Green Image Day

April 22 (which is tomorrow for me and today for some of you) is Earth Day. Not just in Santa Barbara, but globally. On Sunday, the city celebrated Earth Day with a fair of eco-friendly companies and citizen groups around the old courthouse. The place is wonderfully picturesque and a fine location for revoking some long-lost hippie spirit (pay attention to the kids in tie-dye wear and the woman with the hula hoop to the left).

It was a little disappointing though, for the professional environmentalist that I am. I’m suspicious of single days dedicated to tasks that require continuous attention (mother’s day is a prime example). The day probably helped the promotion of eco-friendly ideas and gave companies with green solution to common problems an opportunity to present themselves to potential customers. For example, I think there’s a number of house owners with cash to spend on things like efficient heating and cooling, water reuse technology and the like.

Unfortunately the exhibitors seemed too carelessly selected. What’s a henna tattooing business doing at the Earth Day fair? How about a group that advocates immigration control in order to reduce environmental problems in California due to overpopulation? It gets better: Right next to them was the booth of the Volunteer Ministers, some Red Cross lookalike turned Scientology.

Apart from these obscure groups there was some shiny technology on display, e.g. hybrid cars. One exhibitor claimed to achieve a mileage of more than 100 MPG (miles per gallon, that’s how they measure vehicle efficiency over here). Having taken a look at their homepage I have to say that this is close to a fraud. Yes, it can run many times as far as a common car on each gallon of gasoline, but the energy gap is filled with electricity from the grid – wow.

Sorry guys, I liked the event for the nice atmosphere and there certainly were some interesting booths, but I think you can do better than this contentwise. I might be a little too cynical about the topic, though. Comments and descriptions of your local Earth Day celebrations are welcome.

raise the dead (guns)

The arms manufacturer Vltor of Tucson, Arizona recently announced that they are recreating the famous Bren Ten pistol (which had a rather short appearance on the stage of firearms history) under the name of Fortis. I’m not going to bother you with details about this gun but I need to tell you that it’s comforting to know that for the blog they started to announce news about the development of the Fortis pistol they chose the same color scheme.

chauvinism

Since my work is partly related to ecology I sometimes come across curious facts. The common name for the bird family Paridae is tit. The common name for the mouse genus Soricidae is shrew. This may be trivial for native speakers of the English language but I can’t help thinking that whoever named them had some kind of twisted understanding of females.

Both animals have been scientifically described in the early 19th century but have been known to humans for ages. It would be interesting to know if any species discovered in the last three decades bear similar names.

bad luck #1

How the hell did I manage to catch a cold in southern California?! I’m getting better but my throat is still rough and my nose still clogged. A couple of days ago there was a minor earthquake which I would have loved to experience but since I had gone to bed early due to being sick I slept right through it. Damn.

Apart from that my work is making nice progress and the weather is getting warmer every week. I’ve been told that it’s currently around 5 °C in Stuttgart, with lots of grey sky and rain. I pity those who have to live through this rough time, haha.

what Santa Barbara looks like

Saturday was one of the best days I had in Santa Barbara so far. After the whale watching tour I went shopping for shoes and – eventually – found a pair in my size. Life is hard with size 15 feet. Later, I enjoyed the sunset at the beach with LB and SW and for a change, the wind was rather warm that night. As if that wasn’t enough SW proposed to have dinner at one of the best Mexican restaurants in town, which everyone could easily agree on. The only drawback was that I returned after 10.15 PM and couldn’t have a late night swim in the pool because it closes at 10. Oh well, I think I can live with that.

In order to share some of this life with my dear readers I took some photographs. Wether they make you feel joy or jealousy depends on your personal mindset.

Santa Barbara coastline. Note the mountains leading almost straight into the sea with only a narrow coastal strip, a typical geographic feature of this region. A number of oil rigs are installed off the coast, forming a distinctive chain of landmarks in the sea.

Santa Barbara harbor. If the number of private boats isn’t evidence for the wealth generated in this region, then what?

A small side street in downtown Santa Barbara. Note the flag in front of the house in the background.

Hotel Virginia with a bunch of cars for guys with small dicks. Interestingly, I see this type of car quite often around here. Also, this is about as urban as it gets. There’s a numer of buildings of comparable size in Santa Barbara but only few are larger than this one (not counting mega-supermarkets like Kmart which are outside the city limits).

State Street, the city’s main artery.

luck #4

Sometimes opportunity presents itself when I least expect it. Such as the opportunity for whale watching. These marine mammals pass the Santa Barbara Channel on their annual migration and several businesses offer cruises to watch them. Even better, our local AEP representative had organized a tour, allowing me to save a couple of bucks on the ticket (even though I’m not a member).

At this time there were only humbacks to watch. Fine with me, since they are said to be the most playful of whales. And indeed, they were. One of them breached out of the water in the fashion that made humpback whales famous. The narrator on the boat told the crowd that scientists still haven’t figured out why they do it. One hypothesis is that it’s an attempt to shove off parasites from their sensitive skin. Another explanation put forth by the narrator himself is that “because they can and it looks like fun.” Considering that cetaceans are quite intelligent and a number of intelligent animals show playing behaviour, this is not as unlikely as it sounds. It might also be a way of communication, since a 30 ton body hitting the water makes quite a sound. Other whales flapped their pectoral fins on the water surface, possibly for similar reasons.

