During the daytime of the 11th of December I was busy reading in the large drawing-room. Ned Land and Conseil watched the luminous water through the half-open panels. The Nautilus was immovable. While its reservoirs were filled, it kept at a depth of 1,000 yards, a region rarely visited in the ocean, and in which large fish were seldom seen.

I was then reading a charming book by Jean Mace, The Slaves of the Stomach, and I was learning some valuable lessons from it, when Conseil interrupted me.

“Will master come here a moment?” he said, in a curious voice.

“What is the matter, Conseil?”

“I want master to look.”

I rose, went, and leaned on my elbows before the panes and watched.

In a full electric light, an enormous black mass, quite immovable, was suspended in the midst of the waters. I watched it attentively, seeking to find out the nature of this gigantic cetacean. But a sudden thought crossed my mind. “A vessel!” I said, half aloud.

“Yes,” replied the Canadian, “a disabled ship that has sunk perpendicularly.”

Ned Land was right; we were close to a vessel of which the tattered shrouds still hung from their chains. The keel seemed to be in good order, and it had been wrecked at most some few hours. Three stumps of masts, broken off about two feet above the bridge, showed that the vessel had had to sacrifice its masts. But, lying on its side, it had filled, and it was heeling over to port. This skeleton of what it had once been was a sad spectacle as it lay lost under the waves, but sadder still was the sight of the bridge, where some corpses, bound with ropes, were still lying. I counted five–four men, one of whom was standing at the helm, and a woman standing by the poop, holding an infant in her arms. She was quite young. I could distinguish her features, which the water had not decomposed, by the brilliant light from the Nautilus. In one despairing effort, she had raised her infant above her head– poor little thing!–whose arms encircled its mother’s neck. The attitude of the four sailors was frightful, distorted as they were by their convulsive movements, whilst making a last effort to free themselves from the cords that bound them to the vessel. The steersman alone, calm, with a grave, clear face, his grey hair glued to his forehead, and his hand clutching the wheel of the helm, seemed even then to be guiding the three broken masts through the depths of the ocean.

What a scene! We were dumb; our hearts beat fast before this shipwreck, taken as it were from life and photographed in its last moments. And I saw already, coming towards it with hungry eyes, enormous sharks, attracted by the human flesh.

However, the Nautilus, turning, went round the submerged vessel, and in one instant I read on the stern–”The Florida, Sunderland.”

Her videos there.

You’ve already heard more than enough about collapsed stock portfolios, vanished fortunes, disappearing jobs and consumer confidence that is fading faster than the Knicks’ playoff hopes. Let’s focus instead on a different crisis. What do you do when your raison d’être starts looking more like a raisin d’être — kind of shriveled?

If you’ve asked yourself that very question, then you know what life is like these days for a band of political satirists who have gone by the name of Billionaires for Bush.

For most of this decade, they sallied forth in tuxedos and tiaras for street theatrics about protecting developers from predator environmentalists and shielding the wealthy from money-crazed politicians who would have them pay more taxes. For some in the group, the holiday observed on Monday was known as Buy Your Own President’s Day.

They were getting along just fine, these Billionaires were, when a terrible thing happened.

George W. Bush left office.

It’s hard to be a Billionaire for Bush when there is no Bush. The group might have recast itself as Billionaires for Obama. But that would have required “irony we can believe in,” said Andrew Boyd, who sometimes goes by his Billionaire name, Phil T. Rich.

“Here’s the conundrum,” Mr. Boyd said. “Can you point out that the emperor has no clothes when you like the emperor — and his clothes?”

We told you this was a crisis.

Not that it’s entirely new. Satirists have struggled with the ascension of Barack Obama for a while now. Clearly, some white comedians are pulling their punches out of fear of being accused of racial insensitivity (though racial equality should mean that a black president may be skewered as thoroughly as a white one). Race aside, many comics feel that any new president deserves to be cut some slack. As an added inhibitor, some have said, this president is simply not his predecessor.

“He’s difficult to satirize,” Mr. Boyd said. “He’s very self-aware. He calls himself out on stuff. He’s able to leaven his own heaviness.” Self-awareness, Mr. Boyd said, was not a conspicuous trait of the previous president.

It should be noted that the Billionaires are not exactly equal opportunity offenders. Their politics fall squarely left of center. But unlike many activists, left or right, their weapon of choice is a rapier rather than a sledgehammer. In their reverse world, Vice President Dick Cheney was unfairly attacked and Halliburton wrongly maligned. Big Oil works for the common good, and streets must be liberated from destructive bicyclists.

“Bicycling is a gateway drug to environmentalism,” said Paul Bartlett, or Robin Eublind in Billionaire-speak.

The group tried switching focus as the Bush presidency’s days dwindled down. Some ventured forth as Billionaires for Bailouts. Others threw their support behind Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg by forming Billionaires for Term Limits Except for Billionaires.

But it wasn’t the same. The Champagne had lost its fizz.

