Quartz City

The yacht Maiken encountered that new island that formed recently in the South Pacific and blogged about it. What I’m endlessly finding intriguing is just how much their photo series resembles every sci-fi “lost world” story ever. Distant travelers plow their way through an ultra-remote area. Weird stuff begins to appear in the water, whether it’s soil, strange plants, or an unusually warm current. The debris gets denser until suddenly you’re confronted with Skull Island or the Land That Time Forgot. I know, it’s good ole magma and volcanism, but if I was minding my own business out there and encountered the “stone sea” and an angry island I’d be wanting a crash refresher course in Welles, Verne, and Burroughs.

Geographers start your engines.

In other South Pacific news:

Oceanographers have discovered a broad, almost-bare patch of seafloor in the remote South Pacific. An unusual combination of circumstances has left the region without the mineral and organic sediments hundreds of meters deep that are typical elsewhere in the world’s oceans, the scientists say.

The sediment-poor region is about the size of the Mediterranean Sea and centered approximately 4,000 kilometers east of New Zealand. Researchers discovered the area, which they dubbed the South Pacific Bare Zone, during a cruise early last year, says David K. Rea, a marine geologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The scientists were surprised when their seismic equipment indicated that there was no sediment in that region. A unique combination of factors seems to have dictated the area’s dearth of sediment that’s accumulated since the basalt crust below formed between 85 million and 34 million years ago, Rea and his colleagues report in the October Geology.

As Chris Perridas rightly notices, “The … Alert … was sighted April 12th in S. Latitude 34d21m , W Longitude 152d17m with one living and one dead man aboard.”

Get your elder signs ready.

Someone in Florida used the most famous rare stamp in the world to mail in their absentee ballot. To add insult to injury, the envelope had no return address so the ballot couldn’t be counted and Florida election law requires that all ballots be sealed for 22 months.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — An absentee ballot was mailed with what may have been a rare stamp worth as much as $200,000 _ the famous Inverted Jenny _ but the envelope is in a box that by law can’t be opened.

Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom discovered the stamp while reviewing absentee ballots. There was no name on the envelope, so the vote didn’t count.

What looked like a small stamp collection on one envelope caught Rodstrom’s eye about 8 p.m. Tuesday. At least one was from 1936, Rodstrom said. Then he noticed one had an upside-down World War I-era airplane _ the hallmark of an Inverted Jenny.

“I was a stamp collector when I was little,” Rodstrom told The Miami Herald. “I recognized it.”

Rodstrom discussed the stamp with other members of the canvassing board, and a stamp-collecting Broward County sheriff’s deputy overheard them talking about the possible Jenny.

He said the stamp would be very valuable if it was real. But it was too late.

“By that time we had already sealed the box. And once you seal the box, under the election law you can’t unseal it,” Broward County Court Judge Eric Beller said.