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The Smoot, Defined

You’ve heard of feet and meters… but have you ever heard of the Smoot?

Back in 1958, Oliver Smoot began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also pledging for the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. At 5′ 7″, Smoot was the shortest pledge by far, so his future frat brothers came up with a personalized initiation for him: they took him to the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge and used his body to measure the length of the bridge, with an exhausted Smoot standing up and lying down every time the frat members marked off another “Smoot”. The bridge was eventually found to be 364.4 Smoots long.

The prank became something of a local legend in the Boston area. In the years following the prank, whenever the city of Boston painted over the “Smoot Markers”, the fraternity members would surreptitiously sneak back onto the bridge and paint them back. After a few years of back and forth between the city and the fraternity, the city of Boston eventually gave up and announced that they would no longer paint over the markers. In the past few years, the city has even warmed up to the markers by providing an off-duty motorcycle officer to warn traffic as the fraternity members repaint the markers. I believe that the city even uses “Smoots” as their official measurement of the bridge!

Over the years, Smoots have taken off as something of a “geek joke”. You can even convert between feet and Smoots with Google calculator: open a Google window and type “8.5 feet in Smoots” into the search box. On the next page, Google will have your answer (1.52238806 Smoots).

Smoot eventually became chairman of the American National Standards Institute, was in the news lately because of Smoot Celebration Day at MIT, where he received a plaque which will be installed on the bridge later this year.

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How the Cutty Sark Burned

Clipper ships were the “race cars” of sailing ships. The short and narrow ships were sometimes called “Yankee clippers” due to their development on the east coast of the United States in the early part of the 19th century. Clippers were the ship of choice for low-volume, high-value cargoes. If you needed travel from Baltimore to Buenos Aires as quickly as possible, or you needed to send a cargo of spices from Bombay to London in weeks not months, clipper ships were the way to go. The very first clipper ship, the Annie McKim, was built in Baltimore in 1833, and by 1854 clipper ships were routinely breaking speed records. In that year, the clipper ship Sovereign of the Seas traveled at a sustained speed of 22 knots (25 mph), the fastest speed ever recorded for a sailing vessel.

One of the most famous of all the clipper ships was Cutty Sark. Built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, the ship lived her life in the tea trade. Her claim to fame is that she raced another ship, the Thermopylae, from Shanghai to London in 1872. Although the Cutty Sark lost the race, she nevertheless gained fame when she lost her rudder in the Sunda Strait two weeks into the race. The plucky captain decided to plow ahead with an improvised rudder, and the Cutty Sark made it to London only a week after the Thermopylae, even though she was severely disabled.

In 1895, the Cutty Sark was sold to the Portuguese firm Ferreira and was renamed Ferreira after her new owners, although the crew called her Pequena Camisola, which means “little shirt” and is a direct translation of the Scottish name. In 1922, she was sold to a Captain Wilfred Dowman, who purchased the little vessel to restore it to its former glory and to use as a training vessel. In 1954 she was moved to a dry dock at Greenwich, in south London. For years, the Cutty Sark remained a tourist attraction, being close to the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich Hospital, and Greenwich Park.

Sadly, on May 21, 2007, the ship, which had been undergoing restoration, caught on fire. Although it was feared that the ship might be totally lost, upon further inspection, it appears that much of the ship was not permanently damaged, and much of what was damaged was not original to the 1869 ship.

I mention all this because last week, British police announced that the fire was caused by a vacuum cleaner that had accidentally been left running that weekend. Someone deserves to get fired for this, but it’s at least good news that it was an accident… rather than arson, which was initially suspected.

Currently, there are two petitions about the Cutty Sark before the British Prime Minister: one for funds to restore the ship, and the other for funds to restore the ship into commission as a sail training vessel. As someone that’s seen the Cutty Sark on multiple occasions, as well as stood on the deck of the U.S.S. Constitution (which is still on the US Navy’s roster as an active battleship), I hope that it’s the latter.

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Budwesier American Ale

OK, so by now I’m sure you’ve seen the Budweiser American Ale commercials on TV. Lisa and I had company last night, and I picked up a sixer of these just for kicks. I tried it… and, for the most part, I liked it.

