There is something in the human psyche that makes us love animals. It’s why we have pets, it’s why we love zoos, it’s why we put up with the creepy clowns at the circus – we love animals and have a desire to be close to them. That love goes back as far as the record of man. We domesticate the once-wild animals we find around us, and continually to seek out additional animals. Technology has given us the ability to go places we never could otherwise, and to become close to animals in ways we never could before – and perhaps that technology can help us save some of those animals from ourselves.

Ask a group of people to name their favorite animals, and you’ll get all the old favorites … dogs, cats, rabbits, horses. Some may toss in some exotics, like ferrets or monkeys, and the marine lovers might opt for offshore species – whales, dolphins … or marlin … Chances are, though, not too many would name sharks among their favorite animals … or would they?

Sharks are the ultimate alpha dogs of the oceanm sitting at the very apex of the predator pyramid. They are a very old species, slow to reach maturity and slow to reproduce – whereas a fish might spew forth thousands of eggs, a shark may only have a handful of pups each year. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but while they may have no natural enemies, that doesn’t mean there are no threats. They have one decidedly unnatural enemy that has pushed them to the very brink of extinction – man.

Not so long ago, sharks were a mysterious predator of the seas, seen only by the rare fisherman or unfortunate shipwreck victim. Then came a little movie called “JAWS”, and sharks were painted as an object of pure evil. Shark tooth necklaces were a sign of machismo, killing sharks became some sign of manhood, and shark fishing tournaments became all the rage – just this past weekend, a thousand-pound-plus mako was killed in a tournament off Anacapa Island. Man was killing sharks at a prodigious rate – and for what?

For all the misguided machismo, the harvesting of sharks for teeth and trophies pales compared to the real evil that man does upon sharks. Shark fin soup was once a delicacy in the Orient, but the desire of the people to share in the treat has driven a slaughter of sharks on an unimaginable level. One report indicates that as many as 73 million sharks are killed every year for their fins – most in the shameful process of “finning”, where the fins are sliced off the still-live shark before tossing it back in the sea to meet its fate. Another 50,000 sharks are believed to die as bycatch in fishing nets – every day. Most shark species are dangerously depleted and approaching endangered levels, and there’s no sign that we are willing to step up and do anything.

There may just be hope for sharks, though, and it comes from the strangest of places – cable TV. More than 20 years ago, the Discovery Channel started a week of programming about sharks as a promotional gimmick, and over the years it’s grown into one of the biggest ratings periods in all of cable programming. Shark Week, which is underway now, mixes special shark-themed episodes of current Discovery Channel shows like “Mythbusters” and “Dirty Jobs” with specials about various aspects of shark life and conservation. Along the way, common people are introduced to sharks in a way that shows them for what they are – potentially dangerous, but necessary to the oceans and certainly not evil. Much like the wild animals brought back from Africa in centuries past, sharks are gaining acceptance – and appreciation – among the populace.

As more people learn about sharks, they recognize the essential role they play as the scavengers of the seas. More importantly, they begin to understand the wanton waste of the resource that certain cultures are undertaking, and it helps develop a desire to help. The more people are introduced to sharks, the more they appreciate them … the more they love them … and the more embarrassed they become by the actions of their fellow man against them.

How can you help? For starters, contact your senator and urge them to support the Shark Conservation Act of 2009, which will tighten loopholes in current law to make it illegal to transport shark fins in US waters. If you live in an area where shark tournaments are held, challenge the organizers to improve their tournament rules to help conserve sharks, particularly those large ones that make up the broodstock. Most important, help educate those around you that sharks are an essential part of the marine ecosystem – one we cannot afford to lose.

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 …

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 …

Here at the Home Office we love to laugh at the weathermen, but once in a while they get it right.  They predicted we’d get pounded with rain this week, and boy did we!  I’ve lived in this house for 15 years, and with the exception of the particularly nasty storms we got back in ’98, this was the worst I’ve seen.

