Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  “[On old age:] First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.”

  —Leo Rosenberg

  • Contemporary theorists believe that laughter evolved as a means for primates to diffuse tension and reduce the likelihood of confrontation when meeting and interacting with others.

  FUNNY BUSINESS

  Even if scientists still don’t know why we laugh., they’ve learned a lot about it. For example:

  • You use 15 different muscles in your face to laugh.

  • The sound of laughter is created when you inhale deeply and then release the air while your diaphragm moves in a series of short, spasmodic contractions.

  • The typical laugh is made up of pulses of sound that are about 1/15th of a second long and l/5th of a second apart. When tape recorded and played backward, laughing sounds virtually the same as it does when it’s played forward.

  • Hearty laughter produces physical effects similar to those resulting from moderate exercise: The pulse of the person laughing can double from 60 to 120, and the systolic blood pressure can increase from 120 to 200—about the same thing that happens when you exercise on a stationary bicycle. Stanford University researcher Dr. William Fry even refers to laughter as “a kind of stationary jogging.”

  “I saw a TV commercial that said, ‘Kiss your hemorrhoids goodbye.’ Not even if I could.”

  —John Mendoza

  • When people stop laughing, just as when they stop exercising, the muscles in the body are more relaxed than they were before the laughing started. Heartbeat and blood pressure are also lower. This leads scientists to believe that laughing is a means of releasing stress and pent-up energy.

  THE BEST MEDICINE

  One of the most interesting things researchers have learned is the powerful healing effect of laughter.

  Well, actually they’re re-learning it after centuries of neglect: In the Middle Ages, doctors “treated” their patients by telling them jokes, but modern medicine discounted the curative properties of laughing.

  That began to change in 1979, when editor Norman Cousins wrote Anatomy of an Illness, in which he credited watching humorous videos with helping him reduce pain and recover from ankylosing spondylitis, a life-threatening degenerative spinal disease. The book inspired researchers to look into whether laughter really did aid in healing and recovery from illness.

  Mall rats: The average American child takes their first trip to the mall at age 2 months.

  THE LAUGH TEST

  In 1995, two researchers at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine had 10 medical students watch a 60-minute videotape of Gallagher, a stand-up comedian famous for smashing watermelons and other objects with a sledgehammer.

  The researchers found that after watching the video, there was a measurable decrease in stress hormones, including epinephrine and dopamine, in the students’ blood, plus an increase in endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers. But the most changes were found in the students’ immune systems. These included:

  Increased levels of gamma interferon, a hormone that “switches on” the immune system, and helps fight viruses and regulates cell growth

  Increased numbers of “helper T-cells,” which help the body coordinate the immune system’s response to illness

  More “Compliment 3,” a substance that helps antibodies destroy infected and damaged cells

  An increase in the number and activity of “natural killer (NK) cells,” which the body uses to attack foreign cells, cancer cells, and cells infected by virus

  Some of the levels even began to change before the students watched the video—just from the expectation that they were about to laugh. “Say you’re going to your favorite restaurant,” Dr. Berk explains. “You can visualize the food; you can almost taste it. You’re already experiencing the physiology of enjoying it. Your immune system [also] remembers….By using humor to combat stress, you can condition yourself to strengthen your immune system.”

  “Everything is drive-through. In California they even have a burial service called Jump-in-the-Box.”

  —Wil Shriner

  GETTING THE JOKE

  In 1995 Peter Derks, a psychologist at the College of William and Mary, tested how the brain stimulates laughter. He hooked research subjects up to an EEG (electroencephalogram) topographical brain mapper, then told the subjects jokes. His findings:

  In 1915, the average income for an American family was $687 a year.

  • At the start of the joke, the brain processes the information in the left lobe, the analytical side that processes language.

  • As the joke progresses, the primary activity shifts to the frontal lobe, where emotions are processed.

  • Just before the punch line is delivered, the right side of the brain, which controls the perception of spatial relationships, begins coordinating its activity with the left side of the brain. This is the point where the brain is trying to “get” the joke.

  • “What humor is doing,” Derks says, “is getting the brain into unison so it can be more efficient in trying to find explanations for—in this case—the punch line. Laughter may also have long-term therapeutic effects.” Derks suspects that joke-telling may even help stroke victims and the elderly recover lost brain function.

  “I date this girl for two years—and then the nagging starts: ‘I wanna know your name.’”

  —Mike Binder

  THE LAUGHTER GENDER GAP

  Robert Provine, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland, has studied the laughter that takes place in conversations between men and women. (How? He and his assistants eavesdropped on more than 1,200 conversations that took place on the street and in offices, shopping malls, cocktail parties, and other public places around Baltimore.)

  “ My father’s a strange guy. He’s allergic to cotton. He has pills he can take, but he can’t get them out of the bottle.”

  —Brian Kiley

  His findings:

  • “We found that far and away the most laughter takes place when males were talking and females were listening, and the least took place when females were talking and males were listening. Male-male and female-female conversations fell somewhere in between.” Provine believes that this is because females are better listeners and are more encouraging in conversation.

  Q: What is the most common disease in the world? A: Tooth decay.

