Seattle

SO I've 'escaped' to Seattle for a few days to visit my friend Savas and also to get my head stuck into the books and make some significant progress before term starts and with it my TA duties and the maelstrom of other stuff ... eeek start of term it conjures images of packed buses, a full campus, mayhem everywhere ... ahhh the quiet days of summer will be over!
I got here on the weekend - just so I could relax some before going full throttle into work mode -- Saturday night we went to a lovely Mexican restaurant before going salsa dancing at Century ballroom. Some pretty incredible dancers, but also a lot of showing off!!!! Kinda fun to watch though!
Then yesterday we went for nice walks - my injured toe prevented us from going on a hike on Mount Rainier :o and hung out with one of Savas' friends who is in town for a couple of days from San Francisco.

I like Seattle - it feels somewhat more industrialised than Vancouver - but also somehow more cosmopolitan. It definitely has an 'American city' feel to it that I don't miss in Vancouver - but it has sort of the same dynamism & the same easy access to outdoors feel.

Reading up on work emails this morning I had this bit of news that merits being cited again:
According to "Aquaculture and Fisheries: A Global Strategic Business Report" published by Global Industry Analysts Inc., about one billion human beings worldwide depend on fish as their primary means of animal protein, particularly in coastal areas where reliance on fish is normally higher. [the crazy thing is actually going to that company's website and attempting to download the report you're told it will cost you $3950!!!! that cannot possibly be the case - that would be absolutely ludicrous! ]

The other bit of ocean news I've wanted to post here for a while but always seem to forget is the following sad report:
Large-scale analysis of the world's largest reef system indicates that coral destruction is faster and more widespread than researchers previously thought. Over the past 2 decades, coral has disappeared at five times the rate of Earth's rain forests.
If you follow the link you can actually read the whole article online, as it was published in PLoS ONE a new generation of open access publications.