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New Idea Could Save the Gulf; Another 'Fix,' Another Snag; Light Summer Reading for Students

Aired June 02, 2010 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: In today's Big "I" segment, a possible way to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf. It's a technique called suck and salvage. It sounds strange, but here's how it works.

First of all, a fleet of empty supertankers suck up the seawater that's got oil in it basically. Now, supertankers, as you know, can hold millions of barrels of oil. Now, when they're full, they can discharge the oil. They go to a port and they discharge that oil into a tank, and then they get back out and take more oil in.

The water can be treated when it's discharged. The oil can be salvaged or destroyed. Basically, you can separate it from the tank into oil and water.

The strategy's been used in the past by Nick Pozzi. He's a former pipeline engineer out of Houston, Texas. He's used this approach on several large spills in the past, including a 700 million gallon oil spill in the Arabian Gulf back in the 1990s. He joins us now.

Nick, thanks for being with us.

Nick, this sounds remarkably straightforward and simple. Why has it not be deployed?

NICK POZZI, FMR. PIPELINE ENGINEER: Well, that's a good question. I asked BP that question, and I didn't get a really good answer other than it's not applicable for this spill.

And the key word here is "tanker," not necessarily "super," because with the spill the size that it is, as far as I know, to the best of my knowledge, anyway, is going to require as many tankers, as many sizes as we can muster to get this done. So, I don't know why BP is not using this idea, and they won't dispute it. I asked them for a face-to-face, and it didn't happen.

VELSHI: All right. And we're talking about these tankers that are otherwise busy. I mean, we don't have a whole lot of tankers sitting around that aren't doing stuff, so part of this, I would assume, is the expense?

POZZI: The expense is quite pricey because it's about $210,000 a day, plus a mob cost and a de-mob cost to put them back into --

VELSHI: What does mob and de-mob mean? POZZI: Mobilization is to get you to where they need to be, the diesel it takes and the crew it takes to get you to the site. And then de-mob is to go back to what they were doing before.

VELSHI: And then all the money that they're not making --

POZZI: That's right.

VELSHI: -- doing what tankers normally do, shipping oil around the world.

POZZI: Yes, sir, that's correct.

VELSHI: Are they in the neighborhood? Are there enough tankers available for this sort of work?

POZZI: There's always three large supertankers unloading from Arabia in the Gulf, unloading either in Louisiana, which is probably not happening right now, but also in Galveston, by Texas City, there.

VELSHI: Is this a complicated thing, to suck the oil from the water?

POZZI: No, sir, it's not. We were in contact with some gentlemen who called -- and forgive the name, but that's their real name -- Super Suck International, and they're a suck and salvage company, and they'd rather have the oil on the surface. However, they can suck right off the wellhead as well.

VELSHI: OK. Oh, that's interesting. Suck off the wellhead, which means, what, putting a pipe down -- they can get a pipe down as far as the wellhead?

POZZI: You put a pipe down as far as the wellhead. It's kind of like an umbrella. It doesn't sit over the top of the wellhead. It's basically an umbrella.

They want to put a dome on it and attach the dome to the bottom. And you don't really need to do that. You can actually support those with buoys, and using ships up above, and basically put -- think of an umbrella with a big pipe on the top, and it sucks that straight up to the top. That goes --

VELSHI: All right. Well, listen, this is interesting, Nick. We're obviously interested in hearing all of these possibilities. We didn't think we'd be at the point of CNN where we'd be filtering ideas how to do this. We figured the best minds in the business are on the case.

But we're happy to hear this idea. It sounds straightforward. Thanks for bringing it to us.

Nick Pozzi is the chair of WOW Environmental Solutions. It stands for Water, Oil, and Waste. He started the company a couple months ago, ironically, but he's done this a lot.

Nick, thanks for joining us with this.

POZZI: You're welcome, sir. Thanks for having me.

VELSHI: All right.

It's a few minutes past 2:00 on the East Coast. Here's what I've got down "On the Rundown."

It's day 44 of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, well, they're all feeling the effects right now.

Plus, Israel's prime minister speaks out about the raid that set the world on edge. He says it wasn't the Love Boat his troops targeted, it was a boat of hatred.

And how long could you go without complaining? A week, a day, maybe just a few minutes? I wonder whether I complain too much.

I'm going to talk to you about it in a bit in my "XYZ."

But first, let's talk about what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico. There's a lot happening right now.

