The Key to the Titanic (Preventable Disasters Pt. 2)

If there had been more lifeboats on the RMS Titanic, the sinking of her maiden voyage might not have been so tragic. Still, I hold that her sinking would have been prevented entirely, had one Mr. Davy Blair not left his keys at home.

David Blair was a seaman (snort) under the employ of the White Star Line, the company that owned and operated the three then largest ocean liners in existence: the Olympic, the Gigantic (later Britannic), and the Titanic. Blair was originally to be the Second Officer of the Titanic and had even been with her on her trial voyages to test the ship’s seaworthiness and the sailing from the construction site in Belfast, Ireland to its first passenger loading in Southhampton, England. Just before she left port in Belfast, however, Blair received the news that he would be replaced with the more experienced Henry Wilde, Chief Officer from the temporarily out-of-service RMS Olympic. At this news, he wrote to his family, "this is a magnificent ship, I feel very disappointed I am not to make her first voyage."

When he left the ship for the last time on April 9, 1912, he took with him the key to the Crow’s nest locker, which was supposed to contain the binoculars for the lookouts. On the night of April 13, the Crow’s nest crew were in near freezing conditions with a calm ocean in front of them, smooth as glass. The moon was a waning sliver and provided little light to illuminate any icebergs – about which the Titanic crew had been warned. While Davy Blair lay in bed in England with the locker key in possession, the Titanic and Mr. Iceberg were meters away from collision. 1,522 passengers and crew, 68% of all on board, died that night.

The lookouts on duty at the time of the collision, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, testified later that they were informed they were to have no binoculars during the voyage, because the locker key could not be found. Fleet and Lee died attesting that if they had had binoculars, they would have seen the iceberg with ample time to get out of the way.

The locker key was donated by Blair’s daughter to the International Sailors Society and sold in 2007 at auction for £90,000 (140,000 USD) and is on display now in Nanjing, China.

Sampooing Department Store Collapse (Preventable Disasters Pt. 1)

The Sampoong Department Store was originally slated to be an office building, but during construction in 1987, the building chairman, Lee Joon, changed the plans. This change required that several support columns be cut away at to make room for escalators for the shoppers. When the contractors refused to do something this stupid, Lee fired them and hired his own construction company to do the job.

After it opened in June 1990, the store was immensely popular, amassing an average of 40,000 people daily for the first five years. The store made a ton of money but Lee didn’t get greedy about it – just kidding, he totally added a fifth floor smack on the top of the first four. And what better to put on top of your support beam-deficient department store but a total of eight restaurants! But since Korean restaurant patrons sit on the floor, you have to heat the concrete base with heavy hot water pipes. Restaurants cannot be too warm though, so the air conditioners will have to go right on the roof there. All of this amounted to an elaborate, multi-ton, unsupported cap on the building that already lacked adequate structure. And when the construction company asked to build this extremely risky fifth floor? They refused and they were promptly fired and replaced.

Cracks began appearing in the ceiling of the fifth floor in April, 1995. It was at this point Lee Joon looked up at the damage and instructed his employees to move the merchandise from directly under the cracks to the basement.

On June 29, the cracks were so bad that the whole fifth floor was shut down and the air conditioning was cut off in the summer heat. Since the number of patrons was higher than usual, greedy Mr. Lee refused to issue evacuation orders. But building executives got the hell out of there (just in case).

As civil engineers were called in to inspect the damage and concluded that structural failure was eminent. That day, loud bangs were heard resonating from the fifth floor and the vibration from the air conditioner worsened the cracks – they were now 4 inches wide. A mere 52 minutes before the collapse, the store owners were aware of the damage and refused to evacuate. At 5:50 the building began to fall, and workers sounded the evacuation alarms. The Sampooing Department Store collapsed at 5:57, with the air conditioner crashing through the fifth floor and the roof given way. The support columns weakened to allow for escalators then buckled. Within a third of a minute, the building was pancaked, trapping 1,500 people and killing 501. The damage totaled US$216 million.

what do you call a group of demigods, cyclopes or Bigfeet?

Mushroom Lady

にしきごい !

Egg with a Nose where the Face Goes

baby sharks are the world's cutest things

Chondrichthyans (sharks, skates, rays, and chimeras) are commonly called cartilaginous fish. They all reproduce via internal fertilization, and depending on the species, they can either give live birth (viviparity - ex: hammerheads), lay eggs (oviparity - ex: horn sharks), or hatch the eggs internally and then give live birth later (oviviviparity - ex. rays, Giant White Sharks, tiger sharks).


hammerhead baby (viviparity)


Black Tip Reef Shark pups (viviparity)


Port Jackson baby (oviparity)


ray baby (oviviviparity)

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Chondrichthyan eggcases are called mermaid's purses or devil's purses and vary in size and shape. Some look much like a mermaid's purse might: a pouch with four long tendrils on each corner to anchor the egg somewhere safe. The hornsharks (Heterodontidae), which include my favorite shark, the Port Jackson, produce screw-like eggcases that they lodge in a safe place with their mouths.


