mental_floss Blog » Chris Weber

Extreme Epidermis: 7 Skin Conditions

Chris Weber — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:05:50 +0000

Skin is the largest organ on the human body, and an amazing number of things can go wrong with it. Here’s a menagerie of skin diseases and conditions, all with full-color images that will have you checking yourself in the mirror for weeks. Some of the images are rather graphic. You’ve been warned.

1. Accessory nipples

Accessory nipples are just what they sound like—extra nipples that below the main nipples. They form in a line, as with the row of teats on a pig. Both boys and girls can get them.

2. Rhinophyma

In rhinophyma, your nose grows out of control, becoming bulbous and enflamed. It is a symptom of advanced acne rosacea, which causes chronic flushing of the face. Both Bill Clinton and W.C. Fields had rosacea, and caricatures of the men often show them having round, ruddy, red noses. Many folks with rhinophyma go on to have nose surgery.

3. Black Hairy Tongue

Black hairy tongue doesn’t actually involve hair, nor is it necessarily black. Yeast or bacteria camp out on your tongue, where they produce the characteristic stain and make it appear to be fuzzy. Black is the most common, although many shades are possible, including brown, orange, and white.

4. Leprosy

An ancient disease, leprosy takes years to run its course. It can be 20 years before the first symptoms appear—a stuffy nose, cuts on the skin, and/or numbness—and longer still before the infamous flesh rotting sets in. Interestingly, scholars have been arguing for years (as seen in this 1909 New York Times article) that the leprosy mentioned so prominently in the Bible is not leprosy at all. If treated early, leprosy is highly curable. The World Health Organization has spearheaded a campaign to wipe out leprosy, with efforts now focusing on Brazil, India, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Nepal.

5. Hypertrichosis Lanuginosa

A diagnosis of hypertrichosis lanuginosa means you have hair growing all over your body—hair that is long, thick, and everywhere it should not be. The illness can be either inherited or acquired. The inherited form, known as Abras Syndrome, goes way back in history, according to medical historians. For instance, an extremely hirsute young man named Petrus Gonzalez from the Canary Islands was captured and “given” as a freak-show gift to the French nobility—who realized that there was nothing wrong with the guy except that he was completely covered in shaggy hair. They gave Gonzalez a castle, where he started family. Their portraits of Gonzalez show that many of his descendants inherited Abras Syndrome from him. The acquired form of hypertrichosis lanuginosa cause the fine hairs that your have on your face and elsewhere to thicken and lengthen. This condition is very rare. When it does occur, it’s often as a result of cancer.

6. Cornu Cutaneum

Imagine looking into the mirror one morning—and seeing a horn sprouting from your head! That’s the unfortunate predicament of folks with cornu cutaneum. These conical growths aren’t actual horns, but rather tumors, sometimes benign and sometimes cancerous. But they look like horns, and that’s the problem. One doctor described a patient with a horn three inches long (despite occasional trimmings) that had been developing for 30 years!

7. Human Papillomavirus

The human papillomavirus, often in the news for its association with cervical cancer, also causes numerous kinds of warts. In one extreme case, an Indonesian man with HPV developed pounds of thick, gray, bark-like warts. Since doctors hacked away the growths, the gentleman, Dede Koswara, has quit his job in a freak show and started searching for a wife.

[Most of these photos came from Johns Hopkins' online DermAtlas, which contains over 10,000 pictures of skin diseases.]

Lunchtime Quiz: Beer Geography

Chris Weber — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:30:21 +0000

Remember memorizing the names of continents and capitols for seventh-grade geography tests? Here’s a version for map-savvy adults who have moved on to other hoppies, er, hobbies—namely, beer. Tell us where the following brews are made, and we’ll tell you a fascinating fact about each one.

