Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Most people don’t complain about this use of microchips and even find it a comfort to know that their lost pets can be easily found. When animal control or a shelter picks up a stray animal, the animal is scanned for a chip. When the scanner reads the chip, the pet is identified and reunited with its owner.

  NEW CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCK

  Unfortunately, microchips in pets are plagued by a few problems. Before 2003, one universal scanner could be used to read all pet microchips. But late that year, multiple microchip manufacturers began producing chips differently, and the updated technology was no longer readable by the same scanner. Companies started making their chips identifiable only by their own scanners, and animal shelters couldn’t keep up with the number of new scanners needed to identify every brand of microchip. Pets that were chipped before 2003 remain fine, but those that came after have less-than-universal coverage.

  Problems with microchipping get even more complicated when they involve human beings. It’s too big of an invasion of privacy for most, and it raises complex moral and ethical issues. Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t already being done.

  CHIPS AHOY

  In 2007, controversy swirled around a Florida-based company that announced it was partnering with caretakers of Alzheimer’s disease patients to implant microchips in people impaired by the disease. Critics responded that the plan violated privacy rights and the patients weren’t of sound enough mind to know what was being put in their bodies. Some loved ones and caretakers of the patients, though, disagreed and thought it was for the best—the chips would help them track down a person who’d wandered off. That debate continues.

  BIONIC PEOPLE

  Putting a chip in is easy. It doesn’t require any cutting, just a little anesthetic and a quick shot in the arm (or wherever in the body you want to put it). Microchips are usually about the size of a grain of rice.

  The chips are usually referred to as RFID, meaning “radio frequency identification.” Currently, the chips themselves don’t contain much data, just a unique number. Nothing else is imprinted on the chip, and there isn’t a way at this time to place any kind of global positioning system or the like on it.

  The number is read by a scanner outside the body, which connects the number with a Web-based database, presumably behind a firewall or some security system. That’s where all the information is. Once the chips are inside the body, they usually last about 15 years before wearing out, but they can’t be removed easily. Getting them out requires surgery and a tracking device, because the chips can travel inside the body. So once the chips are in, most people leave them in, even after they’ve worn out.

  CHIPPING AWAY

  In July 2004, Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 of his employees were microchipped as a security measure so they could access top-secret areas of government buildings. Other workers who need access to highly secure buildings also have had microchips implanted in them.

  The Department of Defense announced in 2007 that it was looking at microchips as a way to gain important health information about soldiers wounded in the field. However, the idea that the chips were going to be used to save lives didn’t win over people who were worried that soldiers’ privacy would be compromised. A spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars was quoted as saying, “Even though you shelve some of your rights as a citizen [in the military], you don’t shelve them all.”

  Many people flinch at the idea of putting a microchip inside their bodies, but most don’t seem to mind carrying one around on the outside. Microchip technology has been used for years in automobiles, credit cards, and security systems. Smart card readers, like the ones used by employees to access the buildings they work in or by consumers who want to pay for gas by flashing a card by a reader, all use microchip technology.

  In 2005, the U.S. government began including microchips in passport covers. Privacy-rights activists immediately challenged the move, but the State Department replied that the chips were not a privacy concern since a scanner had to be four inches away or closer to read them. Privacy advocates weren’t convinced, and the debate continues.

  In 2007, a school in South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, put microchips in students’ uniforms so teachers could determine their whereabouts at any time. And retailers have begun looking into placing microchips in inventory to ward off theft.

  HERE TO STAY

  For many, another big concern about microchips is “swiping”—the process of thieves taking information from the microchip by intercepting the radio signal. As things stand today, that concern is more for chips outside the body because they are the ones that currently hold access to sensitive data. But any of that can change as the technology continues to develop.

  So, microchips will likely continue to be a major cultural concern of the 21st century. But hopefully people won’t always have to choose between their privacy and their health and safety.

  THE TIP OF YOUR TONGUE AWARD

  Words of the Year

  Uncle John makes his living with words, so he loves

  them all . . . and wants to honor some of the words

  that seem to define the last two decades.

  WORDPLAY

  In 2007, the word “locavore” (a person who eats only food that has been grown or produced locally) sprang up in numerous magazines, newspapers, and blogs. Locavore was used so much that it became the New Oxford American Dictionary “Word of the Year.”

  WORD UP

  The American Dialect Society (ADS), a group that studies the English language, began picking a word of the year in 1990. They assembled a board of linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, and scholars to select and publish a list of words that had made the most impact on the language during the past year. The ADS says its purpose in making the list each year is to show that “language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining.” They also pick other categories, like “Most Useful” and “Most Unnecessary”—it’s surprising that many of the words of the year did not fall into the latter category.

  Here’s a look back and a comprehensive list of the ADS words of the year:

  2007: subprime—a risky loan or investment.

  2006: Plutoed—to be devalued, as Pluto was when it was delisted from being a planet.

  2005: truthiness—a word invented by television personality Stephen Colbert to signify something that one wants to be true, regardless of any facts that might get in the way.

  2004: red/blue/purple states—based on the political maps prevalent during the year’s election.

