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• The Amelia Earhart Expedition Is Underway

  Purdue University’s expedition to determine if the so-called Taraia Object on Nikumaroro is in fact Amelia Earhart’s long-lost plane, which was postponed due to bureaucratic hurdles last year, has reached the remote island last Monday. Purdue set out the goals of the expedition as follows:

  Expedition members will rendezvous at Tarawa, Kiribati, on Oct. 6 and depart by sea the next day for Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati. The team will sail six days to arrive at Nikumaroro and then spend the following days on the small island in the search effort. Work on Nikumaroro will focus on inspecting the Taraia Object, first noticed in satellite imagery in 2020 and later confirmed to be visible on aerial photos taken of the island’s lagoon as far back as 1938. Initial work will include videos and still images of the site prior to any disturbance, followed by remote sensing with magnetometers and sonar. Then the team will employ underwater excavation using a hydraulic dredge to expose the object for identification. Fieldwork will include a walk-over survey of nearby land surfaces to search for debris washed up by waves.

  On Wednesday, the expedition crew had started their underwater survey of the object, but then, bad weather prevented further work for three days and the expedition was extended. In a YouTube short posted Saturday night (Sunday morning local time) an expedition crew member explains that the weather has cleared up and that the work can now begin again. So we are awaiting news really any time now as to the actual nature of the Taraia Object. Is it Amelia Earhart’s plane? The suspense is killing me here!

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• “No Agenda” Is Over

  On No Agenda 1912, Adam Curry has just announced that he will be quitting the show after the episode on 29 October and thus completing 19 years of the podcast. After the death of John C. Dvorak, this spells the end of No Agenda, at least for me. Adam has hinted that the show might continue in some way, with other hosts, but that is definitely not for me.

  Adam explained on the episode that he really hadn’t been feeling No Agenda for a while now, since he became religious and actively practicing the Christian faith, and that he simply hadn’t managed to bring that up to John before his heart attack. I think there is definitely some truth to that and everyone who was a regular listener to the show probably detected some of this change in Adam. He says he now wants to concentrate on his “kingdom work”, which I guess means religious evangelising, and that this is why he’s quitting the show. But I do feel a big pat of that decision might also be that the listenership numbers have obviously been in a steep decline ever since John died.

  No Agenda just didn’t work without John C. Dvorak’s singular brand of irreverant criticism and acerbic wit and I think many listeners worked this out and stopped listening. I certainly only tuned into the show a few times, and only for short parts of episodes, since John’s passing. Of course, for me personally, it also didn’t help that Adam kept leaning into his newfound Christian faith bullshit and his pro-AI stance. I already vehemently disagreed with him on his very pro-Trump attitude, but this just made it so that I couldn’t logically follow most of his reasoning anymore. And since there was no John there to vehemently push back on some of this stuff and bring another perspective, No Agenda died for me with John. And I guess now it’s finally officially been declared dead.

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