It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recommendations list and it turns out I’ve built up quite a backlog of links. So without further ado (not adieu) here are some lovely websites you might like:
This one just may have my favorite domain name ever. It also sports an enormous, adorable website header. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing ty.rannousaur.us also sports an array of interesting links and amusing articles, mostly about the less savory or downright bizarre aspects of various historical events and figures. Part mental_floss and part Cracked, all awesome.¹
If you like brains (no, not in the zombie way²) then this is the blog for you. From psychology to neuroscience, this blog has what you want, and might even be able to explain why you want it.
On previous occassions, I’ve waxed poetically about World Wide Words. More recently I stumbled upon another lovely site in the same vein: The Word Detective. This site is every bit as informative and delightful. An added benefit for any patriots out there, its an American-made product unlike the lovely, but limey World Wide Words.
If you’ve got some spare time to read, especially if you love music history, I recommend Planet Slade. The website of journalist Paul Slade, it features some seriously in depth articles about the history of three classic songs as well as some other interesting looking articles I have yet to tackle. His nine-page essay on Stagger Lee served as a main source for my post about (surprise) Stagger Lee.
While I normally try to keep my recommendations strictly to educational sites, I’ve got to give props to xkcd. This is the only comic, web or otherwise, that I often have to do research to understand. Its a nerdy little gem, particularly if you like math and computers. Its also hilarious.
1. Full disclosure: I did write an article for ty.rannousaur.us, so I may be biased, but then I also liked the site enough to submit something, so you decide.
2. If you do like brains in the zombie way, you might want to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. I haven’t read it yet, but I want to.
If Walter T. Varney was not obscure enough for you, here, perhaps, is air flight’s oddest character, Alfred W. Lawson.
Alfred William Lawson was a man of many hats. His life would see him transition from working class boy to hobo to baseball player and manager, from aviation enthusiast to aviation engineer, from economist to prophet. Lawson’s life was marked by a dramatic desire to excel, and a constant inability to attain his lofty goals.
In 1886, at the age of 17, Lawson took up the life of a tramp, traveling by hopping on freight trains. This, however, was only to be a brief sojourn in Lawson’s journey. By the spring of 1887, Lawson had taken up his first trade, baseball, in Frankfurt, Indiana. During his baseball career, Lawson would play as a pitcher and outfielder for a wide host of teams, ranging all across the country from Washington and Oregon to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and Virginia. He even organized some teams, acting as manager, and helped pull together a short-lived league in Florida. He played for the National League in 1890, in one disastrous loss for the Boston Beaneaters and two losses for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. He also organized several international ventures most plagued with financial difficulty, including two tours of Cuba¹, two tours of England, and a solo world tour that took him to South Africa and India. By 1895, Lawson left the field, his arm shot, but continued to manage up until the 1907, including a few more games in South Africa.
Though the majority of his baseball ventures had ended in failure and poverty, Lawson’s ambitions had not abated. In 1904, he wrote a utopian novel called Born Again, which displayed his growing prophetic bent. In 1907, after seeing an airship in flight, he had a whole new passion: aviation. In 1908, in Philidelphia, he began publishing the magazine Fly. Two years later, he relocated to New York City, renaming the magazine Aircraft. He also contributed to the 1912 edition of the New Websterian Dictionary. He made another startling display of prophetic talent when he stated in 1916, “Prior to the year 1970 air traffic will be practiced to such an extent that traffic rules of the air will have to be enforced, certain routes being charted altitudinally, the larger, long-distance ships being given the right of way at the higher altitudes.”
In 1917, he started the Lawson Aircraft Corporation, and worked on a design for the military, that after the end of World War I, they no longer wanted. Undeterred, Lawson started the Lawson Airplane Company in 1919, where he commissioned a 24-year-old Vincent Burnelli to design and build the C-2, what Lawson incorrectly termed the first airliner². His first prototype crashed after only a few minutes in the air, but he took his second C-2 on a national tour. At one point he carried 16 Senators, including future president Warren G. Harding. Despite a successful tour, no airline wanted to pay for the C-2. In 1920, Lawson was awarded one of the first airmail contracts in the United States. That same year he decided to build an even larger, more expensive plane, L-4, but when, in 1921, the plane crashed into a tree on its first attempted takeoff, Lawson’s second aircraft company crashed as well, taking its airmail service with it.
By the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, Lawson tried his hand at economics. In 1931, he published Direct Credits for Everybody and founded the Direct Credit Society. In his book, his society, and his newspaper, The Benefactor, he advocated for an abolition of interest on loans, government control of banks, and a government monopoly on lending. He also advocated something similar to (but much more generous than) Social Security for the elderly and those unable to work. This movement actually gained Lawson a strong following, the society claimed 150,000 members at its peak. Gradually the fervor surrounding direct credit dwindled.
