• What happens to the caffeine that’s removed from decaf coffee? Most of it is sold to soda companies and put into soft drinks. (Cola contains some caffeine naturally, but they like to add even more.)
• Do you drink more caffeine than your kids do? If you correct for body weight, probably not. Pound for pound, kids often get as much caffeine from chocolate and soft drinks as their parents get from coffee, tea, and other sources.
Read all about it: 28% of Americans go to a library at least once a month; 27% never go at all.
J. EDGAR HOOVER
AND THE
RED MENACE
Was there really a Red menace in the 1950s?...And did FBI director J. Edgar Hoover really know how to deal with it? Or was the whole thing just a PR scam, devised to make Hoover look good (as some historians now suggest)? We may never know. But the controversy makes this article, from It’s A Conspiracy, interesting to ponder.
J. Edgar Hoover was considered an expert on Communist infiltration. Here are excerpts from different interviews he gave from 1947 to 1950 telling Americans how to protect themselves against the Red Menace.
INTERVIEWER: “How can you tell a Communist?”
HOOVER: “A Communist is not always easy to identify. It is possible that a concealed Communist may hide in the most unsuspected and unlikely place. He is trained in deceit and uses cleverly camouflaged movements to conceal his real purposes. But he may frequently be detected by certain characteristics. He will always espouse the cause of Soviet Russia over that of the United States. His viewpoint and position will shift with each change in the Communist Party ‘line.’ He will utilize a language of ‘double talk’—referring to the Soviet-dominated countries as ‘democracies’ and complain that the United States is ‘imperialistic’ He will attempt to infiltrate and gain control of organizations and subvert them to the use of the party.
“My advice to the public is this: Be alert to the dangers of Communism. Report your information immediately and fully to the FBI.”
INTERVIEWER: “Where do you find Communists?”
HOOVER: “Communists may be found in most sections of the United States. Of course, in some areas, the Communists are more thickly located than others. As a general rule, the Communists are less strong in agricultural areas. The Communists are strongest today in the industrial areas. The Communists, as a basic principle of infiltration, are interested in possessing strength in heavy industry, that is coal, steel, rubber, automobile, etc. It is here that, in event of an emergency, they can do their greatest harm to the country. That is one of the potential sabotage dangers facing America today.”
Per capita, North Carolinians drink more soda than people in any other state.
INTERVIEWER: “Is the FBI interested in any Communist, or only those connected with espionage rings or possible sabotage?”
HOOVER: “The FBI is interested in knowing the identity of all Communists in the United States, as any Communist, properly qualified, might be recruited into espionage. He may today be circulating peace petitions or selling Communist literature. Tomorrow he may be sabotaging American industry or serving as an espionage courier. Every member of this international conspiracy is a potential saboteur and espionage agent.”
INTERVIEWER: “Don’t you draw a distinction between philosophical Communists and those who are tools of spy rings?”
HOOVER: “Any person who subscribes to these teachings, regardless of his reason, is working against American democracy and for the benefit of Soviet Russia. Stalin is his omnipotent oracle from whom all wisdom flows. The Communist party is today a Trojan horse of disloyalty, coiled like a serpent in the very heart of America.
“It may mouth sweet words of ‘peace,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘equality,’ and flourish gay slogans of ‘international solidarity’ and ‘brotherhood of men,’ but its body and feet are from the Russian bear.”
INTERVIEWER: “Are Communists trained to lie?”
HOOVER: “The concept of morality and fair play, as practiced in our democracy, is alien and repugnant to him. Moreover, the Communists employ a purposeful double-talk, roundabout style, known as ‘Aesopian language,’ in their literature and speeches, designed to deceive and evade, to clothe their true thoughts. This technique, utilized by Lenin, is the very epitome of deceit.”
INTERVIEWER: “Would you say it was a favorite Communist technique to belittle the amount of Communist activity here?”
