Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t!

by Neil Patrick Stewart

  Heard Island is a barren Antarctic Australian territory in the Southern Ocean.

  The Du Temple Monoplane was a steam-powered aluminum plane built in 1874–it made the first successful powered flight in history, but it was only airborne for a short while. It could never make it around the world.

  Most planes nowadays are fixed-wing. It simply means that the wings don’t flap or rotate.

  GANDHI!

  Gandhi’s full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The word “mahatma” is an honorific name that comes from the Sanskrit mahātmā, meaning “great soul.”

  In the 1982 film Gandhi, the role of Gandhi was played by Krishna Pandit Bhanji, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, beating out Dustin Hoffman, Peter O’Toole, Paul Newman, and Jack Lemmon. Gandhi also won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year, beating out E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

  In 1893, Gandhi traveled to South Africa to help combat the discrimination against the native blacks. In a series of articles, Gandhi lambasted the country’s treatment of native Africans, and organized resistance to the British war against the Zulus.

  Fact. Mahatmas are thought of as spiritual leaders. Recognized mahatmas are very rare, but Gandhi was not the only one. The nineteenth-century had Mahatma Jotiba Phule, a philosopher who contributed to the development of education and women’s rights in India.

  Fact. This was a trick one–bonus points go to those of you who already knew that Krishna Pandit Bhanji is the real name of actor Ben Kingsley. He adopted “Ben Kingsley” for his acting career out of fear that his ethnic-sounding name would limit the roles available to him.

  Bullsh*t! Gandhi traveled to South Africa at the age of twenty-four for a job. He decided to stay, however, in order to help combat discrimination against Indians in the country.

  In fact, at the time, Gandhi was racist against blacks. Gandhi petitioned the British to let Indians join them in their war against the Zulus. When the British refused, Gandhi decided to personally lead an ambulance corps to give aid to the British wounded.

  It should be noted that all of this was early in Gandhi’s life, and only illuminates the power of transformation: Later in life, Gandhi would speak openly in support of both native Africans and American blacks, and to vehemently condemn racism against either.

  BORING!

  Edwin G. Boring was an experimental psychologist and psychology historian who popularized the idea that different parts of the tongue are responsible for different basic tastes. His work with visual perception led to some optical illusions being called “Boring figures.”

  Wayne Boring was a native Minnesotan and a successful comic book artist, doing the pencil work for the Superman comic strip in the ’40s and ’50s and lending his pencil to Captain Marvel and Prince Valiant.

  In 1994, graduating high school senior Peter Eastman was asked how he’d like his name written on his diploma. He decided to go with the obvious: “William Boring.” He subsequently legally changed his name and has been William Boring ever since (“Billy” Boring to his friends). When asked why the change by an NPR interviewer, he said, “My father, his father, and his father are named Peter Eastman. And so I’m saying I’m my own person. I’m Boring.”

  Fact. Boring (1886–1968) was a leader in the field of experimental psychology and was a director of the Harvard psychology lab for more than twenty years.

  The popular image that can be seen as either an old lady’s face or a young woman in profile is a Boring figure.

  The idea that we use different parts of our tongues to taste different things is a misconception that resulted from Boring’s mistranslation of a German research paper. We taste every type of flavor from all parts of the tongue (which means my fourth grade teacher was wrong!).

  Fact. Boring (1905–1987) was credited with having a huge effect on the visual tone of Superman, and subsequently on our perception of the hero.

  Bullsh*t! The statement is mostly true, except for one crucial error. Peter Eastman did not change his name to William Boring, he changed his name to “Trout Fishing in America.” That’s Trout America for short, and Sensei Trout in Japan, where he teaches English.

  “Trout Fishing in America” is certainly not the weirdest name out there. Just ask the Swedish parents who named their baby “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Weird

  Science

  It is generally agreed upon, particularly by scientists themselves, that every field of science is, in the grand scheme of things, still in its early infancy. Scientists, as a rule, search for demonstrable, provable truth about the world, but few would say we know anything with certainty, because all human knowledge is fallible. If there’s one thing science is excellent at, it’s frequently proving its own prior conclusions to be quite wrong.

  That being said, people who are full of distrust and skepticism when it comes to the scientific body of knowledge in general are perhaps the most glorious examples of human stupidity in the world. For example, when I was a teenager, a letter from the Flat Earth Society arrived at our house. The society wanted our support in their mission to spread the word that scientists are crackpots and the world is, obviously, flat. Otherwise, we’d fall right off of it! And things would forever be rolling away from us, right? I thought it was a hilarious joke.

  But they weren’t joking, and still aren’t. The Flat Earth Society is still active today. My sister is a planetary geologist, and I can tell you, from direct experience, that she is a verifiable expert that can prove to you by multiple methods that the earth is round (in fact, an oblate spheroid) and that she is not some sort of steeple-fingered trickster out to deceive us.

  Real science can be amazing, unbelievable, and downright weird. Turn the page and see for yourself.

  THE SUN!

  The sun is a class GV star, which is also known as a “yellow dwarf.” The term is a misnomer because the sun is in fact not yellow, but white, and while it may be a dwarf compared to giant stars, the sun and other yellow dwarfs outshine 90 percent of the stars in our galaxy.

