Falling With Helium

What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely?

Colin Rowe

As ridiculous as it sounds, this is—sort of—possible.

Falling from great heights is dangerous.^{[citation needed]} A balloon could actually help save you, although a regular helium one from a party obviously won't do the trick.

If the balloon is large enough, you don't even need the helium. A balloon will act as a parachute, slowing your fall to non-fatal speeds.

Avoiding a high-speed landing is, unsurprisingly, the key to survival. As one medical paper[1]De Haven H. Mechanical analysis of survival in falls from heights of fifty to one hundred and fifty feet. Injury Prevention. 6(1):62-b-68. put it,

It is, of course, obvious that speed, or height of fall, is not in itself injurious ... but a high rate of change of velocity, such as occurs after a 10 story fall onto concrete, is another matter.

... which is just a wordy version of the old saying, "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end."

To act as a parachute, a balloon filled with air, rather than helium, would have to be 10 to 20 meters across—far too big to be inflated with portable tanks. A powerful fan could be used to fill it with ambient air, but at that point, you may as well just use a parachute.

Helium

The helium makes things easier.

It doesn't take too many helium balloons to lift a person. In 1982, Larry Walters flew across Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by weather balloons, eventually reaching several miles in altitude. After passing through LAX airspace, he descended by shooting some of the balloons with a pellet gun.

On landing, Walters was arrested, although the authorities had some trouble figuring out what to charge him with. At the time, an FAA safety inspector told the New York Times, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed."[2]ARMCHAIR AIRMAN SAYS FLIGHT FULFILLED HIS LIFELONG DREAM, New York Times, July 4, 1982

A relatively small helium balloon—certainly smaller than a parachute—will suffice slow your fall, but it still has to be huge by party balloon standards. The biggest consumer rental helium tanks are about 250 cubic feet, and you'd need to empty at least 10 of them to put enough air in the balloon to support your weight.

You'd have to do it quickly. The compressed helium cylinders are smooth and often quite heavy, which means they have a high terminal velocity. You'll only have a few minutes to use up all the cylinders. (As soon as you emptied one, you could drop it.)

You can't get around this problem by moving your starting point higher. Since the upper atmosphere is pretty thin, anything dropped from the stratosphere up will accelerate to very high speeds until it hits the lower atmosphere, then fall slowly the rest of the way. This is true of everything from small meteors[3]By the time meteors hit the Earth, they have slowed down to a few hundred miles per hour. to Felix Baumgartner.[4]Jason Martinez, Falling Faster than the Speed of Sound, Wolfram Blog, October 24, 2012

But if you inflated the balloons quickly, possibly by connecting many canisters to it at once, you'd be able to slow your fall. Just don't use too much helium, or you'll end up floating at 16,000 feet like Larry Walters.

While researching this article,[5]Additionally, while researching impact speeds for this article, I came across a discussion on the Straight Dope Message Boards about survivable fall heights. One poster compared a fall from height to being hit by a bus. Another user, a medical examiner, replied that this was a bad comparison:

"When hit by a car, the vast majority of people are not run over; they are run under. The lower legs break, sending them into the air. They usually strike the hood of the car, often with the back of the head impacting the windshield, "starring" the windshield, possibly leaving a few hairs in the glass. They then go over the top of the car. They are still alive, although with broken legs, and maybe with head pain from the nonfatal windshield impact. They die when they hit the ground. They die from head injury."

The lesson: Don't mess with medical examiners. They're apparently pretty hardcore. I managed to lock up my copy of Mathematica several times on balloon-related differential equations, and subsequently got my IP address banned from Wolfram|Alpha for making too many requests. The ban-appeal form asked me to explain what task I was performing that necessitated so many queries, so this is what I put:

I hope they understand.

Drain the Oceans: Part II

Supposing you did Drain the Oceans, and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?

–Iain

In the previous What If, we opened a portal at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and let the oceans drain out.

We didn't worry too much about where the oceans were draining to. I picked Mars; the Curiosity rover is working so hard to find evidence of water, so I figured we could make things easier for it.

