But even though this was known very early on, it didn’t stop federal investigators—and the media—from looking for blame elsewhere.
For Part IV of the story, turn to page 489.
When people in Sweden have their picture taken, they say “omelet,” not “cheese.”
DO YOU SPEAK LÁADAN?
You’ve heard of Esperanto (page 195) and you can probably speak a little pig Latin. Here’s a look at some other “constructed languages” that have been created over the years. Appy-hay eading-ray!
SOLRESOL (“Language”): A “musical language” created by François Sudre, a French author, in the mid-1800s.
Features: Sudre based his entire language on the musical scale: “do,” “re,” “mi,” “fa,” “sol,” “la,” and “ti.” Each word in Solresol is composed of one or more of these syllables. It’s probably the only language in the world that can be translated directly into music, and vice versa. And not just music: Any system you can think of that has seven different components—seven hand signals, seven whistles, seven colors, etc.—can serve as a medium for communicating in Solresol.
Sample Words:
dodomi: season
reredo: July
midofasol: orphan
fafadosol: surgeon
ladoti: book
tiremido:deaf
dofafado: Easter
remitisol: stairs
fadore: corrupt
sollamifa: sculpture
laremila:blue
tilamido: police
Fatal Flaw: Sudre drew huge crowds at demonstrations where language students translated his violin playing into speech. But as much as the public enjoyed the show, most thought of Solresol as nothing more than a novelty act. It never caught on.
VOLAPÜK (“World Language”): Invented by a Bavarian Catholic priest named Johann Martin Schleyer in the 1870s, Volapük was inspired by a dream: God told Schleyer to invent a single, universal language that people of all nations could speak.
Features: To make Volapük easier to pronounce, Schleyer left the “th” sound out of the language entirely. He also kept the use of the letter “r” to a minimum, to make it easier for native Chinese speakers to pronounce. These and other efforts at simplification paid off: By the late 1880s, there were nearly 300 Volapük societies around the world. More than two dozen magazines were printed in or about Volapük, and textbooks of Volapük language instruction were available in 25 different languages. Three international Volapük conferences were held, in 1884, 1887, and 1889; the last one, in Paris, was conducted entirely in Volapük.
Unlike humans, whales and dolphins have to actively decide when to breathe.
Sample Words:
nenomik: abnormal
sanavik: medical
delagased: newspaper
släm: mud
rolatridem: escalator
niblit: pants
paänakek: pancake
jipal: mother
yebafel: lawn
sasenan: murderer
geböfik: ordinary
adyö! goodbye!
Fatal Flaw: Schleyer was very protective of Volapük, and that proved to be its downfall. When a group of reformers tried to fix what they felt were flaws in his language, he blocked them. The movement then split into several factions, each of which then created their own version of Volapük. The entire point of a single universal language having been defeated, the movement collapsed. Today there are fewer than 30 Volapük speakers on Earth.
INTERLINGUA (“Between Language”): Since English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Russian are all cousins, they have many words with common roots that look and sound similar to one another. Why not use these words as a basis for creating a universal language? That was the thinking behind Interlingua, a language started in 1937 by a group called the International Auxiliary Language Association. The project was delayed by World War II, but by 1951 Interlingua was ready to go.
Features: Basing Interlingua on existing languages made it a lot easier to learn. You don’t have to be a fluent Interlingua speaker to guess what words like fragile, politica, rapide, and even disvelop-pamento mean.
Sample Words:
in flammas: ablaze
ris: rice
escaldar: scald
servitor: waiter
abbreviar: abridge
salon: living room
inseniar: teach
vinia: vineyard
condemnar: convict
cisorios: scissors
legumine: vegetable
juvene: young
Outcome: Interest in Interlingua peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, when more than 30 scientific and medical journals published article summaries in Interlingua. Interest has dropped off considerably since then, but Interlingua remains the second-most popular constructed language after Esperanto.
Top three oil-producing countries: Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States Top three countries with the greatest oil reserves: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Canada.
LÁADAN (“Perception Language”): The world’s first feminist language. Invented by science-fiction author Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982, Láadan was an experimental language created to test a theory that was popular with feminists: namely, that modern languages had a male bias that restricted feminine thought and perception.
Remember the old saw that Eskimos have a hundred different words for “snow” while English has only “snow”? If having only one word for “snow” limits how English speakers think about snow, the feminist theory went, then a male bias in modern languages, if it existed, would similarly restrict the perceptions of women. Elgin theorized that if women embraced Láadan within 10 years, or were at least inspired by it to create a better feminist language, that would support the theory of a male bias in modern languages. If Láadan flopped, that was evidence of little or no bias: Women had no need for Láadan because they were well served by the languages they already spoke.
Features: Láadan had five words for “joy,” five words for “anger,” four words for “it” (three female and one male), and six words for “alone.” It also had 13 words for “love,” including ab, “love for one liked but not respected”; ad, “love for one respected but not liked”; and éeme, “love for one neither liked nor respected.” (Curiously, Láadan also has a word for “sewage plant”—waludal.)
