Bitter, Bitter Irony

Here's a trivia question for you. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, there was a silent-film screening going on aboard the ship. What were they showing?



(Jeopardy music)




(more Jeopardy music)




(Death Cab For Cutie, for some reason)




Time's up. The film played at the time the Titanic hit the iceberg was... The Poseidon Adventure.

Back in 1912, even silent films were a new thing- replacing nickelodeons and flip-card movies- and the Titanic wanted this brand spanking new thing on the ship. They decided to go with a nautical theme for the film selection, and The Poseidon Adventure was the film picked for night 5, April 14.

The passengers (the second-class ones, at least; films were considered too disreputable for first-class) loved it, as they did the first film shown on night 3, The Lighthouse Keeper, which ended up getting a double showing on night 4.

Most of the way through the showing, the ship went thud on the iceberg.

The film patrons didn't even notice. Or at least, they felt a minor thud that didn't seem like much. In fact, they asked for a second screening of Poseidon.

And so that's what they got. The viewers didn't notice that the Titanic was sinking until they got outside... and found almost all the lifeboats already gone.

116 out of the 285 in second-class survived. Surely at least one of the Poseidon viewers must have made it onto a lifeboat or else nobody would have been able to tell that story. But the number can't be high.

One Way To Use Less Oil

When you look at the list of ingredients on food or drink, at the very end you'll notice some pairs of colors and numbers. For example, this bag of Doritos sitting next to me shows Yellow 6, Yellow 5, and Red 40.

That's not good.

Those are dyes, meant to make a lot of the food you buy look like something you'd want to eat. There are plenty of drinks out there that could easily go without any color at all. But you as a consumer don't want that. You want your grapes to be purple, your oranges to be orange, your razzleberries to be somewhere in the color spectrum you normally associate with berries.

Red 40 is one such dye, and it is widely used in the United States. Like clothing made in China, you have to go way out of your way to even start reducing the amount of it in your house.

Why is that bad? Because Red 40 is a petroleum-based dye, linked to health problems on down the road. Not immediately, but later on. It's been banned in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. (Yellow 5 and Yellow 6, the other two mentioned on the Doritos bag, have shown a good deal of molecular similarity to Red 40.)

Essentially, every time you buy a food product with Red 40, you buy a tiny bit of oil. And then you eat it.

That second link is part of a website devoted entirely to Red 40. It's worth a click.

Changing Historical Context

The 2010 Siena Presidential Expert Poll is out. This is a poll of political historians that ranks all the presidents of the United States on 20 factors: background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, willingness to take risks, avoidance of crucial mistakes, court appointments, executive appointments, domestic accomplishments, foreign policy accomplishments, handling of the U.S. economy, party leadership, relationship with Congress, ability to compromise, communication ability, leadership ability, overall ability, and present overall view.

The big story here is twofold:

A) Since the last poll in 2002, Ulysses S. Grant shot up the rankings to 25th position.
B) Since the last poll in 2002, George W. Bush shot down the rankings from 23rd all the way to 39th, fifth from last. (He didn't place last in any of the 20 categories, but he did place next-to-last in intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments, handling of U.S. economy, ability to compromise and communication ability.)

Here's the overall:

1- Franklin Roosevelt
2- Teddy Roosevelt
3- Lincoln
4- Washington
5- Jefferson
6- Madison
7- Monroe
8- Wilson
9- Truman
10- Eisenhower
11- Kennedy
12- Polk
13- Clinton
14- Andrew Jackson
15- Obama
16- Lyndon Johnson
17- Adams
18- Reagan
19- Quincy Adams
20- Cleveland
21- McKinley
22- Bush 41
23- Van Buren
24- Taft
25- Arthur
26- Grant
27- Garfield
28- Ford
29- Coolidge
30- Nixon
31- Hayes
32- Carter
33- Taylor
34- Benjamin Harrison
35- William Henry Harrison
36- Hoover
37- Tyler
38- Fillmore
39- Bush 43
40- Pierce
41- Harding
42- Buchanan
43- Andrew Johnson

And the full rankings in all categories are here. You can parse out just about any message you want: Obama is 6th in imagination while Washington ranks 9th. There are eight guys below William Henry Harrison, who died in a month. Harrison is, despite that, not ranked last in luck (he beat Hoover). Both Bush 43 and Clinton scored horribly in integrity (Bush ranked 39th, Clinton 41st). And so forth.

There are some criticisms floating around here. As is normal; there's hardly a ranking list out there, on any topic imaginable, that fails to draw the 'this list is stupid' criticisms. Let's take the ones I've heard so far, disregarding the 'this guy is higher than that guy?!' stuff:

1: Obama shouldn't be included, as he's the sitting President.

