Surfin' USA

1. After the Hayek discussions ended today, I walked down the beach to Manhattan Beach (immortalized here (at around 0:38)).  I watched the surfers for awhile--not a good day for waves--no tubes (sigh) (by the way, "tubular" was a term one used to express the awesomeness of something when I was a lad (as in, "That is so Tubular!"  (I think it is used in the same way the New Englanders use "wicked" which tells you a lot about New Englanders))).

2. Yesterday, there was an earthquake.  What was interesting about the earthquake is that it happened before I wrote anything on the blog yesterday, but it didn't occur to me that the earthquake was in any way interesting until I met the others form the conference and they all thought the earthquake was noteworthy.  It was just a little earthquake (someone said 3.something); I guess living through earthquakes is like riding a bike--it just becomes one of those things about which you don't really think.

3. Speaking of my fellow conferees, I told some people that the biggest fear of conferences like this one whether you spend the whole time talking to the other people is that the other people won't be very interesting.  Fortunately, that isn't the case--the organizers did a good job putting together an nice cross-section of academics (of course, "cross-section of academics" is not a very large slice of humanity).

4. Last night we went to a pretty good restaurant in town.  I was sitting across from one of the conference organizers, who at one point was describing the trouble she had remembering the name of the restaurant..  She described it to the hotel staff as having this interesting cuisine, primarily Caribbean, but mixed with other things.  The staff had no idea what restaurant she meant.  When she remembered the name, they still didn't associate it with the type of cuisine she mentioned.  I told her that the food we were eating was actually just called California Cuisine--exactly the sort of food served all over the state at interesting restaurants.  I don't think she believed me.  Anyway, it was good.


5. Given all the reading I had to do for this conference in the last couple of weeks, I was neglectful of my book reports before I left.  So, I'll start remedying that.  I recently finished
P.G. Wodehouse, Meet Mr. Mulliner.  Mr. Mulliner tells tales of his relatives to the other in his local pub, the Angler's Rest--and given the setting, you know right up front that Mr. Mulliner is telling you a fish tale, but they are, naturally enough, rather amusing Fish Tales.  Well worth reading, but you knew that as soon as you saw the name of the author.