Sample Words:
with: adult (female)
lub: chicken
miwith: city
oma: hand
withid: adult (male)
oba: body
miwithá: city dweller
wíi: alive
héeya: fear
sheb: change
yob: coffee
óol: moon
Outcome: Láadan never attracted more than a handful of enthusiasts, some of whom are still contributing new words and grammar to this day. But as Arika Okrent writes in In the Land of Invented Languages, “After 10 years passed, and women still had not embraced Láadan or come up with another language to replace it, Elgin declared the experiment a failure, noting, with some bitterness, that Klingon (a hyper-male ‘warrior’ language) was thriving.”
SHOW STOPPERS
The show must go on! Or, well, um, no. It doesn’t, really.
PERFORMER: John Cale, Welsh singer-songwriter and a founding member of the highly influential rock band the Velvet Underground. He was also quite a strange person.
SHOW: Cale was performing with his own band at a club called The Greyhound in Croydon, England, in April 1977. During a long and very dark version of the Elvis Presley classic “Heartbreak Hotel,” Cale brought a dead chicken onto the stage (it had been killed backstage a short time earlier) and started swinging it around his head.
STOPPER: Then he pulled out a meat cleaver and decapitated it—and threw the head and body into the dancing crowd. Everyone immediately stopped dancing. Cale later called it “the most effective showstopper I ever came up with.” But it didn’t stop with the audience: Th
e band’s drummer, Joe Stefko, and bass player, Mike Visceglia, were vegetarians. They’d actually discussed the chicken routine with Cale before the show, and told him that if he did it, they’d leave. He did it…and they left. Not just the stage—they both left the band. (Stefko went on to play with Meat Loaf; Visceglia with Suzanne Vega.) Cale’s next album, titled Animal Justice, contained a track that, so the story goes, was about the two quitting bandmembers. Title: “Chickensh*t.”
PERFORMER: Cate Blanchett, Oscar-winning actress
SHOW: Blanchett was playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Sydney Theater in Australia in 2009.
STOPPER: In the middle of a fight scene with Joel Edgerton, playing Stanley Kowalski, Edgerton was supposed to pick up a large, 1960s-style radio and, in a fit of rage, throw it out a window. He missed the window and nailed Blanchett right in the head. The audience gasped as Blanchett dropped to her knees, and blood started dripping down her face and neck. Somehow, the actress managed to get up and continue the scene, but about 30 seconds later the lights went out and the curtain came down. After 10 more minutes went by, a producer came out and announced that the show was canceled. (Fortunately, Blanchett was only slightly injured and returned to the show the next evening.)
James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, and Susan Sarandon all got their start on soap operas.
PERFORMER: Cat Power, a singer/songwriter whose real name is Chan Marshall
SHOW: In November 2000, just as she was beginning to gain national attention, Power did a show at Irving Plaza, a music hall in New York City. She was also becoming known for her bizarre onstage antics. That night she started—but didn’t finish—several songs on both the guitar and the piano, mumbled apologies to the crowd, asked them to talk during her songs, and constantly interrupted songs to make requests or complaints to the soundman.
STOPPER: An hour or so into the show, Power jumped off the stage and ran through the crowd and out the front door. She wasn’t seen again that night. Power later blamed the antics on a drinking problem. She’s now sober and not nearly as erratic onstage as she used to be. But before that, she once mooned an audience, told them all to go away, and said that if they didn’t like it they could sue her. Another time, at an outdoor show, she ignored the crowd altogether for 15 minutes…while she talked to a squirrel.
PERFORMER: Idina Menzel, a Tony Award-winning actress
SHOW: In January 2005, Menzel was performing in the Stephen Schwartz musical Wicked, playing the part of Elphaba, the misunderstood, green-skinned girl modeled after the Wicked Witch of the West from the L. Frank Baum story The Wizard of Oz.
STOPPER: Near the end of the play, the character Dorothy throws a bucket of water on Elphaba…and she “melts.” Here’s how the effect is done: a trapdoor in the stage floor opens, exposing a platform; Menzel steps onto the platform, which is then lowered while Menzel wails and flails her robes, giving the appearance of melting. But that night someone lowered the platform too early and when the trapdoor opened, the Wicked Witch of the West fell into the hole and broke several ribs. The curtain was dropped, actors and crew rushed to help the actress, and she was taken to the hospital. The show was stopped for 45 minutes—but did eventually go on, as Menzel’s understudy got into costume and finished out the performance. Unfortunately, the following day’s performance was slated to be Menzel’s final show—after a 14-month run—and for her, the show did not go on. What was supposed to be Menzel’s grand finale was, in fact, performed by her understudy.
Low-fat food? Most commercial hot dogs are about 55% water.
PERFORMERS: The Who
SHOW: On the night of May 16, 1969, the Who played the Fillmore East in Manhattan.
STOPPER: A few songs into their set, a disheveled-looking, heavy-set man climbed up on stage and grabbed the microphone out of singer Roger Daltrey’s hand, right in the middle of a song. Daltrey stood there stunned, while bassist John Entwistle and one of the band’s roadies grabbed the guy. Then guitarist Pete Townshend walked up and kicked the interloper right in the “bollocks.” Then they threw him off the stage and finished the song. (Drummer Keith Moon hadn’t stopped playing at all…and possibly hadn’t even noticed what was going on.)
