A few weeks ago I blogged about Abraham Lincoln, American Fascist and his war on free speech and individual rights. Before that I'd blogged about the Freedom to Not Listen and the origins of the First Amendment in the John Peter Zenger case. So when I saw the results of the two-year, one million dollar study comissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation on awareness of the First Ammendment among students and teachers, it was understandable that I'd be interested. Turns out that I'd also be appalled.

First, it must be pointed out that the foundation was not started by right-wing or left-wing ideologues, but journalists:

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was established in 1950 as a private foundation independent of the Knight brothers' newspaper enterprises. It is dedicated to furthering their ideals of service to community, to the highest standards of journalistic excellence and to the defense of a free press.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Having established their bona fides, here are the details about the participants:

A national study commissoned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut says that America's high schools are leaving the First Amendment behind. Educators are not giving high school students an appreciation of free speech and free press, according to the study researchers, who questioned more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers, and more than 500 principals and administrators.

Press Release

The "Future of First Amendment" Report itself is highly disturbing:

The words of the First Amendment - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances - do not change, but how we interpret them does. In recent years, in fact, annual surveys of adult Americans conducted by The Freedom Forum show that public support for the First Amendment is neither universal nor stable: it rises and falls during times of national crisis. In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the nation was almost evenly split on the question of whether or not the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.’’ Not until 2004 did America’s support for the First Amendment return to pre 9-11 levels, when it received support from only about two-thirds of the population. Even in the best of times, 30 percent of Americans feel that the First Amendment, the centuries-old cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, “goes too far.’’

Administrators say student learning about the First Amendment is a priority, but not a high priority.

"Future of First Amendment" Report

Sure. You know what is a priority to these "educators"? Football. Here are some of the key findings guaranteed to give you the willies:

1. High school students tend to express little appreciation for the First Amendment. Nearly threefourths say either they don’t know how they feel about it or take it for granted.

2. Students are less likely than adults to think that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions or newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

3. Students lack knowledge and understanding about key aspects of the First Amendment. Seventy-five percent incorrectly think that flag burning is illegal. Nearly half erroneously believe the government can restrict indecent material on the Internet.

4. Students who do not participate in any media-related activities are less likely to think that people should be allowed to burn or deface the American flag. Students who have taken more media and/or First Amendment classes are more likely to agree that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.

Study

The actual numbers are even more frightening:

• Only 50% of students believe "newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories"
• Only 83% of students believe "People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions"
• Only 70% of students believe "Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics others may find offensive"
• Only 25% of students believe "Americans have the legal right to burn the American flag as a means of political protest"

Welcome to Red-State America where the only speech you get is what the government says you need.

You can have my First Amendment when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. (As the saying goes, the Second Amendment guarantees all the others.)

Sources and Further Reading

1. John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Press Release
2. "Future of First Amendment" Report

"Le Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe" by Edouard Manet

"Dejeuner Deja Vous" by J. Seward Johnson

Blogging the Bosch models got me thinking about how a variety of artists are reinterpreting earlier works into three-dimensional versions. Seward Johnson — among the heirs to the Johnson & Johnson fortune — is one of them. For some time, he's been rendering figures from famous paintings as three-dimensional outdoor sculptures.

In Beyond the Frame, Impressionism Revisited, Johnson takes 19th-century masterpieces and transforms them into three-dimensional tableaux. Johnson's interpretations are life-size scenes beckoning you to explore. Each piece has a "sweet spot," marked by a pair of footprints, allowing viewers to see a close estimation of the original painting in three dimensions. Move from that spot, and the works are sheer Johnson invention. With the help of a team of artists, he has continued the sculptures beyond the borders of the framed paintings, imagining the scenery and details that might have surrounded the original artwork.

Unframed: A 3-D leap at the Corcoran by Meghan Keane

One of the problems he faced was finding a foundry to cast his works. Unlike ordinary artists, however, that is a problem he was able to easily solve. (Massive personal wealth often works that way.) In 1974 he founded the Digital Atelier and Sculpture Foundation Studios as a sort of foundry for sculptors. You can see one of his works progress here as well as a large variety of figures on his official Website. The results are quite realistic:

Are there real clothes on the sculptures?

No. Surprisingly each sculpture is entirely bronze. The realism of the textures and details is the hallmark of Johnson's art, and this detailing is achieved with hours and hours of intense labor. Seward Johnson begins each bronze with a l2 inch tall "sketch" in clay, and then enlarges this to life scale in clay. Often delicate textures, such as the skin, can be made more real with fabrics pressed into the clay at this stage. Sometimes articles of clothing are stiffened with a resin and used in the mold process, but there in no clothing on top of, or under the bronze, in the sculpture that you see today. Other times clay clothing is sculpted onto the figure by the artist using wooden and metal tools with very fine points and edges. As the figures are sawed into many parts for the casting process, there are dozens of roughly welded areas when the parts are reassembled in bronze. At this stage, the artist must replace many of the fine textures; a corduroy, a tweed, a cable knit sweater pattern, with an electric tool that is much like a fine dentist's drill. This is the most time consuming part of creating these bronzes. It takes between one and two years to create one sculpture.

...

How does he get the unusual colors?

Seward Johnson has been developing unique chemistry for the colors of his sculptures for years. In an effort to better fool the eye, and allow the pieces to blend successfully into our colorful world, he began to add colors about ten years ago. The skin on the pieces remains a traditional bronze patina, and the current opaque colors are achieved using the type of paints that are the most advanced technical pigments used on airplanes. They are quite resistant to climate conditions, and each sculpture is also coated with a thin film of incrylac and a final coating of wax for added protection.

Seward Johnson Sculpture

Movie Poster for Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch"

Johnson's reinterpreted Marilyn

The construction process from model to figure is quite interesting. Too bad there aren't any pictures of it.

Seward Johnson uses a maquette (small clay model) to fashion the gesture and pose of a figure,which will take up to two years to reach completion.

Once the pose is final and the age, narrative, and facial expression are established, the artist selects a live model to come to the studio to pose. Apprentices at the foundry enlarge the maquette to a life-size nude clay and plastecine figure. Johnson then poses the live model and sculpts the face and the exact stance.

After Johnson selects appropriate clothing for the narrative, each item must be disassembled and sewn onto the nude figure, which has been converted to plaster form. Resin is applied to stiffen all the fabrics, and Johsnon then arranges the folds into proper motion shapes, pumping air into folds and pockets for a lifelike quality. The sculpture dries for two days and is then carved into sections.

The true foundry process now begins. The pieces are transferred from plaster to wax by making a rubber mold of each plaster section.

The wax is carefully chased, that is, all imperfections are corrected using tools similar in their precision to dentist drills. The wax is then given a ceramic shell by a repetitive dipping into a slurry solution. This slurry is made of increasingly fine grains of silica flours and an aqueous slilica solution that hardens in layers. The wax is then burned out at a high temperature, leaving only the ceramic shell with a precise image of the original; formed by the silica layers. This is called the lost-wax method of casting.

The pouring of molten bronze is the next phase of the foundry process. With the bronze reaching a temperature of 2,000 degrees F, it appears almost as poured light. Again, as in the wax stage, extensive chasing assures that all the textural details of the original will be preserved. The pieces are once more joined to for a full figure, and all welds and seams are chased. Items such as pencils and eyeglasses are modeled in bronze and attached to the figure at this time.