Curiosity is sitting in Gale Crater, a round depression in the Martian surface with a peak, nicknamed Mt. Sharp, in the center.

There's a lot of water on Mars.[1]Donald Rapp, Accessible Water on Mars, JPL D-31343-Rev.7 The problem is, it's frozen. Liquid water doesn't last long there, because it's too cold and there's too little air.

If you set out a cup of warm water on Mars, it'll try to boil, freeze, and sublimate, practically all at once.[2]D. L. Santiago et. al., Mars climate and outflow events Water on Mars seems to want to be in any state except liquid.

However, we're dumping a lot of water very fast (all of it at a few degrees above 0°C), and it won't have much time to freeze, boil, or sublimate. If our portal is big enough, the water will start to turn Gale Crater into a lake, just like it would on Earth. We can use the excellent USGS Mars Topographic Map to chart the water's progress.

Here's Gale Crater at the start of our experiment:

As the flow continues, the lake fills in, burying Curiosity under hundreds of meters of water:

Eventually, Mt. Sharp becomes an island. However, before the peak can disappear completely, the water spills over the north rim of the crater and starts flowing out across the sand.

When this kind of thing happens on Mars in real life, the trickle of water quickly dries up before it can get very far.[3]D. L. Santiago et. al., Cloud formation and water transport on mars after major outflow events, 43rd Planetary Science Conference (2012) However, we've got a lot of ocean at our disposal.

The water pools in the North Polar Basin:

Gradually, it will fill the basin:

However, if we look at a map of the more equatorial regions of Mars, where the volcanoes are, we'll see that there's still a lot of land far from the water:

Frankly, I think this map is kind of boring; there's not a lot going on. It's just a big empty swath of land with some ocean at the top.

We haven't come close to running out of ocean yet. Although there was a lot of blue on the map of the Earth at the end of our last article, the seas that remained were shallow; most of the volume of the oceans was gone.

And Mars is much smaller than Earth, so the same volume of water will make a deeper sea.

At this point, the water fills in the Valles Marineris, creating some unusual coastlines. The map is less boring, but the terrain around the great canyons makes for some odd shapes.

The water now reaches and swallows up Spirit and Opportunity. Eventually, it breaks into the Hellas Impact Crater, the basin containing the lowest point on Mars.

In my opinion, the rest of the map is starting to look pretty good.

As the water spreads across the surface in earnest, the map splits into several large islands (and innumerable smaller ones).

The water quickly finishes covering most of the high plateaus, leaving only a few islands left.

And then, at last, the flow stops; the oceans back on Earth are drained.

Let's take a closer look at the main islands:

Olympus Mons, and a few other volcanoes, remain above water. Surprisingly, they aren't even close to being covered. Olympus Mons still rises well over 10 kilometers above the new sea level. Mars has some huge mountains.

Those crazy islands are the result of water filling in 'Noctis Labyrinthus' ('the Labyrinth of the Night'), a bizarre set of canyons whose origin is still a mystery.

The oceans on Mars wouldn't last. There might be some transient greenhouse warming, but in the end, Mars is just too cold. Eventually, the oceans will freeze over, become covered with dust, and gradually migrate to the permafrost at the poles.[4]Maggie Fox, Mars May Not Have Been Warm Or Wet

However, it would take a long time, and until it did, Mars would be a much more interesting place.

When you consider that there's a ready-made portal system to allow transit between the two planets, the consequences are inevitable:

If you weren't aware, Mad Men star (and tonight's ESPYs host) Jon Hamm is alleged to be well-endowed. DeAndre Jordan cracked a joke about Hamm's man meat, and ESPN aired it.

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Drain the Oceans

How quickly would the ocean's drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained?

–Ted M.

I want to get one thing out of the way first:

According to my rough calculations, if an aircraft carrier sank and got stuck against the drain, the pressure would easily be enough to fold it up^[1] and suck it through. Cooool.

