Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 145

AUJA – Why are weathermen called meteorologists?

Uncle John knows pretty much everything—and for what he doesn’t know, he has a massive research library. 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!)

Why are weathermen called meteorologists?

Like the names of many scientific disciplines, “meteorologist” comes from Ancient Greek. In about 340 B.C., Aristotle wrote Meteorologica, a compendium of what was, at the time, complete Western knowledge of weather and climate. Aristotle took the name from meteoros, a Greek word which referred to anything that was in, came from, or fell from the atmosphere, or “the sky.” That includes rain, rainbows, the climate in general, snow, ice, hail…and rocks falling from space, which today are known as meteors and meteorites.

Over the centuries, as humans acquired more knowledge, the disciplines of the study of weather and astronomical phenomena split into two separate scientific fields. The study of weather study kept the name meteorology, and now means a study of the atmosphere, weather, and climate. And since “meteorologist” was taken, people who actually study meteors are called meteoricists.

However, they aren’t mutually exclusive. Weather certainly affects how and when meteors enter the atmosphere, and how or if they’ll burn up—that’s something of interest to both meteorologists and meteoricists.

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Ski Beautiful Pee Mountain

Those weird side-by-side toilets in Sochi aren’t the only convergence of bathroom news and winter sports to make headlines.

Recycling is important. Rather than fill garbage dumps, or float out to the ocean, plastic jugs can be recycled into more plastic jugs. Cardboard can be broken down into pulp and used to make other paper goods. Even the rubber from old shoes can be used to make playground equipment. But there’s one huge source of waste that’s a little bit more problematic to recycle, and that’s human waste. Specifically, urine.

Arizona Snowbowl in Flagstaff, Arizona, is a ski resort, and the only ski resort in the world in which 100 percent of the snow used by its skiers and snowboarders was once human pee. It’s reasonable that Snowbowl would have to get creative with its snow sourcing; after all, there’s not much naturally occurring snow in Arizona. The other options were not particularly earth friendly, or affordable: chemically-derived synthetic snow, or real snow trucked in from far away. So, the resort teamed up with the city of Flagstaff to buy its wastewater—after it has been treated, of course.

But while everyone can agree that a mountain of made of frozen, treated urine is at least kind of gross, many Flagstaff groups and citizens are disgusted and outraged. Arizona Snowbowl sits amidst the San Francisco Peaks, sacred land for the Hopi tribe that once occupied the area. While the Hopi agreed long ago to the construction of Ski Bowl, leaders find it extremely disrespectful to cover holy land with human waste. The tribe is suing Snowbowl to end the urine-snow practice.

Other citizens object because they consider Snowbowl a public health menace. The urine is treated before its frozen to eliminate toxins…but it’s not a perfect science. Samples of the snow analyzed in a laboratory show that the snow still contains traces of all the bad stuff present in urine—stuff the human body rejects by peeing it out. Those things include traces of prescription drugs and antibiotic resistant organisms.

Ski at your own risk.

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Fact-or-Fake Friday: Gross Animal News Edition

What follows are three weird news stories involving animals. However, only two are real, and the other one we made up. Can you spot the fake? Check your answer at the end.

 A.

67-year-old Hiram Cohen is facing charges of animal cruelty after he was discovered hoarding more than 200 birds, dozens of which he appears to have painted with the colors of his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. The birds, which were kept in a 1,100-square foot townhouse in the Wilkinsburg neighborhood in Pittsburgh, included 42 canaries, 33 parakeets, 12 finches, 17 doves and 20 parrots. The animals were discovered when two Mormon missionaries reported “strong, foul odors” and “audible bird noises,” according to police reports. When the hazmat-clad officers were finally able to enter the home, nearly 12 hours later, they found conditions that were unfit for habitation, including extensive piles of bird droppings and dozens of pots of yellow and black paint littering nearly every surface of the home.

B.

A Colorado woman (unnamed in reports) says she saved the life of a puppy she was fostering by breastfeeding the animal. According to a local news station, the woman has a 15-month-old child, and although she felt “weird” about it, she decided to try breastfeeding the puppy when it refused to eat anything else. “I just felt like he just had an hour left. That’s how weak he was, he wasn’t moving and I just did it,” she told the news station. The story became news when the woman took a photo of the puppy feeding at her breast and posted it to her Facebook page. She told the news station that the twp-day old black lab pup, the runt of the litter, was in her care after its mother had been killed, and she was desperate. “It was taboo to me as well. I guess you could call it like a maternal instinct?”

