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The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader.
Born into bondage, Robert Smalls rose from slavery to the Halls of Congress. In between, he helped the Union win the Civil War by doing what no black American had ever done before -he commanded a naval vessel.
AT HOME ON THE WATER
Robert Smalls was born a slave on April 5, 1839, in the coastal town of Beaufort, South Carolina. His first taste of a sailor’s life came at 12 years old when his master hired him out to work at a shipyard in Charleston Harbor. Smalls took to it, displaying a natural talent for seamanship. By 19, he had risen to the highest sea rank available to a slave: a ship’s pilot. Although Smalls could neither read nor write, his photographic memory recalled every bar, shoal, and current in Charleston Harbor.
In 1858 Smalls married another slave, Hannah Jones, and two years later they had a son, Robert, Jr. Being a respected sea pilot, Smalls life was better than that of most slaves …but he was still a slave. Longing to be his own master, he set out to buy his family’s freedom. And he almost did it -Smalls had saved $700 of the $800 purchasing price when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Then everybody’s life was put on hold.
STEALING A SHIP
The Confederate army immediately put the 22-year-old Smalls to work doing what he did best: piloting a vessel. He was given the wheel of the CSS Planter (formerly the USS Planter), a 147-foot-long steamboat. With Smalls at the helm taking order from Captain Charles Relyea, the ship hauled ordnance and supplies to the rebel forts guarding Charleston. A few miles offshore lay a fleet of blockading Union ships, and Smalls knew that freedom awaited him in that blockade. He formed a plan.
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by Joseph Cliburn, Dept. of Institutional Research/Planning, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College,
Perkinston, Mississippi
Andrew Russ, Department of Physics, Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
Tiny Montgomery, State Penn Center of Mathematics and Truck Driving, University Park, Pennsylvania
Zeke de Cork, Shady Acres Old Folks Home and State University, Perkinston, Mississippi
Starting from a statement brought home by Bob Dylan [1965aL we estimate the value of Love using basic algebra of need [Mottram, 1965], perhaps some calculus, maybe a bit of the geometry of innocence [Dylan, 1965f], and a lot of wishful thinking.
The Limits of Love
We begin with the following assertion by Dylan [1965a]:
(Love – 0) / No Limit (1)
using the expression on the record label in preference to the statement on the back cover [1965b], and taking a cue from the author’s statement that it is a fraction [1965c]. Setting aside the question of whether the use of an expression here marks Dylan as an Expressionist, we set the expression equal to X, which is unspecified for the moment, and solve for Love:
x = (Love – 0) / No Limit (2)
Thus:
(No Limit) X = Love – 0 = Love (3)
where we’ve made use of the fact that for any A, A – 0 = A. Thus Love = something times “No Limit.” The traditional quantity that has no limit is infinite, thus we get Love is infinite, assuming that X is finite. If X is 0, we have 0 times infinity, which is indefinite.
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Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which used to be a holiday until it was consolidated with Washington’s birthday. Then Tuesday is Valentine’s Day! Do you have any special plans for Valentine’s Day, or are you one of those who doesn’t care for the over-commercialized, artificially guilt-induced romance of the date? Either way, we’ve got what you need to get through the holiday: a little romance, a little schmaltz, some comic relief, some alternative time-wasters, and a lot of neat stuff on Neatorama! Just in case you’ve missed any of our exclusive features this past week, here are some handy links so that you can catch up.
Jill Harness wrote It’s Never Too Late to Thank Your Mail Carrier in honor of Thank A Mailman Day last weekend.
Sunday is Lincoln’s birthday, which got Eddie Deezen thinking about history, so he wrote The Man Who Shot John Wilkes Booth. Shooting Booth was the least interesting part of his story.
For no particular occasion at all, we reprinted Witness Protection: 5 Not-so Wiseguys from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
The Annals of Improbable Research gave us Hard Looks at Doctors’ Handwriting.
And History’s Wildest Ballet Riot came from mental_floss magazine.
In the What Is It? game this week, the exact purpose for the item in question was never actually verified, but Rob at the What Is It? blog thinks it might be “a form for a medicine ball.” Since we don’t know for sure, we are awarding t-shirts for the TWO funniest answers this week. One came from meiao, who said it’s the ball for Mortal Tetherball. Another good one was from Steve Pauk, who said it was a Rubik’s globe! Those are both worth a t-shirt from the NeatoShop. See the results for all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.
As of now, there’s a three-way tie for the most-commented-on post of the past week, between Psst, Environmentalists! Earth-Friendly Lifestyle Actually Doesn’t Matter, PETA Sues to End Killer Whale Slavery, and Why French Parents Are Superior. None of those are surprising, as parenting, PETA, and the environment are all hot-button issues.
Over at our Facebook page, you can catch extra content you won’t find at Neatorama, and follow us on Twitter, too! And now we’re also on Google+ as well! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Stravinsky and Nijinsky
The most infamous riot in the history of the performing arts began with the violins in Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” But more remarkable than the fistfight was the way the piece revolutionized classical music and ballet.
On the night of May 29, 1913, an elegant Parisian crowd assembled for the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s eagerly anticipated new ballet, “The Rite of Spring.” The opening seemed promising, but then the violins kicked in with a pulsing chord so dissonant that it made spectators wince. As the orchestra continued, the audience hissed and booed. They rose to their feet and shouted—some defending the music, but most denouncing it. People began whacking each other with canes, umbrellas, and, before long, bare fists. Stravinsky’s musical revolution had arrived.
Prelude to “The Rite”
By one account, the idea for “The Rite of Spring” came to Stravinsky in a dream. He envisioned a pagan rebirth ritual, with people throwing themselves before vengeful gods. Rather than a cheerful celebration of springtime, it was a dark and superstitious rite. To compose music appropriate for such a vision, Stravinsky tossed aside convention and broke new ground in rhythm and harmony. He constructed atonal chords never heard before and developed a meter so complex that he struggled to accurately record it on paper. At times in the piece, parts of the orchestra actually seem to be playing against each other.
Stravinsky first performed “The Rite of Spring” for ballet director Sergei Diaghilev and orchestra conductor Pierre Monteux. Both men were shocked and overwhelmed. Later, Monteux wrote that he didn’t understand one note of it and wanted to flee the room. Nevertheless, plans for the ballet got under way. Diaghilev entrusted the choreography to dance phenom Vaslav Nijinsky, whose steps proved just as inspired as the music.
Concept, costumes, and set designs by Nicholas Roerich.
The first signs of trouble came during rehearsals. The ballerinas complained that Nijinsky’s flat-footed, straight-knee jumps jarred them to their bones, and the musicians struggled to keep up with Stravinsky’s galloping pace. At one point, after practicing a particularly dissonant section, the orchestra couldn’t help but burst into nervous laughter.
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compiled by Tenzing Terwilliger, Improbable Research staffwith instructive illustrations from the book Penmanship, Theoretical and Practical, Illustrated and Explained by Benjamin Franklin Foster, Souter and Law, London, 1843.
Doctors often find themselves the butt of jokes about their supposedly horrendous, illegible handwriting. These four studies suggest that, except in one department in one hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, the reputation may be deserved.
“Deciphering the Physician Note,” E.A. Kozak, R.S. Dittus, W.R. Smith, J.F. Fitzgerald and C.D. Langfeld, Journal of General Internal Medicine, vol. 9, no. 1, January 1994, pp. 52–4 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02599144). The authors, at Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, explain:
Objective information about legibility of physician handwriting is scant. This retrospective chart review compared handwritten general medicine clinic chart notes from internal medicine faculty and housestaff with their typed counterparts. The written counterparts took 11 seconds (46%) longer to read and 5 seconds (11%) longer to answer comprehension questions. The authors’ comprehension measure (developed specifically for ambulatory clinic notes) was only slightly higher for typed notes. The legibility of physician handwriting is not as dismal as assumed; physicians can effectively communicate on paper.
“Reputation and the Legibility of Doctors’ Handwriting in Situ,” G.A. Cheeseman and N. Boon, Scottish Medical Journal, vol. 46, no. 3, June 2001, pp 79–80. The authors, at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, report:
Our study evaluates if doctors deserve their reputation and investigates how legibility is affected by the time taken to write. Sets of in-patient hospital notes were selected at random. The first written entry by a doctor and a nurse in the current admission were analysed. In addition to this, 10 doctors and 10 nurses, unaware of the true nature of the study, wrote out lists of words and the time taken to do the task was recorded. The doctors’ handwriting was significantly less legible and they wrote significantly quicker. However a small minority of the doctors was responsible for the majority of illegible words written by that group.
