City Gazettes

James Cameron Dives to Earth’s Deepest Point

James Cameron in February 2010. Photo By Steve Jurvetson at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson

Hollywood film director James Cameron has returned to the ocean surface after traveling to the deepest spot on Earth.

The director of Titanic and other films used a specially designed submarine called Deepsea Challenger to dive nearly 11 kilometers to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench.Cameron spent hours on the Pacific Ocean sea floor, collecting samples for scientific research and taking video and still photographs.

He sent a message from the site, located about 350 kilometers southwest of the Pacific island of Guam, saying “hitting bottom never felt so good” and that he was eager to share what he saw.

Cameron is the first person to make the trip solo.  Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, a U.S. Navy captain, took a dive to the same spot in 1960.  They spent about 20 minutes there but could not see much after their sub kicked up sand from the sea floor.

The Mariana Trench is 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than 1.6 kilometers deeper than Mount Everest is tall. -VOA

If he completes the marathon, he will break his own record as world’s oldest marathoner.

The world’s oldest marathoner plans to celebrate his 101st birthday in an unusual way. He wants to break his own record. Indian-born runner Fauja Singh, who became the oldest person to complete a marathon when he crossed the finish line at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last year, plans to compete in the London Marathon on April 22. If he finishes, it will be his 11th, 42-kilometer race.

Singh, who was a bit of a late bloomer, started running when he was 81 as a way to fight depression after his son and daughter-in-law were killed in a car crash.

“His mental attitude was what inspires me to this day,” said Harmander Singh, who coaches the runner. “He was so mentally focused. If I said, ‘We’re going to do 10 kilometers today,’ he would say, ‘Why not 20?’”

Despite the determination, the turbaned athlete still needed a little guidance.

“He turned up the very first day not knowing what running was all about. He was a savvy dresser. He came in a three-piece suit and a pair of trainers,” said Harmander Singh, who is not related to the centenarian.  “I suggested he needed to invest in a pair of running kicks. And I provided him with a first set but he soon brought his own.”

Fauja Singh was inspired after seeing the New York City Marathon on television and decided he wanted to be a part of it. He finished his first marathon at the age of 89. Since then, he has broken eight world records for his age group.

In India, Singh was a farmer for most of his life. He is illiterate and speaks only Punjabi. But that hasn’t limited his international exposure, or prevented him from being an inspiration to others.

On a recent trip back to India, Singh told the Times of India he wants to inspire young people and motivate them to “leap big in life.” But he said time is running out. “I am ready to go to any length to help youths before I die,” he told the newspaper.

Singh’s coach said as long as his trainee, a vegetarian, is moving, he’ll stay healthy.

“You can’t stop the guy running.  Because the day he stops running will be the day his body will start deteriorating,” said Harmander Singh. “He said he would like to die running.”

Fauja Singh, with his long white beard, has become, in a sense, a man of steel. His trainer said recent blood tests showed the runner is as fit as a 40-year-old. And when London University tested his bone density, they found his left leg had the density of a 35-year-old, while his right leg had the bone density of a 25-year-old.

Singh’s trainer said youth and health are a state of mind.

“All people who reach a certain age, you will find what they have in common is they have a positive attitude in life,” he said. “They do not believe they are old. We do, but they don’t.”

VOA | Pia Salmre

Fauja singh finishes Toronto marathon By Hari Singh, via Wikimedia Commons

When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.

Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.

And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes — at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.

Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow.

If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible, they make growth and improvement possible.

By trial and error — trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes — we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.

Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.

Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away.

Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing usually… then you construct a model in your mind… then you test it out by trying it in the real world… then you make mistakes… then you revise the model based on the results of your real-world experimentation… and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something.

That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults.

Mistakes are how we learn to do new things — because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success — at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.

So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.

Celebrate your mistakes. Cherish them. Smile.