In 1935, Lawson would publish the first volume of Lawsonomy his prophetic masterpiece. This book, the first of three volumes, outlined Lawson’s unusual ideas about physics and philosophy. These ideas were built on the principles of suction, pressure, and the loopily named “zig-zag and swirl” as the primary forces of the physical world. He followed it up with Mentality and The Almighty, which expanded his ideas to the realm of humanity, God, and whatever else struck his fancy. In 1943, he founded the University of Lawsonomy at the former site of Des Moines University³ in Des Moines, Iowa. The school was free, but allowed only males and expected a student to study Lawson’s teachings for 30 years before being granted the title of “Knowledgian.” Not satisfied with a philosophy he dubbed “the knowledge of Life and everything pertaining thereto” Lawson also founded the Lawsonian Religion in 1949. In 1952, Lawson was called before the Senate regarding financial practices at his school. After his death in 1954, Lawson’s University relocated to Sturtevant, Wisconsin, where its sign is still prominently displayed along Interstate 94.
While Lawson and his ideas have been largely forgotten, his adherents maintain a mostly out of date web presence here and here. There was evidently a student reunion in 2002 at the University, but its phone number (1-888-LAWSON-U) and email address are both currently out of service. So much for Lawson’s prophecy that by 2000 all of the world would be adherents of his ideas.
The last testament to Lawson's ambitions
—-
1. Lawson abandoned his second trip to Cuba after financing fell through, forcing his teammates to make the trip themselves after securing backing from a new source.
2. The honor of first airliner goes to the only slightly more successful BAT FK26, designed by Frederick Koolhoven, which first flew in April, 1919. Lawson’s plane did not fly until August 19th of that year. Lawson did have the first American airliner.
3. This Des Moines University was a liberal arts college affiliated with the Baptist Bible Union of North America. It closed in 1929 and should not be confused with the current Des Moines University.
Asides:
If you go here you can find a poem about two of Lawson’s followers.
Favorite quote encountered in researching Lawson: “The force of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was no doubt caused by electron feces.”
Few know of Walter Thomas Varney or his contribution to modern air travel. The man who would later be credited with founding two major airlines started small. Born a day after Christmas, 1888, Varney would go to fly for the U. S. Signal Corps during the first World War. After the war, Varney started an aviation school and air taxi company in San Francisco. Life did not seem to hold much promise of further excitement for Walter T. Varney, but 1925 changed all that.
That year, Congress passed the Contract Air Mail Act, opening up postal air routes to private operators. Many would bid on the lucrative airmail routes that serviced cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, and St. Louis, but Varney saw opportunity where no one else did. Believing that no one else would place a bid, Varney put himself firmly in position to win the airmail route that would serve Pasco, WA, Boise, ID, and Elko, NV. In October, 1925, he was awarded the 435-mile route uncontested.
For his newly created air service, headquartered in Boise, ID¹, Varney recruited another flight instructor, three student pilots, and four mechanics to work for him. He also bought six Swallow biplanes, which were unfortunately underpowered. The planes gave him enough trouble that he had to put in more powerful engines. Later, Varney would replace them entirely with planes made by Stearman.²
Over time Varney expanded his route, dropping Elko and replacing it with Salt Lake City and extending service at its northern end to Spokane and Seattle. He had managed to transform a route that no one else wanted into a lucrative air service. In mid-1930, United Aircraft acquired Varney Air Lines. Along with National Air Transport, Pacific Air Transport, Boeing Air Transport, and Stout Air Services, Varney Air Lines (the oldest of all these companies) would form the foundation of United Airlines.
Not content to simply have his company be absorbed into a larger one, Varney founded Varney Air Service in 1931. In 1932, It became Varney Speed Lines Air Service. Unfortnately, by mid-1934, this company had folded.
The intreped Varney made one more attempt at the airline business. The same year his second air service collapsed, Varney teamed up with Louis Mueller to form Varney Speed Lines. This company served New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and California. Later that year, Varney ceded control to Mueller who renamed the company Varney Air Transport. Mueller later sold 40% of the company to Robert Six in 1936, who renamed the company Continental in 1937.
While Varney now is little more than a footnote in aviation history, one of many enthusiastic characters who bridged the gap between the Wright brothers and modern airlines, his influence was staggering. How many others can claim to have founded two major airlines?
Next time you look up up to see jet crossing the sky, give a little thought to Walter T. Varney.
