The Book of the Year

by No Such Thing As A Fish

  Plans were announced for a tunnel under Stonehenge, to ease traffic gridlock and remove the sight and sound of cars from the site. The tunnel’s intended route had to be altered by 50 metres after archaeologists pointed out that as it was planned, the headlights of cars emerging from it would impede the view of the sun on the winter solstice, thus defeating the object of building the tunnel in the first place.

  TURKEY▶

  Turkey’s president won a vote by offering his people laser hair removal.

  In April, Turkey held a referendum over whether to grant its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, unprecedented new powers. As part of the campaign to persuade people to vote ‘yes’, Erdoğan used his powers under the country’s state of emergency to sign a decree allowing beauticians to carry out laser hair removal. (Previously, only medical staff could carry out the procedure.) He announced the move at a rally called ‘For a beautiful Turkey, of course, yes’. The move was designed to support the industry, create jobs – and win votes. His campaign was criticised by a human rights organisation for lacking the ‘fundamental freedoms’ of democracy, but despite this, Erdoğan won his sweeping new powers with 51.4 per cent of the vote.

  In the lead-up to the referendum, public pressure to vote ‘yes’ and grant Erdoğan his new powers was so great that the word ‘no’ – hayir, in Turkish – became taboo. This meant that, among other things, a group of anti-smoking leaflets was withdrawn by the Ministry of Health because they had the word ‘no’ on them in capital letters, and a TV company refused to screen the Oscar-nominated Chilean film No.* Ordinary Turks even altered their standard greeting ‘have a good Friday’ (hayirli cuma), because the first part of it sounds the same as ‘no’, even though it’s a completely different word.

  Since the attempted coup of 2016, Erdoğan’s regime has sacked and locked up thousands of government employees, banned Wikipedia (see Bans) and jailed over 170 journalists. President Erdoğan helpfully clarified that only two of the detainees had had yellow press cards, and that the rest were terrorists – although he conveniently forgot that critical journalists are often denied press cards in the first place.

  The mayor of Ankara demanded an investigation into an earthquake off the Turkish coast, believing it could have been artificially created by dark foreign powers trying to destroy the Turkish economy.

  TURKMENISTAN▶

  Turkmenistan re-elected a singing dentist.

  President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist, won 98 per cent of the vote in Turkmenistan’s presidential election. The other eight candidates had to share 2 per cent of the electorate between them. He will be pleased – in 2012 he managed only 97 per cent.

  Berdymukhamedov has a unique political style. During the campaign he sang a self-penned song to gas workers, gave desert herdsmen free TVs and consistently suppressed free journalism.

  He’s also a celebrated jockey and, according to state media reports, managed to win Turkmenistan’s national horse race this year. The race was run on Turkmen Horse Day, just before the national horse beauty contest, a tradition that Berdymukhamedov started in 2011. And it’s not the only horse-related award in Turkmenistan this year: a 40-metre-tall monument erected in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat was awarded a world record for largest sculpture of a horse’s head.

  The head was made to celebrate the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, which took place in Ashgabat in September. To celebrate the countdown to the games, Ashgabat went car-free for a day in August. Other than public transport, the only way to get around was by bicycle or on foot, in temperatures of 40°C. Many residents of the capital weren’t happy, but by way of a compromise Berdymukhamedov brought one of the country’s biggest holidays forward, so that most people would get a day off work and could stay home and celebrate National Melon Day.

  Berdymukhamedov made an anti-ISIS propaganda video in August that showed him wearing full combat gear and a pair of sunglasses while throwing knives, firing an automatic rifle and commanding air strikes. The aim was to intimidate terrorists, but it led to ridicule from his own people, who nicknamed him ‘The Turkmenator’.

  TWEETS▶

  Two impassioned sentiments smashed Twitter records this year.

  New record for most ‘liked’ Tweet:

  ‘No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion …’

  —Barack Obama in response to the deadly clash in Charlottesville between white nationalists and anti-Nazi protesters.