There are efforts to cut the top of that riser off at the bottom of the sea. This is the riser that you've been looking at these pictures from for so long. There's an effort to cut that off, and then to try and contain the oil by putting a cap on the bottom of the ocean.

It's hit a snag. We are waiting for an update to see exactly what's happened. But there's a saw that they have to use to cut the top of the riser off.

It's a diamond-edge saw. It's got industrial diamonds, because that's what you need, I guess, to cut through all of this.

It appears that that has -- that that diamond saw has been stuck. And we've talked to the company that operates that diamond saw, and they said they're on the case. They are trying to fix it. We don't know where that is right now.

But the bottom line is, once they get the top of that thing sheared off, then they're going to put the top cap, or the LMRP, the lower marine riser package cap you've seen. They're going to put that over the leaking riser to collect the oil.

It will go up a pipe to a surface, where a vessel will collect it and take that oil to the surface. That is not an effort to seal the well. It is simply an effort to contain the oil until such time that they can drill relief wells and stop that well from leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Let's go to New Orleans, where one member of our full team that is all over the Gulf of Mexico is on the case. David Mattingly joins us from there. Hi, David.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Ali.

You are right, this thing has hit a snag. And this is the most critical part of this operation, because that saw has to give them an extremely smooth surface, a very clean cut across there, otherwise they're not going to be able to collect as much oil as they should.

They need that clean cut so that that cap can sit on there and that seal can go around it. Otherwise, they're going to have more oil leaking out of there than they want to.

So the fact that this thing was sort of pinched as it was going through there, and that they had to retrieve it, means that this is going to be a lot more difficult to pull off now. They're going to have to come in probably at a different angle, or at a different side or a different position on the pipe, to cut through that pipe and try to match up where they were cutting before.

So, this job just got a lot more difficult for something that they hoped would be a clean cut across. They're not able to get that just yet.

VELSHI: Yes. David, you've been on this for so long, that I think you realize more than anybody does that even the simple parts -- like, this wasn't -- when they decided they were going to cut this cap off, the issue was how much oil was going to leak and whether the seal would be right with the new cap that they put on. Nobody discussed a problem actually sawing the thing off.

I mean, this mission just continues to run into problems. Some of them big, some of them small, but nothing goes on schedule.

MATTINGLY: Yes. That is just sort of a given with everything here.

They've even stopped saying that -- they'll say, OK, we're going to do this, and used to they would immediately say, but we've never tried this before at this depth, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's understood now.

Everyone knows that every single step they take down there is difficult, it's never been tried before at this depth. But, still, they say they have been learning from each failure as they've come along.

For instance, the cap that they're using this time has some fail- safes in it that involve pumping warm water down through there to keep it heated so that they don't have a collection of crystals like they had last time. They'll be able to pump methanol in there to dissolve any crystals that might form. So, again, this cap is sort of the son of the son of the massive containment dome that they had weeks ago that just failed miserably.

So, now they're confident, at least, that that problem won't flare up for them, again. But, again, the most critical aspect of this was getting that clean cut, because this is a containment operation. It's not something that's going to stop this well. So, the idea that they won't be able to contain as much if they don't get a clean cut is going to be very disappointing.

VELSHI: All right, David. We'll stay on top of that, and the developments with that well. Thanks for keeping us posted.

David Mattingly in New Orleans.

All right. For 44 days, CNN has led the world's coverage of the Gulf oil spill. That is not going to change. CNN and CNN.com are your most trusted source for all the latest developments wherever and whenever they happen.

All right. Saving kids from the dreaded summer slide, the answer could be right under the cover of a good book. Details in "Chalk Talk" after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. In today's "Chalk Talk," fighting the summer slide. As kids get out of school on summer breaks, studies show that many of them suffer from a learning loss over the long vacation.

Now, this seems to be disproportionately true in students from low-income families, mostly because those kids can't afford to go to summer camp or buy books to read over the summer. The summer slide is a pretty significant thing.

Get this -- by the sixth grade, the slip in academics accounts for as much as 80 percent of the achievement gap between students from low-income families and those from middle-class families. But a possible solution is a free book program.

A recent study tracked the progress of students at 17 high- poverty elementary schools in Florida. Select students were given 12 books on the last day of school every year for three years. The research found the 852 students who received books had significantly higher reading scores when they read more on their own than the 478 students who didn't get books.

So, now an experimental program has expanded this free books idea to seven states. We hope to see those kids improve their reading scores as well.

