Category: No Politics Friday

Our fascination with building cities is almost equal to our fascination with watching them crumble. From the thousands of "urban decay" tumblrs (Is there an angle from which Detroit's decrepit factories have yet to be photographed?) to a TV series about what the concrete relics of our civilization would look like if mankind disappeared, we want to be voyeurs of the apocalypse without actually having to live through it. There's even something of a tourist industry focused on abandoned places like this Japanese amusement park or the subdivision-turned-(sub)urban prairie of Lehigh Acres, FL, where you can see half-built McMansions battered by the elements. And of course there's the mother of all deserted Urban Exploration sites, the remains of Pripyat, Ukraine after it was emptied on short notice due to the Chernobyl disaster; the city was made famous to a new generation when it was replicated (with downright disturbing accuracy) in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

I started thinking about this due to yesterday afternoon's post of a New Years fireworks display in Dubai. Because I'm pretty sure that in twenty years Dubai is going to be an empty graveyard filled with extravagant but decaying monuments to flaunting wealth.

As an architecture fan, it's hard not to have paid attention to Dubai in the last ten years. The city has sprung up from the desert seemingly overnight (if you want to be freaked out, watch animation of its growth over 11 years as viewed from space) and it appears to be run by oil-rich sheiks with resources that border on limitless. Their goal was to prepare Dubai (and the UAE more generally) for the post-oil world by establishing the city as the global hub of the 0.1% – a shimmering oasis of luxury vacation property and the center of the global financial industry. Accordingly, they have spent lavishly on anything and everything their imaginations have conjured, including ridiculously opulent hotels, indoor ski slopes, a skyscraper nearly double the height of any other building on Earth when its ground was broken, and artificial islands covered with multimillion dollar homes.

Basically, Dubai became the hyper-rich, cocaine binge version of Las Vegas, as executed by straight-laced Muslim men who almost certainly were not on a cocaine binge. God knows what schemes they would have hatched under those circumstances.

The problem is that Dubai is already something of a white elephant, and the situation will probably worsen. They ran out of money when the global recession hit and needed to beg oil-soaked neighbor Abu Dhabi for billions in cash to finish its projects. The artificial islands are all sinking and most of the beach is literally poisoned with human shit. The Burj Khalifa is half empty despite asking prices being slashed repeatedly, and the majority of the city's dozens of high rise office buildings are vacant. It already has the look of an abandoned city – if it can qualify as abandoned without ever being occupied. This experiment is showing the flaws in "If you build it, they will come" as an urban planning strategy.

Why aren't the billionaires and trust funders coming? It's hard to say for certain but the better question is, why would they? It's still a Muslim country, precluding a lot of the, uh, "fun" that the jet-set crowd likes. Alcohol is available on a very limited basis, drugs are almost non-existent due to incredible penalties (a Briton got four years in prison for 0.003 grams of weed on his clothing), and as for semi-nude women frolicking in the sun…forget it. And speaking of that sun, it's about a billion goddamn degrees there during the summer and only moderately scorching the rest of the year. What led anyone to believe that spoiled, decadent, rich Westerners would find this place appealing?

Thank god so many of the buildings are so tall; when the whole thing is swallowed by the ocean in a century or so, we'll have no difficulty finding it.

The past five months have been pretty rough for me, moving to a new city where I know exactly zero people and finding out that, well, there's nothing to do here. I could argue that in the global sense, but more specifically the two things I really liked doing when I lived in Georgia do not exist here in their proper form: comedy and trivia. While I miss both activities, it really bums me out to be without a decent trivia game because it's one of the precious few things in this world at which I am not completely terrible. In a better mood I might even describe myself as good at it. My memory is eerily good – not Rain Man good, but uncomfortably close – and over the years I've crammed a lot of facts into it. Recalling facts I read 20 years ago is not difficult, and I like nothing more than being forced to dig deep and exercise the brain a little. Shouting out the Jeopardy! answers in the gym just doesn't cut it after a while.

Whenever someone asks me "How/Why do you know that?" in response to some obscure and painfully uninteresting bit of knowledge I've just vomited at them, I never really answer the question (which is presumed to be largely rhetorical). But there is an answer, at least 95% of the time.

