Culture | Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

Posts Tagged: ‘Culture’

January 2, 2011

Do They Really Need to Make Chocolate Better?

“The production of high quality chocolate, and the farmers who grow it, will benefit from the recent sequencing and assembly of the chocolate tree genome, according to an international team led by Claire Lanaud of CIRAD, France, with Mark Guiltinan of Penn State, and including scientists from 18 other institutions.”

Hmmm. I’m seeing future headlines along the lines of “DNA evidence reveals who stole the chocolate from the office cupboard.” The horror!

In a related note: The study identified 28,798 chocolate tree genes. 28,798 is also the number of the recipe for “How to Render Lard” at Food.com. A coincidence? We don’t think so…

Posted by Thom

Tags: Culture, Food, Science

December 30, 2010

Our New Year’s Gift to You: The Origami Ducky

We wanted to get each and every one of you a gift this holiday season. But, since we didn’t have everyone’s addresses, the hard part was figuring out what to get you that we could transported through the internet. So, here is our little thank you for supporting us in 2010 and for the many years before…and after: THE ORIGAMI DUCKY! (First appeared in Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader)

Print it out, make the duck, and send us a picture [unclejohnsbathroomreader (at) gmail (dot) com] to put on our Facebook page. Let’s see if we can break the record of the most origamis ever made at one time by a team. According to the record: 545 people folded 9,300 origami cranes in one hour at Singapore State University on 22 August 2006. Let the fun begin!!

Posted by BRI

Tags: Art, BRI News, Culture

December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas!

From Uncle John and the entire worldwide staff of the Bathroom Readers Institute, a very special Christmas – or other December holiday of your choosing – to all of our readers, browsers, fans, fanatics, critics, and quoters everywhere. May the holiday season be filled with the best and warmest possible experiences for each and every one of you.

And Happy Boxing Day, too!

Posted by Thom

Tags: Culture, Holidays

December 22, 2010

The Aussie Loo

Greetings, Bathroom Reader fans around the world. BRI Thom here, reporting from the field, which, barring deportation or a fatal shark attack, I shall be doing so henceforth. I’ve flown the bathroom-reading-headquarters coop in our sleepy little Oregon hamlet, and am currently reporting from a picnic bench a few yards from the South Pacific Ocean just north of Sydney, Australia—one block or some from my new home. Leaving Uncle John and the crack staff at the BRI was heartbreaking…until I got here. (I mean come on! I practically live on a tropical beach, for goodness’ sake!)

Fortunately Uncle John forgot to change the locks here, and I’ll still be posting on the UJ Blog!

My first exclusive: The Aussie Loo, and how it perfectly fits Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Just take a look at this beauty:

Those are the flush buttons. The one on the left, the half moon, is for a small flush, for those short visits, as it were; the one on the right is for a full flush for longer, more substantial stops—just like the Bathroom Reader and its short- and long-visit articles! Brilliant! We should have these in America! We should start a movement! (Oh, wait, that didn’t come out right. Oh, I did it again!)

• Now on to the great Australian myth: The water in Australian sinks, tubs, toilets, and whatnot swirls in the opposite direction – counter-clockwise – that it does in the Northern Hemisphere. Something to do with the Coriolis Effect, so the story goes. Well, is it true? No. That’s a myth we conked on the head years ago in the BR. But…I’ve taken a video of water draining from a sink. It’s a bit hard to see, but you be the judge:

Aussie water draining

Now call me crazy, but you can tell by that bit of flotsam in the water that it is clearly swirling, unprovoked, counter-clockwise. I think we have a bit of a mystery on our hands. Further research will be necessary. I’ll get right on it, and report back…

Until then, Happy Christmas – Australian for Merry Christmas – from the Great Down Under! Be well, and I hope your enjoying the brand new BR!

Posted by Thom

Tags: Culture, Myths, Travel

November 11, 2010

Veterans Day

Here’s a BRI salute to all our veterans out there, those gone and those still with us. Thank you, from all of us.

And here’s an appropriate excerpt from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces, called, “Old Soldiers.” (Click on images to enlarge; click a second time to sharpen image.)

Posted by Thom

Tags: Culture, History, Holidays

October 14, 2010

The Origami Toilet

When you’re done—you can use it to wipe! (Ew. Sorry.)

That is the wonderful origami artwork of Won Park. Many more photos of his work can be found here, and here. And thanks to BRI fan James Beran for sending this our way.

P.S. Want to learn how to make a origami rubber duck? Check out Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader—page 117.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Art, Culture

October 6, 2010

Masterpiece Hides in Parisian Flat for 70 Years

Fascinating story:

The woman who owned the flat had left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned.