Spotted Ratfish (chimera)

Spotted Ratfish eggcase

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Ghost Shark (chimera)

Ghost Shark eggcase

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Port Jackson Shark mother and eggcase

Port Jackson eggcase

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Lesser Spotted Dogfish (© malcolmnobbs.com)

Lesser Spotted Dogfish eggcase

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Swell Shark

Swell Shark eggcase

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The Lemon Shark is viviparous and gives birth to 4-17 young every year in warm, shallow waters.


Lemon Shark pup in the womb

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Sand Tiger Shark pups go through a vicious in-vitro ordeal. The are oviviviparious; multiple eggs hatch in each of the two uteri and the hungry pups eat each other until only one in each uterus is left. Two pups are born: the biggest and baddest pups. Unfortunately, their picky reproduction strategy is making it difficult for their numbers to rebound from Vulnerable status.


cannibalistic Sand Tiger pup in the womb

From Wikipedia: "There are reports of biologists probing the bellies of landed females and having their fingers nipped by the cannibalistic young with their fully developed teeth."

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for more animal babies in the womb: click here

Two Dogs

Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom

Wow! Someone made a video summarizing my childhood in 1:06.



If you didn't get the Nom Nom reference, here's the original:

epic bookcase is epic

Last week I cleaned my room and I found I rather large bookcase made of wine crates, filled with books and trinkets! This week it is a mound of dirty clothes again.

my dogs

My two amazing dogs (and Jake) as photographed by Tim Gentry at Overton Park, 2010. Stunningly, their personalities were completely captured! Jake, the scaredy cat; Roo, the clumsy guard dog; Cash, the loyal, graceful Mr. Wonderful!


Jake


Izzy "Roop Roop" Louise


Johnny Catch

mekong catfish sayz "hey"

O hai guise! i no has teef and Is crically endagered, but is okay. imma be a fossel soon!
ktnx pollusion!

Mr. Sharpe

My high school World History teacher in drag.  Senior year.

Roop and Catch

Johnny Catch is on top left. Roop, bottom right. Recent arts.

time-killing websites

Everyone has their time-wasting websites to open up while in class or at work. Here are some of mine.

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TFLN (Texts from Last Night): While I quickly wore through the over-dramatized and often fake MLIA (My Life is Average) and I seldom want to read the depressing happenings in people's lives on FML (F My Life), I'm always up for some TFLN. Immature, drunken college life as documented by friends posting drunken text message conversations? Yes please.



PostSecret:

People have secrets. PostSecret provides an outlet to anonymously let any secret off your chest, from the most mundane ("I thought it was Pullet Surprise!") to the utterly heartbreaking ("My mom thinks my depression is 2 years old. I have dreamed of being hit by cars since I was 12, I'm 21."). There are only two requirements to share your secret here. 1) You must not have ever shared it with anyone before. 2) You must write it on a postcard and send it to 13345
Copper Ridge Rd. Germantown, MD 20874.

If you don't send in your secrets, you might be surprised to see them on the site anyway.  It's quite liberating.

PostSecret now has 5 books available in bookstores nationwide. It is a common practice to write secrets on postcards and leave them in copies at local booksellers and libraries.

At the bottom of the webpage, they boast "PostSecret is the largest advertisement-free Blog in the world. "

FOUND Magazine:

FOUND features grocery lists, private notes, and photographs among other items that have been found and posted by users.

XKCD:

A comic geared toward tech, math, and science geeks.  Way too popular for its own good, but usually very entertaining.  Prereqs: MATH 2110, PHYS 2120.



TWOP (Television Without Pity:

I like TV so much that once I watch an episode, I want to hear complete strangers recap every word of it with snarky comments and cute nicknames (What do you call Dr. House's team?  Cottages!).  That's why I read TWOP.  It's more fun than you think.



The Ack Attack!'s Illustrated Lost Recaps:

TWOP too wordy for you? Try these Lost recaps: episodes retold in LOLspeak complete with screencaps.



Hanzismatter:

Thinking about getting a Chinese tattoo? Unless you SPEAK and WRITE Chinese, think again. So many of the tattoos featured on this site are so wrong it's insane. Quite a bit were translated for the customer by a "reliable" source like a Chinese friend or translation service. There's also the occasional mangled Hanzi (Chinese character) on a corporate ad, seen by millions of consumers. Don't forget menus, signs, and merchandise. You may not care if your Ed Hardy bag says "Die first, insult later," but I for one, find it very funny.

Abeka

From my senior year of high school.  

reimagined pokémans

Always the admirer of good fan art, I've built up the following collection of reseen and reimagined Pokémon. Click images to enlarge. Artists (and additional work) linked above artwork when I could find them.






Hibbary

Hibbary is also a well-known member of the TLKFAA (The Lion King Fan Art Archive). That account is here.

Jublin


Znuese


Transypoo



Shun-008



And finally, the most epic set of 200+ reimagined Pokémon
painted in ancient Japanese style can be found here.