Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 136

Ask Uncle John Anything: Burn, Baby, Burn

Uncle John knows pretty much everything—and if he doesn’t, he heads his massive research library, or puts one of his many associates on the case. So go ahead: In the comments below, ask Uncle John anything. (And if we answer your question sometime, we’ll send you a free book!) Today’s question comes from reader Vicky W., who asks…

How do food makers determine the calorie counts placed on food packages?

Calories provide energy to the body. You need to get a base of calories from food so your body can perform basic functions like pump blood and send electrical signals, and more calories to power any and all activities, like standing, walking, and talking.

A calorie is a measurement of energy, and it is the equivalent of 1,000 kilocalories. What’s a kilocalorie? A very tiny unit of energy, and it’s how much energy is required to raise a kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius.

Kilocalories, and calories, were once determined by burning food. Technicians in labs at food packagers and manufacturers would place a food in a device called a bomb calorimeter: a sealed chamber in which the food item in question was surrounded by another chamber that was filled with water. The food was then completely burned and the rise in water temperature noted. A little simple arithmetic later, and the caloric content of the food was known.

Since 1990, however, things work a little differently. That year the government passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, which sought to make information about the nutritional content of food more accessible and uniform. As such, the caloric counts on food labels are now calculated from the estimated nutritional makeup of the food, and not by burning the food and seeing what it does to water.

All the ingredients in a packaged food are tallied, and then scientists break down the food into its nutritional components: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Based on years of calculating caloric information left the scientific world with data on the caloric values of these things, which are now averaged: a gram of protein contains 4 kcals, a gram of carbs has 4 kcals, and a gram of fat contains 9 kcals.

This is how a candy bar manufacturer, then, would determine how many calories are in a chocolate bar. It’s got 3 grams of protein, 30 grams of carbs, and 10 grams of fat. That amounts to 12 calories from protein, 120 from carbohydrates, and 90 from fat. Total calories: 222.

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Impossible Questions: Musical Conundrum Edition – Answer Revealed!

Think you’ve got the right answer? Keep reading to see if you nailed it.

What distinction do Chubby Checker, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Joan Jett, and Jim Croce share?

All of these acts are among the most successful, famous, and popular musicians to ever come out of Philadelphia…and none of them are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In fact, only one major act from the City of Brotherly Love has been inducted into the Rock Hall: Hall and Oates, and that was earlier this year.

In fact, during his induction speech, Daryl Hall made note of the fact that his duo is the only Philadelphia representative in the Hall, which recognizes American popular music, including rock, pop, soul, rap, jazz, blues, and even disco. The crowd cheered Hall’s comments, thinking he was showing some singular Philly pride. But he corrected them—he doesn’t think it’s right that so many musicians from his hometown have been neglected by the Hall (the institution, not the blond singer of “Maneater”).

Chubby Checker took “The Twist” to #1 twice, in 1960 and in 1962, spawning a dance craze both times. In 2009, Billboard named it the most successful song of the last 60 years.


DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince are eligible for induction, having released their first album more than 25 years ago. They also cleaned up and popularized rap music for mainstream audiences, taking it from a regional music favored by urban areas in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles onto pop radio with hits like “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”


 Joan Jett was one of the first women to find mainstream success in hard rock and punk rock. She also had a #1 hit in 1982 with “I Love Rock and Roll” and was a big inspiration to the 1990s grunge rock “riot grrrl” movement.


Jim Croce was among the most popular singer-songwriters of the early ’70s “singer-songwriter” movement. Tragically, Croce died in a 1973 plane crash just on the cusp of fame. “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” had been a #1 hit in his lifetime, and the ballad “Time in a Bottle” topped the charts after his death.

Want more impossible questions? Check out Uncle John’s Impossible Questions.

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The Hard Luck of Andrew Ridgeley

Wham! was one of the most successful groups of the 1980s. While George Michael went on to lasting solo success with more serious music (and some tabloid scandals), his former bandmate just couldn’t catch a break.

George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley formed Wham! in 1981, and by 1982 they were huge stars in the U.K, with Michael singing lead and writing most of the songs, and Ridgeley performing backing vocals and some guitar parts. In 1984, they crossed over to international stardom with hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “Freedom.”

