Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader)

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  SOVIET POISON TRIALS

  Soviet biochemist Grigory Mairanovsky was the head of “Laboratory 1,” a super-secret Moscow facility run by the KGB, from 1939 until 1946. His assignment: Develop a flavorless, odorless poison that is undetectable in an autopsy. To achieve this Mairanovsky personally directed experiments on humans—all of them political prisoners. They were given poisons with meals or in drinks, and tested for effects. (They were kept in bare cells and observed through small windows.) If the poison failed to kill them, the prisoner would be nursed back to health to await another round.

  John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men was almost called Something That Happened.

  Records show that more than 100 people were tested in this way. Not one survived, and many died agonizing deaths. It’s rumored that Mairanovsky did succeed in developing a poison (dubbed “K-2”) during his time at Laboratory 1. It could reportedly kill within 15 minutes and was undetectable in an autopsy.

  Update: The rumors have never been confirmed.

  SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY SHOCK THERAPY

  In the 1970s and ’80s, South African army psychiatrists performed experiments on members of the nation’s all-white military who were—or were suspected of being—gay or lesbian. The experiments involved encouraging subjects to fantasize about someone of the same sex and then delivering powerful electric shocks to them. If repeated treatments didn’t “cure” them, other methods were tried, including hormone therapy and chemical castration. The exact number of men and women subjected to these experiments is unknown—some estimates put it as high as 900. News of the experiments wasn’t made public until the end of South Africa’s apartheid era in 1994.

  Update: One psychiatrist believed to be involved in these experiments, Dr. Aubrey Levin—known as “Dr. Shock”—was allowed to emigrate to Canada in 1995, where he became a professor of psychiatry at the University of Calgary. Levin’s psychiatry license was revoked in 2010, after he was charged with sexually assaulting male patients. He is still awaiting trial.

  JAPANESE “UNIT 731” EXPERIMENTS

  In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government built an enormous military complex in the puppet state of Manchukuo, in what is now northeast China. Called Unit 731, the facility was headed by General Shiro Ishii, the Japanese army’s chief medical officer. Over the course of the following eight years, Ishii directed hundreds of doctors in an unimagineable nightmare of experiments on humans, mostly Chinese and Korean prisoners. This included exposure to biological and chemical warfare agents (such as plague, cholera, and mustard gas), unnecessary amputations, and surgery without painkillers.

  The experiments were done in the name of medical research, but many had no discernible medical purpose whatsoever. With military defeat in sight, in 1945 General Ishii ordered the executions of all remaining prisoners and fled back to Japan. During his time as the head of Unit 731 more than 10,000 people were experimented upon; roughly 3,000 of them died in the process. Ishii was arrested by U.S. Occupation Authorities in 1945. He was granted immunity in exchange for information about Unit 731 and received no punishment for his crimes.

  Moo-la: The first coins, from around 2000 B.C., were bronze pieces shaped like cattle.

  Update: Ishii died at home in 1959 at the age of 67.

  GERMAN SULFONAMIDE TESTS

  In 1942 doctors at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northeastern Germany were ordered to test the effectiveness of a new kind of drug—an antibacterial called a sulfonamide. The Nazi government’s goal was to reduce troop losses due to infection after injury, especially from gunshot wounds. To make conditions as true to life as possible, doctors at Ravensbrück were supplied with prisoner test subjects, most of them Polish women. Doctors cut long incisions into the women’s calves, dabbed the wounds with virulent strains of bacteria, tied off the blood vessels at either end of the wounds—in order to simulate gunshot wounds—and then stitched up the incisions. Some of the women were given sulfonamide, some weren’t; some were given small doses, some large. Their wounds were observed over the following weeks. Before the experiments ended in September 1943, 74 women had been subjected to the experiments. Eleven died. The rest suffered injuries to their legs that affected them for the rest of their lives.

