Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  —Humanoids from the Deep

  Dr Wagner: “But you’re sacrificing a human life!”

  Dr Brandon (mad scientist): “Do you cry over a guinea pig? This boy is a free police case. We’re probably saving him from the gas chamber.”

  Dr Wagner: “But the boy is so young, the transformation horrible…

  Dr Brandon: “And you call yourself a scientist! That’s why you’ve never been more than an assistant.”

  —I Was a Teenage Werewolf

  Teenager: “You know something? Those things, whatever they are—they’re smarter than all of us put together.”

  —The Eye Creatures

  Dr. Durea: “Oh, she’s a lucky young woman, [Dr.] Groton. We have desperate need of her blood. She has survived decapitation and is manufacturing the right type of vital fluid for us. We are not butchers, Groton! We don’t have this young lady here to merely drain her body and cast her aside! No. We are scientists! And we must have others to experiment with!”

  —Dracula Vs. Frankenstein

  Count for yourself: The average dictionary contains entries for 278,000 words.

  First Scientist: “You say you made a close examination of this light?”

  Second Scientist: “Not as close as I would have liked! It was being guarded by a…a sea serpent! A hideous beast that defies description!”

  First Scientist: “Oh, doctor, if I didn’t know you were a scientist of high standards, I’d say you were a victim of the ridiculous ‘Phantom’ stories that are running wild around the village!”

  —The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues1

  Steve (the hero scientist): “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Evil alien brain: “I am Gor! I need your body as a dwelling-place while I am here on your planet Earth.”

  Steve: “Why me?”

  Gor: “Because you are a recognized nuclear scientist. Because you have entrée to places on Earth I want to go. I chose your body very carefully, even before I knew about Sally—a very exciting female!”

  Steve: “Leave Sally out of this!”

  Gor: “Why? She appeals to me! There are some aspects of the life of an Earth savage that are exciting and rewarding! Things that are missed by the brains on my planet, Arous.”

  —The Brain from Planet Arous

  Dr. Marvin (hero scientist): “General, we saw a strange thing this afternoon. We saw what appeared to be a flying saucer.”

  General Hanley: “A flying saucer!?”

  Carol Marvin (scientist’s new wife): “It nearly ran us off the road.”

  Hanley: “You’re sure of that?”

  Dr. Marvin: “Both Carol and I are subject to the same atmospheric disturbances that may have affected other observers, but there is a quantitative difference, when you’re a scientist.”

  Dr. Marvin: “What do you want with me?”

  Alien: “Arrange for your world leaders to confer with us in the city of Washington D.C.”

  Dr. Marvin: “They may not listen! I’m only a scientist!”

  —Earth Versus the Flying Saucers

  The world’s first recorded tonsillectomy was performed in the year 1000 B.C.

  THE PROVERBIAL TRUTH

  Is blood really thicker than water? How much would you have to eat if you “ate like a horse’’? We found the answers in The Column of Lists.

  At a snail’s pace: The fastest-moving land snail is probably the common garden snail. Its top speed is 55 yards per hour, or 0.0313 mph.

  Only skin deep: The skin on your eyelid is one one-thousandth of an inch deep (the thinnest); the skin on your upper back is one-fifth of an inch (the thickest).

  Eat like a horse: A 1,200-pound horse eats about 15 pounds of hay and nine pounds of grain every day (seven times its own weight each year).

  Quick as a wink: The average wink, or blink, lasts one-tenth of a second.

  Knee-high to a grasshopper: The knee-high measurement of an average-sized grasshopper is about 1/2 inch.

  High as a kite: The official record is 12,471 feet. Abbott Rotch, director of the U.S. Weather Bureau station in Milton, Massachusetts, set that record on February 28, 1898. Weather bureau people used to be master kite fliers, and their kites carried instruments that measured not only the temperature and humidity but also the altitude.

