And Iran (or I don't know a lot of things)

Today was the last day of sketching class, so we presented our design projects. I think it went pretty well, I'll post the drawings soon. My instructor apparently liked my work, because she's holding onto my sheets for a bit to make copies as examples for future classes. Woot.

Watched Who Killed the Electric Car? this afternoon, and I encourage you to see it, if you haven't already. While people can argue about causes of global warming, whether global warming is real, etc., I think we can agree that breathing car exhaust is undesirable. It's pretty much impossible to spin smog as a plus. I haven't done extensive fact-checking on claims made in the movie, but this much is apparent:

1. General Motors and other major car manufacturers produced all-electric vehicles
2. Said vehicles were leased to a limited amount of drivers, at least some of whom had pleasant driving experiences
   
3. The leases on the cars were not renewed and the manufacturers took the cars back to be destroyed
4. Bearded Mel Gibson looks like a crazy homeless man

Regardless of the possible reasons for their actions, that the car manufacturers destroyed the cars is sad and wasteful. It's not even that they decided not to make the cars anymore. It's that they destroyed the fucking cars. Seriously. At least from what was presented by the filmmakers, the cars were fine, good, great, even. They could have at least let people buy up that limited run of cars. Couldn't they? Crushing them up and leaving them in a landfill seems so unbelievably pointless and wasteful.

And now the automakers are getting food stamps. Fuck. That. It's things like this that tell me most politicians who tout a free market don't really believe in free market policies.* Companies do business, some succeed, some fail. When a company fails, another company can fill the void it leaves, hopefully with a better business model or better luck. If a company constantly needs money transfusions to keep it hobbling along, it is failing. Pull the plug. Yes, people will lose their jobs, but other jobs and companies will take their place. It's not as if nobody's trying to build better cars in America, is there?

That domestic innovation is so discouraged when the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in technology and production is sickening.

/rant

Iran's so far away.

Yeah, I had to do that. Not certain that the reform candidate is necessarily the winner of the election, but then again, blanketing censorship of the internet and shooting demonstrators is a pretty dick move. That's what I have to say about that.

*This is my problem with fighting wars to promote "democracy." If we say that our ideas are better but need to be shoved down people's throats with a bayonet, it doesn't matter if the ideas are good or not. Use of force to promote the issue shows me a lack of confidence in the argument.

Escondido Falls Hike

We went hiking this past sunday at Escondido Falls, in Malibu. Pretty easy hike, with some nice scenery. The drive out to Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway is nice, too. It made me like southern california for a bit.

We took a wrong turn early on and ended up walking around rich people's houses. Seriously huge yards:


We turned around and found the right trail




























Scary spider


Small waterfall at the top. There was apparently another waterfall at the top that was more impressive and had swinging ropes, but Toby, Nicole, and I stayed behind while the others went to check it out. I wasn't too sure Toby could pull off the steeper climbing. She seemed to enjoy the hike, though.




























The water smelled kind of sulfurous, but it was pretty. This is now my desktop image at work:






















































































link to Picasa album