Take the Quiz: Beer Geography

6 Really Strange Truck Spills

Chris Weber — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:56:00 +0000

When I first heard that a truck had dumped 40,000 pounds of sausage on Wisconsin highway, my first thought was, “Mmmmm, sausage.” My second thought was, “That has to be the weirdest truck spill ever.” But it’s not. With help from friends at Truckspills.com, we found eight truck spills you would definitely rather read about than encounter.

1. Molasses

If any town might prepare for a sticky truck spill, you’d expect it to be Sugar Land, Texas. That’s where, in 2008, motorists came face to face with a monstrous wave of . . . molasses. 5,000 gallons spilled when the truck carrying it jack-knifed and rolled over. The cleanup took eight hours and 8 trillion handy wipes.

2. A Whale

(Warning: Disgusting photo ahead!)

The Taiwanese city of Tainan looked like the set of a slasher movie after a 56-foot sperm whale exploded on its way through town. At the time, the whale was dead, having beached itself earlier, and was being carted via flatbed truck to a research facility for autopsy. As the whale lay rotting in the sun, gases began to build up inside its carcass until they detonated in a flood of whale guts.

3. Beer

Last year, when a driver lost control of his rig on a Colorado interstate ramp, the capsized trailer was shorn open like a beer can . . . full of beer cans. That’s right: this particular truck was carrying twelve-packs of smooth-drinking Keystone Light. Keystone markets itself as “Always Smooth, Even When You’re Not”–like, say, when you take a ramp too fast and crash your tractor-trailer. Fortunately, the “uninjured” beer was recovered and loaded on another truck, leaving me to imagine that a poor beer-lover somewhere bought himself a very foamy twelve-pack.

4. Money

As tough as the economy is, maybe people should start combing the highways for loose change. In 2004, a wrecked armored truck spilled $2 million in coins on the New Jersey Turnpike. In 2005, an armored truck caught fire and splashed $800,000 in scalding quarters on an Alabama road. And just last year, a truck carrying 3.5 million nickels (worth about $185,000) to the Miami Federal Reserve dumped its load after a violent wreck that killed the driver.

5. A ship engine

What do you do when a 200-ton marine engine destined for a San Diego shipyard flips off its flatbed? Get a crane. Actually, get three cranes–and a new road. The massive engine pancaked cars and even shoved one below the pavement. True to Murphy’s law, the truck driver involved went to the wrong address, realized his mistake, backed up, hit a curb, and—kaboom! For a cool description of how engineers put the engine back on a truck, check out the original article on the crash.

6. Explosives

In 2005, a truck carrying 35,000 pounds of explosives rolled over on a Utah highway and (in classic “A-Team” fashion) blew up moments after the driver and passenger escaped. The blast dug a crater 30 feet deep and 70 feet across. It also propelled concrete road barriers hundreds of feet in the air and twisted nearby railroad tracks like straws. Fortunately, no one died.

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The 5pm Quiz: Star Chores

Chris Weber — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:00:15 +0000

Life on the International Space Station may seem sexy, but NASA doesn’t have maid service. Astronauts have to clean up after themselves, just like the rest of us. In honor of tonight’s scheduled shuttle launch (update: no launch tonight), let’s test your ability to keep house in space.

Take the Quiz: Star Chores

4 Governors Who Did Time

Chris Weber — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:20:00 +0000

When I met Rod Blagojevich at a Chicago Cubs game in 2007 (that’s us), he was a wily incumbent who had just won easy reelection despite longstanding rumors of corruption. Today, facing a federal corruption trial, Blagojevich may soon join the fraternity of governors who have gone to prison.

With help from the chaps at the Political Graveyard, I identified at least 17 governors who achieved this unfortunate distinction. Here are four who make me gag.

1. “A truly heartfelt apology”

Ironically, Rod Blagojevich campaigned as a reformer, promising to clean up the corruption of his predecessor, Illinois Governor George Ryan, imprisoned for fraud and racketeering. In his most infamous scheme, Ryan oversaw the sale of driver’s licenses to unqualified drivers—one of whom, in 1994, killed six children in a highway accident. Just this winter, fourteen years later, Ryan officially offered “a truly heartfelt apology” in hopes that it would earn him a Presidential pardon.