Just how far away is this portal? If we put it near the Earth, the ocean would just fall back down into the atmosphere. As it fell, it would heat up and turn to steam, which would condense and fall right back into the ocean as rain. The energy input into the atmosphere alone would also wreak all kinds of havoc with our climate, to say nothing of the huge clouds of high-altitude steam.

So let's put the ocean-dumping portal far away—say, on Mars. (In fact, I vote we put it directly above the Curiosity rover; that way, it will finally have incontrovertible evidence of liquid water on Mars's surface.)

What happens to the Earth?

Not much. It would actually take hundreds of thousands of years for the ocean to drain.

Even though the opening is wider than a basketball court, and the water is forced through at incredible speeds,^[2] the oceans are huge. When you started, the water level would drop by less than a centimeter per day.

There wouldn't even be a cool whirlpool at the surface—the opening is too small and the ocean is too deep.^[3] (It's the same reason you don't get a whirlpool in the bathtub until the water is more than halfway drained.)

But let's suppose we speed up the draining by opening more drains. (Remember to clean the whale filter every few days), so the water level starts to drop more quickly.

Let's take a look at how the map would change.

Here's how it looks at the start:

And here's the map after the oceans drop 50 meters:

It's pretty similar, but there are a few small changes. Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Great Britain, Java, and Borneo are now connected to their neighbors.

And after 2000 years of trying to hold back the sea, the Netherlands are finally high and dry. No longer living with the constant threat of a cataclysmic flood, they're free to turn their energies toward outward expansion. They immediately spread out and claim the newly-exposed land.

When the sea level reaches (minus) 100 meters, a huge new island off the coast of Nova Scotia is exposed—the former site of the Grand Banks.

You may start to notice something odd: Not all the seas are shrinking. The Black Sea, for example, shrinks only a little, then stops.

This is because these bodies are no longer connected to the ocean. As the water level falls, some basins cut off from the drain in the Pacific. Depending on the details of the sea floor, the flow of water out of the basin might carve a deeper channel, allowing it to continue to flow out. But most of them will eventually become landlocked and stop draining.

At 200 meters, the map is starting to look weird. New islands are appearing. Indonesia is a big blob. The Netherlands now control much of Europe.

Japan is now an isthmus connecting the Korean peninsula with Russia. New Zealand gains new islands. The Netherlands expand north.

New Zealand grows dramatically. The Arctic Ocean is cut off and its the water level stops falling. The Netherlands cross the new land bridge into North America.

The sea has dropped by two kilometers. New islands are popping up left and right. The Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico are losing their connections with the Atlantic. I don't even know what New Zealand is doing.

At three kilometers, many of the peaks of the mid-ocean ridge—the world's longest mountain range—break the surface. Vast swaths of rugged new land emerge.

By this point, most of the major oceans have become disconnected and stopped draining. The exact locations and sizes of the various inland seas are hard to predict; this is only a rough estimate.

This is what the map looks like when the drain finally empties. There's a surprising amount of water left, although much of it consists of very shallow seas, with a few trenches where the water is as deep as four or five kilometers.

Vacuuming up half the oceans would massively alter the climate and ecosystems in ways that are hard to predict. At the very least, it would almost certainly involve a collapse of the biosphere and mass extinctions at every level.

But it's possible—if unlikely—that humans could manage to survive. If we did, we'd have this to look forward to:

NYDN - It’s Plinko time! “The Price is Right” is celebrating 30 years of Plinko — that addictive and infuriating slot game that leaves contestants dangling between big money and the depths of despair. In honor of the much beloved game, CBS producers taped an exclusively Plinko episode on Wednesday. The audience was left in the dark until the cameras started rolling. “When we realized it was the 30th anniversary of Plinko, we wanted to do something special,” executive producer Mike Richards told Buzzfeed. “And [host] Drew [Carey] and I have always wanted to do an all-Plinko show. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to keep trotting it out.” “There’s so much history with this game,” says Richards. “It’s almost becoming baseball-like. … People have all kinds of theories of where to drop [the chip] — whether to drop it high and let it go, or as low as you can and try to feed it into that slot, or come off to the right and move it left.” During the Plinko episode, producers replaced some of the slots with cars or trips abroad. The special is set to air on September 27, 2013, as part of show’s 42nd season.