HOOVER: “Very definitely. As an illustration, a few years ago there was a Communist Action group which was hard pressed in a given area, primarily through the energetic efforts of a few individuals. So, to counteract these few anti-Communists, the Communists developed a technique: Whenever anybody would denounce Communists, they would say, ‘What’s wrong with being a Communist?’ And the average person had given little thought to the subject. They knew they didn’t like Communism, but were at a disadvantage with a trained Communist agitator.”
The fox uses its tail to balance when it runs.
INTERVIEWER: “Do you have many Communists whom you are actually watching from day to day?”
HOOVER: “We have a relatively small force when you take into consideration that there is approximately one special agent to every 29,000 inhabitants in this country. With some 43,217 members of the Communist Party and only 5,200 agents—it’s a physical impossibility to keep all of them under surveillance.”
INTERVIEWER: “What would you say to the charge often made that we are engaging in ‘thought control’ with our constant watching of Communists?”
HOOVER: “The FBI is concerned not with what Communists think, but with what they do—their actions, just as in any other field of its investigative activity. There is no scintilla of evidence to substantiate the charge that the FBI is engaged in ‘thought control’ activities.”
INTERVIEWER: “Isn’t it possible that by asking citizens to report subversive activities, some may be encouraged to circulate gossip and rumor and engage in ‘witch hunts’?”
HOOVER: “I think that citizens cooperating with the FBI provide the greatest barrier you could possibly have against ‘witch hunts’ and hysteria; because, if the citizen has a suspicion, it is his duty to turn it over to the FBI and from that time on do nothing unless he receives a request. A ‘Gestapo’ under the American system would be an impossibility. In addition to the protection of our courts and Congress, we have a free press, which would quickly spot injustices or any excesses on the part of any government agency.”
Q. Who invented swim fins? A. Benjamin Franklin.
ENGLISH / JAPANESE
WORDS
Purists in the Land of the Rising Sun don’t like it, but the Japanese language is becoming more Westernized. A number of words that commonly appear in Japanese pop culture have been loosely adapted from English. Here are some of them, written phonetically. See if you can tell what they mean. Answers are at the bottom of the page.
1. Biiru
2. Terebi
3. Nyusu
4. Supotsu
5. Basu
6. Rajio
7. Gasu
8. Hoteru
9. Resutoran
10. Sabisu
11. Memba
12. Peji
13. Kappu
14. Bata
15. Sekkusu
16. Bitami
17. Dezain
18. Pantsu
19. Supu
20. Dorama
21. Sosu
22. Burausu
23. Sutecchi
24. Bonasu
25. Kado
26. Pointo
27. Makudonarudo
28. Sungurasu
29. Sunobbari
30. Caresu
31. Weta
32. Tawa
33. Sumato
34. Boru
35. Gorufu
36. Sumoggu
ANSWERS
1. beer; 2. TV; 3. news; 4. sports; 5. bus; 6. radio; 7. gas; 8. hotel; 9. restaurant; 10. service; 11. member; 12. page
; 13. cup; 14. butter; 15. sex; 16. vitamin; 17. design; 18. pants; 19. soup; 20. drama; 21. sauce; 22. blouse; 23. stitch; 24. bonus; 25. card; 26. point; 27. McDonald’s; 28. sunglasses; 29. snobbery; 30. caress; 31. waiter; 32. tower; 33. smart; 34. ball; 35. golf; 36. smog
Malaysians wash their babies in beer to protect them from disease.
BASKETBALL NAMES
In the Second Bathroom Reader, we did the origins of baseball and football names. Here’s what we could dig up about origins of pro basketball names.
Seattle Supersonics. Named after a supersonic jet proposed by Seattle-based Boeing in the late ‘60s. (The jet was never built.)
Los Angeles Lakers. There are no lakes in L.A. The team was originally the Minneapolis Lakers; Minnesota is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”
Detroit Pistons. Not named for that city’s auto industry. The team’s founder, Fred Zollner, owned a piston factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1957 the Zollner Pistons moved to Detroit.
New Jersey Nets. Originally called the New York Nets to rhyme with N.Y. Mets (baseball) and N.Y. Jets (football).