2. “The Rascal King

James Michael Curley, elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1935, avoided prison for taking bribes when Bostonians collected $46,629 to pay his fine. A working-class Democrat and Irishman, Curley enjoyed great popular support, which allowed him, among other abuses, to appoint cronies to office, use state patrolmen as golf caddies, and throw a wedding banquet for his daughter that featured 2,000 pounds of lobster. These antics eventually caught up with the Rascal King, though. Convicted of misconduct in 1946, he spent five months in prison while still the sitting mayor of Boston.

3. “Vote for the Crook”

A resilient Cajun politician who served as the 48th, 50th, and 52nd governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards weathered two dozen investigations during his long career. During one campaign, Edwards’ supporters even distributed bumper stickers reading “Vote for the Crook.” Edwards liked to gamble. He often registered in Las Vegas under names like “T. Wong” and settled his tabs with suitcases full of cash. Convicted in 2000 of fraud and racketeering, Edwards turned 81 behind bars this year. Like George Ryan, he’s hoping for a pardon.

4. “Overcoming adversity and surviving”

John G. Rowland was a popular three-term governor of Connecticut until 2004, when a federal investigation revealed his penchant for accepting gifts, like a hot tub, a canoe, free vacations, a $14,000 kitchen for his summer home, Cuban cigars, cases of champagne, and—coolest of all—a vintage Ford Mustang convertible. Having completed a ten-month prison stint, Rowland today advertises himself as a motivational speaker, warning audiences about the perils of power and sharing life lessons about “overcoming adversity and surviving.”

Football’s Most Painful Injuries

Chris Weber — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:50:19 +0000

This season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has set out to make his league a kinder, gentler place. Linebackers groomed since Pop Warner days to inflict maximum carnage now face heavy fines if they bang a quarterback’s head or knee–even though those remain perfectly legal plays. Meanwhile, rumors swirl that Goodell will soon change the game’s rules to make quarterbacks safer than the Boy in the Bubble.

Besides outraging linebackers and fans alike, Goodell’s gambit calls to mind the hideous injuries that distinguish football as America’s favorite sport. As graphic as a real-time injury can be–and the ones described below have been replayed millions of times on YouTube–they overshadow lesser-known maladies that can hurt just as much.

Is a leg supposed to do that?: Compound fracture

There’s a sort of deer-in-headlines fascination about a limb bending where it’s not supposed to–like when bone-crushing New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor mauled Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theisman in what fans later voted the most shocking moment in NFL history:

The tackle snapped Theisman’s shin like a matchstick. Doctors spent hours wiping grass and dirt off the protruding tibia before they could set it. Theisman hoped to go back into the game, but he never played again, nor has he ever watched a replay of that fateful tackle.

That was in 1985, and the footage pales by comparison to the mangled legs captured with today’s television cameras. Take, for instance, the multiple angles and slow-mo analysis of the compound fracture suffered by the Denver Broncos’ Ed McCaffery in 2001. As his leg whips around like a rubber chew toy, McCaffery still catches the ball! That’s good for a first down and an ambulance ride.

Just a bruise—or is it?: Compartment syndrome

Earlier this year, doctors rushed Redskins defensive end (and Dancing with the Stars runner-up) Jason Taylor into emergency surgery—for a bruise. It wasn’t an ordinary bruise, though. After a sharp blow to Taylor’s leg, fluid rapidly became trapped inside, building pressure that can damage nerves, cut off blood flow, release deadly blood clots, and even necessitate amputation. This freak condition, called compartment syndrome, is hard for even seasoned athletes to avoid. Cory Hogue, a linebacker at the University of Central Florida, fortunately avoided those complications and recovered from compartment syndrome in one leg, only to have his season ended by compartment syndrome in the other leg.

