Uncle John’s Briefs

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Austin told her that his father died young and that he never knew his mother. Bowens asked his mother’s name and realized it was the same name as another employee’s mother. For two years, James and Yvette had worked side by side, shooting the breeze but never prying into each other’s personal life….Now they discovered they were brother and sister.

  They were stunned. “Working in the same department for two years,” the 34-year-old Richardson said, shaking her head. “The same place, the same time, every day. What are the odds of that?”

  WHO: John Garcia and Nueng Garcia, father and son

  SEPARATION: During the late 1960s, John Garcia was stationed in Thailand with the U.S. Air Force. He lived with a woman named Pratom Semon, and in 1969, they had a son, whom they named Nueng. Three months later, Garcia was shipped back to the United States; he wanted to take Semon, but she refused to go. For two years, Garcia regularly wrote and sent checks to support his son. Then Semon started seeing another man and told Garcia to end his correspondence. Garcia lost touch with his son. Although he tried to find him, even sending letters to the Thai government requesting an address, he was unsuccessful. He reluctantly gave up.

  The guillotine was used as a method of execution in France until 1977.

  TOGETHER AGAIN: In 1996 Garcia, now living in Colorado, was driving through Colorado Springs when he decided to stop at a gas station. He filled up and bought two lottery tickets, then handed the clerk a check for $18. According to news reports, when the clerk saw the name on the check, the conversation went like this: “Are you John Garcia?” “Yes.” “Were you ever in the Air Force?” “Yes.” “Were you ever in Thailand?” “Yes.” “Did you ever have a son?”

  “With that question,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle, “the two stared at each other and realized at the same moment that they were the father and son who had been separated 27 years ago and half a world away.” Nueng’s mother, it turned out, had married an American and moved to Colorado in 1971.

  Incredibly, Garcia had never been to that gas station before and wasn’t even particularly low on fuel. “I don’t even know why I stopped for gas,” he admitted on Good Morning America. “I started thinking—this couldn’t be. I was totally shocked.”

  WHO: Tim Henderson and Mark Knight, half-brothers

  SEPARATION: When Mark Knight was a year old, his parents divorced. His father remarried and had a son named Tim. His mother remarried, too, and Mark took his stepfather’s last name. The brothers met once, when Mark was five and Tim three, but the families fought and never saw each other again.

  TOGETHER AGAIN: In February 1996, 29-year-old Henderson needed to travel from Newcastle, England, to London. He couldn’t afford the train fare, so he called the Freewheelers Lift Share Agency, which matches hitchhikers and drivers. Out of the 16,000 names on file, the name they gave him was Mark Knight.

  According to a report in the Guardian: “As they drove, they started talking about friends and relatives. ‘There was a moment of complete silence as we both stared at each other in disbelief,’ said Mr. Henderson. ‘Then one of us said, “You must be my brother.” It was pretty mind-blowing. I always knew I had a half-brother but never thought we would meet.’”

  According to scientists, octopuses do not have eight legs. They have six arms and two legs.

  TOM SWIFTIES

  This classic style of pun was originally invented in the 1920s. They’re atrocious and corny, so of course we had to include them.

  “I’ve had my left and right ventricles removed,” Tom said half-heartedly.

  “We’ve taken over the government,” Tom cooed.

  “Dawn came too soon,” Tom mourned.

  “My hair’s been cut off,” Tom said distressfully.

  “Company should be here in about an hour,” Tom guessed.

  “Where did you get this meat?” Tom asked hoarsely.

  “You dropped a stitch,” Tom needled.

  “Blow on the fire so it doesn’t go out,” Tom bellowed.

  “I suppose there’s room for one more,” Tom admitted.

  “That’s no purebred,” Tom muttered.

  “I couldn’t believe we lost the election by two votes,” Tom recounted.

  “I’m losing my hair,” Tom bawled.

  “Measure twice before you cut,” Tom remarked.

  “Thanks for shredding the cheese,” Tom said gratefully.

  “Please put some folds in these trousers,” Tom pleaded.

  “I’ve located the dog star,” Tom said seriously.

