by Marc Aronson
Let’s say that type AB-negative blood is found at a crime scene. Since less than one percent of all people have that kind of blood, matching it to a particular criminal would make a strong case for that person being guilty. But if the blood was O-positive, which more than one-third of all people have, it means that the chances are pretty high it could have come from a lot of different people. That’s where DNA testing comes in.
DNA TESTING
DNA IS THE BASIC INSTRUCTION GUIDE FOR HOW YOUR BODY GROWS, and how you become you. All humans share similar DNA as part of our species, but one-tenth of one percent of your DNA is yours and yours alone (unless you’re an identical twin). It is this small amount of DNA that is used to match criminals with crimes, missing kids with their parents, and determine the identity and the relatives of people who died long ago.
DNA can be taken from nearly any part of a person, including bone, hair, fingernails, teeth, blood, and saliva. When investigators arrive at a crime scene, they look for anything from which they can get DNA: a piece of gum, a half-eaten piece of pizza, the sweatband from a baseball cap, the inside of a mask. Blood is obviously one of the most common as it is often found on weapons or broken glass.
Then the DNA is tested in order to determine what makes up that tiny percentage that is unique to individual people. Once detectives have a list of these unique DNA components, they can compare them against suspects who have had their DNA tested. If a match is found, then it is pretty certain that this is the person they are looking for. The one problem with this is that if there are no suspects, investigators have no one and nothing to compare their DNA samples against.
HOW TO GET OUT OF QUICKSAND
QUICKSAND IS THAT spooky stuff that seems to grab movie bad guys and suck them down to watery graves. It’s not as bad as all that, but it is real. Quicksand is usually found near bodies of water, like lakes and marshes. It is a thick mixture of sand and water: Think of it like a sand milk shake. The thing to know about quicksand is that because it is part sand and water, it’s very dense and most things will float in it. Including you.
If you find yourself accidentally falling into quicksand—maybe during a safari or secret mission—don’t panic. Most of all, don’t struggle, because flailing around will force your body downward. Simply remain calm, and let the quicksand push your body to the surface. Once you’re basically lying on top of the sand, roll over and over until you reach solid ground. Or gently dog-paddle your way to the edge. That should take care of it, and will get you safely on your way. (You should also know that quicksand is rarely more than a few feet deep.)
WHAT ARE YOU REALLY WORTH?
YOU’RE WORTH A LOT AS A PERSON. Your friends and family probably think you’re priceless. But if you ever have to have any of your parts replaced, that actually costs real money. Here’s what the hospital usually has to pay to get you some new parts, in case the old ones break down.
Interestingly, there is no hospital price for the most important organ in your body, your brain. That’s because brains can’t be transplanted. However, labs and universities pay about $600 for brains to use in research.
Palindromes are words or sentences that read the same way backward and forward. There are some everyday words you probably didn’t know were palindromes: radar, Dad, Mom, ewe, eye, kayak, level, peep, rotator, stats, and wow.
Sentences are harder, but here are some great ones.
A man, a plan, a canal. Panama.
A Santa at NASA.
A Toyota’s a Toyota!
Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.
Madam, I’m Adam.
Never odd or even.
No melon, no lemon.
Now I won!
Sit on a potato pan, Otis.
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
A pangram is a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet. The trick to making a great pangram is to keep the sentence as short as possible. You can even make up your own.
Bright vixens jump; dozy fowl quack.
Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
Heavy boxes perform quick waltzes and jigs.
CODES
THERE IS DANGER MAY COME VERY SOON
HOW DO YOU HIDE SOMETHING in plain sight? By using a code or a cipher.
You can make the simplest forms of code by lining up 26 letters in alphabetical order in one row, then starting a second row beneath it that begins somewhere else in the alphabet (see Fig. 1).
Suppose you want to send the message SEND HELP SOON. To encrypt this message, just take each letter and replace it with the one in the row beneath it. So SEND HELP SOON becomes FRAQ URYC FBBA.
This secret code is called a Caesar cipher, because Julius Caesar had his generals shift their messages back to him by three letters, so A became D. A cipher (like this and the substitution cipher below) is a code in which you scramble the individual letters of each word. There’s one obvious problem with this: There are only 26 possible Caesar ciphers, depending on where in the alphabet you start the second row of the table, so if your enemy knows you are using a Caesar cipher, he can try to decrypt your message using each of the 26 tables in turn. He’ll be able to tell when he gets to the table that you used, because the decrypted message will make sense—decrypting using the wrong table will give gobbledygook.
You get many more possible ciphers if you don’t write the letters of the alphabet in order when you make the second row of the table. You can just write all 26 letters in any mixed-up order you want … and there are 403,291,461,126,605,635,584 ,000,000 ways of doing this! When you scramble letters in this way, you are using a substitution cipher.
