What are the 9 races of the world, according to Pirates 3?

For those who haven't seen the movie, the principals (Sparrow, Turner, and Swan) wind up at a meeting of the "nine pirate lords", and it's immediately clear (to me, anyway!) that they represent Disney/Verbinski/someone's exhaustive scheme of racial categorization.

W.E.B. DuBois claimed there were eight races: Slavs, Teutons, English, "the Romance race," Semites, Hindus, Mongolians, and Negroes. Pirates paints a somewhat different picture, with its "nine lords." At first glance I took them to be: Chinese (Swan, in place of Sao Feng), African (Jocard), French (Chevalle), generic Latin American (Vallenueva), Spanish (Barbosa), Caucasian (Sparrow), Indian (Sumbhajee), generic Middle Eastern (Ammand), and Chinese Race II (Ching). (An unexplored possibility: either Swan or Ching represents the race of Women ...)

But the Wikipedia entry about these matters tells a slightly different story, or perhaps just a more specific one. (It appears to be partly crib notes to Disney's website, and partly made up by the author.) Ammand is said to be Turkish, Barbosa hails from the Caspian Sea, and Vallenueva is Spanish. Also Keith Richards is from Masagascar.

(It's also interesting to sort the pirates in terms of the ethnic/national identities and ancestries of the actors who portray them: Ammand is Syrian, Ching is American with Japanese parents, Valleneuva is Mexican, Jocard is South African, Chevalle is Romanian, etc.)

This is all very "Small World"-y, but the pirate Captains actually fit neatly into DuBois' picture, so long as Sparrow is an English, Jocard is a Negro, Sumbhajee a Hindu, and ... well, it gets worse from there. Only one of the Chinese pirates gets to be Mongolian, Vallenueva and Chevalle will have to share "the Romance race," and Barbosa has to choose: Slav or Teuton? But since it's 8 races to 9 Captains, some lucky pirate might end up with no race at all.

More shark "hanky panky"!

Apparently, that is the appropriate scientific terminology. Courtesy of CNN:

NORFOLK, Virginia (AP) -- Veterinarian Bob George sliced open the dead shark and saw the outline of a fish.

No surprise there, since sharks digest their food slowly.

Then George realized he wasn't looking at the stomach of the blacktip reef shark, but at her uterus. In it was a perfectly formed, 10-inch-long shark pup that was almost ready to be born.

George was dumbfounded.

He had been examining the shark, Tidbit, to figure out why she reacted badly to routine sedatives during a physical and died, hours after biting an aquarium curator on the shin. Now there was a bigger mystery: How did Tidbit get pregnant?

"We must have had hanky panky" in the shark tank, he thought.

I urge you to read the entire story. My favorite part is when the pregnant shark, high on shark sedatives, attacks the scientists before dramatically expiring. She's all, I'll physical you, bitches! I'm two sharks in one!

PIRATES 3 RELEASED!!!!

Three weeks ago, and nobody cares. Sigh. The best hope for this summer is Eagle vs. Shark.

Will the death not end??

As if it's not enough that Mr. Wizard has kicked the proverbial bucket, it turns out the whale sharks are dying at the Georgia Aquarium:

ATLANTA - Georgia Aquarium officials say it may be months before they know what caused Wednesday's death of another whale shark, the second this year at the only facility outside Asia that displays the huge, rare fish.

Norton's death also came only a few weeks after two new whale sharks arrived at the aquarium from Taiwan. At the time, Taiwan fishery officials had said they were satisfied the aquarium provided the quality care the young whale sharks — named Yushan, which means "Jade Mountain" and Taroko, named after a national park in Taiwan — would need.

Aquarium officials planned a necropsy Wednesday afternoon for Norton. His death came five months after the death of Ralph, another whale shark that was among the aquarium's first stars after it opened in 2005.

Z-Man and I were fortunate to see both Norton and Ralph soon after the aquarium opened. I wonder if one of those shady-looking sea turtles is on a murderous rampage. You never know with those things.

RIP, Mr. Wizard.

From the NYTimes:

Don Herbert, who unlocked the wonders of science for youngsters of the 1950s and ’60s as television’s Mr. Wizard, died yesterday at his home in the Bell Canyon section of Los Angeles. He was 89.

I loved Mr. Wizard, even though my mother maintained that he "didn't seem very nice" because he was "condescending" to the kids on his show. (This is the same woman who ruined The Smurfs for me by explaining that they were sexist. When I was, like, five.) Apparently, you can order both "Watch Mr. Wizard" and "Mr. Wizard's World" DVD box sets from Mr. Wizard Studios. We should totally do a memorial marathon.

Ask - And Ye Shall Receive.

"Does anyone know," Ms. Cumber asks, "if Vincent Price and Peter Lorre ever starred in a movie together?" Why yes, Ms. Cumber, it so happens that the LEVIATHAN knows.

In fact, Mr. Price and Mr. Lorre starred in no less than five motion pictures together, not counting television (and who does?). A brief survey follows.

First (which is to say, for reasons to be revealed in a moment, last) there is The Comedy of Terrors (1964), directed by the great Jacques Tourneur, the mastermind behind both the original Cat People and the pioneering I Walked with a Zombie. This doesn't seem to have been one of Tourneur's (or Price's or Lorre's) finer moments.

Next up is The Raven (1963) (classy!), in which Price portrayed "Dr. Erasmus Craven," while Lorre stole the show as the fun-loving "Dr. Adolphus Bedlo" (ah, how fondly I remember his antics from Poe's poem!). Entrancingly, this film also stars Boris Karloff (as the incorrigible "Dr. Scarabus") and Jack Nicholson as "Rexford Bedlo"...which can only mean that, yes, the Lorre is father to the Jack.

In Tales of Terror (1962), another Poe-based romp, the pair teamed up again, Price in multiple roles, while Lorre anchored the show as the redoubtable "Montresor Herringbone."

Stepping back a few years to 1959, we find Price & Lorre (not to be confused with Fry & Laurie...

...although these two could almost pass for a younger...never mind) matching wits in The Big Circus (1959) (an imdb user was prompted to comment: "Stands as one of the greatest circus movies of all time," which raises the important question - what are the other greatest circus movies? Dumbo? Big Top Pee Wee?). Lorre plays "Skeeter"; one can only imagine.

And last but not least, we have The Story of Mankind (1957). I will let this elegant summary of the film's plot speak for itself: "The council of elders of outer space is deliberating on a very important subject: Must mankind be allowed to survive, or is it so esentially evil that it must be destroyed? A devil and an angel act as prosecutor and defense for the human race, and the movie presents in a very interesting way a series of episodes of the human history. What will be the final veredict? Innocent, or Guilty?" OK, well, it can't speak for itself, because someone has to tell you that this movie also stars Dennis Hopper as Napoleon Bonaparte! And Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton!! In fact, all of the Marx Brothers (except Zeppo) are in this movie, which is based on a novel by none other than Henrik Van Loon.

And if all of this seems too crazy to be true, here is the final (& most LEVIATHAN-y) factoid of them all. Who, you may wonder, first brought these two masters of the cinematic art together? To whose genius are we so deeply indepted? None other than the master of disaster, Mr. Irwin Allen. Where, you may wonder, have I heard that name before? In addition to Flood! (1976), Fire! (1977), and The Towering Inferno (1974), Mr. Allen is the man who brought you the original Poseidon Adventure (1972).

Wow.

Sea Tiger Stalks Atlantic Seaboard!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.