Encounters in the street

Did I men­tion it was hot here? Try 34 degrees at 8.30pm…

I’ve dis­covered that being ran­domly help­ful to lost-look­ing Eng­lish-speak­ers is not only good for the karma, it’s often good for the intel­lect and the pocket. This last lot not only bought me dinner (mostly I’ve been get­ting a drink here and there out of it) but they included a guy giving a lec­ture on biod­iversity at the uni and Nich­olas Ash­ford, PhD, who appar­ently draf­ted the first reg­u­la­tions on bio­tech­no­logy for the Reagan Admin­is­tra­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, he’s leav­ing tomor­row so I can’t get any more amaz­ing stor­ies about how he was stunned when they approached him because he’d been an out­spoken critic of their policies regard­ing form­al­de­hyde in fur­niture. I have his card though.

I think I got some points with the other guy (Richard Wet­z­ler from the global envir­on­ment stud­ies pro­gram at Brown Uni­ver­sity) for having heard of cladistic ana­lysis, so thanks, Christina!

Anyhow, have some 

Pics of Parc Guëll

From Parc Guell, the anarch­ist squat I spotted:

Another ador­able beastie on La Rambla

Some of the bizarre human statues on La Rambla:

A foun­tain in the Parc de la Ciudad:

I also saw a couple of Aus­tralian trees in this park, duly marked, so I took a photo for Christina… 

And then, mostly for nuwishas_tail, rude things from the Museu de Erot­ica, which hawk_eye and I got a flyer to 3 years ago but never made it… Warn­ing: not work safe. 

Tentacles, even in the 18th cen­tury. Twis­ted, twis­ted souls.

A whole new mean­ing to “I wanna go on that ride, Dad’ I think it’s sup­posed to be art…

and finally…

Mmmm… auto­ma­tion… just like clockwork