• 1.25″ polycarbonate bulletproof plating/shielding
• Biochemical-filtering ventilation system
• Motion sensors
• One-way windows so you can see out from the closed-up bed—but the bad guys can’t see in.
• A built-in cell phone, shortwave radio, and CB radio
• A microwave, refrigerator, CD player, and DVD player
• A toilet
If you’ve got a five-alarm case of paranoia—and a whole lot of money—the Quantum Sleeper may be just what you need for a good night’s sleep. Cost: $160,000.
FAMOUS FOR 15 SECONDS
Adessa Eskridge, 27, was departing her plane at Los Angeles International Airport in 2008 when six police officers approached her at the gate. One of them told her, “Keep your sunglasses on. You’re going to help us with something.” Before she knew it, Eskridge was being escorted through baggage claim. A group of paparazzi ran up and started photographing, filming, and asking her questions: “Jamie-Lynn, how was your trip?” “Jamie-Lynn, any boyfriend rumors?” A cop told Eskridge, “Don’t say anything, just keep your head down.” When they finally got her to safety, the police thanked Eskridge for posing as a decoy for Jamie Lynn Spears (Britney’s younger sister) who was also arriving in L.A. that day. Eskridge was furious. She demanded to be compensated $100,000 for the ruse, which led to photos and video of her—not Spears—all over the Internet. LAX officials refused, so at last report, Eskridge is suing the airport for $2 million. Said her lawyer: “The police did not want to subject Ms. Spears to the pushing, shoving, humiliation, and possible physical injury that come with the paparazzi, but instead decided that Ms. Eskridge was not important enough to give the same protections to.”
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Vocabulary booster: A person with great energy and vitality is a spizerinctum.
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MAGICAL MOUNTAIN
People believe a lot of strange things. One of the strangest happens to be about a place 50 miles south of the BRI’s headquarters: picturesque Mt. Shasta in northern California. It’s known for its hiking, skiing…and the invisible people who live inside the mountain.
SACRED SPOT
Towering 14,179 feet above sea level, Mt. Shasta’s snowcapped peak has been surrounded by mystery and legend since indigenous people first encountered it thousands of years ago. And ever since white settlers arrived in the area in the mid-1800s, the mountain—as well as the nearby town by the same name—has been the scene of some very weird sightings, including UFOs and mystical creatures roaming around the mountain’s slopes. In fact, Shasta City was one of the first centers of the “New Age” movement in the United States. It’s still home to hundreds of energy readers, spiritualists, psychics, and alien-seekers.
Shasta’s New Age movement can be traced back to 1886, when 18-year-old Frederick Oliver, from the nearby town of Yreka, first visited the mountain and fell into a trance. Under the control of “other forces,” Oliver wrote A Dweller on Two Planets. And to thousands of people, the book—still in print today—is not science fiction, but the source material for their belief system.
THE LEMURIANS
Dweller tells the history of Mt. Shasta, which Oliver claimed was channeled directly to his mind by an immortal creature named Phylos, whose race, the Lemurians, once lived on a Pacific Ocean continent called Mu. Like Atlantis, Mu was a “lost continent” that modern scientists say never existed.
Lemurians, Oliver wrote, talk to each other telepathically in a language called Solara Maruvia, but Phylos spoke English to Oliver (curiously, with an English accent). Oliver described the Lemurians as physically stunning—seven feet tall with long, flowing hair and lean, graceful bodies. They wore white robes lined with sacred stones, and jewel-encrusted sandals. Technologically advanced even by today’s standards, the ancient Lemurians developed water generators, antigravity machines, high-speed trains, and devices comparable to cellular phones and televisions.
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Items in London’s subway Lost and Found center: A prosthetic arm, a coffin, and a lawnmower.
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But for all their expertise, the Lemurians could not prevent the cataclysmic earthquake they knew was coming. One night about 12,000 years ago, Mu began shaking and sinking into the sea. But the 25,000 Lemurians were ready—they all boarded tall ships bound for the uninhabited land of what is now northern California. Once there, their engineers hollowed out Mt. Shasta and constructed a subterranean city called Telos. According to Oliver/Phylos, they chose that particular mountain because it’s “the earthly incarnation of the Great Central Sun, the source of all physical and spiritual energy in the universe.” And so, for twelve millennia, the Lemurians have lived peacefully inside the mountain.
BEAM ME UP
Floating in the sky directly above Mt. Shasta, Oliver went on, is yet another Lemurian city: “The Crystal City of the Seven Rays.” It’s visible only to the most tuned-in human psychics, who describe it as a huge, floating, purple pyramid, the point of which extends into space. From within the Crystal City, the Lemurians operate interplanetary, interdimensional spaceships called the “Silver Fleet” (which would seem to explain all of the UFO sightings near Mt. Shasta). The Lemurians represent our galaxy in the intergalactic “Confederation of Planets.”
Good luck actually seeing a Lemurian yourself, or one of their spaceships, or their Giant Purple Pyramid City. Few people have. That’s because the Lemurians merely exist on a “vibrational level” to which humans are not physically attuned (in other words, they’re invisible). Thankfully, there are dozens of books out there about the mountain’s inhabitants and its spiritual energy, all of them based on Oliver’s…er, Phylos’s A Dweller on Two Planets.
DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED
But time may be short for the city of Telos: The mountain the Lemurians moved into is actually a dormant volcano, which the United States Geological Survey warns may erupt again in the next 200 years. So if you happen to live in another area on Earth that contains a massive pocket of spiritual energy, you may soon be getting some beautiful, seven-foot-tall, invisible neighbors.
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There are more Walmarts in the United States than there are colleges.
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BIG NEWS
The growing pains of modern society as it awkwardly adapts to an expanding obesity problem.
• In 2009 Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Health Plans (RMHP) refused to cover Alex Lange because he had a pre-existing condition: obesity. Alex’s parents were furious. Why? “He’s only four months old,” said his father, Bernie, to reporters. “He’s breast-feeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill.” Amidst all the negative press (“RMHP Denies Healthy but Big Baby!”), the company explained that it had a relatively new process of determining which babies are most “insurable”—and at 17 pounds, Alex didn’t make that list. RMHP has since changed its policy to insure any healthy baby regardless of weight. The Langes’ “happy little chunky monkey” is now covered.
• In 2006 Lincoln University in Pennsylvania instituted a new graduation requirement: a three-credit “Fitness for Life” class. But the only students required to take it are the ones who are certified as clinically obese. Lincoln student and school newspaper editor Tiana Lawson, who, according to the rules, had to take the course, wrote, “I came here to get an education, which is something I have been doing quite well, despite the fact that I have a slightly high body mass index.” The head of Lincoln’s physical education department defended the Fitness for Life requirement (which consists of Tae Bo, aerobic dance, and water aerobics): “We as educators must tell students when certain factors are going to hinder them from achieving and maximizing life goals.” So far, about 600 students have had to take Fitness for Life.
• The Topeka, Kansas, branch of American Medical Response, one of the biggest ambulance companies in the United States, began charging extra in 2009 for “larger” patients. Now, if you’re picked up by
an AMR ambulance and weigh more than 350 pounds, you’ll be billed for a $543 surcharge. AMR claims that they respond to so many calls from overweight people experiencing medical emergencies that they’ve had to spend thousands of dollars on winches, hoists, and extra-large, reinforced cots.
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On February 8, 2000, the meaning of life was auctioned on eBay. Winning bid: $3.26.
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MIXED NUTS
Here’s an odd collection of unrelated—but very odd—news and information that we discovered in a pile of peanut shells and candy wrappers under someone’s (Jay’s) desk as we were finishing up this book. (You might want to wear gloves.)
LOUD NIGHT
The maker of Great Britain’s most successful snoring remedy, Helps Stop Snoring, made a public call for recordings of heavy snorers in 2009. They then assembled the snore recordings into a snore-version of the Christmas song “Silent Night,” and put it up on their Web site. They called it the world’s first “snore-chestra.” (Everyone who sent in their snores was given a year’s supply of anti-snoring products.)
THAT LYIN’ SHIRT
Brad Gellert, 32, of Apollo Beach, Florida, was arrested in March 2009. In his mug shot, Gellert can be seen wearing a T-shirt that reads “I [Heart] My Marriage.” Gellert had been arrested for trying to choke his wife during an argument.
A WORLD OF LOVERS, PART 1
Are you the kind of person who likes to kiss and tell? Well, if you do, go to JustMadeLove.com—and tell the world about it. The site, which uses the Google Maps program, allows you to zoom into your exact location and enter your information, and it shows up as a marker on a map on the JustMadeLove.com site. You can even leave a comment about how “it” went. A sample, from Greenland: “böyle bişi yokk doymuyor istiyor en son kanattimm onu pes etti yarim saat sonra bi daha istiyor hep isiyor.” (We hope that’s not dirty.)
A WORLD OF LOVERS, PART 2
Lloyd’s Pharmacy in England launched the “Sex Degrees of Separation” online calculator in 2009—which allows you to figure out how many indirect sexual encounters you’ve had in your life. You enter your age, how many direct partners you’ve had, and how old each partner was, and the calculator estimates how many direct encounters each of your direct encounters has had, which is the number of your indirect encounters. The pharmacy launched the program as an educational tool on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases.
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Researchers estimate that laughing 100 times is a workout equal to 15 minutes on an exercise bike.
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DELICA-TUSSLE
Police were called to a supermarket in Aachen, Germany, in December 2009 to break up a three-way fight between a 74-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman, and her 24-year-old brother. The elderly man was beating the younger man over the head with a salami; the woman was trying to stab the older man with a wedge of Parmesan cheese. Police broke up the tasty melee, and all three food fighters were arrested.
MOUNTAINS OF CONTROVERSY
Officials in Foshan City, Guangdong, China, approved the installation of a new sculpture in a city park in 2009: a statue of a girl whose tiny body is about eight inches tall, with a pair of enormous breasts—about 16 feet wide, 16 feet high, and 20 feet long. Local parents were outraged. “The park used to be a great place for families,” one mother said, “but now what attracts my son the most is the huge breasts. I have tried to educate him with some scientific knowledge, but all he thinks when he sees the statue are smutty thoughts.” A park spokesman said the sculpture would remain in the park anyway. (He added that someone had vandalized the piece one night…by trying to put an enormous bra on it.)
