Surfing at Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz.

I lived in Taiwan in the early 1980's, so I was used to earthquakes. In Taipei we had a couple of quakes every fall — a little shaking, a few objects falling from tables. Even after moving to Santa Cruz in 1987, I'd been through my share of little earthquakes (which were, as it turns out, foreshocks).  It affects you — it shocks you — every time, but I felt

Itunes has a great new feature.

They've had celebrity playlists for a while, but now they're doing podcasts of people talking about the songs and why they like them — people like Quentin Tarentino, Katy Perry, Mick Fleetwood. These folks know a lot about music and it's interesting to watch them cross boundaries and choose music from genres you wouldn't

8.28.9 part 1

Surfing at Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz, California. Some of the best surfers in the world on some of the best waves — just another day at the lane.

Knee-boarder in the background.

Close call. 

 Wave world.

Driving up Highway 1 yesterday, we could see smoke still swirling around over Bonny Doon. The fire is still burning.

If I were a smoke detector, I'd be going off several times a day. Downtown Santa Cruz is many miles from the Lockheed fire, but when the wind blows from the north the air is acrid and stinging, the sky ash grey.

It's nothing like being in the thick of it, but when the air is ashy I can't help but think of mountains ablaze and horses being rescued and

We all laughed at the spaced-out Miss South Carolina when she babbled about education and South Africa in 2008. But Santa Cruz has its own brand of crazy babbling. I guess it could happen anywhere, any time someone starts a speech without thinking through what they'll say. This must be why people fear public speaking.

Does it reflect badly on our town? The

 Wait for it... Katie Couric is the best:

 [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI

I was sitting at the speaker's table, the lone woman among a bunch of testosterone-fueled young entrepreneurs. The room is large and it was packed — people eating, milling around, and finally sitting down for the show (a panel discussion with a focus on local technology).

As usual, the Santa Cruz Geeks had delivered: the usual suspects were there (Sean,

This is on National Geographic's site. It's not Photoshopped; it's a real grizzly.
 

These are just a few of the pictures. More can be found on National Geographic's website.

Here are some photos from the 8th grade Mock Trial at Gateway. I was on the jury. I was trying to follow the trial itself, and didn't want to use my flash, so my pictures are both non-comprehensive and of dubious quality — but fun anyway, so here they are.

The kids did a great job! Many thanks to Jessica and the other grownups who helped with this.

Something to be said for comics, isn't there?

For me, the progression from learning ABC's to perusing the shelves of my local comic emporium was fast. Superman replaced The Cat in the Hat, followed by Little Dot, Archie, and Batman. I love to read, and I love to read comics.

My interest waned for a decade or so — how many times can Superman die, really? —

Dirty Harry's back, and he's a different person. How different? I won't reveal all of it, but there's more going on behind the steely glare.

Clint Eastwood grunts and sighs all the way through Gran Torino, as the epitome of a grumpy old f***. So nasty, so wretched in his inflexible ways, you think he's going to blow everybody away like the good old days.

I remember Richard Nixon. He smiled and shook his jowls in a jolly way but he hated almost everybody: Jews, blacks, hippies, journalists, Europeans, rich people, poor people. Nixon was so meticulous in his hatred that he kept an enemies list, calling out the most despised individuals among the generally despised public.

Still, he had some sort of