Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader®

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

THE INES SCALE

  Background: INES stands for International Nuclear Event Scale, the scale used to measure disasters at nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities. Drawing inspiration from similar scales used by the French and Japanese nuclear industries, the International Atomic Energy Agency created INES in 1990 to provide a single international standard of comparison that it hoped would be as useful as the Fahrenheit scale or the metric system.

  In Oman, date palms are so valuable that the government keeps a list of who owns each tree.

  How It Works: Nuclear events are measured on a scale of 1 to 7: Levels 1 to 3 have consequences contained inside the affected facility and are called “incidents”; levels 4 to 7 have consequences outside the facility and are called “accidents”:

  Level 1: Anomaly

  Level 2: Incident

  Level 3: Serious Incident

  Level 4: Accident with Local Consequences

  Level 5: Accident with Wider Consequences

  Level 6: Serious Accident

  Level 7: Major Accident

  Details: Like the Richter scale, the INES scale is a logarithmic scale: Each increase in level (say, from Level 4 to Level 5) represents a tenfold increase in the severity of the disaster.

  • The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania was a Level 5 “Accident with Wider Consequences” because it involved a partial meltdown with severe damage to the reactor core, plus limited release of radioactive material into the environment.

  • The 1986 accident at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union ranks as the worst nuclear disaster in history and one of only two Level 7 “Major Accidents” to date (release of a “significant fraction” of the nuclear material in the reactor core, resulting in widespread health and environmental effects). The other Level 7 accident occurred after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

  • It can take time to accurately assess the scale of a nuclear event, especially if more than one reactor is involved. In the months following the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, officials were still assessing the damage to six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. Three reactors have been assessed as Level 5 incidents (severe damage to the reactor core, and limited release of radioactive material) and one was rated at level 3 (loss of cooling water to the reactor). The overall incident, however, was categorized as a Level 7 accident.

  DEFCON

  Background: If you’re a fan of science fiction or war movies, you may already know that DEFCON is short for “Defense Readiness Condition” and is measured on a scale from 1 to 5. The system was created in the late 1950s to give all U.S. military operations worldwide a simple measure of the nation’s current state of alert.

  You can’t hum if you’re holding your nose closed. Try it.

  How It Works: DEFCON 5 is the lowest level of readiness in peacetime. As perceived threats increase, the military’s readiness can be raised in stages all the way to DEFCON 1, when war is imminent. (Precise details of how the military increases its readiness when the DEFCON level is raised are kept secret.)

  Details: Are you old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962? Throughout much of the Cold War the military was kept at DEFCON 4, but during the Cuban Missile Crisis the alert level was raised to DEFCON 3, and the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command was ordered to DEFCON 2. That’s the only time since the creation of the system that any part of the military has been placed at DEFCON 2. During the 9/11 attacks the alert level never rose above DEFCON 3. DEFCON 1 has never been used...so far.

  THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK

  Background: By the summer of 1947, just two years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the directors of the University of Chicago’s Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had grown so concerned about the possibility of another nuclear war that they created a symbolic clock face called the “Doomsday Clock” to convey their estimation of how close the world was to “midnight”—nuclear Armageddon—at any point in time. The clock has appeared on the cover of the Bulletin ever since.

  How It Works: When the clock was created in June 1947, it was set at seven minutes to midnight. Between 1947 and 2011, the minute hand was moved 19 times, closer to midnight when the Bulletin’s board of directors thought the danger of nuclear war was increasing; farther from midnight when the danger was receding.

  Details: When the U.S. and the Soviet Union both tested hydrogen bombs in 1953, the clock was reset from three minutes to just two minutes before midnight, the closest to the zero hour that it has ever been set. The farthest it has ever been from midnight was in 1991, when the end of the Cold War and the signing of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty prompted the editors to move it from 10 minutes to 17 minutes ’til midnight in a single stroke. In 2007 the clock was updated to include non-nuclear dangers such as biological weapons and climate change. (So what time is it now? As of June 2011, it was six minutes to midnight.)

