On the Metro yesterday, I sat near a couple of girls -- college students, I think, or possibly high school seniors -- who were talking about a class they were taking together together and how hard it was. It was a psychology course, and they were discussing the infamous ill-fated study wherein a group of college students simulated the roles of prisoners and prison guards. It is a famous study. You know. THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, conducted by PHILIP ZIMBARDO in 1971.

That's in caps not because I have particularly strong feelings about the subject, but because I'm still revved from Googling "college prison experiment" and finally confirming a few little details about the study that I once knew by heart. Such as: a) the name of it; b) where and when it happened; and c) who was in charge of it. The caps are there because I spent an entire Metro ride home in agony, desperately wracking the dank corners of my cobweb-ridden brain for this information, because I knew it was in there somewhere.. It had to be! I got an A in that class.

But there was nothing -- nothing but an infuriating tease of a recollection that the psychologist's name started with a Z and ended with an O. That's as far as I got. I was disastrously thrown off course by the fact that, in the years between my AP Psych class and yesterday afternoon, "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was produced on film; my cretinous brain kept circling back to the clearly false notion that the guy's last name was 'Zimbilbo.'

Now that I am finally relieved, I am beginning to realize that this was a very different phenomenon from that of the everyday fact that momentarily slips one's mind. This was not a minor slip -- this was a giant splat. A deletion. And there are many. For instance, here are some other things I once knew:

-- A sizable chunk of the French language (now basically atrophied to one word: croissant).

-- The plot and characters of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Also "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," which involved just one day of Ivan's life but at least 237 of mine.

-- Every name, date and noteworthy incident leading up to the fall of Ancient Rome

-- Algebra.

-- The names of all the prehistoric eras and periods, and the order in which they occurred (currently, I get lost somewhere around the "Jurassic Park" period).

Leading astronomical theory states that the galaxy is basically swirling around a big black hole from which nothing, not even light, escapes. Clearly my brain also follows this model. There is room in there for only so many planets and solar systems, and when the space gets overcrowded, something inches too close to the black hole and -- bloop! Gone. It is clear that my Solar System of High School Academics has long since blooped into nonexistence. Also the Nebula of Books I Read in Undergrad. Everything I learned from watching 20 squillion episodes of "Nova" as a kid? Bloop.

To replace all the valuable knowledge contained in those lost worlds, I have helpful new additions such as: the "American Idol" Planet! Yeah! Sing with me now: Don't know much about his-to-ry, Don't know much bi-o-logy, But I do know that Jason Castro's hair makes me want to ralph.

Well, enough is enough. I will rage against the blooping. Maybe I will take a trip to the Natural History museum, where I will actually pay attention to the informative plaque at the trilobite display. I will re-read a classic of the literary canon on the Metro ride there. If I see any students with notebooks in my subway car, I will turn up the volume on my iPod.

-- Caitlin Gibson

Rachel -- Love the snake story. The lil' fella looks pretty cute to me, but then I was raised in a tree-huggin' household that served as a rescue shelter for just about every member of the animal kingdom at one point or another -- SNAKE included.

The SNAKE in question was named Larry, whom my mother rescued from a panicked woman who had found him in her laundry. She then put Larry in a pillowcase, which she brought to the local nature store, where my mother was waiting in line to pay for birdseed. It was too cold outside to release Larry -- he'd missed his hibernation window lounging in that lady's laundry basket -- so my mother concluded (via logic typical of the vaguely deranged nature lover) that he should hang out in our house with us until springtime.

Larry was a young garter snake with a great sense of humor, but his joke repertoire was somewhat limited. He had two main pranks. The first was pretty sophomoric: He would poop any time you picked him up. The second was somewhat more impressive: escaping from his terrarium and finding other creative places to take a nap. This second prank resulted in more than one near-anuerysm for the member of the house who was least enthusiastic about Larry's extended visit, namely Dad. One time Larry curled up and dozed right at the top of the stairs; another time, he wrapped himself around the toilet in the bathroom.

