by Dave Barry
The thing is, at the time I didn’t think this incident was in any way remarkable. I had no doubt that people all over America were shouting bad words and coming to blows with each other’s cars. It wasn’t until two days later that I began thinking that maybe we could all be a little more courteous. What got me thinking this was England. I went there to attend a wedding in a scenic area called Gloucestershire (pronounced “Wooster”) near a lovely little town called Chipping Campden (tourism motto: “We’ve Got Your Sheep”).
I’m not saying that the English are perfect. Their electrical fixtures look and function like science-fair projects; their plumbing apparently was designed thousands of years before the discovery of water. Also their television programming is not so great. The TV in my room got four channels, and one afternoon the program lineup, I swear, was:
Channel 1: A man talking about problems in the British gelatin industry;
Channel 2: The national championships of an extremely slow-moving game called “snooker” (pronounced “Wooster”)
Channel 3: Another man (or possibly the same man) talking about problems in the British gelatin industry; and
Channel 4: A show (this is the one I ended up watching) in which five people were taste-testing various brands of canned beef gravy and ranking them on a scale of 0 through 10.
(Of course we have bad TV shows, too. But thanks to cable, we have infinitely more of them.) My point is that the English aren’t better than us in every way. But they are definitely more courteous. It seems as though every time an English person comes even remotely close to being an inconvenience to anybody, he or she says “Sorry!” Often this causes the other person to say “Sorry!” for having been in a position to cause the first person to say “Sorry!” This may trigger reflex cries of “Sorry!” from random passersby, thereby setting off the legendary Chain Reaction of Sorrys, which sometimes does not stop until it reaches Wales.
I’m pretty sure that the Queen, when she’s knighting somebody, taps him with her sword and says: “Sorry!”
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more of that spirit here? Wouldn’t it be pleasant if we tried a little courtesy, instead of shooting each other over trivial provocations? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when we irritated each other, we said “Sorry!” and then shot each other? At least it would be a start!
In fact, I’m going to start right here and now. I’m going to address the end of my column to the woman who hit me with her car, in case she’s reading this:
Whoever you are, I am -sincerely sorry that I impeded your progress through the stop sign. And I am even MORE sorry that I hit your car with my fist.
It should have been a hammer.
ABSOLUTE
MADNESS
What I want to know is: Why is it important to have visible stomach muscles?
I grew up in an era (the Paleolithic) when people kept their stomach muscles discreetly out of sight. Most of us didn’t even realize we had stomach muscles; the only people who ever actually saw them were courageous surgeons willing to cut through fat layers the thickness of the Cleveland white pages.
I’m not saying we weren’t in shape; I’m just saying we had a different concept of what the shape should be. For example, our idea of a stud-muffin prototype male was somebody along the lines of George Reeves, who starred in the black-and-white TV version of Superman, playing the role of the mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent, whom nobody ever suspected of being Superman because he disguised himself by wearing glasses. (It is a known fact that if you put on glasses, even your closest friends will not recognize you; that’s why, despite all the eerie similarities, nobody has ever figured out that Sally Jessy Raphael and Mike Tyson are actually the same person.)
The TV Superman, who was more powerful than a locomotive, did not have visible stomach muscles. In fact, he didn’t have much muscle definition at all; he pretty much looked like a middle-aged guy at a Halloween party wearing a Superman costume made from pajamas, a guy who had definitely put in some time around the onion dip. From certain angles he looked as though he weighed more than a locomotive. But he got the job done. He was always flying to crime scenes faster than a speeding bullet in a horizontal position with his arms out in front of him.
Study Question: Did he fly in this position because he HAD to? Or was it that the public would have been less impressed if he had flown in a sitting position, like an airline passenger, reading a magazine and eating honey-roasted peanuts?
When Superman arrived at the crime scene, he would knock down the door, played by a piece of balsa wood, and confront the criminals, who were usually suit-wearing men with harsh voices. (You had a better-dressed criminal in those days.)
“Superman!” the criminals would say. This was the signal for Superman to put his hands on his hips so the criminals could shoot their revolvers at his chest, an effort that always caused Superman to adopt a bemused expression because, as a native of Krypton with special powers, he knew that the criminals were shooting blanks. Then Superman would turn the criminals over to the police, played by Irish character actors in their mid-sixties, after which he would fly in a horizontal position back to his secret Fortress of Onion Dip.
The point is that, in my era, Superman did not have visible stomach muscles, and neither did Hercules or Tarzan, who needed steel-reinforced vines. But now, suddenly, every body is supposed to have rippling abdominals. They are hot. If muscle groups were rock bands, the abdominals would be Hootie & the Blowfish. Turn on your television, and if you do not see a commercial in which a leading economist such as Candice Bergen, Michael Jordan, or Whoopi Goldberg explains which long-distance carrier is best for your individual case (Answer: Whichever one is paying millions of dollars to Candice, Michael, or Whoopi), you will see the Abdominals People—and I do not wish to generalize here, but these people display the intelligence of sherbet—selling abdominal devices, demonstrating abdominal exercises, and of course proudly showing off their abdominal muscles, which bulge and writhe beneath a thin sweaty layer of skin, so that the people look as though they’re smuggling pythons down there.
