09-01-10:A 2010 Interview with Dan Basta at the Blue Ocean Film Festival
"Experiential learning is the way we learn best."
—Dan Basta
I've spent more time than most talking with engineers, and I know one when I talk to one. It didn't take long for me to suss that Basta was and still is an engineer at heart, and that is the key to his success managing the Marine Sanctuaries of this nation. As he pointed out in our interview at the Blue Ocean Film Festival, the word "sanctuary" is a loaded, emotional term. It is something you might, not coincidentally, seek were ol' Scratch himself to be after you. And for me, this is home.
The challenges of doing what Dan does are enormous and constantly changing. They involve pure engineering efforts and human engineering efforts as well. Dan has written some of the most sophisticated software ever conceived to do environmental simulations, and he and I talked about the problems inherent even with effective software. We talked about how the environmental movements of the 1960's and 1970's brought about some of the most important legislation ever to pass through Congress, and how his work carries on the struggle. You can hear us converse without any struggle; simply follow the link to the MP3 Audio file.
08-31-10:A 2010 Interview with Jean-Michel Cousteau
"We need to change. And we can."
—Jean-Michel Cousteau
Memories beget legends. Those images in our minds that will not go away become to us the basis for our personal mythos. I'm of a generation that grew up on the California coast, and part of my upbringing was spending a lot of time on the water.
And on those rare occasions when my parents would allow me to watch television, there were few allowed shows. Ed Sullivan, pre-homogenization Walt Disney, and of course, since we were water people, Jacques Cousteau. It wasn't until I arrived in a future I could not have dreamed of that I actually met a legend, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Jacques' son, and had the chance to talk with him about the past, the present and the future.
Legends get that designation because they can support it, and Jean Michel Cousteau lives up to his name. He was here in Monterey for the Blue Ocean Film Festival, and I had a chance to sit down and talk with him for a fascinating look at his past, our present and our future.
It's really interesting to me how many of these great underwater explorers got their start early, and Jean-Michel is no exception, except — in his case, his father helped to invent the regulator, and there were, as Jean-Michel told me, no certifications to be had when at the age of 7, his father strapped a tank on his back and sent him underwater for the first time. And that was when ... things changed.
I also spent some time talking to Jean-Michel about current affairs, including the Gulf Oil Disaster, and its relation to his experience with the Exxon-Valdez spill. Not surprisingly, things have not changed, other than the magnitude of disaster. Even the concept of "magnitude of disaster" is odd to me. But to hear a man with Jean-Michel's experience explain it so calmly is indeed chilling.
For a world-renowned conservationist and a living legend, Jean-Michel is refreshingly pragmatic. He does not expect us to simply stop using oil. He knows that just about everything we do is touched by the energy requirement we have, by the energy sources we have. But he does have a a crystal clear vision of the past, a refreshing sense of the present and an energizing view of the future, which you can hear by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
08-30-10:A 2010 Interview With David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes
"Everything people have always feared about photography comes true underwater."
—David Doubilet
Photography has become a technology-driven art. But no matter how much technology you throw at an art, there is no substitute for vision, which is what David Doubilet brings to his underwater photography. Happily, he is quite cognizant of what he does and how he does it. He's been immersed for a long time. His story is just as captivating as his images.
I had a chance to sit down and find out how Doubilet came to possess his vision, and how he came to develop his art. He began at the beginning, literally, with a Brownie camera. I used to have a Brownie camera, and suspect I still do, somewhere out in the garage, but mine was never put underwater. And that was indeed the start of Doubilet's career. He was selling underwater photographs at an age when most kids are still mowing lawns fdor a living.
The Blue Ocean Film Festival has found its official home in Monterey, California, and Doubilet was here with Jennifer Hayes to show his latest photographs in the gallery, including his nudibranchs. He talked to me about how he created these images by bringing a studio 90 feet beneath the surface of the ocean. These are really quite remarkable; they're so so surreal that they are almost abstract, like logos for an alien civilization.
08-30-10: Commentary : David Doubilet Captures 'Water Time Light' : Painting with Pixels
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes : "Everything people have always feared about photography comes true underwater."
08-25-10: Commentary : Vendela Vida 'The Lovers' : Reading and Revelation
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Live Reading and Interview with Vendela Vida At Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...there was an owl that came into this place we were renting one day..."
08-24-10: Commentary : Jeff VanderMeer and 'The Third Bear' : Absurd Is as Absurd Does
08-20-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes 'Deadman's Road' : Deader Than Thou
Agony Column Podcast News Report : On the Phone with Vendela Vida : "You do all this background information, most of which never makes it into the book."
08-19-10: Commentary : Gary Shteyngart Tells a 'Super Sad True Love Story' : Retro-Prescience
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Gary Shteyngart Live Reading and Interview at Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...please like me, this will make up for Hebrew school if all of you like me.."
08-18-10: Commentary : Mark Pilkington Unleashes Weapons of Mass Deception : "ECM+CIA=UFO"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett and Barry Eisler for The Agony Column Live at Capitola Book Café, August 7, 2010 Q and A : "This is NewSpeak."
08-16-10: Commentary : Howard Norman Asks 'What is Left the Daughter' : The Past Always Rises
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Howard Norman : "I'd wanted to write from the beginning an epistolary novel; this is just an epistolary novel that's consisting of one letter."
08-12-10: Commentary : James O'Neal Copies 'The Double Human' : Proceeding into the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler and David Corbett Live at Capitola Book Café on August 7, 2010 : "If anyone thinks it's absurd that the government might assassinate the founder of WikiLeaks, it's quite a bit less absurd than I wish it were".... — Barry Eisler
08-11-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes Huck Finn to 'Dread Island' : "Classics Mutilated"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "...they'll pick up that angle and run interference for us..."
08-10-10: Commentary : David Corbett Asks 'Do They Know I'm Running?' : Crossing Borders
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "These Families are making incredible sacrifices..."
08-09-10: Commentary : David Mitchell and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet : The World is Ever the World
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with David Mitchell : "The periodic table of the human heart is still the same now as it was then."
08-06-10: Commentary : Tim Powers Sails 'On Stranger Tides' : History, Fantasy and the Reality of Reading
08-03-10: Commentary : Robert M. Price Spins 'The Tindalos Cycle' : Terrorize, Horrify, Repeat
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Short Chat with Gary Shteyngart : "...the technology is outpacing our ability to absorb what it is doing to us..."
08-02-10: Commentary : A Second Tour Through 'The Passage' : Sending Characters into Time
07-30-10: Commentary : Subterranean Press and Robert R. McCammon Wake at 'The Wolf's Hour' : The Time Before Cheese
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'
07-28-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space 2 : En Route, RJ Frith and Peter F. Hamilton
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010: Q & A : "The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."
07-27-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space : UK Space Opera Demonstrates Excess is Not Enough (Part one, the Arrived)
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010 : "Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."
07-26-10: Commentary : Brian and Wendy Froud Seek 'The Heart of Faerie Oracle' : Cards, Books and a New Perspective
