Pacific Ocean
Up in the Air
LATE ON THE MORNING of July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart climbed into the cockpit of her Lockheed Electra airplane on a small grass runway in Lae, New Guinea. She was 22,000 flight miles into her daring attempt to fly around the world, a journey that had captivated Americans since she lifted off from Miami a month earlier. Now Earhart was facing the most dangerous leg of the trip: a 19-hour, 2,556-mile flight to a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean known as Howland Island. READ MORE >>
Pacific Islands Defying Sea-Level Rise--For Now
One of the (many) worries about global warming is that low-lying island nations in the Pacific Ocean will get swallowed up by rising sea levels. Last fall, government officials from Maldives put on scuba gear and staged an underwater cabinet meeting as a sort of awareness-raising publicity stunt. And from everything we know, these island nations are going to have a rough time in a warmer world. READ MORE >>
Tanking Hard
The Reinvention of Robert Gates
Titanic
I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she answers. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks me. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe." READ MORE >>
The Operator
Hutchinsland
In 1867 Charles Dickens reported on "the first meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything." A dozen years ago, on the centennial of that occasion, I became Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, California. I was reminded of these moments in history by the news that the Center, after years of seedy gentility, has found a new benefactor. It has been taken in as a ward of the University of California at Santa Barbara. READ MORE >>
The Seas
Twenty-two years ago the Norwegian author-explorer, Thor Hyerdahl, sailed his balsawood Kon Tiki raft halfway across the Pacific Ocean, and he remembers that he and his small crew were “thrilled by the beauty and purity of the ocean.” When Hyerdahl eased into the West Indies this summer after crossing the Atlantic in a boat built of papyrus reeds, he was visibly shaken by the flotilla of bottles, tubes and industrial scum that had bobbed endlessly past him. READ MORE >>
