Found in Mental Floss here:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20151
by Matt Soniak - November 27, 2008 - 10:00 AM
Why does turkey make me tired?
Most people blame tryptophan, but that’s not really the main culprit. In case you’re wondering, tryptophan is an amino acid that the body uses in the processes of making vitamin B3 and serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep. It can’t be produced by our bodies, so we need to get it through our diet. From which foods, exactly? Turkey, of course, but also other meats, chocolate, bananas, mangoes, dairy products, eggs, chickpeas, peanuts and a slew of other foods. Some of these, like cheddar cheese, have more tryptophan per gram than turkey. Tryptophan doesn’t have much of an impact unless it’s taken on an empty stomach and in an amount larger than what we’re getting from our drumstick. So why does turkey get the rap as a one-way ticket to a nap?
The urge to snooze is more the fault of the average Thanksgiving meal and all the food and booze that go with it. Here are a few things that play into the nap factor:
Fats – That turkey skin is delicious, but fats take a lot of energy to digest, so the body redirects blood to the digestive system. Reduced blood flow in the rest of the body means reduced energy.
Alcohol – What Homer Simpson called the cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems is also a central nervous system depressant.
Overeating – Same deal as fats. It takes a lot of energy to digest a big feast (the average Thanksgiving meal contains 3,000 calories and 229 grams of fat), so blood is sent to the digestive process system, leaving the brain a little tired.
Why is dark meat dark and white meat white?
Among the many things inside our bodies (guts, black stuff, about fifty Slim Jims), there are two types of muscle fiber: fast twitch and slow twitch. Fast twitch muscle fibers, which contract quickly but consume a lot of energy and fatigue quickly, are used for rapid movements like jumping and sprinting. Slow twitch muscle fibers contract slowly but don’t use much energy, and can contract for a long time before fatiguing; they’re used for endurance activities.
Most of our muscles are made up of a mix of both slow and fast twitch fibers and, overall, the average human body has about a 50/50 mix of the two. Some people may have a higher percentage of one type or the other from developing those fibers through training and exercise. Some Olympic sprinters have as much as 80% fast twitch fibers and long-distance runners have the same percentage of slow-twitch. Ongoing research says that training can only alter the ratio so much, though. It seems that there’s a genetic predisposition for having more of one fiber than another. But let’s talk turkey.
The meat we eat from a turkey is turkey muscle, and turkeys have fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, too—though not in the same even mixing we see in humans. The difference between dark meat and white meat is due to the type of muscle fiber that’s predominant in the meat and the way that fiber makes energy.
The muscles in turkey legs – the dark meat from the thighs and drumsticks – are mainly made up of slow twitch fibers, which get their energy from oxygen stored in the fibers by a protein called myoglobin. Myoglobin is a richly pigmented protein, and the more myoglobin there is in the fibers, the darker the meat.
Turkey wings and breasts, the white meat, are mostly made up of fast twitch muscle fibers, which get their energy from glycogen, a polysaccharide of glucose that’s stored in the muscle fibers and doesn’t have much pigment.
If you’ve eaten duck breast, you know that it’s hardly what you’d call white meat. That’s because unlike flightless turkeys, ducks take to the air a lot and have more slow twitch fibers, and more myoglobin, in their wings and breasts.
Thanksgiving by the Numbers
Before we all find a comfortable spot on the couch to curl up in, let’s crunch some big numbers that go along with the big meal.
271 million -
The estimated number of turkeys raised in the US this year. Of those, 49 million were raised in Minnesota, the leading turkey production state for the year.
$4.3 billion –
The estimated amount that farmers will make from the sale of all those turkeys.
689 million pounds –
The estimate for US cranberry production this year. Wisconsin comes out on top with 385 million pounds produced.
1.8 billion pounds –
The total weight of sweet potatoes produced by the major sweet potato producing states last year.
1.1 billion pounds –
The total weight of the pumpkins produced last year by major pumpkin-producing states, with a value of $117 million. Illinois wiped the floor with the rest of the states’ pumpkin patches and led the country with 542 million pounds worth of gourd.
177 million pounds –
The tart cherry production for 2008, if pumpkin pie isn’t your thing.
13.3 pounds –
The amount of turkey that the average American ate in 2006.
(If you’re a numbers geek, these figures came from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, the USDA Economic Research Service and the Census Bureau, all of which have plenty of other fun stats to play with.)
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
How Do Trick Candles Work?
From Mental Floss: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20309
by Matt Soniak -
Today is my birthday. While you’re surfing mentalfloss.com, I’m home celebrating with single-malt scotch and Rock Band. Wish you were here. In honor of my special day, here’s the science behind the trick in trick candles, which I really hope aren’t part of today’s festivities, for they are cruel and unusual and prolong the wait for delicious cake.
A lit candle wick melts the paraffin wax near it, absorbs the liquid wax, and pulls it upward. The flame vaporizes the wax, the vapor burns and keeps the flame lit, allowing the cycle to continue. When you blow out a regular candle, you might notice the little wisp of smoke that rises from the wick. That’s a last little bit of paraffin that’s been vaporized by the dying ember of the wick, but didn’t ignite because the ember isn’t hot enough.
The trick to a re-lighting candle, then, is getting enough heat going to ignite the escaping vapor and bring the flame back to life. The folks who don’t want you to eat your cake and make these candles usually turn to magnesium for the job. Magnesium, the ninth most abundant element in the universe by mass, is an alkaline earth metal that’s highly flammable and ignites at temperatures as low as 800 degrees F (430 degrees C) when powdered or shaved into thin strips. Powered magnesium is put inside the wick, where it’s kept cool and shielded from oxygen by the liquid wax. When the candle is blown out, the wick’s ember ignites the magnesium – if you watch closely, you can see little bits of magnesium sparking – which ignites the paraffin vapor and re-lights the candle. Magic!
The problem, of course, is getting the candles out once and for all when you get tired of games and want to eat (or if the cake bursts into flames). Trick candles need to be snuffed or dunked in a liquid to cut off the oxygen supply so the flame can’t re-ignite. And no, you cannot use my scotch.
by Matt Soniak -
Today is my birthday. While you’re surfing mentalfloss.com, I’m home celebrating with single-malt scotch and Rock Band. Wish you were here. In honor of my special day, here’s the science behind the trick in trick candles, which I really hope aren’t part of today’s festivities, for they are cruel and unusual and prolong the wait for delicious cake.
A lit candle wick melts the paraffin wax near it, absorbs the liquid wax, and pulls it upward. The flame vaporizes the wax, the vapor burns and keeps the flame lit, allowing the cycle to continue. When you blow out a regular candle, you might notice the little wisp of smoke that rises from the wick. That’s a last little bit of paraffin that’s been vaporized by the dying ember of the wick, but didn’t ignite because the ember isn’t hot enough.
The trick to a re-lighting candle, then, is getting enough heat going to ignite the escaping vapor and bring the flame back to life. The folks who don’t want you to eat your cake and make these candles usually turn to magnesium for the job. Magnesium, the ninth most abundant element in the universe by mass, is an alkaline earth metal that’s highly flammable and ignites at temperatures as low as 800 degrees F (430 degrees C) when powdered or shaved into thin strips. Powered magnesium is put inside the wick, where it’s kept cool and shielded from oxygen by the liquid wax. When the candle is blown out, the wick’s ember ignites the magnesium – if you watch closely, you can see little bits of magnesium sparking – which ignites the paraffin vapor and re-lights the candle. Magic!
The problem, of course, is getting the candles out once and for all when you get tired of games and want to eat (or if the cake bursts into flames). Trick candles need to be snuffed or dunked in a liquid to cut off the oxygen supply so the flame can’t re-ignite. And no, you cannot use my scotch.
Questioning Thanksgiving
From Young Anabaptist Radicals:
Thanksgiving makes me nervous.
For years, I’ve gotten a sinking feeling in my stomach as the month of November draws to a close and this day looms. On the one hand, Thanksgiving is about joy and gratitude. It is a time when I travel to see family and friends, welcome a few days of rest and look forward to the holiday season. In my mind, I know it is a good thing to have a day where the sole emphasis is to give thanks to God for all God has done. I also appreciate the opportunity to celebrate all my loved ones do and are to one another.
And yet Thanksgiving reminds me of a beautiful but altogether itchy sweater. Sure it looks good on the rack in my closet. It is slimming, well-made, gorgeous color—everything you could hope for in a sweater. But if I put it on I’m guaranteed to spend the whole day tugging, scratching and feeling downright uncomfortable. Try as I might, I can’t shake that weird feeling about that good ole holiday. It gets to the point where weeks in advance I’m trying to come up with other things to say besides “Happy Thanksgiving.” And since “Happy Day Off” doesn’t cut it I go ahead and mutter the greeting anyway, wheels still turning for a suitable substitute.
I guess the trouble with Thanksgiving for me begins with the history of the indigenous people who were here long before America was even an idea. It is a day that celebrates the gift of food the Wampanoag gave to the Pilgrims as they suffered from disease and hunger. It celebrates how this native tribe who had already experienced raids and slavery at the hands of the Europeans nevertheless taught these foreigners the skills necessary to grow their food and survive. And yet inextricably linked to this now mythical tale are years and years of treachery, racism and violence, blessed by Christian language no less, against millions of indigenous people. Small pox blankets, “civilizing” schools, broken treaties…they are bound together with our Thanksgiving celebration no matter how we try to reinterpret the day’s meaning and baptize it with new Christian language and metaphors.
Becoming vegetarian and now vegan just ratchets up my Thanksgiving sweater’s itchiness. The thought of all those living, breathing turkeys—beings that experience suffering and pain, that long for sunlight, that understand in their own primitive ways what it means to be free—locked down in darkness (or penned on their “free range” farms) awaiting slaughter is hard to bear. Through no fault of their own, these creatures who had the unfortunate luck of being born into a less advanced (and less violent) species, are mutilated, abused and butchered so people can serve their burnt flesh on a platter and gorge on their bodies. What does it mean to say “thanks” to God for our food given the conditions these creatures endure? How can this be a “happy” meal when all of this unnecessary killing is done for no other reason than we like turkey flesh and we can wield power as we will?
Perhaps the trouble with Thanksgiving for me is that there is a whole lot of thanks but not a lot of repentance. There’s a whole lot of “grace” but not enough confession. At the very least it would be nice if more people saw the complexity and contradictions of the day. Rather than giving into the myth, getting sucked into the television set and going about their business as usual, it would be nice to know that other people were feeling a bit itchy about the whole dang thing too.