AJ Jacobs wrote a book recently (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World) chronicling his quest to read the entire print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica from start to finish. Every word. He did it, and in the process he qualified for and appeared on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" and generally developed the habit of annoying people by continuously interjecting arcane and questionably relevant knowledge into his social interactions. I know how he feels. Reading the whole Britannica, however, strikes me as overkill.

If you want to become a trivia master or amaze/bore your friends and acquaintances alike with facts and anecdotes, here is my secret. As a child (and adolescent, and adult) I read and re-read all three volumes of The People's Almanac by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, along with their more well known Book of Lists series. They're mostly out of print, having been written in the 1970s – although they did write a somewhat shorter but still very good 20th Century history volume in 1999 – but I'm convinced that they are the best written, broadest, most eclectic, and most complete resource available for the person who desires a brain full of (largely) useless information. Science, movies, politics, history, religion, 19th Century circus performers, food, sports…you name it, it's in there. And in painstaking detail.

The real strength of the book is to combine narratives – the harrowing tale of Poon Lim, the man who survived on a life raft for 133 days after his ship was torpedoed – with dry facts about historical events or natural phenomena. I read these books to death as a kid despite their interminable length, and there are parts (like the aforementioned tale of Mr. Lim) that I can practically recite from memory decades later. Someday I hope to meet the authors and thank them; if not for them I might not know that osmium is the densest of all elements and it smells like shit.

Rather than link each book individually, here is the Amazon search for Wallechinsky and Wallace which will take you to the three Almanacs and the Book of Lists trilogy. Sure, you could stare endlessly at Wikipedia and hope the knowledge sinks in as you zip through the wormholes, but the books give you a guided tour of a hodgepodge of information. I understand if the thought of sitting down to read a reference book cover-to-cover is abhorrent, but what can I say. I was an awkward kid and I liked to read non-fiction. If you want a shortcut to cleaning up at bar trivia, this is the way to do it. Gin and Tacos is not responsible for the deleterious effects of fact-binging on your social skills.

When I was young I wanted to be in the FBI. I thought it would be cool to catch bad guys all day. It wasn't until later that I realized that J. Edgar Hoover might not have been the hero I imagined as a six year old, and still later when I figured out that most of what agencies like the FBI do is really dull. Then you reach a certain age and the dull stuff seems exciting again, albeit in a very different way. And on that note, there exists something at the FBI called the Art Crime Team. Ironically, they have the worst logo in the history of ever.

Seriously?

Apparently it's not a misleading name. They find stolen art. Unbeknownst to me at the time I discovered its existence, apparently art theft is a thing. A thing that happens, like, all the time. In my mind, the idea of stealing something from an art museum seems about as plausible as breaking into the White House and having brunch in the Oval Office. But then it dawned on me that not all valuable art is in an art museum. There are private galleries, art dealers, homes & offices of the wealthy, warehouses, and art museums that, uh, don't exactly have the level of security you'll find in the Smithsonian.

As a kid I was fascinated by the story of the guy who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911. He was caught in 1913 and the painting was recovered. Neat cops-and-robbers story, right? But apparently there are a lot of extremely valuable works from well-known artists that have been stolen and never recovered. For example, in two separate heists from major museums, one of Rembrandt's few landscapes and his sole seascape (which I remember distinctly from undergrad art history classes) were stolen and have never been seen again. Vermeer's The Concert, stolen from a major museum in Boston in 1990, is valued at over $50,000,000 and remains missing.

These stories usually have a happier ending. Law enforcement is aided by the fact that it's pretty damn hard to do anything with a conspicuous masterwork after you've stolen it. And this is the part that really intrigues me. Once you've swiped a Picasso – presumably for financial gain, right? – what in the hell do you do with it? Surely the usual auction houses would be aware of the theft. You can't exactly put the thing on eBay. Is there some underground stolen art sales network where these paintings are sold to Russian mobsters and third world kleptocrats? Even those folks wouldn't be able to display it, I'd imagine. Certainly word would get out, even if they displayed it only in private. And there's no point to expensive acquisitions except to show them off, right?

