In the wake of yesterday’s tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau at Sea World in Orlando, there will be a great deal of angst and hand-wringing.  Brancheau, 40, drowned after she was dragged underwater by one of the orcas she was responsible for handling, and there are already emotional calls for change.

Whenever a human is killed or injured by a captive animal, there is an outcry against the practice of keeping wild animals in captivity.  We saw it when a tiger escaped at the San Francisco Zoo, we saw it when Roy Horn was attacked by one of his white tigers, and we will see it again in the wake of this incident.  Once the emotion of the moment is allowed to fade, it makes sense to have a reasonable discussion on the future.

I have fond memories of my interactions with trained whales as I grew up.  Marineland of the Pacific, once located on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, was the home to orcas Corky and Orky, as well as a trained pilot whale named Bubbles.  All three served as “animal ambassadors,” introducing the wonders of the ocean and its creatures to countless people who might never otherwise have a chance to interact with it.  My own love of the sea is rooted in trips to Marineland and Sea World in San Diego.

But much as I enjoyed the shows, I was aware of the challenges and controversies.  In 1987, Marineland closed and the whales moved south to Sea World, where Orky died a year later and stirred a discussion much like the one that will ensue now.  Killer whales have a very long life span, and forcing them to spend it in what is in effect a large fishbowl is seen by many as cruel.

To me, there are really two issues.  As with any animal that would normally roam over a great area, killer whales face a very different life in captivity as they would in the wild.  Much like elephants and other large animals, it is difficult to replicate the orca’s natural environment.  They seem to do quite well in captivity – the orca involved in yesterday’s incident has lived in tanks for nearly 20 years – but there’s no way to replicate the social interaction that would normally occur in a wild pod.  At the same time, the captive orcas continue to serve in an educational role, and I have no doubt that wild orcas benefit from the protections given them by a society that was introduced to the species by their captive brethren, and their sacrifice on behalf of their species may be justified.

The real issue to me is the idea of continuing to train and perform with the orcas.  While entertaining, it is a throwback to a less-enlightened time, when elephants and bears were chained to a pole and made to dance.  The trainers are skilled and the orcas intelligent, and for many years the two have worked together to entertain many people.  But it is the interaction between the trainer – an inherently unnatural pairing – that led to this tragedy.

It is worth noting tht simply releasing the orcas back into the wild “Free Willy”-style is not practical.  While the money provided by filmmakers and others allowed researchers to determine and locate the pod from which Keiko, the film’s star, was originally taken – facilitating the successful release – most captive whales could never be so happily reunited with the familial pod.  Simply releasing them in the wild alone would be no better than what they face today.

I believe the best path forward is a compromise.  End the trained whale shows and minimize the interaction between humans and orcas, allowing the whales to swim as freely as they can within their confines and make their own choices as to what they want to do.  At the same time, convert the current pens (as much as practical) into viewing opportunities for the public to continue to enjoy – and learn from – the captive orcas.  If pens can be developed that better meet the needs of the orcas, the display practice can continue – if not, it dies out with the eventual death of the orcas.

This solution won’t please the park operators, and it certainly won’t please PETA, but it is the only solution that guarantees the long-term health of the orcas while allowing them to continue to educate the public.  It is a legacy worthy of someone who dedicated her life to the species.

The next domino in the corporate failure of once-iconic car maker General Motors has fallen, as it was announced today that the Hummer brand will be ended.  A deal was thought to be in the works with a Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer, but the apparent collapse of that deal has sealed Hummer’s fate.

While I was sorry to see the earlier end of GM’s Pontiac and Saturn brands, I’m not gonna miss Hummer in the least.  Whereas Pontiac carried history and Saturn represented change, all Hummer stands for is excess.  Born in the chest-thumping days following the original Iraq War, the initial Hummer H1 was a civilian version of the HMMV “Humvee” that gained much fame in the desert sands.  Large, loud, and with no place on civilian highways, the H1 was nonetheless popular with the “big ego, small penis” crowd.  Originally built by AM General, the folks who built the original Humvees for the military, the brand was bought by General Motors and expanded.

