In sci-fi, this convenient device made it easier for everyone to communicate without wasting pages or screen time coming up with devices that allow people to talk to each other. In the real world, a universal language would theoretically break down international borders, make it easier for the world’s peoples to get along and generally make humanity more united.
The problem with creating a universal language, though, lies not so much in designing one (Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof did that in the 1880s) but in getting people to actually be willing to learn it, speak it, and use it in everyday life. In design, Zamenhof ’s language, Esperanto, was everything it was supposed to be. A relatively easy-to-learn, politically neutral language that would allow people from different countries and cultures to communicate.
Unfortunately, more people speak Klingon—the language created for the bad guys on Star Trek—than actually speak Esperanto, and while the concept makes sense, the people of the world have largely rejected the concept. Realistically, much of the world has a problem getting its citizens to speak one language, let alone teaching their people a second one of dubious value. Even here in the United States, we still have plenty of high school graduates who don’t read English very well, so it seems implausible to think we would be able to get the nation as a whole to take up speaking Esperanto.
Though Esperanto is spoken in over one hundred countries, estimates say that as few as ten thousand people to as many as two million people actively use the language. That’s impressive for a language that has no native speakers, but it’s still way less than the amount of people who watch an episode of the least popular prime time program on any given night. In fact, if that entire community of Esperanto speakers all watched the same show—and that number was on the high side of the estimate—that program would likely get cancelled were it airing on MTV.
Other Educational Failures
The metric system. Pretty much the entire world uses the metric system, but the United States has stubbornly refused to adopt it. It’s not that we haven’t tried—huge efforts were made in the 1970s and 1980s to teach it in schools—but Americans seem unwilling to drop our confusing system for the much more logical metric system. In the system used in the United States, we have oddities like twelve inches in a foot. The metric system does everything in multiples of ten, but something that simple and logical simply does not fly here.
Teaching Latin. Despite the fact that nobody actually speaks Latin, U.S. schools continue to teach it with the logic that studying Latin provides a good base for learning other languages. Of course, you could just spend that time learning the other language rather than studying one that’s only useful to know which Super Bowl you are watching.
The new math. In the 1960s, largely driven by America’s fear that the Soviets were ahead of us in science because Sputnik was launched before we had a space vessel, new math was foisted upon America’s schoolchildren. This concept, which was widely disliked by parents, did not catch on largely because the system was so different than what had previously been taught that parents could not help their kids with their homework. After a very brief attempt at making new math the national standard, the program was dropped. Ultimately, the perceived edge in math and science that the Soviet Union had did not result in them beating the United States at much of anything.
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The Reebok Debacle: Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson’s Olympic Ads
During the buildup to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Reebok decided to build its Olympic ad campaign around America’s two decathlon gold medal hopefuls, Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson. This hugely expensive campaign kicked off with ads featuring “Dan and Dave” running during Super Bowl XXVI.
Initially, the ads were a huge success, turning both O’Brien and Johnson—who were complete unknowns because, well, decathletes don’t usually get a lot of mainstream publicity and major companies most certainly do not build gigantic ad campaigns around them. The commercials were a bit of a lastditch effort by Reebok, which had been losing market share to Nike to regain its place at the top of the U.S. sneaker market.
The commercials, which aired in heavy rotation, were built around the theme, “Who will be the world’s greatest athlete—Dan or Dave? To be settled in Barcelona.”
Unfortunately, likely due to the added scrutiny, pressure and demands on his time placed by being a media star, O’Brien failed to qualify for the Olympics as he botched his pole vault during the Olympic trials in New Orleans. In pole vaulting, contestants have the right to not jump until the competition reaches a height they consider worthy of their ability. In doing so, the competitors save energy and avoid making a lot of jumps at heights they can easily clear. On the other hand, they also run the risk of not clearing any height and receiving no points for the event. That is what happened to O’Brien who went from being a gold medal contender to watching the Olympics on television.
Reebok attempted to salvage the spots by modifying them to have Dan cheering Dave on in his quest for the gold medal. That quest failed too as Dave managed only a bronze in Barcelona. So in the battle of Dan versus Dave to see who the best athlete in the world was, the answer was Robert Zmeick of the Czech Republic.
