• Elephant Jokes: How do you get six elephants in a Volkswagen? Three in the front and three in the back. This fad began in 1960, when Wisconsin toymaker L.M. Becker Co. released a set of 50 elephant-joke trading cards. (That one is card #12.)
WIKIALITY CHECK
We live in an age when you can alter “reality” with the click of a button.
ELEPHANTS
On a 2006 episode of his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert made fun of mainstream news outlets for using the online website Wikipedia as a research source. Colbert’s issue: The website allows anyone—expert or not—to edit any of its 22 million articles. “If everyone agrees that what’s in Wikipedia is true,” he said, “then anyone can change reality simply by editing Wikipedia.”
He called this new reality “wikiality” and suggested his viewers edit the Wikipedia article on elephants to read: “Elephant population in Africa has tripled over the past six months.” A fan complied. A Wikipedia staffer removed the line; another fan put it back. After this happened a few more times, Wikipedia “locked” the elephants article so no more edits could be made. Here are a few other instances of people creating their own wikialities.
SARAH PALIN
In 2012 the former VP candidate was touring historic sites in Boston when she mentioned that on Paul Revere’s famous ride in 1775, he was “ringin’ those bells.” Palin’s history was off: Revere didn’t ring any bells. The press mocked her, but she stood by her version of the events. Meanwhile, one of her supporters edited the Wikipedia entry on Paul Revere to reflect Palin’s version. Wikipedia fixed the article and locked out any further changes. (Colbert later tried to “help” Palin by asking his viewers to change the entry on bells to include Palin’s account of Revere’s ride.)
JUSTIN BIEBER
In 2011, after jazz singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding won the Best New Artist Grammy over Bieber, his fans were upset. In the hours that followed, Spalding’s Wikipedia entry was edited more than 90 times with such new “facts” as: “JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT GO DIE IN A HOLE!” Another disgruntled fan changed Spalding’s middle name to Quesadilla.
In Sesame Street’s first season, Oscar the Grouch was orange.
HALLE BERRY
An anonymous Wikipedia user named “Ciii” added this quotation to Berry’s biography in 2006: “I’ve always loved to sing and this album will show people that I can do more than act.” Based on that, several news outlets, including the Washington Post, Rock & Roll Daily, and Rolling Stone magazine, reported that the Oscar winner was about to record a pop album. That prompted an official denial from Berry, who has no plans to become a singer.
BATMAN
In 2007 some joker deleted all of the text from the article on the Caped Crusader and replaced it with this:
Batman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH BATMAN! DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH BATMAN! DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH BATMAN! BATMAN! BATMAN! DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH BATMAN! DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH BATMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(If you’re not familiar, those are the “lyrics” to the theme song of the campy 1960s Batman TV show.)
TITIAN
In the British House of Commons in 2009, Labour Party head Gordon Brown said during a speech that 16th-century Italian painter Titian died when he was 90. Conservative leader David Cameron later claimed that Titian died when he was 86…and then mocked Brown for his “lack of education.” Later that day, one of Cameron’s staffers called the BBC News and told them to go to Titian’s Wikipedia page…which proved that Cameron—not Brown—was correct. Suspicious, a BBC reporter discovered that Titian’s Wikipedia entry had recently been changed to reflect Cameron’s version of the truth. When pressed, Cameron admitted that one of his staffers was responsible. (Titian’s actual birth date is unknown.)
So that’s why the freeways are crowded: One out of every eight Americans lives in California.
THE HALLS OF CONGRESS
• Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-IA) deleted the fact that he broke with Democratic leadership on several budget issues to maintain his reputation as a more conservative “Blue Dog” Democrat.
• Vice President Joe Biden’s staffers removed references to alleged plagiarism in his speeches.
• Rep. John Mica (R-FL) quashed reports that he wore a toupee—rumors started by Stephen Colbert.