Michael was the breakout star, and the band’s record label began to groom him for a solo career. In 1985, the Wham! song “Careless Whisper” was released as a single. In the U.S. it was credited to “Wham! Featuring George Michael,” and in the rest of the world to just “George Michael.” Ironically, it was one of the few Wham! songs that Ridgeley actually wrote. But in interviews, Michael told reporters that he’d written the song by himself one day while working as a movie theater usher years earlier.

After “Careless Whisper” topped the charts around the world, in 1986 Michael told Ridgeley that the ride was over—he was embarking on a solo career. Reluctantly, Ridgeley had to give up Wham!, because if the band was a duo and one person left, it was done. George Michael’s solo career was quite successful—his 1987 album Faith sold 25 million copies and produced four #1 hits.

Ridgeley, meanwhile, was persona non grata in the music industry. He moved to Monaco and became a Formula One racecar driver. He lost every race he entered.

Then in 1990, CBS Records picked up an obscure stipulation on Wham!’s old record deal: It wanted a solo album from George Michael, and Ridgeley as well. Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice sold eight million copies and generated three Top 40 hits. Ridgeley’s mature, full on-rock album Son of Albert was lambasted by critics (one has called it “bloody pathetic unmitigated guff at every level). It peaked at #130 on the American album chart and sold only a few thousands copies. “Shake” petered out at #77. CBS Records dropped Ridgeley, and he never made another album.

But there was always the possibility of a Wham! reunion. In 2006, the night before a show at London’s Wembley Stadium, George Michael asked Ridgeley to join him onstage to perform a couple of Wham! songs. Ridgeley agreed, but having not performed in more than 15 years, he got stage fright and backed out the day of the show. A year later, a full-on Wham! reunion fell apart in the planning stages.

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Impossible Questions: Musical Conundrum Edition

Think you know the answer to this question? Think you can get it? Good luck…and come back tomorrow to see if you’re right.

What distinction do Chubby Checker, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Joan Jett, and Jim Croce share?

Want more impossible questions? Check out Uncle John’s Impossible Questions.

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You’re Saying It Wrong: Celebrity Names Edition

In which Uncle John corrects widespread grammatical and language abominations. Here are a few celebrity names that you may be pronouncing wrong. Can you name any others?

Bjork

The world’s most famous Icelander and swan dress-wearer pronounces her name “b-yerk,” not “b-york.”

J.K. Rowling

“Row” is a British word for “fight,” and you might get in a row if you don’t pronounce the name of the Harry Potter author correctly. It’s “row-ling,” as in “row a boat,” and not “row” as in “a fight in Britain.”

Matt Groening

He created The Simpsons and Futrama and the first syllable of his last name sounds more like “grain” than “groan.”

Dr. Seuss

We thought it would be appropriate to use some rhymes for this one. Theodore Seuss Geisel took his pen name from his middle name, which was his mother’s maiden name. It’s not pronounced so it rhymes “juice,” it’s pronounced “soyce,” so it rhymes with “Joyce.”

Randy Bachman

Time we took care of business. Bachman, of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, pronounces his name “back-man,” not “bock-man.”

Neil Peart

Another Canadian rocker with a mangled name, the drummer for Rush says his name “peert,” and not like it rhymes with “curt.”

Shia LaBeouf

The actor best known for Transformers and having meltdowns would appreciate it if you pronounce the last syllable of his name like “buff” and not “boof.”

Steve Buscemi

The quirky character actor is often referred to as Steve “boo-shem-me,” but he prefers to be called Steve “boo-sem-me.”

Maya Angelou

The name of the late great poet and memoirist was often misstated. It’s “an-jell-oh,” not “an-jell-ooo.”

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The Musical Careers of Three Former Child Stars

These three actors rode the waves of fame at an age when most of us were still picking bubblegum out of our braces. But once those careers slowed down, they chased a different spotlight into the music business.