Pop goes the knee: Ligament tear

A collapsed knee generally means two things: torn ligaments and a replay on that night’s SportsCenter. In 2003, the knee of Miami Hurricanes running back Willis McGahee had a head-on collision with a defender’s helmet, folding it backward like a kicked-in door and tearing three of its four ligaments. McGahee rehabbed successfully, though, and that once-shredded knee has since carried him to nearly 40 NFL touchdowns. In last weekend’s AFC Championship game, McGahee—now with the Baltimore Ravens—lay motionless on the turf for several minutes before being carted off on a stretcher. He’s got a concussion and a sore neck, but will make a full recovery.

Another running back, Napoleon McCallum, wasn’t as lucky. A two-time All American who set 26 records at the Naval Academy, McCallum’s pro career looked equally promising–until this gag-inducing, cover-your-eyes tackle. 49ers linebacker Ken Norton bearhugged McCallum from the front, landed on McCallum’s knee, and bent it backward like a child’s toy bow. “Oh Lord, don’t look at this if you don’t want to see it,” wailed announcer Dan Dierdorf. After six surgeries and months in a wheelchair, McCallum tried to mount a comeback but quit when he lost a footrace to five-year-old girl.

Wounded in the worst place: Sports hernia

Three words: Chronic groin pain. Like a serrated knife to the bone, a sports hernia hurts in the worst way and in the worst place.

A sports hernia isn’t a hernia in the classic sense. Instead, it involves a tear in the muscle attached to the pubic bone. The Philadelphia Eagles have lost so many players to sports hernias–at least seven, including star quarterback Donovan McNabb–that one hysterical sportswriter called it an epidemic. Matt Birk, the center of the Minnesota Vikings, had three by himself. He tried to play through the pain by using his hips for leverage instead of his sore groin—a bad idea, because he then tore the labrums in both hips. The result: five surgeries, one on each hip, and three to repair the sports hernias.

Doctor, my eyes!: Eye trauma

Eye injuries aren’t common in football–the guys wear helmets, after all, often equipped with visors. So when an eye gouge does occur, it’s not always an accident. Earlier this season, the above-mentioned Willis McGahee (seriously, what’s the deal with Willis McGahee?) caught a finger directly in the eye, with bloody results. He maintains that the poke was intentional. And when John Henderson of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Andrew Whitworth of the Cincinnati Bengals rumbled earlier this month, Henderson went right for his adversary’s eyes.

In a toe jam: Turf toe

Footballers are tough men used to playing through pain, but a bad case of turf toe can bring even the toughest to his toes, er, knees. A turf toe forms when your big toe bends backward too far, causing chronic swelling and extreme pain in the tissues beneath the foot. It causes college athletes to miss more time than anything except knee injuries. Even with rest, stretching, and surgery, the injury can outlast a football career. Over half the people with turf toe still have pain five years later, and many develop arthritis. Turf toe dogged flamboyant cornerback Deion Sanders for years and forced Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert into early retirement.

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What’s the World’s Worst Smell?

Chris Weber — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Dr. Pamela Dalton is a chatty, mild-mannered scientist—a sensory psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia—who just happens to have authored the world’s worst smell. Her client: The U.S. Department of Defense, which wanted a world-class stink bomb, a violently potent, no-kill weapon all but guaranteed to make enemies drop their weapons and run away.

Here’s how Dalton made her Frankensteinian creation, affectionately named “stench soup.”

The Recipe: Research shows that certain smells are hated in cultures the world over. Dalton surveyed the vilest odors from around the globe (fish oil factories, old toilet brushes, etc., ad nauseum—literally) and identified the key elements. Specifically, she focused on two kings of the stench world—rotting corpses and human waste—and recreated them in her lab. To these she added sulfur (that yummy rotting egg smell) and a sweet, fruity overtone. The exact recipe, of course, is a secret—we can’t have Al-Qaeda running around cooking up batches of stench soup, after all—but suffice it to say that the final product smells something like a putrescent corpse lying on a mound of human excrement laced with rotten eggs and overripe fruit. Only worse.

