Teach Me

IMPERATIVE

[im-per-uh-tiv], adjective: absolutely necessary or required; unavoidable.

The word imperative stems from the Latin word imperativus, which means “pertaining to a command”. Imperativus has its roots in the Latin words in- “in, toward” and -parare “beget, bear”.

Imperative is primarily used by people of authority. As a general rule of thumb it is only used (almost always over e-mail, but does occasionally make even douchier appearances verbally) when said person of authority forgets to do an item of work, and assumes that using the word “imperative” when directing you to do said item of work that said person of authority forgot (“It is imperative that you get this done first thing in the morning!”) makes them sound more important and therefore helps you forget that you’re only doing said imperative thing because said person of authority forgot to do so themselves, when in actuality, if said imperative thing was so “imperative” it would have been done already by said person of authority, or you would have been directed to do said imperative thing before it became “imperative”.

NOW TEACH ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW!

PRESIDENT JAMES BUCHANAN

I heard a conservative pundit the other day say that if Bill Clinton was the first black president (referring to a remark made by Toni Morrison in 1998) then that would make Barack Obama the first gay president, because with him as president, gays would run rampant and be all up in your crib. And by “all up in your crib” I mean “actually in your cribs, teaching your babies that being gay is okay”. I was shocked and appalled by this! I mean, didn’t he know we already had our first gay president? Wait, you didn’t know we already had our first gay president? Why of course its our fifteenth president James Buchanan who was in office from 1857 to 1861 silly!

Okay, so like most historical gays (I’m looking at you Alexander!) it’s not exactly proven, but you just know he was a big old homo. First off, he was the only president never to be married, which, you know… (::flips wrist::) In fact, Harriet Lane, an orphaned niece whom he had adopted, acted as his First Lady. It’s actually due to Harriet Lane that the term “First Lady” was used because you couldn’t refer to her as “Mrs. President” because her and the President weren’t married.

So what else made Buchanan such a flaming flame of flamocity, you ask? Well for fifteen years, before he was president, Buchanan lived with his also unmarried “close friend” Alabama Senator Gayle King William King and even then people were talking about it. Aaron Brown, Governor of Tennessee at the time referred to the pair as “Buchanan and his wife”. Also, when King was appointed minister to France, Buchanan wrote in a letter:

“I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone, and [I] should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”

Interesting! You know what else is interesting? The nieces of both Buchanan and King destroyed all the letters between the two men after their deaths. That’s like deleting all the dirty text messages you sent when you were drunk the night before! So there you have it. Bill Clinton may have been the first black president, but Barack Obama is certainly not the first gay one. I guess he’ll just have to be satisfied being remembered as the first president born outside the continental United States instead.

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW!

Turns out the world’s first joke was a fart joke dating back to 1900 BC. An ancient Sumerian (of Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, now Iraq) proverb goes: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” Um, I don’t get it. Farting on someone else’s lap? Kinda funny I guess. Farting on someone else’s pillow? Hysterical. Star Wars fart jokes? Abysmal. But there you have it. The world’s oldest joke.

Teach me something new or tell me your favorite bad joke.

INTERNATIONAL RADIOTELEPHONY SPELLING ALPHABET

Whenever I spell my last name to people over the phone, and the difficult-to-enunciate letter N comes up, I always say: “N as in Nancy.” And I’ll ask you not to make any Nancy-boy jokes, thank you very much. Well I did it at work the other day and someone corrected me and said the official word I’m supposed to use is “November”. Show of hands: Who knew there were official words you’re supposed to use? Liars!

Well apparently there is, and it’s called the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. Here they are:

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu

So there you have it. If you don’t use these words you are a moron. This alphabetical system was created in 1927, some changes were made in 1932, and then adopted by British and American military forces in 1956. During the Vietnam War, Viet Cong guerrillas were referred to as “Victor Charlies”, and then abbreviated to “Charlies”. You can also say “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!” which means “What the fuck?” Okay maybe not, but it’s fun to say.

