Writers are infamously messy, and I suppose I am too. My Google Drive, desktop and other repositories hold various half-baked drafts of this and that. From time to time I try to clear them out, but I hang on to some of them. One in my blog drafts folder has a headline — The indifferent sea. — and is an unkind look at something one of my husband’s former colleagues, who was college friends with none other than Stockton Rush, wrote about his dead classmate. Alan asked me to maybe consider not publishing it, if for no other reason than it would make future collegial gatherings maybe a bit awkward. I agreed.
Rush is, of course, the man responsible for his own death, and four others’, when his jerry-built submarine imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The U.S. Coast Guard has published its own report on the disaster, and it is…not kind:
At the time of the Titan’s final dive, Mr. Rush possessed a credential issued by the U.S. Coast Guard that permitted him to operate vessels of a certain volume on inland waters.
That credential was based on falsified information, the report said: In 2020, OceanGate exaggerated the volume of the Titan in a letter to the National Maritime Center so that it would appear as though Mr. Rush had the requisite time at sea needed to earn the credential.
…In an interview with the board, the OceanGate director of operations described a dive in which an earlier OceanGate submersible, the Cyclops 1, became stuck beneath the bow of the Andrea Doria shipwreck near Nantucket, Mass., with Mr. Rush at the controls. In response, Mr. Rush had a “meltdown,” the director of operations said, adding that when he asked Mr. Rush to relinquish the controls Mr. Rush threw the controller at him.
All of which made me dig up the original column, and hoo-boy, talk about aging like milk:
From test pilot Chuck Yeager to Mount Everest explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, risk-takers are a special breed. OceanGate CEO Tock was one of them. Unlike the astronauts and explorers who lived to reach the summit of mountains and outer space, however, Tock was fascinated by going to the bottom of the ocean.
…Ask anyone in my Princeton University Class of 1984 which one of us would be brave enough to dare such a mission, and Tock would be at the top of the list.
…When we were 19 years old, he became the world’s youngest commercial airline pilot, commanding Saudi Airlines planes during our college summers.
The part about Saudi Airlines was my first whoa moment. You’re telling me a commercial airline allows college students to fly its planes? Not quite. A little Googling reveals he worked as a first officer, i.e. co-pilot, on DC-8s operated by Overseas National Airways, which was under subcontract to Saudi Airlines to do charters, so kinda true, but not really.
But for the deepest and most unselfconscious look at ol’ Tock, you really have to go to the Princeton alumni publication:
Seemingly round-the-clock news coverage of the missing submersible has led to some unfavorable characterizations of Rush as a risk-taker whose adventures trended toward recklessness. Deep-sea explorers, oceanographers, and other industry leaders were reported to have expressed concerns about OceanGate’s safety precautions in recent years. For example, the Titan was built of both titanium and carbon fiber, which is used in the aerospace industry but considered experimental for deep-sea pressure.
“I mean if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything,” Rush told CBS Sunday Morning last year. “At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
Rush’s friends said that quote has been used to misrepresent his “joie de vivre” outlook on life, and that the message of his quote was likely more along the lines of encouraging people to live their lives and not be afraid.
“History shows us that exploration and innovation are inherently risky and dangerous,” a group of alumni wrote in a statement to PAW, signing it “Proud and Grieving Friends of Tock.” “We’re disappointed, if not entirely surprised, at the outpouring of armchair quarterbacking about the science behind his work.”
Was Tock a rich kid? Of course he was:
He kept a private plane at the Princeton airport, and friends recounted adventures they took with Rush at the wheel.
…(A) friend who flew with Rush on his private plane during college remembered the feelings of trust and safety she felt on board. “He cared for people deeply and he wouldn’t want to put me in a position where I was unsafe.”
Bad things never happen to rich kids, as we all know. Ah, well. Now we know, but we always knew. Meanwhile, speaking of rich kids, Croaky has effectively pulled the plug on publicly funded mRNA vaccine research. If bird flu goes big, let me say it now, while I’m healthy: It was nice knowin’ ya:
Mr. Kennedy has been sharply critical of the technology. In a video posted on social media on Tuesday, he claimed incorrectly that mRNA vaccines do not protect against respiratory illnesses like Covid and the flu, that they drive viruses to evolve and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.
“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract,” he says in the video.
“By issuing this wildly incorrect statement, the secretary is demonstrating his commitment to his long-held goal of sowing doubts about all vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
What else is new?
So that’s Wednesday’s stop on the Farewell to American Greatness tour. How’s your week going?
Suzanne said on August 6, 2025 at 12:20 pm
“ …mRNA vaccines…drive viruses to evolve and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.”
OMG, how stupid is Wormbrain Kennedy?? Viruses evolve and mutate all on their own without help! That is what viruses do!
We are all going to die from ignorance.
