Bark Worse Than Bite?

Wiki:

The earliest well known report of a man-eating tree originated as a hoax. In 1881 German explorer "Carl Liche" wrote an account in the South Australian Register of encountering a sacrifice performed by the "Mkodo" tribe of Madagascar:

"The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey."

The tree was given further publicity by the 1924 book by former Governor of Michigan Chase Osborn, Madagascar, Land of the Man-eating Tree. Osborn claimed that both the tribes and missionaries on Madagascar knew about the hideous tree, and also repeated the above Liche account.

In his 1955 book, Salamanders and other Wonders, science author Willy Ley determined that the Mkodo tribe, Carle Liche, and the Madagascar man-eating tree itself all appeared to be fabrications.

Vincent By Tim Burton

Welcome to Weirdsville: The Golden Rivet

For as long as men have sailed the seven seas they’d tried to keep women off their boats. It’s a sad fact, but for hundreds of years -- and in the case of certain civilizations, thousands of years -- water and women simply haven’t mixed.

That’s not to say that as the ships have rocked and rolled on the high sees the crew didn’t do their own kind of rhythm magic. Women might have been banned -- with extreme penalties in many cases for any attempts to break the rule -- but sex and the sea have always been part of a sailor’s life.

The logic behind banning women from being sailors appears sound -- for about a minute: to keep the swabbies in line, and to prevent in-fighting among those who might be getting, and might not be getting, it was thought better to keep the ships all male. In response to the obvious homosexual outlet for all that testosterone juice, many admiralties prohibited sex between crewmates -- with punishments ranging from simple monetary fines to floggings.

The fact though was that the big-wigs with the fruit salad on their chests were hundreds or thousands of miles away, so it was usually the discretion of the Captain on whether queer sex was a good thing or a bad thing.

Some captains and ships even bent the rules considerably, and thus was born the Captain’s Wife or Daughter: a courtesan brought on board simply to service the officers of the ship. Other Captains obeyed the letter of the law, while not embracing the spirit -- and thus allowing their crews to ‘embrace’ their own smuggled-aboard women, cross-dressed as fellow swabbies.

Even pirates, who some would think would be lax when it comes to rules and regulations, were much more stern in their sharing of the sexual favors of their fellow crews. Always concerned with equality among their crews, some pirate charters went as far as requiring ‘stranding’ on a desert or severe floggings as punishments for bring aboard women. It’s ironic that two of the more legendary pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, were women -- and who managed to escape the gallows by the singular female plea of the time: “we plead our bellies” meaning they were pregnant.

Pirates, by and large, during this time treated women -- particularly women captives -- rather well. Part of it was wanting to stay on fairly good terms with the authorities (nothing like ravaging some women to get your ship hunted down) but also because women fetched high prices as merchandise as well as in ransom from rich fathers and husbands. A crewman guilty of harming a female captive was treated as someone who had either stolen or damaged merchandise -- a very serious charge in pirate law.

While women (when they weren’t captain, that is) were banned from ships, sailors managed to keep their sanity by keeping any number of common-law wives in a variety of ports. The system worked actually rather well, since the pirates were at the whim of the wind and available profit -- and many of their wives were also the wives of other pirates, sailing on other ships. The only time there was a problem was when there was a question of seniority, such as when a husband died and his goods had to be divided among his wives -- in such cases the women he was married to the longest usually won out, unless the younger one had children. Pirates, for their mush-maligned reputations, were remarkably civilized.

Other pirate societies, such as the buccaneers, created a form of partnership that often included homosexual love. Matelots were a form of permanent relationship between two men that served in many ways the needs of both financial as well as emotional well-being. Many men were more protective and emotionally tied to their matelots than their own wives -- going so far as to will them their lands and goods.

Early Christian Missionaries -- and puritans in general who sought to kill or capture pirates -- often used these forms of same-sex marriage to condemn their society, though it’s telling that the fact that these men where practicing homosexual love and marriage wasn’t as damaging as the rumor that was also spread that some of the gay pirates were converting to Islam -- a more accepting faith (at least at the time): religious intolerance obviously being a greater motivator than simple queer sex.

