On a happier note, Californians won huge points for passing Prop 1A, a bond measure to help pay for a high-speed train between San Diego and San Francisco; and Angelenos passed Measure R, a half-cent sales tax increase to fund public transportation, including a subway extension to the Westside (!). Both of these were huge wins, and I'm absolutely thrilled they passed.

In conclusion, California, congratulations, thank you, and seriously, WTF‽

• The Wall Street Journal (dead tree version; all front pages, and other stories that catch my eye)
• CNBC morning market coverage
• The Economist (dead tree version)
• FiveThirtyEight
• Electoral-Vote
• Intrade
• Countdown
• Rachel Maddow
• NPR's Planet Money
• … and the 303 subscriptions in my newsreader

It's a wonder I find time for anything else! (Actually, it works out well because Countdown, Rachel Maddow and Planet Money are all available as podcasts and watchable at the Gym, and I can toss the dead-tree WSJ and Economist in my bag when I leave the house.)

Maybe next year I'll try the N3 logo.

As an aside, I'm feeling like I should rename this weblog to something like "Travel Troubles." I drove to Providence where Matt and I were scheduled to fly to New Orleans via Philadelphia. This flight is scheduled as one hour and twenty minutes long (which seems generous for just 327 miles). About an hour into the flight, we were informed that Philadelphia airport was busy, and we'd be circling the airport for a while. Over half an hour later, we were told that there was fog developing in Philadelphia, and that we were running out of fuel (!), so we'd be diverting to Baltimore (!!) to re-fuel (the diversion to BWI representing an almost 40% increase in distance). After some time in Baltimore, we continued on to Philadelphia where we had now clearly missed our connection.

Now with an eight hour layover in Philadelphia (and not even free drinks and cookies at the Admiral's Club making this an appealing situation), we took the train into town where we met up with Shuli and had a few drinks and some snacks. Upon arriving back at the airport two hours ahead of our new flight, we found the airport completely locked down (with vague descriptions of a "security issue"). After standing in line behind hundreds of other travelers, we finally made it through and boarded the plane only to sit on tarmac for an hour and a half before finally taking off and heading to New Orleans.

Having lost an entire day to travel woes, we tried to pack as much as we could into Saturday. We had breakfast at Café du Monde (arriving for Beignets just minutes before a huge tour group). We had excellent cajun at Mulates. We took pictures in the French Quarter, wandering around Jackson Square, Bourbon and Royal streets, and spent a lot of time watching trains and street cars near Woldenberg Park. After some time in the Quarter, we drove south into Bayou Segnette and Barataria Preserve for some time away from the bustle of the city.

A day and a half obviously ended up being too short to feel like we weren't rushing everywhere, but it was still enjoyable. Compared to the near-freezing temperatures we left behind in the northeast, the immensely sunny upper-70s weather we got in New Orleans was a nice change. Flying back last night, we got to Providence at midnight, and I hit the road for the three hour drive home to be ready for class in the morning.

I'll post some of the video clips I was able to capture with the D90 soon, but for now there are some photos and one video from the trip on Flickr: New Orleans, Fall, 2008.

In the context of the WSJ piece (in which young workers are described as appearing "entitled", and having high expectations with little desire to seriously commit to a job), the program to entice students into better performance with cash doesn't seem like an inherently bad idea. The NPR piece never really brings up idea that this might be a reasonable way to ease students into a mindset that will help them later in life. It would be fantastic if no one ever had to work on things they didn't like, but in reality these students will all go on to jobs where they'll have to do something they don't like doing. People don't usually do that sort of work for no reason -- instead, they do the work in exchange for a paycheck. Why is it unreasonable to use the same tactic in school? (Not all work is done for cash, of course -- things like Open Source Software rely on work in exchange for more nebulous rewards such as peer recognition, but in general a person is going to need a paycheck to live on.)

Of course, it would be nice for students to want to learn for learnings sake. There's value in that, but that doesn't seem like something you can force on someone. The cash incentive might not be a good strategy. It might not help at all. But if it does work, is there something inherently wrong with using a cash incentive just like the jobs the kids will hold for the rest of their lives do? I like the plea in the article of Harvard economist Roland Fryer: "Let's just let the data speak."

I'm simply astonished by this "drill, baby, drill" nonsense. It is ridiculous. Drilling here and drilling now won't mean paying less now (or even much in the future). We simply have to find a way to stop using so much of it.

I'm simply astonished at the amount of disinformation that seems to be coming from the Republican campaign. I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising from a campaign that doesn't have it's own issues to promote. But the amount of fearmongering about Obama's tax plan raising your taxes is absurd. The reality of his plan raising your taxes only if you make more than $600,000 a year seems to be irrelevant. Similarly irrelevant seems to be the fact that the 60% of taxpayers at the bottom end of the income scale would see their taxes lowered by at least three times more by Obama's plan than McCain's. McCain's plan would drop your taxes no more than 0.7% if you make up to $66,000 (compared to Obama's 2.4%). In fact, Obama wouldn't raise taxes on the bottom 98.9% of taxpayers.

The Washington Post visually presents the tax plans and the differences are striking. Alternatively, there's ObamaTaxCut.com to see a simple presentation of how your taxes will change.

There's the "rhetorical" book banning issue, the outrageous charging of rape victims in Wasilla, and the outright lies about the Bridge to Nowhere.

