Daily Dispatch

It’s National Boss Day

Today is your day to shine, brown-nosers!

National Boss DayLooking for an excuse to cozy up to your superiors and put yourself in the front of the line for that promotion and/or make your coworkers look bad? Then get ready to celebrate National Boss Day. It’s actually been around for over 50 years, but is not widely celebrated for reasons you can probably figure out (it involves buying your boss a present, so there’s one factor).

The person behind this holiday did have good intentions. National Boss Day was created in 1958 by Patricia Bays Haroski, an employee at a State Farm Insurance branch in Deerfield, Illinois. She registered the holiday with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in order to not only honor all the hard-working managers out there but to also help improve relations between them and their underlings. (And probably, we’re guessing, to impress her boss.)

6 Interesting Things About the New Fall TV Season

What everybody’s watching…and decidedly not watching.

TV flat screen lcd, plasma realistic vector illustration.• The Millers is a hit new comedy for CBS on Thursday nights. It starts Will Arnett and Margo Martindale, who are best known for, respectively, the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development and the Emmy-winning drama Justified. Neither of those shows ever brought in a huge audience. The premiere of The Millers attracted 13.09 million viewers, which is more than the most-watched episode of Arrested Development (7.98 million) and the most-watched episode of Justified (4.16 million) combined.

• The Big 4 broadcast networks don’t air many family sitcoms anymore. But the Disney Channel does. One of them is called Dog With a Blog. It’s about a family with a dog, and the dog…writes a blog. In early October, 3.5 million viewers tuned in to Dog With a Blog. That’s 400,000 more people than tuned in to that week’s episode of NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

• Super Fun Night is a new comedy hit for ABC for two reasons: 1) It stars Rebel Wilson, from Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect, and 2) It’s on immediately after Modern Family. This show has been in the works for almost two years. Wilson created the series and filmed a pilot in late 2011, which ABC turned down. They asked Wilson to try again, so she rewrote the script and filmed another pilot in 2012. The network didn’t like that attempt either, but still picked up the show to series and filmed a third pilot episode. That one wasn’t very good either, because ABC refused to air it. The first episode of Super Fun Night was actually the show’s second installment.

The Hackable Smart Toilet

Sitting on a smart toilet right now? Better be careful—you might get hacked!

Smart ToiletJapanese company LIXIL makes computerized gadgets for the home, office, and bathroom…including “smart toilets.” It’s latest innovation: the Inax Satis, a high-tech toilet that can you can program and control with your smartphone.

How can you control a toilet with your phone? Well, the Satis has a motorized lid, a bidet, and a deodorizer. Users can control the pressure of the bidet’s stream, or remotely close an open lid, for example, via an app called “My Satis.” The app can also be used to keep a daily log of bowel movements, if you’re into that level of documenting
your life.

 

A Crappy Cup of Joe

If you think these coffees taste crappy, you wouldn’t be wrong. They literally came from poop. They are coffee from feces.

coffee from fecesIn one of the most inexplicable, perplexing, and kind of gross fads of all time, the hottest thing going in the world of coffee are beans that have passed through the digestive tracts of exotic animals. Adherents claim that the premium coffee that results is better than regular coffee. Why? The animals eat only the tastiest, ripest berries from coffee plants, then digest the outer berries, allowing the beans inside pass through their stomachs unharmed, but left coated with amino acids and enzymes. The animals’ feces is collected, with the beans removed, cleaned, and roasted, then ground into a beverage that fans claim is smoother and less bitter than other coffees because of those amino acids and enzymes from an animal’s digestive tract.

The most popular berries-to-butts-to-baristas blend is kopi luwak coffee, made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of the civet, an exotic mammal native to Asia and Africa, also known as a luwak or toddy cat. In 1991 British coffee importer Tony Wild became the first European to offer coffee made from pre-digested beans. The kopi luwak became so popular in Europe that its production is being industrialized, leading to widespread mistreatment of civets. Recently, Wild launched a campaign to end the production and consumption of the special coffee.

Robot, Heal Thyself!

Modern science has given us a substance that makes robots harder to kill. Way to go, science for giving us self-healing robots.

T-1000_002In the Terminator films, robots sent from the future to kill humans are constructed of a core of liquid metal, allowing damaged or melted robots to easily reform themselves. A group of scientists at the Cidetec Centre for Electrochemical Technologies in Spain thought that this terrifying possibility should be a reality—they’ve developed what they call a “self-healing polymer.”