The final stage is patination, or the chemical coloring of the surface of the bronze. The unique colors of Seward Johnson's sculpture were developed specifically for his work by the Johnson Atelier. They are a combination of traditional patina chemicals and tinted lacquers. The bronze surface is heated with a hand-held acetylene torch flame, and the specific chemicals are brush applied. The flame then "burns" the chemical color into the bronze. A thin film of incralac, a protective coating, is applied to guard against paint or scratches. The entire sculpture is then waxed, as an additional protection from climatic changes. The Johnson sculpture is now complete.

Construction Process

While I find the work whimsical and clever — who else but Johnson would conceive of rendering Van Gogh's "The Bedroom" as a three-dimensional piece — not everyone, however, is a fan.

But what Levy fails to understand is that Johnson has so far remained unknown for the same reason that I can't recall the makers of any of the other ugly lumps that have discolored my workdays: People who like his street sculpture don't really think all that much about it, and people who don't like it would just as soon never think of it again. With both admirers and detractors, there's a threshold to be met, and things such as Sasakawa's Tomorrow simply don't reach it.

...

The sculpture, alas, is graceless crap: clumsy, swollen and unrefined -- poorly conceived and poorly finished. The digitally crafted backdrops are blurry messes. Slathered-on color causes the figures to evoke less those in the original paintings than the rusticated menu-board butlers you find outside the sort of restaurant that is nestled beside an antique mall in a converted mill.

Diversionary Tactics by Glenn Dixon

The Grounds for Sculpture in southern New Jersey is an outdoor museum in New Jersey that has a number of Johnson's pieces. Those of you who stay out of New Jersey — wisely, I might add — should find Johnson's book an interesting alternative to a visit to the land of the Kallikaks.

Title	Beyond the Frame
Author	J. Seward Johnson
ISBN	0821228781
Publisher	Bulfinch

Sources and Further Reading

1. Seward Johnson's Official Website
2. Grounds for Sculpture
3. Seward Johnson pieces at Grounds for Sculpture
4. Unframed: A 3-D leap at the Corcoran by Meghan Keane
5. Digital Atelier and Sculpture Foundation Studios
6. Diversionary Tactics by Glenn Dixon

The word anomie comes from the Greek anamos, meaning "without law". It means a lack of social or ethical standards in an individual or group. This is what people mean when they talk about "anarchy". Think downtown Iraq or anything inside the Washington Beltway and you'll get the general idea. The key element of anomie is that it is an unraveling of the social contract and the rules of society, and not in a way that promotes freedom or individuality. Rather, it is the endless rise of entropy, the enemy of civilization.

Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, introduced the concept of anomie in his book The Division of Labour in Society, published in 1893. He used anomie to describe a condition of deregulation that was occurring in society. This meant that rules on how people ought to behave with each other were breaking down and thus people did not know what to expect from one another. Anomie, simply defined, is a state where norms (expectations on behaviours) are confused, unclear or not present. It is normlessness, Durkheim felt, that led to deviant behaviour. In 1897, Durkheim used the term again in his study on Suicide, referring to a morally deregulated condition. Durkheim was preoccupied with the effects of social change. He best illustrated his concept of anomie not in a discussion of crime but of suicide.

Durkheim's Anomie

The word anarchy comes from the Greek anarkhia, meaning "without rulers". The vernacular uses it to mean lawlessness or a state of chaos, such as accompanies rioting or looting; the true meaning, however is quite different: a lack of rulers, not a lack of rules. (Measuring devices still exist under anarchy, so do not despair.) So comments like, "Anarchy - it's not the law, it's just a good idea." are structurally incorrect, no matter how clever they may be. The famous case of Sacco and Vanzetti springs to mind whenever anyone mentions anarchists. (Well, that and the WTO meeting in Seattle.) The specifics of the case aren't particularly relevant for the definition here, but some of the words of Sacco and Vanzetti serve to illustrate the distinction between anarchy and anomie:

Oh friend, the anarchism is as beauty as a woman for me, perhaps even more, since it include all the rest and me and her. Calm, serene, honest, natural, vivid, muddy and celestial at once, austere, heroic, fearless, fatal, generous and implacable-all these and more it is.

Nicola Sacco, Italian Anarchism in America: An Historical Background to the Sacco-Vanzetti Case by Paul Avrich

I am and will be until the last instant (unless I should discover that I am in error) an anarchist communist, because I believe that communism is the most humane form of social contract, because I know that only with liberty can man rise, become noble, and complete.

Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian Anarchism in America: An Historical Background to the Sacco-Vanzetti Case by Paul Avrich

Oh, and as long as we're on words that start with "a" and concern lawlessness, here's another good one: amok. This one comes to us from the Malysian, where it means a brooding despair punctuated by frenzied, uncontrolled violence. Sort of like what happens when England loses a soccer match to, oh, say, Pakistan.

The cbs [culture-bound syndrome] of "amok" has been known for many centuries in the Malaysian culture (Knecht, 1999). The syndrome has been defined as an episode of dissociation (Suryani & Jensen, 1993) and is often characterized by "a sudden rampage, usually including homicide, ending in exhaustion and amnesia" (Hatta, 1996). Typically seen as a Malaysian cbs, "amok" has been further documented in India, New Guinea, North America and Britain (Kon, 1994). Hawaii has been seen as the melting pot of the pacific with many cultures merging and yet remaining distinct. The legal defense of "amok" was utilized for a Filipino-American that had killed five people and injured three others. Orlando Ganal Sr. (Honolulu Advertiser, 1991) was enraged by his wife’s reported relationship with another man, shot and killed his wife’s parents and wounded his own wife and son. Ganal continued to firebomb the home of the other man’s brother, Michael Touchette, killing Michael, Michael’s two children and badly burning his wife, Wendy Touchette. Ganal was seen as a mild mannered man, until the stress grew and he finally "ran amok."

International Society for the Study of Dissociation

2004 Idiotarod

I spent Saturday at the second annual Idiotarod. (I took the photograph above at last year's race; this year's photos are still being developed.) The Idiotarod is just like the Iditarod but with two important differences: first, it has an extra "o" and second, the Idiotarod uses humans instead of dogs and shopping cards instead of sleds. Oh, one more thing. Make that three important differences — the Idiotarod has alcohol consumption throughout the race instead of just at the end and the, uh, dogs get booze too.

It was loads of fun. As soon as the pictures come back I will put some of them up.

Garden of Earthy Delights (tryptich) by Bosch

The fifteenth century painter Hieronymus Bosch is one of those artists whom you either love or hate. His work is complex, and filled with monsters and mankind, angels and demons, signs and symbols. All concern the inherent corruption in humanity and the punishment to be meted out. Redemption is, alas, not an available option. (Guess he needed to get out a little more. Or maybe he got out too much...)

A half-millennium ago when Europe was moving out of the Middle Ages, Hieronymus Bosch, a prosperous painter and landowner in the duchy of Brabant in what is now the Netherlands, was widely admired as one of the cleverest, most pious, most perceptive, most apocalyptic masters of his times. He then slipped into several hundred years of obscurity. The symbolism and message of his terrifying masterpieces seemed bizarre and unsavory and even heretical. But he has been rediscovered in the 20th century. American tourists, who have little Bosch at home, now crowd through the museums of Europe to be awed by his great triptychs or to track down his smaller masterpieces.