Macaulay Culkin

For his starring role in the smash hit Home Alone, Culkin is largely considered one of the most successful child actors of all time and, unlike many of his former colleagues, he’s still wealthy enough to not have to scramble for acting gigs, affording him the chance to take roles in low-budget, high-prestige indie movies like Party Monster. He also keeps busy with projects like his band, the Pizza Underground. It performs covers of old Velvet Underground and Lou Reed songs…with many of the lyrics replaced with references to pizza. Really. The title of one song: “Take a Bite of the Wild Slice.” After getting booed offstage and having beer cans flung at them during shows in Manchester and Nottingham, the Pizza Underground cancelled the rest of a planned European tour. Instead of blaming ill-tempered audiences that weren’t amused by their pizza puns, the band said on Twitter that they had to return to the United States “to deal with a cheesemergency.”

Jenna von Oy

While Blossom star Mayim Bialik went on to earn a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA (really) and costar on The Big Bang Theory, things went a little different for Von Oy, who played Blossom’s perky, ditzy friend Six. After costarring on UPN’s The Parkers, she briefly attended film school at USC, then branched out to country music. She self-recorded an album called Breathing Room in 2000, but couldn’t land a recording contract. (Breathing Room was self-released in 2007, but didn’t draw much attention.) Von Oy returned to acting, primarily voice work on shows like Family Guy.

Corey Feldman

With movies like The Lost Boys, Stand By Me, and The Goonies, Feldman was one of the most popular child actors of the 1980s but his fortunes turned in the 1990s. While juggling the occasional acting gig, he tried to start a music career. In 1994, he recorded an album of “New Jack Swing” songs—a style popular at the time for groups like Jodeci and Boy II Men—called Love Left. Feldman then started a rock band called Corey Feldman’s Truth Movement in the late ‘90s. All the while he dressed like his friend and idol Michael Jackson, in metal-studded leather fatigues and fedoras. He’s still recording music today. His last album, Technology Analogy, was released in 2010. Along with his Goonies costar Sean Astin appeared in the following strange music video, filmed at the home of Michael Jackson, with Feldman dancing around like Michael Jackson.

 

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Fast Flag and Flag Day Facts For Flag Day

Say that three times fast, and then read these flag facts before Flag Day on June 14th.

Remember that line in “The Star Spangled Banner” that remarks that the “flag was still there,” meaning the U.S. flag survived the battlefield? Well, in real life, the flag that inspired that line is “still there.” Francis Scott Key wrote the song about the flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. A few swaths of the 15-star, 15-bar flag are on display at the Smithsonian.


That entire flag doesn’t remain intact. Not because of damage sustained during war, or natural degradation over the last 200 years. No, the Ft. McHenry flag was a victim of “souveniring,” a 19th century practice in which flags that flew over historical moments were cut up and sold off. (A more recent example of this: chunks of the fallen Berlin Wall were sold in gift shops around the world well into the 1990s.) A 2-by-5-inch piece of this flag of flags was sold at auction in 2011 for $38,000.


Official Pantone colors for the red and blue on the flag: 193C and 281C, respectively.


As a national holiday, Flag Day isn’t even 70 years old. President Wilson issued a presidential proclamation calling for the holiday in 1916, but Congress didn’t pass legislation until 1949. Who thought up Flag Day? A Wisconsin teacher named Bernard Cigrand started a drive for a day to honor the nation’s flag in 1885.


Flag Day is a nationally recognized holiday, but it isn’t “observed”—meaning you still have to go to work. Unless you live in Pennsylvania. It’s a legal state holiday there, as that’s where lore says Betsy Ross supposedly sewed the original flag (although she probably didn’t).


After a 48-star flag flew for more than 40 years, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states in 1959, necessitating a new flag. The federal government received thousands of suggestions for new flag designs to accommodate the two stars, many of them from school kids as part of a homework assignment. Seventeen-year-old Robert Heft of Lancaster, Ohio, got a B-minus on his flag design, but sent it to President Eisenhower anyway. And it was his design that got chosen and adorns the flag today.

Father’s Day Sale: Enjoy 30% off all books until June 15.

June is Bathroom Reading Month: Enter to win a Kindle Fire and 10 eBooks.

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Mythical Creatures In the News

Okay, so these aren’t really about mythical creatures—after all, they’re mythical. These are stories about human beings dressed up like mythical creatures.