  CANADIAN “PSYCHIC DRIVING” PROCEDURE

  In the early 1950s Scottish-born psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron developed what he believed was a cure for schizophrenia, and in 1953 began testing it on patients at the Allan Memorial Clinic in Montreal. He called it “psychic driving.” The treatment: Patients were drugged into unconsciousness with powerful sedatives, had earphones placed on their heads, and were subjected to repeated messages, such as “People like you” or “You have confidence in yourself,” over and over…and over…for days, weeks, and, in some cases, months. Over a decade, Cameron subjected hundreds of people to “psychic driving.” Not a single person is believed to have been cured or even helped by the treatment—and many were quite likely made worse off.

  The Olympic torch weighs about 3 pounds.

  At the same time Cameron was performing these experiments, he was taking part in the CIA’s notorious MK-ULTRA “mind-control” program, involving, among other things, dosing unwitting subjects with LSD. That’s why Cameron’s clinic was in Canada—it would have been illegal to do such things in the U.S.

  THE “LITTLE ALBERT” EXPERIMENT

  In 1920 American psychologist Dr. John B. Watson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, performed an experiment on an nine-month-old boy Watson dubbed “Little Albert” (not his real name). Over the course of several days, Little Albert was introduced to a white rabbit, a white mouse, white pieces of cotton, and other white fuzzy things. He showed no fear of any of these things. Then he was reintroduced to them, but this time when he saw them Watson struck a piece of iron with a hammer behind Little Albert’s head. The sudden loud noise would startle the boy, and he’d begin to cry. Watson did this again and again. After several days, whenever the rabbit, mouse, or other white things were shown to Little Albert, he would burst into tears. After 31 days Little Albert’s mother took the boy home—and that was that. Watson had demonstrated that an infant could be conditioned to fear something through the use of loud noises. He published his findings, which became a standard part of psychology textbooks for decades.

  Update: In 2009 a team of psychologists at Appalachian State University in North Carolina published a paper in which they claimed to have discovered the identity of Little Albert. His name was Douglas Merritte, the son of Arvilla Merritte, an unmarried nurse in training at Johns Hopkins. Douglas died of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) at the age of six. Modern psychologists say the most unfortunate aspect of Watson’s experiment is that no effort was made to desensitize the boy once it was finished, and that he may have suffered long-term effects from it.

  RAT-HEAD FACIAL EXPRESSION EXPERIMENT

  In 1924 Carney Landis, a graduate psychology student at the University of Minnesota, designed an experiment to determine whether there is a basic underlying human facial expression for any given emotion. In the school’s lab, Landis drew black lines on the faces of several volunteers (fellow grad students) to more easily track the movements of their facial muscles. He then photographed their faces as he exposed them to stimuli meant to evoke specific emotional responses, including exposing them to the smell of ammonia, having them stick their hands into a bucket of live frogs, and having them watch pornographic films. Then came the final experiment: Landis gave each of the students (one at a time, with no one else present) a live rat and a large sharp knife—and instructed each student to decapitate the rat. Two-thirds agreed to do it, and actually cut off the rats’ heads. The other third refused, so Landis decapitated the rats for them, while taking photographs of their (disgusted) faces. Conclusion: Landis discovered no universal facial expressions, but did find that most test subjects will do whatever they’re told to do. (Our conclusion: Landis liked to kill rats.)
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  Wynging it: The USDA allows the use of the term “wyngz” for food that looks like chicken wings but contains no actual wing meat.

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  NAUGHTY PENGUINS

  In June 2012, a researcher at the London Natural History Museum discovered lost accounts of “depraved” penguin sexual activity that dated back 100 years. They were written by Dr. George Murray Levick, who accompanied explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his 1911 attempt to reach the South Pole. Levick studied Adélie penguins on that journey, and was so shocked by what he saw that he wrote his notes in Greek, so only “educated gentlemen” like himself would be able to read them. What penguin depravities did Levick observe? Penguins forcing other penguins to καλύψτε τα μάτια σας penguins απόκρυψη των frozen penguins; and penguins κακός penguins κακός κακός penguins. (Sorry—this book is family-oriented.) Levick attempted to publish an academic paper on the penguins’ “astonishing” behavior when he returned to London in 1913, but it was deemed so vulgar that no one would publish it. The report, titled Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin, was forgotten until a curator at the museum came across it in Levick’s papers, which led to the report finally being published 99 years later.

