Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  …AND NOW THE FINE PRINT

  Remember, the reason Percival Lowell went looking for Pluto in the first place was because astronomers believed the orbits of both Uranus and Neptune were being affected by the gravitational pull of an undiscovered planet. Uranus has about 14.5 times as much mass as Earth, and Neptune has 17 times as much. An object would have to be quite massive in its own right to alter the orbits of these giants. When Pluto was first discovered, it was thought to possibly be even larger than Jupiter, which at 318 times the mass of Earth is larger than all of the other planets in the solar system combined.

  But as the years passed and more was learned about Pluto, the estimates of its size and mass were revised ever downward. As early as 1931, its mass was calculated to be roughly that of Earth. In 1948 it was revised to 0.1 times the mass of Earth; then to 0.01 in 1976, then to less than 0.002 in 2006.

  …”support that greatly enhanced space flight safety and mission success.”

  Adding insult to injury, beginning in 1992, other objects similar in size to Pluto were discovered in the same region of space, called the Kuiper belt. Enough of them had been found by 2006, including one, Eris, that had a 27 percent greater mass than Pluto, that the word “planet” was redefined in a way that excluded Pluto, Eris, and other large objects in the Kuiper belt. They were given the new classification “dwarf planet.” Technically speaking, not only did Tombaugh not find Planet X, he didn’t find a planet at all. (But he did confirm the existence of the Kuiper belt.)

  INTO THIN AIR

  So is Planet X still out there, close enough to Uranus and Neptune and massive enough to alter their orbits? Not likely: The way the orbit of a planet is calculated is by estimating the mass of the planet, and then using the mass of the Sun and the laws of physics to determine its orbit around the Sun.

  Estimating the mass of Neptune is no easy task, considering that Neptune is 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth is. It was even more difficult in the 1890s, when Percival Lowell began his search for Planet X. Even the best estimates made in the 20th century turned out to be off, something that the Voyager 2 spacecraft confirmed when it flew past Neptune in 1989 and determined that the planet was a bit smaller than expected. When Neptune’s mass was corrected, the discrepancies in both its orbit and the orbit of Uranus—and thus the need for a Planet X to explain them—disappeared entirely.

  CONSOLATION PRIZE(S)

  Clyde Tombaugh, it turns out, had spent 10 long months doing unbearably tedious work that no one else at the Lowell Observatory was willing to do, slowly poring over millions of stars on hundreds of photographic plates, looking for a planet that wasn’t even there. And still he managed to find Pluto. The discovery earned him worldwide fame, and he got to fulfill his dream of going to college when he was awarded a four-year scholarship to the University of Kansas. There he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in astronomy. (When he tried to sign up for his first course, Introduction to Astronomy, the professor threw him out of the class. “For a planet discoverer to enroll in a course of introductory astronomy is unthinkable,” the professor told him.)

  “For a planet discoverer to enroll in a course of introductory astronomy is unthinkable.”

  In 1898 the U.S. Congress refused to seat newly elected B. H. Roberts of Utah. (Reason: He had three wives.)

  STILL SEARCHING

  Tombaugh continued the search for undiscovered planets even after discovering Pluto. His worst fear was that Pluto might actually be a moon orbiting a much larger, undiscovered planet. And once the Lowell Observatory had publicized Pluto’s location to the world, there was a very real chance that if he stopped searching, someone else might find the planet that Pluto was orbiting (if such a planet existed) and steal the credit for discovering it from right under his nose. “The thought of the possibility of this makes me shudder yet, after 50 years,” he admitted in 1980. “I was determined that if there were more planets to be found, they would be found at the Lowell Observatory.”

  So he kept searching, working full time until he started college in the fall of 1932, then during school breaks until he completed his education. Afterward he returned to the search, and kept at it until 1943. By then the United States had entered World War II, and he was drafted into the military and assigned to teach navigation at a U.S. Navy training school in Flagstaff.

  In all, Tombaugh spent 14 years looking for undiscovered planets. He never did find one, though he estimated that the areas he searched contained more than 44 million stars. As he searched through them all looking for planets, he also discovered 775 asteroids, and numerous other astronomical bodies as well. “Few astronomers have seen so much of the Universe to such minute detail,” he wrote in 1980.

  TO INFINITY

  After World War II Tombaugh worked at the White Sands Missile Range, then in 1955 he achieved another of his life’s dreams when he became a professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University. He worked there until he retired in 1973.

  In 1997 Tombaugh passed away at the age of 90. Nine years later a portion of his cremated remains were placed aboard the New Horizons spacecraft, which blasted off on a mission to Pluto, the first spacecraft ever to visit the dwarf planet. On July 14, 2015, it passed within 7,800 miles of Pluto’s surface before continuing onward.

  Tombaugh’s next and, presumably, last claim to fame will come sometime after 2038, when his ashes aboard New Horizons become the first human remains ever to leave the solar system.

  Random Fact: All the American flags that were left on the moon have been bleached completely white by the sun.

  Earlier in the day he was shot, John Lennon signed his autograph for the man who killed him, Mark David Chapman.