The World of Bosch by Stanley Meisler

Garden of Earthy Delights (Hell) by Bosch

Bosch's personal background, or at least what is know of it, apparently had a lot of influence in his work:

Hieronymus Bosch was born around 1450 (the exact date was not recorded) in the duchy of Brabant, which was then the realm of the dukes of Burgundy. He lived during unsettled and anxious times. The old medieval order imposed by the Church was straining and cracking under the onslaught of the growth of cities, the new vigor of commerce and capitalism, the rise of national states, the demands for religious reform and the beginnings of science. Minds were growing curious, analytical, adventurous. During Bosch's lifetime, the Dutch humanist Erasmus wrote Praise of Folly, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the sun was at the center of our solar system, and Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. In 1517, a year after Bosch died, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. Historians point to these events as the beginnings of the modern world.

...

Bosch was among the pessimists. A member of a lay religious fraternity, he witnessed the corruption in the medieval Church and the sins of his townspeople, and cried out his warning of a wrathful retribution. The idea of an impending punishment was not new, of course, for it came directly out of the teachings of the Church. But Bosch issued his message with an imagery so fierce it could astound and chill his contemporaries and still fascinate his admirers 500 years later.

The World of Bosch by Stanley Meisler

Garden of Earthy Delights (detail) by Bosch

Everything is a symbol in Bosch's work: eggs represent sexual creation and alchemy; birds are unbelievers or carrion eaters representing death or decaying flesh; knives are punishment meted out for evil; the funnel hat is hypocrisy or deceit, intemperance, or an imposter doctor or alchemist. The number of symbols is quite large, but scholars have made compelling arguments for their value in decoding otherwise hidden messages.

But what is interesting is how artists are reinterpreting Bosh's work into three-dimensional versions. 3D Mouseion has a large collection of figures from paintings, including those by Bosch and other artists, rendered in 3D.

Here are some of the Bosch action figures. The "Bird with Letter" is from the tryptichon The Temptation of Saint Anthony; it is probably the most famous of the Bosch figures.

Bird with Letter

The inscription on this note in the beak of this birdlike monster on skates could throw a light on the contemplated symbolism. Unfortunately, this text, which is difficult to read, is open to various interpretations, but none of them are proven to be accurate. The postman-like freak is perhaps delivering a letter to the conspiring figures in the hole under the bridge. The funnel on this curious bird’s head gives him a preposterous appearance. This headwear is referred to elsewhere as wisdom or absent-mindedness, but that symbolism seems unsuitable here.

Bird with Letter

Helmeted Bird Monster

This helmeted bird monster is carrying a pencil box and an inkpot in its beak, in which the nun, decaying into a pig, is dipping her pen. A severed foot is swinging from the bird's helmet referring to the horrible corporal punishments which could be expected in hell. The pig, indeed an indictment against the decay of clergy life, is tempting the man who is sitting beside him and it appears that he is drawing up a contract. Is the man possibly selling his soul?

Helmeted Bird Monster

Egg monster

Amidst the many unlucky ones who are speared, ripped open, strangled or even fried, the monster in the egg that has been shot by an arrow, steps jovially into the middle panel. He appears to be detached from his entourage. Meanwhile, his fellow monsters are painstakingly going about their core-business: carrying out the merciless delivery of the final punishment, for us sinners, in a most inventive manner.

Egg monster

Sources and Further Reading

1. The World of Bosch by Stanley Meisler
2. Bosch figures
3. Ibiblio page on Bosch

Why not? Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol... but too many adrenalin rushes in any given time span has the same bad effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits.

Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, page 17

I was listening to the news and again heard the comment that Socialist Insecurity is the "third rail" of American politics. So I said to myself — yes, I'm back to talking to myself since I ran out of meds — and nobody ever wants to piss on that third rail either. Which got me thinking about the endless debate is it or isn't it an urban legend that doing so is fatal.

But first, what is this "third rail", anyway? Well, for those of you who live in Red State America where there are no underground trains, the subways have a third track running parallel to the rails that the train rests on. This rail is used only to deliver 625 volts (DC) to the subway cars through a collecting shoe. Sounds like a dumb idea? Well, it's pretty much the only way to distribute power if you don't want the overhead transfer approach used by most trains:

There were numerous methods of conducting electricity to car motors. Street railways relied on overhead trolleys and underground conduits of various designs. During the last two years of the nineteenth century the elevated railways, unfettered by crowded street conditions, began to adopt third rail conduction.

Design and Construction of the IRT: Electrical Engineering

But back to our topic of dumb things to urinate on. Third-rail injuries are, fortunately, rare. A paper by doctors at the Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, reports on a mere sixteen injuries over a fifteen-year period:

BACKGROUND: Railway and subway-associated electrical trauma is rare and typically involves high voltage (> 20,000) arc injuries. Not all rail systems utilize such high voltage. We report 16 cases of electrical trauma due to 600 V direct contact with subway 'third' rails. METHODS: A case series of injured patients presenting to Shriners Burns Institute, Boston or Massachusetts General Hospital between 1970 and 1995 was retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 16 cases was identified. Among seven subway workers, the mechanism of rail contact was unintentional by a tool, a hand or by falling; no deaths occurred. Among nine non-occupational victims, injuries involved suicide attempts, unintentional falls, or risk-taking behavior. This group suffered greater burn severity, operative procedures, and complications; three deaths occurred.

"Electrical injury from subway third rails: serious injury associated with intermediate voltage contact." Burns, 1997 Sep;23(6):515-8

Ok. So has anyone died from urinating on the tracks? The short answer is, well, a strong maybe to a weak yes. But we are going to make you sit through the details uncovered on our quest for the truth. We quickly turned up an intriguing first possibility which is, at best, inconclusive and potentially erroneous.

The case of Lee v. Chicago Transit authority is often cited as demonstrating a need for legal reform:

On October 21, 1977, the morning preceding the accident, the decedent informed plaintiff that he planned to attend a party in the evening. Decedent apparently left the party after dark. He proceeded up Kedzie Avenue, a north/south street which intersected with the northwest-bound Ravenswood rapid transit line. At this point, he apparently proceeded into the CTA's right-of-way in order to urinate. In the process of doing so, he came into contact with the third rail, and suffered fatal injuries.

Brief filed by Estate of Sang Yeul Lee (deceased) vs. Chicago Transit Authority, Supreme Court of Illinois, Case No. 71304

In addition to the signing, sharp triangular shaped boards had been installed between the sidewalk and the third rail to make it extremely difficult and awkward for a person to walk up the tracks. Nonetheless, the decedent walked up the tracks approximately 6 1/2 feet to the point where the third rail began. There, attempting to urinate, he was electrocuted.

Decision, Estate of Sang Yeul Lee (deceased) vs. Chicago Transit Authority, Supreme Court of Illinois, Case No. 71304, 22 October 1992

The problem with Lee v. CTA is that nowhere in the briefs or decision does it actually cite direct contact of urine and the third rail as the cause of death. The closest the legal papers come to addressing the issue is the vague, "In the process of doing so, he came into contact with the third rail, and suffered fatal injuries." What were those fatal injuries? How were they obtained? Did he fall onto the third rail? Trip over it? Inquiring minds want to know!

So let's turn back to Gotham, which is what we care about, anyway, where we have the curious case of Joseph Patrick O'Malley:

Marshall Houta's [sic] Where Death Delights contains the sad story of one Joseph Patrick O'Malley, a man with two unfortunate habits: heavy drinking and wandering through subway tunnels.

