As you know, I have decided to support John McCain in his presidential bid. It’s interesting to me to postulate what I think would have happened if we’d followed something like the Obama plan in Iraq. In the first place, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. My feeling is the situation between Iraq and Iran was a tinderbox waiting to reignite, so the two dictators might have fought again. Assuming that Hussein won, which he probably would have, guess who his next target would be? Israel. So, bingo, even Obama would have to go to war then. Maybe the result would have been the same as we have now, but the process would have been different.
I look forward to the Saddam issue being discussed in the next debate instead of ignored. In my opinion, it is the ace in McCain’s pocket.
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On Tuesday I had the opportunity to go to sea on Craig Venter’s boat Sorcerer II. John Evey picked me up at home and took me down to the marina where the 100-and-something foot boat is docked. There were many people aboard, including a permanent crew of three, plus geneticists and several oceanographers from Scripps. It turns out I knew Andy Allen, who did the sampling off my boat when we visited Catalina a few months ago. It was good to see them all again. Sorcerer II is a motorsailer, so we got to do some sailing, although the skipper was cautious because there were so many landlubbers aboard.
The measurements were made off the stern of the boat, and three probes were lowered into the ocean at various depths. The three probes are necessary to make a good measurement of the chlorophyll. One probe measures the viruses in the ocean. Another lowers the instrumentation package into the ocean so we have the metadata such as salinity, temperature, currents, and other characteristics from the environment where samples are being taken. The third probe is basically a hose that sucks the water up from depth, passes it through a filter, and repeats the process to get good samples of the chlorophyll and anything around it. The samples are then put in test tubes and plastic containers for further analysis.
What the scientists were looking for was the behavior of the chlorophyll layer in the ocean. They wanted to know where it was, at what depth, and if its position had moved over the past month. This layer is where photosynthesis occurs in the ocean, and it’s not always on the surface of the water which was a surprise to me.
Andrew and I are planning a trip on my boat after the first of the year up the California coast as far as Point Conception, making measurements along the way. I suspect a lot of the instruments on board Sorcerer II will be used on Solutions. I was particularly happy because I wasn’t sure how well I would be able to maneuver around Sorcerer II. I was fine. I plan to be on the first leg of Sorcerer II‘s voyage when it leaves next month for Europe.
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I wish I cold give financial advice given the current climate, but right now I’m sitting tight on my investments. Thank God they’re mostly bonds. My impression on what is going on in Washington is that none of the people with money know where to apply it to revive the economy.
— Bob