Music mogul QUINCY JONES said that family stories told of Native American ancestry, and thought he had probably a little European blood, too. Result: 66% sub-Saharan African, 34% European, and 0% Native American. Jones was shocked to learn that his father’s line showed only European descent, while his mother’s showed a connection to the Tikar people of modern Cameroon.
The word evolution never appears in the first edition of On the Origin of Species. Charles Darwin didn’t use the term until he revised the text for its sixth printing, in 1872.
IT’S PRIMAL
Bottling up your emotions isn’t good for you; that’s obvious. But according to advocates of primal therapy, the effects can go far beyond headaches and grinding teeth. Repression, they claim, can cause a slew of physical and mental maladies. Primal therapy was pioneered by Arthur Janov in the early 1970s. Janov taught that we are all marked by pain felt early in life—usually a lack of love in childhood—and that internalized pain manifests itself in a range of illnesses, including high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmia, ulcers, phobias, depression, and autoimmune disorders like allergies and asthma. By regressing to an infantile state, the patient can confront and release this pain, exorcising it with a cathartic primal scream.
The therapy has been controversial. Its claims of a single universal root cause for a vast range of seemingly unrelated illnesses (and of the efficacy of a single treatment against all of them) strikes many diagnosticians as overly simplistic. But the method has some serious cultural clout, thanks to devotees like John Lennon, who wrote some of his most powerful solo material while undergoing treatment. “Shout,” the 1984 hit by Tears for Fears, is about primal therapy. So shout! Shout! Let it all out!
HOW SOAP IS MADE
Oil and water don’t mix; they repel each other like opposite ends of a magnet. When you wash your skin with water alone, the oil (sebum) in your skin repels the water and keeps it from cleaning the skin effectively. That’s where soap comes in.
Primitively speaking, soap is oil plus alkali. For centuries, that meant fat plus lye. American colonists and pioneers saved fat scraps from cooking. They also saved the ashes from their fireplaces, which they placed in a barrel with a spigot at the bottom. Water poured over the ashes and left to soak would form lye, which was then drained off from the bottom. The cooking fat was rendered in a vat over a fire, then the lye was added. After much stirring and cooking, a chemical reaction would take place, and soap was the result. Too much lye, and the soap would be harsh on the skin. Too much fat, and the soap is greasy. The newly formed soap would then be poured into boxes to harden and cure for several months.
For more soap stories, go to page 381.
WHAT’S
COOKING?
In the late 1800s, Dr. Frank Buckland caused quite a stir in England. He predicted a time would come when Britain would be overpopulated. The country’s farms would not be able to feed them all, so he set up a society to find tasty new foods. On the menu: silkworms, beavers, parrots, and other unusual items.
Buckland got his weird tastes from his father, who spent his life studying animals. The senior Buckland claimed to have eaten through the entire animal kingdom, all in the name of science. Frank’s dad invited some of the leading scientists of his day to try out new recipes. Mice on buttered toast was a hit. Hedgehog was “good and tender,” but crocodile was a disaster; none of his guests could gulp it down.
As an adult, Frank became a doctor. He often treated sick animals at the London Zoo. Sometimes he could not save his patients, so…he ate them. That’s how Elephant Trunk Soup, Panther Chops, and Rhinoceros Pie ended up on his dinner table. After a fire at the zoo, Dr. Buckland served “Accidentally Roasted Giraffe” to his guests.
On July 12, 1862, Buckland’s society held its first official dinner. The menu included Bird’s Nest Soup, Sea Slug Soup, and Deer Sinew Soup. Buckland thought the soups all tasted like glue. The Kangaroo Stew was “not bad, but a little gone off.”
Buckland’s exotic meals didn’t catch on in England. Tibetan yak steaks and Japanese sea slugs weren’t appetizing to most people. But his society did bring ostrich, water buffalo, and bison farming to Britain. Among the favorite dishes in Britain today: Toad in the Hole—made (thankfully) with sausages, not toads.
7 Steps of the Scientific Method
1.Observation
2.Statement of a problem or question
3.Formulation of a hypothesis, or a possible answer to the problem or question
4.Testing of the hypothesis with an experiment
5.Analysis of the experiment’s results
6.Interpretation of the data and formulation of a conclusion
7.Publication of the findings
PATENTLY WEIRD
VEHICLE PATENTS
INVENTION: Collapsible Riding Companion (patent no. 5,035,072)
INVENTOR: Rayma E. Rich; Las Vegas, NV
DETAILS: Afraid to drive alone at night? Want to drive in the carpool lane? Just want a little company? The Collapsible Riding Companion is a dummy head and torso complete with a full head of hair, T-shirt, and zippered jacket that rides “shotgun” wherever you need to go. The head and torso collapse into a lightweight rectangular case for easy storage.
