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The German chemical tanker Igloo Moon cut through the predawn stillness in the waters off the coast of South Florida. It was 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 6, 1996, when Chief Mate Peter Stubler sent one of his crewmen on a routine inspection of the ship. Stubler liked to call it a fire round in recognition of the volatile and explosive nature of the Igloo Moon's cargo. The chief mate and a merchant seaman, Esene Mafalu, had spent the night on watch together.
While Stubler stood lookout on deck, Mafalu, a native of Fiji, climbed down a 35-foot ladder into the hold of the ship. He walked beneath the six stainless-steel cylinders used to transport the vessel's multimillion-dollar cargo. Together the tanks held roughly 6600 metric tons of butadiene, one of the most dangerous industrial chemicals in use today.
For starters it's toxic. The Environmental Protection Agency has determined prolonged exposure to butadiene is cancerous to humans. At high concentrations it affects the central nervous system and causes nausea, headaches, and dizziness. As a gas it's heavier than air. Loose in a ship it can settle into dangerous pockets.
Yet it wasn't cancer or hazardous clouds that concerned Mafalu.
The crewman verified that the refrigeration system that kept the butadiene liquid still worked. If it failed and the cylinders warmed to room temperature, the liquid would become a gas. In an enclosed place, butadiene gas is unstable and apt to react with itself, leading to an explosion strong enough to blow the 464-foot-long vessel into thousands of pieces. So serious is this threat that as an added precaution, the cylinders aboard the Igloo Moon also contained an inhibiting chemical to prevent such a reaction.
In just three days, the expiration date of the inhibitor would pass. But as Mafalu smoked a cigarette in the crew lounge after the round, he didn't worry. By the time the inhibitor lost its power, the butadiene aboard the Igloo Moon would be offloaded and helping to manufacture tires at a petrochemical facility on the Houston Ship Channel in Texas.
He finished his smoke and headed for the deck. It was now shortly before 5:00 a.m. The tanker skimmed through waves between two and four feet. The wind blew from ten to fifteen knots from the west, northwest. It had been smooth sailing since their departure from Saudi Arabia. After four weeks at sea, they were in the final stretch. The Igloo Moon had crossed the Bahama Banks. All that remained would be to navigate the Florida Straits into the Gulf of Mexico and on to Houston. The ship's German captain, Werner Mittelstadt, plotted a course that would hug the calmer waters of the Miami coastline, to lessen the impact of the headlong northerly flow of the Gulf Stream. It's a common route ships use to save time, although the current can be tricky, fast in one place, slow in another.
There were other reasons they would have to be careful. Sailing so close to shore left the Igloo Moon vulnerable to any number of hazards. There might be smaller craft in the area with which they could collide. The change in water depth is erratic. Nearby are coral reefs, the protection of which the State of Florida and the federal government take very seriously. The reefs are some of the most expensive real estate in the world when it comes time to repair damage to them.
On deck Stubler had his back to Mafalu, looking out to sea. As the chief mate stood silent before him, Mafalu thought he must be listening to music on his Walkman.
In fact the watchman was sound asleep, oblivious to the looming danger.
Suddenly the ship began to shake. Captain Mittelstadt jolted awake in his stateroom and rushed to the bridge. The Igloo Moon was much too close to shore. He tried to turn the vessel hard to port. The ship shuddered violently. Too late, Mittelstadt realized they weren't going anywhere on their own steam.
The Igloo Moon had run aground a little more than three miles from Key Biscayne inside Biscayne National Park. From Stiltsville she would have appeared peacefully at anchor. Yet on the way to her resting spot, the Igloo Moon had powered through enough coral reef to rupture four of its oil and diesel-fuel tanks. The ship carried about 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel and lube oil, much of it housed in tanks in a double-bottom hull. The release of the oil could kill untold numbers of birds and fish and damage productive mangroves for years to come.
Mittelstadt radioed the Coast Guard and the owners of the Igloo Moon in Germany. Coast Guard Miami Port Capt. David Miller learned of the grounding and the ship's perilous cargo around 6:00 a.m. As he hurriedly began to mobilize his forces to prevent an oil spill into the waters of Biscayne Bay, he wondered, How the hell could they safely remove the ship?
What Miller also didn't know was that a rare confluence of November storms from both the north and south was headed his way, bringing with it towering waves and gale-force winds. For the next two weeks, a salvage team would desperately try to prevent the ship from breaking apart and exploding. Today, within the world of disaster planning and ship salvage, the Igloo Moon operation is taught to emergency teams. In maritime circles the Igloo Moon is a major event, says Miller.
At the time of the grounding, and to the continued amazement of the participants in the rescue, local media never paid more than perfunctory attention. But the Igloo Moon incident might soon be in the news again. The U.S. Justice Department is preparing to go to court in an effort to collect reparations for the devastation. If the case is heard in court, jurors will learn not only about the damages wrought on the national park; they also might hear an astonishing tale of heroism in the face of disaster.
Richard Fairbanks learned of the Igloo Moon while still in bed that Wednesday morning. Fairbanks is a marine engineer by training and a former researcher with General Electric's Marine Steam Turbine Division. Today he shares the leadership of Titan Maritime Industries, Inc., a global salvage firm. Fairbanks had never seen anything like the Igloo Moon.
Usually hard aground jobs are nothing too serious and they don't have a lot of risk, says Fairbanks, who hails from the Massachusetts shore and speaks with an accent equal parts brine and Boston. Such jobs don't usually come with highly explosive chemicals onboard.
U.S. law dictates that all tanker ships trading within the nation's waters must name an oil pollution and salvage company in case of a wreck. That way the public doesn't foot the bill for a multimillion-dollar rescue and cleanup. The Igloo Moon had named a salvage outfit in New Jersey called Donjon Marine. Coast Guard Capt. David Miller and the London brokerage firm that handled insurance for the ship wanted Titan instead. For starters, they argued, the firm had the advantage of geography, as it's based in Fort Lauderdale. [The ship] was right on our doorstep, explains the 55-year-old Fairbanks.
When Fairbanks first came aboard in 1988 at the invitation of David Parrot, Titan's founder, the company worked like most other salvors. It had tugboats and heavy equipment to rescue ships that had grounded or partially sunk. These tools of the trade anchored them close to home. But Fairbanks helped nudge the group away from a reliance on equipment and toward an emphasis on expertise. Now Titan fields teams that travel the oceans and rivers of the world, salvaging stricken vessels. It subcontracts with other firms for the bulk of working material. At the time of the Igloo Moon incident, the company also had jobs under way in Denmark, refloating a capsized dredger, and in Indonesia, retrieving an 8471-ton partially exploded tanker.
Fortunately the third in the Titan leadership troika, senior salvage master Guy Wood, was at home in South Florida that November. The 44-year-old English-born Wood began his career as a teenage tugboat captain. When he was just eighteen years old, he towed a ship from Britain to India. By the end of the Igloo Moon ordeal, all those years of experience would be called into play.
During a salvage effort -- by definition an emergency -- Fairbanks, Parrot, and Wood each has an assigned role. Parrot mans the office, communicating with the owners, helping to hire subcontractors, and making sure the team receives everything it needs. Wood is aboard the shipwreck, commanding the most physical and dangerous part of the job. In this case Fairbanks represented the group in a committee called the Unified Command Center, where all the major decisions are made in conjunction with government officials.
The Unified Command Center system is still a work in progress for the government. The idea of bringing specialists from every affected government agency -- federal, state, and local -- together in the same room to handle an emergency began with forest fires. As wildfires sometimes raged across several states, a need grew for stronger coordination among government agencies. In the case of a shipwreck, the owners of the vessel also are included in the group.
The Coast Guard took up the unified command method in 1992, four years before the Igloo Moon disaster. At the height of Igloo Moon, hundreds of people were working in the command center, some passing days without leaving. [Unified Command] is pretty new, says Brad Benggio, a scientific coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There aren't that many big responses where we get an opportunity to pull that out.
By 2:00 p.m. on the day the Igloo Moon ran aground, Benggio, Captain Miller, and Richard Fairbanks had made it to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Operations office off the MacArthur Causeway. They were joined by dozens of others in a conference room on the second floor to analyze the potential perils.
Offshore by the Igloo Moon, several Coast Guard vessels circled while a contractor spread a plastic boom around the ship to contain any spills. Coast Guard officials onboard administered drug and alcohol tests to the captain and crew. (They tested negative.) They established a no-fly zone of 3000 feet and a no-boat zone of three miles (later dropped to 1500 feet and one mile, respectively). Divers from the national park surveyed damage to the coral. And the men in the command center strategized on how to stave off a catastrophe.
