William Randolph Hearst's castle; Hearst Castle is a great diversion when visiting the central coast of California. The castle shows a taste of the life of William Randolf Hearst and his eclectic collecting passion. This magnificent estate of 165 rooms and 127 acres of gardens, terraces, pools and walkways commands an impressive view of the Pacific Ocean as well as the hills and dales of the Santa Lucia mountain range.
Scientists are continually researching some basic questions regarding biodispersion and animal behavior. With shark research, they are looking into why sharks congregate in certain areas, particularly with sharks that migrate. It has only been in recent years that marine scientists have identified migration routes for great white sharks. Now the question is why? What attracts them to a particular area? Is it because of an available food source, a particular geography, temperature, or some other environmental factor?
It was billed by Major League Eating organizers as a make-or-break moment for one of their biggest stars. Passersby just saw two guys quickly gobbling lots of giant calzones. 
When the owners of a $480-million seaside luxury resort said they needed more money to ensure it would open, they turned to Rancho Palos Verdes.
The stage version of Mel Brooks' comedy "The Producers" - which famously contains a lavish production number called "Springtime for Hitler" - is now playing in Berlin in a theater that once contained a box for the fuhrer. Martin Sommerlatte, dressed as Hitler, plays for laughs in that big production number.
For decades, Benny Goodman and his clarinet popped up just about everywhere, and when they did, just about everyone knew it. Goodman, who would have turned 100 on May 30, defined for most people the swing era that dominated popular American music for much of the 1930s and 1940s. From Carnegie Hall and New York's exclusive clubs to his backing up Jack Teagarden in 1933 on "Texas Tea Party," he was as versatile and prolific as he was famous.
Works from one of the world's great private collections of Chinese art are on display at The Huntington Library near Los Angeles. The collection is owned by Chinese American Wan-go Weng. It shows the importance of art in China and in one Chinese family, in particular.
Carole Bayer Sager's passion for music has given the world scores of memorable songs, including her collaborations on "Nobody Does It Better," "Don't Cry Out Loud," "That's What Friends Are For" and the Oscar-winning "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)." And to think it all started back in the '60s when, as a high-schooler, she wrote "A Groovy Kind of Love."
"Departures" is a gentle film about a quiet man in conflict with his world, his father, himself. It is also about death and its rituals. Yet the film manages to be anything but dark; whimsy and sweet irony are laced throughout, a warmhearted blend that turned it into the surprise winner of 2008's Oscar for foreign-language film.
Several times in this blog I have cited my support of ecotourism as a means of enlightening people to the wonders of nature and the need for conservation. And while that is the overarching goal, for ecotourism to be truly successful it must contain a strong economic component that makes it appealing to those who may be faced with having to change established business models or personal activities for the sake of ecotourism operations.
Ranging from hospitality opportunities, including tour guide training to cabins and restaurants, to scientific research support to land and road development - all provide a variety of economic opportunities for local communities. It's fundamental and the cynic may see it as locals just being self-serving, but one of the best ways to garner support for conserving natural resources is to provide a tangible benefit, particularly in areas where the people's day-to-day existence holds much greater influence compared to big picture goals like conservation.
There's one marine animal that, frankly, I don't pay much attention to in this blog and that is sea birds. Except for concern over their uncanny ability to bomb our cars, hats, and docks with globs of white, many people don't give them much thought - maybe the occasional shot of an oil-soaked sea gull catches our eye, but beyond that . . .
"Burn, Baby, Burn," the monumental, recently acquired 1965-66 painting by Chilean-born Roberto Matta (1911-2002) was installed the other day at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on the fourth floor of the building for Art of the Americas. It's quite something -- all 320 square feet (more or less) of it.
The Sleepers — Curtis, Deborah and their children, Kian, Perry and baby Theodore Wesley — live in a cave, a 17,000-square-foot gouge in the earth left by a 1930s sandstone mine. It’s Tom Sawyer country here in Festus, Mo., just a few miles from the Mississippi River, and the Sleepers showed their adventurous side by making their home 45 feet under a forest (and a neighbor’s home).
The decision to film two key scenes from "Star Trek" in the Dodger Stadium parking lot may not seem the logical choice, but that's just what visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett and director J.J. Abrams did. The drill platform scene with Kirk and Sulu battling Romulans high above planet Vulcan and the Delta Vega ice planet sequences were filmed there, on side-by-side sets over two weeks. "From a visual effects standpoint, you want people to believe that someone is actually standing outside on a drill platform," said Guyett, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic and second unit director. "We were looking for a piece of land that had as clean of a horizon as possible." The drill platform was a circular set 60 feet in diameter. Raising it 10 to 15 feet made it possible to shoot those hanging-off-the-edge moments. It also gave cinematographer Daniel Mindel mostly clear sky in his scope of vision. A green screen filled the bottom of the set.