Budweiser American AleAmerican Ale is AB’s first attempt at a genuine push for an ale on the market. They’ve given it the honored Budweiser name instead of pawning it off on their off-brands like Rolling Rock or Michelob. And they’ve advertised the hell out of this stuff. Will American Ale be able to take on Boston Brewing, to say nothing of the Sierra Navadas of the world?

Well, here’s the thing: compared to even Sam Adams Boston Ale, American Ale just isn’t that interesting. It tastes… pretty good, just “less” of an ale. As Budweiser is the vanilla definition of a lager, so too is American Ale a bland ale. But it is an ale, which is a plus over lagers in my book. Even a bad ale is better than most good lagers to my taste, so… the more the merrier, I say!

If American Ale isn’t the most interesting ale at first glance, it is surprisingly drinkable. After the first one, the second and third became much more enjoyable. If you’re drinking for quantity and not quality, but you’d still like something with a little class and taste… American Ale is for you.

But now… there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room: AB’s insanely large distribution system. Unlike Bass, which is touch-and-go as far as finding it on tap in a lot of places, AB products are sold almost everywhere. AB could snap their fingers and make American Ale appear almost anywhere they wanted. Which is intriguing. If I found myself in a bar that only has Heineken and Corona as imports (you know the places), American Ale would be a good second choice.

I don’t see myself turning away from PBR, but if my local is out of Pabst, American Ale would be a good choice as a replacement. It’s lawnmower beer, really… it’s it’s a decent one!

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Anglican Update

Two items of interest from the Anglican world today:

– The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, a conservative diocese often critical of the Episcopal Church’s national leadership, voted to leave the ECUSA yesterday. The diocese will now become part of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. As always, BabyBlue has the full skinny here. Just for kicks, here’s how the vote went:

Clergy
Total Clergy: 159
Voted Yes to Realign: 121
Voted No to Realign: 33
Abstained: 3

Clergy vote for Realignment

Laity
Total Laity: 191
Voted Yes to Realign: 119
Voted No to Realign: 69
Abstained: 3

Laity vote for Realignment

– The grave of John Henry Newman was exhumed this week, and was found to be… empty! Newman was one of the most important bishops in the Church of England in the 19th century. Newman was one of the founders of, and the most vocal advocates for, the Oxford Movement, a 19th century movement within the Church of England that called for a more Catholic interpretation and celebration of the Eucharist. The Oxford Movement invented modern Anglo-Catholicism, and for that I am grateful. Unfortunately, the Oxford Movement wasn’t orthodox enough for Newman, for he left the Church of England and became a Roman Catholic in 1845, eventually rising to the post of Cardinal. The Roman Church wanted to move Newman’s remains to a place of honor as he is following the official path to sainthood. It was hoped that Newman was buried in a lead coffin; unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case, as only “brass, wooden and cloth artifacts” remained. The good cardinal is thought to have decomposed completely.

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No More for Chi-town!

I’m not a baseball fan, but I just had to post it: the latest Anno Catuli has come to an end, with the Cubs on the losing side as always. Read more about it here. So much for AC006299.

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SONGS I LOVE: “Blue”

Mama - BlueMama is a band I know next to nothing about. And it’s easy to not know anything about a band when their name is “Mama” and the album the following track comes from is named “Blue”. You try googling that! I tried “Mama”, “blue Mama”, “Mama blue” “Mama band”, “Mama electronic” and “Mama chillout”… only to come up with a bunch of websites about postpartum depression! The band’s almost as hard to Google as The The, the reigning champs of “bands that are unable to be googled”.

Anyway, I finally had some luck with “Mama ambient” – the second link Google returns is the band’s MySpace page. Apparently, the band is from Athens (the old one) and has at least one member, Manolis Zografakis. And he was once in a punk band, but now does electronic music. Oh, and he has 1213 friends on MySpace as of Friday.