At the very least, that might make me feel a little less nervous.
– Nekeisha Alexis-Baker. Information on the origins of Thanksgiving gleaned from Jacqueline Keeler’s essay “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” available on Alternet at http://www.alternet.org/story/4391/
Thanksgiving makes me nervous.
For years, I’ve gotten a sinking feeling in my stomach as the month of November draws to a close and this day looms. On the one hand, Thanksgiving is about joy and gratitude. It is a time when I travel to see family and friends, welcome a few days of rest and look forward to the holiday season. In my mind, I know it is a good thing to have a day where the sole emphasis is to give thanks to God for all God has done. I also appreciate the opportunity to celebrate all my loved ones do and are to one another.
And yet Thanksgiving reminds me of a beautiful but altogether itchy sweater. Sure it looks good on the rack in my closet. It is slimming, well-made, gorgeous color—everything you could hope for in a sweater. But if I put it on I’m guaranteed to spend the whole day tugging, scratching and feeling downright uncomfortable. Try as I might, I can’t shake that weird feeling about that good ole holiday. It gets to the point where weeks in advance I’m trying to come up with other things to say besides “Happy Thanksgiving.” And since “Happy Day Off” doesn’t cut it I go ahead and mutter the greeting anyway, wheels still turning for a suitable substitute.
I guess the trouble with Thanksgiving for me begins with the history of the indigenous people who were here long before America was even an idea. It is a day that celebrates the gift of food the Wampanoag gave to the Pilgrims as they suffered from disease and hunger. It celebrates how this native tribe who had already experienced raids and slavery at the hands of the Europeans nevertheless taught these foreigners the skills necessary to grow their food and survive. And yet inextricably linked to this now mythical tale are years and years of treachery, racism and violence, blessed by Christian language no less, against millions of indigenous people. Small pox blankets, “civilizing” schools, broken treaties…they are bound together with our Thanksgiving celebration no matter how we try to reinterpret the day’s meaning and baptize it with new Christian language and metaphors.
Becoming vegetarian and now vegan just ratchets up my Thanksgiving sweater’s itchiness. The thought of all those living, breathing turkeys—beings that experience suffering and pain, that long for sunlight, that understand in their own primitive ways what it means to be free—locked down in darkness (or penned on their “free range” farms) awaiting slaughter is hard to bear. Through no fault of their own, these creatures who had the unfortunate luck of being born into a less advanced (and less violent) species, are mutilated, abused and butchered so people can serve their burnt flesh on a platter and gorge on their bodies. What does it mean to say “thanks” to God for our food given the conditions these creatures endure? How can this be a “happy” meal when all of this unnecessary killing is done for no other reason than we like turkey flesh and we can wield power as we will?
Perhaps the trouble with Thanksgiving for me is that there is a whole lot of thanks but not a lot of repentance. There’s a whole lot of “grace” but not enough confession. At the very least it would be nice if more people saw the complexity and contradictions of the day. Rather than giving into the myth, getting sucked into the television set and going about their business as usual, it would be nice to know that other people were feeling a bit itchy about the whole dang thing too.
At the very least, that might make me feel a little less nervous.
– Nekeisha Alexis-Baker. Information on the origins of Thanksgiving gleaned from Jacqueline Keeler’s essay “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” available on Alternet at http://www.alternet.org/story/4391/
Monday, November 24, 2008
All Da Sheet: An Interview With Sanitation Health's New Spokesperson
Waste Happens: A Q&A With the Author of The Big Necessity
By Annika Mengisen
From Freakonomics blog at the NY Times
Rose George’s new book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters not only got me wildly interested in my toilet, but also in what happens after I use it.
In her book, she discusses why we should pay a lot of attention to an issue that affects everyone — several times a day — and why aversion to it (on a personal and global level) isn’t doing us any good.
George holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania. She has written for The Nation, Slate, Details, The New York Times, and many other publications.
She has agreed to answer our questions about her book. But first, she has a question for Freakonomics blog readers:
Do you ever wonder what happens after you flush the toilet? If you don’t, why not?
Post your answers and comments below.
Q: What does the U.S.’s current level of sanitation do to health care costs? What would you suggest we do to improve our sanitation and what could the effects of that action be on health care?
A: I don’t have figures for nationwide health costs, but you can guess by looking at the few studies that have been done. For example, a study out of Stanford in 2006 found that sewage outfalls near 28 California beaches caused up to 1.5 million excess gastrointestinal illnesses, which cost California up to $51 million in health care costs (in year 2000 dollars). And that’s just 160 kilometers of coastline.
Sewage outfalls are common in all water bodies across the U.S., and discharges of raw sewage are far more common than most people realize; because most sewer systems are “combined” (meaning they also take in surface water from streets), and because of population growth and the fact that many sewers are decades and sometimes centuries old, they are very vulnerable to heavy rainstorms. Every week, New York discharges over 2,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of untreated sewage into waters nearby.
And the case of Peru might also give some indication of costs that can be incurred: when Peru had a cholera outbreak in 1991, losses from agricultural revenue and tourism were three times greater than the total money spent on sanitation during the previous decade.
Photo: Rose GeorgeQ: What is the best way to change public perceptions about waste/excrement/(insert preferred euphemism), and why is it important that we do?
A: It will sound simplistic, but what the deeply neglected world of sanitation needs is a champion. I don’t much mind who that is, but it has to be someone with star power who is willing to stand in front of a nice clean school latrine and point out how cool it is and how life-saving (when toilets and sewers were introduced in London in the 19th century, child mortality dropped by a fifth).
But I’d also like people to understand that it’s not just a developing-world issue. It’s not only a poor person’s problem. Public perceptions about sh– tend to veer between toilet humor and embarrassment.
In between those two poles lies a lot of unspoken dissatisfaction. Major western cities like London and New York have a shameful lack of public bathrooms, and city authorities continue to close the ones that do exist. Why are there no protests? The social pact is surely that citizens pay taxes and get essential services in return. Waste disposal is an essential service, and I’m not talking about garbage collection. Get out on the streets and protest!
Q: You mention that the way the benefits of sanitation are calculated is a roadblock to progress; how so?
A: They’re not calculated and that’s the problem. Health economists — particularly Guy Hutton at the World Bank and his colleagues — have figured out that if you invest $1 in sanitation, you save $7 on health care and lost labor costs. That’s a lot of money.
To put it another way, if a minister doesn’t invest $1 in sanitation, he/she will lose $7 in health care and lost labor costs. That, to a minister on a tight budget, seems like even more money.
Now that those calculations have been done, perhaps the messages can be conveyed in a more compelling way. The trouble is that in most countries, responsibility for sanitation is fragmented between various ministries; it’s in health, education, and local government. No one has final responsibility; so no one does the math.
Mumbai, India (Photo: Rose George)
Q: Why, as you write in the book, is a toilet still only a distress purchase in the U.S., while it’s constantly being developed and advanced in a country like Japan?
A: For all sorts of reasons. The Japanese toilet revolution has happened over 60 years and for several reasons. Transforming the toilet into a must-have product appealed to the Japanese love of gadgetry, for a start. Having toilets with inbuilt bidets that can massage you, but are totally hands-off, appeal to the Japanese sense of wabi sabi (i.e. a love of cleanliness and purity), but also enable Japanese to have no contact with their excrement.
Clean, hands-free. It was a winnable concept.
As for why Americans haven’t been convinced yet, it’s because, like most of us with flush toilets, as long as they flush and work, we don’t notice them. Until you use a Japanese robo-toilet, you won’t get it. Perhaps when they make more headway in the U.S., Americans might start to see the light. But they’d have to be cheaper first.
I do think there’s a market in the U.S. for washing rather than wiping: I did a Q&A for Salon recently, and of the 70 or so comments that were left, nearly all were about washing your butt and how much better it was. I was astonished.
Q: Do plungers sell in Japan?
A: I have no idea. I never saw one. I think plungers are a strangely filthy concept. Also, those Japanese toilets are so coated with non-stick chemical stuff, and so beautifully engineered — except the ones that caught fire a year or so ago, but that’s electricity in the vicinity of water for you — that plungers are, I suspect, unemployable.
Q: So is it better to squat or sit?
A: To put it simply, sitting squeezes bits in the body that you don’t want to be squeezed when you’re trying to evacuate stuff. So biologically and ergonomically, squatting is a much more efficient position to use to empty the bowels. But centuries of toilets and chairs have weakened our thigh squatting muscles, and squatting is not easy for elderly or disabled people. So sitting has its place.
Shanti Nagar, Mumbai, India (Photo: Rose George)
Q: In the book, you mention that euphemisms for waste can be destructive. How so?
A: I don’t think euphemisms are destructive, and of course I’m not advocating that people begin to use words they find uncomfortable or upsetting. Euphemisms have their place. But I think when a euphemism gets into the corridors of power that can do something about the parlous state of sanitation in the developed and developing worlds, and the euphemism is being used as a way to avoid the issue, that’s a problem.
If we can’t find forthright ways to talk about this — and if we persist in talking about “water-borne diseases” when we mean sh– -related diseases — then we will continue to be handicapped and we will continue to have a child dying of diarrhea — diarrhea! — every 15 seconds.
Q: Everyone in New York has told me that you can drink New York City tap water straight from the sink. What’s likely in that water? Should I use a filter anyway?
A: I drink tap water on principle. I prefer it filtered, but that’s my preference.
But studies have found trace elements of pharmaceuticals in there, which is unsurprising when you learn — as the Associated Press did in an investigation earlier this year — that many hospitals and clinics simply pour their unused drugs down the toilet or sink. It all ends up in sewers. The trouble with sewers is that anything can go down them and there’s a limit to what can be removed. It’s hard to remove things when you don’t even know what’s in there in the first place.
The pharmaceutical levels are small — you’d have to drink a lot of sewage effluent to get even a pill-full of ibuprofen, probably — but the issue to my mind is how pharmaceuticals combine. They’re prescribed carefully above ground but not once they get to the sewers. I’m not being alarmist — and I drink tap water wherever it’s safe (not in Delhi, India, where I am now) — but I do think questions should be asked.
Q: What could a Hollywood celebrity do for world sanitation?
A: It’s very basic, but sanitation is so neglected that a Hollywood celebrity could move mountains by simply talking about it. They could pose in front of a school latrine, for example, with a young girl who had dropped out of school because she was mortified there were no latrines, and who is now back in school, and whose future is much shinier than it was.