INVENTION: System for Protecting Against Assaults and/or Intrusions (patent no. 4,281,017)
INVENTORS: Yari Tanami, Yoav Madar; Gedera, Israel
DETAILS: If you’re worried that your passenger might assault you, then this is the invention for you. Electrodes over the front and back passenger seats are connected to a high-voltage ignition coil. If the driver is threatened, a foot switch sends a charge of electricity through the offending passenger strong enough to temporarily stun them. Leaving your car parked in a bad neighborhood? Set the system on “FRY” intruder detection mode and give some unsuspecting burglar the shock of his life.
•If you could capture a comet’s entire 10,000-mile vapor trail in a container, the condensed vapor would occupy less than one cubic inch of space.
•In any given year, about 26,000 meteorites land on Earth’s surface, the vast majority dropping into the oceans.
•The most common color of star in the universe is not white but red.
•Earth travels through space at 66,600 miles per hour—eight times faster than the speed of a bullet.
•Oh no! The Sun is a middle-aged star that has only about 5 million years before it dies.
PSYCHED
FOR CYCADS
They look like a cross between a palm and a fern, with a stout trunk and a crown of featherlike leaves across the top. But these ancient plants—called cycads (pronounced “SY-kads”)—are more closely related to gingko trees and conifers.
•Cycads have been growing on this planet for more than 300 million years, making them among the oldest species of any kind still living in the world.
•Cycads contain BMAA, a paralyzing neurotoxin. But native peoples in Australia, Africa, and North America found ways to leach out the poison and turn the starchy stems into edible flour.
•The Seminole Indians of Florida called cycads the “white bread plant.” Their entire diet was based around sofkee, a pudding made from its starch. When Confederate soldiers garrisoned in Florida during the Civil War ran out of provisions, they tried to create their own version of sofkee. Unfortunately, they skipped the soaking process that removed the plant’s poison—and hundreds of soldiers died.
•White settlers in Florida eventually learned the Seminole process and made a cooking powder they called arrowroot starch, or coontie, which was what the Florida cycad was called. During World War I, coontie mixed with beef broth was the only food that soldiers who’d been gassed could stomach.
•The Japanese word for cycad is sotetsu. Cycad nuts were eaten as a food of last resort during famines, and a particularly bad famine in the 1920s is still referred to as sotetsu jinkoku, or “cycad hell.”
•The Japanese sago “palm” is perhaps the best-known cycad in the world
(though misnamed—it isn’t a palm).
•A great petrified forest of cycads used to lie just outside Minnekahta, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was once a national monument until fossil hunters stripped away all of the visible specimens and sold them to museums and collectors.
•Cycad seeds look like pinecones, and can weigh as much as 90 pounds.
•The largest cycad alive today is a Hope’s cycad located in Daintree, Australia. It’s 1,000 years old and 65 feet high.
THE SHOCK THERAPY EXPERIMENT
In the 1970s and 1980s, 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 was found guilty and ordered to serve a five-year prison term.
Let There Be Light
In 1879 passengers on trains traveling from New York to Philadelphia were in for an incredible sight. On those December nights, all of the towns the trains passed were bathed in darkness…except one. Menlo Park, New Jersey—home to Thomas Edison and his “invention factory”—sparkled with light. It was all part of Edison’s plan to draw attention to himself and his inventions. “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” as the press had dubbed him, worked on the stunt for months. He bragged that he intended to light whole cities with his electrical system and that it was only a matter of time until gaslight, which he called dirty and unsafe, became obsolete.
Edison laid eight miles of underground wire across half a square mile of his Menlo Park laboratory property. His workmen planted rows of white, wired posts to hold the thousands of lightbulbs his factory had mass-produced. Glass globes covered the bulbs. The old library annex was converted into a central power station containing 11 generators. When the trains passed by, Edison turned a wheel in the power station and flooded the barren fields with a brilliant array of twinkling streetlights. In addition to the impressive outdoor display, hundreds of lamps installed in his New Jersey research facility sprang to life. It was the most incredible display of artificial light that the world had ever seen.
That winter, Edison was the toast of two cities. Congressmen, dignitaries, bankers, stockbrokers, and celebrities traveled to see his “Fairy-land of Lights.” The publicity stunt worked. He got the go-ahead to bring electricity to Manhattan.
Less than three years later, in 1882, Edison had installed a central generating station that was humming away on New York’s Pearl Street. And as one last treat for the city’s residents, Edward H. Johnson, a longtime associate of Edison’s, put a Christmas tree in the window of his New York City home and decorated it with 80 red, white, and blue lights. The electric age had begun.