  Motor-sport announcer Jan Gabriel popularized the catchphrase “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”

  THE RAPTURE INDEX

  Background: Created by an evangelical Christian named Todd Strandberg in the 1980s, the Rapture Index keeps track of current events to estimate how quickly the world is moving toward the “End Times” that many Christians believe are prophesied in the Bible. (According to the prophesy, during the Rapture, Christians will be lifted up to heaven to be with Jesus Christ; everyone else will suffer seven years of catastrophes in a world ruled by the Antichrist.)

  How It Works: Current events are organized into 45 Rapture-foretelling categories, including “False Christs,” “Satanism,” “Inflation,” “Liberalism,” and “Volcanoes.” Each category is assigned a numerical value from 1 to 5, according to the amount of “activity” in that category. Then the values are added up to calculate the current Rapture Index score. A score of 100 or below is classified as “Slow Prophetic Activity,” meaning the Rapture probably isn’t near. A score of 100 to 130 indicates “Moderate Prophetic Activity,” and a score of 130 to 160 is a sign of “Heavy Prophetic Activity.” A score above 160? “Fasten Your Seatbelts”—the Rapture may be imminent.

  Details: The highest score the Rapture Index ever reached came on August 8, 2011—just after the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency downgraded U.S. debt from AAA to AA+—when the Index hit 184 out of a possible 225. The all-time low: 57, reached in December 1993, when “just about every indicator either went dormant or had positive news,” Strandberg reports.

  Highlights: “There has been an increase in the number of UFO sightings,” Strandberg reports in the “Supernatural” category (2 points). What about the Antichrist category? “The European Union now has a President. This office could be a precursor to the Antichrist,” he writes (3 points).

  Most populous city: Shanghai, China (pop. 13.7 million). #2: Tokyo (13 million).

  THE NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK

  Background: In the winter of 1980, a New York real estate developer named Seymour Durst wanted to communicate his concerns about the ballooning national debt to elected officials in Washington, D.C. So he sent them New Year’s cards that read “Happy New Year! Your share of the national debt is $35,000.” No response—so Durst went to a sign maker and asked if it was possible to make a billboard with a numeric display that showed the national debt growing in real time—a Doomsday Clock for the American taxpayer. It wasn’t possible: That year, the debt was growing at a rate of about $13,000 per second, and the computers of the day weren’t fast enough to operate a numeric display at that kind of speed. It took eight years for technology to catch up with Durst’s vision, and in 1989 the first National Debt Clock was installed on a Durst-owned building near Times Square. Cost: $100,000. (No word on whether Durst went into debt to pay for the clock.)

  How It Worked: Each week Durst called the U.S. Treasury to get the latest national debt figures and updated the sign via modem so that the continuously changing numbers were as accurate as possible. He continued updating the clock until his
death in 1995, after which the sign company assumed the responsibility.

  Details: In 2000 the national debt stopped growing, and for the two years it actually shrank. That created a problem for the sign, which wasn’t designed to run backwards. On Durst’s birthday in 2000, the sign was switched off and covered with a red, white, and blue banner in the hope that it would never be uncovered. But the debt soon started rising again, and in July 2002 the sign was switched back on. It was replaced with a new and improved sign in 2004, but the new sign wasn’t “improved” enough: When the national debt hit $10 trillion in 2008, there weren’t enough digits on the sign to display all the debt, and the “$” had to be converted to a 1. Plans are in the works to add another two digits to the sign. (Every American’s share of the national debt, as of August 2011: $46,700...and climbing.)

  “If I had to describe myself in one word, it would be ‘bad at following directions.’”

  —Matt Roller

  In 1737 Samuel Higley of Connecticut minted America’s first copper coins. Value: 3 pence.

  SUPERMAN RETURNS,

  STARRING WILL SMITH

  Some roles are so closely associated with a specific actor that it’s hard to imagine that he or she wasn’t the first choice for the part. Can you imagine, for example...