C.

A 58-year-old St. Louis man was sentenced to two years of probation for mailing packages of cat poop to companies that didn’t hire him. Jevons Brown admitted to sending envelopes of feces to several employers out offrustration with his inability to land a job. But investigators were able to tie 20 packages of cat turds to Brown, who sent the kitty-bombs via the U.S. Postal Service. In court, the U.S. Attorney John Bodenhausen listed postal workers, the employees who received the cat poop in the mail, and those whose mail was adjacent to the poopy packages as victims. According to local news reports, Brown, who has no prior record, has found a job since his cat poop-mailing spree.

Want more fakes? Check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)

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That Time Prince Harry Hiked All the Way to the South Pole

Trekking to the South Pole was once something that only the hardiest of explorers would attempt to pull off. Now everybody seems to be doing it. Even Prince Harry (for a good cause).

This isn’t the first time that Harry has gone off on a risky journey. After all, the third-in-line to the British throne is a trained combat pilot and flew Apache helicopters during his deployments in Afghanistan.  The prince embarked on his latest undertaking for Walking With the Wounded, an expedition to the South Pole that helped raise money for charity. He was accompanied by four injured servicemen and women from the U.K.

To make things more exciting, they raced against a team from the U.S. and another one comprised of hardy souls from Canada and Australia. (The American team included Alexander Skarsgard, the actor who plays Nordic vampire Eric Northman on True Blood. Dominic West from The Wire, another hit HBO series, served as an ambassador for the third team.)

The teams began the 200-mile trek in late November of 2013. Reaching their goal required three weeks of arduous sled-pulling in temperatures that only a penguin could describe as pleasant. The weather was so bad that the race had to be called off and the teams joined together as one due to safety concerns. Ed Parker, the expedition’s director, later told reporters that “Our aim was to show that, despite injury, young men and women from our armed forces can still achieve great things.”

And they succeeded. The teams reached the South Pole at noon, London time, on December 13th. Sgt. Duncan Slater, one of the prince’s teammates, made the journey without the use of his legs—he lost them while serving in Afghanistan in 2009.

Several members of the expedition put on fake beards and stripped down to their skivvies before they headed back home. Are there photos? (Yes, but we can’t show them to you.)  One features a mostly nude Skarsgard sitting on an outdoor toilet.

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Impossible Questions: Vanity Edition (Answers)

Have you got an answer? Read on to see if you’re right.

What are “Thunderbox,” “Dogstar,” and “P,” and what distinction links them?

All three are forgettable rock bands…all of which could count as a member a huge movie star of the day. (Sort of like how Academy Award nominee Jared Leto took half a decade off from acting to record and tour with his alternative rock band 30 Seconds to Mars.)

Once a successful star of action and martial arts movies, ‘90s star Steven Seagal now spends most of time on other pursuits: being filmed working as a policeman on the reality show Lawman, but mostly his music. He’s written and performed songs for three of his own movies, and he’s released two blues-inflected rock albums, Songs from the Crystal Cave and Mojo Priest. Thunderbox is the name of his backing band, with which he’s toured Europe and the Americas.


Dogstar was formed in 1991 by drummer and TV bit actor Robert Mailhouse when at a Los Angeles grocery store he befriended a bassist who also dabbled in acting, some guy named…Keanu Reeves. They recruited two more members and by 1995, the band was touring the U.S. and Asia, opening for Bon Jovi and David Bowie. Dogstar graduated to headlining its own club tour, with ultimately very popular bands like Weezer and Rancid opening for them. Dogstar never had a hit song, but they did play England’s Glastonbury Festival and released two albums before Reeves (never the lead singer) left the band in 2002.