Every day on "Chalk Talk" we'll bring you lots of information on education and how we can improve it.

OK. Imagine living in a neighborhood where everything you need is just five minutes away and where the food you eat is grown five minutes away. It's more than a dream.

We'll take you there in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) VELSHI: With 34 percent of its adult population considered obese, Montgomery, Alabama, was recently named the most obese metro area in the country. It's a dubious distinction that the city does not want and is hoping to change.

One neighborhood is working hard to make that happen, with a plan that not only sheds weight, but saves the environment.

Here's Martin Savidge with today's "One Simple Thing."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): So, I'm just pulling into the community of Hampstead here. And I will park the car. And if the neighborhood's true to its word, it should be the last time I need it.

(voice-over): Hampstead is the brainchild of husband-and-wife designers/developers Anne Louder and Harvi Sahota.

(on camera): Well, it does look a little bit like I'm in an English village, maybe.

HARVI SAHOTA, DEVELOPER: That was the inspiration, or part of the inspiration.

SAVIDGE (voice-over): The development has its own stores, restaurants, a public library, even a YMCA, all -- and here's the key -- within a few minutes' walk of every home.

SAHOTA: These communities are designed where you can meet your daily needs within a five-minute walk. So, we already have residents who live and actually work here, and do not have to leave or even get in their car.

SAVIDGE: But Hampstead isn't just healthy for residents. It's also healthy for the environment, because it's designed from the ground up to be --

(on camera): Sustainable. I mean, that's an interesting word. The idea is to make it so that this community can what?

ANNE LOWDER, DEVELOPER: Sustain itself.

SAVIDGE (voice-over): To see how, we walk over to Hampstead's community farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to make money and provide residents with food.

LAURA UNDERWOOD, FARMER: I plant it, I grow it, and I harvest it, weigh it, so we can keep up with our production. And then I walk it up the road to the restaurant. John at --

SAVIDGE (on camera): What a notion -- walk it up the road.

UNDERWOOD: Just walk it up the road. SAVIDGE (voice-over): And just up the road is the Ham on High restaurant, which adds farmer Laura's vegetables to its daily specials. And what isn't served is sold by Anthony in the local market.

Almost everything here is used. Organic waste becomes compost. Wind pumps the water. Even cooking oil has a second life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we have in here is a self-enclosed modular biodiesel unit.

SAVIDGE: Which Clay McGuinness (ph) uses to create fuel that runs the equipment that helps build the development.

(on camera): Oh, wow. Isn't that beautiful? Look at that.

(voice-over): Homes here are built using reclaimed woods and locally-produced materials, incorporating the latest energy-saving technologies. Prices start at $160,000.

One of those already sold on Hampstead's new urbanism ideas is Kenneth Groves, Montgomery's city planner and Hampstead resident.

(on camera): Can this really work in the real world, or is it just something that seems like a quaint part of the past?

KENNETH GROVES, MONTGOMERY CITY PLANNER: Actually, it has worked very well. There are over 9,000 such communities scattered all over the country.

SAVIDGE (voice-over): Hampstead is out to show that things can change, even in the fattest city in America, and that where you live could just determine how well you live.

Martin Savidge, CNN, Montgomery.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Hey, I want to bring you up to speed. We're just looking at these live pictures from BP.

I want to ask Dan to take a look at it.

As this image goes down, you may or may not see it. Underneath this unit that you're looking at, we just saw the saw that we had reported to you had been stuck. This isn't it. It's underneath this.

But from the position of the saw that we're looking at, it appears that that saw that was jammed while trying to cut off the top of the riser has been freed in some fashion. We don't know whether they had to cut the diamond chain that's been doing the cutting, or they managed to get it free, but that's the saw. And, in fact, we're looking at it, and I believe this is actually the saw cutting right now.

Is this is a live picture, Kelly (ph)? All right. This is live, which means somehow this saw has started its work again. We've not gotten this confirmed from BP, but we're looking at it.

That is the saw, and it appears to be back in action. We had heard that this saw had been cut.

Now, again, keep in mind, this is amateurs looking at a live feed from under the sea, so the best we can tell you is this appears to be the saw cutting again. This is a live picture, so it does look like we're back in action under the Gulf of Mexico. This is not something that was expected to happen, but the saw got stuck, and it once again threw another wrinkle into this whole situation.

By the way, one big wrinkle will be that we're into hurricane season right now.