Illegible Handwriting in Australia“The Facts on the Legibility of Doctors’ Handwriting,” H. Goldsmith, Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 2, no. 12, September 18, 1976, pp. 462–3. The author writes:
A large number of people, both doctors and others, were tested. The handwriting of each participant was graded and four different statistical tests were performed on the results. In all of these tests the doctors’ handwriting came out significantly worse. Thus the only conclusion which could be established from these results was that doctors’ handwriting is indeed less legible than others.
“Legibility and Completeness of Physicians’ Handwritten Medication Orders,” E.H. Winslow, V.A Nestor, S.K. Davidoff, P.G. Thompson and J.C. Borum, Heart and Lung, vol. 26, no. 2, March–April 1997, pp. 158–64 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0147-9563(97)90076-5). The authors, at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, Texas, report:
OBJECTIVE: To assess handwritten medication orders for legibility and completeness, legibility of physician signatures, and presence of date and time the orders were written. SETTING: Three patient care units in one hospital in Texas. METHODS: Six experienced nurses evaluated medication orders and signatures for legibility using a rating scale developed for the study… RESULTS: Twenty percent of the medication orders and 78% of the signatures were illegible or legible with effort. Twenty-four percent of the medication orders were incomplete. Date was omitted on 18% of the medication orders, and time was missing on 58%.
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The article above is from the March/April 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
When people enter the federal government’s Witness Protection Program, they’re supposed to hide, right?
1. WISEGUY: Henry Hill, a member of New York’s Lucchese crime family and participant in the $5.8 million Lufthansa heist from New York’s Kennedy Airport in 1978, the largest cash theft in U.S. history.
IN THE PROGRAM: The Witness Protection program relocated him to Redmond, Washington, in 1980, and Hill, who’s changed his name to Martin Lewis, was supposed to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. He wasn’t very good at either -in 1985 he and writer Nicholas Pileggi turned his mob exploits into the bestselling book Wiseguy, which became the hit move Goodfellas.
WHAT HAPPENED: When the book became a bestseller, “Martin Lewis” couldn’t resist telling friends and neighbors who he really was. Even worse, he reverted to his life of crime. Since 1980 Hill has racked up a string of arrests for crimes ranging from drunk driving to burglary and assault. In 1987 he tried to sell a pound of cocaine to two undercover Drug Enforcement officers, which got him thrown out of the Witness Protection Program for good.
“Henry couldn’t go straight,” says Deputy Marshal Bud McPherson. “He loved being a wiseguy. He didn’t want to be anything else.”
2. WISEGUY: Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, mafia hit man and acting head of the Los Angeles mob. When he entered the Witness Protection program in 1977, Fratianno was the highest-ranking mobster ever to turn informer.
IN THE PROGRAM: Fratianno had another claim to fame: he is also the highest-paid witness in the history of the program. Between 1977 and 1987, he managed to get the feds to pay for his auto insurance, gas, telephone bills, real-estate taxes, monthly check to his mother-in-law, and his wife’s facelift and breast implants.
WHAT HAPPENED: The Justice Department feared the payments made the program look “like a pension fund for aging mobsters,” so he was thrown out of the program in 1987. But by that time, Fratianno had already soaked U.S. taxpayers for an estimated $951,326. “He was an expert at manipulating the system,” McPherson said. Fratianno died in 1993.
3. WISEGUY: James Cardinali, a five-time murderer who testified against Gambino crime boss John Gotti at his 1987 murder trial. Gotti, nicknamed the “Teflon Don,” beat the rap, but Cardinali still got to enter the Witness Protection Program after serving a reduced sentence for his own crimes. After his release, federal marshals gave him a new identity and relocated him to Oklahoma.
IN THE PROGRAM: Witnesses who get new identities aren’t supposed to tell anyone who they really are, and when Cardinali slipped up and told his girlfriend in 1989, the program put him on a bus to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told him to get lost.
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Image Via allspice1 [Flickr]
If you didn’t already hear, Saturday was Thank A Mailman Day. While we missed the holiday itself, the fact is that mail carriers rarely get the respect and appreciation they deserve, which is why we’ve decided to go ahead and “deliver” you these fascinating facts about the USPS with the hope that you’ll find time in the upcoming week to say “thank you” to your mail carrier.
America got its first postal service in 1692 when King William gave Thomas Neale the power to erect “offices for the receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets,” essentially making him the US’s first Postmaster General.
The post office is so well-established in the states that the Constitution specifically grants congress the right “to establish post offices and post roads. In fact, Benjamin Franklin helped create the United States Post Office and served as the first Postmaster General.
After 1792 and up until the post office was divided from the government in 1971, the Postmaster General was a position on the Presidential cabinet and the person in the role served as the last person in the presidential line of succession –meaning that if the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, the President pro tempore of the Senate, the Attorney General and every other cabinet member died in some sort of freakish accident, the leader of the post office would suddenly be in charge of the nation. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m certainly glad it never came to that.
The first adhesive stamps were issued in 1842 and postage rates became standardized in 1845. Congress officially authorized postage stamps in 1847 and the first two general issue stamps featured Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. The two men were the only images seen on stamps until 1856, when a Thomas Jefferson stamp was issued. Throughout this time, other payment methods were still accepted but in 1856, postage stamps became mandatory for mail sent through the Post Office.
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Another in the parade of February holidays is tomorrow: Super Bowl Sunday! Giants vs. Patriots, a rematch of the 2008 game. The ads, of course, are the ultimate efforts of the ad agencies. But I found out years ago that the best will be on the internet the next day. This year, many advertisers are releasing their Super Bowl ads to the internet before the game. That’s honestly a great idea, because that way they won’t get lost in the inevitable “ten best Super Bowl Commercials” lists. You’ve already seen the Budweiser Canada Flashmob and the Bark Side, and no doubt there will be more of “the best” all this coming week. This past week was a lot of fun here at Neatorama, what with Groundhog Day and lots of interesting things to share. Here are our features, in case you missed anything.
Eddie Deezen asked the cinematic question Why Did Bill Murray Keep Going Back in Groundhog Day? And then answered it.
Jill Harness told about 5 Terrible Inventions From Otherwise Great Inventors. We all have our off days.
Time Travel Movie Marathon gave us some great film suggestions, courtesy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
From the Annals of Improbable Research, we had Scientific Dining: Reviews of Research Institute Cafeterias (part one).
And mental_floss magazine brought us 5 Lessons from the Gurus of Spin.
In the What Is It? game this week, these strange-looking goggles are Masonic Hoodwink Goggles, they were used as a blindfold in rituals of initiation. Edward K knew that, and wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Pismonque came up with a great funny answer: “These are Fear Goggles, the companion to Beer Goggles. When you wake up mostly sober at 5 AM and stumble to the loo, they act as blinders against the horror of discovering your newest intimate acquaintance. The flip-down lids protect against the increasing light of morning and prolong the denial.” That wins a t-shirt! Find out the answers for all the mystery items at the What Is It? Blog.
The most commented-on post was The World’s First Heartless Man, and they weren’t all jokes. Coming in second was Teaching High School Students to Work at Walmart, which I thought for sure would be #1.
After you catch up on everything that’s happened this week, you may want to browse through The Best of Neatorama, where we have all our great feature articles listed -you’re sure to find something that tickles your fancy! Check us out on Twitter and Facebook as well!
You’ve heard of these people -because they wanted you to! Here are some pointers in the art of publicity from history’s greatest masters of hype.
KILL OFF YOUR RIVALS | Benjamin Franklin
During colonial times, the almanac business was cutthroat. The books were the bestsellers of their day -fun compendiums full of facts and witticisms. So, in 1732, Benjamin Franklin decided to enter the game with Poor Richard’s Almanack. In an early edition, Franklin jokingly predicted that rival almanac writer Titan Leeds would die on October 17, 1733 at 3:29 PM, the very instance of a conjunction of the Sun and Mercury.
Humorless, Leeds took the bait and ridiculed Franklin publicly. The response only generated more press for Poor Richard’s Almanack, turning it into a best seller. After October 17 came and went, and Leeds was still breathing, Franklin kept up the gag, claiming Leeds was dead and pretenders were writing under his name. Five years later, when Leeds finally passed away for real, Franklin thanked the imposters for stopping their ruse. By then, Poor Richard’s Almanack had made Franklin a rich man many times over.
STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANT … TURTLES | Salvador and Gala Dali
Though notorious in Europe, Salvador Dali and his savvy wife, Gala, weren’t famous in the United States until 1941, when they took the nation by metaphysical storm. To introduce themselves to Americans, the Dalis threw an unforgettably weird party in Pebble Beach, California, called “Night in a Surrealist Forest.” Dali decked the room with 12,000 shoes, 2,000 pine trees, 24 animal heads, 24 mannequins, and a wrecked car. His guest list ranged from A-list stars, such as Clark Gable, to wild animals, including a baby tiger. At one point in the evening, Bob Hope screamed when, after removing the dome from a plate, a toad leapt out at him. After the bizarre bash, Dali conducted an interview for American Weekly from a tall chair -its legs resting on the backs of four giant turtles. Gala claimed the chair “stimulates the artist’s creative powers.”
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After all the impressive additions they’ve given this world, it’s easy to think of famous inventors as brilliant creators who can simply do no wrong. But the reality is that no one is perfect and just because someone came up with a device that revolutionized the world around them doesn’t mean they didn’t have their share of failures as well. Here are some of the less famous (for good reason) inventions of some of the greatest inventors on Earth.
Edison had over 2000 patents by the time he died, so it’s not really much of a surprise that among his innovations on the phonograph, the light bulb, the kinetoscope and the telephone, he also had some utter failures as well.
Interestingly, one of his worst failures was actually a great idea that was just too far ahead of its time for the current technology. The Edison Doll was the inventor’s attempt to bring the joy of the phonograph to children. While talking dolls are common place these days and widely loved by little girls around the globe, the problems with the Edison Talking Doll were many. For one thing, phonographs of the time still had to be manually cranked at the appropriate speed in order to play correctly. That’s asking a lot for a child to do with her toy. Another problem was that even when cranked at the proper speed, the doll sounded simply terrible because voice recording still wasn’t very good at the time. In fact, Edison himself admitted “the voices of the little monsters were exceedingly unpleasant to hear.” As if those two issues weren’t bad enough, the mini phonograph inside the doll was incredibly fragile –meaning even if a little girl did manage to play the sound at the right speed and not run away from the shrieking abomination, she’d almost certainly destroy the wax record after only a short amount of play time.
Of course, all the new technology didn’t come cheap and the doll would cost between $10 and $25 depending on the outfit she came in. That’s the equivalent of between $240 and $600 these days, which is a whole lot to spend on a doll that terrifies your daughter and breaks without any effort. Of 2,500 made, only 500 were sold and most of the dolls were returned. With all of these failures, it’s no wonder the doll was only sold for a few short weeks in early 1890. Of course, the rarity of the failure has only increased the doll’s value over the last century. These days, an Edison doll in good condition can easily go for over $15,000 –and that’s without the original phonograph, since most of the excess inventory was sold off without a sound device inside.
The terrible toy doll wasn’t Edison’s only failure though. In fact, his best-known failure was in his push for concrete housing complete with concrete furniture, even concrete pianos. Edison believed these cheap creations would be a good way to solve the housing crisis and allow low-income families to enjoy the finer things in life without spending a fortune. In 1917, he and Charles Ingersoll offered 11 concrete homes (that’s them above) up for sale for only $1,200 –a third of the cost of an average home. Even so, they didn’t manage to sell a single one.
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We’re running another fun caption contest over on our G+ page! Go leave a funny or witty caption. The one with the most +1s gets his/her choice of t-shirts from the neatoshop! So what are you waiting for? Get thee.
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Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website. This post contains spoilers.
Almost everyone loves the movies, and along with viewing our personal favorites and other movies, most of us enjoy discussing the subjects and contents of films. Opinions and tastes, of course, vary. But almost everyone I know loves, or at least likes, Bill Murray’s best film, Groundhog Day.
In the film, Murray plays Phil Connors, an obnoxious, self-centered TV weatherman. Phil wakes up one day and realizes it’s actually the same day as it was yesterday -and this occurs over and over and over… Finally, Phil “evolves” and finds his true love (his colleague Rita, played by Andie MacDowell) and his true identity and a “new day” is finally allowed to dawn. The film is actually a great movie version of The Twilight Zone.
The great thing about Groundhog Day (or any other great movie) is that it is endlessly rewatchable (a bit of irony there). Last Groundhog Day, February 2nd, one cable channel played Groundhog Day over and over, for the entire day. Nice gag.
Groundhog Day also makes for great discussions, and numerous theories about the movie and its meaning have been put forth. Is it karma? What goes around comes around? Is it a commentary on man’s true nature? His true goodness -reflected by kindness, understanding, and warmth? Some Buddhists have adopted the film as a modern symbol of their religion. One keeps “coming back” until they finally evolve into a “perfect state,” at which time the endless “coming back” ceases. All valid and very metaphysical theories.
But why was poor Phil stuck in the “endless” time loop in the first place? This is one thing that the film leaves nebulous and unclear. In one sense, it is “hell,” i.e. a world of endless repetition, with no randomness, no unpredictability. But in another sense, this is the situation we all want and need: endless chances to fix and correct our mistakes, and then to understand why they were wrong. In the film, when Phil finally straightens out what he’s done wrong, the “endless” loop stops.
But again, why the punishment? After all, Phil is undeniably a jerk, but hey, he never murdered anyone. He’s not a rapist. He didn’t torture any small animals. Why Phil?
Okay, here’s the answer. The second draft of Groundhog Day says, actually, it was caused by Phil’s scorned ex-girlfriend Stephanie. The second draft of Groundhog Day is pretty close to what we all see in the film. There is a bit more of Phil in the studio at the beginning, but nothing major. But also in the second draft, Stephanie, Phil’s ex-girlfriend, puts a curse on him. Literally, she opens a book of magic spells and does a little ritual that causes him to get stuck in time.
Near the beginning of this script, we meet Phil’s girlfriend, Stephanie, who Phil coldly and unceremoniously dumps. Later, as Phil is going to bed in Punxsutawney, we see Stephanie in her room, using Phil’s business cards and broken watch (conveniently set at 5:59) to perform a magic spell from a book titled 101 Curses, Spells, and Enchantments You Can Do At Home. This sets the theme of Groundhog Day in motion. There is no “higher purpose” given, just an angry, embittered ex-girlfriend with a little book.
Excerpt from the second Groundhog Day script:
Stephanie: Are you saying that our relationship was a waste of time?
Phil: Our relationship? We went out a total of four times, and only once did anything happen. It was fun, but I don’t see that as a big commitment.
Stephanie (closing in again): I had our charts done. My astrologer says we’re extremely compatible. There may even be some past lives involved here.
For whatever reason, the director, the writer, or whoever, made the decision to completely excise any mention of Stephanie and her vindictive curse. I guess they just felt it was unnecessary to the movie or that it “slowed down the action” or that it made Phil too sympathetic, or some such Hollywood reason. Well, maybe they were right.
Groundhog Day is Bill Murray’s (who is a great actor with a great body of film work to his credit) finest and most memorable film. By the way, I never liked Andie MacDowell as an actress. She seems like a very nice lady, but just never liked her on screen. But in Groundhog Day she puts in a very likeable performance.
Oh, and that’s not the only mystery that’s solved here. The screenplay also specifies that Phil will spend the next 10,000 years (Holy cow!) trapped in the time loop. It also has a more definite answer as to why he comes out of it. It was apparently the kiss with Rita at the end of the film that broke the spell, much like a fairy tale. Even in the final filmed version, you can hear a tinkly magic sound as Phil and Rita lock lips.
Oh yes, one last note on Groundhog Day. My friend Kenny had a bit part in the film. I asked him what Bill Murray was like to work with.
“Oh, he wasn’t that friendly, but he got nicer as the film went along.”
“Just like in the film, ” I said.
“Yeah,” he said (as if it had just dawned on him),
“Just like the film.”
A look at various dining facilities at scientific research centers, from a series first published in the Annals of Improbable Research.
by Karen Hopkin, Biochemist and food critic
The decor is stoic but pleasant in a dining hall that offers a spectacular view of the quaint and peaceful Cold Spring Harbor. With its informal ambiance, Blackford Hall draws a very faithful following. In fact, many diners return just about every day.
“Actually, the food here is not bad, really,” raves geneticist Alcino Silva, a frequent diner. “At least they don’t rip you off…They offer mediocre food at a mediocre price.”
The group we lunched with began the meal with a dish called “Shrimp Nuremberg.” This entree was described by the diners as being “chunky,” “yellowish,” and “somewhat recognizable,” with a taste that was “subtle, sort of.”