It’s a no-brainer: Good sanitation reduces disease by 40 percent. To be fair, Matt Damon did talk about latrines at the Clinton Global Initiative rally, and that’s great. He already does wonderful stuff with clean water supply.
It’s only logical he should see the link with sanitation. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t even feed a child without good sanitation; you can stuff a child with calories, but if the food or water is infected with fecal bacteria, he’s not going to keep those calories in.
Sanitation is often why you get malnourished children in well-fed families.
Q: Why do people hate biosolids and should they hate them as much as they do?
A: People don’t like biosolids because they believe that they’re not safe; because sewage sludge — to give biosolids their real name — is, after all, the dirt that is removed from sewage, and can contain whatever has been put down the sewer, including strong antibiotics, heavy metals, and all sorts of chemicals.
So there is a growing grassroots movement of activists who strongly object to this stuff being put on fields near their homes. And there is also a growing collection of anecdotal reports — collated, for example, by Ellen Harrison at Cornell — of people who claim they are being made ill by biosolids.
That said, the E.P.A. insists that biosolids are safe as long as regulations are followed, and the people who work in the industry told me they’d happily let their kids roll around in it, they’re that convinced.
It’s not for me to say whether people should or shouldn’t hate them. I think more epidemiological studies should be done, and the two sides should talk more.
The trouble is that if sludge isn’t applied to land, where can it go? It can’t be dumped at sea, as that’s now banned. Landfills are also out. The only other credible option is incineration, which can be expensive and also unpopular with people.
Q: What do you do differently now as far as sanitation/toilet habits? What’s the main behavior you try to promote in others?
A: Ever since a toilet designer told me that wallpaper changes color from all the urine spray flying around from the flush, I always put the toilet seat lid down. I try very hard never to put cooking oil down the sink or drain (I wait for it to dry and put it in the trash or pour it on soil) ever since I saw huge mounds of dried fat blocking a sewer stairwell. I wash my hands more carefully, but not obsessively. Sometimes I don’t flush if it’s just urine; it can wait and it saves water.
I’d encourage people always to wash their hands and to think about how to reduce using water; that’s clean drinking water; it’s precious. For rural people who can bear to think about it and deal with it, I’d suggest thinking about composting toilets. But they aren’t for everybody, and I’m realistic about that.
But really the main behavior I’d like to see is for us to be open about this. It’s a huge problem; it’s not going to go away. Let’s talk about it.
By Annika Mengisen
From Freakonomics blog at the NY Times
Rose George’s new book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters not only got me wildly interested in my toilet, but also in what happens after I use it.
In her book, she discusses why we should pay a lot of attention to an issue that affects everyone — several times a day — and why aversion to it (on a personal and global level) isn’t doing us any good.
George holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania. She has written for The Nation, Slate, Details, The New York Times, and many other publications.
She has agreed to answer our questions about her book. But first, she has a question for Freakonomics blog readers:
Do you ever wonder what happens after you flush the toilet? If you don’t, why not?
Post your answers and comments below.
Q: What does the U.S.’s current level of sanitation do to health care costs? What would you suggest we do to improve our sanitation and what could the effects of that action be on health care?
A: I don’t have figures for nationwide health costs, but you can guess by looking at the few studies that have been done. For example, a study out of Stanford in 2006 found that sewage outfalls near 28 California beaches caused up to 1.5 million excess gastrointestinal illnesses, which cost California up to $51 million in health care costs (in year 2000 dollars). And that’s just 160 kilometers of coastline.
Sewage outfalls are common in all water bodies across the U.S., and discharges of raw sewage are far more common than most people realize; because most sewer systems are “combined” (meaning they also take in surface water from streets), and because of population growth and the fact that many sewers are decades and sometimes centuries old, they are very vulnerable to heavy rainstorms. Every week, New York discharges over 2,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of untreated sewage into waters nearby.
And the case of Peru might also give some indication of costs that can be incurred: when Peru had a cholera outbreak in 1991, losses from agricultural revenue and tourism were three times greater than the total money spent on sanitation during the previous decade.
Photo: Rose GeorgeQ: What is the best way to change public perceptions about waste/excrement/(insert preferred euphemism), and why is it important that we do?
A: It will sound simplistic, but what the deeply neglected world of sanitation needs is a champion. I don’t much mind who that is, but it has to be someone with star power who is willing to stand in front of a nice clean school latrine and point out how cool it is and how life-saving (when toilets and sewers were introduced in London in the 19th century, child mortality dropped by a fifth).
But I’d also like people to understand that it’s not just a developing-world issue. It’s not only a poor person’s problem. Public perceptions about sh– tend to veer between toilet humor and embarrassment.
In between those two poles lies a lot of unspoken dissatisfaction. Major western cities like London and New York have a shameful lack of public bathrooms, and city authorities continue to close the ones that do exist. Why are there no protests? The social pact is surely that citizens pay taxes and get essential services in return. Waste disposal is an essential service, and I’m not talking about garbage collection. Get out on the streets and protest!
Q: You mention that the way the benefits of sanitation are calculated is a roadblock to progress; how so?
A: They’re not calculated and that’s the problem. Health economists — particularly Guy Hutton at the World Bank and his colleagues — have figured out that if you invest $1 in sanitation, you save $7 on health care and lost labor costs. That’s a lot of money.
To put it another way, if a minister doesn’t invest $1 in sanitation, he/she will lose $7 in health care and lost labor costs. That, to a minister on a tight budget, seems like even more money.
Now that those calculations have been done, perhaps the messages can be conveyed in a more compelling way. The trouble is that in most countries, responsibility for sanitation is fragmented between various ministries; it’s in health, education, and local government. No one has final responsibility; so no one does the math.
Mumbai, India (Photo: Rose George)
Q: Why, as you write in the book, is a toilet still only a distress purchase in the U.S., while it’s constantly being developed and advanced in a country like Japan?
A: For all sorts of reasons. The Japanese toilet revolution has happened over 60 years and for several reasons. Transforming the toilet into a must-have product appealed to the Japanese love of gadgetry, for a start. Having toilets with inbuilt bidets that can massage you, but are totally hands-off, appeal to the Japanese sense of wabi sabi (i.e. a love of cleanliness and purity), but also enable Japanese to have no contact with their excrement.
Clean, hands-free. It was a winnable concept.
As for why Americans haven’t been convinced yet, it’s because, like most of us with flush toilets, as long as they flush and work, we don’t notice them. Until you use a Japanese robo-toilet, you won’t get it. Perhaps when they make more headway in the U.S., Americans might start to see the light. But they’d have to be cheaper first.
I do think there’s a market in the U.S. for washing rather than wiping: I did a Q&A for Salon recently, and of the 70 or so comments that were left, nearly all were about washing your butt and how much better it was. I was astonished.
Q: Do plungers sell in Japan?
A: I have no idea. I never saw one. I think plungers are a strangely filthy concept. Also, those Japanese toilets are so coated with non-stick chemical stuff, and so beautifully engineered — except the ones that caught fire a year or so ago, but that’s electricity in the vicinity of water for you — that plungers are, I suspect, unemployable.
Q: So is it better to squat or sit?
A: To put it simply, sitting squeezes bits in the body that you don’t want to be squeezed when you’re trying to evacuate stuff. So biologically and ergonomically, squatting is a much more efficient position to use to empty the bowels. But centuries of toilets and chairs have weakened our thigh squatting muscles, and squatting is not easy for elderly or disabled people. So sitting has its place.
Shanti Nagar, Mumbai, India (Photo: Rose George)
Q: In the book, you mention that euphemisms for waste can be destructive. How so?
A: I don’t think euphemisms are destructive, and of course I’m not advocating that people begin to use words they find uncomfortable or upsetting. Euphemisms have their place. But I think when a euphemism gets into the corridors of power that can do something about the parlous state of sanitation in the developed and developing worlds, and the euphemism is being used as a way to avoid the issue, that’s a problem.
If we can’t find forthright ways to talk about this — and if we persist in talking about “water-borne diseases” when we mean sh– -related diseases — then we will continue to be handicapped and we will continue to have a child dying of diarrhea — diarrhea! — every 15 seconds.
Q: Everyone in New York has told me that you can drink New York City tap water straight from the sink. What’s likely in that water? Should I use a filter anyway?
A: I drink tap water on principle. I prefer it filtered, but that’s my preference.
But studies have found trace elements of pharmaceuticals in there, which is unsurprising when you learn — as the Associated Press did in an investigation earlier this year — that many hospitals and clinics simply pour their unused drugs down the toilet or sink. It all ends up in sewers. The trouble with sewers is that anything can go down them and there’s a limit to what can be removed. It’s hard to remove things when you don’t even know what’s in there in the first place.
The pharmaceutical levels are small — you’d have to drink a lot of sewage effluent to get even a pill-full of ibuprofen, probably — but the issue to my mind is how pharmaceuticals combine. They’re prescribed carefully above ground but not once they get to the sewers. I’m not being alarmist — and I drink tap water wherever it’s safe (not in Delhi, India, where I am now) — but I do think questions should be asked.
Q: What could a Hollywood celebrity do for world sanitation?
A: It’s very basic, but sanitation is so neglected that a Hollywood celebrity could move mountains by simply talking about it. They could pose in front of a school latrine, for example, with a young girl who had dropped out of school because she was mortified there were no latrines, and who is now back in school, and whose future is much shinier than it was.
It’s a no-brainer: Good sanitation reduces disease by 40 percent. To be fair, Matt Damon did talk about latrines at the Clinton Global Initiative rally, and that’s great. He already does wonderful stuff with clean water supply.
It’s only logical he should see the link with sanitation. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t even feed a child without good sanitation; you can stuff a child with calories, but if the food or water is infected with fecal bacteria, he’s not going to keep those calories in.
Sanitation is often why you get malnourished children in well-fed families.
Q: Why do people hate biosolids and should they hate them as much as they do?
A: People don’t like biosolids because they believe that they’re not safe; because sewage sludge — to give biosolids their real name — is, after all, the dirt that is removed from sewage, and can contain whatever has been put down the sewer, including strong antibiotics, heavy metals, and all sorts of chemicals.
So there is a growing grassroots movement of activists who strongly object to this stuff being put on fields near their homes. And there is also a growing collection of anecdotal reports — collated, for example, by Ellen Harrison at Cornell — of people who claim they are being made ill by biosolids.
That said, the E.P.A. insists that biosolids are safe as long as regulations are followed, and the people who work in the industry told me they’d happily let their kids roll around in it, they’re that convinced.