The soft real estate market has developers of upscale condominium buildings auctioning brand-new units instead of trying to sell them conventionally. Thirty-eight units were sold at auction last week in West Ocean Two, a Long Beach high-rise completed in 2008.
The latest report from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) confirms what other scientific agencies have been saying, that the Arctic ice is melting at a rate faster than previously thought. Previous scientific models are not keeping up with the rapid changes taking place due to the feedback effect (when warmer temperatures melt ice that exposes dark water which absorbs sunlight and therefore warms the water even more), complicated by the influx of warmer water currents as climate change begins to impact the temperature/current relationships in the oceans.
The AMAP report, Update on Selected Climate Issues of Concern, noted the need for improved models (a subject I mentioned in an earlier posting) to determine the long-term impact of negative and potential positive effects. As an example, will the newly exposed seas increase plankton growth which can absorb more carbon (a positive) be offset by the loss of marine life, including plankton, due to the influx of more fresh water from melting ice (a negative) or vice-versa? 
Next weekend in Ft. Meyers Beach, Florida, the annual "Are You Man Enough" Shark Tournament was going to be held where fishermen could vie for recognition and prize money for the largest shark caught and brought back to the docks. The event brought the attention and wrath of several conservation organizations and the resulting pressure was enough to make the organizers opt for a catch-and-release policy only.
Since its founders built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway northwest of downtown Indianapolis in 1909, the speedway and the race -- which was first held in 1911 -- remain among the sporting world's most celebrated fixtures. And for many fans, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500 -- like Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby, and the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters -- endure as unique institutions whose popularity surpasses that of their sports. Shown above is Ray Harroun who came out of retirement to win the first Indy 500 in 1911.
One California Plaza (1985 - Arthur Erickson Architectural Corporation) and Two California Plaza (1992 - Arthur Erickson Architectural Corporation) are the 13th and 3rd tallest buildings in Los Angeles at 578 and 750 feet, respectively. Two California Plaza is on the left. Arthur Erickson passed away recently. He was 84.
Founded in 2007 in California, Airship Ventures Inc. operates the only passenger airship operation in the United States, featuring Eureka, the world’s largest airship. At 246 feet in length, the Zeppelin is longer than a 747, more than 50 feet longer than the largest blimp. Based out of Moffett Field, Eureka also flies out of Oakland and Monterey.
Just a little over two weeks away, World Oceans Day is an internationally recognized, public relations opportunity, sponsored by The Ocean Project, to recognize the importance of our oceans and consider their fate and what we can do about it. These often are not earth-shattering events but good opportunities to increase public awareness. With the readers of this blog? Not likely as you are all pretty aware of the many issues threatening the health of our oceans. Once again, it's the unenlightened we need to reach - your friends and neighbors who are unaware or don't believe that they can make a difference. Those are the ones we need to reach.The world's ocean:
Generates most of the oxygen we breathe
Helps feed us
Regulates our climate
Cleans the water we drink
Offers us a pharmacopoeia of potential medicines
Provides limitless inspiration!
Yet for too long, human society has taken the world's ocean for granted.
Now we can give back! Take part in World Oceans Day events and activities this year and help protect our ocean for the future!
It's up to each one of us to help ensure that our ocean is protected and conserved for future generations. World Oceans Day allows us to:
Change perspective - encourage individuals to think about what the ocean means to them and what it has to offer all of us with hopes of conserving it for present and the future generations.
Learn - discover the wealth of diverse and beautiful ocean creatures and habitats, how our daily actions affect them, and how we are all interconnected.
Change our ways - we are all connected to the ocean! By taking care of your backyard, you are acting as a caretaker of our ocean. Making small modifications to your everyday habits will greatly benefit our blue planet.
Celebrate - whether you live inland or on the coast we are all connected to the ocean; take the time to think about how the ocean affects you, and how you affect the ocean, and then organize or participate in activities that celebrate our world ocean.
In a smiley-faced ending to a CBD lawsuit against the U.S.'s largest retailer, last Thursday a judge overturned the approval of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter near Joshua Tree National Park because the project wrote off the impacts of its greenhouse gas emissions.
In response to a suit brought by CBD (represented by Earthjustice), a federal judge last week sent the California Fish and Game Commission back to the drawing board on its assessment of the plight of the American pika, a tiny mammal threatened by climate change. In 2007, CBD petitioned the Commission to protect the pika under the state's Endangered Species Act, and after it rejected the petition, CBD filed suit the next year. Last Friday, a judge issued a written order to the Commission invalidating its rejection of the petition and ordering it to think again about protecting the pika.
