Dear mainstream media: the earthquake happened in Chile, not Hawaii
The devastation caused by the 2010 Chilean earthquake, which was 500 times as powerful as the recent Haitian earthquake, merits attention. Unfortunately, the US has been fixated on the tsunami that was headed for Hawaii. The possible destruction of various pieces of low-lying paradise upstaged the real tragedy of an earthquake felt for a thousand miles.
In the end, it seems that the water got a little murky near the Big Island, but that’s it for Hawaii. Yet where is all the attention about the earthquake? News organizations like CNN and MSNBC couldn’t stop drooling at the possible destruction heading for Hawaii. Look at the relative size of the images from CNN’s US homepage on the evening of February 27th directly concerning Chile:
Here’s the main video still image and headline in the center of the page to the right of the photo above (not playable):
In a tiny headline below the smaller photo, they point out that currently 214 are known to have died. Does the country’s attention really rest here? Even the respectable New York Times can’t avoid making Hawaii part of its headline:
Let’s hope the worl’d’s largest swimming pool survived the earthquake. If not, that’s all we’re going to hear about for a week. It’s in Chile—about 220 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter:
If you are looking for a good charity to which you can make a useful donation, consider Doctors Without Borders. They have sent a team to assess the situation, and even if they deem that they are not needed to any great degree there, your money will be appropriately in places like Haiti.
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Posted on February 27, 2010
Filed Under Islands, Natural Disasters, Scaradise | 1 Comment
A Shark Spring at the LA County Museum of Art ~ John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is getting into the spirit of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week with their advertising for an exhibit called American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915, which runs from February 28 to May 23, 2010. Check out this dramatic scene of a young swimmer being rescued from hungry sharks featured in several ads running prominently on the LA Times website:
Everybody loves to hate sharks, and given the success of everyday Jaws-frenzied initiatives why wouldn’t a museum latch onto that style of promotion to draw more people into the art world? I’m not sure what else they could mean by “Paintings of Everyday Life” in America because, while shark images are everywhere, people are not getting attacked by them daily, even in the early moments of the Republic.
Okay, so this 14-year-old boy was apparently just enjoying some “everyday” swimming in Havana when he was attacked and lost part of his right leg, which is craftily cropped by the artist (and even more by the graphic designer of this ad)—a dramatic story. According to that page, he went on to become the “brief” but everyday Lord Mayor of London.
The painting is called “Watson and the Shark” and was painted by John Singleton Copley, “America’s most important colonial painter,” in 1778 (oil on canvas, 71 3/4 x 90 1/2 in.). It is part of the permanent collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, purchased in 1963. This image was supplied to LACMA courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art.
The image in the ads seems to have been lightened a bit compared to the version featured online. They were perhaps trying to better match the painting’s colors with the red-white-blue gradients that drift across the exhibit’s logo. Most importantly, they really illuminated my favorite part of the painting, which is the shark’s ear—just your everyday shark with an ear.
A vertical version of the ad also exists, which may lead people to believe that the swimmer is a woman and that the shark might not be an anthropomorphized mutant:
According to the NGA’s website, Copley painted a full-sized replica of this painting that now hangs in Boston and a smaller version that finds its home in Detroit. The real-life boy’s name was Brook Watson. You can read more about him and the painting at this link, which is the source of the information above. A full bibliography for the museum’s web features is also available here. A story of the presumed and possible sources of the painting’s inspiration can also be found here, with photo credits for non-museum images here.
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Posted on February 23, 2010
Filed Under Art, Sharks | Leave a Comment
Beach Sand and the Bloom Box ~ Here come the conspiracy theorists
Allow Rapidsea to be the first to predict the ecological uproar over the Bloom Box by Bloom Energy, a power-generating fuel cell stack that was revealed to the television world on 60 Minutes on February 21, 2010. The technological and economic doubters have already had their say, even before the product is fully revealed, but various groups of people will soon be running around in fear of losing their precious beaches to energy consumption. Why? Because “beach sand” is an ingredient in the fuel cells. Here it is in Petri dish:
That’s reporter Lesley Stahl’s hand and Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar’s purple shirt. Stahl started out the conversation by comparing the process of making the Bloom Box cell to cooking. Sridhar handed her this sand and referred to it as flour after graciously accepting her comparing him to Martha Stewart. He claimed that ocean beaches on every continent have the material “in abundance.” Stahl goes on to say that the sand is turned “magically” into ceramic.
If the Bloom Box proves to be the most important improvement in electricity in decades, we may finally get to see if people value paradise more than energy. It could be a magnificent battle. At least that’s the story that the conspiracy theorists will soon be forwarding to your crazy uncle. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not going to steal your beaches in the night.
Of course, if they decide to use sand from a source other than beaches, then maybe the Bloomy meadow of the future will be bright. We still have to be honest with ourselves that we’re still going to need to find a different source of energy other than fossil fuels like natural gas to meet our consumption demands no matter how efficient the device is.
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Posted on February 21, 2010
Filed Under Beaches, Meadow, Technology | Leave a Comment
Shark Law Office ~ Folly Beach, South Carolina
The Internet is having fun again (still?) with sharks. The image that is popping up at various blogs and social networking sites is of a shark mounted over the door of a law office. The photo below was taken by William B. Folsom of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the US Department of Commerce:
The image is from the NOAA America’s Coastlines Collection, and the law office itself is located in Folly Beach, South Carolina. It’s the “beach” office of attorneys D. Keith Bolus and Michael Tommy Bolus located at 23½ Center Street. They specialize in “personal injury, criminal defense, and DUI cases,” and their visual message screams loud and clear. They also have an office in North Charleston. Their shark is featured in a small photo on this “Locate Us” page of their website.
In other versions of the image floating around, you can get a better sense of the setting that the building sits in. No Google Street View cameras have rolled by yet.
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Posted on February 18, 2010
Filed Under Law, Sharks | Leave a Comment
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