  JOHN BELUSHI AS ARTHUR (Arthur, 1981) The part of the millionaire alcoholic became the definitive role of Dudley Moore’s career and earned him an Oscar nomination, a rare feat for a comic performance. But the producers’ first choice for the role was Belushi, one of the biggest comic actors of the era. Belushi thought the script was excellent, but turned it down. Reason: After playing a hard-drinking guy in Animal House, he didn’t want to play another hard-drinking guy in Arthur and risk getting typecast as a substance abuser. (Belushi died from a drug overdose in 1982.)

  EMMA THOMPSON AS GOD (Dogma, 1999) In this dark comedy about Armageddon, God makes a brief appearance at the end of the film, silently cleaning up the chaos and forgiving the bad guys. Writer-director Kevin Smith wrote the part for Emma Thompson because he felt she could imbue the role with authority and dignity. She passed on it because she was pregnant. Smith then asked Carrie Fisher, which would have been an in-joke, as all his movies feature characters discussing the Star Wars movies, in which Fischer starred, at length. She turned it down too, so Smith cast singer Alanis Morissette. (He also rewrote the script for her. When asked by the lead character for the meaning of life, God was originally supposed to reply, “Plastics,” but Smith deleted Morissette’s one and only line.)

  WOODY ALLEN & MEL BROOKS AS JERRY AND GOD

  (, and Carl Reiner signed on to direct it. Both had worked on Sid Caesar’s Oh, God!, 1977) Larry Gelbart wrote the scriptYour Show of Shows in the 1950s and wanted to extend the reunion by casting fellow Show writers Mel Brooks as God and Woody Allen as supermarket manager Jerry Landers. Brooks and Allen were the two top comedy directors of the 1970s, and acted only in their own films. That’s why Allen turned down the role—he was working on Stardust Memories, also a film about God. Once Allen turned it down, Brooks backed out too. (Singer John Denver and George Burns were cast as Jerry and God, respectively.)

  In Great Britain, McDonald’s changed the design of its McFlurry containers to prevent hedgehogs from getting their heads stuck in them.

  PAUL NEWMAN & JIM CARREY AS WOODY AND BUZZ (Toy Story, 1995) Pixar envisioned casting Paul Newman as the voice of Woody, the old-fashioned cowboy doll, and Jim Carrey as Buzz Lightyear, the fancy electronic spaceman toy that replaces Woody in the heart of the little boy who owns them. It was meant to be a metaphor for Old Hollywood (Newman) and New Hollywood (Carrey, the hottest new star of the year). This was Pixar’s first feature film, and the company couldn’t afford to hire two big movie stars, so they went with just one: Tom Hanks as Woody, and TV star Tim Allen as Buzz.

  WILL SMITH AS SUPERMAN (Superman Returns, 2006) Filmmakers considered many B-list actors, including Josh Hartnett and Ashton Kutcher, but director Bryan Singer wanted the industry’s biggest star: Will Smith. Obviously that would have been a controversial choice, because Superman is white, and Smith would have been the first black actor to take on the role. Smith wanted no part of that controversy. “You can’t be messing up white people’s heroes in Hollywood,” Smith said to a reporter. “You’ll never work in this town again!” In the end, Singer hired a largely unknown soap actor named Brandon Routh.

  BETTE MIDLER AS ANNIE WILKES (Misery, 1990) In 1989 Disney-owned Touchstone Pictures was producing an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Misery, about a crazed fan who kidnaps and tortures her favorite author. Touchstone repeatedly offered the role of crazy Annie to Bette Midler, who they had under an exclusive contract. Midler repeatedly turned it down because she thought the script was distasteful and frightening (it was based on a Stephen King novel, after all). The part ultimately went to stage and TV actress Kathy Bates. It made her a film star...and won her an Oscar.

  I’M STUCK...

  And we thought the toilet was the worst place to get stuck.

  ...BETWEEN A ROOF AND A HARD PLACE: On New Year’s Eve 2009, Roberto Carrillo executed his long-planned escape from the prison in Valle Hermoso, Mexico. He hoisted himself up to the top of his cell and proceeded to squeeze his way through a small gap between the top of the bars and the roof. He got his head and upper torso through...and then he got stuck. Hanging upside down, Carillo had no choice but to call the guards, who laughed while they cut him free with a chainsaw.