I suppose we'll never know. Can anyone shed some light on this? If nothing else, today you learned that it doesn't exactly require Ocean's 11 level thieving skills to steal multimillion dollar artwork, judging by how regularly it seems to happen.

Ever wonder why a fat guy named Santa Claus, with a workshop on the North Pole wherein elves make toys, brings gifts to children all around the world on Christmas using a reindeer-powered sleigh?
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Well I'm glad you asked.

The historical predecessors of the Anglo-American version of Santa Claus (and Christmas folklore overall) are a real historical figure – St. Nicholas of Myra – and character from Dutch folklore named Sinterklaas. Catholic veneration of St. Nicholas emphasized his famous generosity toward the poor, not merely feeding and clothing them but giving them gifts.
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Sinterklaas was a mythical winter figure in German-speaking Europe dating back to the Dark Ages (with many characteristics of his appearance borrowed from Odin). Eventually the legend of Sinterklaas became intertwined with St. Nicholas, whose similar background – both were Bishops famously generous with gifts – resulted in Sinterklaas making a tradition of bringing gifts on St. Nick's feast day (December 6). So why haven't we exchanged gifts already?

Enter a similar character in British folklore, Father Christmas. Daddy C was a rotund, white-bearded older man with a green robe who symbolized the spirit of Christmas in a secular sense. It is worth noting that Christmas, from a religious perspective, was considered a very minor holiday until…well, we'll get there in a minute. But for the latter half of the 18th Century and the dawn of the 19th, the London Times on Dec. 25 only bothered mentioning Christmas about half the time. It just wasn't a big deal.

The people who made Santa Claus as we know him today are largely the same people who made Christmas as we know it: Charles Dickens in Britain and little-known Clement Clarke Moore in the United States (Washington Irving had created an "American" Santa in 1808 – a fat Dutch sailor – tongue in cheek as a way to mock the Dutch, so that doesn't quite count). Of course you know Dickens, although you might not realize how instrumental A Christmas Carol was in making Christmas a major cultural holiday in Britain. You don't necessarily know CC Moore, but a poem he wrote for his children, published at the urging of his friends and family in 1823, is well known. "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" begins:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads,

This poem created and established 99% of what we "know" about Santa Claus today – the sleigh pulled by 9 reindeer (which Moore named), landing on the roof and entering down the chimney, and the sack of toys made in his workshop. Moore used the name St. Nicholas, but the character he created was essentially an amalgam of Father Christmas (who was responsible for moving the gifting from St. Nicholas' feast day to Dec. 24), St. Nicholas, and Sinterklaas.

Before Moore and Dickens, images of Santa Claus existed but varied considerably by region. These authors began the process of standardizing the character and his narrative. Appearance-wise, Santa also began to take on a single recognizable form. He wore a robe like Father Christmas, but it was red (the color of Sinterklaas' bishop's robes) instead of green. He had a big white beard and a large belly like both the Sinterklaas and Father Christmas characters before him, as this appearance was considered to make him more "jolly." Political cartoonist Thomas Nast's depictions of Santa in this form cemented the image and it has varied little since the mid-19th Century (Nast also created, in 1886, the idea of a workshop on the North Pole. No one is quite sure where the idea of elves originated.)

The idea that Santa was created by the Coca-Cola company is an urban legend, although early 20th Century Coke advertising certainly did popularize the character even more. The fact that he wore Coke colors didn't hurt.

Finally, in the 1930s, Montgomery Ward gave away millions of coloring books to children every year as a promotion, so they tasked one of their advertising copywriters, Robert May, with creating their own coloring book.
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They saw this as a cheaper alternative to buying coloring books from vendors. He created the story of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" based on the reindeer in Moore's poem. The coloring book was wildly popular and May's brother wrote a song based on its story, recorded in 1939 by Gene Autry and immediately becoming a mega-hit. The stop-motion animated Rudolph TV special created in 1964 elaborated the story considerably but retained most elements of May's original storyline.
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If you ever win money at trivia or on a game show for knowing any of this, I get 10% off the top. That means before taxes, people.

I've been doing a lot of flying lately and it never fails to amaze me how uneventful flying within the continental U.