  “You look like a goat,” Tom kidded.

  “I used to own that gold mine,” Tom exclaimed.

  “Another plate of steamers all around!” Tom clamored.

  “I memorized the whole thing,” Tom wrote.

  “That’s the last time I’ll pet a lion,” Tom said offhandedly.

  “No thanks to that Frenchman,” said Tom mercilessly.

  “You’re not a real magician at all,” Tom said, disillusioned.

  “I’ve never had a car accident,” said Tom recklessly.

  “It’s made the grass wet,” said Tom after due consideration.

  The real winner: Simon Cowell earned $22,000 per minute as an American Idol judge in 2009.

  BRAND NAMES

  You already know these names. Here’s where they came from.

  Q-TIPS. In the early 1920s, the owner of the Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Company noticed that his wife cleaned their daughter’s ears by wrapping cotton around a toothpick. Inspired, he built a machine that made “ready-to-use cotton swabs.” At first he called the product Baby Gays. In 1926 they became Q-Tips (“Q for Quality”) Baby Gays…and finally just Q-Tips.

  FORMULA 409. The two scientists who invented the “all-purpose cleaner” in the late 1950s didn’t get the formula right until their 409th attempt.

  LEE JEANS. At the turn of the 20th century, Henry D. Lee was one of the Midwest’s biggest wholesalers of groceries, work clothes, and other items. In 1911, because he wasn’t getting shipments of work clothes on time, he decided to build his own factory. In 1924 he started making jeans for cowboys. In 1926 Lee made the first jeans with zippers.

  TURTLE WAX. In the early 1940s, Ben Hirsch mixed up a batch of car wax in a bathtub. He called it Plastone Liquid Car Wax and started selling it around the country. Several years later while walking along Turtle Creek in Beloit, Wisconsin, he began thinking about how his product gave cars a hard shell like a turtle’s. “Plastone” became “Turtle Wax.”

  CONVERSE ALL-STARS. Named for Marquis M. Converse, who founded the Converse Rubber Company in 1908. He introduced the canvas-topped All-Star—one of the world’s first basketball shoes—in 1917.

  SARAN WRAP. In 1933 Dow researchers discovered a plastic called monomeric vinylidene chloride. They called it VC Plastic. In 1940 a salesman suggested they rename it Saran (the name of a tree in India). Dow liked the new name because it had only five letters and had no negative connotations. During World War II, Saran was used in everything from belts to subway seats. After the war, it was marketed as a plastic film called Saran Wrap.

  4 of the 6 largest European cities have 6-letter names. (Moscow, London, Berlin, Madrid.)

  READING TOMBSTONES

  In centuries past, families had special symbols carved into gravestones to tell something about their loved ones, to express their grief, or to reflect their faith or belief in eternal life. So, next time you’re strolling through a cemetery, look around—the dead are talking to you.

  Anchor: Steadfast hope

  Tree trunk: The brevity of life

  Birds: The soul

  Snake in a circle: Everlasting life in heaven (also called ouroboros)

  Cherub: Divine wisdom or justice

  Broken column: An early death

  Cross, anchor, and Bible: Faith, hope, and charity

  Cross, crown, and palm: Trials, victory, and reward

  Crown: Reward and glory

  Horseshoe: Protection
against evil

  Gourds: Deliverance from grief

  Lamb: Innocence (usually on a child’s grave)

  Swallow: Motherhood

  Hourglass: Time and its swift flight

  Arch: Rejoined with partner in heaven

  Ivy: Faithfulness, memory, and undying friendship

  Laurel: Victory

  Lily: Purity and resurrection

  Mermaid: Dualism of Christ—half God, half man

  Conch shell: Wisdom

  Oak: Strength

  Palms: Martyrdom

  Shattered urn: Old age

  Peacock: Eternal life

  Poppy: Eternal sleep

  Column: Noble life

  Garland: Victory over death

  Rooster: Awakening, courage, vigilance

  Shell: Birth and resurrection

  Six-pointed star: The creator

  Olive branch: Forgiveness

  Heart: Devotion

  Dolphin: Salvation, bearer of souls across water to heaven

  Skeleton: Life’s brevity

  Broken sword: Life cut short

  Crossed swords: Life lost in battle

  About 1 in 4 American employees say they’re always angry on the job.