THE SEIGENTHALER INCIDENT
In 2005 an anonymous Wikipedia user created a fake page about NBC News journalist John Seigenthaler, claiming that he was a suspect in the assassinations of both John F. and Robert Kennedy and that he had lived in the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1984. None of it is remotely true, but somehow the hoax went unnoticed for more than four months. Wikipedia eventually tracked down the saboteur: Brian Chase, 38, a delivery service manager in Nashville. “It was just a joke,” Chase claimed, adding that he thought the site was “some sort of gag encyclopedia.” He was forced to resign from his job. Chase later called Seigenthaler to apologize, saying he didn’t think anyone would take it seriously.
The incident prompted Wikipedia to add more editorial oversight to its articles, which is why suspect entries have disclaimers at the top. The rules were changed so that a person must register on the site before they can make any changes (but they don’t have to use their real name). In 2012 the company added new software that alerts a core group of trusted editors of article changes so that, if necessary, they can be fixed immediately. However, errant “facts” can still slip through the cracks. Seigenthaler summed up his experience in an editorial in USA Today: “We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research—but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects.”
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“It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.”—e.e. cummings
Oldest horse on record: “Old Billy,” an English barge horse. He lived to age 62.
SCI-FI VIDEO TREASURES
For all the sci-fi fans out there, searching the aisles of the video store or clicking around Netflix looking for an obscure science fiction gem, here are a few you might have missed.
MOON (2009) Psychological Drama
Review: “This mesmerizing mind-bender sneaks up and hits you hard. Sam Rockwell is an astronaut finishing up a three-year stint on the moon, mining energy from lunar rock. He wants to be back on Earth with his wife and daughter. His only contact is GERTY, a robot with the sweet-sinister voice of Kevin Spacey. There’s an accident. A new astronaut appears, looking just like the old one. I’ll say no more.” (Rolling Stone)
BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1984) Comedy
Review: “John Sayles’ first bona fide box-office success, Brother centers on a black escaped slave from a faraway planet who finds himself on the mean streets of Harlem. Though the locals are put off by the slave’s inability to speak, they are won over by his technical wizardry. He is adopted as a ‘brother’ by his new friends, who protect him from pursuing white aliens played by director Sayles and David Strathairn.” (Rottentomatoes.com)
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976) Drama
Review: “David Bowie is haunting, androgynous, and ethereal as a spaceman hoping to return to his dying world with fresh water. Instead he succumbs to human vices while shocking our economy with disruptive new technologies. A main-street American girl falls in love with this strange, vulnerable visitor and witnesses his descent into isolation and paranoia. A more poignant portrait of extraterrestrial homesickness than E.T.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
FANTASTIC PLANET (1973) Animation
Review: “It’s not every midnight movie that can stand a second viewing in the sober light of day. Based on a novel by Czech fantasist Stefan Wul, Planet opens on an ominous note: A ragged woman clutching a baby runs through a thorny wilderness, sharp Yellow Submarineish sq
uiggles and spikes raining onto her path. The cause of her trouble is soon revealed when a giant blue hand appears, casually flicking her about until her small body lies in a broken heap. The hand belongs to a child of the Draag race, hundred-foot-tall, azure-skinned beings who brought the little Oms to their home planet centuries ago, alternately keeping them as pets and decrying them as fast-breeding vermin.” (Village Voice)
Country with the highest marriage rate: the U.S. Highest divorce rate: the U.S.
