Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (19 page)

Economics was also the reason the U.S. Congress expanded Daylight Saving Time in 2005; the representatives wanted to save
money—some $180 million on energy. That number came from Michigan Congressman Fred Upton, who cosponsored the bill and estimated that the country would use 100,000 fewer barrels of oil per day (at $60 per barrel at the time) if Daylight Saving Time were lengthened.

How true that assessment is, though, is another story. In decades past, Daylight Saving Time worked on the principle that people used less electricity because they needed fewer lights when the sun was out and that they enjoyed more outdoor activities when during daylight. But today, most households have a computer or a TV, and one is likely to be on any time someone is awake, meaning that electricity savings may be minimal. A study by the University of California–Santa Barbara, released in 2008, seems to support this. The study determined that Daylight Saving Time actually costs households more money—$3.19 more a year in electricity. (However, the study focused entirely on Indiana, where part of the state observes Daylight Saving Time and part doesn’t; it’s not clear if the added expense would be equivalent across the entire country).

Good news does come in the form of fewer car accidents, though. A 1995 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that motor vehicle crashes decreased when Daylight Saving Time was in effect, particularly fatal accidents involving pedestrians. This group even called for year-round Daylight Saving Time, saying that “the predicted net benefit for retaining daylight saving time was a reduction of 727 fatal pedestrian crashes and 174 crashes fatal to vehicle occupants.” So, as annoying as the idea of changing all the clocks can be, the tradeoff of an hour of sleep once a year isn’t so bad when you consider that it’s a good way to save some lives.

“I want to thank my father, the man who, when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession, like welding.’”

Donkey Kong

Before Donkey Kong, video games were a mild addiction at best. Sure, you had your Pong enthusiasts, Space Invaders had quite a few fans, and Pac-Man enticed a lot of the world’s youth to turn over their hard-earned quarters. But Donkey Kong showed us how simple and compelling a console could be. The intervention should have occurred then—before Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy, and all the rest were injected into our lives.

When Donkey Kong was released, America was in a video game frenzy. About 10,000 arcades had sprung up across the nation, and video game consoles could be found in bars, movie theaters, bowling alleys, laundromats, and grocery stores—anywhere people could be tempted to spend a few minutes and a few quarters.

This is when the video game pastime became a full-fledged addiction. The giant machines gobbled up 20 billion quarters in 1981 alone. And the success of the arcade and video game industry was due in large part to a game called Donkey Kong.

Let’s start at the beginning. The year was 1981, and Nintendo introduced Donkey Kong. What’s in a name? The Japanese video game company needed a good one to identify its new product: the game’s developer Shigeru Miyamoto thought the word “donkey”
meant “stupid” in English, so he chose it to modify “Kong,” a word associated with apes. It was a good way to sum up the game’s giant ape villain. Although most players didn’t care about the story behind the game, there was one: The ape escaped from the zoo after being mistreated by his trainer, Jumpman (later called Mario). Kong kidnaps Mario’s girlfriend, Pauline, for revenge and takes her to a construction site, which he partially demolishes by jumping up and down. Mario, of course, comes to the rescue. While the ape throws barrels and other objects at Mario in an effort to kill him, the player (as Mario) continues trying to rescue the girl. As he gets closer, the ape climbs up another level, and there are more ladders to climb and barrels for Mario to jump over.

The game sounds deceptively easy, but it takes a certain skill to jump over the barrels—the player has to time pressing the jump button just right. And sometimes the barrels double up, meaning the player’s finger dexterity is about to get tested. (Most likely, a generation’s worth of Nintendonitis can be traced back to here.)

No video game is an island. During the 1980s, the industry’s heyday, gamers’ attention was easily diverted to newer, bigger, and shinier things. Video game developers had to keep coming up with new projects to lure players in, and sequels to popular video games were one way to do it.

