Archive for 2010

Charlie Chaplin: Fun Facts

By Dan Zambonini, July 21, 2010, 6:51 pm in Film, Past

A portrait of Charlie Chaplin

There’s some fascinating trivia about Charlie Chaplin over on IMDB:

  • He was born four days before Adolf Hitler, in 1889.
  • He had bright blue eyes.
  • His understudy in England was Stan Laurel; they sailed to America together and shared a boarding house when they arrived.
  • In 1925, he was the first actor to appear on the cover of Time magazine.
  • At the height of his popularity, he failed to win a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest.
  • His imprints were removed (and subsequently lost) from the Hollywood walk of fame because of his suspected communist views.
  • Although Adolf Hitler despised Chaplin, he was aware of his popularity, and grew the Chaplin moustache to endear himself to the people.
  • He never became a U.S. citizen.
  • He composed about 500 melodies, including Smile.
  • The last film he saw, in 1976, was Rocky.
  • In 1978, his dead body was stolen for over two months. When it was recovered, it was re-buried in a vault encased in cement.

Credit: Portrait photograph of Charlie Chaplin via Wikimedia.

0
Comment Tweet

Eggcorns, Mondegreens and Charactonyms

By Dan Zambonini, July 14, 2010, 3:32 pm in Language, Present

I like discovering linguistic terms for things that I thought were too trivial to be given an official name.

Eggcorns

An Eggcorn is a special case of a malapropism: a mistaken phrase that retains some of the original meaning. For example, where a malapropism might be the nonsensical, “He is the very pineapple [pinnacle] of politeness“, an eggcorn might be, ”Chickens coming home to roast“.

The term derives from a woman who thought acorns were egg corns.

Mondegreens

A Mondegreen is a mis-construal of a phrase in a song, poem or lyric. The most famous of these is the Jimi Hendrix line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky“, which is often misheard as, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy“. However, some argue that this particular example is not really a mishearing, as Jimi may have purposefully sung the line to be interpreted both ways.

The Kiss This Guy database has an excellent collection of mondegreens, including the awesome, “Might as well face it, you’re a d**k with a glove” – Addicted to Love, by Robert Palmer.

The term derives from a misheard line in a poem, that was originally, “And laid him on the green“.

(Thanks to Francesco Cetraro for pointing me to the video above, which has some wonderful mondegreens, including “Steven Seagal”, which is always funny, in any context.)

Charactonyms / Aptronyms

An Aptronym is a person’s name that suits them, such as the American football player Chuck Long. Similarly, a Charactonym is the name of a fictional character that describes their personality, such as Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, or many of the adult character names from Harry Potter.

1
Comment Tweet

Clan Kerr and The Legend of The Spiral Staircase

By Dan Zambonini, July 7, 2010, 4:09 pm in Architecture, Culture, Design, History, Past

The left-handed Clan Kerr and spiral staircases

Spiral staircases were a clever defence in medieval castles. They were almost always built with the spiral in the same direction (clockwise, when looking up from the bottom) so that the defending swordsman, who would either be coming down the stairs or backing up in reverse, could freely swing his sword. Conversely, the attacking swordsman (ascending the stairs) would have his swing blocked by the wall.

This, of course, assumed that both attacker an defender were right-handed, which most were.

Left-handed swordsman, though rare, had the advantage of surprise when attacking out-in-the-open – they had fought (and trained against) more right-handed opponents than their adversary had fought left-handed opponents. Their attack when ascending standard spiral staircases was also not blocked by the wall.

The warlike Clan Kerr trained to use their weapons with their left hands. Scottish Poet James Hogg (1770-1835) wrote, in The Raid of the Kerrs:

But the Kerrs were aye the deadliest foes
That e’er to Englishmen were known
For they were all bred left handed men
And fence [defence] against them there was none

and Walter Laidlaw wrote, in The Reprisal:

So well the Kerrs their left-hands ply
The dead and dying round them lie

Legend has it that, to allow them to more easily defend Ferniehirst Castle – seat of the Clan Kerr – the staircase was built spiralling in the other direction (see illustration above, with left-handed Kerr shown with ginger hair).

Is this true? Certainly, the castle does feature a reverse spiral staircase, but a 1993 study found no increased incidence of left-handedness in Kerrs.