On particular crumby (when I need cheering up) or silly (when I just feel like being a buffoon) days, I enjoy using ridiculous words when spelling things out over the phone. There are a few ways you can do this such as:

Use obsurd words like: “O as in Onomatopoeia.”
Or STDs: “C as in Chlamydia.”
Make it the second word: “P as in Mary Poppins.”
Say it even though the letter doesn’t need clarification: “W as in Wikipedia.”
Bonus points for alliteration: “B as in Bouncing Ball of Boyancy.”
Make up silly sentences for letters that are also words: “Y as in Why does my boyfriend’s Mom hate me so much?”
Change the first letter of common words: “M as in Melevision.”
Use words with silent letters: “K as in Knife.”

Your job today — if you choose to accept it (and you better!) — is to use a ridiculous “Blank as in Blankety Blank” phrase to a complete stranger, or coworker, or anyone who isn’t a friend, and report back to us here and tell us about it. Otherwise:

TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW!

THE NORWEGIAN DAWN

Me and my sister Amanda took the Norwegian Dawn on a 7-day cruise to Bermuda.

The Norwegian Dawn was christened in Manhattan in 2002 by none other than Kim Cattrall:

Because when you need to christen a starship, it is only logical to pick a Vulcan:

The Norwegian Dawn is also the ship that’s home to Rosie O’Donnell’s R Family Vacations, a cruise designed for gay and lesbian families with children.

While the Norwegian Dawn is only 74 feet longer than the RMS Titanic, it is nearly twice as heavy at 92,250 tons, compared to 46,328 tons. (Perhaps all those added lifeboats?)

It also comes shockingly close to scraping the bottom of the Verrazano Bridge:

The rooms are also super roomy. Shouldn’t all rooms be roomy by name alone?

And it even had TV! Which came in handy when being rocked to sleep to the gentle sounds of a Law & Order marathon. We may have also stayed in bed to watch Definitely, Maybe one day. Don’t judge us! It was such a cute movie! And it was our dang vacation! We could do whatever we want!

Did you know that the Norwegian Dawn is the ship that made national news in May of this year when a female passenger fell over the railing off the coast of New Jersey? She was never found.

The urinals also have excellent views, which I may or may not have snuck Amanda in to see:

The Norwegian Dawn also comes equipped with an Imperial-class shield generator, which I was sure to take a picture of:

Because even on vacation, I’m still a dork.

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW

Today’s Teach Me Something Tuesday is brought to you by Ξ_Heather and TwoPi from 360 – The Math Blog.

A HISTORY OF CRUISES

This year we celebrate the 190th anniversary of passenger ships. The company that began the era was the Black Ball Line, offering service from Craig’s own New York all the way to England and back. Soon there were steamships going back and forth carrying people, mail, and even on the Royal Mail Steam Packet — a cow for fresh milk. By 1844 pleasure cruises had evolved for their own sake instead of just transportation, and within 20 years there were all sorts of amenities such as electric lighting and entertainment. And except for little disruptions like world wars, the industry has continued to grow.

Of course, cruises are not without their risks. There’s the whole Titanic thing.

But there’s also the German Cruise ship Maipu, which sunk after being hit with US troopship General M. L. Hershey on a foggy morning in 1951.

(Don’t worry Craig, no one was killed.)

There’s the Greek Cruise Ship Neptunia which was almost certainly named after the half-human half-Atlantian Aquaria Nautica Neptunia and which was sadly grounded on a rock in Ireland in 1957.

(Don’t worry Craig, no one was killed.)

There’s the RMS Caronia, which had a hull that was painted not two, not three, but four fine shades of light green. It also boasted amenities like a bathroom in every room, which was fancy-dancy back in 1946. After a good long life it was sold, renamed the Caribia, and had an explosion in the engine room. She was sold for scrap, but while being towed to Taiwan in 1974 ran into a storm and sank. Poor Caribia.

(Don’t worry, Craig, no one was killed.)

But if cruising still appeals to you, it’s possible to spend more than just a week on the boat. In 1999, Bea Muller was on the Queen Elizabeth II when her husband died. She decided that she didn’t want to live alone in a retirement home, so she moved onto the QE2 and has been living there ever since, using e-mail to keep in touch with her landlocked family.