  ACCORDING TO THE

  LATEST RESEARCH

  It seems like every day there’s a report on some scientific study with dramatic new info on what we should eat, or how we should act, or who we really are. Did you know, for example, that science says…

  JOKES CAN BE “TOO SOON”

  Researchers: A joint study by the University of Colorado and Texas A&M University

  What They Learned: Jokes about a recent tragedy are the least funny 15 days after the event, and the most funny 36 days after, which the research scientists dubbed the “comedic sweet spot.”

  Methodology: The scientists asked 1,064 online participants to rate the humor of tweets pertaining to Hurricane Sandy—which caused severe damage to the Caribbean and eastern United States in October 2012. They chose to conduct the study during a hurricane because a hurricane doesn’t show up unannounced like other disasters. This way, they could test the humor potential before, during, and after the event. They started a Twitter account a few days prior to landfall called @HurricaneSandy, and then posted humorous tweets about it, including this one:

  “JUS BLEW DA ROOF OFF A OLIVE GARDEN FREE BREADSTICKS 4 EVERYONE”

  Before the storm hit, when no one knew how catastrophic it would be, the participants rated the tweet as pretty funny. As the days passed, however, and stories of human turmoil and images of destroyed landmarks dominated the news, the tweets were considered less funny. They bottomed out about two weeks after the storm, when it was still “too soon.”

  Then, as people came to terms with the disaster, the humor served as a coping mechanism, and tweets were deemed funniest around a month after the storm. “A tragic event is difficult to joke about at first, but the passage of time initially increases humor as the event becomes less threatening,” the researchers concluded. “Eventually, however, distance decreases humor by making the event seem completely benign.” (They also noted that jokes about less devastating disasters require significantly less than two weeks to be funny.)

  Bananas, which are tropical, can be grown in Iceland, using the warmth of volcanic steam vents.

  YOU’RE LEAST LIKELY TO BE PUNCHED IN FEBRUARY

  Researchers: Cardiff University’s Violence Research Group

  What They Learned: Violent attacks are m
ainly a summertime activity. That’s due to longer daylight hours and warmer nights, when more people are out and about.

  Methodology: The researchers studied several years’ worth of medical reports from 151 “Emergency Departments, Minor Injury Units, and Walk-in Centres” in England and Wales. The fuel of these violent attacks: alcohol. The study’s co-author, Jonathan Shepherd, noted: “Given that violence peaks in the summer months of May and July, a time when all-day drinking is more common, it would make sense for the government to step up alcohol campaigns and violence prevention efforts at this time.” There was some good news: the researchers reported that violent crime numbers have gone down in recent years, especially in February.

  SELFIES SPREAD LICE

  Researcher: Marcy McQuillan, who offers lice-removal services in California’s Bay Area

  What She Learned: The act of two or more teenagers putting their heads together when taking a selfie is transmitting lice to an age group that has never had to deal with it before.

  Methodology: In a 2014 interview with the website SFist, McQuillan said, “Every teen I’ve treated, I ask about selfies, and they admit that they are taking them every day.” The result, she said, was a “huge increase of lice in teens this year.” The interview went viral, and within a few days, rival news outlets ran the story with alarmist headlines, such as this one from England’s Daily Mail: “Selfies are causing a rise in MUTANT head lice!” Referring to McQuillan as a “lice expert,” the article stated that “the social media trend is causing an infestation of head lice among older children.” The reasoning: because lice can’t jump, they only spread when two people’s heads touch, a common occurrence when posing for selfies. Worse yet, reported the Mail, the parasitic insects are becoming resistant to insecticides (hence the phrase “MUTANT lice”).

  What Real Scientists Say: Several critics pointed out a flaw in McQuillan’s research: there wasn’t any. But even though her conclusion wasn’t based on any previous study, most media outlets reported it as if it were. According to an actual expert, Shirley Gordon, director of the Head Lice Treatment and Prevention Project at Florida Atlantic University, selfies do not spread lice. While it’s theoretically possible, there’s no data that shows an increase in head lice cases. Besides, she says, the insects aren’t that agile; they need several seconds of close contact in order to spread, more than the time it takes to take a selfie.

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was based on real 1920s English racing cars called Chitty Bang Bangs.

  “It’s a marketing ploy, pure and simple,” Harvard University lice expert Richard J. Pollack told NBC News. “Wherever these ‘louse salons’ open a new branch, there always seems to be an epidemic. It’s good for business.”

  YOU MAKE THREE KINDS OF MISTAKES

  Researchers: Psychologists from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary (who conducted a study about stupidity because the subject is “surprisingly unexplored”)

  What They Learned: Any given mistake can be categorized into one of three broad groups, and its level of “offensiveness” depends on which one it lands in.