Somehow, of course, the friend you are sending your secret message to will have to know which scrambling of the alphabet you are using. You can either agree beforehand on a scrambling, or you can have a trusted messenger take the key to your code to your friend. (Just make sure the messenger isn’t a spy!)
Fig. 1
But there are other forms of codes, too, where you replace entire words with other words. Commanders of submarines and ships used to have large codebooks that would tell them what words should be used to stand for others in coded radio messages. If the codebook said that SEND = HORSE, HELP = CHEESE, and SOON = MOSS, then SEND HELP SOON would turn into HORSE CHEESE MOSS. But again, everyone using the code would have to have the same codebooks with them. During wartime, capturing an enemy’s codebook was one of the best things you could do—which is why naval codebooks were sometimes lined with lead, so that a sailor who was about to be captured could throw his codebook overboard and be sure it would sink to Davy Jones’s locker.
In the story The Valley of Fear, the great (fictional) detective Sherlock Holmes was faced with a problem. An accomplice of the evil Dr. Moriarty, who wanted to betray him and warn Holmes of impending danger, mailed Holmes a coded message. But before he could send a second note explaining how to decode the first note, he was frightened by the sudden appearance of Dr. Moriarty himself. Holmes was left with the problem of decoding the secret message without knowing the key. The message began:
534 C2 13 127 36 31 4 17 21 41
Holmes tried out the idea that 534 might be a page number in a book—thus, a long book. If so, “C2” suggests “second column.” Only a few kinds of books, almanacs, say, come in double columns and are common enough that Holmes would have them. Holmes and his companion Watson searched around, found the right almanac, and counted through the words on the page to find the ones given in the message:”There is danger may come very soon.” And that is the fun part of codes—finding the secret message.
If you want to send a secret message to a friend and you haven’t already agreed on a code or cipher, don’t give up hope! You can always do what some ancient Greeks did: Find a trusted messenger. Shave the hair off his head. Write your message on his scalp. Wait for his hair to grow back. And
then send him off to visit your friend. It’s as easy as that! (But you should warn the messenger with the secret on his scalp to be very careful: Such extremely valorous emissaries need to evade enemy notice!)
♠ ♣ ♦ ♥ CARD TRICK 2 ♠ ♣ ♦ ♥
“THE MATH GENIUS MAGIC TRICK”
YOU LAY OUT ELEVEN CARDS AND ASK A volunteer to move several cards over from the right side to the left side while your back is to the cards (so you can’t see how many are moved). When the moving is done, you turn around, wave your hand over the cards, and pick up one of them. It’s the number of cards that the volunteer moved!
1. Take eleven cards from a regular deck. Take a joker, an ace, and one of all the numbers from 2 to 10.
2. Set up the trick by laying the cards facedown in this order: 6 5 4 3 2 Ace Joker 10 9 8 7.
3. Invite a volunteer to move any number of cards one at a time from right to left. The volunteer should be facing you on the other side of the table.
4. When the volunteer is done, count (to yourself) five cards from the right. With a wave of your hands, turn this card over. It will always be the number of cards moved. If it’s the ace, it’s one. If it’s the joker, that means no cards have been moved at all.
The trick works because of the layout you set up, and because the cards are moved only from the right side to the left. This subtracts them according to the numbers on the cards.
(Try it yourself. Move four cards. Now the order is:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Ace Joker
Count over five cards from the right. Turn it over—it’s the number 4!)
PRESIDENTS
THERE ARE THREE ways to remember the presidents in order. You can work out a little rhyme where each word begins with the appropriate initial, but the ones we’ve seen are as hard to remember as the presidents and they don’t include everyone. Like this:
Washington And Jefferson Made Many A Joke;
Van Buren Had Troubles Pierce Boasted Loud;
Plenty To Find. Johnson Gave Him Good Advice;
Cleveland Hail Cleveland Made Ruler Twice.
Write a memorable rhyme with the initials, in order, of at least 28 presidents in a row and we’ll include it in the next edition.
Or you can try the location game—put the name of each president somewhere where you live—all around your house or apartment. Then try to picture that location in your mind. As you “walk” through the space you will “see” each president and remember the order.
But there is another way, which we’ve tried to help out with here—link each guy to something quirky, interesting, or memorable about him or his time. So instead of your room, you walk through our past. Crossing the bridge from Jackson to Lincoln—Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan—is tricky, because these are mainly guys who didn’t accomplish great things. In fact, Henry Clay, who ran for president five times in this period and kept losing, is more interesting than all of them.
