I guess I should explain why I came to D.C. in the first place. Rebecca gave me the heads-up about a couple available fellowships for bloggers to attend a seminar on Computer Assisted Reporting and Researching hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Yes, that Heritage Foundation.

There is something I’ve learned about blogging while on the road - you’re never going to fit everything in and if you put it off until you think can, the post will putter away into oblivion. That’s what happened to me at the Internet & Society Conference in Cambridge last year; so many amazing people, [...]

My sister has recently discovered David Bowie. Well, musically at least. Little did she know of his acting career. So last night, on our way to do some shopping at Trader Joes, I insisted she watched both Labyrinth - a classic on par with The Princess Bride - and Basquiat where Bowie plays Andy Warhol [...]

The following morning:
“Man, you look skinny”
“Well shit, I probably lost four pounds riding up here.”
“Dude, you probably lost four pounds on the side of Cindylu’s car.”
(Laughter from the peanut gallery)
Lesson learned: no binge drinking after a 53 mile bike ride. As kind as it was of Ramone to greet me with a cold beer and [...]

I can’t imagine a more meaningful gesture from one blog buddy to the next than the tattooing of a blog URL on one’s arm. I present you with the forearm of my dear compadre, Armando Franco (AKA catarf):

Beginning tomorrow morning there will be parking outside my house again, which I guess means that summer is [...]

In the NY Times Business Day section there’s a long feature about the explosion of private schools catering to teenagers with behavioral problems. It’s in the Business Day section because some big name investors see it as a sure fire way to make some big cash. It makes sense: there’s no shortage of over-working, wealthy [...]

Last night, probably technically this morning, for about one hour on the I-5, the west coast’s most beloved freeway, I reached that sort of fulfillment that can only come around, so I guess, if your brain is literally drowning in seratonin. Call it what have you: universal oneness, a spiritual moment, talking with god. I [...]

Just a couple days ago I was having a very bad day in what seems like a year of plenty of bad days. Around two in the afternoon I was full of anger, anxiety, and other adjectives beginning with A. But I still had to go to work. Work doesn’t care about bad days. Neither [...]

You may have noticed that my murderous threats towards oceanographic graduate students are really nothing more than filibuster as I stall on my post about Cuba and the realizations it delivered to me. The reason/excuse I haven’t yet posted about Cuba is that I’m extremely curious to read what our good friend Peter is going [...]

Let’s take a break from my incessant whining about my very flat wallet shall we?
Last Monday, I think it was, Laura and I took off in the Chi Chi for a three hour desert trip to Northern Coahuila. Through the maquila filled pueblo/rancho of San Pedro, the vast expanse of flat desert nothingingness, and finally [...]