Tiny milestone

Well, this blog now has over 1,000 views. I'm not exactly on the path to fame and wealth from this hobby, but it's nice that some people are finding some value in it. Thank you!

Top Ten San Francisco suggestions for visitors

I am often asked for suggestions for things for people to see and do during their visits to the San Francisco Bay Area, and as a transplant that has done a fair amount of exploring in the area, I'm sometimes able to provide some decent insight for people (as I can still sometimes see The City as an outsider).

However, I always seem to take forever to get back to people with suggestions because it takes so long to sit down and bang out my thoughts.  To fix that problem, I've created this blog post that can be my "go-to" list for everybody. 

Before you arrive -- I highly, highly, highly recommend you read "The Age of Gold."  It will provide you with so much fascinating history about the genesis of San Francisco and will provide an excellent context to more fully understand so much of what you will see in San Francisco today.  In addition, you will know more about who the streets of San Francisco are named after than 99% of the residents of San Francisco.

To get things started off, here's my generic Top 10 Suggestions for Tourists in San Francisco:

#10 - Coit Tower

A walk up to Coit Tower pays off in a lot of ways.  First, it puts you in North Beach, which is always a good thing as far as I'm concerned.  Second, you get a killer workout (the hills leading up to Coit Tower are intense).  And finally, you get to see Coit Tower!  Between it's history (including the Marxist murals inside, which tell an interesting story about the artist community in the Depression) and the views from the top, it's a must see.

#9 - Golden Gate Park

We happen to live a fairly short walk from Golden Gate Park, so we spend a lot of time there.  Because of that, I may be biased either in favor of it or against it -- I'm not sure which. 

Golden Gate Park is a huge park that was created in the same spirit as Central Park in NYC -- it really is an oasis in the city, and it's easy to forget you are in a city in many places within the park. 

The primary attractions in the park (outside of the trees and grass and limited wildlife) are the DeYoung Museum (a world class art museum with an excellent free observation deck), the California Academy of Science (essentially a natural history museum plus aquarium), and the Conservatory of Flowers.

The museum portion of the park is right next to 9th and Irving, which is a great area in the Inner Sunset for restaurants and (to a lesser extent) bars.  The N Judah line has a stop there, which makes it very convenient as well.

Further east, the park thins out into the Panhandle, which should be a familiar image for fans of the Summer of Love.  Haight-Ashbury is just a block off of the Pandhandle.

#8 - Explore a neighborhood

Before we had kids, my wife and I would often enjoy a whole day by just picking a neighborhood and wandering around.  We'd seek out the unqiue sights, check out the unique stores, hit a restaurant or two we'd never been to before, maybe grab some ice cream or some other speciality treat, and ultimately find a cool dive bar in which to rest and drink when we wore ourselves out.

I'd recommend this approach for almost any neighbhorhood, but my favorites are:  North Beach, South Beach, The Mission, Chinatown, The Marina and The Haight.

#7 - Ferry Building

The Ferry Building is one of the many iconic structures of San Francisco, and one of the most historical buildings in the city.  It's still an active Ferry landing for commuters heading across the bay, but the inside of the building is essentially a big niche market, high end crunchy sort of collection of stores.  So if you are looking for expensive grassfed beef or expensive mushrooms (non-hallucinatory types) or expensive kitchen wares or many other kinds of expensive and interesting products, there may well be a store in here that interests you. 

Shopping aside, there's food everywhere, and the architecture of the building itself is definitely worth seeing.  Once you step outside, you can't beat the views in all directions. It's a great park of town to walk and explore.  It's essentially on the edge of South Beach and the Financial District.

#6 - Fisherman's Wharf

When people think of "Fisherman's Wharf" in San Francisco, they tend to think of Pier 39, which is essentially just a crappy outdoor mall on a pier.  It's fun for what it is, but it's not on my Top 10 list.  Swing by and see the Sea Lions on the back side of Pier 39, and then move on to the "real" Fisherman's Wharf, which takes you on a walk toward west.

This area has a lot to offer.  There are lots of boat/ferry tours of the Bay you can take from this area, which I highly recommend (especially if you haven't already done one to Alcatraz).  The Musee Mechanique is a very cool arcade filled with old arcade games dating back to the early 1900s.  Next to that are WWII submarine and liberty ship that can be toured.

Further down, you'll find the Maritime Museum, which features several old ships that can be toured.

And, of course, this area is filled with working fishing boats and seafood restaurants (some better than others).  Just avoid the Times Square-eque crap camera shops further from the water, and you're set! 

You can finish off the day by getting a drink at the historic Buena Vista bar or getting ice cream at Ghiradelli Square.