In more rough-and-tumble pirate societies, such as among the famous South China sea pirates, sex and love between men became a political force as well as a sexual one. Kidnapped as children from raided ships, the boys would often form long-lasting sexual relationships among themselves as well as their captors that later helped hold together the scattered pirate tribes.

While women were always a question, at best, or a big problem, at worst, on ship there was a long-standing tradition of sexual release in the form of the cabin boy. For many years, the position of cabin boy required duties that weren’t on the usual cook/captain/first mate’s job description. Often, however -- especially for those ‘boys’ with experience -- the other requirements were pretty obvious, in other words to sexually service either the officers or the entire crew.

For those not familiar with these duties, the crew had a special tradition to ‘enlighten’ a new cabin boy. What makes this tradition interesting is the masking they used to lure the young lad into the bowels of the ship. The story they told was of an ancient maritime tradition (presumably concurrent with keeping women off-ship), where each and every ship -- when it’s keel was laid -- was given a special, good-luck, gold rivet.

It’s taken thousands of years, but finally women are serving without a problem on ships -- both civilian as well as military (well, depending on the country). But if you’re on-board an get an invitation to view the lucky golden rivet I would still think twice -- unless you’re into that kind of thing, of course.

Musical Interlude: "Endicott" By Kid Creole & the Coconuts

Wasting Away -

Wiki:

Fasting girls is a Victorian term for young females, usually preadolescent, who, it was claimed, were capable of surviving over indefinitely long periods of time without consuming any food or other nourishment. Fasting girls were not only girls who refused food but who also drew attention to their fast by claiming to have special religious and/or magical powers. The ability to survive without nourishment was attributed to some saints during the Middle Ages, including Catherine of Siena and Lidwina of Schiedam, and regarded as a miracle and a sign of sanctity. Numerous cases of fasting girls were reported in the late 19th century. Believers regarded such cases as miraculous. In some cases, the fasting girls also exhibited the appearance of stigmata. Doctors, however, ascribed the phenomenon to fraud and to hysteria on the part of the girl. Joan Jacobs Brumberg believes it to be an earlier incarnation of anorexia nervosa.

Mollie Fancher, otherwise known as the "Brooklyn Enigma," was extremely well known for her claim of not eating, or eating very little for extended periods of time. She attended a reputable school and by all reports was an excellent student. At age 16, she was diagnosed with dyspepsia. At around the age of 19, reports came out that she had abstained from eating for seven weeks. It was after two accidents in 1864 and 1865 that she became famous for her ability to abstain from food. As a result of the accidents Mollie Fancher lost her ability to see, touch, taste, and smell. She claimed to have powers that involved her being able to predict events as well as to read without the ability of sight. By the late 1870s she was claiming to eat little or nothing at all for many months. Her claim to abstinence from food lasted for 14 years. Doctors and people in the public began to question her abilities and wished to perform tests to determine the truthfullness of her claims. The claims to abstinence were never verified, and she died in February 1916.

A tragic case was that of Sarah Jacob (May 12, 1857-December 17, 1869), the "Welsh fasting girl," who claimed not to be eating any food at all after the age of twelve. A local vicar, initially skeptical, became convinced that the case was authentic. She enjoyed a long period of publicity, during which she received numerous gifts and donations from people who believed she was miraculous; but doctors were becoming increasingly skeptical about her claims. Doctors eventually proposed that she be monitored in a hospital environment to see whether her claims about fasting were true. In 1869, her parents agreed for a test to be conducted under strict supervision by nurses from Guy's Hospital. The nurses were instructed not to deny Sarah Jacob food if she asked for it, but to see that any she got was observed and recorded. After two weeks, she was showing clear signs of starvation. The vicar told the parents that she was failing and that the nurses ought to be sent away so that she could get food. The parents refused. They continued to refuse even when informed that the girl was dying, insisting that they had frequently seen her like this before and that lack of food had nothing to do with her symptoms. Sarah Jacob died of starvation a few days later because she had actually been consuming very little amounts of food, which she could no longer do under medical supervision.

