IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE
On April 21, 2010, police in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, received a strange call: A woman said she was walking through town when she felt a sharp pain in her chest. She looked down and saw a tiny dart sticking out of her blouse. A little while later, a similar call came in from another person, and then another, and then another. Then it dawned on police that they were probably dealing with a serial tiny-dart shooter. Thankfully, the darts weren’t poisonous. And the cops had a lead: One of the victims saw a small tube sticking out of the window of a black minivan, which sped away. Police found the minivan; sitting inside was 41-year-old Paula Wolf…and her blow darts. Why did she do it? “I like to hear people say ‘ouch.’”
BUMPER STICKERS
We keep thinking that we’ve seen every clever bumper sticker that exists, but every year readers send us new ones.
Never do anything you wouldn’t want to explain to the paramedics
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
I’ve got a God-given right to be an atheist
Free airbag test: come a little closer
If you’re not supposed to eat animals, how come they’re made of meat?
EVEN IF THE VOICES AREN’T REAL, THEY HAVE SOME GOOD IDEAS
If it weren’t for physics and law enforcement, I’d be unstoppable
Drive it like you stole it
I’m great in bed: I can sleep all night
Look out! I drive just like you
Eliminate and abolish redundancy
I missed winning the lottery by only six numbers
I STARTED WITH NOTHING, AND I STILL HAVE MOST OF IT LEFT
Lord, give me patience…but hurry!
I beat up five hippies and all I got was this lousy VW bus
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Help! I Farted and can’t roll down my windows!
THIS IS NOT AN ABANDONED VEHICLE
Even though this is a stupid sticker, you’re squinting to read it.
Hello, officer. Put it on my tab.
IF GOD IS YOUR CO-PILOT, PLEASE SWAP SEATS
My other bumper sticker is funny
On Star Trek, Spock’s blood type was T-negative.
VOLCANO MOON
Using any half-decent telescope, you can easily view Jupiter and its four largest moons. The moon closest to the gas giant—called Io—may look like any other point of light, but don’t be fooled: Io is perhaps the strangest, and certainly the most volatile, celestial body in our solar system.
IO’S CONTENTIOUS DISCOVERY
In 1610 Galileo Galiei claimed he discovered four moons around Jupiter. So did one of his chief rivals, fellow astronomer Simon Marius. But because Galileo published his findings a few days earlier than Marius, Galileo got the credit.
• It was Marius, however, who named Jupiter’s moons. Based on a suggestion from Johannes Kepler that he name them after Jupiter’s illicit lovers in Greek and Roman mythology, Marius chose Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Galileo hated those names and simply called the moons Jupiter I, II, III, and IV. Those names stuck until the 20th century, when several more moons were discovered, and Marius’s original names became official. (To date, 63 moons have been discovered orbiting Jupiter.)
LAND OF EXTREMES
• For centuries Io was assumed to be similar to the other moons in the solar system—an inactive rock speckled with impact craters. But in the last 50 years, more-powerful telescopes and several unmanned flybys revealed a different picture: Io is a volcanic world. Only a handful of moons and planets have volcanic activity, but none are anywhere near as active as Io.
• Io owes its violent nature to the extreme forces constantly affecting it. About the same size as our moon, Io is actually closer to Jupiter than our moon is to Earth. (Picture a BB floating a few inches above a beach ball.) So on the near side, Jupiter’s gravity is pulling tremendously on Io. At the same time, Io’s far side is being pulled on by the gravity of Europa and Ganymede.
• This tug-of-war results in what’s called “tidal heating.” Io’s surface bulges in and out an average of 328 feet each day. Compare that to Earth’s tides, which at their maximum reach about 60 feet.
Since the Federal Reserve was created (1913), the U.S. dollar’s value has fallen 98%.
• This creates an incredible amount of friction inside Io, which heats it up—sort of like the way kneading dough makes it warm. That heat gets released in the form of more than 400 active volcanos, including the most powerful one in the solar system, called Loki, which spews lava several hundred miles above Io’s surface. At any given time, dozens of Ionian volcanoes are erupting, creating huge umbrella-shaped plumes that cover vast areas.
• Another record: Io’s solid iron core makes it the densest moon in the solar system. In that respect, Io is more similar to the four inner planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—than it is to the other large Jovian moons, which are mostly made of water ice.
ASSAULT ON THE SENSES
• A trip to Io would be amazing…and treacherous. Viewed from afar, Io resembles a giant pizza, complete with tomato sauce, melted cheese, and black olives. These colors are created by sulfur and sulfur dioxide in their various states—liquid, gas, and solid. If you flew closer to Io (avoid the massive plumes!), you’d see enormous sulfur icebergs floating in bubbling sulfur lakes, volcanic craters the size of Texas, raging rivers of molten lava, and mountains twice as high as Mt. Everest.
• Please remain in the safe confines of your spacecraft…or at least hold your nose when you venture outside. Because it literally snows sulfur dioxide, Io smells like a really, really, really bad fart. If you do want to get out, wear layers. Io boasts some of the most extreme temperature differences ever recorded: The surface temps are about -200°F; the areas surrounding volcanoes can top 3,000°F. Only one place in the solar system is hotter than that: the sun.
