(Body) Surfing in California

Riding the wave...

Today the 28th Annual World Bodysurfing Championship start in Oceanside. Gotta watch it..

Swift boat liars exposed

The presidential election campaign get really ugly: After a group of Vietnam Veterans - the http://www.swiftvets.com/Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - attacked democratic candidate John Kerry that he lied on his war record, the New York Times unveils in a sensational article that the group is having close ties to prominant Republicans with close ties to Rove and Bush himself. Plus: The newspaper also put together this handy graphic to track all the Bush and Rove connections in their slimy glory, as well as several of the Swift Boat Veterans lies. In the meanwhile the Bush campaign - of course - denied any involvement in the ads .

Eagle Rock: landmark as art installation

Great article in the Los Angeles Times about the landmark which gave our neighborhood its name, the Eagle Rock: (...)"Already something of a community icon, the designated Los Angeles Cultural Historical Monument appears on stylized street signs and the community flag, and is found in the names of churches, schools and local organizations. It's also visible to commuters on the Ventura Freeway. Rising up wart-like from the Eagle Rock Valley, its round shape (some say the profile looks like George Washington's) is set off by the jagged San Gabriel Mountains to the north, and the low Eagle Rock Valley to the south. But the real spectacle is on the southern face, where an eroded impression looking remarkably like an eagle in flight is visible when the sun's rays cast a shadow on it at midday.
A local artist turned the Eagle Rock into a public art installation which will light up the first time in history Septemer 25. Two projectors will expose the eagle silhouette and project the art installation onto a nearby face of the rock. After that, the rock will be illuminated every weekend.
The formation of Eagle Rock took place 10 million to 15 million years ago, when tons of sediment and rock were deposited at a bend in the stream that once ran through the Eagle Rock Valley. According to one version of Tongva legend, an eagle once made its nest on top of the rock. One day, it swept up a baby in a basket with its talons. Tongva warriors gave chase, shooting arrows at the eagle until it dropped the baby, unharmed, on a soft patch of earth. Unable to regain altitude, the eagle hurtled smack into the rock's steep south face, leaving the imprint of a bird with outspread wings in the stone.
Eagle Rock was first incorporated into the San Rafael Land Grant given to Spanish sergeant Jose Maria Verdugo in 1784, the third private land grant in Alta California. Notorious bandit Tiburcio Vasquez is said to have camped at its base in 1874. What is believed to have been the first Easter Sunrise service in Los Angeles, in 1917, was held on its crown. Before highways, a trolley line once took recreation-seeking Angelenos there to escape the city. In 1923, Eagle Rock was incorporated into the city of Los Angeles.

Weblogs in American classrooms

American teachers started to use weblogs in the classrom, the New York TImes reports. Maybe I should use it, too, since I'm a language instructor now.

Big demand for jobs in L.A.

Approximately 250000 applications have poured in for 3000 temporary jobs at the ports of Los Angeles and Los Beach, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Strange link between housework and sex

How much housework he does may determine how many children she wants. That's right. Cooking, grocery shopping, vacuuming, dusting, laundry, and the dirty dishes can be a fertility booster or a contraceptive. Researchers from Brown University determined that 81 percent of couples in which the husband does at least half the housework will have a second child. But that number drops to 74 percent if the woman does most of the cleaning and cooking chores and has a job outside the home, reports BBC News Online.

Tracking the way we use language

I just found an interesting website: Wordcount. It is an artistic experiment in the way humans use language. Wordcount "presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance. The larger the word, the more it is used."

City blogs are becoming fashionable

According to CNN metro blogs - weblogs with insider news about a specific city - are the latest trend. New York has the Gothamist, Chicago has Gapersblock and Los Angeles hast the LAist. A (new) network of blogs which covers half a dozen major cities in the U.S. and Europe can be found at Metroblogging.

A daily dosis beach

Webcam from Avila Beach, California.