At 4:00 p.m. they held a press conference. When it ended Captain Miller breathed a sigh of relief. The Unified Command Center had answered all reporters' questions; fortunately there weren't many of them.
Meanwhile Guy Wood and a team of Coast Guard officers and Titan crew climbed onboard and began preparations to remove the oil and fuel in a process called lightering. Coastal Tug and Barge was hired to bring a barge alongside the ship, that would be pumped full of the Igloo Moon's oil and gas.
By the next morning, they were all at work. Despite five tanks breached, miraculously no oil had spilled. From the unscathed tanks the team simply pumped the oil out into the barge. The barge was fitted with fenders so when it bumped up against the Igloo Moon, it wouldn't further damage the ship.
The breached tanks had flooded. After ascertaining the water depth, the salvors stuck tubes down vents, which run up the side of the ship and allow air to escape the oil tanks. The hoses sucked up the oil floating on top of the water. Transferring the oil proved slow going. The Unified Command Center awaited anxiously for Wood to finish and eliminate the threat of an oil spill. Wood used heating coils to loosen the viscous oil -- until the devices malfunctioned. While lightering the oil, they pondered how to remove the butadiene quickly and safely. Without offloading some of her explosive cargo, the Igloo Moon wouldn't budge.
By Friday, November 8, Titan had completed removing 68,085 gallons of fuels and oils. Now they could focus on what really scared them: the butadiene. The inhibitor was set to expire the next day, so they sent to Houston for more to buy time.
During the discussions science coordinator Benggio eyed the weather forecasts with growing concern. Seas were around three feet, which is about the maximum for most lightering operations. But meteorologists predicted that by Sunday there would be swells up to nine feet.
The risk calculations performed for butadiene in the Unified Command Center focused on two possibilities. (Later in the week, when 30-foot waves lashed the Igloo Moon, horrors they'd never imagined suddenly became possible.) The butadiene could explode from a tank rupture or a breakdown in the refrigeration system. In that case everyone onboard, and most vessels in the vicinity, would be destroyed. Along the shoreline windows would shatter from the blast. And a huge chunk of Biscayne National Park's coral reefs would be ruined.
The gas could also escape into the air. Brad Benggio led a team that estimated hazard zones for a butadiene release by plugging into a computer variables of wind speed and rupture size. Key Biscayne lay little more than three miles from the ship. They computed a danger zone that stretched six miles from the point of release. It covered an area that would potentially expose thousands of people to the gas should it leak.
Models also told them how much butadiene needed to be removed before the vessel could float off the ocean floor by itself. Modelers arrived at a figure of 1000 tons. Through endless meetings over a period of 48 hours, they debated and eliminated options for lightering the cargo.
Someone suggested flaring it as a gas, burning it on the spot, but most agreed that seemed foolish. They couldn't release it into the atmosphere slowly to dissipate either; Captain Miller remembers that to do so safely would have taken about 90 days. The threat of explosion would be too great, and almost certainly those onshore would smell the gas and become frightened, or even sick. Finally, if they transferred it intact, a multimillion-dollar cargo could still be sold.
The problem with butadiene is that it can't be hauled just any old way. The men in the command center toyed with the idea of putting tanker trucks on a barge, but ruled it out as an invitation to trouble. The chemical is transported on the Mississippi River by special barges, but the vessels are not designed for the sea and would take too long to arrive, if they even agreed to risk it. To find a nearby ocean-going vessel equipped to handle butadiene seemed a long shot. To add to the difficulty, the vessel also had to be smaller than the Igloo Moon, with a shallow draft to clear the reefs carrying a full cargo.
Titan founder David Parrot and partner Richard Fairbanks identified several potential tankers. Miraculously one ideally suited had just finished unloading butane in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that Friday. Coast Guard Capt. David Miller and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration coordinator Brad Benggio are amazed to this day that Titan came up with a ship so quickly, and were able to convince its master and owner to take on the job.
One can imagine the hard sell, jokes Benggio. You have to bring your ship into this shallow coral reef area where another ship already has run aground. That other ship is sitting there with this highly explosive chemical that we want you to put on your vessel. Benggio breaks into laughter. Oh, okay, yeah I'll be right there, he mimics.
But Titan got the ship under contract and on its way. The 363-foot Selma Kosan set a course for Miami with a scheduled arrival of Monday afternoon, November 11.
At the same time, the owners of the Igloo Moon decided rather than just adding extra inhibitor into the cargo, Titan should test whether the original still maintained its strength. Although it would safeguard against explosions, if Titan overdosed the butadiene, it might spoil the cargo's value. They sent a sample of the liquid to a laboratory in Pensacola for a 24-hour test. In a remarkable stroke of luck, the lab reported the expiration date could be extended to December 1.
Finally, once the Titan crew had removed enough cargo to float the Igloo Moon, they needed to pull it out to sea without damaging even more of the coral reefs surrounding the ship. It would be tricky. They needed to find deep water and quick.
At the insistence of the National Park Service, Titan contracted a firm to do a detailed hydrographic survey. In a small boat, Search, Survey and Recovery crisscrossed the area using sonar to map the ocean floor and its depths. Once such a map existed, they could mark a coral-free exit channel with buoys. The only problem was that to complete the hydrographic survey, calm seas were required, and on the horizon ominous storm clouds gathered.
Out to the south and the north, two distinct weather systems began to make their way toward the Igloo Moon. Most agree this particular confluence of storms is rare for November. I've only seen it a couple of times in 25-odd years here, remarks Fairbanks.
In the Caribbean, around Cuba, a low-pressure tropical storm had started to blow hard. Over New York a huge area of high pressure circulated. Within a few days the two systems would be interacting with each other above the stranded ship. As they rubbed together, gale winds and monster waves would buffet the Igloo Moon. Those in the Unified Command Center prayed the mounting danger would not result in a rupture that would spew the Igloo Moon's deadly cargo into the sea and air.
By Monday, the day the lightering vessel the Selma Kosan was due to arrive, seas had risen to ten feet. Titan ferried material to the Igloo Moon in a 25-foot rigid-bottom inflatable boat, and the crew held tight as they went over the top of the large swells. Owing to the bad weather, the command center called off the hydrographic survey that had mapped about 75 percent of the area.
The Selma Kosan arrived on time, six days after the Igloo Moon went aground. But she had to anchor off the coast, because the Port of Miami wouldn't let it enter until a marine chemist certified the ship's cargo holds were gas free and a person could walk into one of the tanks and breathe.
Regardless of the Igloo Moon's dire situation, the Port of Miami wouldn't take a chance. Exploding chemical tankers could frighten -- indeed kill -- tourists on nearby cruise ships. The Coast Guard's Miller, in his capacity as captain of the port, didn't feel the need to fight the rule and force the Selma Kosan into its berth. They couldn't transfer the butadiene in the tumultuous seas anyway.
The next morning the swells averaged ten to twelve feet. A Coast Guard ship on the scene reported the boom had tangled underneath the Igloo Moon. When ordered to recover the boom, the cutter radioed back a negative: The seas were too rough to make the attempt.
Onboard the Igloo Moon, Guy Wood had another problem: how to prevent the ship from moving around in the storm. It helped that the Igloo Moon was hard aground: Except for 100 feet of the bow and 15 feet of the stern, the ship was firmly planted on the ocean floor. Still, a real possibility existed for the stress of the elements to tear it apart. My worst-case scenario, and I really didn't know what to do about it, was if the ship started to break up, these spherical tanks are very, very well constructed; they are very heavy and meet a lot of criteria because of the cargo they are carrying, says Captain Miller. If the ship broke up in half, a tank or two tanks could have left the vessel basically, possibly intact.
In such an eventuality, if the tanks didn't explode immediately, they might have to call in the navy to blow them up at sea. More frightening still, since shore wasn't that far away and the wind blew heavy to the northeast, it might just be the army detonating them on the beach. Then the media would certainly pay attention.
So Wood ballasted the Igloo Moon with water to keep it from bouncing around and doing more damage to herself. He also chained the vessel with three anchors. When the storm came, I filled everything I could, which again causes problems in and of itself, explains Wood. Everyone says, Well, the bottom is not supposed to take that sort of stress.' Well, it's not supposed to take the stress of hitting the [ocean floor] either.