I can remember trying unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle the first time I saw the Hummer H2.  Downsized to more closely match the SUVs that were becoming popular at the time, it was literally the worst of both worlds.  It was boxy to try and resemble the H1 (and included embossed replicas of the some of the H1 features no longer needed in a smaller vehicle), but that cost the H1 valuable cargo space.  I figured they’d jumped the shark when I saw a crash test on an H2 that showed it had the suvivability of a ball of tin foil, but it was the even smaller H3 and a pickup version of the H2 that set the stage for failure.  In a time when intelligent people are looking to hybrids and electric vehicles as the future, the Hummer is as dated as leg warmers and spandex pants.

It’s important to note that while the Hummer brand is gone, the HMMV goes right on, as GM owns no part of AM General.  From now on, the only folks with Humvees are the ones who’ve earned them …

LA takes a lot of justifiable abuse for the two most-visible by-products of our super-sized population:  traffic and smog.  Politicians work hard to resolve both (generating a lot of hot air in the process … ) but the truth is that neither will be solved until we figure out how to decrease the local population – and we all know that’s not gonna happen any time soon.  Every once in a while however, nature steps in and lends a hand, if only temporarily. 

Los Angeles is a basin plain, wedged between mountains on the north and east and oceans on the west and south.  The prevailing sea breezes would like to sweep the smog to the east, but it only makes it as far as San Bernardino before it backs up, leaving us with the hazy skies we’re known for.   The further west you live (and the Home Office is about as west as you can get), the better the air quality, but it’s only gonna get so good.

This winter, though, we’ve been fortunate to be hit by a series of stronger-than-usual storms.  Well, perhaps “fortunate” isn’t the right word, or is at least in the eye of the beholder.  I suppose if I lived in one of the burn areas and was watching 4 feet of mud roll through my living room I might have a different opinion, but for the rest of us there’s a huge upside.  Once the rains end and the front passes through, the breezes that follow on the back side of the storm are usually strong enough to flush the smog out of the basin for a couple of days – and the results are breathtaking.

I was driving up from Long Beach yesterday on the 405 and as I passed the blimp port in Carson I glanced to my left and was amazed to see the Hollywood sign – clear enough to read.  Just to the right, the dome of the Griffith Observatory and off to the left, the Getty Museum.  Behind them all, the snow-capped mountains. 

Once in a while, nature reminds us what an amazing place this really is …

Back from a long week of workshops and ready to talk some Winter Olympics …

- If there is a story of redemption in these Olympics, it has to be skier Bode Miller.  He arrived at the Olympics four years ago expecting to compete for gold, but with his head in clearly the wrong place.  His lack of discipline and conflicts with the US Ski Team forced him to leave Torino empty handed and the subject of justified ridicule.  Four years later, Miller comes to Vancouver a changed man – the father of a two-year old who has completely changed his attitude.  He’s returned to the national team and is skiing better than he has in years.  Even with that, however, no one really expected him to score medals in each of his first races, but that’s exactly what he’s done – including an impressive gold in the combined.  He’s considered a medal favorite in two more events, which would leave him the most decorated skiier ever for a single Olympic games – quite a change from the last go around …

- Another guy who as performed above expectation – at least, the expectation of anyone but himself – is short track skater Apolo Ono.  After starring in the last two winter games, Ono stepped away from skating and expanded his fame significantly by competing in – and winning – TV’s “Dancing With The Stars”.  Most viewers assumed you’d never again see Ono back on the ice, but he still had the itch and regained his competitive form.  In a sport marked by notoriously short careers – Ono has repeatedly pointed out he’s skating against people coached by people he used to skate against – Ono has scored a pair of medals at the half-way point in the games.  Some will point out that his achievements have come in part due to the misfortune of others, but he’s been a victim of that same kind of bad luck himself over the years and it all balances out.  He’s now the most-decorated US Winter Olympian, and still has two more events to skate.

