By R. Michael Brown, Writer| Producer & Former Field Engineer
In the lake in front of the Polynesian Hotel and Village, Disney World built a wave machine on an island to pump waves toward the hotel beach for surfing.
The company I worked for was doing some geotechnical work on it and I was the only surfer in the company so they sent me out to test the waves.
When the machine worked, which wasn’t very often, it would pump out a 2 foot closeout of murky swamp water.
Me [my skinny self back then] OR Dick Nunis, Disney executive?
There is only one photo that I’ve found of someone surfing the wave (above). A Disney employee newsletter ran the photo and said it was Dick Nunis surfing in the photo, the Disney executive that came up with the wave machine idea and acquired the $400,000 budget to build it. Might have been him but the newsletter also said it was a 5 ft. wave. That’s a stretch LOL.
5 ft. Wave?
It wasn’t a very powerful wave but it was strong enough to ride on a longboard AND wash away the man-made fine white sand beach next to the Polynesian.
I told them they should try to use larger/heavier grain size quartz beach sand; but, that’s tan and gray and they wanted pristine white – I’m sure for the Disney attraction brand or something. Powdery white sand only comes in tiny grain sizes and is easily moved by wind and waves. Erosion was instantaneous. Common sense really.
I was just an ocean engineering college student, employed field soils engineer, and surfer, so what did I know, right? They didn’t listen or try it.
It failed.
So the ride/attraction was cancelled and scrapped.
Nunis did finally get his wave machine with Typhoon Lagoon in 1989 – But that’s another story…
So when your driverless car cuts someone off, will the road rage be directed at you… the passenger?
Today’s top story, from reporter Anabelle Nicoud, IBM Think Newsletter
If you’ve ridden in a Waymo recently and found your driverless taxi to be more assertive and, dare we say, more human on the road, you’re not imagining things. The Alphabet-owned company, which has been navigating passengers in San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix and LA, is now exhibiting very human-like traits, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. No drunk driving or road rage, of course, but under the right circumstances, that white Jaguar might indulge in a honk or two. As it turns out, a more commanding Waymo yielded safer rides, the Chronicle reported. “Being an assertive driver means that you’re more predictable, that you blend into the environment, that you do things that you expect other humans on the road to do,” David Margines, Waymo’s Director of Product Management, said in an interview with the paper. “It’s a very interesting kind of paradox here: we need less perfection to really fit social norms,” said Kaoutar El Maghraoui, a Principal Research Scientist at IBM, in this week’s Mixture of Experts. According to the company’s data, Waymo is safer than human drivers. And yet, part of being so might just be by mimicking our bad, albeit predictable, habits, favoring social compatibility over algorithmic perfection. Uncanny valley, you say? Technically, Waymos could be enjoying more free-form decision-making, thinks Gabe Goodhart, Chief Architect of AI Open Innovation at IBM. He likened older, rule-based vehicles to the chatbots of yore—pre-generative AI systems beholden to clunky decision trees. But as autonomous vehicles adopt more human-like behavior—and choice—drivers may feel more comfortable because the cars better adhere to their expectations. “If we start applying this more flexible way of adapting [the car’s] behavior to the environment … it may make the vehicle fit in a whole lot better,” he said on the podcast. As more driverless cars hit the streets of American cities—from Zoox to Tesla’s newly launched robotaxis—it will be fascinating to watch how they adapt to robot driving. Could it pave the way to more collaboration between tech giants? “A lot of open-source consortiums have started because of similar problems,” noted Ann Funai, CIO and VP of Business Platform Transformation at IBM. “There’s this area where you need common understanding, common knowledge, common engagement. Maybe that means agreeing to use the same open-source component for training, so we’re not all crashing into each other.” Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office shared a warning on June 15 after receiving numerous calls about groups of manatees gathering together
By Kelli Bender Published on June 18, 2025 07:30PM EDT
Manatee Mating
If you see the manatees rocking through the waves, don’t come knocking on the Pinellas Sheriff’s Office’s door.
The Florida sheriff’s office shared an unusual warning about the animals on Instagram on June 15. The post includes a video showing a clump of manatees closely gathered together on the shore of a Florida beach. At least 10 manatees swim over and near each other in the footage.