  2003: metrosexual—a straight man who adopts some of the grooming and fashion habits of a gay man.

  2002: WMD/weapons of mass destruction—the phrase used as justification for the war in Iraq.

  2001: 9/11—the most important event of the year could also be spelled out or written “9-11.”

  2000: Chad—the famous “hanging chads” of the 2000 presidential election—pieces of paper punched out of ballots in the contested race—put this word to much use.

  1999: Y2K—the unrealized fears surrounding the year 2000 led to this becoming one of the few obsolete words on this list; for another problem, see 1997.

  1998: E-—meaning the letter that could be put in front of just about any word in the digital age: E-mail, E-money, E-commerce.

  1997: millennium bug—this was reported to be the cause of the world’s Y2K problems.

  1996: mom—mom was chosen because of her part in the term “soccer mom.”

  1995: tie—World Wide Web and newt. The World Wide Web is the Internet; newt—the verb, not the amphibian—means to make a lot of changes despite being a newcomer. It’s from Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker of the House in 1995.

  1994: tie—Cyber and morph. Both words came about as part of the world’s growing fixation with computer technology.

  1993: information superhighway—the communications connections formed among various media.

&n
bsp; 1992: not!—from the Wayne and Garth Saturday Night Live skits, “Not!” is a way to say that the sentence that preceded it is not true.

  1991: mother of all—when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, he warned that any international challenge to his country would lead to the “mother of all wars”; the phrase gained a life of its own as a result.

  1990: Bushlips—a mash-up of Bush, the president, and lips, based on his “Read my lips” quote; it meant empty rhetoric on the political trail.

  GLM’S GLUM CHOICES

  Somewhat similar to the ADS, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) is also made up of people who study language—they analyze trends to see how words are being introduced and used. They started picking their words of the year in 2000, when the company was known as yourdictionary.com (it became GLM in 2004):

  2007: hybrid

  2006: sustainable

  2005: refugee

  2004: incivility

  2003: embedded

  2002: misunderestimate

  2001: Ground Zero

  2000: Chad

  WEBSTER’S WEIGHS IN

  Not to be outdone, Merriam-Webster began choosing Words of the Year in 2003. First, the dictionary ranked them according to searches users did on its Web site, and later, in 2006, the company allowed people to vote. Think of this list as the popular vote (or the People’s Choice) when it comes to words of the year. In addition, Webster’s system allows words (like “insurgent,” for example) to get picked in more than one year:

  2007

  Winner: w00t—a celebratory term, pronounced “Woot!” Signifies a victory; mostly used in online gaming activities, which is why it uses zeroes instead of “O”s.

  Runners-up: Facebook, conundrum, quixotic, blamestorm (how a group will start pointing fingers at each other for something going wrong, especially in an office setting), Sardoodledom (an unrealistic and contrived story line in a work of fiction; it comes from French playwright Victorien Sardou’s name), apathetic, Pecksnif-fian (having sleazy characteristics; from a character in a Charles Dickens story), hypocrite, charlatan

  2006

  Winner: truthiness

  Runners-up: google, decider, war, insurgent, terrorism, vendetta, sectarian, quagmire, corruption

  2005

  Winner: integrity

  Runners-up: refugee, contempt, filibuster, insipid, tsunami, pandemic, conclave, levee, inept

  2004

  Winner: blog

  Runners-up: incumbent, electoral, insurgent, hurricane, cicada, peloton (a group of bicycle riders in a race), partisan, sovereignty, defenestration

  2003

  Winner: democracy

  Runners-up: quagmire, quarantine, matrix, marriage, slog, gubernatorial, plagiarism, outage, batten

  (Other dictionaries have gotten in on the act, too. We’ve already mentioned the New Oxford American Dictionary and its 2007 choice, “locavore.” In 2006, the folks at New Oxford American chose “carbon neutral.” The year before that, “podcast.”)

  THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS

  Words of the year often get a great deal of criticism—sometimes from members of competing groups. When Merriam-Webster announced its selection of “w00t,” the ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf complained that it was “limited to a small community and unlikely to spread and unlikely to last.” And Michelle Malkin, a reporter, writer, and blogger, criticized “locavore” this way: “Shouldn’t the word of the year be a word that more than four people have actually heard of?”

  Of course, not everyone will agree on which word deserves “word of the year” honors. Sometimes, a word’s ability to sum up the culture and mental state of the year trumps its staying power. In 2005, “refugee” took on new meaning because of Hurricane Katrina. And what else but “9/11” could have come out of 2001? We may not talk about “Bushlips” much anymore, but as a gauge of society, the word of the year is like a time capsule back to a particular year’s state of mind.

