Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (53 page)
Read Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers' Institute
Unlike the World Trade Center towers and other skyscrapers that were typical of “modernist” designs of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Sears Tower tapered gracefully as it rose skyward, with “setbacks” at the 49th, 65th, and 90th floors. It was better received than the World Trade Center, but it still had its problems—namely wind and the building’s 16,000 bronze-tinted windows. As Judith Dupré writes in
Skyscrapers:
Tenants are subject to terrifying high winds both inside and out. An employee on the seventy-seventh floor has said, “On very windy days, the building sways noticeably...the corner columns creak and groan...and my windowpane flaps and vibrates so alarmingly that I abandon my office.” The windows—shattering so frequently that the Wall Street Journal devoted a November 2, 1988 article to the subject—are fast becoming the stuff of myth: the article quotes a secretary who “heard that one man was blown out and then blown back in.”
Sears had its own financial problems in the 1980s—it moved out of the Sears Tower in 1988 and sold the building a few years later.
What city has the most taxicabs in the world? Mexico City—60,000 taxis.
END OF AN ERA?
Before the computer age, housing most or all of your employees and corporate files in one building was a necessity—people could communicate easily with one another and files were within easy reach. Computers and modern telecommunications have changed this. William Mitchell writes in
Scientific American:
The burgeoning Digital Revolution has been reducing the need to bring office workers together, face-to-face, in expensive downtown locations. Efficient telecommunications have diminished the importance of centrality and correspondingly increased the attractiveness of less expensive suburban sites that are more convenient to the labor force....Microsoft and Netscape battle it out from Redmond, Washington, and Mountain View, California, respectively...few of their millions of customers know or care what the headquarters buildings look like.
HEADING EAST
The Sears Tower has held the record for the world’s tallest building for 25 years, and there are no buildings planned in the United States that will top it. Instead, several Asian nations are constructing buildings that, when finished, will push the Sears Tower to second, third, fourth place or even further behind. The Patronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, for example, will rise to a height of 1,476 feet, when finished in late 1998, beating out the Sears Tower by 22 feet. The Kuningan Persada Tower, under construction in Jakarta, Indonesia, will be 1480 feet tall when it is finished in 1999.
Why are so many tall buildings being built in Asia, and so few in the United States? Because for a time, the Asia of the 1990s resembled the America of the 1900s. “Buildings that grab statistics like “world’s tallest” or “world’s second tallest,” writes
The New York Times’
Paul Goldberger, “are the product...of cultures in the first flush of excitement at moving onto the world stage. Such buildings are assertions of power, demands to be noticed, and there is a particular moment in the life cycle of a rising culture when those impulses are irresistible.”
Of course, the collapse of the Asian economy in 1998 will affect the status of many “tallest” buildings. Just how remains to be seen.
28 countries fought in World War II, the most of any war in human history.
YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET
Will the digital revolution put a stop to the seemingly endless contest to see who can build the world’s tallest building? Not likely...at least not any time soon. “In the 21st century, as in the time of Cheops, there will be undoubtedly taller and taller buildings, built at great effort and often without real economic justification,” William Mitchell writes, “because the rich and powerful will still sometimes find satisfaction in traditional ways that they’re on top of the heap.”
*
*
*
*
*
AND NOW FOR A CHANGE OF PACE
Whew! That was a long piece—eight sections on tall buildings. Kinda makes us want to write something silly—like these kids’ musical bloopers collected in the
Missouri School Music Newsletter.
(They insist they’re real, and, of course, we believe them.)
• “Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died from this.”
• “A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
• “Refrain means don’t do it. A refrain in music is the part you better not try to sing.”
• “When electric currents go through them, guitars start making sounds. So would anybody.”
• “My very best liked piece of music is the Bronze Lullaby.”
• “Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
• “Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.”
• “I know what a sextet is, but I had rather not say.”
The term “kangaroo court” was unknown in Australia until it was brought over from the U.S.
The hits keep coming. Here’s another BRI Top Ten of the Year list.
