The Straight Dope 04/18/2003

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

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 04/18/2003

Dear Cecil:

What's the Straight Dope on handwriting analysis?
I know that handwriting experts' testimony can be
accepted in court, so there must be something to
it. But I have a hard time believing that a smart
criminal wouldn't be able to change his writing to
avoid detection. On a related issue, can an
"expert" really tell something about your
personality from your handwriting (e.g., that
loops in your g's and y's indicate a high sex
drive)? If that were true, it would seem that one's
handwriting would change from day to day, which it
doesn't. --Kristin in Sausalito, California

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Cecil replies:

At first this question might seem like a great
opportunity to lay out the difference between
science and pseudoscience. On the one hand we have
forensic handwriting analysis, in which an expert
decides whether two or more samples were written
by the same person, e.g., whether a signature was
forged. On the other we have graphology, in which
some sage tries to divine a subject's personality
traits from his or her handwriting. While graphology
enjoys about the same prestige as palm reading,
forensic handwriting analysis has helped send people
to jail since the days of the Lindbergh kidnapping.
But in the eyes of the law, the credibility of such
analysis is on the wane. Thanks to a landmark Supreme
Court ruling in the early 90s, more and more federal
judges are deciding that while forensic handwriting
analysis may not be quackery, it's not exactly science
either.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030418.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

I'm reading Huckleberry Finn again, and I've reached
the part where Huck, having faked his murder and run
away, is hiding on an island watching the ferry try
to locate his corpse in the river. This is done by
firing a cannon, which supposedly raises a submerged
body, and floating loaves of bread filled with
quicksilver in the river, which supposedly finds said
body. What's the principle behind these practices, and
do they work? And wouldn't Huck have died of mercury
poisoning after eating the bread? --Marc Hirsh

SDSTAFF Dex and SDSTAFF Hawk reply:

For those who never took a course in American literature,
Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) published
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884. He been
working on it on and off for almost ten years as a "kind
of companion" to his earlier very successful The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Twain (1835-1910) once defined a classic as "a book which
people praise and don't read." Michael Patrick Hearn in
The Annotated Huckleberry Finn says that "Huckleberry Finn
is the exception to his rule: It is a classic which is both
praised and still read. It has also been both condemned
and banned. No other living work of American literature has
suffered so contradictory a history." 

The story is that of a young boy, starting in St.
Petersburg, Missouri (a thinly veiled cover for
Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain spent most of his
youth), in pre-Civil War days, who tries to run
away from "sivilization" with an escaped slave
named Jim. The book paints a picture of an era
through the dialects and habits of the characters,
through their adventures and misadventures, and
through their attitudes and the way those attitudes
change during the story. One of those attitudes is
the inclination to superstition. 

Let's deal with your cannon question first. 

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

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 12/22/1978

Dear Cecil: 

Scott tissue, in its advertisements, used to claim
that each roll of its paper was 1,000 sheets, 500
sheets longer than any other brand. Yet it claimed
that the additional 500 sheets made it last 28
percent longer.  How did the Scott people arrive at
the 28 percent figure? If there are 100 percent
more sheets in one of its roll, shouldn't it last
100 percent longer, not 28 percent?
--Anonymous, Phoenix

Dear Anonymous: 

You'd think so, all right. However, we are dealing
here not with the crisp elegance of mathematics, but
the fetid swamp of human nature.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_176b.html

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