Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (56 page)

Only 20 years after partitioned offices ushered in a new era of comfort and productivity, cubicles (as they were being called) came to symbolize everything that was wrong with the American workplace. The nation’s 40 million or so cubicle workers spent their days in “cube farms” with seemingly no escape from their neighbors’ chit-chatting, keyboard-tapping, radio-blaring, Dorito-crunching, perfume-wafting, gas-passing…

NOT-SO-PROUD PAPA

Just as Alfred Nobel came to regret inventing dynamite, and Robert Oppenheimer lamented the atomic bomb, Bob Propst was demoralized by what his grand idea turned into. He didn’t blame himself, though: “The dark side of this is that not all organizations are intelligent and progressive. Lots are run by crass people who take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rat-hole places.” The research backed him up, too: The International Workplace Studies Program concluded that “cubicles can inhibit teamwork by separating workers via artificial walls.”

By the time Propst passed away in 2000, he’d obtained 120 patents, including ones for a vertical timber harvester, an electronic tagging system for livestock, a mobile office for quadriplegics, and a new workflow chart system for hospitals. But today, he’s mostly remembered as the “father of the cubicle”—even though his original design consisted of no cubes at all.

But Propst’s dream of a better workplace didn’t die with him. For the future of the office, fast-track over to
page 435
.

IRONY, R.F.D.

Actress Betty Lou Lynn, 83, played Thelma Lou on
The Andy Griffith Show
in the 1960s. In 2007 she decided to move away from Beverly Hills after twice being mugged. So Lynn moved to Mount Airy, North Carolina. What could be safer than the town that inspired Mayberry in the first place? Not long after, she was mugged outside of a shopping center.

Marilyn Monroe tried out 9 different shades of blonde before settling on platinum.

MYTH-CONCEPTIONS

“Common knowledge” is frequently wrong. Here are some more examples of things that many people believe…but that, according to our sources, just aren’t true
.

M
yth:
Front-line troops are nicknamed G.I.s, which stands for “general infantry.”
Truth:
They are called G.I.s, but it doesn’t stand for general infantry. The term dates to World War I, when American troops referred to German artillery shells as “G.I. cans” because they were made of galvanized iron. Over time, the “G.I.” came to refer to the people who made up the abbreviation.

Myth:
Cranberries are grown underwater.

Truth:
Farmers grow them in bogs near waterways, which they use to flood the bogs during harvesting. The individual berries float to the surface, where they’re easily collected.

Myth:
During the Civil War, all slaveholding states seceded from the United States.

Truth:
Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware were slave states, but remained in the Union. Slave owners in those states kept their slaves until the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1865 and the practice was outlawed.

Myth:
It was illegal to drink alcohol during Prohibition (1920–33).

Truth:
It was only illegal to produce, sell, or transport alcohol, although home brewing of up to 20 gallons of wine and cider (but not beer) was legal. And if you had any alcohol left over from before 1920, it was legal to consume that.

Myth:
In his 1859 book
On the Origin of Species,
Charles Darwin theorized that humans evolved from chimpanzees—the basis for the theory of evolution.

Truth:
Darwin never asserted that humans came from chimps. Rather, he claimed that humans and chimpanzees both descended—separately—from the same ancestral hominid, called the
Sahelanthropus tchadensis,
about seven million years ago. (Humans and chimps share 94 percent of their DNA.)

Only some shark species, such as the Great White, must swim constantly to breathe.

OMENS

Can you tell a good omen from a bad one? Here’s a handy guide
.

G
ood Omen:
If ants have built a nest by your front door, you’ll be coming into money soon.

Bad Omen:
If you hear the tapping of a deathwatch beetle, someone in your house is going to die within the year.

Good Omen:
A bird flying through your house means important news is coming.

Bad Omen:
But if that bird can’t get out, the news will be about the death of someone you know.

Good Omen:
If the first butterfly you see in the New Year is white, good luck will be yours throughout the year.

Bad Omen:
A black moth in your home means death will come calling within the year.

Good Omen:
Wearing a jade ring on your little finger will bring you wealth. Men should wear the ring on their left hand. Women on their right.

Bad Omen:
Wearing a ring on your thumb isn’t just a bad fashion statement; it will make you lose all your money and any chance of future success.

Good Omen:
Having a bent or crooked little finger means you’re lucky with money.

Bad Omen:
A white spot on the nail of your middle finger means you have an enemy.

Good Omen:
If your right ear is ringing, someone is saying nice things about you.

Bad Omen:
If your left ear is ringing, someone is trashing you.

Good Omen:
It’s good luck if you make a rhyme by accident. If you make a wish before you say another word, it will come true.

Bad Omen:
If you drop the comb while combing your hair, misfortune will visit you.

Good Omen:
Finding a spider in the evening is good luck.

Bad Omen:
Seeing a spider in the morning will bring bad luck for the rest of the day.

Good Omen:
Got itchy feet? Pack your bags—you’re going on a trip.

Bad Omen:
Start a trip on Friday and disappointment will follow wherever you go.

That’s not nice: In the 1300s, the word “nice” meant “lazy, lecherous, and strange.”

ARCADE IRE

Here’s a handful of the biggest controversies involving video games
.

L
OVE ON THE ROCKS

In 2009 Courtney Love, widow of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, licensed her husband’s image to Activision for use in its latest
Guitar Hero
music simulator game,
Guitar Hero 5
. She thought Cobain’s image would only be seen on-screen playing guitar along with the Nirvana songs in the game, but was shocked when she saw a YouTube clip of “Cobain” playing a song by the ’80s hair-metal band Bon Jovi—something Cobain would have loathed. Love sued Activision for misappropriating Cobain’s image. Activision CEO Dan Rosensweig responded in public, saying Love’s contract clearly permits the use of Cobain’s image, and that Love “happily cashed the check.” The suit is still pending.