A snake in a garden might catch you off guard. But true surprise is a grown man sprinting from the bathroom in a towel, spouting vocabulary words that his young daughter would not fully come to appreciate until high school.

-- Caitlin Gibson

Last Sunday I was walking in a garden and was tempted by a snake. It was awesome.

I had gone out to talk to my plants in soothing tones, which I do because I have no children or pets. The strawberry had been a wild idea -- $14 and no fruit until next year, but he's adorable. It is important for him not to feel insecure, just because he costs as much as four and a half tomatoes and will not be particularly useful for awhile. It is important that this plant learn of unconditional love. I was explaining to him he could produce fruit whenever it felt right, when I noticed SNAKE.

That is exactly what happened in my brain. SNAKE. And then I was eight feet away. The best part was that the same thing happened to him. We had been hanging out, just fine, and both saw each other and ran in opposite directions.

Well, I ran. He contracted his belly into some rocks, which a second later produced a chipmunk, sprinting away.

Snake and Chipmunk and I, them with their quarter-teaspoon brains and me with my three-pounder, all had exactly the same instinct. That scaly, unblinking eating machine and I looked at each other and thought: Doom.

And then, because I have another layer of brain besides instinct, I wanted to get a 2x4 and whomp him.

It's important that you know that this is not a scary snake. He looks like this.

(Click here to see scary snake.)

By this time I was able to use a more external layer of brain and look him up on the Internet. And I found out that, really close up, he looks much scarier!

(Click here to see much scarier snake.)

And you can't even see his teeth in that picture, if he has teeth. Plus, his wife gives live birth. She could be giving live birth right now on my cucumbers. I had to get this snake. He thinks I'm a wuss now.

But I didn't. I thought about all the dead deer on the side of highways I had seen this week (three) and the turkey vultures eating them, and turkey vultures are actually pretty cute. I love the way their heads are bald and naked so they don't get dead animal gunk on their feathers. There's an admirable honesty in that. And then I thought about the example I was setting and whether I wanted the strawberry plant to grow up in a world of thoughtless violence, even thoughtless violence to snakes. I could cover him with a blanket while I did it, but eventually he would know I was a killer. He will find that out soon enough, when I eat his babies, so let's let him have a childhood for now.

---

Note to the Boodle (is it capitalized?): You all need to know about the existence of the New Landers sisters, the world's least biodegradable teen singing duo. Daughters of Audrey or the other one. Their song "Fallen Angel" (the music video, produced apparently in 1988, must be watched on Youtube) features the lyric, "Last night my whole world has died."

-- Rachel Manteuffel

Buddy was a racehorse in Oklahoma before we found him in Maryland. He wasn't a big winner; he never actually won at all. As a result, he fast became one of thousands of horses in the United States "retired" from racing each year.

When a Triple Crown winner is retired, he is put out to stud. He is well cared for and enjoys a cushy life siring high-priced foals. For most racehorses, however, retirement means being sold cheap at auction, or euthanized, or sent to a slaughterhouse. Others are released in barren pastures, victims of often-fatal neglect.

Buddy, a sweet-natured slowpoke, was a lucky one. He was rescued after years spent abandoned in a field, where he deteriorated into an emaciated, parasite-ridden shadow of a horse, his hooves so ruined he could barely stand. My family took him in, and Buddy slowly grew to trust us. He was a walking scar; deep cuts from barbed wire circled his legs, his flanks were marked by spurs, a racing number would forever remain tattood in the soft flesh of his upper lip.

But Buddy's deepest wounds were most evident in his behavior -- he was terrified beyond consolation when anyone tried to ride him. The moment he felt human weight on his back, he broke out in frothy sweat; his eyes rolled, his legs shook, and he would succumb to panic. Though he ultimately became a gentle and affectionate animal on the ground, one who was safe and loved the remainder of his days, Buddy could never be ridden again. What he suffered as a colt took years off his life, and he died in his early twenties. Too young -- but two decades older than Eight Belles, the filly who was killed on Saturday at the Kentucky Derby.