Unicorn!

In May 2013, teachers at North Pole Elementary in Fairbanks, Alaska, set a goal for its students: Over the course of the 2013-14 school year, it challenged its students to amass 24,000 points in “Accelerated Reader” points, a national reading program that assigns points to children’s books based on their level and difficulty. By Memorial Day weekend 2014, North Pole students had earned 24,793 points, or about 35,000 short books. Principal Mark Winford had to make good on the promise he’d made the student body a year earlier, and at a school assembly he did. Winford belly-flopped into a swimming pool filled with more than 140 gallons of Jell-O…dressed in a pink, one-piece unicorn costume. As a bonus, the school district’s central cafeteria was able to use up a huge stock of blue Jell-O mix that had been banned by recent nutritional guidelines.

Elf!

Last May, a woman was driving her BMW through a southeast Portland, Oregon at a slow pace. Suddenly, a man darted into traffic and began attacking her car…with a sword. Startled, the woman (unnamed in news reports) called 911 on her cell phone, and police arrived. They arrested a man clad in a helmet and shield named Konrad Bass. At least that’s what his ID said—he claimed he was actually “a high-elf engaged in battle with the evil Morgoth.” Morgoth is a villain mentioned in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Simarillion, and Bass believed that the BMW was a tool of destruction sent by Morgoth. Bass may also have been the other kind of “high-elf”—he told police he was under the influence of LSD. (He was cited for criminal mischief.)

Father’s Day Sale: Enjoy 30% off all books until June 15.

June is Bathroom Reading Month: Enter to win a Kindle Fire and 10 eBooks.

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3 Environmentally-Friendly Toilets

These eco-potties come with Mother Nature’s stamp of approval.

The Loveable Loo

Compost toilets typically require no water, and it’s possible to build your own at home. However, this basic model comes pre-assembled. It consists of a toilet seat attached to a box and a few buckets (more or less). Needless to say, the instructions are pretty simple. Just place one of the buckets in the box and, after each use, cover the poop with some sawdust. Then, once the bucket is full, simply swap it out for an empty one and dump the contents in a separate outdoor compost heap Believe it or not, the Loveable Loo has appeared on television twice. Larry the Cable Guy investigated the potty on Only in America, and it also popped up as a viable treehouse toilet on a recent episode of Animal Planet’s Treehouse Masters.

The Phoenix Composting Toilet

If the Loveable Loo seems a little too much like an indoor outhouse for your tastes, you could always try one of Advanced Composting System’s fancier models, like the Phoenix. It can now be found in various campsites and national parks around the country, but they’re available for homeowners, too. Their residential models feature a sophisticated network that can deposit waste from multiple toilets into a storage tank. (There’s also a ventilation system that cuts down on potential stinkiness.) While the company’s residential models are allegedly odorless and can handle the poop of eight “full time users,” they don’t come cheap ($3,000 to $5,000) and they require electricity.

The Sun-Mar Excel

“King of All Compost Potties” might be an appropriate nickname for this luxury toilet. It can turn the poop of a family of five into useful compost and look good while doing it. The odorless toilet comes painted white or “bone.” The Excel is also the first ever self-contained composting toilet to be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation. But how much does it cost? A cool $1,850.

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Giveaway: June is Bathroom Reading Month

It’s our favorite time of the year! We are ready to kick off the month of June by celebrating the two things we love the most: Reading and the Bathroom. If you didn’t already know, June is Bathroom Reading Month! Every year, we celebrate by having a fantastic giveaway for our fans. Enter this year to win:

Grand Prize: Kindle Fire and 10 Uncle John’s eBooks


2 Runner-ups: 5 Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader books of your choice

Entering is easy. In fact, too easy! You just need to sign up for our irregular email newsletter through Rafflecopter below. You also have the chance to earn additional entries by following us on different social media platforms. If you are already an email subscriber or follow us on social media, filling out the form will still count as your contest entry. We promise not to send you duplicate emails to the same email address.

Best of luck!

BRI

a Rafflecopter giveaway

* This giveaway is not affiliated or endorsed by Amazon or Amazon Kindle.

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