. So how did they determine the winner? State law dictates that tied races be called ‘by lot.' Legally, they could have rolled dice, picked cards or drawn straws to determine the winner, but they flipped a coin. Broughton called heads. She lost.”

—
Seattle Times

“What's the value of a vote these days? If it's a Canadian Alliance party leadership vote, the answer is $42. That's what the bidding got up to on eBay after Montrealer Charlie McKenzie, alias ‘deep toke,' put his first-round Alliance party leadership ballot up for auction. EBay stopped the sale, saying it is against the rules to buy or sell anything that could determine the outcome of an election.

“McKenzie originally paid $10 to join the party, with the intention of voting for a fringe candidate. But when party finance rules forced drag queen Enza out of the race, McKenzie decided to follow ‘the Dow of democracy' and sell his vote to the highest bidder.”

—Montreal Gazette

“Incumbent U.S. Senator from Missouri, John Ashcroft (R), was left running against a dead man after his opponent, Governor Mel Carnahan (D), died in a plane crash three weeks before election day. By that time, it was too late to remove Carnahan's name from the ballot.

“Ashcroft held the lead in polls until Carnahan's death threw the race into turmoil. On election day, no one could predict how the sympathy factor would play at the polls. The late governor's wife, Jean Carnahan, used ads to make emotional appeals for ‘the values and beliefs that Mel Carnahan wanted to take to the United States Senate.'

“Her ads worked. Ashcroft lost; Carnahan beat him by 41,000 votes.”

—CNN

“In 2002, workers in a Miami nursing home voted 49–37 to unionize. But the nursing home immediately filed an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming a series of voodoo signs may have spooked the facility's large Haitian-American workforce into voting to organize. Workers testified at a hearing that they were frightened by seeing lines of pennies, half-empty water cups, and a pro-union empolyee twisting black beads in her hand before the vote.”

—Bradenton Herald

It's one of TV's eternal mysteries: Here he was stranded on Gilligan's Island with no tools and no power. Yet the Professor was such a genius that he could invent virtually anything… except a boat. Stupefying. Well, here's a list of some of the things he
did
invent.

• Lie detector (made from the ship's horn, the radio's batteries, and bamboo)

• Bamboo telescope

• Jet pack fuel

• Paralyzing strychnine serum

• “Spider juice” (to kill a giant spider)

• Nitroglycerine

• Shark repellent

• Helium balloon (rubber raincoats sewn together and sealed with tree sap)

• Coconut-shell battery recharger

• Xylophone

• Soap (made from plant fats, it's not really so far-fetched)

• Roulette wheel

• Geiger counter (
that's
far-fetched)

• Pedal-powered bamboo sewing machine

• Pedal-powered washing machine

• Keptibora-berry extract (to cure Gilligan's double vision)

• Pedal-powered water pump

• Pedal-powered telegraph

• Hair tonic

• Pedal-powered generator

• Various poisons and antidotes

• Pool table (for Mr. Howell)

• Lead radiation suits and lead-based makeup (protection against a meteor's cosmic rays)

Most people are afraid of bees—hey they sting. But bees aren't merely pests—they're an essential part of the ecosystem. Consider this: One-third of the average human diet comes from plants that depend on insects to pollinate them, and honeybees perform 80% of that pollination.

Honeybees are real workhorses. A typical bee visits—and pollinates—between 50 and 100 flowers in a single foraging trip from the hive…and never visits the same flower twice. On average, a honeybee flies 500 miles over the course of its lifetime at an average speed of 15 mph—the human equivalent to traveling twice around the circumference of Earth. And they carry loads up to half their body weight while doing it. There's one simple reason for all that activity: They're collecting food.

Here's how it works: Honeybees fly from flower to flower to collect nectar. At a flower, they use their proboscis, or long sucking mouth, to drink the flower's nectar. They store the nectar in a special “honey stomach,” which sits next to their regular stomach, then fly back to their hive. Once back in the hive, they spit the nectar into one of the honeycomb cells. Other bees then suck it up and regurgitate it—a process that gets repeated up to 50 times. The combination of water evaporation and enzymes from the bees' saliva creates honey.

In the process of collecting nectar, honeybees also collect pollen. They do this by rubbing up against the flower's
anther
—its male apparatus. Their body hairs brush the pollen into pollen “baskets,” which sit on the bees' hind legs; some of the pollen also gets stuck to their body hair. Back in the hive, the pollen that's stuck on their hair gets mixed with different types of pollen by brushing against other bees; outside the hive, it gets mixed by entering different flowers. Either way, the process contributes to
cross-pollination—the fertilizing of one flower with pollen from another flower…which produces fruit.

It also contributes to the bees' diet. Honeybees eat both the pollen and the nectar they collect from flowers. The pollen provides their protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals for growth and reproduction; the nectar provides sugar for energy. Adult bees convert some of the pollen into a milk that they secrete from glands in their heads to feed to their larvae.

And what do the bees do with their honey? They store it for use as food during seasons when flowers don't bloom—winters in temperate climates; rainy spells or droughts in tropical climates. When lots of nectar-producing flowers blossom, bees store much more honey than they could ever eat.

Honey harvested by beekeepers is collected in at least two ways: liquid honey is extracted from honeycombs by machine; comb honey is collected while it's still in the original wax combs made by the bees (this honey is less adaptable to cooking but is preferred by connoisseurs).

Bees collect not only nectar and pollen but also water. They don't drink the water—they use it to air-condition the hive on hot days by spreading it on every surface and fanning it with their wings. When a worker bee arrives back at the hive bearing a load of food, house bees meet it and take the food from him to be stored. Generally, returning bees bearing food are relieved of their loads immediately; those carrying only water have to wait. However, researchers once deliberately turned up the heat under a hive. As the temperature slowly and steadily rose, bees bringing water were greeted at once while those bringing food were ignored. So effective is the evaporative method of air-conditioning that a bee colony on a lava field kept their hive at a constant temperature of 97°F as the surrounding air temperature soared to 140°F.

Until recently, law required all movies made in Hong Kong had to have English subtitles. But producers spent as little on translations as possible… and it shows. These gems are from the book
Sex and Zen & a Bullet in the Head,
by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins.

“Take my advice, or I'll spank you without pants.”

“Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.”

“You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken.”

“Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?”

“This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your toenails and leave them out on the dessert floor for ants to eat.”

“A normal person wouldn't steal pituitaries.”

“That may disarray my intestines.”

“The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?”

“Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.”

“I am darn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.”

“If you don't eat people, they'll eat you.”

“She's terrific. I can't stand her.”

“Darn, I'll burn you into a BBQ chicken.”

“I'll cut your fats out, don't you believe it?”

“Sex fiend, you'll never get reincarnated!”

“How can I make love without TV?”

“I got knife scars more than the number of your leg's hair!”

“Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your doctor for a thorough extermination.”

“What is a soul? It's just a toilet paper.”

Here's Part III of our story on Eli Whitney. (Part II starts on page 239.)

Eli Whitney's cotton gin played a pivotal part in creating the pre–Civil War south as an economic power. Cotton had transformed the South from an underdeveloped, underpopulated wilderness into the home of America's largest cash crop. It enriched not only the South, which grew it, but also the North, which had its own fledgling textile industry, and whose merchants shipped it to England.