  BIG NOISE, LITTLE BUG

  Cicadas are the vuvuzelas of the insect world. (What are vuvuzelas? Those loud horns that nearly caused soccer fans’ brains to explode during the 2010 World Cup.) Vuvuzelas reach a decibel level of 60, but cicadas? These little bugs can reach a decibel level twice that loud. That’s as loud as a rock concert or a jet engine.

  BROODY BUGS

  Cicadas are bizarre, especially the “periodical cicadas” that live only in eastern North America. What’s odd about them is that they’re on either a 13- or a 17-year cycle. They emerge in “broods” of so many bugs it’s like some shock-and-awe insect invasion, make a lot of deafening noise, mate, lay eggs, and, within just a few weeks, die. Then they disappear again for an another exact number—13 or 17—of years. Entomologists are still trying to figure out what makes periodical cicadas tick. The main problem: those long cycles. It’s difficult for scientists to study an insect that shows up only once or twice in their careers.

  The name cicada is Latin for “tree cricket,” which is actually incorrect: cicadas are not crickets. And though one species is commonly called the “17-year locust,” they’re not locusts, either. Locusts are “eating machines” that can devour entire crops. Cicadas don’t eat leaves; they’re sapsuckers, like their closest relatives leafhoppers and spittlebugs. Cicadas have also been called “jar flies,” “harvest flies,” and “dust flies,” but their Australian nickname, “galang-galang,” which echoes the racket they make, may be the most fitting.

  THE DROP ZONE

  Periodical cicadas wait a long time for their 15 minutes of fame, spending the bulk of their lives hidden underground. Each cicada begins as one of about 600 eggs embedded into V-shaped slits that a female cicada makes into new growth at the tips of tree twigs. The female makes the grooves using the sharp proboscis (feeding tube) under her chin. (It’s the same tool cicadas stick into plant stems to suck out the sap, their main food.) The egg-laying process can cause the twig tips to turn brown but doesn’t harm adult trees. Saplings are a different story—too many cicada eggs can kill young trees.

  Twelve percent of scientists and 38% of doctors in America are from India.

  When cicada eggs hatch it’s kind of like a family riding the Drop Zone at an amusement park. After 6–10 weeks, baby cicadas emerge as “nymphs.” They look like the adults they’re going to become, except they’re smaller (about the size of an ant) and they can’t fly. That’s why a nymph’s intro to the cold cruel world is a sudden plummet from the tree to the ground below.

  HIT THE GROUND RUNNING

  After crash landing, cicada nymphs burrow into the ground, digging down 1 to 9 feet where they settle in next to a juicy root. They leach off the root for their entire 13 (or 17) years underground. During that time, periodical cicadas don’t cocoon, they molt. Over and over. They eat, their bodies grow, and when they grow too big for their skin: pop! Their exoskeletons burst open, and a slightly bigger and more mature cicada emerges. This happens seven times before they become adults.

  In the spring of their 13th (or 17th) years, the cicada’s biological alarm clock sounds. As for the time of year, many experts think soil temperature triggers cicada nymphs to emerge. When it reaches a constant minimum of 64° F or 18° C, cicadas burrow to the surface for the first time since they dropped from the tree at hatching. If the ground is wet, “mud chimneys” appear on the ground as the nymphs tunnel upward. If the ground is dry, the emerging cicadas leave it pockmarked with round holes.

  As soon as they reach the surface, cicadas scurry off to attach themselves to a plant (trees are particular favorites) for one final molt—this one will make them full-fledged adults. The skin down the middle of their backs splits open and the adult cicadas climb out, stretch their wings and wait for them to dry, and then fly off, leaving their empty skins hanging on the tree. (These look so much like live cicadas that they act as decoys for predators.) After about six days of hiding in leaves while their new outer shells harden, it’s time to start singing.

