Jaques Cousteau's Famous Ship Calypso Enters Rehab

I was a huge, huge fan of in my youth of Jacques Cousteau so this is very interesting news:

The widow of legendary marine explorer Jacques Cousteau said Tuesday she is trying to relaunch his iconic ship the Calypso — sunk, badly damaged and now in rehab — in time to mark the centennial of his birth.

Aboard the Calypso, Cousteau unlocked the mysteries of the sea for tens of millions of TV viewers in the 1960s and 1970s with his riveting documentary series, "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau."

Francine Cousteau and the Cousteau Society announced a year of events what would have been the 100th birthday of the undersea pioneer, who with his red cap for a time became synonymous with the underwater universe.

The relaunching of the 140-feet ship would be a centerpiece of the centennial, which begins this week. Cousteau was born June 11, 1910, in Saint Andre de Cubzac in southwest France. He died 13 years ago at the age of 87.

"The Calypso is really the Eiffel Tower of the oceans," Francine Cousteau told a news conference. But funding to put it back in the water by May 2011 for a world educational tour is only a hope.

Cousteau did more than anyone to bring the wonders of the undersea world to your living room and democratize the sport of scuba and the art of underwater photography. With cable, we now see more beautiful underwater images than Cousteau managed to bring us but he was the first and lead the way. I thought for a time I'd like to have some kind of career like his until I learned that oceanography and ichthyology was more about lab work and the study of tides and waves than it was about exploration. Still, I was a card carrying member of the Cousteau Society and even way back then they were sounding the alarm of the demise of the seas that would surely come in the next few years. Like most environmentalism, in never happened, but, hey, it's their bread and butter, so they're still doing it, no matter how wrong they've been in the past.

Oh, look, The Cousteau Society's PR machine's running at ramming speed. They manage to tie in Cousteau's centennial and Calypso's restoration with the BP oil spill. Excellent spin!

The launch of the year honoring Cousteau could not have come at better time, as the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has underscored the importance of ocean conservation, the organization said. An early defender of marine life, Cousteau long railed against ocean drilling by the oil industry and instead urged "more direct access to the sun's power."

"We hope that this (oil spill) will be a wake up call to help us change," said Tarik Chekchak, the Cousteau Society's director for science and environment.

Here's the ol' boat in its more glorious day:



Here it is now:



Yep, still some work to do.

Hello? Anyone Out There?

Alien life forms have been bashful about revealing themselves:

After five decades of patient listening, however, all the astronomers have to show for it is an eerie silence. Does that mean we are alone in the universe after all? Or might we be looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Some argue that since the universe is so vast, alien life must exist but in an infinite universe, all things are possible including the disconcerting notion that we are, in fact, alone. Still, it's good to see scientists have such unwavering faith in the unknown despite the lack of supporting evidence. Their fervor is almost religious.

Busy Planet

Jonah Goldberg's right. this is cool:

KISS drummer Criss: Men Get Breast Cancer Too

This is for brotha John, who may remember he used to be a Kiss fan as a teen:

Founding KISS member Peter Criss knows that many of his male, rock music fans are macho, so he is making the rounds to tell them that rocker guys like him can suffer from the disease, too.

Criss, who was the New York rock band's drummer on and off from its founding in 1972 until 2004 and the voice on some of their most beloved classics, including the 1976 Top Ten hit "Beth" and "Hard Luck Woman", said too many men don't seek treatment and think breast discomfort will go away on its own.

Ouch. Quite a cautionary tale.

Filling Me Up With Your Rules

Here's some school absurdity:

The biking debate started last spring, when school district officials told Kaddo Marino that Adam was violating school rules by biking to class. Walking to the school also is not permitted.

Kaddo Marino challenged the policy and asked the school board to change it. The district charged a committee to review the rule, which was instituted in 1994.

(Emphasis mine. This foolishness has been going on for 15 years!)

When Emily's elementary school had welcomed a new principal, the new principal, to win the hearts and souls of her new charges, immediately implemented a zero tolerance policy on talking during lunch. The kids were required to eat in stony faced silence until they were through and then out they went where talking could re-commence. The reason? Apparently in the Principal's past, she once worked in a school where a student choked during lunch and no one could hear her cries because of the talking. I'm unclear about the outcome - Lord, let's hope the child didn't die - but, come on. How rare is that? Yeah, I know, even one death or bad incident is too many, but the solution seemed hardly to be one of complete silence throughout the meal. During the first parent meeting when she was introduced, the principal choked up telling her story but, relaxed her rule until it was closer to what it had been before: a reasonable level of noise was allowable but the cafeteria monitors had the right to shut things down should they get out of hand.