It’s not for me to say whether people should or shouldn’t hate them. I think more epidemiological studies should be done, and the two sides should talk more.
The trouble is that if sludge isn’t applied to land, where can it go? It can’t be dumped at sea, as that’s now banned. Landfills are also out. The only other credible option is incineration, which can be expensive and also unpopular with people.
Q: What do you do differently now as far as sanitation/toilet habits? What’s the main behavior you try to promote in others?
A: Ever since a toilet designer told me that wallpaper changes color from all the urine spray flying around from the flush, I always put the toilet seat lid down. I try very hard never to put cooking oil down the sink or drain (I wait for it to dry and put it in the trash or pour it on soil) ever since I saw huge mounds of dried fat blocking a sewer stairwell. I wash my hands more carefully, but not obsessively. Sometimes I don’t flush if it’s just urine; it can wait and it saves water.
I’d encourage people always to wash their hands and to think about how to reduce using water; that’s clean drinking water; it’s precious. For rural people who can bear to think about it and deal with it, I’d suggest thinking about composting toilets. But they aren’t for everybody, and I’m realistic about that.
But really the main behavior I’d like to see is for us to be open about this. It’s a huge problem; it’s not going to go away. Let’s talk about it.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Best Speculative Fiction
"Speculative Fiction" is Harlan Ellison's name for Science Fiction/Fantasy books. I have been a fan of this genre since I was in 6th grade and first picked up the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (my favorte by him is The Iron Ring, btw)
Below is a very personal list, and there are many I should have put on, but in all probability, I haven't read them. These are books I consider not only good writing, but also packed full of ideas and books that I would want to re-read.
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Yes, okay, so this is on EVERYONE'S list now. But from my perspective it became popular-- over a long period of time-- because it was good. It didn't become "good" because it was popular.
Bone by Jeff Smith
This is a graphic novel. A HUGE graphic novel. And it takes in a lot of the complexities of a novel. But it is hilarious and imaginative and sets up some interesting quandries. Once you start, it is almost impossible to stop. This is probably my children's favorite book. (I've certainly read it enough to them)
Dune Quartet (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune) by Frank Herbert
If you are a fan of this series, you know that there are other books in the series, but I did not find them as compelling as these four. Frank Herbert sets up a totally believable political and religious society, making many points about how the enviornment effects headlines. "God, Emperor of Dune" is the pleasant surprise for me. It is less plot oriented, and focuses instead on the sacrifices it takes to create a utopia. Just brilliant.
The Robot Books (The Complete Robot, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, the Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire, Foundation and Earth) by Isaac Asimov
I love these books and have read them more times than I can count. The short stories of "I, Robot" and the other books (containted in "The Complete Robot", which I purchased in India) are each one a gem. R. Daneel is one of the best characters ever-- let alone the best robot. Asimov sets these up as mysteries in a science fiction setting and the mystery is compelling and the detectives are completely logical. But my favorite twist is how he ties together his Foundation Series with his robot series. Just wonderful all the way through.
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
This is my favorite book of all time. It grows out of Card's missionary work in Brazil, and yet ties in beautifully as a continuation to his huge bestseller, "Ender's Game". It discusses cultural differences, family conflict, compassion v. objectivity, and all so much more, placed in a compelling plot. I can't imagine a better combination of ethics, excellent writing and wonderful character development. Just perfect.
The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Paralanda, That Hideous Strength) by C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis was a smart man, and a brilliant writer. But it is in these novels that his full intellectual imagination came out fully. It is in this set (and also The Great Divorce) that we see C.S. Lewis the theologian, not in the many popular orthodox pieces he produced. Every reader of C.S. Lewis should examine these volumes. My praise is especially for the first two, for while the third book has a wonderful climax, getting there is rough going.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This is a collection of short stories around a theme. It has to do with lost innocence and the destruction of purity than about Mars itself. The stories don't actually hold together very well-- there are contradictions. But who cares. The writing and the themes hold all together into a seemeless whole.
The Squire Books (The Squire’s Tale, The Squire, His Knight and His Lady, etc) by Gerald Morris
These are Arthurian re-writes that are published for the middle school set. But they weren't written for them. They are filled with wry humor and theological jokes and romantic farces. My kids love the books, but my wife and I count them as favorites as well. Okay, deep breath: I count these volumes as the best versions of Arthur that I have ever read. Yes, better than Mallory, and better even than T.H. White. Thank you, thank you, thank you Pastor Morris for writing these books!
His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) by Phillip Pullman
The publishers strike again! It is published for children, but I think some of the themes are too much for children to bear-- the continuing betrayal of parents, the sexuality, the theological confusion. And a number of my Christian friends decry the book. But any careful reader would note that Pullman is not speaking of the God of the Bible at all-- rather the "God" as presented by Milton and Blake, a very harsh Calvinistic sort, he is! But this is not speaking of the books themselves. Honestly, they are written unbelievably well, they offer positive critiques of the church. And while I think his view of sexuality is a bit overy optimistic, the adventure and the thinking is well worth the shallow conclusion.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Okay, yes, they're great. Allegory, character, humor, awe-- its all there. Avoid the movies. Spend time with the books.
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Many twists and turns, it opened my mind to a new way of thinking about physics and communication with those completely alien from us.
Startide Rising by David Brin
My wife often speaks of the rush she felt when opening this book and being dropped into a world where nothing made sense, but you had to figure things out. Kinda like being dropped in a foriegn country where you did not understand anything that was going on. If you don't like that idea, then read "Sundiver" first-- then it makes more sense. But whether you do or do not, this book is worth the time and effort. And, although it didn't make my list, "Earth" by the same author gets an honorable mention.
The Newford Books (The Dreaming Place, Memory and Dream, The Onion Girl and many other books) by Charles DeLint
To get started, just pick up one of the short story collections, like Memory and Dream. Or, if you want something light, you can read The Blue Girl. But once you start you will not want to stop. Newford is a compelling mix between the urban and the faery, the gritty and the fantastic. And De Lint is one of the best character writers ever, especially of women. After you are done with one of his novels you really feel you know this person and are sorry for the relationship to end.
The Stand by Stephen King
Mr. King is well known as a horror author, but the Stand is more of a Christian allegory/fantasy. He says that he wanted to write a "Lord of the Rings" in the U.S., and while it's not that, it is close. I'm rereading this book for the fourth time now. It takes its time developing, but you just want to see what will happen next. Every character is precious and is given time to speak. Exciting and wonderful.
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Odd Thomas is probably the most friendly, nicest guys you'd ever want to spend time with. And he just happens to see dead people. He can't touch them, nor even hear them speak, but he can see them. The plots of the (currently) four books are intense, thrilling even, but the reason to read the books is for the main character. He's a good friend of mind now. And I can't wait to meet with him again.
Honorable Mentions:
Lilith by George McDonald
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Earth by David Brin
The Face by Dean Koontz
Below is a very personal list, and there are many I should have put on, but in all probability, I haven't read them. These are books I consider not only good writing, but also packed full of ideas and books that I would want to re-read.
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Yes, okay, so this is on EVERYONE'S list now. But from my perspective it became popular-- over a long period of time-- because it was good. It didn't become "good" because it was popular.
Bone by Jeff Smith
This is a graphic novel. A HUGE graphic novel. And it takes in a lot of the complexities of a novel. But it is hilarious and imaginative and sets up some interesting quandries. Once you start, it is almost impossible to stop. This is probably my children's favorite book. (I've certainly read it enough to them)
Dune Quartet (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune) by Frank Herbert
If you are a fan of this series, you know that there are other books in the series, but I did not find them as compelling as these four. Frank Herbert sets up a totally believable political and religious society, making many points about how the enviornment effects headlines. "God, Emperor of Dune" is the pleasant surprise for me. It is less plot oriented, and focuses instead on the sacrifices it takes to create a utopia. Just brilliant.
The Robot Books (The Complete Robot, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, the Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire, Foundation and Earth) by Isaac Asimov
I love these books and have read them more times than I can count. The short stories of "I, Robot" and the other books (containted in "The Complete Robot", which I purchased in India) are each one a gem. R. Daneel is one of the best characters ever-- let alone the best robot. Asimov sets these up as mysteries in a science fiction setting and the mystery is compelling and the detectives are completely logical. But my favorite twist is how he ties together his Foundation Series with his robot series. Just wonderful all the way through.
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
This is my favorite book of all time. It grows out of Card's missionary work in Brazil, and yet ties in beautifully as a continuation to his huge bestseller, "Ender's Game". It discusses cultural differences, family conflict, compassion v. objectivity, and all so much more, placed in a compelling plot. I can't imagine a better combination of ethics, excellent writing and wonderful character development. Just perfect.
The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Paralanda, That Hideous Strength) by C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis was a smart man, and a brilliant writer. But it is in these novels that his full intellectual imagination came out fully. It is in this set (and also The Great Divorce) that we see C.S. Lewis the theologian, not in the many popular orthodox pieces he produced. Every reader of C.S. Lewis should examine these volumes. My praise is especially for the first two, for while the third book has a wonderful climax, getting there is rough going.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This is a collection of short stories around a theme. It has to do with lost innocence and the destruction of purity than about Mars itself. The stories don't actually hold together very well-- there are contradictions. But who cares. The writing and the themes hold all together into a seemeless whole.
The Squire Books (The Squire’s Tale, The Squire, His Knight and His Lady, etc) by Gerald Morris
These are Arthurian re-writes that are published for the middle school set. But they weren't written for them. They are filled with wry humor and theological jokes and romantic farces. My kids love the books, but my wife and I count them as favorites as well. Okay, deep breath: I count these volumes as the best versions of Arthur that I have ever read. Yes, better than Mallory, and better even than T.H. White. Thank you, thank you, thank you Pastor Morris for writing these books!
His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) by Phillip Pullman
The publishers strike again! It is published for children, but I think some of the themes are too much for children to bear-- the continuing betrayal of parents, the sexuality, the theological confusion. And a number of my Christian friends decry the book. But any careful reader would note that Pullman is not speaking of the God of the Bible at all-- rather the "God" as presented by Milton and Blake, a very harsh Calvinistic sort, he is! But this is not speaking of the books themselves. Honestly, they are written unbelievably well, they offer positive critiques of the church. And while I think his view of sexuality is a bit overy optimistic, the adventure and the thinking is well worth the shallow conclusion.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Okay, yes, they're great. Allegory, character, humor, awe-- its all there. Avoid the movies. Spend time with the books.