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with Drew Carey as the Price Is Right host. In the sense that me makes me love Bob Barker even more and I absolutely hate his skinny-fat guts. But I gotta hand it to Drew here. Fantastic idea. Plinko is what puts asses in the seats. Its what the people want. So just give it to them without all the extra filler. An all Plinko episode of Price is Right is like an all marshmallow box of Lucky Charms so you didn’t have to pick through those fucking oats. It would be like if Kellogs started selling Pop Tarts with frosting that covered the entire pastry instead of just 75% so you have to pick off the crust around the perimeter. Its just none of the bullshit. None of the fluff. All Plinko.

I’ve always thought about how disappointing it would be if you made it all the way to the stage and then they present you with a game like “This or That” where you just choose to leave the prices of 2 prizes the same, or switch them. And if you win both you get like a new living room and a grill. How anticlimactic would that be? Well not September 27th. Everyone is Plinkoing their dicks off with that twirp Drew Carey. Appointment television for us bloggers who can make TV appointments at 11am on weekedays.

 

Military Times – Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill, lost her legs and the use of her right arm as a helicopter pilot in Iraq in 2004. She was awarded a Purple Heart for her combat injuries. Braulio Castillo broke his foot in a prep school injury nearly three decades ago at the U.S. Military Preparatory School, which he attended for nine months before playing football in college. He owns a technology business certified as a service-disabled, veteran-owned company eligible for government set aside contracts. The two met at a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing Wednesday in an exchange neither will forget anytime soon. For background, what brought them together was a months-long House probe into whether Castillo’s company won IRS contracts thanks, in part, to help from a top contracting official and friend inside the IRS named Greg Roseman, who pleaded the Fifth Amendment when called to testify.While much of the hearing delved into questions about Roseman and Castillo’s friendship, lawmakers from both parties wondered aloud how a prep school injury suffered so long ago could result in Castillo’s company getting special set aside contract status from the government at a time when so many injured veterans are looking for work. But among hours of testimony, Duckworth’s questioning of Castillo stood out.

AMAZING. I’ve never heard of Tammy Duckworth before, but she just won my vote for President. I mean this is how you eviscerate somebody. Just complete and total annihilation. Like I literally had a smile ear to ear by the time this was over. The only thing that could have made this better is if Tammy walked up to this scumbag and shot him in the foot at the end of this rant. You think your foot hurts now? Well this is what real pain is. Too bad you can’t do that in this nancy country of ours. Everything has to be so political. But nobody in the history of earth has deserved to have their foot blown off more than this clown claiming disability for getting hurt playing football in high school. Such a joke.

 

If π is expressed in base 26, then each of its digits can be associated with a letter of the alphabet (0=A, 1=B, … 25=Z). This produces an endless string of letters:

D.DRSQLOLYRTRODNLHNQTGKUDQGTUIRXNEQBCKBSZIVQQVGDMELM …

If the digits of π are truly random, then this string “emulates the mythical army of typing monkeys spewing out random letters,” writes Mike Keith. “Among other things, this implies that any text, no matter how long, should eventually appear in the base-26 digits of π.”

In examining the first million letters, Keith has found that the word CONJURE appears at position 246,556. If a carriage return is added after each 2,736 letters, then we have a two-dimensional field in which further words appear, in the style of a word search. Now HOCUS and POCUS appear, intersecting CONJURE (with POCUS in the shape of an L).

When each row is 14,061 digits long, then ALPHA, OMEGA, and GOD appear in a group near position 148,655. And when rows are 13,771 digits long, then DEMON and SATAN appear interlocked near position 255,717. Keith even found the makings of a charming haiku near position 554,766 when rows are 1,058 letters long:

Sun, elk in water;
Oho! For her I’ll try to
Be a hero yet.

