Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (11 page)

FIX:
Because there were so many roaches, Pina got a lot of bug bombs. He said about 8 to 10; the police later said there were probably as many as 18. (One or two is usually recommended.) Pina set them all off at the same time and rushed out of his house.

OUTCOME:
A spark from his refrigerator ignited the fumes, triggering an explosion that separated the building’s walls from its roof, caused three families to lose their homes, and cost more than $1 million to repair. Pina still has cockroaches.

 

PROBLEM:
In 2007 a Brevard, North Carolina, teenager’s Xbox 360 video game console kept turning off every five minutes.
FIX:
The 14-year-old boy did some research online and found a Web site that the said the power supply was probably overheating. So, following the directions provided, he wrapped the power supply in plastic and tape and submerged it in a bowl of cool water… while it was still plugged in.

OUTCOME:
The teen’s mother walked into the room a few minutes later and found him lying unconscious on his back. She rushed him to the hospital, where he was treated for minor burns to his right hand and right foot.

PROBLEM:
While trying to fix up his old Lincoln Continental, a 66-year-old man from South Kitsap, Washington, tried everything he could think of to get that last stubborn lug nut off the right rear wheel.

FIX:
Frustrated, he went and got his 12-gauge shotgun. Holding the barrel only a few feet away from the lug nut, he fired.

OUTCOME:
His plan backfired—literally. A police spokesman said the man’s legs were “peppered with buckshot.” He was taken to the hospital for serious (but not life-threatening) injuries.

 

PROBLEM:
Weeds were growing between the hedges at the home of a German gardener.

FIX:
While it’s not uncommon for gardeners to use a small blowtorch to clear weeds from cracks in a driveway or sidewalk, it’s not recommended when the weeds are growing among giant hedges. But that’s what this 54-year-old gardener tried to do.

OUTCOME:
The hedges caught fire…then the toolshed…then the roof of his house. Unable to extinguish the blaze with his garden hose, the man called the fire department. By the time they put it out, his house was so damaged that it was uninhabitable.

 

PROBLEM:
A 45-year-old man from Düsseldorf, Germany, found a hole in his inflatable air mattress.

FIX:
He tried to seal the hole with tire solvent, which is flammable. Then he used an electric air pump to blow up the mattress.

OUTCOME:
A spark from the pump ignited the solvent, and the explosion knocked out a wall and shattered all of the windows in the apartment. The man and his daughter were treated for burns, but were otherwise okay.

 

PROBLEM:
The toilet in the master bathroom of Carol Taddei’s Minneapolis home stopped working.

FIX:
Taddei, a retired paralegal, wanted to save money on costly repairs, so she purchased a new toilet and tried to install it herself.

OUTCOME:
The new toilet seemed to work fine at first…but Taddei didn’t know that a pipe underneath it was leaking. A few days later, the bathroom floor gave out and the commode crashed down into the living room below. In Taddei’s rush to get the hardware store for repair supplies, her car clipped a pole in the garage, dislodging the bumper and sending several shelves of flower pots crashing down. Total cost for repairs: $3,000.

“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”

—
Erma Bombeck

You put your pound of hamburger or chicken breasts into a plastic bag and stick it in the freezer. When you take it out a few months later, it has dry-looking patches all over it. That’s “freezer burn.” It occurs when the water molecules in the food form ice crystals and migrate out of the food. The loss of water dehydrates the surface of the frozen food, creating those dry patches. Best way to avoid freezer burn: Wrap foods tightly in moisture-resistant packaging and keep the freezer temperature at a constant 0°F. (Tight packaging will also prevent oxygen molecules from creeping in and altering the food’s flavor.) Freezer burn can make food (especially meat)
look
unappetizing and even taste a bit stale, but don’t worry—it isn’t harmful.

Any dead (but uncooked) crustacean will begin to deteriorate very quickly, so we’ve gotten into the habit of protecting ourselves from potential food poisoning by putting the live lobsters directly into boiling water. Seems like a good solution, since lobsters don’t feel pain, right? Wrong. Scientific evidence shows the opposite: They actually suffer severely. A more humane way to deal with a live lobster is to freeze it for several hours to reduce nerve function and pain sensitivity
before
dropping it into the pot, or to practice the quick-kill technique of inserting a knife point into the back of the lobster’s head, an inch below the eyes, in the middle of the back—and then put it immediately into the boiling water.

It is wax—edible food-grade wax. Growers apply it to retain moisture and protect against damage during shipping. For reasons of taste and aesthetics, most chefs recommend peeling waxed cukes before you eat them. If you don’t want to peel it, a good scrub with soapy water will make an unpeeled waxed cucumber more
palatable…but it won’t remove all the wax. Don’t like wax on your cucumbers? Avoid it by buying local produce.

No. Before 1980 it was legal in the U.S. to feed pigs garbage containing raw meat, which sometimes included animal parts infected with the
trichina spiralis
parasite, the cause of a deadly disease called
trichinosis
. It was thought that pork had to be cooked to 180°F (very well done) in order to kill the parasite. Two things have changed: First, in 1980 uncooked garbage was outlawed as pig food. And second, it was discovered that cooking pork to only 137°F will destroy the parasite. To be completely safe, the USDA recommends 160°F, which is medium doneness. Since 1980, cases of trichinosis have declined to about 10 per year in the U.S., most of which have been traced to undercooked game meats such as bear and boar.