I did not watch the Derby. I never watch races. When I heard what happened, I thought about Buddy and the terrible price so many horses pay for this high-stakes sport. And when I went looking for the gruesome details of the story, I knew what I'd find: all the familiar lines about how horses love to run, about how poignant it was to watch Eight Belles strive to finish the race, how heartbreaking this must be for the people who cared for her.

Eight Belles' trainer was quoted in yesterday's Sports section, noting that it was necessary to focus on business, but adding that "It's going to be very depressing for several days around here." (Several days: mourning period of the truly heartbroken.)

I guess that brief mourning period shouldn't be surprising. Horse racing is, after all, a business. A regular riding horse is broken around age three, when the animal is strong and mature enough to be properly trained. Racing horses are already at the peak of their careers by then, competing with underdeveloped and unprepared bodies, often with bones and joints that are already compromised and vulnerable. Hairline fractures, muddy racetracks, weaknesses from prior injuries: All are part of the reality of racing. The show goes on. There are crowds to entertain.

A horse in the wild runs in short bursts of speed -- to escape a threat, to play, to express joy or excitement. Nature never designed them to engage in long-distance marathons at breakneck speed, and a horse being whipped down the home stretch of a track is not an animal that would willingly run herself to death. It's all too convenient to attribute free will to a horse who dies for her efforts, but let's at least have the courage to call this exactly what it is. It is a delusion to suggest that horses race of their own desire -- to satisfy the noble longing of their wild hearts. It is a delusion fabricated by people and for people. It does no justice to the racehorse, and it provides no solace when a crumpled filly collapses past the finish line.

-- Caitlin Gibson

Yes, Caitlin, car neglect is a very powerful thing. Intentionally or not, mechanics make me feel bad for 1) not knowing what is wrong; 2) having caused the problem, probably by overloading the floor with soda cans and ignoring potential problems and generally thinking an idiosyncratic car is charming; and 3) having a liberal arts degree.

A car is an extremely dangerous, heavy thing that I clearly do not deserve. Besides treating mine like a recycling bin, I have basically given my car opportunity after opportunity to kill me. One time I kept jumping the battery until it smoked. Another time, preparing to jump the battery, I stood downhill from my car when it was in neutral, and held out my arms as if to stop it. I am so durn proud of my two car skills (jump battery, change tire) and I basically trust my car not to kill me while I am trying to fix it.

But the worst part, as you determined, is my own behavior when it is time to talk to the professional. Insecure and stupid -- and overly friendly. Wow! All that damage? Ha ha! Little ol' me neglected a car that much! God, it's so complicated. Good thing you told me all this. I never knew you were supposed to take care of all that stuff. It looks really hard!

Those of you well-acquainted with subtext will recognize this act. It just so happens that insecure, ditzy and overly friendly is also the method for getting drinks bought for one. I do not make this revelation proudly.

Why would I revert to the same mode for both these operations? Do I feel guilty in the bar, or am I trying to weasel something from the mechanic? The car people know I am incompetent, but I want them to think I am still an okay person. I guess this is true for drink buyers, too! Car guys and bar guys should know: I am not an expert, okay? I am not gonna do this right. But let's be pleasant about it!

Then I panic.

-- Rachel Manteuffel

[Editor's note: Joel is a away for a couple weeks -- working on a top-secret project with Paul Hogan -- and will be posting only intermittently. In his absence, he's asked a few Friends of Achenblog to pinch-write for him. This week's featured FOA are Caitlin Gibson and Rachel Manteuffel.]

I dropped off my car recently for a routine oil change. When I arrived at work the next morning, there was already a voicemail waiting from the mechanic: Please call me back as soon as possible, he said. No further explanation.