—
1. A Varney Air Line hangar, dating from 1931, served as part of the Boise Airport terminal building until 2003.
2. When writing this article, there was an amusing story of how Varney pilots had to take off using trees in the Airline Builders, part of Time-Life’s The Epic of Flight series. While the tale was delightful, it also smacks of apocrypha. After lots of deliberation (and finding no other reference to the story in the scant sources I could find about Walter T. Varney) I finally decided to excise the story. However, on the off chance that the tale is true, here is the paragraph as it originally appeared:
For his newly created air service Varney recruited another flight instructor, three student pilots, and four mechanics to work for him. He also bought six Swallow biplanes, which due to their underpowered engines had to be launched in a rather novel fashion. On occasion, they would park one of the planes against a sapling, where the pilot could rev his engine to nearly full throttle before jumping the young tree. The intrepid pilot would then aim his roaring plane at a second sapling, using it to bounce his feeble little craft into the air. The planes gave him enough trouble that he had to put in more powerful engines. Later, Varney would replace them entirely with planes made by Stearman.
The above is an adorable music video for Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee,” that puts the fun back into back alley gambling and murder.
In 1959, Lloyd Price turned a traditional folk and blues song into a major hit for himself. His song, “Stagger Lee” (later to be ranked by Rolling Stone as the 456th greatest song of all time) brought the legendary title character into the mainstream of American culture. Stagger Lee, also known as Stack-O-Lee, Stack O’Lee, Stag-O-Lee, and numerous other variations, has inspired at least 284 recordings ranging from instrumental to a cappella and from jazz to reggae. His story in song and folklore, seems endlessly varied. Yet, as big as Stagger Lee’s story is, the story of Lee Shelton, his real life inspiration, is in some ways even larger.
Lee Shelton¹ was born on March, 16, 1865 in Texas, in the last days of the Civil War. By 1895, at the age of 30, he had established himself in St. Louis, MO. Lee was a man of many trades. He worked as a carriage driver, an occasional waiter, a pimp, and the owner of a tavern and gambling house known as The Modern Horseshoe. He was also apparently active in politics, as the head of a club for the Democratic Party.
On Christmas night, 1895, Shelton walked into a saloon owned by Bill Curtis in an area of St. Louis known then as “Deep Morgan.” There Shelton began conversing with the unlucky Billy, one William Lyons. Lyons worked as a levee hand, his age was either 25 (given in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat) or 31 (as listed on his death certificate). He and Shelton conversed in a friendly manner for some time, until the conversation turned to politics. The two men began to argue, hitting one another’s hats until eventually Lyon’s took Shelton’s Stetson hat. Shelton drew his .44, hitting Lyons with it. When Lyon drew a knife, “Stagger Lee,” so the song goes, “shot Billy.”
Lee Shelton returned to his home with his hat. He was arrested around 3 am. William Lyons lingered on at City Hospital until an hour after Shelton’s arrest.
While there 4 other murders took place that Christmas night in St. Louis, Shelton’s gained a peculiar prominence. His slaying of William Lyons came to symbolize the political and economic tensions within St. Louis’ African American community. Lyons had powerful connections. His brother-in-law, Henry Bridgewater, was a wealthy and prominent black Republican. He ran the Bridgewater Saloon only a few blocks from Curtis’ saloon. While Cutis’ saloon catered to lower class Democrats, the Bridgewater was a Republican stronghold that served a more upscale clientele and even garnered the occasional black celebrity.
Shelton soon found himself embroiled in a political feud that transcended a mere bar fight. When he was taken to the coroner’s inquest the next day, Shelton was confronted with a crowd of approximately 300 angry blacks, most likely connected to Bridgewater. Bridgewater himself agitated for prosecution of Shelton and hired the Assistant Circuit Attorney of St. Louis, Orrick Bishop, to head the case.
Not to be out done, Shelton used his own powerful connections to wrangle up a prominent lawyer for himself. He had engaged the services of Nat Dryden, a brilliant, opium-addicted alcoholic. Despite his substance abuse problems, Dryden had a reputation for winning difficult cases and had even secured Missouri’s first conviction of a white man for killing a black man. By the fourth of January, Shelton had managed to raise $4,000 and bailed himself out of jail. On July 15, 1896, the trial began. After two days of trial and twenty-two hours of deliberation, the jury was hung. Lee Shelton was a free man, at least until his retrial.
In the interim, Dryden died on August 26, 1897, after a drinking binge. That October, after being convicted in his second trial, Shelton was confined in the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City for a twenty-five year term.
