The following is an article from Uncle John's Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader.

Our readers seem to love palindromes, words or phrases that are spelled the same forward and backward. So, on a recent trip to the BRI archives, we pulled out some of our favorite palindromes and used them to create this silly story. There are 52 hidden here (not including doubles). Can you find them all? Good luck!

OTTO

One day a zoologist named Otto paddled his kayak to Los Angeles, eating a banana sandwich. He had heard there was something amiss with the animals there and wanted to help. When Otto reached the shore, a familiar voice called out, "Yo, Banana Boy, what's happening?" Otto looked up and saw his old friend Ed, a general, a renegade who had left the military. General Ed was standing next to his new race car -a Toyota with attitude.

"Wow!" said Otto, "Nice wheels!"

"Yeah, but if I had a hi-fi stereo with a DVD player, it would be perfect," replied Ed. "Hey, want a ride?"

"Sure," said Otto, and the two friends headed downtown.

"Pull up, pull up!" yelled Otto as they passed a newsstand. Ed got out and bought the afternoon edition. The headline read "L.A. Ocelots Stole Coal." Otto read aloud: "Authorities believe the ocelots are being controlled by a giant mutant rat who calls himself King Ognik. Injected with a 'pure evil' gene, Ognik had grown to the size of a yak and escaped the lab. Whereabouts: unknown."

Fifty years after slavery was abolished, the Bronx Zoo had an exhibit in which they displayed a man in a cage. His name was Ota Benga, a member of a pygmy Mbuti tribe from the Belgian Congo.

Ota Benga's life was tragic from early on. He was a member of the Mbuti people who lived in the area then known as the Belgian Congo. Forces under the control of King Leopold of Belgium killed Benga's wife and two children during a massacre – part of the drive to control rubber trees in the region. Benga escaped death because he was on a hunting trip when the slaughter occurred.

Benga was later captured by slavers, then sold to missionary Samuel Verner for a bolt of cloth and a pound of salt. Verner had been contracted by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (otherwise known as Saint Louis World's Fair) to find some pygmies for the fair. Four other Batwa or pygmy people and five non-pygmies eventually agreed to come on the trip.

After the World's Fair, Benga was displayed at the Museum of Natural History in New York and the Bronx Zoo. Read his story at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(YouTube link)

You know what they say... if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS. From the YouTube page:

In 1970 three American researchers, John E. Ware, Donald H. Naftulin and Frank A. Donnelly, designed an experiment to find out whether a brilliant delivery technique of a talk could so completely bamboozle a group of experts that they overlooked the fact that the content was nonsense. The result was the hilarious Dr Fox Lecture and the answer was: yes! The experts didn't notice a thing.

An actor named Michael Fox was recruited to play the lecturer. Fox didn't understand the material he was going to present, and he was concerned that someone in the audience would recognize him from his many TV appearances. But he needn't have worried. Read the full story at Weird Experiments. Link -via Cynical-C

Marketing lore and common sense tells us we value the things we make more than the things we buy already made. That even holds true when we assemble things from a kit, according to research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Experiment 1A: Participants either inspected an IKEA pre-built box or assembled it themselves.  Afterward, they were asked to bid on the box they had either seen or built.  If their bid was above a random number, they would pay that amount to keep the box; if it was lower, they couldn’t keep it.  Participants were also asked to self-report on the value of the box.  An effect was found in both cases; on average, participants bid 62% more when they built the box versus when they simply inspected it.  On average, participants also self-reported liking the self-built box more than the inspected boxes.

Other experiments used origami creations and LEGO sets, and the same effect was noted. Read more about it at NeoAcademic. Link -via Boing Boing

In the 1960s, music videos were shown in coin-operated machines from a French company called Scopitone. Strange and somewhat exotic visuals were added to pop songs to draw viewers to the machines, which were introduced to the US in 1964. Collector's Weekly talked to Scopitone film collector Bob Orlowsky, who not only gives us the history of these "visual jukeboxes," but also shares some of the videos from those days. Link

(vimeo link)

Now you know why zombies always walk so stiff -they're just out of shape! -via the Presurfer

If you are on Barack Obama's email list, you may have noticed the weirdly personal subject lines. Jason English has, and made a quiz about it. Some of the lines are actual presidential email subjects, and some are from Jason's aunt. Now, Jason's aunt doesn't send me anything, but just like you, I have relatives who send me similar messages, so I scored only 74%. Maybe you will do better. Link

The earth saw a mysterious episode of global warming 56 million years ago due to a surge of carbon into the atmosphere. Animals could walk from continent to continent and never see ice. That period is called PETM, or the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and it changed everything about life on earth. Paleontologist Philip Gingerich has been studying the fossil record of the era for forty years, mainly in the Bighorn Basin, just east of Yellowstone National Park.