One morning, O'Malley's mangled body was found in a tunnel 50 yards from the nearest station. He had apparently been struck and killed by a train.

But an autopsy turned up another cause: "The burns on the head of the penis and on the thumb and forefinger were obviously electrical burns....The stream of urine had come into contact with the 600 volts of the third rail. The current had coursed up the stream to cause the burns on his body as the electricity entered it.

"In all probability, he was dead from electrocution before the train ever hit his body."

Straight Dope

Ok, so that's the story. (By the way: the book is by Marshall Houts, not Houta, and the title is Where Death Delights: The Story of Dr. Milton Helpern and Forensic Medicine. Mistakes like these make me doubt the rest of Cecil Adam's — ok, Ed Zotti and staff's — work.) But would electricity really race up a stream of urine in practice? Can a stream of urine arc almost ten feet long and be continuous enough to electrocute someone? Can this story actually be true? Maybe:

The combination of water and electricity is notoriously volatile--so much so that there might be a built-in safety factor, i.e., the shock would be great enough to knock you down. This would spoil your aim and cut off the current before the electricity could do its lethal work on your heart muscles.

Straight Dope

I'm not buying it, but because of the distances involved, not the conduction factor. Remember, air insulates at about a thousand volts per millimeter, so the 625 volts of the subway can't jump the multi-millimeter gaps. (Urinating onto high-tension lines, however, is probably a bad idea.) Having said that, I recently watched the Mythbusters episode on this very myth where Adam urinates on an electric fence in the name of science. (Not to worry, paramedics were standing by. Kids, don't try this at home.) Adam, fortunately, does not have a shy bladder so he was able to perform on camera. (A career in fetish porn clearly awaits.) The question Mythbusters asked was:

Is it really that dangerous to answer the call of nature on the electrified third rail of a train track?

Episode 3: Barrel of Bricks, Pissing on the Third Rail, Eel Skin Wallet

The answer? Well, after Adam complained, "I've been painted gold and anal probed for you today... What else do you want?" the experiment proceeded forthwith. The conclusion was no, it doesn't, mostly because the stream of urine breaks up too much to conduct electricity. (Which seems to be confirmed by the sites listed at the end of this entry. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) I'm not sure that stream breakup is the sole reason. Yes, there is the air gap problem. (See above.) But my take was that the experiment is faulty: Adam simply wasn't grounded enough.

I've heard stories from people who grew up in farm country who'd apparantly heard stories about close encounters of a urinating kind with electric fences, mostly involving dogs that quickly learned to not do this. (Dogs make a lot of sense as the primary victims of electric fences because, like Wall Street bankers, they're always marking their territory and with four paws on the ground they are thoroughly grounded, completing the circuit.) But, once again, who knows how true those stories really are? And how, exactly, do they relate to the subways?

Ok. Let's get the data from the people who really do know. Years ago I read Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist by William R. Maples which relates the finding by New York City Medical Examiner Milton Helprin that a man didn't commit suicide by leaping onto the subway tracks but was rather electrocuted when he answered a call of nature on the third rail. (Burns on the thumb, index finger, and glans clinched it. Ouch!) But I can't find the details of that online. (Dead trees are so hard to search!).

I was able to locate the relevant bit from Marshall Houts' book online, but don't know how accurate it is. (I haven't seen my copy of Where Death Delights or Dead Men Do Tell Tales in a long time. Both, like the thousands of other volumes in my library, are boxed up pending finding sufficient space.) So here's what Houts allegedly wrote about it:

Milton Heprin, longtime chief medical examiner in New York City, used to tell the story of a young Irishman seen standing on the far reaches of a subway platform by several witnesses. At a certain point he suddenly and silently pitched forward right in front of an oncoming train. He was found dead beneath the wheels, horribly mangles. But his family was Catholic and did not readily accept the initial conclusion of suicide. They were quite certain that their son had no reason to commit suicide, and in the end they were proved right. Helprin reexamined the mangled body and noticed tiny burn marks on the right thumb, index finger, and the tip of the penis. He was able to reassure the family their son had died accidentally. He had been urinating on the subway tracks, and the stream had accidentally reached the third rail. The arc of falling water, rich with salts favoring conduction, instantly became an arc of lethal electricity. The lad was probably dead before he hit the tracks.

Darwin Digest, quoting from Where Death Delights: The Story of Dr. Milton Helpern and Forensic Medicine by Marshall Houts

And now, the piece de la resistance:

It was surely one of the most bizarre deaths in the annals of New York history, let alone its medical history. An unidentified man was traveling the subways one day when he felt the urgent call of nature. Unable or unwilling to seek out a public toilet, he proceeded to relieve himself on the subway tracks. But alas, relief was not forthcoming. The arc of the man's urine hit the third rail, conducting a high-voltage electrical current back to his body and killing him instantly.

Newsday, 28 January 1988, Part II, page 3

But I can't fully confirm that, either. Finally, one more tidbit:

Just did an interview with Bob Lobenstein... the General Superintendent, power Operations, Traction Power Historian, Maintenance of Way - Electrical systems and all round good guy of the New York City Transit Department. NYCT are the guys who power the third Rail in NYC.

He claims that he has not only heard of the pissing on the third rail myth... he thinks it's true. From the day he began with NYCT his trainers and supervisors told him the story... although when asked he could not produce any names or paperwork. This seems to back our case that there are no cases on Medical record.

He gave us a demonstration at full power 625 Volts... 10,000 amps. with a squeeze bottle on a curcuit.. filled with saline water.

USENET Posting by Peter Rees, 14 July 2003

So where were we... ah yes... the third rail experiment... well he managed to get a connection up to three feet from the rail. Unfortunately I think he hadn't taken into consideration the fact that his squeeze bottle... under pressure from two hands... was capable of producing a far higher pressure urine stream that is feasible for the average human. We measured a urine stream and noted that on average a male produces around 200ml in 14 - 18 seconds. At this rate the stream breaks up in a little over six inches.

By the way I had a message from Danny Burstein that I though you giys might be interested in hearing. Danny, I hope you don't mind.

Danny said that he had heard of a charred member.. the product of third rail pissing... in the collection of the NYC medical examiners office. We dutifully made the calls and to date have not received a conclusive answer. The NYCMEO claims that their collection was transferred to the Smithsonian some years ago. They had no recollection of the charred member.

USENET Posting by Peter Rees, 20 July 2003

So there you have it. Urinating onto the third rail may or may not kill you if you do it in the subway. It will, however, destroy your career if you do it in Washington DC.

After all, Social Security has been called the third rail of American politics, but the President has grabbed onto this rail and insisted that it be discussed.

