When we were kids, there were certain facts etched in stone. We would always go to church on Sunday. Noone would ever hit more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth. It was impossible to cook a Thanksgiving meal without grandmothers. You couldn’t get to the Moon from here. There were 48 states in the U.S.A. and 7 continents in the world. Oh, and anyone who got caught by Frankenstein was a moron, the monster couldn’t run a lick.
Now, it turns out, none of that was true except the Frankenstein part. Sunday Mass is but a withering memory, the Babe has succumbed to time and steroids, we’ve had to make do without Nana, Elon Musk is scheduling bus rides to the Moon and there were at last count 50 United States. Okay, you say, but we’ve still got seven continents. Oh, really? Haven’t you heard about Zealandia?
After decades of research and analysis of geoscience data, a paper published in 2017 made official in the scientific community the classification of the newest geological continent, Zealandia. The Big Z is the youngest, thinnest and most submerged of all continents with 94% of its surface currently under water. The name Zealandia was first used in 1995 by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk to describe a large region of continental crust encompassing New Zealand, the Chatham Rise, Campbell Plateau and Lord Howe rise. The paper, Zealandia: Earth’s Hidden Continent, provides for the first time systemized evidence to show that this continental crust is large and separate enough to be considered a continent in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
Zealandia, which is approximately the size of greater India, once made up about 5% of the area of the Gondwana supercontinent which began to fragment in the Mesozoic period about 252 to 66 million years ago. Gondwana’s breakup resulted in continents with wide, thinned shelves such as Zealandia and West Antarctica. Would somebody please call the nuns at St. Patrick’s and tell them to throw out all those old textbooks? If we were wrong about the number of continents, what else don’t we know? Plenty, it turns out.
Ten Things We Thought We Knew
1. Humans have 5 senses. Nope. More, lots more. Most humanistic social scientists believe we have at least nine, some argue up to twenty. In addition to touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell, humans can sense pain, thirst, pressure, balance, acceleration and time. There are others you’d rather not know about.
2. Men Think About Sex Every Seven Seconds. Ridiculous. They need that time for football.
3. Chewing Gum Takes Seven Years To Digest. Wrong. Shoots right through you. Don’t look.
4. George Washington Had Wooden Teeth And Smoked Pot. The first president’s chompers were made of gold, hippo ivory, lead and human teeth. He grew hemp on his property but never smoked it. The crop was used to make clothing for his slaves. Some of them smoked the sleeves.
5. Napolean Bonaparte Was Very Short. He was 5’7”….standard height in 1821. His nickname, le Petit Corporal, was a term of endearment rather than a commentary on his height. It’s a known fact, though, that his wife called him Pencildick.
6. Bulls Despise The Color Red. Uh-uh. They can’t even differentiate red from any other bright color. They just don’t like getting messed with by prissy matadors. You wouldn’t either.
7. I Have Tons Of Friends. Not really. Aside from family and a very few intimates, noone on Earth really gives much of a damn about you. Unless you’re a Kardashian.
8. Sleepwalkers Should Never Be Awakened. That’s just silly. What about the sleepwalker heading for heavy traffic? What about the sleepwalker approaching an open manhole? What about the sleepwalker putting up yard signs for Trump?
9. Hair And Fingernails Continue To Grow After Death. Not so, say those who pay attention to such things. The skin cells surrounding the nails and hair follicles die and shrink away, giving the perception of growth. Either way---gross, let’s talk about something else.
10. Marie Antoinette Did Not Say, “Let them eat cake.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau first wrote that phrase when Marie was only ten years old. What she really said was, “Let them eat boogers.”
“To The Moon, Alice!”
On September 17, SpaceX announced that Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, founder of the e-commerce site Zozo, had purchased all of the seats aboard a BFR vehicle that will launch on a weeklong trek around the moon as early as 2023.
Maezawa, an art-lover and collector, said he will take six to eight artists, depending on how many chicken out. The goal of the mission, aside from coming back in one piece, is to help spur the creation of great art that will inspire the whole of humanity, according to Maezawa.
Toward the end of the event, a reporter asked Musk about his own plans to fly in space. “I’m waiting to see what happens to Yusaku,” Musk jovially replied. He suggested that Maezawa had offered him a seat on the trip but he might have a meeting in Tristan de Cunha that day. Musk has previously expressed a desire to fly in space, though not on the earliest, riskiest missions. “I’d like to die on Mars,” he has said, “but not on impact.” Tee shirts have arisen containing that statement.
The moon mission won’t be as dangerous as a trip to the Red Planet but there will still be considerable risk involved. Musk thanked Maezawa for his bravery and for helping to fund the BFR’s development with his purchase. “This has done a lot to restore my faith in humanity---that somebody’s willing to do this,” Musk said. “To take their money and help fund this new program that’s risky, might not succeed and is dangerous. He’s donating seats. These are great things.”