More here. See also A Hidden Message and Equidistant Letter Sequences.

We first heard about Rust-Oleum's liquid-repelling product, NeverWet almost two years ago. It looked absolutely magical, and now you can finally buy it.

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Free Fall

What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit?

—Dhash Shrivathsa

The largest purely vertical drop on Earth is the face of Canada's Mount Thor, which is shaped like this:

To make things a little less gruesome, let's suppose there's a pit at the bottom of the cliff, filled with something fluffy—like cotton candy—to safely break your fall.

A human falling with arms and legs outstretched has a terminal velocity in the neighborhood of 55 meters per second. It takes a few hundred meters to get up to speed, so it would take you a little over 26 seconds to fall the full distance.

What can you do in 26 seconds?

For starters, it's enough time to get all the way through the original Super Mario World 1-1,[1]Super Mario 1-1 speed run assuming you have perfect timing and take the shortcut through the pipe.

It's also long enough to miss a phone call. Sprint's ring cycle—the time the phone rings before going to voicemail—is 23 seconds.[2]Sprint ring cycle (For those keeping score, that means Wagner's is 2,350 times longer.)

If someone called your phone, and it started ringing the moment you jumped, it would go to voicemail three seconds before you reached the bottom.

On the other hand, if you jumped off Ireland's 210-meter Cliffs of Moher, you would only be able to fall for about eight seconds—or a little more, if the updrafts were strong. That's not very long, but according to River Tam, given adequate vacuuming systems it might be enough time to drain all the blood from your body.

So far, we've assumed you're falling vertically. But you don't have to.

Even without any special equipment, a skilled skydiver—once they get up to full speed—can glide at almost a 45-degree angle.[3]Glide data By gliding away from the base of the cliff, you could conceivably extend your fall substantially.

It's hard to say exactly how far; in addition to the local terrain, it depends heavily on your choice of clothes. As a comment on a BASE jumping records wiki puts it,

The record for longest [fall time] without a wingsuit is hard to find since the line between jeans and wingsuits has blurred since the introduction of more advanced ... apparel.

Which brings us to wingsuits—the halfway point between parachute pants and parachutes.

Wingsuits let you fall much more slowly. One wingsuit operator posted tracking data from a series of jumps.[4]Jump. Fly. Land., Air & Space It shows that in a glide, a wingsuit can lose altitude as slowly as 18 meters per second—a huge improvement over the normal rate.

Even ignoring horizontal travel, that would stretch out our fall to over a minute. That's long enough for a chess game. It's also long enough to sing the first verse of—appropriately enough—REM's It's the End of the World as We Know It followed by—less appropriately—the entire breakdown from the end of the Spice Girls' Wannabe.

When we include horizontal glides, the times get even longer.

There are a lot of mountains that could probably support very long wingsuit flights. For example, Nanga Parbat, a mountain in Pakistan, has a drop of more than three kilometers at a fairly steep angle.[5]Prof. Dr. Herrligkoffer, The East Pillar of Nanga Parbat, The Alpine Journal (1984) (Surprisingly, a wingsuit still works fine at those altitudes,[6]The Guestroom - Dr Glenn Singleman and Heather Swan [7]Highest BASE jump: Valery Rozov breaks Guinness world record though the jumper needs oxygen and glides a little faster than normal.)

So far, the record for longest wingsuit BASE jump is held by Dean Potter, who jumped from the Eiger—a mountain in Switzerland—and flew for three minutes and twenty seconds.[8]Dean Potter, Above It All

What could you do with three minutes and twenty seconds?

Suppose we recruit Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi, the world's top competitive eaters.

If we can find a way for them to operate wingsuits while eating at full speed, and they jumped from the Eiger, they could—in theory—finish as many as 45 hot dogs between them before reaching the ground ... pass

... which would, if nothing else, earn them what just might be the strangest world record in history.

