Monthly Archives: June 2022

Factslap: The Pacific Ocean was so named because Magellan thought it was “pacific,” or peaceful


The largest and oldest ocean basin on Earth, the Pacific has roughly twice as much water as the Atlantic. Yet it didn’t receive the name we know today until the 16th century. On November 28, 1520, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan — after 38 days of weathering the treacherous waters of the strait that’s now named after him at the tip of southern Chile — became the first European to reach the ocean by way of the Atlantic. Happy to have the harrowing journey behind him, Magellan referred to this new ocean as “Mar Pacifico,” meaning “Peaceful Sea.” While the moniker made sense at the time, today we know that both the Pacific and Atlantic can be tumultuous at times.

Yet “Pacific” isn’t the only name this big blue expanse has been known by. In 1513 — seven years before Magellan glimpsed the Pacific — Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa led an expedition across the isthmus of Panama and named the sea he found on the other side the far less poetic “el mar del sul,” or the “South Sea.” However, the most authentic moniker for the Pacific Ocean may be the Hawaiian term “Moananuiākea.” Interestingly, this name — perhaps over a thousand years old — is closely related to the Maori “Te Moana Nui a Kiwa,” meaning the “Great Ocean of Kiwa” (Kiwa being a Maori guardian of the sea). So while “Pacific” is the name most of us now know, it’s certainly not the one used by the people who mapped and sailed the Pacific’s 63 million square miles for centuries before the Europeans arrived.
 

Open Letter to Stan Lee(‘s Ghost)


Dear Stan,

You are not here and wouldn’t remember me if you were. I’ve interviewed you a few times, and was even in one of your cameos: Iron Man cameo (where Tony Stark mistakes you for Hugh Hefner). Did all of them take that long?

Anyhoo, that’s not my question, and this is not another interview request, though that would be quite a scoop. It’s a superhero pitch. And no need to summon your lawyers, who have probably cryogenically frozen your brain somewhere. It’s not a ripoff of Ant-Man or X-Men. Well, it kinda is.

The pitch is a superhero that can harness and all powers of the human brain. And not like Batman, who was never a regular human, no matter what the dweebs say. Who can afford an electric cave?

Consider, then, Quantum, the first superhero to have utter control of the brain, its billions of neurons, its trillions of synapses, and its infinite combination connections. Quantum is androgynous, raceless, and ideologically poseable to fit your retail needs. Quantum can:

  • Turn off neural pathways that deliver pain. Imagine, Stan, a scene when Quantum is captured and placed in a torture device. No matter what the pain brings, no matter the anguish, it all brings a chilling laugh from Quantum, who can laugh at her own amputation. How NC-17 is that?
  • Engage photographic memory at will. Scientists studied one man with a photographic mind and who memorized the PI calculation to roughly the 30,000th digit. Q can double that at least, leaving Batman’s detective looking like the Encyclopedia Brown on meth.
  • Commandeer dreams. This is perhaps the most exciting power, because it unleashes the subconscious. Imagine: Quantum CANNOT put a crime piece together, for whatever dastardly reason. So he/she decides to dream on the case, to approach it from the brain’s dreamscape perspective during sleep. Dreamscapes are like multiverses: You can apply any narrative you wish. Except we know dreamscapes are real.


Because Quantum works at the subatomic level, the battles can occur within someone’s brain, carried in by nothing more than an asymptomatic cough. Stories can be built around epic battles, all occurring within one skull (or lung, heart, kidney, etc.) All panels, scientifically sound (which should shut up the adults who still believe them infantile rubbish).

The villains rip themselves from the social media headlines. Q vs. Covid. Q vs. Facebook A.I. Q vs. Lone Gunman Syndrome. Q vs. Q. Conspiracy theorists alone provide a built-in diehard circulation base.

It’s even got a tagline. Quantum: His/Her Only Limitation Is Your Imagination.

Anyway, that’s the pitch. Feel free to give me a dream sometime, or accidentally irradiate me, or do whatever lingering spirits do. Because Hollywood needs something resembling originality.

How’s my dad, by the way? Portly guy, salt and pepper hair, has probably punched at least one afterlifer in the face and threatened two with the same.

Now HE’S gonna want an interview.