The tragic death of Sea World’s most veteran orca trainer, Dawn Brancheau, has raised a lot of questions with animal rights activists and laymen alike this week.  Tilikum, the whale who grabbed his trainer off a platform in front of a live audience at Sea World’s Orlando park, had already been involved in 2 other human deaths before this latest tragedy.  The largest and most dominant whale on Sea World’s roster, Tilikum was known as being different from the other whales, and was the only whale with which the trainers were forbidden to swim.  Branchaeu was one of the few trainers allowed to work with him.

Sea World’s lead trainer says that the whale has been in captivity too long to be safely returned to the wild, but at least one leading whale scientist disagrees, noting that it’s unsafe to keep him in captivity.  Ironically, it seems that Tilikum’s size and testosterone levels are the very reason Sea World refuses to return him to the wild where he was born.  Tilly is the most prolific stud whale ever in captivity, having sired 13 calves.  And so, while so many are questioning why Sea World would continue to work with a temperamental whale already involved in 3 human deaths, his breeding successes and crowd-pleasing “splashes” due to his size seem to be the answer.

Tilly was not born in captivity himself.  He was captured off the coast of Iceland and housed in a Canadian aquarium.  After he and 2 other whales were involved in the death of a trainer, he was transferred to Sea World Orlando where he was immediately put to work to perform and to sire more whales for Sea World.

As Sea World prepares to resume its Shamu shows, many animal rights activists are asking that Sea World release Tilikum – either into the wild, or to a sanctuary off the coast of Chile wherein his world will resume to a size beyond that of what, to a human, would be a hot tub.

Whoa, whoa, whoa … relax … take a breath … step back slowly from your February 2010 calendar.  This is NOT a leap year.

There will be no confusing hop, skip and a leap over to that ever-so-odd February 29^th date (at least it’s odd to me).  The next leap year doesn’t happen until 2012.  This is great news, because now I don’t have to get a birthday gift for my friend Laura (her often-invisible February 29^th birthday has allowed me to save much money through the years).

Although I must admit, on the other hand, I do sorta-kinda miss leap years.  With an extra day in February I get more of my money’s worth from those “pay-by-the-month” expenses like the gym membership, train pass, cable bill and such. Somehow I feel gypped only getting 28 days, when the surrounding January and March each have 31 days.

For people who love learning stuff, the added day every fourth February is needed.  Why?  Because it actually takes the earth 365 ¼ days to finish its orbit around the sun.  If we didn’t make the correction, in just a few years kids would spend their “summer” vacation from school shoveling snow off the driveway.

For people who really love learning stuff to the n^th degree, the solar year is actually 11 minutes and 14 seconds short of 365 ¼ days (which means after 128 years, we would be off by a day again!).  So to top-secret super compensate, a new rule was made in 1582: “Century” years are not counted as leap years unless they’re evenly divisible by 400.

For people who really, really love learning stuff to the n^th degree, this new rule still has us about 30 seconds off (to-date).  But at this rate, it will take us 3,300 years to wander off by a whole day.  Hopefully they’ll come up with another rule by then?

Play ball!  In case you haven’t heard, Spring Training has officially sprung.  Yes, with baseball now in full swing (at least from a practice standpoint), that means the start of the professional baseball season is only months away … and we’ll be watching the play-offs in a few dozen more months (true, baseball has a very long season).

It promises to be an exciting season, with great teams up and down the country. If you want to show your love for America’s pastime, here at CafePress you’ll find lots of baseball designs on all sorts of products.  This includes aprons for the tailgate party, gym bags for the softball beer league, SIGG™ bottles for washing down your sorrows after another ninth-inning rally falls short, and calendars to start planning out how next year’s season will be better than this year’s.

See you in the cheap seat!

I’m sort of surprised that we’ve been able to hold out for so long, but 7 weeks ago when asked if we wanted to know the gender, during our ultrasound appointment, we did the very abnormal thing and said “NO.”

Unfortunately it’s THE most-asked question I get being pregnant: boy or girl?  I just always thought it would be nice and traditional, fun to buck the trend, buck technology and laugh in its face … “Hahaha, I don’t need to know! I don’t need your fancy high tech imaging!”  You know, like holding out and not feeling you had to get that iPhone the second it came out.  Granted I did get one about a year later, but it was worth the wait and I paid way less (okay, off topic.)

But I get many, many more shocked reactions than I expected: Ohmygosh how can you not want to know!  I HAD to know!  Apparently everyone is now a control freak or such a planner that they can’t keep themselves from painting the nursery in EITHER blue or pink.  Or having a name picked out, and referring to the baby as such in everyday conversations.  Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to know the gender of your baby.  I just didn’t think my choice would be such an anomaly!

It does mean that I will most likely have to paint the nursery yellow, I can’t buy many baby clothes yet (my wallet thanks me) and I have to come up with TWICE as many baby names to chew on.  But hey, that’s all part of the fun!

