My Cruise Ship Has Come In

My wife and I were celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary by sailing beyond the reach of cell phones, the Internet, weblogs, and responsibility. We didn't even have to decide where to eat -- meals were covered by the ticket, and everything was so decadent that if you didn't order the specials, they'd bring them anyway so you could try them.

One more day of that, and they'd have to tow me behind the ship like Herbie the Fat Fury as we headed back to port. The staterooms got smaller with each meal.

As a practicing neurotic, I couldn't help but think of the Titanic, which was 83 feet shorter, 14 feet thinner, and held around the same number of passengers (the Wonder's maximum population: 3,325). Standing on our veranda at night, all you could see were rolling, pitch black seas and the distant lights of the Carnival Fantasy, a ship following roughly the same path.

As it turns out, comparing your cruise ship and its nocturnal companion to the Titanic and Carpathia is a poor way to go back to sleep.

The ship was crewed by hundreds of people, most of whom were young, foreign, aggressively chipper, and worked like galley slaves. (One of the current stage performers has a LiveJournal.) According to our Indonesian waiter -- every guest has staff who follow them from meal to meal -- they work a six-month contract of seven-day weeks, return to their countries, then hope for good customer reviews to get rehired.

A more industrious weblogger has posted much better Disney Wonder pictures than I took -- especially this shot of Castaway Cay.

The bayfront shops in Nassau were a reminder of home. I could pretend I was on St. George Street by stripping the word Bahamas off row after row of knick-knacks, replacing it with St. Augustine, and paying taxes on my liquor.

There was one striking difference between the towns and their assortment of tourist merchandise: a Nassau shop sold a barrel-wearing, spring-loaded carved man who turned out to be anatomically correct.

Having never been on a cruise ship before, I was awestruck by the insane engineering genius required to turn a 2,000-room hotel on its side and float it around the world. It's only a matter of time before they strap rockets on one of these, fill it with battered calamari, key lime pie, alcohol, and tourists, and send it 'round the moon.

On the final night of the cruise, I was hopped up on Beck's and Killian's Irish Red, trying to bust a move old-school on disco night in the Wavebands nightclub. It wasn't easy to lift a foot, then look for the floor's new location before putting it back down.

I must have been a gruesome spectacle, because each time I tried to leave the floor, a pair of attractive young women I didn't know yelled "dance, gray hair, dance!" When the DJ started playing music like Pearl Jam's "Evenflow," I knew he was throwing everything he could into making me stop the Elaine Bennis-like gyrations before I broke a hip.

Jacksonville · 2005/02/18 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Democratic Podcast: Return of Deficits and Debt

Saturday's Democratic response to the presidential radio address was delivered by Terry McAuliffe, the outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

McAuliffe's tenure ends on Saturday, when the DNC will meet and choose Howard Dean to replace him.

The transcript of McAuliffe's remarks:

I'm Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

This week, President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, and though he claimed our nation is strong, he did not and could not say that America is stronger today than it was four years ago.

Four years ago, when President Clinton left office, our nation was experiencing the longest economic expansion in our history. We had moved from record deficits to record surpluses. Unemployment was at a historic low and America was respected in the world.

But after four short years of Republican control, our economic growth has slowed. We've returned to the days of deficits and debt, and America is no longer seen as a beacon of freedom and progress.

And now these same Washington Republicans want to privatize Social Security. While Social Security faces challenges, Bush's privatization plan would make things worse.

Here's how: First, in order to pay for the creation of private accounts, Bush wants to borrow $2 trillion from foreign nations.

Secondly, Bush wants to cut benefits. How? He wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated, and by doing that, future retirees will see a nearly 50 percent cut in benefits compared to the current system. And that's whether you set up a private account or not.

And here's the worst part. Even after all those cuts and massive borrowing, private accounts would actually do nothing to help save Social Security. Don't take my word for it. Bush's own White House admitted that this week. In fact, private accounts would actually speed the insolvency of the program.

Benefit cuts, massive debt and more insecurity are not the type of drastic changes we need to make to our nation's retirement security.

Americans deserve better. After all, Social Security is not a handout. It's an earned benefit, one that every American pays into over his or her lifetime and one that every American deserves to get back -- guaranteed.

For our part, Democrats are for giving Americans more options and choices when it comes to retirement security and savings. And we agree there must be discussion about Social Security and the challenges that lie before us.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security is solvent until 2052. And even after 2052, it still will not be bankrupt as the president has said. There's no dispute that Social Security faces problems down the road, and we must address that. But we have the time to do it right.

And that begins with telling the American people the whole truth. Bush's plan, as I've said, will force America to borrow $2 trillion from foreign nations, further increasing our national debt. It will also result in a guaranteed cut, and that's the truth.