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Prohibition: The “Noble Experiment” Goes Horribly Wrong
In the 1920s many Americans pretended they were in favor of banning all sales, manufacturing and consumption of alcohol. Unfortunately, saying you were against drinking and not actually liking drinking did not go hand in hand. Much in the way that most people now claim to not buy any porn, yet porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, alcohol in the early part of the 1900s had the same stigma. Everyone pretended to be above having a few shots of whiskey or a couple of beers, but when the doors were closed, plenty of people enjoyed the hard stuff.
Because alcohol consumption was not socially acceptable—largely due to the religious beliefs of the time—the public stood idly by while an actual amendment was added to the Constitution. The vast majority of the public did not support prohibition, but nobody was willing to stand up and admit that they enjoyed drinking and did not think it should be outlawed.
Lasting from 1920 to 1933, Prohibition did eliminate the legal production of alcohol. It also created a huge industry involved in the illegal production of alcohol and led to the creation of thousands of “speakeasies.” These establishments pretended they were merely social clubs serving legal beverages, but everyone knew that they actually served alcohol. Much like the Chinese restaurants in the 1980s that would allegedly serve beer to underage patrons if they ordered the “cold tea,” the speakeasies worked using thinly veiled codes.
Prohibition was only loosely enforced and the public became disenchanted with the law during the Great Depression when people had more than a few reasons to want a drink. With the law mostly only working to create a gigantic criminal underground (which had replaced the once successful legal manufacturers of alcohol) and causing enormous problems for police, Prohibition was ultimately repealed in 1933—making it the only Constitutional amendment to ever be reversed.
Though Prohibition was unsuccessful, it did succeed in devastating the city of St. Louis, which had been one of the major producers of beer for the nation. This contributed to the already rampant unemployment that occurred during the Great Depression. The law also helped fuel the growth of the Mafia in the United States as the criminal organization controlled much of the flow of illegal liquor. This led to U.S. cities becoming battlegrounds between rival gangs—turning once safe streets into dangerous war-zones. Crime increased in major cities across the country by over 20% and drug addiction (because drunks couldn’t get a drink when they wanted it) rose by more than 40%. In some cases, desperate for a fix, alcoholics would turn to drinking Sterno, a substance that did mimic the effects of alcohol while poisoning and sometimes killing the person who merely wanted a drink.
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Celebrity Baby Names: Facebook, Apple and Banjo are Not Names
Celebr
ities—by the general nature of being famous—are used to standing out and being in the public eye. Because of that, they forget that not everyone wants attention called to themselves and there actually are people—even children of famous people—who prefer a more anonymous lifestyle. For a lot of celebrities, though, the idea that their kids would not also be famous seems impossible so in naming their kids, they choose names that are guaranteed to stand out. They do this without any regard for the fact that their kids already have to grow up with famous parents and that perhaps the added burden of being named after Superman’s Kryptonian name (Nicholas Cage’s son Kal-El), an inanimate object (Rachel Griffiths’ son Banjo) or just being given a plain old ridiculous moniker (Penn Jillette’s daughter Moxie CrimeFighter) might make a difficult life even harder.
Since many celebrities seem unwilling to give their children the option of having a normal life, we are instead left with kids who must bear names that invite mocking and require explanation for the rest of their lives. These kids not only have to spend their lives being judged by the accomplishments of their parents, they must also do so with names that only make sense if you are famous. It’s hard to introduce yourself as “Moon Unit,” without also explaining that your dad was Frank Zappa and, well, that pretty much sets the tone for your entire life.
Though the list of horrif yingly bad names famous people have saddled their kids with is extensive, here are some of the worst:
True Harlow (Joely Fisher’s daughter)
Diva Muffin (Another Frank Zappa daughter)
Indiana August (Casey Affleck and Summer Phoenix’ daughter )
Pilot Inspektor ( Jason Lee’s son)
Poet Sienna Rose (Soleil “Punky Brewster” Moon Frye’s daughter)
Seven Sirius (Erykah Badu’s son)
Apple (Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s daughter)
Bronx Mowgli (Ashley Simpson and Pete Wentz’ son)
Petal Rainbow Blossom and her sister Poppy Honey (daughters of chef Jamie Oliver)
Of course, giving your kids horrible names is not solely the purview of celebrities as one lucky Egyptian boy—after the country’s revolt that ousted the nation’s long-time dictator—has been saddled with the name Facebook. At least he isn’t MySpace or Friendster, but living in Egypt with the first name Facebook takes what will likely be a difficult life and make it worse.