What do you think the oil spill is going to do if a hurricane hits it? Hurricane season is here, and, by the way, it may be a big one, potentially some scary stuff.

We'll tell you about it when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

VELSHI: All right. Fallout is heating up over Israel's deadly raid on those aid ships that were bound for Gaza. Now, the center of the crisis is Israel's blockade of Gaza.

When we come back, we're going to go "Globe Trekking" and find out what this is all about.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: OK. Chad was just telling us about the saws a little bit. I want to just tell you what's going on. There's a couple things happening.

First of all, we have confirmation -- a few minutes ago I showed you the big saw that's been pulled out. OK, here's one saw. This is not the big saw. This is not the saw that we're talking about that got stuck.

This is a different saw. They've got more than one saw going on. This is kind of a helper saw.

This one is working. The other one got stuck, and we now have confirmation that it has been freed from being stuck.

I do not know whether it's been freed from being stuck because they've cut it, or it's just come free, or it's been maneuvered free, but that saw has been freed. It has not started cutting again, as far as we know, but the other saw, which is a round saw, has started cutting.

Well, it's hard to keep this all straight, but we're on top of it for you, and we'll make sure you know.

Let's "Globe Trek" though for a minute. Let's go around the world over here to -- let me get back to Japan. That looks like Japan. All right, here's Japan.

Interesting development in Japan. Let me tell you about it.

All right. In Japan, the prime minister has resigned very suddenly. His name is Yukio Hatoyama. He was apparently the victim of a dispute with Washington over U.S. Air Force -- a U.S. Air Force base on the island of Okinawa.

He had been in office only for about six month, is the leader of the Democratic Party. In his campaign speech, he had promised to force the U.S. to move that Marine Air Force base -- or the Marine air base -- off of Okinawa. He later backed down, that upset a whole bunch of people in Okinawa and other Japanese, who viewed him as a weak leader. He also said he was stepping down because of a funding scandal. So, the prime minister of Japan has stepped down.

Now I want to take you across over to -- where are we going here? All right. let's -- let's take you over -- all right, let's take you to the Middle East. We know there's been all sorts of things going on in the Middle East. This Israeli raid of the flotilla that had humanitarian goods that were on their way to Gaza. We heard from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a little while ago saying that, in his -- the translation said that this wasn't a love boat that they stopped. This was a boat of hatred, that it was -- it was filled with people who were helping out terrorists and terrorists material. Didn't give an explanation for that, but the bottom line is this hasn't gotten any simpler or less complicated.

So let's go to Paula Hancocks in Jerusalem, CNN's Paula Hancocks, who can give us some context as to exactly what's going on here -- Paula.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Ali, well, he spoke a couple hours ago, and the prime minister was very unapologetic, he was very unrepentant about what had happened, those nine people who had died out at sea.

Now he said about ten minutes into this speech, of course, we are sorry for the loss of life, but he also pointed out that he believed that his soldiers thought that they might lose their lives as well, so this was basically self-defense.

So still, we are still getting two very different sides here. We are getting the side from those on the humanitarian boats saying that they were humanitarian boats, they wanted to take aid to Gaza and that they were not armed. And from the Israeli side, we are still hearing that Israel does not have a need to apologize because they were trying to defend themselves. Now, we heard from the prime minister. He kept saying this is Hamas' fault. He kept saying they are trying to stop weapons from being smuggled into Gaza so that Hamas and militant groups can then fire them upon Israel.

But, of course, for the Israeli people, many people here, are shocked that this has happened. There are questions as to whether or not this was the right way to go. With hindsight, of course, it doesn't appear as though dropping crack commandos onto these boats was the right way to go because of the loss of life -- Ali.

VELSHI: Paula, the prime minister, Netanyahu, was not clear on -- when he said they were defending themselves, the fact is that they had boarded this boat in international waters. Had they not boarded the boat, it wasn't clear.

Now, was he talking in general terms defending themselves as in Israel defending itself against potential terrorist activities or those commandos defending themselves? Because it does appear that those commandos, somebody put them on the boat. Somebody decided that they got onto that boat, at which point the video does seem to indicate at that point they were defending themselves. But if they weren't on that boat, they wouldn't have had to defend themselves.

HANCOCKS: This is the point. All the Israeli officials, including the prime minister, have been saying. that the commandos had to defend themselves as well, but they went on with paintball guns and so they were goes to use those to try and quell any -- any dissent on the boats. But when they realized that there was going to be more dissent than they thought, they said they came under attack, that's when they defended themselves and that's when they were shooting live rounds. There's also claims from Israeli officials that there were live rounds used against them before they started shooting, and, of course, we know the tragic consequences of that.

