Really Weird: US Naval Ship Gets Stuck At Tubbataha Reef

Now, this is weird news indeed. A vessel of the finest navy in the world got stuck in what happens to be one of the finest reefs in the world – the Tubbataha Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Image credit: Western Command, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)

The USS Guardian is a minesweeping ship. That is, it’s equipped to find mines at sea and destroy them. And it gets stuck on a reef. Not just any reef. One that’s off limits – by Philippine law – to navigation, let alone a 224-foot vessel. (Except if you’re a tourism or research boat.)

This kind of vessels are equipped to detect mines at sea, right? So anywhere they are at a given time, I’m assuming that they know what’s under the hull. And it’s basic for every seafaring vessel to have equipment that pinpoints their location and the possible topographical features of the seabed beneath them. So they can’t really hide behind the excuse that they didn’t know where they were…and, thankfully, they didn’t use that pathetic excuse.

2012 In 4 Minutes [Video]

I was updating my free Real Player desktop app when I saw this video of the newsmakers and YouTube's top hits of the past year.

It's an interesting mashup by Ryan James Yezak (though I don't know who he is, heh). It's got everything:

• Online piracy
• Celebrity births & deaths
• US Presidential elections
• Planned parenthood brouhaha
• Death of a Florida teen
• Felix Baumgartner's historic space jump
• Facebook-Instagram deal
• Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know (hubby's current fave)
• Facebook going public
• Senseless shootings in the US
• Celebrity hookups & breakups
• Obamacare
• Floods in the Philippines
• The London Olympics
• Prince Harry partying naked (heh!)
• Lance Armstrong stripped of cycling titles
• iPhone 5
• The death of a US ambassador in Libya
• Obama's successful second-term bid
• PSY's Oppa Gangnam Style (my fave!)
• A royal pregnancy