Life imitates XKCD.

I haven't resorted to linking, the lowest form of blogging, in a while, so I'm entitled. Anyways, here's the comic:



Now, here's Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wood&oldid=224066992#Wood_in_Popular_Culture

Even funnier is the warning placed on the page: "Editing of this article by new or unregistered users is currently disabled until July 10, 2008 because a mention in xkcd is causing significant disruption in the form of useless "wood in pop culture" section additions."

--Update 11:28--

It gets better: here's the "Popular Culture" section of the "Popular Culture" article.

Indiana Jones and the Historical Accuracy.

Yay! Now that the bulk of work is finished on my "other project" I can get back to my haphazardly-scheduled blog posting. I plan on writing a lot more, particularly reviews and "my take" bits, since my opinion is vastly more important than yours, because I have a blog. There are several posts which I have in mind that I want to get to over the next few weeks.

Today's topic, children, is The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. I'll have a complete review of it once the third and final volume is out come April 29th. But I wanted to mention something of interest from volume two: The War Years.

Volume Two contains some of the best Young Indy episodes (including one co-starring both Catherine Zeta-Jones and Daniel Craig; quite the line-up). One of the better episodes, Adventures in the Secret Service has Indy in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. But that's not the part I want to talk about. The first half of the episode has Indy taking on a secret mission to escort Prince Sixtus to a secret meeting with Emperor Charles I of Austria, to discuss a peace treaty with the allies, separately from Germany.

Ok, I sez to myself. I know World War I pretty well and I don't remember reading about anything like that. I assumed it was a dramatic fabrication in what is otherwise a "mostly" historically accurate show. But I decide to look it up on that oracle of accurate information (snicker snicker), Wikipedia.

Intersting, intersting, I say to myself, reading Charles' wikipedia entry (full name: Karl Franz Josef Ludwig Hubert Georg Maria von Habsburg-Lothringen). He was emperor for just under two years, and was, in fact, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. So they got that right. Child's play. Reading further, I see that Prince Sixtus was, in fact, his brother-in-law, as stated in the episode, as he was the brother of Emperor Charles' wife, Princess Zita of Parma. Ok, they get a point for that. Next up, is that fact that Prince Sixtus is actually an officer in the Belgian army, which explains why Indy (a Belgian officer working French intelligence), escorts him. This is getting eerily accurate. Finally I notice that... What? Charles I entered into secret negotiations with the French, represented by Prince Sixtus? Dude, they didn't make it up. And not only that, but Charles' advisor, Ottokar Czernin, even looks like Christopher Lee, who played him in the episode.

Ok, so cool, they're actually pretty good on the facts. The half-episode ends with Indy escorting Prince Sixtus back to Switzerland, with a letter, secretly written by Charles so Czernin—who was opposed to the separate peace—wouldn't know about it, conceding to the Allies' demands. In real life, the secret peace was broken when the French posted memos written by Charles, hurting Austria's relations with Germany, making them more dependent on their ally. Way to go France.

But there's one fact they left out of the episode.

That's Blessed Charles I to you.

That's right. On October 3, 2004, Pope John Paul the Great beatified Emperor Charles I of Austria, praising him for putting his Christian faith first while making political decisions, and also for his role as a peacemaker while trying to bring about an end to the Great War. His Holiness said of Blessed Charles:

"The decisive task of Christians consists in seeking, recognizing and following God's will in all things. The Christian statesman, Charles of Austria , confronted this challenge every day. To his eyes, war appeared as "something appalling". Amid the tumult of the First World War, he strove to promote the peace initiative of my Predecessor, Benedict XV.

"From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!"

Too bad they left that tidbit out of the episode, but it probably didn't fit with George Lucas' view of religion (more on that when I get around to the full review of the series).

There's also one more interesting thing to note about Emperor Blessed Charles I: I've met his son.

Ok, I knew that I had met an Otto von Hapsburg, Crown Prince of Austria, during my (in?)famous adventures of early 2001. I just didn't realize until after watching this episode and reading about it on Wikipedia that it was that Otto von Hapsburg, Crown Prince of Austria (full name: Archduke Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius of Austria). But it's ultimately cool. I know the son of a beatified emperor. Beat that!

I would also like to point out, for those of you keeping score, that this gives me an Indiana Jones index of 3.

--EDIT--

I guess I should point out that the episode was made before Charles I was beatified, but he was still venerable Charles I, the cause for his canonization was open, and it's not like his faith was unknown.

Random Wikipedia Article of the Day

The Hum, also known as the "Bristol Hum" or the "Taos Hum," is a low-frequency droning sound of unknown origin heard by a small percentage of people. The article has a link to a recording of the hum captured by a New Zealand university professor. You'll probably need a subwoofer to hear it, since it's a 56 Hz tone.

Wikipedia is Dangerous.

I know of few better time wasters. There aren't too many places where you can begin by looking up 17th century sailing vessels and end up reading about the history of the Luftwaffe, only by clicking links within the articles. The trail went something like this:

Fluyt
Sailing Vessel
Sailing Ship
Corvette
Littoral Combat Ship
USS Freedom (LCS-1)
RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile
Braunschweig-class Corvette
Germany
Luftwaffe

It's sort of like the IMDb game. The way that works is if you are looking at one page in IMDb and you decide you want to look up another page, you are not allowed to search on the term. Instead, you just have to click links to get from one actor/filmmaker/movie page to another actor/filmmaker/movie page. Bonus points if you do it in 6 links or fewer.