The next day, Tuesday, November 12, the Titan ferried a marine chemist out to the Selma Kosan's anchorage. It was midafternoon and the sea heaved as the chemist struggled to board the vessel. It wasn't easy. Captain Miller describes what it's like: You get out in heavy seas. You are going up twenty feet and then dropping twenty feet, and all you've got is this little rope ladder that you are supposed to grab onto.
To get him onboard, they transferred the chemist to a larger ship that came around the other side of the Selma Kosan. Once aboard the ship, chemist Peter Rimmel dropped a hose into each tank to take an atmosphere sample. By the time he determined the ship safe and certified her gas free, darkness had fallen. As the wind and waves whipped up, an anchor winch on the Selma Kosan malfunctioned. The ship's master decided to stay at anchorage until the following day. Rimmel opted to remain as well rather than try to board another vessel to take him home in the furious sea. Wednesday morning, November 13, as the storm worsened, the Selma Kosan cut the anchor and headed for a safe berth in the Port of Miami.
Eight days after the Igloo Moon ran aground off Key Biscayne, the storm toyed mercilessly with the trapped vessel. Wood's fears were proving true. The stern and bow shifted back and forth while the rudder post jerked up and down. The vessel's loud protests could be heard in the sound of stretching steel, stressed in ways for which it was not designed. Wood wondered how much the storm was scouring the bottom underneath, moving sand, and exposing more of the ship to the mercy of the crashing waves.
Shortly before 1:00 p.m., Captain Miller ordered all Coast Guard personnel, both onboard the Igloo Moon and in boats around the grounded vessel, to evacuate. By Friday, November 15, the tempest grew fiercer still, with winds blowing 30 knots and seas well over twenty feet. Until this point most of the crew of the Igloo Moon was still onboard. Titan offloaded nearly everyone from the ship. As the mariners tried to depart the grounded ship in the heaving seas, they watched the waves, timing their jump onto the rescue vessel as the swells crested. The count aboard the stricken ship fell to nine crew members and two Titan salvors left to ride out the weather and risk their lives.
On the mainland the storm caused highway accidents, downed power lines, and upturned trees. In the command center, the helpless group gave Wood approval to dump the ballast water and the fuel if the ship started to break. In the meantime Wood tried to pump additional water aboard to keep the vessel as still as possible. I would have put more in if there were more spaces to put it in, says Wood. All you could do was add more weight to stop it from moving around.
A contingency plan was formed to try to spirit off the remaining crew by helicopter if necessary.
Onboard, waves smashed over the top of the deck. That night Wood walked the ship as crewman Esene Mafalu had done in much calmer circumstances. Wood had all but foregone sleep by that point. As the ship bucked, he climbed down the 35-foot ladder with a flashlight to inspect the tanks. The wind wailed and the ship grinded. The darkness accentuated every pop and creak. The tanks were banging, recalls Wood. She was [sloshing] around and clanging a bit.
Wood made a horrifying discovery: The top of the tanks had broken through the deck and were moving wildly from side to side. The stoic Wood, whose chosen profession places him in extreme danger on a regular basis, admits it wasn't much fun. The only time I've ever heard Guy worried was one of the nights when the weather was really bad and they were out there by themselves, observes Phil Reed, a Titan naval architect who has been on many jobs with Wood. He was sitting on a bomb.
The next morning, Saturday, November 16, as the sea roiled with waves as high as 30 feet, Wood reported the discovery of an 18-inch crack in the engine-room bulkhead. If the crack widened and seawater flowed into the room, they could lose the diesel generators. Without the power they provided, the refrigeration of the butadiene tanks would stop. In the rough weather, an explosion surely would follow. At the least that would mean death for everyone onboard. They hurriedly moved portable pumps to the engine room.
Standard procedure to stop a crack from expanding is to drill a hole on either end of it. The energy of the break then loses itself in the circular hole rather than continuing to cut through the metal. They drilled the holes, but the crack wouldn't stop growing. Wood decided to weld a triangular metal bracket called a gusset on either end of the crack. After much coaxing, they finally contained the fissure and welded it shut.
By this time the Selma Kosan was safely at berth in the Port of Miami. While Wood and those remaining onboard the Igloo Moon wrestled with the elements, the lightering vessel had its cargo holds filled with the inert gas nitrogen so no air would react with the butadiene to come.
That Sunday the cruise ship Westerdam tried to leave the Port of Miami. As it exited the port, the nearly 54,000-ton Westerdam lost power in the storm and began to drift directly toward the Selma Kosan.
Guy Wood remembers sitting onboard the Igloo Moon, listening on the radio as the Westerdam bore down upon their hapless lightering vessel. I thought, Oh my God, now we are back to square one, he recalls, and we don't have a ship.
Just before the Westerdam could crush the Selma Kosan, it regained power. In Coast Guard reports the event is described as the paint-scraping incident.
Monday, November 18, arrived with eight-foot seas and the promise of more moderate swells moving down from the North. By Tuesday the sea might hit the magic wave size of three feet or less, without which the transfer could not take place. No one wanted stressed hoses full of butadiene splitting open. And it's tricky to park a ship next to a grounded vessel. You have to wait for the weather to be good, otherwise you just roll into each other, says Wood.
With the lightering near and the storm subsiding, Biscayne National Park sprang into action. The Department of Interior, as the landholder where the grounding occurred, demanded that the ballast water be treated before Wood dumped it into the ocean. Park service staff feared that since the Igloo Moon had traveled from foreign oceans with similar climates, the water in her belly might contain invasive species. The real-life horror story that motivated them came from the zebra mussel, which likely arrived on these shores in ballast water around 1988. It went on to colonize the Great Lakes. The economic and environmental disaster continues to mount twelve years later.
The National Park Service takes their responsibility to protect that resource very seriously, and they didn't want to take a chance that was unnecessary, says Capt. David Miller.
The hard-bitten Titan crew thought it a little ridiculous. We could just about see the Port of Miami, and there were ships coming in and out, pumping out ballast water, notes naval architect Phil Reed.
Still, it wouldn't cause much delay; no special laboratory was needed. All they had to do was run to Home Depot for a couple of gallons of bleach. The tanks would be treated with chlorine, left for at least six hours, and then the water released.
Before they proceeded marine engineer Richard Fairbanks demanded an agreement in case the chlorine killed nearby marine life. I needed a harmless agreement from them saying, Look, I'll put this in but if we kill all the lobsters in the area with the swimming-pool water it's not my fault,' he says. The park service finally decided the risk was minimal to surrounding life. The Igloo Moon's crash through the coral likely had eliminated all sea creatures in the ship's wake.
When the weather had cleared even more, Search, Survey and Recovery had completed the hydrographic survey of the ocean bottom. Now that they knew the way out, Wood and the other Titan crew wanted to lighter the vessel as quickly as possible. Fortunately Tuesday promised ideal conditions. Indeed November 19 arrived sunny, but with waves still over three feet. Concerned that their window of good weather might close, the Unified Command Center decided to push ahead anyway.
The Coast Guard set about marking the channel with buoys so the Selma Kosan and the three tugboats Fairbanks had enlisted knew where to go. The buoys had radar reflectors and chemical marker lights. Titan ferried additional diesel fuel to the Igloo Moon to keep the refrigeration system humming. Now Fairbanks had to find new ships to help with the lightering operation. Coastal, the tugboat company that had worked to remove the oil, declined to participate in removing the butadiene on the advice of their insurance company. It was just too dangerous.
After several delays involving the late arrival of fenders and the removal of the Igloo Moon's stern anchor, the time to lighter finally came. It was now late afternoon. The Coast Guard gave strict orders that cell phones and beepers could not be carried on deck, as they could set off an explosion. They demanded all ships be equipped with fire suits, breathing apparatuses, and protective clothing. Extra sensors were deployed around the vessel to monitor the air.
Then at the last minute, the captain of the lightering vessel decided he couldn't go forward. Captain Miller went aboard the Selma Kosan to try to convince its master to proceed. He wanted another night to sleep on it, recalls Miller. He felt like there was too much pressure. Despite the Coast Guard captain's entreaties, the master of the Selma Kosan wouldn't budge. So Miller called off the operation until the following day.