Houston Rockets. Ironically, it has nothing to do with NASA. They began as the San Diego Rockets—a name inspired by the theme of a “city in motion” and its “space age industries.”
Orlando Magic. Inspired by Disney’s Magic Kingdom.
New York Knicks. Short for knickerbockers, the pants that Dutch settlers in New York wore in the 1600s.
Indiana Pacers. Owners wanted to “set the pace” in the NBA.
Los Angeles Clippers. Started out in San Diego, where great sailing boats known as clipper ships used to land 100 years ago.
Sacramento Kings. When the Cincinnati Royals moved to the Kansas City-Omaha area in 1972, they realized both cities already had a Royals baseball team. They became the K.C. Kings, then Sacramento Kings.
Atlanta Hawks. Started in 1948 as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa), they were named after Sauk Indian chief Black Hawk, who fought settlers of the area in the 1831 Black Hawk Wars. In 1951 the team moved to Milwaukee and shortened the name to Hawks.
In case you were wondering: In general, frogs hop faster than toads.
OOPS!
Everyone’s amused by tales of outrageous blunders—probably because it’s comforting to know that someone’s screwing up even worse that we are. So here’s an ego-building page from the BRI. Go ahead and feel superior for a few minutes.
A PUBLISHING BOMB
“In 1978 Random House issued a cookbook that contained a potentially lethal mistake. Woman’s Day Crockery Cuisine offered a recipe for caramel slices that inadvertently left out one simple ingredient—water. It was soon discovered that if the recipe was followed exactly, a can of condensed milk called for in the book could explode. Random House had to recall 10,000 copies of the book” to correct the potentially lethal recipe.
—From The Blunder Book, by M. L. Ginsberg
TAKE THAT!
“In 1941 the British warship Trinidad sighted a German destroyer and fired a torpedo at it. The icy Arctic waters apparently affected the torpedo’s steering mechanism—it began to curve in a slow arc As the crew watched in horror, it continued curving slowly around until it was speeding right back at them at forty knots. The Trinidad’s torpedo slammed into the Trinidad and caused so much damage that it put the warship out of action for the rest of the war.”
—From The Emperor Who Ate the Bible, by Scott Morris
SOLID PLANNING
“In 1974 the Nigerian government decided to initiate a ‘Third National Nigerian Development Plan,’ intended to bring the country in a single leap into line with most developed Western nations.
“The planners calculated that to build the new roads, airfields, and military buildings which the plan required would call for some 20 million tons of cement. This was duly ordered and shipped by freighters from all over the world, to be unloaded at Lagos docks.
“Unfortunately, the Nigerian planners had not considered the fact that the docks were only capable of handling two thousand tons a day. Working every day, it would have taken 27 years to unload just the ships that were at one point waiting at sea off Lagos. These contained a third of the world’s supply of cement—much of it showing its fine quality by setting in the hold of the freighters.”
—From David Frost’s Book of the World’s Worst Decisions
The big chill: The South Pole is colder than the North Pole.
CALLING ALL CARS
In 1977 American carmakers actually recalled more vehicles than they produced: 9.3 million cars were made in the United States that year; 10.4 million were recalled.
RAISING THE DEAD
“A mixup at a company that makes compact disks resulted in rock music with lines like ‘God told me to skin you alive’ being shipped to radio stations labeled as religious music.
“The Southern Baptist Radio-TV Commission, which markets a weekly religious radio program called “Powerline,” is calling more than 1,200 radio stations across the country to warn them that some CDs it sent out for religious broadcasts are mislabeled.
“The CDs are supposed to contain inspirational talks and music. They are actually the alternative rock band Dead Kennedys’ album, ‘Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.’”
—Reported in the Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1993
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
“Festivities marking the centennial of organized soccer in Hereford, England, were canceled abruptly when officials discovered the league was only 90 years old.”