I'm trying really hard to see value in the Republican ticket, but I'm just not getting it. I haven't seen a single positive ad from the McCain campaign. Never an ad about issues (not surprisingly), and never a positive ad about the candidates. If you're thinking of voting for McCain, may I ask why? Do you agree with the issues McCain won't talk about (or are the issues irrelevant)? Are you wealthy and the tax break overwhelms all other issues? Are you swayed by Palin because of (or in spite of) her pro-life, anti-gay policies and her demonstrably blatant lying, and pandering? What am I not seeing? Is it really only about "character"?

The whole extended family was there for the weekend, and it was really great to get to spend time with everyone, having just done a bit of it a few weeks ago in San Francisco. Unlike San Francisco, though, this time we had plenty of time to spend time with each other without the pressures of touristy things, crowds or other hassles.

Aside from a quick trip to the store on Saturday, we spent three days entirely at Norm's (still new-ish) beautiful house enjoying assorted events (archery, shooting, tennis, swimming, ... drinking), eating delicious food, and celebrating the birthday.

On Saturday, assorted friends arrived for the big birthday dinner, and we enjoyed a feast while the accordionist played into the night (Zydeco!), getting all the kids to join him on various percussion instruments.

Getting to spend time with the whole family has become something I look forward to ever since we started doing it regularly a few years ago. The all-day and red-eye flights back and forth from the west coast are killing me (trying to fit these trips into a normal schedule of work and classes), but I really do wish we could do it more often.

A few more photos from the weekend are in the Flickr set Dad's Birthday.

The food was superb and the service was excellent. Each course was tremendous and worthy of praise, but I'll mention a few that really stood out:

• The French Laundry Garden Lettuce and Herb Soup was interesting because the dark green, chilled soup tasted just like lettuce. It was presented with just the tomatoes, croûtons, and ice cream in a shallow bowl, and the soup was expertly poured on by the waiter so as to fill the bowl without so much as a drop falling on the food.
• The Garlic-Glazed Eggplant Confit was by a wide margin simply the best eggplant I have ever tasted.
• The "Fricassée" of Hand-Rolled Russet Potato "Gnocchi" was rich and delicious.
• The French Laundry Garden Basil Sorbet was, just as it says, a basil sorbet. Interesting and tasty, although I think Kat won out with her apricot sorbet.
• Finally, the "Mignardises" were delicious, but we were so full we had to take some home. Our waiter insisted we try at least a couple truffles (I had the peanut butter and the passionfruit) with the remaining dozen or so being put into a box and handed to us along with two packages of fresh shortbread.

Below is transcribed the full nine courses I enjoyed. The full menu is linked from the image (it's a scanned PDF of both the tasting menu and tasting of vegetable menu).

Japanese Mountain Yams
with White Miso and Perilla

Compressed English Cucumbers
Green Grapes, Red Chili, Cilantro Shoots
and Sesame Seed Purée

French Laundry Garden Lettuce and Herb Soup
Toybox Tomatoes, Olive Oil-Fried Croûtons and Caper Mayonnaise Ice Cream

Garlic-Glazed Eggplant Confit
Garden Carrots, Pumpkin Seeds, Medjool Dates,
Spicy Greens and Madras Curry Emulsion

"Tarte de Courgette D'été"
Sweet Peppers, Armando Manni Olive Oil,
"Burrata" and Niçoise Olives

"Fricassée" of Hand-Rolled Russet Potato "Gnocchi"
Bluefoot Mushrooms, Golden Corn and Lovage

"Robiola Due Latti"
Globe Artichokes, Cipollini Onions,
Red Ribbon Sorrel and Dijon Mustard

French Laundry Garden Basil Sorbet
Lychee Fruit and Basil Seeds

Honeycomb "Sabayon Glacé"
Spiced "Tuile," Tupelo Honey Ice Cream
and Santa Rosa Plum "Confiture"

"Mignardises"

The entire experience was delightful and certainly lived up to expectations. The service was excellent as expected, but I think I was caught a bit off guard by the clever details: the clothespin on the napkin (which I had known about ahead of time but is even more charming in person) and the bill hand-written on a laundry tag being two examples.

I believe we were the last ones to finish dinner. On our way out we asked to see the kitchen and were met by what I assume was most of the staff: all of the servers who had waited on us (five of them, perhaps? My memory of some of the details is already fading.) and what seemed like most of the fourteen chefs we were told occupy the kitchen during the night. True to the stories, the kitchen was spotless (just minutes after we had finished our meals) and thoroughly impressive. After dinner, we walked just a couple blocks back to our hotel, the wonderful Maison Fleurie.

All four flights (both to and from) went pretty well, but Chicago seems to be our problem city. Two firsts for me: being waived off of a landing (while within perhaps 50 feet of the runway) and aborting a takeoff. During landing at Chicago on our way to San Francisco, we were waived off of our landing within a few seconds of touching down due to a flock of birds. After circling around and trying again we landed and found we had to sit on the runway for a while as our gate was now unavailable.

Leaving Chicago on the way home, our takeoff was abruptly aborted about half way down the runway as the pilots slammed on the brakes (apparently due to miscalculated trim). After circling around the runway to try again, we had to sit for a while to let the brakes cool down. When the brakes didn't cool off as fast as expected, we had to go back to the terminal for inspections and paperwork, and finally were told that changing planes would be faster than continuing to wait.

Gary was gracious enough to offer four of us lunch at Google, and then we went down the road to visit the Computer History Museum (and the very impressive Babbage Difference Engine). After the whole family met up in San Francisco, we had a great (but hectic) few days of Ghirardelli Square, Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf (sourdough bread bowls!), the Exploratorium, and many other things.

More photos of San Francisco and the Computer History Museum on Flickr.