At 9:35 the next morning, Wednesday, November 20, the Selma Kosan arrived alongside the Igloo Moon. By 10:25 a hose connection had been made between the two vessels. Fairbanks had purchased from Houston the specially designed hose, made with braided stainless steel to prevent breakage. Once the hoses were attached, the team pumped nitrogen through to flush the air out and test it. To their horror they discovered the hose had a hole. Fortunately Fairbanks had ordered several. An hour passed as they repeated the hookup.
At 12:40 p.m. the Selma Kosan started to receive butadiene from the Igloo Moon. By 4:37 p.m. the stranded vessel had filled the Selma Kosan, though the Igloo Moon still carried enough butadiene to blow herself into smithereens. Less than an hour later, the Selma Kosan left the exit channel. The tugs guided the vessel between two reefs for almost two miles before moving out to sea at a spot that was deep enough. Now, the Igloo Moon had an estimated draft of 17 feet. They would need a draft of 22 feet to escape.
On Thursday, November 21, they dumped the ballast water. After fifteen days, at 2:47 p.m., the Igloo Moon floated off the ocean floor and was led out to sea. Fairbanks and the Titan crew were now in the tanker business. They had to get the butadiene to Houston to sell it. It wasn't safe to take the Igloo Moon there directly and no U.S. port close by would allow the damaged vessel in. So while the Selma Kosan made fast to Houston to deliver what she held in her hold, the Igloo Moon sailed to Freeport, Bahamas. The Selma Kosan did one more trip back and forth.
With the cargo gone and salvage master Guy Wood still in the wheelhouse, they towed the Igloo Moon to a shipyard in Tampa. Phil Reed, who worked out of the shipyard, remembers watching with his three-year-old son as the big ship was brought in. Over the next four months, workers gave the Igloo Moon a new steel bottom, and then sent it back out to sea.
Fallout from the Igloo Moon continued long after the ship left dry dock in Tampa. When the crew returned to Germany, a Maritime Board of Inquiry convened in Bremen to conduct an investigation into the incident. During the inquiry the chief mate admitted he had fallen asleep, something he neglected to tell the Coast Guard during the salvage effort.
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The Coast Guard conducted its own investigation. Their report concluded that the overall management of the watches on the Igloo Moon lacked discipline and strict adherence ... to good maritime practices. Although the investigation uncovered inadequate staffing, it did not find a willful violation of law. The investigator made the recommendation that the Coast Guard should develop and promote regulations that require the use of bridge monitoring systems, shallow-water alarms, continuous automatic plotters, and waypoint alarms for vessels in the Straits of Florida.
Coast Guard headquarters disagreed. Sufficient equipment existed, it just wasn't used properly, argued the Coast Guard commander. The core of the problem appears to be fatigue and improper watchstanding, wrote W.D. Rabe, chief of the Investigations Division of the U.S. Coast Guard's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Sufficient manning requirements, addressing fatigue and work-hour limits, are where we should be focusing our efforts.
At the present time the U.S. Department of Justice is trying to recover damages to Biscayne National Park from the insurance company that represents the owners of the Igloo Moon. Lawyers with the Department of Justice waited three years before filing the lawsuit, claiming the ship destroyed 492 meters of coral reef habitat. The government is asking for a total of $2,063,086.36 for reef and sea-grass repairs. The two sides currently are reviewing each other's documents. A pretrial conference is scheduled for January 2001.
Within three months of the Igloo Moon incident, the Titan crew was back at work. A tanker loaded with crude oil, the San Jorge, had hit an unchartered reef off the coast of Uruguay. The cargo tanks had ruptured, spilling oil. Titan's task: Remove the remaining oil, stabilize the vessel, and ready it for towing.


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Nearly three and a half years after passage, the sweeping Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act remains a subject of intense controversy.
The two retired legislators for which the law is named will appear together at a conference for independent investment advisors on Wednesday — the MarketCounsel Summit in Las Vegas.
And two widely disseminated commentaries on the law published this week — both of them critical — may set the tone for questions that advisors and journalists will be asking former Sen. Christopher Dodd and former Rep. Barney Frank, both Democrats.
The Wall Street Journal devoted all of its above-the-fold lead editorial space Monday to a criticism of an idea vetted by the Dodd-Frank-created Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) that would expand the definition of systemically important financial institutions to include asset managers.
The Journal editorial draws a sharp distinction between the world of investing, where risk is expected and desired, and the world of banking, where safety is paramount. It notes that the dot-com bust of 2000, which saw the Nasdaq drop more than 60%, did not lead to a systemic crisis because it was private money that was lost.
"An asset manager decides where to invest money on behalf of clients. The profits or losses on these investments accrue to the clients, not the manager. A market decline shouldn't threaten an asset manager or the larger financial system," the Journal writes. This contrasts with banks, whose customers expect to be able to writhdraw every penny of their deposits, for which taxpayers are liable through federal deposit insurance.
Were the U.S. Treasury, which chairs FSOC, to rope in the likes of BlackRock or Fidelity as "systemically important," then asset managers, too, will become too big to fail, their new status will raise regulatory costs paid for in investor fees, and taxpayers will be on the hook for potential bailouts, the Journal argues. The editorial warns that Treasury has already breached the nonbank distinction by designating Prudential and AIG, two large insurers, as systemically important.
Perhaps most devastating, the Journal called Frank as chief witness. It quoted the law's co-author speaking a conference last month panning the new FSOC idea: "[FSOC] has enough to do regulating the institutions that are clearly meant to be covered — the large banks. I have not seen the argument made yet to cover [the] very plain-vanilla asset managers," he told a New York gathering of bankers.
On the same day, another leading financial journal, Investor's Business Daily, ran a lengthy critique of Dodd-Frank by Nicole Gelinas, a CFA and fellow at the free-market-oriented Manhattan Institute think tank.
Gelinas takes a broader view of Dodd-Frank, arguing that its biggest failing is perpetuating, rather than curtailing, "too big to fail." Rather than allow systemically important financial institutions to go under safely, the law seeks to "make the world safe from bankruptcies," she writes, noting that "bankruptcy is a natural, healthy occurance in a capitalist system."
Gelinas also fingers FSOC as particularly harmful because its mandate of identifying market risks and promoting market discipline is inherently contradictory. "Why should investors monitor big firms if the government is already doing it for them?" she writes.
She quotes Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher in testimony he gave Congress this summer warning that "as soon as a financial institution is designated as systemically important … it is viewed by the market as being the first to be saved."
The privilege that creates in the marketplace has fueled the growth of large banks, whose four largest representatives have assets amounting to 50% of GDP in 2011, compared to just 9% in 1990, according to Fisher.
Gelinas shows how under Dodd-Frank large financial institutions are shielded from bankruptcy. The law's Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA), rather than declare insolvency and work out an equitable arrangement between creditors and debtors, is actually authorized to inject taxpayer funds — a bailout, in other words — to keep the institution alive.
Gelinas quotes President Barack Obama as saying, at Dodd-Frank's 2010 signing ceremony, that "there will be no more tax-funded bailouts—period" under the law.
The Manhattan Institute scholar laments the law's sweeping approach — the bill was criticized for its 2300-plus pages — as opposed to enacting discrete technical fixes to the problems that caused the 2008 financial crisis, such as repealing a law that prohibited regulation of new derivatives markets.
She cites favorably a 5-page bill advocated by the Fed's Fisher that would end any government guarantee or subsidy and notes that Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., have introduced a 30-page bill that would bring back Glass-Steagall's separation of investment and commercial banking.
Check out these related stories on ThinkAdvisor:


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It is well known that every planar graph has an embedding such that every edge is drawn as a straight line segment (Fáry's Theorem). Kemnitz and Harborth made the following stronger conjecture
Conjecture 1. Every planar graph has a straight line embedding with integer edge lengths.
I was wondering if it is possible to attack this problem with the following approach.
Conjecture 2. Let $X:=\{ x_1, \dots, x_n \}$ be a finite set of points in the plane such that no three points of $X$ are colinear. For any $\epsilon >0$, there exists $X':=\{x_1', \dots, x_n'\}$ such that for all $i, j \in [n]$
- $d(x_i, x_i') < \epsilon$,
- $d(x_i', x_j') \in \mathbb{Q}$, and
- no three points of $X'$ are colinear.
To prove Conjecture 2, it suffices to prove the following conjecture.
Conjecture 3. Let $X:=\{ x_1, \dots, x_n \}$ be a finite set of points in the plane such that no three points of $X$ are colinear and all pairwise distances are rational. Then the set of points which are at rational distance from all points in $X$ is a dense subset of the plane.