The weekly menu frequently features ethnic dishes, ranging from jambalaya to lamb curry, and lyonnaise potatoes to white beans and sausage with corn chowder. We were told that these meals usually proved to be less frightening than predicted.
We were most pleasantly surprised by the dessert selection. The cakes and pies, imported from a local bakery, were described as “supreme” and “highly recommended,” though when it came to dessert, resident scientists seemed to feel that quantity was as important as quality. Because of the imprecise nature of the cake-cutting procedure, biochemist Yuri Lazebnik informed us that, with careful observation and selection, one could choose a slice of cake that might be two standard deviations larger than the average hunk. All for the same price, of course.
Unfortunately, we could not stay long enough to experience firsthand the boisterous excesses of the legendary Saturday night lobster banquet. Or the warm comfort of the Sunday afternoon lobster bisque. Or the half-price bargain of Monday’s lobster salad.
The quality of the food improved exponentially after Chef Ron Padden, formerly of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, joined the staff in March of 1994. He replaced a chef who had been the head cook on a submarine for seven years. “He certainly had a captive clientele,” said geneticist Michael Hengartner of their former chef, “But he wasn’t too good with fresh fruit.”
Hengartner summed up the Blackford experience most eloquently. “It’s the best place for miles around,” he said. “Actually, it’s the only place for miles around.”
Quality: 1.78
Trendiness: 2.5
Bearded Men: 3
**********
by Stephen Drew
The cafeteria at the GM Research and Development Center is very clean. Sited majestically in the basement, just steps from the base of a gleaming Eero Saarinen-designed spiral staircase, it attracts a well-groomed and occasionally faithful lunch crowd of hungry researchers.
Just outside the cafeteria entrance, a blood-pressure monitor has been placed next to a display of plastic-wrapped real food.
Every table features a bouquet of artificial flowers anchored to an attractive woven basket.
We asked, “What is there about this cafeteria that distinguishes it from any other research lab cafeteria?” A focus group of five GM staff research scientists answered this question with silence. Eventually, one scientist offered the notion that “it’s subterranean.”
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The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.
Got some time? Here’s at least a day’s worth of time travel flicks.
Holly wood loves time travel -they’re always punting people forward in time or backward in time, or just plopping them into a feedback loop where they relive the same day over and over again. Even though time travel is scientifically impossible (sorry to disappoint), it doesn’t keep people from making or going to movies about it.
Army of Darkness: Technically the third part of director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, but it’s not like you need a road map for this plot, which features a one-handed discount store salesman (the impossibly lantern-jawed Bruce Campbell) hurled back into the Middle Ages to fight zombies and skeletons and a creepy, man-eating flying book. It’s kind of dumb, but all horror freaks love it (and you know how high their standards are). It’s pretty funny, in a stupid comic-book way. Besides, any movie in which a minimum wage-earner from the future can condescendingly call a castle full of medieval types a bunch of “monkeys” can’t be all that bad.
Back to the Future: Michael J. Fox goes back to the 1950s and is called “Calvin” because that’s the name sewn into his underwear (Calvin Klein underwear -can’t believe we need to explain this). The film’s still funny in it’s own right (especially with freaky Crispin Glover as Fox’s loser dad), but now it’s like two time travel movies in on. First you get the 1950s, which Fox goes back to, then you get the 1980s, which is the “present”‘ for this film. It’s enough to give you a shiver (look for the Huey Lewis cameo). There were two more Back to the Future films, but unless you’ve got a thing for Michael J., you needn’t bother.
Groundhog Day: Bill Murray goes back in time -exactly one day, over and over again. In the process he turns from obnoxious twit to the perfect man (or at least the perfect man for Andie McDowell, and who wouldn’t want to be that kind of man?). It’s a fine, fine film, and in addition to being funny, it’s actually sweet and a little serious, and it proved that Murray was a little better of an actor than anyone ever gave him credit for before. But let’s not kid ourselves: If you had to live Groundhog Day over and over again, you’d become a little zen yourself to keep from going utterly freakin’ insane.
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This coming Thursday is Groundhog Day! Get your Groundhog Day decorations out, put up the Groundhog lights, and let’s all sing Groundhog carols! Will the Groundhog see his shadow? Ya know, it doesn’t really matter, because whether he does or not, spring will be here in six weeks anyway. At least on the calendar. So we can say we’ve turned the corner on winter,and that’s what the holiday is all about. Happy Groundhog Day! Meanwhile, it’s time to catch up on this week’s best stuff from Neatorama.
Jill Harness collected 7 Amazing Stories of Lost and Re-Found Wedding Rings.
Eddie Deezen brought us The Origin of the Beatles Haircut.
Many thanks to National Geographic for providing Joel Sartore’s Biodiversity Portraits, which we posted at the Neatorama Spotlight Blog.
Goodbye, Farewell, and A*M*E*N was this week’s offering from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Mental_floss magazine told us 10 Secrets of the Vatican Exposed.
The Psychoanalyst Says Your Gut Says… was a bit of nonsense from the Annals of Improbable Research.
In the What Is It? game this week, the pictured item is a meat cleaver with an attached combination tool, which is for sale at eBay. The first person to identify it was Michael S. Gatlin, who wins a t-shirt for his efforts! Chuck Farkleycame up with the funniest answer:
Chicken
Pablo Picasso
1934
mixed media with cleaver
So Chuck wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop, too! Thanks to everyone who played this week. See the answers to all this week’s mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
The most-commented-on post this week was Raising a Gender-Neutral Child, which is not surprising. Coming in second was Can America Make the iPhone? (Hint: It’s Not About The Labor Cost).
Earlier this week, we were offline for a while due to technical difficulties. Our tech wizard worked all night and most of the next day to get it fixed, and we really appreciate that. If it ever happens again, we will try to post updates on Facebook, Twitter, and G+ so you’ll know what’s going on. Be sure to check back often! And if you need your Neatorama fix in the meantime, those social networking sites are the place to be for fun stuff, discussions, and extra contests you won’t find on the main page. Visit them every day!
Vatican City may have fewer than 1,000 citizens and span only 110 acres, but it also has a multimillion-dollar budget and an unbelievably complex history. Understanding how it all works requires parsing through centuries of religious texts. Is the Vatican confusing and mysterious? Is the Pope Catholic? Here’s a look behind the scenes.
1. Regular Exorcise!
Baudelaire once said that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” But in modern-day Vatican City, the devil is considered alive and well. The former Pope John Paul II personally performed three exorcisms during his reign, and the current Pope Benedict XVI is expanding the ranks of Catholic-sponsored exorcists throughout the world. In fact, Father Gabriele Amorth, the Church’s chief exorcist, claims to expel more than 300 demons a year from the confines of his Vatican office, and there are more than 350 exorcists operating on behalf of the Catholic Church in Italy alone. Amorth also teaches bishops how to tell the difference between satanic possession and psychiatric illness, noting that those who suffer from the former seem to be particularly repulsed by the sight of holy water and the cross.
2. Where Thieves Go to Prey
With 1.5 crimes per citizen, Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world. It’s not that the cardinals are donning masks and repeatedly robbing the bank, it’s just that the massive crowds of tourists make Vatican City a pickpocket’s paradise. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Vatican has no working prison and only one judge. So most criminals are simply marched across the border into Italy, as part of a pact between the two countries. (The Vatican’s legal code is based on Italy’s, with some modifications regarding abortion and divorce.) Crimes that the Vatican sees fit to try itself—mainly shoplifting in its duty-free stores—are usually punished by temporarily revoking the troublemaker’s access to those areas. But not every crime involves theft. In 2007, the Vatican issued its first drug conviction after an employee was found with a few ounces of cocaine in his desk.
3. The Worst Confessions
Some sins are simply too much for a local bishop to forgive. While priests can absolve a sin as serious as murder (according to the Church), there are five specific sins that require absolution from the Apostolic Penitentiary. This secretive tribunal has met off and on for the past 830 years, but in January of 2009, for the first time ever, its members held a press conference to discuss their work.
Three of the five sins they contemplate can only be committed by the clergy. If you’re a priest who breaks the seal of confession, a priest who offers confession to his own sexual partners, or a man who has directly participated in an abortion and wants to become a priest, then your case must go before the tribunal to receive absolution. The other two sins can be committed by anyone. The first, desecrating the Eucharist, is particularly bad because Catholics believe that the bread and wine transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ. Messing with them is like messing with Jesus. And then, there’s the sin of attempting to assassinate the Pope. That one’s pretty self-explanatory.
The meetings of the Apostolic Penitentiary are kept confidential because they’re a different form of confession. The sinner is referred to by a pseudonym, and only the Major Penitentiary, Cardinal James Francis Stafford, decides how the sin shall be dealt with. Presumably, a bunch of Hail Marys doesn’t cut it.
4. Read the Pope’s Mail
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Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
New York Press Conference 1964
Reporter: Where you your haircuts come from?
George Harrison: Our scalps.
In their early years as a fledgling rock and roll band in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, The Beatles each sported typical slicked-back, greased-up Tony Curtis/Elvis Presley type D.A. haircuts. In an early explanation as to the origin of the Beatles haircut, George was quoted as saying that he came out of the swimming baths one day, his hair had fallen down over his forehead, and he just left it that way.
The true derivation of the world famous coiffure is a bit more complex. In August of 1960, the newly-0named “Beatles” consisted of five members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, bassist Stu Sutcliffe, and a newly-hired drummer named Pete Best. The band was hired to play as series of gigs in August of 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. It was there that they met two people who were to have a profound effect on their future careers as icon and trendsetters: Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer.
Kirchherr was a very original and creative photographer. One night she saw The Beatles play at a local club in Hamburg called the Top Ten Club (she was talked into going by her boyfriend Klaus Voorman and fellow artist and friend Jürgen Vollmer). Astrid, Klaus, and Jürgen struck up an immediate and close friendship with the five young, talented, and slightly homesick young rock and rollers. Also, Astrid and bassist Stu Sutcliffe almost immediately fell in love.
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If you’re married, you’ve almost certainly misplaced your wedding ring at one place or another and even if you’ve never actually lost it, you probably know someone else who has. After all, a little band of gold or platinum is pretty easy to lose track of, even if it is important to hold on to. But while many people lose their rings, it’s pretty rare to actually find them again. Even so, it has been known to happen. Here are some of the most amazing stories of people who have lost their wedding or engagement rings, only to find them again.
Image Via Jason Pier in DC [Flickr]
Anthea Capewell lost her wedding ring and engagement ring in 1976, when they fell off her finger as she closed her garden gate. After a long and thorough search, she and her husband could only find the engagement ring. Eight years later, the couple moved out of the house, which is why it was even more amazing that 33 years after the ring was lost, Anthea received a call from her old neighbor who claimed to have found the ring. The neighbors discovered the ring buried in some weeds underneath a hedge that was shared by the two homes.
The discovery was such a pleasant surprise for the couple that Anthea and her husband immediately decided to renew their wedding vows in the next year.
In 1974, a year after Donna Claver was married, the pregnant woman set her engagement ring on the tank lid of her toilet while she put lotion on. Unfortunately, the ring slipped into the bowl. Despite Donna and husband Terry’s best efforts, including unbolting the toilet and shaking it vigorously, the ring was stuck inside the hole at the bottom of the bowl and couldn’t be removed. Because the couple was too poor to afford a new toilet, they eventually gave up and put the fixture back in place, expecting to never retrieve their lost ring.
As the years went by, the Clavers moved out of the home and it was sold over and over, but just last year, Terry happened to be roofing a house across the street from his old home when he noticed the new owners carrying the toilet to the trash. Remembering his wife’s lost ring, Terry climbed off the roof and told the gentlemen he’d be happy to throw the toilet away for them. He then took the fixture to his shop and broke it with a sledgehammer. Finally, the ring was free.
Amazingly, after a little cleaning, the ring still looked brand new 36 years later.
Toy surprises are usually reserved for cereals and Cracker Jack boxes, that’s why when Krista Berg discovered a man’s wedding ring in the bag of NutroMax she bought for her pup Otto, she figured it wasn’t meant as a bonus gift. Whereas most people would probably invoke the law of finder’s keepers, Krista decided to call around. When no one at the dog food plant had lost their ring, she tried calling the store where she bought the food and got in touch with Mike Stoddard, the rightful owner of the wedding ring. Mike was glad that Krista found his ring and not someone else, noting, “most people would just keep it.”
When 77 year-old Bridget Pericolo put her wedding and engagement rings into a Dixie cup for safe keeping, she certainly didn’t expect the adventure that followed. It all started when her husband thought the cup was trash and tossed it away with the rest of the garbage.
Unfortunately, by that time, the local trash truck had already come by and collected the couple’s garbage bags. Bridget immediately called the local sanitation department, only to have the supervisor tell her that the truck couldn’t be stopped until the end of their route.
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by Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research staff
Some psychoanalysts can find meaning in the most ordinary-seeming bits of your life. Some discern it even in your intestinal rumblings. There’s a technical name for those digestive sounds: borborygmi. Several published studies tell how to interpret people’s gut feelings—how to translate those borborygmi into common everyday words.
In 1984, Prof. Dr. Christian Müller of Hôpital de Cery in Prilly, Switzerland, published a report called “New Observations on Body Organ Language,” in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomics.
“New Observations on Body Organ Language,” Christian Muller, Psychotherapy and Psychosomics, vol. 42, nos. 1–4, 1984, pp. 124–6.
Müller paraphrases a 1918 essay by someone named Willener that “concludes that the phenomenon generally known as borborygmi must be regarded as crypto- grammatically encoded body signals that could be interpreted with the help of [special] apparatus.” Müller laments that Willener’s “attempts to follow up on his theory were thwarted by the defects of recording techniques at that time.”
Happily, Müller himself had access to later, better equipment. “We have been trying at our clinic since 1980,” he writes, “to combine electromesenterography with Spindel’s alamograph, and in addition to use digital transformation for a quantitative analysis of the curves via computer.”
Müller reveals his greatest interpretive triumph:
The presence of a negative transference situation was not difficult to deduce from the following sequence: ‘Ro… Pi… le… me… 1o…’. The following translation is certainly an appropriate rendering: ‘Rotten pig. leave me alone.’
This lovely piece of deadpan, intentional nonsense, I am told, was swallowed whole by some readers, and perhaps also some journal editors.
A few years later, Guy Da Silva, a Montreal psychoanalyst, published several apparently quite serious papers about the psychoanalytical significance of borborygmi.
The most accessible (in my view, anyway) is his “Borborygmi as Markers of Psychic Work During the Analytic Session: A Contribution to Freud’s Experience of Satisfaction and to Bion’s Idea About the Digestive Model for the Thinking Apparatus.” This professionally dense monograph appeared in a 1990 issue of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. Freud is Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalysis pioneer who lived in Vienna, Austria. Bion is Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, director of the London Clinic of Psycho-Analysis in the 1950s, and later president of the British Psycho-Analytical Society.
“Borborygmi as Markers of Psychic Work During the Analytic Session: A Contribution to Freud’s Experience of Satisfaction and to Bion’s Idea About the Digestive Model for the Thinking Apparatus,” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 71, 1990, p. 641–59.
“The Emergence of Thinking: Bion as the Link Between Freud and the Neurosciences,” Guy Da Silva, in M. Grignon (Ed.) Psychoanalysis and the Zest for Living: Reflections and Psychoanalytic Writings in Memory of W.C.M. Scott, ESF Publishers, Binghamton, NY, 1998.
“Le Modèle Alimentaire dans la Théorie de la Pensée de Bion: Suivi d’une Application de ce Modèle dans l’Analyse d’un Patient,” Guy Da Silva, Symposium of the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal, Spring 1992.
Guy Da Silva digested a little Freud together with a little Bion. He writes: “Borborygmi may signal the process and acquisition of new thoughts (symbolization) and the free associations derived from borborygmi often provide the key to the understanding of the session by linking the verbal flow of ideas to the underlying sensory and affective experience, thereby providing a ‘moment of truth’. Within the primitive maternal transference, borborygmi are often accompaniments to the fantasy or the hallucination of being fed by the analyst.”
The name Guy Da Silva will be familiar to some readers as the star of hundreds of psychologically gut-wrenching films, among them Beyond Reality 3, The Lube Guy, Attack of the Killer Dildos, and Porn-O-Matic 2000. But Guy Da Silva the actor and Guy Da Silva the psychoanalyst are not the same person, no matter how similarly stimulating their work may be.
(Title image credit: Flickr user threefatcats. Captioning via Speechable.)
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This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.
The final episode of M*A*S*H aired on February 28, 1983. It wasn’t just a “TV event” …it was the most-watched episode in scripted TV history.
WAR IS SWELL
M*A*S*H was a sitcom based on a cynical movie inspired by a cynical book about an unpopular war. It was also one of the most successful TV shows of all time. Chronicling the doctors and nurses of the 4077TH Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War (1950-1953), the first season in 1972 drew such low ratings that CBS nearly canceled it. But they gave it a chance, and by season two, M*A*S*H was a top 10 show. For the remainder of its 11-year run, it never fell out of the top 20.