It depends. With most soft cheeses, such as Brie, Camembert, mozzarella, chèvre, Monterey Jack, Muenster, and ricotta, any unfamiliar mold growth means toss it—do not eat. But you
can
eat hard cheeses if you cut out the mold to a depth of one inch on all sides of it. Molds form threadlike roots that insinuate themselves into the foods on which they grow, and even though most molds are harmless (like the ones used to produce blue cheeses), some are not. If you can’t cut away all of the mold, the safest thing to do is throw out the cheese. (Caution: Don’t let the knife touch the mold or you’ll end up cross-contaminating the cheese—and the mold may reappear.) Some hard cheeses that are generally considered safe to eat once the mold is removed: cheddar, Colby, Gruyère, Asiago, Parmesan, and Swiss.

No. Blood is
hemoglobin
, found in arteries. That red juice is
myoglobin
, a purplish-colored protein found in the tissue cells of meat. When it combines with oxygen, it’s called
oxymyoglobin
and looks bright red. That’s why the surface of raw meat is bright red. It’s also why the liquid that oozes from your roast beef is bright red: The myoglobin has been exposed to oxygen. Chicken and other “white” meats contain less myoglobin than red meats.

Concept:
Meinong’s Jungle (Philosophy)

What It Means:
Alexius Meinong was a 19th-century Austrian philosopher who believed that since we have the ability to conceive of things that do not exist—unicorns, islands in the sky, square circles, the sound of one hand clapping, honest politicians—these things must exist in some sense. Meinong’s jungle is the place where all the things that do not exist, exist.

 

Concept:
Opportunity Cost (Economics)

What It Means:
The sacrifice a person makes when choosing one product or service over another. If you spend $1,000 on a new transmission for your car instead of going on vacation, for example, you are giving up rest and relaxation in order to keep your car running. The lost rest and relaxation is part of the cost—the opportunity cost—of the transmission. Likewise, if you choose to watch an episode of
CSI
instead of an episode of
Law & Order
on another channel, giving up the opportunity to watch
Law & Order
is the price you pay to enjoy the episode of
CSI.

 

Concept:
Lullaby Effect (Psychology)

What It Means:
It’s the process by which humans and other organisms adapt and become desensitized to new—and frequently repeated—stimulus. If you move into a house next to the railroad tracks, for example, after a while you may not even notice the noise and the rattling caused by the trains passing by.

 

Concept:
Motherese (Linguistics)

What It Means:
Also known as Child-Directed Speech, motherese is what we think of as “baby talk”—the special language that a parent or other caretaker uses when addressing infants and young children. Characteristics can include shorter words and simpler sentences than in normal speech, a higher and more variable
pitch, and a specialized vocabulary. Experts in child development and language acquisition are still debating whether baby talk enables babies to develop language skills more quickly.

 

Concept:
NAIRU, the Non-accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (Economics)

What It Means:
The level of unemployment that does not affect the rate of inflation over time. Rates of unemployment
lower
than the NAIRU put upward pressure on inflation, as more people with more money bid up the price of goods. Rates of unemployment
higher
than the NAIRU put downward pressure on inflation as people who have lost or fear losing their jobs cut back on spending, causing prices to fall. When the unemployment rate is right at the NAIRU, the upward and downward pressures on inflation are equal, and the inflation rate remains steady…in theory, anyway.

 

Concept:
The Least-Effort Principle (Psychology)

What It Means:
This explains how rats learn to navigate mazes: When given a choice of tasks that result in the same reward, such as taking a long, circuitous route through a maze or the shortest, most direct route to a piece of cheese, rats instinctively seek out the choice that requires the least amount of effort.

 

Concept:
Gresham’s Law (Economics)

What It Means:
Where coins minted from precious metals like silver and gold are concerned, “bad money will drive out good.” If, for example, the value of the silver in a $1 coin rises above $1, speculators will remove the coins from circulation to melt down the silver and sell it at a profit, leaving only coins whose metal content is worth less than their face value. Now that precious metals are no longer used in coins, the theory no longer applies.

 

Concept:
Fallibilism (Philosophy)

What It Means:
It’s the doctrine that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, although imperfect knowledge is still possible. Fallibilism is widely believed to be true…but can we really know for sure?

No, it isn’t an article on Ex-Lax. These are the stories of some of the
most famous and infamous mass evacuations of
people
in history.

Trapped!
In May 1940, nine months into World War II, several German Panzer divisions tore into France, then swooped north, and in just days reached the English Channel. In the mayhem, hundreds of thousands of British, French, and Belgian troops were trapped in a pocket around the harbor town of Dunkirk, France, surrounded by a much larger and better-equipped German army. If they were killed or captured, said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, “the whole root, core, and brain of the British Army” would be lost, setting the stage for a Nazi invasion of Great Britain.