IT’S THE BLOOMIN’ ALGAE
A fascinating spectacle sometimes seen in oceans and rivers is a red tide, or more accurately an “algal bloom.” The water is tinted a brilliant red color by the overgrowth of an algae species that is normally microscopic. Algal blooms form when too many nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus collect in water, causing the algae to reproduce so quickly that the ecosystem is overtaken. When these blooms coat the water’s surface, they block sunlight, hog the oxygen, and kill off underwater plants and animals. Some red algal blooms also produce toxins that harm aquatic life and humans. Mammals can become ill or die if they swim in the water or eat shellfish harvested there. At night, red tidewater turns an amazing bioluminescent blue. Why? When waves or boats disturb the microscopic organisms, it causes a chemical reaction that creates a flash of blue light, which is multiplied by billions of cells within the red tide. Algal blooms may hang around for months, wreaking havoc on the environment and the area’s tourism trade.
STRANGE MEDICAL CONDITION
SUBJECT: Shanya Isom of Memphis, Tennessee
CONDITION: Unknown condition affecting hair follicles
STORY: In September 2009, Isom, a 28-year-old student at the University of Memphis, had an allergic reaction to the steroids she was given to treat an asthma attack. Initially, the reaction caused her skin to itch all over her body…but then it got much worse: she started growing oddly shaped, stiff, sharp black growths all over her body. Two years later, after seeing dozens of doctors, all to no avail, she sought treatment at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. There, doctors finally figured out what was happening. Isom’s hair follicles were producing 12 times the number of cells they normally do, and they weren’t producing hair cells—they were making nail cells, like the ones produced for fingernails and toenails. She was basically growing sharp black fingernails all over her body. The doctors informed Isom that she was the only person ever known to have such a condition…and they had no idea what was causing it. They were able to alleviate her symptoms to a degree, but unfortunately, she continues to suffer from the condition today.
DUNE TUNES
In the 13th century, while traveling through the Gobi Desert, explorer Marco Polo heard eerie sounds coming from the sand dunes around him. He described the noise as “all kinds of musical instruments, and also of drums and the clash of arms.” After hearing the mysterious noises, Polo came to the “logical” conclusion that he must be in the presence of evil spirits. These days, we know that all that music was nature, not spirits. Of all the sand dunes in the world, only a few have the ability to “sing” in the ways that so startled Marco Polo. Beach sand sometimes makes brief squeaking noises, but it’s rare to find dunes that produce the magnificent instrumentals Polo described. There are actually only about 30 singing sand dunes on earth, including:
•The Kelso Dunes. Located in the Devil’s Playground area of the Mojave National Preserve, the Kelso Dunes rise as high as 650 feet.
•The sounds of the Dumont Dunes, also located in the preserve, were filmed for the PBS Nova episode “Booming Sands.” According to researchers, the Dumont Dunes “sing” the note of G.
•The Eureka Dunes in Death Valley National Park. Rising 680 feet from the valley floor, the dunes are also thought to be the tallest in North America.
Go to page 354 to learn more about these musical dunes.
WHEN A BLACK
HOLE THROWS UP
Black holes suck, but they also blow. For a long time, astronomers have known what they suck: matter and light from nearby stars. But the blowing has been something of a mystery. It’s known that black holes create intense heat that is emitted as X-rays. These “space jets” can shoot out at more than 400 million miles per hour, or about two-thirds the speed of light.
But for some unknown reason, the jets are positively charged. To find out why, astronomers used the XMM-Newton—an X-ray space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 1999—to get a closer look at 4U1630-47, a relatively small black hole not too much larger than our Sun. “We’ve known for a long time that jets contain electrons,” wrote Australian astronomer James Miller-Jones, “but they haven’t got an overall negative charge, so there must be something positively charged in them, too.” When the astronomers examined the X-rays, they expected the culprit to be something exotic like antimatter, but it turned out to be two elements that are abundant here on Earth: nickel and iron. For some reason, the black hole rejected them. The reason why is still a mystery.
“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and
myth frame our response.”
—Arthur Schlesinger (historian)
Animals with Heart
Like humans, most other creatures need hearts to stay alive—the exceptions are jellyfish and coral, which don’t have hearts. But that doesn’t mean that all hearts work like ours do.
•Instead of circulating oxygen-rich blood back to the lungs, a fish’s heart sends the blood to its gills.
•Frogs have three-chambered hearts: two atria and just one ventricle.
•Insects have hearts (of sorts), but their circulatory system is open. This means that bug blood (called hemolymph) flows throughout the insect’s body—not in arteries and capillaries like ours—propelled by a vessel in its abdomen that functions as a heart.
•The blue whale is the largest creature on earth, so it stands to reason that the whale’s heart is the largest, too. A blue whale’s heart can weigh 1,300 pounds… about half the size of the average compact car.
•A hovering hummingbird’s heart flutters at 1,200 beats a minute or more.
•The giraffe has the highest blood pressure in the animal world because its heart must pump blood with extra force to overcome the gravity associated with a head so high. That doesn’t mean the giraffe is a big-hearted fellow, though—its heart is as big as any animal its size. Instead, the walls of a giraffe’s heart are thicker and more powerful. And to accommodate all that extra pressure, the giraffe’s blood vessels also thicken as the animal (and its neck) grows.
Strange Science Page 15