In an age of unending propaganda and spin, there are still rare times
when undeniable evidence leaves no room for argument. Such is the case
with the emerging artificial intelligence data centers and the energy
needed to sustain and grow them.
The evolving AI technologies and their rapid implementation in almost
every walk of life can be intimidating and even frightening. The
technology already seems in danger of outpacing the controls and
parameters necessary to harness AI’s astounding possibilities. The
Stanley Kubrick classic from 1968, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” warned about a future where “thinking” computers would refuse to obey the commands of their human creators.
While ethicists wrestle with the philosophical questions surrounding
AI and politicians debate laws to regulate it, the U.S. must not only
compete with other nations but make sure it remains the worldwide
leader. To that end, AI centers continue springing up across the
country, placing demands on electric grids unlike anything seen before.
Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment recently reported
that in 2023, AI data centers consumed 4.4% of electricity in the U.S.
alone. That’s an impressive number. But the institute went on to predict
that by 2030-2035, data centers “could account for 20% of global
electricity use, putting an immense strain on power grids.”
MIT’s Energy Initiative noted earlier this year how
ubiquitous AI technology has become, with most people not giving it a
second thought as they utilize its services daily through companies like
Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.
“Without realizing it, consumers rely on AI when they stream a video,
do online banking, or perform an online search,” MIT noted. “Behind
these capabilities are more than 10,000 data centers globally, each one a
huge warehouse containing thousands of computer servers and other
infrastructure for storing, managing, and processing data. There are now
over 5,000 data centers in the U.S., and new ones are being built every
day—both in the U.S. and worldwide.”
Universities such as Penn State and MIT are worried about the data
centers’ “environmental footprint.” But many who predicted that
“alternatives” would someday power the world are increasingly
acknowledging the fact that fueling the data center boom will require
traditional energy sources, especially natural gas.
“While renewables like wind and solar will play an important role in
the energy future, they alone cannot power a 24/7 AI infrastructure,” Forbes recently reported.
“That’s why natural gas and nuclear are regaining prominence in grid
planning. Several utilities have fast-tracked proposals for new natural
gas “peaker” plants. Others are evaluating small modular nuclear reactors as potential solutions for delivering steady, low-carbon baseload power.”
While some data center developers may be considering building small
nuclear reactors, natural gas has the upper hand because it is readily
available and can be utilized more quickly – and it’s increasingly
considered “green” energy, including by legislative fiat.
It’s important to step back and recall the conflicting courses being
charted less than a year ago by the U.S. government on one hand and the
AI boom on the other. While the U.S. desperately needed to keep pace
with other nations, particularly China, in building AI data centers, the
Biden administration was implementing policies designed to eliminate
fossil fuel-based energy in favor of taxpayer-subsidized solar and wind
farms.
In essence, the U.S. was on track to power down at the same time that
new technologies demanded greater and more reliable power sources than
ever before. Thank goodness voters came to the rescue in 2024. President
Trump and his administration are working overtime to undo the damage of
the previous administration. Trump’s Energy Department, guided by two
executive orders – “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in
Artificial Intelligence” and “Unleashing American Energy” – is examining
ways to facilitate and accelerate the AI infrastructure.
On July 15, the Trump administration announced more than $90 billion in
AI and energy investments in Pennsylvania, “including Google’s $25
billion investment in data centers and infrastructure, Blackstone’s $25
billion investment in data centers and natural gas plants, and
CoreWeave’s $6 billion investment in data center expansion.”
Last week, Trump delivered the keynote address at a half-day summit
in Washington D.C., hosted by the All‑In Podcast and the Hill &
Valley Forum, called “Winning the AI Race.” The event also featured
other administration officials and leaders in the AI tech world.
The Trump administration’s proactive posture toward AI and associated
data centers should be welcomed by all Americans. Likewise, people
across the political spectrum should be clear-eyed about the emergent
demands on our nation’s electric grid and the fact that “renewables”
such as wind and solar are simply not up to the task. No political
propaganda or spin will change that immutable scientific reality.
Natural gas is the future, and the future is now. If you’re not sure
about that, just Google it – which is possible thanks to an electric
grid powered mostly by reliable, affordable and available natural gas.
Critical juncture theory focuses on critical junctures, i.e., large, rapid, discontinuous changes, and the long-term causal effect or historical legacy of these changes. Critical junctures are turning points that alter the course of evolution
of some entity (e.g., a species, a society). Critical juncture theory
seeks to explain both (1) the historical origin and maintenance of social order, and (2) the occurrence of social change through sudden, big leaps.
