I've been back from California for nearly three weeks, but I haven't yet said anything about my trip here. I won't bore you with a day-by-day narrative (although if you're interested let me know), but here are the highlights in an unsorted fashion.

• Mystery was a theme for the week as michael and I visited both a Mystery House and a Mystery Spot.
• For me, the highlight of the week was driving down Highway 1 to see Heart's Castle at San Simeon. Even without the castle, the drive alone was worth it. Unless you've seen it, you'll have a hard time picturing the highway running down the coast with the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other.
• Charlie was nice enough to show us around Santa Cruz one day. He took us to the aforementioned Mystery Spot and then we went to the 65¢ night at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Charlie also promised to restart his blog when we saw him, but that seems to have come to nothing.
• michael and I saw the Cardinals play the Giants at SBC Park in San Francisco. We had great seats and through some odd coincidence everyone in our row rooted for the Redbirds. Woody Williams pitched to Barry Bonds all night long and Barry went 0 for the game. I've always had a theory that Bonds wasn't quite as good as everyone thinks he is, so it was nice to see someone actually challenge him. And to top everything off the Cardinals won the game.
• michael would want me to mention the Exploratorium, which is a much cooler version of the St. Louis Science Center.

I had a bad habit of forgetting to bring my camera with me when we went to see things, but I did remember it when we drove down Highway 1. I'll put all the pictures up in a bit, but I'll leave you with a preview. Click the image below for the full size image, but be patient. The full size image is 2 Mb.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 25 August 2004 at 2:19 PM

Today's Papers on Slate linked to an LA Times editorial that makes the point I was trying to make in my post yesterday. The right-wingers, in the form of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, are using a tried-and-true technique for disseminating false information about a rival. But the back-story is complicated enough that it's difficult for the average voter to separate fact from fiction and it creates doubt in their minds. Read the article as it makes these points better than I can (if you need an LA Times login/password use bugmenot).

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 24 August 2004 at 11:22 AM

Occasionally I fall back into old habits. Today, after a healthy four or five months since I last did so, I followed a link to slashdot.

Slashdot rose to fame and fortune in the late 90s because their target audience was internet users. Because of the unique demographics of the world wide web before it gained true acceptance, slashdot had articles uniquely targeted to the geeks of the world. And those geeks happened to be the only ones using the internet. (Or so it seemed.) Things have changed on the internet in the six years or so since I started reading slashdot, but slashdot hasn't changed at all.

Visiting the site -- or more accurately reading the comments -- is a bit like stepping back in a time-warp. You can still read the same comments today that were made almost a decade ago. Let me offer you an example. Here is a slashdot article that touches on Java from 1999 ('99 is the last year I could find on slashdot that had comments). Here is a more recent Java-related article from slashdot.

If you had the stomach to churn through them, you'll see that they are still arguing about the same things. Java is either too slow or to dumb for some to use, but perfect for others. (I'll address the Java debate in a future post. I had intended this post to be a response to some of the anti-Java sentiments, but got side-tracked by how mind-numbing reading slashdot can be.) I didn't have the heart to link to two articles that deal with Microsoft or Linux, but rest assured that the slashdot folks have not swayed in their appreciation for the latter and their hatred of the former.

In short, slashdot was started in September '97, and no doubt peaked not long after that. Slashdot lacks a search capability that lets me do useful searches for historical purposes, but I assume that by the end of '97 they'd covered all of their main topics: open source, Linux, Microsoft, gaming, and illegal file-sharing. (As it turns out, all of those categories are currently represented on the slashdot front page as I write this article.) So really, everything written there in the past six years has mostly been a retread of past comments.

(I'll leave as an exercise to the reader to examine how slashdot front page posts lag behind other news conglomeration sites. Anecdotally, it appears that slashdot is frequently a day or so behind other sites.)

As a final point, you do have to give some credit to Rob Malda and Jeff Bates for turning a site with no newsworthy posts or insightful comments into a profitable business. Bravo, boys!

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 24 August 2004 at 10:48 AM

On the issue of the Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth," I think this illustration from the NY Times more than adequately illustrates the connections between the Bush administration and the Swift Boat folks and the blatant lies told by the Swifties. You should study it, as it's quite amusing. For the full story that accompanies the graphic, follow this link.

But as troubling as all of this is, the part that bothers me the most is Kerry's slow response. He built his whole campaign around his status as a Vietnam veteran, but just stood aside while the Swift Boat Veterans for ... tore right into the heart of his campaign. Maureen Dowd's Sunday column addresses this issue very well, but here is the killer quote:

Bill Clinton implied two weeks ago that Mr. Kerry was acting sluggish. "Whenever they hit me, I hit 'em back," he told Jon Stewart. "And whenever they came up with a charge I didn't believe was true, I answered back."

I'm beginning to believe more and more that the only Democrat good enough at both policy and politics to ever be elected president is Bill Clinton. The last two Democratic candidates aren't very inspiring, to say the least.

John Kerry needs to buckle down and treat this election like all elections. Stop focusing on the special issues (terrorists, Iraq) and focus on the one issue that trumps all others, the economy. The communist system fell apart during the reign of George I, but Clinton still beat him by focusing on the economy. Jobs have disappeared under George II and the so-called Bush tax cuts have done nothing more than funnel money from you and I to the ultra-wealthy (unless you are ultra-wealthy, in which case you owe me some money), but Kerry continues to focus on Iraq and uses Vietnam as his credentials.

I suspect that I was one of the few Kerry supporters who was disappointed by his convention speech. I wanted more economy and less war. Politicians who base campaigns on nebulous issues like integrity, leadership, and bravery leave themselves open to nebulous attacks like the Swift Boat attack. If Kerry had focused on the economy the best Bush could have come up with would have been to point at a "recovering" economy that continues to lose jobs (relative to population growth) and shows no other traditional signs of recovery. But no, Kerry continues to focus on the "war on terror." (Is terror something you can even wage war against?)

---

Also, to address one of the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for ..., during the Vietnam War if you were an American soldier injured while under fire -- regardless of whether your wound was superficial or self-inflicted -- you were awarded a Purple Heart. Those were the regulations in place at the time. And Bob Dole should be very careful when he criticizes John Kerry for accepting Purple Hearts.

Comments: 6 Posted by david on 23 August 2004 at 9:22 AM

As the show progressed things clearly diverged, but was "The OC" originally designed as the new "Saved by the Bell?" We have the blond lead and his nerdy, social-outcast friend. The athletic arch-villain. The main crush; the flightly, rich girl; and the smart, style-all-her-own girl. And we top things off with the older father figure.

Want more proof? See below.

The OC	Saved by the Bell
Ryan is the new Zack.
Seth (at least as origianlly conceived) is the new Screech.
Luke is the new A.C. Slater.
Marissa is the new Kelly.
Summer is the new Lisa.
Anna is the new Jessie.
And Sandy is the new Mr. Belding.

Comments: 3 Posted by david on 10 August 2004 at 11:02 PM

I saw this while visiting the NY Times today. Who looks more awkward and uncomfortable, Bush or McCain?

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 10 August 2004 at 5:46 PM

What part of "compassionate conservatism" do you think calls for deporting the 292 Montserratians whose homes (and country) were destroyed by a continuing volcanic eruption? My guess is that this policy is more conservative than compassionate. Also, do we really need our immigration officials spending time worrying about 292 refugees from a country destroyed by a volcano? It seems like there are other things they could spend their time on...

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 9 August 2004 at 2:23 PM