Another tragic case was that of New Jersey's Lenora Eaton in 1881. Reputable citizens in Eaton's town promoted her as someone who had "lived without eating". During these times, Eaton was marked as a "special person and symbol of faith in the miraculous". When these claims were investigated and doctors were sent to help her, Eaton continued to refuse to eat and died after forty-five days.

In 1889, the Boston Globe ran a story, "Who Took the Cold Potato? Dr. Mary Walker Says the Fasting Girl Bit a Doughnut." Dr. Walker reported that Josephine Marie Bedard, known as the Tingwick girl, was a fraud. The evidence was circumstantial: "At the hotel I searched her clothing and found in one of her pockets a doughnut with a bite taken out of it.... On Fast day I had a lunch served to me... I left a platter with three pieces of fried potato on it. I went there and one of the pieces was gone... when I returned, Josephine had her handkerchief to her mouth." Asked whether that was all the evidence, she said "after I accused her of it she broke down and cried."

Writing in 1954, Bergen Evans called Therese Neumann (1898-1962) "the most famous of contemporary non-eaters. The number of ecclesiastical and medical dignitaries who have vouched for the truth of her claims is impressive.... millions of sober, sensible people believe beyond doubt that this woman does not eat or drink." She claimed that after 1927, nothing but the Eucharist had passed her lips. She was also a stigmatic. Evans said "The Roman Catholic church has never, officially, recognized her claims as true."

Because fasting girls were such a curiosity in the Victorian era, many companies and individuals rushed to put them on display. In the case of Josephine Marie Bedard, two different Boston-based enterprises, the Nickelodeon and Stone and Shaw's museum, competed in court for the right to "exhibit the girl" publicly. Still, even as she was used for blatant commercial gain, there was also an element of scientific inquiry in regarding Bedard as a medical phenomenon. This shows the general shift throughout the Victorian era from seeing the fasting girls as pious figures to seeing them as diseased ones, and from regarding religion as the ultimate authority to putting that faith in science and medicine.

"Woof! Woof! Woof!" KABLAM!

Wiki:

Anti-tank dogs, or Hundminen as they were known by the Germans, were dogs taught to carry explosives under tanks and armoured vehicles where they would detonate and inflict the most damage upon the vehicle.

The most concerted effort to use dogs as anti-tank weapons came during World War II when the Soviet Union used them against German tanks. When training the dogs, the Soviets kept them hungry in order to teach them to find food beneath tanks. On the battlefield a dog was fitted with an explosives-packed box and then released before oncoming German tanks. When the dog dove under a tank, a wooden lever sticking up from the top of the box was tripped which detonated the charge. Because the chassis was the most vulnerable area of these vehicles, it was hoped the explosion would gut the vehicle.

Among the plan's failings was the Soviet use of their own diesel tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks, which had petrol engines. On the battlefield this resulted in the dogs tending to seek food under and thus destroying the Russian tanks with which they were familiar instead of the strange German tanks. This was not always an issue, however, as the dogs were sometimes spooked by the noise and vibration of the tank engines and fled the field immediately upon release.

Despite these problems the anti-tank dogs were said to have been successful at the Battle of Kursk, the Soviets claiming 12 German tanks destroyed by 16 dogs. As such the Germans were compelled to take measures against them. An armored vehicle's top-mounted machine gun proved ineffective due to the relatively small size of the attackers, the fact that they were low to the ground, their speed and the difficulty in spotting them. Consequently orders were dispatched that commanded every German soldier to shoot any dogs seen on sight as they might be rabid. Eventually the Germans found tank-mounted flame-throwers to be much more successful in warding off the attacks

Dark Roasted Weirdsville

Here we go again: another article for the always-great Dark Roasted Blend. This time it's about underground cities. Enjoy!


The whys shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. After all, when Mr. and Mrs. Neanderthal tut-tutted about the sorry state of the neighborhood, what with all those Homo Sapiens moving in and all, they did it around a nice warm fire – in a cave.

What is surprising is that even though early man lived in caves for a very, very long times we’ve pretty much abandoned having granite floors and ceilings, homes hewn – or simply found – inside stern mountains.