This Monday the tusked, blubbery, and highly imperiled Pacific walrus moved closer to Endangered Species Act protection when a federal judge approved a settlement between the CBD and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service compelling the agency to decide on protections for the species. The Pacific walrus is in danger as global warming melts the Arctic sea ice it needs for resting, breeding, raising young, and foraging activities. CBD petitioned to protect the pinniped in February 2008 and sued in December to force a response; now the feds must voice their first thoughts on protection this September, with a final decision due next year.
Natural Capital: Putting a Price on Nature By Dr. Taylor Ricketts
Sometimes pushing the limits of conservation means changing our perspective on a problem or challenging established assumptions. Doing so can unlock whole new approaches to conservation and lead to waves of success on the ground.
Assumption: Conservation and economic development are by nature at odds - a family can either earn money off their land or set it aside for conservation. With colleagues at Stanford University and The Nature Conservancy, we decided to turn this assumption on its head: What if people could be rewarded for conserving their land through payments from other people who value the "ecosystem services" that land provides? Could those who use the water that is cleaned when it flows through wetlands pay the owners of the wetlands to conserve that ecosystem? How cool would that be? That's how the Natural Capital Project was born.
To be fair, the concept of ecosystem services - and payments - has been around for a while. The goal our three organizations now share is to make them an operational force for conservation. We have set up experimental sites - in China, Tanzania, the Mesoamerican Reef, California and Hawaii - to test valuing ecosystem services in explicit economic terms. Some say it is politically dangerous to put a price tag on nature; others say it can't be done. Both could be true, but we believe the venture is worth the risk, as the rewards could be huge.
In Tanzania's Eastern Arc Mountains. Ancient forests here sustain thousands of species unique to the area. They give birth to half a dozen rivers providing water and electricity to more than 4 million people. Local villagers depend on the forest for firewood, medicinal plants, building materials and food. But in recent decades over 70 percent of the forest has been destroyed by logging, fires and farmland conversion. River flows have declined, interfering with hydropower and leading to increasingly frequent rolling blackouts in Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam. In short, the links between nature and human well-being are as tightly forged here as anywhere on Earth.
My WWF colleague Dr. Neil Burgess and I are working with international researchers, local experts and decision makers to calculate the forest's economic value to local, national, and global populations. With funding from the Packard Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust, we're creating maps that plot the value of ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, water purification, flood control, crop pollination, and harvested forest products. Only a few months into a five-year project, we've hit the ground running. Teams are in the field collecting data on water purification, carbon sequestration and timber. By the time you read this, we'll have met with leading decision makers to ensure our research is as useful as possible. In early 2008 we'll use the data and software we're now developing to publish our first maps. We already see clear political support and interest in using our products: The Tanzanian government has commissioned a task force on ecosystem services, based in part on the technical advice Neil has provided them for years. The Natural Capital Project is simply the most exciting initiative I've been involved with at WWF. Combining powerful research with strong and immediate application, we aim to break new intellectual ground and achieve big conservation results. It is experimental, with all the uncertainties that go along with any experiment. But we have the right partners, wonderful support from our leaders, and a powerful idea: making conservation economically attractive.
You can learn more about this and other WWF projects by visiting their web site, one of the most comprehensive in the conservation field.
The ocean is being bombarded from several directions and the effects can be not only predicted with computer models but can be seen right now first-hand. Some time ago I ran a post on the impact of domoic acid on wild life (and potentialy humans, too). Domoic acid is a toxin produced by phytoplankton algae and the issue presented in the post was that man's "treated" sewage waste products, pumped far off shore were, in essence, over-fertilizing the algae and thereby increasing the level of algae-based toxins.
One more shark story, and this one ties into the Shark-Free Marinas Initiative I wrote about last Thursday. Early this month, Florida sport fisherman Bucky Dennis reeled in a world-record Great Hammerhead. At 1,060 pounds, it far surpassed the previous record of 620 pounds. While Mr. Dennis feels quite proud of his catch (he has been hoping to set a new record for some time), he has been heavily criticized from a variety of sources, including other fishermen (Read St. Petersburg Times article.).
This was a tragedy all around. Due to it's size, Dennis had no way of weighing it unless he brought it back to the marina where it could be hoisted and weighed - and that meant killing it.
In the end, all Dennis had for his conquest was a handful of teeth and some meat he gave away. Then this magnificent animal, once a tribute to enduring survival and longevity, was dumped back into the sea.
For you whale watchers out there, there's good news regarding the right whales that migrate along the U.S. East Coast. It was reported last week by the New England Aquarium that a record number of calves were reported for this spring. At 39 calves, that's considerable improvement from 2000 when only one calf was born.