Looking at the trust rain gauge – otherwise known as a Homer Bucket, we can see that 5 1/2 inches of rain has fallen here since Monday morning.  Most of it came in four fast-moving storms that were each followed by eerie calm, although today was a more traditional soaker.  In any case, it’s more rain than we’ve gotten in many full seasons, and a welcome gift.

The truly amazing thing about these storms is the relatively minor impact they’ve had on the hillsides that surround Los Angeles, particularly the ones where last fall’s wildfires left them particularly vulnerable.  Nearly 1000 homes were preemptively evacuated, fearing the rivers of mud that all this rain would doubtless cause.  So far, though, the hillsides are holding.

This weekend is supposed to be clear, but there’s a possibility of another storm next week.  It’ll be nothing like what we saw this week, though – and I suspect it’s going to be quite a few years before we do again!

It’s been a week since the massive earthquake destroyed Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, and there hasn’t been a lot of good news coming out of the region.  Aid trickles in, hampered more by a lack of infrastructure in country than any lack of sympathy by the world.  Bodies remain in the streets and crushed in buildings, and the smoke rising from burning corpse piles can be seen in many locations around town.  As the reality of the devastation sinks in, the task ahead for Haiti – and those who will have to step in to rebuild it – is daunting.

One bright spot amid the darkness is well-known to those of us in SoCal.  The Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Heavy Rescue Task Force is one of the best in the world when it comes to dealing with the aftermath of earthquakes, having prepared to face the inevitable “Big One” here in SoCal.  When the first rescuers hit the ground in Haiti, the lack of resources and organization stymied their efforts, but not CRT2 – they came fully staffed, supplied and prepared.  Once a flatbed truck had been appropriated, they were a mobile rescue unit, moving site to site and applying their expertise to pull victim after victim out of the rubble.

Because it was clear that they were among the more effective groups in those chaotic first days, they attracted significant media attention.  Several SoCal news crews are in Port-Au-Prince, and have been documenting the efforts of their local team, but even CNN’s Anderson Cooper has followed the team around, turning them into something of a media sensation, particularly with the attention that came with their rescue of the “singing woman” earlier this week:

Ironically, as the team works to save lives in Haiti, SoCal faces one of its biggest challenges in years as a series of nasty rainstorms moves into the area.  The good news is that there are plenty of Urban Search and Rescue teams left here to get the job done.

You can follow the ongoing efforts of CA-TF2 at the LACFD’s Daily Briefings page.

And of course, if you haven’t already – and even if you have, if you can – click on the banner at the top of any SCMO page to donate to the Red Cross Haiti relief effort. They’re gonna need a lot of help for a very long time.

The amazing thing about democracy is that no matter which side of the political aisle you may sit on, you’re going to be subject to the whims and wishes of the electorate. Sometimes they’re going to see things your way, and sometimes, they’re not. It’s a lesson as old as the concept itself, and one that must be taught over and over. Today, members of the Democratic Party are the unwilling students.

Tomorrow morning, Democrats will awake to the uncomfortable reality that the newly elected junior senator from Massachusetts, the man replacing the revered liberal Ted Kennedy, is a Republican. They already have their spin doctors working the news shows, trying to convince themselves that this isn’t one more repudiation of the Obama administration and rather just a statistical blip caused by a weak candidate who blew an election. Meanwhile, the Republicans are doing giddy “toldya so” cartwheels and thinking it means that maybe – just maybe – the public is willing to forgive them for trying to foist them with Sarah Palin.

But what does it really mean?

Barack Obama strikes me as a sincere, well-intentioned person who is doing all he can to execute the platform he outlined during his successful campaign for president. And, to be honest, I don’t disagree with much of what he’s trying to do. But anytime you hit the ground running and never slow down, you can miss the scenery – and when that scenery changes, you can be the last to know.

