Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (25 page)

 

The Plaintiff:
Jeb Corliss, daredevil

The Defendant:
W&H Properties, owner of the Empire State Building

The Lawsuit:
In 2006 the 31-year-old Corliss went to the 102nd-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. And then…he tried to jump off, with a parachute. (Why? Why not?) But before he could get around the many safety barriers and into the air, he was tackled and restrained by security guards. Corliss was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment, and was later convicted of the lesser charge of second-degree endangerment, for which he received probation. But then W&H Properties sued Corliss for $12 million, after which he countersued
them
for $30 million for defamation of his character—claiming that there is no law against jumping off skyscrapers, and W&H’s attempt to have him arrested damaged his reputation.

The Verdict:
Pending.

 

The Plaintiff:
Paul Sanchez, a 67-year-old golfer

The Defendant:
Candia Woods Golf Links outside of Manchester, New Hampshire

The Lawsuit:
Sanchez drove his ball down the fairway during a round of golf at Candida in 2006. The ball hit a yardage marker, ricocheted back, and hit Sanchez hard in the right eye. It all happened in under a second. Sanchez’s right supraorbital ridge was shattered and his vision was severely impaired—he is temporarily (and possibly permanently) blind in one eye, and his remaining vision is blurred. In 2008 he sued Candia for negligence in designing the course (the markers, he says, shouldn’t be right on the fairway) and for failing to warn him of the dangers of yardage markers.

The Verdict:
Pending, but Sanchez probably won’t win. In a similar case in Hawaii, the state ruled against a golfer trying to sue another golfer for accidentally hitting him in the eye with a ball because “hitting a golf ball at a high rate of speed involved the very real possibility that the ball will take flight in an unintended direction.”

Description:
A coarse woolen fabric traditionally used to make suits and sport coats. It can have a plain weave or a “twill” weave that creates a pattern of diagonal lines or herringbone across the fabric.

How It Got Its Name:
Tweed owes its name to a mistake made in the 1830s. In those days, fabric woven with a twill weave was called
tweel
in Scotland. But when a London merchant unfamiliar with that name received a letter from a textile firm in the Scottish town of Hawick, he mistook the handwritten word “tweel” to be “Tweed,” the name of a river that flows near Hawick. The merchant assumed that the textile firms in the area had named their fabric after the river to differentiate it from fabrics woven in other parts of Scotland. Acting on this false assumption, the merchant advertised the fabric as “tweed.” Both the plain and twill weaves of the fabric have been called that ever since.

Description:
A cotton fabric that almost always has a checkerboard pattern.

How It Got Its Name:
Gingham originally came from Indonesia, where it had a striped pattern. The Indonesian or Malayan word for the fabric was
genggang
, which meant “striped.” When genggang entered the Dutch language in the early 17th century, it became
gingang,
which in turn became
gingham
in English.

Description:
A synthetic fabric used to make everything from clothing to bedsheets to the seatbelts in your car. When used to make clothing, polyester is often blended with natural fibers like cotton to create fabrics that feel natural but offer improved wrinkle resistance and other desirable qualities of artificial fabrics.

How It Got Its Name:
Developed by British chemists in the early 1940s, it’s made of
polymers
—large molecules that are created by linking smaller molecules together into long chains. These smaller molecules are linked to one another with
esters,
a class of oily or fatty substances that are created when acids react chemically with alcohols:
Poly-ester.

Description:
A fine, soft, smooth fabric that feels artificial but is actually made from
cellulose—
fibers from wood pulp or cotton. The fibers are dissolved down to a liquidy goo, and then the goo is re-spun to make new fibers—that’s why it feels so artificial. Hawaiian shirts are often made with rayon fabric.

How It Got Its Name:
Created by a French inventor named Hilairede Chardonnet in 1889, rayon was known as “artificial silk” until 1924, when it was first marketed under the name
rayon—
“ray,” to call attention to its satiny sheen, and “on,” to show that it was similar to cott
on
fabric.

Description:
This fabric is woven in a way that creates a pattern of raised ribs that run across it.

How It Got Its Name:
If what you learned in high school French class led you to conclude that corduroy is “the King’s cord,” you’re mistaken…but don’t feel too bad. People have been making that same mistake for centuries, and it still pops up in reference books today. Actually, corduroy has never been known as
corde du roi
in France. The name actually refers to
duroy
or
deroy,
a type of woolen fabric once made in western England. Duroy woven with raised ribs or
cords
was known as
corduroy.

Description:
Invented by DuPont chemist Joseph Shivers in 1959, spandex is a highly elastic, synthetic fabric used to make swimsuits, bicycling shorts, ski pants, and other body-hugging garments. Spandex is often sold under the brand name “Lycra.”

How It Got Its Name:
In most of the world, spandex is known as
elastane
. But in the United States, it’s
spandex
, an anagram of the word “expands.”

 

2008…according to
Split Second
(1992).
Global warming will leave the Earth at a perpetually toasty 170°F. The polar ice caps will melt, cities will be knee-deep in water, and a giant mutant will go around killing people and eating their hearts.