  A WORD BY ANY OTHER GUY

  William Shakespeare introduced dozens of words and phrases into our language. It’s difficult to say exactly how many, and it’s also difficult to prove he was the first one to use them. Since written records from his lifetime are spotty, no one knows if Shakespeare was the first to use these or if they were common in his time and he just wrote them down. But the fact that there are so many speaks highly of Shakespeare and is at least circumstantial evidence that he was the first to use them. Here are some words and phrases we can credit Shakespeare with:

  Fashionable Pander

  Sanctimonious Outbreak

  Arch-villain Vulnerable

  Method to the madness Full circle

  Neither rhyme nor reason

  Bedazzle

  Dauntless One fell swoop

  Go-between A sorry sight

  Lustrous Strange bedfellows

  THE MUD BATH AWARD

  Weird Spa Treatments

  Jump on in . . . the water, beer, wine, or chocolate—they all feel fine.

  AHHHH . . .

  Spas are more popular than ever; there are currently about 14,000 of them in the United States alone, and the yearly growth rate for new spas is around 16 percent—150 million people visited spas in 2007.

  The two main purposes for those visits are relaxation and beautification, so atmosphere and treatments have tended toward soft and soothing: lots of white towels, quiet New Age music, and gentle pats and pulls. In the past few years, though, spas and their treatment menus have taken a turn for the stimulating.

  TWIST AND SHOUT: WATSU

  Shiatsu is an ancient form of massage that involves isolating pressure points on the body and making their release relax other muscles. In 1980, Harold Dull, a Shiatsu practitioner, considered how the technique might work if it were conducted in the water. “Watsu,” or “water shiatsu,” was born.

  In a watsu treatment, you arrive at a small, round pool in your bathing suit and meet a suited-up massage therapist who uses your body (if you don’t float easily, you can attach small floats to your wrists and ankles) to manipulate your muscles through a series of balletic movements. It’s not for the shy!

  EGGSTRAVAGANZA: CAVIAR FACIAL

  Biting into a fresh blintz topped with beluga or osetra is a pleasure for many. Having your face covered with a paste of fresh caviar might not be as great a pleasure (really, it’s just a paste, and it doesn’t smell), but it is food for the skin: the anti-aging properties of fish eggs make this the “Cadillac of facials.” Make that the QE2 of facials . . .

  SINUOUS TREATMENT: SNAKE MASSAGE

  It’s not an urban legend: Israeli massage therapist Ada Barak really does offer “snake massage,” allowing her six nonvenomous snakes to slither across clients’ backs to untangle their knotted muscles. Barak uses the California and Florida king, milk, and corn snakes because she believes that people find contact with living creatures soothing.

  COLD COMFORT: SNOW AND ICE THERAPIES

  The Qua Spa in Las Vegas has something a little different: a “cold room” complete with artificial snow. For anyone who’s ever experienced a real Nordic sauna, this won’t seem like too much of a shock: cooling down rapidly after a sauna or hot tub soak can be invigorating. With mint-scented air, snow drifting from the ceiling, and an ice fountain, this spa feature has a certain . . . je ne sais “Qua.”

  CHOCOLICIOUS: CHOCOLATE FONDUE WRAP

  It might smell and feel as if you’re being coated in thick, rich chocolate, but the Chocolate Fondue Wrap at Spa Hershey in Hershey, Pennsylvania, is actually a mixture of skin-renewing “moor mud” (the mud of European moors) and cocoa essence. Chocolate spa treatments have become so popular that chocolate-scented lotions, gels, powders, and candles are available in most bath and beauty stores. Just don’t try nibbling on the candy bar-shaped soaps.

  BEAUTY ON TAP: BEER BATHS

  Many a man might believe a beer bath to be the height of happiness, but the Bodvar Brewery Spa in the Czech Republic doesn’t offer
beer baths so the bather can get a buzz from the fumes. It’s so he or she can enjoy circulatory and exfoliant benefits for the skin. (Anyone who wants a buzz at Bodvar can access a tub-side bar, ready to dispense a pint of the cold stuff to enhance the warm bath.)

  CONE HEAD: EAR CANDLING

  Ear candling has been around for centuries, but in the last couple of decades it’s become a “hot” spa treatment. A therapist at the spa inserts a narrow cone of waxed muslin into the spa-goer’s ear and then lights the other end. The gentle suction supposedly draws out earwax and debris. Medical professionals have their doubts about whether or not ear candling is effective, but they believe when done by a spa or medical professional it’s harmless.

  FIRED UP: CUPPING

  Cupping is a form of acupressure in which a flame is used to create a vacuum between a small glass cup and a person’s skin. It can leave large, red, circular welts, but its fans swear by the treatment, saying it raises their energy levels and reduces musculoskeletal pain. Many spas now offer cupping treatments, and there are various methods. One that should never be considered in a spa setting is the old practice of “wet cupping,” in which a small slit is cut in the skin, first. That can cause infection. So if you see your aesthetician with a scalpel, run the other way.

  VINTAGE SOAK: WINE BATH

  We’ve all heard about the benefits of tannins for the inside of the body, but now we can experience them on the outside. Cleopatra supposedly bathed in red wine, and the Hakone Yunessun Spa west of Tokyo, Japan, allows visitors to bathe in a pool that mixes water with Beaujolais Nouveau. The pool is replenished several times a day. The rest of the day, a 3.6 meter faux wine bottle “pours” and aerates the spa waters. Visitors can also drink glasses of the red wine while they soak.