The Most Important Questions Of 2009

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF 2009 ANSWERED! By Ethan Trex Photographs By Cary Norton N

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BY THE END OF THE COLD WAR, IT WAS ESTIMATED THAT MORE THAN 50 NUCLEAR WARHEADS WERE SCATTERED ACROSS OCEAN FLOORS AROUND THE WORLD.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF 2009

Why won’t Americans use dollar coins?

How can I get a nuclear weapon? While we normally wouldn’t divulge this sort of information, you did ask nicely. Here are three options we’ve handpicked for you: OPTION #1: STEAL ONE. This is the most difficult route. Nations with nuclear weapons are aware of the catastrophes that could happen if a bomb got into the wrong hands, so they tend to keep their weapons under tight security. But it’s more complicated than just getting your hands on a bomb. Even if you manage to pinch one, each device is equipped with so many locks and safety features that you probably wouldn’t be able to detonate it. OPTION #2: BUILD YOUR OWN. This option is easier than stealing a nuke, but you still have to swipe the fissile nuclear material. That’s pretty tricky, unless you can get an underpaid nuclear scientist to do it for you. In 1992, Leonid Smirnov, a foreman at the Podolsk Chemical Research Institute in Russia, created a black-market side business by sneaking enriched uranium out of his lab in 50-gram batches. By the time authorities nabbed him, he’d ferreted out more than 1 kilogram of fissile material. While that certainly isn’t comforting, Smirnov’s activities haven’t really curbed Russia’s ability to produce weapons. By some estimates, Russia still has enough unused radioactive material to make as many as 70,000 more nukes. OPTION #3: FIND ONE THAT SOMEONE ELSE LOST. This is probably your best bet. Governments misplace nukes all the time, and our government is no exception. In August 2007, for example, a B-52 bomber transferred nuclear weapons from a base in North Dakota to a base in Louisiana entirely by mistake. The error occurred when the crew in North Dakota loaded the wrong missiles onto the plane. It was an easy slip-up to make, because nuclear missiles are often stored next to conventional ones, and the only visible difference is the label. No one realized anything was amiss until the ground crew in Louisiana unloaded five cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. Nuclear missiles are sometimes ditched on purpose, too. In 1958, a pair of U.S. Air Force planes collided off the coast of Savannah, Ga., and jettisoned a Mark 15 weapon into the ocean. Presumably, the bomb sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. Air Force officials maintain that the bomb had no nuclear capsule and wouldn’t pose a huge threat if it fell into the wrong hands. However, it did contain tons of conventional explosives and enriched uranium, so it’s probably best if it stays underwater. Unfortunately, the nuke has quite a bit of company. A 1989 study estimated that more than 50 nuclear warheads are scattered across ocean floors around the world.

THE U.S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT wishes it knew. For the past three decades, the National Mint has been trying to get Americans to make the switch from paper bills to dollar coins. That’s because coins are more durable than paper money. Dollar bills fall apart after a year or two, but coins stay in circulation for closer to 30 years. A switch would save Americans nearly half a billion dollars a year in production costs, so it’s easy to see why the government is heavily invested. While dollar coins have been minted on and off since the late 1790s, the Treasury’s first real campaign to lure Americans away from dollar bills was with the Susan B. Anthony coin in 1979. The effort failed miserably. Instead of giving the Susan B. Anthony a truly distinct look, the Mint decided on a silver-colored piece that was only slightly larger than a quarter, and people ended up confusing the two coins. The Treasury made its next big attempt in 2000 with the Sacagawea dollar. This coin didn’t fare much better, although the reasons were more complicated. The government spent $45 million on marketing and advertising, but internal politics at the Treasury Department prevented the advertisements from mentioning the coins’ strengths over bills. Instead, the ads just proclaimed that the coins were shiny and new, without ever letting consumers know why it was in their interest to use them. After making more than 1 billion of the dollar coins, the Mint only found demand for 88 million of them the following year. Oddly enough, the Sacagawea coins enjoy widespread circulation and popularity—just not in the United States. Citizens of Ecuador, who use the U.S. dollar as their official currency, are more than happy to load their coin purses with Sacagaweas. Since their introduction in 2000, the U.S. Mint has shipped half a billion dollar coins (nearly half their total production) to Ecuador. And the Treasury hasn’t given up on America just yet. In 2007, it began minting dollar coins emblazoned with portraits of each U.S. president. The hope is that the series will become a collector’s item, catching on like the successful state-quarters program. The truth, however, is that Americans probably won’t adopt dollar coins until the Mint stops producing paper money altogether. In the end, that may just be the change we need.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF 2009

Why don’t school buses have seat belts?

