Page 13

Quicksand

A plot device that isn’t as dangerous as movies & TV led us to believe.

Quicksand was once a very common plot device in TV shows & movies. From Lawrence of Arabia to The Incredible Hulk, Gilligan’s Island, Batman, and even in space in Lost in Space, quicksand was all over pop culture in the 1960s. Nearly 3% (or 1 in every 35) movies made in the 1960s featured quicksand. Characters step on what looks to be solid ground but, surprise, it’s quicksand. They begin sinking like they’re going down some sort of Earth elevator with the looming possibility of being totally submerged unless a handy vine or person can save them … this is not how quicksand really works. Real quicksand is not as sudden, dramatic, or dangerous as fictional quicksand.

Quicksand has been a serious, and sometimes humorous, plot device for a long time but was especially popular in the 1960s.

Non-Newtonian Fluid

Quicksand is a mixture of water and sand/silt where the sand particles are suspended in water and spaced further apart than typical sand. It’s a non-Newtonian fluid so if you apply pressure you momentarily change the viscosity. Higher viscosity substances move more like mud, lower viscosity substances move more like water. In quicksand’s case stepping on it with your foot applies pressure and changes the viscosity to become momentarily less viscous. The sand particles get pushed out of the way making it more watery, which allows your foot to sink. This is quickly followed by the sand settling into place around your foot which is how you get stuck. The more you move, the more you agitate the mixture, the deeper you go.

The Good News

You can not totally sink into quicksand like some sort of bottomless pit. One reason is that quicksand is rarely more than a few feet deep. Further, the human body is less dense than the density of quicksand which means that, regardless of the quicksand depth, it’s not possible to sink further than your waste. That said there are dangers.

Since quicksand can form beside larger bodies of water there is the possibility of drowning due to flash flooding, tidal changes, etc. Other dangers include hypothermia, sunburn, predators, and/or the pain of having part of your body under pressure for a prolonged period of time. Most of the time though quicksand is fairly harmless as long as you stay calm to get out of it.

To get out of quicksand the first thing you should do is to not go any further in – stop moving around. If you can’t use your other foot to just step back out, and you really feel stuck, it’s time to sit/lay down extending away from the quicksand. Making yourself wider reduces the focalized pressure into the quicksand which helps free your foot. Then slowly work your leg back and forth, lowering the viscosity & making the quicksand more watery, and patiently pull your leg out.

A short video on Why Does Quicksand Make You Sink?

Bonus: The “King of Quicksand” has a whole YouTube channel devoted to intentionally getting stuck, and then escaping from, quicksand. Watching any of his videos shows that you really have to work to get yourself stuck in quicksand, which is reassuring.

You can also watch a playlist full of scenes from TV shows and movies (old and new) of characters getting stuck in quicksand.

Buried Pirate Treasure

Treasure Island is largely responsible for why we think pirates buried treasure, but they didn’t.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 tale of pirate adventure, Treasure Island, has done more to shape our idea of colonial era pirates than anything else. How we think pirates dressed, how they behaved, to how they spoke (although some of that was English actor Robert Newton’s exaggerated West Country accent in the 1950 film adaptation – which is the basis of most “pirate speak”), Treasure Island basically defined the pirate genre. It also popularized the fictional idea of treasure maps and buried treasure.

You can’t bury perishables

Pirates didn’t bury treasure for a host of reasons. For one, if they were lucky enough to raid a ship loaded with money or jewels they turned around and spent it – it didn’t stick around long enough to be buried. A bigger reason however was that gold, silver, & jewels were a small fraction of what pirates typically got to steal. Most looted booty was normal trade goods (sugar, alcohol, dyes, tobacco, cloth, timber, food, etc). The seas were the highway system for moving all manner of commercial merchandise and most of what pirates stole would rot if left to sit around for extended periods of time (burying these goods being even worse). It was more typical that pirates would sell their loot in port towns and, again, immediately squander the money they earned. Most pirates never accumulated enough wealth to even have the option of burying it somewhere.

The buried pirate treasure of Captain Kidd is the one exception to the rule that pirates never buried treasure.

It’s a myth, except …

Ultimately it’s a myth that pirates buried treasure … but with one famous exception. In June of 1699 Captain William Kidd, while sailing to New York where he knew he was a wanted man, took the preventative measure of burying some pirated treasure on Gardiners Island off the East end of Long Island. He hoped to use this treasure as leverage in his future trial, which failed as he was eventually convicted of piracy and executed.

Added info: You can find a copy of Treasure Island in lots of places but it’s also available for free as an audio book on archive.org.

American Lobsters: From Trash to Treasure

North America lobsters were originally a poor person’s food.