The Cidetec Centre actually named their creation the Terminator Polymer, but claim their invention wasn’t made for time-travelling, human-killing robots. Instead, the goal is to improve the lifespan and durability of common plastic-and-metal consumer goods that, while expensive, frequently break, such as video game controllers, stereo speakers, and laptop computers. The Terminator polymer is reportedly the first automatically regenerating material ever designed and it’s capable of repairing imperfections in itself up to 97% in as little as

Scientists at the Cidetec Centre say that the regeneration is caused by a “metathesis reaction of aromatic disulphides, which naturally exchange at room temperature.” Or, in layman’s terms, the polymer works sort of like a combination of Velcro and a standard household sealant. In just a few years, this polymer could start popping up in everything…so watch out.

3 Actors and Their Musical Aspirations

Three celebrities with surprising musical aspirations…some of which didn’t quite work out.

506px-Clint_Eastwood-Rawhide_publicityThe action star and acclaimed film director

While co-starring as a tough guy on the TV western Rawhide in 1962, the tough guy actor, Clint Eastwood, recorded an album called Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites. The songs on the album weren’t pop or rock songs—they were story songs about cowboys and outlaws of the Old West, similar to what Marty Robbins might record. The album was not a hit and failed to expand Eastwood’s fanbase into the younger demographic. Eastwood gave up singing, but not music. He’s composed the score for eight of the movies he’s directed, including Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.

Women in Men’s Sports

Women in sports: Here are the stories of a few who attempted to join
in men’s sports and how far they got.

women in men's sportsManon Rhéaume

Rhéaume was one of the best goalies in Canadian minor league hockey in the late 1980s. The Trois-Rivieres Draveurs, a Quebec team in a league that was just a step below the NHL, signed her in 1991—the first woman to play at that level. It was logical she’d try out for the NHL after that, another first. In 1992, Rhéaume was signed by the Tampa Bay Lightning as a free agent. She hit the ice for one period each in two exhibition games, and that was that. She was scored on twice, so she wasn’t the best goalie, but at any rate, she won a silver medal in the 1998 Olympics…for the Canadian national women’s team.

Brittney Griner

In 2013, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made headlines when he publicly stated that he was considering drafting Griner, the top prospect in women’s college basketball. During her college career at Baylor University, the center scored 2,000 points and blocked 500 shots—a college basketball first for any player, male or female. Griner is 6’8” and the right size for the NBA, and a woman playing in the NBA would certainly be historic. But then the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA drafted Griner with the #1 pick. The ongoing success and high play level of the WNBA will probably prevent many women from ever joining the NBA.

Rush! Rush!

Recently honored with their own Canadian stamp, the group Rush was the first Canadian band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here are some other little known facts about Canada’s favorite prog-rock power trio from our newest release Uncle John’s Weird Canada Bathroom Reader.

Rush • Rush once opened for the retro group Sha Na Na. They were booed off stage.

• The inspiration for the eight-minute, epic “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” on Fly By Night was the band’s road manager’s mouthy German shepherd, who would bite anyone who came near. “He’s a By-Tor,” the manager would say.

• Neal Peart was for many years a devotee of Ayn Rand, who emphasized the individual over society and denounced the poor as parasites. He has since denounced Rand’s doctrine of selfishness and called himself a “bleeding-heart libertarian.”

• Alex Lifeson was born Aleksandar Zˇivojinovi ́c to Serbian parents—his stage name is an almost literal translation of his Serbian name.

• Unlike other bands from the ‘70s, Rush never trashed hotel rooms. However, Lifeson was tasered, arrested, and had his nose broken in 2003 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida. The incident stemmed from what the guitarist called the hotel and sheriff’s office’s “incredibly discourteous, arro- gant, and aggressive behavior.” The hotel chain later settled for damages.

8 Household Uses for Vodka

It’s more than just the basis of a great martini! Vodka doesn’t have a lot more to it than grain alcohol (or potato alcohol). That makes it a great, cheap household cleaner,
germ killer, wound healer…(NOTE: try these at your own risk.)

household uses for vodka• For your hair. Add an ounce or two to a mostly-full bottle of shampoo, and shake it to mix in. The vodka is effective at preventing oily buildup on the hair and scalp.

• For removing goo. Have any hard surfaces where the price-tag or other sticker glue just will not go away no matter how much you scrape and peel? Saturate the price-tag residue with vodka. The alcohol will dissolve the adhesive.

• For bandages. Vodka can also dissolve the extremely sticky adhesive on bandages. Simply soak a cotton ball in the spirit and apply liberally to the bandage, which will fall off and save you the agony of ripping it off. NOTE: Only do this if you’re sure the wound beneath is healed—the alcohol can kill all living cells in a wound, the germs and the germ-fighters.

• For a better pie. Substitute a third of the water in pie crust recipes with vodka for a flakier result. This prevents the gluten, a protein found in flour, from making the crust rubbery and dry.