Until 1983, M*A*S*H was a fixture on Monday night at 9:00 PM on CBS. But by the time it ended, it had evolved into a much different show than it had been at the start.
FROM SILLY TO SERIOUS
The biggest reason for M*A*S*H‘s change in tone was Alan Alda, who starred as Captain “Hawkeye” Pierce, the unit’s chief surgeon. After series creator Larry Gelbart left the show in 1976, Alda took over as head writer. He, along with executive producer Burt Metcalfe, convinced CBS to phase out the laugh track and focus less on the doctors’ womanizing and pranks and more on character development and honest depictions of the horrors of war.
Result: M*A*S*H was no longer a comedy with occasional drama, but a drama with occasional comedy. “We’re recreating a time of suffering and joy and revelation that happened to real people at a real time,” said Alda. “We know what they went through. We can’t be casual in the face of that.”
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
M*A*S*H remained popular through all the changes, but after 10 seasons, Alda and company were running out of stories to tell about a three-year war. CBS wasn’t willing to call it a day, though, and convinced Metcalfe and Alda to return for a final season that would conclude in February 1983 with a movie-length finale.
That wasn’t Alda’s first choice. He wanted the last M*A*S*H to be a regular 30-minute episode. At the end of his version, the audience would hear the director yell “Cut!” and the camera would move back to reveal the crew. Alda would take off his surgical mask and address the viewers with a short, heartfelt tribute to veterans.
CBS nixed that plan, so Alda and eight other writers began penning “Goodby, Farewell, and Amen.”
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Last Wednesday will go down in history as the day the internet stood up for itself. More than 115,000 websites went on strike to protest the SOPA and PIPA bills that would endanger the internet as we know it. Many more websites urged action to stop the bills. The result was ten million petition signatures and countless emails to congress, which crashed congressional websites. A whole bunch of Senators and Representatives decided to oppose the bills, including some of the original sponsors! Both bills have been shelved, meaning they won’t be voting on them as scheduled (but each may come back later). And this all happened because people who use the internet made it happen, so THANK YOU, everyone! If you haven’t contacted your representatives in Washington yet, you can still do so.
On Wednesday the 18th, Alex wrote up what the SOPA and PIPA bills were about, and urged Neatoramanauts to take action in SOPA and PIPA: The Internet Needs Your Help!
January the 18th was also an anniversary date that led to two feature articles. Curly Howard of the Three Stooges passed away 60 years ago Wednesday, which inspired Eddie Deezen to tell the story of Whatever Happened to Curly?
It was also the 130th anniversary of the birth of author A.A. Milne, which inspired Jill Harness to write up 11 Things You Might Not Know About Winnie the Pooh.
Jill also gave us 10 Words Originating From Greek Mythology.
Dancing for Dollars from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader was about the 20th-century dance marathon fad.
The Annals of Improbable Research asked the question How Dead Is a Doornail? Commenters clued us in on details about doornails that scientists don’t know!
Five Medical Innovations of the Civil War was reprinted from mental_floss magazine.
The most commented-on post this week turned out to be full of name-calling and abusive comments that will be deleted. Remember, comments that attack another commenter are against the rules at Neatorama. Then there’s the post Should Wearing Pajamas In Public Be Banned? that had a lot of opinionated but mostly civil discussion. That’s more of what we like to see. Tell us what you think, but please, no personal attacks on other commenters!
In this week’s What Is It? game, the object in question is a wolf collar for protecting a dog from attack by wolves, used mostly in Europe. Rastercat was the first with the right answer, but did not select a shirt. Cricket had the funniest answer: it’s the Dugger family’s marshmallow roaster! That one deserves a t-shirt from the NeatoShop. You’ll find the answers for all of this week’s mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
Have you stopped to realize that Valentines Day is only about three weeks away? The NeatoShop has a great selection of thoughtful Valentine gifts that you won’t find just anywhere. And when you buy anything from the NeatoShop, you helping to keep Neatorama going!
When you’ve caught up on everything else, be sure to check our Facebook page and our Google+ page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won’t find on our main page. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what’s going around the web in real time. And remember, we always welcome your comments, feedback, and suggestions for making Neatorama ever better.
Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the first gunshots of the Civil War -and the first gunshot wounds. As it turns out, the bloodiest war in American history was also one of the most influential in battlefield medicine. Civil War surgeons learned fast, and many of their MacGyver-like solutions have had lasting impact. Here are some of the advances and the people behind them.
Life Saving Amputation: The General who Visited his Leg
The old battlefield technique of trying to save limbs with doses of TLC (aided by wound-cleaning rats and maggots) quickly fell out of favor During the Civil War, even for top officers. The sheer number of injured was too high, and war surgeons quickly discovered the best way to stave deadly infections was to simply lop off the area -quickly.
Among those saved by the saw was Daniel E. Sickles, the eccentric commander of the 3rd Army Corps. In 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg, the major general’s right leg was shattered by a Confederate shell. Within the hour, the leg was amputated just above the knee. His procedure, publicized in the military press, paved the way for many more. Since the new Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. had requested battlefield donations, Sickles sent the limb to them in a box labeled “With the compliments of Major General D.E.S.” Sickles visited his leg yearly on the anniversary of its emancipation.
Daniel Sickles' leg on display at the the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
(Image credit: Wikipedia user Nis Hoff)
Amputation saved more lives than any other wartime medical procedure by instantly turning complex injuries into simple ones. Battlefield surgeons eventually took no longer than six minutes to get each moaning man on the table, apply a handkerchief soaked in chloroform or ether, and make the deep cut. Union surgeons became the most skilled limb hackers in history. Even in deplorable conditions, they lost only about 25 percent of their patients -compared to a 75 percent mortality rate among similarly injured civilians at the time. The techniques invented by wartime surgeons -including cutting as far from the heart as possible and never slicing through joints- became the standard.
As for the nutty-sounding behavior of the leg-visiting commander, Sickles can be justifiably accused. In 1859, while serving in Congress, he shot and killed U.S. Attorney Philip Barton Key for sleeping with Sickles’ wife. Charged with murder, Sickles became the first person in the United States to be found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
The Anesthesia Inhaler: A Knockout Breakthrough
In 1863, Stonewall Jackson’s surgeon recommended the removal of his left arm, which had been badly damaged by friendly fire. When a chloroform-soaked cloth was placed over his nose, the Confederate general, in great pain, muttered, “What an infinite blessing,” before going limp.
English is a fascinating language, particularly in that most of our words come from other languages. While most words come from some sort of root words that have travelled from ancient languages to more modern lexicons, some come from myths and stories of gods and goddesses, particularly from stories from ancient Greece. Here are a few fascinating English words with roots dating back to stories of Zeus and his fellow gods.
If you’re familiar with Greek myths, then you’ll immediately recognize the name of the Titan who was forced to hold up the heavens after angering the Olympians. Even if you didn’t recognize his name from myth though, you certainly recognized the modern use of the term for a group of maps. The connection is logical, but it wasn’t used in the cartography until the sixteenth century.
Image Via Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez [Wikipedia]
These words may not seem to have much in common definition-wise, but there is a good reason they start with the same root –they are both related to time. Chronology deals with the way events happened over the course of time and chronic describes something that takes place over a long period of time. Wondering where we got these words? Well, they are all related to Chronos, the god of time.
Image Via Jorbasa [Flickr]
This is one of the more famous Greek stories-turned-words. In the ancient tales, Echo was a mountain nymph who talks excessively with her gorgeous voice. Her voice was so lovely that she would often distract Zeus’ wife Hera with her long and entertaining stories while Zeus would sneak away and make love with the other mountain nymphs. When Hera found out about Echo’s role in her husband’s activities, she punished her by taking away her ability to speak, except in repetition of the words of others.
There are many differing ends to the story, but in all of them, Echo eventually dies in some heartbreaking manner, leaving her voice to haunt the earth, where it can still be heard to this day.
Did you know today is Winnie the Pooh Day in honor of his creator, A.A. Milne’s birthday? If Mr. Milne were still alive today, he’d be turning 130 and he would no doubt be honored to see that his creation is still bringing joy to children to this day. In honor of Milne and his beloved Pooh Bear, here are a few things you might not know about Winnie and the rest of his pals.
Image Via CorneelW [Flickr]
His name has changed over the years, but not much. When the first A.A. Milne books came out, he was originally called Winnie-the-Pooh, but when Disney acquired the rights to animate the characters, they dropped the hyphen and the hyphenless title became much more popular.