GATTACA (1997) Thriller
Review: “In a near-future in which DNA is destiny and custom genetic makeups are for sale, Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) is a nearsighted ‘love child’ with a burning desire to join the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation’s flight program. Through a complicated process that involves tiny baggies full of dead skin, plastic sacks of urine, and peel-off fingertips, Vincent assumes another identity and rises through the Gattaca ranks. This stunningly beautiful picture evokes a future in which present-day prejudices and neuroses have been taken to insidious heights.” (TV Guide’s Movie Guide)
MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985) Action
Review: “From its opening shot of a bizarre vehicle being pulled by camels through the desert, this film places us firmly within its apocalyptic postnuclear world. Mad Max (Mel Gibson), former cop, now freelance nomad, makes his way to Bartertown, a quasi-Casablanca hammered together out of spare parts, where you go to buy, trade, or sell anything—or anybody. It is ruled by an imperious queen named Aunty Entity (Tina Turner) and powered by an energy source that is a compelling argument against nuclear war: piggy-do. This is a movie that strains at the leash of the possible, a movie of great visionary wonder.” (Roger Ebert’s Four-Star Reviews)
IDIOCRACY (2006) Comedy
Review: “Director Mike Judge (Office Space) indicts American culture with scathing humor, as he projects what the country will look like 500 years from now. His dystopian vision includes avalanches of trash, a U.S. government that has been purchased for corporate sponsorship by a sports drink, and a citizenry that has become congenitally fat, lazy, and stupid. A trashed-out landscape that’s part zombie film and part broken-down Blade Runner, the America of Idiocracy has become one vast junk food-entertainment complex. It is essential viewing.” (Washington Post)
Coldest place in the solar system: Triton, a moon of Neptune (-240°C).
A FISHY BUSINESS
If you’ve never had a pedicure, or it’s been a while since you have, say hello to Garra rufa.
JAWS
Any nail salon can trim your toenails, apply nail polish, and maybe scrub away the dead skin with a pumice stone. All in all, a pedicure is a pretty routine experience…unless your salon uses “doctor” fish—Garra rufa, a tiny species of carp about the size of your toe. They’re also known as “nibble fish” because they will eat dead skin cells. Hundreds of nail salons in North America, Asia, and Europe have incorporated the fish into the pedicure routine. Instead of a beauty technician scrubbing feet with a stone or other tools for half an hour, dozens of garra rufa feast on the customer’s feet. What’s it feel like? Some have compared it to ants running across their skin, or the feeling of a limb being “asleep.”
As bizarre as it sounds, using such fish dates back to Turkey in the early 1800s. According to local legend, a shepherd hurt his foot one day, so he stuck it in a hot spring to ease the pain. There, a bunch of tiny fish chewed on his feet until his wound was healed. Whether or not that’s actually how the fish were first discovered, in the years that followed, fish clinics for skin ailments became commonplace throughout Turkey and eastern Asia.
CUTS LIKE A FISH
Garra rufa—the preferred fish for these treatments—are typically found in warm-water ponds that don’t support much other aquatic life. As such, they’ve evolved into scavengers. They eat whatever they can find, even dead skin. They’re also born without teeth. Instead, they have rough scalelike mesh, a trait that makes them perfect for sloughing off dead, flaking skin but incapable of biting off “live” skin (which they won’t eat, anyway).
While they’ve been used as beauty treatments in Turkey for almost 200 years, doctor fish were unheard of in the United States until 2008. John Ho and his wife, Yvonne Le, the owners of two salons in Virginia, had been searching for an alternative to pedicure razors, which tend to cut live tissue as well a dead skin. When a customer told them about the popularity of skin-eating fish in Asia, they booked a trip to China. After a treatment at a spa in Chengdu, Ho immediately contacted a dealer and paid $40,000 to have 10,000 fish shipped to back to Virgina.
First video game to feature a playable black character: the Atari 800’s 1979 game Basketball.
POOL SHARKS
Right from the start, Ho and Le faced resistance from health inspectors, who classified the communal tub (with doctor fish in it) a “swimming pool,” and closed it over sanitary concerns and the fear that the fish could spread blood-borne illnesses, such as hepatitis or HIV. The couple quickly created a workaround: a separate Plexiglas fish tank for each customer. The popularity of their aquatic foot-munchers took off. In July 2008, Ho appeared on Good Morning America and convinced host Diane Sawyer to stick her feet in one of his tanks. She compared it to “tiny, little delicate kisses.”
Ho and Le opened more salons, and started encouraging other salon owners to do the same. The fad has spread to England, too. The first UK-based fish pedicurist opened in 2008; by 2011 there were 279 British salons using doctor fish.
