Bad luck on boats

On May 25th, Bruce Rudeforth of Broome, Kimberley, Australia, was on a fishing trip with friends. He was baiting up his hook for barramundi when a 2.5m saltwater crocodile leapt into his dinghy and clamped its jaws around his upper chest (1st image, with apologies to squeamish readers). The victim (2nd image, being treated on scene by his brother-in-law) describes, "Out of the corner of my eye, this thing came at me. It bit into my shoulder and I stood up and gave it one in the throat with my free elbow. I presume that's what made it let go. It was a bit touch-and-go as to whether it went back into the water or came into the dinghy with us. Things were a bit tense." Even after the crocodile slid back into the water, Rudeforth and his fishing mate had to beat it with an oar to drive it off. With the puncture wounds from the animal's teeth stitched up, Rudeforth found no reason to cut short the week-long fishing trip, a planned vacation away from his practice...as a dentist.

In early June, Mark Wilkinson of Birmingham, U.K., took his newly acquired cabin cruiser out for its 1st spin. Unfortunately, the 16' second-hand vessel sank stern-first after he returned from a successful fishing trip in Lyme Bay. Due to a 6" hole in the fiberglass hull, the boat began taking on water faster than the bilge pump could pump it out. Witnesses described a big guy desperately holding on to the wheel before abandoning ship and clinging to the hull, which was still afloat due to an air pocket in the cabin. Wilkinson was rescued by the harbor master of West Bay, Dorset, and his boat had to be towed after its maiden voyage. He admits, "It's all a bit embarrassing and I got pretty fed up with people asking me if I had hit an iceberg." Why the teasing? The name of the boat was Titanic II.

Oasis and Airbus

My Dad and Sarah are visiting from Arizona for the holiday while my Mom and Del spend Thanksgiving with a friend in Texas. Since Dad and Sarah like to go on cruises, I will ask them if they intend to sail on the heavily promoted Oasis of the Seas. This Royal Caribbean ship is so enormous that its home port had to be enlarged and many ports are too small to accommodate it. It weighs 225,282 tons, has a length of 1,181 feet, has a height of 154 feet above the waterline, has 16 passenger decks and 6 engines, cost $1.4 billion to build, and carries a crew of 1,165. The 6,296 passengers it holds may enjoy the following amenities: a park with 56 live trees, a carousel, a casino, a tattoo parlor, a 750-seat amphitheater, 4 swimming pools, a jazz club, a comedy club, an entertainment venue, boutiques, restaurants, 5 movie theaters, a spa, a fitness center, a zip-line, a mini-golf course, a volleyball court, a basketball court, 2 surf simulators, 2 rock-climbing walls, and a youth zone that offers a science lab and computer gaming. To build and launch such a thing seems to me to be hubris and to sail on it seems to be conspicuous consumption. We know what happened when the Titanic was billed as the largest and safest ship ever built - and Oasis of the Seas is 5 times the size of the Titanic...

And then there's the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world. Since its debut in 2007, a total of 38 have been built at a cost of more than $300 million apiece, with orders for dozens more. It has 4 engines, weighs 610,000 pounds, carries almost 82,000 gallons of fuel, and can carry 100 tons (the freight version can transport 150 tons). It is 240 feet long, 79 feet tall, and has a wingspan of 261 feet. The cabins in the A380 are customized, so the various planes offer bars, lounges, casinos, duty-free shops, beauty salons, and private suites with beds, desks, and shower access. The A380 has 2 decks and - with a flight crew of only 2 - can carry up to 853 passengers. I'd be afraid to be one of them for fear of tempting fate.

Follow-ups

Follow-ups Kent congratulated me on finding the speed-cooking video in my last set of follow-ups (see Autotomy). He writes, "I experienced tiny bits of that during several trips to Singapore. I had heard of the fried fish with mouth still moving, but hadn't seen it before. The Japanese decided to just skip the cooking part altogether for certain dishes. At a sushi bar in Tokyo, the chef netted a fish from a tank, laid it on a cutting board right in front of us and proceed to cut still squirming slices and drop them on to the rice balls on our plates....Quite memorable."
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Prosimians The researchers who studied the fossil featured in "The Link" - the documentary I mentioned in my May 25th post - make a convincing argument that it represents a species that split into prosimians (which include lemurs) and primates (which include humans).
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Rediscovery of ancient Egypt Many of David Roberts' paintings show ancient Egyptian temples being excavated from the sand. Here is a list of places being swallowed up by the ever-shifting sands.
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Cadaver dogs Cindy Economou was a member of the rescue team that responded to a 2-vehicle collision in Melbourne, Florida, in September 2008. Karl Lambert survived, but his leg had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage. Economou has since resigned from the fire department, apologized to Lambert, and been sentenced to 6 months of probation and community service for stealing the leg to train her cadaver dogs.
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Octopi at it again! Octopi at each of 23 branches of the Sea Life Centre attractions in Europe and the U.K. will be given Rubik's cubes and other toys to play with to see if they favor a particular tenticle. Visitors and staff will be asked to record their observations, which will be tallied.
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Crop circles The most recent crop circle to appear in Britain depicts a 600' jellyfish.
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Corpse flower A 14-year-old corpse flower in St. Louis, Missouri, is about to bloom for the 1st time in 8 years, so the greenhouse at the University of Missouri has opened its doors to the public!
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Hedgehogs In this unfortunate incident in Auckland, New Zealand, power lines fell and electrocuted 7 cows on a dairy farm. The last line of the report notes, "A hedgehog was also killed."
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Space chimp Megan noted that Friday, May 29th, was the 50th anniversary of monkeys in space.
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Facial reconstruction Thanks go to Megan again for pointing me to this article about paleoartist Viktor Deak, who puts a recognizable face on casts of the skulls of ancient hominids.
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Suitcases Millvina Dean, who I mentioned in this post, has died. She was the last Titanic survivor and was only 9 weeks old when the ship went down. Her father drowned, but she, her mother, and her brother were rescued.

Suitcases

A recent story in the news reminded me of this traveling exhibit, which I hope to see. It is a collection of suitcases that were found in the attic of an abandoned building at the Willard Psychiatric Center in New York State when it closed in 1995. The contents, packed decades ago by those who were committed to the institution, offer clues to abandoned lives and the reasons they unraveled. The website is gorgeous and haunting.

I was reminded of "The Lives They Left Behind" when I saw a report that 96-year-old Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean, the last living survivor of the Titanic and only two months old when it sank in 1912, is selling her mementos. To maintain herself in Woodlands Ridge, a private nursing home in Southampton, England—Titanic's home port, Millvina is auctioning some rare prints of the ship and other artifacts. But the item that caught my interest is the small wicker suitcase that was filled with clothes and given to her destitute family when they arrived in America after being rescued. Andrew Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers, calls the suitcase emotive. It is that, but so is the luggage of downed airliners. Because of their history, Millvina's suitcase and those of the mental patients who died long ago at Willard are evocative in the way that time capsules are.