So, even though they did board this ship in international waters at nighttime when it was dark and there was always that -- that chance for even more confusion, Israel does stick by the fact it was defending itself.

VELSHI: And, Paula, any word on an independent investigation to exactly find out what happened? Because, again, the prime minister's comments today seemed to be generalities as opposed to specifically, who said to put these commandos on there, who shot at whom, what happened?

HANCOCKS: Well, it's likely that there will be an internal investigation with the Israeli military. That's what happens when these kind of incidents take place. Whether or not there's going to be an independent investigation, I mean, there are still calls for an independent investigation from the Gaza war back at the end of 2008, beginning of 2009. That's no closer to happening.

And one thing I should mention, Ali, there's another boat on its way. A boat called the Rachel Corrie boat, it's about 100 miles south of Cypress, so it's hoping to get to Gaza Friday night, Saturday morning. And this boat is saying it that it wants to get through. It has humanitarian goods on board. It says it has schoolbooks, crayons, school games, that sort of thing that Israel is not allowing into Gaza at this point. Israel has said it will stop that boat, although it's likely to use different tactics.

VELSHI: All right, Paula, that means we could have another showdown coming up. Paula Hancocks in Jerusalem.

Let's go to Istanbul, Ivan Watson is in Istanbul for us.

Ivan, the Turkish authorities Turkish leadership has definitely called for an independent investigation. Not an internal Israeli defense force investigation, but some -- you know, an independent investigation to say what happened here, what went wrong.

IVAN WATSON CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. They're calling this an international act of piracy. Those are tough words for a country that has traditionally been a close ally of Turkey. Turkey and Israel being strategic partners, sharing intelligence sharing joint military exercises in the past, strong economic ties. All of those, the Turkish officials say have been put at risk by this raid.

The Turks say they issued an ultimatum to Israel to immediately handover, within 24 hours, more than 460 Turkish citizens who had been taken prisoner by the Israelis from the convoy after that raid turned so deadly early Monday morning. And that, Ali, is why I'm here at Istanbul airport, because the wait is on for those Turkish citizens, hundreds of them, to be brought back on board.

Six Turkish planes that have been sent over to Israel within the last 48 hours. None of those planes have taken off yet, they're still waiting. We're told by our CNN team on the ground at the airport in Israel, we're waiting for another 50 Turkish citizens to come in.

Meanwhile, the Turkish parliament, which has been polarized politically for some time, voted unanimously today, Ali, to condemn Israel's actions, and they urge the Turkish government in this declaration to seriously reassess all military and economic ties with Israel. This alliance right now is really on the line right no -- Ali.

VELSHI: Ivan, you understand this very well. Maybe everybody who's watching us doesn't quite get that, because this has been a generally a positive relationship between Israel and Turkey, how important that relationship has been. This has been 40 years of a -- of a good relationship between Turkey, a Muslim country, and Israel. There are major world implications for this relationship shattering.

WATSON: (AUDIO GAP) -- drawing right not now, Ali, a strategic map of the Middle East. As one analyst once put it, there are three superpowers to this very turbulent region, and they are Iran, Israel, and Turkey.

And with the Israeli/Turkish relationship fraying, meanwhile Turkey has really enhanced its ties with its eastern neighbor Iran -- economic ties, political ties. Just last week the Turks were trying to help work out a nuclear deal to get Iran some breathing room basically with its argument with the West.

And just to give you a sign of how much the anger has built up here in all sections of society, we were at a courthouse in Istanbul, where activists, some 80 families had signed up, Ali, to sue the state of Israel for what they claim is murder, which took place Monday morning. And we saw a woman screaming, crying, after she found out, while filling out this paperwork, that one of her -- that her husband, actually, had died. Is one of the nine people who died aboard that ship in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean early Monday morning -- Ali.

VELSHI: All right, Ivan, thanks very much. You'll stay on top of this, Paula will stay on top of it, we'll all stay on top of it, especially that next boat that is headed toward Gaza.

Thanks very much, Ivan Watson in Istanbul.

All right, in a moment we're heading back to the Gulf of Mexico, 5,000 feet down to the nuts and bolts on BP's attempt to cut and cap that well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Day 44 of the oil spill.