- Unlike most of her teammates, skier Lindsay Vonn was expected to win her events – at least until a training injury mere days before the Games began left her unable to ski.  Frankly, only the unpredictable weather of Vancouver gave her a chance to even compete, and she made the most of her opportunity, scoring the gold in the women’s downhill.  Her results since that first race haven’t been as fruitful, mixing a DNF with a bronze medal, but the joyous yells she lets out at the end of a run – win or lose – show how happy she is just to be competing.

- Americans like to look at Canada as our 51st state, but I suspect most Canadians see Americans as their boorish neighbors to the south.  Louder, ruder, clumsier – we’re the bulls in the Canadians china shop.  Imagine how it must feel, then, for the American hockey team to go to Vancouver and beat the Canadians at their national game – and yet, that’s just what happened in group play yesterday.  The Canadians outshot the Americans 2-to-1, but inspired defense and goalkeeping kept the US squad in the game long enough to take a 4-3 lead late into the game.  An open netter set the final score, and started the spin doctoring of the results.  Publicly, the Canadians are saying it’s just another game, but most people think these are the two teams destined to meet for the gold, and you really don’t want to lose a game like this.  For all their ho-hum reaction, it’s worth noting that the Canadians have benched goalie Martin Brodeur in favor of Roberto Luongo for the remainder of the tournament.   Those cold fingers are closing on the Canadian team’s necks …

-  Did I mention that the US Women’s hockey team is playing the Canadians for the gold?  Imagine if both teams bring home the gold – they’d have to close the bars in Canada …

I think I’m pretty typical for someone my age in that I feel my generation was totally screwed when it comes to cars.  Our parents got all the cool ’60s muscle cars, but by the time we got our license all those things were long gone – we got the Pinto and the Vega.  It’s not surprise, therefore, that I was pretty pumped when Ford rolled out their retro-Mustang a couple of years back – all the cool of the original with modern touches like airbags and disc brakes.  It didn’t take long for the other manufacturers to follow the leader, and soon we had a brand new Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger.  But while everyone’s dipping into the ’60s well for inspiration, some ideas are clearly more inspired than others.

Dodge was a little late to the table rolling out their modern muscle car, and 2010 is the second model year for the Challenger.  One could say they were a bit preoccupied trying to stay corporately afloat, but it seems they used the extra time to learn the mistakes made by Ford and Chevrolet with their earlier introductions.  Most people agree the Challenger is the throwback that is the “truest” to the original design – right down to the colors.  Like the original, you can get your Challenger in classic colors Detonator Yellow, TorRed or Blue Pearl – heck, they even brought back Plum Crazy.  But to celebrate what would represent 40 years of the Challenger – had they stuck around – they’re rolling out a version in … wait for it … Furious Fuschia.

Now, I should point out here that I’m a Ford guy, so there’s really only two acceptable colors to me – white with two Ford Blue stripes or Ford Blue with two white stripes.  I’m willing to tip my hat to the Mopar Gang for showing a little flair in their colors, but dude – that’s a pink car.  There’s just no other way to look at it.  I guess maybe if your girlfriend is into hot cars and you’re trying to impress her with a muscle car for her birthday or something, but I think for the rest of us this is just not going to work. Maybe they could have called this one “Failed Fuschia” …

Oh, and memo to the folks at the Three-Point Star’s Five-Point division:  If you’re gonna celebrate an award, make sure it’s something legitimate.  We all know that JD Power will give an award to anything from cars to toilet paper, but you guys are celebrating the Challenger being named “Most Appealing Midsize Sporty Car” – I mean, what the hell is that?  Probably exactly what you’d expect someone driving a pink car to celebrate, I guess …

If you make your living on the sea, you put your life at risk every time you leave port. That’s just an unavoidable fact of working on the ocean, and one that every commercial fisherman knows all too well. Certainly that is well-known by all the crabbers working the Bearing Sea crab grounds, the fishermen whose lives and livelihood are documented in The Discovery Channel’s hit series, “The Deadliest Catch”.