While an expensive luxury today, the American lobster (aka Homarus americanus, the Maine lobster, Canadian lobster, northern lobster, etc) was once a food of last resort. Native American tribes of the northeastern coastal regions would use lobsters as fertilizer, fish bait, and when necessary food. European colonists also viewed lobsters as inferior last-resort bottom feeders. These “cockroaches of the sea” became relegated to food for the poor, for servants, prisoners, slaves, and sometimes even feed for livestock.

The turnaround for lobsters began in the 19th century with two new industries: canning and railroads. As canning became a viable way to preserve & ship food, lobster meat became a cheap export from the New England area. Lobster meat was sent via rail to locations all around North America. This was followed by tourists visiting New England along some of the same rail lines. These tourists were able to finally taste fresh lobster meat instead of canned and lobster’s popularity grew. By the 1880s demand for lobster (especially fresh lobster which must be shipped alive) combined with a decrease in supply, lead to higher prices. This helped establish lobster as the expensive delicacy we think of today.

Expensive?

Like any commodity, lobster is subject to price fluctuations. While lobster typically maintains its cultural status as an expensive delicacy, this doesn’t always reflect the real cost. For example the over abundance of lobsters around 2009 sent the wholesale price of lobster from around $6 a pound to half that – but it would have been hard to notice. Restaurants don’t typically reduce their prices because an ingredient has suddenly become cheaper.

However, when lobster is less expensive it does appear in unexpected places. Around 2012 Gastropubs included lobster in dishes such as macaroni & cheese, fast food chains included lobster on their menus, Walgreens in downtown Boston even sold live lobsters – all things you don’t usually see when a commodity is expensive. Today, even in years when lobster is abundant and the cost is low, it is still thought of as a luxury item.

Sparkling Wine Sweetness

Sparkling wines range from dry to sweet based on how much sugar is added after the second fermentation.

What’s in a name?

Sparkling wine goes by many names. The most well known is of course Champagne (which not-so-coincidentally comes from the Champagne region of northern France). The word “Champagne” is a protected designation of origin (PDO) term which means only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France may be legally called “Champagne” (as per a rule included in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919). That said Crémant is sparkling wine made from other areas of France that can be just as good (or better) and frequently for a lot less money.

The Spanish call their sparkling wine Cava, the Germans and Austrians have Sekt, the Italians have Spumante but their better known protected designation of origin variety of sparkling wine is Prosecco, etc. The United States however (who never ratified the Treaty of Versailles) does sometimes call their sparkling wine Champagne. That said in 2006 the issue was revisited and the US agreed to some limits on the Champagne name but long established American companies calling their sparkling wine Champagne were allowed to continue doing so.

While there are a variety of methods to making sparkling wine, they all start with making wine. This is followed by adding a little sugar & yeast to each bottle to generate a second fermentation. This second fermentation, which takes place in the capped bottle, is what produces the CO2 bubbles sparkling wine is known for. Depending on the production method, wine makers then add a mixture known as “le dosage” at the end before the final corking. Dosage is a sweet mixture of still wine and sometimes sugar to balance out the flavor of the sparkling wine. How much dosage is added makes all the difference.

Sparkling Sweetness

The sweetness of a sparkling wine is determined by how much sugary dosage is added – the more sugar, the sweeter the sparkling wine (makes sense). To know how sweet a sparkling wine is, wine makers label their bottles with a variety of terms. Unfortunately, different countries use different words to convey the same general idea. The following is an explanation of sparkling wine sweetness terms.

BRUT
Brut comes from the French for “dry” or “unrefined”. There is some overlap in Brut categories depending on the wine maker but they are all fairly unsweet sparkling wines.

0-3 grams of sugar per liter
Brut Nature / Naturherb
No added sugar, as unsweet as you can buy.

0-6 grams of sugar per liter
Extra Brut / Extra Herb
Just a little sweet

0-12 grams of sugar per liter
Brut / Herb
A fairly unsweet common sparkling wine variety.

EXTRA DRY
12-17 grams of sugar per liter
Extra Dry / Extra Sec / Extra Seco / Extra Trocken
While it may be extra dry it is still sweeter than the brut category.

DRY
17-32 grams of sugar per liter
Dry / Sec / Seco / Trocken
These words all mean “dry”, but are dry in context of the range of possible sparkling wine sweetnesses. They’re midway between the driest and the sweetest options.

DEMI-SEC
32-50 grams of sugar per liter
Demi-Sec / Semi Seco / Halbtrocken
Only “partially dry” or “half dry”, these fairly sweet sparkling wines can still have a balanced taste.