  The sun is not only moving, it’s a speed demon. It is currently traveling hundreds of miles per second through an area called the Local Bubble Zone.

  Hear that ticking? The sun is actually a time bomb of a sort–it is contracting and cooling down, and will eventually undergo a gravitational collapse and explode into a supernova, which will destroy the earth. But don’t panic. We have 10 billion years to prepare for our fate.

  Fact. The sun is, in fact, white, and only appears yellow to us due to atmospheric scattering of blue light. Most of the stars in our galaxy are red dwarfs, which are not nearly as bright as the sun.

  Fact. Our planet orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the center of the Milky Way. While it takes the earth roughly 365 days to orbit the sun, it takes the sun roughly 250 million years to complete its orbit. The sun is traveling at roughly 230 miles per second–fast enough to travel from New York City to L.A. in eleven seconds.

  The sun is actually traveling through the Local Interstellar Cloud, which is, in fact, in the Local Bubble Zone, which is in the Orion Arm, which is in the Milky Way, which is in the Local Group, which is in the Virgo Supercluster, which is only one of millions of superclusters in the observable universe.

  Bullsh*t! The sun actually does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. We do have reason to worry, however, and less time to prepare. The sun will heat up and expand, and in about 5 billion years it will officially become a red giant. While the earth will not be blown up, it will likely be swallowed up by this enormous version of the sun–if our planet is spared that fate, it will only have to deal with minor inconveniences: The oceans will boil away and the atmosphere will escape.

  PLASTIC SURGERY!

  When it comes to plastic surgery, “plastic” is derived from the Ancient Greek plastikos, which means “to shape or mold.” It has never referred to the synthetic material we know as plastic. Like
its Greek root, plastic surgery is surgery that is concerned with form and shape, and is not always purely cosmetic.

  In 2007, a Colorado man, Thomas Martell, had his thumbs surgically made smaller so that the large man could more easily operate his smart phone.

  In 2008, U.S. citizens spent nearly $12 billion on cosmetic procedures, surgical and nonsurgical. Of the cosmetic surgeries performed, breast augmentation was the most popular, with over 350,000 procedures performed in 2008. Liposuction was a close second, with over 340,000 procedures performed.

  Fact. Many forms of reconstructive surgery are in fact plastic surgery, particularly when dealing with burns or disfiguring injuries.

  Bullsh*t! This story was, in fact, reported in the North Denver News in 2007, but it was a parody. Not everyone got the joke, however, and the story circulated as truth online for a long time (and probably still does).

  Fact. The data was collected by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, working in conjunction with a private research firm. They found that from 1997 to 2008, there was an 80 percent overall increase in cosmetic surgeries, but that there was a slight decrease in surgeries from 2007 to 2008. Racial and ethnic minorities only accounted for 20 percent of the total cosmetic procedures performed in 2008.

  The most popular cosmetic surgeries, in order, are breast augmentation, liposuction, blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), rhinoplasty (nose job), and abdominoplasty (tummy tuck).

  LIFE!

  The oldest-known currently living individual organism is a tortoise on the Galapagos Islands named Daddy (185 years old). In close second is a giant sea urchin in the Florida Keys named Juliet (179 years old).

  In 2010, biologist Craig Venter created the world’s first synthetic life. An alarmed President Obama asked for a special commission to investigate the implications and possible dangers of the new frontier.

  “LIFE” is the name of an interplanetary mission being developed by the Planetary Society to test the panspermia hypothesis–that life can survive being hurtled through space and can naturally transfer from one planet to another (inside of meteors or asteroids, for example). Some adherents to the idea of panspermia believe that life may have originated on the earth in this very manner, having arrived from somewhere far, far away.

  Bullsh*t! While tortoises and sea urchins can live a long time, the oldest-known currently living individual organism is Methuselah–a Bristlecone Pine that will turn an estimated 4,843 years old in 2012. Methuselah is growing in the White Mountains of eastern California. A Norway spruce (named Old Tjikko) has been discovered in Sweden that is estimated at 9,550 years old–this is the oldest living clonal tree, in a sense a series of genetically identical trees, growing from a single root system.

  Fact. Venter and his colleagues, after fifteen years and $40 million of work, created a synthetic bacteria genome out of chemicals and implanted it in the hollowed-out cell of a different kind of bacteria. The new bacteria sprang to life. As Venter put it, “This is the first self-replicating species that we have had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”

  Because this process could potentially lead to biological weapons, Obama asked the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to explore the dangers and implications of the discovery.

  Fact. “LIFE” stands for the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment. In the experiment, the Planetary Society will send canisters of living microorganisms on a three-year mission from the earth to the Mars moon Phobos and back.

  GOLD!

  In some cultures, people eat powdered gold, sprinkling it on fruit and other food items. The practice is harmless.

  Gold is extremely ductile, which means it can be hammered into a very thin layer without breaking. Gold is so ductile that it would take less than 4 pounds of gold to stretch a wire from Los Angeles to New York City.

  Ambergris, better known as apple glass, is an expensive golden-hued decorative material made by mixing gold with molten glass.

