Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that Fresca was the favorite drink of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a button installed on the desk in the White House’s Oval Office which would summon his military aide to bring the drink.

– Wikipedia, “Fresca.”

There are a ton of hilarious anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson but this might be my favorite. Dude was way too awesome to pick up the phone or use the intercom or heaven forbid, actually get up and walk out of his office to grab a Fresca. He had a special Fresca button installed so he didn’t have to bother with all that.

Fun fact: Fresca happens to be my favorite soda, too. I stopped drinking soda with sugar in it at some point in high school and by now a full serving of any non-diet soda makes me feel almost sick from the sweetness. I know that diet soda is also not good for me, so spare me the lectures. Fresca is delicious. It’s one of our very few grapefruit-flavored things, and I feel like supporting it is a good way of letting candy-developers everywhere understand that I would purchase more grapefruit-flavored things if they became available.

Also, I like drinking Fresca because it is inherently hilarious for reasons I can’t really define. You’ll have to ask Judge Smalls I guess.

Unfortunately it is surprisingly hard to find Fresca other than in 12 packs in supermarkets, and I rarely find myself moved to buy a 12 pack of soda in the supermarket. The other flavors of Fresca that came out a few years back pale in comparison to the OG Fresca. Don’t water down my grapefruit flavor with peach, please. No disrespect to peach-flavored stuff.

On my campus television show in college we used to say the show was sponsored by Fresca and drink it on air all the time. Often that Fresca was spiked with 99 Bananas, a ridiculous liquor. That was the first but certainly not last time I was scolded for drinking on camera. And I’m really not much of a drinker.

The news about LBJ and Fresca comes via Dan Lewis’ Now I Know newsletter, which you should probably check out.

Because it exists.

From the Wikipedia: Burj Khalifa.

Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At its highest point, it is 2,717 feet tall, just shy of 1000 feet higher than the next tallest building in the world. By architectural detail (ie not including antennae), it more than twice the height of the Empire State Building. Burj Khalifa is named for UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who lent support to the project when the economy went south. It is a mixed-use building, with a hotel, residences and corporate suites.

The building opened on Jan. 4, 2010. When it did, it became the tallest skyscraper ever built, the tallest structure ever built, the tallest extant structure, the tallest freestanding structure, the building with the most floors and the building with the highest occupied floor — the 160th. Burj Khalifa can boast the world’s highest mosque, the world’s highest swimming pool, the world’s highest nightclub, the world’s highest restaurant, and, I like to imagine, the world’s highest guy, a bit lost and just sort of stumbling around all like, “bro, this is a really tall building.”

The Wikipedia says Burj Khalifa was built “to put Dubai on the map with something really sensational,” and that makes sense. Obviously this and this and this weren’t going to cut it.

The tower was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which is basically the Yankees of architectural firms. It is reminiscent of The Illinois, a mile-high building proposed for Chicago by Frank Lloyd Wright when he was an old-ass man and everyone figured he had lost his mind. Its design is also supposedly derived from elements of Islamic architecture and inspired by the Hymenocallis flower. Basically, Burj Khalifa is a prism through which you can see pretty much anything you want; that’s what happens when you build something so tall the human eyes and brain can’t really process it. (I assume. Man, I really need to get to Dubai.)

Obviously a building of this magnitude requires quite a feat of window-washing. Burj Khalifa has a horizontal track at levels 40, 73 and 109 that holds a bucket machine that moves horizontally and vertically. There are $8 million worth of Australian robots to clean to top 27 tiers and the glass spire. It takes 36 workers three-to-four months to clear the entire facade of Burj Khalifa.

Outside Burj Khalifa is a fountain that shoots water 490 feet into the air. There was a sweet fireworks show when Burj Khalifa opened. People like to BASE jump off Burj Khalifa.

Originally posted March 18, 2010.

I like nature as much as the next guy, but I’m not generally one to get all broken up about extinct animals because, you know, survival of the fittest and all. But I do always wonder what those extinct animals would have tasted like.

The subject of today’s From the Wikipedia was almost certainly delicious. In fact, it was partly our ancestors’ ravenous consumption of the species that led to its demise, because our forefathers lacked the foresight to leave even a few of them behind for us to breed and subsequently barbecue.

From the Wikipedia: The Great Auk.

The Great Auk was a species of flightless bird that lived on islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain up until the 19th century. It stood about 30-33 inches high and vaguely resembled a penguin. Under its down, it had a thick layer of fat, which served the dual purpose of protecting it from the cold Northern air and preventing its meat from drying up when cooked over an open fire.

Besides its deliciousness, the Great Auk’s most notable characteristic, by far, was its naivete. For some stupid reason, it was not afraid of humans, even though it clearly should have been.

In fact, on a 1622 expedition to Funk Island — which is not nearly as awesome a place as it sounds — a British crew was able to drive the succulent poultry right up the gangplanks and onto their boat. Sir Richard Whitbourne described it, “as if God had made the innocency of so poore a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the sustenation of man.”

But man, being man, was obviously not an admirable instrument for the sustenation of so poore a creature.