Critical juncture theory is not a general theory of social order and change. It emphasizes one kind of cause (involving a big, discontinuous change) and kind of effect (a persistent effect). Yet, it challenges some common assumptions in many approaches and theories in the social sciences. The idea that some changes are discontinuous sets it up as an alternative to (1) "continuist" or "synechist" theories that assume that change is always gradual or that natura non facit saltus – Latin for "nature does not make jumps." The idea that such discontinuous changes have a long-term impact stands
in counterposition to (2) "presentist" explanations that only consider
the possible causal effect of temporally proximate factors.
Theorizing about critical junctures began in the social sciences
in the 1960s. Since then, it has been central to a body of research in
the social sciences that is historically informed. Research on critical
junctures in the social sciences is part of the broader tradition of comparative historical analysis and historical institutionalism. It is a tradition that spans political science, sociology and economics. Within economics, it shares an interest in historically oriented research with the new economic history or cliometrics. Research on critical junctures is also part of the broader "historical turn" in the social sciences.
Origins in the 1960s and early 1970s
The
idea of episodes of discontinuous change, followed by periods of
relative stability, was introduced in various fields of knowledge in the
1960s and early 1970s.
Kuhn challenged the conventional view in the philosophy of science at the time that knowledge growth could be understood entirely as a process of gradual, cumulative growth. Stephen Jay Gould writes that "Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific
revolutions" was "the most overt and influential" scholarly work to make
a "general critique of gradualism" in the twentieth century.
Gellner's neo-episodic model of change
AnthropologistErnest Gellner
proposed a neo-episodic model of change in 1964 that highlights the
"step-like nature of history" and the "remarkable discontinuity" between
different historical periods. Gellner contrasts the neo-episodic model
of change to an evolutionary model that portrays "the pattern of Western
history" as a process of "continuous and sustained and mainly endogenous upward growth."
SociologistMichael Mann adapted Gellner's idea of "'episodes' of major structural transformation" and called such episodes "power jumps."
Lipset and Rokkan's critical junctures
Sociologist Seymour Lipset and political scientistStein Rokkan introduced the idea of critical junctures and their long-term impact in the social sciences in 1967. The ideas presented in the coauthored 1967 work were elaborated by Rokkan in Citizens, Elections, and Parties (1970).
Gellner had introduced a similar idea in the social sciences.
However, Lipset and Rokkan offered a more elaborate model and an
extensive application of their model to Europe (see below). Although
Gellner influenced some sociologists, the impact of Lipset and Rokkan on the social sciences was greater.
Gould's model of sudden, punctuated change (bottom image) contrasts with the view that change is always gradual (top image).
Gould's model of punctuated equilibrium drew attention to episodic bursts of evolutionary change followed by periods of morphological stability. He challenged the conventional model of gradual, continuous change - called phyletic gradualism.
The critical juncture theoretical framework in the social sciences
Since
its launching in 1967, research on critical junctures has focused in
part on developing a theoretical framework, which has evolved over time.
In studies of society, some scholars use the term "punctuated equilibrium" model, and others the term "neo-episodic" model. Studies of knowledge continue to use the term "paradigm shift". However, these terms can be treated as synonyms for critical juncture.
Developments in the late 1960s–early 1970s
Key
ideas in critical junctures research were initially introduced in the
1960s and early 1970s by Seymour Lipset, Stein Rokkan, and Arthur Stinchcombe.
Critical junctures and legacies
Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) and Rokkan (1970) introduced the idea that big discontinuous changes, such as the reformation, the building of nations, and the Industrial Revolution, reflected conflicts organized around social cleavages,
such as the center-periphery, state-church, land-industry, and
owner-worker cleavages. In turn, these big discontinuous changes could
be seen as critical junctures because they generated social outcomes
that subsequently remained "frozen" for extensive periods of time.
In more general terms, Lipset and Rokkan's model has three components:
(1) Cleavage. Strong and enduring conflicts that polarize a political system. Four such cleavages were identified:
The center–periphery cleavage, a conflict between a central
nation-building culture and ethnically linguistically distinct subject
populations in the peripheries.
The state–church cleavage, a conflict between the aspirations of a nation-state and the church.
The land–industry cleavage, a conflict between landed interests and commercial/industrial entrepreneurs.
The worker–employer cleavage, a conflict between owners and workers.
(2) Critical juncture. Radical changes regarding these cleavages happen at certain moments.
(3) Legacy. Once these changes occur, their effect endures for some time afterwards.
Rokkan (1970) added two points to these ideas. Critical junctures
could set countries on divergent or convergent paths. Critical junctures
could be "sequential," such that a new critical junctures does not
totally erase the legacies of a previous critical juncture but rather
modifies that previous legacy.
The reproduction of legacies through self-replicating causal loops
Arthur Stinchcombe (1968) filled a key gap in Lipset and Rokkan's
model. Lipset and Rokkan argued that critical junctures produced
legacies, but did not explain how the effect of a critical juncture
could endure over a long period.
Stinchcombe elaborated the idea of historical causes (such as critical junctures) as a distinct kind of cause that generates a "self-replicating causal loop."