This is never a good thing. A car mechanic does not ask for an immediate call back for a happy reason. He does not want to compliment the zebra-print fuzzy dice hanging from your rearview mirror or chat about why you have so many old half-chewed dog nylabones on the floor of your backseat.

I called back and it was as I feared: There would be nothing routine about this oil change. The brake pads were shot, the tires needed to be rotated, my alignment was off. But what really seemed to offend him was my transmission fluid. It was absolutely the "dirtiest" he had "ever seen."

The message was clear. He thought my car was a big ugly pile of busted crud, and that I was guilty of unconscionable neglect. It's a miracle that Car Welfare Services hasn't shown up on my doorstep to rescue the abused vehicle from my automotive incompetence. "Have you ever flushed the transmission fluid on your car?" he asked, with awestruck disdain.

Inside, I was fuming - LISTEN, guy, the only thing I think about flushing is a toilet. But I didn't say that. I didn't really say anything; I made a noise. A high-pitched, humiliating, whimpery noise. I was a total cliché: a woman who knows squat about cars, floundering in her own ineptitude.

The more I hesitated and squeaked, the more I knew I was doomed. Surely the mechanic was sitting on the other end of the line, absorbing all the pathetic uncertainty that was oozing through the receiver, knowing that if he so pleased, he could take it one step further and start fabricating random verbs and imaginary mechanical parts. "We're going to need to disenthwart your flobulator," he could have said, "or else the gallbearing will overcrump." And I would hand over my credit card in terror.

If I were a genuinely tough, no-B.S. type of gal, I wouldn't put up with this. The minute I got the slightest notion that a mechanic was taking advantage, I'd tell him: Listen, pal, I don't know who you think you're talking to, but this babe isn't believing a word of it. Don't try to jack up the bill on me. I would stomp into the garage and retrieve my car and roar off the lot, indignant, intimidating, assertive. The mechanics would stand and watch me go, thinking, Wow, that's one woman you can't mess with. Or possibly, Wow, that's one woman who will not be able to stop her car at the next red light.

And therein lies the reason why I'm inevitably a pansy about these things. Yes I am a person who hates appearing vulnerable or ignorant. But even more, I am a person who doesn't want to die, especially because of brake pads. In the end, the mechanics always win. My pride is worth whatever price is on the bill.

-- Caitlin Gibson

It's a long way to the other side of the planet. The airline announced that there were heavy headwinds and we'd have to make an unscheduled stop in Honolulu to refuel. I was all in favor of that, since I never once believed it was possible to make it all the way to Australia on a single tank of gas. My feeling is, when crossing the Pacific in a tube of metal 7 miles above the open ocean you shouldn't throw caution to the wind. Visually it's not much of a trip for mos tof the time -- it's always dark west of Los Angeles, I've discovered. Hawaii is dark. The International Date Line was completely invisible, though I squinted to see it. Eventually there was light, and all kinds of boiling clouds, and you could almost hear a choir of angels over the jetliner whine.

For some reason I found the Safety Card not very reassuring. Do planes actually float?? I don't like the little graphic in the upper left showing the plane making a very calm "water landing." I studied this thing a lot over the course of the roughly 39 hours it took to fly to Australia.

A view of Sydney Harbour (we're switching to British spelling) from out the window of the plane. The place is a little bit San Fran, a little bit Rio, with lots of neighborhoods that feel like Sausalito. In other words it reminds me of Gainesville.

Everyone makes a big fuss about this bridge (Harbour Bridge -- apparently you can hike the spans for a price), and the Opera House. Took a ferry from the zoo to downtown and had lots of snapshot-worthy views of the city. I like the sandstone buildings. Also the light -- everything is sparkling. We should experiment with clean air sometime in the States.

You may recall that my story on What Does A President Do quoted a Harvard professor saying that Jimmy Carter got entangled in such minutia as approving the use of the White House tennis court: "Roger Porter, who teaches about the American presidency at Harvard, says that Carter also got enmeshed in the parking assignments at the Department of Interior, as well as the crucial issue of federal cotton-dust standards."

