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Big Secrets by William Poundstone is an old book, but I still enjoy skimming through it every few years. The author did research into obscure subjects people don’t want you to know about. This is different from mysteries, which nobody knows the truth - there are no Loch Ness monster tales. This is stuff that is more on the level of urban legend or conspiracy theories, corporate secrets, and magic tricks. The easiest way to give you a glimpse of what’s inside is a quick list of the secrets plus some links if you don’t know what they refer to.
- Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe: Does the greasy finger-licking white meat really have 11 herbs and spices?
- Money stuff: Secret security measures in American dollar bills, the UPC code decoded.
- The Rorschach Test: What to say when you see those ink blots to not have the psychologist mark you down as insane.
- What’s in perfumes: Do you know what ambergris, fatty aldehydes, or civet are?
- What’s in alcohol: The complex, centuries old Benedictine liquor has a secret recipe. I’m scared of Angostura bitter.
- Magic tricks: Uri Geller, The Amazing Kreskin.
- Secret initiation rites of the Freemasons: For a bunch of guys who supposedly founded America and built the Denver airport, the frat-boy-hazing rites sure sound whacked.
- Is Walt Disney cryogenically frozen?: I’d like to watch the decapitated Pluto cartoon.
- Secret number stations: When I first read this section, I got chills.
All in all, this is a pretty fun book. There is the undercurrent of corporations making money off a clueless public, and some of the secrets are a bit head slapping when you realize you’ve been bilked for so long. Two more books, Bigger Secrets and Biggest Secrets follow this one.
Categories: Books, General :: Tags: Big Secrets, Food, Magic, William Poundstone ::
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"Thanks - i'll mention the one day twitter boycott too. But a big reason why I'm okay with leaving Twitter temporarily is because I have FriendFeed - my cojones are not that big." -
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title. Thanks for informative article.
I am, I admit, sad to learn that Walt isn’t frozen … I would have liked to see what he had to say about contemporary animation techniques
Fun book. Though I must admit, books like these have largely been replaced by links to the weird and wonderful via sites like fark, reddit and boinboing for me.
Still, I remember borrowing Greg William’s copies of these two books repeatedly during high school and college.
These are definitely old books - I think what I still find kinda neat is how the author does a little bit of investigative journalism for some of these secrets. Of course nowadays people do it on their own, they get a link to digg, enjoy their five minutes of fame, and are then completely forgotten about in the ever changing world that is the Internets as everyone moves onto the next hilarious link.