Conjecture 3 is trivial for $n=1$ and easy for $n=2$. Almering proved it for $n=3$, and I think it is open for $n>3$. Note that Conjecture 3 is (essentially) a weakening of:
Conjecture 4. There exists a dense subset of the plane with all pairwise distances rational.
This question was posed by Ulam in 1945 (see this mathoverflow question for more background). So, the reason I like Conjecture 3 is that it is still strong enough to prove Conjecture 1, but appears much weaker than Conjecture 4. Unfortunately, Conjecture 3 is beyond my limited area of expertise. Hence:
Question. What are the prospects for proving Conjecture 3? A proof or disproof would be fantastic. However, even arguments suggesting that it is true/false but say beyond current technology would be most welcome.


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New Super Mario Bros. DS
This is classic side-scrolling Mario Bros action, a successor to the original Super Mario games. The new moves in this one include a super-mushroom that turns Mario into a giant. Mario's adventure spans both screens.
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
You could start your DS collection with New Super Mario Bros., which is as fundamental as it gets, but try this twist inside. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is the newest in the series of creative role-playing games starring Nintendo's famous brothers and their wonderful cast of friends and enemies. This game has exploration, tons of inside references to past Mario games, more of the series' top-flight comedy (this is a rare game that will intentionally make you laugh), plus, it's got a twist: You play as Bowser in the top screen and you play as Mario or Luigi — who have been swallowed by Bowser — in the lower screen, exploring his, uh, guts. Read Kotaku's Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story review.
Think of a noun that describes something solid. Write it into the DS. That will make it appear in the DS as a person, animal or object that will hopefully help you solve one of the many puzzles in Scribblenauts. Maybe the way to get the star out of the tree involves a "tiger"? "hot air balloon"? "black hole"? "god"??? Read Kotaku's Scribblenauts review.
Elite Beat Agents
Pop music plays as Elite Beat Agents requires you to rhythmically tap and swipe at the DS' lower screen. Doing this and doing it well allows the game's feel-good heroic male cheerleaders to improve the lives of regular people, that turn of good fortune depicted through hilarious comic-book-style scenes on the DS' upper screen.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Puzzle Quest DS combines the match-three style of gem-matching puzzle gameplay popularized by hit computer game Bejeweled with the story, battling and character-leveling aspects of a good old-fashioned fantasy role-playing game.


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Sam Irwin-Hill, an ambidextrous rugby-style kicker, rolled to his right on fourth down late in the first period then tossed a rainbow pass to the deep snapper — yes, the deep snapper — for a first down. How did it happen? The Razorbacks lined up in an unbalanced line to the left with nobody to the right of Alan D'Apollonio except for a couple of flankers off the line of scrimmage. D'Apollonio was wearing a No. 82 jersey rather than his normal 53, which made him an eligible receiver. The play gained 24 yards to the Rutgers 27 and the drive resulted in Zach Hocker's 41-yard field goal with 1:51 to go in the quarter, putting Arkansas ahead 3-0.
Trickeration II
The 21-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter marked the second major trick play by Arkansas on Saturday. The pass from tailback Jonathan Williams to wide open tight end Hunter Henry put Arkansas ahead 24-7. It came one play after defensive end Trey Flowers hit quarterback Gary Nova and jarred the ball loose, which was recovered by Chris Smith. Coach Bret Bielema said last week he had not used everything in the playbook; that was obvious against the Scarlet Knights.
Punt Return
Arkansas' special teams were dealt a blow when Janarion Grant returned one of Irwin-Hill's punts 58 yards for a touchdown with 2:14 left in the third quarter. It was the first special teams touchdown Arkansas has allowed this season. Grant added another big punt return of 47 yards in the fourth quarter, setting up Rutgers' go-ahead touchdown.
Film Study
On Friday night, Rutgers spent the night at the Hyatt Regency. If the players wanted to, they had a chance to do some extra film study for Saturday's game. It must have worked.
One of the in-house television channels normally dedicated to showing information about the hotel replayed the first three Arkansas games of the season on a loop. Commercial breaks and other delays were eliminated from the broadcasts.
First-Quarter Drives
Arkansas has scored in the first quarter in every game this season, including a field goal and a touchdown Saturday at Rutgers. Zach Hocker put Arkansas up 3-0 on a 41-yarder and Tevin Mitchel intercepted a Nova pass and returned it for a 26-yard touchdown. Arkansas also has kept opponents scoreless on their first possession for the first four games of the season. So far, Arkansas has outscored opponents 38-7 in first quarters this season. It was the fourth quarter Saturday that made the difference — Rutgers outscored the Razorbacks 14-0.
Not A Sixth …
AJ Derby appeared on his way to becoming the sixth quarterback since Arkansas joined the Southeastern Conference to win his first road game and the first one since Fort Smith's Barry Lunney Jr. to win a road game in his first start (1992 against Tennessee). That was before the comeback 28-24 Rutgers victory. Road-game winners in their first road appearance were Lunney, Clint Stoerner, Ryan Sorahan, Casey Dick and Mitch Mustain.
Fans Follow Hogs
Arkansas was represented by a small but vocal fan contingent at High Point Solutions Stadium, mostly sequestered in the upper deck on both sides ranging from the 15-yard line to the goal. The band was in the lower deck of the north end zone. The game marked the first time the Razorbacks had played in the northeastern United States since traveling to New York City to play Fordham in 1940.
SEC Coppers
Arkansas entered Saturday's game ranked first in the SEC in eight individual and team statistics, and defensive end Chris Smith was No. 1 in the nation in sacks per game with 1 1/2. Against Rutgers, he registered one sack. The other conference-leading statistics were for individual total rushing yards, Alex Collins, 418; team time of possession, 108:22; total tackles for loss allowed, six; sacks allowed, .67; rushing offense, 294.3; passing defense, 147.7; and scoring defense, 12.7. Some of those records will continue into Week 5 against Texas A&M, while others, like rushing totals, are likely to drop.
Streak continues
Center Travis Swanson has started all 42 games of his career at Arkansas. His streak is tied for third in the nation.


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Trace Adkins Says Losing His House Brought Him Back to 'Celebrity Apprentice'
One thing's for sure: Trace Adkins is a strong example of what tough people do -- not only in his music, but also in life. The four-time Grammy-nominated artist has seen great success as well as devastating loss -- especially the 2011 loss of his house in an electrical fire while the singer was traveling to Alaska. Since then, he has realized the necessity of making every moment count, and that includes being bluntly honest when needed.
Adkins recently showcased his newfound bluntness during a press junket for 'Celebrity Apprentice All-Stars,' the reality series in which celebrities compete to raise money for their favorite charities -- it's entertainment for a great cause. The country singer is returning as a contestant simply because of the terrific help his family received from the Red Cross after the fire. He feels indebted to pass on that generosity, but does not feel the least bit obligated to be friends with the entire cast.
Entertainment Weekly reports that Adkins did not want to return to the show initially because he dislikes his fellow contestants. In his words, "It puts me in a position where I'm forced to tolerate individuals that I normally wouldn't tolerate… I don't live my life like that. I don't have to spend time around people that I abhor." However, he adds, "…so it took my house burning down to get me to come back."
Returning to the show is a big sacrifice for Adkins, so it's clear that the tragedy of the house fire coupled with a charitable mindset has been powerfully impactful in his personal life. He concludes, "That's the only reason I even considered coming and doing something like this."
Equally intriguing is a comment from fellow 'Celebrity Apprentice' contestant Omarosa Manigualt, who states "Trace is a game changer. I can't give it away, but he changes 'The Apprentice' as we know it."
We know one thing; we can't wait until 'Celebrity Apprentice All-Stars' premieres March 13 on NBC. We'll be watching; will you?


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Sarah Darer Littman: Arizona law whites out what the powerful don't like
Markus Zusak's brilliant work "The Book Thief" was the first Greenwich Reads Together choice. I facilitated a discussion group in which we talked about some of the major themes in the novel: censorship and the power of words as a force for either good or evil, as a method to dehumanize others.
Little did I realize that life would be imitating art in the state of Arizona. In May 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, known for her proud championing of the heinous anti-immigrant SB1070 legislation, signed HB2281 into law. The bill, promoted by then superintendent of public instruction and now Attorney General Tom Horne, bans any educational programs that: "1. Promote the overthrow of the United States government. 2. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people. 3. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. 4. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
Clearly this means we shouldn't allow students to study anything about Rick Perry, even if by some extraordinary miracle he's elected president of the United States. After all, the guy threatened to secede from the Union back in 2009.