Long before television make some of them into rock stars, rugged crews drove their boats into harm’s way on the wrong side of the Aleutian Islands in search of the bounty of crab that lives there. All too often, someone didn’t come home, and it was that “roll the dice” mentality that brought the cameras north in the first place. The change from the winner-take-all “derby” fishing to a more sedate – and safer – quota method drained a lot of the drama out of “Deadliest Catch” after a couple of seasons, and focus turned to the people who ran the boats and took the risks. We learned more about the men of the fleet, and what made them tick.

One of those men was Phil Harris, captain and co-owner of the crabber CORNELIA MARIE, and audiences got to know an awful lot about Phil and his crew. We learned that he was a prankster, a lifelong crabber, and a proud father to Jake and Josh, his two sons who served on his crew. We also learned that he was a short-tempered, chain-smoking, Red Bull-swilling advertisement for how not to live a long life, a stroke or heart attack just waiting to happen. In 2008, that vision nearly came to pass, as a blood clot forced Harris off the boat and into the hospital for treatment. When he returned in the spring of 2009 to once again run the CM we hoped he’d be a changed man, someone who had cheated death and learned a valuable lesson. Alas, that was not to be.

On January 29th, while the CORNELIA MARIE was tied up at remote St. Paul Island to offload catch, Harris suffered a stroke. He was rushed to Anchorage and placed in a medically-induced coma, and seemed to be making progress. The coma was ended, and he appeared to be on the mend when he died unexpectedly on Tuesday.

Aa television viewers, we saw Harris as the editors wanted him to be seen, but the townsfolk of Dutch Harbor saw him every day for many years. Here is how the local newspaper remembered Captain Harris:

Their pain is so new that people in Dutch Harbor talk about Harris in the present tense, like he’s about to walk through the door any minute amid a cloud of cigarette smoke and colorful language.

He was “friendly,” “honest,” “strong,” “hardworking” “caring.” He was the kind of guy who took “Deadliest Catch” T-shirts to sick children in the hospital.

“He was a one-of-a-kind person,” said Al Mendoza, fleet manager for Unisea, where the Cornelia Marie landed millions of pounds of crab over the years. “I don’t think he had an enemy over the years I knew him. Not one enemy, ever.”

All say he loved his sons, Josh and Jake Harris, more than life itself.

Then they tell how he used to joke about why lions eat their cubs. The words “brash,” “macho,” “loud” and “impatient” pop up. By all accounts, he could be a pain in the patoot, but that doesn’t mean they loved him less.

It’s been a tough opilio season for the boats of “Deadliest Catch” – deckhand Jake Anderson of the NORTHWESTERN lost his father only days before Harris was struck down. It is a reminder that a life on the ocean can be a very remote one, and time spent on the beach with loved ones is all the more precious.

Phil Harris was 53 years old.

There was probably some other sports this weekend, but c’mon – you know what we all watched …

- Last week, if you’d put money on the New Orleans Saints to win Super Bowl XLIV, it would have been considered a sucker bet or, at best, a sentimental bet. But today, it’s a winning bet after the long-suffering Saints defeated the Colts 31-17 last night in Miami. There will be a lot of talk about how the Saints uplifted the spirit of New Orleans, and that is a great thing that comes out of this game no matter who you were pulling for. But for now, let’s talk about who won the game – or, more importantly, lost it. Drew Brees has one of the greatest post-seasons by a quarterback, and the rest of the Saints did what they had to do to get their hands on the Lombardi Trophy. But to me, the real story of this game is the inexplicable performance by the Colts. This is a team built to win the big game, one that sacrificed the possibility of a perfect season to get to the big game – and once there, acted like they never arrived. League MVP Peyton Manning had a decent game statistically (with one significant exception), but the Colts played like a team more worried about not losing than winning – and that’s a recipe for disaster. Incredibly dull play calling by the Colts’ coaching staff led to field goals instead of touchdowns – and punts instead of first downs – and left the door open for the Saints. And the Saints came marching through …