Democrats want any plan to solve the Social Security challenge to be rooted in fiscal discipline with budgets that pay as we go. Democrats will insist that any change in the system not result in benefit cuts. And those two principles for the safety and security of America's seniors we will not yield.

Democrats will reach out. We will work across the aisle. But we will also hold feet to the fire and make the Washington Republicans accountable for their selfish agenda.

This is Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And thank you for listening.

Podcasts · Politics · 2005/02/08 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Ouch: In Jacksonville Wednesday, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper spontaneously gave a paralyzed local athlete two diamond necklaces worth about $75,000 during an NFL awards ceremony Wednesday, then subsequently took them back.

Jacksonville · Sports · 2005/02/03 · Comment · Link

Wikipedia's Rank Decision

Wikipedia has placed nofollow on all external links, based on my spot check of random entries such as Gregorian calendar, MacGuffin, and Albert R. Broccoli. This change was made with little if any discussion, though there appears to be an effort now to decide whether it should be rescinded.

If this becomes Wikipedia policy, several million external links on 1.2 million pages will no longer contribute to Google's ranking algorithm, and Wikipedia's own pages will get a boost, as Phil Ringnalda describes:

Previously, if you were a certain well-known encyclopedia written as a wiki, you would generate a lot of PR just by having half a million pages, and that PR, along with any from external links, would be distributed around the site by internal links, and would also be distributed to any external sites you felt were important enough to link from your encyclopedia articles.

Now, as a byproduct of antispamming, every single bit of PR that each page has to distribute will be distributed only internally, to your own other pages, since all external links are nofollowed. Net result: you are more popular than before, the sites that you pretend to call important are less popular. You will tend to come out higher in search results, they will tend to come out lower.

I'm guessing this change was motivated by a desire to avoid spam abuse, but the practical effect is a huge site that shares none of the benefit it receives from 139,000 pages that link to its site.

Wikipedia · 2005/02/03 · 7 COMMENTS · Link

The Meek Shall Inherit the Press

The White House official who briefed reporters on the speech said Mr. Bush would take detailed positions on Social Security in coming weeks and months, but only to the extent that doing so would help Congress move forward. The official, who spoke before an auditorium full of journalists, insisted on not being quoted by name. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the goal in not allowing the use of the official's name was to keep the focus on Mr. Bush.

Can anyone imagine an auditorium full of webloggers, told not to quote a public official by name, being docile enough to honor the request like the Times, Washington Post, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Detroit Free Press, and many other papers?

Atrios identifies the official as White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.

Politics · Journalism · 2005/02/02 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Jacksonville: the Worst Coast

Philadelphians headed for this town are excused if they confuse it for home. Not because of the landscape, of course; this place lacks anything approaching charm.

You know your city has a bad rep when someone from Philadelphia calls it charmless. It's like being a singer booed off the stage by Ashlee Simpson.

Now that Workbench has begun to attract random abuse about Jacksonville, I'm feeling some civic responsibility to defend the Bold New City of the South, the First Coast, the place Where Florida Begins, or as one local dubbed it: "Just Barely Florida."

However, I would prefer for the world to believe the media digs and encourage the steady tide of new Floridians to beach themselves someplace else.

So Tony Kornheiser is right: Jacksonville is a foul-smelling city where we celebrate our wedding anniversaries by scrounging the doublewide for shoes and taking the cousin-wife out to Hooter's.

Forget what you heard about smooth beaches, year-round golf, and a nine-month summer that begins in two weeks. Those are lies spread by malicious yokels who lure unsuspecting tourists deep into the pines to re-enact their favorite scenes from Deliverance.

Jacksonville · 2005/02/02 · 19 COMMENTS · Link

The Revolution Will Be Podcasted

Thank you for providing a podcast of the weekly Democratic address. Where do you pick up the MP3? I asked the governor's staff where I could find it and they were unable to tell me.

I started this project after fruitlessly looking for an official source. As far as I can tell, my podcast is the first attempt to distribute and archive the opposition party's weekly response on the Web.

I pick up the audio from one of several streaming radio stations that run the speech each Saturday. One place you can hear it is C-Span Radio, which broadcasts the president's speech and the Democratic response beginning at around 2:50 p.m. Eastern.

A week after I began doing this in January, I received an e-mail from a staffer at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who is working to set up a multimedia server for stuff like this.

I also have communicated with Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid's war room, a new "rapid-response" communications center for Senate Democrats that includes its own television and radio studio.

I've offered to help one of these groups produce regular podcasts, because it's frustrating watching Democrats struggle to get their message out without the bully pulpit of the White House, control of Congress, or its own house organ.

Politics · Podcasts · 2005/01/31 · 1 COMMENT · Link

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