We finished off yesterday by going to The Stinking Rose, and came out reeking of garlic. Mmmm. Then we went to Ghirardelli Square and came out reeking of garlic-tinged chocolate. Then we went to see “Hitch,” which was surprisingly delightful. Will Smith will be president in 2016, at the latest…

I’m having a little upper back episode that was actually helped by sitting in one of them magic fingered massagey chairs at Sharper Image. I usually just find them creepy, but this one seems to have rolfed off the edge of the pain. That and massive doses of ibuprofen. Why, I can almost look to my left today!

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My daughter Leah, 20 yrs old as of Tuesday, flew out last night. She’s never been to San Francisco, so we’re spending today and tomorrow as 100% pure tourists.

Today we took a cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf, went on a one-hour boat tour of the Bay, waved at the sea lions, went through Ripley’s Believe It or Not (much of which causes me to opt for the latter alternative), walked through Chinatown, had a mediocre Chinese lunch, had a fantastic, warm coconut bun, walked to and through the Cartoon Museum, and tried to calm the uppe back spasms of the more senior of us. Soon we’re off to The Stinking Rose to eat as many garllic-themed foods as possible.

Too much fun.

By the way, the concierge at our hotel thought we should get reservations for the Stinking Rose restaurant because it’s so popular around Valentine’s Day. What sort of weird, twisted romantic couple goes to a garlic restaurant for Valentine’s Day? You might as well go to The International House of Cold Sores. [Technorati tags: San Francisco]

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“A lonely young star has been discovered fleeing from the Milky Way galaxy at the most fantastic speeds ever seen, and Harvard astronomers say it is doomed to wander throughout the universe for the rest of its life.”

This is the lede of a story in today’s SF Chronicle by its science editor, David Perlman.

A little heavy on the anthropomorphism, wouldn’t you say?

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Like how to fold a shirt, this promises to make you far more efficient in an ordinary task. Like how to fold a shirt, I can’t really figure out how to do it. (Thanks to Mark Dionne for the link.)

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At the conference I’m at, the shit barrier was broken at 1:30. That’s the moment the word “shit” was first used by one of the speakers.

I have only recently begun to collect data on this phenomenon, and look forward to producing many attractive line graphs.

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I’m in San Francisco for a TTI Vanguard conference. I’m doing the first presentation, and if you look at this list of Vanguard “digerati” in the room (not to mention the other 150 attendees) you’ll see why I’m a tad nervous. So, of course, I spent three wee hours this morning rewriting the presentation I’d rewritten on the plane, that I’d rewritten…

I’m talking about taxonomies and tagging, and at the moment I’m planning on ending with three conclusions about the potential significance of tagging:

1. Rather than knowledge ending where the miscellaneous begins, now it’s beginning with the miscellaneous. (In your face, Aristotle!)

2. In the continuing battle between the forces of neatness and messiness, tagging advances the cause of messiness. (I think that’s a good thing, but you’re talking to a guy who last night was given the employees discount at a food stand at the airport because the cashier just assumed I worked there.)

3. We are owning not just our information but the organization of information. This is part of the project of re-meaning the world – make meaning ours – in which we’ve been engaged for decades.

Too late to tell me that those are ill-thought and I’m about to make a fool of myself. I have to give over my slides now, the moment of commitment. Oh, how I hate it.

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The series of photos returned by Google Images if you search on “leaf pile” provides overwhelming evidence that piles of leaves spontaneously generate children.

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If you were so wrapped up failing to build a MythTV that you missed the Superbowl, you can see the ads here. [Technorati tag: superbowl]

Hmm. I just watched a bunch. You have a year to come up with a commercial and that’s the best you can come up with? Pretty lame overall, I thought. Plus, apparently rampant misogyny is acceptable now. Oh goody.

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Adina addresses issues Chris Allen raises about the flatness of online social networks. Snippet:

I think part of the problem is being a post-freudian modern; intimacy is the ultimate goal of relationship and a source of secular transcendence. We need to go back to a more 18th century concept of public identity to describe the pleasures and rewards of broad acquaintance.

Lots more good stuff.

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SJ, a wikipedian of note, takes on JD Lasica. It’s a death match over whether “Wikipedia” takes a definite article…

SJ also wins the Bogus Contest in the latest issue of my newsletter that asked for favorite, oddball pages at [the] Wikipedia. SJ points us to the Wikipedia page about oddball Wikipedia pages.

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