Stinchcombe explained that the distinctive feature of such a loop is
that "an effect created by causes at some previous period becomes a
cause of that same effect in succeeding periods." This loop was represented graphically by Stinchcombe as follows:
X t1 ––> Y t2 ––> D t3 ––> Y t4 ––> D t5 ––> Y t6
Stinchcombe argued that the cause (X) that explains the initial
adoption of some social feature (Y) was not the same one that explains
the persistence of this feature. Persistence is explained by the
repeated effect of Y on D and of D on Y.
Developments in the early 1980s–early 1990s
Additional contributions were made in the 1980s and early 1990s by various political scientists and economists.
Douglass North, coauthor of Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Punctuated equilibrium, path dependence, and institutions
Paul A. David and W. Brian Arthur, two economists, introduced and elaborated the concept of path dependence, the idea that past events and decisions affect present options and that some outcomes can persist due to the operation of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This idea of a self-reinforcing feedback loop resembles that of a
self-replicating causal loop introduced earlier by Stinchcombe. However,
it resonated with economists and led to a growing recognition in
economics that "history matters."
The work by Stephen Krasner in political science incorporated the idea of punctuated equilibrium
into the social sciences. Krasner also drew on the work by Arthur and
connected the idea of path dependence to the study of political
institutions.
Douglass North, an economist and Nobel laureate, applied the idea of path dependence to institutions, which he defined as "the rules of the game in a society," and drew attention to the persistence of institutions.
A synthesis
Political scientists Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, in Shaping the Political Arena
(1991), provided a synthesis of many ideas introduced from the 1960s to
1990, in the form of the following "five-step template":
(1) "Antecedent conditions are diverse socioeconomic and
political conditions prior to the onset of the critical juncture that
constitute the baseline for subsequent change."
(3) "Critical junctures are major episodes of institutional change or innovation."
(4) "The aftermath is the period during which the legacy takes shape."
(5) "The legacy is an enduring, self-reinforcing
institutional inheritance of the critical juncture that stays in place
and is stable for a considerable period."
Debates in the 2000s–2010s
Following
a period of consolidation of critical junctures framework, few new
developments occurred in the 1990s. However, since around 2000, several
new ideas were proposed and many aspects of the critical junctures
framework are the subject of debate.
Critical junctures and incremental change
An important new issue in the study of change is the relative role of critical junctures and incremental change. On the one hand, the two kinds of change are sometimes starkly counterposed. Kathleen Thelen
emphasizes more gradual, cumulative patterns of institutional evolution
and holds that "the conceptual apparatus of path dependence may not
always offer a realistic image of development."[38] On the other hand, path dependence, as conceptualized by Paul David is not deterministic and leaves room for policy shifts and institutional innovation.
Critical junctures and contingency
Einar Berntzen
notes another debate: "Some scholars emphasize the historical
contingency of the choices made by political actors during the critical
juncture." For example, Michael Bernhard writes that critical junctures "are
periods in which the constraints of structure have weakened and
political actors have enhanced autonomy to restructure, overturn, and
replace critical systems or sub-systems."
However, Berntzen holds that "other scholars have criticized the focus on agency
and contingency as key causal factors of institutional path selection
during critical junctures" and "argue that a focus on antecedent
conditions of critical junctures is analytically more useful." For example, Dan Slater and Erica Simmons place a heavy emphasis on antecedent conditions.
Legacies and path dependence
The use of the concept of path dependence in the study of
critical junctures has been a source of some debate. On the one hand,
James Mahoney argues that "path dependence characterizes specifically
those historical sequences in which contingent events set into motion
institutional patterns or event chains that have deterministic
properties" and that there are two types of path dependence:
"self-reinforcing sequences" and "reactive sequences." On the other hand, Kathleen Thelen and other criticize the idea of path dependence determinism, and Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch question the idea of reactive sequences as a kind of path dependence.
Institutional and behavioral path dependence
The study of critical junctures has commonly been seen as involving a change in institutions. However, many works extend the scope of research of critical junctures by focusing on changes in culture. Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen state that the
persistence of a legacy can be "reinforced both by formal institutions,
such as Jim Crow laws (a process known as institutional path dependence), and also by informal institutions, such as family socialization and community norms (a process we call behavioral path dependence)."
In addition, many processes and events have been identified as critical junctures.
The
domestication of animals is commonly treated as a turning point in
world history. The image depicts an Egyptian hieroglyphic painting
showing an early instance of a domesticated animal.