Dr. N. Gregory Mankiw, Chairman Council of Economic Advisers, Annual Meeting of the National Association of Business Economists, 15 September 2003

Sources and Further Reading

1. "Electrical injury from subway third rails: serious injury associated with intermediate voltage contact." Burns, 1997 Sep;23(6):515-8
2. Straight Dope
3. Darwin Digest
4. Design and Construction of the IRT: Electrical Engineering
5. Brief filed by Estate of Sang Yeul Lee (deceased) vs. Chicago Transit Authority, Supreme Court of Illinois, Case No. 71304
6. Decision, Estate of Sang Yeul Lee (deceased) vs. Chicago Transit Authority, Supreme Court of Illinois, Case No. 71304, 22 October 1992
7. USENET Posting by Peter Rees, 14 July 2003
8. USENET Posting by Peter Rees, 20 July 2003
9. Dead Men Do Tell Tales; The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Antrhopologist by William R. Maples, 1994
10. Where Death Delights: The Story of Dr. Milton Helpern and Forensic Medicine by Marshall Houts, 1967
11. Autopsy: The Memoirs of Milton Helpern, The World's Greatest Medical Detective by Milton Helpern, 1977

The Guardian UK would be laudable if it did nothing more than just present better reporting about what goes on in America than do the NY Times or Washington Post. But beyond more political reporting that's either boring or upsetting, lies a valuable resource: the digested read. As the Guardian puts it, "Too busy to read the hot books? Let us read them for you". What this means is that it delivers "The must-read books in 400 words", but while retaining the author's style present in the original work. (Now, you're saying, if Citizen Arcane were shorter I'd have the time to read these books. To which I say, well, yeah, sure. How do you think I feel? I'm the one who actually writes all this verbiage...)

Anyway, one of my favorite digest reads is the version of Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. (BTW: I quite liked Bourdain's early work; after a while it got repetitious, but it's still interesting even if you aren't a chef, amateur or professional.) If you're a vegetarian, you'd best skip these excerpts. (It's for your own good. Trust me.) This is such a good parody of Bourdain that as I read it I heard his voice narrating.

Yo, motherfuckers. I'm sitting in the bush with Charlie, deep in the Mekong Delta, drinking hooch. My hosts, VC war heroes, pass me the duck. I chomp through its bill, before cracking open the skull and scooping the brains out...

When you've just had a big score with an obnoxious and over-testosteroned account of your life, your publishers tend to fall for any dumbass plan. So when I told them I wanted to go round the world eating all sorts of scary food in a search for the perfect meal, they just said, "Where do we sign?"

Y'know, most of us in the west have lost contact with the food we eat. It comes merchandised and homogenised. The same goes for chefs. Cooking isn't about knocking up a few wussy monkfish terrines out of fillets that have been delivered to the kitchen door; it's about badass guys going deep into their souls and looking their ingredients in the eye.

Which is why I am in Portugal, outside the barn while Jose and Francisco restrain several hundredweight of screaming pig. I unsheathe my knife, bury it deep into the neck and draw it firmly towards me. The pig looks at me in surprise and fury. I lick the blood from my arms, make another incision and rip out the guts. The women pan-fry the spleen. It's indescribably good.

Digested Read for A Cook's Tour.

Philippe Starck's Package Design for Kronenbourg Beer

The designer Philippe Starck has created a very clever beer bottle for Kronenbourg:

For his new collaboration with Kronenbourg, Philippe Starck has designed this new bottle of french premium beer. His goal was to put elegance in drinking to the bottle. For this, he choosed the champain glass shape. The transparency of the glass was to show the beer, good and healthy product with nothing to hide. The other new idea was to add a cork to the bottle the way to keep it, if needed. This bottle is only available in a selection of hype bars, restaurants and hotels.

OBJECTS by, the online store of Philippe Starck

Philippe Starck's bottle for Kronenbourg Beer

The package features a special ink, since image and presentation are more important, of course, than the underlying quality of the beer:

The can is decorated with a new ink developed by Crown specifically for the project. The silver ink creates a 'pearl-like' quality when rotated under light. The resulting effect adds a luxury appeal to the already successful brand. "We adopted a promotional can with a crisp, modern look to reflect the high-quality of beer inside the package. The elegant visual appeal of our new can effectively reinforces the premium brand image of Kronenbourg 1664," explained the marketing manager at Brasseries Kronenbourg.

"Promo Lager Can's Pearl-Like Ink" in Packtalk

While Starck created a simple, clean package, he may have been picked for reasons other than pure design skills:

I venture that plenty of people are likely to buy his products purely for the Starck brand - itself a useful marketing tool.

"What can I do?" he protests. "I am concerned. But I hope that my tribe is a smart tribe. I want to be the last barometer of the product. If people buy just because of my name, I regret it."

Starck adds that he works for both extremes of the monetary spectrum, and that his work for "wealthy clients" allows him greater freedom to design for the masses.

But this formula hasn't always proved successful. Starck's affordable collection for US discount retailer Target was discontinued after a season.Target has been vague about its demise. Starck claims that design was "not in their DNA".

Nonetheless,the Starck brand is growing at a phenomenal pace. The designer claims that studies have shown that when the word `Starck' is slapped on a product, its sales rise by 45 per cent.

Interview with Philippe Starck

But if you want one for your collection, best act fast:

The promotional cans will be available in supermarkets throughout France until the end of the year. The group has not announced any plans to use the new can beyond that time.

Beverage Daily

Still from The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957

Glyn Hughes has done the world a service by squashing books; that is, distilling the essense from the major works in philosophy to make them far more accessible and easier to read. (No, we're not adopting that philosophy for Citizen Arcane. So sorry. Actually, so not sorry.)

The author explains the project's laudable purpose:

Unfortunately, life is rather short, the little storeroom of the brain doesn't have extensible walls and the greatest of thinkers seem to also be among the worst, and the lengthiest, of writers. So, most knowledge of Plato or Hume or Aristotle tends to come second-hand, unfortunately too often through masters more filled with pompous pleasure in their own mastery of complexity than with knowledge of their subject. Which is a pity, because your Prince, whether they call themselves President or King or Prime Minister, has almost certainly read Machiavelli. Your therapist is steeped in Freud, your divines in Augustine. Lawmakers take their cues still from Paine, Rousseau and Hobbes. Science looks yet to Bacon, Copernicus and Darwin.

So, here are the most used, most quoted, the most given, sources of the West. The books that have defined the way the West thinks now, in their author's own words, but condensed and abridged into something readable.

I'd like to say that the selection was far from arbitrary; that thousands of papers and essays and articles were scanned to find which great works were most commonly cited, which prescribed to students, which have the most published editions. The shades of these authors were invoked no less than 588 times in the last decade in the British parliament. Plato's Republic, and assorted commentaries, has 1722 editions, and that's just in English, and just in print at the moment. Machiavelli gets mention in just over a quarter of a million websites. Thomas Paine's name has appeared 186,526 times to the US House of Representatives. And so on. It is true that all this research has been done, but, the choice has, ultimately, to be a personal one.

...

And there's something more. By compressing these books to a tenth or so of their original size it becomes possible to read the whole thing as a single narrative, as the story of Western Thought, the story of how we got where we are now, the last chapter still waiting to be written. Is it cheating? Perhaps, but if it is, then so is reading Plato in anything other than unical Attic on papyrus.

Glyn Hughes Squashed Philosophers

As I leafed read through the squashed Tractatus Logico Philosophicus — I adore Wittgenstein, which probably comes as no surprise to you, dear reader — I again encountered one of my favorite quotes: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." Ahhh, yes, how true, how true. (I, of course, never paid attention to it.) I closed my Master's thesis with this very quote. Again, no surprise to those who know me. But I wouldn't want to slight another observation of Wittgenstein:

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Proposition 6.522

Mayan Calendar Stone (Sunstone) depicting the four cycles of creation and destruction. The skull is the god Tonatiuh, the fifth sun.