Shelton was not to serve that full term, however, and was released in November, 1909, with the aid of fellow Democrats. His regained freedom would do him little good. In January, 1911, Shelton robbed a man and returned to prison that May for a five-year sentence. Once again Shelton would not serve his full term. In 1912, after a failed attempt by Missouri’s Democratic governor to have him paroled, Shelton succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 46.
Despite his ignoble end, Lee Shelton’s political career did not cease with his death. Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party and one of the Chicago 8, gave his son the name Malik Nkrumah Staggerlee Seale. For Seale, Stagger Lee represented the untrained, unfocused resistence of oppressed African Americans, which could be transformed into the focused, organized resistance of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X.
Though Stagger Lee continues to live on² in popular culture, Lee Shelton himself was buried in an unmarked grave in Greenwood Cemetery³ in Hillsdale, MO, just outside of St. Louis.
The Mississippi John Hurt verison of Stagger Lee.
—-
1. Shelton’s name is also occasionally given as Sheldon, as it appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat article that detailed his shooting of William Lyons.
2. Fittingly, in 2004, ex-pimp Fillmore Slim recorded a version of “Stagger Lee” on his album Funky Mama’s House. His story was also made into a graphic novel by Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix.
3. If you’re interested in visiting his grave site, there’s more information about it here and here. You can also visit his house and the former site of Bill Curtis’ Saloon.
Lemmings get a bad rap. Commonly considered mindless followers and suicidal vermin, lemmings are a far cry from popular perception. The truth is these little rodents are more independent and less bent on self-destruction than they are given credit for.
Lemmings are basically solitary creatures. They live in tundra regions throughout the Arctic and sub-Arctic, where they feed on moss, lichen, grass, and other plants. On the occasions where they do meet up, its usually for a quick one-night stand to try and pop out another litter of little lemmings.
Due to predation, variations in food supply, and a prodigious ability to reproduce, lemming populations can fluctuate wildly, changing from near extinction to massive overpopulation in just one year. It is at these times of overpopulation when the lemmings embark on their legendary mass migrations. When there is little food left to be had and many competitors, lemmings, like most starving creatures, look for greener pastures. Large numbers of lemmings may disperse over wide areas, sometimes even braving bodies of water to reach new feeding grounds. In the course of swimming across various lakes and streams some lemmings often drown. Of course, this is also true of caribou, wildebeests, and just about any land animal that migrates across water.
The myth of mass suicide is an old one. The earliest published account I was able to track down puts the date at 1923, but the myth is probably much older. Considering that in the 1530s a hypothesis was put forward that lemmings fell from storm clouds and died out when spring came, the comparatively simple (and still believed) suicide myth probably also has a long pedigree.
In the 1950s the lemming suicide myth got a big double-boost due to Disney. In March, 1955, Disney published an issue of their comicbook Uncle Scrooge titled “The Lemming with the Locket” which featured a giant swarm of lemmings on an unstoppable quest to throw themselves into the sea. You can view the lemmings’ final moments here or read the whole comic here.
The lemming myth got an even bigger boost in 1958, when Disney released White Wilderness a supposed documentary about life in the Arctic. This film was successful enough to win an Academy Award for best documentary feature. Little did the Academy know that the documentary featured falsified footage¹, including its famous scene of lemmings jumping into the sea. The scene was filmed using creative editing and camera angles as well as outright fraud to create a scene of lemming suicide. It was filmed in southern Alberta, near Calgary, well south of the lemming’s natural habitat. The lemmings, which were captured by children, were flown from in from Churchill, Manitoba, for the shooting. In the footage (at the top of this entry) the film crew never shows more than maybe two dozen lemmings at a time. When it came to filming the lemmings jumping over the cliffs edge, that was just the film crew flinging the hapless rodents to their doom.
But while there’s no evidence that lemmings commit mass suicide, there are two documented cases of sheep doing just that. Sort of.
In 2002, 403 sheep flung themselves to their death in southern France. These sheep were likely trying to escape a pack of wolves and because they are herd (or in this case, flock) animals used to mindless following they all went over the cliff together.
In 2005, a like-minded group of sheep flung themselves from a cliff in Turkey. Nearly 1,500 sheep leapt from the cliff for no known reason, to the horror of the 26 families that owned the sheep. Their is a silver-lining, though. While over a thousand sheep leapt from the cliff, only about 450 died. By the time the later sheep went flying from the cliffs edge, the woolly bodies of their fallen comrades cushioned the blow enough that most of them survived.
—
1. The film also featured the intentional hurtling of a polar bear cub over rocks. You can watch a lovely expose of all this here.
Another aside: the myth of lemming suicide helped spawned a successful series of video games, starting in 1991, entitled Lemmings.