Pre-1760 power jumps
Michael Mann, in The Sources of Social Power (1986),
relies on Gellner's neo-episodic model of change and identifies a series
of "power jumps" in world history prior to 1760 - the idea of power
jumps is similar to that of a critical juncture. Some of the examples of power jumps identified by Mann are:
Collier and Collier's Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and the Regime Dynamics in Latin America
(1991) compares "eight Latin American countries to argue that
labor-incorporation periods were critical junctures that set the
countries on distinct paths of development that had major consequences
for the crystallization of certain parties and party systems in the
electoral arena. The way in which state actors incorporated labor
movements was conditioned by the political strength of the oligarchy,
the antecedent condition in their analysis. Different policies towards
labor led to four specific types of labor incorporation: state
incorporation (Brazil and Chile), radical populism (Mexico and
Venezuela), labor populism (Peru and Argentina), and electoral
mobilization by a traditional party (Uruguay and Colombia). These
different patterns triggered contrasting reactions and counter reactions
in the aftermath of labor incorporation. Eventually, through a complex
set of intermediate steps, relatively enduring party system
regimes were established in all eight countries: multiparty polarizing
systems (Brazil and Chile), integrative party systems (Mexico and
Venezuela), stalemated party systems (Peru and Argentina), and systems
marked by electoral stability and social conflict (Uruguay and
Colombia)."
John Ikenberry's After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (2001) compares post-war settlements after major wars – following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the world wars in 1919 and 1945, and the end of the Cold War
in 1989. It argues that "international order has come and gone, risen
and fallen across historical eras" and that the "great moments of order
building come after major wars – 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919, 1945, and
1989." In essence, peace conferences and settlement agreements put in
place "institutions and arrangements for postwar order." Ikenberry also
shows that "the actual character of international order has varied
across eras and order building moments" and that "variations have been
manifest along multiple dimensions: geographic scope, organizational
logic, rules and institutions, hierarchy and leadership, and the manner
in and degree to which coercion and consent undergird the resulting
order."
Seymour Martin Lipset, in The Democratic Century
(2004), addresses the question why North America developed stable
democracies and Latin America did not. He holds that the reason is that
the initial patterns of colonization, the subsequent process of economic
incorporation of the new colonies, and the wars of independence varies.
The divergent histories of Britain and Iberia are seen as creating
different cultural legacies that affected the prospects of democracy.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012) draws on the idea of critical junctures. A key thesis of this book is that, at critical junctures (such as the
Glorious Revolution in 1688 in England), countries start to evolve along
different paths. Countries that adopt inclusive political and economic
institutions become prosperous democracies. Countries that adopt
extractive political and economic institutions fail to develop political
and economically.
Debates in research
Critical
juncture research typically contrasts an argument about the historical
origins of some outcome to an explanation based in temporally proximate factors. However, researchers have engaged in debates about what historical event should be considered a critical juncture.
The rise of the West
A key debate in research on critical junctures concerns the turning point that led to the rise of the West.
Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs and Steel
(1997) argues that the development reaching back to around 11,000 BCE
explain why key breakthroughs were made in the West rather than in some
other region of the world.
Michael Mitterauer, in Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of its Special Path (2010) traces the rise of the West to developments in the Middle Ages.
Jerry F. Hough
and Robin Grier (2015) claim that "key events in England and Spain in
the 1260s explain why Mexico lagged behind the United States
economically in the 20th century."
Sebastián Mazzuca
attributes Latin America's poor economic performance in the twentieth
century to the distinctive state weakness resulting from the process of
state formation in the nineteenth century, and the way in which national
territories were formed, combining dynamic areas and backward
peripheries. This claim complements and refines the usual ideas that attribute all
forms of economic and social backwardness in Latin America to colonial
institutions.
Atul Kohli (2004) argues that developmental states originate in the colonial period.
Tuong Vu (2010) maintains that developmental states originate in the post-colonial period.
Reception and impact
Research on critical junctures is generally seen as an important contribution to the social sciences.
Within political science, Berntzen argues that research on
critical junctures "has played an important role in comparative
historical and other macro-comparative scholarship." Some of the most notable works in the field of comparative politics since the 1960s rely on the concept of a critical juncture.
Barrington Moore Jr.'s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966) is broadly recognized as a foundational study in the study of democratization.
Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier's Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and the Regime Dynamics in Latin America (1991) has been characterized by Giovanni Capoccia
and R. Daniel Kelemen as a "landmark work" and by Kathleen Thelen as a
"landmark study ... of regime transformation in Latin America."
Robert D. Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) provides an analysis of the historical origins of social capital in
Italy that is widely credited with launching a strand of research on social capital and its consequences in various fields within political science.
Johannes Gerschewski describes John Ikenberry After Victory (2001) as a "masterful analysis."
Frank Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones's Agendas and Instability in American Politics (2009) is credited with having "a massive impact in the study of public policy."
Within economics, the historically informed work of Douglass North, and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, is seen as partly responsible for the disciple's renewed interest in
political institutions and the historical origins of institutions and
hence for the revival of the tradition of institutional economics.