  New record for most retweeted Tweet:

  ‘Help me please, a man needs his nuggs’

  —16-year-old Carter Wilkerson from Nevada, trying to get enough retweets to qualify for free chicken nuggets for a year.

  TWITTER▶

  For the only app on the president’s phone, see Apps; for the word that melted the Internet, see Covfefe; for redirections to Donald Trump, see Dickheads; for TwitterPeek, see Failures; for an unintelligent tweet by an intelligence agency, see Hacking; for a tweeting recluse, see Hermits; for how Charlotte Church RSVPs, see Inauguration; for an ill-advised tweet by a movie director, see Lawsuits, Non-Trump; for the wrong Steve Bannon, see Mix-Ups; for a response to a controversial advert, see Pepsi; and for a tweeting jailbird, see Punishments.

  UBER▶

  The CEO of Uber got a one-star passenger rating from one of his drivers.

  Travis Kalanick, who resigned as CEO in June, got the poor review in February after getting into a fight with the driver in the back of his car. The driver complained that Kalanick was running the company badly and that he himself was losing money because of it. Kalanick retaliated by saying, ‘Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit, they blame everything in their life on somebody else,’ and stormed out, slamming the car door.

  Uber also faced gender image problems this year, when a blog written by a former female employee revealed, among other allegations of sexism, that all the men in her unit had got free leather jackets, but none of the women had. The justification offered by the company was that there were so few women – six in the department, compared to 120 men – that it had proved impossible to get a bulk discount on the women’s jackets. Her manager went on to explain that it was a sign of equality that he hadn’t given women preferential treatment by spending more money on their individual jackets than he had on the men’s. Kalanick has said that Uber improves his dating prospects, and as a result he has nicknamed the company ‘Boober’.

  Conversely, it was revealed that some male Uber managers pretend to be women. They sign off with fake female names when messaging their drivers because they’ve found that staff are more likely to agree to take on a particular job if they’re being asked by a woman. The drivers themselves aren’t beyond resorting to deception. In China, some of them changed their profile photos to ghost and zombie images so that when potential passengers saw their picture they would cancel the ride they’d just booked, thus earning the driver the cancellation fee.

  The company often stated the fact that Travis Kalanick has the world’s second-highest Wii Tennis rating. He was playing on a friend’s Wii (the friend was the original source for the story), when he navigated to the leaderboard to show that he was the joint-second-best player in the world. The problem with the story is that there’s no such game as ‘Wii Tennis’ – tennis is just one of the options in the Wii Sports game – and at the time Wii Sports didn’t keep a list of the highest scores in the world.

  A town in Canada has paid Uber to provide subsidised taxi journeys for its citizens because it’s cheaper and easier than setting up a bus route.

  A French man took Uber to court after his wife discovered he had been using it to visit his mistress. The app kept sending notifications to her phone after he used it to request a driver.

  UMBRELLAS▶

  A Chinese umbrella-sharing start-up lost all of its 300,000 umbrellas.

  The company’s founder, Zhao Shuping, set up the firm after raising $
1.5 million in funding, but found that once people had paid a $2.79 fee to sign up, they just kept the umbrellas for themselves, and he had no way of tracking where they’d gone.*

  Undeterred, the company is going to make another 30 million umbrellas available for rent across the country by the end of the year – this time with GPS installed.

  Elsewhere, a Japanese scientist claimed his published paper on ladybird wings could lead to the first change in umbrella design for 1,000 years – the doesn’t-blow-inside-out-on-a-windy-day umbrella.

  Until now, ladybird wings have been a mystery to scientists, who couldn’t work out how they fit their wings into their shells. However, Kazuya Saito, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science, has worked out that it’s thanks to a complex, origami-like folding mechanism. Like a ladybird wing, the new umbrella will have only one moving part, preventing it from turning inside out at the joints – a fundamental flaw of existing brollies. Other possible applications for the research include microscopic medical instruments, satellites, aircraft wings and fans.