 

2008…according to
Terminal Justice
(1995).
Police officers will be equipped with computerized eyes that can see in the dark and across town. Also, human cloning will be perfected, but the technology will be used largely to make illegal clones of celebrities for use as prostitutes by the Mafia. (Bada-bing!)

 

2009…according to
I Am Legend
(2007).
A cancer vaccination will backfire, killing the entire human population…except for one scientist and a clan of mutant vampires.

 

2013…according to
The Postman
(1997).
A nuclear war (and the violent, paranoid survivalists left in its wake) will destroy civilization, kill billions, and wreak havoc on the climate, turning America into a desert wasteland run by a power-mad militia.

 

2015…according to
Robocop
(1987).
Detroit will turn into a crime-infested wasteland in which no one is safe. The shambles of the city government will contract with the massive Omni Consumer Products Corporation to privatize the police department and introduce an experimental, criminal-killing cyborg that is half-robot, and half-deceased cop.

 

2017…according to
The Running Man
(1987).
The American economy will collapse, and the country will be run as a police
state. To keep people calm and distracted, the government will air live gladiatorial game shows that feature criminals being forced to defend their lives in sadistic human-hunting games. The most violent (and most popular) game show will be
Running Man
, shot in a burned-out section of Los Angeles that was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1997.

 

2019…according to
The Island
(2005).
Those with the financial means will get a clone of themselves made, and it will serve as a bank of spare parts should the original human part ever be lost to disease or injury.

 

2022…according to
Soylent Green
(1973).
Overpopulation will lead to a worldwide food shortage. Most people will subsist on the processed food products of the Soylent Corporation. Soylents Red and Yellow are made from vegetables, but the source of the newly introduced delicious, protein-rich, meatlike Soylent Green is a mystery. (It’s dead people.)

 

2022…according to
Tank Girl
(1995).
A comet will strike the Earth with such force that it will alter the atmosphere—it will stop raining everywhere. Water will become scarce and expensive, and a fascistic global water company will control its distribution. The employees will be frequently attacked by Rippers, failed genetic experiments that are half-man/half-kangaroo. It will finally rain again…in 2033.

 

2027…according to
Children of Men
(2006).
Humans will be infertile from 2009 on—we will be a dying race. With little future, society will slowly collapse, governments will descend into anarchy, and doctor-assisted suicide as well as acts of terrorism will be on the rise. But when a teenage refugee becomes pregnant, she will offer the world a glimmer of hope.

 

2054…according to
Minority Report
(2002).
By 2048 Washington, D.C. will have a murder rate of zero. How? The police will use the visions of three psychic mutants to predict—and prevent—crimes. It will be an extremely effective law-enforcement technique until one cop discovers that some of their bleak predictions of the future… could be wrong.

 

AIR DAM.
Part of the car’s body, under the front grille. It reaches very close to the ground, causing air pressure to push down on the car, which improves handling.

 

APRON.
The innermost part of an oval stock-car track. It separates the track from the unpaved infield.

 

BACK MARKER.
Derogatory term for a driver who regularly places very far back.

 

BANK.
All NASCAR tracks are bowl-shaped, meaning the tracks are inclined upward from the infield out. This helps the drivers take the corners at high speed. On some tracks, the “bank” can be as steep as 36 degrees.

 

BLUE OVAL.
Nickname for Ford vehicles, taken from their blue oval logo.

 

BOW TIE.
Nickname for Chevrolet, from their logo.

 

BRAIN BUCKET.
Helmet.
DIRTY AIR.
The turbulent air that comes off the car in front of another. Some cars run well in dirty air, others do better out in the open, in “clean air.”

 

DOWNFORCE.
The down-paved ward pressure created by air traveling over a moving car. Race teams try to find a balance between the benefits of downforce (increased grip on corners) and the detriments (increased drag and slower straightaway speeds).

 

DRAFTING.
When several DRAFTING. When several cars run very close together, touching sometimes nearly touching (at 185 mph!), it results in less drag on all the an cars, making them capable of higher speeds than one car alone. That’s called “drafting.”

.
GROOVE.
The quickest and most efficient path around a particular race course. Sometimes it’s the “high groove” along the outside of the track
near the outer wall, and sometimes it’s the “low groove” around the inside of the track near the apron.

 

HAPPY HOUR.
The last official practice session before starting the race.

 

LOOSE.
When a car’s rear end tends to slide out of control while cornering, it’s said to be “loose.” A loose car is generally faster than a “tight” car, but harder to handle.

 

MARBLES.
Debris that builds up on the track, mostly made up of rubber from tires.

 

PITS.
Parking spots just off the inside of the track, where “pit crews” quickly service the cars—change tires, clean windows, fill gas tanks, etc.—during “pit stops.”

 

POLE POSITION.
A term originally used in horse racing, it’s the location of the driver who is first when the race starts.

 

PUSH.
A car is said to have “push” when the front tires lose grip during a turn and the car is
pushed
up the face of the track toward the outer wall.

 

QUALIFYING
. The position at which drivers start a race is determined by driving “qualifying” rounds beforehand, during which each driver takes a few laps alone and as fast as possible. The driver with the fastest single round starts the race in the “pole position.”