Dove Disney

I went to the Epcot Living Seas aquarium with some apprehension. I haven't been "wet" in a year, I'd be performing in front of an audience, and I'd be using somebody else's gear.

That apprehension ended when I stood on the platform, suited up, ready to take the plunge. Wow! Schools of fish. Rays, turtles, sharks, grouper, you name it. For an artificial environment, they've done a perfect job of recreating a real Living Sea. They told us they feed the sharks every two days and they'd fed them yesterday. They also said, if you see one coming, get out of his way because he will not get out of yours.

I got a little paranoid after realizing how easy it was for one to swim by before I noticed. For the little guys on the bottom, that was no problem but when I looked over my shoulder and saw the nose of their nine-footer maybe ten feet away, all I could think of was, which way can I go and how fast can I get there? But, no problem. They see divers every day and probably realize that divers taste like neoprene. (Surfers, who taste like coconut oil, are much more palatable.)

Other than that, our forty-five minutes in the water went by too quickly. To all my family who chipped in for this present, thank you!

Diving Disney

You're looking at a Christmas present that is six months overdue to be enjoyed. Tomorrow night, I'll (finally) get to go diving at Epcot. Keith, at the dive shop, tells me the water in their tank is so clear it is like diving in gin. With perfect visibility and no currents, I'll get spoiled, he said. Schools of fish. Well-fed sharks. I'll report back later.

some motorcyclists have been out in the sun too long

During the past six years, deaths of cyclists have risen in Florida. This is an expected result of repealing the law requiring helmets. Here's the story, although the writer demonstrates the kind of sloppiness in dealing with statistics that we've learned to expect from the news media:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/19/State/Report__Biker_fatalit.shtml

I love the attempt by the helmet law opponent to change the subject by saying: "What causes most of the crashes is cars," he said. "Usually, it's the car driver turning left at an intersection and causing an accident because they didn't see us coming."

Sure, and removing your helmet is going to make them see you better.

tropical relief

T.S. Alberto dumped about four inches of rain on us, blew a few trees over, and lifted the roof from a motel on our beach, but otherwise did little more than give the TV news clowns a chance to practice their hysteria.

Time was, a serious journalist wanted to send reports back from whatever war we had going on. That seems to be out of favor, not to mention more dangerous than ever. Now they want to be live on camera, one arm wrapped around a palm tree, with hair, coat and legs blowing downwind while telling us how dangerous it is out there. Puh-leeeze. Give us el breako.

I don't want TV weather guys in my face. What I really want is a FEMA debit card with some of my hard-earned federal tax money on it. They are apparently easy to get. Use a fake name, fake social security number, and a P.O. box address, and you too can obtain a little extra cash (at $2,000 per card) for hurricane relief necessities such as plastic surgery, expensive booze, season tickets for a football team, diamond jewelry, and overseas vacations. You say you are already in jail, and were at the time of the hurricane? No problem, man. Some of your fellow jailbirds have already obtained their unfair share.

Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of genuine hurricane victims are still waiting for FEMA relief assistance which, I promise you, will never come.

the season is off to a roaring start

Hurricane season, that is. Here's the latest on Tropical Storm Alberto:

http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm1/projectedpath_large.html?from=wxcenter_maps

Note that they have stopped drawing a line up the middle of the "cone of uncertainty." Note also that we are IN this cone. This is consistent with our weather pattern this year: A month's worth of rain in an afternoon followed by 29-30 days of drought.

a few notes for a Friday [edited]

[Edited on Sunday, 06-11-2006. See next to last paragraph.]

Here are some odds and ends, jotted down while waiting for the "river of steel" to thin out so I can drive home:

Evidence that some teenagers in the U.S. have the intelligence of a turnip:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MYSPACE_MIDEAST_TRIP?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME

Evidence that some lawyers in the U.S. need to be closely supervised by nannies:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/08/Tampabay/Rock__paper__scissors.shtml

Evidence that some adults need to be closely supervised by nannies:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/08/Hillsborough/Teachers_resign_over_.shtml

If you worry that politicians and other talking heads might run out of silly, brainless things to talk about, and that we might be forced to listen to a national debate on serious issues, you are not alone:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/08/Columns/Maybe_we_can_get_that.shtml

Finally, and I have no URL link for this one: The death by bombing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq may have no measurable effect in Iraq, where they are engaged in tribal warfare that the Hatfields and the McCoys would have been proud of (every act of vengeance begets another act of vengeance).

However, the U.S. Air Force must be extraordinarily proud. I have been reading "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," by NY Times military correspondent Michael R. Gordon & retired Marine General Bernard E.Trainor, who give us a detailed, researched history of the current war in Iraq. Among other things, they report that none of the top 200 Iraqi leaders were killed by air-strikes during the war, or at least until their book went to press this year. You might recall that the war opened hours earlier than planned because of a hot tip that Saddam Hussein would be at a particular location. The Air Force pounded the hell out of that location with bunker-busting bombs and the Navy launched rockets from offshore. Later, they discovered that they'd beaten an open field into submission. No Saddam, no bunkers. And that's been pretty much the story on the quality of intelligence from the CIA and the military intelligence agencies, and the Air Force's belief in "air power."

The Army used to say that a war is not won until the muddy boots of the Infantry stand on enemy soil. That was before Viet Nam, and before Afghanistan, and before Iraq. [And I must add, that is still true today but it is extraordinarily difficult for a trooper to know if or when he can relax. The Marines who apparently went berserk, shooting up the neighborhood after one of their buddies was killed, did what you would expect any young man who is heavily armed, trained to kill, and scared on a 24-7 basis to do under such circumstances. If our troops reacted to all roadside bombings in the same way, would their incidence decrease?]

Here's something I read on another blog and wished I'd written it myself: We were winning in Viet Nam when we pulled out. If we had not pulled out, we would still be winning. But that war would still be going on.

the season is upon us

. . . hurricane season, that is. As if on cue, we have a respectable thunder storm blowing up from the southeast and the weather radar for the Gulf shows storms blowing in all directions. My wife's trip home was blocked by Clearwater firefighters putting out a burning pine tree on the corner near our house - in the pouring rain. Lightning must have set it on fire just as the storm broke. It was blazing merrily from the ground up and they were using a fire hose on it. We had a record 96 degrees earlier this week. This is going to be a long, strange summer.