Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (13 page)

This part of the mystery has been referred to as “The Great
Silence,” and there are numerous possibilities for why the extraterrestrials never bother to call or write. For example:

• It takes too long.
Radio and laser signals travel at the speed of light, but the nearest habitable planets may be hundreds of light years away. It’s pretty difficult to have a conversation with someone if you have to wait hundreds of years for a response.

• They
did
call, but we didn’t know how to answer the phone.
Centuries ago we would not have known how to detect alien communication signals even if they had been directed at Earth. It’s possible that alien civilizations tried to contact Earth in 1000 B.C. or A.D. 1500, and when they didn’t receive a response, either lost interest or died out before we could communicate back.

• They don’t want to disturb the animals.
According to the “Zoo Hypothesis,” the aliens know we’re here and are observing us without our knowledge. They don’t want to interfere with our development, so they’re treating us like a herd of elephants in a nature preserve and leaving us alone.

• We’re on probation.
The other worlds know we’re here, but they’re waiting to see if we can curb our warlike impulses and get past the age of nuclear weapons before they reveal themselves to us and risk spreading our barbarism to other worlds.

• Alien civilizations self-destruct before they figure out how to to travel to or communicate with Earth.
So far, at least, the human race hasn’t exhausted its natural resources, nuked itself back to the Stone Age, or polluted the planet to the point of extinction. Maybe the aliens haven’t been so lucky: This possibility is known as the “Doomsday Argument”—civilizations advance to a certain stage of development, and then they destroy themselves.

• The extraterrestrials are hiding from
other
extraterrestrials.
Human history is filled with tragic examples of primitive civilizations that get wiped out when they come in contact with more-advanced societies. Who’s to say galactic history isn’t just as tragic? It’s possible that some alien civilizations choose to keep a low profile, out of fear of what might happen to them if an even more advanced civilization happens along and discovers them.

Harold St. John of New Jersey suffered from asbestos exposure, which he believed was caused by the brake linings he installed in Chrysler cars in the early 1960s. He sued Chrysler, and the suit was to go to trial on March 9, 2009. The only problem: St. John died on February 28, 2009. A trial delay motion was filed, and the family prepared for the funeral service at the Spotswood Reform Church in Jamesburg, New Jersey. But as they were praying by St. John’s graveside, a process server arrived. He immediately called off the funeral—he had a subpoena from Chrysler demanding the
burial
be delayed (instead of the trial) so that St. John’s body could be tested for asbestos, even though he’d already undergone extensive—and conclusive—testing while he was alive.

Orlando Bethel, a preacher from Loxley, Alabama, was scheduled to sing at the June 2002 funeral of Lish Taylor, his wife’s uncle. Before he began singing hymns, however, Bethel wanted to say a few words about the departed—that he was a “drunkard” and a “fornicator,” and was now “burning in Hell.” Bethel never sang—mourners attacked him, beat him up, and threw him out of the church. Bethel later claimed that “the Holy Ghost” instructed him to speak out, and added that the angry mourners were “whoremongers.”

In 2009 several body viewings and funeral services were interrupted at Ang Yew Seng’s funeral home in Singapore. The cause: an angry monkey. Ang spotted the stray monkey in his yard and, thinking it was hungry, offered it a bushel of bananas. Instead of taking the gift, it jumped on Ang’s back and bit him. Ang pulled the monkey off himself, threw it on the ground, and ran away. The monkey, however, didn’t leave. It smashed memorial urns, chewed up flowers,
swiped food from funeral receptions, and bit five mourners. After four days of unsuccessful attempts, Singapore animal control finally captured the monkey and ended its reign of terror.

Teamsters Local 727 represents Chicago undertakers and hearse drivers. By the 1990s, the funeral industry in Chicago was almost completely unionized—except for the small, family-run Donnellan Funeral Home. And the Teamsters had a problem with that. So in late 1999, union members began holding protests in front of the funeral home, quietly pacing back and forth while holding pro-labor picket signs. The marching never occurred while services were being held or mourners were inside…until January 2000, when they decided to picket a funeral. As the coffin was being carried out of the home, protesters started chanting at the hearse (and the deceased’s family), “Who are we? We are Teamsters!” A Teamsters representative spoke to the media about the incident. Apology? No. If Donnellan refused to go union, he said, Teamsters would follow any mourners to churches and even to graveside services. Two weeks later, they reached an understanding. (Donnellan stayed non-union.)

In April 2008, 66-year-old church organist Brian Markland performed Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” at a funeral service in the Preston, England, church where he worked. Immediately after finishing the piece, Markland shut his eyes, collapsed, and fell to the floor, dead. An autopsy revealed he’d died of heart failure. Three days later, his funeral was held at the same church, where another organist played “Moonlight Sonata” (and lived).

• Fork, mangled, 50 cents. Also selling garbage disposal. Used once. Needs repair.

• Free Sundaes for Dads on Father’s Day (Dads must be 15 or older).

In 2007 a team of researchers at Free University in Belgium developed tiny robots the size of cockroaches. They sprayed the robo-roaches with cockroach pheromones and released them among real roaches. The goal: to see if the robots could lure the cockroaches into following them. But in the end, it was the robots who followed the cockroaches (into dark corners, which is where roaches like to congregate). The scientists say the result is a major development in creating robots that can understand, adapt to, and even mimic animal behavior.

