The richest dudes of all time

A visit to the King Tut exhibit led us to wonder how the wealth of American tycoons compare to that of the pharaohs. Fairly well, according to the Forbes list of wealthiest people of all time.

A stunning number of Americans (14) made it to the top 75. In fact, John D. Rockefeller (1) and Andrew Carnegie (2) beat out the mighty pharaohs (Amenhotep III at no. 12). The list doesn't include absolute monarchs who theoretically owned the entire empire. This might explain the absence of emperors of China, which—for centuries—had the largest GDP in the world. Nor does it include Alexander the Great, who conquered everybody (in the parts of the world known to the West) and their dogs.

A monumental pyramid built by legions of slaves?! Pfft, Carnegie can build two skyscrapers with a steel train shuttling him from one towering structure to the other.

Wikipedia has its own list, but the scholarship is even more suspect. Who knows what methodology they (whoever "They" are) used.

There, there

Quick, name all the "there-" adverbs that you know! Let's see, there's thereby and therefore and thereabouts... oh, and therein. Kthnxbai, I'm done. 

Well, it turns out more of 'em are lurking in the dusty dictionary. Some, like "therebefore" and "thereunto," feel so vintage, I feel like I have to put on some bloomers before I could use them.

Check out the words:

• Thereabout
• Thereafter
• Thereagain
• Thereagainst
• Thereat
• Therebefore
• Thereby
• Therefor
• Therefore
• Therefrom
• Therein
• Thereinafter
• Thereinto
• Thereof
• Thereon
• Thereto
• Theretofore
• Thereunder
• Thereunto

See, this is why English has a vocabulary of 1 million words. It's stuffed with all sorts of fillers and random combinations.

Bean, bean, the musical fruit

Why do beans make people produce music involuntarily? If you know about lactose intolerance, you probably already have the answer—it's all about not having the enzyme to digest some doohickeys. In this case, it's the lack of of a-D-galactopyranosidase, which breaks down oligosaccharides (specifically, raffinose, stachyose, and verbascose). And just as "lactose" is a fancypants term for milk sugar, "oligasaccharide" is just a fancypants term for bean carbs.

Carbs that our body cannot digest go to the colon, where they are gnawed on by bacteria whose byproducts are gases that turn our bodies into walking wind instruments of death. Hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and—in some unfortunate individuals—methane, together produce the sound effects.

Anyway, you can easily shush the music by taking the missing enzyme in the form of Beano. To minimize other types of music produced by bacterial fermentation, change what you eat and see what happens. It's a fun science project, but not for your second-hand subjects and innocent passersby, I have to say.

Take two intestinal worms and call me in the morning

What do you do when your bacon-wrapped cookie falls to the ground? Why, pick it up and eat it, of course! If the floor is dirty, even better! Bonus germs!

An increasing number of studies are supporting the hygiene hypothesis, which proposes that early exposure to cooties encourages the development of a well-tuned immune system.

The hypothesis is commonly cited as a possible explanation for the rise of autoimmune diseases, such as allergies and asthma, in developed nations. Supposedly, a squeaky clean environment results in a bored immune system that starts tasering harmless things, like pollen, some food items, or in some cases, the very body it's supposed to protect.

Harmless bacteria and happy-go-lucky viruses are all good for the development of the immune system, but the "It" girl of hygiene hypothesis is turning out to be—get your cameras ready!—the intestinal worm. Most worms are harmless in healthy people, because human beings have adapted to their presence. 

Some worms seem to be good at preventing some bowel diseases (such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease). A few showed promising potential to even reverse autoimmune diseases! In one study, subjects stricken with multiple sclerosis who were subsequently infected with human whipworm (in the course of life, not by the researchers) had mellower versions of their disease. (The University of Wisconsin Madison is conducting a similar study. Imagine the recruitment poster for that study!) 

