Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (25 page)

Gerrymander
is a term that means “to re-divide a state or county into election districts so as to give one party a majority.” The term was coined in 1812 when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry redrew Congressional lines in order to give his Democrat-Republican party an advantage over the Federalists. When a Boston newspaper ran a political cartoon showing that one of Gerry’s new districts looked a lot like a salamander, the word
gerrymandering
was born. The bad publicity cost Gerry the election.

Islamic cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds the position of Supreme Leader of Iran. He’s had the title since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death in 1989. (The word
Ayatollah
means “Sign of God” in Farsi.) The Supreme Leader is not elected; he is appointed for life by an elected body called the Assembly of Experts. In addition to functioning as Iran’s chief of state, the Supreme Leader is commander-in-chief of the military and heads up Iran’s intelligence-gathering and security forces. By contrast, the president is elected by popular vote for a four-year term, but serves at the will of the Supreme Leader. However, the Supreme Leader doesn’t have
absolute
power—the Assembly of Experts is in charge of his succession and can depose him if they deem it necessary.

Where do 714 million people use one million machines for four weeks every five years?

What two governmental superlatives belong to the Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific?

India is the world’s largest democracy, with 714 million eligible voters and more than one million electronic voting machines. The massive country—population 1.15 billion—has 30 main languages, six prominent religions, and a hierarchical caste system that dates back millennia. It has had free elections only since 1947, when the country gained independence from England. In a nation that big, elections are no small task. There are six national parties and 40 regional parties, with more than 4,600 candidates, requiring 6.5 million workers to oversee the process. As such, the Indian elections last for about a month. Within a few years, the nation is predicted to have more people than every other democracy combined.

It’s the world’s smallest democracy, and the one where the highest percentage of its citizens—21 percent—are directly involved in government. As of 2010, the Pitcairn Islands (the island where the mutineers of the HMS
Bounty
settled in 1790) has 48 residents, 10 of whom sit on the Island Council. But everyone chips in: The public works department consists of every Pitcairn citizen between the ages of 15 and 65. A visiting ship is cause for a national celebration: Every single one of Pitcairn’s residents will turn out for a public dinner to honor the rare guests.

What caused an uproar in an Annandale, Virginia, neighborhood association in 2011 after they elected Ms. Beatha Lee to serve as their president?

The residents were upset because they didn’t elect who they thought they had elected. The vote took place at the February 2011 meeting of the Hillbrook-Tall Oaks Civic Association. President Mark Crawford’s term was about to expire, so he asked if any of his neighbors wanted to run for the position. Anybody? Anybody? Nobody answered. So Crawford nominated Ms. Beatha Lee. “She’s interested in neighborhood activities and the outdoors,” he explained, adding that she “had experience in Maine overseeing an estate of 26 acres.” Crawford asked once more if there were any other nominees—there weren’t, so he called for a vote. Fifty members raised their hands, and Ms. Beatha Lee was elected association president. Meeting adjourned.

Two weeks later, a newsletter was sent to the 250 families in the neighborhood introducing their new president. The headline read: “Dog Rules, Humans Apathetic (Pathetic).” Ms. Beatha Lee turned out to be a shaggy Wheaten Terrier belonging to Crawford.

Dogs have run for political office before, but people usually
know
they’re voting for a dog. Once Annandale residents realized they’d been had, they were foaming at the mouth. “She had a name!” said one. “It wasn’t Spot or Rover. It was a
first and last name
! We’re embarrassed!” Crawford was unapologetic; he did it to send a message that people should participate more in their local government. He now serves as vice president to Ms. Beatha Lee, who presides from underneath his desk and “delegates a lot.”

Time for planets and atoms and Internets and nerdy scientists with really big glasses
.

How do Global Positioning System satellites rely on Einstein’s theory of relativity?

You’re taking a walk in a desert and you find a rock. You say, “That has to be a meteorite!” And you’re correct. Where are you?

Albert Einstein had two theories of relativity: His theory of
special relativity
proposed that time moves slower when you’re moving very fast, whereas his theory of
general relativity
posed that time moves faster in a weaker gravitational field. Those two theories were put to the test in 1990 when the U.S. Department of Defense launched 24 Global Positioning System satellites into orbit. Each one contained an atomic clock that was synced up to an Earth-based system of identical atomic clocks. If Einstein was correct, the time on the space clocks—which are subject to weaker gravity than Earth-bound clocks, and travel at 8,424 mph—should move faster by 38,700 nanoseconds every 24 Earth hours. This seemingly tiny discrepancy would throw the GPS off by about six additional miles each passing day, rendering it useless. So the space clocks were set to account for this discrepancy. It turned out that Einstein
was
correct, and without his prediction, we’d still have to use those annoying folding maps.

You’re in Antarctica. Because of its miniscule annual precipitation (less than 10 inches), it’s classified as a desert. And its ice and snow have been slowly building up for millennia with little evaporation. Result: Antarctica’s earthly rocks have long been buried under the ice. So if you’re taking a walk on the Antarctic tundra and you stumble upon a rock, either a scientist dropped it there or, more likely, it fell from the sky.

The sun is the closest star to us. Traveling from Earth at one million miles per hour, it would take a little over three and a half days to get there. Traveling at the same speed, how long would it take to get to the second-closest star?

How long is a jiffy?