I tried to take some nice photos for you but it’s rather difficult to take a good picture of a diving whale for someone as unexperienced in nature photography as me. However, luck was with me once again and I managed to capture a half-minute video of a couple of whales coming very close to the boat. WordPress won’t let me upload the file so you’ll have to wait until I find a solution to this problem.

a good investment

As if three posts in one day weren’t enough I’m throwing a third one at you. An announcement, actually. Part of my first salary was invested in a box housing a painting imp. You name it, an iconograph, as made famous by the lovably naive Twoflower of the Agatean Empire.

For those of you who are not familiar with the infamous Terry Pratchett’s work, you may simply refer to it as a camera.

So in order to show you the view that I described earlier, here’s a picture of sunrise at the pacific ocean, taken from just outside of my office. And another one of sunset on the same day.

Update: Here’s an even better picture of the ocean front, taken at 3 PM.

Future Breed Machine

Meshuggah. Live. I was there. Need I say more?

Maybe a little more. These Swedish gods had chosen House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to descend unto Earth and dazzle their admirers with a complex, yet monotonous and grinding polymetric wall of sound. Supported by the well known industrial rock band Ministry (that some of the less enlightened may have perceived as the actual headliner) and the lesser metalcore band Hemlock from Las Vegas.

Meshuggah seemed to have found their style since about the Nothing album. and consequently played mostly stuff from 2002 and later. A slight drawback for me since I like their 1998 album Chaosphere best. Slight because all their stuff is great, as one would expect from gods like these. And hey, they played the song that gave this post it’s name and which is undoubtedly one of the greatest metal songs ever. I was completely exhausted after their gig and even today I can still feel my neck twitching lightly in seven-eigths time.

the city of angels

One might think that it’s just a short ride from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. Well, that’s true in American terms but it’s still about a hundred miles to the northwestern corner of the L.A. metro area (and a hell of a lot more to the other side). That’s probably the main reason I haven’t been there so far. Sunday was the day to close another gap in my personal experience geography knowledge and eventually visit the city of angels.

LB and me were on a mission about which I shall tell you in the next post. We spent about half a day in L.A., which is of course not even close to enough for a serious visit. In fact, we stayed in the aforementioned northwestern corner without even seeing every spot we had planned for. A very nice corner, I feel compelled to add.

Our first stop was Santa Monica beach. I felt a bit like Fry in the second episode of Futurama when I saw this amusement park that was erected on a pier. The pier was populated by tourists and local artists trying to sell crap to them. Cheezy paintings, meaningless portraits, holographic photographs and the like. I was just waiting to come across the inevitable refrigerator magnet. However, it was much better on the very tip of the pier, and the view towards Venice beach was quite nice. Do I need to mention that there was a big police SUV parked on the pier? What’s the use of having a pier if you can’t drive on it?!

Right next to the pier was a monument that the people who set it up refered to as Arlington West. The name is derived from Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Guess why. Each cross means one dead US soldier in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. On Sunday the death toll was just above 4000. There was also a sign saying that if they had put up a cross for every dead Iraqi, they would fill the entire beach. No exact number was given but since it raises faster than the US death toll it’s kind of hard to keep track of it, i guess.

Not far from Santa Monica is Venice. This part of Los Angeles is an example of what I think happens when rich people are given enough space to realize their weird dreams. The guy who founded it actually tried to recreate the original Italian city of Venice, complete with channels and gondolieri. Of course it’s about as authentic as Disneyland but many Americans must love to live there, otherwise the prices for real estate would be lower. We came across a house that was for sale and took a look inside. Newly built, spacious, close but not too close to the beach. Not bad at all, and a total steal at just under 1.9 million dollars. Not to mention the monthly utility bill in a house where even the microwave loader is powered.

We had lunch on the Ocean Front Walkway and since we both felt pretty hungry we went for the biggest hamburger on the menu. Bad idea. That thing was massive. It was quite good for a burger and the fries were delicious (as far as this term can apply to fast food), but it was just too much.

It was also on Venice beach that we realized that we wouldn’t make it to all the other places. We decided to skip the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and visit only the Museum of Jurassic Technology instead. This wonderful “museum” is easy to overlook just driving by but turns out to be much larger inside. Unfortunately, they closed at 6 PM and we had only half an hour left to rush through it. I haven’t quite figured out if the exhibits are real, forged or mixed, but they certainly are all extremly bizarre. Hopefully I get the time to visit it again. Should this be the case, be sure to read the respective blog entry.

The last stop before the original mission were the LaBrea Tar Pits. If this image doesn’t remind you of a particular movie (or comic book for the very literate) you have probably been living under a rock for the last couple of years. I was quite surprised that this place existed – and that it looked almost exactly like Frank Miller’s drawings (the latter being slightly dramatized for effect).

moment of truth

Okay, how many of you actually believed this bullshit that I wrote yesterday?