Chapter 23 BAD THINGS As you are about see, all bad things are not so bad. They often have an interesting or amusing side. Looking at the bright side of unfortunate situations may cause people to remember that such bad things exist yet often people are in a position to do something about it. Because of our modern diet of food preservatives, undertakers have been noticing that dead people do not deteriorate as fast as they once did. If a man shaves with a razor he uses more energy than if he uses an electric shaver because of the power required to purify and pump the water through his faucet. Every weekday morning, the commuters of Los Angeles use 250,000 gallons of gas getting to work. They drive 5 million miles, which would be like one car driving to the moon and back 20 times, or around the earth 192 times. If you were to sort through a typical landfill here is what you would find: 41 percent of your trash would be unrecycled paper. 17.9 percent of the stuff is yard clippings with which you could make a fine mulch. 7.9 percent of the trash is uneaten food. 6.5 percent of it is plastic that almost never disintegrates. 8.7 percent is precious metal - primarily aluminum and steel. Wear thick gloves, 8.7 percent of your trash is glass. 9.3 percent is rubber, leather, clothing, wood and other trash. We are destroying the world's rain forests at the rate of 100 acres per minute. An acre is a square 208 feet on a side. Forty percent of the rain forests are already gone. Many folks don't realize exactly why the forests are being wasted. One big reason is hamburgers. It is profitable to raise cattle where rain forests once were. If we could all eat less beef, there would be less reason to remove the trees. There is a chemical waste dump in the Soviet Union that is twice as big as the whole state of Vermont. Two to four million tons of oil leak into the Soviet water table every year from the Siberian pipeline. Americans use eight times more fuel than people anywhere else in the world. Of the 20,000 television commercials written each year, 7,000 are for childrens' sugary breakfast cereals. In other words, 35 percent of commercials are designed to mislead children into desiring sugary cereal. In the past twenty years, there has been a 39 percent increase in the number of overweight children. One major reason is television. Not only does this lack of activity take up more of kids' time, but while they watch, they tend to eat the junk food that is constantly being advertised at them. According to many pediatricians, up to one third of all children at age two may already be developing abnormally high cholesterol levels. The screaming of an upset baby can damage your hearing. Kid's can scream at levels up to 90 decibels, and permanent damage can be caused at 85 dB. One dB is the minimum amount of sound detectable by the human ear. Last year 81 million Americans got sick from food poisoning and 9,000 of them died. The average American will get food poisoning 100 times in a lifetime. The symptoms are headache, sick feeling, diarrhea. Most people think this is the flu. To prevent food poisoning, clean all kitchen items with heat, never leave food at room temperature for more than a few minutes. Remember when you could buy little green turtles in department stores? These were discontinued because they passed salmonella (food poisoning) to children. People who knew about the turtle scam were glad. Almost all of those turtles starved to death. It seems that a turtle can survive several months without eating after birth. The commercial turtle food that was available where the turtles were sold was usually nothing more than "ant eggs." In fact, it was only ant egg SHELLS. But it does not matter that the food was not nutritious, because the turtles wouldn't eat it anyway. When the shells decomposed and sank to the bottom of the water, people used to think that the turtle had eaten. Fifty percent of all turkeys and 37 percent of all chickens that you can buy in grocery stores are contaminated with Campylobacter (food poisoning) according to the Food and Drug Administration. Many millions of chickens are raised and spend their whole lives in coops so efficiently packed that they have no room to fall over if they die. 66 people per day are killed by drunk drivers. This is down from 70 per day as it was a couple of years ago. According to the Environmental Protection Agency almost twenty percent of Americans drink tap water that is dangerously high in lead. Diabetes is the third leading cause of death in America. Diabetes is 50 percent more common than twenty-five years ago. Presently, 10 million Americans suffer from the disease. (Perhaps it is related to the increase in refined sugar consumption in America.) One million Americans wear false teeth. Approximately half of these are radioactive. There is a tiny amount of uranium in these teeth to make them whiter in incandescent light. Human beings and pigs are the only animals that can get sunburn. Sunburn seems to heal in just a few days, but the blood vessels under the skin do not return to their normal condition for up to fifteen months. Baseball players have the longest lives of all occupations. A study of professional baseball players determined that left-handers had significantly more medical accidents and tended to die younger than right-handers. The southpaws also had higher incidence of immunological problems and sleep disorders. The hypothesis behind this phenomenon is that babies who would have normally been right-handers become lefties if they have problems at birth such as long labor or low birth weight. In another study, this one of college students, the researchers