“Any sailor that goes out to the water knows that being hit by a rogue wave is a risk, no matter where you are,” she said.

“You can’t eliminate risk, you can do a lot to minimize it but it’s always there.”

I suppose the same could be said for criticism, the entirely predictable result of any end to Abby’s adventure, except unmitigated triumph.

The Sunderland family has evidently done little to minimize criticism. If it bothers them so much to be criticized, they might have taken some steps. But it seems it has hit them broadside, completely unawares.
I’m surprised that criticism is even on their radar, and that they’re choosing to see it as such a threat.

Of course Abby Sunderland is brave, remarkable, and a person of admirable spirit. But her boat is gone, and she had to be rescued many days from the nearest port. The thing speaks for itself. And who speaks for the lost and abandoned boat? It’s an inanimate object, right. But is anyone going to ask Abby if she feels guilty letting Wild Eyes slip away into oblivion?

Maybe we should ask Wilson…

Personally, I think anyone who sets sail across the Indian Ocean alone in a sailboat smaller than my condo is careless and foolish. I would think that even if Abby had been out there with her sailing instructor dad. It doesn’t matter if you have 30 years experience. Because you can encounter calamity anywhere, and it’s wise to do it within reach of a Coast Guard cutter, if not in sight of land.

I’ve been driving for over 30 years, but I would not set out across a roadless desert by myself, even with the best equipment and preparation. It’s simply unwise. And the sun rises and sets just as beautifully off the coast of California as it does a thousand miles from Madagascar.

It’s good to have dreams, but some people seem bent on pushing the living of their dreams beyond the horizons of absurdity.

Suicide is called another casualty of BP oil spill

An Alabama charter boat captain kills himself after he was forced to do something he hated: working for BP on the cleanup. Now, a close-knit community worries there may be others suffering silently. [Link]

Every day, I drive past a BP gas station – called ARCO here – on my way to and from my home. And I wonder at the fact that there are still cars at the pumps there. And people inside the AMPM MiniMart, buying Doritos and beef jerky, and Cokes and other crap. I say to myself, boy I'd have to be pretty damn low on gas – desperately so – to pull my pickup into that place.

Maybe I'm wrong, and we shouldn't be driving past the BP, staging a boycott, exerting the power of our debit cards over the evil indifference of global corporate greed. After all, there are local people working in there, and it seems shallow and vindictive to make them pay for our collective outrage.

Fine. I could accept that point of view, if at least I sensed any collective outrage at all. Where is it? Are the American people even mildly annoyed with this company?

It seems like we are all so hypnotized by the rhetoric that "we need oil," and the fact that we're all driving around using it, that we feel complicit with BP in its greed and destruction. I was driving my gas-burning vehicle when I encountered this train of thought, so perhaps that was a bad moment to get self-righteous.

Baloney. People eat meat too. That doesn't mean we're all accomplices if McDonald's starts grinding up people along with the cows. Though we are guilty if we're eating the cows they're grinding up now. But that's another blog post.

Another analogy lies in the fact we pay taxes for a national defense. That doesn't prove we concur with the myopic and misbegotten judgments of an assclown president, who decides to launch shock and awe and perpetual war against countries who pose no clear and present danger to US.

The reality is that I never stop at that ARCO anyway, unless I'm seriously on fumes and in a rush at the moment I'm passing it. I never did like that place, because they play annoying commercials from overhead speakers, and the pay stations don't work half the time. And if you go inside to pay, you're met with a cashier who seems to have been stunned by a blow to the head.

The head of BP met with our Congress and president Obama, then went yachting. Aside from the irony that he sailed in waters not seething with poison, it's obvious he and his company aren't getting the message: You don't get to devastate a large and beautiful, vital part of America, destroy people's lives, leave communities and families lost in your wake, and just go on doing business as usual.

So even if that had been my favorite place to buy my fuel before, I wouldn't set my Goodyears on it now. No way. I'm boycotting British Petroleum until they clean up the mess and grow a conscience. Both of which are certain to take a very long time.

This Seattle lady narrowly escape death by going to her kitchen for some cheese. Seconds later, a car crashed through her living room.

I keep reading in the news that the effects of the volcanic eruption in Iceland led to a massive financial loss for the airlines. For example, in this morning's Los Angeles Times:

I understand that flights had to be canceled and people were left stranded. But what did they do, decide to give up and buy real estate where they were stranded? I mean, aren't they eventually – as soon as possible – going to buy another ticket and go to where they won't be stranded?

If people already live in the area from which they intended to begin travel, and were stuck there – at home – they weren't stranded. They were unable to travel. And that's not what the news has been reporting. 

Unless the stranded people decided to live where they're stuck now (screw it, Honey, let's just buy a house here) the airlines have postponed sales, not lost them, right?

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony lambasted legislation passed Monday by Arizona lawmakers that would crack down on illegal immigrants, likening it to "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques" that compelled people to turn each other in.

"The Arizona legislature just passed the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law," he wrote on his blog. "The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense."

Los Angeles Times

I agree with the Cardinal, except in one way: the law isn't useless. It serves quite ably to create a climate of fear and dehumanization. It's unamerican and unchristian, which is why all Christians and their leaders like this one should speak out against it.