We all know the President inherited a mess, and he did a decent job addressing the recession upon taking office. You can argue about the scope of his plans, but there’s no disputing the number of projects in work or the people employed by them – you can’t turn a corner in SoCal without running into some public works project with its “Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” sign. But once he turned his attention to health care, without slowing to first take the temperature of the populace, things went south in a hurry.

There’s a reason health care reform has been a concern for so long, and it’s not because Congress is lazy – it’s hard! There are a lot of details, and options, and opinions, and it’s been very difficult to achieve a consensus. Thus, every new Congress butts its head against it until bloodied then moves on to other issues. But this Congress – and the President sending the orders – had something different … a super majority, and they weren’t afraid to use it.

You know that old saying about how power – and particularly absolute power – corrupts? Well, Americans on the right – and, increasingly, the center – saw how Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi rubbed their hands together in glee at what they could do with their filibuster-proof majority and began to worry. At their core, most citizens don’t trust politicians, particularly if the checks-and-balances built into the system are overridden. Once it became clear that the Democrats were going to shove health care through no matter what the opposition thought – and with little concern for the opinions of said opposition – a red flag was raised. One-time fringe groups like the Tea Party movement suddenly gained traction, and an increasingly large number of voters wanted to put on the brakes. At the same time, the speed at which the Democrats were moving prevented them from seeing the size of the wave that was about to break over their heads until it was too late to do anything about it.

To be sure, the campaign of Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General who was the Democratic candidate for the senate seat, is as much to blame for the loss as anything. She stumbled badly and often, and did everything she could to lose the election. But in a state with as long a history of sending Democrats to Washington, this is a stunning blow.

The message has been sent to the President and his party – slow down. Think things through. Consider all the opinions, even those of the opposition. Now we’ll see if anyone is listening.

We like to make fun of the local TV weathermen for the panic-stricken way they react to every cloud in the sky, but the truth is that most Calis (myself included) are pretty much clueless when it comes to weather. One of the reasons we live in SoCal is so we don’t have weather, and most of what we know is from experiences living elsewhere or hours spent watching the Discovery Channel. For the vast majority of the time, the forecast for LA is unchanged – sun, light breezes and mild temperatures.

Once in a while, though, the weather gods throw us a curveball. Most of the storms that roll off the Pacific pass to the north of us (are you listening, Portland?) – all we get are a few annoying clouds. But when the El Nino phenomenom fires up in the equatorial Pacific, things can get a little interesting – like they’re gonna get this week.

The following is the summary from a much longer forecast from Samuel Johnson of the USGS up in Santa Cruz. To say it catches ones interest is quite an understatement:

In short, the next 2-3 weeks (at least) are likely to be more active across California than any other 2-3 week period in recent memory.  The potential exists for a dangerous flood scenario to arise at some point during this interval, especially with the possibility of a heavy rain-on-snow event during late week 2.  In some parts of Southern California, a whole season’s worth of rain could fall over the course of 5-10 days.  This is likely to be a rather memorable event. Stay tuned…

To hear it described, we’re supposed to see a series of really fast, really nasty storms that will dump a couple of inches each on us here at the beach, and even more in the mountains surrounding LA.  That could be problematic for the folks in the foothill burn areas both in LA and Orange counties, where sandbags and K-rails aren’t going to do much against a wall of mud.

I’ve seen a couple of other forecasts that use the word “biblical” to describe what’s gonna happen this week. Naturally, I have to spend most of it in a class at a Boeing facility in Huntington Beach, which means I get to experience rush hour freeway traffic right in the middle of this slop. Should be … fun.

I’ll have the Home Office Rain Gauge deployed before the first drops fall – we’ll see together just how deep it gets.

Stay tuned …

If you’ll excuse a small indulgence, I’m going to be a Boeing homer for a moment. One of the big stories that went down late in the year was the potential first flight of our new 787 Dreamliner, an oft-delayed event that some felt might never come. Welll, I’m happy to report that it came indeed – twice!