Pretty much, though, isn’t everyone – and even though most of now live above ground a few very back-to-basics people have returned to living below ground: out of necessity in many cases, and, a rare few, because they simply liked it.

One town that bridges below ground and above ground is the charming Spanish city of Setenil De Las Bodegas. While a lot of the elegant town is above ground, many of it is also tucked in a wandering network of caves under its sheltering cliffs. Because Setenil De Las Bodegas has been a living city for centuries it also lacks the dust and decay that sometimes haunts a lot of ancient underground settlements.


If you want to talk about an almost mystical kingdom that lived as much under the ground as on it then you have to talk about the Cappadocians. So in tune were these ancient Turks (who were there long before there was a Turkey, actually) with the earth when they carved entire towns and cities into like natural outcroppings they did it so elegantly as to look as flowing and natural as … well, nature. Sure, time has ruined a lot of their work but still today you can see hints of their craftsmanship and geological architectural skill in what of their cities and tunnels still survive.

What’s also fascinating about underground cities is how they can hide, right under out feet, for centuries. Another Turkish underground city was discovered in 1972 when a local farmer noticed his water supply was going somewhere it shouldn’t – that somewhere turning out to be a massive underground city, called Özkonak, that – at it’s height – could have been home to (wait for it) over 60,000 people. Yes, you may whistle.

There’s not enough space here to go into every ancient underground city – mainly because, like with Özkonak, some of them have no doubt yet to be found – especially if we decide to be generous and stretch the definition of what a city might be. After all, sometimes underground chambers and tunnels never planned to be cities have become makeshift ones, like with the catacombs of Paris and the Resistance during the Second World War.


It gets even fuzzier if you include man-made underground structures and not just cities carved by hand into stone. If you use that definition the world is honeycombed by modern underground cities, especially in congested cities like Tokyo, Singapore, London, and New York.

Putting aside the questions of what is or isn’t a real underground city there’s one that has to be mentioned. Yes, it’s ancient, but it was also a living subterranean community up until very recently.

What’s also odd about it was that it was carved not from stone but from salt. Started sometime in the 13th century (again, you can whistle), the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland has been in almost continuous operation until 2007. Stretching over 300 kilometers long, it goes as deep as 327 meters. Okay, that’s impressive, but what’s really staggering is that the mine was home to generations of workers and their families, who transformed their simple mine into a cathedral of brilliant and awe-inspiring art.


Purely a labor of love, the miners carved the salt into statues, a chandelier, and even into a chapel. But that’s not all: the mine also features a movie theater, an underground lake, a café … all the amenities of life on the surface but rather deep in the living earth.

As with narrow houses we talked about before, as the population rises and living space shrinks, its looking more and more likely that many people will be living as their great, great, great ancestors did: below the ground – though at least this time when we complain about the neighbors it’ll be by the light of something much more sophisticated than a roaring fire.

Starring ....

Wiki:

Walter Plinge is a pseudonym, traditionally used in London theatres when a part has not been cast, an actor is playing two parts or an actor does not want his or her name in the programme. Plinge was supposedly a real London pub owner, honoured by a group of actors with the borrowing of his name.

The name has also been used occasionally in American theatre, as has the more popular George Spelvin. Similar pseudonyms are David Agnew at the BBC and Alan Smithee in Hollywood.

Books You Haven't Read But Should: Kim By Rudyard Kipling

Wiki:

Kim is a novel by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900 to October 1901 as well as in Cassell's Magazine from January to November 1901, and first published in book form by MacMillan & Co. Ltd in October 1901. The story is set against the backdrop of The Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia. It is set after the Second Afghan War which ended in 1881, but before the Third, perhaps in the 1890s.

The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of Indian people, culture, and its varied religions. It is generally considered by critics to be Kipling's best serious long novel.

Kim (Kimball O'Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier. He earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for his friend, Mahbub Ali, a horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service.