  • Men are more likely to make jokes than women are, and women are more likely to laugh at them than men are. These differences, Provine says, are already apparent when children begin telling their first jokes, usually around the age of six.

  “I feel good. I lost 20 pounds on that deal a meal plan. Not that Richard Simmons plan. This is where you play cards, lose, and don’t have enough cash to eat.”

  —John McDowell

  ANIMAL LAUGHTER

  Chimpanzees, apes, orangutans and a few other primates laugh, but no other animals do. Chimps laugh at the relief of tension, when tickling each other, and when playing chasing games. Their laugh sounds like rapid panting, but unlike humans, they are unable to regulate or control the air as they breathe out, which means they can’t change the way it sounds. This lack of ability to control airflow is the same thing that deprives them of speech.

  Just because primates can’t talk, it doesn’t mean they can’t share jokes. Chimps and gorillas that have learned sign language have been known to sign one another for laughs. Sometimes they give incorrect signs in “conversation,” and then laugh audibly with each other; other times they urinate on humans and then sign “funny.”

  A drop of rain can fail as fast as 22 mph.

  SILKWOOD

  Karen Silkwood has been the subject of numerous articles, books, and a major movie, but few people know what really happened to her. Here, from the book “It’s a Conspiracy,” are the details of her controversial life and mysterious death.

  On November 13, 1974, Karen Si
lkwood left a group of coworkers at the Hub Cafe in Crescent, Oklahoma, headed to a crucial meeting with a New York Times reporter. On her way out, she told them that she had proof that the plutonium plant where they all worked—Kerr-McGee’s Cimarron River plant—had repeatedly covered up safety violations and falsified records. But she never made it to her meeting.

  A little more than 7 miles outside of Crescent, Silkwood’s car went flying off the straight highway and crashed into a concrete culvert, silencing Silkwood forever. Official statements claim that Silkwood fell asleep at the wheel, but evidence suggests otherwise.

  KAREN SILKWOOD VS. KERR-McGEE

  • Soon after she started working for Kerr-McGee in 1972, Karen Silkwood joined the local branch of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). In the spring of 1974, she was elected to the governing committee and began to voice her concerns about the company’s safety record. She believed Kerr-McGee was sloppy in its handling of radioactive materials and indifferent to the health of its workers.

  • She became even more concerned when several coworkers were directly exposed to plutonium—perhaps the most toxic substance on earth. And a production speedup that required employees to work 12-hour shifts increased the danger.

  • On August 1, 1974, Silkwood herself was contaminated when airborne plutonium entered the room in which she was working. She began worrying about her own health as well as the effects of company safety lapses on her coworkers. She began carrying a notebook with her constantly to record the infractions she observed.

  • On September 26, she and two other local union officials flew to Washington D.C., to meet with national OCAW leaders. They alleged serious health and safety violations and charged that plant documents had been falsified to conceal defective fuel rods. National union leaders were so alarmed that they immediately took Silkwood to testify before the Atomic Energy Commission.

  The U.S. Postal Service delivers more than 171,000,000,000 pieces of mail a year.

  • This charge had “very deep and very grave [consequences],” according to OCAW official Steve Wodka—“not only for the people in the plant, but for the entire atomic industry and the welfare of the country. If badly made pins were placed into the reactor without deficiencies being caught, there could be an incident exposing thousands of people to radiation.”

  • After presenting her charges in Washington, Silkwood returned to Kerr-McGee and continued to document the safety violations she observed on the job.

  CONTAMINATION

  • On Tuesday, November 5, Silkwood was in the metallography lab, where she was handling plutonium in a safety case called a “glovebox.” When she finished her work, monitoring devices revealed that she had been contaminated again—this time from her hands all the way up to her scalp.

  • The contamination on her coveralls was up to forty times the company limit. Any exposure above the company limit required emergency decontamination—scrubbing repeatedly with a mixture of Tide and Clorox, which left Silkwood’s skin raw and stinging. Within a few days, she noted, “It hurt to cry because the salt in my tears burned my skin.”

  • Health officials required Silkwood to supply urine and fecal samples so they could monitor the radioactivity level in her system. Samples taken over the next few days showed new, extremely high levels of radiation. Baffled by the source of the contamination, officials eventually checked her apartment. They found that it was so contaminated that most of its contents had to be removed and buried. While officials gutted her apartment, Kerr-McGee lawyers interrogated Silkwood, insinuating that she had smuggled plutonium out of the plant.

  • Her health began to deteriorate. She began to lose weight and had trouble sleeping. A series of doctors prescribed sedatives to relieve her anxiety. Now, terrified by the trauma of decontamination scrubbings, the burial of her belongings, and the high levels of contamination in her body, Karen Silkwood believed she was dying.

  According to Billboard magazine, the #1 single of the 1960s was “Hey Jude,” by the Beatles.

  • She spent November 10 to 12 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, undergoing tests to assess how much radiation she had absorbed. Doctors determined that she was in no imminent danger—the amount of plutonium that her body had absorbed was below the maximum absorption that “cannot be exceeded without risk.” But no one could assure her that the radioactivity would not lead to cancer or other health problems in the future.