P is the shortest-named band in history, but is also notable for being a collaboration between Gibby Haynes (front man for the Texas punk band the B******* Surfers) and some guy named Johnny Depp, before he was an A-list superstar, and back when he was primarily known for starring in quirky movies like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. P played most of its gigs at The Viper Room in Los Angeles, which Depp co-owned. P released a self-titled album in 1995, which produced a minor radio hit: a cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”

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

 

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7 Things You Didn’t Know About Coca-Cola

It’s one of the oldest and most distinctively American products…but how much do you really know about Coke?

Coca-Cola inventor John Pemberton, a trained doctor, served in the Civil War…for the Confederate Army. He made it to the rank of colonel, and in combat he suffered a wound that left him addicted to morphine. He created Coca-Cola as a way to break himself (and he presumed, many others) of that addiction. It worked, although in the 19th century, Coca-Cola contained both alcohol and cocaine, with the former phased out the latter ultimately replaced with caffeine.


Cost of a serving of Coca-Cola at a soda fountain in 1886: 5 cents. Cost of a serving of Coca-Cola until 1959: 5 cents. Coke kept the price at a nickel for more than seven decades, surviving progressive inflation and even World War II-era rationing that made sugar triple in cost to keep prices down. Reason: It was a form of marketing, a way to build consumer trust. (Economists have a name for this: “nominal pride rigidity.”


In 1932, Coca-Cola introduced the concept of selling beverages in a six-pack. A plastic six-pack ring wasn’t used—it was a printed cardboard carton, similar to the 12-pack cardboard tubes used to sell soda in supermarkets today.


The reformulation of Coca-Cola and introduction of “New Coke” was a famous debacle for the company in 1985-86, so much so that the original formula was quickly returned to stores under the name “Coca-Cola Classic.” New Coke, however, was not an immediate failure. It maintained a 3 percent market share for years, until it was renamed “Coke II” in 1990. It was hard to find, but Coke II/New Coke was available all the way up until 2002.


The New Coke incident seemed like such a dumb business move that it spawned many urban legends and conspiracy theories. One was that the restored old-Coke formula somehow tasted “different”—because it was different. Some believed that Coke had used the New Coke switchover as a ruse to replace the sugar in original with cheaper high-fructose corn syrup. The truth? Somewhere in the middle. In 1980, Coca-Cola had begun replacing a little bit of the sugar with HFCS, gradually increasing the ratio in favor of the new sweetener. By 1985, and with the restoration of Coca-Cola, the transition was complete.


The formula for Coca-Cola is known by only two executives and is held in a vault in a branch of SunTrust Bank in Atlanta, not far from Coca-Cola headquarters.


The beverage reportedly lacks the ability to impart “taste memory.” That means that you can remember, at least vaguely, what Coca-Cola tastes like, enough to crave one and drink one every day…but not enough so that you ever get tired of the taste.

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Impossible Questions: Vanity Edition

Think you know what these three oddly named entities have in common? Look back to the title for a (very vague!) clue, and come back tomorrow to see if you guessed correctly.

What are “Thunderbox,” “Dogstar,” and “P,” and what distinction links them?

 

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

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Two Weird TV Coincidences

Real life converges with TV, and vice versa.

Burger War!

In 1982, Burger King created a TV first—it became the first fast food chain to directly attack the competition, by name, in a commercial. The ad featured a cute, four-year-old actress, addressing the camera and stating that McDonald’s burgers were “20 percent smaller” than Burger King’s. McDonald’s sued Burger King for defamation and the case was settled out of court. The four-year-old actress—actually made to testify in the suit—went on to a successful career, first on the soap All My Children, and then as the star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her name: Sarah Michelle Gellar. Last fall, Gellar returned to TV with the hit CBS sitcom The Crazy Ones. Gellar plays a director of an advertising agency. Like the ad agency-set Mad Men, the series incorporates real brands into the storylines for the sake of realism, but also blurring the lines between entertainment and marketing. The first episode’s plot involved Gellar trying to convince pop star Kelly Clarkson to record a high-profile jingle for the agency’s most lucrative client—McDonald’s. (Perhaps The Crazy Ones is a 30-years late penance for slamming McDonald’s.)

