Penguin March on Cinematical

by Erik Olsen on

Our sister site Cinematical has
got a great post on a new film
called March of the Penguins. The film was picked up at Sundance 2005 by Warner Independent Pictures and National
Geographic Feature Films for around a million dollars…and then thoroughly de-Frenchified. That is, the film was shot by
Frenchman Luc Jacquet, who obviously injected a bit of his country’s cultural aesthetic.

To shoot the film, his crew visited the scientific center of Dumont d’ Urville, in Antarctica, to shoot the emperor
penguins in super 16mm. I look forward to seeing the film myself. You can catch the
trailer here.

Global Quiz

by Erik Olsen on

The World is a great site for up-to-date nes and commentary on what’s going
on globally. I tune in pretty often to hear their NPR-style stories which come from every corner of the earth. And it
just so turns out they have a global quiz they do every week
or so that can be a fun little diversion. Check out their most recent quiz. They ask you to name the northernmost and
least developed of Japan’s four main, mountainous islands. Know the answer? Tell them.

Poppa Neutrino’s Crazy Adventures

by Erik Olsen on

So, this guy who calls himself Poppa
Neutrino is planning some major adventure involving the Pacific Ocean and a raft. That is to say, he plans to cross
said Pacific on said raft. A bit crazy, to be sure. But he has creds. Turns out many years ago he actually sailed the
Atlantic Ocean (sorry, a truly inferior ocean to the Pacific by almost any measure) on a raft made out of New York
trash. Now that’s quite an accomplishment. So this new article is available in the print edition of the New Yorker, but
it’s not online, which is sad. BUT, you can read an interview with the article’s author, Alex Wilkinson, on the New
Yorker site, and that’s where this
link goes.

Watching the Whales

by Erik Olsen on

Not too long ago I posted a bit about my experience seeing a bunch of porpoises while I was out fishing. It was totally cool. They surrounded the boat and I reached out and patted their silvery backs.

In California whale watching is big. that’s because there are so many of these meandering cetaceans in the off the coast in the Pacific. Having grown up in California, I’ve seen humpbacks around the waters since I was a kid. And when you see them, it’s often the case that they are being tailed by whale-watching boats. Whale watching is pretty fun, if there are whales to see. And especially if the whale seem intent on entertaining. Here is an article about the best places to do whale watching. Of course California is there, but so are the Azores, Dominica and Orcas Island up in Washington. This last one is also a favorite of mine because the whales you see are often killer whales, and if you’ve ever been out kayaking and seen an Orca, well, there’s nothing quite like it.

Whale Burgers to Sell Big?

by Erik Olsen on

Don’t know how I feel about this one. It just seems such a shame to eat whales, but maybe that’s my Western
sensibilities talking. But as this article points
out, whale burgers are in high demand. A Japanese fast food chain estimates that demand will be so high that it
will sell 200 whale burgers a day. The chain, Lucky Pierrot (that doesn’t sound very Japanese?), runs 10 shops in the
northern island of Hokkaido, and will use the mean minke whales caught under Japan’s controversial research whaling
program. The burgers are said to taste a lot like beef. No word on whether the burger will be called the McMoby.