Angeline Sauvignon Blanc

Dr Desert Flower likes her Sauvignon Blancs, as long as they don't taste like grapefruit.  Angeline S.B. was delicious, inexpensive (less than $10 a bottle) and available at Total Wine.  It was not bad at all.   If you want a good white wine, try it.

Have you met Aliki?

Portlandia's "Farm" sketch was incredibly funny, where two yuppies order chicken at a local organic restaurant that provides them with a portfolio on the chicken they're going to eat: "His name was Colin, and he was fed a diet of sheep's milk, soy, and hazelnuts".  DDF and I laughed our asses off watching it the first time.  It remains one of the funniest bits from the show.  Jason Sudeikis plays the cult leader Aliki, at the Farm, most hilariously.

When I saw the Vital Farms eggs at WholePaycheck ($6 a dozen) and they were "Certified Humane", USDA Organic, lpasture-raised, local California eggs, I thought to myself "ok, these are a $1 more than Farmer's Market eggs... but I didn't wake up early enough to go to the Farmer's Market... and... these eggs even Have Paperwork!" - there was a little certificate, inside the carton, telling all about Colin and his friends.  Well, obviously Colin didn't lay any eggs, but the hens he would have liked to have procreated with if he'd not been served to discerning restaurant customers did lay them.

The eggs were some of the darkest yolks I've ever had.  Fully flavorful, satisfying delicious.  They are not "the cheapest" eggs in the world, but they are certainly some of the healthiest & most sustainable.

Four or Five days a week for breakfast, I will typically sauté 1/4 or 1/2 an organic onion in a heaping tablespoon of bacon grease (Canadian maple cured thick strips of bacon, cast iron skittle fried, and recovered), throw on 3 or 4 handfuls of organic baby spinach (covering all the onions, and using "more than you think, it'll all reduce down" as my dear friend Ron advised), several cups of Trader Joe's  sliced crimini mushrooms (it's really hard to find organic mushrooms in California), and a handful of Costco bacon bits, on a medium flame in our new Circulon Symmetry 12 inch sauce pan until the spinach shrivels down to little strands, the criminis are all coated in the residual bacon grease, and the onions are translucent.  Then add 2 scrambled eggs on top of this tasty mixture, maintaining the medium flame.  The 12 inch pan spreads out the eggs for faster cooking and heat transfer - I like my scrambled eggs dry, not gooey, as gooey makes me want to verp as it makes me think I am eating something the consistency of snot.  The 8 inch pan would work too, it just takes longer with nearly 1/2 the heated surface area (and nearly double to the egg thickness layer).    Season with organic pepper and sea salt.  It's a tasty breakfast / brunch / sometimes lunch (when work keeps me busy all morning until 1 or 2pm).  Come to visit us, and I'll cook you some eggs as I did our friend Rick back in July and DDF's Phoenix scientist friends who've visited OC this summer as well.

Dearly Beloved - I Thee Red

Trader Joes was carrying this wine at the Dana Point store, and I was in a "California Wine" purchasing mood, so I picked up a bottle of "Dearly Beloved - I Thee Red" from the Central Coast.  I usually don't go for kitschy labels, but this one appealed to me.  Bottled by Dearly Beloved Wines, Hopland CA, it was a tasty red.  Smooth, drinkable.  It was $7 or $8 at Trader Joes (I can't remember exactly how much).  It was good.  I can't complain.

Shipyard Brown Ale

I picked up a six pack of Shipyard Brown Ale at my local Ralph's supermarket, after enjoying the Porter and Blueberry Shipyard varieties earlier this year.  While I enjoyed drinking it, the Brown Ale fell short of my "amazing flavor" expectations that the Porter had previously established.  It's a fine beer, very drinkable, pleasant; not wimpy, diluted, or corporate by any means.  I just don't know if I'd buy it again, if there are other choices to be had.  Not a failure, but not a 'home run' either.

It was good, but not great.  Portland Maine continues to make some good craft beer.

Grifone Primitivo

Grifone Primitivo - From Old Vine Zinfandel - Puglia, Indicazione Geografica Tipica, bottled by Roccadoro, Pontedera Italy and imported by Latitude Wines for Trader Joes, is a delicious red wine from the heel of Italy.  "Zinfandel in America, Primitivo in Italy, Mali Plavac in Croatia" the back label states.  Whatever the name, it is delicious, smooth, full flavored, and at $8 a bottle, very economical to drink.  I enjoyed it with a nice rare grilled grass fed rib eye steak.  Yum.

...and it was infinitely better than the $2.49 "Three Wishes".

Downtown Brown - Bottled

Back in January, when I rode my bike on Catalina Island on my birthday, I enjoyed a 22 oz pour of Downtown Brown, at the Lobster Trap in downtown Avalon.  It was a delicious, dark brown, nutty ale that was refreshing after a strenuous bike ride.

When I was shopping at my local grocery store, I saw they were selling 6 packs of Downtown Brown, from the Lost Coast Brewery, Eureka California.  I picked up a six pack, and kept it in my fridge until my old friend RGK came to visit back in July, and we polished it off the night he was here.  Downtown Brown is just as good in a bottle as it is on tap, in my perspective.

Cheap Wholepaycheck Wine - Three Wishes

Sometimes, the cheapest wine is also the lowest quality wine.  This was certainly the case with the Three Wishes Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon that I purchased from Wholepaycheck, simply because a) it was $2.49 a bottle and b) the stack of cases and bottles was cash-register adjacent, making a "point of sale" decision easily convincing.

I opened the Cabernet first, and noticed a slight "medicinal" small.  I had a taste of the first glass, and decided "perhaps more appropriate for a 2nd, or 3rd bottle of the night".  I went onto a much more pleasant Italian wine (which I'll post later) and came back to the Cab 2 days later.   It had mellowed a little, but it still was not a good "first vintage" bottle.

The next week I opened the Merlot.  It had a turpentine-esque aroma, and was completely un-drinkable.   I poured it down the sink after 2 sips... hoping the 2nd sip would improve.   It didn't.

If you've visited JustJoeP previously, you know I am a HUGE fan of hidden gems, bottles under $10 that are good quality and drinkable.   The two bottles I purchased from WholeFoods for $5.98 (total) were not hidden gems.  They were not even iron pyrite.  I cannot recommend them.  The only "Three Wishes" they granted for me were "not wasting $10 a bottle", "not giving me a headache hangover", and "not finding a dead animal in the bottom of the Cab I drank".  As far as wishes go, that's pretty low expectations.