1992
(1) End Of The Road (from
Boomerang) —Boyz II Men
(2) Baby Got Back
—Sir Mix A-lot
(3) Tears In Heaven —
Eric Clapton
(4) Save The Best For Last
—Vanessa Williams
(5) Baby-Baby-Baby
—TLC
(6) Jump —
Kriss Kross
(7) My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It) —En
Vogue
(8) Under The Bridge
—Red Hot Chili Peppers
(9) All 4 Love
—Color Me Badd
(10) Just Another Day
—Jon Secada
1993
(1) I Will Always Love You (from
The Bodyguard) —Whitney Houston
(2) Can’t Help Falling In Love (from
Sliver) —UB40
(3) Whoomp! (There It Is)
—Tag Team
(4) That’s The Way Love Goes
—Janet Jackson
(5) Weak —
SWV
(6) Freak Me
—Silk
(7) If I Ever Fall In Love
—Shai
(8) Dreamlover —
Mariah Carey
(9) Rump Shaker
—Wreckx-n-Effect
(10) Informer —
Snow
1994
(1) The Sign —
Ace Of Base
(2) I Swear —
All-4-One
(3) I’ll Make Love To You
—Boyz II Men
(4) The Power Of Love
—Celine Dion
(5) Breathe Again —
Toni Braxton
(6) Stay (I Missed You) (from
Reality Bites) —Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories
(7) Hero —
Mariah Carey
(8) All She Wants —
Ace Of Base
(9) All For Love —
Bryan Adams / Rod Stewart / Sting
(10) Don’t Turn Around
—Ace Of Base
1995
(1) Gangsta’s Paradise (from
Dangerous Minds) —Coolio, featuring L.V.
(2) Waterfalls—
TLC
(3) Kiss From A Rose (from
Batman Forever) —Seal
(4) Creep —
TLC
(5) On Bended Knee —
Boyz II Men
(6) Another Night —
Real McCoy
(7) Don’t Take It Personal (Just One Of Dem Days) —
Monica
(8) Take A Bow —
Madonna
(9) Fantasy —
Mariah Carey
(10) This Is How We Do It
—Montell Jordan
Originally, Jack-O-Lanterns were made from turnips.
She’s back by popular demand! Here are two of Aunt Lenna’s favorite brain twisters. See next year’s
Bathroom Reader
for the answers. Just kidding. See
page 460
for the answers.
C
ircle Words
The letters in the circles are in the correct order. Simply find where the words begin and in which direction the word is read.
N
ine Dots
Using four straight lines, connect all nine dots without lifting the pen off the paper (i.e., a continuous line).
Now, do it with only three straight lines!
One in three American adults say their partner snores.
Longtime BRI writer Jack Mingo contributed this story of how one of the most popular candies in history was created.
M
ELTS IN YOUR HAND
In 1913, when air conditioning was still just a dream, candymaker Clarence Crane was having trouble with his business. He specialized in manufacturing chocolate—but it didn’t travel well during hot summer months. As a result, candy stores ordered almost nothing from him between June and September.
To stay in business, the Cleveland native decided to develop a new line of hard mints—they tasted cool in the Midwestern summer, and they wouldn’t melt. There was only one problem: His factory was only set up for chocolates. Luckily, he found a druggist with a pillmaking machine. Crane figured it would work for candy as well, so he commissioned the man to stamp out a batch.
HOLE LOT OF TROUBLE
As it turned out, the pill maker’s machine was malfunctioning—it kept punching a hole in each mint’s center. When he presented the first batch to Crane, the druggist promised he’d fix the problem for the next batch. But Crane said, “Keep it the way it is. They look like little life preservers.”
That title was a little long to put on a pack, so he tried “Life Savers” and decided that he had an irresistible hook for the mints. He advertised his “Crane’s Peppermint Life Savers” as a way of saving yourself from “that stormy breath” and designed a round paperboard tube with a label showing an old seaman tossing a life preserver to a woman swimmer. Still, he considered the product to be a sideline to his real business and didn’t push it with any enthusiasm.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN NEW YORK...
Edward John Noble made a living selling ad space on streetcars in New York City. One day, he saw Crane’s Life Savers in a candy store and bought a roll. He was so impressed that he jumped on a train to Ohio to convince Crane to buy streetcar ads. “If you spend a little money promoting these mints,” Noble told Crane, “you’d make a fortune!”
A woman’s sense of smell is most acute during ovulation.
Crane wasn’t interested, but Noble persisted. To get rid of him, Crane sarcastically suggested that Noble buy the Life Saver brand. He’d even throw in the defective pill machine for free. Noble asked, “How much?” Caught unprepared, Crane blurted out, “$5,000.”
Noble thought the price was a steal—but he didn’t have that kind of money. He returned to New York and was able to raise $3,800. He went back to Cleveland and talked Crane’s price down to $2,900.