I was looking at my dead Seiko Kinetic — the storage cells in these electrically-powered self-winding watches are known to have serious manufacturing defects causing them to die after a few years but Seiko refuses to repair them — and was thinking about timekeeping. (I was also thinking I'm going to take Seiko to small claims court over this piece of junk, but that's another issue for another entry.) Anyway, it got me thinking about calendars.

Calendars are a useful thing beyond remembering your special someone's birthday. Without them governments can't collect taxes, farmers can't plant crops, and landlords can't collect the rent. (The last one has some special significance which will become clear later.) Which is why just about every culture has created a calendar of one sort or another. While most are based on the dating of some religious event, or a revolution, all tend to have, in rough terms, the traditional number of months and days, with some rejiggering as needed to account for minor errors.

Compare the oldest, and most complex, calendars with one of the newest yields an interesting juxtaposition. We'll start with the Mayan calendar.

The Maya calendar uses three different dating systems in parallel, the Long Count, the Tzolkin (divine calendar), and the Haab (civil calendar). Of these, only the Haab has a direct relationship to the length of the year. A typical Mayan date looks like this: 12.18.16.2.6, 3 Cimi 4 Zotz.

12.18.16.2.6 is the Long Count date.
3 Cimi is the Tzolkin date.
4 Zotz is the Haab date.

...

As the named week is 20 days and the smallest Long Count digit is 20 days, there is synchrony between the two; if, for example, the last digit of today's Long Count is 0, today must be Ahau; if it is 6, it must be Cimi. Since the numbered and the named week were both "weeks," each of their name/number change daily; therefore, the day after 3 Cimi is not 4 Cimi, but 4 Manik, and the day after that, 5 Lamat. The next time Cimi rolls around, 20 days later, it will be 10 Cimi instead of 3 Cimi. The next 3 Cimi will not occur until 260 (or 13 x 20) days have passed. This 260-day cycle also had good-luck or bad-luck associations connected with each day, and for this reason, it became known as the "divinatory year."

Calendars Through the Ages

This is so complicated it makes my brain hurt. (Sensible people use a program or library routines to do these conversions.) So let's go from the frightfully complex to the dirt simple. At last year's American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, Richard Henry, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, resurrected an old proposal to create a new, and simpler, calendar:

The world's presently-used Gregorian calendar is extremely clumsy, because the Gregorian calendar repeats only after 400 years (Seidelman 1961), and therefore organizations, including the AAS, have to re-work their calendar each and every year. This work is totally unnecessary. I propose that the American Astronomical Society advocate the world-wide adoption of the CCC&T calendar, which is an adaptation of Bob McClenon's Calendar, a brilliant fix which results in the calendar being identical every year. This calendar is far superior to previously suggested reformed calendars, in that it does not break the cycle of the days of the week, ever! Pragmatic (and more than adequate) synchronization with the seasons is achieved by the introduction of an extra week-long "month" every four or five years at the end of June; I propose that this seven-day month be called Newton. The target for adoption is 2006 Jan 1, and at the same time, universal use of universal time should be adopted, making the date and time identical everywhere on Earth. Time zones remain as "hours of work" zones, EST for example becoming "14 o'clock to 22 o'clock" for a "nine-to-five" job. The economic benefit that astronomers could provide the world through shepherding this simple reform would easily and indeed more than repay all that the world has kindly spent on astronomical research.

AAS Meeting January 2004

Professor Richard Henry

Henry's proposal is based on Bob McClenon's "Reformed Weekly Calendar". (The original proposal and revised proposal have details.) McClenon's issues with the current calendar are shared by most of us:

The Gregorian calendar has two obvious disadvantages. First, the weekday of a date in a month varies from year to year and is difficult to predict. One cannot quickly determine whether a future day will be a day of work or a day of rest without consulting a perpetual calendar. Second, the months are of variable length with no particular pattern.

Bob McClenon's Proposal

The whole business is so complicated we need mnemonics to keep it all straight:

Thirti Dayes hath Nouembir
Thirti dayes hath Nouembir,
April, June, and Septembir;
Of xxviijti is but oon,
And all the remenaunt xxxti and j.
Author unknown, circa 1300 — 1450

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.
M.S. Stevins, circa 1555
Also attributed to Richard Grafton, "Chronicles of England", 1568

Thirty dayes hath Nouember,
Aprill, Iune and September;
Twentie and eyght hath February alone,
And all the rest thirty and one,
But in the leape you must adde one.
William Harrison, Description of Britain, prefixed to Holinshed's "Chronicle", 1577

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
February has twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one;
Excepting leap year, — that's the time
When February’s days are twenty-nine.
John Day, "The Return from Parnassus" 1601

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
Which hath but twenty-eight, in fine,
Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.
New England Saying

Fourth, eleventh, ninth, and sixth,
Thirty days to each affix;
Every other thirty-one
Except the second month alone.
The Friends, Chester County, Pennsylvania

Various Sources

So how did we get into this mess? Consider some calendar history:

The Julian Calendar

In ancient Rome the lunar calendar was constantly being adjusted, adding days here and there to bring the seasons back into sync. Some corrupt politicians and officials even added days to the calendar to lengthen their stay in office, or for financial gain. Then in 45 B.C. Roman Emperor Julius Caesar decreed that a new calendar, called the Julian calendar, would be adopted. The astronomer Sosigenes designed the calendar to strictly follow the seasons, not the moon. Each year had 365 days, with an extra "leap" day added every 4 years. This made the length of a Julian year 365.25 days, not far from the actual value of 365.2422 days.

The Gregorian Calendar

But the average length of the Julian year was a bit too long, by some 11 minutes. Slowly the first day of spring shifted to earlier and earlier dates, at the rate of about eight days every thousand years. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII, advised by the astronomer Christopher Clavius, decreed that the date of the vernal equinox, which had crept forward to March 11, should revert to March 21, its date at the time of the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. It was at the Council of Nicaea that the church decided Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. By bringing the calendar back into sync, Easter would be celebrated closer to its original date.

The only way to make such a change was to skip ten days; and so in Catholic countries the day after October 4, 1582, was October 15, 1582. Many non-Catholic nations, however, did not go along with this jump. England and the British colonies held out until 1752 when September 2nd was followed by September 14th. Many citizens thought they were being cheated out of 11 days of life and in the resultant riots a number of people were killed!

The change brought the first day of spring back to March 21st, but it was necessary to prevent future date-jumping. So the new Gregorian calendar was shortened a tiny amount. A leap day was still added every four years, but with a special rule about century-end years: only century-end years divisible by 400 would be leap years. Therefore, the years 1800, 1900, and 2100 have no February 29th, but 2000 and 2400 do. This makes the average length of the Gregorian year 365.2524 days, less than half a minute off each year. This will produce an error of only one day every 3000 years.

NASA History of Calendars

NASA, however, has one item dead wrong. (That's why I picked their explanation.) People were not rioting because "they were being cheated out of 11 days of life" but because at the time of calendar transition the landlords were charging tenants for a full month's rent, instead of pro-rating for a month eleven days shorter than the full month. (Remember when I said in the introduction that calendars were important to landlords?)

But back to Henry's proposal. It has an interesting characteristic: days of the week in his calendar always stay the same, year after year. July 4, for example, will always be a Wednesday; Christmas, a Sunday. (Thus clearly gaining the support of both Christians and patriots. Ok, just kidding about the patriots. True patriots know that July 4 should always be a Friday so we get a long weekend. Some things should only be tinkered with for the better.)