IRONIC APPAREL
Imitating the “Livestrong” cancer-awareness bracelet program, in 2004 Bristish students were given blue “Beat Bullying” bracelets in an attempt to end schoolyard violence. However, because famous athletes and musicians were sporting the bracelets as part of the campaign, they became collectors’ items (eBay sellers could get up to $30 apiece for them). Result: Bullies beat kids up in order to steal their “Beat Bullying” bracelets.
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Predatory Asian climbing fish travel in groups—over land—to new pools at night.
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PHOTOSHOPPED
Retouching photographs is nothing new, but thanks to graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop, it’s become hard to tell what’s real and what some graphic designer created on a screen—unless they did a really bad job. Here are a few extreme examples of “digital manipulation.”
THE IMAGE: The official 2006 campaign Web site of New Orleans mayoral candidate Kimberly Williamson Butler featured a photo of her standing in the city’s famous French Quarter.
THE TRUTH: When close observers noticed some Mickey Mouse garbage cans in the photo, the campaign was forced to admit that they’d superimposed a photo of Butler onto a background image of Disneyland’s “New Orleans Square.” Butler’s campaign designer deleted the garbage cans, but that didn’t end the mocking from the press. So they took the same image of Butler and superimposed it over a photo of the real New Orleans. (She lost the election.)
THE IMAGE: The cover of the March 2005 issue of Newsweek magazine featured Martha Stewart emerging from between two curtains. The headline: “Martha’s Last Laugh—After Prison, She’s Thinner, Wealthier & Ready for Prime Time.”
THE TRUTH: Stewart’s head was digitally added to a thin model’s body. The only acknowledgment that it was fake came in the credits on page 3: “Cover: Photo illustration by Michael Elins; head shot by Marc Bryan-Brown.” After the magazine received a great deal of criticism, Newsweek’s assistant managing editor, Lynne Staley, said that they didn’t mean to “misrepresent the news” but had no choice because the issue was put together before Stewart was actually released from prison. “Anybody who knows the story and is familiar with Martha’s current situation would know this particular picture was a photo illustration,” she said.
THE IMAGE: In September 2009, a Ralph Lauren ad featuring 23-year-old supermodel Filippa Hamilton was created for a campaign in Japan. Although it’s no shock that fashion-model shots are manipulated (the skin is smoothed, the waist is drawn inward, the bust is drawn…bustward), Hamilton looked like a freak of nature in the ad.
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The bacteria that live in your belly button can’t survive in your armpits The bacteria that live in your armpits can’t survive in your belly button.
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THE TRUTH: Hamilton’s photo was altered so much that her waist was narrower than her head and her arms looked like string beans. (Google it—it really is quite disturbing.) As soon as the ads appeared, women’s groups cited it as perhaps the most outrageous example of the fashion industry creating an unnatural—and unhealthy—image for girls and women to try to achieve. The controversy took another turn when Hamilton appeared on the Today show to claim that the company had actually fired her for being “too fat” and for not being able to fit into the sample clothes that she had to wear. Ralph Lauren execs denied it, but they did admit to going too far with Photoshop: “We have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body.”
THE IMAGE: “Come have fun in Toronto and celebrate our diversity!” That was the message that the city’s summer 2009 “Fun Guide” was supposed to send with its cover photo of a mixed-race family leaning into the camera, arm in arm, all smiling. The mom and two kids appeared to be Hispanic, and the dad was African Canadian.
THE TRUTH: Earlier that year, the City of Toronto had issued an order that all of its official publications had to reflect the ethnic diversity of the area. But instead of finding a photo of a multicultural family, the designers found a picture of a black man on a stock-photo Web site and then Photoshopped it into a picture of a mother with two kids. The result is obviously a fake—the man is lit differently, his head is too small, and it looks as if someone cut his head out with sciss
ors and pasted it on top of the original photograph. Kevin Sack, Toronto’s director of communications, defended the picture: “The policy doesn’t say ‘no Photoshop,’ the policy says ‘show diversity.’ And that’s of course what we try and do. Nothing wrong with that. You won’t find a more inclusive organization than us.”
FRANKEN-FOOD
Not everything that goes into our food is mentioned on the label. Food manufacturers pay millions to keep their products from being regulated, leading to some strange practices. Franken-food is a science fact…and it’s what’s for dinner.
THE NATIONAL FOODBALL LEAGUE
Food production is a high-stakes game with many players: corporations, farmers, consumer safety groups, scientists, doctors, the government, and, of course, consumers. Each group has its own agenda and its own game plan. We’ve tried to sort through it all to bring you clear, unbiased information, but there doesn’t seem to be a single study result out there that hasn’t been disputed by somebody. Hopefully the players who say these food products are perfectly safe are correct—and the ones who say we’re all going to turn into hairy mutants and die gruesome, horrible deaths are wrong. Here’s a look at what’s in your food…and who doesn’t want you to know about it.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy Page 28