Not Stukas Over Disneyland, but instead Zeppelins Over California!

Slashdot points to a story in The Industry Standard on a very, very cool thing: “Look, up in the sky: Zeppelin company Airship Ventures raises $8M” —

This fall, if our San Francisco Bay Area readers spot a zeppelin overhead, don’t worry — you haven’t been caught in a time warp. It will just mean that a startup called Airship Ventures has succeeded in bringing the zeppelin (an icon of 1930s aviation) back to the United States. The company just raised $8 million in a first round of funding.

Specifically, Airship Ventures plans to offer zeppelin rides out of Moffett Field. If the company follows through on its plans, it will bring the first zeppelin to Moffett Field since 1947. In a few months, Airship will operate a single Zeppelin NT based in Moffett’s Hangar 2, which was built by the Navy to house zeppelins in 1942.

Now if only they were down here in SoCal…

I was out watering the back yard plants earlier when a huge BOOM! BOOM! exploded somewhere. We had no idea at the time what it was, thinking maybe it was fireworks or something. But I think I know what it was!

“California landing for Atlantis”

The shuttle touched down at the Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert at 1549 (1949 GMT).

Poor weather conditions caused the touch-down to be first delayed and then moved from the original landing site, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

February 1st marks the fourth anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia breaking apart over Texas. It would be nearly 2 1/2 years before the Discovery returned to space, in June of 2005.

I posted on the day it happened, “I am in tears this morning, flooded with memories of the first shuttle we lost.”

Apart from its tragic ending, there were several unique aspects of STS-107 mission, including having as a crew member the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon. Carried with him was a copy of a drawing done by Auschwitz victim Petr Ginz, showing the Earth from the viewpoint of the moon.

Wikipedia articles:

• STS-107
• Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
• Ilan Ramon
• Petr Ginz

Other links:

• NASA STS-107 memorial page
• Moon Landscape drawing by Petr Ginz, part of a memorial website for Ilan Ramon.
• STS-107 Experiments Survive

“To even mention all the things the bird must constantly keep in mind in order to fly securely through the air would take a considerable part of the evening… The bird has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight. We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it.”

— Wilbur Wright

Arctic birds showing up in the California desert? Well, yes.

LA Times: Birders atwitter over sighting at Salton Sea

Scott Terrill got the news about 4 p.m. His son, who was attending a birding conference in the Central Valley, had heard about the sighting and called to tell his father. Minutes later, a co-worker came in to report news of an Internet posting of the bird. And just after that, a birding friend in Southern California gave him a call. The frenzy had begun.

Like many birders, Terrill, an ornithologist with a San Francisco Bay Area environmental consulting firm, keeps lists of the birds he’s seen. Lists are kept by state, by region, by time of year. A Ross’s gull was a great sighting for any list. For a California list, it was a crown jewel. The bird had never before been seen in the state.

Meanwhile, feral parrots squawk proudly in the Inland Empire.

Press-Enterprise: Wild parrots ruffle feathers in Redlands

There are a variety of theories on how they got here, but lots of people in Redlands and surrounding communities have been seeing — and more often hearing — feral parrots for more than 20 years.

Gene Cardiff, of Rialto, a past president of the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, says he seriously doubts that the parrots migrated to Redlands. That would amount to at least a 1,500-mile flight for the two most common Redlands species: the red-crowned (Amazona viridigenalis) and lilac-crowned (Amazona finchi), which normally call Central America and central Mexico home.