But when she died recently aged 91, experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions [...]

Entering the untouched, cobweb-filled flat in Paris’ 9th arrondissement, one expert said it was like stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900.

“There was a smell of old dust,” said Olivier Choppin-Janvry, who made the discovery. Walking under high wooden ceilings, past an old wood stove and stone sink in the kitchen, he spotted a stuffed ostrich and a Mickey Mouse toy dating from before the war, as well as an exquisite dressing table.

But he said his heart missed a beat when he caught sight of a stunning tableau of a woman in a pink muslin evening dress.”

The woman who rented the apartment—who had left for the South of France and simply never returned—was one Marthe de Florian, the grandaughter of the woman in pink in the painting, and described as a demimondaine, which Merriam-Webster’s tells us is a “a woman supported by a wealthy lover.” The strange thing is that she had paid the rent all those years, while apparently never setting foot in the apartment and letting it go to the spiders. Bizarre.

And the painting? It was by Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. It recently sold at auction for 2.1 million Euros ($2.9 million).

* The painting at the top left is not the one found in the apartment. It’s another Giovanni we found here.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Art, Culture

October 5, 2010

8 Habits of Lousy Listeners

How many of these bad listening habits do YOU have? (We asked Uncle John and, in between moments of plucking his nose hairs, he said, “I knew you were going to say that, and I knew the worst listener of all time when I lived in New York. I had a house in New York once, it was really something. Had doors and windows and everything.” Then he walked into the bathroom and locked the door.)

Please list your own bad listening habits in the comments.

Most people know that one of the keys to success in relationships is good listening.

Experts tell us to use “active” listening, “I messages,” and open-ended questions. Articles urge us to stop talking when someone speaks, to use our body language effectively to encourage the other guy, and to work to understand what is meant as well as what is said. We’ve been told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus and we’ve been taught how to translate the gender languages. Yet despite all that, developing good listening skills continues to be a challenge for some people.

1. Lousy listeners are attending to other things when you are speaking. Proud of their ability to multitask, they continue to scan the newspaper, pick up the living room, text, or clean their desk while being addressed. An occasional ‘uh-huh’ is supposed to cue you that, really, they are with you. They’re not — or at least not totally. Their mind is distracted. Chances are they miss important pieces of your message — even if they protest that they don’t.

2. Lousy listeners are planning how they will respond even while you are speaking. They are so busy rehearsing their reply that they miss part of your message and don’t catch the nuances of your communication. They’re ready with a paragraph before you’ve even completed a sentence.

Six more bad habits at the PsychCentral Blog.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Culture, People

September 15, 2010

Help the BRI With a Story!

Howdy, BRI fans, we’re busy working on our next book, Uncle John’s Tunes Into TV, and I’ve got a request: I’m working on an article about the history of closed captioning—the subtitle-like text that allow’s you to read, rather than listen to, a show’s dialogue. It’s a surprisingly fascinating subject. Just imagine, for example, that millions of deaf or hard-of-hearing people were not able to fully enjoy that most ubiquitous of modern life experiences—watching the television—until the 1970s, and that it didn’t become truly widely available until the 1980s.

I’m really digging into the story, and trying to get the details that you won’t find just anywhere. (There is a mountain of WRONG information on the subject on the internet, as with most subjects.) A few tidbits: The technology for sending captions along with television transmissions was first produced…to send the time to television viewers. (As in, something like “It’s 11:59 p.m” would show up on your TV screen.) And the first show to be aired with captions in history (in a private test): The Mod Squad, in December 1971. The first publicly televised captioned show: The French Chef, with Julia Child, on Boston’s legendary public television station WGBH, in August 1972.

I’m wondering if anyone out there has their own particular insight into this story. Do you know someone who worked at a TV station during the era? Or someone who helped develop new technology at some point in CC’s development? Or do you just have a funny or interesting thought on the subject? We’d love to hear what you’ve got. Please leave what you can in the comments here or over at Facebook or Twitter.

Thanks a million,

The BRI team

Posted by Thom

Tags: Culture, Pop culture, Television

September 8, 2010

Mens Rooms and Hens Rooms?

Mana the Magnificent and BRI fan Ken Lerner send us to The Society Pages, where we get a look at how male and female are symbolized on public restroom doors around the world:

As such, washroom signs are very telling of the way societies construct gender. They identify the male as the universal and the female as the variation.

An example we all recognize:

The most common type of washroom sign, pictured at the top of this post, is another example. Typically, these signs depict men as people, and women as people in skirts.

Or men as naked and women as dressed?

Anyway, do go give it a look. It’s a thought-provoking post, and there are a bunch of examples, many funny and some just strange. One more: