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Jul 10, 2016 · Published July 10, 2016. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Claim: Actor Nicolas Cage died in a motorcycle accident in July 2016. Rating: False. About this rating. A message reporting that actor...
- Overview
- What If … ?
When Tyler Vigen was finishing law school a few years ago, he went on a search for identical twins—not in the real world but in data sets.
So he would find a study like this:
And then keep searching until he bumped into a totally unrelated study, one that looked like this:
Then he’d put one plot line on top of the other, and—lo and behold!—at least wiggle-wise they looked close to identical.
Seeing them coupled like this, it’s hard not to think, just for a second, that, Oh my god, science research causes hanging, strangulation, and suffocation.
I know, I know, that’s wrong. Correlations like these are total accidents. They don’t even imply causation, but when the match is compellingly close, you can’t help telling yourself a this-caused-that story. Tyler calls these “spurious correlations,” which is also the name of his blog. And his new book. They’re wonderfully silly and totally random. Unless …
… unless by some uncanny and particular set of circumstances, one data set did cause the other. I mean, it could happen, right? What looks absurd might, in some weird scenario, be true. But what would the story be?
Well, I looked very closely at some of Tyler’s graphs, closed my eyes, and told myself, Here’s what really (might have? could have?) happened …
So here’s what I imagine: Eating melted cheese in bed isn’t safe. There should be a warning label: “Do Not Bring Cheese Products Into Close Contact With Bed Linen” for the obvious reason that mac and cheese, a warm pizza, or any “soft” cheese like brie or camembert can slip out of one’s sleepy hands, drop onto the bedsheets and create an oily surface that is potentially dangerous—especially to a restless sleeper. Tossing and turning on “cheesed linen” creates extra knots and tangles, and as they say, “Tangles can kill.”
Had Will and Sandra Beckerman read such a warning, they might not have brought a Big Mamma Giant Sicilian pizza to their bed while binge-watching the History Channel’s seven-part series, Sunken Luggage of the North Atlantic. When they lost consciousness during episode seven, their sheets became so slick with mozzarella that it took only one left-to-right body flip to lock Sara’s torso into a knot so tight she lost circulation and ended up in the critical care unit at her local hospital. She survived, but as you can see from the rising black line on our graph, she was one of the lucky ones.
So here’s what I imagine: The Nicolas Cage Aquatic Society loves to meet, especially when there’s a new Nick Cage film to see and everybody’s all excited and can jump in the pool and organize themselves into rows, each person treading water, while Nick’s up on the big screen (which hangs above the diving board at the deep end).
Bobbing through a Nick Cage film is, as any Cage-aholic will tell you, the best way to watch our favorite actor at work. When Nick has a really busy year (he made four movies in both 2007 and 2009), so many fans show up poolside that—yes, it’s true—more people than usual fall into the pool and, well … drown. Forensic pathologists were surprised that in many years, most pool drownings took place at Nick Cage Aquatic Swim-ins, but hey, that’s understandable: In Moonstruck, when Nick first sees Cher all dolled up, standing in the moonlight, hair glistening, the night beckoning, he is so bewitched that he can barely breathe. Same for his fans. The ones who stopped breathing? They go up on this graph.
- Robert Krulwich
Oct 21, 2020 · According to Loudwire, Cage and Neil were at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas on April 7, 2016, when a woman approached the actor and asked him for his autograph. When Neil realized that she wasn't an aging '80s bodacious bimbette looking to get backstage, he apparently lost his temper like a spoiled brat who isn't getting everything he wants.
- Cody Copeland
Jan 13, 2017 · Here’s the Nic Cage/drowning data: (TYLER VIGEN) It’s not just an academic matter, either, as the confusion between correlation and causality can lead to dangerously wrong conclusions as it...
Oct 3, 2014 · With Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson, Nicky Whelan. A small group of survivors is left behind after millions of people suddenly vanish and the world is plunged into chaos and destruction.
- (43K)
- Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
- Vic Armstrong
- 2014-10-03
Box office. $224 million [1] Con Air is a 1997 American action thriller film directed by Simon West and starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich in the lead roles. Written by Scott Rosenberg and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film centers on a prison break aboard a JPATS aircraft, nicknamed as "Con Air".
He sought to capture a gritty and realistic look to the film, and his approach involved a continuous two-minute scene in which Cage's character sees a plane crash and attempts to rescue passengers. The scene was an arduous task, taking two days to set up and two days to shoot.
