Charting WWII oil spill potential

The common perception is that during World War II, Japanese forces came nowhere the American western coastline. To a large extent, that is true. However, it is not entirely true, as we are reminded by the launch this week of an oil recovery program for an oil tanker sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Cambria, Calif., in 1941.

The SS Montebello was the target of a Japanese torpedo, and the result was a ship 900 feet below the surface, with the oil intact. Seven decades later, the 440-foot ship — and its oil — are still there.

Divers accompanied by a remotely operated underwater vehicle are aiming to ascertain whether the oil is in danger of spilling out of the ship. Scientists think that the oil would be very thick after so long in the ship's hold, but they're not taking any chances. The divers will drill a 1-inch-diameter hold into a couple of the oil tanks and extract samples that scientists will analyze, before deciding on further action, which include a recovery operation.

The publicity is a far cry from what accompanied the sinking. The U.S. Military hushed up the incident. All 38 people onboard were rescued and (presumably) sworn to secrecy. The U.S. Government did not confirm knowledge of the incident until many years later.

Now, though, the priority is preventing a big oil spill.

Oldest Still-running Car Sells for $4.6 million

What's the price of propulsion? In this case, it's $4.6 million.

That's the price paid for the world's oldest still-running vehicle, a steam-powered car from france that sold at auction in the U.S. The car has a nickname of La Marquise, but has a much longer actual name of the De Dion-Bouton et Trepardoux Dos-a-Dos Steam Runabout. Built under the longer name, the car was put together in 1884 and was driven in the first automobile race three years later.

Only four men owned the car in its long life. The latest previous owner was John O'Quinn, a collector from Texas, who had bought it in 2007 for $3.5 million.

The longer name of the vehicle comes in part from the man for whom it was built, Count De Dion. His mother, of course, was La Marquise.

The car seats four people back-to-back, eliminating the presence of a back-seat driver because they can't see where they're going — only where they've been. And that's just as well because the driver doesn't have a steering wheel; rather, the driver is tasked with maneuvering a tiller that resembles nothing so much as a common garden implement.

The new owner won't be going very fast in this vehicle, or very far — the car gets only half a mile to the gallon. But the new owner probably didn't buy it to run it in any races. If he or she is in any way like one of the previous owners, it will be more than 80 years before the car changes hands again.

JFK Bomb Shelter Begging for Tourists

You'd be forgiven for at first thinking "Why bother?" But as a piece of historical trivia, this is a good one: Now open to the public is a bomb shelter built for President John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War.

It's a bit of a trip from Massachusetts or Washington, D.C., but it's worth the trip if you want to get away from it all. The shelter, referred to in documents at the time as the "Detachment Hotel," is on Peanut Island, off the coast of Palm Beach, Fla. Navy Seabees built the shelter in December 1961, and Kennedy did stay there, for brief periods of time, twice.

Trees camouflage the entrance, and passersby who happened to notice the shelter were told that it was a munitions dump. Incredibly, it was maintained for a few decades before falling into disrepair in the 1990s. (No doubt the funding ran out, just like for many other military installations.)

However, some new money was found and the bunker is now open to the public, in a promotion that organizers hope will put the tiny island on the map.

Visitors can take a step into the recent past, viewing the 15 metal bunk beds, ham radio, petroleum jelly, castor oil, and K-rations (not to mention the gas masks that would probably be the most sought-after item of supply if things really got rough). Fittingly, the shelter also contained a bona fide escape hatch, in case the cover was blown and a full-scale physical invasion was under way.

You can book your tour of the bunker, which is now a museum, at any time, really, since the organizers are quite happy to show anyone around. Crowds have become sparse, as has funding.

Pursuing the Wider Utility of the Straw Poll

So the presidential election season is in full swing already, with the allegedly big-time straw poll taking place in Davidson County, Iowa. The big winner this time, more than a full year before the 2012 presidential election, was Michele Bachmann, the darling of the very right part of the generally right-wing party of the Republican persuasion.

This is big news. See, the straw poll was the main event at the annual picnic of the Davidson County Republican Party. (Presumably, they don't have this sort of straw poll every year, even though the picnic is an annual one.) This year, however, most of the media in the known world would have been there, holding their breath until the tallies were released. And the big news that preceded the giant relief of those waiting to exhale was that Bachmann came out on top.

It was a rather crowded field, so she didn't exactly get a majority. In fact, her first-place finish was by way of a 20 percent preference. This was big news, of course, because she finished ahead of GOP mainstay Mitt Romney, who finished second in the polling, just ahead of Herman Cain, who used to run a pizza chain.

About 250 people attended this earth-shaking event; and if you do the math on that, you come up with about 50 people casting their straw for the congresswoman from Minnesota. Yep, Bachmann is a member of the House of Representatives. She's running for president, of course, and it brings to mind the chances of her taking the nomination and/or, conceivably, the presidency.

History is not a friend to her in this case, since the last person to go directly from the House to the White House was James A. Garfield, way back in 1880. Garfield was a Republican, so there is some precedent there. He won by a mere 10,000 popular votes, over the Democratic nominee, General Winfield Scott Hancock, who was as old as the hills 20 years before, during the Civil War. And Garfield, of course, was killed in his first year in office. But I digress.

