The hopes and dreams of these socks unfortunately never came to pass.
Let’s see how the the hopes and dreams of Obama turn out. I’m excited!
Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category
Failed Socks
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009No More Tunnels
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
By far my favorite place to ride my mountain bike (that is reachable without driving) are the single track ‘tunnels’ that are typically reached through Peñasquitos Park (although they aren’t actually inside the park, they are on non-park city land). They are called ‘the tunnels’ because for most of their length they are covered by low bushes and trees just over head height. There are four of them that total a few miles in length and vary in technical difficulty. Until about a month ago, they were somewhat illicit and not patrolled, now they are very expressly illegal. During the rainy season I think it’s perfectly reasonable to close them. Muddy and wet ground is especially susceptible to erosion, and nature doesn’t need human help to erode the ground during the rainy season. The ditch my bike is pictured in above was fairly level ground the last time I was there, less than a month ago (*).
The New Academy of Sciences
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
A few days ago while I was still in the Bay Area, I visited the new Academy of Sciences museum with my family. They just re-opened a few months ago after replacing their old earthquake-damaged buildings with a new, very unique building. You can follow those links to learn all about the ‘living roof’ and the various exhibits.
I have some mixed feelings about the new museum. The old museum (you can see some pictures of it at their time line page) was a funky amalgamation of several buildings built over many decades. You could see the history of modern American natural museums in one place. The old section had dioramas of stuffed animals in pseudo-natural scenes. Exhibits like lions hunting antelopes with Serengeti sounds playing on speakers. The newer sections had live animals and fish and a greater focus on education. The whole place was labyrinthine and dusty, and a well-used kind of ancient. It was never too full of people. I liked the old museum and I’m sad that a piece of my childhood is gone.
The new place is very shiny, flashy and popular. We waited for one hour and forty minutes to get inside. It might be bigger in cubic meters due to the higher ceilings, but I don’t think it’s bigger in square meters of floorspace. The main exhibition areas are limited to the two ends of the building, past the planetarium and tropical sphere, and the aquarium has been moved to the basement. The aquarium is quite a bit nicer than it was, with a few tanks that rival the Monterey Bay Aquarium in quality and cool curving Plexiglas, but not in size. Like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the museum pushes education on choices the individual can make to positively change their effect on the ecosphere. They have a ‘carbon balance’, but it mostly ends up being played with by children who generally don’t decide whether to buy a SUV or a hybrid car.
I found a couple things I really liked; click on the thumbnails above. Read the tag on the human skull, and take a look at a whole wall of very carefully pinned ladybugs. I took three pictures a various zooms. That may have been a PhD thesis, right there.
There are more pictures here.
Mini-Vacation – Monterey Bay Aquarium
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Yesterday, Melissa and I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We were met there by my brother Adam and his lady friend Shinji, who not coincidentally decided to also see the aquarium on the same day. The aquarium has expanded since my last visit. There is now a northern wing that has fresh water otters, an “outer bay” tank and a seahorse exhibit (that was under construction, sadly). More than the last time I was there (or maybe I was too young to pay attention to things not cute), the aquarium really pushes conservation and ethical seafood consumption. They have a set of cards you can carry to help guide seafood and sushi purchases in stores and restaurants.
But what about the cute animals? (These links go to movies.) Fresh water otters gamboling! Feeding the penguins! A huge wolf eel in the kelp forest tank!
There are lots more photos here.
Brodozers
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009I spent several hours today standing at the corner of El Norte Parkway and Elm Street in Escondido as a course marshal for the Amgen Tour of California. Today was the final stage of the eight stage (plus prologue) race that started in Sacramento.
While I waited hours for the brief seconds of each pack of cyclists to pass, I decided to amuse myself by taking pictures of all the ‘brodozers’ that drove by. A brodozer is a pick-up truck that has been jacked up on shocks with huge noisy tires. They are a particularly nasty form of transportation. They are a big middle finger to the environment and are driven by young males in a very aggressive manner. One of my scariest moments on a bicycle was due to a brodozer in East County San Diego. This county is infested with brodozers, and Escondido is particularly bad.
Below are 16 of the 17 brodozers I was able to capture. There were many that passed before I had inspiration, and others I missed. It’s interesting that white is the dominant color, and none appear to have been off-road recently. The seventeenth was the only vehicle I saw escorted off the course by the police. That brodozer needed to be told more than once by the police to get off the course. This tells you all you need to know about brodozer drivers.
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Tags: douchebags, dudes, hicks, jerks
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