All my life I have struggled to overcome negative exposure to sharks. I think I have won, but it has been a long haul.

My earliest memory of sharks is from 1975. I was spending the night at a friend’s house. Across the street from his building was the base movie theater. All that Friday night we were scared witless by the constant screams we heard coming out of that theater during the three showings. We had seen the posters on the movie theater billboard and our imaginations filled in all the rest, which is not too hard for imaginative 7–year–olds. It would be years later before I actually saw the movie, which only reinforced my abject fear of sharks.

Fortunately, my folks exposed me to National Geographic and the Cousteau Society, so I was also exposed to sharks as amazing animals and important parts of the ecosystem. Yet, whenever we’d visit the coast and go swimming, in the back of my mind I would worry about the sharks. As an adult in the Caribbean, I was revisited by that fear when I began diving. I have to admit my greatest concern when I began diving was that I was entering their realm. I slowly got over that fear (mostly) as I got more dives under my belt, including several dives with reef and nurse sharks. Then came Somalia.

In Somalia there was a strict order not to swim in the beautiful waters around Mogadishu. I have to tell you it is VERY tempting to take a small dip in the water to escape the equatorial heat, especially when you’ve been riding convoys in full battle gear and are caked in sweat, dust, and dirt. A moment of wading in cool salt water to escape it all was very inviting. I wanted nothing more, but the order was there for a reason. In a little over a year 6 UNOSOM workers were bit by sharks in Mogadishu. Three died of their injuries. I knew Mogadishu was a unique place for the sharks. The area had become a rich hunting ground for them, thanks in part to a history of townspeople throwing carrion and refuse into the waters nearby. Eventually the UN installed a shark fence around the beaches at the airport. I wonder if it’s still there.

To the south in Kismayo, I did a couple dives with several sharks in the area. My job was to keep an eye out for sharks while the underwater specialists carried out their jobs. I was pretty scared, but I was young and dumb and diving with a bunch of seriously gung–ho types, so I wasn’t about to admit it. The funny thing is the sharks were there, but their behavior was very non-threatening, even the largest of them. They occasionally came into view, swam lazily at a distance, then receded back into the blue. They were not terribly interested in us or our activities.

I continue to dive, even in the “dive by touch” conditions that the locals call “high visibility” in Long Island Sound. I have studied sharks a bit more and the critical part that many sharks play as part of their ecosystem. Intellectually, I know that even as a diver and someone who works in the marine environment, I am less likely to be bitten by a shark than I am to be struck by lighting or electrocuted by my toaster. Yet, in the back of my mind, there is still a little kernel of concern. When I see the replica of the great white in the cafe on campus (caught just outside of Long Island Sound), or I hear of the juvenile great white found in the estuary near here, I find myself having to shake off that fear and refocus my thoughts.

I have been fortunate to see sharks up close in the wild and I realize that they are not the killing machines that the media often portrays them as. Even the Discovery Channel uses sensationalism and fear to sell their Shark Week. I haven’t watched Shark Week for several years, since I was disgusted by their inaccurate and sensationalistic portrayal of sharks the last time I did watch. Shark Week then was about 80% fear and sensationalism, 15% interesting factoids, and 5% conservation, proactive education, and recent science. The shame is that Shark Week could be a force for genuine education about shark conservation and the importance of sharks in the ecosystem.

I certainly hope that they have changed their portrayal of sharks, especially since the sharks are in desperate need of our help. Even Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws, expressed his deep regret over having written Jaws after the damage it caused.

“Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today,” said Benchley, who also co-wrote the screenplay for “Jaws.” “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges.”

Unfortunately, with shows such as “Deadly Waters” and “Sharkbite Summer” in the lineup, it doesn’t look likely. I could take a very optimistic view and hope that “Deadly Waters” is describing the terrible daily massacre of sharks for shark fin soup. Maybe “Sharkbite Summer” is about us putting the figurative bite on sharks. But as far as the Shark Week advertising and show titles go on the Discovery Channel website, the message is still all about fear.