Hint to animals: Fear humans or figure out how to make humans fear you. Otherwise, you’ll endure species-wide humiliations like the ones that eventually spelled the demise of the Great Auk.

As long ago as 2000 B.C., someone was buried in Newfoundland wearing a coat made of 200 Great Auk skins with the heads left on for decoration. The Great Auk jacket was the O.G. mink coat.

The Beothuk people of Newfoundland made pudding out of Great Auk eggs. (It should be noted, here, that the last surviving Beothuk died about 15 years before the last Great Auk, so the Great Auk had the last laugh in that storied rivalry.)

But more than anything, it is the treatment of the last few Great Auks that underscores humanity’s lack thereof.

By the turn of the 19th century, after centuries of being hunted for its meat, eggs and down feathers, the Great Auk was nearly extinct, and in 1794 it became illegal to kill Great Auks in England.

That didn’t stop the 75-year-old Scotsman who caught the last Great Auk ever seen in the British Isles, though. He tied the bird up for three days then beat it to death with a stick. Why? Because he thought it was a witch, obviously.

The last remaining colony of about 50 Great Auks lived on an island inaccessible to humans until 1830, when the island submerged and they were forced to move to another island that was barely accessible to humans.

Just accessible enough, it turned out, for preservationists — I kid you not — to kill the remaining birds for displaying their skins and eggs in museums.

In July, 1844, the last pair of Great Auks sat incubating an egg, still somehow not fearing humans even though humans had killed all the other Great Auks. Three humans approached and the two Great Auks just sat there on the egg, so two of the humans strangled the Great Auks while the third smashed their egg with his boot.

That was all for the Great Auk.

Heard about this thing for the first time this morning. Here I thought the city’s only notable bird was the middle finger. (Ed. note: Heyoo!)

From the Wikipedia: Pale Male.

Pale Male is a Red-tailed hawk that has made his home in New York City since the early 1990s. He is the first of his species known to have built his nest in a building instead of a tree, and he has sired at least 26 chicks. He is named Pale Male because he is a male bird and he is pale.

I’m on the record as saying birds are pretty stupid, and I’ve never really understood birdwatching as a hobby. I mean, look: I like looking at birds because they can fly, which is awesome, and they’re colorful, which is nice too. When I see a blue jay or a cardinal in my backyard I’m all, “hey, look at that bird! It can fly and it’s colorful, and I can identify it because I recognize it from a baseball team’s logo.”

But then after I look at it for a little while, either the bird flies away or I go back to tending to my barbecue, because it’s highly unlikely the bird’s really going to do anything all that interesting. And after the bird leaves I’m never like, “damn, I wish I were still looking at that bird.”

Hawks and other birds of prey are clearly a different story, though. First of all, they’re called raptors, which is viciously badass. And I know I only think that because of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, but whatever. Also, they’re birds that totally dominate other animals. Death from above.

When I was in Costa Rica I watched a hawk stalk a family of monkeys, then swoop in and grab a baby monkey. Monkeys are sweet so it was sad and all, but they’re also crazy dexterous even when they’re young, so that’s pretty impressive work by the hawk right there. Really some impressive nature all around.

Back to Pale Male: After being chased from Central Park by crows in 1991, he moved to a classy 5th Ave. apartment building, sort of a real-life rags to riches story. In his prime location on E. 74th St., overlooking the park, he has romanced four different mates.

In 2004, a group of chumps and suckers, obviously jealous of Pale Male’s remarkable virility, took down his nest and the anti-pigeon spikes upon which it was built. But it turned out Mary Tyler Moore lived in the building, and she and a group of birders protested until the co-op board agreed to install a new “cradle” for his nest.

Since then, there have been numerous accounts of other red-tailed hawks setting up camp on buildings around the city. Presumably many of them are Pale Male’s offspring. I will go ahead and assume this means the city’s going to eventually be overrun with a bunch of inbred hawks, which might be kind of awesome if you think about it.

Pale Male has been featured in a PBS Documentary, three children’s books, a Steve Earle song, and numerous Conan O’Brien sketches.

Because adenosine, in part, serves to regulate blood pressure by causing vasodilation, the increased effects of adenosine due to caffeine withdrawal cause the blood vessels of the head to dilate, leading to an excess of blood in the head and causing a headache and nausea. This means caffeine has vasoconstriction properties.[94] Reduced catecholamine activity may cause feelings of fatigue and drowsiness. A reduction in serotonin levels when caffeine use is stopped can cause anxiety, irritability, inability to concentrate, and diminished motivation to initiate or to complete daily tasks; in extreme cases it may cause mild depression. Together, these effects have come to be known as a “crash”.[95]

Withdrawal symptoms — possibly including headache, irritability, an inability to concentrate, drowsiness, insomnia and pain in the stomach, upper body, and joints[96] — may appear within 12 to 24 hours after discontinuation of caffeine intake, peak at roughly 48 hours, and usually last from one to five days, representing the time required for the number of adenosine receptors in the brain to revert to “normal” levels, uninfluenced by caffeine consumption.

– The Wikipedia, “Caffeine.”