"Who's on First?" is a comedy routine made famous by American comedy duoAbbott and Costello. The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello. However, the players' names can simultaneously serve as the basis for questions (e.g., "Who is the first baseman?") and responses (e.g., "The first baseman's name is Who."),
leading to reciprocal misunderstanding and growing frustration between
the performers. Although it is commonly known as "Who's on First?",
Abbott and Costello frequently referred to it simply as "Baseball".
History
"Who's on First?" is descended from minstrel and turn-of-the-century wordplay sketches. One of the most famous was developed by Weber and Fields and called "I Work On Watt Street". Other examples include "The Baker Scene" (the comedian "loafs" at a
bakery located on Watt Street) and "Who Dyed" (the business owner is
named "Who"). In the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts, comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey
examine a map of a mythical kingdom with dialogue like this: "What is
next to Which." "What is the name of the town next to Which?" "Yes." In
British music halls, comedian Will Hay performed a routine in the early 1930s (and possibly earlier) as a schoolmaster interviewing a schoolboy named Howe, who came from Ware, but now lives in Wye. By the early 1930s, a "Baseball Routine" had become a standard "bit" in burlesque in the United States. Abbott's wife recalled him performing the routine with another comedian before teaming with Costello.
Bud Abbott stated that it was taken from an older routine called "Who's the Boss?", a performance of which can be heard in an episode of the radio comedy program It Pays to Be Ignorant from the 1940s. After they formally teamed up in burlesque in 1936, he and Costello
continued to hone the sketch. It was a big hit in the fall of 1937, when
they performed the routine in a touring vaudeville revue called Hollywood Bandwagon.
In February 1938, Abbott and Costello joined the cast of The Kate Smith Hour radio program and the sketch was first performed for a national radio audience on March 24 of that year. The routine may have been further polished before this broadcast by burlesque producer John Grant, who became the team's chief collaborator, and Will Glickman, a staff writer on the Smith show. Glickman may have added the nicknames of then-contemporary baseball players like Dizzy and Daffy Dean
to set up the routine's premise. This version, with extensive wordplay
based on most of the fictional baseball team's players having "strange
nicknames" that seemed to be questions, became known as "Who's on
First?" Some versions continue with references to Enos Slaughter, which Costello misunderstands as "He knows" Slaughter. By 1944, Abbott and Costello had the routine copyrighted.
Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" hundreds of times
in their careers. Although it was rarely performed precisely the same
way twice, the routine follows a definite structure. They did the routine for President Franklin Roosevelt several times. An abridged version was featured in the team's 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties and it is that longer version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed "Who's on First?" several times on radio and television (notably in The Abbott and Costello Show episode "The Actor's Home").
I Don't Care or I Don't Give a Darn or I Don't Give a Damn
The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine and the right fielder is never named. In the Selchow and Righter board game, the right fielder's name is "Nobody".
At one point in the routine, Costello thinks that the first baseman is named "Naturally":
Abbott: You throw the ball to first base.
Costello: Then who gets it?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Now you've got it.
Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You don't! You throw it to Who!
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Well, that's it—say it that way.
Costello: That's what I said.
Abbott: You did not.
Costello: I said I throw the ball to Naturally.
Abbott: You don't! You throw it to Who!
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott's explanations leave Costello hopelessly confused and
infuriated. At two points in the routine Costello appears to parody
Abbott by saying what appears to be gibberish to him, but inadvertently
gets it right:
Costello: Now Tomorrow throws the ball and the guy up bunts the ball.
Now when he bunts the ball, me being a good catcher, I want to throw
the guy out at first base, so I pick up the ball and throw it to who?
Abbott: Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right!
Costello: I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
And finally,
Costello: Now I throw the ball to first base, whoever it is drops the
ball, so the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to
What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to
Tomorrow—a triple play.
Abbott: Yeah, it could be.
Costello: Another guy gets up and it's a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know. He's on third and I don't give a darn!
Abbott: What was that?
Costello: I said, I DON'T GIVE A DARN!
Abbott: Oh, that's our shortstop!
That is the most commonly heard ending. "I Don't Care" and "I Don't Give a Damn" have also turned up on occasion, depending on the perceived sensibilities of the audience. (The performance in the film The Naughty Nineties ends with "I Don't Care".)
The skit was performed only twice on the team's radio series. (It
was heard more often when they guested on other shows.) On their April
17, 1947 show, it serves as a climax for a broadcast which begins with
Costello receiving a telegram from Joe DiMaggio asking Costello to take over for him due to his injury. Since DiMaggio played center field at the time, Costello ostensibly would be the center fielder, moving Because to right field.