Everyone wants to hear about intestinal worms during dinner parties, so load up on materials by doing a Google search. For a great overview on the studies, check out the Evolution and Medicine Review and the New York Times (registration required).

Opinion: Enough with the czar fetish already

Not quite a factoid, but it made us laugh. It deserves to clutter your brains, too.

Read the open letter to President Obama from Wilhelm II, German kaiser and king of Prussia.

DOORN, THE NETHERLANDS

Gott im Himmel! Enough with the czars!

You've named 18 so far, according to something I read in Foreign Policy. That includes a border czar, a climate czar, an information technology czar and — I don't think Thomas Jefferson grew enough hemp in his lifetime to dream up this one — the "faith-based czar." Your car czar, Steve Rattner, was in the news last week, trying to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

It took Russia 281 years to accumulate that many czars. Even with hemophilia, repeated assassinations and a level of inbreeding that would gag a Dalmatian breeder. You did it in less than 100 days.

And every one of them hurts. I think I speak for all passed-over Victorian despots when I say that. Somehow, that fancy pants with the jeweled-egg fetish got to be a synonym for innovative, efficient leadership. At minimum — at minimum — I thought my legacy would be the continued popularity of pomaded mustaches and shiny, spike-topped helmets. But it's just the bikers now. And I think they mean it ironically.

I promised myself that I wouldn't say anything about this: I've been out of public life for years and actually dead since 1941. But genug is genug. Americans have been calling powerful Washington figures "czars" since the early 1830s. What do you see in the Romanovs that makes them such models of good government? Ivan the Terrible, the first czar, had his enemies dropped alive through the ice on frozen rivers. Or maybe you're thinking of Nicholas II, the last czar. He was deposed and executed by a guy who looked like a used bookstore clerk. Or Ivan VI, who was locked in a fortress for two decades and then murdered? I'm searching for the lessons any of these might offer for managing your southwestern border.

Most detestable of all, your "czars" don't even possess the one real benefit of czardom: absolute power. Rattner showed that last week, when he failed to stop the bankruptcy. Many of your "czars" don't even have their own departments: Their job is to "coordinate policy." And I'm told that most of them have no control whatsoever over Cossack partisans. I think Nicholas II would have dropped a Fabergé egg himself if he'd heard something like that called a "czar." I nearly swallowed a monocle.

So maybe it's time for a new autocrat to get some air time. Time for something that will stand out even in a White House with a czar in every cubicle. President Obama's archduke of information technology announced today ... Pricks up the ears, doesn't it? In Detroit, the president's car sultan ... Instant respect. Mainly because those who defy the car sultan might be killed by eunuch assassins. Or might I humbly suggest the title of an enlightened ruler who — unlike the czars — actually worked well with parliament and the nobility (in your terms, that would be "Congress" and "Oprah''). Somebody whose record is nearly unblemished, except for one invasion of Belgium that everybody's totally over now.

Today, President Obama congratulated his new climate kaiser ... Goose bumps.

Yours in friendship,

Wilhelm II

David A. Fahrenthold is a Metro reporter for The Washington Post.

Badassminton

The most watched sports is soccer—we know that—but do you know which one is the second? Why, it's badminton! No, no, not the backyard batting around favored by picnickers. That's called abominableminton.

Why would anyone watch world-class badminton events?

• For starters, there's the explosive 200-mph smashes (the record is 206 mph) generated from vertical leaps that rival that of giant basketball players (jumping around 3-4 feet).
• Then there's the sprintastic rallies that cover twice the distance traversed by tennis players in half the time of an average professional tennis game. Because badminton players must return the shuttlecock before it hits the ground, they must lunge for the shuttlecock; tennis players shuffle their way to the bounced ball. Pffft. The "5-second rule" works for dropped cookies and tennis balls, but not for badminton.
• And to top it all off, reflexes that could return those 100++ mph smashes or drive shots give fans a glimpse of what a Jedi duel could look like without CGI. Trust me, the shots are a lot faster than it seems on the video.