Anyway, absurd school rules.

Let's keep the kids safe. But let them live their lives. Walking and biking to school isn't risk-free but nothing is and this kind of tradition builds responsibilities and fond memories.

(Blog title from a Beatles lyric.)

F-word in Cobain Quote Sparks Controversy

The F-word has some folks hepped up:

The late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is igniting a new controversy in his hometown of Aberdeen, Wash. This one involves one of the quotes attributed to him on a new granite marker at an unofficial neighborhood park honoring him.

Aberdeen city officials are upset about the quote that says, "Drugs are bad for you. They will f--- you up." The marker contains the full F-word.

This was going to be a post about how people these days can't seem to express themselves without the frequent dropping of the F-bomb - followed by an urging to get off my lawn - but then I thought better of it when I realized Cobain's right. So it's a pretty good quote. But not something that should be put out for the general public. I'm a firm believer that young kids don't need to be exposed to the coarser aspects of culture any sooner than necessary and this is one of those times.

Oho, you say, you're in favor of censorship. Not at all. I just don't mind a little touch up to quotes to make them a bit more palatable to the general public. Who thinks that "Nuts!" was the original response given by General Anthony Clement McAuliffe when the Germans demanded the surrender of the 101st in Belgium during the siege of Bastogne in World War II? Yeah. You get the idea. Just as you'd get the idea if you left off a few letters from Cobain's quote. No big deal.

Straight to the Moon!

Forty years since we've been to the moon? We oughtta go back. Krauthammer does the heavy lifting of telling you why for me:

Michael Crichton once wrote that if you had told a physicist in 1899 that within a hundred years humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), "travel to the moon, and then lose interest ... the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad." In 2000, I quoted these lines expressing Crichton's incredulity at America's abandonment of the moon. It is now 2009 and the moon recedes ever further.

Next week marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. We say we will return in 2020. But that promise was made by a previous president, and this president has defined himself as the anti-matter to George Bush. Moreover, for all Obama's Kennedyesque qualities, he has expressed none of Kennedy's enthusiasm for human space exploration. . .

. . . But look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints -- untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." We came, we saw, we retreated.

How could we?

Isola Bell Apartments Spends Some Serious Money

Isola Bella Apartments, a renovated, gated community in northwest Oklahoma City, celebrated the completion of a $32 dollar property renovation July 15 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Hey, you can get a lot for 32 bucks.

Yeah, I know it's a typo. Far be it from me to point 'em out - my posts are filled with 'em - and OKC Business is a classy outfit. They'll fix it soon. Just thought it was funny.

Japan Study: Chubby People Live Longest

Bad news for scrawny folk:

Health experts have long warned of the risk of obesity, but a new Japanese study warns that being very skinny is even more dangerous, and that slightly chubby people live longer.

People who are a little overweight at age 40 live six to seven years longer than very thin people, whose average life expectancy was shorter by some five years than that of obese people, the study found.

"We found skinny people run the highest risk," said Shinichi Kuriyama, an associate professor at Tohoku University's Graduate School of Medicine who worked on the long-term study of middle-aged and elderly people.

So eat something already!

Dead Sea Sinkholes Swallow Up Plans

The area around the Dead Sea is filling up with holes:

Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.

After 14 hours a search party pulled him from the 10-meter-(30 foot-) deep hole unhurt, and five years later the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.

These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.

Estimated number of holes? 3,000. Which means, to paraphrase John Lennon, they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the, er, Dead Sea.

Lambert Gay? Shocking!

No, I'm not really shocked; no one should be:

“American Idol” runner-up Adam Lambert has landed the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, where he talks about sex, drugs and his “Idol” experiences.

The 27-year-old singer from San Diego acknowledges in an interview that he’s gay, and says it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

“I’m proud of my sexuality,” he says. “I embrace it. It’s just another part of me.”

Interestingly enough, should Lambert's star begin to fall - and no doubt it will, in the world of fickle fame - it may not be due to his being gay but his otherwise less than wholesome image presented in this article. Sure, he's playing up to Rolling Stone's audience, and most of his mainstream fans may not read the magazine, but he was able to garner a lot of support from Middle America. Some of the others thing he has to say may be the actual turnoff.