Writing credit
"Who's
On First?" evolved from earlier wordplay sketches but it is not known
who transposed the basic wordplay to baseball, although numerous people
have claimed or been given credit for it. Such claims typically lack
reasonable corroboration. For example, a 1993 obituary of comedy sketch
writer Michael J. Musto (1919–1993) states that, shortly after Abbott
and Costello teamed up, they paid Musto $15 to write the script. Several 1996 obituaries of songwriter Irving Gordon (1915–1996) mention that he had written the sketch. Musto would have been 17 when Abbott and Costello teamed in 1936, but a
script entitled "The Baseball Rookie," with the names of Costello and
Joe Lyons, his straight man before Abbott, dates even earlier, perhaps
to 1934, when Musto would have been 15 and Gordon would have been 19.
Copyright infringement case
In 2015, the heirs of Abbott and Costello filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern District of New York claiming unauthorized use of over a minute of the comedy routine in the play Hand to God.
The suit named producer Kevin McCollum, playwright Robert Askins, and
the promoters as defendants. The defense claimed that the underlying
"Who's on First?" routine was in the public domain
because the original authors, Abbott and Costello, were not the ones
who filed a copyright renewal, but the court did not see the need to
make a final determination on that. The court ruled against the heirs,
saying that the use by the play was transformative.
On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court in 2016 but for the other reason. The one minute of the routine used in the play did not constitute transformative fair use, since it was a significant portion and was taken word for word. But that was moot since the court also found that the heirs had failed to establish that they owned the copyright. (The court did not reach the issue of whether the routine had entered the public domain since the parties had apparently stipulated that they believed its copyright term was coterminous with One Night in the Tropics, where it had first been published for purposes of copyright law at that time). The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on the case in 2017.
Derivatives and references in popular culture
The sketch has been reprised, updated, alluded to and parodied many
times over the decades in all forms of media. Some examples include:
Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato performed a variation on this theme on the TV series SCTV (1976–1984), with the rock groups The Band, The Who and Yes. The final punchline changed to "This is for the birds (The Byrds)!" "Ah, they broke up long ago!"
Episode six of the fourth season of WKRP in Cincinnati
(1981) is entitled "Who's on First?". It revolves around Mr. Carlson
being mistaken for Herb Tarlek, and to "prove Andy wrong" Les Nessman is
then convinced to act as Mr. Carlson. When a thug named Dave shows up
to confront Johnny Fever about an unpaid gambling debt, Johnny claims
Andy Travis's identity, while Mr. Carlson refers to Andy as "Johnny" ...
with painful consequences for Andy.
Author and poet Shel Silverstein's poem "The Meehoo with an Exactlywatt", featured in his 1981 poetry collection A Light in the Attic, is stated in the afterword by Silverstein himself to have been inspired by Abbott and Costello's routine.
The biography of Lou Costello written by his daughter Chris is titled Lou's on First (1982).
In the mid-1980s, Johnny Carson's spoof of then-president Ronald Reagan
preparing for a press briefing included "Hu is on the phone", a
reference to fictional Chinese leader Chung Dong Hu (there would
eventually be a real Chinese leader Hu Jintao). Reagan also misunderstands references to Secretary of the Interior James Watt (misheard as "what") and PLO leader Yassir Arafat (misheard as "Yes sir").
In the 1986 Billy Crystal HBO special "Don't Get Me Started," Brother Theodore and Sammy Davis Jr practice an ill-fated version of the routine in their own incongruous performance styles. [28]
In the 1988 film Rain Man, the film's titular character, played by Dustin Hoffman, stims by reciting the skit to himself whenever his brother Charlie, played by Tom Cruise, makes him anxious by meddling with his personal effects.
In The PJ's
episode "The HJs", (2000) Thurgood reopens the apartment building's
radio station and forms an unexpected comedy team with the community's
beloved crack addict, Smokey. They parody the comedy bit with Smokey
saying, "Who's on crack, Say What's on smack, and I Don't Know is on
freebase."
In the Family Guy episode "Extra Large Medium",
Peter Griffin, in his psychic routine, attempts to solve a case for the
police (namely, a person being buried alive with a bomb attached to
him) by "summoning the spirit" of Lou Costello. He and the police
officer, Joe Swanson, then reenact the routine when it's revealed the
person's name is Melvin Hu. Unfortunately, they do the scene so long
that the bomb explodes and kills him, at which time Peter dropped the
act and admitted he wasn't a psychic. In the episode, "You Can't Do That
on Television, Peter," Peter gets his own sketch cable show, and
performs Who's on First with a puma, resulting in Peter getting mauled.
Later, the puma visits Peter in the hospital, telling him that he
finally understands the joke.
In 2002, playwright Jim Sherman wrote a variation called "Hu's on First" featuring George W. Bush being confused when Condoleezza Rice tells him that the new leader of China is named Hu, pronounced similarly to the word "Who". Bush also misunderstands Rice's references to Yassir Arafat ("yes, sir") and Kofi Annan ("coffee"). He also hears Rice introduce herself, particularly using her last name,
while talking on the phone and immediately craves rice, wanting to
order some to eat.