The two most tragic assassinations, Lincoln and Kennedy, both had vice presidents named Johnson. And that’s not the only weird coincidence. Abraham Lincoln was first elected to Congress in 1846, John F. Kennedy in 1946. Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy exactly one hundred years later. Kennedy’s secretary was named Evelyn Lincoln. Both presidents were shot on Fridays.
Remember that Grover Cleveland needs to be named twice, since he was both the 22nd and 24th president.
PRESIDENTS IN ORDER
1) George Washington (1789-1797) Started his military career in a botched mission for England in the Seven Years War, but later showed great leadership in battle and as president.
2) John Adams (1797-1801) Bright New Englander with a prickly personality, got on people’s nerves, but opposed slavery. Father of No. 6.
3) Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) Great writer whose words did much to define American ideals, but had no good answer for how to apply those ideals to the people he owned.
4) James Madison (1809-1817) Genius behind the Constitution, third Virginian president.
5) James Monroe (1817-1825) His “doctrine” warned Europe to leave the nations of the Americas alone.
Fourth out of five first presidents to come from Virginia.
6) John Quincy Adams
(1825-1829) Like his dad, this smart New Englander had good ideas but no pizzazz.
7) Andrew Jackson
(1829—1837) Bold personality, easy to like, if you ignore how he treated Indians.
8) Martin van Buren
(1837-1841) Known as Old Kinderhook after the New York town where he grew up, which some people think is the source of the phrase O.K.
9) William Henry Harrison (1841-1841) Caught a cold while giving the longest inauguration speech ever, and died a month later. He had the shortest term of any president, and began the run of Ohio presidents, though also claimed by Virginia.
10) John Tyler
(1841-1845) He called his Virginia home Sherwood Forest—making him Robin Hood—and he was such a go-it-his-own-way guy that his own political party rejected him. Virginia’s fifth, or sixth—depending on how you count Harrison.
11) James K. Polk
(1845-1849) President during the Mexican War, which added Texas and the Southwest to the United States, but made abolitionists mad, since the war was favored by slave owners.
12) Zachary Taylor
(1849-1850) Known for being a sloppy dresser (useful if your parents keep bugging you about that) but died after being out in a lengthy July 4 celebration. Virginia’s sixth, or seventh.
13) Millard Fillmore
(1850-1853) When he split with his own party, he joined ity, easy to like, if you ignore how he treated Indians. another called the Know-Nothings—whose anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic views were about as dim as the name.
14) Franklin Pierce
(1853-1857) It took the Democratic Party 48 ballots at their convention to settle on him as their candidate—he was a last choice, not a best choice.
15) James Buchanan
(1857-1861) The only president who never married, he was in office as the country slid toward the Civil War.
16) Abraham Lincoln
(1861-1865) He said the Civil War was fought to ensure the future of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” To this day, that defines the best American political principles.
17) Andrew Johnson
(1865—1869) Took over after Lincoln was killed, and was extremely unpopular in the North because he seemed more worried about the rights of Southern whites than their former slaves. (If you want to read more, try Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy.)
18) Ulysses S. Grant
(1869-1877) Great Civil War general but his presidency was marred by corruption scandals. Mark Twain later helped him publish his autobiography. Ohio II.
19) Rutherford B. Hayes
(1877–1881) Made a terrible deal when he agreed to give the South back to enemies of black rights so he would be elected. He may have been the first president to have his voice recorded, but no one can find the actual recording. Ohio III.
20) James A. Garfield
(1881-1881) Shot on July 2, 1881, by a man who was mad that he didn’t get a federal job, he lived on until September 19. Ohio IV. (See a pattern?)
21) Chester A. Arthur
(1881–1885) First of the large presidents who looked like overstuffed seals, still, he proved to be a fair-minded guy.
22) Grover Cleveland
(1885–1889) Standing up to greedy, wealthy men and striking workers made him both popular and unpopular. No surprise that he won, lost, and won presidential elections. (See also No. 24.)
23) Benjamin Harrison
(1889-1893) Grandson of No. 9, he was the first president to have electric lights in the White House, which his wife was too afraid to turn on. He is also the first president whose voice has been preserved in a recording. Ohio V.
24) Grover Cleveland
(1893-1897) Thom
as Edison filmed Cleveland as part of the inauguration ceremony for his successor—making him the first president in a movie. (See also No. 22.)
25) William McKinley
(1897-1901) The Spanish-American War took place in his first term. He was killed by a sick man in his second. Ohio VI.
26) Theodore Roosevelt
(1901-1909) Spanish-American War hero. A human dynamo, he ushered in the Progressive Era by doing everything from creating national parks to shutting down monopolies. Like Jackson, a fascinating guy with terrible prejudices.
