Author: Jordan Raddick

You’ve probably heard the story: it’s Christmas. A young husband and wife are very poor, and very much in love. His dearest treasure is a gold pocket watch his father gave him; hers is her beautiful long hair.

Unknown to him, she sells her hair to a wigmaker to buy a chain to hold his pocket watch. Unknown to her, he sells his watch to buy her a set of jeweled combs for her hair.

When they exchange gifts, they realize how much in love they really are. The power of this story comes from its bittersweet irony, with just a hint of tragedy. Love truly is the greatest gift, but you can’t comb your hair with love, and love can’t tell the time.

The source is “The Gift of the Magi,” one of the most famous short stories in American literature. It was written in 1905 by American author O. Henry (the pen name of William Sydney Porter). Henry wrote hundreds of short stories, but this one was by far his most famous.

My lovely spouse and I just had an experience that reminded us of this classic story, but without the hint of tragedy.

We have recently become fans of the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears, a slice-of-life sitcom about three brothers who live together, and who happen to be bears. Grizz is a grizzly bear who is well-meaning but a bit dense and self-involved. Pan-pan is a panda who is girl-crazy and addicted to his smartphone (yes, I know pandas aren’t really bears, and I love how that is your first objection to this concept). But the star of the show is Ice Bear. Ice Bear is a martial arts expert who speaks only in short, direct sentences in a low gravelly voice – and consistently speaks of Ice Bear in the third person.

Here are some of his best moments from the show so far:

And so it came to pass that during one of my frequent Nights of Insomnia, I had just finished watching a few episodes, followed by the NBA TV rebroadcast of my hometown Orlando Magic’s exciting 149-113 win over the Atlanta Hawks. I mention that detail to explain what I did next: I logged in to my Amazon.com account to look for a Nikola Vučević jersey. I found only a few, all far above my price range – but made another important discovery.

My lovely spouse and I share an Amazon account. We don’t normally share online accounts, but sharing one with Amazon makes life simpler because we can share the free two-day shipping to our address. And so when I didn’t add the Nikola Vučević jersey to my shopping cart, I discovered something was already in the cart: a beautiful Ice Bear Believes in You T-shirt, size men’s large.

We are fortunately not even close to poor, much less as tragically poor as the young couple depicted in “The Gift of the Magi,” but with her finishing up a career-change master’s degree, we don’t always have immediate funds for purchases, no matter how awesome.

And so I figured she was waiting until her next paycheck to buy the shirt. I also figured she was buying it as a gift for our lovely nephew, a fellow We Bare Bears fan. And so I thought it would be an excellent time for a gift – not only the gift for our nephew but one in a more appropriate size for the spouse herself.

But of course she was not buying it for our nephew. And thus arrived in the mail a few days later:

And so, far from Christmas 1905, I’ll adapt the words of the story’s lyrical closing to celebrate our love:

O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Ice Bear.

adapted from “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

Click the Play button on the video above to watch this morning’s press conference as it happened. The press conference begins at the 33-minute mark of the YouTube stream.

Note: this isn’t something I’m directly involved in, I just think it’s REALLY REALLY COOL

10:15 AM UPDATE: The Press Conference is now over. Click the link above to watch the archived recording. I’m watching it now and I’ll summarize here.

10:04 AM UPDATE: The livestream is over, and there are so many fascinating results to unpack! Keep watching this space as I add more explanations and further resources to explore.

9:48 AM UPDATE: I’m learning about this at the same time you are. As I learn more, I’ll keep updating this post. This is so exciting!

Sheck Exley wrote the book on cave diving. Literally.

Sheck Exley (1949-1994) doing what he loved

If the title of his book Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival sounds dramatic, that’s because cave diving is dramatic. Imagine all the fun and danger of SCUBA diving, combined with all the fun and danger of cave exploration, except turned up to 11.

Irby Sheck Exley, Jr. (yes, that was his real name, on his birth certificate) was born in Jacksonville, Florida on April 1, 1949, son of a Volkswagen dealer. His younger brother drowned at age 17; perhaps that is what sparked his desire to make cave diving safer for others, but I don’t want to read too much into other people’s motivations. The important thing is that he did care deeply about making cave diving safe for others. 

The one thing you must understand about cave diving is that it is completely insane. SCUBA diving is dangerous in itself – carrying your own air into a place where you would normally die is an obvious danger, but even if you do everything right you could still die of nitrogen narcosis.

Cave diving adds a new set of dangers. Sunlight can pass through hundreds of feet of open water, but not through rock, so it’s DARK in there, bring your own light. Some passageways are no bigger than you are, so you can go in only to get stuck on the way out. Swimming can stir up mud and silt, reducing visibility to near zero. And with rock above, around, and below, it’s easy to lose sight of where you are and where you are going. There are hundreds of ways to die, and if science has taught us one thing, it’s that nature doesn’t care whether you live or die.

Even with all these dangers, thousands of people enjoy cave diving. I’m not one of them, and I have no interest in becoming one, but I can definitely see the appeal. I have a great admiration for people who push themselves to the absolute limit of human ability, even in the most unexpected ways. Especially in the most unexpected ways.

