Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (39 page)

Exxon spent over $100 million on market research before changing its name from Esso.

IT’S A CONSPIRACY!

If Midgely and Ethyl knew that lead was so harmful compared to the alternatives, why did they try to cover it up? Money. Because adding lead to gasoline was cheaper than adding alcohol, as long as Ethyl had control over the lead additive business, Ethyl controlled the entire gas industry…and would fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

Car dealers warned their customers about lead’s dangers until 1927—when GM ordered their dealers to promote it.

The following year the Lead Industries Association was formed to counter the negative publicity. The Ethyl Company—along with its parent companies, GM, DuPont, and Standard Oil—hired scientists willing to claim that lead couldn’t be conclusively tied to illness.

The Ethyl Company refused to sell to distributors who also carried alcohol blends.

Because it was a national company, Ethyl was able to undercut the price of any independent filling station that tried to buck the system. During the Great Depression, people sought out the cheapest gas they could find—Ethyl made sure it was theirs.

Henry Ford called alcohol the “fuel of the future” (as had Midgely years before) and continued to make carburetors that would run on either gas or gas/alcohol blends until 1929. But by 1936 it no longer mattered: leaded gasoline accounted for 90 percent of the fuel sold in the United States, most of that produced by Ethyl.

CLEANING UP

In the 1950s, a geochemist from the California Institute of Technology named Clair Patterson (who was not on the Ethyl Company’s payroll) hypothesized that atmospheric lead levels had increased drastically since leaded gas was introduced in 1923. His proof came from ice core samples taken from glaciers in Greenland. In areas where more snow falls than melts every year, ice builds up in layers that can be counted and studied (much like a tree’s growth rings). By counting back through 40 years of annual snowfall and measuring the amount of lead in each layer, Patterson was able to show in a 1965 study that the high levels of atmospheric lead found in industrialized countries were a result of leaded gasoline use. Patterson’s findings led to the Clean Air Act of 1970. A provision in the act required automakers to install catalytic converters in all new cars. Catalytic converters, it just so happened, are fouled and rendered useless by lead deposits.

Exactly 342 chests of tea were dumped at the Boston Tea Party. Some survive to this day.

The oil industry still continued to resist. With the infrastructure still in place to make—and profit from—leaded gas, they tried to sell as much of it as they could before it was phased out. For years industry “experts” insisted that precatalytic converter motors would be harmed by unleaded gas—which has since proven not to be the case.

Finally, in 1986, leaded gasoline was removed from American gas pumps for good, though it continues to be sold throughout the developing world, and was common in Eastern Europe until the European Union banned it in 2000. Today, alcohol blends are increasingly being used to boost octane and to meet improved emissions standards. Lead is being replaced by the very additive it replaced in the 1920s—alcohol.

THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS MAN?

Leaded gas wasn’t Midgley’s only contribution to the modern world. After curing engine knock with tetraethyl lead, he turned his attention toward the development of a non-toxic, non-flammable refrigerant gas for use in refrigerator and air conditioner compressors. In 1928 he came up with
chlorofluorocarbons
, or CFCs—the chemical whose use is credited with creating the hole in the ozone layer. These two technological advances have led some to note that Thomas Midgley may have had a bigger impact on the environment than any other single organism in the history of the Earth.

What goes around
…Midgley contracted polio in middle age and suffered partial paralysis. He died in 1944 when he was accidentally strangled by a contraption he had built to help himself in and out of bed.

*        *        *

“Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

—Abba Eban

Oberammergaueralpenkräuterdelikatessenfrühstückskäse
is a type of cheese.

YOU CALL THAT ART?

Ever been in a gallery or museum and seen something that made you wonder, “Is this really art?” So have we. Is it art just because someone says it is? You be the judge
.

A
RTIST:
Mark McGowan

THIS IS ART?
This London-based artist has a reputation for odd endeavors, such as pushing a nut with his nose to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office as a protest against the high cost of school tuition, and rolling on the ground for seven kilometers while singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to highlight the work of office cleaners. McGowan’s latest project, however, has grabbed the most attention: in early 2005, he went to Scotland and took pictures of himself using keys to scratch the paint off other people’s cars. So far, the 39-year-old artist has admitted to vandalizing 47 cars in the greater Glasgow area. He plans to display the photos in local Glasgow galleries. Surprisingly, police have received no complaints…yet.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
“I do feel guilty, but if I don’t do it, someone else will. They should feel glad that they’ve been involved in the creative process.”