Are there any places on Earth left to explore? You might think air travel and satellite imaging have allowed us to explore every last square inch of the planet, but there are a few places that remain largely mysterious. Here are two hot spots your travel agent won’t be sending you: UNDERNEATH THE ANTARCTIC ICE: Antarctica has an uncharted landscape buried under 2 miles of ice. Scientists believe a complex network of lakes and rivers is trapped underneath, sealed off from the rest of the world for millions of years. These lakes aren’t tiny, either. One of them, Lake Vostok, is about the size of Lake Ontario— only deeper. So why hasn’t anyone explored the lakes yet? Drilling through 2 miles of ice is tricky, especially when you’re trying to preserve the purity of the water. Introducing even a little foreign bacteria to the isolated ecosystem could completely destroy it. But if scientists find a safe way to drill, studying Antarctica’s landscape could be the next best thing to walking on another planet. The frozen terrain bears a striking resemblance to Jupiter’s moon Europa. So, with any luck, the land could reveal secrets about life on other planets.

SEAT BELTS HAVE BEEN mandatory in cars for more than 40 years, so why aren’t school buses equipped the same way? According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it’s because school buses don’t need seat belts to be safe. The bulkiness of a bus makes it about seven times safer than a passenger car. In the event of a collision, a bus can easily absorb the force of impact. Plus, kids riding in buses are doubly protected because the seats are designed to cushion children almost like eggs in a carton. The accommodations might not provide much legroom for unruly 8-year-olds, but the high seatbacks and heavy padding work to form a protective cocoon around them. If Junior is thrown forward in a crash, he won’t get far before the cushy seatback absorbs his momentum. Of course, none of this will help if the bus flips over. But the chances of that are so slim that most state legislators don’t think seat belts are worth the added expense. Still, some states would rather be safe than sorry. New York and California, for example, now require all new school buses to come equipped with lap-and-shoulder belts.

NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND: If you’re looking for a more thrilling adventure destination, try North Sentinel Island. It sits in the Bay of Bengal and is technically a part of India, but the Indian government refuses to go near it. That’s because the island is populated by a not-so-friendly tribe known as the Sentinelese. No one knows exactly how many Sentinelese exist (estimates range from a few dozen to a few hundred), but any attempt to contact them is met with a standard greeting: a hail of arrows. In 1974, a documentary crew attempted to visit the island only to turn back when the director took an arrow in the thigh. Similar episodes have convinced the Indian government to leave the Sentinelese alone. More recently, officials thought the 2004 tsunami might have wiped out the Sentinelese. But when a pair of fishermen drifted too close in early 2006, they were killed by the locals. A helicopter from the Indian coast guard attempted to recover the bodies, but the natives did what they do best and drove it away with barrages of arrows. To this day, their lifestyle and island remain a mystery.

NO ONE KNOWS EXACTLY HOW MANY SENTINELESE EXIST, BUT ANY ATTEMPT TO CONTACT THEM IS MET WITH A STANDARD GREETING: A HAIL OF ARROWS.

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When can I travel to space? If your y bank account is larger than the GDP of a small country, then go ahead and start packing now. A Virginia-based firm called Space Adventures has been launching ultra-rich tourists into the atmosphere since 2001. But these deep-space getaways aren’t quite as customized as they sound. Space Adventures makes its money by booking empty seats on Russian shuttles that are flying to the International Space Station, then sells them to wealthy adventurers. A ticket to ride costs between $35 and $45 million, most of which finds its way to Russia’s cashstrapped space program. If you’re willing to wait, you might be able to find lessexpensive options in the next year or so. Space Adventures

will soon be facing competition from Richard Branson’s latest endeavor, Virgin Galactic. The flights won’t go all the way into orbit, but Virgin Galactic passengers will get about four minutes of weightlessness, an unobstructed view of the stars, and the ability to see Earth’s curvature for 1,000 miles in any direction. The tickets still aren’t cheap, though; a seat will set you back about $200,000. But there’s hope that more competition in the industry will bring the prices down. Blue Origin, a space tourism company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is currently building and testing its own vehicles in West Texas, in hopes that it will be able to enter the market soon. mentalfloss.com

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GEORGE W. BUSH’S TWO INAUGURAL CELEBRATIONS REPORTEDLY COST AROUND $40 MILLION EACH. 44

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THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF 2009

Who foots the bill for the presidential inauguration? Presidential inaugurations aren’t frugal affairs. We don’t know exactly how much Barack Obama’s gala will cost, but previous ones have been pretty steep. George W. Bush’s two inaugural celebrations, for instance, reportedly came in at around $40 million each. Corporations cover the brunt of the expenses, donating up to $250,000 per company. But ticket sales to the various parades, balls, and celebrations help cover the cost as well. This year, for example, a ticket to the gala at the Corcoran Art Gallery is going for $1,000. This doesn’t mean taxpayers are entirely off the hook. Government-provided security can run up quite a bill. In 2005, D.C. taxpayers shelled out $17.3 million for security alone. On top of that, the congressional committee overseeing the festivities spends about $1.25 million. Plus, federal employees in the D.C. area get the day off—a work holiday that cost American taxpayers an estimated $66 million in 2005. So whatever your political leanings, try to enjoy some of the pageantry this January 20. After all, you helped pay for it.

