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Random jumble of thoughts from the weekend.

Erin and myself spent the last few days in San Diego, California.  While ostensibly for my birthday, which was in August, it was a family vacation.  Our aim was to take our progeny Dobhran to meet the Pacific Ocean as well as take in the Sea world park.  The journey to California was mostly uneventful and relatively close to the posted speed limit.  One thing that was annoying, an immigration checkpoint, an internal border checkpoint  the kind much beloved in every other country that’s not the USA ( if you’ve watched the movies from the ww2 and cold war era a point that was made quite clear) Had the same on the way back though this time with drug sniffing dogs..   thanks I like my family  being treated like suspects  it reminds me of the visit to Sea World,  Search the backpacks and then make you go through a scanner and provide a biometric from your fingerprint , er WTF  we just gave them over $100 for the privilege of entering their park and this is how they treat their guests.

Usual libertarian excuse follows.

They are perfectly within their rights to do so  just as we are to not attend. Sadly that would have  required a degree of respect from their side showing this to be the case prior to taking the money.  

I did write Sea world asking them how long they retained the information from the scans and what was stored with them alongside the general question of why they feel the need to do this.  It will be interesting to see if I even get a reply.

I also think the sea world has quite literally jumped the shark in terms of being anything other than an entertainment than educational establishment.  It seems that the trend in aquariums and zoos in general is to tell you   fairly little about the animal themselves and provide explicit detail on how  man is fucking up the planet I’m not sure that’s the correct way to go about this. Honestly, if people have a better understanding of ecology and to quote to Dirk gently.  “The fundamental interconnectedness of all things” we wouldn’t need a bully pulpit to tell us about our failings.  When we could be concentrating on the animal’s success in getting this far.

Hotels and parking

Erin found a hotel using Priceline which got us a good deal for the class of establishment.  We were staying in one major failing, however Priceline  fails to take into account the ancillary charges, such as parking, which was billed at over $16 a day.  Paying for parking in San Diego sucks, oh wait I’m assuming you found some to park in, but we did find a nice little loophole. By parking at the mall, close to a Ben & Jerry’s store, we could go eat in the gas light district and then return for the car several hours later and validate our parking by buying something from Ben & Jerry’s. Technically this is getting free parking, but that is not as cool as getting free ice cream. 

Next up.

The Food and the sea.