• But that’s assuming you could even fly close enough to observe these phenomena. Io’s thin sulphur dioxide atmosphere is sucked away at about one ton per second by Jupiter. This creates an intense radiation belt known as the Io plasma torus, a doughnut-shaped ring of ionized sulfur, oxygen, sodium, and chlorine around Io. Between the ionized field, the radiation, and the bad weather, it’s best to observe Io from a safe distance. (Bring a camera.)
“I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
—Galileo
Stomach ulcers aren’t caused by spicy foods or stress—they’re caused by bacteria.
NO FINALE
The finales of popular TV shows like M*A*S*H or Friends are big media events, wrapping up the series neatly and bringing in huge numbers of viewers. But some shows tape their final episodes without knowing it’s the final episode, or that the show’s about to get canceled.
Show: Married…With Children (Fox)
On the Air: 1987–1997
The End: An offbeat, cynical, and often crude take on the traditional family sitcom, Married was one of the first-ever shows on the Fox Network. It remained on the air through its 11th season, getting renewed well in advance of the season’s end each year. In early 1997, Fox was noncommittal about another year of the show, but the producers filmed the 11th-season finale as planned—a regular episode in which Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) prevents daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate) from marrying a jerk. A few weeks later, Fox canceled the show. O’Neill got the news that he was out of a job when a couple of fans bumped into him in a parking lot and expressed their condolences.
Show: My Name Is Earl (NBC)
On the Air: 2005–2009
The End: Earl was the most popular new sitcom of the 2005–06 season and finished the year at #40 in the ratings with 11 million viewers. The original premise appealed to audiences: Earl (Jason Lee) was a redneck petty thief who won the lottery and tried to turn his life around by righting every wrong he’d ever committed. But the show took a lot of weird turns (example: Earl spent half of season three in a coma with an imaginary 1950s sitcom playing
in his brain, in which he was the star and the other characters were his friends and family) and lost nearly half its viewers, dropping to #85 in the fourth season. Creator Greg Garcia knew the show was slipping and asked NBC what their plans were so he could produce either a wrap-up final episode or an end-of-season cliffhanger in which Earl finds out he may be the father of his ex-wife’s child. NBC told him to go with the cliffhanger. After it aired, the network canceled the show. (And Earl never found out if he was a dad.)
What do Henry Ford and Paul Revere have in common? They both made clocks.
Show: All in the Family/Archie Bunker’s Place (CBS)
On the Air: 1971–1983
The End: All in the Family, the satirical show about a loud-mouthed, blue-collar bigot named Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) and his “dingbat” wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), was one of the biggest hits in TV history—it was the #1 show for five years. Then, in 1979, the actors who played Archie’s daughter and son-in-law (Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner) quit the show, necessitating a format change away from the “family” setting. So producers changed the name to Archie Bunker’s Place and moved most of the action to the bar that Archie bought in season eight. The new show continued to draw viewers and was a top-20 hit, although it wasn’t as popular as All in the Family. Then Stapleton left. With none of the original characters in the cast except Archie, the ratings plummeted, and CBS canceled Archie Bunker’s Place without a proper ending to the 13-year Archie Bunker story. Instead, the last episode is about the bar’s co-owner trying to win back an old girlfriend. Writer Fred Rubin said that if he’d been given advance notice, he would have written an ending that reunited Archie with his WWII army buddies in Italy.
Show: Gunsmoke (CBS)
Years: 1955–1975
The End: Gunsmoke debuted in TV’s early black-and-white days, outlasted more than 100 other Western shows, and was still popular in 1975, when sitcoms like Happy Days, Sanford and Son, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show dominated and it was the only Western on the air. For 15 of its 20 years, Gunsmoke was a top-10 show, and no prime-time TV show has ever produced as many episodes—635 in all. (The Simpsons is a distant second, with over 460 and counting.) Despite all that, Gunsmoke was simply pulled off the air in April 1975, a few weeks after a forgettable episode—the sharecropping Pugh family struggles to get their crops planted before they’re evicted; lead character Marshal Dillon barely appears. The show had slipped to #23 in the ratings, but no one from CBS had ever mentioned to anyone in the cast or on the production staff that the end was even a possibility. James Arness, the star of Gunsmoke for 20 years, had planned to retire after another three years. Instead, he read about the show’s cancellation in Variety.
Have you ever seen one? There are fewer than 50 albino alligators in the world.
THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS,
PART II
For Part I of the story of the 2001 anthrax attacks, go to page 75.