  It wasn’t the only exciting umbrella news announced this year. A ‘smart umbrella’ has been invented that knows when it is going to rain, and flashes to let you know. You can also find it with your phone if it’s lost – and, conversely, activate a ‘phone-finder’ mode in the brolly by shaking it.

  UNITED AIRLINES▶

  The day after dragging a doctor off one of their flights, United Airlines’ share price fell by $250 million – enough to fly a 747 around the world 1,300 times.

  United made global headlines when security staff dragged 69-year-old doctor David Dao off a flight in April, breaking his nose and knocking out two of his front teeth. They apologised and compensated him.

  On the same day that Dr Dao was being dragged off his flight, a passenger on another flight being operated for United claimed that she was forced to pee into a cup. Nicole Harper told staff she had an overactive bladder and she ‘would either need to use the restroom or pee in a cup’. She said the attendants took her literally and gave her two cups. United stated, ‘At no point … did flight attendants suggest that Ms Harper use cups instead of the lavatory.’

  United also got into trouble over a giant rabbit called Simon. Simon was owned by former Playboy model Annette Edwards, from Worcestershire. He was meant to travel from London to the Iowa State Fair, but was pronounced dead on arrival at (ironically) Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. United denied the rabbit had been accidentally locked in a freezer. Simon was the son of the world’s largest rabbit, Darius.* His owner’s lawyer said Simon might have one day outgrown even his father. United placed a ‘temporary restriction on large rabbits’ and paid Ms Edwards a substantial settlement.

  UK GENERAL ELECTION

  Anna: So, you have to pay £500 to stand in a UK election, but did you guys know that all of the deposits lost in this election went to the Queen?

  Andy: No, I didn’t know that.

  Anna: It’s true. I was reading the guidelines given to all the electoral officers, and they say, ‘If a candidate does not poll more than 5 per cent of the total number of valid votes cast, their deposit will be forfeited. You must send any forfeited deposits to Her Majesty.’

  James: And there were a lot of deposits lost. UKIP lost £168,500 in deposits. The Lib Dems lost £187,500 and the Greens lost £227,500. I worked out that for that amount of money, the Greens could have bought a thousand solar panels, the Lib Dems could have bought 6,700 pairs of socks and sandals, and UKIP could have bought half a million little Union Jack flags.

  Andy: No wonder the Queen’s so rich. It’s all that mini-Union-Jack money.

  Anna: Indeed. But, of course, this is all to stop frivolous candidates, and I think we can all agree that it does the job extremely well.

  Dan: It sure does. I was very disappointed to read, for instance, that there was only one party which had any kind of policy about yetis in this election.

  Andy: How did you manage to raise the deposit, Dan?

  Dan: Actually it’s a party that goes by many names, including the ‘Bus-pass Elvis Party’, the ‘Elvis Defence League’ and the ‘Grumpy old Elvis Party’. This year they were the ‘Elvis and the Yeti Himalayan Preservation Party’.

  James: I’ve heard of these guys. Isn’t the leader called Lord Biro?

  Dan: That’s right. And he promised to deal with the threat that North Korea might fire missiles towards Europe.

  Anna: Very sensible.

  Dan: But it was mainly because those missiles would have to fly over Tibet and they might accidentally hit the Yeti.

  James: But the big character of this election was the one and only Lord Buckethead, wasn’t he? He ran against the Prime Minister, and he – or someone called Lord Buckethead – has been running in elections since 1987, when he promised to destroy Birmingham and replace it with a Star Base.

  Dan: He tweeted after the election that he received 249 votes, which he called ‘A new Buckethead record’.

  Anna: You had to feel sorry for Theresa May, didn’t you? She was already having a bad night, but then she had to share a stage with Buckethead. And also a guy dressed like Elmo.

  Andy: Elmo only got three votes. Buckethead absolutely mopped the floor with him.

  James: Well it could have been worse for May. Tim Farron had to share a stage with a fish finger.