Sadly, I know way too many people here in beet red Indiana who believe the garbage that Wormbrain and his ilk are selling and will be cheering this on.
And then there is this headline: AMA and other medical associations are kicked out of CDC vaccine workgroups. Because, you know, those groups have a bias.
https://apnews.com/article/vaccine-committee-cdc-cfbdcab84b2a919a6131d471959c3431
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Dexter Friend said on August 6, 2025 at 1:44 pm
5 shot at Fort Stewart, Georgia, no fatalities reported yet. Shooter captured 30 minutes after last shot fired.
Trump was seen short time ago, maybe on Monday, wandering atop The White House roof, saying to the multitudes he was walking for his health, then he said something about visually surveying where the new ballroom was going to be built.
There is a new doc on Prime about Tom Brady’s ownership foray into British football. So far, all I have heard and read about is ridicule for TB12.
The second place Red Sox are maintaining a short lead in the standings over the goddam fucking Yankees. This is good, even as Toronto is running away with the division.
Since the first officer is just as much the pilot of an aircraft as the pilot, only subservient to the pilot, having a 19 year old kid in the right seat in the cockpit is fucking just not right in my mind.
Here in Ohio, around Columbus anyway, Ramaswamy is throwing his money around at events as he campaigns for Ohio Governor. This creep MAGA bastard with the voice of a cartoon penguin makes me sick.
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Sherri said on August 6, 2025 at 3:14 pm
On the last thread, I posted that the way to know that the US is not serious about going to Mars is because the Trump administration is destroying academic science. The scientists who would solve the hard problems of putting humans on Mars aren’t going to be there because Elon Musk and Donald Trump gutted universities.
Maybe Musk truly believes that AI will solve everything, but his ketamine-addled brain is not to be trusted.
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Jeff Borden said on August 6, 2025 at 3:26 pm
How many preventable deaths will Brain Worm Bobby cause by this action? I’d say thousands, but that might be low. We’re in the Age of Dumb and I wonder if we’ll ever come put of it?
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jim said on August 6, 2025 at 4:13 pm
On Trump on the WH roof from reddit:
“Diddler on the Roof”
“All the Libs are saying, “Trump is too much of a pussy to jump off the WH roof!” Please, Sir, with tears in my eyes, prove all those sissy Libs wrong and jump off that roof head first and show them what a REAL CONSERVATIVE MAN can do! Maybe right into that freshly paved Rose garden patio? THAT’D SHOW THEM!”
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David C said on August 6, 2025 at 5:06 pm
If he took head first dive onto his stupid fucking patio, all would be forgiven. Even Jackie Kennedy would say, “yeah, fair trade”.
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Deborah said on August 6, 2025 at 5:19 pm
I am so fucking furious right now I could scream. Excuse my French but this is so maddening, my husband and I both have covid again right now. Me for the 3rd time, LB has been house/dog sitting so away but has had contact with us some during the time we would be contagious. We had plenty of tests but no masks. LB got us some masks that turned out to be horrible fitting, not her fault, they were the best CVS had.
My husband has to fly back to Chicago on Sunday which we have calculated to be day 7 or 8, so he should be noncontagious according to the 5 day theory but he should be wearing a mask still for a while.
We both thought it was allergies, grasses are doing their thing this time of year in northern NM, and grasses are everywhere. He was out at the cabin, came back yesterday with what he thought was a sinus infection that he often gets with bad allergies. this morning I encouraged him to take a test and sure enough he was positive.
I too have it. It’s mild as the other 2 times I’ve had it, I felt a little light headed Monday morning but I thought it was because of dehydration, I drank lots of water and a couple of Advil and felt fine except for a runny nose, nothing out of the ordinary when I have allergies. I feel really bad because I took the bus on Monday since my husband had the car in Abiquiu. An elderly woman with a walker who was somewhat overweight sat next to me and I feel like I have exposed her. I wish there was a way I could alert her, but I have no idea how to do that.
I hate that probably with someone like Kennedy Jr in charge this is going to be with us forever and given how quickley viruses evolve and mutate what is going to happen next?
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Mark P said on August 6, 2025 at 6:26 pm
I commented on the previous thread about Musk and AI. Medicare plans to use AI to pre-authorize some Medicare procedures in six states as a trial. I expect pre-authorization to spread throughout Medicare as they try to force everyone into Medicare Advantage plans.
I wondered in my previous comment what in the hell the goal of all of this is. I think I know: kill as many of us as possible, and make the rest of us technoserfs.
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Brandon said on August 6, 2025 at 7:17 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_Rush
Not only rich but the descendant of Founding Fathers. Had Rush survived, one could imagine his starring in a movie of his life.
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susan said on August 7, 2025 at 12:08 am
Brandon, that wiki link led me to this one, an on-going/ “dynamic” list of inventors killed by their own invention.
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