Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (11 page)

Lane Jensen, an Alberta tattoo artist, has a tattoo of a large-breasted cowgirl on his left leg. In 2007 he decided his cowgirl didn’t look buxom enough. So his tattoo got “breast” implants—dime-sized bags of silicone inserted into his leg under the tattoo. Two weeks later, Jensen lost a liter of lymphatic fluid from his leg—his body had rejected the implants. “I guess my girl wasn’t meant to have 3-D breasts,” he said.

In 2007 a 15-year-old in Hamilton, Ontario, was sledding one night and decided he wanted to tag a local bridge with some graffiti. He left his gloves and cell phone in the sled and rappelled down the side of the bridge. Suddenly the rope shifted and the boy panicked. He tried to scurry back up but somehow ended up hanging by his feet, upside down. As he tried to wiggle free, his shirt came off. And it was February. And it was –5°F. He was there for two hours before someone finally heard his screams for help and saved him.

Keep It Simple, a bar in Edmonton, was in danger of being closed in 2003 when officials found out it was not abiding by the citywide smoking ban. The only place smoking is legal is in liquor-licensed bars. But Keep It Simple is a bar for recovering alcoholics—it doesn’t serve alcohol. It does allow smoking, which helps many alcoholics not to drink. But because it didn’t have a liquor license, it was illegal for people to smoke there. So in order to let its non-drinking customers smoke, Keep It Simple applied for and received a liquor license, which it doesn’t use, because it doesn’t sell liquor.

“Everything is funny as long as it’s happening to someone else.”

—
Will Rogers

And we mean reely, reely, mysterious
.

W
HAT ARE THEY?
Eels have been one of the aquatic world’s great mysteries for for more than 2,000 years. It wasn’t until relatively modern times that scientists discovered that they were a type of fish—specifically members of the class
Actinopterygii
, the “ray-finned” fishes, making them relatives of herring, anchovies, salmon, and goldfish. Like all fish, eels are cold-blooded, they obtain oxygen via gills, and they have fins. Beyond that they are completely unique.

Eels make up their own fish order—the
Anguilliformes
(from “snake-shaped” in Latin). They all have long, tubular bodies, and instead of having separate fins on their backs, tails, and bellies like most other fish, they have one long, continuous fin that goes down the back, around the tail, and up the belly. Another unique characteristic: they’re “naked.” Almost all species of eel have no scales, and those that do have them embedded in their skin. What do they have instead of protective scales? Slime. Eels produce a thick, mucuslike substance that protects their naked skin, and, of course, makes them very slippery.

There are more than 600 different eel species and a tremendous variety of shapes, color, and sizes. Most, by far, are marine—they live exclusively in saltwater oceans and seas. Some standouts:

• There are about 200 species of Moray eels living in tropical reefs in all the world’s oceans. Some are small, just several inches long; some are huge. Giant Morays, for example, can reach 13 feet in length. Morays have canine-like snouts and large mouths with very sharp teeth. Bonus: They also have an extra set of jaws inside their throats that lunge forward to help swallow prey (just like the creature in the
Alien
films).

• Conger eels have pectoral fins—the pair of fins found on the sides of fishes near the head—and big puffy “lips.” Giant Congers are the most massive eels, growing to more than 10 feet long and
weighing as much as 240 pounds. If you’ve ever eaten
anago
at a sushi restaurant—you’ve eaten Conger eel.

• Snipe eels can be found from about 1,300 to 13,000 feet deep, and they look like eel-birds. The upper part of their long, pointy, beaklike jaws curves upward and the lower part curves downward—like the beaks of the wading birds known as snipes.

There are only about 16 species of
freshwater
eels—but that’s deceiving. Although they’re found in lakes, rivers, and streams around the world, they’re all
catadromous
: They’re actually born in the oceans, spend most of their lives in freshwater, and eventually go back to the sea to spawn and die. Some standouts:

• European eels can be found throughout Europe, from Scandinavia to Greece. They grow to about 40 inches in length, and can weigh up to 20 pounds. They have been eaten, and even farmed, for millennia: The ancient Romans kept eels in elaborate garden ponds, and some even kept them for pets.

• American eels look similar to European eels (though females can grow to five feet long). They’re found in the eastern Americas from northern Canada to Brazil, and as far inland as the Great Lakes. They’re the only freshwater eels in the Western Hemisphere.

• American eels were a dietary staple to many Native Americans tribes: to the
Mi’kmaq
people of New England and eastern Canada they were called
kat
, and they were prepared in many different ways—from raw to steamed to stewed—and their skins were used for making belts, decorations, and even medicine.

• Japanese eels are found in freshwaters in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. In the sushi world, they’re
unagi
.