  Fact. However, gold has no nutritional value, and it can’t be digested. It just, you know, passes on through.

  Fact. According to the American Museum of Natural History, 1 ounce of gold could be spun into gold wire 50 miles long and 5 microns thick. New York and L.A. are roughly 2,450 miles apart. It would only take 49 ounces of gold, or just slightly over 3 pounds.

  Of course, 5 microns thick means a wire so thin you wouldn’t be able to see it. Maybe it’s already there?

  Bullsh*t! As Victorian glassblowers knew, when you mix gold (or more accurately, gold chloride) with molten glass, the result is cranberry glass, which is an expensive glass that is visually striking thanks to its deep, rich, red hue.

  Ambergris is a smelly, waxy substance produced in the digestive system and regurgitated by sperm whales. Mmmm, whale vomit.

  CLONING!

  Dolly the sheep, born in 1996, was the first mammal to be artificially cloned by somatic cell transfer. (Somatic cell transfer means that the cloned nucleus came from an adult and was placed in an egg cell from the same species.) Since then, many mammals have been cloned, including the first domestic cat in 2001, the first horse in 2003, the first dog in 2005, and the first camel in 2009.

  Researchers at Kyoto University announced plans in 2011 to resurrect a species that’s been extinct for 10,000 years–the wooly mammoth. Using cloning technology, they claim to be able to produce a living specimen by 2017.

  In 2007, the House of Representatives approved the Declaration on Human Cloning, which passed through the Senate and was written into law in 2008. The federal law bans reproductive cloning, and, as far as we know, there are no (and have not been any) human clones in the United States.

  Fact. Dolly made headlines in 1996, but CC the cat, Prometea the horse, Snuppy the dog, and Injaz the camel will go down in history as well as the first artificially produced clones of their kinds.

  Fact. The researchers, led by Akira Iritani, plan to insert a preserved mammoth cell nucleus into an elephant egg cell, creating an embryo with mammoth genes. Then they’ll insert the embryo into an elephant’s uterus, sit back, and wait for magic.

  It seems like a lot could go wrong, but Iritani is confident. “Preparations have been made,” he told reporters rather ominously. “We need to discuss how to breed it and whether to display it to the public.”

  Bullsh*t! Actually, there are at least half a million human clones in the country right now. You probably know one or two. Biologically speaking, identical twins are clones, albeit naturally occurring ones, since they are descended from one zygote and share identical DNA.

  The House of Representatives has tried to pass a bill banning both reproductive and therapeutic human cloning on multiple occasions, but the Senate has never let it pass. There is no federal law banning human cloning, but several state laws ban it.

  Mature human embryos have been produced by artificial cloning in the U.S. many times, but they have never been implanted, and have never been born. The embryos are, however, human clones.

  Of course, there’s no telling what’s going on in Area 51. They probably have human clones riding around in hovercrafts with hood-mounted laser guns.

  PI!

  Givenchy markets a cologne named Pi, calling it “the thinking man’s fragrance.”

  In 2010, a Japanese man set a world record by calculating the value of pi to a billion decimal places. He managed this feat on his own personal laptop, which took a week to finish the job.

  As of 2010, the Guinness World Record for pi memorization is held by a Chinese graduate student who successfully recited pi to 67,890 places. It took him twenty-four hours and four minutes to recite. A Ukrainian man was recognized in 2006 by the Ukrainian Book of Records for having memorized pi to 1 million places.

  Fact. Givenchy’s Pi is a “modern masculine blend of tangerine, neroli, rosemary and tarragon.” Smells like smarts to me!

  Bullsh*t! Japanese system engineer Shigeru Kondo and U.S. computer science student Andrew Yee set a world r
ecord by calculating pi to 5 trillion decimal places. Kondo built a powerful computer specifically for the task that cost $18,000 in parts, including twenty external hard disks. The process took more than ninety days. No currently-available laptop could accomplish such a feat by itself.

  Fact. Lu Chao had planned to recite over 91,000 digits, but made an error on the 67,891st digit.

  Andriy Slyusarchuk, a Ukrainian neurosurgeon, was not content at 1 million. In 2009, he claimed to have pi memorized to 30 million places. Although recitation is not possible, he reportedly was able to recite any random selection of the digits asked of him. He was rewarded by a visit and a meeting with Ukrainian president Viktor Yuschenko.

  PEE!

  From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, stale human urine was a common household product. The aged pee, called lant, had multiple uses, including cleaning floors, rinsing hair, as an additive to ale, and as an ingredient in the making of pastries.

  Pee has less bacteria and fewer microorganisms than the water coming out of your kitchen faucet.

  Human urine is high in acetic acid, which has the peculiar quality of neutralizing the sting of a jellyfish. A jellyfish encounter with the skin leaves behind tiny stingers, which can keep firing long after the jellyfish is gone. Acetic acid causes the stingers to shut down. For this reason, urinating on a jellyfish sting is the best thing one can do for pain relief.

  Fact. Lant has a high ammonia content, making it great for cleaning. It was often used as a hair rinse and you can still find urea listed on many shampoo bottles. Today the urea is synthetic, though.