Warning: Video montage has loud music.

This article is dedicated to all those who have ever sported a shiner from one of those 100++ mph smashes. To the careless dudes who ever smashed at their opponents at close range: Boo! Terrible sportsmanship.

How to give the perfect man-hug

The web is full of useful instructional videos that make life better. Here's a great one for the XY-set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUdWApwbudQ

Who said this blog is completely worthless?!

The zen of fasting

The brain is the SUV of organs—guzzling huuuge amounts of calories to keep humming. So when you start fasting, your body scrambles to feed the pig of a brain. First, the trusty liver pumps out its supply of glucose; when it runs out after 24 hours, the body starts breaking down its fat and protein.

All this scrambling to feed the electrically charged fat pus (that's what my liver calls my brain) changes the composition of the blood rapidly, causing the brain to go bloop! and experience the clarity and the sense of peace that people who fast describe.

Superpowered bears that won't maul you

Hey, want to meet a creature that you can't destroy by dehydrating, boiling, freezing (we're talking absolute zero here), and bombarding with radiation? Obnoxious Great Aunt Mabel's evil chihuahua is a good guess, but I was thinking of the teeny water bears, the lesser known cousins of the ol' science lab favorite, the fruit flies (also called the girly-man flies).

Sure you can squash them when they're squiggling about, but once they enter the tun (deep hibernation) state, good luck with your blow torch.

NPR radio has a short clip you can watch.

As Mary Poppins said, a spoonful of dirt helps the medicine go brown

A spoonful of sugar has 15-25 horrific calories, but a spoonful of dirt has 10,000 species of bacteria AND fewer calories*. Which would you rather have with your medicine?

If this article didn't waste enough of your time, you can watch a Mary Poppins music video. If you hate your coworkers, sing along loudly.

* Actually, I haven't found data on dirt calories, but there's plenty of information about dirt cake. And some recipes, too.

Who's your Maine man? Why, Alaska, of course!

Listen up, Joe the Plumber and Rito the Hairdresser, Alaska gives to you there a sledful of foreign policy experience. Being the state that is the most far away west and that also far away east gives you that doctrine knowhow that all soccer moms have also. You can keep an eye on two countries, Russia and Asia.

Take a globe (which should be right next to your phonograph machine), then look northwest of Washington. See that giant state? No, that's Canada. A little more to the left.... That's it, Alaska. Now, trace the Aleutian islands and watch your fingers go past the "Made in China" print, past the 180° meridian of longitude, and into the Eastern Hemisphere. Whoa, Alaska is actually east of the "Prime Meridian"! (Oh please. Before he got famous and started wearing gold chains and oversized medallions around his neck, we just called him "Greenwich." His mother still calls him "Urkel.")

Take that, Maine! Easternmost state, indeed. Tshaaa!!!

I don't want no stinking bean sprouts in my northern Vietnamese pho

If you are in a noodle house serving northern Vietnamese cuisine, do not ask for bean sprouts for your pho, unless you want to antagonize the people who run the place. Keep on asking, and you might get some free spit in your soup. They don't add no stinking sprouts and herb doohickeys to their already perfect noodle soups, dangit!

What? But how do you know you are eating northern pho? Rule of thumb: thick noodles and green onions = north; thin noodles with a side dish of fresh herbs = south. Or maybe you can just check the cover page on the menu or even the giant restaurant sign, but pshaw, that's too easy.

The first pothead lit up way before 420 BC

To the list of things that Chinese people did first (detonated fireworks, navigated with a compass, traded with paper money, and printed books), add "smoked pot."

A marijuana stash was discovered in a 2,700-old Chinese tomb. Well, OK, he was a white Chinese guy and he probably would've claimed that he was just holding it for a friend, but it still counts.

The full academic yatter is in the Journal of Experimental Botany. I wonder how grad students who submit articles to the journal "test" experimental botany. Newspapers also reported the archeological find.