Watching Our Water Ways

When I hear about research taking place in Earth’s polar regions, I often wonder how our amazing ice-breaker ships make it through the ice. Do they just plow forward without hesitation, or do they worry about getting stuck?

Cassandra Brooks, a doctoral student at Stanford University, recently compiled an intriguing video showing time-lapse scenes of the Nathaniel B. Palmer on a cruise just completed in the Ross Sea of the Antarctic.

Cassandra’s narration provides a clear explanation of all kinds of ice encountered by the ice breaker, and she touches on the research itself.

“It was so beautiful,” Brooks told NBC News’ LiveScience. “And it was such a neat experience to be on this crazy boat that was just screaming through the ice.”

The video was part of a blogging project she undertook for National Geographic. The blog includes just seven entries, but each is an enjoyable science lesson for the reader. Take the entries in chronological order (bottom first) to get the full story of the adventure.

Before entering the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Brooks worked in both basic research and environmental education, according to the bio she wrote for her own website.

She holds a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has published articles for both scientific and general audiences.

Casandra informs me that she hopes to write a final closing blog related to the recent cruise and will probably continue blogging about other projects.

Share on Facebook

I recently noticed that people are still clicking on a blog entry from February of 2011 in which I featured the elaborate sculpted cakes of Karen Portaleo of Atlanta. See “If I knew you were coming…”

This week, I’d like to bring you some more amazing cakes, this time from Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii, where Rick and Sasha Reichart run a cake business called cakelava.

This scuba diver cake, a recent creation, was made to celebrate the 21st birthday of a marine biology major who enjoys diving.

It’s hard to believe that talented people can make a cake look like just about anything they want. I’m amused when I find water-related themes for cakes — not just because this blog is about water but because water is one place you would never put a cake.

Rick Reichart has been making elaborate cakes for more than 20 years. He and his wife Sasha opened their business in Hawaii in 2005. Before that, Rick worked in Los Angeles and Seattle and competed in the Food Network Challenge. Sasha had a culinary career in Los Angeles and Seattle. She currently runs the business and writes an entertaining blog about the adventures of making cakes and the interesting customers who order them. Check out the cakelava blog for pictures of interesting cakes and the stories behind hem.

In July, their new book, “Extreme Cakeovers,” will be released. It is written for people who would like to create their own unique cakes. Its list price is $17.99, but it can be found on line for $12.98.

A pirate theme is combined with a mermaid theme in this cake for two children, a brother and a sister, who celebrate their birthdays together. All the jewels in the chest are edible.

In March, the Reicharts delivered a cake for a Navy change-of-command ceremony. The cake was ordered by the wife of Cmdr. Stephen Mack, who served as commanding officer of the USS Hawaii, a Virginia-class sub, from 2010 to 2013.

The sailboat cake was a groom’s cake in a wedding. It was ordered by the bride as a surprise for her fiance, who is a fisherman. The boat included fishing poles and a marlin in the water. Rick Reichart also created the larger wedding cake around a racing theme.

Share on Facebook

Remember the television commercial for a French brand of toilet paper, the one I featured in “Amusing Monday” on April 8? The ad clearly demonstrated that the international trend toward a paperless society can go only so far, especially in the bathroom.

In a contest sponsored by “Ad Age” magazine, that toilet paper commercial almost won the Readers’ Choice Award for the funniest video of the year. The video chosen over it, by a few votes, is a commercial for Liquid Plumr called “Double Impact” (see video player, right). You can judge for yourself which water-related ad is the best.

The Viral Video Awards were presented two weeks ago at the annual Ad Age Digital conference in New York. The full list of winners can be viewed on the webpage for the magazine’s weekly report. If you have time, watch all the videos. They’re each about a minute or two long, and all play well on full-screen. Here are my favorites:

“Nike Golf: No Cup is Safe” shows a funny, impossible competition between Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. The ad agency responsible, Wieden & Kennedy Portland, was deemed the Creative Agency of the Year.

“P&G: Proud Sponsor of Moms” is a touching campaign about the mothers behind Olympic athletes. It involves a series of videos on a theme, including:
“Thank You Mama”
“Thank you, Mom”
“Special Olympics: What I See”
“To their Moms, They’ll Always be Kids”
“Never Walk Alone”

Expedia’s “Find Your Understanding” was deemed “Best Tear Jerker” of the year in the voting by readers.

Share on Facebook

Today is Earth Day and a good time to consider the Earth as a whole. Thanks to an impressive set of videos released by NASA in celebration of Earth Month, we can take a wide-angle view of the entire planet.

The first video serves to demonstrate the many images generated by NASA’s fleet of science satellites and aircraft. The space agency chose to accompany the video with music rather than narration, which ties together the images better than a detailed description. To delve more deeply into the science behind the images, visit NASA’s “Missions” page.