What’s the difference between a recession and a depression? BUSINESS CYCLES MOVE in waves— up and down, from growth to decline and back again. Think of a recession as the descending slope between a peak and a trough. During these downturns, industrial output and employment decline, as does the average worker’s income. Strictly defining a recession is a tough task, but a simplified rule of thumb is that two straight quarters of declining gross domestic product (a drop in the market value of all the goods and services produced within a country) signal a recession. A depression is like a recession, but much worse. It’s less like the downward slope of a wave and more like a precipitous drop off a cliff. Often, unemployment shoots up, industrial production plummets across multiple sectors, the stock market crashes, and currency deflates.

Why can’t I use my cell phone on an airplane? THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION (FAA) BARS the use of all transmitting devices in the off chance that transmissions could interfere with a plane’s navigation and communications equipment and cause system malfunctions. It’s true that these concerns are overblown, but the FAA likes to err on the side of caution. (Can you blame them?) The real reason authorities don’t want you flipping open your mobile phone has less to do with crashing your plane and more to do with crashing the cell phone network. The Federal Communications Commission has determined that mid-flight calls have a direct impact on cell phone service on the ground. That’s because cell phones are primarily designed for callers who are firmly planted on land, communicating with a single, nearby tower. If you’re speeding through the sky at 550 mph, your phone will connect with multiple towers and eat up valuable space on their circuits, wreaking havoc on service. A 2007 plan to lift the ban was strongly opposed by cell carriers for this reason. So, at least for a while, frequent flyers should recline their seatbacks and enjoy the last place on Earth that’s free of cell phone chatter.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF 2009

Why does Cuba let the United States keep a military base on its soil? THE SHORT ANSWER is that we got

a really great lease on Guantanamo Bay. In 1903, Cuba signed a treaty agreeing to lease the harbor to the American government for $2,000 in gold coins annually. The treaty indicated that the United States could only use the 45-square-mile area as a naval base and that Cuban trading ships could pass freely through it. In 1934, the countries renegotiated the lease, but this time with fine print stipulating that the agreement could only be terminated through mutual consent from both countries. That’s the kicker. Because the United States obviously doesn’t want to give up the base, it remains in American hands. Needless to say, Fidel Castro is pretty irritated by the arrangement. In protest, he hasn’t cashed an American rent check since 1959.

If the United States had to stop importing oil tomorrow, how quickly would we run out? Obviously, America would be in trouble. We’d have to subsist off of what we have stockpiled and what we can drill for domestically. Luckily, the government has planned ahead. Following the energy crisis of the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy started storing oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a network of salt-dome caverns located around the Gulf of Mexico. The Reserve is meant to safeguard against a major shortage, and it currently holds more than 700 million barrels of crude oil. That may sound like a lot, but we go through the stuff pretty quickly. The United States currently consumes more than 20 million barrels a day—more than any other country in the world. Factoring in the 5 million barrels a day that we currently produce at home, the Department of Energy estimates that the SPR could support America for 58 days. The United States does have other sources of domestic oil that haven’t been tapped yet, but they wouldn’t sustain us for long, either. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska could be sitting on 4.3 to 11.8 billion barrels of oil. Again, that seems like a lot, but it would only keep us going for about a year at our current rate of oil consumption. More importantly, we can’t just access all of that oil immediately; it would have to be extracted gradually over a period of years. All told, including offshore oil, there are at least 23 billion barrels of oil under U.S. territory (that we know of). Even if the United States could somehow get its hands on all of that oil in one fell swoop, and add that to the 700 million barrels in the SPR, we could only sustain our current rate of consumption for about three years before running dry.

How hard is it to convert seawater into fresh drinking water? IT’S TOUGH, but definitely possible. The idea of desalinating seawater to make it suitable for human consumption dates back so far that Aristotle even wrote on the topic. Typically, heated seawater is put into tanks under low pressure, and as the water boils, the vapors are condensed into fresh water. Other ways to desalinate water include filtering the salt water through membranes or using electricity to filter out the salts (electrodialysis). While scientists have the process down, there are some downsides. Heating up all that water for distillation requires a lot of energy, and although some desalination sites have power plants to harness the wasted heat, the purified water still ends up being at least twice as expensive as normal fresh water. Moreover, desalination plants

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are gigantic structures that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. The problem is that our need for fresh water is growing increasingly desperate. According to the World Health Organization, four out of every 10 people in the world suffer from water scarcity. And by 2025, almost 2 billion people will be living with less than the minimum amount necessary for a healthy and hygienic lifestyle. But despite the high costs, many areas are still betting on large-scale desalination as the answer to the looming freshwater shortage. More than 14,000 desalination plants are already up and running around the world. While some scientists feel the impending crisis can be alleviated through better conservation and management practices, buttressing these policies with desalination seems like the best plan we’ve got.

