OK - a very tangential takeoff: Engineering prof assigns students this question: Explain how to determine the height of a very tall building using a barometer.
Obviously meant to use change in barometric pressure with altitude. But one student submitted the following:
There are several ways of doing this
1. On a sunny day, stand the barometer up in the sun, measure the length of its shadow relative to its height, then measure the length of the building’s shadow and calculate its height from that.
2. Go into the stairwell and climb the stairs to the top, marking off the length of the barometer on the wall, giving you the height of the building in “barometer units”.
3. Go onto the roof of the building and drop the barometer off the top and time how long it takes to hit the ground, then calculate the height using the well known formula of 32 ft./sec./sec.
4. Go into the office of the building superintendent and say “If you tell me how tall this building is, I will give you this nice barometer”.
PSA: journalists aren’t supposed to put names in the headlines if the person isn’t a public figure. It’s not a matter of maliciously not giving credit
^^^as a journalist, this is something that bothers me ALL THE TIME
A friend of mine on Twitter explained this the other day, so to elaborate based on what she said: If the name is not instantly recognizable the way a public figure is, then putting the name in the headline isn’t going to bring about any sort of recognition or connection in the reader, and doesn’t do much to draw the reader into the story. But something like “local teen” does create a connection by tying the person into the community, and encourages the reader to learn more about what this local teen has done. The name will be in the article itself, after the headline has done its job at getting the reader to look into it.
It’s worth noting too that usually, according to the Inverted Pyramid writing style used for journalism where the most important information is shared first, the person’s name is usually in the first sentence of the first paragraph.
Whenever I see someone get up at arms over a headline that says “Local Teen” and the first comment is “SAY THEIR NAME” I’m always like “hey, thanks for telling every journalist present that you don’t read articles and just skim headlines.” Really makes us feel appreciated.
I think this Onion headline illustrates the point pretty well
My best friend forced me to watch some GI Joe and here’s a few insane things that happen in it:
Baroness is so upset over Destro talking to another girl that she burns down his entire family inherited Scottish castle, and he keeps her because she’s a catch
The villains are fed up with Cobra Commander being an inept shit, so they create a new guy made up from the DNA of history’s greatest monsters, and are surprised when he turns out to be an asshole
In the obligatory drug episode, Duke’s brother and one of the rando villain’s sister both get addicted to a made up drug. The villain is very concerned, gets official sick leave from the bad guys, visits her in the hospital and promises her his support no matter what. Duke, the good guy, on the other hand is so upset at his brother for having a drug problem that he basically disowns him and shames him, telling him he’s no longer his brother. A real american hero right there
The drug episode ends with the drug manifacturer dying and exploding and a shot of his mangled hand with giant red letters on screen saying “DRUGS KILL”
They meet a shirtless guy shooting a commercial in the arctic who asks them if they’re his camera team. He teams up with the Joes and we never see his actual camera team so I guess they died
Cobra Commander is revealed to actually be a snake person in the movie, it’s incredibly bad
There’s a guy named Snowjob
The entire show is disgustingly Too American, like you’d think that’s obvious, but it’s even more American than you’d initially think
The animation sucks and that’s what kept me going, very funny
Sgt. Slaughter is in this. The wrestler. He’s just in this as himself, he says every line like a wrestling promo, he’s the most powerful being in the show, it’s a rampant self insert and it’s kinda amazing
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