S. is these days. Considering that we put our bodies in a metal tube and accelerate them to several hundred miles per hour before landing them with great precision in a different area code, it's remarkable that the modern airliner, airport, and airline pilot have turned this into a procedure one can easily sleep through. I almost feel cheated on occasion, after a particularly tranquil flight. What the hell, airline – I was supposed to feel the thrill of a near-death experience!

Maybe I should take a flight into the lovely Caribbean island of Saba. Not a great place to overshoot the runway, guys.

Or maybe you like the sensation of praying that you've picked up sufficient airspeed before plunging off the side of a mountain at Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Nepal (at 9500 feet). Or you could land there, realizing that one end of the runway is a giant mountain. So it's like landing on an aircraft carrier, but without the option of a go-around.

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Perhaps flying an airborne obstacle course (including a last second 50-degree turn) to land in the bottom of a steep valley is more your thing – Tegucigalpa, Honduras might be a neat destination for you. If you have a spare set of clean undergarments handy, try watching the cockpit view of landing at this death trap. Read about what's involved in the landing here.

Maybe that's all too exotic and you want the simple pleasure of hair-raising crosswinds at a major airport. Try Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport for the unique experience of landing sideways.

If you're anything like me, these videos will help you appreciate your next 1:25 into Newark just a little bit more.
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One of the saddest but surest signs of our intellectual and cultural stagnation over the past few decades is the total lack of imagination in our visions of the future. After the Industrial Revolution and throughout most of the 20th Century, people dreamed of flying cars and spaceships. Science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, and Arthur C. Clarke wrote about concepts that were unthinkable at the time – space flight, radar, nuclear power, artificial intelligence, microprocessors, and so much more – and eventually became reality. Today's visions of the future consist largely of putting an LCD touchscreen on every conceivable surface and object, or incrementally upgrading cellphones and personal computing every few years. That is, when we're not too busy envisioning a future of famine, global climate disasters, and conflict over dwindling and finite natural resources. No, we no longer have the zeitgeist of the Cold War era, when science was a force for good that would make life immeasurably better. Now science exists to make us toys/gizmos/gadgets to make it easier to look at Facebook in public, while trying to mitigate the damage done by the industrialization that made previous generations so excited about the future. What happened to visions of the future that actually excite us?

The only recent invention that really strikes me as a paradigm shifter – and the first since the affordable, practical home computer in the 1980s – is 3D printing. I am the first to admit that I have only a layman's understanding of the process, but it holds the potential to make us rethink the process of turning ideas into physical objects. Of course, there are some pretty alarming implications of the technology as well. Everything else, including the mighty internet and all of the devices that allow us to access it, is merely a means of repackaging information for greater convenience. Has that convenience changed our lives? Certainly. Has it created something fundamentally new? No.

This is starting to veer dangerously close to non-NPF territory. So, um…here's some retro-future stuff for your slow Friday afternoon in the office:

1. Check out this Jetsons-styled behemoth of a home computer offered by Honeywell in the late 1960s. This "kitchen computer" was supposed to offer home cooks access to recipes and other things to better organize the kitchen.

Being massive, massively expensive ($10,600 in 1968), and requiring an (included) two-week programming course just to figure out how to use the damn thing, it was…not a sales success. Sure did look cool, though.

2. Here's a classic short film from that perennial retro-future favorite, Disneyland's Monsanto House of Tomorrow.

The brief second part of the film can be found here. Note that in some form or another, almost every innovation they envisioned in the film is now a part of our daily lives (although moving sinks do not appear to have caught on). Don't overlook the architectural magnificence of the house from the outside either:

3. If you currently work in a tech-related field, perhaps even doing some programming, you are certain to get a kick out of this Bell Labs training video (1973) for newly hired programmers. Be sure to note which counter to go to when you need to have a tape changed in the mainframe.

I know this violates both the letter and the spirit of NPF, but I struggle to think of something more bizarre, wonderful, and entertaining than Megyn Kelly's walking tour of the Fox studio (to question the integrity and competence of the people the network pays to make calls for them) on election night. While the following video captures the entire Fox meltdown – the first 4:45 of the video is Karl Rove's emotional deterioration, if you're interested – the ridiculous yields to the surreal at the 4:47 mark when Kelly is helped down from the news desk and then followed around various hallways while she awkwardly chit-chats on her way to confront the behind-the-scenes team. We're all used to Fox News being awful and descending into self parody, but..