THE UNITED STATES DOES HAVE OTHER SOURCES OF DOMESTIC OIL THAT HAVEN’T BEEN TAPPED YET, BUT THEY WOULDN’T SUSTAIN US FOR LONG.

Who are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Well, they’re not real estate moguls. They’re just the better-known nicknames for the Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. Thanks to the recent housing crisis, it’s hard to say whether these mortgage companies are in the public sector or the private sector. Fannie Mae was founded in 1938 as a government agency—part of President Roosevelt’s effort to help Americans gain access to mortgage funds during the Great Depression. It remained part of the federal government until 1968, when Congress revamped Fannie Mae’s charter so that it could become a private company. Although stockholders owned Fannie Mae, the government retained significant regulatory power over the company. Then in 1970, Congress chartered a second company, Freddie Mac, to provide competition in the mortgage market. In general, Fannie and Freddie were set up to buy individual home loans from banks, then group them together and resell the bundled mortgages as securities to institutional investors.

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In turn, this gave banks the cash to make other mortgage loans, creating what is known as the secondary mortgage market. In theory, this was supposed to keep the American housing market stable, liquid, and affordable. And for years, they played a vital role in the American housing market. Although the government never explicitly guaranteed the securities of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, investors have long speculated that the two lending companies were as stable as anything could be. Because Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed about $5.3 trillion in home loans (more than half of all mortgages in the United States), the assumption was that the government would bail them out in any pinch. After all, if they went under, the entire system would collapse. Sure enough, when the housing crisis of 2008 led to huge losses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Congress stepped in. The government once again has full control of the two companies and is making efforts to try and stabilize the housing market.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF 2009

Will there ever be a global currency? AS GLOBALIZATION MARCHES ON,

a single currency seems to make a lot of sense. There would be no need for exchange rates, meaning you’d never have to change your money when you travel abroad. More importantly, a single currency would make it easier for money to flow between countries, which would be a serious boon to international companies. The prospects are so intriguing that even sharp cookies such as economics Nobel laureate Robert Mundell have advocated a single world currency. Of course, the notion also has its fair share of drawbacks. In the current system, individual nations have the freedom to kick-start their economies by manipulating their monetary supply. (That’s basically what The Fed is doing when it lowers interest rates.) But with a global currency, that option wouldn’t be possible because individual countries aren’t the ones issuing the money. On top of that, regulating such a currency would require global cooperation and the establishment of a central bank, which could be a nightmare. Global currency supporters are quick to point out that these were the same arguments doomsayers used to protest the creation of the Euro, which has been hugely positive for Europe since its introduction in 2002. The unified currency helped pull down high interest rates in poorer countries like Ireland, which quickly led to economic growth in other nations. And there’s no doubt that the European Central Bank has been able to deftly contain inflation and regulate the Euro, while also allowing nations to remain politically independent. Still, it’s difficult to extrapolate enough from Europe’s success to claim that it would work for the entire world. But it never hurts to save your pesos, yen, and rubles. Who knows? They might be collectors’ items someday.

What will happen if I don’t switch to digital TV? EVERY TELEVISION BROADCAST in the country will go digital on February 17, 2009. So if you receive your TV programming via cable or satellite, this change won’t affect you. But if you view local stations using an antenna, you’ll be plopping down on the couch to stare at a black screen all night. There are actually a few good reasons why America is making the shift to digital. The spectrum that we use to broadcast television signals is limited, and digital broadcasts take up less space than their analog counterparts. So, in addition to the better picture and sound quality that comes with digital broadcasting, the switch will free up more space for police and fire broadcasts and for services such as wireless broadband. Anyone with a newer TV that has a digital tuner doesn’t need to worry about the changeover. The more than 25 million non-digital televisions out there will still perform fine with cable or satellite, but will need a digital converter to pick up over-the-air stations. A converter costs just $50, and the U.S. government is even offering $40-off coupons to anyone who needs them. But as of October 1, 2008, only 11 million coupons have been redeemed. Despite the government’s TV ads and incentive programs, Americans are procrastinating. Maybe it’s because they still don’t fully understand what’s at stake—Dancing with the Stars. But once everyone figures that out in February, don’t be surprised if the line outside Best Buy drags a mile long. ,

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