Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

1. You can translate most of the English words ending in “-ic” into Spanish by: substituting the ending with “-ico”. These words always have a written accent.
Examples: academic→ académico, fantastic→ fantástico, magic→ mágico, organic → orgánico.
Exception: mastic→ mastíque

2. You can translate most of the English words, with two or more syllables, that end in “-al” into Spanish by keeping the same ending “-al”.

Examples: cultural→ cultural, capital→ capital, cereal→ cereal, dental→ dental
Some Exceptions: continual→ contínuo, magical→ mágico, terrestial→ terrestre.

Wow. This is some ninja eagle ray.

From the AP Story

MIAMI (Reuters) - An eagle ray leaped onto a boat off the Florida Keys on Thursday and stabbed a woman with its barb, knocking her to the deck and killing her, a Florida wildlife investigator said.

“It’s a bizarre accident,” said Jorge Pino, an agent with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The woman and her family were aboard a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, off the city of Marathon in the Florida Keys, he said.

“A large ray jumped out of the water and collided with the victim and somehow the barb penetrated some part of her body, which caused her to fall back and hit her head on some portion of the vessel,” Pino said. “We don’t know exactly which one of those things caused her death.”

Local media said the animal’s barb had impaled the woman through the neck.

Eagle rays are common in warm or tropical waters and are often seen near coral reefs. The spotted creatures can grow to more than 8 feet across and have two to six short, venomous barbs near the base of their whip-like tails, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Web site.

The rays often swim near the water’s surface and can leap out, especially when pursued, but are generally shy of humans.

“All rays leap out of the water from time to time but certainly to see one collide with a vessel is extremely unusual,” Pino said.

….

Let’s hope people don’t start killing rays because of this.

Ok, I like the show Lost. And I understand that we are dealing with a show where I should suspend my disbelief about a lot of things. But the thing that is really bothering me is:  Jin speaking close to perfect English.

As a non-native speaker of bad Spanish, I know how difficult it can be to speak a foreign language late in life and how hard it is for a non-native English speaker to follow a conversation. I lived in an immersion program in Mexico for a summer and was reminded of this everyday just trying to get by.
Which brings me to Jin. They are on a island for maybe 3 months and he’s understanding and speaking English. Not just yes/no or getting the drift of of what’s going on but full blow conversations about karma and how difficult it is being married. WTF!

A new rebreather is now on the market, the Poseidon Discovery which is also called the Cis-Lunar Mk VII. This new automatic rebreather was designed by Bill Stone with Swedish-based Poseidon Diving Systems.
From the product decription:

The diving is simple. Open the tank valves, wet the switch on the back of the display, wait for the systems check and off you go. Forget about everything you ever heard about PO2, scrubber life and oxygen cells. Our system will handle all that. Just remember to breathe.

You don’t adjust anything, and the mouthpiece vibrates and blinks to alert you of a malfunction. There is an integrated bailout valve in mouth piece that allows you to breath open circuit and return to the surface. There is also an integrated gauge/computer to track your decompression obligation and how much time you have left. You can read the manual here.

I’ve just got a beta invite to test the new HULU online video service.

Hulu was put together by some of the major networks (NBC, FOX, Universal, and more). The idea it to offer a YouTube like experience that is legal and allows the networks to offer another ad-supported network outlet for their content.

This isn’t just old catalog stuff but with originally aired network content & movies, such as Heroes, 30 Rock, Chuck, Family Guy, The Simpsons, etc.

I just started playing with it but I have 10 invites, anyone want one?

This is so awesome.

An Austrian diver was attacked by a shark while participating in a cage-less shark dive in the Bahamas. It’s tragic, but now questions are being raised on the safety of a cage-less shark diving in the area.

From CNN:

The leader of a shark tour whose customer was mauled to death Saturday was warned that his practice of allowing people to swim close to hungry sharks could lead to tragedy, a colleague said.

I’m not sure I would be in the water, without a shark cage, while they were feeding sharks for these types of dives. However, that’s doesn’t mean that it’s something that should be banned, it simply is getting lots of attention because it’s a shark killing a human.

Wetpixel has the in-depth of the incident.

Scientists investigating the icy waters of Antarctica said they have collected mysterious creatures including giant sea spiders and huge worms in the murky depths.

Here is a video of giant sea spider, the size of dinner plates, on CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/02/19/vo.aus.sea.spider.ap

The small island nation of Kiribati has created what looks to be the world’s largest marine protection area. The purpose of this 410,500 square kilometers preserve is biodiversity and will be off limits to commercial activities like fishing.

Fishing concessions make money for the Atoll based nation but they have a plan:

Protecting the Phoenix Islands means restricting commercial fishing in the area, resulting in a loss of revenue that the Kiribati government would normally receive from issuing foreign commercial fishing licenses. NEAq and CI are helping Kiribati design an endowment system that will cover the core recurring management costs of PIPA and compensate the government for the foregone commercial fishing license revenues. The plan allows for subsistence fishing by resident communities and other sustainable economic development in designated zones of the protected area.

Basically, they are hoping for eco-tourism. This new reserve is bigger than the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument west of Hawaii (137,797 square miles) and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (345,000 sq km.)
If you want to read about life on Kiribati , you should pick up, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost, who lived on Kiribati and recounts his experience living in a nation that is far removed from most other countries. It’s hilarious, he’s a good writer.

These samples should set you straight on the fact that you need to watch this show… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgMbU-we1o and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkxiJP3gg14

It’s on obscure cable station FUSE.tv, http://www.fuse.tv actually on IFC, http://www.ifc.com/. Thanks Julie.