Sublime Sun SPF50+

Living as close to the beach as we do now, I've spent a good deal of time at the shore.  Not wanting skin cancer - as several of my friends and family members have been diagnosed - I've been trying to avoid being burnt and moderating my exposure to our G2V averaged sized fusion reactor in the sky (the Sun).  Dr Desert Flower gave me a bottle of L'Oreal Sublime Sun SPF50+ to put on my face (we coat ourselves in SPF70 primer, multiple passes, with the spray guns) and it's worked rather well.  No face burning.  No clogged pores or break-outs.  No allergic reactions.  Washes off nicely in the shower with soap.  It is good quality stuff.  A little dab on the finger-tips, massaged into nose, cheeks, forehead, and chin, and 20 seconds later, my face is ready to withstand the ravages of solar radiation.  It took all of 2013 (so far) to go through this little 1.7fl oz bottle.

Highly recommended.

Kitchen Sink - Total Wine

Often the rating on a bottle of wine from a wine magazine (like Wine Speculator [what I call "Wine Spectator" after my mother-in-law got me a subscription to it 10 years ago] or Wine Advocate) is corporately driven, mass marketing targeted, and oblivious to the really good wines that are less than $10 a bottle.  Sure, not every bottle under $10 is great, and some are not even good, but many are wonderful, drinkable, delicious and affordable table wines.

Dr Desert Flower scored such a wine in Kitchen Sink, at Total Wine just before Labor Day.  Kitchen Sink had a "favorite selection" of one of the Total Wine employees, but at $5 / bottle, of course it was not rated by any wine magazines.  With the attitude of "if it is not very tasty, I might make a sauce with it" she bought the bottle.  We drank it the weekend before labor day, and it was great!  Smooth, pleasant on the tongue initially and at the back as well, with a slightly fruity aroma, but not overpoweringly so.  We enjoyed it, and at $5 a bottle, everyone who likes a pleasant white wine can too.

The back label says it is a mix of Chardonnay (which DDF detests), Chenin Blanc, and Gewürztraminer, bottled in Santa Rosa CA by "Kitchen Sink Blends".  Nice job, KSB!

The NSA Thanks You

Cool!

What I Learned Body Boarding On Friday Afternoon

"What I Learned Body Boarding On Friday Afternoon" or "Body Boarding For Dummies".

I am a California novice.   I don't pretend i know everything about what to do or how to do it here, and I find those who try to appear to be "way so cool" to be laughable (and I choose not to hang around them).  On Friday afternoon, my last conference call ended at 1pm (after starting my day at 4am and not having breakfast until a quick snack at 11am).  I checked the wave conditions at Dana Point, and found that there was a "2 star" rating (out of 5 stars) at the surf rating sites, and that the waves were estimated at 2.5 feet high.  "Cool!" I thought, time to body board!

I broke out my O'Neill Psycho 3:2 wet suit, body board, cooler (for re-hydration), reading glasses and book (Gaffigan's Dad Is Fat), towel and sun screen, and headed down to Dana Point.  I scored rock star parking at the best parking spot at the top of Strand Beach, headed down the 200+ stairs, and looked for the best area to begin body boarding.  There were dozen of adolescent & 20-something surfers, and 1/2 a dozen children and "old men like me" body boarders.  I headed for the body boarders, and avoided the skillful surfers.

While websites said the waves were 2.5 feet high, they often ran 5 or 6 feet high, with formidable crashing into the shore.  The wind speeds were about 10 mph.  It was clear and sunny (good thing I had SPF 50 on my face and neck) and the water was about 66F.  Here's my take-aways, as a rather novice body boarder:

1)  Wear a wet suit.  Your fingers and toes will get chilly in the 66F water, but the rest of your body will be fine.  3:2 or thicker..  (the kids in the 2 mil suits were shivering)

2)  When you are bobbing out in the surf, up to your neck, your toes in the sand, and a Large Wave approaches, and you feel the TUG of the under-tow drawing you out to sea, and the water level goes from chin, to chest, and then to wait level (dropping almost 3 feet) LOOK at the oncoming wave.  If it is about to crest, DIVE DAMNIT!   DIVE INTO and UNDER IT!  You will come up on the backside of the wave alive, and well balanced.  If you naively choose to try to "ride the wave" you will be pummeled, pounded into the surf and sand, and tumbled like an old sock in the dryer, repeatedly, dizzily, to the point where walking a straight line is a significant challenge.

3) When another body boarder (or boogie boarder, or no-board-surfer) rides an excellent wave for dozens of yard, at the crest, and makes it from the deep water all the way into shore in-tact, and you NOTICE this, and marvel at it, and then that person swims back out past you, it is nice (and good karma) to compliment them and tell them "that was a good wave you caught".  Telling them this will Make Their Day.  The responses I have received when I've done this have ranged from "thank you" to "that is the best wave I caught all day, I've been out here for 4 hours!".

4) when the seagulls are laughing, they are not laughing at you.  They just make that sound, that seems like laughing to humans.

5) when you ride a crashing wave all the way into shore, and you try to maneuver to avoid crashing into three 5 and 6 year old little girls who are standing in knee deep water, but the wave is so violent & powerful that you still glance against the leg of one of the 3 foot tall little girls (who tells you "I'm fine" when you ask her "sorry about that, are you ok?") it is time to call it quits.  If an old man approaching 50 years old cannot control his body board trajectory, and he crashes into little girls who are standing knee deep in the surf, he's too tired to keep body boarding.

6)  A "one star" surf rating, is rather "boring" with 1 foot high waves, and a "green flag" rating.  A "two star" rating, at 2 feet, is fun and exciting, and enjoyable, with a "yellow flag" rating.  A "two star" or "three star" rating might be fun for seasoned surfers, with a "red flag" rating, but for old men like me, it means a wet suit full of sand, a dizzying tumble in the surf after being pounded repeated by powerful waves, and a dazed-and-confused stagger back to your cooler, sandals, and towel.

7) Wear your body board wrist tether, it will keep you from having to swim (or wade_ ashore to retrieve your body board that will inevitably be wrenched from your tenacious grasp when you are pummeled by a crashing wave. But remember, when you wearing your wrist tether, that the chord is somewhat elastic, and when the board Finally Breaks Free of the waves, it will have a tendency to WHACK you in the neck or face as it breaks free of the shore bound wave.

8) Rinsing your wet suit in the shower while wearing it, and then peeling off and rinsing it "inside out" will be the easiest way to get all the salt water off the suit.  Make sure to use the coldest water possible, so as not to degrade the suit (hot water and hydrophobic coatings are not so compatible).  Make sure to keep the original equipment hangar close to the shower so that you can hang up the wet wet suit, after rinsing.