We are watching it very, very closely, the implications of this are enormous. We've covered it from all the angles here, but let's go right down to the angle that is most important, the shot underneath the sea. These cameras are moving around quite a bit, hard to see exactly what's going on. The process we know that is under way is cutting off the top of that riser and -- and trying to get that cap installed. We know they haven't started moving that cap on just yet.

Let me show you the tools that they're using under the sea right now to try to get this thing fixed up. Let's put it up there, if we, can the tools, starting with the diamond saw. That's the things that has been stuck now for a while. We know that that got stuck this morning. That's when it's above ground. It wasn't underwater. Let's give you the scale of how big that saw is. That's the thing that is meant to cut off the top of that riser.

Then they've got shears. Before we actually cut the top off, there are pipes that have to be cut off. When the Deepwater Horizon sank, they had to cut the pipes at some point.

Then there's the cap that we were talking about, the cut-and-cap procedure. This is called the LMRP cap, the lower marine riser package cap. That's the cap over there. Again, if you can see it, there are a couple guides on either side of it just to give you a sense of the scope. Those people in yellow are men. So that's the size of the cap.

And that big chimney up on top is where the oil is going to go up to the top. This is not an effort to stop the oil from flowing, it's an effort to capture the oil coming out from the bottom of the sea. We'll keep you posted on what's going on there.

The other thing is Dolphin Island, Alabama, has now got globs of sort of dirty oil that have washed onshore. Pascagoula, Mississippi, has also got them. There's a sheen nine miles off the coast of Pensacola. Governor Charlie Crist said it could hit the panhandle in a day or two. About 40 percent of the Gulf of Mexico has now been shutdown to all fishing as this oil spreads around.

All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, world-renowned architect, Michael Graves. Michael Graves, you know his name, he's bringing his eye for design and detail to a brand-new setting. Not a buildings, but rooms in hospitals. Just ahead, he'll tell us about his own health care reform initiative.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Every day in "Mission Possible" we bring you somebody who's really applied themselves to changing the world. Now this is a world-renowned architect and designer who is trying something a little more personal.

Michael Graves, boy, you've probably heard his name. He's a major player in the world of architecture. Landmark buildings around the globe. You're looking at the Walt Disney World Dolphin which he designed, but just one of many, many hundreds of buildings.

He's also made another name for himself as a product designer. His line of goods, home goods, in Target stores, more than 2,500 items. That's a toaster. Look at that. The coolest toaster you've seen in a long time.

But now he's moving past skyscrapers and soup spoons, he's moving into hospitals. Michael Graves joins me from New York.

Good to have you on the show. Thank you for being with us.

MICHAEL GRAVES, ARCHITECT & DESIGNER: Nice to be here.

VELSHI: You are, I would say, more than an architect and designer, you're a bit of a design freak. So here you are, sitting in hospital -- I don't know when it was, some time ago. Something landed you in hospital, and you decided this wasn't up to snuff, this wasn't up to standard, you needed hospitals and hospital rooms to look better.

GRAVES: I was paralyzed seven years ago, and from that time on I've been in eight hospitals. And when you live in a hospital, you realize, as an architect, designer, you can do better. And people shouldn't have to suffer the kind of environments that they do in some of our better hospitals.

So, we just added it to our -- our plate in the office and said, let's take on health care. So, we've -- we have two initiatives. One is to design things for the retail market, things you can buy at your local drugstore. And the other is to design products for the hospital room. However, on top of that, we are just now becoming engaged with a group known as anchor health to add ambulatory cares to -- in a kind of satellite pattern around major hospitals. Now, that's crucial for the hospital, because the hospital can get rid of certain kinds of activities like MRIs and non-ambulatory work. So, all of that can be done in these smaller buildings. So from the building to the fittings inside the building, we hope to bring a better experience to the patients.

VELSHI: Well, what's interesting about you is that you're world renowned and you've been responsible for so many great buildings, but the reality is your design aesthetic is accessible to people, including, for instance, the fact that they can buy things designed by you at Target. When we think about a hospital room and we think about fixing our environs, we're so sort of hung up on costs in the medical system. Can you make better environments for people in hospitals without them being outrageously expensive?

GRAVES: I think like this Target model you cited, we cannot only make them better, we can make them operate better. In other words, better function, but we can also make a better cost.