I sort of suspect there’s another bit of truth to be told: I’m kind of nervous about how much my life is going to change after this baby.  So not knowing the gender could be my way of chickening out from facing that reality.  My doctor has the envelope though…I could always give him a call…

A tip of the ol’ beanie cap to America’s own Flying Tomato.  In dramatic fashion last night, Shaun White was good as gold as he dominated the Winter Game’s snowboarding Halfpipe competition.

Pulling an awe-inspiring (and all-spiraling) Double McTwist 1260 out of his gym bag of tricks (imagine being in commercial dryer with an ironing board duct-taped to your slippers), the red-coiffured wonder leapt into the history books with his second-consecutive Olympic gold medal.

Of course, Shaun does have his own private halfpipe to practice on – a $1 million beauty built in Colorado by his corporate sponsor Red Bull.  If I had one of those in my backyard, I might not have to spend my entire day snowboarding down runs with names like “Bunny Patch,” “Pooh Bear” and the death-defying “Toddler’s Alley.”

See you on the slopes, Red. I’m gaining speed.  Soon I’ll be able to pull this one off (does Bunny Patch have a half-pipe?):

Some small business owners in Minnesota made a bit of a splash with a highway billboard emblazoned with a picture of George W. Bush and the question, “Miss me Yet?”  While the billboard’s legitimacy was originally questioned throughout the blogosphere, NPR has assured us that the billboard is, indeed, quite real.

What’s most interesting to us about this billboard is simply that the “Miss me yet?” sentiment is the first real George W. Bush T-shirt trend since the heartfelt liberal inaugural farewells and, before that, the infamous Iraqi shoe-throwing incident.

Indeed, it would seem that now that he’s out of office, George W. Bush – so long a source of inspiration for Liberal designers – has finally become a font of inspiration for Conservatives.  And as was the case so often in W’s presidency, Cheney’s got a piece of the action himself.

Lost your credit card in a seedy bar, but you gotta have that stylin’ new Sawyer T-shirt that shows everyone how much you love ABC’s LOST?

No problem, Freckles.

Now you can purchase products from the CafePress site using PayPal.  In case you don’t know, PayPal is an online payment company that lets you fund web purchases from your bank account or credit card.  With something like 190 million accounts, they’re good at getting money from point A to point B.

So if the only thing between you and that Desperate Housewives tote bag is the fact that you want to use PayPal, relax.  Payment-wise, you’re now on Easy Street (or should we say Wisteria Lane?).

While those of us in California tend to be a bit chilly and affronted when the weather dips below a daytime high of 50, the Mid-Atlantic has been recently hammered by a series of winter storms that has buried cars, killed power, disrupted travel, broken snow records, and effectively shut down the Federal Government for 4 days.

President Obama dubbed the back-to-back blizzards “Snowmageddon,” and while folks have been debating whether or not climate change is actually real, all this blogger can tell you is that D.C. (which used to be a swamp – a painfully obvious fact if you arrive in mid-August) is not exactly known for its snowmen.  (Straw men, maybe.)

Heck, it snowed in Louisiana.  With Mardi Gras looming, one has to wonder whether the Hand Grenade man will start a new trend with Hand Grenade slushies, made with fresh Bourbon Street snow.  For that matter, the slush in the gutters by 3AM would probably be a potent (if entirely bio-hazardous) cocktail.

Our community has responded to this wild weather with some pretty fun designs of their own.  Here are a few of our favorites:

Although MTV’s “Jersey Shore” is on hiatus, star DJ Pauly D isn’t slowing his GTL schedule just yet.  Pauly’s been busy lately – doing Michael Cera’s hair, on the Ellen show, and of course setting up his own line of DJ Pauly D t-shirts and other fun goodies.  *Fist pump*

And don’t worry, Guidettes: you too can support Pauly, whether publicly via a T-shirt or somewhat more privately with American Apparel undies.  Undress to impress…

Attention LOSTies!  Interested in an island getaway?  Want to collect autographs from cast members of your favorite TV show?  Here’s your chance to win a trip for 2 to Hawaii, a t-shirt signed by some of the LOST cast*, and other fabulous prizes with the LOST Design Contest.

If you’re a LOST fan and you’re a creative at heart, this contest is for you.  There are 5 categories to enter.  Category Prizes: $200 CafePress Gift Certificate, LOST seasons 1-5 DVD box sets, and a T-shirt signed by some of the LOST cast.  Grand Prize is a trip for 2 to Oahu, Hawaii for 4 nights!

Inspire our judges and fans with dramatic LOST T-shirt designs that folks will love searching for (and finding).  Hurry!  Contest ends February 18, 2010.   Learn how to enter the LOST Design Contest.

Good luck brotha!



*signatures on the T-shirt:

Naveen Andrews – Sayid Jarrah
Matthew Fox – Jack Shephard
Jorge Garcia – Hugo ‘Hurley’ Reyes
Daniel Dae Kim  - Jin Kwon
Yunjin Kim – Sun Kwon
Evangeline Lilly  - Kate Austen
Terry O’Quinn – John Locke
Emilie de Ravin  - Claire Littleton
Michael Emerson – Ben Linus
Harold Perrineau – Michael Dawson
Ken Leung – Miles Straume
Jeff Fahey – Frank Lapidus
Zuleikha Robinson – Ilana