World’s most “toileted” building: London’s Wembley Stadium, with 2,600 loos.
Just after 9:00 p.m. on the evening of October 8, 1871, fires erupted almost simultaneously not just in Chicago and Peshtigo, but across three different states in the Great Lakes region—Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. Eyewitness reports seem to support the meteor theory: A number of survivors reported seeing “balls of fire” or “flaming balloons” falling from the sky.
ARE YOU GUYS NUTS?
After writing about the meteor theory for Meteorite Magazine, Calfee was contacted by George Zay, a former tracker for the International Meteor Organization (the guys NASA calls when they need an expert opinion about meteor activity). His reaction: “If any astronomer suggests a meteor caused a fire somewhere, he might as well be reading tea leaves.”
Wait! Everyone knows meteorites are red-hot when they strike the ground, right? “Wrong,” said Zay. “If it weren’t for the ablation process,” he wrote, “there could be room for the validity of a meteorite reaching the ground hot. But ablation is there with every meteorite.” What’s the ablation process? Calfee’s research had actually taught him a lot about it. Here are a few of the facts he shared in his article:
When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere it does two things. Its surface heats up due to friction with the air and it begins to quickly slow down. The heating causes the outermost millimeter of material to melt and slough off. As the meteoroid loses mass during its flight it disperses its heat, thus cooling the outer surface. A freshly fallen meteorite is often cool, if not cold, to the touch. There are reports of ice condensing upon the surface of meteorites as they lay on the ground in warm conditions.
Much as he enjoyed researching the meteor theory, in the end, Calfee drew this conclusion: “It is probably safe to assume that the only way an object falling from outer space could have caused the Great Chicago Fire was if it had frightened Mrs. O’Leary’s cow into kicking over the fabled lantern.” (Which isn’t true either.)
Only U.S. president with a doctorate: Woodrow Wilson.
STALL OF FAME: MR. FLOATIE
If you’ve ever been to Victoria, B.C., you know it’s one of North America’s prettiest cities. You may also know that its sewer system is, well…Victorian. Here’s the story of one person who decided to do something about that.
TROUBLED WATERS
James Skwarok was a university student and environmental activist living in Victoria in 2004. The city is a popular tourist destination, but it has a dirty secret: It’s one of the very few Canadian cities that does not treat its sewage. The city’s waste-water is screened to remove objects larger than 6 mm in diameter (¼ inch), but that’s it. The raw sewage is then piped out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates Vancouver Island from the state of Washington. There, about a mile from shore and in waters more than 200 feet deep, it’s released into the swift-moving currents through outflow pipes on the seafloor. Thirty-four million gallons of sewage are disposed of in this manner each day. It’s something that would be illegal in Europe and in the United States, just 20 miles to the south. But not in Canada, which has no national wastewater treatment standards.
Skwarok was disgusted by the thought of that much sewage flowing into the waters off Victoria every day. He wanted to call attention to the problem with something more than just a bumper sticker, a pamphlet, or a website…but how? An idea came to him one night while watching the animated TV series South Park. The episode featured the character Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo, a talking piece of excrement who wears a Santa hat. That got Skwarok thinking: Why not dress up as a giant ocean poo?
ALL DRESSED UP
Skwarok’s friends thought his idea was hilarious. They formed an organization called People Opposed to Outfall Pollution (POOP) and set to work building a costume. Starting with a backpack frame, they added some plastic garden mesh to give it shape, then added a one-inch layer of mattress foam and covered it with brown velour fabric. They made two eyes out of clay and a smiling red mouth out of latex, added a jaunty yellow sailor cap, and named their seven-foot-tall creation “Mr. Floatie.”
The Super Soaker was invented by a NASA engineer. Original name: the Power Drencher.
MAKING A SPLASH
Mr. Floatie began showing up at festivals, parades, yacht races, town hall meetings, and anyplace else Skwarok thought would call attention to his cause. He made appearances at all the top tourist spots, even greeting cruise ships as they pulled into port on their way to Alaska. For more than one foreign visitor to the Garden City, the first Canadian they ever met was a walking, talking turd at the bottom of their cruise ship gangplank, passing out “business cards”—hand-stamped squares of toilet paper—and eager to bring outsiders up to date on the city’s sewage problem. “I’m Mr. Floatie, the ocean poo, if you live in Victoria, I come from you,” he’d sing. A catchy jingle to be sure, but one that probably kept the city’s tourism officials up at night.
In the summer of 2005, POOP organized Victoria’s first-ever Mr. Floatie Toilet Bowl Regatta, a flotilla of inflatable boats (all outfitted with porcelain toilets) with names like Montezuma’s Revenge and Gas Bag. That fall Mr. Floatie entered the race for mayor of Victoria, but was blocked from participating in all-candidate meetings, and then ejected from the race when city officials went to court and complained that the law did not allow for “costumed characters” to run for office, only real people. (“Of course I’m not a real person,” Mr. Floatie replied. “I’m a big piece of poop!”)
