Everyone call Dean Kamen Lord Dumpling

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Oh! so you are saying our east coast islands are not as good as your pacific coast islands?

Our islands cant take it? not up to snuff?

wouldnt last 10 minutes in the pacific.

I see where this is going - your a snob! :^)

Now, now, don't let your ears curl, Ken! I was only talking about ONE particular island. It's protected by much bigger islands, such as Long Island, which has withstood countless Atlantic hurricanes.

About our trees: The first time I went out on Long Island was right after Hurricane Gloria, in the mid-1980s. Power was still out in many places, and people were griping about the slowness of the local utility company's response--sound familiar? People were also moaning about how many trees were destroyed, but as we drove along Sunrise Highway, I kept looking around and saying, "What are they talking about? They have more trees left standing than we ever have in L.A.!" I didn't see any shortage of trees.

Here's a fun illustration for this little botany lesson (UC Irvine is in southern California; UC Santa Cruz is in the Central Coast area; both were founded in the ecologically-conscious mid-1960s):

UC Irvine Founding Chancellor Dan Aldrich, a soil scientist, liked to tell about a conversation he had with the Founding Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz. The man from UCSC boasted that, when his campus was built, they planned it so that they cut down as few of the magnificent redwood trees as possible. To which Chancellor Dan replied that at UCI, they didn't have to cut down any trees at all!

By the way, if any would-be Lord Dumplings wish to buy an island off the coast of southern California, good luck! You'd probably have to build it yourself--after spending millions to obtain the necessary permits, which would be fought in the courts by militant environmental activists, if it wasn't completely shot down by the California Coastal Commission to begin with.

You'd probably have to settle for buying a chunk of land in the desert near Palm Springs, digging a big hole, piling the dirt in the middle, then filling the hole with water (assuming you could get the water rights and the excavation permits, ha-ha!). Then you would have your own island, but you might as well turn it into a golf course and charge money, because you'll be broke by then.

Oh, and you'll plant your new island with palm trees, of course, which aren't really trees, no matter how tall they get. (Insert botanical debate here.) Then you'll have to cut down the palms to avoid getting sued for damage to limousines when they drop massive fronds from 80 feet in the air; besides, they were attracting rats. But wait! You can't cut the palm plants down, because they were harboring kangaroo rats, or some other endangered species. But that's OK, because you never got your excavation permit, because your land is in the habitat of the endangered sand fly (or was it pupfish?).

Stay tuned for the next installment of the hit environmental soap opera, "That's My Island!"