I mean really, how far have we come in 34 years??

The 1975 film poster for Jaws

and 34 years later, the 'Web Poster' for Shark Week 2009

I’m hoping this is simply a typo!

Watch… then see the complete series at the The Manpollo Project

The cable company model is so bassackwards it’s not even funny. The crap the TV stations put out and then the cable company only lets us “buy” it in massive blocks of supposedly market segmented channels.

We realized recently that we watch less than 2 hours of cable TV each week. For which we paid some $50+. We tend to watch one of two channels. The remaining channels on the bloody system were totally worthless. On most channels we wouldn’t watch the few shows we were interested in because the commercials were obnoxious and offensive.

Today we shut it off. For the $50+ dollars we save we can download shows we really want (For me the SciFi Friday lineup) from iTunes or wait to the end of the season and get the DVD.

Funnily enough if Comcast would have given us the option of buying channels à la carte, even charging a per channel premium for it, we would have kept it. As is… No more cable. DVDs, Netflix, and iTunes thank you very much. And we’ll still save money.

Unfortunately as great as the Eneco Tour was to watch, the finish was significantly marred by spectator interference and, in my opinion, poor judging robbing George of a much deserved win. Stefan Schumacher, who put in a beautiful performance during the tour, made it perfectly clear he did not want the victory the way it was. Unfortunately it was a hard situation made worse by a bad judges decision.

While I’ve always been a fan of George and root for him, especially during the classics, I am beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe, he really is cursed.

Vuelta Ramping Up
The Vuelta a España started today and we watched the time trial in the late afternoon. One thing I like about Cycling.tv is if I choose or have to miss the live broadcast of the stage I can catch the rebroadcast later the same day, or the highlights anytime later. I avoided all the cycling web sites until after we could watch the stage as well. ‘Fraid with school I’ll have to do that for almost all of the stages.

Today’s prologue was a bit different, being a TTT. There were few real surprises in store as the CSC team (Carlos Sastre, Fabian Cancellara, Volodymir Gustov, Lars Bak, Kurt Asle Arvesen, Inigo Cuesta, Marcus Ljungqvist, Nicki Sørensen and Stuart O’Grady) dominated the event and helped Carlos Sastre into the golden fleece — his first grand tour leaders jersey.

The only big surprise really came from Gerolsteiner as they lost their leader in a messy transition through a roundabout. Riders in front of David Rebellin slowed abruptly as they went though a small dip in the road and into a roundabout. Unfortunately David couldn’t stop himself from touching wheels and going down rather hard into the turn. While 6 men from Gerolsteiner finished the stage 19″ off the CSC time, they left their main contender for the GC (and another rider) to limp in 2′50″ behind the race leader Sastre. Maybe the DS figured waiting for and pulling Rebellin to the finish would take too long in such a short ride. Of course maybe Rebellin wasn’t going to be the leader after all (cetainly won’t be now)? Maybe they have decided to pull for Markus Fothen (second in the TdF Young Rider this year) instead? … I don’t know, but it was not a good way to start the Vuelta.

From PelotonJim we learned that the Vuelta this year is they will be using some of the camera angles and advances we saw and enjoyed on Cycling.tv for the Deutschland Tour and the Eneco Tour. Specifically the under the seat camera. A small wireless camera placed under a domestique’s saddle and aimed back and slightly up which gives a good view of the one or two riders directly behind and riders diagonally back to either side of the camera bike. It also give a really good idea of just how tight the bunch is in the peloton sometimes. I’m hoping they have one of those camera’s tagged on Petacchi’s lead out man. Watching the Milram milk men run out a great lead and Petacchi being delivered from both the normal view and the view from the lead out man’s seat would be something I would really like to see.