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this is just weird, guys.

This is dadaism at its finest. It has the production quality of a snuff film and the weird tension of a performance in which something completely unpredictable is expected to happen without warning or cause.

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I keep waiting for her to round a corner and be impaled by a spear, or confronted by a hissing wolverine, or pied in the face, or engaged in conversation with a man dressed in a garment made entirely of sugar packets. My fondness for absurdist humor is well documented, and this video reminds me that the darkest comedy always comes from watching something ridiculous and realizing, "Oh my god they're serious."

In case you needed this to be funnier, apparently Fox producers cooked up this scheme as a way not only to prolong interest among viewers after Romney was clearly toast but also to get Megyn Kelly's legs on camera. It's not like we thought they were hiring their newsmodels for their journalistic integrity, but it's nice to have this point made explicit.

I have never made but one prayer, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

Have any of you been trapped indoors and/or without utilities by the recent storm? I did not, of course, but most of the people to whom I've spoken claim that the worst part is the sheer boredom – with the decline of hygiene that accompanies no power and no water a close second.

The nearest experience I've had involved being in a winter "storm" in Georgia, where 3" of snow was sufficient to shut down the entire city and all of the roads for a solid week.

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After sitting in the house for about three days, I was fairly certain my ex-wife and I were on the verge of murdering each other, and we were not a violent people. There are only so many times you can move around in an enclosed space before you begin to get irritable for no good reason whatsoever.

Other than reading, what can we do to kill time once our electronic nonsense is taken away from us? I freely admit to being antsy if I have to go very long without being in front of my laptop. And god help us if there is no internet access. It's amazing, sad, and amazingly sad how rapidly these once non-essential technologies become indispensable.

In the future, if I have sufficient advance warning that I am about to be stranded, I am purchasing the necessary ingredients to make this fruit Rubik's Cube salad.

And I don't even like feta cheese. Don't care. Still making it. When else are you going to do it?

On the Gin and Tacos Facebook page (which you should join even though Facebook is now trying to make us pay them to let you see the things we post) I have a lot of fun with other styles of writing beyond Serious Political Stuff, although there is certainly enough of that too. Many of you are aware that my humor preferences tend toward the absurd. I have been posting these random bits of strangeness for a while, often but not always centered around on fantastical takes on the Romney/Ryan campaign. It has been inspired in no small part by the brilliant twitter account of one Daniel Manitou, as well as my friends Will and Pauline who both excel at this sort of thing. Every time I post one of these bits of surrealism, someone comments that I should collect them all in one place for easy reading. Well, here they are. I'm loosely calling this "Campaign of the Damned" until I concoct a better name.

If you look at this and think something along the lines of, "What in the holy hell is this?

" then perhaps this type of humor simply isn't for you. No hard feelings. It's an acquired taste.

10/23/2012
ROMNEY RESPONDS TO A QUESTION ABOUT LIBYA BY PROJECTING A RAINBOW COLORED PARABOLIC ARC OF VOMIT ACROSS THE DESK AND INTO BOB SCHIEFFER’S WAITING MAW. THE FOCUS GROUP LINES JERK UPWARD IN APPROVAL. HE APOLOGIZES IN A CHORUS OF FIVE DISTINCT VOICES EMANATING FROM THE SAME MOUTH. "I ATE RAFALCA," HE SAYS BY WAY OF EXPLANATION. THIS IS THE KIND OF DIMENSIONLESS WRAITH YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A BEER WITH.

10/18/2012
SANDRA LEE HANDS YOU HER RECIPE. IT CALLS FOR "STAR ANUS." IT IS NOT A MISPRINT.

10/16/2012
CARL, A SOYBEAN DEHULLER FROM UTICA, ASKS ABOUT TAX CUTS FOR WORKING MOMS. MITT ROMNEY OPENS A PORTAL TO ANOTHER DIMENSION ONSTAGE. HIS RAMBLING, FOUR MINUTE ANSWER USES THE WORD "FISTULA" 12 TIMES. HE NEVER EXPLAINS THE PORTAL.