And what about today? At this very moment Royal Caribbean International is building the largest cruise ship ever, the Oasis of the Seas, which will hold 5400 guests and features rock walls, ziplining, and a moving bar. With all this fanciness set to launch in 2009, it makes one wonder just what the more distant future will hold.

NOW TELL US SOMETHING WE DON’T KNOW

THE NUMBER 13

In honor of this being the thirteenth edition of TMST, I thought it was fitting to give a brief history of why the number 13 is considered so freaky deaky. The number thirteen has been cursed ever since it was associated with the piece of crap cartoon titled “The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo”. Seriously, what was that crap? Actual ghosts? No Fred and Velma? More Scrappy Doo? A child Mexican pick-pocketer named Flim Flam? Shaggy in a red shirt instead of a green one? That’s where I draw the line! Lordy, that cartoon was an abomination. So that’s how the number 13 became evil. THE END.

Wait, you mean that’s not correct? Oh my. Okay let me see. Surely there are several explanations for why the number 13 is so ominous. Possibly because Judas was the disciple to betray Jesus and the 13th to sit at the table of the Last Supper? No? Okay, how about as Charles A. Platt suggested, if you start counting up from 1 using your fingers and feet (not your toes) you get up to twelve, making 13 an unknown — and therefore scary — number. Lame! If you’re counting relies solely on your fingers and feet, and the idea of continuing past 12 without their aid scares you, then you deserve to be cursed by an evil magic number. Oh I know! How about women have their period every 28 days, or about 13 times a year! Evil women! Eeeeeviiiil! Perfect.

Now that that’s settled, I’ve enlisted the help of resident Math geniuses Ξ_Heather and TwoPi from 360 Blog (those of the awesome cookies) to teach us some interesting math related facts about the number 13.

1. 13 is a prime number (a number with exactly two divisors: 1 and itself). And if you write it backwards, 31 is also a prime number so that makes 13 an emirp (seriously, that’s a real word).

2. 13 is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of the square of two different prime numbers (13 = 2² + 3²; the number 1 isn’t considered to be prime, so 2 and 3 are the smallest primes).

3. And speaking of primes, the first three prime numbers are 2,3, and 5 and 13 = 2³ + 5.

4. There are 13 Archimedian solids. Archimedian solids are symmetric ball-like figures where each face is a regular polygon (polygons with all sides and faces identical), and where at least two different polygons meet at each vertex/corner. Like a soccerball. See for yourself!

5. Our calendar (Gregorian) falls in a 400-year cycle, and the 13th of the month falls on a Friday more than any other day of the week: 688 times. Comparatively, it falls on a Thursday or Saturday only 684 times.

6. Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy was actually born Stanley Jefferson. He went by Stan Jefferson but then (according to several possibly legitimate sources) decided to change his last name because “Stan Jefferson” had 13 letters. Okay fine, that last one wasn’t Math related, but it was still interesting!

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW

LUCIFER

It is believed that Lucifer was the name of Satan when he was still an angel in heaven, before being cast out by God. The word “lucifer” in Latin means “light-bringer”. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Well Lucifer is also the name given to the “Morning Star” or Venus. Because Venus is an inferior planet — meaning that it’s closer to the Sun than the Earth is — its orbit prevents it from being seen high in the sky above Earth like the superior planets such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and so on, and is usually only visible in the morning and evening shortly before and after the Sun rises and sets. So the reason for the connection between the name given to Satan and the name given to Venus is that the inability of Venus to reach the grand heights of the night’s sky reflects the way Satan was cast out of Heaven.

Oh, and that whole cast-out-of-Heaven business could totally be a wacky misunderstanding. You see, when God made the angels, he told them to never worship anyone but God. But then God made Man, and told the angels to bow down to Man. Lucifer’s refusal to bow to Man could be interpreted in two ways: 1) Lucifer was so egotistical that he refused to bow down to what he considered to be a lesser being or 2) His love for God was so great that he couldn’t bring himself to bow to Man the same way he bowed to God, even if God told him to. Wasn’t that an episode of Three’s Company?

