Scatter Brained

BURNING AT THE STAKE:
 Particularly eff ective  in  the 
elimination of witches, heretics, Christians, Zoroastrians, 
Ling chi
’s slower, less palatable 
brother, “death by a thousand 
cuts,” appears to be an exaggera-
tion perpetuated by traveling West-
erners, apparently concerned that 
tales of 
ling chi 
weren’t suffi ciently 
disturbing.

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7
C H A P T E R   1
Nordic  thugs,  British  traitors  (females  only,  please),  homo-
sexuals, and anyone else whose fl esh is not fl ame-retardant, 
burning at the stake is the straightforward but reliable, the 
Toyota Corolla of capital punishment. Its advantages are ob-
vious: It’s easy to do—all you 
need is a stake and some 
burning—and it makes for a 
fl 
ashy public-service mes-
sage. Th
  e upside of death by 
fi re: You may die of carbon 
dioxide poisoning before 
you’re engulfed by fl ame. Th
 e 
downside: You might not. 
Given the choice, we’d rather 
go like ’30s movie star Lupe Vélez, who committed suicide in 
1944  by  overdosing  on  sleeping  pills  and  then  reportedly 
drowning in her toilet. . . .
03
 Toilet Facts
Toilets are like oxygen or boyfriends: You tend not to think 
much about them until the moment you can’t fi nd any. Maybe 
it’s time to give your W.C. a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. After all, you 
probably don’t notice but you pay respect to the porcelain god 
six to eight times per day, on average—or thirty to forty 
times per day, if you’re a six-year-old on a road trip (just josh-
ing, kids). Th
  at makes for 2,500 trips to Flushville per year, 
comprising an average of three full years of your life. Th
 at’s 
enough time to get a law  degree . . . if only you hadn’t spent it 
reading 
mental
_fl oss.
If death by fi 
re were 40,000 
shares of stock and we were your 
broker, we’d probably advise you 
to “sell.” Most places either abol-
ished it (like England, in 1790), 
redesigned  it  (America’s  electric 
chair), or never used it in the fi rst 
place (Islamic law forbids it).

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8
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
✖  ✖  ✖
Nazi war criminal and Gestapo 
founder Hermann Göring de-
spised toilet paper (seriously). 
He refused to use it and in-
stead bought handkerchiefs in 
bulk.
✖  ✖  ✖
In 1993, an Argentinian 
prankster switched the “Wom-
en’s” and “Men’s” signs in a se-
ries of public toilets. We don’t 
see why this is particularly 
clever—the gender divide is 
the same whether you all go to 
Room A or Room B (except 
that women will get to peek at 
some urinals). Apparently, the 
Argentine government wasn’t 
impressed by it either: Th
 ey 
sentenced the bathroom ban-
dit to three years in the clink 
(which supposedly left him 
fl ushed).
✖  ✖  ✖
Th
  e separate stall, a welcome 
innovation if ever there was 
one,  is  a  relatively  modern 
concept. Th
 e Romans and 
Greeks, for instance, saw toilet time as a social occasion and 
sat  down  in  groups  at  their  open-air  toilets.  Th
 at brings us 
back to the Greeks, which brings us to . . .
Lies Your Toilet 
Told You
One of the best-known bits of 
trivia regarding the loo is that 
fl 
ushing one in the United 
States produces a clockwise 
swirl, whereas Australia’s toi-
lets fl ush counterclockwise—a 
phenomenon said to be driven 
by the contrasting effects of 
the earth’s rotation upon the 
Northern versus the Southern 
Hemispheres. What’s particu-
larly fascinating about this oft-
mentioned factoid, though, is 
that it’s entirely false. Although 
grounded in a true natural 
phenomenon known as the 
Coriolis effect, this nugget of 
misinformation fudges the fact 
that over an area as small as 
a toilet—or, for that matter, an 
Olympic swimming pool—the 
Coriolis effect’s effect is negli-
gible. Whether in New Zea-
land or New Hampshire, your 
toilet will only fl ush in the di-
rection its water jets tell it to.

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9