9) remember to watch how large of a volume of liquids you drink while wearing a wet suit.  While emptying your bladder in the ocean might seem "natural" to some people, voiding your bladder inside your wet suit is just plain old nasty.  And when you get home, tired, and post-surf-tumbled, and you have a full bladder, getting out of the wet suit and going to the rest room will become of paramount importance to the human brain.

10) soaking in a hot tub, for about an hour, with jets on your neck, shoulders, and lumbar, with a large glass of iced ethanol, helps to alleviate the pain that being tumbled in the surf can cause.

Nest Mate Black Chinned Brothers?

These little guys only 1/2 heartedly spar with each other, and perch unusually close to each other just outside my window.

They appear to be black chinned adolescent hummingbird males.  They have very small "goatees" of bright feathers under their chins, unlike the full grown adults who look like they spilled a quart of cranberry juice down their china and throats.  They do the little "are you threatening me?!?" head bobs...  but they'll sit on adjacent branches, and easily within stroking distance, but they only 1/2 heartedly 'fight'.  Then a Rufous or Anna's hummingbird comes by, and it's a melee, with "Battle of Britain, 1939 Spitfire vs Messerschmidt - esque" dogfights chirping and speeding and whizzing about the back and side yards.  Once the "interloper" is driven off, one or both of the young males comes back, to roost above the feeders.   They are not really a "team" but they are not really "rivals" either... they are pretty much just peaceably co-existing - better than my brothers and I ever did!  If a female black chinned hummingbird shows up, they'll Swoop Down, and chirp "hey baby...  how you like my feeder? you in estrus yet, hmm baby?"

I'm going through about 1/2 a gallon of nectar a week now, out of the 6 feeders in my back & side yards.  That's a pittance compared to some bird fanatics who go through 2 gallons Each Day (as Birds and Blooms has told me).

Brave Little Lizard

A few weeks ago, I photographed this lizard on the wall, just outside out breakfast area to the West of
our kitchen.  It was mid day, and this lizard was busy doing "push ups" on the top of the wall, the same way the whiptail striped lizards would in Phoenix.  But the wall is just above and next to 2 large hummingbird feeders, and there was a buzz of activity all around the feeders, with adolescent black chinned males, fully grown Anna's males, and fully grown Rufous male hummingbirds vying, parrying, dog-fighting for who would dominate the delicious feeders - so much testosterone, in such tiny little birds!   The lizard was "not impressed" by these darting and speeding avian creatures, and actually, at one point, put his head over the edge, at WATCHED one of the hummingbirds, CLOSELY, as if to say...  "come closer punk, and I'll bite you, latch on, and have hummingbird for dinner".  Now, I have seen grotesque youtube videos of fully grown preying mantis devouring hummingbirds (no, I won't provide a link, it's too gross), but I'd never seen a small 5 inch long lizard attempt to eat a hummingbird, or even try to menace one...  until August of this year.

The adolescent hummingbird was keenly aware of the wall mounted lizard who was observing him, and he hovered, and chitted, and tried (ineffectively) to scare off the lizard from his vantage point about 12 inches above one of the feeders.  Eventually, after a few minutes, the lizard gave up and went about its way looking for easier & slower prey, but it was fun to watch while it lasted.

I Don't Want This To Be Me

My Godfather sent me this image this afternoon (along with about 20 others...  but this one was the best).

This would have taken several hours to sculpt.  No beaches around here have white walls like that.

Another Lackluster Year For The Bears Offense

Confused Bear Offense

Dr Desert Flower and I were out looking at possible homes to buy on Sunday, so I missed the NFL Sunday Ticket to which I stupidly and Expensively subscribed last May for nearly $300.  When we got home around 3pm, I turned on the TV thinking I could watch the Bears game that I'd set the DVR to record earlier.  DirectTV had other plans for me though.  See, I did not hit the little "red button" hidden behind the sim card front door, to "reset" my box, since last May when I subscribed, so it recorded NOTHING.  This infuriated me, having paid so much for a season, and having planned to watch the game while frying up several pounds of maple cured bacon from Canada in my cast iron skillet, reserved exclusively for bacon frying.  I finally calmed down, put on the Green Bay / SF game, and tried to enjoy it.   Green Bay was not losing enough, so I turned it off, and watched some old Dr Who episodes that I'd not previously seen as I fried the bacon, salvaged all the bacon fat, and burnt up the afternoon.

I saw a show called "NFL Shortcut" and had no idea what it was, but I hoped it might have some or all of the Bear's game highlights.  It was set to play at 9:30pm Pacific time, so I set my newly reset DVR to "record" the little "$" show on NFLST, and hoped for the best.   I knew that Chicago beat the Cincinnati Bengals 24 to 21, but I had no idea about the details of the game.  DDF and I watched BReaking BAd, and I went to bed early, having a 5am call Monday morning.

Typical Bear Defense, Week 1 of the 2013 NFL Season

So this afternoon, when I finished my day of work, I began to cook myself breakfast at 3pm, and low and behold, there was the "NFL Shortcut".  It was commercial free, time-out free.  Just the plays that mattered.  In less than 30 minutes, at a frenetic pace, I was able to see every run, pass, fumble, kick, and turn-over.  It was a great game for the Chicago defense, in particular Tillman.  But sadly, again, another lackluster performance by the Bears offense.  The running backs tried, and made some progress.  Marshall caught several passes with amazing skill.  But QB Cutler could not organize his troops, and exhibited his typical inconsistencies.  Throwing on 30 yard pass, and getting a first down, and then squandering the next 3 downs to have to kick.  There as no cool steely finesse of Aaron Rodgers.  No 3-ringed bravado of Tom Brady.  No decades honed innate skills of the Manning brothers displayed.  No flair of a Colin Kaepernick, and even the Andy Dalton's losing performance was much better than Cutler's accidental, Defense produced winning performance.

I found myself cringing at punt after punt.  Again this year, once Cutler was sacked hard, the little birdies and stars flew around his head and he had trouble finding his targets, keeping his courage, and effectively scrambling.  It's sad that Chicago management thought it best to get rid of Lovie Smith but kept Jay Cutler.  Would have been better to cut Cutler, and begin grooming a young-and-up-coming rising star.  it'll be another "near 50% season" at this rate.  And I got to pay $300 to see it at home...  but I will not be yelling at my TV.  Just shaking my head, disgusted, wishing San Diego was a better team, and that Los Angeles still had the Rams.  At least the Glendale AZ Cardinals might do well... Fitzgerald is having a better year...   I still own underwater property in that state, and can be happy for them if they win next week.  I love a great defense in the NFL, but a defense needs at least a "pretty good" offense to be able to win games.  If the offense is lack luster, the defense gets burnt out, frustrated, and injured.  il faut voir.

