raleighnet.org

The article When Brain Damage Helps contains a logic problem that is much easier for somebody with a specific type of brain damage to solve.

I had no problem solving it, so I assume that means I have brain damage (actually, about 43% of the non-brain damaged people were able to solve it compared to 80% of brain damaged people, so I probably haven’t been lobotomized in my sleep). Awesome. I wonder what other super powers I have.

I drove up to Santa Barbara and went out on a whale watching boat trip. It was a fun day. Some of the whales got almost within touching distance, and there were hundreds of dolphins swimming and jumping around. It turns out it’s not very easy to photograph whales. You basically just get a bit of gray — and given the cloudy and foggy day, that means that the whale, the water and the sky were all kind of an uninteresting gray. I did what I could though, and you can see a few whale watching photos here.

I had a few hours of light after the whale watching trip, so I stopped in to the Santa Barbara Zoo as well. You can see some zoo pictures here.

By the way, when they tell you that even when it’s cloudy you can still get sunburned… you should totally believe them. I’m terribly red right now.

Yesterday, I went for a hike in Malibu. The Solstice Canyon Loop is an interesting trail to hike. There’s this burnt out old building that you can explore, and plenty of streams and waterfalls. I would have liked to have seen the house before it was burned. It’s sort of tough getting an idea of what it must have been like because it seems like the outside and inside of the house must have been very tightly integrated, sort of like a Frank Lloyd Wright house or something. A tripod would have been very helpful on this hike since it was a little too dark under the canopy for hand held most of the time. Still I managed to make a few pictures of Solstice Canyon.

I had no idea Roger Ebert was so powerful. Thank goodness there is The Thumbs of Fate comic strip to set me straight.