Henry assures us that there are impressive benefits to switching calendars, beyond dumping a fortune into retooling so much software it would make the Y2K upgrades look simple:

1.) Why fool with the calendar?
There are enormous economic advantages to the proposed calendar. These benefits come because the new calendar is identical every year... except that, every five or six years, there is a one-week long "Mini-Month," called "Newton," between June and July. "Newton Week" brings the calendar into sync with the seasonal change as the Earth circles the Sun. How much needless work do institutions, such as companies and colleges, put into arranging their calendars for every coming year? From 2006 on, they do it once ... and it is done forevermore.

Henry's Calendar Reform Proposal

Yeah, right. I don't think anyone needs Jimmy the Greek to give odds on this happening.

Oh, and that title line? It's an allusion to a song. The "Kankin" is the Mayan month approximately where September would be. (See where this is going? No? Oh, well. I am not Citizen Arcane for nothing.) I couldn't find the lyrics online. Best I could turn up was: "Try to remember, the days of September, when life was sweet and oh so mellow...". As far as I can determine, the song is from the musical The Fantasticks. But I'm certain Harry Belafonte sang the version I recall.

Sources and Further Reading

1. Calendars Through the Ages
2. Mayan Calendar
3. Henry's Calendar Reform Proposal
4. Henry's Calendar Reform Presentation at AAS Meeting January 2004
5. Bob McClenon's "Reformed Weekly Calendar" proposal (original)
6. Bob McClenon's "Reformed Weekly Calendar" proposal (revised)

Schwinn Paramount Chainwheel

Virtually all bicycles use a chain and wheel combination to transfer power from the pedal crank to the wheel. There are alternative mechanisms to transfer power, of course, but these are not widely used. The chainwheel, also called a chainring, is a type of sprocket, or toothed wheel. (Remember Spacely Sprockets from the Jetsons?) I see all sorts of bicycles as I go walkabout in the city and many are highly customized. (Few, however, approach what the Black Label Bike Club and the other NYC bicycle clubs do. If you've seen the tall bikes around, you know what I mean.)

Colnago Chainwheel

What I find so interesting is the artistic creativity shown in the numerous chainwheel and chainring variations. There is, of course, a whole continuum of design tradeoffs, including weight, strength, cost, and safety. My interest, however, is simply in the elegance of design and mechanical items as art. Having seen these collections I find myself sated. For some, however, interest changes into, well, a borderline obsession.

Joel Metz just can't get enough of chainwheels, whether they are the silhouettes he collects on paper or on his very skin:

i havent yet decided what the plan is once my arm is entirely filled with as many black chainwheel silhouettes as it can hold without overlap. granted, this is a good ways off, but... i have considered a background of some kind - perhaps a second layer of silhouettes, in deep red, "underneath" the black ones... or i may come up with something else, or even just leave it as is. a lot will depend on how the sleeve looks once its all filled, and theres no more room for further chainwheels in black - i doubt ill be able to decide what to do next until that point.

Joel Metz's Chainwheel Tattoo Project

Trying to wrap one's head around the buying power of a dollar in different time periods is never easy:

Determining the relative value of an amount of money in one year compared to another is more complicated than it seems at first. There is no single "correct" measure, and economic historians use one or more different series depending on the context of the question.

Most indices are measured as the price of a "bundle" of goods and services that a representative group buys or earns. Over time the bundle changes; for example, carriages are replaced with automobiles, and new goods and services are created such as cellular phones and heart transplants.

These considerations do not stop the fascination with these comparisons or even the necessity for them. For example, such comparisons may be critical to determine appropriate levels of compensation in a legal case that has been deferred. The context of the question, however, may lead to a preferable measure and that measure may not be the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is used far too often without thought to its consequences.

The example below of what Babe Ruth's salary was "worth" can demonstrate this point. His earnings had a "purchasing power" in today's price of a million dollars, but he could not purchase any effective cure for cancer. However, if the question was how to compare his salary with that of a current super star such as Tiger Woods or Barry Bonds, using Ruth's wage compared to an unskilled worker, the average income or the percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) he earned gives comparable numbers.

"What is its Relative Value in U.S. Dollars" from the Economic History Services

So let's put it in context by considering one of the most famous ad jingles (listen) of all time. That would be the 1939 ad from Pepsi-Cola touting the benefits of their "superior" formulation of sugar water:

At about the same time Pepsi-Cola launched what was to become one of the most famous jingles ever written. "Nickle, Nickle" (later known as "Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot") was written by Alan Bradley Kent and Austen Herbert Croom-Johnson.

Pepsi-Cola hits the spot
Twelve full ounces, that's a lot
Twice as much for a nickle, too
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.

This little jingle would go on to be recorded in 55 different languages, over 1 million records containing this jingle were produced, and it was the first jingle ever played from coast to coast on network radio. It is hard to convey just how big this jingle was, but it was very popular for nearly a decade and was even described as "immortal." How many people decided to give Pepsi a try because of this jingle can not be over estimated. The jingle was first written as a standard commercial with the jingle at the end but Mack insisted that only the jingle be aired. It was played so often that 50 years later there are still people who remember the words.

The History of Pepsi-Cola, Soda Museum

Now, let's consider what the "Twice as much for a nickle, too" means in today's dollars: (BTW: the "twice as much" referred to Pepsi-Cola's twelve ounces versus Coca Cola's six.)

In 2003, $0.05 from 1940 is worth:

$0.65 using the Consumer Price Index
$0.54 using the GDP deflator
$1.39 using the unskilled wage
$2.46 using the GDP per capita
$5.42 using the relative share of GDP

5 cents scaled from 1940 dollars to 2003 dollars

And $0.65 is just about what it would cost you to buy a soda today at a supermarket. (Not quantity one in a bodega, of course.) Notice how the CPI is spot on. Yet not everthing scales so nicely. Consider today's value for a home purchased for $50,000 in 1970:

In 2003, $50,000.00 from 1970 is worth:

$237,137.93 using the Consumer Price Index
$191,863.42 using the GDP deflator
$248,964.68 using the unskilled wage
$373,282.77 using the GDP per capita
$528,834.86 using the relative share of GDP

$50,000 scaled from 1970 dollars to 2003 dollars

Inflation in real estate better tracks the change in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita than it does changes in the CPI or wages. That's why a home that was affordable in 1970 requires three salaries to pay for in 2005. That's likely because commodities benefit from improvements in supply and manufacturing not to forget competition, which keep the price down. Real commodities, however, tend to be priced according to the owner's share in the American Dream, aka GDP. What? Your share of GDP hasn't kept pace? Well, that's all the fault of the tax-and-spend Democrats; all the "fiscally-conservative" Republicans got their share of GDP, now didn't they.

Buy land, 'cause they ain't makin' it no more.

— Will Rogers

Sources and Further Reading

1. "What is its Relative Value in U.S. Dollars" from the Economic History Services
2. "How Much is That" from the Economic History Services

Minard's Chart of Napoleon's 1812 Russian Campaign

Charles Joseph Minard (27 March 1781 — 24 October 1870) was a brilliant engineer and graphic designer, and is famous for many things. Yet one single piece of work stands above all the others, and has achieved widespread fame. That work is his chart depicting the fate of Napoleon's Grand Army during the truly disastrous 1812 Russian campaign. (Be sure to look at the large version.)