  Methodology: The researchers collected 180 news articles about blunders big and small, and then had 150 volunteers fill out questionnaires to rate the blunders’ severity. (Sample question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how stupid was it?”) One interesting takeaway: 90 percent of the respondents were in agreement as to which acts were stupid and which were merely strokes of bad luck. Then the researchers divided the acts of stupidity into three categories:

  1. Confident Ignorance: When you falsely believe your abilities are greater than they are. For example, someone jumping off the roof of a building, falsely believing he will land safely because he saw someone do it on TV. This type of blunder ranked as the “stupidest” of the three categories, averaging 8.5 on the stupid scale. “What that tells us,” said lead researcher Balazs Aczel, “is that you don’t have to have a low IQ, in people’s eyes, to act stupidly. You just have to misperceive your abilities.”

  2. Lack of Control: It’s when you find yourself doing something really stupid because you think, at the time, the means will justify the end. Often the result of “obsessive, compulsive, or addictive behavior,” this is the category that most political scandals fall under, such as the time South Carolina governor Mark Sanford went missing for several days while having a tryst with his mistress, and later claimed he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” despite a mountain of evidence that showed otherwise.

  3. Absentmindedness—Lack of Practicality: You might call this a “brain fart.” It’s what happens when you’re walking down the sidewalk while texting and veer off into traffic. This is the category that the respondents found the least offensive in terms of stupidity.

  Good news: being aware of these stupid categories can help you avoid committing them. Or, as the researchers put it, “These stupidity categories can potentially predict what environmental or inner states increase the likelihood that one would behave in a way that others could call stupid.” (Duh.)

  17th-century Canadian contraceptive: a potion made from crushed beaver testicles. (No word on how well it actually worked.)

  LEANING TO THE LEFT MAKES THE EIFFEL TOWER SEEM SMALLER

  Researchers: Psychologists from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

  What They Learned: “Body posture influences our estimations of quantity.”

  Methodology: The researchers devised a sneaky tactic to come to this conclusion. They asked 91 college students “39 questions that involved making estimations of a wide variety of quantities.” When they asked the questions—which ranged from “How much coffee is in that cup?” to “How tall is the Eiffel Tower?”—the test subjects had to stand on a Wii Balance Board and use a crosshair on a screen to continually adjust their balance in order to remain upright. But the scientists manipulated the Wii, so the students were unknowingly leaning to the right or to the left. Interestingly, the left-leaners estimated the Eiffel Tower to be an average of 12 meters shorter than the right-leaners did. And not just the iconic Paris landmark. Nearly all quantitative estimates were lower when the subjects were leaning to the left. By contrast, there was little difference in the estimates of those who were standing straight up or leaning to the right.

  The reason, the researchers posited, is that most of the participants were right-handed, so they were “slightly biased” toward their dominant side. While this might seem like a silly experiment, it helps prove the “embodied cognition hypothesis” that says “the content of the mind is partly determined by the form of the body.” So the next time you’re trying to gauge the size of something, stand up straight to get the most accurate estimate.

  MCDONALD’S FRENCH FRIES CAN CURE BALDNESS

  Researchers: Hair scientists at Yokohama National University in Japan

  What They Learned: “Oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS)” (more commonly known as silicone) can help “grow thousands of hair follicles suitable for transplantation.”

  Methodology: The researchers came to this conclusion after studying hair growth on mice. They released their findings in a scientific journal in February 2018…and then the story went off the rails. A writer at England’s Daily Mail had read a recent report that McDonald’s used PDMS as an antifoaming agent in its cooking oil, so after reading the results of this study, he made the “McDonald’s cures baldness” connection himself. One problem: the Japanese scientists mentioned nothing about curing baldness—or McDonald’s, for that matter.

  Following the Daily Mail article, bogus reports of baldness-curing French fries spread like hotcakes. Australia’s Channel 9 News reported: “Japanese scientists say eating McDonald’s fries could cure baldness!” They claimed the scientists “have mass produced ‘hair follicle germs’ which fuel hair development.”

  Ed Sullivan missed Elvis’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. (He was recovering from a car accident.)

  What Real Scientists Say: The record was f
inally set straight by science writer and LifeHacker.com’s health editor, Beth Skwarecki:

  Let’s be clear: the scientists used silicone to build their hair cell growing chip. And McDonald’s uses silicone in their frying oil. That is literally the only connection. The silicone is not an “ingredient” in a baldness “cure.” And it certainly doesn’t “come from” frying oil, as if frying oil were a natural resource to be mined.

  When one of the researchers, Junji Fukuda, was asked by Japan Times to clarify the fast-food claim, he was befuddled: “I have seen online comments asking, ‘How many fries would I have to eat to grow my hair?’ I’d feel bad if people think eating something would do that!”

  RUDE BEHAVIOR SPREADS LIKE A DISEASE

  Researchers: Trevor Foulk, Andrew Woolum, and Amir Erez from the University of Florida

  What They Learned: When a person in a position of authority is rude to a subordinate, other subordinates are more likely to think rude thoughts as well.

  Methodology: Two groups of volunteers took a survey asking what they felt about various words—some positive (like “happy”) and some negative (like “savage”). What the test subjects didn’t know: the researchers arranged for an actress to show up late to each session and ask to be included. In one group, the tester politely told the woman that she would have to leave, which she politely did. In the other group, the tester humiliated the woman for her tardiness and rudely told her to get out, which she rudely did.