“I think we were serious about having our brand lose its brand identity,” said Elissa Jiji or, if you prefer, Meg A. Bucks. Mr. Bartlett observed that “it’s not the time for ostentatious wealth.” Even though there are still plenty of potential targets — Bernard L. Madoff and bonus-hungry Wall Street executives, for example — there seems little point going after them when others are, too.

“They’re no longer held in such esteem that they need to be knocked down,” Mr. Boyd said.

For now, the Billionaires have chosen to put away their gowns, toss aside their top hats and leave their badminton rackets in the closet. Soon after the Obama inauguration, a few dozen of them met at a Greenwich Village bar for what Ms. Jiji described as “a last huzzah.” She had “thought we’d be sad,” she said, “but it was very festive.” Mr. Boyd called it a “farewell to arms contracts.”

But bear in mind that “Billionaires never die,” he said. “We just refinance.”

So they may be back. They could be like Tom Joad in reverse. If there’s a rich man being wrongly hassled by a tax collector, they’ll be there. If there’s a war profiteer unfairly condemned in the press, they’ll be there.

Look on the bright side, they said. It probably costs less than before to bribe corrupt public officials.

What they’re missing, though, are tunes to capture the mood. You have to give the Depression this much: It produced some great numbers. Mr. Boyd suggested reworking a classic from that era. This one would be called “Brother, Can You Spare a Diamond?”

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com

I am the heaven
I am the water
I am the dirt beneath your rollers
I am your secret smut & lost metal money
Down your cracks

I am your cracks & crannies

I am the clouds
I am embroidered
I am the author of all tucks & damask piping
I am the chrome dinette
I am the chrome dinette
I am the eggs of all persuasion
I am all days & nights
I am all days & nights
I am all days & nights
I am all days & nights
I am here
And you are my sofa
I am here
And you are my sofa
I am here
And you are my sofa

Click for large view.

This Tornado Loves You

My love, I am the speed of sound
I left them motherless, fatherless
Their souls they hang inside-out from their mouths
But it’s never enough

I want you

Carved your name across three counties
Ground it in with bloody hides
Their broken necks will line the ditch
’til you stop it, stop it
Stop this madness

I want you

I have waited with a glacier’s patience
Smashed every transformer with every trailer
’til nothing was standing
65 miles wide
Still you are nowhere
Still you are nowhere
Nowhere in sight

Come out to meet me
Run out to meet me
Come in to the light

Climb the boxcars to the engine through the smoke into the sky
Your rails have always outrun mine
So I pick them up and crash them down
In a moment close to now
Cuz I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss
I miss how you’d sigh yourself to sleep

When I raked the springtime across your sheets

My love, I am the speed of sound
I left them motherless, fatherless
Their souls they hang inside-out from their mouths
But it’s never enough

My love
I’m an owl on the sill in the evening
But morning finds you
Still warm and breathing

This tornado loves you
What will make you believe me?
This tornado loves you
What will make you believe me?

After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets.

The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

“We don’t know what state they were in,” said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. “They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure.”

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there’s not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn’t be reproducing much. It’s possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating.

“Microbes have found ways to survive in harsh conditions for long times that we don’t yet fully understand,” Brenchley told LiveScience.

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well.

“We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory,” Brenchley said. “It was viable.”

Such vigor is partially due to the microbe’s small size, the scientists speculate. Boasting dimensions that are 10 to 50 times smaller than Escherichia coli, the new bacteria likely could more efficiently absorb nutrients due to a larger surface-to-volume ratio. Tiny microbes like this one can also hide more easily from predators and take up residence among ice crystals and in the thin liquid film on those surfaces.

H. glaciei is not the first bacteria species resurrected after a possibly lengthy snooze beneath the ice. Loveland-Curtze and her team reported another hardy bacterium in the same area that had survived for about 120,000 years as well. Chryseobacterium greenlandensis had tiny bud-like structures on its surface that may have played a role in the organism’s survival. Another bacterium survived more than 32,000 years in an Arctic tunnel, and was brought back to life a few years ago.

The harsh conditions endured by these microbes serve as models of other planets.

“These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats,” Loveland-Curtze said, referring to the Greenland glacier. “The exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for even millions of years.”

And studying such microorganisms may provide insight into what sorts of life forms could survive elsewhere in the solar system.