#5 - Land's End/Sutro Baths

This area is an incredibly scenic Pacific Ocean coastline that also offers a huge amount of history and hiking.  The foundations of the immense Sutro Baths are still in place, and look like Roman ruins to the uninitiated.  It's hard to describe the beauty that one will find there, so I just have to leave it at that.

We had our family pictures done there by Nicole Wickens a few years ago ... a perfect location, we now realize.

One can hike all the way from the Land's End trailhead to the Golden Gate Bridge, or stop at the Palace of Legion of Honor as well.

#4 - Game at AT&T Park

This one requires little explanation.  It's an awesome ballpark.  The area around the ballpark is becoming the center of the sports scene in San Francisco (and is only going to get better).  Views, food, beer, and baseball.  Need I say more?

#3 - Twin Peaks

It's always cold and windy, but the view from Twin Peaks is amazing.  If you have access to a car (as there is no public transit to get there that I'm aware of), I highly recommend you include this on your trip.  It gives you a bird's eye view of a huge portion of the Bay Area, and an amazing view right down the length of Market Street.

#2 - Golden Gate Bridge/Presidio/Marin Headlands

The Golden Gate Bridge is perhaps one of the most iconic images in the world, and seeing it in person is never a let-down.  Driving or biking or walking across the bridge will put your mind into motion and will make you amazed at the idea that people built this bridge in the days of little technology and even less safety standards.  The structure itself is not only amazing, but the views from the bridge are breath taking. 

One can spend a whole day exploring the bridge, along with the Marin Headlands on the north side of the span and the Presidio on the south side (San Francisco side) of the span.

#1 - Alcatraz

I've heard a lot of locals mock Alcatraz and even brag that they've never been there.  I consider those people to be kinda silly.  No matter where you are from, Alcatraz is awesome, and is something that everybody should do at least once if they can.  The views are amazing, the history is fascinating, and the place is just so iconic that you have to experience it yourself.  The self-guided tours are excellent, and give you a pretty good idea of how miserable it would have been to be an inmate there.

On top of it all, you get to ride a Ferry out and back to the island, which is a thrill in itself for most people.

This list will surely change through time, and I change my mind or realize that I've missed some incredibly cool stuff (like the Anchor Steam Brewery tour -- damn, I may need to change it already!), but this will work for now.

How bullshit becomes mainstreamed

This piece outlines an event that would be really funny, were it not so common in the world of the partisan right and left-wing blogger/pundit worlds.

The line between journalism and gossip has blurred to such a degree, particularly among some brazenly partisan media outlets, that many people no longer even seem to care about fact-checking.  If the rumor sounds good (in other words, if it makes the "other side" look bad), they just run with it, no questions asked.

Generally, this wouldn't be such a big deal ... reasonable people reading it would probably get their bullshit detectors going and have suspicions about the story, then seek out the truth, discover that the story was, in fact, complete bullshit, and then never trust that media outlet again.

But that's not what happens for the extreme partisans who are locked in the partisan feedback loops (their "tribe") we see today.  What happens instead is that extreme partisans of the same persuasion as the author of the bullshit story will link to that story and pass it on to all of their friends.  People will create picture memes referencing the bullshit story and forward it all over facebook, and all of their like-minded partisan friends will "like" it, oblivious to the fact that they are liking something that has been proven to be complete bullshit.  Before long, the bullshit story is an ingrained part of the "knowledge" of many partisan people, and they will continue to repeat it as validation of their own faith-based beliefs that their side can do no wrong and the other side can do no right. 

The bullshit story will go from rumor, to "fact," to a part of the fabric of the legend of that partisan hackery ideology.

Anyone who steps in and points out to any of those people that what they are saying isn't true, and provides the evidence that it isn't true, will be dismissed and derided and mocked as being a mere naive pawn of the "other side," and the bona fide evidence presented will be disregarded because it was provided by a news source that wasn't part of their partisan feedback loop (in other words, it came from a news source that was too objective to be trusted, because they have been trained by the partisan puppetmasters to only trust their own partisan sources of information).

This is how the partisans on the left and the right are fed bullshit, and this is how they often end up swallowing that bullshit and even defending that bullshit, leaving them looking foolish to people outside of their partisan feedback loop, but (sadly) making them heroes within their partisan feedback loop.

And since they often place far more value in the what people inside their own partisan feedback loops think about them, and often almost take pride in being seen as foolish by those outside of their partisan feedback loops, the incentives are firmly in place to continue to create, distribute, and defend convenient bullshit.

The health care cost curve bending favorably?

It seems like good news relating to the cost of healthcare has been about as rare as a legit Bigfoot sighting over the last decade or so, which makes the data discussed in this piece very interesting.