Because this is totally colorblind and not racist, right?
Wrong, as is apparent from the open letter from Horne to the citizens of Tucson in 2007, which opened: "The TUSD Ethnic Studies Program Should be Terminated."
Bear in mind upon reading Horne's words that Latino students make up over 60 percent of the Tucson Unified School District: "VI. Teaching the Wrong Things About Literature. When I began speaking out publicly against ethnic studies, one of the ethnic studies teachers had his students write me letters. One of these letters states: `All that the English classes teach is mainly about some dead white people.' I believe schools should teach the students to judge literature by its content and not by the race or gender of the author."
Ironic because amongst the books now crated up and prohibited from use is Shakespeare's "The Tempest." I guess the Powers that Be don't like Latino kids exposed to themes of race, colonization, oppression, class and power, even if it is The Bard.
Meanwhile, GOP State Rep. Terri Proud has proposed two bills to allow the Bible to be taught as an elective in high school. But not the Quran, because it "hasn't influenced Western culture the way the Bible has." Guess she never studied algebra.
Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, another great writer whose works are now prohibited from being taught, said, "If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves ... Growing up, I felt like a monster ... I was like, `Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don't exist?' And part of what inspired me was ... that I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it."
Aside from bigotry, there's the gross stupidity of eliminating a program that works. Ninety-seven percent of students in the TUSD ethnic studies program graduate high school, compared to a 44 percent graduation rate nationally among Latin-American high school students. The state's own auditors, to whom current state Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal paid $170,000 to determine if the program was unpatriotic and ineffective, came back with the exact opposite conclusion.
As Debbie Reese, publisher of American Indians in Children's Literature (americanindiansinchildrensliterature.net), observed, "Students ... showed improvement in grades and graduation rates as a result of taking these classes. Isn't that what schools want to see happen?"
Tom Horne and John Huppenthal need to learn one of the Mayan concepts absorbed by students in the program they just shut down: In Lak'ech Ala K'in -- "You are the other me."
Sarah Darer Littman is a Greenwich resident. Her fourth novel, "Want to go Private?" was published in August by Scholastic Press.


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KB The General - Jordan (Chief Keef - Kobe Remix) [Unsigned Hype]
@LiveFreeNation Presents: @KBTheGeneral - "JORDAN" Shot by @KnoEffort
Mixtape titled "Live Free" is set to release 12-12-12.
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Intel will offer to bundle its promised solid-state drives with its upcoming Centrino 2 platform, it has been claimed. The plan is being portrayed as a bid to push SSDs into the mainstream.
Today, SSDs generally command a significant premium over the price of equivalent notebooks fitted with a hard drive. Quite how far Intel will use the bundle approach to drive down the cost of implementing SSDs remains to be seen.
Centrino 2 - codenamed 'Montevina' - is due to debut late June, according to industry moles. Back in March, Intel executive Troy Winslow said the chip giant would ship 80GB and 160GB 2.5in- and 1.8in-format SSDs in Q2, so the timing of both product types could easily coincide.
According to insiders cited by Digitimes, the Flash drives will be branded Intel High Performance SSD, with the model codes X25-M and X18-M for 2.5in and 1.8in sizes, respectively. The first SSDs will be 80GB. They'll use a SATA interface.
That makes the 1.8in model a logical update for Apple's MacBook Air - reviewed here - allowing the company to deliver a second-gen machine that connects to storage over a SATA bus rather than the slower, parallel ATA bus the current version uses. The report claims the 160GB version won't arrive until late Q4, with 250GB SSDs following next year.
Sponsored: Practical tips for Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration


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Baltimore Co. gov't, schools consolidate building, saving district up to $4M
District's data center to move into county courthouse
Baltimore County public schools are working with the county to help save the district up to $4 million by consolidating the district's data center with the county's data center.
The school system and the county have tentatively agreed to consolidate the Department of Technology data center with the county's data center in the courthouse in Towson, a move that would save the district between $2 million and $4 million in construction costs, as well as an annual savings of $100,000 in maintenance costs.
The move, which would be complete by August 2013 if the County Council approves the deal, would allow the school district to quit leasing the building it's currently using in Timonium.
Officials said the school system and the county government have been sharing an off-site data backup center since 2007.
"We have made giant strides so far in using innovation and consolidation to maximize efficiency in general government operations, and the next logical step is to work together with the school system to save taxpayer dollars and ensure that we are doing all that we can to focus our limited resources on the classroom" said County Executive Kevin Kamenetz.
In August, the county and school system decided to move the Division of Curriculum and Instruction to a county-owned building, too, saving an extra $1.5 million in operating expenses. The relocation of those offices will also be complete next August.


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Lots of children, it seems to me, are bored much of the time after school and on weekends. But I'm not, because I run a neighborhood newspaper ...and I think my "job" is fun and constructive. One of the things I enjoy most about the journalistic project is that I have total control over what kind of paper I put out. Editing it is like running my own business. Children usually don't have the opportunity to try out new ideas, but I can with my own newspaper.
The idea for starting my first paper (I've done two neighborhood newspapers) came to me from a book called Eddie's Big Deal, by Carolyn Haywood, which I read when I was six years old. I lived in a group of townhouses in Eugene, Oregon then, and started a paper called Hot News. I handprinted every copy of the first issue. After that, a neighbor let me use her "ditto" machine for free. The purple-print duplicator could copy only on one side of a sheet, so the Hot News was a one-page newspaper. It came out once a week.
Later our family moved to Arroyo Grande, California. There I started a journal called the Tierra Street Hot News, which I distributed to the 23 houses on Tierra Street. A teacher who lived next door to us ran the paper off on a ditto machine at his school, so my cost of publishing was only the price of the duplicating paper.
Next, I enlarged my newspaper to cover two streets, and started calling it the 2 Street Press. By that time, the county school office had agreed to do my printing, by photo offset, if I'd pay for the paper. I was then able to tape photographs and children's drawings on the pages. And, since that machine worked by a process called duplex, I could print the 2 Street Press on both sides of my sheets.
After six months, I expanded the newspaper again, in order to cover three more streets, and I changed its name to the 5 Street Recorder. I passed the paper out for free and used my allowance to pay for the expenses. (It cost $1.50 to print 135 copies of each issue.)
In October of 1980, I expanded once more. Today the paper covers ten streets, comes out twice a month, and is named the Pike Press.
I now charge 25¢ a month for subscriptions and have a company nearby print the paper for $8.50 an issue. I also buy film for $1.75 a month and pay $4.00 to get it developed, so the total cost of making the Pike Press for one month is $22.75. Since I have 95 subscribers, the paper breaks even.
People are interested in news. They enjoy seeing their ads or items in the paper. We advertise garage sales, cars, babysitting, and more. News may include the details of a vacation, neighborhood sports events, or kids' news such as a report on a child who lost a tooth. Little boys and girls like to put fun items in the paper, such as "Jason is the fastest runner in the world."
In order to get stories for the Pike Press, I go from door to door and politely ask people if they have any news to share. I go back to visit anyone who wasn't home the first time I came around. If people don't have anything for one issue, I don't give up on them. They may have some news for the next one.
I also do interviews for special columns such as "Our Neighbors" (which tells about a family), "Super Kid" (which puts a youngster of 4 to 12 in the spotlight), "Teen Super Star" (for 13- to 18-year-olds), "Pamper Kid" or "Super Baby" (for babies), and "Tot Terrific" (for children 1 1/2 to 3). I ask questions like "What do you want to be when you grow up?", "What are your hobbies?", "What is the greatest thing that has ever happened to you?", "What is your age and grade?", etc. And I always take pictures of the subjects to use with the article.
After the people have answered all my questions, I write up the stories, using the facts from the interviews. Then I bring the finished articles back to the people I wrote about to check the facts and see if they want to make any changes. This is important because you have to be very sensitive to other people's feelings.
Once, before I started checking on stories, I interviewed a family for "Our Neighbors." The mother told me to write that she had foster children because she was very proud of making a home for them. But when the story came out in the paper, the children's friends made fun of them. The youngsters had been pretending that their foster parents were their real father and mother. The children got upset, and the whole family blamed it on me.