First off, I hope these aren't the same people arguing that Obama actually isn't President because of the whole birth-certificate thing. Because if they are, they don't know it yet, but they just conceded that point.

That established, I've no problem with including the incumbent. I take it as a kind of 'if a meteor fell on him right now, what would his legacy be' hypothetical. (His legacy would be that a meteor fell on him. But anyway.) Bush 43 was included in 2002, at around the same point in his term.

Besides, we form opinions on most everything before we have all the historical context available to us. Have you ever formed an opinion on a sports team early in the season after they got off to a good or bad start? I know I have. I'm a Cubs fan and I'm currently disappointed with the season they're having. It's early July. Theoretically, they could get hot and take the division yet. I don't have all the historical context yet. But as it stands, I'm disappointed and don't mind saying it.

2: The rankings are too volatile and are therefore untrustworthy.

Opinions change in eight years. In 2002, Bush was at about the peak of his popularity. He had also yet to enact the vast majority of his agenda. He had yet to go into Iraq or Afghanistan, Katrina was three years away, nobody was familiar with the phrases 'swiftboat' or 'enhanced interrogation technique' or 'waterboarding', he had a lot of 9/11-related benefit of the doubt. None of that had happened yet. Now it has.

After one leaves office, new things emerge about the administration. Things that were classified are declassified. New documents and photos emerge. New events play off of the old. People that were around at the time leave politics and write tell-alls. Things happen.

Even after one is long dead, perceptions can change dramatically. Early in my childhood, Christopher Columbus was this big thing. Columbus Day was this big thing. Here's the guy who discovered America.

Then he got one hell of a historical working-over. He didn't even set foot in America. Amerigo Vespucci discovered it. No, Leif Eriksson discovered it. How do you 'discover' somethng that's already inhabited, anyway? And what about all the stuff he did once he made landfall wherever it is he made landfall? Wait... we're celebrating this jerk? Ew! No! Stop!

By the time I'd gotten to high school, Columbus Day wasn't even really being observed anymore.

3: 'Imagination' and 'luck' are stupid categories.

Imagination is really very important. How effective can a President possibly be if they have no real direction in which they wish to go? Check the top 10 in imagination and you can really start to see where they're going with it:

1- Teddy Roosevelt
2- Lincoln
3- Jefferson
4- Franklin Roosevelt
5- Wilson
6- Obama
7- Kennedy
8- Madison
9- Washington
10- Clinton

And the bottom 10:
34- Benjamin Harrison
35- William Henry Harrison
36- Fillmore
37- Coolidge
38- Hoover
39- Pierce
40- Bush 43
41- Andrew Johnson
42- Buchanan
43- Harding

Some categories mirror the overall ranking better than others, and there was a pretty strong correlation between imagination and the overall.

As for luck... yeah, that one is kind of dumb. It appears to be the second-worst correlation to overall, ahead of background, in which Lincoln placed 28th and Hoover placed 10th. (The strongest correlations, aside from 'present overall view', look to be domestic accomplishments and executive appointments.) Bush 43 was our 18th-luckiest President, which means 9/11 and Katrina can hit in the same administration, the recession can hit during the stretch run of the election to choose your successor, and you can still be in the top half for luck.

Coolidge placed 12th in luck, likely on the back of dodging the Great Depression. Hoover placed last, surely on the back of not dodging it. They sit seven spots apart in the overall.

This criticism is valid. Luck doesn't make a President. How you respond to it does.

Urgent Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest Update

There are contract disputes and holdouts for more money... in a hot-dog eating contest.

God bless America.

What's With Miley Cyrus?

If you are a parent, or knows someone who is, or in fact have eyeballs, you are probably aware that Miley Cyrus is rather emphatically casting off the Hannah Montana persona for one of a definitely not Disney-approved nature. Her latest (and as she tells it, last) album, 'Can't Be Tamed', is full of barely-veiled shots at the House of Mouse. There were some warning signs beforehand, most notably the 2008 Vanity Fair shoot where she was photographed barebacked and topless- but as of late she has projected just about as wild and sexual an image as one can do prior to their 18th birthday (which comes November 23).

So what's going on?

In 1987 Daniel Wegner of Trinity University conducted a three-part psychology experiment. In the first part, students were asked to just say whatever they thought for five minutes. This was easily done.

Then in the second part, they were told to do the same, except they were told to try not to think of a white bear. Every time they did so, or said 'white bear', they were to ring a bell in front of them. Of course, now all the students could think about was the white bear. They'd try to block it out, but it was easier to do when they just, you know... didn't think of one. Now that they were told to suppress it, here it is and it won't go away. They'd end up ringing the bell rather often.

Then in the third part, the students were given permission to think about white bears. The result was that their thoughts just became 'white bear white bear white bear'. The white bear utterly overwhelmed them.