ARTIST:
James Robert Ford

THIS IS ART?
Ford’s piece, entitled
Bogey Ball
, was two years in the making. He displayed it in four different London galleries, but was unable to attract a buyer. It now rests on a shelf in his apartment, waiting for someone willing to shell out the asking price of £10,000 (about $18,000). What is it? A golf ball—sized ball of Ford’s dried snot. (He’s been collecting it since 2003.)

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
“It’s a physical record of all the different places I have been and people I’ve met. And it will be hard to let go, but at the same time, it’s hard not to have any money.”

ARTIST:
Damien Hirst

THIS IS ART?
Critics call Hirst, a conceptual artist from Leeds, England, “Mr. Death.” Why? He sliced two dead cows in half and placed the pieces in four large clear plastic vats filled with formaldehyde. The “artwork”—
Mother and Child, Divided
—earned him the 1995 Turner Prize, one of the art world’s most prestigious awards.

When a sumo wrestler retires, his “topknot” (his hair) is removed in a special ceremony.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
“I want to make people feel like burgers. I chose a cow because it’s banal. Nothing. Doesn’t mean anything. What is the difference between a cow and a burger? Not a lot. I want people to look at cows and feel ‘Oh my god,’ so then in turn, it makes them feel like burgers.”

THE ARTIST:
Lee Mingwei

THIS IS ART?
The Taiwanese artist cooked a meal and then picked a stranger at random to eat it with.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
“When people ask me, Is it art? I ask them, What is an apple? Usually they give a descriptive answer—it’s a fruit, it’s red, etc. Then I ask, when do you really know it’s an apple? And most people say, when I eat it. That’s when you know it’s art, when you experience it with your senses, with your memory, when you own the work. That would be a better way to decide it’s art—or maybe you don’t have to decide at all.”

THE ARTIST:
Carlos Capelán

THE WORK:
“Only You”

THIS IS ART?
This Uruguayan artist attempted to recreate fractal patterns…using his toenail clippings. The pieces were displayed at a London gallery in 2004.

ARTIST STATEMENT:
My work “playfully explores issues of self, ego and identity.”

*        *        *

IM TLKing

Shorthand expressions for Internet chat rooms and text-messaging:

GAL:
Get a life

J2LUK:
Just to let you know

IMHO:
In my humble opinion

RUOK:
Are you okay?

H&K:
Hugs and kisses

OTOH:
On the other hand

BCNU:
Be seeing you

BFN:
Bye for now

It’s human nature that when two people greet, their eyes widen and their eyebrows lift.

WHAT A DOLL

For every Barbie or G.I. Joe that’s created, there are hundreds of toy ideas that die a quick death. Here are a few of them
.

E
MERALD THE ENCHANTING WITCH (1972)
Amsco Toys made this doll to capitalize on two popular fads: Barbie dolls and witches (but cute ones, like Samantha on TV’s
Bewitched
or
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
in comic books). Like Barbie, Emerald was posable and came with lots of outfits. But unlike Barbie (or Samantha or Sabrina), Emerald had lavender skin, lime green hair, and hollow black eye cavities with flashing green lights in them. Little girls apparently didn’t like the doll. According to reports, it was “too scary.”

LEGGY (1971)

With the advent of the miniskirt in the late 1960s, showing a lot of leg suddenly became a fashion trend. That was the idea behind Hasbro’s aptly named Leggy. The doll was 10 inches tall—and seven of the ten inches were Leggy’s legs. Result: huge legs, a tiny torso, and a mutant-looking doll that quickly bombed.

THE LOVE BOAT (1981)

After Mego Toys turned down the chance to make
Star Wars
toys (they missed out on $1 billion in sales that went to rival Kenner Toys), the company started snapping up the rights to characters from every TV series and movie they were offered. Result: dolls and action figures that probably weren’t very good ideas.
The Love Boat
, for example, was a very popular television show, but it aired at 10 p.m., wasn’t action-oriented, and had mostly love- and sex-related plotlines that didn’t interest children. Nevertheless, Mego released four-inch figures of Captain Stubing, Doc, Gopher, Isaac the bartender, Julie, and Vicki, and a two-foot-long replica of the cruise ship. They sold so poorly that Mego decided not to release another line of toys, even though they were already manufactured: action figures based on the TV show
Dallas
.