DOUX
Doux comes from the French for “soft” or “sweet”. These bottles are the candy aisle of sparking wines.

50+ grams of sugar per liter
Doux / Dolce / Mild
The sweetest sparkling wines on the market. For comparison 1 liter of Coca-Cola has about 105 grams of sugar. — Sparkling wines range from brut to doux. Brut comes from the French for “dry” or “unrefined”. There is some overlap in Brut categories depending on the wine maker but they are all fairly unsweet sparkling wines. Doux comes from the French for “soft” or “sweet”. These bottles are the candy aisle of sparking wines.

Added info: the most famous early sparkling wine was by the 17th century monk Dom Pérignon, however sparkling wine originated in England. In typical wine bottles, sparkling wine has the tricky problem where the second fermentation inside the bottle builds up enough pressure that the bottle can explode. Because 17th century English glassmakers used coal in their glass production they could produce a stronger bottle which allowed them to reliably produce sparkling wine before the French.

Cicadas & Prime Numbers

Part of the survival strategy of cicadas is to emerge in prime number intervals.

There are thousands of species of cicadas. As nymphs they live most of their lives underground, only to emerge when they are ready to transform into adults, sing, mate, and die. Their time above ground is about a month.

Broadly speaking cicadas can be divided into two groups:
• Annual cicadas: those with relatively short life cycles, some of which appear every year
• Periodical cicadas: those that live underground for over a decade and only come above ground in synchronized intervals

Periodical cicadas are found only in the eastern areas of North America. Instead of a few here and a few there coming above ground every year, periodical cicadas (divided up into 15 geographic broods) appear all together at designated intervals. Their synchronized appearances, every 13 years or every 17 years, is what makes them remarkable.

Prime Number Survival

Part of the survival strategy of the periodical cicadas is that they appear all together. Millions to billions of cicadas all emerging in the same short window of time ensures that, while many will be killed by predators, the majority will survive to continue the species. Simply put, there are so many cicadas appearing all at once that predators can’t eat them fast enough – a survival concept known as predator satiation.

Predator satiation is a numbers game. It only works in large numbers relative to the number of predators. For a brood of periodical cicadas this means they have to be synchronized and appear all at the same time otherwise their numbers might be too low, too many may be eaten, and they could die off.

What a brood of periodical cicadas doesn’t want is another brood appearing at the same time. For one thing they would be competing for resources. What’s worse is if a 13 year brood and a 17 year brood interbreed then the inner clocks of their offspring may become confused. The result could ruin the synchronized timing of their appearances which they need for predator satiation. Their survival depends on avoiding other broods of cicadas. Enter, prime numbers.

Taking into consideration reasonable lifespans for cicadas, composite number intervals would have broods appearing in the same year more frequently than the prime number intervals of every 13 or 17 years.

Prime numbers are numbers only divisible by themselves and 1. The periodical cicadas of North America appear in prime number intervals of either 13 or 17 years. If you create a list of years, and mark every 13 years as well as every 17 years, they rarely overlap. In fact, 13 year cicadas and 17 year cicadas only overlap every 221 years. If they appeared in composite number intervals, (4, 6, 8, 9, etc) they would overlap constantly and most likely die out. Through evolution, the periodical cicadas that used prime numbers have survived.

Uppercase & Lowercase

The terms we use for different letterforms come from how they were stored.

In the beginning, there were capital letters (majuscule letters). The written languages of the Ancient Greeks and Romans were both in all caps. The Roman square capitals and the Roman calligraphic script eventually generated Uncial script. Uncial was used between the 4th and 8th centuries and continued the style of all caps. Around the late 8th century however, the Benedictine monks of Corbie Abbey in France began using a new style of writing which became the Carolingian script. Carolingian could be written faster than Uncial script because it used a new style of letters: lowercase (minuscule letters). What this meant was that some European countries now had two different styles for each letter of the alphabet. These different letterforms meant the same things, and were pronounced the same ways, but they looked different.

While these letterforms started off isolated to their respective styles of writing, over the centuries they began to commingle. This merger of letterforms was partially inspired by the decorative initial caps in illuminated manuscripts. It wasn’t until the 14th century that grammatical rules began to define when to use a majuscule letterform in otherwise minuscule text (such as capitalizing the start of a sentence, or someone’s name, etc).

Uncial script on the left (a portion taken from The Book of Kells) compared to Carolingian script on the right.

Majuscule minuscule, uppercase lowercase

Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to Europe in 1439. The printing press allowed individual metal letters to be assembled together to print information. All of these metal letters were organized into trays/drawers/cases. The majuscule letters were used less often and so were placed higher up. The minuscule letters were used the most and were placed the closest to the worker setting the type. Because of their position these higher elevated majuscule letters became known as “uppercase” while the easier to reach minuscule letters became “lowercase.”

