Month: March 2010

Moby Monday — A Farewell Fit for a Cannibal


It’s SkyMall’s moment. On the heels of Nina Katchadourian’s infectious "Sky Mall Kitties," a tribute in song, comes new attention to the 2006 parody book SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From a Plane. Among the book’s pages of “Reality-Cancelling Headphones” and “Adultery Detectors” you’ll find the "Moby-Dick Hamster Coffin, a “hand-carved mini-coffin” designed to give your fluffy friend the burial-at-sea he deserves—or the life-buoy he so desperately needs.

Margaret Guroff is the editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick.

Tall ship Amistad is still making waves after 10 years!

Amistad by Voytec Wacowski

Today’s Amistad’s 10th birthday!

Her berthplace, Mystic Seaport has a good post with some photos of Amistad under construction.

Today also marks another major historic milestone for Amistad: she’s the first US flagged vessel to make an official call in Cuba.

Amistad flying US, UN and Cuba flags

Congratulations and Happy Berthday!

Student Survival Story from High School Tall Ship Concordia Sinking (video)

George Stroumboulopoulos, the host of the popular CBC tv show The Hour, did a terrific interview with Natasha Carruthers, a sail trainee/student aboard the high school tall ship Concordia when it sank off the coast of Brazil on February 17, 2010.  The video is a little jumpy but the audio does the job. Carruthers tells an amazing first hand account of what happened.  She’s joined by Class Afloat instructor Ryan Cleland who had recently gotten off the ship and tells what transpired in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, Canada, the ship’s homeport.

You can find lots more on the Concordia sinking here.

The Story of Bottled Water

In honor of World Water Day today you should must watch this video and then go out and buy a reusable bottle. Better yet, rinse one out and use that!

Amazing amount of energy wasted on making and ship bottles of water that we consume in 2 minutes! Yikes! Shame on us.

Moby Monday — A Springy Thingie


Illustrator Mat Hudson, aka Orphan Elliott, has designed a line of spectacularly bright posters to encourage “the joy and excitement of reading,” he says.

With its sunny backdrop and shattered-glass ocean spray, Hudson’s Moby Dick does seem joyous, despite the whale’s precarious position in front of a darted harpoon. Then again, the harpooneer’s position is plenty precarious too. Is this what narrator Ishmael would call "a joint-stock company of two"?

Margaret Guroff is editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick.

National Geographic Magazine’s Water Issue

Unlike Playboy magazine, I buy National Geographic mostly for the pictures.

The April 2010 issue is themed “Water: Our Thirsty World.” Here are some sobering statistics accompanied by some powerful images. (Update: Download a cool, free,  interactive  edition of this issue here.

World Water Day – March 22nd