SMELLS FISHY
But almost as soon as the fish started biting, regulators bit back. As of 2012, fourteen states have banned doctor fish for cosmetic use. The problem: Many states have laws requiring cosmetology tools to be sanitized or discarded after each use. Properly “sterilizing” doctor fish would require them to be heated for at least 30 minutes at 350 degrees…which would kill them. The other option, to throw away the fish after a single use, would be cost-prohibitive (not to mention cruel).
Salon owners who have invested thousands of dollars in fish and equipment are pretty unhappy about the situation. Many turned to the fish to help their businesses survive tough economic times. In 2009, one salon owner in Arizona filed a lawsuit against the state’s Board of Cosmetology after they closed down her Garra rufa tanks. That case is currently on appeal, but despite the ongoing controversy about them, fish pedicures continue to be a worldwide phenomenon…however fishy the whole thing seems.
Dolphins don’t drink water.
YOU CAN FIND THEM IN THE DICTIONARY
Here’s a list of words added to English dictionaries since 2000. It’s a mini time capsule of turn-of-the 21st-century culture…and you don’t have to wait 100 years to look inside. Some words are so familiar that it’s easy to forget they weren’t around just a few years ago. And others, well, the definitions are included.
• ADULT CHILD (2011): Someone who is 25 or older and still shows no interest in joining the real world.
• ALPHA GEEK (2012): A person who has great expertise, especially in computing and related technology.
• AEROMEDICINE (2008): A branch of medicine relating to physical and psychological stresses specific to flight.
• ASPERGER’S SYNDROME (2002)
• BLOGOSPHERE (2009): Personal websites and blogs collectively.
• BAILOUT (2009)
• CLICK-THROUGH (2009): The action of following a hypertext link to a particular website, especially a commercial one.
• CRYOPRESERVE (2004): To preserve by cooling them to below the freezing point of water.
• DEADHEAD (2005)
• EARWORM (2011): A catchy song or tune that runs continually through someone’s mind.
• ECO-WARRIOR (2001)
• ETHNIC CLEANSING (2001)
• INFOMANIA (2012): The compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via cell phone or computer.
• ISLAMISCISM (2012): Islamic militancy or fundamentalism.
• SUPERB
UG (2010): A bacterium that is resistant to antibiotics.
Good news! 95% of humans are naturally immune to leprosy.
• LATTE (2004)
• TIME SUCK (2008): Something so engrossing that it keeps you from doing more important things; a time waster.
• POST-GUTENBERG (2006): The shift from delivering knowledge through print to delivering it through digital media, over the Internet.
• REVERSE ENGINEERING (2010): The reproduction of another manufacturer’s product following detailed examination of its construction.
• SEXTING (2011): Sending sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone.
• OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE (2004)
• SUPER PAC (2012): An independent political action committee that may raise unlimited sums of money.
• PAPARAZZI (2005)
• TIGER MOM (2011): (Coined by author Amy Chua) A strict or demanding mother who pushes her children to high levels of achievement using methods regarded as typical of child rearing in East Asia.
• PODCAST (2008)
• UPSELLING (2007): Talking a customer into buying something more expensive.
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JUMBO SHRIMP
In 2005 University of Melbourne biology student Anna McCallum discovered a new species of shrimp off the southwest coast of Australia. That gave her the right to name the species herself, but she decided to auction off that right on eBay to raise funds for the Australian Marine Conservation Society. Winning bidder: Luc Longley, the 7'2" Australian-born forward for the Chicago Bulls. (He won three straight NBA championships along with teammate Michael Jordan.) Longley, an avid environmentalist, paid $2,900 for the naming rights, and dubbed the new species Lebbeus clare-hanna—after his 15-year-old daughter, Clare Hanna Longley. “You get to name a species and you get to donate to charity at the same time,” Longley told reporters. “It’s a fabulous concept.”
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