10/13/2012
IS IT FRIDAY OR IS IT SATURDAY? DOES IT EVEN MATTER ANYMORE?
::FLINGS FECES::

10/3/2012
ROMNEY SCANS THE AUDIENCE FOR C.H.U.D.s BEFORE THROWING BACK HIS HEAD, UNHINGING HIS JAW, AND EMITTING A LUNG-SHATTERING WHINE. THE ROOM IS SILENT. HE THRUSTS A FIST SKYWARD AND COMMANDS THE PEOPLE OF EARTH NEVER TO TRUST A BIG BUTT AND A SMILE. JIM LEHRER SHIFTS IMPERCEPTIBLY; "MR. OBAMA. 60 SECONDS FOR YOUR REBUTTAL." HE INHALES DEEPLY THE SMELL OF SINGED HAIR.

9/26/2012
GET UP YOU SONOFABITCH, 'CAUSE MICKEY LOVES YA.

9/24/2012
MITT ROMNEY REFERS TO THE POOR AS "GENETIC DETRITUS" ONSTAGE. THE ENTIRE CAMPAIGN RECEIVES THE TEXT MESSAGE THEY HAVE LONG DREADED: "CREATE DIVERSION." A TOPLESS BAY BUCHANAN UNICYCLES ACROSS THE STAGE; JOHN SUNUNU REACHES INTO A DUFFEL BAG AND WITHDRAWS THE SEVERED HEAD OF DARIUS RUCKER; PAUL RYAN EMERGES IN BLACKFACE AND BEGINS A MINSTREL SHOW. THE CROWD QUIETLY ENVIES THE DEAD.

9/18/2012
SECRET FUND RAISER VIDEO REVEALS MITT ROMNEY RELEASING AN EGG SAC FROM HIS CLOACA AS ANN SHOUTS "PUT ON SOME CLOWN MAKEUP AND FUNNY FUCK ME" TO NO ONE IN PARTICULAR.

9/12/2012
YOU HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO: *DEATH*. TO APPEAL YOUR SENTENCE OF *DEATH*, PRESS OR SAY "ONE". TO ACCEPT YOUR SENTENCE, PRESS OR SAY "SURRENDER." TO LEARN ABOUT EXCITING OFFERS ON VACATION PROPERTIES, REMAIN ON THE LINE OR MASH THE KEYPAD AGAINST YOUR FOREHEAD. TO HEAR THESE OPTIONS AGAIN, INSERT THE CRAB KNIFE FROM YOUR SEAFOOD PREPARATION KIT INTO YOUR ABDOMEN NOW.

8/28/2012
A NUDE OCTOGENARIAN SPLAYS HERSELF ACROSS THE HOOD. A MAN IN A CATTLE SKULL AND LOINCLOTH POINTS HIS DOWSING ROD MENACINGLY. DRUIDS CIRCLE YOUR CAR CHANTING "REINCE PRIEBUS, REINCE PRIEBUS" WHILE SELF-FLAGELLATING. YOU CAN NO LONGER REMEMBER IF YOU ARE AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION OR BURNING MAN.

8/16/2012
YOU ARE LED INTO A DANK GYMNASIUM. THE ROOM IS EMPTY BUT FOR YOU AND ANN ROMNEY'S DRESSAGE HORSE.

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YOU EXCHANGE KNOWING GLANCES. IT BEGINS ITS SURREAL HORSE BALLET.

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BETWEEN MOVEMENTS YOU COULD SWEAR IT MOUTHS "HELP ME.

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" THIS IS NOT THE BIRTHDAY GIFT YOU WANTED; IT IS THE ONE YOU DESERVED.

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7/30/2012
CELEBRITYBLUMPKIN.ORG RECEIVES ITS TEN MILLIONTH VISITOR. YOU WERE WISE TO REGISTER THE DOMAIN. YOU ARE THE MASTER OF ALL YOU SURVEY. IN THE DISTANCE YOU HEAR THE MOURNFUL CRY OF THE LOON.

7/23/2012
INFORMATION SUPREMACY IS THE HOT NEW LOOK FOR THE FALL. GREAT DEALS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY. ENTER YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER AND A LIST OF YOUR FEARS.