The new bacterium is described in the current issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

I got a date with the night, burnin down my finger
Gonna catch the kids dry, gonna walk on water
Buying out the fight, we’re sweatin in the winter
Both thighs squeeze tight
Choke Choke Choke Choke Choke
Choke Choke Choke Choke Choke

Don’t tell me to fix her, don’t tell me to fix her
Just take a bite, no hangin no picture
Flyin out my sight, droppin brides at the altar
Both thighs squeeze tight
Choke Choke Choke Choke Choke
Choke Choke Choke Choke Choke

I’ll set you I’ll set it off
I’ll set you I’ll set it off
I’ll set you I’ll set it off off
I’ll set you I’ll set it off
I’ll set you I’ll set it off
I’ll set you I’ll set it off
I’ll set you I’ll set it off off off

Buying out the fight, gonna walk on water
Gonna catcha squeeze dry
Gonna bend my finger
We’re sweatin in the winter
Both thighs squeeze tight
Both thighs squeeze tight

Love not blame
Love left dry
Frost or flame
Skeleton me

Fall asleep
Spin the sky
Skeleton me
Love don’t cry
Love don’t cry
Love don’t cry
Skeleton Me
Skeleton Me

Soon comes rain
Dry your eyes
Frost or flame
Skeleton knee

Fall asleep
Spin the sky
Skeleton knee
Love don’t cry
Love don’t cry
Love don’t cry
Skeleton me
Skeleton me

Rangoon travel agent Chin Chin used to take tourists to a nearby Irrawaddy delta town famous for its pottery. But the vast waterworld of rivers and rice fields that stretched beyond it was a foreign land to her until Cyclone Nargis and its horrific aftermath. On Thursday, Chin Chin and her friends bought rice and water, loaded it on a truck, and drove deep into the delta. She was shocked by what she saw: roads lined with hundreds of cold and hungry villagers, disregarded by their own government, who had walked for an hour from their broken villages to beg from passing motorists.

“They were mostly housewives,” recalls Chin Chin, who goes by the nickname. “They told me, ‘Rice is a must, so it’s worth standing in the rain for three or four hours to get some.’ They didn’t even have a change of clothes.” Fighting back her tears, Chin Chin gave out rice and listened to stories of families torn apart and villages destroyed. “It was piteous,” she says. “I really sympathized with them. We didn’t see any aid from government or foreign groups.”

Chin Chin belongs to a burgeoning homegrown relief effort which is capturing Burmese from all walks of life. Students and shopkeepers, medics and models – thousands of people have now donated money, food or services to Nargis victims. Hundreds like Chin Chin are delivering aid themselves, while privately run local charities are reorienting their operations around cyclone relief.

While they continue to make it difficult for foreigners to offer aid, Burma’s generals welcome the help of their own people – at least officially. “Myanmar people’s generosity is amazing,” marvels a recent article in The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run newspaper.* Privately, however, they must be getting nervous. Ordinary Burmese are horrified by the suffering of their compatriots and angry at the junta’s inadequate attempts to alleviate it. Their humanitarian efforts could well spark a political one, especially as it also involves Buddhist monks, who last September led the biggest anti-government protests Burma had seen for nearly 20 years.

Private donors have faced some government restrictions. Those who arrive in the towns have been asked to hand over their relief supplies to local authorities for distribution. Instead, many are reportedly storing the goods with sympathetic locals and secretly distributing them by themselves. The junta doesn’t want foreigners distributing aid in the delta, but neither does it feel comfortable with Burmese distributing it. “The government is scared that relief workers will get involved in politics,” says a co-founder of one Burmese relief group.

Some are involved already. Celebrated actor Kyaw Thu, who was jailed for a month for joining last September’s demonstrations, runs the Free Funeral Services Society, a private charity offering free cremations for the poor. It is now operating its own relief effort, with volunteers at its Rangoon headquarters loading up delta-bound trucks with donated goods.

Another anti-junta stalwart is comedian Zaganar (the name means “Tweezers”), also briefly jailed for his role in last year’s protests. Zaganar and his celebrity friends have bought food and medical supplies for Nargis victims and are using their names to raise more funds. Both the disaster and the grassroots response to it are unprecedented in Burma. “I think there will be political consequences,” he says. “People are very angry with the government.”

The monks are also on the move again. Buddhist temples and monasteries have always played a central role in helping the needy in Burma (as, in this religiously and ethnically diverse country, have churches, mosques and Hindu temples). After the cyclone, monks led small-scale relief efforts into the delta, the distinctive multicolored flags of their faith fluttering from cars and small trucks. Monks from well-known monasteries in Mandalay and elsewhere in Burma are either in the delta or heading there, while in Pakkoku – the Irrawaddy town near Mandalay where last year’s protests originated – their brethren are reportedly soliciting donations for cyclone victims. Shwe Pyi Hein Monastery, which already runs a free clinic in Rangoon, has dispatched five volunteer doctors to the disaster area, who are treating more than 100 people every day.

Despite the participation of thousands of Burmese, the impact of this homegrown relief effort will always limited, admits Zaganar. “We deliver our supplies by road because we cannot afford a boat,” he says. “But most victims live close to the water. We cannot get through to them.” He says Burma desperately needs more boats and helicopters from abroad. Not even the nation’s richest private donors – who include junta cronies like tycoon Tay Za, who was put on a U.S. sanctions list last year – have the means or expertise to meet even a fraction of the needs in far-flung delta areas.

*The junta that rules the country unilaterally decreed changes in place names, including Myanmar for Burma and Yangon for the former capital Rangoon. The U.S. State Department has not recognized these changes. TIME has chosen to retain the name Burma. – Time.com