- Football is a team game, but this more than most was a story of individual moments. There were good moments – Tracy Porter’s interception return to seal the victory, Sean Peyton’s decision to go with an onside kick at the beginning of the second half that left the Colts’ flat-footed and flabbergasted – and bad – Pierre Garcon’s drop of an easy pass on a crucial third down. But the one that will stick with me will be Hank Baskett’s flub of the aforementioned kickoff. Look, the reason you put wide receivers on the front line of a kickoff is for this very occurance – that’s why it’s called the “good hands team”. Baskett, better known as the guy who stole Kendra Wilkinson from Hugh Hefner, was a mid-season pickup by the Colts after getting dumped by the Eagles. After this gaffe, I think he’s gonna be looking for a job once again …

-  OK, let’s talk about the real game … the commercials.  For the last decade or so, the buzz before the big game has often been more about the commercials than the game itself – blame Apple and the original Mac commercial in ‘84 for that, I guess.  But, much like the action on the field, the commercials seldom live up to the hype, and this year was no exception.  There were nearly 70 commercials during the game (!), but I’d say only a half-dozen or so were even memorable.  Some of my favorites were the Snickers commercial with Betty White and Abe Vigoda (who’s still alive – who knew?) or the Coke commercial with the entire cast of the Simpsons.  Both were cute in entirely different ways.  There were plenty of attempts to sell with a different cute (Megan Fox taking self-portraits in the hot tub, for example), but for me they fell short.  Same goes for perennial SB advertisers GoDaddy and e-Trade (the new baby sucks).  Among the big winners were Focus on the Family, whose Tim Tebow commercial was remarkably understated compared to the controversy it stirred up, and Toyota, who threw itself on its sword in a mea culpa commercial aimed at the largest audience possible.  Doubt that’s gonna save the stock value, though. The best of the bunch, though, has to be the one in which an entire trans-Atlantic love affair played itself out in the simple interface of a search window, reminding the world that no matter how much money Microsoft and Yahoo invest in hyping their search engines, when the world wants a question answered, it still “Googles it”.

Is it me, or does it feel like the recession is starting to turn around?  The unemployment numbers are still bad – but not as bad as they were.  The stock market is better, folks are buying again (except Toyotas, of course), and the sun is starting to shine on the economy once again.  There are many ways to mark the economic turn around, but none as certain as when the ultra-rich aren’t afraid to spend big once again.

Let’s face it – there are some really big private yachts out there.  For a guy like me, who loves to fish but isn’t even in the same ZIP code as boat ownership, a battlewagon like BAD COMPANY is a mighty big boat.  For others, the luxury yachts lined up in Cabo San Lucas or Monaco are the ultimate prize.  If you’re really swimming in money – and the lawyers haven’t locked it up yet – you might roll with a megayacht like Tiger Woods’ aptly-named behemoth, PRIVACY.  But there are those out there for whom even a couple of hundred feet of luxury just isn’t enough – at least, that’s what one boatyard is betting.

The folks at Emocean Yacht Design, a Belgian marine architecture firm, have begun planning what would be the largest private yacht yet – a 200-meter monster.  For those of us on this side of the pond, that works out to 656-ft – over 150-ft longer than the current ARLEIGH BURKE-class Navy destroyers.  They haven’t found anyone ready to pony up the $500-to-$900 million needed to launch the beast, but here’s what the new owner can look forward to:

Drive-in garage, vehicle garage, two 30m day boats, helipad and hanger, 30m swimming pool, nightclub, casino and games room, 2 level cinema, 3 beach clubs with health spa, 10 vip rooms, 22 guest suites and owners deck

Did you catch that?  Two 98-ft onboard “tenders” and a full Olympic-size swimming pool.  With all that, she’s supposed to hit 28-kts and cruise at 20 – although the vast majority of us couldn’t even afford the fuel.

Of course, if this is still a little rich for your post-crash tastes, you can always charter Richard Branson’s yacht …

Yesterday, a particularly grumpy rodent was dragged from his burrow on Gobblers Knob and trust into the air before a large and eager crowd.  I refer, of course, to the annual appearance of that Pennsylvania Prognosticator, Punxsutawney Phil.  Phil’s pudgy body did indeed cast a shadow on the snowy ground, which legend holds indicates another six weeks of winter.  Considering the National Weather Service is already predicting “epic snowfall” for the East Coast this weekend, you can imagine what a popular guy ol’ Phil is right about now.