An explanation of uppercase and lowercase letters and how these terms originated with the printing press.

Added bonus: Not all languages have uppercase and lowercase letters. Unicase languages include Arabic, Hebrew, and Georgian to name a few. That said, while Arabic doesn’t have the capitalization rules that Latin derived languages now have, Arabic does utilize the IMFI writing system. Based on the position of the letter in a word or sentence (initial, medial, final, or isolated), one of four different shapes are used. So instead of the two letter form variations that the Roman alphabet has Arabic has four but for different reasons.

Abracadabra

The magic word with a magical/medical past.

The exact origin of abracadabra is unknown but what is known is, before its modern usage by stage magicians, it was used as a real magical incantation. The earliest documented instance is the 2nd century medical text Liber Medicinalis by Serenus Sammonicus. As physician to the the Roman emperor Caracalla, Sammonicus prescribed wearing an amulet with the word abracadabra written on it to cure malaria.

A 13th century version of the 2nd century medical text *Liber Medicinalis* by Serenus Sammonicus showing abracadabra written in triangular form.

Abracadabra’s use in healing magic may have to do with its possible etymologies. One possibility is that it comes from the Hebrew “ebrah k’dabri” or “I will create as I speak”. Or it may have come from “Abraxas” the mystical word/god from the Gnostic belief system. One language it’s not from is Aramaic (which the internet likes to say it is). Often quoted as coming from “Abra Kadabra” meaning “May the thing be destroyed”, this false Aramaic etymology became a popular internet “factoid” because J.K. Rowling used it as the basis for her “Avada Kedavra” spell in the Harry Potter series (a spell that does not cure malaria … or anything else).

Abracadabra became a popular protective magical word to cure a variety of ills. One application was to write abracadabra out 11 times but each time removing the new last letter, forming a triangle pointing down. This could be written on parchment and worn around the neck, or carved into a pendant of some kind, but the idea was the same – you used the word to summon protective spirits. As you worked your way down, abracadabra would disappear and hopefully so would your illness.

In a metal pendant or written on parchment, abracadabra in triangular form was said to have protective / healing powers.

From Real Magic to Stage “Magic”

Over the millennia, as our scientific knowledge grew, we learned more about medicine and our belief in magic diminished. In general we no longer rely on magic to cure/protect us from the unknown. Our scientific understanding of the world leaves little room for magic; in a similar way to how we no longer have sea monsters on our maps. Magic went from being a highly-regarded area of study, to fun entertaining ~~tricks~~ illusions with rabbits in hats, decks of cards, sleight of hand, magic wands, etc. Similarly, abracadabra went from being a real magic word to being a performative word for stage magicians.

Added info: In A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe mentions that some citizens of London, so desperate for relief from the plague in 1665, took to writing abracadabra in the triangle design on the doors of their homes. The Victorians took to the triangular abracadabra pendant as Western esotericism became popular. Today you can still find abracadabra pendants, should you want a little extra magical protection from the viruses of today.

Uchi & Soto

The concept of in-groups and out-groups that shapes Japanese culture at all levels.

Uchi & soto is the Japanese cultural concept that people can be (and are) sorted into one of two groups: your in-group (uchi) or your out-group (soto). Is the person you are interacting with part of your inner-circle? Based on which group someone is in dictates how you should behave.

Uchi (内) means “inside” – it’s the familiar, the home, the groups you belong to. Soto (外) means “outside” – it’s the unknown, strangers, foreigners, the groups you aren’t a part of. People in your family, your coworkers, can be thought of as part of your inner circle, your uchi. Non-family members however, or your boss, can be considered soto. To add more complexity, these categorizations are fluid. While your boss is ordinarily considered soto, if the two of you are meeting with a customer then you’re unified in representing the company and so your manager is now considered uchi while the customer is soto. When you get back to the office however your manager goes back to being soto.

Shifting categories

People are constantly moving between social circles based on the situation, creating a shifting web of relationships. The status of who you are interacting with, whether they are uchi or soto, influences how you behave. Soto people are shown respect and honor. This is done using keigo (“respectful language”), sometimes gifts are given, and as you honor soto people you humble yourself and members of your uchi. Foreign tourists are very much soto and as such will probably receive very polite honorable treatment.

To some degree however this honoring comes with tatemae (建前, “a façade”). A person’s true feelings, their honne (本音) is reserved only for members of their uchi. So a tourist may receive great service but really getting to know people can be difficult.

