The Devil's Backyard A couple of months ago I heard a University of Nevada political science professor being interviewed on NPR. He said that Washoe County, where Reno is located, could decide the presidential election in Nevada, and that Nevada's five Electoral College votes could in turn decide the presidential election nationally. I owed a visit to my (former) sister-in-law, who lives in Reno and who has been battling cancer for two years; my son, Ben, calls me every night to talk politics; and Obama had a 25% lead over McCain in California. So I decided to kill three birds with [View Full Entry]

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KONICHIWAAAAAAA!!! That's Pikachu, a.k.a. The Cosmic Inferno, screaming into a microphone. She's the guest singer of Acid Mothers Temple, the reclusive Japanese psychedelic band that lives communally on the slopes of Mt Fuji. They look like monks and take their music (and acid) very seriously. Except Pikachu. She looks like Pris, the berserk android from Blade Runner. The Pale refers to the tiny patch of territory around Dublin that the English first controlled. Beyond that patch, beyond the Pale, as our expression goes, lurked mad Celts hiding in deep forests. My own plan to go beyond the Pale failed to reach [View Full Entry]

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Rescued! Things were looking up for me. I had arrived in Dublin the night before. The cheapest sleeping arrangement I could find—at $50 per night-- was to share a long narrow room in a hostel with four girls my daughter's age. The bathroom was so tiny that it was necessary to step out of the shower to turn around. The next morning I left before the girls woke up so as to avoid any "awkward moments." Due to an unforeseen bank holiday, everything was closed, so I ended up sitting on a park bench contemplating the difference between being homeless and [View Full Entry]

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I don't often drink so much that I am hung over the next day. Last night was apparently an exception. When I get like this I always think of the description of Peter Fallow's hangover in Bonfire of the Vanities: an egg yolk in his head exploded into millions of silvery minnows swimming towards his flesh The occasion was a barbecue at the lake for the students. I got there an hour late because I turned right instead of left when I reached the lake and walked halfway to Geneva before turning back. I was ready to give up when I [View Full Entry]

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This summer the Vaud School for Engineering and Business (better known by its French acronym, HEIG VD) is hosting ten students from San Jose State, ten from CSU Long Beach, and ten from Arizona State. These students are joined by 30 Swiss students. For the next three weeks they will be taking intensive courses in subjects ranging from Bioinformatics to Internet Security. My course, Artificial Societies, doesn't begin until tomorrow, but I interrupted my stay in Italy to shoot up to Lausanne to check on my "kids". They all arrived and were safely tucked away in their dorms. I'm not sure [View Full Entry]

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A good soldier recognizes the different sounds made by his enemy's weapons and reacts accordingly. So to have I come to recognize the different sounds made by vehicles approaching from behind as I sprint from doorway to doorway down the narrow streets of Sant' Angello. If it sounds like a truck, the side view mirror will be at head level so I duck. If it sounds like a Smart Car, I cover my crotch. Sant' Angello is one train stop before Sorrento on the southern tip of the Bay of Naples. I thank the me of three months ago who, at [View Full Entry]

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US Borax shut down their mining operation in Ryan back in the 1920s. Since then it has been used as a backdrop in the opening scene of Spartacus and in a few episodes of Death Valley Days. Other than that, Ryan has been a ghost town, gradually succumbing to the baking Death Valley sun. (Note: Ryan is privately owned and visitation is highly restricted. There are NO scheduled public tours.) However, Ryan comes alive every spring, when US Borax allows San Jose State University to conduct its annual spring break course: "Field Studies in the Natural History of Death Valley". Scientists [View Full Entry]

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In early September I returned to Santa Cruz. The weekend before I traded my Benz in on a new Civic Coup. I figure what I'll lose in sex appeal I'll pick up in savings on operating expenses. I threw a birthday/welcome home party for myself a week later. Still later in the month I visited Debra in Boise. She was kind enough to take me to the National Fast Draw Championships in Idaho City. October began with a visit from cousin Monte, the one man party! [View Full Entry]

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I should be back in my house in Santa Cruz this week. I've been couch surfing in San Francisco. Yesterday I caught the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love in Speedway Meadow. Nostalgia is a strange sad drug. You can't help think about the people who were there then and are elsewhere now. You can travel the wide world and never see weirdness like this. I don't know, maybe there's something like this on Venus. [View Full Entry]

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Dalmatia Coast Our bus is clinging to the cliffs and Debra is asleep on my shoulder, so I have to write between the curves and only moving my wrist. We are returning to Split after several nights in Dubrovnik, Athens of Croatia, Pearl of the Adriatic. Dubrovnik is located at the very tip of this crescent-shaped country. The border with Bosnia-Herzegovina runs so close to the east that along one five mile stretch it actually touches the Adriatic, cutting Croatia into two pieces and forcing us through a pair of border crossings. The ragged borders suggest the shreds that Yugoslavia was [View Full Entry]

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