  THE GARBAGE VORTEX

  A lonely plastic bag blows across a parking lot. It tumbles down a hill and into a creek, where the water carries it downstream to a river. Down the river it goes until it’s swept out to sea. Day after day it floats in the expanse until, there in the distance— another plastic bag! And another, and another…and millions of others. What is this strange place?

  ALARMING DISCOVERY

  In the late 1990s, a sea captain and ocean researcher named Charles Moore entered a yacht race in Hawaii. As he was sailing back home to California, he came upon an odd sight: “There were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic.”

  Around the same time, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer was researching ocean currents by tracking debris that had washed up on beaches around the world. When he heard of Moore’s discovery, he named it the Eastern Garbage Patch (EGP).

  Moore put together a team to survey the area in August 1998. Onboard the research ship Alguita, they pulled all sorts of strange objects out of the ocean: an inflated volleyball dotted with barnacles, a picture tube for a 19" TV, a truck tire on a steel rim, and even a drum of hazardous chemicals. But most of what they saw was plastic…and something else. Moore described it as a “rich broth of minute sea creatures mixed with hundreds of colored plastic fragments—a plastic-plankton soup.” But there was six times more plastic than there was plankton.

  TROPIC OF PLASTIC

  Just how large is the Eastern Garbage Patch? No one knows for sure—it’s growing all the time, and the translucent plastic floats just below the water’s surface. “It’s one of the great features of the planet Earth, but you can’t see it,” said Ebbesmeyer. Estimates, however, say that it’s larger than the state of Texas. And that’s just on the surface. Much of the debris—up to 30%—sinks to the ocean floor and lands on top of animal and plant life.

  Most-common trash items found on the beach: cigarette butts, bottle caps, and plastic bags.

  Just how fast is the EGP growing? In a survey conducted in 2007, Moore found that in less than a decade the “patch” had become a “superhighway of junk” running between San Francisco and Japan. He believes that the amount of plastic could now be 10 times higher than it was in 1998; some of the samples he gathered have as much as 48 parts plastic to 1 part plankton.

  IN THE DOLDRUMS

  How did all that garbage accumulate there? The answer is ocean currents. The EGP is located in an area known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, about 1,000 miles from any landmass. The Gyre is formed by air and water currents that travel between the coasts of Washington, Mexico, and Japan. The clockwise currents form a vortex in the center, just as if a giant soup spoon were constantly stirring it or, as Moore says, “the same way bubbles gather at the center of a hot tub.”

  The Gyre is part of the Doldrums—an area named by ancient sailors for its weak winds. For centuries sailors avoided it for fear of stalling there, and fishermen knew there was nothing there to catch but plankton or jellyfish. The Gyre has always accumulated marine debris such as driftwood, as well as “flotsam and jetsam”—stuff that washes offshore from beaches or falls overboard from ships and is caught by the currents and pulled into the middle, where it swirls continuously. But the difference in the last century is that the never-ending influx of trash has made it larger and larger. A plastic bag that flows into the ocean from a California river will ride the currents for up to a year before finally making it to the EGP. And because ocean currents travel only about 10 miles per day, depending on where a object enters the ocean, it could float for much longer—even decades.

  REVENGE OF THE NURDLES

  Most garbage breaks down over time, but plastic is different. No one really knows how long it takes for plastic to biodegrade because, so far, none of it has. Instead of biodegrading, plastic photodegrades—the sun’s UV rays cause it to become brittle, which breaks it down into small pieces…and then into minute particles that resemble tiny confetti.

  A whale of a trip: On a week-long cruise, the average traveler gains 8 pounds.

  Sailors call these plastic bits “mermaid tears,” but the technical term is nurdles. They’re light enough to float in the air (think of tiny packing peanuts and how impossible it is to keep them from spilling everywhere). Everything made out of plastic is made out of nurdles, and every year 5.5 quadrillion of them are manufactured around the world. Just how many end up in the oceans is anyone’s guess, but it’s a huge amount.