How She Knows It’s The Worst: Dalton tested her smell on volunteers. That’s right—for the sake of science, people signed waivers saying that, yes, they were about to whiff something mind-blowingly, paint-peelingly hideous. Happily, all of the volunteers completed the study uninjured; Dalton says that it’s very unusual for a smell, no matter how bad, to cause actual physical harm.

Why People Love Stench Soup: Once completed, stench soup got a lot of press—and a surprisingly enthusiastic responses. After reading about her creation, hundreds of people wrote and called Dalton to tell her about the God-awful smells that only she, as an expert, would appreciate.

Unsolicited “discoveries” shared with Dalton:
Burning cat poop (This person confided that, in the spirit of discovery, she had actually put her cat’s poop on a lit barbeque.)
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Five pounds of raw shrimp left in a vacation home over the winter
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The fluid excreted by a dog’s anal glands
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“My mother’s basement”
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The socks and underwear of a guy named Gary. Wrote a friend of Gary: “All you would have to do is throw a pair of his socks in the Taliban caves in Afghanistan and I promise you they would come running out.”

(For the record, last year Dalton told The Times of London that her favorite smell was diesel exhaust.)

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Dirty Secrets Under the Bleachers: When Landfills Become Sports Arenas

Chris Weber — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:04:15 +0000

You know what they say: you can take the stadium out of the trash, but you can’t take the trash out of the stadium. Many American sports meccas—such as Comiskey Park in Chicago, Mile High Stadium in Denver, and Giants Stadium in New Jersey—were built on top of the landfills because the land was cheap and convenient. Unfortunately, the past doesn’t always stay buried. White Sox shortstop Luke Appling felt the spike of his shoe hit metal as he was heading out to his position in Comiskey Park. To his surprise, he’d struck a large copper kettle. The game actually had to be delayed to dig up the kettle and then again to fill in the gaping hole near second base.

Sports injuries aside, building on top of landfills may have serious consequences as well. Four members of the New York Giants developed cancer during the 1980s, the decade after the stadium was built over a dump in the Meadowlands. It’s impossible to know whether the contaminated trash below their feet was to blame, but at the time, many members of Giants felt as if their home field held no advantage. As linebacker Harry Carson told the New York Times in 1987, “’I don’t know how much more I can take of guys getting ill. It makes you wonder what is going on around here.”

But the trouble in New Jersey didn’t prevent the residents of Antioch, Illinois, from trying to turn their trash into treasure some years ago. With the help of the Environmental Protection Agency, the town converted its 121-acre landfill into an athletic complex for the local high school, which included five soccer fields, three softball fields, and 12 tennis courts. But that wasn’t all. Antioch also tapped into the waste inside the landfill, which releases methane and other combustible gases. Engineers piped this gas into the high school campus, heating it all winter long. This ecofriendly design trimmed the town’s electricity bill and may even turn a profit. On nights and weekends when school is closed, Antioch sells the surplus power back to a local utility.

Landfills By the Numbers

• Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island can be seen from space. Fresh Kills served New York City for five decades, and like many retired landfills, it will ultimately become a park.

• Forget panning for gold. If you want to try your hands at prospecting, head for a dump. One ton of trashed computers can contain more gold than 17 tons of gold ore.

• The number one most common thing in a landfill: Paper.

• In years to come, your car may run on trash juice. Engineers are perfecting techniques to condense landfill gas into clean-burning, liquid fuel. Fittingly, this fuel already powers garbage trucks in some parts of the country.

• Wish they all could be California landfills? The Fresno landfill, built in 1937, was the country’s first “sanitary” landfill, in which trash is compacted and buried under a layer of dirt every day, keeping out rats. By 1945, more than 100 cities had copied Fresno’s model, and today it can be found worldwide. In honor of Fresno’s influence, the landfill was named a National Historic Landmark.