As for me, my job is clear: go to every newsstand and remove the Rolling Stone issue with this news, to keep it from Emily. She refuses to believe it.

Beacon Awards Honor Oklahoma Businesses

Though it's a waste of time - links to Journal Record articles become broken over time as the Journal Record places them behind a pay-to-view wall, I'll go ahead and link to this article about the Beacon Awards:

The Journal Record next month at its second Beacon Awards event will honor 26 businesses and organizations for their contributions to the nonprofit community.

Four Beacon Award recipients will be selected from the group as the overall winners and announced at the July 9 event in downtown Oklahoma City. Organizations will be recognized in large and small/midsized divisions for their contributions to the nonprofit community. The large business subcategory represents those with more than 100 employees while the small/midsized businesses have fewer than 100 employees.

The companies:

Large business finalists:
• American Fidelity Assurance Co., Oklahoma City.
• Arvest Bank, Tulsa.
• Bank of Oklahoma NA, Tulsa.
• Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma, Tulsa.
• Chesapeake Energy Corp., Oklahoma City.
• Dean McGee Eye Institute, Oklahoma City.
• Devon Energy Corp., Oklahoma City.
• Diagnostic Lab of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City.
• Francis Tuttle Technology Center, Oklahoma City
• Frankfurt Short Bruza, Oklahoma City.
• Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores, Oklahoma City.
• McAfee & Taft, Oklahoma City.
• MidFirst Bank, Oklahoma City.
• Norman Regional Health System, Norman.
• Oklahoma City Thunder, Oklahoma City.
• Public Service Company of Oklahoma, Tulsa.

Small/midsized business finalists:
• Element Fusion LLC, Oklahoma City.
• The Persimmon Group, Tulsa.
• Principal Technologies, Oklahoma City.
• Saxum|PR, Oklahoma City.
• Scott Sabolich Prosthetics & Research, Oklahoma City.
• Ted Withrow State Farm Insurance, Bethany.
• Third Degree Advertising, Oklahoma City.

In these tough economic times, charitable giving is hard to do. I know my non-profit clients appreciate the efforts of their corporate sponsors. So kudos to the above.

Veteran L.A. Detective Charged with Murder

Michael Connelly's next novel:

A veteran detective was charged with murder Monday in the slaying of her ex-boyfriend's wife in 1986 — a crime that went unsolved for more than two decades as she rose through the Los Angeles Police Department ranks.

Detective Stephanie Lazarus, 49, could be sentenced to death if convicted of breaking into the victim's condominium on Feb. 24, 1986, and repeatedly biting, beating and shooting the woman.

Lazarus, who joined the force in 1983, was identified as a suspect through a recent DNA match of saliva taken from bite marks on Sherri Rasmussen's body, said Deputy Chief Charlie Beck.

Mel Gibson: Wild Man

Is Mel Gibson perfect? Hardly. So why the hate?

I’ve never been the type to throw things at the television screen out of anger. But I’ll admit I did shout something nasty at my TV when I caught Mel Gibson yukking it up with Jay Leno and calling himself “Octo-Mel” since his pregnant girlfriend is carrying his eighth child.

My anger, of course, was directed at Gibson’s hypocrisy. Not so long ago, Gibson was the world’s best-known Traditionalist Catholic, talking about his preference for the old-style teachings of Vatican I (no divorce, no Russian girlfriends while still married). These days, he’s not yet divorced and living the kind of life he preached against. What’s worse is that Gibson seems unrepentant, to use church lingo. Even publicity mongers Jon and Kate Gosselin seemed more chastened when confronted with their alleged indiscretions. And that’s saying something.

I'm not here to defend Gibson; his behavior was inexcusable but then he's apologized for his earlier mis-deeds and has come across as genuinely repentant so what else do you want? His latest foibles - an extra-marital affair, an extra-marital fathering - are undeniably unacceptable but we haven't heard the whole story yet. Not that I believe he'll come up with something to justify his behavior but I do think he probably understands what he's done and will try to make amends for it. As a Christian, he knows he's not perfect.

I have no idea of the faith of the linked-to-article's writer but what I think really gets under his skin is Gibson's Christian faith. Except for Gibson's opposition to Vatican II, the writer never makes a direct link to Gibson's finger-wagging-at-others-but-not-himself kind of hypocrisy. Add to this, Gibson has committed the sin of making a successful film about the root of his faith. How terrible. (Gibson's a mad-talented film-maker, by the way. Don't think so after The Passion of The Christ? Take a look at Apocalypto and tell me what you think. Yeah.) No, it seems Christians fall harder than anyone in the world of celebrities. Profess no faith and, well, your transgressions are shrugged off.