If you saw the movie – one of my faves, btw – then you may already know the myth:  German settlers brought the knowledge that hibernating animals were better at understanding the weather than they were, and watched the reaction of the groundhog to determine when to plant.  Over time, the traditional holiday of Candlemas was usurped as a celebration of this ritual, and Groundhog Day was born.

It’s worth noting that while Phil has predicted a long winter 85% of the time, he’s only been right 39% – which would still get him a job with any local TV station in LA …

Well, the worst-kept secret in recent memory is finally out of the bag, as Apple yesterday introduced their new tablet computer to the world. Not the “iSlate”, “iTab” or “iTampon” (as some wags dubbed it after hearing the real name), the new machine is called the “iPad” and it appears to be everything the spies claimed and then some.

Your Kindle just became a relic ...

In typical Apple style, the event was held in San Francisco with CEO Steve Jobs once again taking the stage to demo the new product (One aside: Jobs appeared lively but still critically gaunt. He’s looking more and more like a man whose body will fail him long before his mind …). The presentation mixed canned presentations of the device’s capabilities, followed by live demos that backed up the promise. From all accounts, the promise was met, as the iPad seems nimble, capable and quick.

There are those who will see the iPad as nothing more than a steroid-driven iPod Touch, and initially that’s not a bad comparison. The iPad can run all iPhone apps, both in the native iPhone resolution or full screen using pixel doubling. It syncs via iTunes and a connector identical to those found on iPhones and iPods, and most of the applications developed by Apple for the iPad release are simply rewrites of the iPhone apps with larger, more capable interfaces. However, part of the presentation was devoted to a series of presentations by app writers who showed how in just a few weeks they were able to improve their applications to take advantage of the real estate and capabilites of the iPad. As Jobs commented later, “imagine what they can do with a couple of months?”

The challenge now is to convince the user public that there is a role for the iPad. Jobs from the start pointed out that the last device considered the logical item to slot between smartphones and laptops – the “netbook” – failed miserably. As he put it, the new device needs to do things better than both laptops and smartphones to survive, and the netbook did neither. The iPad, however, he believes will.

Unlike any computer Apple has produced before it, the iPad is clearly a consumer device. Apple believes that it can be shared by members of a family, passed around the same way you might the TV remote, and be used to view television and movies, surf the web, check email, and read books and magazines. In fact, a key new element of the iPad is the iBooks app, which is a slick e-book reader. Unlike previous Apple media apps, this one uses a standar e-book format, and it includes integration with an iBook store where new books can be purchased and downloaded in seconds. Naturally, it has a classically Apple interface, resembling a bookshelf. Jobs said that five major publishing houses had already signed on to provide books, and negotations would begin immediately with the rest that afternoon.

Another target of the iPad will be newspaper and magazine readers. The print media has been worried at their shrinking market share, and some are following the lead of the New York Times and contemplating charging for content. The combination of the iPad platform and the iTunes/iBook stores should allow them to advance the concept and perhaps regain readership.

It was only briefly mentioned, but Apple also sees the iPad as a wonderful textbook reader. Apple has long been a favorite of the education community, and I can certainly see this as the future of the textbook.

One interesting thing I saw from the reporting of the event was a sense of … disappointment … that the iPad was less revolutionary than evolutionary. People forget that when the iPod was released, the general sentiment was, “Gee – another MP3 player … how nice” – it wasn’t until the iPod was mated to the iTunes store that the real power was felt and the paradigm changed. While I welcome the faith and enthusiasm the media has in Apple’s ability to force societal change, I suspect their faith will be rewarded in the long run as content becomes available and apps are written to take full advantage of the iPad’s capabilities.

The first of several models of iPad (differeing by memory capability and connectivity options) will cost $499 and ship in the next month or so. Time will tell if this is the game-changer the iPod and iPhone were, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

I guess in the end, the winner is … everyone!