It seems like scenes from Futurama come true to give us hope or haunt us with far too regularity. In one early episode, Fry wants to experience the wonders of the Future that are mundane to those born there. So he gets a toddler-ride on a tamed T-Rex. After ignoring the cautionary sign while feeding the Rex a pig, his handle get ‘tickled’ off by the Rex. A short trip to the hand shop later, he has two new hands.
Recently, several people have received double hand transplants (a few even switched from right to left handed with zero explanation currently known by science). Wow, Futurama comes true.
In another episode, New York, sometime after the 21st century, contracts the mob to launch their garbage problem into space. Solving it once and for all. Until it comes back as a garbage meteor.
Today, I read about a giant garbage slick swirling around in the mid-Pacific, twice the size of Texas. The New York Times wants to do an article on it, but the graduate student contracted needs $10,000 to take the trip to the garbage to photograph and then write the article. She needs $3,800 to complete her goal to get this story noticed. This garbage slick wasn’t even discovered until recently.
Wiki on the Garbage Patch. I tried to find it on Google maps, but they’ve stripped out pictures of the surface of the ocean, it appears. (ed: in favor of ocean bottom topographical data.)
Here is a NPR story on the subject.
And last but not least, here’s the TED talk on the man who sailed through this marine shitstain, Captain Charles Moore.
I am going to see if I can find it with Google Earth – but if anyone has some satellite imagery of this, I beg of you to post it to twitter with the tag #GreatPacificGarbageSpot – this should be one of the Seven Great Shames of Humanity.
Thanks to @zoecello and @sarawinge on twitter for diggin this up.
Tags: garbage gyre, holy shit, pacific gyre, total cockup, trouble in paradise, we're fucked