The second video shows the beauty of the Earth as seen from the International Space Station. The third is a blend of Earth images, computer animations and glimpses of the science behind it all. Although these videos are not amusing in a humorous way, I hope you’ll find them worth a look on Earth Day.

If you would like more NASA videos, still images and explanations, check out NASA’s “Earth Month 2013.”

Share on Facebook

We all know that water is the substance of life, but can it really turn a dehydrated baby chick into a living creature?

I think the so-called “Magic Clerk,” featured on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, is one of the greatest bits ever. People don’t expect a friendly store clerk to be a magician, so they are trapped into believing some of the most amazing things.

Michael Caronaro is perfect in the role, as Xaque Gruber describes in a blog on the Huffington Post:

“By pulling the wool over customers’ eyes — right in front of them — with bizarre, unexplainable stunts, we are reminded how we all move through life with blinders on. When confronted with a moment of sheer wonder — as in the chicks segment of the Easter video, people are thrown off guard, and often (inexplicably) accept the impossible as reality….

“It takes a certain sensibility to pull off this kind of act. Who else could do this except for someone who excels as a comedian, an improviser, an actor, and a magician? Carbonaro is all of these things, and even goes the extra mile by still being the charming, fun-loving, guy next door — a far cry from the ego-driven personalities that many associate with great magicians. And with an impending regime change at The Tonight Show, the time is right for a smart TV producer to snatch this guy up, and give him his own show.”

Here are more roundups of some of the Magic Clerk features.

Magic Clerk Part 1

Magic Clerk Part 2

Magic Clerk compiled

Share on Facebook

I would like to share some comments from a story along with an editorial cartoon, but first I want to talk about rain runoff from streets, driveways, parking lots, yards and roofs — also known as stormwater.

Stormwater is considered the greatest pollution threat to Puget Sound, according to studies by the Washington Department of Ecology. Of course, it is not the rain itself that causes the problem. It is what gets picked up along the way: chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers, bacteria … The list goes on.

Cameron Coleman finishes up an oil change on a car at Hockett & Olsen Automotive on Bainbridge Island, where car owners can obtain a free oil-leak inspection.
Kitsap Sun photo by Meegan Reid

Among the toxic chemicals, one of the biggest problems appears to be motor oil from vehicles. Oil leaks out of cars as they are moving down the road or while they are parked, then the rains wash the pollution into the nearest ditch and eventually into Puget Sound. By some estimates, that amounts to 7 million quarts of oil each year.

Fortunately, not all the oil goes into the water. In Kitsap County, for example, city and county street sweepers are driving around, picking up some of the oil and other chemicals along with soil particles on the roads. It is a proven effort to reduce pollution.

It would be better still if the oil didn’t get on the roads or parking lots in the first place. But how do you get people to fix the oil leaks in their cars?

An organization of local governments throughout the Puget Sound region is hoping that awareness will provide one answer. More than 80 service shops in the region have agreed to check for oil leaks at no cost or obligation to anyone. See my story in last Tuesday’s Kitsap Sun.

It’s a pilot program with the clever title “Don’t Drip and Drive.” It will run through April. The cost to the government is the cost of advertising on the radio. A federal stormwater permit issued to local governments throughout the region already requires that they try to educate the public. Maybe this campaign will work; maybe it won’t. I’ll report on the results after the program is over.

It seems like a simple approach to the problem. Even if people know their cars are leaking, this program encourages them to think about solutions. Why not get a free estimate to see what it would cost to fix the leak? Maybe it won’t cost much. Maybe a few people will find a way to address the problem sooner rather than later. Maybe it will reduce wear on their vehicles.

If people become informed and are offered a free, no-obligations solution, will it make a difference? I hope it does, because it avoids the more heavy-handed ideas, such as requiring vehicle inspections to obtain a car license.

If you read some of the comments at the end of the story, however, you might think this pilot program is intruding into people’s personal lives, not just asking them to check for oil leaks. I realize that the comments section can be a dark place, occupied by people who see a full glass as empty. But it is amusing to see what bothers some people.

Here are the first few comments:

“I would guess that 99% of drivers park their vehicle in the same spot in their driveway or garage every night. Do we need a government program so they won’t have to look at that spot to see if oil has dropped there?”

“I agree! Government is way outside of what they are supposed to be. This is ridiculous and out of control.”

“Yep so they find a leak and what’s next??? Big time repair bill and just in time to keep your wallet empty! Nice program! Big goverment (sic) get out of my life will you???”