In the Get Fuzzy comic for September 12, 2005, an injured Rob asks Satchel to use speed dial
to call "Dr Watt", who is second on the speed dial list after Dr. Hu.
Satchel gleefully replies "Third Base!", much to Rob's annoyance.
In the 2007 film Rush Hour 3, LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) visits a Kung Fu
studio where he meets Master Yu and an instructor named Mi. Carter, Yu
and Mi engage in a comedic back and forth in which they confuse the
names Yu and Mi with the words "you" and "me".
In 2007, Canadian Internet comedy group LoadingReadyRun released a parody called It's Very Simple.
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,
in December 2012, featured a variation of the routine called "Who's on
First?: The Sequel". Depicted with vintage touches (black and white
images, retro costumes, etc.), the skit finds host Jimmy Fallon in the Bud Abbott role and announcer Steve Higgins
as Lou Costello. The twist here is that "Who", "What" and "I Don't
Know" actually join in on the quick repartee, with the players
respectively played by Billy Crystal, Late Night head writer A. D. Miles and Jerry Seinfeld.
In Bojack Horseman episode "Downer Ending", (2014) a group of characters encounter a doctor named Allan Hu, which Bojack at first confuses with BBC television show Doctor Who; which Bojack's roommate Todd Sanchez further confuses for Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman. In utter confusion,Todd at one point says "I don't know", to which all the characters simultaneously exclaim "Third base!".
The October 19, 2014, strip of the comic Pearls Before Swine sees Rat ask Goat "Whose drummer was Keith Moon?" Goat responds that he is correct, although Rat does not understand that Goat is telling him Moon was the drummer for The Who. It leads to a routine of more confusions, including Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Steve Howe of Yes and Pete Townshend
– also of The Who. Thinking Goat is asking what band Townshend is the
guitarist for, an exasperated Rat screams "I don't know!" Goat replies
"Third base!" The final panel sees the still-exasperated Rat threatening
to hit the comic's author Stephan Pastis with a baseball bat, asking "When would you like this hit?". Pastis responds "Winwood's the guitarist for Traffic."
The 2015 puzzle video game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes features a module officially referred to on page 9 of the Bomb Defusal Manual V1 as Who's on First. Its description reads: "This
contraption is like something out of a sketch comedy routine, which
might be funny if it wasn't connected to a bomb. I'll keep this brief,
as words only complicate matters". The module works similarly to the
routine, in which the Defuser must recite the word that appears on the
module's display to the Expert. The Expert must then follow the steps in
the manual to tell the Defuser which button to press. The reference
comes in the form of the words that appear on the module's buttons, some
of them being homophones of other words that may appear, an example being the words there, they're and their, thus resulting in a similar confusion to that of the sketch.
In 2017, Studio C made a spin-off of this as a sketch in their seventh season, titled Detective Doctor, At Your Service, where several characters have names such as Detective Doctor, Doctor
Hisbrother and Officer Wounded, making the scene of an attempted murder
much more confusing to deal with.
Emcee duo Blanche Debris and Jonny Porkpie did an adaptation of the sketch at the 2017 Burlesque Hall of Fame weekender and reunion, recontextualized as the lineup for a burlesque show.
In season 11 of All That (2019), the "Good Burger" sketch used the routine, in which Kel Mitchell's character Ed became confused when musical guest H.E.R. walked in to place an order after she told him who she was.
A variant of unknown origin, called "Abbot and Costello do Hebrew",
is popular in the Jewish American community. Its humor draws from the
homophonic similarity of a number of words in English – hu, he, me, ma
and dag are homophones of the Hebrew words for he, she, who, what and
fish respectively.
The skit is an easter egg on Google Assistant, Siri, Amazon Alexa and Bixby. Asking Google Assistant "OK Google, Who's on first?" will lead to the response "Yes, he is." or "Exactly." Siri responds "Correct. Who is on first." Alexa responds "That's what I keep telling you. Who's on first, What's
on second." Bixby responds "I think Who gets the ball and throws it to
What."
There are several American restaurants named "Who's on First",
located on 1st Street or 1st Avenue of their respective cities,
including New York City, Waconia, MN and Snohomish, WA
In the spring split of 2022, League Championship Series casters Azael and Captain Flowers performed a spin-off of the skit using "River" and "Blue", the tags of two players from the esports team Dignitas as well as the river location and blue jungle camp on Summoner's Rift.
Real-life parallels
On
several occasions, players with names phonetically similar to the
characters in the sketch reached the appropriate bases as runners, or
defended them as infielders:
On October 3, 1920, Allie Watt played one game at second base for the Washington Senators so that, for a brief time, "Watt's on second".