—From News of the Weird
USING HIS HEAD
“On May 26, 1993, Texas Rangers outfielder Jose Canseco went back for a fly ball hit by Carlos Martinez of the Cleveland Indians. It missed his glove, bounced off his head, and ricocheted into the stands for a home run. ‘I thought I had it,’ Canseco explained later. ‘Now I’ll be on ESPN for a month.’”
—From the San Francisco Chronicle
A restaurant in Mississippi called Hello, I’m...Jello served over 400 dishes made from Jell-O.
FABULOUS FLOPS
Next time you see the hype for some amazing “can’t miss” phenomenon, hold on to a healthy sense of skepticism by remembering these duds.
ESPERANTO
Glorious Prediction: “Where will Esperanto be tomorrow as a world language? 1) Everyone will learn Esperanto; 2) Everyone will use Esperanto; 3) It will be the international neutral language; and 4) It will be a major step toward world peace and prosperity.”
Background: Esperanto was created in 1887 by Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof, an idealistic 28-year-old Polish ophthalmologist. According to one account, “Zamenhof’s neighbors—Poles, Russians, Estonians, Latvians, and Germans—profoundly misunderstood and mistrusted each other in a multitude of tongues. It was his dream to fashion a new language they could share, and through which they could learn to coexist.” Drawing on nearly all the romance languages, Zamenhof created a simplified, hybrid version with only 16 rules of grammar, no irregular verbs (English has 728), and words that could be changed from nouns to adjectives, adverbs, or verbs by changing the vowel at the end of the word. He published his language under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, which translates as “one who hopes.”
What Happened: Despite more than 100 years of lobbying by Esperanto devotees, the language has never taken hold. Still, today there are thousands of Esperanto speakers organized into clubs in 100 countries around the world—including special-interest chapters for vegetarians and nudists.
THE COMET KAHOUTEK
Glorious Prediction: “Kahoutek will be the greatest sky show of the century, with a brilliance fifty times that of Halley’s comet and a tail extending across a sixth of the sky.” One Harvard astronomer even predicted that the comet’s tail length “might reach 36 times the apparent diameter of the full moon.”
Poll results: Twelve percent of American boat owners name their boats “Serenity.”
Background: The comet,
“a grimy lump of chemical ice some three miles in diameter” was discovered by German astronomer Lubos Kahoutek in 1973.
What Happened: Nothing. On January 15, 1974, the comet came as close to the earth as it would get in 80,000 years—and no one on Earth could see it. One astronomer described the spectacle as “a thrown egg, that missed.” Where was Dr. Kahoutek? He and 1,692 other passengers were on the Queen Elizabeth 2, which had been specially chartered for the event. As Newsweek magazine put it, “The weather turned out rough and overcast, and Dr. Kahoutek spent much of the voyage too seasick to leave his cabin.” Two weeks later the comet did emit a burst of explosive color—but by then it was so close to the sun that only three people saw it—the astronauts aboard Skylab.
THE WORLD FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Glorious Prediction: The WFL would become a successful alternative to the NFL by 1978. “The National Football League has grown arrogant and complacent,” announced the WFL’s founder in 1973. “The doors are open to a rival....The war is on!”
Background: In October 1973, Gary Davidson, a Newport Beach lawyer, announced he had formed the World Football League. The league started with 12 domestic teams but predicted it would become the first international football league, with franchises in Tokyo, Madrid, London, Paris, and other cities within five years.
What Happened: The WFL went broke in its first season, and collapsed 12 weeks into its second season more than $20 million in debt. Nearly all the teams in the league were bankrupt. The Florida franchise was so broke that the coach had to pay for the team’s toilet paper out of his own pocket, and the Philadelphia team had to fire its cheerleaders because it couldn’t come up with enough cash to pay them their $10-per-game salary.
But perhaps the worst embarrassment came after the 1974 championship “World Bowl” game between the Birmingham Americans and the Florida Blazers. Americans owner Bill Putnam owed the IRS money, and according to Sports Illustrated, “After the game, sheriff’s deputies moved right into the locker room to repossess the uniforms as soon as the champions took them off.”
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 32