The BFR stands for Big Falcon Rocket, not what you’re thinking. It stands about 387 feet tall and both its rocket and spaceship components will be reusable. The 180-foot spaceship can accomodate 100 people but SpaceX wants to keep the numbers down for obvious reasons. The company will use the extra space to store tons of food, water, fuel and spare parts in case…well, you know…things don’t work out. The 2023 date is merely a target, not definite. A lot of development and testing work will have to go well for SpaceX to keep to that schedule, but Yusaku is young and there’s always a spare artist available.
The BFR is designed to eventually help humanity settle Mars and other worlds throughout the solar system, and good luck with that Elon. If everything goes according to Hoyle, SpaceX will also do a lot of other things, from satellite launches to “point-to-point” travel here on Earth. Maezawa’s moon flight will be livestreamed in high def VR, Musk said, “so it’ll feel like you’re there in real time minus a few seconds for speed of light.” We can hardly wait. We’re not sure about Yusaku.
Finale
When we were kids, I never thought I’d have a horse. Lawrence, Mass. was an old mill town, all asphalt, no countryside. Nobody had a horse. If you did, you’d live in nearby Andover or Methuen or up in Salem, New Hampshire, where Rockingham Park racetrack held forth. My grandmother’s second husband, Bob Vogler, was a big fan, marking his race selections each morning in the sports pages of the Boston Record-American and often traveling up to Rockingham with his brothers for a day of wagering and drinking of ceremonial nectars. Bob often complained that his success rate of picking winners from his easy chair was far greater than when he was in attendance with money at stake. ‘Twas ever thus. Years later, when I sent him a framed winners’ circle photo of Star Specter, my first colt to race, he was thrilled to death, calling over all his friends, giving it a place of honor on his mantle.
This racing business came about after my second marriage, this one to an equine enthusiast. Harolyn Locklair was not involved in the racing business, merely wanted a place to keep her riding horses, so we bought a pretty forty acres in Orange Lake, a hop, skip and jump from the Heagy-Burry Park. Our pal Shelley Browning, a lifetime thoroughbred fanatic, suggested buying a mare or two since we were smack in the middle of the Ocala breeding industry. Over time, our first two mares grew into a 50-horse operation with all the joys and sorrows that entails. We traveled around the country following our runners, celebrating their successes. We sat up nights waiting for the new foals to arrive, anguishing over each birth, delighted as the wobbly baby would gather itself and stand for the first time. We had a lot of early success but just as much heartbreak. Shortly after Spar Specter broke his maiden, he bowed a tendon in a race at Calder, ending any chance of a stellar career. Someone once said the racing business is not for boys in short pants and that’s an accurate observation. There are more negative events than great successes, more disappointments than champagne moments. It takes a trooper to persevere. The marriage to Harolyn lasted only ten years but the horse farm lingered on.
The great moments, of course, are unforgettable. A mare named Vaunted Vamp won 21 races and $420,000 for us and financed Siobhan’s return to the University of Florida and her eventual PhD. A colt named Juggernaut won two $100,000 stakes races in Miami and had a shot at the big time at Monmouth and Keeneland; though unable to prevail at that elevated level, he gave us plenty of excitement. We had countless winners, endless bright spots in our lives, events to look forward to, and we’re grateful to the horses for all that.
When I was young, I always thought that sooner or later I’d have a horse in the Kentucky Derby but that proved to be a mountain unascended. Earlier successes devolved into a moderate business, few great triumphs, not many disasters. For 12 of 14 years, however, the racing business continued to be profitable, if barely, and we hoped for a shot in the arm. We thought it might happen a few years ago with Cosmic Flash, a colt who seemed as fast as any, and started out like gangbusters, winning his first start. He looked like he could be “any kind of horse,” a phrase often used to refer to the potentially great ones in the racing business. Cosmic Flash was none of that, descending into anonymity and eventually being given away. The last ten years in the business for us were sad and unrewarding, filled with racing injuries, mediocre runners and the death of a wonderful foal. Siobhan and I decided to phase out of the business, ceasing to breed our last mare, Cosmic Light. Our final hurrah would be her last baby, a filly named Cosmic Outlaw by the promising sire Uncaptured.
Cosmic Outlaw learned her lessons well at Ocala Stud, looked like a good mover, had a competitive nature, did not do silly things on the track, behaved well in her stall. We sent her to trainer Eddie Plesa in Miami, a patient man who seems to get the best out of his horses and keeps them going over time. The filly’s works were good if not sensational and she went into a half-mile workout this morning with hopes of a maiden start in less than a month. Cosmic Outlaw ran her half-mile in reasonable time, took one bad step after the finish line, broke her knee and was euthanized on the Gulfstream track. Sometimes, Fate is trying to tell you something. Sometimes, you have to listen to Fate.