• For weeds. Many gardeners use vodka as the basis of a chemical-free, environmentally-safe herbicide. Mix an ounce of vodka with two cups of water and a few drops of liquid dish detergent in a spray bottle, and spray.

Weird Holiday: It’s German Unity Day

Get a little closer…the German way. It’s German Unity Day.

German Unity DayJust about every country on the planet has some kind of national day. These public holidays involve citizens celebrating their country’s heritage and traditions. The observance date is often placed on a day that the country became independent of another country: America, for example, has Independence Day (July 4th), Canada has Canada Day (July 1st), and Macedonia has Den na Nezavisnosta (Sept. 8th). And these holidays almost always involves fireworks. Why? Because everybody loves fireworks.

Germany has a national holiday, too, but unlike those other countries, they celebrate unification, not separation. Tag der Deutschen Einheit, literally “German Unity Day,” falls on October 3rd and observes the day in 1990 that West Germany and East Germany combined back into a single Germany after more than three decades of separation.

RIP Tom Clancy

Best-selling author Tom Clancy passed away yesterday at the young age of 66. Here is a look back at how The Hunt for Red October became a best-selling thriller.

Tom Clancy The Hunt for Red OctoberIn 1984, a Maryland insurance broker named Tom Clancy wrote The Hunt for Red October, a naval thriller about a Soviet submarine captain who tries to defect to the United States.

Clancy, a military buff, had never published a book before—his only “author” credits were for a three-page article on the MX missile, and a single Letter to the Editor. And the Naval Institute Press had never published a work of fiction. But they liked Clancy’s manuscript, so they bought it and printed 14,000 copies.

A Friendly Hand: President Ronald Reagan read The Hunt for Red October after it was recommended to him by a friend.. .and that’s when a reporter just happened to ask what he was reading. Reagan praised the book as “the perfect yam” and “non-put-downable.”

That did the trick. The Hunt for Red October, which until then had received little attention and was selling slowly, shot up the bestseller lists. Ultimately, it sold more than 5.4 million copies, setting Tom Clancy on a course to become one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century.

Article first published in Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra-Strength Bathroom Reader.

The Search for the National Geographic Afghan Girl

This October marks the 125th anniversary of National Geographic. To celebrate, we take a look at the most famous photographs of the 20th century: the National Geographic Afghan Girl. This story was originally published in Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader.

national geographic Afghan girlSNAPSHOT

In December 1984, a National Geographic photographer named Steve McCurry visited the Nasir Bagh refugee camp on the Afghan/Pakistan border while covering the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. While there he snapped a photograph of a 12-year-old girl with haunting blue-green eyes. The girl had been living in the camp ever since Soviet helicopters had bombed her village five years earlier, killing both her parents.

McCurry didn’t have a translator with him that day, so he never got the girl’s name. But the photograph, which appeared on the cover of the June 1985 issue, went on to become the single most recognized photograph in National Geographic’s 125-year history and one of the most reproduced images in the world.

How did Google Get its Name? Happy 15th Birthday Google!

how did google get its nameHappy 15th birthday Google!

It seems that anything you do online has the word Google attached to it today. Our online lives are filled with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Plus, Google Maps, Google Earth, Youtube, Piacasa, and most importantly, Google Search! So, how did Google get its name? Here is an piece from Uncle John’s Top Secret Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!

In 1998 Sergey Brin and Larry Page were looking for money to help start their company, so they boasted to investors that their new search engine could find a googol pieces of information, which is the word for the numeral “1” followed by 100 zeroes. One investor liked them, and immediately wrote a check made out to “Google.” The name stuck.

Restaurant Firsts

We’re becoming more and more of a restaurant culture.

Retro Eat Sign ThunderstormFirst restaurant to note GMOs: In 2013, the Mexican fast-food chain Chipotle became the first chain to adopt a policy to note on its menu what of its ingredients were of “genetically modified origin.” The only ingredient, so far: soybean oil, used to cook meat.

First green salad: The prime rib restaurant Lawry’s opened in Beverly Hills in 1938. One of the their hallmarks was, and still is, tableside service—an employee wheels a cart to your table and carves off a slab of prime rib (as that was once the only entrée offered). But before the meal, another employee wheels another cart around, table to table, and tosses fresh green salads for guests. Included in the price of the meal, this was the first time an American restaurant offered a salad course.

First restaurant to accept bitcoin: “Bitcoin” is an electronic currency, invented in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto, used exclusively over the Internet. And now, at least one place in the “real world.” In 2013, Bubba’s Firehouse Barbecue in Salt Lake City, Utah, started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. (The owner is a big fan and online user of bitcoin.)

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