Terrier Plot

Terriers was a critically acclaimed but low-rated (and subsequently short-lived) drama about a pair of unlicensed, down-on-their-luck private investigators that aired on FX for three months in 2010. The series was executive produced by The Shield creator Shawn Ryan. The show’s title was ambiguous, as Terriers didn’t have anything to do with small dogs. In 2014, the Westminster Dog Show awarded its top, “Best in Show” honors to Sky, a five-year-old Wire Fox Terrier. The owner and breeder of Sky: Diane Ryan, who has been breeding terriers for more than 40 years. She’s also the mother of Terriers producer Shawn Ryan.

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7 Amazing, Obscure, and Wonderful Bits of Oscars Trivia

Impress (or annoy) your friends at your Oscars party this weekend with these fun facts.

Six actors have won Academy Awards for performances not in the English language: Sophia Loren in Two Women (1961, Italian); Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful (1998, Italian); Benicio del Toro in Traffic (2000, Spanish); Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (2007, French); and Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, Spanish). Those five actors are native speakers of those languages. The sixth winner is Robert De Niro, who had to learn Sicilian for his Oscar-winning role in The Godfather, Part II (1974).


 Two directors have been nominated in the Best Directing category twice in one year. Steven Soderbergh earned nods for Traffic and Erin Brockovich in 2000. He won for Traffic. In 1938, Michael Curtiz was nominated for Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters. He lost to Frank Capra for You Can’t Take it With You.


The most nominated films in Oscar history are Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950). Both landed 14 nominations. Titanic won 11; Eve won six. That 11 put Titanic into a three-way tie for most-Oscared movie, along with Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The latter, however, pulled off the only sweep in Oscar history—it won all 11 of the Oscars for which it was nominated.


The most snubbed movies at the Oscars are The Turning Point (1977) and The Color Purple (1985). Both received 11 Oscar nominations. Total number of Oscars received by each film: 0.


Meryl Streep is the most-nominated performer ever at the Academy Awards. This year, she’s up for Best Actress for August: Osage County, her 18th total nominations. Of those 18, she’s won three times—two for Best Actress (The Iron Lady and Sophie’s Choice) and once for Best Supporting Actress (Kramer vs. Kramer). Eleven of her nominated roles have been for fictional characters, and seven for portraying real people.


Walt Disney was nominated for at least one Oscar for every year from 1942 to 1963, a continuous, record streak of 22 years. He amassed 53 total nominations, also a record, mostly for animated and documentary shorts. In 1954, he won four Oscars in a single year, another record, winning the Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short, Best Short Subject – Cartoons, and Best Short Subject – Two-Reel awards.

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Can You Solve the Mystery of the Krafla Toilet in Iceland?

Anaheim has Disneyland. South Dakota has Wall Drug. Þingeyjarsveit has a toilet.

You may not have heard of this remote municipality in northeastern Iceland, but its home to one of the world’s most unusual tourist attractions. Those willing to make the trek will find the Krafla Toilet along a desolate stretch of highway that leads to the local Krafla power station. The toilet sits in the middle of a large patch of dirt beside a showerhead powered by a nearby hot spring. Nobody seems to know who installed this strange, open-air bathroom, or even how long ago, but more than a few confused visitors have stumbled upon it in recent years.

The toilet has mystified plenty of travel bloggers and several photos can be found on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Author Stephen Markley tried to find out who installed it while gathering material for his 2013 book, Tales of Iceland.

“Believe me, I spent a good day Googling ‘Krafla toilet,’ ‘Krafla commode,’ and other variations,” he wrote. “And while others had certainly witnessed and photographically documented the Krafla outdoor toilet, no one appeared to have an explanation for what its purpose might be.”

However, it’s listed as a place for hikers to get drinking water on the website for Vatnajökull National Park, which could offer a clue to its origins. Perhaps the toilet was placed there by a few bored park rangers. Of course, this doesn’t explain why they didn’t add some walls and a door. Perhaps some pranksters are the ones responsible.

That said, the toilet’s location is pretty isolated. A visitor could probably relieve themselves, or take a quick shower without anyone noticing, all while enjoying breathtaking views of the Icelandic countryside. On the average day, only 15 employees work up at the power station. Just be sure to bring some toilet paper if you’re headed that way.

If anyone out there knows more about the Krafla Toilet or where it came from, definitely let us know in the comments section. We’d love to learn more about it.

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