CHANGING COURSE
Skwarok kept at it for three years. His antics made news all over the world (“Mr. Floatie Causes a Stink in Canada,” read one South African newspaper headline)…and generated a lot of unflattering publicity for British Columbia, just as the province was hoping to shine in the buildup to the 2010 Winter Olympics, held 60 miles away in Vancouver. The attention helped pressure the city into re-examining its waste treatment policies: In September 2005, the Capital Regional District, which oversees the city’s sewage (non)treatment, ordered a scientific and environmental review of the city’s practices, giving new life to the debate over wastewater treatment that had been going on for years.
Language with the fewest vowels: Ubyx (Turkey), with 2. The last native speaker died in 1992.
DOOS AND DON’TS
Advocates for a sewage treatment plant argued that in addition to the “ick” factor associated with pumping 34 million gallons of raw sewage into the sea every day, there was a significant environmental impact as well. The wastewater contained chemicals, heavy metals, and other contaminants that are harmful to aquatic life. Any toxic chemicals that entered the water were likely to find their way into the food chain and accumulate at the top—namely, in the killer whales that live in the waters around Vancouver Island.
Opponents of sewage treatment argued that the estimated $1 billion cost of building a sewage treatment plant outweighed the benefits, and they questioned whether there were really any benefits at all. In treatment plants, sewage is exposed to oxygen and bacteria, which quickly break it down into less harmful substances. The opponents argued that a sewage treatment plant would only do artificially—and at great expense to the taxpayer—what the oxygen- and bacteria-rich waters around Vancouver Island were supposedly doing naturally. “In the oceans, there is the possibility of allowing the natural effect of heavily oxygenated sea water to treat sewage,” the Victoria Times Colonist argued in an editorial. “Nature has provided us with a natural toilet, whose flushing action disperses our screened sewage far and wide.”
TOP O’ THE PIPE
As for the hazardous materials in wastewater, for years Victoria had pursued a “top-of-the-pipe” waste management strategy, requiring chemical companies, dental offices, and other hazardous-waste-generating businesses to outfit their operations with special waste traps, collectors, and separators to prevent harmful materials from entering city sewers in the first place. Victoria spent more than $1 million a year on the
se source-control efforts and an additional $1 million monitoring the sewage discharge area for signs of environmental damage. Opponents of the sewage treatment plant argued that it would be much more cost-effective to expand and improve these efforts than it would be to spend a billion dollars (or more) on a sewage treatment plant.
The scientific review was completed in July 2006. While it found little evidence of health risks or environmental degradation to date, given that the population of the greater Victoria area was expected to double by 2035, it also concluded that continued dumping of raw sewage into the sea was unsustainable.
About 16 million Americans practice yoga. They spend $5.7 billion a year on equipment.
Acting on this information, the B.C. government ordered Victoria to come up with a sewage treatment program. In 2009, the Capital Regional District approved a plan to build treatment plants in four different locations in and around Victoria, for a total cost of $1.2 billion, with the provincial government and the federal government picking up two-thirds of the construction costs. The plants are scheduled to come online in 2016. Estimated cost to local residents: about $700 a year, or just under $60 a month.
GOTTA GO!
As of 2012, Victoria’s sewage is still untreated while the city waits for the treatment plants to come online, but Mr. Floatie rarely makes appearances anymore. James Skwarok has moved on to other issues. Now a substitute teacher, he dresses up in a red-and-yellow superhero costume in his spare time and battles global warming as “CO2 Man,” part of a campaign to pressure the Canadian government into placing strict caps on the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Skwarok hopes his new character will be as effective as the old one. “Mr. Floatie definitely helped,” he told an interviewer in 2006. “I mean, you can’t ignore a seven-foot-tall walking, talking, dancing piece of poo.”
* * *
GOOD LUCK, BAD LUCK
In 2000 the International Olympic Committee enacted a rule change that allowed athletes from less developed, less equipped countries into the Olympics without meeting minimum qualifications. Swimmer Eric Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea made it to the Olympics that way. His first event was the 100-meter freestyle…in which all seven of his competitors were disqualified for false starts. Result: Moussambani swam unopposed in his heat and won with the slowest winning time in Olympic swimming history, 1:52.72. (The eventual gold medalist, Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands, did it in just over 47 seconds.)
Most popular restaurant choice for a first date: Italian.
TURKEYS & WHALES
More casino terms to make even the lowest grind joint pokie pigeon sound like a whale with coattails.
Camouflage: Things an expert gambler does to look like a novice to casino security (like appearing drunk, wearing disguises, playing badly, etc.).
Grind Joint: A casino that caters to low rollers. Example: the El Cortez, a low-budget hotel off Fremont Street in Las Vegas.
Carpet Joint: A casino that caters to high rollers. Examples: the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, etc.
Whale: The highest of the high-stakes gamblers. Whales bet a minimum of $500,000 an hour, for hours on end, without flinching. (Estimated worldwide whale population: 200–250.)
Nit: A poker player who only raises on their best hands.
Card Mechanic: A dealer who cheats by using sleight of hand to manipulate the cards.