found that 44 percent of left-handers had received medical attention for an accident within the last five years, while only 36 percent of the right-handers had such troubles. In this case, scientists believe, the reason might be that the equipment of the world is designed primarily for right-handed people. Some gem merchants now use Geiger counters to inspect precious stones before purchasing them. It seems that the natural colors of some gems can be enhanced by exposure to atomic radiation. Some unscrupulous dealers have done this. Americans throw 694 plastic bottles into the trash every second. A plastic container that you throw away today may still exist 50,000 years from now. Once every month, National Geographic publishes a stack of magazines 52 miles tall. The people of the world use one billion gallons of crude oil a day. A tankful of gas uses about the same amount of crude oil as 14 bicycle tires. A typical car uses about 1.6 ounces of gas for every minute the engine idles. It uses up about one-half ounce of gas to start the engine. So, if you turn off the car anytime you are likely to stand idling for more than twenty seconds, you will save gasoline, and therefore save money. It costs approximately one dollar per hour to idle your car. If you slow a car down from 57 to 50 miles per hour, you will get half again better gas mileage. This means that the average American driver would save about $200 per year. The rain in New York carries so much acid from pollution that it has killed all the fish in 200 lakes in the Adirondack State Park. The world's smog is so thick that Astronomers are complaining. Americans throw out 1,000 bags of garbage every second. We grow more tobacco than wheat in America. According to the National Academy of Engineering, the deaths of 15,000 Americans are caused by air pollution. Fifteen thousand children starve to death every day. In Bengladesh, only one out of two children live to see age five. Smoking Every thing about smoking cigarettes is dangerous. Last year 6,000 people suffered injuries caused by ashtrays. A cure for cigarette smoking: learn to play a flute, recorder, trumpet. Then play a little music until the urge to smoke subsides every time you feel the temptation. Not only will you soothe your oral desire, but you will become involved in the music which will make you forget the urge, and you will be calmed by the music and the feeling of creativity. At one time, the country of Albania honored a smoker who used twelve packs a day on a postage stamp. A pack-a-day smoker smokes the equivalent on one cigarette one-half mile long per year. Cigarette smokers catch colds 65 percent more often. Americans smoke 1 billion cigarettes per day. If you lined up all the cigarettes smoked in one day, then drove past them at 55 miles per hour, it would take 28 weeks (driving 40 hours per week) to get to the end of the line. 11,000 cigarettes are lighted every second, just in America. Every 22 seconds, a kid tries smoking for the first time. Each year the cigarette industry spends two and a half billion dollars in advertising to replace the 365,000 customers it loses due to death from lung cancer. There are three million new cigarette smokers in America each year. 2,700 people die per day of heart disease. When researchers gave three joints (marijuana) per day, five days a week, to monkeys, which is less exposure than many humans give themselves, after six months the monkeys exhibited chronic symptoms ranging from listlessness to irritability. No big deal. But then the monkeys were no longer given the marijuana, and they did not return to normal. Even after eight months, their brain wave patterns were quite abnormal. When the monkey's brains were examined with a microscope, physical damage was obvious. The THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] content of marijuana common during the 1960's was typically one percent. THC is the active ingredient. Marijuana growers worked constantly to improve the quality of their weed and now contains up to 14 percent THC. The monkeys received 3 percent. Cancer 400,000 Americans die of cancer anually. Researchers found out that women who work at home as housewives have a 54 percent greater chance of getting cancer than women who work at paid jobs. The hypothesis is that housewives are affected by the carcogenic cleaning chemicals they frequently use. The amount of people who get cancer is increasing at the rate of two percent per year. According to a study done by The Harvard School of Public Health, women who drink at least one cup of coffee per day are more than twice as likely to get bladder cancer. You can accidentally kill yourself by drinking over 40 cups of coffee in one day. The amount of caffeine is sufficient to cause respiratory failure. 70,000 New York residents get cancer every year. That's one out of every 251 people. In Wyoming, there are less than 1,000 cancer victims per year, which is one out of every 469 people. You are nearly twice as likely to get cancer if you live in New York. Research has pointed out that lonely women get more breast cancer than women who have lots of friends. In the Duwamish River in Seattle, one out of every four fish has liver cancer. In a river in Ohio almost every single bullhead over three years old has cancer. These foods have been found to be carcinogenic if eaten in sufficient quantities: celery, parsley, parsnips, rhubarb, mustard, mushrooms, honey, herb tea, peanut butter and grilled meat. Children don't have to worry about cancer because in kids it is very rare. However, if kids are aware about how to protect against cancer starting when they are young - through proper diet, exercise, avoidance of air pollution, chemicals, excessive sunlight and smoking - they are far less likely to get cancer when they are older. Military Matters During World War II, 2,700,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany, killing 300,000 people, and seriously injuring 780,000 more. If cars were dropped from the sky instead, by weight the equivalent number of cars would be 1,800,000, enough cars to give six to the families of every one who was killed by a bomb. Altogether, Germany lost almost 12 million people. 