Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  change their names. (By the way, the Bathroom

  Reader is now called LooRead.)

  WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION

  Story: The World Wrestling Federation was a “sports entertainment” business founded in the U.S. in 1979. The World Wildlife Fund is an environmental preservation group established in Switzerland in 1961. For 20 years, the two organizations were able to share use of the abbreviation “WWF,” probably because one was a business and the other was a charity. But in 2000, the nature WWF sued the wrestling WWF for unfair trade practices, claiming the wrestling WWF had used the WWF abbreviation internationally, which, under a 1994 agreement, was the charity’s domain.

  New Name: A British court ruled in favor of the charity, forcing the wrestling organization to change its name (and abbreviation) to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

  BLACKWATER WORLDWIDE

  Story: Established in 1997, Blackwater Worldwide was a private security and military service. During the war in Iraq, the U.S. government contracted with the firm to provide private troops and security. (Essentially, its troops are mercenaries.) But between 2006 and 2008, Blackwater became the subject of a number of controversial charges, including opening fire on civilians (killing

  12), smuggling weapons, and helping a jailed Iraqi politician escape prison and the country. In February 2009, Blackwater was expelled from the country by the Iraqi government. And its contract was not renewed by the Obama administration.

  New Name: To disassociate itself from all of its Iraq-related problems, Blackwater rebranded itself Xe (pronounced “zee”).

  PHILLIP MORRIS

  Story: By the early 2000s, the Phillip Morris company was a $30-billion corporation that had diversified beyond its original core business of tobacco. No longer just the manufacturer of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, and Chesterfield cigarettes, it also made Kool-Aid, pudding, Cool Whip, instant coffee, mayonnaise, and cheese—the company owned an 84 percent stake in Kraft Foods. After losing several wrongful death lawsuits because of the cigarettes they manufactured, the company wanted the public to focus on its wholesome foods divisions, not the tobacco.

  New Name: In 2003, Phillip Morris became Altria. The word is a derivative of altus, the Latin word for “high.”

  DIEBOLD

  Story: Diebold is an American company that today is best known for making electronic voting machines—the ones that didn’t work properly during the 2004 national election. The company’s primary business is selling safes and automated teller machines; voting machines were produced by an individual division within the company called Diebold Election Systems. In 2007 the main corporation sought to distance itself from the troublesome voting machines and the segment of the company that made them. By selling off the division? No—they just changed its name.

  New Name: Premier Election Solutions

  GMAC FINANCIAL SERVICES

  Story: In 1919 General Motors created its own financing branch, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, in order to help World War I veterans buy their first cars. Over the past 90 years, GMAC expanded to offer not only car loans, but also mortgages and insurance. Technically, it wasn’t a bank; it was a loan agency. But in the 2008 financial meltdown, GMAC struggled with the same problems that banks had—they were hemorrhaging money because consumers weren’t keeping up with their car loans or mortgage payments. So in December 2008, GMAC converted to a bank, entitling it to receive part of the $700 billion federal bailout money. It got about $6 billion.

  New Name: In order to disassociate itself from its past problems—and its parent company’s current ones—in May 2009, GMAC “rebranded” as Ally Bank.

  THE HISTORY OF JUDO

  In the late 1870s, a short, skinny kid started taking jujitsu

  classes in Tokyo. Martial arts would never be the same.

  (Right down to their fancy, colored belts.)

  NINETY-POUND WEAKLING

  In 1878 Jigoro Kano, the 17-year-old son of a sake maker, moved from the island of Honshu to Tokyo to attend Tokyo Imperial University. Shortly after arriving he started taking lessons in the Japanese martial art jujitsu. Kano was small, just over five feet tall, and weighed only about 90 pounds, but he was incredibly focused, and in just a few years became a master in the Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu, or “Divine True Willow,” school of jujitsu. Then he started studying other techniques—including western wrestling styles—and began developing his own moves, primarily takedowns. In 1882 Kano opened his own school, beginning with just 12 students. At the time he felt he was still teaching a form of jujitsu, but in 1884, at the age of just 24, he founded a new school of martial arts—judo, meaning “the gentle way.”

  JU-JISTORY

  Jujitsu had been the dominant martial art in Japan for centuries. The name, which means “the art of softness,” was first used in the 1500s, and referred to a wide variety of combat techniques which had been developed by Japan’s warrior class, the samurai, since at least the 12th century.

  During its formative years jujitsu involved the use of weapons, such as swords and spears, and was used on battlefields by heavily armored samurai. In the 1600s, that all changed when the Tokugawa Shogunate conquered the entire country. Over the following 250 relatively peaceful years, jujitsu naturally evolved, reflecting those more peaceful times. Rather than fighting with weapons and in full armor, combatants studied and developed unarmed fighting techniques in schools. This is known as the “Golden Age” of jujitsu, when literally thousands of different schools and styles flourished.