I found Blue at a recommended site and thought I’d give it a whirl. The disc is all about the “different shades of blue in human existence” or someting like that. I don’t know and I don’t care… ‘cos I like it! Lisa said that it sounds like “Weather Channel music for cool people”… and in a way, she’s right. It’s first rate electronic chill-out music, so if you like that kind of thing, give it a listen!

[audio:blue.mp3]

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OJ – GUILTY!

OJ Simpson was found guilty of all charges this evening. He will be sentenced to 15 years to life. He could die in jail. The verdict comes “13 years to the day after Simpson was cleared of murdering his ex-wife and a friend of hers in Los Angeles in one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century”.

For your amusement:

Click To Make It Bigger
Click To Make It Bigger
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Sooooo HUNGRY!

Man, I’m hungry! No wait – make that hungry… no- make it hungry! You know what would make my hunger go away? This:

(click ye to embiggen)
(click ye to embiggen)

Personally, I’d go for a 3×2 animal style extra toast with some well done fries (see here). I tell ya though… I’m almost hungry enough to eat this:

You can click, but it's big enough already!
It's large enough as-is!

Sigh. Too bad we don’t have any In and Outs here on the east coast. That’d really hit the spot right now!

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An Interesting Statistic

If you’re a football fan, you probably know that people have been debating for years about the “best way” to have an overtime period in tied games.

The NFL uses a “sudden death” system. There is a coin toss, and the team that wins the toss almost always opts to receive the kick from the team that loses the toss. 15 minutes are put on the clock, teams are issued two timeouts, and the team that loses the coin toss kicks off to the team that won the toss. The game continues as if “fifth quarters” were a normal part of the game, except that the first team to score points in any fashion wins.

For years, people argued that this system wasn’t fair. The team that won the toss, they argued, could simply drive the ball down the field and kick a field goal to win.

For this reason, the NCAA adopted a different system for college football. In this case, there is a coin toss, and the team that wins the toss can opt to go first or second. The ball is then placed on the 20 yard line and the game clock abandoned. The team on offense can try for a first down, throw to the end zone for a touchdown, or can simply come right out and attempt a field goal. Once the offense has either scored or turned the ball over (either on downs or via turnover), the other team gets the ball at the same 20 yard line, and has to either match the first team’s score (in which case another “overtime period”  is played), or exceed the first team’s score (in which case the second team wins). If the game should exceed three overtime periods, teams must attempt a two-point conversion after scoring a touchdown.

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Hooray! Daisies is back!

Banks might be collapsing, Wall Street may be crumbling… but all is well now that Pushing Daisies is back on ABC!

If you’ve never seen the show, the plot is like this: Ned is a man with a special gift: he can bring the dead back to life. There are two caveats to his power, however: 1) the dead can only be alive for 1 minute, or else something else of equal “life value” dies; and 2) once Ned touches a dead person twice, that person is dead forever. Ned discovered his gift in his hometown of Coeur d’Coeurs when his golden retriever Digby accidentally runs into the path of an 18 wheeler. Later that same day, Ned’s mother dies of an aneurysm. Ned touches her, which brings her back to life. Unfortunately, in doing so he kills the father of Charlotte Charles (“Chuck”), his next door neighbor and childhood sweetheart. Ned also accidentally discovers caveat #2 when his mother kisses him goodnight that same evening, killing her forever. Ned’s father then sends him away to the Longborough School for Boys, where, in bouts of loneliness and depression, Ned tries to “recreate” his mother’s love by baking pies. Ned eventually turns this talent into “The Pie Hole”, a pie restaurant in an unnamed city. There he employs a waitress named Olive Snook, a tiny blonde that’s secretly in love with Ned. Unfortunately, The Pie Hole doesn’t make a lot of money, so Ned has teams up with Emerson Cod, a private investigator. Ned and Emerson go to morgues and funeral homes, where Ned touches dead people to find out who killed them. Emerson then collects the reward money and splits it with Ned. In the pilot episode, Emerson and Ned find out that Chuck has been murdered whilst on a cruise. Ned touches her just to talk to her, and can’t bring himself to touch her again, causing the corrupt funeral home director to drop dead. Ned and Chuck live happily ever after… even though they can never touch again, and even though the two have some serious secrets between each other.

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