As they note, it will be quite telling if these data points turn out to be bona fide trends in the coming years, or if, instead, the increase in healthcare costs reverts back to its steep growth pattern as the effects of the recession fade away.

Some of the potential drivers of reduced costs they discussed are exciting, but they are merely speculation until we have the benefit of hindset and all of the data that comes with it.

Freakonomics on guns

As everyone can probably tell, I just caught up on my Freakonomics podcasts.  With the beautiful weather we are having here in SF today, the walk and listen during lunch was sublime.

This podcast they did on guns is, in my opinion, very well thought out and very informative.  I am sure there are vast areas where more discussion and more studies could lead to different conclusions, but the throught process that these guys apply (the economist "hat") really works well in presenting arguments that I find compelling.  It's sure a helluva lot better than all of the emotion-based arguments we hear constantly on issues like this.

So with very few exceptions, I think I probably am in the same camp as Levitt in concluding that most of the gun control proposals really won't do much good, as the genie is already out of the bottle (hundreds of millions of guns already in circulation).

The one point of disagreement I apparently do have with him is in regards to background checks.  I do see value in those, even though they would only apply to new sales.  The reality is, not everyone has a gun right now, and, absent buying one legally, it's not necessarily easy to obtain a gun.  Yes, people can steal guns or get them on the black market, but that's still a significant hurdle to overcome.  For example, if I wanted to murder somebody with a gun tomorrow (don't worry, I don't), I would have no idea where to buy a gun on the black market.  I also wouldn't even know where to start in terms of stealing a gun.  So for me, my only option would be to buy the gun through legal channels.  If I happened to be a felon or have some other black mark on my record that would preclude me from buying a gun legally after a mandatory background check, I'd have to come up with some less efficient way of commiting my murder (which would reduce the chances that I'd murder somebody, as they note in the podcast).

So I do think that universal background checks are a good idea and would be effective in limiting some of the crimes gun crimes committed by those people who would make "the list" (mentally troubled people, felons, etc.).

That said, as Levitt concludes, no new laws are really going to make a huge impact on the levels of gun violence in our country.  And, in an interesting discussion that doesn't get enough play, it's arguable that it's not as big of a problem as we may think, in the grander scheme of things.  Yes, any innocent life lost is a horrible thing, but looking at the number of innocent people murdered with guns each year, reducing it by the number of people who would have been murdered even without a gun involved, and then divide that by the total number of people in our country, and we reach the conclusion that the odds of any of us being harmed by a person with a gun is incredibly small.  So from an economists mindset (looking at the marginal costs vs. the marginal benefits), it would be really hard for most any form of gun control, put in place right now, to be seen as effective in a material way.

All that said, when we step away from that non-emotional, objective way of looking at the issue, it's damn hard to hear stories of gun deaths around the country and then conclude that we simply have to live with that (low) level of risk and accept the senseless deaths that result.  And that's why it's so understandable why this issue is so emotionally charged for so many people.  Unfortunately, there simply are no easy answers.  And in lieu of effective easy answers, we often try to legislate with approaches that give us comfort, but may not necessarily be effective when put up to empirical analysis.

Empirical evidence of political party tribalism

This is a really entertaining podcast from the Freakonomics guys talking about an experiment that was done that proves the not-so-much-contested theory that loyalty to political parties makes us believe things that aren't true.

A full discussion of the study in written form is available here.

It really can't be stressed enough -- the more loyal we are to a political party, or a football team, or a religion, or virtually anything else, the less likely we are to be able to objectively sort fact from fiction and less likely we are to reach the best conclusions on matters of fact and logic relating to that subject of our loyalty.  The human brain, as I tried my best to explain from my own layman's understanding, creates avenues of self-delusion that we often aren't even aware of.  Only by becoming aware of our own biases can we then work to overcome them in order to truly reach objective conclusions on issues that we have any degree of emotional attachment to.

This explains why so many talking heads and bloggers and less-than-objective media outlets spend so much time, money and effort distributing false (or misleading) information -- they know that putting out that kind of propoganda can be very effective in creating an alternative reality in the minds of their viewers/readers/listeners, and that fictional reality happens to be one in which their party/ideology/etc. is always right.

This book looks like a disturbing/entertaining collection of examples of "confirmation bias" in play.  When people want to believe something, they always seem to find ways to filter the world around them so that all that enters their own personal world is material that supports that they want to believe.

There are many more like it, but this survey adds more fuel to the fire.

On a related note, this Q&A is pretty interesting, and makes me want to add this book to my long list of "books I want to read but never seem to have the time."