The Pooh stories have broken many book records –even in foreign languages. It has been published in dozens of languages and the 1958 Latin translation even became the first non-English book to be featured on the New York Times Best Seller List and it remains the only Latin book to ever be seen on the list.
Winnie the Pooh may seem like a silly name for a bear, but it was the name of Christopher Robin Milne’s real teddy bear, so it became the name of the bear in the books as well. As it turns out, Christopher Robin named his bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear that lived at the London Zoo (pictured above in his youth), and a swan named “Pooh” that the family met on vacation. Before the toy was given its famous name, it was originally sold at Harrods with the name “Edward Bear.” As for Pooh the swan, he was actually featured as a character in the same poetry book where Milne first introduced Winnie The Pooh to the world, although he still wasn’t named in one of Milne’s works until a 1925 Christmas story he wrote for The Evening News.
Contrary to many rumors, Winnie’s last name is not Sanders. This story was spread because Pooh’s house says “Sanders” over the door, but it is generally accepted that the name was put above the door by the home’s previous resident and that Pooh just never bothered to take it down.
Most of the other characters were named after Christopher Robin’s toys as well. That is, except for Owl, Rabbit and Gopher. Owl and Rabbit were created by Milne and illustrator Ernest Shepard solely to add a little more variety to the character list. Gopher wasn’t added until 1977, when the Disney company added the character to their animated feature, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
You can see all of the real plushies that inspired the characters at the New York Public Library. With one exception –Christopher Robin lost his Roo plush in the thirties, so it is sadly missing from the collection.
You can also visit most of the locations from the stories. The Hundred Acre Wood, Roo’s Sandpit, Poohsticks Bridget and the rest are all fictionalized names of real places in the Ashdown Forrest in Sussex, England where Milne bought a country home in 1925. For example, the Hundred Acre Wood is really the Five Hundred Acre Wood and Galleon’s Leap is really Gill’s Lap.
Christopher Robin was less than thrilled about the success of his father’s stories. Apparently his grudge started when kids in school picked on him by citing passages from the stories. As he grew older, he accused his father of achieving success by “climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame.” I don’t know about you guys, but if my dad wrote awesome books about me and my toys, I’d be touched, especially as I got older and realized that if the kids making fun of me used verses from the stories –that they must have been fans of the stories themselves.
While Disney maintained Pooh’s classic red shirt look, first introduced in 1932, critics complain that the company has changed the personality and stories too drastically. Strangely, if you prefer your Pooh Bear to be closer to the original, you’ll have to sacrifice the character’s look as his most accurate animation portrayal has been performed by his Russian version. While Russian Winnei’s stories closely follow those depicted in the original trilogy of Pooh stories, he certainly looks drastically different from the illustrations created by artist Ernest Shepard. That’s him in the cartoon above, if you couldn’t tell.
As for Disney, they’re doing just fine with their own take on the bear and his friends. It turns out the company makes just as much money from Pooh movies and merchandise as they do from the same creations bearing Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Pluto.
Image Via parodyerror [Flickr]
Of course, Disney hasn’t manipulated the stories nearly as much as a few others have. The character has been used by Benjamin Hoff to explain the tenants of Taoism, by Frederick Crews to satirize philosophical approaches used by academics and by John T. Williams to illustrate the works of popular philosophers including Descartes, Pluto and Nietzsche. Apparently the little stuffed bear might just be one of the best philosophers of our time. As if that weren’t enough, Kenny Loggins even wrote a song based on the cuddly character.
He has also left his mark on the real world as well. There are streets in Warsaw and Budapest named after him. And the imaginary sport of Poohsticks, where contestants drop their stick in a stream to see whose will cross the finish line first, is now played worldwide and even has a World Championship match in Oxfordshire.
Are you a Pooh fan? Is there anything I left out here? Also, who is your favorite character in the Hundred Acre Wood? Personally, I love Eeyore, but that’s partially because he reminds me of my lazy, mopey dog.
Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, Mental Floss
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
In 1932, Jerome Howard, soon to be universally known as “Curly” joined The Three Stooges comedy team. Curly was replacing his older brother Shemp as the third stooge, joining his older brother Moe and frizzy-haired Larry Fine. In 1934, the team signed with Columbia Pictures and began churning out the series of comedy slapstick shorts that were to bring hilarity to the entire world. His “Woo-woos” and “Nyuk-nyuks,” as well as his incredible gift for physical, inventive, surreal comedy, make Curly Howard “everyone’s favorite Stooge.”
From 1934 to 1944, Curly Howard and his comedy partners made 80-odd of the funniest shorts in the history of movie comedy. But by 1945, something appeared obviously wrong with the brilliant Curly. He was having a harder time than usual learning and remembering his lines (Curly was always a bad study, anyway). His once graceful, quick movements now seemed slower, more lethargic, and his voice had lost its high-pitched vitality, now sounding deeper and more like a strained croak. In early 1945, Moe Howard made an appointment for his kid brother at the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. The hospital test results proved shocking: Curly was suffering from high blood pressure, hypertension, a retinal hemorrhage, and obesity.
Curly loved the good life, drinking, hanging out at clubs, seeing and dating as many beautiful women as possible. Moe, trying to help his beloved brother settle down, tried to fix Curly up with a glamorous beauty named Marion Buxbaum. Always a sucker for a pretty face, Curly married Marion after only two weeks. Curly was soon to discover that Marion was not a very nice person and was only after his money. The marriage proved a disaster, and the unhappy couple divorced after only three months together. In the divorce proceedings, Marion said of Curly: “He used filthy vile language, kept two vicious dogs, he shouted at waiters in cafes, struck and kicked me, put out cigars in the sink.”
These specious accusations were disputed by all who knew Curly as a jovial, good- natured, good-hearted fellow. Curly, always a free spender, had spent a fortune buying gifts for Marion and the divorce really shook him up. He had his first stroke soon thereafter, in early 1946.
Curly’s great vigor and boyish vitality, his comedy trademarks, sank lower and lower. Instead of resting after his stroke, as Moe requested, studio head Harry Cohn kept Curly churning out new Three Stooges shorts. Sadly, this final handful of Curly shorts show him looking very old and worn, his previous starring roles are greatly reduced, and indeed, they do put a bit of a black mark on his otherwise classic body of amazing comedy performances.
Curly’s appearance became worse and worse until finally, while filming his 97th Three Stooges short Half Wits Holiday, on May 6, 1946, the straw finally broke the camel’s back. Curly was supposed to participate in the film’s final, climactic pie fight, and Moe spotted Curly sitting in his chair on the set. “Come on, Babe,’ he said (“Babe” was Curly’s nickname among his close friends). Moe found Curly slumped over in his chair with tears running down his face: Curly had suffered another stroke.
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by Mike Dubik, MD
Brian Wood, MD
For hundreds, if not thousands, of years it has been accepted as an axiom that inanimate objects, such as nails, are dead. This self-evident truth has been expressed in the phrase: “dead as a doornail.” Thus, someone who is unequivocally dead is said to be “dead as a doornail.”
Advanced life support technology now allows us to maintain the heart and lung’s functionality in patients who no longer have any brain function. This ability has created legal, moral and religious conundrums. Until a generation ago, these problems were solely the domain of a few ethicists who entertained them as theoretical exercises.
However, now most states have laws concerning brain death. The American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the American Neurological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics came together and formed a Special Task Force1,2,3,4 and have endorsed the following as a definition of death: Irreversible cessation of all function of the entire brain, including the brain stem.
If the definition of death as expressed by the AMA et al has validity, it should be possible to compare this recent criteria against the widely accepted and time-tested “doornail” standard. We did just that.
We subjected a large doornail (see Figure 1) that was forged in 1986 to thorough examination, prolonged close observation, and an electroencephalogram (EEG).
Our Findings
The doornail was repeatedly examined and closely observed over a 24 hour period.
1. The nail did not exhibit any vocalizations of volitional activity.
2. The nail evidenced no spontaneous eye movements; neither could respiratory movements be detected.
3. There was no evidence of postural activity (decerebrate or decorticate).
4. The nail made no spontaneous or induced movements whatsoever. Thus, the nail met the “physical examination” criteria of death.3.4
A well-executed and reliably read electroencephalogram is a useful adjunct in the diagnosis of brain death. We performed a 30-minute EEG to document electrocerebral silence (see Figure 2). As is of ten the case with small children, it was not possible to meet the standard requirement for 10 cm electrode separation. Instead, the inter-electrode distance was decreased proportionally to the size of the nail’s head. The EEG was isoelectric, i.e. flat. Further, there was no electrical response to rousing stimuli. When we subjected the doornail to rousing stimuli, there was no response.