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Many twists and turns, it opened my mind to a new way of thinking about physics and communication with those completely alien from us.
Startide Rising by David Brin
My wife often speaks of the rush she felt when opening this book and being dropped into a world where nothing made sense, but you had to figure things out. Kinda like being dropped in a foriegn country where you did not understand anything that was going on. If you don't like that idea, then read "Sundiver" first-- then it makes more sense. But whether you do or do not, this book is worth the time and effort. And, although it didn't make my list, "Earth" by the same author gets an honorable mention.
The Newford Books (The Dreaming Place, Memory and Dream, The Onion Girl and many other books) by Charles DeLint
To get started, just pick up one of the short story collections, like Memory and Dream. Or, if you want something light, you can read The Blue Girl. But once you start you will not want to stop. Newford is a compelling mix between the urban and the faery, the gritty and the fantastic. And De Lint is one of the best character writers ever, especially of women. After you are done with one of his novels you really feel you know this person and are sorry for the relationship to end.
The Stand by Stephen King
Mr. King is well known as a horror author, but the Stand is more of a Christian allegory/fantasy. He says that he wanted to write a "Lord of the Rings" in the U.S., and while it's not that, it is close. I'm rereading this book for the fourth time now. It takes its time developing, but you just want to see what will happen next. Every character is precious and is given time to speak. Exciting and wonderful.
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Odd Thomas is probably the most friendly, nicest guys you'd ever want to spend time with. And he just happens to see dead people. He can't touch them, nor even hear them speak, but he can see them. The plots of the (currently) four books are intense, thrilling even, but the reason to read the books is for the main character. He's a good friend of mind now. And I can't wait to meet with him again.
Honorable Mentions:
Lilith by George McDonald
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Earth by David Brin
The Face by Dean Koontz
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Psychological Experiments in (un)ethical Behavior
5 Psychological Experiments That Expose Humanity's Dark Side
By Alexandra Gedrose
Source: Cracked.com
Psychologists know you have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind because you're never sure what you'll find there. A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions about the subjects.
Oh, we're not talking about the occasional psychopath who turns up. No, we're talking about you. The experiments speak for themselves:
#5. The Asch Conformity Experiment (1953)
The Setup: Solomon Asch wanted to run a series of studies that would document the power of conformity, for the purpose of depressing everyone who would ever read the results.
Subjects were told that they would be taking part in a vision test, along with a handful of people. The participants were then shown pictures, and individually asked to answer very simple and obvious questions. The catch was that everybody else in the room other than the subject was in on it, and they were were told to give obviously wrong answers. So would the subject go against the crowd, even when the crowd was clearly and retardedly wrong?
The Result: Questions the subjects were asked were like the puzzle shown here:
All they had to do was say which line on the right matched the one on the left. As you can see, Asch wasn't exactly asking these people to design the next space station. Really, the only way you could get the line questions honestly wrong is if you took two doses of LSD that morning and rubbed them directly on your eyeballs (which would have made for an even more awesome experiment, but we're getting off the point).
Yet, sadly, 32 percent of subjects would answer incorrectly if they saw that three others in the classroom gave the same wrong answer. Even when the line was plainly off by a few inches, it didn't matter. One in three would follow the group right off the proverbial cliff.
What This Says About You: Imagine how much that 32 percent figure inflates when the answers are less black and white. We all tend to laugh with the group even when we didn't get the joke, or doubt our opinion we realize ours is unpopular among our group. So much for those lectures you got in elementary school about peer pressure and "being brave enough to be yourself."
"Well, it's a good thing I'm a rebellious non-conformist," many of you are saying. Of course, for virtually all of you, the next step is to find out what the other non-conformists are doing ...
... and make sure you conform to it perfectly.
#4. The Good Samaritan Experiment (1973)
The Setup: The Biblical story of the Good Samaritan, if you hadn't heard, is about a passing Samaritan helping an injured man in need, while other, self-righteous types walk right on by. Psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson wanted to test if religion has any effect on helpful behavior.
Their subjects were a group of seminary students. Half of the students were given the story of the Good Samaritan and asked to perform a sermon about it in another building. The other half were told to give a sermon about job opportunities in a seminary.
As an extra twist, subjects were given different times that they had to deliver the sermon so that some would be in a hurry and others not.
Then, on the way to the building, subjects would pass a person slumped in an alleyway, who looked to be in need of help. We like to think Darley and Batson beat the crap out of some random dude to make it more realistic, but sources say otherwise.
The Result: The people who had been studying the Good Samaritan story did not stop any more often than the ones preparing for a speech on job opportunities. The factor that really seemed to make a difference was how much of a hurry the students were in.
In fact, if pressed for time, only 10 percent would stop to give any aid, even when they were on their way to give a sermon about how awesome it is for people to stop and give aid. Though to be fair, if you were late for a class, did your professor ever accept, "I had to stop and help a wounded traveler" as an excuse? Probably not unless you could produce the guy's blood-stained shirt as evidence.
What This Says About You: As much as we like to make fun of, say, anti-gay congressmen who get caught gaying it up in a men's bathroom and pointing out Al Gore's resource-hogging mansion ...
... the truth is us common folk are just as likely to be hypocrites as the politicians. After all, it's much easier to talk to a room full of people about helping strangers than, say, actually touching a smelly and bleeding homeless man. So even pointing out their hypocrisy becomes a form of hypocrisy.
And in case you thought these results were just restricted to hypocritical seminary students, turn on the news. Remember a few years ago when cameras captured at least a dozen cars refusing to stop for an injured woman laying in the road?
Just like the students, they all had to be somewhere. The drivers were presumably proud enough of themselves just for swerving to miss her, rather than squishing her like roadkill.
#3. Bystander Apathy Experiment (1968)
The Setup: When a woman was murdered in 1964, newspapers printed that 38 people had heard and seen the attack, but did nothing. John Darley and Bibb Latane wanted to know if the fact that these people were in a large group played any role in the reluctance to come to aid.
The two psychologists invited volunteers to take part in a discussion. They claimed that because the discussion would be extremely personal (probably asking about the size of their genitals or something) individuals would be separated in different rooms and talk to each other using an intercom.
During the conversation, one of the members would fake an epileptic seizure, which could be heard on the speakers. We're not completely sure how they conveyed over the intercom that what was happening was a seizure, but we're assuming the words "Wow this is quite an epileptic seizure I'm having" were uttered.
The Result: When subjects believed that they were the only other person in the discussion, 85 percent were heroic enough to leave the room and seek help once the other began the fake seizure. This makes sense. Having an extremely personal conversation (again, presumably about tiny genitalia) with another person is difficult enough, but being forced to continue to carry on the conversation by yourself is just sad. But either way, 85 percent helped. So that's good, right?
Well, they weren't done. When the experiment was altered so that subjects believed four other people were in the discussion, only 31 percent went to look for help once the seizure began. The rest assumed someone else would take care of it. So the phrase, "The more, the merrier" somehow got lost in translation because the correct expression should be, "The more, the higher probability that you will die if you have a seizure."
What This Says About You: Obviously if there's an emergency and you're the only one around, the pressure to help out increases massively. You feel 100 percent responsible for what happens. But, when you're with 10 other people, you're only 10 percent as responsible. The problem is everybody else only feels 10 percent responsible too.
This sheds some light on our previous examples. Maybe the drivers who swerved around the injured woman in the road would have stopped if they'd been alone on a deserted highway. Then again, maybe they'd be even more likely to abandon her since they know nobody is watching (unlike the people in the experiment, who at least knew there were others around to judge their actions).
Or maybe it comes down to just how plausible an excuse we can make for ourselves. "Surely someone will come along and save the lady in the road," we say. Or, "Surely someone else will do something about the environment," or "Surely the shark will get full and stop eating that dude at some point." We just need the slightest excuse to do nothing.
#2. The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
The Setup: Psychologist Philip Zimbardo wanted to find out how captivity affects authorities and inmates in prison. Sounds innocent enough. Seriously, what could go wrong?
Zimbardo transformed the Stanford Psychology Department's basement into a mock prison. Subjects volunteered by simply responding to a newspaper ad and then passing a test proving good health and high-quality mental stability, which are very important factors in deciding who goes to prison. These volunteers were all male college students who were then divided arbitrarily into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. Zimbardo himself decided that he wanted to play too, and elected himself Prison Superintendent. The simulation was planned to run for two weeks.
Yep, nothing at all can go wrong with this.
The Result: It took about one day for every subject to suddenly go as insane as a shit-house rat. On only the second day, prisoners staged a riot in the faux detention center, with prisoners barricading their cells with their beds and taunting the guards. The guards saw this as a pretty good excuse to start squirting fire extinguishers at the insurgents because, hey, why the hell not?
From that point on, the Stanford Prison that had already gone to hell, just continued to ricochet around in hell for day after day. Some guards began forcing inmates to sleep naked on the concrete, restricting the bathroom as a privilege (one that was often denied). They forced prisoners to do humiliating exercises and had them clean toilets with their bare hands.
Incredibly, when "prisoners" were told they had a chance at parole, and then the parole was denied, it didn't occur to them to simply ask out of the damned experiment. Remember they had absolutely no legal reason to be imprisoned, it was just a role-playing exercise. This fact continued to escape them as they sat naked in their own filth, with bags on their heads.
Over 50 outsiders had stopped to observe the prison, but the morality of the trial was never questioned until Zimbardo's girlfriend, Christina Maslach, strongly objected. After only six days, Zimbardo put a halt to the experiment (several of the "guards" expressed disappointment at this). If you were about to applaud Maslach as the only sane person involved in this clusterfuck, you should know that she went on to marry Zimbardo, the guy who orchestrated the whole thing.
What This Says About You: Ever been harassed by a cop who acted like a major douchebag, pushing you around for no reason? Science says that if the roles were reversed, you'd likely act the same way.
As it turns out, it's usually fear of repercussion that keeps us from torturing our fellow human beings. Give us absolute power over somebody and a blank check from our superiors, and Abu Ghraib-esque naked pyramids are sure to follow. Hey, if it can happen to a bunch of Vietnam-era hippie college students, it sure as hell could happen to you.
#1. The Milgram Experiment (1961)
The Setup: When the prosecution of the Nazis got underway at the Nuremberg Trials, many of the defendants' excuse seemed to revolve around the ideas of, "I'm not really a prick" and, "Hey man, I was just following orders." Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to test willingness of subjects to obey an authority figure. Maybe he could just, you know, ask people? Oh, hell no. That would not be nearly horrifying enough.