The life cycle of freshwater eels is one of the wonders of nature and ones of its ongoing mysteries. The first person known to study them: 4th century B.C. Greek scholar Aristotle. After being unable to find pregnant females carrying eggs, or witness eels mating, he concluded that eels do not procreate—they simply sprout up from “putrefying” mud. That was incorrect, of course, but it took more than 2,000 years to prove him wrong.

In 1896 several small, transparent, willow-leaf-shaped fish were discovered in the Mediterranean Sea. They were deemed a new fish species and named
leptocephalus
, meaning “small head.” Then two Italian biologists captured and raised some in aquariums, and watched—in amazement—as the leptocephali slowly turned into eels. This was the first big clue that eels, even freshwater varieties, were born in the ocean. But where?

In 1905 Danish oceanographer Johannes Schmidt started searching the Atlantic for the smallest leptocephali he could find. The smaller they were, naturally, the closer he’d be to their place of birth. Fifteen years later, he finally narrowed it down to the Sargasso Sea—a 2,000-mile-long, warm section of the Atlantic Ocean, running roughly from Bermuda to the Azore Islands off Portugal.

The Sargasso Sea is where all European and American eels (and many marine species, as well) go to spawn. According to scientists, it’s one of the world’s most remarkable animal migrations.

• Eel eggs hatch somewhere in the Sargasso Sea.

• The young leptocephali spend about a year being carried many thousands of miles by ocean currents to estuaries and river mouths all over western Europe and the eastern Americas.

• Once near freshwater, they begin to change into young eels, or
elvers
. As they grow, they make their way up rivers and streams, some for many hundreds of miles, eventually becoming adults and making homes in muddy-bottomed streams and lakes. There they feed on prey such as insects, fish, crabs, worms, and frogs.

• After 10 to as many as 40 years, they make their way back down-stream to the Atlantic and swim back to the Sargasso. There, in the depths, the females each lay millions of eggs, males fertilize them, and then both adults die. And it all starts all over again.

“If dandelions were difficult to grow, they would be welcome on any lawn.”

—
Andrew Mason

Uncle John bought one of those cool robot vacuums this year. His house is much cleaner now, but he can’t find Porter the Wonder Dog anywhere
.

C
ROWD CONTROL–BOT
The Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute of Osaka, Japan, has created a friendly robot that monitors large groups of people and helps anyone it thinks might be lost. On a trial run at a local shopping mall, the robot gathered information from 16 cameras and several range finders to monitor 20 people and categorize their behavior (such as walking fast, running, wandering, waiting, or “suspicious”). If it spots someone who looks “lost,” the robot—about the size of a toddler—wheels up and asks if they need assistance. If the robot is wrong and the person is just loitering, it recommends shops and restaurants.

David Levy, an expert on artificial intelligence, theorizes in his book
Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships
, that by the year 2025 humans will be able to engage in realistic romantic situations with robots. Levy believes that intimate relations with ultrarealistic, humanoid-looking robots will be commonplace by then, perfect for anyone who might have difficulties attracting a mate (such as the authors of books about sex with robots).

Rufus Terrill, of Atlanta, an engineer, bar owner, and 2006 candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia, got tired of the high rate of crime in his neighborhood. So he mounted a meat smoker to a three-wheeled scooter; added a spotlight, a loudspeaker, and an infrared camera; and made a remote-controlled crime-fighting robot. Each night, Terrill stands on a corner and guides the robot to a nearby daycare center where drug dealers and vagrants gather. He flashes the spotlight at them, informs them (through the robot’s speaker) that they are “trespassing,” and then shoots them
with the robot’s on-board high-powered squirt gun. “The city lacks the ability to control crime in the area,” he said. “I’m doing what I have to do.”

The city of Perm, Russia, spent a fortune on a crime-fighting robot designed to patrol streets and beam video to police stations, alerting officers to crimes in progress. After just three hours on the job, the six-foot-tall, egg-shaped robot broke down. Reason: It was raining, which shorted out the robot’s electrical system.

An 81-year-old man from Australia’s Gold Coast was upset about his relatives’ plans to move him into a nursing home. Unwilling to live in an institutional facility, he decided he’d lived long enough, and searched on the Internet to find a way to kill himself. Using various information he collected, he made a robot…with a remote control and a .22-caliber handgun attached. When the man activated the robot, it pulled the trigger, killing him instantly.

•
Dancer-Bot.
To address growing concerns in Japan that with rapid modernization, many of its ancient traditions will be lost, Tokyo scientists created
wa
, 14-inch-tall robots that visit schools and teach school-age children traditional Japanese dances. (The robots even wear tiny kimonos.)