If you ever doubt caffeine’s potency, try quitting it cold turkey. When I pulled into a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike to clean out my car yesterday and realized I had already drank about 48 ounces of coffee and a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew, I realized I should probably go off caffeine for a while. Now I have a brutal headache, and I’m quite irritable. Who wants to fight me?

Originally published Feb. 1, 2010, a day dedicated to Rex Ryan’s middle finger.

Hilariously, the finger — as in the middle finger, the bird, the flip-off — has its own Wikipedia page. And it’s your day, the finger.

From the Wikipedia: The finger.

You already knew that the finger is an obscene gesture created by showing the back of the hand while extending only the middle finger upwards, and that it often connotes the phrase, “up yours.”

What you probably didn’t know is that the tradition dates back to ancient Greece, and was known as — no joke — digitus impudicus, or “impudent finger” in Roman times.

The Wikipedia speculates that the use of the finger started as a threat, since the middle finger was an archer’s bow-plucking finger, and so extending the middle finger was really just the middle-ages version of the Gilbert Arenas trigger-thumb.

The entry also includes a rundown of similarly obscene hand gestures in other cultures, which is a handy thing to know if you’re traveling. For example, DO NOT flash the two-finger, back of the hand V-sign to people in most other English-speaking countries, because they do not think it means “peace.” This means you, Justin Bieber.

What the Wikipedia does not include, unfortunately, is a list of popular middle-finger delivery styles.

So I’ll provide a few on my own. If anyone wants to add these to the Wikipedia, you know, go to town.

1.) The “Right Here, Buddy”: This is the method Rex Ryan chose, and probably the most widely used variety of the middle finger. It is by nature dismissive, as if to suggest that the provider has something to lord over its recipient. In Ryan’s case, it almost certainly came in response to some heckling, as if to say, “I got your fat joke right here, buddy. I just coached a team to the AFC Championship, and I’m about to eat more bacon than you can possibly conceive.”

2.) The Maniacal Double: This is my favorite, especially while driving. I think in New York the finger gets bandied about so liberally that it almost loses its meaning, so I like to bring it back by adding a little flair. Next time someone cuts you off or does some bad-driving move that prompts your road rage, drive up next to them, widen your eyes as far as they’ll go, and wave both middle fingers around in the air at them. The driver will almost certainly be terrified enough to think twice next time he or she is about to do something stupid and/or dangerous on the road.

NOTE: It is crucial that your tires be properly aligned before you attempt the Maniacal Double. And yes, I know that it is hypocritical to respond to a dangerous or dumb instance of driving with something at least as dangerous and dumb. But wait ’til you see the look on that guy’s face.

3.) The Clever Guy: This category includes all middle-finger techniques popular in late elementary school, including holding up the index, middle and ring fingers and instructing recipients to “read between the lines” and pretending your hand has a little crank attached to it and using your off hand to ratchet up the middle finger. These methods were hilarious in elementary school, but have lost their luster with time. Avoid these methods.

4.) The Emphatic Thrust-Bird: OK, I just made that name up (which I guess makes sense, since I’m making all these up). But sometimes you really, really need to give someone the finger, and you’re concerned that the regular old finger just isn’t strong enough. That’s what this is for. It’s actually a combination of two-to-three obscene gestures, depending on your definition of obscenity, and it really drives home how emphatically you want to let the recipient know how you feel.

Here’s what you do: Keep both feet planted with your weight distributed evenly and knees slightly bent. With your left hand, slap your right bicep as you swing your right hand up, simultaneously extending your middle finger. This combines the classic French bras d’honneur — recognizable from Spaceballs, of course — with the time-honored middle finger. As you’re doing it, ever so slightly thrust your pelvis forward. That’ll show ’em.

Originally published on Nov. 7, 2009.

Don’t ask why. From the Wikipedia: Birdhouses.

The Wikipedia’s birdhouse, or “nest box” entry, contains frighteningly little information about birdhouses. Basically, all it confirms is that they exist, and they are houses made for birds.

So I’ll go ahead and assume they were invented in the Bavarian Alps by that region’s 18th century middle-school shop teachers.

Birdhouses are currently most sought-after by the American old, and maintain some popularity among birds.

Moreover, birdhouses are one of the most presumptuous human inventions.

“Hey, bird. I know you and your feathered ancestors have been perfectly fine on your own since the late Jurassic, but I figured there’s no way you could build yourself a home as nice as this one. Eh? Eh? We people have a fine sense of aesthetics, don’t we? See, it looks just like my house! Now you can live like a real person!”

And furthermore, birdhouses are another indication of how stupid birds are. If someone you didn’t even know — especially from a species that totally dominates yours — just set up houses for you at random, would you move in without a whole lot of suspicion? It seems way more likely it would be a trap, or haunted or something.

But birds don’t think that way, even though humans eat bird eggs for breakfast. Birds are just all, “hey, this seems like a good enough place to set up camp. I mean, look at how cute the roof is!”

They’re lucky that, in this case, the humans responsible usually have good intentions. But man, birds really have a lot of growing up to do.