  ...IN THE MUCK: In May 2010, Xiao Chen went for a night swim in the China’s Chang Jiang River. The 25-year-old underestimated just how muddy the river would be in the rainy spring season and got completely stuck waist-deep in the mud. He tried to free himself for four hours, before some passing fishermen called firefighters, who freed him another seven hours later. Bonus: Xiao had a cell phone on him the entire time, and he wasn’t so stuck that he couldn’t have reached it. He told reporters he was simply “too embarrassed” to call for help.

  ...ON THE LINE: Mustafa Danger is a high-wire motorcycle rider—a professional daredevil. In the Spanish resort of Benidorm in 2010, he was attempting a world record for the highest high-wire ride: 1,640 feet long, 610 feet in the air, with no safety net. He went 1,100 feet...and then the wind picked up, making it too dangerous to move in any direction. Danger stopped and had to be towed to safety. (A day later, he tried again, and made it.)

  ...HEAD UNDER HEELS: In 2007, 16 people boarded the roller coaster at Fangte Amusement Park of Wuhu in China. As the ride swung into the middle of an upside-down loop, a huge gust of wind blew through. Safety equipment automatically went into effect, locking the coaster to the track and grinding the ride to a halt—with 16 people hanging upside down. It took park officials half an hour to resume the ride and get everyone to safety. Six people were treated for nausea at a local hospital.

  The state of Georgia owns the trademark for a variety of onion: Vidalia.

  THE FORBIDDEN ISLAND

  Ever heard of North Sentinel Island? Probably not...even though it’s one of the most unusual places on Earth. What makes it so odd? The people—they’ve been there a long time, completely cut off from the rest of the world.

  MAROONED!

  Late on the night of August 2, 1981, a Hong Kong freighter navigating the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal ran aground on a submerged coral reef. The ship, called the Primrose, was hopelessly stuck. But there was no danger of it sinking, so after radioing for assistance, the captain and his crew settled in for a few days’ wait until help arrived.

  The following morning, as it became light, the sailors saw an island a few hundred yards beyond the reef. It was uninhabited, as far as anyone could tell: There were no buildings, roads, or other signs of civilization there—just a pristine, sandy beach and behind it, dense jungle. The beach must have seemed like an ideal spot to wait for a rescue, but the captain ordered the crew to remain aboard the Primrose. It was monsoon season, and he may have been concerne
d about lowering the men into the rough seas in tiny lifeboats. Or perhaps he’d figured out exactly which island lay beyond the reef: It was North Sentinel—the deadliest of the 200 islands in the Andaman Island chain.

  SOME WELCOME

  A few days later, a lookout aboard the Primrose spotted a group of dark-skinned men emerging from the jungle, making their way toward the ship. Was it the rescue party? It seemed possible...until the men came a little closer and the lookout could see that every one of them was naked.

  Naked...and armed, but not with guns. Each man carried either a spear, a bow and arrows, or some other primitive weapon. The captain made another radio distress call, this one much more urgent: “Wild men! Estimate more than 50, carrying various homemade weapons, are making two or three wooden boats. Worrying they will board us at sunset.”

  First woman elected to U.S. political office: Susanna Salter, mayor of Argonia, Kansas (1887).

  A WORLD APART

  After a tense standoff lasting a few more days, the crew of the Primrose were evacuated by helicopter to safety. They were lucky to get away: It was their misfortune to have run aground just offshore of one of the strangest islands on Earth, and probably the very last of its kind. Anthropologists believe that the men who appeared on the beach that morning in 1981 are members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years. That’s 35,000 years before the last ice age, 55,000 years before the giant wooly mammoths disappeared from North America, and 62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. These people are believed to be the direct descendants of the first humans out of Africa.

  The outside world has known about the North Sentinel Islanders for centuries, but the islanders have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world all that time, and they fiercely maintain their isolation to this day. No one knows what language they speak or what they call themselves—they have never allowed anyone to get close enough to find out. The outside world calls them the “Sentineli” or the “Sentinelese,” after the island. It’s estimated that the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there.