Personally, I don’t Kerr whether it’s true or not – it’s a great story.

0
Comment Tweet

Competitive Eating and the Fourth of July

By Amy Thibodeau, July 5, 2010, 12:19 am in Culture, Present

“We are thrilled to offer this spirited event on America’s most patriotic day,” said Wayne Norbitz, president and CEO of Nathan’s Famous [hotdogs], Coney Island competition sponsor.

Food competitions are a big deal in America. Today at the annual Coney Island hotdog eating competition, high jinx ensued as previous champion Takeru Kobayashi was arrested after taking the stage in protest after Joey “Jaws” Chestnut was awarded the top prize. Kobayashi wasn’t allowed to compete because he refused to sign an exclusivity contract with Major League Eating, the organisation responsible for the event. With all this brouhaha, we thought we’d do some hard hitting journalism and give you some facts about eating for sport:

  • In today’s competition Chestnut became ‘top dog’ after eating 54 hotdogs in just under ten minutes. According to most sources an average hotdog contains about 110 calories and a bun somewhere around 105. Assuming there are no condiments involved, that’s approximately 215 calories per dog, meaning Chestnut ingested a whopping 11,610 calories in ten minutes, 1161 calories per minute and 19.35 calories per second. It would take someone weighing 150 pounds over ten hours straight of running at 10 mph to burn his total calorie intake. (source)
  • According to their website, Major League Eating holds around 80 events per year and the ESPN broadcast of their fourth of July Hotdog competition has generated more viewers than any Major League Baseball telecast on the same day in the US. Their website also has a page featuring world records in eating where people have ingested mass quantities of an impressive list the includes slurpees, vienna sausages, asparagus, beef tongue, butter, cabbage, clams, cow brains, gyoza, haggis, bannock and yes, spam.
  • Competitive eating is more popular in Japan and the USA than any other countries.
  • There is apparently some bad blood between Major Eating League and the other organisation that officially represents competitive eaters, the Association of Independent Competitive Eaters. According to Wikipedia, the AICE was “established by competitive eater Arnie “Chowhound” Chapman, also sanctions contests. Chapman was a former IFOCE member who defected to form an independent league after disputes over IFOCE contractual restrictions.” AICE members also refer to themselves as ‘food warriors’.
  • ‘Chipmunking’ is the practice of shoving a bunch of food in your mouth during a competition but not swallowing it. Generally this isn’t cool. People who do this are usually given a specified amount of time to swallow the food in their mouth once the competition is over and if they can’t then they’re disqualified. Vomiting is also not allowed and competitors are asked to maintain a fairly rubbish free eating area.
  • Competitive eating can actually be a dangerous sport with side effects including: a bleeding overstretched stomach, ulcers, water intoxication and stomach paralysis.

In a 2007 piece for the Huffington Post, actor Ryan Reynolds summed up competitive eating aptly: “we are ALL bound together by the vibrant spirit of competition and grotesque displays of boundless, unapologetic shitheadery.”

Happy Independence day America!

Image Credit: Hot Dog by benjibot

1
Comment Tweet

Change Blindness, Saccadic Masking: Eye Hacks – Oh My!

By Dan Zambonini, June 30, 2010, 5:39 pm in Physiology, Present, Psychology

In the above video, 75% of the people tested failed to notice that the person they were talking to was swapped with a different person during their conversation. In a similar experiment conducted by Derren Brown, about 50% of people failed to notice that a person asking them for directions was swapped-out during their interaction. This phenomenon is referred to as Change Blindess or Inattentional Blindness – our inability to detect large changes in a scene.

We also experience some form of ‘blindness’ on a very small scale. Our brain performs something called Saccadic Masking during certain types of fast eye movements (saccades), where our vision is massively impaired during the movement, but our brain uses before and after snapshots to hide the fact that we were unable to clearly see during the movement – in effect, it is hiding the useless blurred image of movement from us.

You can see this in action with a simple experiment. Grab a friend and a mirror. Look into the mirror, and stare at one eye, then switch to the other, then back again. You won’t be able to see your eye movement (your brain is masking it), but your friend will.

For more information, check out Hack #17, Glimpse the Gaps in Your Vision (pdf) from O’Reilly’s excellent Mind Hacks book.

0
Comment Tweet
« Older Entries