Instead he ran an experiment where the subject was told he was a "teacher" and that his job was to give a memory test to another subject, located in another room. The whole thing was fake and the other subject was an actor.
The subject was told that whenever the other guy gave an incorrect answer, he was to press a button that would give him an electric shock. A guy in a lab coat was there to make sure he did it (again no real shock was being delivered, but the subject of course did not know this).
The subject was told that the shocks started at 45 volts and would increase with every wrong answer. Each time they pushed the button, the actor on the other end would scream and beg for the subject to stop.
So, can you guess how this went?
The Result: Many subjects began to feel uncomfortable after a certain point, and questioned continuing the experiment. However, each time the guy in the lab coat encouraged them to continue. Most of them did, upping the voltage, delivering shock after shock while the victim screamed. Many subjects would laugh nervously, because laughter is the best medicine when pumping electrical currents through another person's body.
Eventually the actor would start banging on the wall that separated him from the subject, pleading about his heart condition. After further shocks, all sounds from victim's room would cease, indicating he was dead or unconscious. If you had to guess, what percentage of the subjects kept delivering shocks after that point?
Five percent? Ten?
Between 61 and 66 percent of subjects would continue the experiment until it reached the maximum voltage of 450, continuing to deliver shocks after the victim had been zapped into unconsciousness or the afterlife. Repeated studies have shown the same result: Subjects will mindlessly deliver pain to an innocent stranger as long as a dude in a lab coat says it's OK.
Most subjects wouldn't begin to object until after 300-volt shocks. Zero of them asked to stop the experiment before that point (keep in mind 100 volts is enough to kill a man, in some cases).
What This Says About You: You might like to think of yourself as a free-thinking marauder, but when it comes down to it, odds are you won't stick it to The Man because of the fear The Man will stick it right back up your ass. And this was just a guy in a lab coat--imagine if he'd had a uniform, or a badge.
Charles Sheridan and Richard King took this experiment one step further, but asked subjects to shock a puppy for every incorrect action it made. Unlike Milgram's experiment, this shock was real. Exactly 20 out of 26 subjects went to the highest voltage.
Almost 80 percent. Think about that when you're walking around the mall: Eight out of ten of those people you see would torture the shit out of a puppy if a dude in a lab coat asked them to.
By Alexandra Gedrose
Source: Cracked.com
Psychologists know you have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind because you're never sure what you'll find there. A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions about the subjects.
Oh, we're not talking about the occasional psychopath who turns up. No, we're talking about you. The experiments speak for themselves:
#5. The Asch Conformity Experiment (1953)
The Setup: Solomon Asch wanted to run a series of studies that would document the power of conformity, for the purpose of depressing everyone who would ever read the results.
Subjects were told that they would be taking part in a vision test, along with a handful of people. The participants were then shown pictures, and individually asked to answer very simple and obvious questions. The catch was that everybody else in the room other than the subject was in on it, and they were were told to give obviously wrong answers. So would the subject go against the crowd, even when the crowd was clearly and retardedly wrong?
The Result: Questions the subjects were asked were like the puzzle shown here:
All they had to do was say which line on the right matched the one on the left. As you can see, Asch wasn't exactly asking these people to design the next space station. Really, the only way you could get the line questions honestly wrong is if you took two doses of LSD that morning and rubbed them directly on your eyeballs (which would have made for an even more awesome experiment, but we're getting off the point).
Yet, sadly, 32 percent of subjects would answer incorrectly if they saw that three others in the classroom gave the same wrong answer. Even when the line was plainly off by a few inches, it didn't matter. One in three would follow the group right off the proverbial cliff.
What This Says About You: Imagine how much that 32 percent figure inflates when the answers are less black and white. We all tend to laugh with the group even when we didn't get the joke, or doubt our opinion we realize ours is unpopular among our group. So much for those lectures you got in elementary school about peer pressure and "being brave enough to be yourself."
"Well, it's a good thing I'm a rebellious non-conformist," many of you are saying. Of course, for virtually all of you, the next step is to find out what the other non-conformists are doing ...
... and make sure you conform to it perfectly.
#4. The Good Samaritan Experiment (1973)
The Setup: The Biblical story of the Good Samaritan, if you hadn't heard, is about a passing Samaritan helping an injured man in need, while other, self-righteous types walk right on by. Psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson wanted to test if religion has any effect on helpful behavior.
Their subjects were a group of seminary students. Half of the students were given the story of the Good Samaritan and asked to perform a sermon about it in another building. The other half were told to give a sermon about job opportunities in a seminary.
As an extra twist, subjects were given different times that they had to deliver the sermon so that some would be in a hurry and others not.
Then, on the way to the building, subjects would pass a person slumped in an alleyway, who looked to be in need of help. We like to think Darley and Batson beat the crap out of some random dude to make it more realistic, but sources say otherwise.
The Result: The people who had been studying the Good Samaritan story did not stop any more often than the ones preparing for a speech on job opportunities. The factor that really seemed to make a difference was how much of a hurry the students were in.
In fact, if pressed for time, only 10 percent would stop to give any aid, even when they were on their way to give a sermon about how awesome it is for people to stop and give aid. Though to be fair, if you were late for a class, did your professor ever accept, "I had to stop and help a wounded traveler" as an excuse? Probably not unless you could produce the guy's blood-stained shirt as evidence.
What This Says About You: As much as we like to make fun of, say, anti-gay congressmen who get caught gaying it up in a men's bathroom and pointing out Al Gore's resource-hogging mansion ...
... the truth is us common folk are just as likely to be hypocrites as the politicians. After all, it's much easier to talk to a room full of people about helping strangers than, say, actually touching a smelly and bleeding homeless man. So even pointing out their hypocrisy becomes a form of hypocrisy.
And in case you thought these results were just restricted to hypocritical seminary students, turn on the news. Remember a few years ago when cameras captured at least a dozen cars refusing to stop for an injured woman laying in the road?
Just like the students, they all had to be somewhere. The drivers were presumably proud enough of themselves just for swerving to miss her, rather than squishing her like roadkill.
#3. Bystander Apathy Experiment (1968)
The Setup: When a woman was murdered in 1964, newspapers printed that 38 people had heard and seen the attack, but did nothing. John Darley and Bibb Latane wanted to know if the fact that these people were in a large group played any role in the reluctance to come to aid.
The two psychologists invited volunteers to take part in a discussion. They claimed that because the discussion would be extremely personal (probably asking about the size of their genitals or something) individuals would be separated in different rooms and talk to each other using an intercom.
During the conversation, one of the members would fake an epileptic seizure, which could be heard on the speakers. We're not completely sure how they conveyed over the intercom that what was happening was a seizure, but we're assuming the words "Wow this is quite an epileptic seizure I'm having" were uttered.
The Result: When subjects believed that they were the only other person in the discussion, 85 percent were heroic enough to leave the room and seek help once the other began the fake seizure. This makes sense. Having an extremely personal conversation (again, presumably about tiny genitalia) with another person is difficult enough, but being forced to continue to carry on the conversation by yourself is just sad. But either way, 85 percent helped. So that's good, right?
Well, they weren't done. When the experiment was altered so that subjects believed four other people were in the discussion, only 31 percent went to look for help once the seizure began. The rest assumed someone else would take care of it. So the phrase, "The more, the merrier" somehow got lost in translation because the correct expression should be, "The more, the higher probability that you will die if you have a seizure."
What This Says About You: Obviously if there's an emergency and you're the only one around, the pressure to help out increases massively. You feel 100 percent responsible for what happens. But, when you're with 10 other people, you're only 10 percent as responsible. The problem is everybody else only feels 10 percent responsible too.
This sheds some light on our previous examples. Maybe the drivers who swerved around the injured woman in the road would have stopped if they'd been alone on a deserted highway. Then again, maybe they'd be even more likely to abandon her since they know nobody is watching (unlike the people in the experiment, who at least knew there were others around to judge their actions).
Or maybe it comes down to just how plausible an excuse we can make for ourselves. "Surely someone will come along and save the lady in the road," we say. Or, "Surely someone else will do something about the environment," or "Surely the shark will get full and stop eating that dude at some point." We just need the slightest excuse to do nothing.
#2. The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
The Setup: Psychologist Philip Zimbardo wanted to find out how captivity affects authorities and inmates in prison. Sounds innocent enough. Seriously, what could go wrong?
Zimbardo transformed the Stanford Psychology Department's basement into a mock prison. Subjects volunteered by simply responding to a newspaper ad and then passing a test proving good health and high-quality mental stability, which are very important factors in deciding who goes to prison. These volunteers were all male college students who were then divided arbitrarily into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. Zimbardo himself decided that he wanted to play too, and elected himself Prison Superintendent. The simulation was planned to run for two weeks.
Yep, nothing at all can go wrong with this.
The Result: It took about one day for every subject to suddenly go as insane as a shit-house rat. On only the second day, prisoners staged a riot in the faux detention center, with prisoners barricading their cells with their beds and taunting the guards. The guards saw this as a pretty good excuse to start squirting fire extinguishers at the insurgents because, hey, why the hell not?
From that point on, the Stanford Prison that had already gone to hell, just continued to ricochet around in hell for day after day. Some guards began forcing inmates to sleep naked on the concrete, restricting the bathroom as a privilege (one that was often denied). They forced prisoners to do humiliating exercises and had them clean toilets with their bare hands.
Incredibly, when "prisoners" were told they had a chance at parole, and then the parole was denied, it didn't occur to them to simply ask out of the damned experiment. Remember they had absolutely no legal reason to be imprisoned, it was just a role-playing exercise. This fact continued to escape them as they sat naked in their own filth, with bags on their heads.
Over 50 outsiders had stopped to observe the prison, but the morality of the trial was never questioned until Zimbardo's girlfriend, Christina Maslach, strongly objected. After only six days, Zimbardo put a halt to the experiment (several of the "guards" expressed disappointment at this). If you were about to applaud Maslach as the only sane person involved in this clusterfuck, you should know that she went on to marry Zimbardo, the guy who orchestrated the whole thing.
What This Says About You: Ever been harassed by a cop who acted like a major douchebag, pushing you around for no reason? Science says that if the roles were reversed, you'd likely act the same way.
As it turns out, it's usually fear of repercussion that keeps us from torturing our fellow human beings. Give us absolute power over somebody and a blank check from our superiors, and Abu Ghraib-esque naked pyramids are sure to follow. Hey, if it can happen to a bunch of Vietnam-era hippie college students, it sure as hell could happen to you.