One day, he befriends an aged Tibetan Lama who is on a quest to free himself from the Wheel of Things by finding the legendary 'River of the Arrow'. Kim becomes his chela, or disciple, and accompanies him on his journey. On the way, Kim incidentally learns about parts of the Great Game and is recruited by the British to carry a message to the British commander in Umballa. Kim's trip with the Lama along the Grand Trunk Road is the first great adventure in the novel.

By chance, Kim's father's regimental chaplain identifies him by his Masonic certificate, which he wears around his neck and Kim is forcibly separated from the Lama, although the Lama insists to Kim that he should comply with the chaplains plan because he believes it is in Kims best interest, and sent to a top English school in Lucknow. The Lama insists on funding Kim's education and Kim remains in contact with him through his years at school. Kim also stays in contact with his secret service connections and is trained in espionage while on vacation from school, by Lurgan Sahib at his jewellery shop in Simla. For example, he looks at a tray full of mixed objects and notes which have been added or taken away; a pastime still called "Kim's Game".

After three years of schooling, Kim is given a government appointment so that he can begin his role in the Great Game. Before this appointment begins, however, he is granted time to take a much-deserved break. Kim rejoins the Lama and, at the behest of Kim's superior Hurree Chunder Mookherjee, they make a trip to the Himalayas. Here the espionage and spiritual threads of the story collide, with the Lama unwittingly falling into conflict with Russian intelligence agents. Kim obtains maps, papers, and other important items from the Russians -- who were working to undermine British control of the region. Mookherjee befriends the Russians under cover, acting as a guide and ensures that they do not recover the lost items. Kim, aided by some porters and villagers, help to rescue the Lama ....

Hop To It!

Wiki:

World Jump Day was an event scheduled for July 20, 2006 at 11:39.13 UTC, at which time the organization claimed to have 600 million people from the western hemisphere jump simultaneously. They claimed this would move the Earth out of its orbit, and into a new one, one that would not cause global warming. The site was a hoax, an art installation by Torsten Lauschmann (claiming to be a Professor Hans Peter Niesward from the Institute for Gravitational Physics in Munich), and in no way serious. The German student association Lambda-Omega-Lambda provides the computer sciences for this project (programming, as well as server hosting).

According to DNS lookup information, the site http://www.worldjumpday.org is hosted in UK, on UK2. Before that, it was registered to Torsten Lauschmann. Lauschman is a German artist currently living in Glasgow. His website, http://www.lauschmann.com, links to the World Jump Day website and a tour where he travelled under the name "Slender Whiteman" (http://www.slenderwhiteman.com).

This hoax has been put forth in the "media" before, as an item in the Weekly World News in 1993, according to this link. The idea is also noted in the feature film 'Pay it Forward' (2000) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_It_Forward_(film). A school kid outlines his plan to create a website encouraging all the kids in China to jump up and down at the same time. To this his teacher, played by Kevin Spacey, remarks: "The goal being to knock the earth off its axis.."

The counter for the site, measuring registered jumpers, was also inaccurate. The number of registered jumpers would go both up and down. For a point of reference, at 21:37 on 18 July 2006, it was at 598,196,296 but just 15 minutes later it had dropped to around 598,106,000. Less than 12 hours before the event the site's counter read that there were 600,256,820 registered jumpers, over 50% of all internet users.

Though this experiment is over it is still talked about in classrooms all over the country.

Even if it were to be taken seriously, World Jump Day's claim was completely unscientific and was widely discredited. There are a number of reasons to reject the thesis:

• It is impossible to permanently change the Earth's orbit using the planet's own mass (which includes that of the world's population) unless such mass is ejected from the Earth at escape velocity (see Newton's third law of motion). The center of gravity of the system containing the earth and its population of humans will remain in the exact same orbit it was always in throughout the jump. However, for the very brief moment when the jumpers were in the air, the Earth's orbit would have been moved a tiny bit - only to be restored to its exact same location by the force of gravity acting between the jumpers and the planet while they were in the air.

• Even ejecting such mass from the Earth (or colliding to it from outer space), the resulting energy would be equivalent to only 2% of the energy released by a modern hydrogen bomb, shifting the Earth's orbit just a small fraction of the radius of a single atom