According to the post, this type of bizarre-looking manatee gathering is common in the summer, and no cause for alarm. The marine mammals are getting together for an NSFW reason, per the Pinellas Sheriff’s Office.
“If you see this … no, you didn’t,” the sheriff’s office wrote on the manatee video. “Don’t call us. They are more than fine. It’s mating season.”
Pinellas Sheriff’s Office provided more context in the caption alongside the manatee footage.
“We get calls all the time from citizens when they see this, believing the manatees are in distress. We can assure you they are more than fine,” the agency wrote, adding, “Manatees actually mate in herds like these, and often they are near the shore. They mate all throughout the year, but generally, mating herds like these are seen in the summer months.”
Uncle Festus and Lurch from the Addams Family TV show
Lurch was a fictional character created by American cartoonist Charles Addams as a butler to the Addams Family. In the original television series, Lurch was played by Ted Cassidy.
He is a 6 ft. 9 in. tall, shambling, gloomy butler. In the original Addams Family television series, Lurch has a deep and resonant voice. Although fully capable of normal speech, Lurch often communicates via simple inarticulate moans, which, much like the dialogue of Cousin Itt, his employers have no trouble understanding.
Like any butler, Lurch tries to help around the house, but occasionally his great size and strength cause trouble. He clearly takes pride in his work and is willing to do even the most arduous task.
His character often demonstrates signs of frustration towards his employers; however, his continued presence also suggests loyalty. As a result, he appears to be one of the family.
The family summons him with an ever-present bell pull (in the form of a hangman’s noose). When pulled, it produces a loud gong noise that shakes the house, to which Lurch instantly appears and responds, “You… rang?”, even if wide-angle shots reveal that he was clearly nowhere in the vicinity before; on a few occasions Lurch arrives even before the bell pull is tugged.
Much of Lurch’s history, including his first name and the nature of his relationship to any other Addamses, was originally unspecified. “Lurch” was revealed during the original TV series to be a surname, as there was a “Mother Lurch” who appeared in one episode (portrayed by Ellen Corby). She addressed Lurch as “Sonny”, which could either be a parental nickname or his actual first name. As for his father, he was mentioned twice, once in the second animated series, and in an apparent reference to his Frankenstein’s monster-like appearance, Lurch said, smiling, “He put me together.” And another time in the original series where Lurch mentions his father wanted him to be a jockey (typically short and light people) instead of a butler.
It was stated in Addams Family Reunion that Lurch is part Addams. This plays into his being a creation similar to Frankenstein’s monster. The only definite body part that is from an Addams is his heart. Lurch’s mother appears to be a physically normal, elderly woman, although she does not see anything unusual about the Addams family or their home, with the exception of Thing.
“Lurch” as a Florida ocean lifeguard in Ormond Beach
A decade before Ted Cassidy played Lurch on The Addams Family (and appeared in Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and other films and series) he was an Ormond Beach lifeguard who earned a double major in Speech and Drama at DeLand’s Stetson University. That’s him, second from left. Handsome fella and, by all accounts, a very nice man.
Theodore Crawford Cassidy (July 31, 1932 – January 16, 1979) was an American actor. He tended to play unusual characters in offbeat or science-fiction works, such as Star Trek and I Dream of Jeannie, and he played Lurch on The Addams Family TV series of the mid-1960s.[1][2] He also narrated the intro sequence for the 1977 live-action The Incredible Hulk TV series and provided the growls and roars for the Hulk for the first two seasons before his death. [Wikipedia]
By R. Michael Brown, Journalist and Copywriter June 1, 2025
An Australian completed 7,079 pull-ups in 24 hours — nearly doubling the previous female Guinness World Record. Olivia Vinson, 34, told Guinness World Records she was looking for a challenge when her husband and coach suggested she attempt the record.
“I was looking for a bigger challenge and my husband and coach actually suggested 24 hours of pull ups, which I initially, quite literally, laughed at because I thought there was no way,” Vinson said. “I looked up what the current record was, which was 4,081, and again I thought, ‘There’s no way.'”
Vinson said it was only after she crunched the numbers on the previous record, which was set by Polish woman Paula Gorlo in 2021, that she started to reconsider.
“After a little while, I did some maths on it and I thought maybe I could,” she said.
The record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours (male) is 11,707, achieved by Oh Yohan (South Korea) on September 28-29, 2024.
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