A minute later, Pete Townshend said, “I smell smoke.” Someone walked out from backstage, whispered in his ear, and the band quickly left the stage. Why? The five-story apartment building and supermarket next door were on fire. The audience was asked to exit the theater quietly (which they did). Unbeknownst to the band, the man who had jumped onstage was a plainclothes cop trying to tell everyone about the fire. The NYPD nearly charged Townshend with assault; he eventually paid a fine and the matter was dropped.
BONUS. We didn’t have to read a rock ’n’ roll history book to research this item. Why? Because a very young Uncle John was there that night. And—amazingly—he remembers it! (But we researched it anyway, just to be sure.)
TWO RANDOM FACTS
• In an early draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones’s weapon of choice was brass knuckles, not a whip.
• Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, had a fear of heights.
Per capita, the British eat 1,000 times as much chocolate as the Chinese.
THINKING OUTSIDE
THE BOX
As anyone who works in a large office knows, the corporate workplace is dominated by little boxes called cubicles. On page 327 we told you the history of the cube. Here’s what you have to look forward to.
ANEW WORKDAY IS DAWNING
However flawed it may be, the office cubicle is still a very flexible and economical way for an employer to give workers a bit of privacy, easy access to their equipment and files, and a place to put up Dilbert posters. So don’t expect cubicles to be “made redundant” anytime soon. But new designs are being tested with the knowledge that the workplace is different than it was in 1980, and different than what it will be in 2020. Workers aren’t the same, either. Due to a combination of factors—improved technology, cheaper outsourcing, corporate downsizing, and the changing economy—there are fewer low-level positions such as receptionists and data entry personnel, and more specialists, middle managers, salespeople, and creative types. All of them must multitask more than ever before, and very few will get an office of their own.
What does this mean for cubicles? The goal is still the same: They should keep out distractions and encourage interaction, but not make the workers feel “oppressed.” To accomplish this, several design firms are working on what many refer to as “Cubicle 2.0.” Here’s a bit of what looms on the horizon both inside and outside of the box.
NEWBICLES
• No more squares: Many new personal workspaces are circular, like pods. A company called StrongProject sells S-shaped cubicles. High-tech cubicles resemble the command center of a sci-fi spaceship.
• Lighting: Because studies have shown that fluorescent bulbs cause eye strain and fatigue, some new cubicles include their own incandescent lighting systems. “My Studio Environment,” made by Herman Miller, the company that released the first partitioned office system in 1968, comes with translucent plastic walls, which still give workers privacy but let in more light. (Most revolutionary, My Studio Environment actually comes with a sliding door.)
Not as snappy: The original name of the Snapple company was Unadulterated Food Products.
• Noise: After a lack of privacy, cube dwellers’ biggest complaint is that they overhear co-workers’ conversations. One solution is a device called the “Babble,” a white-noise generator that broadcasts garbled recordings of the user’s voice. If you can’t decipher your neighbor’s actual words, the thinking goes, the talking will be less distracting. (There’s also the tried-and-true method for blocking out unwanted noise—headphones.) Three other noise reduction ideas:
1) Soundproof phone booths called “Cell Cells.” Located throughout an office floor, they come with cell-phone reception boosters so workers can talk on their phones in private.
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br /> 2) A 2-person soundproof pod called a “Dyadic Slice.” Two co-workers can sit inside it and gossip all they want (or work, or settle their differences) without the rest of the office overhearing them.
3) And for loud brainstorming meetings, there’s the larger, but also soundproof, “Digital Yurt.”
WAY OUTSIDE THE BOX
• Studio 53: In the 1970s, New York City’s Studio 54 was the premier disco club. Studio 53, made by Steelcase, recreates that feeling with shag carpeting, velvet walls, and plush pillows…in an eight-foot by eight-foot cubicle. When it was unveiled at a trade show in 2006, it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously (for one thing, it cost thousands of dollars), but according to James Ludwig, Steelcase’s director of design, “Not only were people connecting to its high-concept message of ‘Don’t Hate Me Because I’m a Cubicle,’ but designers were unrolling blueprints to discuss how we could include some of the workstations in their projects.” Much to Ludwig’s surprise, Steelcase received several orders on the spot.
• Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle: In 2001 Dilbert creator Scott Adams realized that “somehow, accidentally, I’d become a leading authority on what’s wrong with the cubicle.” Spurred on by his readers, Adams partnered with the design firm IDEO to build “Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle.” Though most features were intended as a spoof (the hammock and the “boss monitor”), a few have since been incorporated into actual cubicle designs, including lighting that changes in accordance with the time of day.
50% of American men wear briefs, 40% wear boxers, and 10% wear boxer-briefs.
TEAR DOWN THE WALLS
As innovative as these new cube farms are, they’re still cube farms—and employers pay a lot of rent and other overhead costs just so workers can show up and sit inside their boxes all day. Solution: Many offices of the future may not be offices at all.
Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Page 49