The chart (see above) is 22 inches by 15 inches and uses two colors. Edward Tufte, the undisputed maestro of chart design, called it "Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn." I think that observation is spot on. As Tufte explains:

Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales.

Edward Tufte

The beauty of this chart is how it conveys the whole sense of the doomed campaign, from it's utter futility to the death of the soldiers, but explaining where the losses ocurred and, to some extent, the reasons why. It is, literally, ten pounds of information in a one-pound box.

Here he uses the same proportional line to track Napoleon's Grand Armee as it made its was across the Russian plains toward Moscow. We see a fraction of the troops splitting off from the main group and pausing at Polotzk (known in English as Polotsk in the modern country of Belarus). Although the thickness of Napoleon's army diminished somewhat by the time it arrived at Moscow, it was still formidable. Unfortunately for Napoleon and his troops, Czar Alexander I and the residents of Moscow had fled and burned the city, leaving little for Napoleon to conquer. Up to this point, Minard's map bears many of the same qualities as the Hannibal map. But an additional, tragic chapter of the campaign enabled Minard to add even more depth to his already incredible map.

Like a scorned groom whose bride never showed up at the altar, a frustrated Napoleon had little choice but to return back to the part of Europe he controlled for food, shelter, and supplies. Minard now traces the remnants of the Grande Armee as it makes its way back toward the Neiman River. In doing so, the parallel tracks of the advancing and retreating army are set next to one another, making the continuing deterioration of the army all the more visible and heartwrenching. As the army slowly made its way across barren earth (the Russians had burned food along this path while blocking other escape paths), one of the worst winters in recent memory set in. Minard tracks the plummeting temperature against this trek on a horizontal axis at the bottom of the page, even more profoundly capturing the dire straits that the retreating army found itself in. Not surprisingly, the pitiful band of troops that returned from Russia marked the onset of the collapse of Napoleon's Continental Empire.

Charles Joseph Minard: Mapping Napoleon's March, 1861. By John Corbett

Minard was able to do this because the chart is:

[A] narrative graphic of time and space which illustrates how multivariate complexity can be subtly integrated so that viewers are hardly aware that they are looking into a world of four or five dimensions.

Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

But it is so much more than that; it is also a magnificent testament to the folly of war.

Together, the maps of these two campaigns provide a visual lesson to historians and generals, which might have been subtitled, “Some things to avoid in planning a military campaign.” In fact, I believe there is a more personal and more emotive meaning, as an anti-war statement by an engineer who had witnessed the horrors of war in his youth and who, in his final year, was forced to flee his home.

Chevallier (1871, p. 18) says, “Finally, as if he could sense the terrible disaster that was about to disrupt the country, he illustrated the loss of lives that had been caused by Hannibal and Napoleon. The graphical representation is gripping; it inspires bitter reflections on the human cost of the thirst for military glory.” It may well be, for this reason, that Minard’s most famous graphic defied the pen of the historian.

Re-Visions of Minard By Michael Friendly

A beautiful poster — printed on heavy archival stock — is available from Edward Tufte for $14. (A framed copy of these prints, purchased from Tufte, has adorned on my wall for nearly two decades.) No, I don't get a kickback; I just think Tufte sells quality products.

Sources and Further Reading

1. Tufte, E. R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire, CT, 1983.
2. Charles Joseph Minard: Mapping Napoleon's March, 1861
3. Geovisualization Illustrated by Menno-Jan Kraak
4. Re-Visions of Minard By Michael Friendly

The great thing about mod_rewrite is it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. The downside to mod_rewrite is that it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail.

Brian Behlendorf, Apache Group

Instead of creating an entry for today, I spent it wrestling with Apache's URL rewrite rules. The documentation says, "Welcome to mod_rewrite, the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulation!" but knives aren't useful if they keep amputating body parts of the user. Anyway, the results of a days work are, as they say, mixed. Archives sort of work, but only if the path includes index.php. This isn't especially interesting, but it's why there isn't an entry for today.

Despite the tons of examples and docs, mod_rewrite is voodoo. Damned cool voodoo, but still voodoo.

Brian Moore

Monopoly evokes a unique emotion, the surge of thrill you get when you know you've wiped out a friend.

— Shelly Berman

Early Parker Brother's Monopoly Board

The board game Monopoly is an institution. It is available in in many variants (link, link link, and link) and even some parodies (Ghettopoly and Anti-monopoly). Versions exist for most major cities, and even for such specialized areas as football, the military, and the space program. Even the Franklin Mint has a version. (You know something has hit the bigtime when the Franklin Mint has an edition.) All teach the joys of unfettered capitalism and world domination, not to mention a little math, too. (I can picture how none of the other children wanted to play monopoly with a young Bill Gates.)

Microsoft Monopoly Parody

The "official" origins of Monopoly are on the Hasbro Website, but these are, to be blunt, absolute lies. And therein lies a tale. First, consider the official, and fraudulent, version of the origins:

Today, it's the best-selling board game in the world, sold in 80 countries and produced in 26 languages including Croatian. But where did the game come from? How did this phenomenal pastime get its start? tells the legend best.

It was 1934, the height of the Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the MONOPOLY game to the executives at Parker Brothers. Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"! But Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce it on his own.

With help from a friend who was a printer, Mr. Darrow sold 5,000 handmade sets of the game to a Philadelphia department store. People loved it! But as demand grew, he couldn't keep up with all the orders and came back to talk to

History of Monopoly, Hasbro

New York Version

Parker Brother has always asserted that the inventor of Monopoloy was Charles Darrow. He does, in fact, hold United States Patent number 2,026,082 for it, and the rights to the patent were sold to Parker Brothers. The fact is that Parker Brothers invented a nostalgic history to cover up a fraud. First, the history:

His is a nice little story, with an appropriately capitalist theme. An unemployed Depression-era radiator repairman invents a game in which down-on-their-luck Americans trade pricey properties and connive their way to fantastic riches. The game catches on with a cash-starved public looking for cheap entertainment. The unemployed repairman fills his pockets with wads of real money.

National Public Radio report on Monopoly

The fact is that Darrow had nothing to do with Monopoly, as it is based on an earlier game called the "Landlord's Game" by a Quaker named Elizabeth Magie; she even holds the 1904 United States Patent on the game. (How could Darrow invent a game that had been patented 31 years earlier?) Magie's goal was not entertainment; it was education:

It was from Ralph Anspach, the inventor of Anti-Monopoly, that I learned that Monopoly itself had begun as a critique of the very system it has done so much to promote. The official history of Monopoly, recorded in endless Reader's Digest-like articles, holds that Charles Darrow, an unemployed Philadelphia worker, invented the game in 1933, and sold it to Parker Brothers, who in turn have sold Darrow's pro-business inspiration to the world. Anspach's research shows that the real inventor of Monopoly was Elizabeth Magie, a Quaker follower of the Single Tax economist Henry George. She invented the game in 1903 and called it the Landlord Game; Its squares carried such inspired names as "Lord Blueblood's Estate" and "The Soakum Lighting Co."

A 1925 version of her game, by now called Monopoly, which was made by Louis Thun, states in its Introduction, "Monopoly is designed to show the evil resulting from the institution of private property. At the start of the game, every player is provided with the same chance of success as every other player. The game ends with one person in possession of all the money. What accounts for the failure of the rest, and what one factor can b