SWCAMBORNE

We went for a training walk in Altadena this morning.  It was a beautiful day.

There are some great houses.  This was one of our favorites:

Life is Good!

This post was one of my most popular ones ever.  The original was lost in the security lapse reported below.  This is an updated re-creation.

A NIMBY is an acronym, we all know, for a person who while proclaiming to be in favor of progress and change says quite clearly but:

Not In My Back Yard

A BANANA is a bit more adamant he says:

Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody

The really furious RAGE. This one is courtesy of Doug W. a brilliant environmental lawyer in NY. They are the:

Residents Against Goddamn Everything

This submission promoted a flock of posts with new anti development acronyms these from Arnie S. are the only two I could recover:

NOPE Not On Planet Earth

TEDAO Tear Everything Down At Once

We definitely need someone to build the Acronym-omatic I invented last year as an I-Phone application.

My neighbor Marta J.  sent me an email a few weeks ago telling me she had spotted a pair of Red-whiskered Bulbuls in her yard.  This morning Marta called with news of a sighting I grabbed my camera and binoculars and rushed across the street.  It was excellent I saw the Bulbul pair and tried to take a picture.

In my picture you can barely see the crest and the color.  Marta also sent me a link to a very cool birders website called whatbird.com.  Here is a direct link to the Bulbul on whatbird.com.  There is a much better picture, you can hear its very distinctive call and you can get enough data to decide whether the Bulbul is an invasive species or not.  Some say yes some say no.

When a sitting president calls for bipartisanship by the opposition – he really means surrender.

Mark Knoller

CBS News White House correspondent.

link to the article

An apology is in order.  Earlier this week Swcamborne was hacked and a phishing page was illegally inserted into the front of my blog.  I was finally able to get it removed by the hosting company Bluehost and all is well again now except for my and your confidence.

Thank you to all of the readers who emailed to alert me.  I did lose a few posts from the blog including the brilliant NIMBY post which I will try to recreate.

It turns out that there is no jurisdiction actively pursuing and prosecuting hackers and phishers.  The phishing site replicated a Bluehost page yet Pedro,the rep I spoke to, said “We are not part of the problem.”

I have hired a company to make my sites less vulnerable.  But ultimately it is up to all of us as users to be careful to never enter our confidential data without confirming who is asking for it.  I urge you to read the phishing definition on wikipedia.  As citizens we also need to urge politicians to get rules in place that better define virtual property and then enforce property rights law against violators.  I’ll be doing more posts on this issue now that it has gotten my attention.

We stayed for three nights at the Tabacon Resort near the Arenal Volcano. It was cloudy when we were there except for when it was cloudy and raining.

What Arenal looks like when it is not raining

Tabacon is a super nice hotel with the most phenomenal hot spring resort just down the road.

We spent one day at the pools, getting massages and in the waterfalls.  The water everywhere is about 105 degrees F.  Magnificent!

Lots of places have swim up bars.  This one is in a pool of 100 degree F water.  The perfect temperature it turns out for enjoying a Mai Tai.

Did I mention the flowers?

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In Costa Rica we got to drive a truck built by Great Wall a Chinese vehicle manufacturer.  It is not yet available in the USA.  We got to drive it while in Costa Rica because of the kind generosity of Maria and Tony S.  It came with a Garmin that was programed for Costa Rica.  What a pleasure it was to be driving a car that made us look local and at the same time actually know where we were going.

Tony tells me that the truck was inexpensive.  It deserves to be.  Great Wall doesn’t have its quality up to the standards of Toyota yet.  Perhaps that is a bad comparison, the brakes always worked.

Driving up to Arenal Volcano from Highway One we saw some signs in Hebrew.

On the way back we stopped to investigate.  The Hebrew is advertising a Hotel/restaurant/tourism spot named Lands in Love. It was started by a group of 16 friends from Israel.  It is vegetarian and pet friendly.

Nurit ate a falafel plate and I had a Latte and we talked for a few minutes with one of the founders.  Of course they have zip lines.

it seems that everyone who owns two trees in Costa Rica has put in a zip line.

The founders wanted to start a tourism business in Israel but the bureaucracy was too difficult.  They looked other places in the world and settled on Costa Rica, because it was where they though they would have the best opportunity. In terms of immigration, ease of starting a business, opportunity, capital transfers etc Costa Rica turned out to be the best choice for them.

Clearly their unique selling proposition is “An Israeli place in Costa Rica.”  It seems to be working they have been open four years and have grown 80% plus each year.  According to our contact they operate on the principles of communal capitalism.

We went on a boat tour of the Cano Negro one day.  It is up near the Nicaraguan border of Costa Rica.

There were Cayman (crocodiles) in the water, monkeys in the trees and birds everywhere.

The weather was overcast so the pictures are not as good as the day was.  Our excellent guide was Pablo.  He was the best we had in Costa Rica although all of the guides were quite good.

Howler Monkeys

One of the other guests on the trip saw what he thought was a crocodile.

The boat went over to look and Pablo announced another sighting of a “Log-odile.” For which we award new word credit.

I took pictures bad pictures of lots of birds.  The above is a sample.

You cannot divert a tiger from devouring his prey by adopting resolutions or sending cables.

You have to take your gun and shoot him.

Richard Lichtheim

Writing in 1942 about how to stop Hitler’s genocide.