No Thank You Experian!

On the Credit Rating Agency website from the company Experian their tag line is "A world of insight".  What it really should say instead is "Intrusively and without your knowledge, pimping out your data".  Why do I say this?  Well, from personal experience.

You see, about 2 months ago, Dr Desert Flower contacted our bank (one of the big national, too-big-to-fail US institutions) just to inquire if they could call us back about a home loan, since we are renting here in California.  The very next day, our phone began ringing off the hook, with misguided and misinformed mortgage brokers from shady, never-heard-of-before, finance companies.  Each of these unprofessional callers incorrectly assumed we were "re-financing" our California home (which we rent, and do not own, but the callers were too stupid to figure that out).  The first day, there were 4 callers.  The next day, 6 more.  These were inane callers interrupting my work conference calls, leaving long messages, all of them dodgy and circumspect about who they were, how they got my name, or with which company they were associated.  I began telling them off, to remove my name from their lists, and asking them if they understood what the "Do Not Call Registry" was, and are they familiar with the $10,000 federal fines they would be hit with if they called back?  The 2nd week, the calls stopped.

Then, this week, DDF contacted a mortgage broker referred to us by our realtor, as we are looking to possibly purchase a home and wanted to see how much of a mortgage we could be pre-qualified to receive.  That mortgage broker again ran a credit check on us, and yesterday, once again, the flood gates opened.  3 calls yesterday, 5 calls today.  I began interrogating the callers directly, after they butchered the pronunciation of my last name:
"what is the nature of this call?"
"from what source did you get my contact information?"
...and then telling them I would never be interested in getting a mortgage from a telephone broker who I do not know, who I have never met, who is being predatory upon my wife and I, and whom I do not trust.  Sheepishly, some of them apologize.  Others, just rudely hang up on me.
"Do you understand what the Do Not Call Registry is?"
"Do you understand that if you call back, I will be reporting you and your company to the Federal government and they will hit you with a $10,000 fine?"

After the 5th call today, I looked up Experian, since 3 of the unsolicited callers told me that they 'purchased a list of potential borrowers from Experian' - to which I told each of them "that was not money well spent, was it?".  Buried 5 levels down on their web page, is an "Opt Out" page (link here).  It also has a link to the Do Not Call national registry.  I called Experian's OPT OUT number (1-888-5OPTOUT, or 1 888 567 8688) and the computerized answering protocol had the nerve to ask me for my name, address, social security number, and phone number.   Of course, it could NOT figure out what my street was, since it is a bastardized Spanish spelling that is meaningless and un-referenceable, so that lead to "leave a detailed message, with the spelling of your street address" logic path.

I never asked Experian to sell my information to anyone.   I never authorized Experian to sell my information to anyone.   And I am obviously not happy that Experian pimped out my name, and the predatory lenders have swarmed my phone number like locust.    I don't know if the other 2 national credit rating agencies do the same thing, but it is rather despicable and underhanded.  I rank credit rating agencies on the same list of bottom feeders and those who add no value to society, along with derivative traders, ambulance chasing injury lawyers, California DMV workers, industrial artificial franken-food manufacturers, tele-marketeres, and political strategists.

Hey you kids, get off my phone!!!!  grrrrrrrr

Today's big number: 340

This depressed me when I read it.... (link here)

So the Navy has to apply for environmental permits now, and in doing so, state how many cetaceans they anticipate their going to kill or harm.  340.  That's how many dolphins and whales the US Navy predicts it will kill from 2014 to 2019 in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico, during training exercises with bombs and by testing sonar...  Awesome.

At least now, the Navy is finally admitting that active sonar harms cetaceans.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/aug/30/navy-says-its-probably-about-bomb-hundreds-dolph/

A Bigger Saturday Afternoon

With 4 people working together (2 elementary school children, and 2 adult males) we made a much larger castle complex further north on Salt Creek beach, over the course of 3 hours.   It was great fun.

When high tide began to approach (towards 5pm, high tide projected to be 640pm last Saturday) the furthest outpost, closest to the shore, began to be battered by the surf's onslaught.  The youngest of our all male construction crew wanted to destroy the entire complex before we left, but we convinced him to just let the ocean take it.  He reluctantly agreed.

When Dr Desert Flower and I walked the beach on Labor Day (September 2nd, about 40 hours later) there were no remnants of the 10ft x 8ft x nearly 3ft high castle and 1 foot deep moat.

I am getting "the hang of it" now, and have figured out the 'goldilocks' ratio of wet sand to dry sand that is required to make the structure formable and sturdy enough, without having it collapse in an amorphous slurry.  It is one helluva work out, and there's something "to show" for it when it is done, so I know this will not be the last sand castle my hands make on the Pacific Ocean's California shoreline.

A Fun Friday Afternoon

After I got my work done, and did my weekly grocery shopping, I headed down to Salt Creek Beach, scored a Rock Star parking space in the 3:30pm jammed packed parking lot, and hauled my contractor grade shovels and sand forms down to 'just above the high tide mark'.

I experimented with dry sand, moist sand, really sopping-wet sand...  and found that moderately wet was the best for forming parapets and towers.  Sopping wet stayed inside the forms, or became amorphous once the form was lifted.

Altogether, it took roughly 90 minutes of digging and forming, to make a T-shaped sand castle with moats, that was roughly 8ft by 6ft  by 2 feet high, with a 18 inch deep moat.  The moat's intention was to divert the rising tide, but high tide was at 6:19, and when I left at 6:30, the waves advanced to within 3 feet of the first moat, and did not fill it.

Sadly, a small child, who was a very cocky, oldest son of a polygamous Arabic family ("my mother's friends like your sand castle, and want me to take a picture of it" the 8 year old boy told me, and pointed at the 3 hijab wearing women, standing next to a fourth woman wearing all black and sun glasses & head scarf on the beach.  When his tank-top and shorts wearing father came over, I said to him "As-Salaam-Alaikum," to which he immediately responded "Wa-Alaikum-Salaam") kept threatening the construction of the castle, and repeatedly mocking it, telling me how he could do better using just his hands) triumphantly ran over, danced across and kicked down the construction by the time I had walked to the elevated exit road, heading back to my car.  He was unable to contain his destructive envy any longer.  But that's ok.  It was a fun experiment to build, and practice.

Our friends Tory & Alan will come to Orange County to visit us this weekend, and they're bringing their two elementary school aged sons with them, who (I think) will enjoy building an even better castle this weekend - if we can find a parking spot at the Salt Creek Beach lot, that is!