#1. The Milgram Experiment (1961)
The Setup: When the prosecution of the Nazis got underway at the Nuremberg Trials, many of the defendants' excuse seemed to revolve around the ideas of, "I'm not really a prick" and, "Hey man, I was just following orders." Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to test willingness of subjects to obey an authority figure. Maybe he could just, you know, ask people? Oh, hell no. That would not be nearly horrifying enough.
Instead he ran an experiment where the subject was told he was a "teacher" and that his job was to give a memory test to another subject, located in another room. The whole thing was fake and the other subject was an actor.
The subject was told that whenever the other guy gave an incorrect answer, he was to press a button that would give him an electric shock. A guy in a lab coat was there to make sure he did it (again no real shock was being delivered, but the subject of course did not know this).
The subject was told that the shocks started at 45 volts and would increase with every wrong answer. Each time they pushed the button, the actor on the other end would scream and beg for the subject to stop.
So, can you guess how this went?
The Result: Many subjects began to feel uncomfortable after a certain point, and questioned continuing the experiment. However, each time the guy in the lab coat encouraged them to continue. Most of them did, upping the voltage, delivering shock after shock while the victim screamed. Many subjects would laugh nervously, because laughter is the best medicine when pumping electrical currents through another person's body.
Eventually the actor would start banging on the wall that separated him from the subject, pleading about his heart condition. After further shocks, all sounds from victim's room would cease, indicating he was dead or unconscious. If you had to guess, what percentage of the subjects kept delivering shocks after that point?
Five percent? Ten?
Between 61 and 66 percent of subjects would continue the experiment until it reached the maximum voltage of 450, continuing to deliver shocks after the victim had been zapped into unconsciousness or the afterlife. Repeated studies have shown the same result: Subjects will mindlessly deliver pain to an innocent stranger as long as a dude in a lab coat says it's OK.
Most subjects wouldn't begin to object until after 300-volt shocks. Zero of them asked to stop the experiment before that point (keep in mind 100 volts is enough to kill a man, in some cases).
What This Says About You: You might like to think of yourself as a free-thinking marauder, but when it comes down to it, odds are you won't stick it to The Man because of the fear The Man will stick it right back up your ass. And this was just a guy in a lab coat--imagine if he'd had a uniform, or a badge.
Charles Sheridan and Richard King took this experiment one step further, but asked subjects to shock a puppy for every incorrect action it made. Unlike Milgram's experiment, this shock was real. Exactly 20 out of 26 subjects went to the highest voltage.
Almost 80 percent. Think about that when you're walking around the mall: Eight out of ten of those people you see would torture the shit out of a puppy if a dude in a lab coat asked them to.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
10 Flu Facts
From Mental Floss:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20154
by Stacy Conradt - November 12, 2008 - 3:46 PM
1. The flu vaccine can’t give you the flu. The vaccines only contain a dead piece of the flu virus, and a dead virus can’t infect you. There is a nasal vaccine that contains a live virus, but that particular vaccine is designed to seek and destroy the part of the virus that actually makes you sick.
2. You can treat the flu. Within 48 hours of contracting it, a doctor can prescribe antiviral medicine that will help. It’s not going to get rid of it entirely, but it will lessen the time that you’re curled up on the couch, watching bad daytime T.V. and wanting to die.
3. The Spanish Flu is the most well-known pandemic of the flu – it took out anywhere from 40 to 100 million people from 1918 to 1920. It was so severe that it registered a Level 5 on the Pandemic Severity Scale, which is the highest level that exists. The mortality rate was incredibly high – some estimates say up to 20 percent. People that got it and survived, though, include FDR, Walt Disney, Mary Pickford, General Pershing and Woodrow Wilson.
4. Recently (September), Sir Mark Sykes of England was dug up so scientists could study the Spanish Flu virus, hoping to understand more about the current bird flu. Even though Sykes has been six feet under for the past 90 years, the fact that he was buried in a lead coffin makes scientists hope that the virus has been preserved.
5. In the U.S. alone, the flu season results in 36,000-ish deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations. As if those facts weren’t painful enough, the flu costs Americans a collective $10 billion annually.
6. While we have the Freshman 15, the Brits have Freshers Flu. Up to 90 percent of people during their first few weeks at college end up getting sick, and whether it’s actually the flu or not (it’s usually just a cold), the nickname has a nice ring to it.
7. People who say they have the “stomach flu” probably don’t really have the flu. It’s just a nickname that came about because you feel crappy in similar ways to the real flu. But, WebMD says, if you don’t have fever or body ache, you likely don’t have the flu – just a gastrointestinal virus of some sort.
8. This one is Snopes-verified – Donald Rumsfeld owns stock in Gilead Sciences, the company that makes Tamiflu. Tamiflu, for those that don’t know (I didn’t), is a drug that can reduce the severity of the flu. It’s one of those drugs I mentioned up in #2. Some people think this is a big conspiracy theory – that the avian flu and other strains have become a huge deal in recent years because the government, including Rumsfeld, wanted to make a tidy profit from his stocks. Seems a little farfetched to me, but… who knows?
9. The flu has been around for a loooong time – Hippocrates wrote of an illness with a description closely matching today’s modern flu symptoms.
10. The most recent flu pandemic was the Hong Kong Flu in 1968-69, which registered as a Level 2 on the Pandemic Severity Index. About 500,000 people were infected in Hong Kong, about 50 million were infect in the U.S. Around 34,000 of those 50 million died.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20154
by Stacy Conradt - November 12, 2008 - 3:46 PM
1. The flu vaccine can’t give you the flu. The vaccines only contain a dead piece of the flu virus, and a dead virus can’t infect you. There is a nasal vaccine that contains a live virus, but that particular vaccine is designed to seek and destroy the part of the virus that actually makes you sick.
2. You can treat the flu. Within 48 hours of contracting it, a doctor can prescribe antiviral medicine that will help. It’s not going to get rid of it entirely, but it will lessen the time that you’re curled up on the couch, watching bad daytime T.V. and wanting to die.
3. The Spanish Flu is the most well-known pandemic of the flu – it took out anywhere from 40 to 100 million people from 1918 to 1920. It was so severe that it registered a Level 5 on the Pandemic Severity Scale, which is the highest level that exists. The mortality rate was incredibly high – some estimates say up to 20 percent. People that got it and survived, though, include FDR, Walt Disney, Mary Pickford, General Pershing and Woodrow Wilson.
4. Recently (September), Sir Mark Sykes of England was dug up so scientists could study the Spanish Flu virus, hoping to understand more about the current bird flu. Even though Sykes has been six feet under for the past 90 years, the fact that he was buried in a lead coffin makes scientists hope that the virus has been preserved.
5. In the U.S. alone, the flu season results in 36,000-ish deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations. As if those facts weren’t painful enough, the flu costs Americans a collective $10 billion annually.
6. While we have the Freshman 15, the Brits have Freshers Flu. Up to 90 percent of people during their first few weeks at college end up getting sick, and whether it’s actually the flu or not (it’s usually just a cold), the nickname has a nice ring to it.
7. People who say they have the “stomach flu” probably don’t really have the flu. It’s just a nickname that came about because you feel crappy in similar ways to the real flu. But, WebMD says, if you don’t have fever or body ache, you likely don’t have the flu – just a gastrointestinal virus of some sort.
8. This one is Snopes-verified – Donald Rumsfeld owns stock in Gilead Sciences, the company that makes Tamiflu. Tamiflu, for those that don’t know (I didn’t), is a drug that can reduce the severity of the flu. It’s one of those drugs I mentioned up in #2. Some people think this is a big conspiracy theory – that the avian flu and other strains have become a huge deal in recent years because the government, including Rumsfeld, wanted to make a tidy profit from his stocks. Seems a little farfetched to me, but… who knows?
9. The flu has been around for a loooong time – Hippocrates wrote of an illness with a description closely matching today’s modern flu symptoms.
10. The most recent flu pandemic was the Hong Kong Flu in 1968-69, which registered as a Level 2 on the Pandemic Severity Index. About 500,000 people were infected in Hong Kong, about 50 million were infect in the U.S. Around 34,000 of those 50 million died.
Monday, November 3, 2008
You Are Here
The only photo of Earth taken from outside our solar system. It gives us an idea of just how puny we are in the sight of the entire universe. And the universe is small compared to God. "What is man that Thou does take thought of him?" Psalm 8
Fairy Tale Endings-- Not What You Think
8 Fairy Tales And Their Not-So-Happy Endings
by Stacy Conradt for Mental Floss - December 14, 2007 - 4:10 PM
You might have noticed from an earlier post that I’m a bit of a Disney buff. This is kind of out of character for me, to be honest, because I’m not a huge fan of happily ever after. I like movie endings that are unexpected. After doing a little research, though, I realized that maybe fairy tales and I are a perfect match: those Disney endings where the prince and the princess end up blissfully married don’t really happen in the original stories. To make sure kids go home happy, not horrified, Disney usually has to alter the endings. Read on for the original endings to a couple of Disney classics (and some more obscure tales).
1. Cinderella
Don’t break out your violins for this gal just yet. All that cruelty poor Cinderella endured at the hands of her overbearing stepmother might have been well deserved. In the oldest versions of the story, the slightly more sinister Cinderella actually kills her first stepmother so her father will marry the housekeeper instead. Guess she wasn’t banking on the housekeeper’s six daughters moving in or that never-ending chore list.
2. Sleeping Beauty
In the original version of the tale, it’s not the kiss of a handsome prince that wakes Sleeping Beauty, but the nudging of her newborn twins. That’s right. While unconscious, the princess is impregnated by a monarch and wakes up to find out she’s a mom twice over. Then, in true Ricki Lake form, Sleeping Beauty’s “baby’s daddy” triumphantly returns and promises to send for her and the kids later, conveniently forgetting to mention that he’s married. When the trio is eventually brought to the palace, his wife tries to kill them all, but is thwarted by the king. In the end, Sleeping Beauty gets to marry the guy who violated her, and they all live happily ever after.
3. Snow White
At the end of the original German version penned by the brothers Grimm, the wicked queen is fatally punished for trying to kill Snow White. It’s the method she is punished by that is so strange – she is made to dance wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes until she falls over dead.