Compare to Miley. Early in life, Miley was pretty much any other pre-puberty girl, except that she happened to be the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus. She'd go to a Baptist church, wear a purity ring.

Then she moved to Hollywood in 2005 and became Hannah Montana, and along with it an army of Disney makeup and wardrobe people, and a rock-star persona. She also got a Disney personality construct: no overt sexuality, no excess showing of skin, nothing about boys that's not Disney-approved (she wound up dating a Jonas Brother). All white bears that Miley now had to suppress, while being made- and developing her own accord- into an attractive young woman.

The Vanity Fair shoot came about amidst all this. Ding. Prior to that, pictures surfaced of her flashing her bra strap and draping herself over an unidentified male. Ding. She broke up with Nick Jonas and decided to "just figure out who I really am." Ding.

But now she nears her 18th birthday, Hannah Montana will soon wrap, and now she, like all Disney teen idols, must strike out into the entertainment industry without Disney's assistance. Or to put it another way, she is now free to express herself however she sees fit.

White bear white bear white bear white bear white bear.

What does Miley need to do? Well, now that the white bear is here, it's pretty tough to make go away. But she does need to dial it back. Dolly Parton may be fine with the image, but she's had years of her own to properly develop, at her own rate. She started thinking of the white bear naturally, and just generally knows what she's doing. Miley didn't and doesn't. She is at risk of having it consume her at a young age, and needs some sort of proper guidance that, clearly, she is not getting.

None of this is to say Dolly is not worthy of advising Miley. In fact, Dolly Parton is probably the best mentor Miley could possibly have concerning this kind of thing. Like I just said: Dolly knows what she's doing. She knows how to convey a sexual image without having it consume her. She's actually a corollary to another aspect of the white bear experiment: some subjects were told from the beginning that they had permission to think about white bears, without any prior suppression. They thought of the white bear less frequently than those who had been suppressing it.

If sexual expression is the direction Miley wishes to go, Dolly's just the person to tell her how to go about it properly. But all the sound advice in the world does no good if it is never given in the first place.

It's a very delicate time in Miley's life, as it is with any child star, particularly Disney child stars. The most dramatic example is Britney Spears, a former Mouseketeer. Her mental derailment after leaving the safety of Disney is well-documented, which progressed to the point where she began making prominent appearances in death pools, in which people make predictions on which celebrities they believe will die in the next year. She recovered, but only after her father asserted legal control over every aspect of her life, control that is currently ongoing.

Miley, obviously, is nowhere near that point, and this should not be regarded as a statement that she will ever reach that point. Christina Aguilera was a Mouseketeer as well, and made the transition expertly. But Spears is to be regarded as a cautionary tale. Control the white bear, or the white bear will control you.

Sri Lanka, Have You Lost Weight?

Apparently. A study has come out showing that gravity is not quite as uniform on this planet as you might think.



This is the finding of GOGE, the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer, a satellite launched last year to detect minute variations in gravity across Earth's crust and oceans.

What you're looking at is the geoid: likened to a level used in construction work, this is a level that covers the planet.

First, imagine an 'elipsoid'- a perfectly smooth surface covering the entirety of the planet, or at least its generalized shape. The geoid is not smooth; rather, the map shows the elevation in relation to the elipsoid that the geoid would have to be in order to ensure an equal gravitational pull at all points along the planet, a pull such that if you placed a ball along one of the geoid's slopes, it would not roll.

So if you're in Sri Lanka, the gravitational pull is weak enough that the geoid has to be about 100 meters under the elipsoid, and in Papua New Guinea, the pull is strong enough that the geoid must be about 80 meters above the elipsoid, in order for the two places to have equal gravitational pull.

Why is this important? If all the icecaps melted and all the meltwater went into the global ocean, and there wasn't any wind or currents or tides, this is the shape the water would take.

For more, click the link, because it's 2 AM here.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, It Was This Instead Of Summerfest Edition

Summerfest, as you may know, is the week-and-a-half-long music festival on the Milwaukee lakefront also known as the 'Big Gig'. My family hasn't gone in years, and there's a reason for that.

We're bad luck.

Every single year we have ever gone, the weather has either amounted to oppressive heat of the frolic-about-an-open-fire-hydrant variety, or driving rain such that it doesn't even matter how fast you run your wipers, you're still not seeing out of it. We came home miserable year after year after year and eventually we just all made a pact to never speak of the accursed place again.

I hit up a bookstore or two instead, meaning we have four new additions to the Rapid-Fire Book Club:

*Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: The World's Gone Crazy, by the Bathroom Readers' Institute
*Stupid American History, by Gregory, Leland
*The Shadow of the Sun, by Kapuscinski, Ryszard
*Kabul Beauty School, by Rodriguez, Deborah