Delicious Stick Family

Californians love their automobiles, and adorn them with vanity plates, window stickers, and bumper stickers, as well as custom paint jobs more than any where else I've ever lived.

This hungry T-rex amused me tremendously.  There's no shortage of stick-familied SUVs on the road around here, and I honestly think the crowd could use some thinning.  =)

Avocados Over Time

From Ilovecharts (link here)

Dr Desert Flower loves her avocados, and has demonstrated the efficacy of this chart, while we lived in both AZ and now in CA.

Storm - Scientifically Explained

I'd never seen this before...   but it is awesome:
Storm, by Tim Minchin  link here

Well worth the 10 minutes.

Primal Wine Pairing

I had never seen this before...  but when my uncle sent it to me yesterday in email, it made me laugh.

Tesla Model S Achieves Best Safety Rating Of Any Car Ever Tested

Thank you Chris Hayes of MSNBC for pointing this out last night:
"Tesla Model S Achieves Best Safety Rating Of Any Car Ever Tested"
link here: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/52805602/#52805602

I watched this as I grilled my steak dinner last night.  I was impressed.  One of my neighbors down the street just bought one, for $70K.  Now that is a chunk of change, certainly.  But he never needs to buy gas again, and he's got a very stylish sedan that is also incredibly safe.

"The roof is so strong, it broke the testing machine".  Thank you so much also to Consumer Reports, for their unbiased and impartial testing.  National Highways Safety Administration gave it a A++ safety rating - safest car they ever have tested.

What I Learned From Mary Roach's Gulp

Last weekend, while sitting at Salt Creek Beach on Sunday afternoon with my lovely wife, drinking a subtly rum spiked adult beverage, watching the waves washing ashore, pelicans fishing in the shallows, tourists body boarding without wetsuits, and 100s of people passing by having a wonderful beach day, I finished reading Mary Roach's Gulp, Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.  (for reference ISBN 978-0-393-08157-2).  It was interesting, hilarious, informative, and amazing well written.

I read it in hard back - since electronic devices in beach sunlight often have glare issues, and besides, I read slowly and would consume massive amounts of battery life.  I've found that Roach is now one of my favorite authors.  Her writing style "suits me" very well as an intelligent reader, and I thorough enjoyed digesting (pun absolutely intended) her work.  Gulp will not be the last book I read penned by her.  Next I will read Bonk, and then maybe Stiff.

Now, remember when you were back in grade school, or middle school, and you had to do a "book report" and turn it in for a grade?  I liked doing some book reports, as the material was sometimes enjoyable, but I loathed doing book reports on subjects which did not interest me.  Eating (and what the body does with and to the food we put into ourselves) has always interested me, and has, in fact, been a life long passion of mine as well as a subject that warrants scientific study.  Mary's done that research, handily, and thoroughly.

So what follows here, are the notes I took while (and after) reading Gulp.  These were not a "chore" they were things that I found fascinating, interesting, or just very cool.  They are not intended to be any kind of copyright infringement, but rather, a quick way to "index" and 'key word search" on a hard back book, via blog.  They are also intended to get other people to go out and read Roach's work, not dissuade them from doing so.  The notes below are by far NOT comprehensive (and they're pretty disorganized) but they are what I liked and found noteworthy.  =)

Things I learned from Gulp:

Aerobacter & H.eutropha bacteria slurry is proven inedible by humans (1968)

Only 5 to 10% of the air we breathe reaches the olfactory epithelium at the roof of the nasal cavity.

5 tastes humans perceive:  sweet, bitter, salty, sour and (I did not know) umami (brothy). 

Bad Olive Oil tastes (from the tasting wheel) include:  baby diapers, manure, vomit, bad salami, sewer dregs, pig farm waste pond.  Yummy!

Cadaver sniffing dogs are sniffing for cadaverine.

Liver is the most appealing dog food palatant, to dogs (and some humans, as well!).

The Inuit Games have indoor competitions like Ear Lift, and Mouth Pull.

Inuit eat a natural diet of raw organs - they leave the muscle tissue alone for the most part - far too tough, and has little nutritional value.  

For fruits and vegetables in the Arctic, Inuits let the caribou eat the lichens & moss, and then eat the caribou's stomach and contents after it's been partially digested.  A caribou stomach can be considered as "two servings of fruits or vegetables". 

Clara Davis did a study in the 1930s with orphaned babies to see what they would eat given choices, before learning from any adult.  Most desired by babies:  bone marrow, followed by brains and sweetbreads.   Shunned by babies:  liver, kidneys, 10 different veggies, haddock, and pineapple. 

Raw Narwhale skin ("Muktuk") tastes like a combination of chicken skin and pork rinds.  

Meat Industry vernacular includes the following terms I had never heard of before:

plunks - thoracic viscera, heart, lungs, trachea

melts - spleens

paunch - rumens

slunks - unborn calves (play THOSE in Scrabble!   Ha!)

trichobezoars - human hair balls  (ew!) and April 27th is Hair Ball Awareness Day!

Babies prefer milk that smells like garlic over milk that doesn't. (in scientific studies)

Human hair, is Kosher  (but ew!) and contains up to 14% L-cysteine, which is also founding bird skin (chicken soup).

Horace Fletcher (creator of the mastication practice of "Fletcherism", was a tedious person and a bad scientist.

Dr William Beaumont took advantage of Canadian Alexis St.Martin and his fistulated stomach, for decades.

Italian saliva scientists (like Erika Silletti) can't stand Dutch food, and go grocery shopping in Germany where they can pick up ingredients for home cooked Italian meals.

There are two kinds of saliva - stimulated and unstimulated.  Stimulated makes up 70 to 90% of the saliva a person produced in a day.  Unstimulated keeps down bacteria and fights disease, creating long amino acid chains (mucins) as well as regulating pH.  

The parotid glands are our faithful servants, making saliva whenever we eat, no matter what it is, trying to help us get it down.  

People affected by Sjögren's syndrome have damaged salivary glands and don't make saliva, suffer from chronic dry mouth. Their teeth wind up becoming soft and rotting out.

Babies have salivary lipase to break down milk fat, but as they get older, the lipase moves into their gut and out of their saliva.  

At the American Cleaning Institute, there are actually a Dr Luis Spitz, and a consultant Keith Grime!

Fabric Softeners work by partially digesting the fibers of your clothes, to make them less rigid, rounder, seemingly "softer"  (ew!)

Inter-museum Conservation Association conservators use spit when restoring clay works of art.  

Incubated Saliva smells worse than fishy amines (rank vaginal odor), dirty feet, or any other human by product that one can attempt to de-odorize.