Acknowledgements
This book—at least our second attempt at getting this book published—started with a bad idea.
It started when Dan, standing alone at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club watched Buffalo Tom—his long-time favorite band—get up on stage in front of a sold-out crowd where they played new songs that held the audience as much as their familiar classics (well, classics to those of us who have had the joy of knowing who Buffalo Tom are). On that night, though he was happily employed, running a very cool toy store for really good money for a boss who treated him like family (and yes, that is meant as a positive), Dan decided to quit his job.
In a time where jobs were scarce and countless people we knew had been unemployed for over a year, Dan walked away from in the neighborhood of six figures without a backup plan beyond a vague plan to sell this book—something that if we managed to beat the very long odds to accomplish would bring us at most the equivalent of a few week’s salary, which we would then have to split.
That was a foolish plan and a classic bad idea, but we didn’t have a better one.
And while selling this book and having it actually get released was a bit of a dream come true, it did not (as of this writing) put much money into our bank accounts. Had the story ended with the book coming out, both my writing partner Jason and I would be very available for book signings as we lived out of our cars eating nothing but press releases and publisher’s proofs.
My bad idea, however, either through inspiration or blind luck has led to both of us stumbling into new lives where we never would have gone were it not for that Buffalo Tom concert and a proposal so old that people still used their cell phones mostly to make phone calls when we wrote it.
During this time, Jason was laid off from his job working at my family’s business. One would not think I would have to worry about my family laying off one of my closest friends (who did a good job) but one would be wrong, and much like me, Jason was out of work—though much less happily. And while we were grappling with unemployment and dreams of publishing stardom, my wife, Celine, who had been very supportive of my foolish choice to become voluntarily unemployed during the worst economy of our lifetimes, was also struggling at her job and looking to move on.
At this point, the story could go horribly off course as it does for nearly every person behind every bad idea in this book. In my case, however, my bad idea turned into a consulting gig with a website for teachers where the general manager asked me to evaluate their operation. This turned into me overseeing a revamp of their website—a project which Jason helped me on and which Celine offered her insights on as well. And when the time came to relaunch the site with a new team behind it, well, Jason started a few weeks early as associate editor before Celine joined him as editor.
So with that backdrop, it’s important to say that this book would not be possible without the support of Steve Maynard, formerly my employer and forever my friend. In addition, Steve’s wife Pam has been strongly in my corner as have his two oldest sons, Alex and Patrick, as well as the rest of the Time Machine Family. Thanks also go to Rich Datz at EducationWorld.com for inadvertently providing Jason and Celine with a lifeline.
Dan would also like to thank his brother Todd, as the past few years would have been impossible without him. Dan also thanks his long-time friends, Allison Atkins, Ellen Maccarone, and Lauren Moynihan as well as their families for the support they have always provided. Also, as this book was conceived, written, and ultimately sold, both Jeff Colchamiro and Jennifer Barrows Fox lived through the highs and the lows with us and their support kept me going more than a few times.
And of course, Dan wishes to thank Buffalo Tom, for showing him that even if you couldn’t conquer the world, you could still move forward as an artist.
Jason would like to thank his father Robert for all of the worst ideas he proposed that didn’t make the final cut. He would also like to thank Mark Tomaszewski for always supporting his writing career and for giving him brutally honest advice. Finally, Jason would like to thank everyone who ever listened to the Worst of the Week podcast; you guys are the ones that keep the bad ideas flowing.
We also could not have done this without our wives, Celine Provini and Dawn Tomaszewski, who put up with our endless phone calls, weekends spent working on our podcast, and everything else we put them through in the interest of humor. The same could be said of our former Lynn Ladder co-workers, specifically Frank Koughan, Duane Boucher, Steve Young, and Mark Krook as well as our entire crew in New Haven. We truly appreciate the support.
Last, we wish to thank our editor, Ann Treistman, who told us the book was funny and didn’t make us change our vision. Other publishing companies offered us more money. Nobody else offered us a place that actually believed in us.
Find more bad ideas and our weekly podcast at WorstIdeas-Ever.com.
Worst Ideas Ever Page 11