  Moore has another name for nurdles: “poison pills.” They absorb oily toxic chemicals called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, which include DDT and PCBs. Though many of these chemicals were banned in the 1970s, they still linger in the environment and attach themselves to plastic debris. Japanese environmental researchers found that nurdles can absorb one million times their weight in POPs from surrounding water.

  Even more troubling: The “poison pills” resemble plankton in how they seem to “swim” near the surface. Jellyfish and “filter feeder” fish that strain their food out of the water—and who have been eating plankton for eons—are now eating the nurdles instead. And then fish eat the nurdle-eaters. And then those fish are caught by fishing boats…which means there’s a good chance you’re getting more plastic in your diet than you realize. And not just plastic, but all of those toxic chemicals it absorbed.

  NO END IN SIGHT

  The problem might not be so severe if the EGP were the only garbage patch in the world. But each major ocean has its own gyre, and each gyre has its own vortex of swirling garbage. There are five major patches in all, covering 40% of the world’s oceans. “That corresponds to a quarter of Earth’s surface,” Moore says. “So 25% of our planet is a toilet that never flushes.”

  The question now becomes: How do you get rid of millions of tons of tiny bits in the middle of the sea? “Any attempt to remove that much plastic from the oceans—it boggles the mind,” Moore says. “There’s just too much, and the ocean is just too big.” So chances are that the garbage patches will be here for a very long time. About the only thing we can do right now is to stop adding to them.

  How long does it take a major-league fastball to reach home plate? About 4/10ths of a second.

  LET’S PLAY GORUFU!

  Golf isn’t just popular in England, Scotland, and the United States—it’s loved all over the world.

  DOMO ARIGATO

  Before World War II, there were 23 courses in all of Japan. Today, the number exceeds 3,000—in a country slightly smaller than California. Despite the volume of courses and their distance from urban centers (most are an hour’s drive or more), the courses are almost always busy. Although avail
able tee times are scarce, the clubs compete so fiercely that all kinds of specials abound, such as free caddies, or, more commonly, half-price greens fees on Monday. And that’s a generous discount, as Japanese golf (or gorufu) is very expensive—18 holes might cost $400. Even the driving ranges are expensive: it can cost 50 cents to hit a single ball.

  Only the very wealthy can afford country club memberships. The price of joining a club costs the equivalent of about five years of a middle-class worker’s salary. The most prestigious clubs charge several million dollars. However, Japanese golfers view a membership as an investment as well as a status symbol—they can be bought, sold, transferred, and passed down. At the peak of the Japanese inflation crisis in the late 1980s, country club memberships accounted for roughly 10 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product.

  LAND OF THE RISING GREENS FEES

  It’s pricey, but Japanese golfers get a lot for their money. Courses are so meticulously manicured that it’s virtually impossible to lose a ball, even in the rough. Clubhouses are lavishly decorated with marble. Even daily fee-paying golfers are treated well, with access to saunas, baths, and high-end restaurants. Refreshing hot towels are provided at the 7th and 16th holes, and you can get a robot caddie to carry your gear.

  Links are so crowded that playing nine holes can take up to three hours, but golfers are given a 45-minute lunch break after the front nine (in Japan, you’re assigned a tee time for each set of nine holes). And after the round, there is a traditional bath followed by drinks and coffee, while clothes and shoes are left to dry in special heated lockers.

  Fewer than 50 pilgrims survived their first winter in America.

  Some other notable golf hot spots (and cold spots) around the world:

  • ICELAND: There are only 15 golf clubs in this tiny island nation, but the population is so small, the number of golf courses per capita is comparable to that of the United States. The Akureyri Golf Club is the northernmost course in the world. Each June it hosts the Arctic Open Golf Championship. The sun doesn’t completely set for six months of the year in arctic regions, so tee off is at midnight and play continues until 6 a.m. On the other side of the country, the Westman Island Golf Club is set inside a volcanic crater adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean. The bumpy lava formations and unrelenting ocean winds make for a challenging round of golf.