The Straight Dope 12/02/2005

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 12/02/2005

Dear Cecil:

With shows like Lost and Gilligan's Island, movies like Cast
Away and Swiss Family Robinson, and books like Robinson
Crusoe, I've been wondering: Are there documented cases of a
person or persons being shipwrecked on an uncharted,
deserted isle and surviving for some length of time only to
be rescued later? Are there a lot of large, uninhabited
islands in the South Pacific that could sustain a person
indefinitely? --D.G., Dallas, TX

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Cecil replies:

As usual, D., first we have to straighten out your question.
The answer to the one you asked is none too surprising:
Yeah, lots of folks have survived shipwrecks, and some spent
time on deserted islands in the process. To cite a
well-known example, U.S. Navy lieutenant John F. Kennedy and
the crew of PT-109 were rescued after several days on an
island following the destruction of their boat in a
nighttime collision with a Japanese warship in 1943.

But that's not what you're after. What you want to know is
whether you can survive the classic Robinson Crusoe
scenario, to my mind depicted in purest form in the Tom
Hanks movie Cast Away (2000), which features a (1) solitary
(2) product of civilization who is (3) unexpectedly marooned
on (4) a deserted island for (5) a year or more with (6)
only such resources as you'd reasonably expect to find,
i.e., naturally occurring food, water, and so on plus a
modicum of junk washing up on the beach.

Has anyone really endured such an ordeal? With one possible
exception . . .

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/051202.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

As a history buff, I've never found a good answer anywhere
to this question, namely, just how was the great library of
Alexandria destroyed? When did this destruction happen? --
History Fanatic in Atlanta, Georgia

SDSTAFF Dex replies:

There's considerable disagreement among historians on how
and when the great library was destroyed. But before we
discuss its end, let's discuss its beginnings.

Libraries date back to earliest historic times.
Archaeologists have found libraries--that is, storage places
for clay tablets carved in cuneiform--in Mesopotamia, dating
from around 2000 BC. As clay tablets and cuneiform gave way
to scrolls and an alphabet, Greek authors and scholars
around the 5th century BC began to develop history and
philosophy, and the evidence strongly suggests they had
access to libraries. Aristotle (384- 321 BC), the teacher of
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), had a personal library of
around 400 scrolls, one of the largest in ancient times.
When Alexander marched east to India, he designated
administrators in the libraries and archives of the
countries he conquered to study local laws and records to
determine the best means of governing each region. 

The great library at Alexandria in Egypt was founded by the
Ptolemy dynasty around 290 BC, in a palace district known as
the Brucheion. Alexandria was the largest city in the
western world at the time, the home of the papyrus industry
and the center of the book trade. A smaller "daughter
library" was built in the same district about a century
later at the temple of Serapis. It was called a "museum,"
that is, a "house of the muses"--what we would call a school
of arts and sciences.

It wouldn't have looked like a modern library. 

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/malexanderlibrary.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 02/07/1986

Dear Cecil: 

Cecil, O Font of Inestimable Wisdom, please tell me about
the christening of ships. If a world famous celebrity (say,
Cecil Adams) is about to christen a ship the USS Straight
Dope, but at the last moment, a dangerous psycho runs up and
grabs the Dom Perignon, hits the ship, and christens it the
USS Dear Abby, does that mean the vessel is really named
after the world's lamest advice column? Can it be
rechristened, or was it ever truly christened in the first
place? I need to know soon, Cecil--my prankster cousin
pulled this stunt with my new 90-foot yacht, now called the
Heavy Brick. --Zeke K., Evanston, Illinois  

Cecil replies: 

Zeke, you're old enough to realize that what you say in this
world is of no great importance. It's what you write down on
the official government form. I'm talking about the federal
government now, you understand. Most states don't care what
you dub your tub as long as you pay the registration fee. In
such cases the name of the boat depends entirely on the whim
of the mope wielding the paint brush and stencil kit.  The
naming process is more formal for boats registered with the
Coast Guard, as is required for certain commercial vessels.
Among other things you have to fill out Form CG-1258,
Application for Documentation or for Surrender, Replacement,
or Redocumentation, wherein you state the proposed name of
the boat, along with various things that we need not go into
right now. You send this in with the appropriate fee and the
Coast Guard sends you back another form assigning you an
official number and telling you to affix it to the boat,
along with the name and hailing port. That done, you send in
yet another form and the gummint sends you back Form
CG-1270, Certificate of Documentation, which officially
declares the name of the boat to be whatever you wrote down
on Form CG-1258. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_446.html

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