  Faster than a speeding bullet: Los Angeles Police Department ballistics experts say that the fastest bullet is fired from a .223-caliber rifle and travels at 3,500 feet per second, more than three times the speed of sound.

  Blood is thicker than water: In chemistry, water is assigned a relative density, or specific gravity, of 1.00—it is used as the standard for all other densities. By comparison, blood has a specific gravity of 1.06—only slightly thicker than water.

  The word hussy originally meant “housekeeper.”

  THE PERSONALS

  We admit it—we like to sneak a peek at the personal ads every once in a while. Even when they’re completely serious, they’re fascinating. And when they’re strange, they’re irresistible. Most of these ads were collected by Kathy Hinckley for her book Plain Fat Chick Seeks Guy Who Likes Broccoli.

  WOMEN SEEKING MEN

  Me: buxom blonde with blue eyes. You: elderly, marriage-minded millionaire with bad heart.

  I like driving around with my two cats, especially on the freeway. I make them wear little hats so that I can use the carpool lane. Way too much time on your hands too? Call me.

  Lonely Christian woman has not sung Glory Hallelujah in a long time. Write soon!

  Cute guy with snowplow sought by head-turnin’, zany, brainy, late-30s Babe to share happy time in the big driveway of love. A rake for springtime a big plus!

  Coldhearted, insensitive unconscionable, selfish, hedonistic, drunk liar seeks next gullible male without enough sense to stay away from me.

  Gorgeous blonde model, tired of being patronized. Looking for sincere, understanding man. Must be willing to listen to stories of alien abduction.

  MEN SEEKING WOMEN

  Mentally Ill? Are you restrained in a straight-jacket? Do you think you’re a chicken? Did you kill and eat your last boyfriend? I don’t mind. This tall, educated, professional SWM would like to meet an interesting woman!

  I drink a lot of beer, smoke a lot of cigars, and watch football nonstop from September to January. I seek a woman, 18-32, to share this with.

  If it takes a three-legged elephant with one tusk 5 days to cross the Sahara Desert, how many times do I have to put an ad in to get one call?

  Award-winning poet, 27 yrs., seeks short-term, intense, doomed relationship for inspiration. Must be attractive, sensual, articulate, ruthless, 21-30 yrs., under 5′6″. Break my heart, please.

  Desperate lonely loser, SWM, 32, tired of watching TV and my roommate’s hair fall out. Seeks depressed, unattractive SWF, 25-32, no sense of humor, for long talks about the macabre.

  Pound for pound, spiders, flies, and grasshoppers all contain more protein than beef does.

  WHY ASK WHY?

  Here are more cosmic queries you don’t need to answer, from the Internet and our friends at “The Edge.”

  Who needs rhetorical questions?

  Why do they sterilize the needles for lethal injections?

  How do they get the deer to cross the road at the yellow sign?

  Why do kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

  What do you do when you discover an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants?

  If women wear a pair of pants and a pair of glasses, why don’t they wear a pair of bras?

  Twenty-four hours in a day…twenty-four beers in a case…coincidence?

  Why do they put braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM?

  When you’re sending someone styrofoam, what do you pack it in?

  If 7-11 is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the doors?

  If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

 
How can there be self-help groups?

  What’s another word for thesaurus?

  Do witches run spell-checks?

  If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?

  Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?

  When you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?

  If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?

  If you haven’t understood me to this point, why do I bother? If you have understood me, why are you listening?

  Cost, per day, of fighting the Revolutionary War: $20,411. World War II: $409.4 million.

  HOW A MICROWAVE WORKS

  We gave you a brief history of the microwave oven on page 51. Now here’s the rest of the story—the science that makes it work.

  WHAT ARE MICROWAVES?

  Here’s the first thing you should know about “microwaves”: Like visible light, radio waves, and X-rays, they are waves of electromagnetic energy. What makes the four waves different from each other? Each has a different length (wavelength) and vibrates at a different speed (frequency).