35 countries have a total of over 50,000 atomic bombs with which we can be blown up: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, East Germany, Egypt, Finland, France, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Yugoslavia. It is tempting to think that with the new, improved relations between the super-powers of Russia and America, the likelyhood of nuclear war is diminishing. Modern times are not scary like in the 1960's, with people building nuclear fallout shelters in their backyards and under their schools. Right? Wrong, there are now dozens of politically unstable, or even down-right crazy suicidal countries with nuclear capability. Both the Soviets and the Americans are building more nuclear missils than they promised to throw away with the INF Treaty of 1987. (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down. 10% of the world's total production goes to the manufacture of arms. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Grenada, their unemployment rate was fourteen percent. Now it's thirty percent in that country. Fighting in the Confederate army at the Battle of Gettysburg, General Henry Heth was wearing a hat that was too big. He had folded some newspaper into the sweatband to make it fit better. He was hit in the head by a bullet, but the newspaper deflected its path, saving his life. Liechtenstein used to have the world's smallest army. There was one soldier. He served his country until his death at age 95. Then the country no longer had an army. When Commodore Perry's ships sailed into Japanese waters the local warriors sailed out and tried to restrain the ships by holding them with ropes. They knew the steam ships were huge, but had no idea of the power of their engines. When the commodore blew the ship's whistles, the warriors were so scared they all fled. In one of the most unusual military maneuvers ever, in 1911 King Richard The Lionhearted captured the fortress of Acre. The inhabitants were barricaded inside, so King Richard had his soldiers throw 100 beehives over the walls. The people in the fortress surrendered immediately. A military technique was used 1600 years ago that should still be used occasionally today. Java and Malaya both wanted the territory of Sumatra, so the generals each selected one buffalo. The buffalo were pitted against each other and no people participated in the battle. What is the war room in the Pentagon really like? There are no high-tech plexiglass wall maps, no high-tech computers any of that sort of stuff. All there are is a bunch of telephones, several chairs and some conference tables. The famous red telephone, or "hot line" between the Kremlin and the Pentagon does not exist. The closest thing to it is a couple of teletype machines in another office in the building. Flint lock muskets were used from 1550 to 1850, 300 years. They were very crude, requiring reloading after every shot, and frequently misfiring, jamming or even exploding. Ben Franklin once remarked that soldiers might do better with bows and arrows because four arrows could be shot during the time it took to shoot a musket once. During the Civil War Battle of Spottsylvania so many shots were fired that a nearby oak tree ten inches in diameter was cut in two from hundreds of random bullet hits. After the Battle of Waterloo, all the teeth were extracted from the soldiers that lay dead on the field. These were made into dentures called Waterloo Teeth and worn by the elite, rich of America who needed false teeth. Decimation used to be a military disciplinary technique. Started by the ancient Romans and used by some European countries until World War I, it meant to kill one out of every ten men in a group of soldiers who had misbehaved. Technically, to decimate still means to destroy ten percent. More American colonists fought on the side of the British than those who fought for independence. Only 16 percent of the eligible men fought in this war. The rest tended their farms as usual. During World War I, 33 percent of English men of military age were killed. General John Burgoyne had great respect and obedience from his soldiers. His method of punishment was different. If a soldier misbehaved, he had the man wear his coat inside out. Of the half-million Americans who receive combat training, half of these men will develop some permanent hearing damage due to the loud noises made by combat weapons. It seems that John Paul Jones, the naval hero of the American revolution was a bit of a trouble maker. Originally he was a professional actor, but in fact he was also a pirate. He was accused of at least two murders and one rape. After the American revolutionary war was over, he served in the Russian navy as Kontradmiral Pavel Ivanovich Jones. The United States Strategic Air Command invented an atomic powered airplane. The only problems were that even carrying twenty tons of lead to shield the pilot, only crews who had already had children could be used due to the radiation exposure and if the plane crashed, there would be no way to contain the contamination. Fortunately, the military had the good sense not to develop this plan fully. 