  Dan: That’s right. A guy known as Mr Fish Finger. His costume came about after someone on Twitter called @SkipLicker did a poll asking who people trusted most, Tim Farron or a fish finger. And the fish finger got 95 per cent of the votes.

  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA▶

  For keeping people out, see Border Wall; for drive-through drugs, see Cannabis; for a C-grade student who changed the constitution, see Constitution, US; for babies with unfortunate names, see Donalds; for the US embassy that aroused suspicion, see Fakes; for Americans trying to escape, see Immigration; for what the birth of America has to do with West Sussex, see Independence; for France’s involvement in American independence, see Irony; for a patriotic anus, see MAGA; for an American president who doesn’t know the name of Britain’s prime minister, see May, Theresa; for a Miss USA who became an atomic bombshell, see Nuclear Power Plants; for the assassination of JFK, see Putin, Vladimir; for American non-presidents who don’t know the name of Britain’s prime minister, see Surveys; for keeping other people out, see Visas; for shipping mosquitoes in, see Zika; for visiting every single state, see Zuckerberg.

  UNPOPULAR▶

  For the first time in history, the percentage of Americans who approved of their president was lower than the percentage of Americans who were obese.

  Trump has found himself with an approval rating of between 35 and 40 per cent throughout most of his tenure so far. But after he failed to specifically condemn white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, this fell to 34 per cent in a survey by Gallup, marginally lower than the 35 per cent of Americans who are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  A poll by Connecticut University in May that asked registered voters to describe Trump in one word found that the top answers were ‘idiot’, ‘incompetent’ and ‘liar’ – followed by ‘leader’, ‘unqualified’, and in sixth place, ‘president’.

  Shoppers in Leeds, meanwhile, were given the chance to punch Donald Trump in the face when an exercise store, Predator Nutrition, set up a punchbag dressed as the president. Nine out of ten people chose to punch him, while one in ten kissed him. The store said, ‘The event was a huge success and we are now looking into the possibility of recreating it with Kim Jong-un.’

  URANUS▶

  Uranus opens up a couple of times a day, allowing wind through.

  That’s the finding of some new research by Georgia Institute of Technology. It looked at the magnetic field of the planet, and found that it flips every day as Uranus rotates. When it flips, it opens, allowing the solar wind to enter its atmosphere for a brief amount of
time, before closing and deflecting the particles away again.

  The next thing scientists want to do is probe Uranus. This year, NASA outlined plans to do so by 2036. The hope is that scientists might be able to measure exactly what it is made of, and figure out how Uranus works.

  It was discovered this year that Uranus smells of farts. Actually, generally speaking, Uranus is odour-free; it’s so cold there that gases can’t really waft around. But the smelliest chemicals there are hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, and if the temperature rises enough, they can form clouds that smell like rotten eggs.

  URINE▶

  This year’s Glastonbury Festival was partly powered by urine.

  A special urinal, designed to harvest energy with a ‘microbial fuel stack’, took in about 1,000 litres of urine a day from festivalgoers. The urine deposited was kept and fed to bacteria that turned it into electricity, which was then used to power the festival’s electronic display boards.

  As a result of the complex legal permissions needed, only people over the age of 18 were allowed to use the urinal. Signs outside read: ‘By using this urinal you are consenting for your urine to be used to create electricity. If you do use the urinal in error, you will be unable to remove your urine.’

  Elsewhere:

  ▶ Scientists at Germany’s aerospace centre announced they were growing tomatoes in tanks full of urine, a technique they hope could one day be used in space.

  ▶ Indiana banned the sale of synthetic urine, to make it harder for workers to cheat on drug tests. (Until recently, anyone who wanted to get around a drug test could splash out and buy 85ml of highly convincing fake urine for $30.)

  ▶ The Australian Medical Association’s president said that multivitamins are so useless that they generally pass straight through the body, meaning that most people who take them just end up with ‘very expensive urine’. AMA chief Michael Gannon said, ‘You’re pissing the money down the toilet for no benefit.’