Visited the Vineyard Saturday, at Calvin’s urging. Awesome! Highly recommended, at least in the off season.

1. If you work for IBM, rent at Enterprise. They waive the (usurious) underage fee. We got a sweet little Volvo. And they’re right on Comm Ave.

2. Take 90 (east) to 93 to 24 to 495 to 28 (after the bridge) until you’re directed to parking lots near Woods Hole.

3. Try not to barely miss the ferry, although there is a nice bakery near the ferry dock.

4. Ending up at Oak Bluff is good, since that’s where the action is. Vineyard Haven is lame, and it’s weird that ferries there are more frequent. Oak Bluff has a cool army surplus store and a nice bike rental guy and a hat store and an old ferris wheel and an octagonal church and pretty houses and a little beach.

5. The bike ride to Edgartown is gorgeous, though doing the full loop would be better.

6. Edgartown (or Agerton, as the bike man called it) is supposed to be the center of action, but isn’t that exciting, except for the harbor.

7. Black Dog is inexplicable.

8. Try to leave time to visit the cliffs and the nudists. Maybe next time.

9. Taking the ferry back at night is good, because you can see all the stars. And there are tons of them.

Thanks to Ping, I played Battleground God (which is an excellent example of what I was trying to with my own belief challenging system (results)). I made it through, only biting bullets on questions 6 and 13. How’d you do?

I’m in love. While waiting for a present to be wrapped at the bookstore, I picked up Schott’s Original Miscellany. What an awesome book! It’s become my booting reading (think bathroom reading, but Windows is the person taking care of business). I’ve never seen a book so captivating and funny and educational. I think maybe it’s because I always think in terms of charts and lists, but the random collections (ranging from Ivy League fight songs to nouns of assemblage (a malapertness of peddlers) to measures of alcohol to notable Canadians to presidential facts (Calvin Coolidge was the last president born on the 4th of July)) are just plain awesome.

Dropped in on VON the other day, which is going pretty well. It was crazy to see everybody again, and the party was fun as always. RevUp Records is in full swing, and East of Autumn played. If VoIPers are anything like the WWW people, I imagine there will be pictures of the conference posted on their web sites soon enough.

from the Christian Science Monitor:

Formal, school-based messages about the dangers of illegal drugs have long rung hollow to him. He certainly knows that drugs are dangerous, but he also sees a difference between casual experimentation - such as his relatives drinking wine - and addictive behavior, and he knows the lessons about drugs aren’t necessarily as black and white as the rhetoric used in class.

Ghazalle’s dad is running for governor. Pretty cool. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science and claims to be the first Iranian-American to run for governor. Certainly more appealing than Arnold.

Okay, this is truly creepy. The Internet Archive has this new Recall search engine (there’s a link from Metabuzz). It’s quite slick - I’m impressed how quickly it does its thing. In any case, searching for myself turned up this review of my web page from 7 years ago.

I love propaganda posters.

From the one about dancing:

Conventions are the fences society has built to protect you and the race.

Complete and lasting love is of the mind as well as of the body.

I just heard from Dave Pennock (as depicted in this nifty ascii picture), which prompted me to check out his web page, and, lo and behold, he had an excellent refutation of the attacks on the terrorist futures market.

Of course, scientists can’t be trusted either.

In the good news department, Robin finished his wireless network project in Nepal. And thanks to him, you can help support the schools in Nepal.

A gorgeous weekend on the Cape at Hayden’s in Dennis (thanks Hayden!). Rode in his Jeep to Sundae School, played Kings and Scattergories, ran on the beach, swam in the pool. Paradise. And then I came back to the absolutely unbelievable Springsteen concert at Fenway.

I think weekends like this definitely meet afterglow expectations, though I’m compelled to read more about affective forecasting. (This article about American unhappiness, which is quite Putnamesque, also came out around the same time.)