Missing Mom, Girl Found at Disney World

Well, if you're gonna concoct a crazy story to cover your tracks while you go to Disney World, at least go in style:

A suburban mother who claimed she and her daughter had been abducted and stuffed in a car trunk is was in custody in Florida on Thursday after the pair were found at Disney World, where they had flown hours after the mother reporting their abduction. . .

Henry told reporters that Sweeten borrowed a co-worker's driver's license and presented it as her own when she bought an airline ticket and flew to Orlando, Fla., then checked into the Grand Floridian Hotel with her daughter, Julia Rakoczy. The two were taken into custody at the hotel Wednesday evening, Henry said.

Ah, The Grand Floridian. Destination of choice for whacked out suburban Moms. And me, too. Some day, I'll get there. Some day.

Sonic Drive In Be Praised!

Lileks sings the praises of the pleasures of Sonic Drive In:

The evening was full: piano lesson, then picking up Mommy at the airport. Hence the brevity of this. Before piano we ate at Sonic; a new one opened in our immediate burb. It’s popular. How popular?



Wars have staging areas, I thought. But this is where they prepare people to enter the Sonic Experience. This only being Tuesday, we got in to a stall and engaged in the timeless American delight of eating hamburgers in the car. The view out the window was sad:



Good luck, missy. I expect the shake is cinnamon-flavored, but I wonder how many people will infer this from CINO.

Wendy’s doesn’t have a staging area.

Wendy’s never had a staging area.

For what it's worth, when Chik Fil-A opened in Moore, they had a staging area, though they didn't call it that. But they did have police directing traffic. For days after the opening, too.

Flu Brings Less Crime, Blue Sky to Mexico City

In Mexico City, there's an upsideto the swine flu scare:

The sound of leaves rustling in the wind replace a cacophony of commuter car horns. The lone bark of a dog echoes from a far-off balcony into the normally bustling restaurant district, suddenly empty of lunchtime crowds and late-night revelers.

Swine flu has also brought an unusual calm to this city that never shuts up. Crime is down and even the smoggy skies have turned a shade approaching blue.

Throughout Mexico City, a megalopolis of 20 million, hustle and bustle has given way to shuffles and sighs.

More about the swine flue in another post - my take: it's not so bad - but I linked to this story not only because of its timeliness but because of some of the pictures associated with it gave me a different view of the Mexico City I had in my mind. Maybe yours, too:


I've never been to Mexico City but I've been on the El Rio Del Tiempo ride in Epcot and that's the same thing, isn't it? Of course, the ride idealizes Mexico City and I have no problem with that but my surprise came from seeing these pictures of the city and realizing that, with the flu scare, the idealized scenes in the ride weren't actually too far off. The original news story I saw had a now-missing picture of the fountain that must be in a prominent part of the city because that very same fountain is shown in the Epcot ride.

So, Epcot and Mexico City during the time of the swine flu. Who would think there'd be a connection?

Etruscan Treasures From Tuscany

This exhibit looks like the one that was at St. Gregory's in Shawnee not too terribly long ago but since it's now in Dallas, it's OpinionJournal-worthy:

True to form, the Lone Star State manages to defy ordinary expectations. And in the midst of it all, a spectacular and unpredictable show, 'From the Temple and the Tomb: Etruscan Treasures from Tuscany' (until May 17), has just opened at Southern Methodist University's Meadows Museum. It bills itself as the largest such exhibition of Etruscan art and artifacts in the U.S. Why a museum based on the Spanish paintings collected and loved by its eponymous founder, a Texas petro-millionaire who died in 1978, should be sponsoring such an enterprise remains something of a mystery. But it's no more mysterious than much about Texas ways or, more important, about the Etruscans themselves, of whom we know very little.

My carping about unfairness of Texas media coverage over Oklahoma's aside, it's a fascinating exhibit. Well-worth making the trip to see.

Bacardi Moves From Its Cool Building

This isn't huge news
but it is a good excuse to get you to follow the link for some pictures of a beautiful building. The Herald's site is a slide show and I can't figure out how to embed it here so a quick 'net search turned up this picture:



Click on through to the article for some better pictures.

The Key to Success? Work. Who Knew?

Looks like your parents and teachers were right:

Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.