We can see uchi & soto played out in architecture as well. Traditional home design has a wall surrounding the property. These walls serve more as mental barriers than physical ones. The walls form a line of demarcation between the uchi and the soto. Where the uchi and soto meet in the house is the genkan which is the entryway where you remove your outside shoes before putting on your inside slippers – physical separations to match the mental separations.

Nobita from Japan explains the concept of uchi & soto.

Thugs

The term “thug” comes from India and centuries of murderous highway thieves.

The word “thug”, used in the common parlance to describe “a violent or brutish criminal or bully”, comes from the medieval highwaymen of India. Thugs were organized professional criminals. Posing as innocent travelers, thugs would gain the confidence of wealthy people traveling the same roads, sometimes traveling with them for a few days. Then, when the time was right, the thugs would strangle their victims, rob them, and dispose of their bodies. While thugs used a variety of methods for murder, their preferred method of strangulation may have been from a loophole in 16th century Mughal law which specified that a murderer would only be sentenced to death if he/she had shed blood.

Thugs about to strangle an unsuspecting victim.

Colonial Thug Life

Over the centuries thugs murdered & robbed tens of thousands of people. They gained international infamy with the British colonization of India. As the British encountered the thugs, stories of these scandalous criminals made it back home to England. The thug problem was even used in part to justify the colonization of India as the British would be “helping to save the natives from themselves”.

In the early 19th century the British began to break-up, prosecute, and eradicate the thugs. The Thuggee and Dacoity Department was formed in 1830 as a division of the East India Company to address the thug problem – hunting down thousands of thugs. By the late 19th century thugs had largely disappeared from daily life.

The “Cult of Kali”

In the west, thugs were often portrayed as members of a cult to the goddess Kali, murdering and robbing in her honor. It was even said that strangulation in particular was part of a divine mandate. In recent years however there has been increasing doubt as to the legitimacy of these religious claims. Modern thinking is that it’s unlikely these criminals were members of some wide-spread murderous death cult and more likely that the British were using these ideas to further their own agenda.

In portraying what were in actuality informal networks of criminals as a horrifying death cult the British could denigrate, delegitimize, and criminalize indigenous peoples. Over time “thug” became a term used to dismissively denigrate people of all kinds, but especially people of color. By the 1990s, in a reclaiming of the word, “thug” became a fixture of hip-hop especially through Tupac Shakur (who had “thug life” tattooed across his stomach). Today the word “thug” appears in either the lyrics or the artist name, of over 4,800 songs.

Added info: This association with Kali was the inspiration for the thuggee cult members in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Also, Kali is often portrayed with her tongue out, which served as inspiration for the Rolling Stones logo. Further, in Sympathy For The Devil, the lyric “And I laid traps for the troubadors / Who get killed before they reach Bombay” is believed to be a reference to thugs murdering Tibetan musicians on the road to Bombay.

Metal Horns

The metal hand sign is from an Italian gesture to ward off the evil eye.

Famed singer Ronnie James Dio is considered one of the greatest heavy metal vocalists having fronted a host of legendary bands – Rainbow, Dio, and Black Sabbath. In 1979 when he was replacing Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath he wanted to set himself apart from his predecessor. Ozzy would flash the peace sign during concerts and Dio wanted to do something different. He thought back to a hand gesture his Italian grandmother would use to ward off the “malocchio” or “the evil eye.” From this Dio began to flash the “mano cornuto” or the “horned hand” gesture.

Mano Cornuto

The mano cornuto is related to the Italian cornicello charm of a single horn that looks a bit like a chili pepper. They’re both used as protection against the evil eye. The hand gesture has the index and pinky fingers extended and may have evolved from the idea that the two extended fingers are “poking the eyes” of the person giving you the evil eye.

Because Dio was using the sign as the vocalist for Black Sabbath, he helped popularize the gesture in heavy metal culture. Soon other musicians, as well as fans, began to make the same gesture and today it’s used all over pop culture. Dio never claimed to have invented the sign but he certainly did more to make it a part of heavy metal than anyone else.

Added info: Gene Simmons of KISS, never one to pass up an opportunity to shamelessly profit off of something, filed an application to trademark a strikingly similar hand sign. In 2017 he tried to trademark the metal hand sign but with the thumb extended instead of tucked in. What Simmons claimed was his also happens to be the sign for “I love you” in American Sign Language. He later withdrew his application but not before Ronnie James Dio’s widow, Wendy Dio, said of Simmons “To try to make money off of something like this is disgusting. It belongs to everyone; it doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s a public domain; it shouldn’t be trademarked.”

Dio explains the Italian origin of the metal horns.