Inuit parents and grand parents siphon nose snot from their children's and grand children's noses by oral suction - sucking the snot out of them.

Inuit nose rubbing is called "kunik"

When a Brahmin comes in contact with crow dropping, the ritual purification is "1000 and one baths".

The World Wide Web has far more mucilaginous strands that are not-safe-for-work (NSFW), compared to scientific references about the frothiness of protein.

Saliva kills more kinds and greater numbers of bacteria than does mouthwash.  Use mouthwash for the rinsing and taste, but don't fool yourself that it is killing more bacteria than your natural saliva.  It can't.  There are more strains of bacteria that live ON Other bacteria in your mouth, than the culture-able strains that live in most human mouths.  

In any crowd, approximately 20% of the people in that crowd will pick their nose.  Doctors, students, religious, managers…  it doesn't matter. (again, studied by scientists)

The medical perforative "quack" is derived from the German quacksalber which Merck used to promote as an antisyphilitic remedy.

In the New Testament of Mark, Jesus uses spittle to treat the blindness of a man, but in Luke and Matthew, they leave out that story entirely.  The spittle treatment was only partially effective, as Mark reported the man say "people who looked like trees" walking around.

There are three types of fingerprints:

loop - 65%, whorl (30%), and arch (5%)

There are 4 types of oral processing styles for semi solid foods like custard or yogurt:

simple (50%), taster (20%), manipulator (17%) and tongued (13%).  

A human's teeth can sense something as small as 10 microns.

When Tom Little was a child, he swallowed hot clam chowder in 1895 and burnt his throat shut, so that a doctor had to give him a fistula in his stomach into which pre chewed food was poured via a funnel. Beer however, was poured straight into the funnel, without chewing.  If he put the food straight into the funnel without chewing, Tom was not satisfied, and still felt hungry.  

A high-viscosity bolus travels down the esophagus at approximately the same speed as a fast tortoise; 0.22 mph.  

When patients suffer from dysphagia, and they have to chose between being able to talk, or being able to chew and eat, they usually opt to have their voice box (larynx) removed and become mute, rather than not being able to chew their food and swallow - so strong is the human desire to chew and taste and swallow!

The snapping of a chip sends sound waves at 300 meters per second. Humans prefer to hear it at 90 to 100 decibels as they chew.  (340 m/s = speed of sound at sea level)

An orca's fore-stomach has been measured to be 5 feet x 7 feet, unstretched.  A 24 ft killer whale was once dissected by E.J. Slijper, to reveal 14 seals & 13 porposies (presumably adolescents or very small young).  

Mary's wit shows clearly in sentences about seamen, sperm whales, suction and swallowing…  =)

An unrestrained 10 pound dog will impact your car's windshield with 500 lbs of force in a 50 mph head on collision. 500 lbs of force is also the compressive force exerted by a birds gizzard on what it swallows, as evidenced by René Réaumur in 1752.

Claude Bernard used to vivisection experiments on dogs in 1855, that were so horrific, bizarre, and unnecessary, that his wife Marie Françoise "Fanny" Bernard eventually left him in 1870 and founded an anti-vivisection society.

After a person dies, their stomach's acids continue to digest, and without the protective mucosal lining of the stomach being relined every three days, the stomach will begin to "digest itself".  In warmer climates, the heat accelerates the pace.  

Per anum and "per annum" are VERY different in meaning.  Just one little "n" in the middle  =)  "10% interest per anum" would be extremely hilarious!

pylorus = the stomach-to-intestine valve

A cow's rumen is the size of a 30 gallon trash can.

TLESR = transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxation  (burp)

A Liverpool woman in 1984 died when her stomach ruptured, after she only ate

2 pounds of kidneys, 1.3 lbs of liver, 1/2 a pound of steak, 2 eggs, 1 lb of cheese, 1/2 pound of mushrooms, 2 lbs of carrots, head of cauliflower, two slices of bread, 10 peaches, 4 pears, 2 apples, 4 bananas, 2 lbs of plums, 2 lbs of grapes, and 2 glasses of mile; 19 lbs in all.

Takeru Kobayashi nearly beat her record (and lived) by eating 18 lbs of cow brains in 15 minutes, in an eating competition.  

Dyspepsia - stomach pains after eating (typical American weekend & buffet syndrome)

Bristol Stool Scale - actually used "type" excrement

Defecography - "as close to pornography as medicine will come" - gastroenterologist Mike Jones

If you refuse to take a meal on an international flight (especially from Columbia or Bolivia to the US) you will probably be interviewed by the DEA when you land in the US.  Drug smugglers who have swallowed balloons of narcotics avoid eating and drinking to slow down the movement of their cargo through their digestive tracts.

alvine - of or relating to bowel blockages, coined by orthopedist Dr Gregory Alvine.

CH4 and H2 are explosive in concentrations higher than 4 to 5 percent.  Liquid Manure pits can be naturally topped with as much as much as 60% frothy methane.

Up to 80% of flatus is hydrogen (not methane).  Only 1/3 of humans harbor gut bacteria that makes methane.

NASA space suits recirculate the air inside of them 3 times each minute, including an astronaut's flatus  =P

Grumous = clotted or lumpy

glabrous = smooth and hairless

periblepsis = wild look of delirium

maculate = spotted

People (usually women) who hold in their flatus re-absorb a great deal of that 80% hydrogen into their blood, which they then breathe out through their mouths.

Pythons and Boas have cecums, just as horses, rabbits, and koalas do.  The constrictors use it to digest the remnants of their prey's vegetarian diets, using bacteria to break down the vegetable matter into nutrients, and…   hydrogen.  Daenerys Stormborn exaggerates her motherhood  =)

Beano gives away wind breakers as promotional items…  sponsors a hot air balloon in races, and has cans of beans in their break room at AkPharma.   

Michael Levitt has published 34 papers on flatus.  He's identified that it is trapped methane that makes floaters (not fiber or fat), he invented the hydrogen breath analyzer, and identified the 3 main chemicals that make flatus smell:  hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol, and dimethyl sulfide, in most all humans (he reversed engineered them with chemical supply house gases, until the gas chromatograph signatures matched).  

Devrom's active ingredient is bismuth subgallate - and it does not irritate the gut, unlike the irritating bismuth that Pepto-bismol uses. Devrom absorbs flatus odor.  I think I may be giving out Devrom to my extended family in Chicago next Christmas!!!

Rural Sudanese eat fermented (decomposing) caterpillar, frog, and heifer urine.  mmmmm yummy!  Can we vacation in the Sudan, please!?!?