NYDN – “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm’s private parts are causing a stir. Again. An AMC insider tells Confidenti@l that during filming of the sixth season of the hit show — when the ’60s-style clothing was a tight fit — Hamm was politely instructed by a staffer at the network to please wear underwear while shooting his scenes.  “This season takes place in the 1960s, where the pants are very tight and leave little to the imagination,” a source tells us. “Jon’s impressive anatomy is so distracting that they politely insisted on underwear.” Our insider says that during seasons one and two, AMC’s marketing team even had to do some Photoshop magic on promotional booklets that went out to press in order to make his privates more, well, private.  “His privates are the inside joke,” says our source, who adds that Hamm “knows what he’s got.”  This season, the network hired popular ’60s illustrator Brian Sanders to tackle the poster task with a paintbrush. In past seasons’ posters, we’ve seen Hamm’s Don Draper both sitting and standing with his back to us. The new season debuts on Sunday, April 7, with a two-hour premiere. A rep for Hamm said: “It is ridiculous and not really funny at all. I’d appreciate you taking the high road and not resorting to something childish like this that’s been blogged about 1,000 times.”

Hammerhead cock on that Don Draper. Just an absolute sledge. Trying to cram that dick and balls into a pair of 1960s pantaloons must be an absolute chore. And the staffer can give me a break with this whole underwear thing. Asking Jon Hamm to control his cock so it doesn’t distract people. You can’t stop Jon Hamm’s dick. You can’t even hope to contain it. Asking him to put that thing away in a pair of tighty whities is like asking an elephant to get inside a dog cage. Just not happening. That trunk has a life of its own. Does what it wants. Its Don Draper’s dick and ball’s world. We’re just living in it.

PS – Jon Hamm’s rep can suck my little, 1/10th the size of Don Drapers dick. Its been blogged about 1,000 times and if he steps out of the house bulging like I’m wearing a pair of 3D glasses then its gonna be 1,001. And the time after that 1,002 and so on and so forth. I will never take the high road on Jon Hamm’s dick.

Or: a modern portrait of free agency. Let's count Bradley's stops, working backwards:

Ex-Mariner Milton Bradley convicted of spousal battery, could face 7 years

Ex-Cub Milton Bradley convicted on wife abuse, faces prison time

Former Texas Ranger All-Star Bradley faces jail term

Former Padre Milton Bradley arrested

Ex-A's player Milton Bradley charged in Los Angeles with domestic abuse

Former Dodger Outfielder Milton Bradley Convicted Of Spousal Battery

Former Indians Player Milton Bradley Charged with 13 Counts

Milton Bradley reconnu coupable de violence conjugale

Ex-Cape Fear Crocs’ Milton Bradley charged with domestic abuse

Class is in session at my university this week, but I won't be there. I'll be a part of March Madness, but I'm not a basketball player. I'm a member of my school's band, which makes me a member of the "spirit squad"—the peppy umbrella term that also encompasses our school's cheerleaders and mascot. As such, I am taking an all-expenses-paid trip courtesy of the NCAA. Chartered planes, hotels, and per diem are all provided by an organization founded "as a way to protect student-athletes," even though, during March Madness, we aren't much of either.

We don't sit in a Holiday Inn doing homework until game day. We're on vacation. We stay in resorts; we get sunset views; we share our hotels with famous actors and musicians; we stay in places that give out free wine without carding us. Spirit squads for higher-seeded teams receive relatively luxurious accommodations in prime, downtown locations. Those for lower-seeded teams sometimes wind up in the boonies near the airport. My school has never been a heavy favorite, but my hotels have been unbelievable. I can only dream of what Gonzaga's hotel will look like this year.

It's a racket—the little one that blooms within the big one. No one's an amateur during March Madness.

What's a typical week for a spirit squadder? If the team is placed far enough from home, we get to fly with them. If the team stays close by, which happens only to top seeds in the first round, we'll bus in on game day. That hasn't been my experience, though. The round of 64 is played on Thursday and Friday. Let's say Texas is playing at the Staples Center on Thursday; the Longhorns need to adjust to the new time zone, get in some practice, and make appearances for alumni and donors in the area. So they leave on Tuesday, which means that a saxophonist in the band gets a night out after he checks in to his hotel, then Wednesday is all his. If Texas wins on Thursday, he has the rest of the day and Friday to himself before the round of 32 game on Saturday. If Texas wins on Saturday, guess what? He's got another free trip in store.