On December 15th, thousands of Boeing employees and family members braved chilly Seattle weather to watch as the first Dreamliner lifted off the ground at Payne Field in Everett, WA. Several hours later, it landed safely – in a rainstorm, no less – at Boeing Field in Seattle. I, unfortunately, was unable to be there, but was able to watch the historic moment via webcast – and even got a screenshot of the liftoff! A week later, on the 22nd, Dreamliner #2 made the same flight, the second of the six 787s destined to perform in the flight test program.

Most of the headlines recently about the 787 have been negative, so it’s good to have some positive news to report for a change. Now all we have to do is start rollin’ ‘em out!

Earlier this morning, the first flight of what is touted as the future of the American space program took place with the launch of an Ares 1-X rocket from Cape Canaveral.  The rocket, part of NASA’s “back to the future” plan to return to the moon in an Apollo-like capsule, uses a combination of shuttle parts and new components.

The good news is that the suborbital flight,  scheduled to last only two minutes, appears to have been a success.  The booster section – similar to the solid rocket boosters in use by the current Space Shuttle – parachuted into the Atlantic where it will be recovered.  The upper section, which was a mockup, simply plunged into the water somewhere downrange.

Unfortunately, just as the program can look at this success, it faces its greatest challenge.  Many were disappointed with President Bush’s decision to retire the shuttle in favor of what is at best an underwhelming effort to retrace steps taken generations ago.  The current administration is reviewing the program, and is under significant pressure to cancel it.

I’m an unabashed fan of space exploration.  I was one of those kids who sat cross-legged on the living room floor watching the black and white pictures of early launches back in the ’60s, and I remain a fan today.  Part of the reason I built satellites for Boeing was to be part of the space program in some little way.

There is a significant value to space exploration, even as the price tag reaches staggering levels.  Many of the technological conveniences we enjoy today were initially developed for our space program.  More than that, though, we are a species of explorers – it is our destiny to push forward, even if that means pushing into space.

But space for space’s sake isn’t enough.  You can’t just build and fire rockets and call it good – hell, the Chinese did that a thousand years ago.  You have to have a purpose, and a passion, and a vision – and the Constellation program doesn have any of that.  Yes, we need to get people to and from the space station, but we can use the Russian hardware for that.  Yes, there are probably resources to be exploited on the moon, but that’s what commercial ventures are for – let the boys at Space-X show the way.  NASA needs to lead the race for space, but it needs to be the right space – and right now, we’re on the wrong path.

Once in a while, I’ll catch some heat over the age of some of the Eye Candy selections we post here at the MB.  I mean, it’s not like I’m posting pictures of Miley Cyrus or something, but unless I’m in a particularly milfy mood there’s a decade – or generation – in age between myself and most of the models.  But I’ve got nothing on Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi, the 72-yr-old Prime Minister of Italy, is a rich and powerful man.  Beyond the political clout afforded the senior leader of the G8 nations, Berlusconi owns several media outlets as well as the AC Milan football club.  This is a guy who knows what he wants, and has the power to get it.

Right now, what he apparently wants is shown at right jumping off a boat in Sardinia.  Noemi Letizia is an 18-yr old aspiring model in whom Berlusconi has taken an unnaturally active interest.  All parties – the PM, the model and the model’s family – claim everything is innocent, but Berlusconi’s wife recently filed for divorce, making the statement at the time: “I cannot be with a man who spends time with under-age women.” Around the same time, Berlusconi attended Noemi’s 18th birthday party, presenting her with a gold and diamond necklace and a book inscribed:

“To my little Noemi, my little graphic artist, your little daddy teacher.”

Even taking into consideration the roughness of the translation, it’s not exactly “Happy Birthday, Princess”. Italians are a tolerant lot, but I’m not sure they’re this tolerant.

Personally, I blame French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Ever since he bagged model Carla Bruni, the bar’s been set pretty high for European Leaders. It certainly gives the term “keeping up with the Joneses” a whole new meaning.

And I even managed to work water in one more time …