"Are you going to San Francisco?"

Scott McKenzie? Flowers in your hair? :-) Ah, the summer of love.

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I love San Francisco, it's my favourite US city, I''ve been there once, in 1998. I did all the touristy things - saw Alcatraz on perhaps the only sunny day of the year, saw the seals on the pier, played chess with the hobos down by the cable car station (boy what a bunch of piece swindlers!)

I still think I owe my well being to a street walker of all people. I was staying down by Fishermans Wharf and, being a Beatles fan, I had gone in search (on foot) of Haight-Ashbury - not realizing that it was quite a walk. On my way back I was walking through somewhere to the west (I think) of Russia Hill. It was dark and the neighbourhood was clearly not safe - it felt foreboding anyway. So I hear "hey white boy, where you going?" from across the street, and this young black girl came up and started propositioning me. I carried on walking and she fell in step, I asked how she was doing and just chatted to her. I made sure to tell her about my wife and child (going for the don't orphan my kid approach!) She walked me thru a gang of 10 or so "home boys", and I think because we were chatting and seemingly getting along they didn't mug me. At the end of the long street she said "don't you be walking around these parts at night white boy". I made it back to the hotel safely and learned my lesson!

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It wasn't a joke - I actually did detect some talent in The Shaggs, especially in the rhythm section - I'm glad Cobain had that album in his top 100, for Cobain was a musical genius, for me he understood how to convey emotion within a tune, and boy did he have tunes.

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Why do we have to promote our good deeds? Wouldn't a good manager go out of his way to actually see what you did? I guess they don't do that.

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I imagined that Jesus drew some "power runes" (symbols) on the ground cross this line if you are sinless. Everyone knows that they are lost when they cross the line don't they? Do you think education was at such a standard back then that these folks could read words like "theft," "lust," "lying," and "false witness"? Maybe, I dunno. This is just the sort of thing one needs to send a camera into space for. Send a powerful camera instantaneously (though a wormhole) to a point approximately 1970 or so light years away from Earth and get it to take a picture of what Jesus wrote. For right now, that point in space is where the light from Jesus' writing in the sand on that day actually is. How far away is that? It's 1/7,106,598 th of the way to the edge of the known universe. The Good News has a long way to travel :-)

Interestingly from the perspective of "The Good News" it has been everywhere. If you travel at the speed of light then all distances are zero, and time stands still, so you're not actually going anywhere, for there is nowhere to go.

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Were I there we could discuss this over a guiness and a fine seegar. Safe travels my friend!