Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (62 page)

The idea of “thinking outside the box” is almost clichéd. But in the case of these medical researchers, it’s absolutely appropriate
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D
O RABBITS REALLY NEED THIS KIND OF HELP?
In November 2009, Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest University’s Institute of Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, announced that his research team had made a medical breakthrough: They successfully grew rabbit penises in their laboratories. Not only that, the scientists implanted the penises onto rabbits that had damaged sexual organs. Result: The rabbits developed erections, and when placed with females…well, they did what rabbits do, and were even able to father baby rabbits. The new technique involves taking specific cells from rabbit penises, spraying them onto a frame made of collagen (the main protein found in animal connective tissue), soaking the structure in growth-inducing hormones, and “growing” the new organ in a special oven. It was, of course, for a very good cause: “One of the major challenges that we find is babies who are born with inadequate organs,” Atala said, “and right now there are not a lot of options.” His work may also lead to growing new organs—of various kinds—for humans in the not-too-distant future.

LET’S GET NAKED!

In 2009 biologists at the University of Rochester in New York announced that they may have solved a longstanding mystery involving a bizarre species of rodent: the naked mole rat. The rats, found in East Africa, have little to no hair, can live as long as 30 years, and—this is the mystery—don’t seem to get cancer. In fact, they’re the only animal known to science that doesn’t. In 2009 the Rochester team announced that they may have figured out why: Naked mole rats have a gene that makes the cells in their bodies “claustrophobic,” meaning that if cells start multiplying uncontrollably—the defining characteristic of cancer—the gene stops the multiplying long before a tumor can form. “It’s very early to speculate about the implications,” say lead researchers Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov, “but if the effect of this gene can be simulated in humans, we might have a way to halt cancer before it starts.”

The engineering division of British Rail received a patent for a flying saucer in 1973. (It doesn’t fly.)

QUICK—WHERE’S THE REMOTE?!

In 2005 Ged Galvin, 55, of Barnsley, England, suffered horrific injuries when a car collided with his motorcycle. One injury affected his ability to use the bathroom: “The doctors did several operations to repair the sphincter in my bottom,” Galvin said, “but they didn’t work. They told me I’d have a colostomy bag for life.” But they were wrong. In 2009 doctors performed a complex procedure: They took a muscle from Galvin’s knee, wrapped it around his sphincter, fitted the muscle with electrodes, and programmed a remote control to contract and expand the muscles. “Now, when I want to go to the loo,” Galvin explains, “I use the remote control. They call me the man with the bionic bottom. My gratitude to the surgeons is endless because what they have done is a miracle.” He also said he’s fine with the fact that the muscles in his bionic bottom will have to be replaced every few years. (No word on whether he ever gets it mixed up with the TV remote.)

PHOTO FAKERY

The Image:
In 2005 a photo of a kidnapped African-American soldier was posted on the Internet. He was sitting in the sand against a wall with his hands behind his back. On the wall behind him is a flag with Arabic writing on it. The barrel of an assault rifle points toward the man’s head from off camera. Underneath the picture is a statement: “Our mujahedeen heroes of Iraq’s Jihadi Battalion were able to capture American military man John Adam after killing a number of his comrades.”

The Truth:
The U.S. military wasn’t missing anyone named “John Adam.” After a few hours of confusion, someone noticed that the “soldier” looked a lot like “Special Ops Cody,” a toy action figure only available at Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores in the Middle East. (Only a few hundred of the African-American version of the dolls were made.) Though the photo didn’t do much to help the Jihadist effort, it did help the toy’s value skyrocket from $39 to several hundred dollars on eBay.

Economic indicators? Studies show that requests for breast implants drop sharply before a recession
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THE ONE MILLION
GUESSES QUIZ, PART II

We’re back…with a few more quiz questions that we’re pretty sure you won’t be able to answer in a million guesses. (For Part I, turn to
page 80
.)

S
TORY:
In March 2009, Julia Grovenburg of Fort Smith, Arkansas, got pregnant. Two and a half weeks later, she got what?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
Pregnant again with a second child. Normally, hormones released after conception and throughout pregnancy stop the release of eggs from the ovaries, preventing a woman from becoming pregnant while she’s already pregnant. However, in what doctors say is an extremely rare phenomenon known as
superfetation
—of which there are only 10 known cases in history—Grovenburg actually conceived a second baby more than two weeks after becoming pregnant the first time. The discovery was made in June, when doctors performing an ultrasound found two fetuses in different stages of development in her womb. (No word yet on the outcome of the pregnancy.)