4. The Little Mermaid
You’re likely familiar with the Disney version of the Little Mermaid story, in which Ariel and her sassy crab friend, Sebastian, overcome the wicked sea witch, and Ariel swims off to marry the man of her dreams. In Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale, however, the title character can only come on land to be with the handsome prince if she drinks a potion that makes it feel like she is walking on knives at all times. She does, and you would expect her selfless act to end with the two of them getting married. Nope. The prince marries a different woman, and the Little Mermaid throws herself into the sea, where her body dissolves into seam foam.
Now here are four more fairy tales you might not be familiar with, but you might have trouble forgetting.
1. The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter
What It’s Like: Cinderella, with an incestuous twistThe King’s wife dies and he swears he will never marry again unless he finds a woman who fits perfectly into his dead Queen’s clothes. Guess what? His daughter does! So he insists on marrying her. Ew. Understandably, she has a problem with this and tries to figure out how to avoid wedding dear old dad. She says she won’t marry him until she gets a trunk that locks from outside and inside and can travel over land and sea. He gets it, but she says she has to make sure the chest works. To prove it, he locks her inside and floats her in the sea. Her plan works: she just keeps floating until she reaches another shore. So she escapes marrying her dad, but ends up working as a scullery maid in another land… from here you can follow the Cinderella story. She meets a prince, leaves her shoe behind, he goes around trying to see who it belongs to. The End.
2. The Lost Childen
What It’s Like: Hansel & Gretel meets Saw 2This French fairy tale starts out just like Hansel & Gretel. A brother and sister get lost in the woods and find themselves trapped in cages, getting plumped up to be eaten. Only it’s not a wicked witch, it’s the Devil and his wife. The Devil makes a sawhorse for the little boy to bleed to death on (seriously!) and then goes for a walk, telling the girl to get her brother situated on the sawhorse before he returned. The siblings pretend to be confused and ask the Devil’s wife to demonstrate how the boy should lay on the sawhorse; when she shows them they tie her to it and slit her throat. They steal all of the Devil’s money and escape in his carriage. He chases after them once he discovers what they’ve done, but he dies in the process. Yikes.
3. The Juniper Tree
What It’s Like: Every stepchild’s worst nightmareCannibalism, murder, decapitation… freakiness abounds left and right in this weird Grimm story. A widower gets remarried, but the second wife loathes the son he had with his first wife because she wants her daughter to inherit the family riches. So she offers the little boy an apple from inside a chest. When he leans over to get it, she slams the lid down on him and chops his head off. Note: if you’re trying to convince your child to eat more fruits and veggies, do not tell them this story. Well, the woman doesn’t want anyone to know that she killed the boy, so she puts his head back on and wraps a handkerchief around his neck to hide the fact that it’s no longer attached. Her daughter ends up knocking his head off and getting blamed for his death. To hide what happened, they chop up the body and make him into pudding, which they feed to his poor father. Eventually the boy is reincarnated as a bird and he drops a stone on his stepmother’s head, which kills her and brings him back to life.
4. Penta of the Chopped-off Hands
What It’s Like: Um…you tell usThese old fairy tales sure do enjoy a healthy dose of incest. In this Italian tale, the king’s wife dies and he falls in love with Penta… his sister. She tries to make him fall out of love with her by chopping off her hands. The king is pretty upset by this; he has her locked in a chest and thrown out to sea. A fisherman tries to save her, but Penta is so beautiful that his jealous wife has her thrown back out to sea. Luckily, Penta is rescued by a king (who isn’t her brother). They get married and have a baby, but the baby is born while the king is away at sea. Penta tries to send the king the good news of the baby, but the jealous fisherman’s wife intercepts the message and changes it to say that Penta gave birth to a puppy. A puppy?! The evil wife then constructs another fake message, this time from the king to his servants, and says that Penta and her baby should be burned alive. OK, long story short: the king figures out what the jealous wife is up to and has her burned. Penta and the king live happily ever after. I can’t really figure out what the moral of this tale is. Chopping hands off? Giving birth to a dog? I just don’t get it. Help me out here, people.
by Stacy Conradt for Mental Floss - December 14, 2007 - 4:10 PM
You might have noticed from an earlier post that I’m a bit of a Disney buff. This is kind of out of character for me, to be honest, because I’m not a huge fan of happily ever after. I like movie endings that are unexpected. After doing a little research, though, I realized that maybe fairy tales and I are a perfect match: those Disney endings where the prince and the princess end up blissfully married don’t really happen in the original stories. To make sure kids go home happy, not horrified, Disney usually has to alter the endings. Read on for the original endings to a couple of Disney classics (and some more obscure tales).
1. Cinderella
Don’t break out your violins for this gal just yet. All that cruelty poor Cinderella endured at the hands of her overbearing stepmother might have been well deserved. In the oldest versions of the story, the slightly more sinister Cinderella actually kills her first stepmother so her father will marry the housekeeper instead. Guess she wasn’t banking on the housekeeper’s six daughters moving in or that never-ending chore list.
2. Sleeping Beauty
In the original version of the tale, it’s not the kiss of a handsome prince that wakes Sleeping Beauty, but the nudging of her newborn twins. That’s right. While unconscious, the princess is impregnated by a monarch and wakes up to find out she’s a mom twice over. Then, in true Ricki Lake form, Sleeping Beauty’s “baby’s daddy” triumphantly returns and promises to send for her and the kids later, conveniently forgetting to mention that he’s married. When the trio is eventually brought to the palace, his wife tries to kill them all, but is thwarted by the king. In the end, Sleeping Beauty gets to marry the guy who violated her, and they all live happily ever after.
3. Snow White
At the end of the original German version penned by the brothers Grimm, the wicked queen is fatally punished for trying to kill Snow White. It’s the method she is punished by that is so strange – she is made to dance wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes until she falls over dead.
4. The Little Mermaid
You’re likely familiar with the Disney version of the Little Mermaid story, in which Ariel and her sassy crab friend, Sebastian, overcome the wicked sea witch, and Ariel swims off to marry the man of her dreams. In Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale, however, the title character can only come on land to be with the handsome prince if she drinks a potion that makes it feel like she is walking on knives at all times. She does, and you would expect her selfless act to end with the two of them getting married. Nope. The prince marries a different woman, and the Little Mermaid throws herself into the sea, where her body dissolves into seam foam.
Now here are four more fairy tales you might not be familiar with, but you might have trouble forgetting.
1. The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter
What It’s Like: Cinderella, with an incestuous twistThe King’s wife dies and he swears he will never marry again unless he finds a woman who fits perfectly into his dead Queen’s clothes. Guess what? His daughter does! So he insists on marrying her. Ew. Understandably, she has a problem with this and tries to figure out how to avoid wedding dear old dad. She says she won’t marry him until she gets a trunk that locks from outside and inside and can travel over land and sea. He gets it, but she says she has to make sure the chest works. To prove it, he locks her inside and floats her in the sea. Her plan works: she just keeps floating until she reaches another shore. So she escapes marrying her dad, but ends up working as a scullery maid in another land… from here you can follow the Cinderella story. She meets a prince, leaves her shoe behind, he goes around trying to see who it belongs to. The End.
2. The Lost Childen
What It’s Like: Hansel & Gretel meets Saw 2This French fairy tale starts out just like Hansel & Gretel. A brother and sister get lost in the woods and find themselves trapped in cages, getting plumped up to be eaten. Only it’s not a wicked witch, it’s the Devil and his wife. The Devil makes a sawhorse for the little boy to bleed to death on (seriously!) and then goes for a walk, telling the girl to get her brother situated on the sawhorse before he returned. The siblings pretend to be confused and ask the Devil’s wife to demonstrate how the boy should lay on the sawhorse; when she shows them they tie her to it and slit her throat. They steal all of the Devil’s money and escape in his carriage. He chases after them once he discovers what they’ve done, but he dies in the process. Yikes.
3. The Juniper Tree
What It’s Like: Every stepchild’s worst nightmareCannibalism, murder, decapitation… freakiness abounds left and right in this weird Grimm story. A widower gets remarried, but the second wife loathes the son he had with his first wife because she wants her daughter to inherit the family riches. So she offers the little boy an apple from inside a chest. When he leans over to get it, she slams the lid down on him and chops his head off. Note: if you’re trying to convince your child to eat more fruits and veggies, do not tell them this story. Well, the woman doesn’t want anyone to know that she killed the boy, so she puts his head back on and wraps a handkerchief around his neck to hide the fact that it’s no longer attached. Her daughter ends up knocking his head off and getting blamed for his death. To hide what happened, they chop up the body and make him into pudding, which they feed to his poor father. Eventually the boy is reincarnated as a bird and he drops a stone on his stepmother’s head, which kills her and brings him back to life.
4. Penta of the Chopped-off Hands
What It’s Like: Um…you tell usThese old fairy tales sure do enjoy a healthy dose of incest. In this Italian tale, the king’s wife dies and he falls in love with Penta… his sister. She tries to make him fall out of love with her by chopping off her hands. The king is pretty upset by this; he has her locked in a chest and thrown out to sea. A fisherman tries to save her, but Penta is so beautiful that his jealous wife has her thrown back out to sea. Luckily, Penta is rescued by a king (who isn’t her brother). They get married and have a baby, but the baby is born while the king is away at sea. Penta tries to send the king the good news of the baby, but the jealous fisherman’s wife intercepts the message and changes it to say that Penta gave birth to a puppy. A puppy?! The evil wife then constructs another fake message, this time from the king to his servants, and says that Penta and her baby should be burned alive. OK, long story short: the king figures out what the jealous wife is up to and has her burned. Penta and the king live happily ever after. I can’t really figure out what the moral of this tale is. Chopping hands off? Giving birth to a dog? I just don’t get it. Help me out here, people.
Cool Thinking Game
My children tortured me until I was forced to play this new game, Splitter.
Turned out, it was fun! There's the cutting of wood involved, rolling smilies and pendulums of doom!
Check it out:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/EvgenyKarataev/splitter
Turned out, it was fun! There's the cutting of wood involved, rolling smilies and pendulums of doom!
Check it out:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/EvgenyKarataev/splitter
Things Aren't Always What They Seem
Check out these optical illusion sites:
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/illusion/illusions.htm
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/index.html
The Virtual Wife Nagging Diet
From Freakonomics:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/the-virtual-nagging-wife-diet/
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/the-virtual-nagging-wife-diet/
Red and Blue for Everyone!
This is a video which gives the support of the electoral college for their candidates.
http://americanpast.richmond.edu/voting/statelevel.html
http://americanpast.richmond.edu/voting/statelevel.html
Sunday, November 2, 2008
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