After I have all of my news, ads, and interviews, I start getting the paper ready to be published. I type it, but if you can't get to use a typewriter yourself, then print it out neatly. (Either way, it's best to use the kind of typing paper you can erase with a pencil eraser or to buy some white Liquid Paper Correction Fluid so you can brush it over any mistakes and write or type on top of them.)
If I find that I don't have enough material to fill the paper, I go out and look around for more news. I might ask a child to draw a picture on a small piece of paper. Then I write the child's name and address on the picture and glue or tape it to my newspaper sheet.
Another thing I do is to cut pictures out of magazines. I tape each one in its space and write under who it is and something about the person. I also write jokes, include a puzzle, or add something about a mystery person.
It takes me four hours an issue to get the subscriptions and collect the money for each issue. I then spend six hours getting all the ads and news items. Interviewing and photographing require only two hours. Typing and editing the paper take four hours. Then it takes me one hour to have the Pike Press printed, and two and a half hours to distribute it. Altogether, I spend 19 1/2 hours putting out each issue. But no paper will be any good unless you take the time to make it good!
I think the Pike Press has really brought this neighborhood together. Since I started it, many people have been able to meet other people they wouldn't have met without a neighborhood paper.
Lots of children's activities have been organized through the newspaper, too. One lady had a neighborhood Easter egg hunt. Mothers have given potluck dinners to show films that were checked out from the library, and boys and girls have gotten together to make cutout cookies and string cranberries and popcorn for Christmas. One family even organized kids to clean up an empty lot!
Everyone, young and old, likes the Pike Press. When I deliver a new issue, most of the children gather to wait for their copies. Parents have been really proud of their child when he or she has been featured as a "Super Kid." Many lonely elderly people have been happy with the paper because it helps them feel they are a part of the neighborhood. And when new families move in, they are especially glad they chose our neighborhood because of the Pike Press and the friendliness of all the people.
The Pike Press helps my neighborhood, and editing it has been a big help to me, as well. Running my own newspaper has taught me a lot of things that I'll need to know when I begin my adult career ...in journalism)
Some Selections From Pike Press
•> 651 Lancaster: Derek's soccer team the Cougars won trophies for winning every game except one.
•> The dog Snoopy at 641 Lancaster St. will bark at you but don't be afraid. All he wants is attention. He would like it very much if you stopped to pet him. He is a very nice dog.
•> 791 Paul Place: If you need a babysitter for New Year's Eve see Sherry.
•> Read a book a day!
•> 610 Del Sol: We put in a new roof on the weekend of the 13th and 14th.
•> Mr. Leos of 605 Del Sol who is HAPPILY married with 7 kids has a special message for his beautiful wife. "I love you Bettie because you're sexy."
•> The Tot Terrific for this issue is Theresa Blackner. She is 22 months old. She likes to look at books and go to see the ocean. Her birthday is Dec. 9th. She has a little brother named Jake who is 5 weeks old. Theresa recently rode a cow on a ranch and went to Disneyland. She learns very quickly. Theresa is potty trained. Her father is a mechanic at Cal Auto in San Luis Obispo. Theresa is a bright young girl and I'm sure she will grow up to be someone important.
•> 661 Tierra: Who's missing a friendly, shaggy, black poodle? He hangs around here.
•> 1231 Russ Court: Jenny has a teddybear that can wear her clothes.
•> 621 Elm St.: 1950 Buick For Sale. In excellent working condition.
•> Your Opinion by Aaron Haber
I asked many people what their New Years Resolutions were, and here are a few of the answers:
- "stop biting fingernails"— Frances Miranda
- "to give what it takes in '81"—David Shargel
- "to lose 15 pounds"— Carolyn Tabor
•> We are sorry to hear that Christy at 601 Lancaster had a cold this week. From "The Gang."
•> 670 Tierra: We had eight relatives over for Independence Day.
•> Work hard and never give up!
MOTHER EARTH NEWS feels strongly that youths can be creative "doers," working toward more ecological and self-reliant lifestyles ... whether their tasks be raising chickens on a farm or maintaining rooftop container gardens in the city. To support the endeavors of our often overlooked "underage" citizens, we're glad to publish well-written articles from younger children and teenagers concerning projects they've undertaken. However, we recommend that all young authors query (that is, send us a letter telling about the story you'd like to do) before writing a full article.


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Not long in the past a lot of men and women started out getting involved in rearing their own chickens the key reason being that they wish to produce their own food and feed their families. But since the demand for chicken produce grew a lot of men and women found an opportunity in the market to raise chickens for revenue.
When beginning in farming chickens at home in Fresno California you must find out if you are allowed to raise chickens in your area. Some states or countries might not allow the keeping of chickens. Nevertheless if you are allowed to keep chickens in your area then its time that you can get started.
>> Click Here For A Recommended Guide To Raising Chickens…
Chickens require a lot of attention plus management. You should make sure you feed your chickens the right food to keep them healthy and illness free. Feeding hens is not a complicated process. Birds can eat all sorts of food like garden pests, weeds and even your leftover foods. With this being said birds can be ideal for your garden as well because as they eat up the insects and also fertilize your garden with the poo.
Contructing a chicken house is very vital. The chicken house must be safe and protect the birds from predators such as hawks, cats and even dogs. Some folks can even try to steal your chickens. Your chicken coop should be well covered as well to protect your birds from too much sunlight, cold and rain.
You must try by all means to keep your chicken coop clean as possible. The coop should be large enough to accommodate all of your birds, young and old. They should be enough space for your birds to lay their eggs and eat. Fresh water can be given to your birds in their coop.
You should surround your chicken house with a fence to give your chickens some space to move around and search for insects to eat. The fencing should be high enough for the chickens not to fly over and predators such as dogs to jump in. Once you get this right you sure will be a happy poultry farmer.
>> Click Here For A Recommended Guide To Raising Chickens…


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As I said earlier Abstraction in Java is implemented using abstract class and interface as discussed in next section. In fact, what is an abstraction in Java, difference between Abstraction and Encapsulation is also a very popular core Java interview because strong OOPS skill is one of the primary requirement for Java developers. Abstraction is also one of the hard to master concept. Programmer often mix differnet levels of abstraction which result in in-flexible code, so be careful with that.
What is abstract class in JavaAn abstract class is something which is incomplete and you can not create an instance of the abstract class. If you want to use it you need to make it complete or concrete by extending it. A class is called concrete if it does not contain any abstract method and implements all abstract method inherited from abstract class or interface it has implemented or extended. By the way Java has a concept of abstract classes, abstract method but a variable can not be abstract in Java.
A popular example of abstract class in Java is ActionListener which has an abstract method called actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae). This method is called when an ActionEvent is fired like when you click on JButton. It's common in java to attach ActionListener with JButton by implementing abstract method actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) using Anonymous class, as shown in below Example :
JButton ok = new JButton("OK"); ok.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){ public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae){ //code to handle event } });
Abstraction Using Interface in Java
If you know some of the behavior while designing class and that would remain common across all subclasses add that into an abstract class. An interface like Runnable interface is a good example of abstraction in Java which is used to abstract task executed by multiple threads. Callable is another good abstract of a task which can return value.
A picture is worth more than 100 words and this picture proves that. It nicely explanis the concept of data abstraction in object oriented programming world:
Abstraction : Things to Remember
7) If a class extends an abstract class or interface it has to provide implementation to all its abstract method to be a concrete class. alternatively, this class can also be abstract.
Further Learning
SOLID Principles of Object Oriented Design
Absolute Introduction to Object Oriented Programming in Java
Java - Object Oriented Programming [For Absolute Beginners]


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At the 20th Congress for the New Urbanism in West Palm Beach, Fla., one of the liveliest and most important recurring themes was one that many urbanists now call "sprawl repair." New Urbanism's first 20 years were notable primarily for impressive stand-alone neighborhoods like Seaside in Florida and Belmar in Colorado, big projects on huge sites that reinvented the American residential community from scratch. The real sustainability challenge of the next 20 years (and likely beyond) though, will be reconfiguring our existing communities to perform in an age of energy scarcity and declining automobile dependency. An aging population of smaller families will need fewer McMansions and cul de sacs and much more in the way of dense, walkable urban streetscapes.
Some of the most exciting work in this field to date has focused on retrofitting that humblest and least cherished of suburban design features: the strip mall. We all know the function of the standard version of this design, of course — it's a quick-stop shopping plaza, usually catering to daily needs. There's a row of four or eight or 12 small retail outlets, often in a straight line, sometimes in an L or C shape. Usually there's a good-sized anchor tenant or two: a grocery store, a drug store, a Walmart or hardware store. The strip is pulled well back from the road, marooned from the cityscape by a wide desert of parking lot.