What I want to know is, why is this considered attractive? And how important, really, are abdominal muscles? I mean, I’m sure they serve some medical function, such as keeping your intestines from falling into your lap, but do they have to be HUGE? Do these people who spend seventeen hours a day building up their abdominals ever actually use them for any practical purpose? If so, what? Moving furniture? (“Okay, Thad, you push your awesome stomach muscles against THAT end of the bureau, and I’ll push mine against THIS end, and we’ll just… Huh! It’s not moving!”)
What I also want to know is: What’s next? I mean, when the Abdominals People—formerly the Biceps People; formerly the Thighs People; formerly the Buns People—have made all the money they can from our stomachs, where will they go? Are they going to work their way through ALL of our muscles? Will there come a time, say ten years from now, when they’re going to announce that we all need to build up, say, our eyelid muscles? Will we turn on the TV and see commercials for the Lid-A-Cizer, featuring enthusiastic men and women with form-fitting workout outfits and bulging eyelids the size of golf balls? Are we going to fall for THAT, too? Or are we going to draw the line somewhere? Think about it!
And while you’re thinking, pass the dip.
Here are some members of a literary rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders: (from left) Stephen King, Al Kooper, Ridley Pearson, me, and Tad Bartimus. We sound almost as good as we look.
PLANET
OF THE APES
you don’t realize it, but you are constantly enjoying the benefits of science. For example, when you turn on the radio, you take it for granted that music will come out; but do you ever stop to think that this miracle would not be possible without the work of scientists? That’s right: There are tiny scientists inside that radio, playing instruments! A similar principle is used in automatic bank-teller machines, which is why they frequently say: “SOR
RY, OUT OF SERVICE.” They’re too embarrassed to say: “SORRY, TINY SCIENTIST GOING TO THE BATHROOM.”
Yes, science plays a vital role in your life; but when it comes to scientific knowledge, there’s an excellent chance that you’re a moron. I base this statement on a recent survey, conducted by the National Science Foundation, which showed that the average American does not understand basic scientific principles. Naturally the news media reported this finding as though it were shocking, which is silly. This is, after all, a nation that has produced tournament bass fishing and the Home Shopping Channel; we should be shocked that the average American still knows how to walk erect.
But the point is that we have a scientific illiteracy problem in this nation, and you could be a part of it. To find out, see if you can answer these three actual questions from the National Science Foundation survey:
True or False: The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.
Which travels faster, light or sound?
Explain, in your own words: What is DNA?
All finished? Now let’s look at the correct answers:
1. FALSE. The truth is that the dinosaurs had been dead for over a week before the first human came along, probably in the form of Bob Dole. Yet most Americans firmly believe that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted. This misconception arose from the many absurdly inaccurate fictional depictions of caveman life, such as the TV cartoon show The Flintstones, in which the Flintstones own a pet dinosaur named Dino. But paleontologists, who can determine the age of fossils with a high degree of accuracy using a technique called “carbon dating,” have known for many years that “Dino” is actually another character wearing a costume. “We think it’s Barney,” the paleontologists announced recently, “but we can’t say for sure until we get another government grant.”
2. To answer the light-vs.-sound question, consider what you observe when a thunderstorm is approaching and a bolt of lightning strikes. First you see the lightning bolt; then you hear thunder; then you hear a scream if the lightning bolt has struck a person; then you hear a loud cheer from bystanders if the person was George Steinbrenner. This tells us that light travels faster than sound, because light goes straight down from the sky and is therefore attracted by gravity; whereas sound goes sideways and is slowed down by friction with the Earth’s rotation, also known as “peristalsis,” or “The Greenhouse Effect.”
3. “DNA” is an abbreviation for “deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism,” a complex string of syllables that is found inside your body in tiny little genes called “chromosomes.” Biologists often refer to DNA as “The Body’s Secret Handshake,” because the information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age, and Social Security number.
There is surprisingly little difference between the DNA found in humans and that found in other species such as H. Ross Perot. This fact has led to research that could benefit mankind, most notably a series of experiments in which biologists chemically altered the DNA in fruit flies in an effort to isolate the gene that causes baldness. The biologists reasoned that fruit flies must contain this gene, because virtually all of them (the fruit flies) (also the biologists) are bald. This work took nine years and cost $31 million, but the results were impressive: When a group of fruit flies with normal DNA were compared with a group with altered DNA, both groups were found to consist of little random black smears, because the only way the biologists could get them to hold still was to whack them with rolled-up copies of Scientific American. Nevertheless the biologists believe that they are on the right track.
“We think it’s Barney wearing a Dino costume,” they announced recently in a press conference that led to allegations of plagiarism from angry paleontologists, “but we can’t say for sure until we get another government grant.”
So those are your correct answers. If you did poorly, you’re not alone; the National Science Foundation reports that only 25 percent of the people surveyed, or 1 in 6, passed the quiz. And if you think that’s a pathetic commentary on our national intelligence, you should see all the mail I’m going to get in which people will send me this column with the words “25 percent” and “1 in 6” circled and a snotty note informing me that this is incorrect.