During a May 31, 1966, game against the Minnesota Twins, relief-pitcher Eddie Watt of the Baltimore Orioles led off the 5th inning with his only career double, again creating a "Watt's on second" situation.
Parkinson's law can refer to either of two observations, made by the naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson in 1955 in an essay published in The Economist:
"work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"; and
the number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done. This was attributed mainly to two factors: that officials want subordinates, not rivals, and that officials make work for each other.
The first paragraph of the essay mentioned the first meaning above as
a "commonplace observation", and the rest of the essay was devoted to
the latter observation, terming it "Parkinson's Law".
First meaning
The first-referenced meaning of the law – "Work expands to fill the available time" – has sprouted several corollaries, the best known being the Stock-Sanford corollary to Parkinson's law:
If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.
the Asimov corollary to Parkinson's law:
In ten hours a day you have time to fall twice as far behind your commitments as in five hours a day.
as well as corollaries relating to computers, such as:
Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
Second meaning
This was the main focus of the essay by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, published in The Economist in 1955, and reprinted with other similar essays in the successful 1958 book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress. The book was translated into many languages. It was highly popular in the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence. In 1986, Alessandro Natta complained about the swelling bureaucracy in Italy. Mikhail Gorbachev responded that "Parkinson's law works everywhere."
Parkinson derived the dictum from his extensive experience in the British Civil Service. He gave, as examples, the growth in the size of the British Admiralty and Colonial Office even though the numbers of, respectively, their ships and colonies were declining.
Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly
scientific observations supporting the law, such as the increase in the
number of employees at the Colonial Office while the British Empire declined (he showed that it had its greatest number of staff when it was folded into the Foreign Office
due to a lack of colonies to administer). He explained this growth
using two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not
rivals", and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He noted that the
number employed in a bureaucracy rose by 5–7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done".
Formula
Parkinson presented the growth as a mathematical equation describing the rate at which bureaucracies expand over time, with the formula , in which k was the number of officials wanting subordinates, m was the hours they spent writing minutes to each other.
Observing that the promotion of employees necessitated the hiring
of subordinates, and that time used answering minutes requires more
work; Parkinson states: "In any public administrative department not
actually at war the staff increase may be expected to follow this
formula" (for a given year)
where:
x – number of new employees to be hired annually
k – number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees
m – number of working hours per person for the preparation of internal memoranda (micropolitics)
P – difference: age at hiring − age at retirement
n – number of administrative files actually completed.
Related efficiency
In
a different essay included in the book, Parkinson proposed a rule about
the efficiency of administrative councils. He defined a "coefficient of
inefficiency" with the number of members as the main determining
variable. This is a semi-humorous attempt to define the size at which a
committee or other decision-making body becomes completely inefficient.
In Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London: John Murray, 1958 a chapter is devoted to the basic question of what he called comitology:
how committees, government cabinets, and other such bodies are created
and eventually grow irrelevant (or are initially designed as such). (The
word comitology has recently been independently invented by the European Union for a different, non-humorous meaning.)
Empirical evidence is drawn from historical and contemporary
government cabinets. Most often, the minimal size of a state's most
powerful and prestigious body is five members. From English history,
Parkinson notes a number of bodies that lost power as they grew:
The first cabinet was the Council of the Crown, now the House of Lords, which grew from an unknown number to 29, to 50 before 1600, by which time it had lost much of its power.
A new body was appointed in 1257, the "Lords of the King's Council",
numbering fewer than 10. The body grew, and ceased to meet when it had
172 members.
The third incarnation was the Privy Council, initially also numbering fewer than 10 members, rising to 47 in 1679.
In 1715, the Privy Council lost power to the Cabinet Council with eight members, rising to 20 by 1725.
Around 1740, the Cabinet Council was superseded by an inner group, called the Cabinet,
initially with five members. At the time of Parkinson's study (the
1950s), the Cabinet was still the official governing body. Parkinson
observed that, from 1939 on, there was an effort to save the Cabinet as
an institution. The membership had been fluctuating from a high of 23
members in 1939, down to 18 in 1954.
A detailed mathematical expression is proposed by Parkinson for the
coefficient of inefficiency, featuring many possible influences. In
2008, an attempt was made to empirically verify the proposed model. Parkinson's conjecture that membership exceeding a number "between 19.9
and 22.4" makes a committee manifestly inefficient seems well justified
by the evidence proposed.
Less certain is the optimal number of members, which must lie between
three (a logical minimum) and 20. (Within a group of 20, factions or
various individual discussions may occur, some of which may substitute for or displace the working of the whole committee, thus diluting the power of the leader,
the chair of the committee proper.) That it may be eight seems arguable
but is not supported by observation: no contemporary government
(cabinet) in Parkinson's data set had eight members, and only king Charles I of England had a Committee of State of that size.