Ralph Nader called me on that. True fact. He left a voice message on my machine at work:

"Hey Joel. Ralph Nader. Nice article in the Post. Very few people pay attention to what a president does every day."

Then: "I hope you didn't mean that the crucial issue of cotton dust standards is trivial like parking assignments. That dealt with byssinonis that affected you know, in the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of textile workers." [Nader worked on the issue decades ago. Some web sites cite him as coining the term "brown lung disease." See this.]

Nader had one more quibble:

"Also, you said, consider how little most of us know about the decision make skills of the three people running for president. I beg your pardon Joel? Thanks for your article."

Fair enough. "The three major-party candidates" would have been more precise.

Here, for those wanting more on this, is Carter mentioning his work on cotton dust standards. The question remains, I think, whether Carter got too deep into the details of that issue, which is what Porter was saying. And here's the famous James Fallows piece in the Atlantic in which he insists that, despite Carter's denials, he really did sign off on the tennis court requests.

--

Next week: I'm off to Australia to do a freelance paleontology story. I'll post photos when I can. Subbing here at the blog for a few days will be Caitlin Gibson and Rachel Manteuffel, who most recently produced the rebuttal to Charlotte Allen's Outlook essay. I've told them they can't write about making big pots of beans, sitting on the porch, fighting crab grass, planting tomatoes or any of that middle-aged guy stuff. But maybe there's not much danger of that.

"He threw him under a bus."

Where did this phrase come from? Suddenly it is the required phrase for describing the act of publically breaking with, or criticizing, or blaming, a former ally/friend/colleague/lover.

The Obama-Wright relationship has incited a massive outbreak of the phrase, which we can now officially declare to be overused. That doesn't mean that those who used it in recent days were guilty of cliche-mongering -- because this one congealed into cliche status with astonishing speed. (Searching for uses I see that David Knowles of the blog Political Machine says "under the bus" is number one on his list of the five most egregiously overused phrase of the campaign season.) (And Tony Dokoupil of Newsweek says the phrase caught fire after Obama's famous speech on race, when it was widely noted that Obama didn't you-know-what to Wright.)

Just to take a few examples of outbreaks in the last couple of days, someone on Hardball said, "His public performance in the last 24 hours has had the unintended consequence of throwing Senator Obama's campaign under the bus." In return, Obama distanced himself, at which point a number of people (for example, here) declared that Obama had thrown Wright under a bus.

Urban Dictionary says the phrase dates to 1988, though I doubt that (show me the footnotes). It offers multiple definitions, the earliest from 2002. Here's the most popular:

"...to sacrifice some other person, usually one who is undeserving or at least vulnerable, to make personal gain."

The second-most popular is also framed as a self-serving, fundamentally deceitful act.

But at least in the Obama-Wright affair there's nothing deceitful about Obama's decision to distance himself from the ranting Wright. So the third definition (which happens to be the one from 2002) would apply in this case:

' You get thrown under the bus when someone (usually a co-worker) reports some wrongdoing or slacking off to a superior or other influential person. Sometimes used with the suffix "Vrooooom!" to simulate the noise the bus would make as it passes by at a high rate of speed.'

I didn't check the transcript to see if Obama said "Vroooom!"

More from Dokoupil:

'In an interview with NEWSWEEK, William Safire, the author of "Safire's Political Dictionary," traced the popularization of the phrase back to Cyndi Lauper, who jauntily tossed her critics "under the bus" after the release of her debut album "She's So Unusual" in 1983, says Safire. But he suspects that the phrase has deeper roots in minor-league baseball, where players are almost always bused to away games. In fact, its original meaning could be have been quite literal: be on time for the bus, or you will be thrown underneath it, into the storage bays. He says the metaphor has also been used as a way to say "get with it, or get lost," as in "you're either on the bus, or you're under it." He isn't quite sure when the meaning of the phrase crystallized into the act of "summarily and decisively rejecting someone." '

Just a note: Safire may be conflating this with the Ken Kesey/Merry Pranksters notion, which we learned about via Tom Wolfe ("The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test") that "you're either on the bus or off the bus" (with the program or not with the program).