We conclude that the criteria for death as described in modem medical literature 1,2,3.4 is valid and may be used with confidence by clinicians.
References
1. “Determination of brain death,” Ad Hoc Committee on Brain Death (The Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA), Journal of Pediatrics, vol. 110, January, 1987, pp. 15-19.
2. “Guidelines for the determination of death,” President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Washington, DC, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 246, 1981, p. 2184.
3. Report of a Special Task Force: Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children,” Pediatrics, 1987, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 298-300.
4. “Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children,” Task Force for the Determination of Brain Death in Children, Neurology, vol. 37, June, 1987, pp. 1077-8.
5. You should see the door it came from.
6. The patient was seven years old at the time of the study.
(Title image credit: Flickr user topher76)
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This article is republished with permission from the November-December 1995 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
Dance marathons started out as innocent fun but wound up as grim as the Depression that ended them.
Post-World War I America was in a mood to break all records: popular events included endurance kissing and hand-holding contests, eating marathons, and flagpole sitting. A guy named Shipwreck Kelly became national celebrity after sitting atop a flagpole for 7 days, 13 hours, and 13 minutes. When someone challenged Bill Williams to push a peanut up Pike’s Peak with his nose, he agreed. It took him 30 days, and he won $500 (415 euros) for the feat. It all had to do with the mood of the day. But nothing caught the public’s fancy as much as dance marathons.
A CRAZE IS BORN
The birth of U.S. dance marathons can be traced to early 1923 when, inspired by a record set in Britain a few weeks earlier, Miss Alma Cummings took to the floor of the first American dance marathon, which was held in New York City’s somewhat seedy Audobon Ballroom. Cummings wore out six males partners over the next 27 hours and won a world record. Within a week, a French college student broke that record. A few days later, Cummings retook the title, which was soon broken again, this time by a Cleveland, Ohio, salesgirl. The challenge was on.
A few weeks after Cummings’ win, a Texas dance hall owner got the brilliant idea of charging spectators admission (25¢ during the day, $1 at night). He gave his first winner -Miss Magdalene Williams- a prize of $50 (42 euros). On April 16, Cleveland’s Madeline Gottschick beat William’s record with a time of 66 hours. Within days, that record was broken three times. On June 10, Bernie Brand danced for 217 hours (more than 9 days) and went home with $5,000 (4,151 euros) in prizes.
In just a few months in 1923, the dance marathon had swept the nation and the world. And so it continued throughout the 1920s.
THE DOWNBEAT
The deaths of a few supposedly healthy young people -including 27-year-old Homer Morehouse from heart failure after 87 hours of dancing- brought some unwelcome attention. Officials banded together with church groups (who saw the marathons as immoral) and movie theater owners (who saw the marathons as competition) to try to stomp out the fad. Critics called the contestants “dangerous, useless, and disgraceful,” and they even likened them to the dancing manias of 14th-century Europe.
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There was a funny image macro posted at reddit this week which turned into a great discussion here at Neatorama called Buying Bread. It was the most-commented-on post of the week. It could have been a “making fun of dumb people” thread, but a lot of you contributed personal experiences. Teaching your kids how to manage on their own is difficult, and no one can cover everything they may encounter. Hope pointed out how even in families who diligently pass along knowledge, there are things that will surprise you about being on your own.
I grew up helping with (doing) most of the household chores so laundry and shopping was no problem. However, the horrible taste of sour milk still lingers in my mind as being very surprising. Milk never sat around long enough to go bad back home so it never occurred to me not to buy an entire gallon for myself.
Thanks for a great discussion thread! The second most-commented-on post was The Great Mistake Lurking in “Don’t Stop Believin,’’ which brought a geography lesson with it. You learn something new everyday! Here are this week’s feature articles, in case there’s one you missed:
Jill Harness showed us 17 Great Geeky Hats For National Hat Day, which is tomorrow, so you still have time to make your plans accordingly.
Eddie Deezen wrote Why Do Nerds So Often Wear Glasses? which could have been titled The History of Nerds in Pop Culture.
Mental_floss magazine brought us 10 Coins That Aren’t Boring.
A Thousand Cranes, the story of Sadako Sasaki, came to us from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
And from the Annals of Improbable Research, we learned about Popcorn-Bag-Induced Disorientation in a Gull.
At NeatoBambino, it was adorable crocheted superhero costume week, featuring Batman, Robin, and Wolverine. Plus cute kids on video, a bald Barbie, and other neat stuff.
In the What Is It? game this week, Berhard was the first in and had the right answer, too! These are caulking chisels used on a ship, specifically “the Great Lakes schooner Mary A. Gregory, c. 1900.” They are now in a museum display. The funniest answer came from Straight Flush, the first of several who mentioned Wolverine, who said “They are cancerous tissue growth removed from Wolverine’s thoracic cavity, not to mention adamantium tissues .. duh!” Both win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! See the answers to all the mystery items this week at the What Is It? blog.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day makes this a long holiday weekend for some people, so after you catch up on these posts, you may want to browse through The Best of Neatorama, where we have feature articles going back six years! You’ll also find more content, discussions, and treats on our social network pages at Facebook, G+, and Twitter.
Comments Off Nerdy reputation or not, coin collecting (otherwise known as numismatics) has been a hobby since the days of ancient Rome. If you’re not a member of the enthusiast crowd, though, knowing a thing or two about the following faves just might be enough to help you rub elbows with true aficionados.
1. The Stupidest Coin the Government Ever Made: The Racketeer Nickel
(Image credit: Hephaestos at the English language Wikipedia)
In 1883, the United States issued a newly designed five-cent piece called the “V nickel.” The coin got its name because the value was indicated on the back simply with the Roman numeral ‘V,’ sans the word “cents.” After all, it was obvious it was a nickel, right? Apparently not. Turns out, the V nickel was the same size as a U.S. $5 gold piece, and both coins featured a bust of Lady Liberty on the front.
It wasn’t long before light bulbs started going off over the heads of con men all across America. Within weeks of the V’s debut, crooks were gold-plating the nickels and palming them off as $5 gold pieces. Meanwhile, government officials scoffed at the notion that anyone would fall for such an obvious hoax. Unfortunately, they were wrong again. Despite the gold-plated nickels not looking like $5 coins and not being nearly as heavy, most people didn’t notice, because the gold coins were rarely used in everyday purchases.
By April 1883, “gilded nickels” were both a national joke and a growing concern for commerce and law enforcement. The U.S. Secret Service made arrests in 10 states related to the scam. In one raid, they seized a “half bushel” of coins waiting to be plated. But all good things come to an end, and con artists had a hard time getting enough new nickels to keep the racket going. Finally, embarrassed officials put an end to the scam by halting production of the nickels until new dies were prepared. This time, the redesigned backs read “V cents.” Today, the V nickel remains a favorite among coin collectors.
2. The Coin You Carry in Bundles: The Kissi Penny
Money hasn’t always been strictly confined to coins and bills. In Biblical times, for example, people used sheep and cattle as currency. Of course, because deceased livestock don’t paste that well into scrapbooks, numismatists have to draw the line somewhere. And that’s where the phrase “odd and curious money” comes in. It’s a numismatist category used to classify various pre-cash societies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
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January is filled with weird holidays, from Run Up The Flag Pole and See if Anyone Salutes Day (January 2) to Play God Day (January 9) to Measure Your Feet Day (January 23), but of all the strange holidays this month, perhaps one of the most fun is National Hat Day on the 15th. While there are plenty of fun ways to celebrate this holiday, there’s perhaps no better way for our Neatorama readers to celebrate with a great geek hat like one of these.
Unsurprisingly, many of the best geek hats are custom made and, since many nerds also enjoy crafting, the majority of great geek hats you’ll find are knitted or crocheted.
As if any crochet Domo hat weren’t nerdy enough, Etsy seller littlepopos opted to make Domo in his excellent nerd incarnation, complete with tape on his glasses.
What better way to play your role as the Dovahkiin than to wear this delightful crochet steel helm based on the in-game icon by Etsy seller CreativeExcess. If you don’t want to fork over the money to get your own completed hat, you can always buy the pattern for $5, which is sort of a real-world version of forging your own helmet.
Pika-Pika-Pika-Hat! Why catch them all when you can get the cutest Pokemon hat from Etsy seller littlepopos?