Today the teen-aged Team Wiesenhof-AKUD rider Gerald Ciolek out sprinted Erik Zabel and the other sprint favorites to take a most excellent stage. Great sprint performances out of Ciolek are not too surprising, even though he is currently only 19 and on a Continental team — in 2005 he beat Zabel and Gerosteiner’s Robert Förster in a bunch sprint to become the youngest ever National Champion of Germany. Now in his second Pro year, rumors are T-Mobile is looking to pick him up from Wiesenhof for next year.

Overall Gusev continues to hold the leaders Yellow Jersey (by fractions of a second over Erik Zabel) along with the Best Young Rider’s White Jersey. Erik Zabel has a solid lead in the sprinters Green Jersey competition. The mountains really only begin tomorrow (Hartz mountains between Witsenhausen and Schweinfurt), but right now Gerolsteiner’s Stefan Schumacher has the lead for the Polka Dot jersey.

Voigt’s win in stage 2 was one part of a CSC hat trick for the day, winning three different races in one day. CSC as a ProTour team can and is fielding teams in three races across Europe right now, besides Voigt’s win with the D-Tour team, Fabian Cancellara took a win in the day stage of the Tour of Denmark and Marcus Ljungqvist won the day at the Paris-Corrèze. Amazing.

The great thing about Cycling.TV is that we can watch the 2–3 hour live show when it airs (usually starts around 9am EST) or if we can go out and do whatever needs to be done and watch the edited broadcast (60-90 minutes) of the stage anytime after they post it later that night. Awesome!

Johann wanted to know what cyclocross was, since I had referred to my amateur cyclo-cross racing in Germany and wanting to get a good cyclo-cross bike for winter and commuting use. Sure enough looking through the archives of Cycling.TV and there was the British National Cyclo-cross Championships from earlier this year. We watched Helen Wyman of Team Fat Birds Don’t Fly (I love that team name!) win the women’s championship and Discovery Channel’s Roger Hammond take the mens championship. Johann now knows what cyclo-cross is and thinks it very cool.

Did I say I like Cycling.TV ??

* watch The Dukes of Hazzard every weeknight on CMT;
* know the words to The Dukes of Hazzard theme song, “Good Ol’ Boys,” written and performed on the series by the legendary Waylon Jennings;
* serve as media expert on The Dukes of Hazzard for the CMT Dukes of Hazzard Institute: must be available for TV, radio and newspaper interviews to share passion for The Dukes of Hazzard on CMT;
* write the CMT Dukes of Hazzard Institute online blog for cmt.com;
* be passionate about The Dukes of Hazzard on CMT;
* make appearances at special events such as Dukesfest 2005 in Bristol, Tenn., (June 4-5, 2005).

Anyone got an mp3 of the theme? Maybe a bootleg tape from one of the picnics in Luckenbach?

Oh and Steve, we gotta talk…

“A music podcast featuring the best and worst of cover songs. Presented with full legal licensing from ASCAP.”

Usually each show follows a theme or an artist or two. I usually listen to Coverville late at night when I am working, but lately I have been listening to playlists from my own collection in iTunes. Today I finally got around to listening to Brian’s Tribute to Holly, Valens and Richardson edition of Coverville.

True to his tagline, there were some good covers in there including Jerry Lee Lewis, The Misfits and Harry Belafonte and then… well… pain. So painful it was actually funny, at least for the fist 30 seconds. It was The Brady Bunch covering Don McLean’s “American Pie.” For this one I had to unplug the headphones and share the pain with Tammy. This song ranks right up there with William Shatner’s Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds cover. Good for a laugh or two, but also suitable for use in psychological warfare ops on roommates etc.

Now if only I had the iPod… but more on how I swallowed my iPod — and an iMac — later…

“Son, if you and yours in this room continue to give these people the mantle of legitimacy, then the men under my command who died back there in Bastone will have died in vain. The war against the enemy of mankind didn’t end in Berlin or Tokyo or Seoul, that war goes on today. That war is being fought by men and women every bit as brave as the men who I served with in the past.

…

“People are going to die in this war until someone says “I surrender”. If you are ready to surrender, I suggest you do so, for the rest of us, I have just one word for you:

“Nuts!“