This is where Donkey Kong really shines. Some people argue that Pac-Man and its successor, Ms. Pac-Man, deserve the kudos for getting us all seriously addicted to video games. They did their part, to be sure, but Pac-Man is monotonous—its maze never changes, so you’re stuck playing the same board again and again. Ms. Pac-Man is a contender, with its six mazes, constantly changing colors, and several different unpredictable ghost enemies.

But Ms. Pac-Man is a hack. It was an unauthorized sequel originally produced by a couple of small-time computer programmers as a Pac-Man knockoff. In quality, though, it far surpasses the original, so much so that Namco (the Japanese company that produced Pac-Man) and Midway (the American licenser of Pac-Man) eventually brought it into the family. Still, it loses points for not being original.

What about other sequels, like Baby Pac-Man and Professor Pac-Man? They were lemons. Baby Pac-Man tried to combine pinball action with the Pac-Man grid (it didn’t work), and Professor Pac-Man had trivia questions built in. Not really what the Pac-Man enthusiasts were after.

Donkey Kong, on the other hand, managed to produce a sequel—Donkey Kong Jr.—that was every bit as fun as the original. In that one, Donkey Kong’s son tried to rescue the captured ape from the evil Mario. The first screen started with a tropical theme, and successive screens got progressively more challenging. The game was still based on moving up levels, but the scenery changed. And in a twist on the original, the industrial barrels and ladders were replaced with vines to swing on and falling fruit to dodge.

Beyond delivering a great sequel, Donkey Kong created an industry in Mario, who (along with his brother Luigi) would return to star in more than 200 games. Mario also became one of the most (some people say
the
most) recognizable characters. Just as you can’t keep a good ape down, you certainly can’t keep the Mario brothers down, either.

Interstellar Messaging

In 1936, the world sent its first intergalactic greeting card. That year’s Olympic games, hosted by Germany and officially opened by Adolf Hitler, became the first broadcast powerful enough to travel into space. Even the weakest radio waves can escape the Earth’s surface. The distance a signal can travel is really only limited by the amount of background noise and the quality of the receiver. A stronger signal will go farther because it is easier to pick out from the background noise. Before 1936, transmissions weren’t strong enough to leave Earth’s atmosphere. The broadcast of the Olympics happened to be the first transmission that was powerful enough to go out into space. And in the 70-plus years since then, hundreds of thousands of hours of television and radio have streamed their way out beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

Whether it’s possible for intelligent life out there to detect and decode these waves is a question that scientists continue to ponder. Radio waves are wide—sometimes up to a mile wide—and cannot be “read” completely by just one radio telescope . . . unless it’s as wide as the signal itself. So scientists have had to create several large radio telescopes—like the aptly named “Very Large Array” in New Mexico, which has 27 telescopes lined up to form the equivalent of one 22-mile-wide telescope. (The installation provides the resolution a much larger, single antenna but at a fraction of the cost.)

The farther radio wave signals travel, the more they widen and weaken. They also can be disrupted or broken up by planets, comets, stars, and other objects. Still, scientists believe that the signals could continue to travel, even in a weakened state, for several hundred light years. And even if they were indecipherable, they might still be recognizable as the product of intelligent life. Some programs are even sent out especially for audiences far, far away.

Other people are getting in on the act, too. At least one Web site on the Internet sells a “service” that allows anyone to send a text or phone message into space. (Uncle John’s message: “Go with the Flow.”)

SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), a research institute in Mountain View, California, says its mission is “to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.” To that end, it transmits radio messages with the hope that a living being outside of our solar system will receive it.

Some people, though, think that talking to the heavens is a potentially dangerous activity. In 2006, an editorial in
Nature
challenged scientists (and amateurs) who send out these radio transmissions to stop because the practice is irresponsible. People could be establishing contact with . . . well, anything. Their other issue was with anyone setting themselves up as a self-appointed spokesperson for the planet. Many scientists also feel that the search for life in the universe is a waste of time. Even if there were extraterrestrials out there and radio waves reached them, it would take the same amount of time for them to send a message back. Hundreds or even thousands of years could go by, and that’s a really long time to wait for a return call.