This is what a strip mall is, where it began. But what else could it be? This question is at the heart of an eye-opening design competion called "Strip Appeal," which was launched by the University of Alberta last year and attracted fascinating, innovative submissions from across North America. (The "Shortlist" and "Notables" sections of the website make for some thought-provoking eye candy.)
Here are the contest winners, announced earlier this year, along with my two favorites that didn't win:
1. "Free Zoning" by Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis
This entry, which won the Jury Prize, is more a zoning trick than a full-on retrofit. It proposes transforming a derelict strip mall in Buffalo, N.Y., by dismantling it, lifting all zoning restrictions, and allowing new residents to use the materials for free to build new structures. The advantage, is that it keeps the old strip-mall foundation — the most expensive single element of the construction — so it would permit a mini-neighborhood to pop up on the cheap.
2. "Park(ed) Mall" by Carole Levesque, Todd Ashton and Aumer Assaf
The Jury runner-up was this entry from a team working in Edmonton, Alberta, which invented a replicable design concept for a next-generation strip mall. The "Park(ed) Mall" would involve clearing an existing strip-mall site and reconfiguring it as a park space, outfitted with docking stations for small businesses set up in trailers. It's a nimble, flexible and endlessly reconfigurable approach to retail development.
3. "Unbox-Embrace-Cohere" by by Jasper Hilkhuijsen and Geraldine Li
This redesign of a strip mall in the Netherlands won the Public Choice award. The central innovation is to punch holes in the strip mall, to break it into a series of smaller boxes (the "unbox" part of the equation) which allow for greater integration ("embrace") with the neighborhood. In the design drawings, a rooftop patio, courtyards and green space are added to tie the pieces into a single integrated whole ("cohere"). Stylish stuff, though the design team had the advantage of starting with a Dutch-style strip mall, where the mall itself is tight against the street.
4. "Pop-Up Food Truck Station" by Daniel Orlando Martinez
This one earns my runner-up prize for a clever twist on a booming urban trend. It takes the standard strip mall, turns it into a food-court space without the restaurants, then adds in docking stations for food trucks, which are of course the hottest thing in street-scale, low-cost urbanism in cities across the continent. This idea is similar to the "Park[ed] Mall" concept above, which leads me to think that maybe the modular docking station for small retail might become a critical tool in the sprawl repair kit. And I like the food truck cross-pollination a lot, because food trucks are such crowd pleasers — a great way to prove the concept to a city hall reluctant to make big zoning changes (are there any other kinds of city halls)?
5. "Strip:Weave" by Teal Architects
This stylish design, a sort of earthy modernist retrofit of a strip mall in suburban Halifax, Nova Scotia, wins my grand prize. It brings density, green space, and nimble, modular retail configurations to the plain old strip, and it does so with eye-catching design of the sort that could create a destination all by itself. This goes beyond reconfiguration to wholesale reimagination, and it introduces a highly replicable way to bring mixed-use urban design to suburbia.
To trade case studies in sprawl repair 140 characters at a time, follow me on Twitter: @theturner.
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text:
By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird
To have the 3508-hectare Mount Seymour Provincial Park right in our Greater Vancouver backyard is such a blessing. All of us, whether nature enthusiasts, hikers, skiers or mountaineers, would enjoy the serene forest cover of hemlock, Douglas fir and red cedar. My wife and I, along with our three sons, have enjoyed many pleasant hours hiking along the Mt Seymour trails, especially on the Baden Powell Trail that ends up down in Deep Cove. In the last number of years that we have been hiking on Mt Seymour, I have often wondered just whom Mt Seymour was named after.
After being given a fascinating book entitled 'British Columbia Place Names', I discovered that Mt Seymour is named after the first Governor of the united British Columbia colony, Frederick Seymour. Even though Frederick Seymour has been described as the forgotten governor, his namesake is found scattered all throughout our local community. Examples are Mt Seymour Lions, Mt Seymour Dry Cleaners, Mt Seymour Little League, Mt Seymour Soccer, Seymour Dental Centre, Seymour Animal Clinic, Seymour Golf & Country Club, Seymour Heights Elementary School, and the 11th & 13th Seymour Scouts, Cubs, and Beavers. Even SeyCove High School is a combined name involving Seymour, as well as Deep Cove.
The more I learned about the Seymour connection, the more curious I became about just who Frederick Seymour was and why so many things were named after him, including Seymour Creek, Seymour Arm, Seymour City, and Seymour Street in Vancouver. I discovered that Seymour was born in Belfast, Ireland on September 6, 1820 to a formerly wealthy family that had just lost its properties, position, and paycheck. Through a family friendship with Prince Albert, Seymour was appointed as assistant colonial secretary of Tasmania. Before being appointed as Governor of the mainland colony of British Columbia in 1864, Seymour also served in Antigua, Nevis, and finally as lieutenant governor of British Honduras for 16 years. The Duke of Newcastle chose Seymour for BC because he saw him as 'a man of much ability and energy'. Seymour was thrilled at the 'prospect of a change from the swamps of Honduras to a fine country'.
Frederick Seymour got along well with the citizens of the capital city of New Westminster. He upgraded their school, made personal gifts of books and magazines to their library, built a 200-seat ballroom, and encouraged the growth of cricket, tennis, & amateur theatre. He also ambitiously attempted to complete Sir James Douglas' great highway to the interior of BC, but the financial costs of construction were staggering.
Seymour hosted 3,500 First Nations people at New Westminster for a weeklong celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday. He also gained the support of a Chilcotin Chief in ending a violent inter-racial dispute at Bute Inlet. Seymour later reported that his 'great object was to obtain moderation from the white men in the treatment of Indians.'
As the interior BC gold rush began to slump in 1865, Seymour went to England in a bid to cut costs by consolidating the two colonies of Vancouver Island and the Mainland. The British Government endorsed Seymour's plan which resulted in the abolition of the Vancouver Island House of Assembly and the establishment of New Westminster as the sole capital of BC. Victoria was outraged that it ceased to be a capital and lobbied successfully to move the BC capital back to Victoria. Seymour grudgingly was forced to move from his beloved New Westminster to Victoria where he was deeply disliked by many locals. Despite such Islander animosity, Seymour was able to establish the BC public school system, improve the courts, draw up public health regulations, set standards for mining, and reduce the provincial debt.
During this period, some BCers petitioned that BC join up with the United States. Others began campaigning for BC to join Confederation, a move that Seymour opposed in numerous ways. Seymour initially 'forgot' to forward a number of pro-Confederation letters to the Colonial Secretary in London but, when he did, he included his own anti-Confederation messages. Seymour believed that Confederation was only wanted by a vocal minority of business people who were hoping that Confederation would solve BC's economic woes. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was outraged at Seymour's opposition to Confederation, stating that Seymour should be recalled "as being perfectly unfit for his present position, under present circumstances. From all I hear, he was never fit for it."
Seymour's provincial recall campaign never had a chance to get off the ground, as Seymour was called up north to settle an inter-tribal war between the Nass and Tsimshian First Nations. Using the famous Anglican missionary William Duncan of Metlakatla as an interpreter, Seymour convinced the warring groups to sign a lasting peace treaty. On his way back, Seymour died in Bella Coola from one or more possible causes: dysentery, Panama Fever, and/or acute alcoholism. His convenient death paved the way for his opponents to sweep the memory of Seymour and his anti-Confederation feelings under the carpet. It is amazing to realize that when BC entered Confederation in 1871, BC had fewer than 40,000 people, of which almost 30,000 were First Nations people. Confederation for better or worse was the 'watershed experience' that defined our province. Seymour was an embarrassment to John A. Macdonald and friends. So Seymour the anti-Confederationist became the Forgotten Governor.
In the same way that Seymour was a forgotten governor in the civil realm, God is so often a forgotten governor in the spiritual realm. It is time that we re-establish Jesus Christ in his rightful spiritual place as governor of our land. My prayer is that God may keep our land glorious and free and that God the forgotten governor may have dominion from sea to sea.
The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier/North Shore News
-Click to check out our newest marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook.
It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook ), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).
Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form. Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.
Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version. You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.
To receive a signed copy within North America, just send a $20 cheque (USD/CAN) to ED HIRD, 1008- 555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC, V7N 2J7, Canada.