I don't know what the players do. We don't talk much. We don't have much in common, but I've never had a bad interaction with any of them. I would imagine their experience is a more supervised, more PG-13 version of ours. A couple years ago, two of my team's players asked my friend to buy them a bottle of Ciroc the night before a game. My friend declined.

Spirit squad isn't so restricted. This isn't high school. There are no bed checks or curfews. No one puts masking tape on our door frames. We don't run or sweat; hangovers are easier to manage. We put on our makeup or facepaint and smile for Jim Nantz, and we play our instruments, and our job for the day is done. The same night those players asked for a bottle of Ciroc we were taking shots of Everclear from a trombone.

When we first check into our hotel we get three days' per diem up front, usually around $55 total, which doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that, for a college kid, "per diem" is Latin for "beer money." If we win our first game, we get per diem for the remainder of the weekend when we return to the hotel. A $5 tax on all 29 people in the band makes for a nice slush fund for filling a hotel suite with booze. We never finished that Everclear. Every year we end up dumping liquor down the drain. Last year it was the moonshine I don’t remember drinking.

The NCAA wants every team to have some support, but not every school has cheerleaders or a band. I've twice been a mercenary spirit squadder, paid in extra per diem to cheer for a school I don't attend. This happens more than you think. Podunk University stumbles into winning the Big Sky tournament and needs someone in its corner halfway across the country. A Podunk U. bursar or a band director or an operations manager gets in contact with someone from one of the other schools in the same host city, who in turn asks his spirit squadders if they want to be peppy on another team's behalf, for cash. Sure, we say. What do we care? A lot of us will probably watch Podunk U. get smacked around on TV anyway. A Podunk U. rep hands out Podunk U. shirts to us mercenaries, and all we have to do is play our normal repertoire and watch the alumni in the building to pick up on the cheers. When the game is over, the people from Podunk U.—school reps and alumni—are nice to us. We share a fleeting kinship, even if we are only Potemkin fans.

March Madness is a great time for small hustles like this. All that TV money lavished on the tournament has to wind up in someone's hands, after all. Cash is everywhere. There are stacks upon stacks of the stuff floating around every host city; the chaperones have manila envelopes with hundreds, even thousands of dollars. (No word on how this affects my amateur status.)

The coming tournament will be my fourth. I'm flying out this afternoon, but I'd rather not tell you where I'm going; like the big racket of March Madness, everyone knows about the little racket, but no one's supposed to talk about it in public. It doesn't matter, anyway. I'll have a great time wherever I wind up this March, because I'll get free shit like pins and sweatshirts, and someone will stuff cash in my pocket as compensation for my having to miss school.

These trips are like living a dream. Every year I nearly fail a class while readjusting to the real world. I've never been to the Final Four. Spirit squads for the better teams will wind up missing nearly a month of school. With the condensed schedule, travel fatigue, and no access to tutors, I don't know how those guys manage to pass their classes. Thank god the NCAA is around to protect us from the pernicious evils of professionalized sports.

A variety of animals have been used to deliver mail over the years, from camels and dogs to horses and pigeons. But cats? According to a 19th century article in the New York Times, around 1877 the Belgian Society for the Elevation of the Domestic Cat tested 37 cats for the task by taking them far from the city of Liege where they "promptly proceeded to 'scat.'" Within 24 hours, they had all returned home.

This result has greatly encouraged the society, and it is proposed to establish at an early day a regular system of cat communication between Liege and the neighboring villages. Messages are to be fastened in water-proof bags around the necks of the animals, and it is believed that, unless the criminal class of dogs undertakes to waylay and rob the mail-cats, the messages will be delivered with rapidity and safety.

"Domestic Explosives and Other Six Column Fancies: (From the New York Times.)" - William Livingston Alden