Hydrogen sulfide is detectable by the human nose from <1 ppm to 150 ppm.  Above 150 ppm it paralyzes the olfactory nerves, and can kill you.   Human flatus is generally 1 to 3 ppm H2S.

Rats who eat their own feces (autocoprophagy) grow 3x as fast as rats who are restarted from eating their own feces (collars and corsets had to be employed to keep the rats from eating it as it came out, before it could fall through a grated floor.).  Vitamins B5, B7, B12, K, thiamine, riboflavin, and essential fatty acids made in the lower GI tract of the rats.  

Cows can re-swallow their food as much as 40 times - Cecotrophy, pseudo-rumination.

Indonesian civets eat coffee beans that are then excreted, and gathered by Indonesian humans, to see for exotic coffees that are $200/ lb.  (another reason to switch to tea)

Only cnidarians (sea anemones and jelly fish) eat and defecate out of the same orifice.  (pronounced "nidarians").  

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia has a colon that is 28 inches around (a normal colon is 3 inches around)

Elvis did not die of an overdoes of anything.  Elvis died of constipation.  The drugs in his system were not fatal…  they did however, help to slow down the natural colon motility (peristalses). Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain and Tammy Wynette also struggled with "obstinate constipation" (as Mary called it).

Human papillomavirus causes anal cancer (ew) - it is what killed Farrah Fawcett.  (another reason Not to "go there")

The strains of bacteria in your gut that you're born with pretty much stay with you the rest of your life.  You get them from your mother, mostly, when you're being born.  

Having Clostridium difficile in your gut can be miserable, and cause chronic, severe diarrhea (like 10x a day, wearing diapers severity) in adults. It kills around 16000 Americans a year (4X as many as 9-11)  A fecal matter transplant, from a donor who does not have Clostridium difficile can make your life much more pleasant.   Two weeks after the transplant, the donor & recipient's colon microbial profiles are synchronized.   Fecal transplants have been being done since 1958, have proven to be very effective, but Insurance companies think they are too "icky" and won't cover them.  (better to let 16000 people die annually instead).  Drug companies don't make any money off of them, and have actually lobbied AGAINST such transplants.  

Toxoplasmosis infects rats guts, but needs to be inside of a cat's digest tract to reproduce.  So toxoplasmosis alters the rat's behavior to make it attracted to cat urine, so that the rat can be eaten.   Ingenious, that evolution is!

Hilarious near homophone:  "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" line "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" ~ "the girl with colitis goes by"  (akin to Jimi H's "excuse me, while kiss this guy!")  

Probiotics - unless they are shipped in oxygen-free packaging and administered directly to the gut without any oxygen - are not probiotic.  Natural human gut microbes are anaerobic, and exposing them to oxygen kills them.  

Most people eat about 30 different things in their diet - humans are creatures of habit.  While some of us have wily varying food stuffs that we eat and drink, most Americans have about 30 different foods that are their "go to" choices.

[and if Mary Roach or her publicist are visiting this web page and reading this...  please let me know if 

a) I got anything wrong

b) you'd like me to redact any of the information

c) you thought what I gleaned from the vast information presented by Gulp was 'weird']

Colbert Tyson interview

It's a little old, pre-Higgs Boson discovery, but it still has some good points.   While I know some of my close friends deride Neil, I think his passion for science is a force of good in the world.

Double Catch

Dog-eat-dog...  shark-eat-shark world.   I hope I never run into a tiger shark in the Pacific.
Link here: http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/turducken-of-the-sea-scientists-off-delaware-catch-shark-within-a-shark/

John Oliver Hits His Stride

I am watching the DVR of The Daily Show from Monday, August 5th, and I must say, John Oliver has hit his stride.  He is funny as all hell, and delivers sarcasm even better than Jon Stewart in some cases.   I do miss Stewart, and I will be happy to see him come back from his documentary making in Jordan.  But honestly, John Oliver is hilarious, accommodating, and a perfect replacement / stand-in for John Stewart.   If you have not watched The Daily Show with John Oliver, you SHOULD watch it.  it's hilarious and poignant.

Creationism Is Making US Dumber

This is disgusting.

Distorted views being taught to impressionable children.  These "Christian" madrases in the US are doing a disservice to the nation.  "Blue Ridge Academy" in Landrum SC...   DDF and I used to live just a few miles from there.  A "100%" - that's a perfect score in fictional history.  Saudi Arabia would be proud.  ANyone in the USA who subscribes to this literal mis-interpretation of "The Bible" is frankly, delusional, and needs to seek therapy immediately.

Dis-Spirited Debate

Reza Aslan is the consummate gentleman. He incredibly, politely, and respectfully tried to speak with Faux News's Lauren Green on her "Spirited Debate" program, who refused to listen to anything Reza had to say, and who misunderstood what she didn't want to hear.  "Cringe Worthy" is how Slate puts it.  I'd say that Ms Green revealed herself for the biased Murdoch parrot that she truly is.  Have a watch for yourself, below:

"Why would a Muslim write a book about Jesus?"
Wow, don't bother doing a EEG doctor, the patient has no signals.
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth .  I am going to buy it in hard back, and read it this Fall.

Garman's Irish Flub

Last night, Dr Desert Flower got home at 5pm, unusually early for a week-day night, so I suggested we go out to happy hour and get a bite to eat.  I wanted to surprise her, so I took her to a place we'd never been before - Garman's Irish Pub, in Mission Viejo.  It's about 5 miles from our house, a short drive, and it had outdoor seating, good yelp reviews, and appeared to be a nice "neighborhood place", not a chain, local.  Let's try it, why not?

So we drive Celeste up to Mission Viejo, found Garman's, and as we approached the door, it was opened by a hostess and greeted (good so far).  The hostess also had to double as our waitress... (oh...) since they were short staffed (strike 2).  We asked if we could be seated outside - it was 75F and a pleasant evening.  No, the outside dining area was closed for a private function - a fashionable ensemble of perfectly dressed and quaffed young high school and college aged boys (the OC young men's choral group, perhaps?), they were fabulous!  Ok, we'll sit inside... that's fine.  Our hostess/waitress assured us that she'll be right back to take our drink order.  Sure.