  • Microwaves get their name because their wavelength is much shorter than electromagnetic waves that carry TV and radio signals. (For more info about electromagnetic waves, see page 381.)

  • The microwaves in a microwave oven have a wavelength of about four inches, and they vibrate 2.5 billion times per second—about the same natural frequency as water molecules. That’s what makes them so effective at heating food.

  • A conventional oven heats the air in the oven, which then cooks the food. But microwaves cause water molecules in the food to vibrate at high speeds, creating heat. The heated water molecules are what cook the food.

  • Glass, ceramic, and plastic plates contain virtually no water molecules, which is why they don’t heat up in the microwave.

  MICROWAVE MECHANICS

  • When the microwave oven is turned on, electricity passes through the magnetron, the tube which produces microwaves. The microwaves are then channeled down a metal tube (waveguide) and through a slow rotating metal fan (stirrer), which scatters them into the part of the oven where the food is placed.

  • The walls of the oven are made of metal, which reflects microwaves the same way that a mirror reflects visible light. So when the microwaves hit the stirrer and are scattered into the food chamber, they bounce off the metal walls and penetrate the food from every direction. Some ovens have a rotating turntable that helps food cook more evenly.

  The Netherlands used to be known as the United States.

  • Do microwave ovens cook food from the inside out? Some people think so, but the answer seems to be no. Microwaves cook food from the outside in, like conventional ovens. But the microwave energy only penetrates about an inch into the food. The heat that’s created by the water molecules then penetrates deeper into the food, cooking it all the way through. This secondary cooking process is known as “conduction.”

  • The metal holes in the glass door of the microwave oven are large enough to let out visible light (which has a small wavelength), but too small to allow the microwaves (which have a larger wavelength) to escape. So you can see what’s cooking without getting cooked yourself.

  YOU CALL THAT COOKING?

  According to legend, shortly after Raytheon perfected its first microwave oven in the 1950s, Charles Adams, the chairman of Raytheon, had one installed in his kitchen so he could taste for himself what microwave-cooked food was like. But as Adams’s cook quickly discovered, meat didn’t brown in the oven, french fries stayed limp and damp, and cakes didn’t rise. The cook, condemning the oven as “black magic,” quit.

  When sales of microwave ovens took off in the late 1980s, millions of cooks discovered the same thing: Microwaves just don’t cook some foods as well as regular ovens do. The reason: Because microwaves cook by exciting the water molecules in food, the food inside a microwave oven rarely cooks at temperatures higher than 212°F, the temperature at which water turns to steam.

  Conventional ovens, on the other hand, cook at temperatures as high as 550°F. High temperatures are needed to caramelize sugars and break down proteins, carbohydrates, and other substances and combine them into more complex flavors. So microwave ovens can’t do any of this, and they can’t bake, either.

  Some people feel this is the microwave’s Achilles heel. “The name ‘microwave oven’ is a misnomer,” says Cindy Ayers, an executive with Campbell’s Soup. “It doesn’t do what an oven does.”

  J, the youngest letter in the English alphabet, was not added until the 1600s.

  “It’s a glorified popcorn popper,” says Tom Vierhile, a researcher with Marketing Intelligence, a newsletter that tracks microwave sales. “When the microwave first came out, people thought they had stumbled on nirvana. It’s not the appliance the food industry thought it would be. It’s a major disappointment.”

  Adds one cooking critic: “Microwave sales are still strong, but time will tell whether they have a future in the American kitchen.” In the meantime, Uncle John isn’t holding his breath—he’s too busy heating up leftovers.

  MICROWAVE FACTS

  • Have you heard that microwave ovens are dangerous? In 1968 the Walter Reed Hospital tested them to see if the microwaves leaked out. They did—and the government stepped in to set the first federal standards for microwave construction. Today all microwaves sold in the U.S. must be manufactured according to federal safety standards.