Robotics scientists at Aberystwyth University in Wales and Cambridge University in England have developed a robotic scientist. “Adam” is programmed to propose a scientific hypothesis and then prove it by conducting experiments. He’s already conducted his first tests (on baker’s yeast). Ross King of Aberystwyth thinks this could lead to teams of human and robot scientists working together in labs someday, with robots conducting the tedious experiments and keeping records, which human scientists don’t like doing.

London has more than 6,000 pubs, but as of 2007, it has only one that is robot-operated. The bartenders at Cynthia’s Cyberbar are robots—named Cynthia and Rastus—that are programmed to pour pints and mix drinks in the perfect proportions. And like real bartenders, they engage in friendly conversation (although their responses are all prerecorded).

In June 2007, a worker at a factory in Bålsta, Sweden, was trying to repair an industrial robot used to lift and move heavy rocks. The man turned off the power supply and approached the robot.

Well, he
thought
he’d turned off the power supply. As he came near, the robot, which is programmed to grab and lift whatever came near it, latched its “hands” around the worker’s head and lifted him into the air. The man broke free, but suffered four broken ribs in the process. Swedish police investigated the incident and fined the factory the equivalent of $3,000.

The most widely known robots in the United States today are probably Roombas, the commercial line of programmable robotic vacuum cleaners. Researchers at Georgia Tech have published a study showing just how accepted Roombas have become. Despite lacking the humanoid structure of science-fiction robots (the Roomba is disc-shaped and six inches high), according to the study, owners commonly attribute human qualities to them and even name them (like pets) or dress them up in tiny outfits.

“Saya,” the newest teacher at Kudan Primary School in Tokyo, is the world’s first ultra-realistic robot teacher. Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi, who has been working on the project at the city’s University of Science since 1994, created Saya, a robot that looks like an attractive Japanese woman in her early 20s. He’s especially proud of her skin, which feels smooth and real because it’s made out of a very fine latex. As she conducts preprogrammed lesson plans, Saya can simulate human facial expressions and give feedback to her students. One of her 10-year-old students told reporters that she’s “pretty,” while another said she’s “scary, but fun.”

Each year since the mid-1980s, more than 150 robots of various types and sizes compete in an event called “Sweeping the Nation.” In the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gymnasium, the robots pick up crushed soda cans and small piles of trash that have been scattered on the floor and place them in a “recycling center” (a milk crate). The objective: to see which robot can “recycle” the most trash in under a minute. It’s the final project for an MIT sophomore class in mechanical engineering. The top eight finishers (the humans, not the robots) get T-shirts.

JOHN STONEHOUSE.
Stonehouse was a 49-year-old rising star in Britain’s Labour Party when he went for a swim at a Miami beach in November 1974 and disappeared. He was presumed drowned, leaving a wife and daughter. But on Christmas Eve he was discovered in Melbourne, Australia, with a new identity…and his 28-year-old former secretary. Deported to England, Stonehouse was eventually convicted on 18 counts of theft, fraud, and deception relating to phony businesses he’d set up before going into hiding. He served three years of his seven-year sentence, married the secretary in 1981, and died in 1988 at the age of 62.

 

MARCUS SCHRENKER.
Schrenker, a 38-year-old money manager from Indiana, was facing financial ruin in 2008 when authorities began to investigate him for theft (stealing from his clients) and securities fraud. What to do? First, Schrenker went to Alabama and stashed a flashy red motorcycle in a storage facility. Then he returned to Indiana and took off toward Florida in his Piper Malibu airplane. Over Huntsville, Alabama, he sent out a distress call, claiming that his windshield had imploded and he was bleeding badly, and then he parachuted 2,000 feet to safety. The plane, tracked by military aircraft trying to intercept it, flew on autopilot for another 200 miles before it crashed in a Florida swamp near several homes. It was assumed that Schrenker had been killed—but there was no blood in the plane and the windshield did not appear damaged. Schrenker, meanwhile, retrieved the motorcycle in Alabama and zoomed away toward the Florida Panhandle. He holed up in a remote campground, wrote a goodbye e-mail to a friend, and slit one wrist. By the time U.S. Marshals found him, days later, he had lost a lot of blood—but he
survived. He pled guilty to federal charges and faces up to 26 years in prison.

 

STEVEN CHIN LEUNG.
At the time of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, 27-year-old Leung was under indictment for passport fraud in Hawaii. He saw the 9/11 tragedy as his chance to escape prosecution, so he decided to masquerade as his brother (he didn’t really have a brother) and apply for his own death certificate. First, in a phone call to his own lawyer, he posed as “Jeffrey Leung” and claimed that Steven had been working at the brokerage firm of Cantor Fitzgerald and had died in the terrorist attacks. Next he posed as “William Leung” and told the NYC Law Department the same thing. He even concocted e-mails supposedly exchanged by Steven and a deceased manager at the brokerage firm and cited the e-mails as proof that he had been in the Twin Towers on that day. When U.S. Marshals caught up with him, Steven admitted that he’d never worked in the World Trade Center and had faked his own death to avoid federal prosecution for passport fraud. The judge threw the book at him, sentencing him to four years in jail—18 months more than federal guidelines recommend for passport fraud.