British newspapers have a way of exaggerating reality, but, regarding Yellowstone:
The massive eruption could be a staggering 6,000 times as powerful as the one from Washington’s Mount St Helens in 1980 which killed 57 people and deposited ash in 11 different states and five Canadian provinces.
If the volcano explodes, a climate shift would ensue as the volcano would spew massive amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which can form a sulphur aerosol that reflects and absorbs sunlight.
I'll probe into this latest inflated fear tomorrow.
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- One in 90 births is twins.
- Square that number, and get one in 8100 births being triplets.
- One in 729,000 births results in quadruplets.
- Quintuplets? One in 60 million births.
- There are several sextuplets, with the Gosselins featured in Jon &Kate Plus 8 (right, sextuplets + twins).
- In the U.S. there are two octuplets, in 1998 to the Chukwu family in Texas (seven survived) and the Suleman Octoplets, 2009, in California. The life of Nadya Suleman would fill an encyclopedia. Note the notation of 14 children. She previously had six others, and there is no identifiable father.
- There have been births of nine, and pregnancies up to 15, but none survived.
- Fraternal
- Identical
- Combination
- Today, fertility treatment is responsible for 36% of twins and 78% of triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets.
- Average gestation is 29 weeks, so all these births will be premature with an average weight less than three pounds.
- Mother will gain around 50 pounds, and almost surely by cesarean delivery.
- The Dione Quintuplets (right), Canada, 1934 were the first surviving set of identical quintuplets. They financially survived by being displayed as a tourist attraction.
- Fischer Quintuplets, South Dakota, 1963, were the first U.S. fivesome.
- Baseball player Melvin Mora became a dad of quintuplets in 2001.
- The mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics were quintuplets.
- Five seat strollers are available, but are expensive at $1000.
- Older, larger and taller women are more apt to have multiple births.
- Less likely in the Orient.
- Parents will change 35,000 diapers before child is potty-trained.
- Full term is 40 weeks.
Just background for a film I recently saw, Three Identical Strangers. I went to this documentary mostly because Rotten Tomatoes gave it 95%/86% ratings. If you plan on seeing this film and don't want to know the whole story, this review tells most of the whole story without giving everything away. I will, so scroll down to the end of this posting for my second film Skyscraper.
On 12 July 1961 triplets were born to an unmarried Jewish girl who gave them up to Manhattan's Louise Wise Adoption Agency. The movie is all joy and wonderment when these triplets, at the age of 19, adopted by different parents who did not know there were two others, coincidentally find each other. That would have made for a typical Hollywood film if that's were it ended.
But there was a dark underside. They were provided to three families at three economic levels, each with an older sister, previously adopted. You get where this is headed? Yes, a scientific study sponsored by what became the Jewish Board, which today has 3,000 employees with a $200 million budget. Eminent New York City psychiatrist Viola Bernard (left) persuaded the Louis Wise organization to send multiple birth children to separate homes without telling anyone, and regularly study the outcome.
Her motivation was to show that identical twins would better forge an individual identity without the influence of the other. Nearly 60 years ago, this sort of interest was not entirely immoral. However, she passed away early in the effort, and New York University psychiatrist Peter Neubauer was hired to replace her. The study ended two decades later in 1980, accumulating 10,000 pages of information, and a decision was made not to publish because of possible negative public opinion. Note that this termination coincided with the triplets discovering each other.
Neubauer found The Wizard of Oz disturbing. Said he, child viewers became deeply troubled by the seductive mix of realism and fantasy. This was the film from which came the top movie song of all time, Over the Rainbow.
The entire Neubauer file was sent to Yale University and sealed until 2066. Not certain how many twins and triplets were studied, but at the age of 35, twins Else Schein and Paula Bernstein, who were unknowingly in this experiment, began to write a memoir, and published Identical Strangers in 2007.
The film was made by British director Timothy Wardle, partly because previous American attempts faced intense pressure from guess who. CNN partly financed the production, and will air it later this year. The Jewish Board did not participate in the film. More information will almost surely come to light. For now, the bottom line is that it appears nature overwhelms nurture.
I also saw Skyscraper with Dwayne Johnson and Pearl, a super-skyscraper 3500 feet tall in Hong Kong. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai at a mere 2717 feet is currently the highest building. A so-so 49% Rotten Tomatoes reviewers rating, but 79% of the audience liked it. I did, for after all, The Rock is from Hawaii, and my high school.
Before the films I had lunch at Goma Tei, located close to Kahala Theater. Good al dente ramen with Kagawa broth:
Before the films I had lunch at Goma Tei, located close to Kahala Theater. Good al dente ramen with Kagawa broth:
There is a Tomatometer 100 documentary to open this week: McQueen. Also, Mama Mia. Here We Go Again, with the same cast (Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, etc.), which received 94%/88% ratings. Oh, and Cher somehow shows up, plus Andy Garcia, so she could sing Fernando to him. All of the ABBA hits, of course, are also back.
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