--

My friend Tony Horwitz is blogging about his book tour. Here's the most ominous passage:

'People who have never visited a publishing house imagine a hushed, book-lined shrine to literature, where gentlemen in tweed jackets labor quietly over deathless prose. This may once have been the case, but these days publishing is pretty much like any other business: high-tech and frantic and a place where the talk is less of literature than of price points, sales handles and distribution systems.

'The main difference between publishing and other businesses is that it routinely loses money. That's right--of the tens of thousands of books published each year, 80-90 percent fail to make back the cost of producing them. Not a great business model, which makes me glad (for once) that I'm a 49-year-old veteran hack rather than a 29-year-old rookie just starting out. With luck, writing books will see me out, or at least to my first Social Security check, but I doubt the next generation will be so lucky.'

He's taking comments...

--

Via fishbowldc , Ana Marie Cox has more WH Correspondents Dinner highlights, as does the NY Observer. Rachel Sklar has gobs of photos (why did I not see any of these people? -- maybe I wasn't really at the WHCD ... maybe I was in the wrong hotel entirely ... ).

Jonathan Alter has a great piece -- factual, furious -- on why suspending the gas tax is a terrible idea and a blatant pander by McCain and Clinton.

So it was very late, at Reuters's party, pretty much the last thing happening at the Hilton Saturday night, and I was talking to a fellow named Jason from Congress Daily, and it suddenly dawned on us both that the White House Correspondents Dinner wasn't like a Fellini film after all. No: More like a 1970s disaster movie.

You know how, in a 1970s disaster movie, there's always the character-setting portion in the first 30 or 40 minutes in which we meet the various over-the-hill B-list actors? Perhaps there'll be a big scene in which everyone's in black tie, feeling full of themselves -- unaware that in a few short minutes a calamity will strike and the entire ballroom will be upside down. That's how it felt in the big room at the Hilton: Like you ought to grab hold of something for when the place flipped.

"It would be really bad if we suddenly ran into Shelley Winters," I said.

"Or Ernest Borgnine," Jason said. "Or George Kennedy. He was in all those movies. George Kennedy had the best sideburns of the 1970s."

There was definitely an end-of-days quality to the event. (Bush himself made the appropriate joke: Mitt Romney and Pam Anderson in the same room, isn't that a sign of the Apocalypse?)

My Pam Anderson encounter was a new low for me as a journalist, which is saying something. Always shameless in the presence of celebrity, I tapped Ms. Anderson on the arm, introduced myself, and asked I could take her photo. She said yes at first. But then I mentioned that it would be for my blog. "Not for your blog!" she said, and turned away from me with a dismissive wave of her hand that will be burned in my memory to my dying day. All I got was a photo of Pam Anderson's Cold Shoulder.

Earlier I pounced on Cheryl Tiegs (shown here with Bob Nixon). She was quite lovely and laughed at my lame attempts to be amusing.

Also I talked to Miss America.

"Can you fly?" I asked Miss America, and then, to try to impose some clarity on that question, added. "Do you have superpowers?"

This seemed, at the moment, a fair line of questioning, as the act of wearing a tiara seems just one step removed from wearing a cape. She very easily could have said, "I can make myself invisible" or "I control the weather." Instead she talked about her commitment to helping young people with eating disorders.

High moment: A strangely intense conversation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who talked of the night he got a call that the Soviets had launched a nuclear strike on the U.S. I hope it doesn't ruin the anecdote when I reveal that it was a false alarm. I'll tell the full story down the road, but in any case it was a reminder that, during the Cold War, the ultimate disaster was potentially only minutes away [it still is, isn't it? --ed.], and it wasn't something dreamed up by Hollywood.