Either way, Lucifer’s refusal to obey God led to this huge war in Heaven with a third of the angels siding with Lucifer, and the other two thirds siding with God. Lucifer lost — of course — and he was cast out of Heaven with his fellow rebellious angels. All of this happened before the Fall of Man, which was when that bitch Eve totally forced Adam to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and Man ceased being perfect beings (well, most of us ceased being perfect beings) and were cast out of Paradise. You just know Lucifer was shaking his fist up to Heaven being all like “I told you so!” Oh, and by the way, “malus” in Latin as a noun means “apple” and as an adjective means “evil”, which is a possible explanation for why — even though the Bible makes no mention of apples — an apple is typically used in illustrations of the Fall of Man.

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.

VOWELS

Today we’re going to talk about vowels, because really, they’re everywhere. They’re so ridiculously common that Scrabble only gives me one freaking point for them. Even the damn U! Which is like impossible to use. And if you pick one, you hold onto it for the entire game because what if you pick the Q and you already used the U you had? Then you’ll be kicking yourself and scrambling (Not to be confused with scrabbling, which spellcheck says is a word. And I just looked it up and apparently it means to “scratch” or “scrape”. And what do you know! The Scrabble tiles have letters scratched into them! Very clever Hasbro!) to use those lame U-less Q words like Qabala, Qabalah, Qadi, Qaid, Qanat, Qat, Qi, Qindar, Qintar, Qiviut, and Qoph. Oh I’m sorry, do you not have all the U-less Q words memorized? Obviously you’re not an awesome Scrabble player such as myself.

Letter frequency isn’t a precise science since it depends on the source text you’re working with, but from what I found, it was common for 4 of the top 5 most frequently used letters included A, E, I, and O, with E being the undisputed champion. Vowels, unlike consonants, are letters that can be pronounced without compression or closure of the airway so there is minimal build-up of air as the letter is spoken.

The word “vowel” stems from the Latin word “vocalis” which means “speaking” due to the fact that speaking would pretty much be impossible without vowels. While we’re on the subject of Latin, take the five common vowels from the English language and say them in Latin:

A – pronounced: “ah”
E – pronounced: “eh”
I – pronounced: “ee”
O – pronounced: “oh”
U – pronounced: “oo”

Say them outloud. No really, say them, I’ll wait. Notice that as you say them, the sound starts from the back of your throat with “ah” and progresses forward until you get to “oo” which practically falls off your lips as you say it. Neat right? I would tell you about how W can sometimes be considered a vowel, but now you’ll be too busy reciting the Latin vowels in your head all day, so we’ll save that for another time.

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.

PANSPERMIA

Today we’re going to talk about the theory of Panspermia, because isn’t that just an awesome word? It’s made up of the words pan and sperm which mean all and seed respectively. Panspermia is the theory that there are seeds of life traveling through the Universe that can deliver life to hospitable planets. These seeds of life would be bacteria carried on meteorites or asteroids. And how funny is it that planets are round and comets have tails? Like something else we know, right? I’m of course talking about sperm and eggs. But kittens and balls of yarn, is also an acceptable answer.

As we know, the Martian meteorite ALH84001 found in Antarctica in 1984 proves that rocks are capable of being blasted off their home planet’s surface (probably by a separate meteorite impact) and sent flying through space. But how can bacteria survive the vacuum of space while traveling on a comet, you ask? Well there is a class of bacteria called extremophiles, which are known to thrive in extreme locations.

Some extremophiles have been found to survive the freezing cold and crushing pressure of life a mile below the surface in Antarctica, similar to the conditions of an icy comet. Others can survive temperatures over double that of the standard boiling point, which would help them survive the heat of burning up while entering planetary atmosphere. Others are radioresistant, meaning they can survive high levels of radiation, like the radiation that exists in space. And others have even laid dormant in amber for over 10 million years, which means the bacteria can survive traveling for millions of years through space. Put all these extremophile characteristics together and BAM planet sperm!

In a sense, the theory of Panspermia focuses on the distribution of life rather than the creation of it, therefore it doesn’t contradict the existence of God or a higher power. In fact, in a recent article titled “The Extraterrestrial is My Brother”, the Vatican okayed believing in the existence of extraterrestrial life. So if you think about it, bacteria carrying meteorites are like God’s sperm. You know, if God were some sort of frozen rock monster.

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.