  • If you microwave your foods in a square container and aren’t happy with the results, try cooking them in a round one. “Food cooks better in a round container than in a square one,” says Jim Watkins, president of the company that makes Healthy Choice microwave food products. “No one really knows why.”

  • Irregularly shaped foods, such as a leg of chicken that is thick at one end and thin at the other end, cook unevenly.

  • Food that has been cut up will also cook faster than a single, large piece of food, for the same reason: the microwaves penetrate completely through smaller pieces of food, but not through larger pieces.

  • Aluminum foil reflects microwave energy the same way mirrors reflect light energy. That’s why you can’t use foil in a microwave…unless, for example, you’re using it to shield some food items on a plate while others are being cooked. But be careful: if too much food is shielded with foil, the microwaves can overload the oven and damage the magnetron.

  According to our Foreign Correspondent: In Denmark, Danish pastries are called “Vienna bread.”

  MYTH-CONCEPTIONS

  Common knowledge is frequently wrong. Here are a few examples of things that most people believe…but just aren’t true.

  Myth: Watching TV in a dark room is bad for your eyes.

  Fact: As Paul Dickson and Joseph C. Goulden write in Myth-Informed, “The myth was created in the early 1950s by an innovative Philadelphia public relations man named J. Robert Mendte, on behalf of a client who manufactured lamps.”

  Myth: For every cockroach you see in your house, there are 10 more you didn’t see.

  Fact: According to studies conducted by the Insects Affecting Man and Animals Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number is actually closer to 1,000 to 1.

  Myth: Flamingos are naturally pink.

  Fact: Flamingos are grey when chicks. They turn pink as adults because the sea creatures they eat turn pink during digestion. The pigment is then absorbed by the bird’s body and colors its feathers. If flamingos are fed a different diet, they’re white.

  Myth: Johnny Weissmuller’s famous Tarzan yell was his voice combined with a high C sung by a soprano and a hyena’s howl recorded and played backward.

  Fact: Fooled us. It was all Weissmuller’s own voice.

  Myth: All your fingernails grow at the same rate.

  Fact: If you’re right-handed, nails on your right hand grow faster; if you’re left-handed, nails on your left will.

  Myth: Tonto’s nickname for the L
one Ranger, Kemo Sabe, means “faithful friend.”

  Fact: In Apache Kemo Sabe means “white shirt,” and in Navaho it means “soggy shrub.” But George Trendle, who created the Lone Ranger, didn’t know that. He took the name from a summer camp he went to as a boy.

  In Nepal, Mt. Everest is known as “Gauriosankar.”

  Myth: The artist Vincent Van Gogh cut off his entire ear.

  Fact: The famous episode followed two months of hard work, hard drinking, and an argument with his best friend, Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh was despondent and cut off only a small part of his earlobe.

  Myth: Hens cannot lay eggs without a rooster.

  Fact: Almost all eggs we buy in the store are unfertile eggs, laid by hens with no help from a rooster.

  Myth: More women in the U.S. have had face lifts than any other type of cosmetic surgery.

  Fact: Nope, the cosmetic surgery performed most frequently on women in the U.S. is liposuction. The second most popular process: collagen injections.

  Myth: John Kennedy is one of many presidents buried in Arlington National Cemetary, in Virginia.

  Fact: Actually, there are only three. William Howard Taft (27th president) and Woodrow Wilson (28th president) are the other ones.

  Myth: The largest pyramid in the world is in Egypt.

  Fact: The Quetzalcoatl pyramid southeast of Mexico City is 177′ tall, with a base covering 45 acres and a volume of 120 million cubic feet. Cheops, the largest in Egypt, though originally 481’ tall, has a base covering only 13 acres and a volume of only 90 million cubic feet.

  Myth: Giraffes have more vertebrae in their necks than other mammals.

  Fact: They’re the same as the rest of us. Although giraffes have the longest neck of any animal—10 to 12 feet—they have the same number of vertebrae as all mammals, including humans. The giraffe’s neck bones are farther apart, though.