There are things that have gotten too big in the hospital environment and need to go on a diet. And so we've -- we've tried that with great success. So, I don't think the cost will be our problem. I would imagine that the cost in some of our ambulatory care centers will be an issue as we get going. How do we bring buildings that should be done in multiples into a very cost-conscious environment?

VELSHI: But if we're redesigning the health care system, we might as well redesign every part of it, including what those rooms look like.

Let's talk a little about the other projects you're on. You've done so many things. What are you sort of proudest of and what's your next big thing?

GRAVES: Well, right now we're finishing a project off the coast of Singapore in Sentosa, and that's the largest thing we've done. It's about a $4 billion project. So, there's a lot there. It's next to a Universal theme park. This is a family resort -- six hotels we designed, a maritime museum, retail, all of that. And Sentosa is going to be a new destination for a lot of folks.

The -- one of the interesting things for me is that the client, the developer, named one of the hotels after me. And so I -- not only did we get to design it, we get to call it, too, so it's the Hotel Michael.

VELSHI: You were telling my producer that one of the things you like best that you're working on is your own home.

GRAVES: Always. I suppose -- I read something of Thomas Jefferson's the other day, and he said it's always best to come home to Monticello. Well, for me, it's my warehouse in Princeton. It's not Monticello, but it is my haven.

VELSHI: Michael Graves, what a pleasure to talk to you. An honor to talk to you here. You're an inspiration for what you do, and thanks for not only doing all these great things to make our environment better but, you know, just doing it in a way that addresses a lot of people, making it accessible to people. Mostly we think of architecture as a high-end thing that's out of most of our reach.

GRAVES: Thank you. Thank you very much.

VELSHI: Good to talk to you.

Michael Graves, famous architect and designer.

All right, playing with words -- cut and cap, LMRP, small dome, top cap, top hat. We're cutting through the technology while BP tries to cut through the broken oil pipe.

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VELSHI: OK, stopping the flow of the oil underwater. Let me look at all the words involved in this. It's very complicated. Cap- and-cut operation is what we've been calling it. It's actually the most descriptive term. They're taking -- it's actually cut and cap, not cap and cut. It's cut and cap. Just take it away or ignore it. You have to cut the whole thing and put a cap over it.

There's another term that you'll hear used a lot in official circles. What it's really called is LMRP, lower marine riser package. All different ways to say pretty much the same thing. Basically what BP is trying to do is cap the well.

LMRP stands for lower marine riser package. Lower marine riser package is the thing that they are cutting into with the submersible robots, also known as remote operated vehicles. That's the top of the blowout preventer, but when you hear people talking about the LMRP, they are talking about the containment cap system. The small dome is one way people are describing the cap that will go over the exposed pipe and the cut and cap is just what you call the whole operation.

I know, there's way too many words describing the same thing. We're going to try to keep you up to date with all of them so that you at least know what's going on. This is definitely an issue that applies to all of us.

OK. We all do it whether at home or in the office or in traffic. Boy, do we ever complain. It's hard these days not to complain. I'm going to give you an alternative to complaining coming up in my "XYZ."

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VELSHI: Time now for "The XYZ of it."

Self-improvement is a worthy goal, so when I heard about a push to cut down on complaining, I was kind of intrigued. Here's the deal, a nonprofit group called A Complaint-Free World is challenging all of us to watch the whining. Ban the bellyaching. You get the idea.

Their take? Complaints are by definition negative, and so constant complainers are putting all kinds of negative energy out there into the world. The group wants you to mind your mouth for 21 days. That's the amount of time it takes most people to form new habits. They've got this little bracelet that you can order, and you're meant to put it on one wrist and move it from wrist to wrist every time you slip and complain.

Naysayers take note, a lot of people are signing on to this campaign. Personally, I do think we complain too much. Me included. I don't know about all this negative energy stuff, but complaining is the easy way out. It's much harder to close your mouth, open your mind, find a solution to the problem. That's what we try and do with our two-hour piece of the day here. We try and get you some clarity, some ideas, some answers on the stuff that we all otherwise complain about.

Now my executive producer, Kelly, has been giving this complaint- free workplace a whirl, with mixed results. About half of our show staff is walking around with these little purple things on their wrists. I'm not one of them. She's willing to be self-critical, I'm don't know if I'm ready to find out how big a complainer I actually am or the world actually thinks I am. When and if I'm ready, I know the team will tell me.

Meantime, if you've got any complaints about today's show, try holding them in and wearing one of these.

That's my "XYZ." Time now for "RICK'S LIST."