  Then in the mid-1800s, everything changed again: The Tokugawas lost power and the country emerged from its primitive, feudal framework, ended its policy of complete isolation, and embraced the West and the modern, industrialized world. As a result, old Japanese traditions became very unpopular—and that included jujitsu. The storied martial art was in danger of dying out completely…but then Kano showed up.

  I GENTLE YOU TO DEATH!

  Jujitsu may mean “the art of softness,” but that’s deceiving: It includes the use of foot and hand strikes, and can be brutal. To make the art more appealing—to people who didn’t want broken bones on a regular basis—Kano removed the strikes, making judo truly more “gentle,” relying instead on throws, holds, and choking submission techniques.

  But the most important aspect of judo, according to Kano, was kuzushi, or “off-balancing,” which referred to moves designed to put an opponent off balance, making it easier to take them to the ground. It was nothing new, but it had never been a central theme in a martial art before—and it was very effective. Within months, Kano began beating one of his former jujitsu teachers, something that he had never done before. That immediately brought judo a lot of notice.

  Two years later, because of Kano’s growing success, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police organized a contest between Kano’s judo students and students of the most popular jujitsu school in the city. Tokyo police officers—who normally studied jujitsu, pledged that if Kano’s school won—they’d switch to judo. Kano sent his 15 best students. Out of their 15 matches they won 12. Judo soon became popular all over Japan, and Kano certainly couldn’t have known it at the time, but it would eventually have enormous influence on martial arts all over the world.

  RANK AND RE-FILE

  One of Kano’s biggest influences on other martial arts was the student ranking system he chose. Instead of using jujitsu’s menkyo, or “license” system, which awarded students certificates based on skill level—and which was not used uniformly around the country—Kano adopted a straightforward system that virtually all Japanese people were already familiar with: It was from the ancient Chinese board game Go. The game had been popular in Japan since the 1600s, and since that time had used a player rating system which made competition more fair. It consisted first of separating students into two groups: the kyu, or non-ranked, beginning students; and the dan, the ranked students. Within each of these were several levels (or degrees): six in the kyu ranks and ten in the dan. In 1884 Kan
o brought this to judo. Then came the belts.

  BELT HIM!

  In 1885 two of Kano’s students became the first to reach the first dan level. At the time all students of Japanese martial arts wore simple kimonos with a white sash around their waists. To give his two dan students a visual sign of their achievement, Kano had them wear black sashes—and invented the colored belt ranking system that is probably the most recognizable aspect of any martial art in the world today. By 1895 virtually all of Japan’s hand-to-hand martial arts schools were using Kano’s ranking system, belts included. And when new martial art schools later appeared, such as modern karate and aikido, they did, too.

  Kano was an especially adept teacher, businessman, and diplomat, and over the following decades he and his students traveled the world promoting the martial art he founded, often at the invitation of world leaders. By the 1920s there were judo schools, or dojos, in most European countries, and several in the U.S.

  Jigoro Kano died in 1938 at the age of 77, before his dream of seeing judo competition in the Olympics. It finally made it in 1964, when Tokyo became the first Asian city to host the summer games. The host country gets to add a sport of their choosing—and Japan chose Kano’s judo. It was the first Asian martial art to become an Olympic sport, and judo is still one of the most popular martial arts in the world today.

  Extra: In 1935 one of Kano’s students, Mikonosuke Kawaishi, opened a dojo in Paris. To give Westerners more incentive to stay in school, he tried an innovation: he started awarding different colored belts—white, yellow, orange, green, blue, and brown—to the six levels of beginner kyu students, who would normally wear only white. It was a hit, and quickly spread to other European schools, and over the years to many other martial arts, and finally all over the world.

  POLI-TALKS

  Public officials suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.

  “If crime went down 100 percent, it would still be 50 times higher than it should be.”

  —John Bowman, Washington, D.C., Councilman

  “I’m probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.”

  —Rudy Giuliani, to British reporters

  “On this Memorial Day, our nation honors its fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today.”

  —President Barack Obama

  “Saturday Night Live could use a good Obama impersonator like you.”

  —Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, thinking it was a prank when Barack Obama called her on the phone

  “I’m sure a lot of you have tripped out on alcohol. It’s actually a lot safer to do it on marijuana.”

  —Sen. Mike Gravel, to high school students

  “Every week we don’t pass a stimulus package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs.”

  —Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

  “It is perfectly American to be wrong.”

  —Newt Gingrich

  Impeached Illinois Gov.

  Rod Blagojevich: I’ve wanted to be on your show in the worst way for the longest time.

  David Letterman: Well, you’re on in the worst way, believe me.

  “President Washington, President Lincoln, and President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.”

  —Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General, testifying to Congress

  “You had some good points. It was kind of long, so I forgot some of them.”

  —Sen. Diana Bajoie, during a debate

  “I’m the former chairman of the Ethics Committee. I know what’s ethical and what isn’t, and there’s nothing unethical about this.”