Coattailing: Placing the same bets as a nearby gambler who is winning.
Top-hatter: Someone who tries to place a roulette bet after the wheel has stopped spinning.
Bustout Dealer: A crooked dealer who specializes in breaking winning streaks, so that gamblers don’t leave with too much of the casino’s money.
Bustout Joint: A gambling establishment where all the dealers are cheats.
Tell Player: A gambler who specializes in observing subtle, involuntary “tell” signs that reveal whether another player has good or bad cards.
Color Up: To trade in a large number of low-value chips for a smaller number of high-value chips.
Turkey: A player who’s rude to the dealer.
Apple: A sucker. Also called a cucumber, egg, fish, pigeon, sheep, or donkey.
Soft Player: A sucker who keeps playing until all of their money is gone.
First president of the Republic of Chile: Bernardo O’Higgins, a Chilean of Irish descent.
OLDSTERS
Old age ain’t no place for sissies.”—Bette Davis
“Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.”
—Bill Cosby
“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once aboard, there’s nothing you can do.”
—Golda Meir
“I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.”
—Peter Gabriel
“Age isn’t important unless you’re a cheese.”
—Helen Hayes
“I’ll tell you how to stay young: Hang around with older people.”
—Bob Hope
“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”
—George Orwell
“It’s true, some wines improve with age, but only if the grapes were good in the first place.”
—Abigail Van Buren
“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“My dad’s pants kept creeping up on him. By 65 he was just a pair of pants and a head.”
—Jeff Altman
“After a man passes 60, his mischief is mainly in his head.”
—Edgar Watson Howe
“You know you’re getting old when all the names in your black book have M.D. after them.”
—Harrison Ford
“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”
—Andy Rooney
“I was born in 1962. True. And the room next to me was 1963.”
—Joan Rivers
“Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity.”
—Brian Rathbone
“Don’t complain about getting old. Many people don’t have that privilege.”
—Earl Warren
“The older I get, the better I used to be.”
—Lee Trevino
What do Hawaii and the Galapagos Islands have in common? Earth’s only green sand beaches.
“JACK AND THE HEIFER HIDE”
On page 388, we told you about Jack tales an’ how they traveled all the way from the Old World to the hills and hollers of Appalachia. Here’s one of Jack’s most rip-roarin’ stories (which we should warn you contains some debauchery and killin’). As master storyteller Monroe Ward said a century ago, “It’ll not do just to read ‘em out of a book, you gotta tell ‘em to make ‘em go right.” So gather your kinfolk ‘round and have yourselves an old-timey story-tellin’ session!
JACK used to have two brothers. Will and Tom were their names. One day their daddy gave the three of ’em a patch of land way up in the Smoky Mountains to start a farm. He gave Will and Tom a horse apiece, but Jack, bein’ the youngest—he didn’t get nothin’ but a little ol’ heifer. (That’s a cow for you city folk.)
The three brothers fixed themselves up a pole shanty and set to work a-clearin’ new ground. Well, Will and Tom did, anyway. All Jack did was loaf around the rest of the day. His brothers didn’t like that much and felled a tree upon Jack’s heifer to get back at him. Jack didn’t mind that none. He just skinned it and lived off the beef. Got so big, he plumb busted out of his overalls!
Time came that the beef all ran out, and Will and Tom wouldn’t share none of their rations with Jack. All he had to his name was that heifer hide, and he thought long and hard about what he could do with it.
JACK hatched a plan. He studied up on proper preservation techniques and then salted the heifer hide to dry it. The
n he stuffed it full of corn shucks and set off for low ground, a-draggin’ that stuffed heifer behind him by the tail. It was near about the funniest thing you ever saw—Jack draggin’ that old thing down the road, it a-goin’ fump fump fump every step he took!
It was gettin’ dark now, and Jack was hoping for a meal, so he stopped at a farmhouse and knocked on the door. A woman ran up—clomp clomp clomp—and opened it like she was all excited. But then she frowned when she saw Jack and his heifer hide. “What do you want?” she asked.
You have about 5 million nerve endings in your nose. Your cat has more than 19 million.
“Just a floor to sleep on, ma’am, and perhaps a nibble to eat, and then I’ll be on my way. I’m takin’ this here magic heifer to the city tomorrow to sell it!”
“No,” said the woman. “Blame the man of the house. He ain’t here, and he wouldn’t like it. And I don’t believe in no magic.”
“Surely you wouldn’t deny a poor farm boy a floor to sleep on,” Jack begged. She looked past him and quickly pulled him inside.
“You go up in the loft and keep quiet. If you don’t say a word, I’ll fix you up with some cornbread later.” So Jack went up the stairs, dragging his heifer hide behind him—fump fump fump.
JACK heard someone come in the front door. He peeped down through a knothole in the floor to get a look. Now, Jack wasn’t that old, but he’d been around long enough to know that somethin’ fishy was up. This dandy feller who came in all dressed up in a collar and necktie was by no means the man of the house. “Well, I’ll be,” said Jack to himself. “She’s a-courtin’ another.”
Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) Page 55