STORY:
In August 2009, a British dwarf performing at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland had to stop his show mid-act and go to the hospital. What happened?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
His penis became glued to a vacuum cleaner. The festival is known for its odd performances, and Daniel Blackner, also known as “Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf,” has a particularly odd act that he performs with a vacuum cleaner and a…special attachment. But this time the attachment had broken before the show, and he’d used extra-strong glue to fix it. It hadn’t dried by the time he did his act…and it took a trip to the hospital to get the device removed. “It was the most embarrassing moment of my life,” Captain Dan said later.

STORY:
Scientists at the Primate Research Center at Japan’s Kyoto University reported in 2009 that while they were studying macaque monkeys at a shrine in Thailand, they’d seen several females teaching their babies to do what?

Mental health professionals are twice as likely to kill themselves as other people are
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ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
Floss their teeth with human hair. For years, monkeys at the shrine have been known to pull out the hair of visitors, sit down with it, and spend several minutes running a strand of hair through the gaps in their teeth. That’s surprising enough, but the Kyoto researchers followed the activities of seven adult females, all with one-year-old babies, and found that a young monkey would sometimes sit in front of its mother and watch her intently as she flossed. While the baby was watching, the mother would exaggerate her flossing motions, opening her mouth very wide, cleaning the same spot several times with obvious motions, all while looking at the young monkey. They were, the researchers said, teaching the kids how to floss. “These findings suggest,” said lead primatologist Nobuo Masataka, “that education is a very ancient trait in the primate lineage.”

STORY:
Firefighters in St. Petersburg, Florida, received a call in 2009 that a man was bleeding from his face not far from the fire station. Two firemen jumped into their rescue vehicle, hit the lights and sirens, and when the garage door opened, they did what?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
They ran over the guy they were rushing to help. Ted Allen Lenox, a 41-year-old homeless man, was lying on the ground directly in front of the bay doors, police said, and the firefighters couldn’t see him over the hood of their 10-ton rescue vehicle. They stopped when they felt a “bump,” then got out and treated Lenox on the scene and later drove him to the hospital. Lenox, who’d been drinking, eventually recovered from his injuries. One of the firefighters told reporters, “We should have just walked out the door and looked.”

BONUS QUESTION

Q:
What are “Super Lemon Haze,” “Vanilla Kush,” “Triple Zero,” “Grey Area Crystal,” and “Royal Jelly”?

A:
Winning strains of marijuana at the 2009 Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.

Celebriphilia
is an abnormally intense desire to have a romantic relationship with a celebrity
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THE WORLD’S MOST
DANGEROUS BAND

Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne—those “wild children” of rock ’n’ roll are downright tame compared to the craziest musical act we’ve ever heard of. Murder, suicide, and sheep heads are all part of the package with the Norwegian “black metal” band known as…Mayhem
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D
ISILLUSION
In the early 1980s, a radical underground music scene was forming in Europe. As far as these young musicians were concerned, rock was too tame, punk had gone mainstream, and the supposed “Satan-worshipping” heavy-metal acts like Black Sabbath, Dio, and KISS were all faking it. So, with no bands that were “heavy” enough for their taste, these young people made their own music that reflected their bitter attitude toward…well, everything. The two most prominent styles to emerge from the scene came to be known as “death metal” and “black metal.” To the untrained ear, both sound pretty much the same—blisteringly fast tempos; distorted guitars; screeching, unintelligible vocals; morbid lyrics (when you could hear them); and elaborate, gruesome stage acts. But of the two, black metal was the most melodic…and the most blasphemous.

THE GATHERING

One of the pioneering bands of black metal was an Oslo band called Mayhem. Formed in 1984, the original lineup consisted of guitarist/vocalist Øystein Aarseth (also known as “Euronymous”), bassist Jorn Stubberud (“Necrobutcher”), and drummer Kjetil Manheim. After going through a few singers (“Messiah” and “Maniac”), Mayhem was joined by Swedish vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin, who adopted the nickname “Dead.”