7/13/2012
YOU SIT ALONE IN YOUR APARTMENT LISTLESSLY PERUSING MITT ROMNEY'S WEBSITE. A BUTTON ENCOURAGES YOU TO DONATE TODAY. YOU CLICK IT. YOUR COMPUTER BEGINS TO EMIT AN OMINOUS SOUND AND ODOR. CHILDREN OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW BEGIN WALKING ON ALL FOURS. THE DOG STARES AT YOU. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO CLICK THAT BUTTON.

5/18/2012
TEN ASSHOLES FOUND ASSHOLES THEY WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH USING ASSHOLE FINDER. FIND YOUR ASSHOLES NOW.

4/24/2012
THE SKELETON IS COATED WITH A THIN LAYER OF SPACE-AGE LUBRICANTS. EACH SLIMY, OFF-PINK CADAVER MUSCLE IS CAREFULLY STAPLED INTO PLACE – THEY LOOK AND SMELL LIKE PUTREFYING TUNA. TECHNICIANS CHECK EACH SERVO-ACTIVATOR ONE LAST TIME. THEY FIND NO FAULTS. THE MOURNFUL CALL OF AN ALPENHORN SUMMONS THE DWARF LABORERS. IT IS TIME.

ANN ROMNEY IS READY TO BE REINSERTED INTO HER SKIN.

3/31/2012
THE NATION WAITS PENSIVELY FOR THE LOTTERY WINNER TO COME FORWARD. CHILDREN GATHER STONES.

2/17/2012
THE SANTORUMS ENJOY A LOVELY VALENTINE'S DINNER. RICK SLOWLY REALIZES THAT THE WAITER IS A GAY. THE MOON ABRUPTLY SHIFTS TO A RETROGRADE ORBIT. THE CRUST SPLITS BENEATH HIS FEET. SATAN EMERGES, URGING YOU TO TRY THE MEATLOAF. IT SMELLS OF JACKFRUIT AND BURNING TIRES. YOU HAVE NEVER TASTED ANYTHING QUITE LIKE IT.

You know, it didn't strike me that I might be a crazy person until I saw them all in one place.

By now you have all seen Felix Baumgartner's parachute leap from over 100,000 feet. This is mightily impressive and nothing can diminish the magnitude of this accomplishment. I cannot help but be even more impressed, however, by the fact that someone already did this. 52 years ago. With equipment that was beyond rudimentary for the task.
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In 1960 the Air Force conducted Project Excelsior, an experiment to test parachutes from obscenely high altitudes to determine the feasibility of pilots ejecting from new (at the time) super-high flying aircraft like the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the (later canceled, but possibly the most incredible aircraft ever constructed) XB-70 Valkyrie. A retired USAF pilot named Joseph Kittinger volunteered to make a jump from 100,000 feet to test a drogue parachute. So, to be clear, he volunteered to don a ramshackle pressure suit, ride a flimsy helium balloon to altitudes no human had seen without the protection of a spacecraft, and then jump out to test a parachute that nobody could be certain would work.

The real question is where they found a balloon with enough lifting capacity to accommodate Kittinger (150 lbs), his gear (155 lbs), and his gargantuan balls (3 short tons).

On the way up the glove on his space suit depressurized, but he didn't tell anyone because he was afraid they would cancel the mission. So instead he went up there with a part of his body exposed to space. His hand swelled to twice its size and did not return to normal for several days after he landed.

I have always been fascinated by this, even from a very early age when I saw a Life Magazine photo spread in a coffee table book about NASA. One of the great pleasures I had while living in Indiana was visiting the USAF Museum in Dayton and seeing the actual balloon and basket that carried Kittinger into space. I don't have the words to express how small and flimsy it was.
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"Tiny" might be more accurate than small, and I'm pretty sure it was made of canvas. He basically floated up into space in a potato sack.

It's an impressive feat regardless of when it is or was done.
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I want to make a minor contribution, though, to making sure Joseph Kittinger gets some well deserved attention for having done this a half century ago under spartan conditions and with a substantial risk that he was just going to plow into the Earth and die. It would be as if someone had climbed Everest 52 years before Hillary and Tenzig wearing bulky wool coats and sleeping in a canvas tent. (Cue the George Mallory link)