During the PETM itself a strange thing happened to some mammals: They got dwarfish. Horses in the Bighorn shrank to the size of Siamese cats; as the carbon ebbed from the atmosphere, they grew larger again. It's not clear whether it was the heat or the CO2 itself that shrank them. But the lesson, says Gingerich, is that animals can evolve fast in a changing environment. When he first drove into the Bighorn four decades ago, it was precisely to learn where horses and primates came from. He now thinks that they and artiodactyls came from the PETM—that those three orders of modern mammals acquired their distinctive characteristics right then, in a burst of evolution driven by the burst of carbon into the atmosphere.

Learn more about the changes that happened during the PETM in the October issue of National Geographic magazine. Link

(Image credit: Ira Block)

(YouTube link)

A 9 to 5 office worker calls in sick and thinks he will have the city to himself during business hours. He is surprised to find that he's in the minority. Reaction to this video is that this happens in every big city. I can attest that it is the case in small towns, too. This skit is from the live show Killing my Lobster Conquers the Galaxy. Link -via Metafilter

PECANS The All-American Nut

 (Image credit: Markus Brunner, Germany)

With more than 80% of the world's output produced in the United States, pecans have been an American favorite since the days of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (both of whom grew them in their gardens). The nuts even helped fight communism during the Space Race! Apollo astronauts regularly munched on pecans during their missions.

CASHEWS Because You're Worth It

(Image credit: Flickr user Alisa Cooper)

Cashews are one of the only nuts never sold in their shells. That's because cashew shells contain a toxic liquid that causes nasty skin rashes. In fact, the oil is so caustic that, in the West Indies, it's used to give extreme facial peels. Women spread it on their mugs, and in a few days, the skin completely blisters off, revealing a smooth, clear complexion underneath.

ALMONDS The Lustiest Nut of All

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Porter)

For thousands of years, almonds have been associated with the birds and the bees. Pagans used them as fertility charms, and ancient Romans gave them as wedding presents. Even today, they're involved in a mass reproductive ritual right here in the United States. Every February, close to one million beehives are trucked to California so that the bees can pollinate almond trees. It's the largest managed pollination event in the world.

BRAZIL NUTS Why People are Falling for Them

The question is, I hope, theoretical: if you were to leap out the sixth-story window of a building, how much bubble wrap would be required to ensure your survival? Rhett Allain tackled the problem with graphs, math, physics, and experiments. You should be aware that he used the British idea that the first floor is the one above the ground floor, which we Americans would call the second floor. The answer is ....at the Wired science blog Dot.Physics. Link

(YouTube link)

Queso the cat would rather have gooshy food but is given dry food and water, so he makes cold cereal. Or maybe you could say he prefers his kibble au jus. -via Buzzfeed

Crafty Lady Abby went to a zombie wedding in full skull makeup. It turned out so well that she posted the makeup process as a tutorial for you. You might not have a wedding this would be appropriate for, but a Halloween party would be the perfect place to show off your skull skills! Link -via Laughing Squid

How do you spell the name of the erstwhile leader of Libya? The Colonel writes it in Arabic lettering, which is not directly translatable to Roman. For most Middle Eastern names, news agencies use whatever spelling the subject prefers, but in this case, he has never stated a preference.

Instead, Libya's Brother Leader lets a hundred flowers bloom. The banner at the top of his official website spells it, "AL Gathafi." But if you go deeper into the site, you'll see it variously rendered as "Al Qaddafi," "Algathafi," and "Al-Gathafi." Adding to the multitude of his spellings is the increasingly ironically named "Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights."

And that's just the surname. Variations on his given name include Muammar, Moammar, Mu'ammar, and Moamar, and many others. Once you've settled on how to spell his first and last names, you then have to decide whether you want to add the Arabic prefix "al-" before his last name. Which can also be spelled "el-." And then you have to decide whether the prefix should be capitalized.

The list of different ways that western news outlets spell the Libyan dictator's name is all over the map. Link -via the Presurfer

Chalk up another example of science finding inspiration in nature. The slipperiest substance in nature appears to be the lip of a deadly (to insects) pitcher plant. And a scientist has copied it.

The pitcher plant kills and eats animals. Some of its leaves are shaped like deep pitchers, and their rims, known as peristomes, are exceptionally slippery. Insects that explore the rim, looking for nectar, soon lose their footholds and fall in. They soon drown, and are broken down by the pitcher’s digestive fluids.  (There are some exceptions – see slideshow at the bottom).

Under the microscope, the secret to the peristome’s slipperiness is clear. It is lined with cells that overlap one another, creating a series of step-like ridges and troughs. The plant secretes nectar onto this uneven surface. The troughs collect the nectar, and the ridges hold it in place, preventing it from draining away. The result is an extremely smooth, stable and slippery surface that repels the oils on the feet of insects. Any bug that walks on this frictionless zone falls to its doom.

Tak-Sing Wong of Harvard University recreated this scheme using synthetic materials to build a surface that is slipperier than anything ever made. See the nuts-and-bolts of how he did it at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link -via reddit