And for people who love cave diving, there is no better place in the world than Sheck Exley’s northern Florida. There are only a few places in the world with both the right rock type and the heavy rains required to create karst topography, home of the most elaborate cave systems – Slovenia, southern Thailand, Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula – but northern Florida is unique even among these places because of its high water table. There are no above-ground cave systems like Postojna or Tham Luang there; all of Florida’s cave systems are underwater, with entrances at springs and sinkholes.

Even though I’ve never been cave diving – and the thought of it terrifies me – I have some experience with cave divers. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of camping at Florida’s Ginnie Springs,  one of the most famous cave diving destinations in Florida, and thus in the whole world. That means I almost certainly saw Sheck Exley before his death in 1994, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Exley took a job as a math teacher at Suwanee High School in Live Oak, Florida, so he could live close to his beloved springs. His list of SCUBA diving records, in both open water and cave diving, stretches farther than the deepest cave. He was the first person in the world to log 1,000 cave dives – all before he turned 24. He has had the deepest penetration of numerous caves in Florida and elsewhere. He was the first person in the world to dive to a depth of 800 feet (240 meters), a grueling dive that required more than 13 hours of gradual post-dive decompression. 

But without a doubt, his greatest contribution to the sport of cave diving was his obsession with doing it safely. His book is now required reading for many cave diving certifications – meaning that aspiring divers can’t legally enter their first cave until they know how to do it like Exley did. He also helped popularize the use of the “Octopus,” a secondary diving regulator so that your buddy can breathe from your tank if theirs runs out.

Unfortunately, even for a man who literally wrote the book on safe cave diving, cave diving is still a dangerous sport, and ultimately it took Sheck Exley. On August 6, 1994, Exley died in Mexico’s Zacatón Sinkhole while trying to become the first person to descend to 1,000 feet (300 meters) in freshwater. His cause of death is uncertain, but likely due to the effects of breathing a mix of helium gas under high pressure – effects which are poorly-understood even 24 years later, simply because so few people have ever tried.

But there is one detail of his death that is both fitting and heartbreaking. When he didn’t come up at the scheduled time, his friends in the surface support crew knew he was gone – but they never expected what they were about to see when they pulled up the air hose. With his literal dying breath, Exley had wrapped himself firmly in the air hose, saving his friends from a risky mission to recover his body. But that’s who he was: right up until the end, finding ways to keep everyone safe.

Sheck Exley may be dead, but there are literally hundreds of people alive today because of him.

Aloha `oe, Sheck.

Today’s Google Earth find is extra-weird. This is the Japanese outlying island of Okinotorishima (沖ノ鳥, which means Distant Bird Island). Use the map controls below to navigate. Zoom out to see how far away it is from everything. Zoom in to see the island.

Wait, where’s the island?

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d7324.342850210825!2d136.07070049065902!3d20.423924910883432!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x60a150154ebcdd5d%3A0xed84b30186a11b67!2sOkinotori+Island!5e1!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1543423497787&w=800&h=600]

The white ellipse is not the island – those are waves crashing over the surrounding coral reefs, which are just barely submerged. The green patches are not the island – those are formerly parts of the island that have now sunk beneath the waves.

Totally an ISLAND! Right, guys? Guys?

The rectangular building is not the island – it’s a Japanese scientific research station and military radar installation, held up by a giant concrete pillar drilled into the shallow water below. The nearby circular features are support structures.

Nevertheless, the Japanese government insists that this is totally an island, and it’s totally part of the glorious nation of Japan.

Of course, there used to be an island here. Okinotorishima was one of the few places in the world where the world-spanning underwater mountain range system known as the mid-ocean ridges stuck up above the water. In the 1980s, the dry-land area of the island measured only nine square meters. But between the natural subsistence of the Pacific Plate and the artificial sea level rise caused by global warming, Okinotorishima has now slipped beneath the waves.

You might wonder why Japan is so interested in maintaining its claim on an almost-island hundreds of miles away from anything. The answer lies not with the island itself, but with the waters surrounding it.

International Maritime Law defines an “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ) offshore everywhere, a 200-kilometer (120 mile) zone in which only the onshore country can operate. This law makes perfect sense in most of the world – the U.S. wouldn’t want an Icelandic whaling vessel to shoot harpoons across Miami Beach, or a Chinese warship to sail right up to the mouth of the Hudson River just to say “STILL IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS! NOT TOUCHING YOU! HAHAHAHA!” Islands count too.

So if the Japanese can convince the world that Okinotorishima is totally an island, they can maintain exclusive access to a 200-km circle around the island. That’s 125,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles) of prime South Pacific fishing territory, with the potential for undiscovered oil deposits underneath. The map below shows that circle, which is also in a strategically important area between the Philippines and Taiwan.

The yellow circle shows Japan’s claimed Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around Okinotorishima. Click for a larger image.

But this claim is valid only as long as they can justify that there is an island, even at high tide. Every few years, the Japanese Navy must deploy to Okinotorishima to extend the concrete pillars and make sure the research station stays above water.

Yes, this is ridiculous.

And yes, your country would do exactly the same thing.

(Photo: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kanto Regional Development Bureau Keihin River Office)