NO WAY, JOSÉ

In April 2000, Jose Rabadan Pardo of Madrid murdered his parents and his sister with a
katana,
a Japanese sword. Afterward, police investigating the case suspected that Pardo’s crime may have been triggered by delusions stemming from round-the-clock video game play. Pardo, they said, believed that the video game
Final Fantasy VIII
was real and that he was a character in it—“Squall Leonhard,” a sword-toting mercenary on a mission of revenge. Just as Leonhard avenged his “enemies” in the game by killing them with a sword, so did Pardo in real life. But further investigation revealed that Pardo may have been faking his delusions to avoid prison. Evidence showed that he’d been planning the murders for two weeks, and that immediately after the killings, he dumped his bloody clothes far away from home, something a noble warrior in the feudal world of
Final Fantasy
(or a mentally ill person) probably wouldn’t do. He was sentenced to eight years in a Spanish psychiatric hospital…and was released in 2008.

Study: Only 50% of emergency-room personnel wash their hands during their shifts.

PLAYING DIRTY

Video games took off in 1982, with arcade and home consoles like Atari earning billions. The games were purchased and played primarily by children and teenagers, leading to a moral crusade over the negative effects of video games, namely that they were a waste of time and that video-game arcades attracted juvenile delinquents. So when a company called Mystique began releasing sexually explicit video games for the Atari 2600 home console in 1982, it generated even more negative attention. The most infamous was
Custer’s Revenge,
in which the player controlled a naked General George Custer as he dodged arrows while attempting to reach, and then rape, a nude Native American woman tied to a post.
Custer’s Revenge
drew outrage from numerous women’s and Native American groups and was banned in Oklahoma City (where there is a large Native American population). But it sold nearly 80,000 copies nationwide before Mystique finally bowed to pressure and pulled the game from stores. Mystique went on to release more potentially offensive games (including
Bachelor Party
and
Philly Flasher
), and then attempted to reap the benefits of the free publicity from the resulting controversy. It didn’t work—Mystique went out of business in 1983.

JOE LIEBERMAN, ZOMBIE KILLER

Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman has frequently spoken out against violent pop culture that he finds offensive and believes is harmful to young audiences. He once called for sweeping censorship of the Internet, and he supported Tipper Gore’s mid-1980s crusade to label music. In 2005 he publicly criticized the Xbox game
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
. He called it “cannibalistic,” with the capacity to “harm the entirety of American youth.” He may have been a little off base. With all of the violent video games on the market
(Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Halo,
for example), Lieberman decided to go after one that was fairly tame.
Stubbs
wasn’t a gorefest—it was a comic adventure set in the 1950s, featuring a bumbling zombie who isn’t very good at hunting for brains. Further, the kids that Lieberman claimed would be corrupted by the game couldn’t even buy it. The game had a rating of “M,” meaning gamers under the age of 17 couldn’t buy or rent it. Before Lieberman decried it,
Stubbs
was just another video game. Thanks to Lieberman’s rant, it became “controversial” (which probably helped sales).

There are more than 120 Boy Scout merit badges (including one for dentistry).

PILOT (T)ERROR

When you’re on a plane, do you wonder about the “professional” sitting in the cockpit? Is he a suicidal nut? A war criminal? Is he even a real pilot? If you never wondered before, you will after you read these
.

H
IGH ANXIETY

“Imagine your adrenaline is being excited by the roar of the 747 engines as you thunder down the runway. Just after lift-off, there’s a sudden hush from those massive engines. Your heart is in your mouth, pumping as it had never done before.” Those are the opening lines from a book called
One Obsession, Two Obsession, Three Obsession, Four,
written by a former Qantas Airlines pilot named Bryan Griffin. Hired in 1966, the Australian pilot developed a compulsive urge to crash a plane, and it grew worse and worse as the years passed. A few times he even had to grab his own hand to keep it from shutting off the engines. “It’s like it wasn’t even my arm,” he said. In 1979 Griffin finally informed his bosses of his urges but, amazingly, they cleared him to fly. Then a psychiatrist diagnosed him with severe obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and depression. But still, Qantas cleared him to fly. Fortunately for passengers, in 1982 Griffin quit. He spent the next 28 years working odd jobs, seeing psychiatrists, writing his book, and filing lawsuits against Qantas. In 2010 a judge finally ruled that airline officials had “exacerbated” Griffin’s condition by continuing to let him fly and awarded him $160,000 for loss of earnings, medical expenses, and legal costs.

ON-THE-JOB TRAINING

A Boeing 737 carrying 101 passengers was about to take off in Amsterdam in March 2010 when police boarded and walked into the cockpit. A few minutes later, they returned with the pilot in handcuffs and took him off the plane. When a passenger asked a flight attendant what was going on, he responded, “He wasn’t a real pilot, but we have one coming on to replace him.” Technically, the 41-year-old man (name not released) was a pilot, but he was certified to fly only very small planes. Thirteen years earlier, he had meticulously falsified his pilot’s license so it said he could operate passenger jets as well. He then logged more than 10,000 flying hours with several airlines, never having earned a valid license. Dutch police said the man, from Sweden, actually seemed relieved when they finally caught him: He tore off his flying stripes and handed them to the officers.