  THAT “COME HITHER” FLICK

  Cicadas have a pair of stiff hollow membranes called tymbals located on the sides of their abdomens just behind their wings. When they flex the large muscles attached to the tymbals, the tymbals buckle inward. This buckling makes a vibrating click that’s amplified by an air chamber in the insect’s abdomen. As the muscle relaxes, the tymbal sounds again. Repeating this action quickly and repeatedly can sound like anything from a motorbike to the vuvuzela-infested soccer stadium. The specific sound depends on the species of cicada.

  Wood turtles whistle.

  “Choruses” of male cicadas congregate in high tree branches, hoping to get lucky with a receptive female. The louder a cicada sings, the better its chance of attracting a mate. There are a lot of competitors: As many as 1.5 million cicadas can emerge in a single acre, but many of those are females whose biological clocks are ticking away the last few weeks of their lives. Females don’t call. When they hear the singer of their dreams, they signal their interest with an alluring flick of their wings.

  CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

  Every species has its own song. Differences in tymbal size between species create different tones, which combine with the speed of clicking and the length of the call to make up each species’ distinctive call. And like moms and elementary school teachers, cicadas have “selective hearing.” Each cicada species clearly hears its call while remaining virtually deaf to the calls of other species. Result: A dozen cicada species could be buzzing their tymbals off in a single forest, and each cicada would be able to pick out the call of its own species above the din. But cicadas are often fooled by machines: Because they can only hear one narrow range of frequency, odds are good that some undertone or overtone of machine noise will match it. The sounds of lawnmowers, weed whackers, and other chugging two-cylinder machinery can sound quite attractive to a female cicada. (“He’s playing our song.”)

  NOT QUIET ON THE SOUTHERN FRONT

  Although cicadas are Johnny One-Note when it comes to pitch, they can modulate it a bit. Once a male attracts a female with its “calling song,” it switches to a softer, more romantic “courtship song.” Cicadas also have a “distress call” that they use when caught by a predator: They click erratically like a tiny engine revving and stopping as it runs out of gas.

  The trash dumped into Earth’s oceans each year weighs 3 times as much as the fish caught.

  How loud a chorus gets depends on the concentration of cicadas in a given area. The noise can be as loud as 88–120 decibels (from a blender to a jet engine). Brood XIX, a 13-year brood also known as the Great Southern Brood, was scheduled to emerge in May 2011. Spurred on by horror movielike headlines, people from Virginia to Oklahoma started to worry about whether the “deafen
ing” insects that were about to cover their trees could actually make them deaf. Biology professor Johannes Schul offered reassurance: “It won’t damage anyone’s hearing, and won’t have any adverse health effects aside from stressing a few people out.”

  Don Griffith, a 70-year-old retired Georgia school superintendent experienced that stress first-hand during Brood XIX: “It sounds like a million little wooden boxes rattling with a million marbles. They’ll land on your collar. They’ll land on your head. It causes you to think maybe you’re at war with them.” Despite Griffith’s periodical cicada paranoia, those masses of insects really are fighting for something: survival.

  SURVIVAL OF THE LUCKY

  Many animal species hang out in herds, schools, or flocks. Why? Because there’s safety in numbers. Cicadas take this to an absurd length, coming out en masse, but not every year. Scientists theorize that if broods emerged every year, predator populations would be so well fed they’d increase. Every year, more and more predators would be standing around with their tongues hanging out, waiting for the cicadas to show up. Cicadas survive by going into hiding for so long that few individual predators live long enough to see the tasty bugs more than once in their lives.

  Brood X, also known as the Great Eastern Brood, is on a 17-year cycle and last showed up in 2004. This brood’s turf stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to the edge of the Great Plains. Scientists say the 2004 emergence was probably “the largest insect outbreak on Earth.” How large? It produced an estimated one trillion cicadas. Scientists call this natural strategy “predator satiation.” Predators that happen to be around gorged themselves until they can’t eat another insect. After a few days, predators get sick of eating cicadas and leave them alone. “If you walked outside and found the world swarming with Hershey Kisses, eventually you’d get so sick of Hershey Kisses that you’d never ever want to eat them again,” said biologist and editor-in-chief of American Entomologist, Gene Kritsky. Most cicadas survive and go on to sing, mate, and lay eggs (if they’re female) for about two weeks.