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’d like to share with you an editorial cartoon by Milt Priggee published in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

Share on Facebook

We hear a lot about personal electronics and the move toward a paperless society. This idea only goes so far, however, as you’ll see in the video below. It comes from a television commercial by Leo Burnett, a French ad agency.

While we’re on the theme of paper, check out this episode of “Prank vs. Prank,” a long-running series on the Internet that involves a couple playing pranks on each other from 2007 right up to the present.

I’m not sure how their relationship survives, but Jesse Wellens and Jennifer “Jeana” Smith are still going strong with their pranks. Some are funny and some seem a little cruel. But people keep watching their videos on Prank vs. Prank. As of today, their channel has been viewed more than 376 million times.

I was also amused by the funny toilet paper rolls brought together in a blog by Rhonda Ablom, a.k.a. Pukeko, on the website Cozy.

Rhonda points toward a survey that asked people what things they would least want to wipe their bottoms with. Glass shards and barbed wire led the list, and Rhonda was able to find some soft bathroom tissue with a picture of barbed wire on each sheet. This could be a good conversation starter.

Share on Facebook

We used to call them “practical jokes.” My wife’s family has a long tradition of pulling tricks on people — a tradition that has made me the victim too many times to count, a tradition that now has caught on with our grandchildren.

Through the years, television has captured the reactions of many prank victims, beginning with “Candid Camera,” a show that dates back to the earliest days of television. At least 10 TV shows have been based on tricking people, according to Maccorley Mathieu of Star Pulse, who listed his “Top 10” prank shows for April Fool’s Day in 2010.

One of the tickster shows is the ongoing Canadian production “Just for Laughs” and its later version involving children, called “Kidding Around.” In honor of April Fool’s Day, I’ve borrowed a few water-related videos from this program to amuse you today. If that’s not enough, check out the YouTube pages where you will find these:

Fire Hydrant Explosion Gag

Wet and Dry Twins

Laptop Water Damage

Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice

Crazy Watermelon Spray

Shark Attack!

Share on Facebook

Parental instincts are on stark display in this video, below, showing a pair of fish protecting their eggs against an aggressive turtle, who no doubt wants to make a meal of their unhatched offspring.

The conflict takes place in Africa’s Lake Tanganyika. At first glance, you have to wonder how these fish, known as emperor cichlids, could possibly hold off the larger terrapin. But they do.

Another kind of fish-vs-turtle contest is the classic tug-of-war involving a worm. I found two videos in which a goldfish in an aquarium tries to steal a worm from a turtle. In each, the fish is at least partially successful. The longer (2.5-minute) video on Benjenings Channel plays up the drama; the shorter (22-second) video on Stonemanjosh Channel gets right to the moment of truth.

Can a turtle and goldfish be friends? They can, according to this sweet little video by Chibikana70.

But if you want to understand the more common scenario between turtle and goldfish, just search in YouTube for “turtle eating goldfish” and choose from the long list. You’ll find out more about the dark side of life than you wish to know.

I used to include some epic battles in this “Amusing Monday” feature. (Remember the octopus-vs-shark video taken at the Seattle Aquarium?) But some readers objected to violent battles ending in death, so I’ve kind of steered away from them. But I’m still fascinated by closely matched conflicts, such as the alligator against the python. Check out this video from “Nature,” originally broadcast on PBS.

As the narrator of the alligator-python battle explains:

“Alligators were once the undisputed reptile kings of the Everglades. But when push comes to shove, who would win in a battle now, alligator or python? It all depends on which one is bigger.”

Who wins in a battle of bats versus crows? I’m not sure there is an answer, but this well-produced video on BillsChannel is amusing to watch.

Share on Facebook

I really love this picture by Araminta “Minty” Little, a seventh grader at Fairview Junior High School in Central Kitsap. Her picture shows an octopus grasping trash that has been thrown into the ocean.

Apparently, the judges in the annual Marine Debris Art Contest also liked Minty’s picture. They named her one of 13 winners nationwide out of more than 600 students from 21 states who entered the contest, which is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Minty’s drawing is a fine piece of work, but she also got high marks for her concept, which carries a message about the dangers of marine debris. As part of the contest, she was required to write a bit about the problem. As quoted on the Central Kitsap School District’s website, she explained:

“The picture I drew depicts a sea creature surrounded by garbage. The octopus … is wrapping its tentacles around stray trash preparing to throw it all back onto land. In the top right tentacle is a sign reading ‘S.O.S.’ in parody to … an old sailing term.”

To see all the 2012-13 winners, check out the slide show on the Marine Debris Blog.

The contest is open to students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The 13 winning entries will be used to create a calendar scheduled to be printed in a few months.

“You wouldn’t believe the talent of some of these students,” said Dianna Parker of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program, which has conducted the art contest since 2010.

The next contest opens to entries in September.

Share on Facebook