  —Sen. Ted Stevens, on appearing in a TV ad for a military contractor

  “Now, the only thing that remains unsolved is the resolution of the problem.” —Thomas Wells, Ontario

  Minister of Education

  “I talked to the White House this morning—I mean, you can’t talk to a building, but I talked to some people in the White House this morning.”

  —George Stephanopoulos

  “I am running for President of the United States to enable the Goddess of Peace to encircle within her arms all the children of this country and all the children of the world.”

  —Rep. Dennis Kucinich

  REAL REDNECK RECIPES

  Hillbilly Hash: Heat up an iron skillet and melt two teaspoons of butter. Add a cup of ground beef and ½ cup of finely chopped possum meat. When it sizzles, add in a cup of boiling water. Brown the meat and add two cups of diced, boiled tomatoes (2½ cups if the possum meat is extra greasy). Let cook for about 10 minutes, and add a dash of moonshine whisky. Serve with fried eggs.

  Vinegar Pie: Combine 1¼ cups sugar, ¼ cup of flour, and a tablespoon of lemon zest, and blend together in a heated saucepan. Stir in two cups of water and ½ cup of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a boil, remove from heat, and combine with a mixture of three beaten eggs. Pour into a pie crust and bake.

  Black Stew: Fry two cups of chicken gizzards, chicken livers, or possum in a skillet until crispy. Add in a whole chopped onion and fry for a few minutes. Dump it all into a large pot and add six cups of boiling water. Throw in five cups of collard greens, two cups of wild mushrooms, a cup of pinto beans, a chopped potato, and anything else you’ve got lying around that might be good in a stew. Just before serving, add in a spoonful of butter and ½ cup of bacon grease.

  RANDOM ORIGINS

  Once again, Uncle John answers the question: Where does all this stuff come from?

  LICENSE PLATES

  The first license plates for automobiles appeared in France in 1893. In the United States, the first state to require them was New York in 1901. Two years later, Massachusetts became the first state to issue them. But these early plates were inconsistent. Some were issued by towns or states, others were homemade, and they could be made of wood, clay, porcelain, or metal. More inconsistencies: some plates displayed the owner’s initials, some displayed the owner’s registration number, and others were numbered sequentially according to when the cars were purchased. How long did it take for license plates become the 6 x 12-inch metal rectangles we know today? Half a century. In 1957 Congress finally passed national standards for what are technically called “vehicle registration plates.”

  THE INFINITY SYMBOL

  John Wallis, a mathematics professor at Oxford University, was creating a text book called Arithmetica Infinitorum in 1655, and needed a symbol to represent a number so high that it could not be counted. He came up with this: ∞. Most historians believe that Wallis simply altered the Roman numeral M (1,000), which was sometimes used to mean “many.”

  THE PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS

  In 1868 Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, a professor at the University of St. Petersburg, set out to categorize the 60 known elements. Although scientists didn’t know what atoms were made of, they knew that elements were different kinds of atoms, each with its own unique atomic weight. Mendeleev made a little card for each element, complete with all of its physical and chemical properties. Then he laid them all out on a table and tried different ways of arranging them. He noticed that when he started with the lightest weight, a pattern emerged: Basically, certain types of elements would always follow each other based on their reactivity. Although Mendeleev had only 60 of what we now know to be 110 elements—and much of what was assumed about them was wrong—he was able to predict most of the ones that had yet to be discovered, and as such, his periodic table is still in use today.

  THE TAPE MEASURE

  In Sheffield, England, in the late 1820s, James Chesterman manufactured long steel bands that were rolled into continuous loops for use as frames in hoop skirts. But when the hoop skirt fashion fell out of favor, Chesterman was left with a lot of light-weight, bendable steel bands. Solution: He put notches into them at incremental distances and sold them to surveyors as “Steel Band Measuring Chains.” He even built a special casing with a spring inside that would roll up the band. In New Haven, Connecticut, in 1868, Al
vin Fellows improved on Chesterman’s design by adding a clip that locked the tape in any desired position. Tape measures have changed little since then.

  SUDOKU

  In 1783 Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler devised what he called a “Latin Square,” a 9 x 9-square grid in which every number appears once in each row and column. In the late 1970s, a U.S. puzzle maker named Howard Garnes turned Euler’s squares into a game by removing some of the numbers from the grid. Called “Number Squares,” they first appeared in a Dell puzzle magazine. The game caught the eye of Maki Kaji, president of the Japanese puzzle company, Nikoli, Inc., and in the mid-1980s, he altered it—making it more difficult by restricting the amount of given numbers to 30 and making each pattern symmetrical. Maki also thought the game should have a more Japanese-sounding name, so he combined the words Su, meaning “number,” and Doku, meaning “single.” In 1997 a New Zealander named Wayne Gould discovered Sudoku in Japan, and set out to create a computer program that could generate new puzzles. Seven years later, in 2004, Gould’s puzzles began appearing in London’s The Times, and were so popular that soon other newspapers in Europe and the United States started running them. Today, Sudoku books outsell all other puzzle books combined by 10 to 1.