So it's been a good weekend. Yesterday I went and bought the last few pieces of wood we needed for the deck and a 5 lb box of screws, went to town on the deck and it is now officially finished! (except for the back steps, but those will come later). Then had a great evening over at the Dale's having some great fellowship, watching the kiddo's play, and then getting our Catan on.
Today has been a bit more relaxed, we got the fireplace all cleaned out, started a nice little fire and roasted some marshmallows and made smores. Been watching the NBA Finals for the last hour or so, but it is such a blowout that I got bored and was surfing the net, and ran across one of the most fascinating web pages I have ever read.
It's all about this garbage dump. But it's not just any garbage dump, it's a garbage dump TWICE the size of Texas. Thats a freaking huge garbage dump. Now you might be asking "where exactly is this garbage dump that is twice the size of Texas" and that is the most shocking part: it's a man made (out of garbage) island that is floating between San Fransisco and Hawaii!
This guy volunteered on a 3 week research trip out to the trash island, brought along his video camera, and journaled the whole thing. He posted about an hour worth of footage, but it is broken down in to 12 different 5 minute segments, so it is easy to digest the whole thing bit by bit.
I HIGHLY recommend people check it out, just fascinating all the way around. How many places on this earth are 7 days away by travel nowadays, it doesn't sound like much, but when you think it only takes 8 hours to fly to Hawaii, it puts in perspective how remote this patch of ocean really is.
Anyway, the link is here: http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Weekend Garbage
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
ok so i watched [skimmed] it, and it was made really well. i was quite impressed with the usability and the website in general.
and i was a little disillusioned by the hyperbolic descriptive language used to refer to it as "an island" "twice the size of texas".
now, were you to refer to it [over simply] as the trash line, i would have known exactly what you were referring to.
i've ssn some crazy things in the ocean, just like they were seeing while fishing off the coast of oahu. we had a 26' salt water yellowfin fishing boat and we'd finish over 50 miles off shore.
the BEST fishing was when you could find the "trash line", because all the big fish would be there feeding off the little fish, who were feeding off the garbage.
now i don't know if it was my younger mind or a changing culture, but never once did i think to myself, "that's a lot of garbage in this ocean, we humans are polluting and destroying it...". i was just excited that we were going to start catching some sweet fish!
i wonder if that's just a cultural shift that more people are asking that question?
it's nice that they contributed the problem rightly to "the whole world", rather than just "the evil american government".
"the downfall of honduras is going to be the plastic bottle."
-jeff brady
i agree that america is a huge/world leading culprit in the problem and need to take a large part of ownership in acknowledging our fault, and leading the way to do all we can to help right or wrongs.
i also found it interesting that there were/are so many SMALL pieces of plastic that are there. the scene on the beach at the end was great about being able to pick it up as a coke bottle, before it turns into a million little pieces.
i wonder if there could be a massive "ocean combing filtering" ship built that would just drive through this area, cleaning out the plastic... wall*e style... hmmm?
this picture was "sad".
thanks for the link.
reduce.
reuse.
recycle.
Post a Comment