Nantucket, July 15th
- The Nantucket Island Inquirer reports
that the carcass of a young female white shark 6.5' in length washed up
on Madaket Beach off of
Sheep Pond Road on Monday. The cause of death is unknown. This is the
first time in 21 years that the body of a dead white shark has washed
ashore in Massachusetts. This fact of a real dead shark follows the
hoax of a white shark sighting on Martha's Vineyard last Thursday.
Update on the 2nd shark sighting at MVY - Lifeguards at South Beach (aka "Katama") on Martha's Vineyard closed the beach last Thursday when, at the same time as the hoax sighting was reported on the Nantucket Sound side of the island, they too saw a shark. According to the Cape Cod Times the shark seen by the lifeguards last Thursday was also seen by a biplane pilot.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 16 July 2008 )
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Last Thursday Michael Lorenzo told people swimming at Joseph
Sylvia Beach on the Nantucket Sound side of Martha's
Vineyard that he had seen two 20'+ great white sharks while
working on a fishing boat. Vineyard officials subsequently
closed the beach. Also on Thursday, pehaps seeing things because of
Lorenzo's warning, lifeguards closed South
Beach on the Atlantic side of the island because they might
have seen a white shark. Investigators determined that
Lorenzon was lying when they learned that the boat he claimed he was
working on didn't exist. Both beaches reopened Friday.
The fact of the matter is that big sharks are out there... just like
they've always been. The thing that gave this story a little
extra traction is that Martha's Vineyard was the location for filming
Steven Speilberg's classic, "Jaws" in 1974.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 13 July 2008 )
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 Michael Phelps in Speedo LZR / Speedo image
Since
its introduction in mid-February the Speedo LZR racer, a $550 swimsuit designed
by rocket scientists, has broken 44 world records. Is
it fair to credit the swimsuit over the swimmers? In this case
it is. The LZR smooths the contours of the swimmers so they are more
hydrodynamic. On top of that the surface of the suit repels water
and also makes the swimmers float a little better. For
some body types the LZR
swimsuit can make a profound difference. Professor Raul
Arellano of the University of Grenada in Spain observed a master level
swimmer with a wide mid-section lop off SIX SECONDS of time for the 100
meter butterfly to set a new record for her age class. That's a
gargantuan improvement in a sport where the difference between first
and second place is often measured in 1/100ths of a second.
There has been a lot of debate about whether or not the suits are fair.
It seems clear that
swimmers who don't wear equivalent suits will be disadvantaged. And what about the world
records themselves? Should the records be defined as pre and post LZR?
If changing body shape with a swimsuit is ok wouldn't it be
even more ok to have webbing surgically added between the toes... maybe
a little cartilege to extend the webbing into a full fledged
fins? Where should the line be drawn?
The Olympic committee has approved the new suits for this year's
competition in Beijing. The race is now on for everyone to get into one
before August. But getting into the suit is tricky. It is really and
truly skin tight and rips easily. An extra donut in the morning could
mean a new $550 swimsuit in the afternoon.
Interesting commentary at SportScientists.com
Speedo
LZR website
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 05 July 2008 )
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 NASA JPL image
For the sake of discussion let's say we opened up all of the US coastline and
ANWAR to oil drilling. In approximately 10 years, being supremely optimistic, this might add as much as 5% to world oil supply. If demand were flat then costs would come down. But...
demand isn't flat. The economies of China and India have been exploding
and billions more people are beginning to achieve middle class status.
If you think demand for oil and gas is high today, just wait. Imagine
what it'll be when those Chinese and Indian families will start to achieve the
American dream of two cars in every garage. Yikes!
The US does, in fact, have enough oil reserves to make a real difference in the
price of crude. Those reserves are trapped in shale deposits in Colorado,
Utah and Wyoming. By some estimates the deposits
of shale oil in the USA equal all of the known reserves of crude oil in the
world.
Another factor to consider is that many potentially productive offshore
areas are currently open for drilling and the US oil industry is not drilling
in them. One reason for this is a shortage of offshore drilling ships.
Like oil itself, the demand for ships that can set up offshore rigs to get the
oil is international and overwhelming. Similarly there is a huge backlog of orders
for offshore oil platforms. Last but not least, we need more refining capacity to turn oil into gas. Building refineries takes many years.
There's nothing we can do about high gas prices for at least 10 years. But
there are many things we can do today that can improve things substantially
by 2018 and beyond. Of those many things we can do, opening up new areas for
offshore drilling is surely one of the least productive. New oil wells
off of US beaches will not change the price of gas one penny this year and is
unlikely to change it more than two pennies a decade from now.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 June 2008 )
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Now you can easily find information on 255 Cape Cod beaches, ponds,
boat ramps and landings. The MoreBeach Cape
Cod and Islands beach map page has been updated with new
beaches added to the online map and a table of links to Cape Cod
beaches and ponds organized by town. We also corrected a few errors.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 13 June 2008 )
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