HOW THE DISEASE WORKS
The method by which anthrax disables its victims is like something out of a horror movie. Once spores enter the body, either through a cut on the skin or via food or inhalation, the body’s immune cells capture and ingest them. Normally invaders are broken down and taken to the nearest lymph nodes, where antibodies against further infestation are produced. But that’s just what anthrax wants: The spores have a protective coating that prevents them from being broken down, but being ingested by immune cells induces them to germinate, or “wake up,” so to speak, from their spore state and become fully active bacteria. Then they begin to multiply incredibly rapidly, quickly killing and bursting out of their host immune cells to enter the bloodstream. They continue multiplying in the blood, which carries them throughout the body. That’s bad, but it gets worse: The bacteria now begin producing and releasing the deadly anthrax toxin.
Anthrax toxin is made up of three proteins that work together to chemically “trick” the body’s cells into allowing the proteins to enter them—a big cellular no-no—then induce them to produce inflammation-causing fluids. Inflammation is a normal immune response and is usually a good thing. But this is a massive response, and toxic levels of fluids quickly build up in the body, leading to tissue damage, decreased blood pressure, organ failure, and, in the worst forms of the disease, death in just a few days.
Result: The little B. anthracis bacteria have what they wanted all along: something dead to feed on. And when they’re all done, and there’s no food left, they go back into their spore state. And wait.
TRIPLE WHAMMY
There are three different forms of anthrax disease, each one corresponding with how the bacteria enter the body.
Hi Mom!
• Cutaneous anthrax, caused when anthrax spores enter through a cut or abrasion on the skin, accounts for about 95 percent of all known human cases. It begins as a small, itchy sore at the site of contact, then a blister that eventually bursts and dries into a very black scab, all of this accompanied by flulike symptoms. Cutaneous anthrax is easily treatable with antibiotics and is fatal in only about one percent of cases. People most likely to get it: those who work with wool and cow hides. (Anthrax is also known as woolsorter’s and ragpicker’s disease.)
• Gastrointestinal anthrax is caused by ingestion of the spores, most commonly through eating infected meat. It is extremely rare, and no cases have ever been reported in the United States. (It is, however, the most common form in animals.) Symptoms include abdominal pain, fever, and severe inflammation. It is often fatal in livestock, but is treatable with antibiotics.
• Inhalational anthrax is caused by inhaling airborne spores, and it’s the worst form of the disease. Characterized by fever, flulike symptoms, and fluid buildup in the lungs, it causes death within days in nearly 75 percent of all cases—even with treatment. It’s also extremely rare: Before the 2001 attacks, the last death in the United States due to inhalation anthrax occurred in 1976, when a 31-year-old weaver in California died after working with spore-infested yarn imported from Pakistan.
FROM MEDICINE TO WEAPON
For all the bad press that anthrax gets, it actually holds an important place in the history of advances against infectious diseases: It’s the very first disease positively linked to a particular bacterium. That discovery was made by German physician Robert Koch in 1876. (He did the same with cholera and tuberculosis, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.) Five years later, French scientist Louis Pasteur developed an anthrax vaccine, which is still used on livestock around much of the world today.
Unfortunately, the discoveries also led to less-than-humane pursuits, and it wasn’t long before the anthrax bacterium (as well as many other microorganisms) was being studied for possible use as a weapon.
• During World War I, the German government reportedly sent agents supplied with anthrax bacteria to several Allied countries in order to kill livestock. One agent, Dr. Anton Dilger, a German-American physician, set up a lab in his basement in Washington, D.C.—just miles from the White House—in 1916. There’s little evidence to suggest that he and the other agents were successful.
The Latin name of the black squid Vampyroteuthis infernalis translates to “vampire squid from Hell.”
• In the 1930s, several nations—including Germany, the United States, the U.S.S.R., Canada, and Japan—conducted extensive research into weaponizing anthrax, though it’s unclear whether it was ever used in battle.
• In 1942 the British military exploded the first known “anthrax bomb” in a test on Gruinard Island off Scotland. It released a cloud of anthrax spores that killed 60 sheep and made the island uninhabitable for the next five decades.
• The British also produced five million “anthrax cakes” intended to be dropped over Germany and eaten by cattle, but never deployed them. They were safely incinerated after the war.
• In 1943 the United States began producing anthrax-based and other biological weapons at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
• In 1969 Presid
ent Richard Nixon ended America’s biological weapons program, but studies, including work on human anthrax vaccines, continued. The FDA approved a human vaccine a year later.
• In 1979 an unknown amount of anthrax spores in aerosol (airborne) powder form was accidentally released at a bioweapons plant near the Ukrainian city of Sverdlovsk. At least 68 people in the area died in the days that followed, as did livestock as far as 30 miles away.
• In the 1980s, the Iraqi government developed an extensive biological-weapons program and produced large amounts of anthrax bacteria. For this reason, American and allied soldiers were inoculated with anthrax vaccine before the Persian Gulf War in 1991. No biological weapons are believed to have been used in the war.
So how were the deadly bacteria used to terrorize a nation in 2001? Turn to page 424 to find out.
KURT’S CUTS
Kurt Vonnegut is one of our favorite authors here at the BRI. He wrote science fiction, but he was all about humor and what it means to be human.
“All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”
“If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.”
“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
“Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow, whether there is a market for it or not.”
Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Page 30