Lunchtime Quiz: The Likelihood of Death

Chris Weber — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:30:27 +0000

It may seem morbid to calculate the odds of someone dying—but that’s what being an actuary is all about. See if you have what it takes by completing this quiz.

Take the Quiz: The Likelihood of Death

Love Potions: 6 Surprising Aphrodisiacs

Chris Weber — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:30:42 +0000

Everyone knows oysters’ reputation for spurring loving-making—but how do you kindle randy feelings in your partner if you can’t call down to room service for a tray of blue-tips? Over the centuries, desperate lovers have developed aphrodisiacs out of surprising ingredients, and scientists are now researching how they work.

1. Ginseng

Ginseng is so commonplace today, available in teas, juices, and even chewing gum, that many men may not realize that it has long served as a bedroom aid. Ginseng boosts the level of nitric oxide in the bloodstream, and that in turn helps blood flood into the penis to create that male lovemaking necessity, the erection. Viagra, by the way, works by precisely the same mechanism.

2. Toad Secretions

During the mid-90s, four men died in New York after using “Love Stone,” an aphrodisiac that’s usually applied directly to the genitals. In these cases, however, the men decided to smoke the “stone,” which wasn’t a stone at all but a lump of ointment containing toad secretions. The toad juices harbored a hallucinogen known as bufotenine that may stir the libido in some way. But the toad juices also led to poisoning and cardiac arrest—not exactly the way you’d hope to end an amorous evening.

Toad was in the news again last month when another New York man died after ingesting a hard, brown substance containing toad venom.

3. Nutmeg

The common spice nutmeg inspires lab rats to (a-hem) rattle their cages. Wrote researchers: “It significantly increased the Mounting Frequency, Intromission Frequency, Intromission Latency and caused significant reduction in the Mounting Latency and Post Ejaculatory Interval. It also significantly increased Mounting Frequency with penile anaesthetization as well as Erections, Quick Flips, Long Flips and the aggregate of penile reflexes with penile stimulation.” Scientists are unsure about how nutmeg works its magic, or whether the resulting rat-love is as good for the lady rat as it is for the male.

4. Deer Antler

Deer antler is an extremely popular aphrodisiac worldwide. Deer antlers are the only organs on any mammal that can regenerate itself, and the velvet that forms on the horns is collected on specialized velvet farms. New Zealand produces more antler velvet than any other nation.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the velvet is dried and sliced before being mixed with medicinal herbs; people make a soup from the preparation. In the West, cleverly named products like Velvita (not the processed cheese) contain velvet in powder or capsule form. Deer antler velvet seems to have bedroom benefits for both men and women. The antlers are rich in amino acids, hormones, and enzymes, and this cocktail enhances strength and endurance, in bed and elsewhere. Scientists hypothesize that the antlers may have many other benefits, such as reducing stress, helping bones heal, and treating ulcers.

5. Pumpkin Seeds

In China, Turkey, and Bulgaria, men eat pumpkin seeds to stay virile. The oil in the seeds helps keep the prostate healthy, and that’s good for the love life. Two to three ounces per day, eaten raw, are supposed do the trick.

6. Beetles

In decades past, people get the aphrodisiac Spanish fly directly from the source, the beetle Lytta vesicatoria (pictured, courtesy of the Armed Forces Pest Management Board). It’s not an easy thing to swallow, either, because the beetle secretes a substance called cantharidin so prickly that it has been used to remove tattoos. Inside the body, cantharidin irritates the urinary tract and may cause erections as it leaves the body, which enhances its reputation but comes at a price—the poison can cause extensive bleeding. In fact, cantharidin hastened the death of Simon Bolivar, the famed Bolivian revolutionary. Nowadays, you don’t have to eat the beetles; Spanish fly, like everything else, is available on the internet. Though useless as an aphrodisiac, cantharidin has shown great promise in cancer treatments—so you wouldn’t be wrong to say that lovers found a cure for cancer.

Chris Weber is an occasional contributor to mental_floss.