  • Then, on November 13, six days after the contamination was discovered in her house, Silkwood drove to meet a reporter from The New York Times, with documents she believed would prove Kerr-McGee’s criminal neglect. En route, her car veered across the road and down the left-hand shoulder, and slammed head on into a concrete culvert, killing her.

  WAS IT A CONSPIRACY? #1

  Was her car wreck an accident—or murder?

  • The official explanation of Karen Silkwood’s death is that she brought it on herself: she took too many tranquilizers and dozed off while driving. “An autopsy revealed that her blood, stomach, and liver contained methaqualone, a sleep-inducing drug, and it was surmised that she fell asleep at the wheel,” according to the Encyclopedia of American Scandal. “Justice Department and FBI investigations found no wrongdoing.”

  • This was possible. To cope with insomnia, changes in her work shift, and growing tension at the plant, Silkwood had gotten a prescription for sleeping pills. Her boyfriend, Drew Stephens, says that she had taken them for tranquilization, not for sleep—especially during the last week of her life. (Ms.)

  • But colleagues who had been with Silkwood shortly before the accident said she appeared alert, spoke clearly, and acted normally. “It would never have crossed my mind that she might not be capable of driving a car safely,” one coworker said. What’s more, the road her car went off was perfectly straight, and Karen was an excellent driver—she’d won several road rallies in previous years.

  Q: What area of your body has the most bacteria?A: Between your toes.

  • When Silkwood left her colleagues to meet with the reporter from The New York Times, she was carrying a brown manila folder and a large notebook. One coworker who had been at the Hub Cafe recounted some of Silkwood’s last words: “She then said there was one thing she was glad about, that she had all the proof concerning the health and safety conditions in the plant, and concerning falsification. As she said this, she clenched her hand more firmly on the folder and the notebook she was holding.” (Ms.)

  Suspicious Facts

  • Silkwood’s manila folder and notebook disappeared after the accident. “A trooper at the scene reported stuffing the papers back into the car,” said one reporter, “but they were gone when it was checked a day later.”

  • The road was straight. If, as the police suggested, she fell asleep, her car would probably have drifted to the right because of the road’s centerline, or crown, and the pull of gravity. But instead it crossed the road and went off the left shoulder.

  • Experts disagreed about the meaning of the tire marks at the accident. Police said her car left two sets of rolling tracks with no evidence of having attempted to brake or control the car. An investigator hired by the OCAW, however, thought the car had been out of control, as if it had been hit or pushed by another car.

  • Experts also disagreed about a scratch along the side of the car. Police said it was made when the car was towed away from the culvert. But the OCAW analyst said microscopic exams showed metal and rubber fragments in the scratch, as if another car had bumped Silkwood’s.

  • Several years after the accident, family members filed a lawsuit against Kerr-McGee, claiming that the company intentionally contaminated Silkwood. In 1979, an Oklahoma jury ordered Kerr-McGee to pay Silkwood’s estate more than $10.5 million in damages. The decision against Kerr-McGee was later overturned on appeal because the “award was ruled to have infringed on the U.S. government’s exclusivity in regulating safety in the nuclear power industry” (Encyclopedia of American Scandal).
Four years later, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “courts could impose punitive damages on the nuclear-power industry for violations of safety.” Kerr-McGee eventually settled the suit for $1.3 million. Under the out-of-court agreement, the company admitted no guilt for the automobile accident.

  Hey, Laurie! Did you know the kernel inside a peach pit is poison?

  WAS IT A CONSPIRACY? #2

  If Silkwood was murdered, could agents of the U.S. government be responsible?

  Suspicious Facts

  • At least forty pounds of plutonium—the active ingredient in nuclear warheads—were missing from the Kerr-McGee plant. Silkwood was among the first to suggest this, and company officials later confirmed it.

  • According to The Progressive, the Justice Department, “ignoring evidence that suggested the possibility of foul play at the accident site…shut down its investigation of Karen Silkwood’s death early in 1974 with a four-and-a-half-page summary report dismissing the possibility of murder or any relationship of missing plutonium to the case.”

  • According to Rebel magazine, “Every attempt to get the government to release related intelligence files has been replied to by the Justice Department with claims of ‘national security’ and ‘state secrets.’ The FBI even tried to get a permanent gag order against Silkwood attorneys forbidding public disclosure of what they were finding.”

  • Attorneys working on the lawsuit brought by Silkwood’s estate alleged that there was a relationship—and perhaps a conspiracy—between Kerr-McGee and the FBI. These attorneys said that Silkwood was being spied on and that transcripts of her private conversations were later passed from a Kerr-McGee official to both an FBI agent and an author (alleged to have CIA and Navy-intelligence links) who later wrote a disparaging book about Silkwood’s activities.

  • Attempting to clarify the relationship between Kerr-McGee, the FBI, and the author, Silkwood attorney Danny Sheehan repeatedly pressed the author in court to tell who had commissioned her book. The FBI objected 30 times, citing “national security.” Finally, after conferring with FBI officials, the judge told Sheehan, “The information you seek is sinister and secret, and should never see the light of day.” (The Progressive)