A Ratty Tree House On Euclid In Oakland
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Larry Ellison's USA - 76 International America's Cup Yacht Driven By Zennie Abraham
USA-76, currently owned by Brad Webb and ACsailingSF, was most famously helmed by Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, and used by the BMW Oracle Racing Team in their preparations to win the challenger series and won the right to challenge for the 2007 America's Cup that was held in Valencia, Spain.
Never done it before at all.
Frankly, helming USA 76, originally built for the 2003 America's Cup race, is unlike anything I've ever done in my life. When you grab the wheel of the yacht, you're aware that you're in control of something big, fast, and yet very responsive. What I had to get used to what that the yacht was leaning at a very high speed - about 30 knots. And at that point we were getting a nasty cross-wind, as well.
My thought during that point in time is "You know, I'm going to tip this thing into the drink and they're going to sue me." But I kept at the helm for about five minutes or so, or until I figured it was time to give it up to someone else.
Which is another way of saying I lost my nerve.
But it's a drug: you fear what can happen, but you want to do it again. I can see how people who work in the business of sailing get hooked on it.
The other thing I got used to was getting wet; which didn't happen to me much at all. I was wearing loose-fitting khaki shorts, which kept whatever dampness that had developed away from my butt.
Tell you what, if boat owner Brad Webb and his guys give me another chance to helm USA-76, I'm jumping forward to do it.
Larry Ellison's got nothing on me!
Harold Camping Family Radio End Of The World Apocalypse, Wrong
Well, it's Saturday, May 22nd, 11:42 AM, and we're all still here. That means Harold Camping Family Radio's "End Of The World Apocalypse," was just plain wrong. And I use this photo I took of the Golden Gate Bridge from yesterday's cruise about the yacht America, to illustrate how wonderfully awesome it is to be alive.
(But what's neat is to see all of these words dominate search trends: apocalypse, end of the world, doomsday, rapture, mayan calendar 2012, world clock, and May 21)
And what does Harold Camping himself have to say about it? Well, at this point and as of this writing, nothing at all. Silence.
But Camping does owe some explanation to those people who believed him. People who've sold their possessions, or spent their life savings all because they believed him.
What they didn't believe in was God.
There's nothing in the Bible that expressly points to this day as the end of the World. Moreover, regarding The Second Coming, the Bible also states that we will not know when that happens.
You do know what the real problem is, don't you? It's what I'm going to start called The Stephen Hawking Problem. That's where people have faith in a person for a set of reasons that are really just based on their desire to have faith in what that person says.
Hawking says Heaven's a "fairy tale" because he can't see it. His believers agree with them because they have faith in what he says.
Harold Camping said the World's end would be today, and his believer's had faith in his words. Camping's wrong and because of the basic fact that we're all here.
Hawking's believers should take that as a warning not to blindly follow what another human being says. And by "blindly," I mean without a solid set of reasons for doing so.
If you're going to have faith in that person, just admit that's what it is, and stop trying to rationalize it.
I have faith that God, my Mother, and my friends love me. That's enough for me.
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