Anyway, this straw poll business got me to thinking about whether we could use this method of solution-finding or decision-making for other important decisions. Imagine if the federal budget could be decided by a straw poll. We wouldn't need Reconciliation or Conference Committees or any other such pillars of modern democratic governing practice. As long as every voting member of both houses of Congress had a straw and submitted that straw for a final count, we could get on with the more important things in modern life, such as how many Twitter followers Lady Gaga is up to in the past week.

This straw poll idea might need some careful thinking when the Congressional bills got to the President for approval. Presumably, the President would have more than one straw, since he has Authorization or Veto power — although giving the President more than one straw sort of goes against the principle of one person, one vote. And you'd probably have to give the Supremes — sorry, the Justices of the Supreme Court — straws as well.

It could get kind of complicated, though. The key, I think, would be that each politically important person would get just one straw for each vote. So we might need to do some work around the idea of what Congress would do if the President cast the Veto straw at a Congressional bill. And conceivably, there's the Supreme Court's Unconstitutional straw to worry about as well. It's enough to make a Congressperson hold back on the straw-casting to see what everybody else is doing — or run for President.

British Library to pay millions for well-preserved Anglo-Saxon book

Religions still sells &151; big time.

The British Library is having to come up with 9 million pounds (that's $14.5 million) to buy the rights to display the St. Cuthbert Gospel, a 7th Century book revered by its contemporaries and their many descendants.

Cuthbert lived in the 7th Century, dying in 687. He was buried at Lindisfarne, the famed target of Viking raiders a few hundred years later. To protect the bones and other treasures left behind by Cuthbert, monks moved the coffin to Durham. When the coffin was opened in 1104, those responsible found the small book inside.

The book contains a complete Latin text of the Gospel of John. The book is remarkably well preserved, given its age. The cover is leather, and cover and contents are in such good shape that you have to wonder whether the airtight nature of the coffin helped in keeping the book from falling apart down through the centuries.

Lindisfarne, of course, was plundered and burned, but Cuthbert's remains were long gone by then, which is one reason that they have survived to the present day. Another reason, of course, is that the Church needs money.

The Church in this case is the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, and they will profit quite handsomely from merely hanging on to the book all these years. The British Library, meanwhile, will get to show off yet another artifact from the island's past. The library reports having raised more than half the money already. (That's half of 9 million pounds — not bad for a fundraising effort.)

Strength of Purpose: Filling in the Gaps in the Story of the Philistines

It's tough sometimes to shake preconceptions. Those of us brought up in the Christian tradition know well the story of the Philistines, for they were one of the chief antagonists to the rise of ancient Israel. In particular, they had a champion named Goliath who was bested by Israel's young David, in an encounter that still lends itself to comparisons today. Another story that survives to this day was of the Philistine champion Samson, whose legendary strength was undone by the fleecing of the hair off his head.

Goliath and Samson — two pillars of strength, as it were — and yet both were undone by guile — in Goliath's case by a well slung stone from tiny David and in Solomon's case a well thought out plan from the crafty Delilah.

But who were those ancient people? The Jewish and Christian traditions don't give much more detail than that on the Philistines, but they were certainly successful in surviving in the rough-and-tumble world of the ancient Mediterranean.

Gath, the city that archaeologists have unearthed recently, was one of several Philistine settlements that dotted the area after the people arrived from Greece about 1200 B.C. They built towns that turned into some major ports of the area, including one called Gaza.

Results of the dig include shards of jugs, ancient bones, and a large number of stones assembled as buildings and embankments — the latter a big clue that the city was fortified against an invading army. Indeed, the neighboring Arameans succeeded in razing the city in 830 B.C.

The Philistines lasted for a few centuries, until the Babylonian army under King Nebuchadnezzar wiped them off the map. However, as with the Babylonian Captivity, the famed king might have won a temporary victory, but today's diggers are unearthing evidence that paints an ever diverse picture of the Philistines, a picture that has much more than the one dimension mentioned in David's triumph and Samson's defeat.

Shuttle Is History; Exploration Should Not Be

The last of the space shuttle missions began today, and so an era ends.

The shuttle was a reusable space transport vehicle that captured the imagination of many, many people, chief among them proponents of space exploration and of scientific research.

Yes, the shuttle cost money — tons of it. Yes, people died, and that is always a tragedy. I can't imagine the terrible toll that has taken on the lives of the families left behind, especially when we appear to celebrate success but don't remember their sacrifices.

But also yes, shuttle astronauts ran thousands of experiments that gave us greater insight into how things work in our bodies, in our environment, in our atmosphere, and in our universe. And yes, shuttle astronauts launched (and, in one famous case, fixed) a parade of outer space exploration machines that are to this day rewriting our books of knowledge on what is in the sky we look at every night.

This kind of technology and discovery did not come cheap, but cost isn't always the most important factor. The more we seek to understand what is around us and in us, the more we will spend — be that time or money or both. Progress can be slow, and it can bound ahead in great leaps. Progress is always worth the time, effort, and money we spend.

The shuttle program has ended. The exploration of space should not.