So there’s no question about it: Scientific illiteracy is definitely a major problem in America. And as the saying goes: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re a newspaper columnist.” So I feel I’ve done my part. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to shake the radio.
GOOD FOR WHAT
AILS YOU
We here at the Bureau of Medical Alarm hope you had a restful, carefree, fun-filled summer. But before you get back into “the swing of things” for fall, we’d like to take just a moment to remind you that practically everything can kill you.
Latex Gloves of Death
We have here a Health Advisory issued June 27 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (motto: “We Have Not Yet Determined That Our Motto Is Safe”). This advisory, which was sent in by several alert medical people, begins with the following statement:
“In the spring and summer of 1995, the spontaneous combustion of powder-free latex patient examination gloves caused four fires in different states.”
The advisory states that all four fires involved large quantities of gloves stored in hot warehouses. But we here at the Bureau of Medical Alarm are asking ourselves: What if a single glove (this is sometimes called the “Lone Glove” theory) were to burst into flames? What if this happened while the glove was on a doctor’s hand? And what if the doctor’s hand was, at that very moment, inside your personal body?
One thing that would happen, of course, is the doctor would charge you a lot of money The underlying philosophy of our entire health-care system is that the more scary, painful, dangerous, and unnecessary a medical procedure is, the more it should cost. So you would definitely pay top dollar to have a flaming glove thrust into what is technically known as the Booty Region. Once word of this lucrative new procedure got around, doctors would be prescribing it for athlete’s foot.
And here’s a related item to be concerned about: An alert dental surgeon named Ian Hamilton sent me the June 1996 newsletter of the Canterbury Branch of the New Zealand Dental Association, which contains a letter to the editor, accompanied by a photograph, concerning a latex medical glove that was found to have a moth embedded in one of the fingers. Yes. This means you could wind up with a burning rubberized insect inside your body. Imagine the bill you’d get for THAT:
Flaming Booty Moth Treatment (FBMT)—$578,000
Recharge Fire Extinguisher—$23
Damage to Doctor’s Golf Grip—$54,000,000,000
We know what you’re wondering at this point. You’re wondering: “Wouldn’t The Flaming Booty Moths’ be a great name for a rock band?”
Yes, it would. But right now you have other important medical things to worry about, such as:
Deadly Items Up Your Nose
We have here a news item from the Denver Post, written by Jim Kirksey and sent in by many alert readers, concerning a man who arrived at a hospital “with a device in his sinus cavity that potentially had the explosive force of five powerful M-80 firecrackers.” The device was a trigger used to deploy automobile air bags; the man worked at a factory that manufactures the triggers, and an explosion had caused one of them to become—in the words of a surgeon—“lodged into his nose.”
Fortunately, the device was safely removed, but the doctors were very nervous that it might go off during the surgery. Here at the Bureau of Medical Alarm we are wondering: Why doesn’t the federal government require auto manufacturers to warn us that air bags contain devices that could be deadly if we get them up our noses? This is especially critical if we have very young children, who can get ANYTHING up their noses. Very young children can get things up their noses that are larger than their BODIES. We think the government should require that the following statement be pr
inted on automobile steering wheels:
WARNING—DO NOT ALLOW VERY YOUNG CHILDREN TO DISASSEMBLE THE AIR BAG AND INSERT THE EXPLOSIVE TRIGGER DEVICE WAY UP THEIR NOSES, AS THIS COULD RESULT IN YOUR HAVING TO SPEND THE REST OF YOUR MORTAL LIFE TRYING TO EXPLAIN THINGS TO YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY. ALSO, YOU SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT TO READ THIS WARNING WHILE OPERATING THIS… LOOK OUT!! (CRASH) TOO LATE
On a related medical note, we received a letter from Gail White, who works at a large hospital that shall remain nameless, and who relates the following incident:
“A man appeared at the emergency room with his hands over his face, demanding to see a MALE doctor, and to see him ALONE. A doctor (dreading to see some horrible disfigurement) complied with his wishes. When the man removed his hands, he was revealed to have a brassiere caught in his nose by the hooks.”
No, we do not know how the brassiere got caught there. Nor do we know how many men are, right now, suffering from Brassiere Nose, but are too embarrassed to seek medical treatment. Our best guess is: thousands. If you are one of these unfortunate people, we urge you to seek medical help; your doctor can tell you about a revolutionary new procedure to correct this condition. Tell him you definitely want the moth.
EUREKA!
People often ask me how America became the world’s greatest economic power, as measured in Remote Control Units Per Household (RCUPH).
My answer is: “Inventions.”
Americans have always been great inventors. To cite one historic example: Back in 1879, a young man named Thomas Alva Edison was trying to develop a new light source. One day he was messing around in his laboratory with some filaments when suddenly a thought struck him: The letters in “Thomas Alva Edison” could be rearranged to spell “Do Have Salami Snot.” This made him so depressed that he invented the phonograph, so he could listen to B.B. King records.