She arrived a few minutes later with ice waters, and took our drink & appetizer order.  Ok.  20 minutes later, after talking our our work days, we noticed we still were nursing ice waters.  Hostess/waitress returned, apologized for the lack of drinks, assured us they'd be right there, and came back 5 minutes later with drinks.  We should have just paid for them, and left to get dinner somewhere else, but we thought we'd give dinner a try, so we ordered, thinking the appetizer would come sometime soon.  We each order a soup and salad combo, but in different configurations.  Pleasantly, the hostess took the order, and we sipped our drinks, though the lime on the edge of DDF's glass looked more like a sad, wilted lemon, but OK, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

There's no silverware on the table, so I ask if we can get some. "Yes, right away" hostess replies with a smile, and returns with 2 forks, one dirty butter knife and one clean one, and a stack of bar napkins.  I examine the knife, try to clean it with one of the bar napkins as DDF comments "Just keeps going downhill".  I used to work as a bus boy in high school and college, so serving unclean silverware is a pet-peeve of mine. Easily avoidable, if the staff is paying attention, from dishwasher to bus boy to server.  But that's fine, I am not eating anything that requires the use of a knife.

Another 15 minutes pass, and my soup arrives.  No soup for you DDF!  It's soup... it's already prepared...  just ladle it into a bowl...  but ok.  I asked the hostess (as she brought the soup) "so we're not going to get the appetizer?" and she blankly looks at us and asks "you ordered an appetizer?" "Don't worry about it, that's fine."I tell her "We don't need it".  She apologizes profusely, looking at her ordering tablet.  "We're really busy with the private party, I'm so sorry!"  "It's fine, don't worry about it".  2 minutes later, a cook hurriedly brings us a plate of 7 cold stuffed mushrooms. I eat 2 of them, and DDF eats the rest (we're hungry) as I finish my soup.

My tomato bisque gone, DDF's potato cheddar soup arrives, and two very small (dessert plate sized) arugula salads are placed on the table, one on a small plate, and one in a small bowl (maybe the kitchen ran out of same sized serving dishes?).  They have no dressing on either of them.  I finish my Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey.  DDF's drink has no discernible alcohol content in it.  We wait for the dressing to arrive as DDF finishes her soup.  Other waitresses, and the t-shirt & jeans clad owner, are actively avoiding our table.  The owner is glad handing and greeting all of his regulars - a group we will decidedly never be - patting them on the back, shaking hands, greeting them by name.  I try for a solid 5 minutes to flag down a waitress, a bus boy, anybody to bring us some salad dressing for our dry salads.  I am invisible, despite our table being adjacent to 2 large (20+ person) family gather group tables, and the busy out door seating area.  I finally catch the hostess as she is seating a newly arrived couple at the booth behind us, and ask her if we can get some salad dressing as neither salad has any.  "Do you want one, or two portions of salad dressing?" she inquisitively implores.  "Two salads, two portions of dressing, please" I politely reply.  A few minutes later, vinaigrette dressing arrives, and she asks if we'd like to refresh our alcoholic beverages.  "No thanks, just the check".

$35 for 2 soups and salads, cold stuffed mushrooms (that were barely the diameter of a US quarter), one finger of whiskey ($7), and one weak vodka mixed drink.  I tipped our beleaguered and stressed out hostess/waitress 16% out of pity.  It wasn't her fault that the kitchen was slow & incompetent, that the bar was short staffed, or that her boss didn't help her out.  She was pleasant and apologetic - but usually when the service is that slow & forgetful, management steps in to knock something off the bill or offer a free desert or something...  but we were not regulars, and now, we won't be back.  It was interesting to try a new place...  but after the first 30 minutes of waiting for food, the experience started to become a tragic comedy.

Watching A Train Wreck

The phrase "like watching a train wreck" is frequently used by English speakers for a variety of situations.  Actual "old timey" black and white footage of train wrecks showing steam locomotives going over broken bridges or colliding head on into each other are anachronistic and un-relatable by modern humans.  But the Spanish high speed rail train wreck yesterday in North West Spain was captured on video (link here).

It is a terrible tragedy that more than 70 people died and 130 were injured on that train wreck.  Spain has one of the most enviable rail systems in Europe.  I've taken the train from Madrid to Toledo and found it comfortable, affordable, efficient, clean, and pleasant.  If you watch the 14 second video
http://news.yahoo.com/video/cctv-video-shows-spain-train-121213066.html
from a purely mechanical stand point (no humans are visible, even if you know the train is full of real people) around the 5 second mark, you see either the first car or the 2nd car behind the engine begin to leave the track.  As the car starts to shift, part of the train rises and hits the high voltage line - or the shifting car hits a tower supporting the high voltage line - and I think that is what causes the flash that looks like an explosion.

As part of my job as an engineer, I analyze failures of large, complex systems.  Rarely is there video footage of the point of initiation of failure events, and usually we have to piece together secondary evidence to try and understand what lead to the failure.  So it is difficult for me to not watch this particular train wreck.

The engine does not appear to be the cause.  The cars behind the engine did not fully decouple from the engine, because if they had, the engine would have continued unabated while the rest of the train careened off the tracks - unabated that is, until it coasted to a stop several miles away, the high voltage lines being damaged and the main breakers at the last relay station tripping.  So what makes a train car leave the track?  A bad track / damaged track can, but in this case, the track supported the heavier engine just fine.  A ruptured wheel (wheel burst) on the car could cause this, but the investigation has not yet shown that to be the case.  There did not appear (in the video) to be any explosions under the train, so sabotage / terrorism does not appear to be an obvious cause.

My heart goes out to all of the families of those people killed and injured on the train crash.  I do hope that the Spanish transportation investigators are able to piece this together, and issue corrective actions to mitigate risks of future crashes that might have the same cause.

Welcome To Paradise

It is the middle of July here in Orange County, 4 miles away from the Ocean, about 5 miles from the
base of the largest mountains, the first summer I've ever spent in California.   The nights have been in the 60s, and the days have been in the 70s, sunny, with a light breeze.  The humidity is averaging between 20% and 40% most days.  We HAVE Run our AC for 3 or 4 days, usually in the afternoon on a day with little-or-no-wind, when solar heating has brought the inside of the house up to about 80.

When I compare this to July in Arizona, where it is regularly over 110F and the AC runs non-stop even at night, this is a much better quality of life.  When I hear from my friends in NY, SC, GA, IN, and New England about how hot and humid it is there in July, I cringe, and encourage them to come visit us here in California!  =)

We've got an extra body board... and the water is now averaging 72F down at Dana Point... come and visit, and I'll take you body boarding.  Send your progeny (who are old enough to feed and bathe themselves) and we'll look after them for a few days while they're here (yes, free room and board), and pick them up from the airport (20 minutes away) or train station (5 minutes away).

It's really a beautiful place.  We pay huge amounts in tax, but we are getting fantastic parks, traffic lights that work, roads without pot holes, rapid police response, a distinct lack of graffiti, prompt city services, nearly non-existent crime, delicious and diverse restaurants, breathable air, stunning landscapes, and an excellent quality of life.