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Category Archives: 2000-2009

Gardner Street School

Gardner Street School is a block north of Sunset Boulevard and a few blocks west of La Brea. I showed up here for first through fifth grade and I hadn’t been back inside the place since the last day of school in June of 1969. I used to walk half a block to buy the [...]

Plague of Locusts

OK, maybe it was one cricket, but you don’t see one of these every day.

Earthquake Retrofitting

If you live in earthquake country, this is a sight you’re likely to see in your neighborhood very soon.

Recent studies have shown that common bubblegum does a better job than steel when it comes to protecting old buildings from earthquakes. When the ground starts shaking, the bubblegum stretches without breaking, allowing the building to roll [...]

Pescadero Avenue, O.B.

Ocean Beach is one of the most fun parts of San Diego. Here we see the view west from a few blocks up Pescadero Avenue. I’m looking forward to winter. When this neighborhood gets a few inches of snow, people snowboard down the hill, off the ski jump and into the ocean, and then catch [...]

Caution Rattlesnakes

Smoking and campfires are forbidden in the Hollywood Hills.
Public compliance with these rules went up dramatically when the Authorities brought in some rattlesnakes to enforce the laws!

Hollywood Construction

A massive tidal wave of money is coming into the core of Hollywood. Maybe the rest of California and the nation and the world are all having problems in real estate, but the Entertainment Capitol of the World is getting a lot of new buildings and luxury condos.
Here’s a shot of the cluster of buildings [...]

Ocean Beach View

Less than four years after my last day living at Venice Beach, I get to enjoy a water view once again. This time around it is from the border between Ocean Beach and Sunset Cliffs. My office will be here by the end of September. This is a tremendous development!
OB is a place “where the [...]

Lonesome Dove

The latest visitor to our tiny slice of unpaved suburbia is this bird, which hung out with us for a couple of hours before flying off. The bird and I watched one another for quite a while.
Who was this bird? Why did this bird choose this place? How come it was alone - don’t birds [...]

Half The Pressure Twice The Speed

This is my pencil. It is the legendary Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602. All discriminating writers recognize that this is the finest pencil ever produced. It is the Stradivarius of pencils. One of the reasons my ideas are so clever is that I’m using a better writing implement than most people.
Of course, not one of the [...]

O.B. Welcomes You To Behave

Ocean Beach is one of the saner places in San Diego County. You’ll notice that the alcohol ban is a new sticker attached to the sign. That’s because San Diego has prohibited alcohol at the beach. You see, the local cops have a tradition of rioting when too many people gather in one place to [...]

Dracula 1974

This rather nervous-looking cat was named Dracula because of his fondness of going for the neck of anybody wearing perfume. They all had it coming. Already I have featured one of the other weird cats from the spring of 1974. Don’t worry, there’s more where this came from! We had 12 cats in the house [...]

Marijuana Prohibition

 
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Here is a five-part presentation about the history of the drug laws. It’s a fascinating story, far more entertaining and bizarre than you might expect.

Dress For Success

If you’re going to stretch out underneath the trees and let somebody take a picture of your belly, it’s a good idea to be dressed appropriately. This is a nice way to enjoy a mild summer afternoon in one of the gentler neighborhoods of San Diego.

Afghan War: Illegal and Wrong

The latest Juris Vodcast is deadly serious.

 
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Barak Obama and many others who consider themselves to be progressive argue that the “real” front in the War on Terrorism is in Afghanistan. This is dangerous nonsense. Bush, Cheney, and the others lied about the Afghan war, too.
The Afghan war is yet another illegal war of aggression. We’ve [...]

Blue Dragonfly!

This magnificent creature posed for me on the surface of Big Bear Lake this afternoon.