Most people have seen birds cruising on air currents, whether they be hawks, eagles, vultures, or crows, but few can imagine a bird the size of a small airplane gliding over the world’s highways and byways. Long before Big Bird began roaming Sesame St.¹ Argentavis magnificens did just that.
A colossal bird, Argentavis magnificens soared over parts of Argentina approximately six million years ago. It boasted a twenty-one foot wingspan and weighed an estimated one-hundred and fifty-five pounds. In comparison, the longest wingspan of a living bird is that of the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) measuring in at a measly ten feet, while the heaviest flying bird, the kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) weighs only about forty pounds.
Argentavis’ great weight made for an ungainly take-off. Using computer simulations originally designed for helicopters, researchers have come to the conclusion that Argentavis could probably get airborne only by running downhill, or launching itself from a high point. However, once aloft, Argentavis used its massive wings to soar with the best of them. It is estimated to have been able to cover distances of up to two-hundred miles at a speed of just over forty miles per hour, with a diving speed of up to one-hundred and fifty miles per hour.
While Argentavis could by no means carry off lift an elephant into the air like the mythical roc it was likely a capable predator. Its head measured twenty inches and sported an impressive hawklike bill. Coupled with its impressive diving speed and fierce talons, Argentavis could take down large prey with ease.
from Birdfinders
Much less capable of catching large prey, but equally impressive in its own way is Cuba’s zunzuncito, or bee hummingbird, the world’s smallest bird. The bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) has a length of approximately two inches and weighs around .0635 ounces, with males being slightly smaller than females. It would take approximately 39,060 bee hummingbirds to equal the weight of one Argentavis magnificens. Not satisfied to be the smallest bird, the bee hummingbird is the smallest warm-blooded vertebrate.²
Unlike Argentavis, the bee hummingbird has no trouble taking off. With wing muscles that make up 22 to 34 percent of their body weight, they can fly at a speed of up to 30 miles per hour. Like other hummingbird they are adept at various aerial feats like hovering, vertical and backwards flight, and are even able to fly upside down.
These little birds feed primarily on nectar and small insects. Don’t be fooled by their humble diet, though; bee hummingbirds are as tough as they come. Males will establish feeding zones from which they aggressively chase all competitors be they other males, bumblebees, or hawk moths.
The bee hummingbird is also able to conserve energy during cool nights by dropping their body temperature. During the day their temperature is about 106 degrees Fahrenheit, but can drop down as low as 86 degrees in a sort of mini-hibernation.
Sadly, the bee hummingbird may go the way of Argentavis magnificens. While it is only considered Near Threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, its fairly small population is declining meaning its situation may worsen.
—
1. Big Bird has been roaming Sesame St. since 1969, played always by Carroll Spinney.
2. The honor of smallest vertebrate currently goes to Paedocypris progenetica, a tiny fish that lives in highly acidic swamps on the island of Sumatra. This little fish is only 7.9mm long, less than 1/3 an inch. It also sports a skull that leaves its brain unprotected by bone. Unfortunately, Paedocypris progenetica faces danger due to habitat damage caused by forest fire, logging, agriculture, and urbanization.
Sometimes, flipping through the channels, it seems like there’s nothing on worth watching. While, the quantity of our television programing is ever expanding, the quality usually isn’t. However, there is still hope! Occasionally, someone puts out a good documentary. Here’s some of the better ones I’ve seen in the last year or so:
1. Planet Earth (2006)
This whole series is spectacular (especially the caves episode). Absolutely jam-packed with eye-candy and plenty of information to boot. This is what nature documentaries should be if they could all manage to have huge budgets and Sigourney Weaver.
2. The Yes Men (2003)
This amusing little film, which lampoons of the World Trade Organization, is somewhat amateurishly done (I don’t need to see every single time the one guy cuts his hair,) but the personalities of the two fellows it follows helps carry it. The gigantic, golden inflatable phallus doesn’t hurt either.
4. Out of Balance (2007)
Here we have another low-budget political documentary. This one details Exxon Mobil’s significant contributions to global warming (and you thought the Valdez oil spill was bad) and the obscene amount of money they spend to confuse the facts on climate change. The graph showing the correlation between the world’s CO2 emissions and Exxon Mobil’s profits is priceless, and horrifying.
5. Helvetica(2007)
A surprisingly interesting look at a notably boring font. Through the use of some highly opinionated typographers and graphic designers, this documentary traces the rise of helvetica, the rebellion against it¹, and its ultimate triumph as the most ubiquitous font on earth.
—
1. Yes, apparently there have been some fairly serious culture wars in the world of typography.
