I’ve lived in California for close to 20 years now and one of the things I’ve forgotten is just how great Muir Woods National Monument (in Marin) is. We had some family visiting and the weekend before last we had a chance to visit and wander around the main trail in the woods.

The Coastal Redwoods are really magnificent and defy simple description or rendering with photos. These trees are nearly 100 meters (~330 feet) tall when mature and live thousands of years (provided humans don’t cut them all down…)

The drive there is also beautiful winding along Highway 1 through Marin, up the side of Mt. Tamalpais. However, if anyone in your retinue is prone to car sickness, look out! After marveling at the trees for awhile, we headed north on Highway 1 to Point Reyes Station and had a delicious late lunch at the Station House Cafe.

Regardless of whether you’re a visitor or resident, take a trip to check out Muir Woods, it’s a fun day trip and will remind you of some of the benefits of living in or visiting the Bay Area.

One of the things I’ve missed since being a long hair for so many years was the simple pleasures of the neighborhood barbershop. Now some aren’t all that pleasant with conversation tilted toward the political and such, but some are simply gems.

Half Moon Bay is lucky enough to have a family barbershop magically transported out of the 1960’s and perfectly preserved for our use. Operated by two brothers, Vincent and Robert, these guys offer no excuses haircuts for $20. Cash. They do a good trade from what I can tell in my half-dozen trips to their tiny shop on Main Street.

It’s a two chair affair with four fancy lawn chairs for waiting. The normal magazines are there if you want to read them. The TV is on, generally with an episode from the Twilight Zone – a longtime favorite of mine. The conversation is light and friendly, the haircuts are great, and they get you in and out in a hurry.

Let’s hope Mantia’s Barbershop stays around for a long, long time. I’m a fan. If you’re in town and you want a good haircut, this is your place. Check it out. No phone, no website, nothing. Open 9:30-4:30 Monday-Saturday at the corner of Main and Mill in downtown Half Moon Bay.

Heck, I’m a pretty entrepreneurial guy, I’ve got good ideas all the time. But this one escaped…..thankfully, someone else made it real. What could be such a good business idea that I wouldn’t want to let it get away?

Imagine a huge customer base, a customer base that has real difficulty separating reality from fiction, a customer base so absolutely sure of themselves, despite that reality problem, that they have a superiority streak that causes them to want to spread their views to everyone else. Imagine a customer base so convinced, they’ll want to communicate how right they were to anyone and everyone who ever disagreed with them. If you think I’m talking about the religious masses, you’re right!

The product? Post Rapture Post Cards from the Saved.

It’s really brilliant, say you want to send a message to a smart-ass like me who points at you and laughs when you talk about the second coming and your planned ascension into paradise. Now, courtesy of a very friendly and helpful atheist, you can be assured your message is delivered after the big event. That’s right, for a small fee, much smaller than a standard tithe, you can be assured that every non-believer will have tangible proof of your superiority and their pending future wasting away in hell.

Aside from the obvious smug message, there are also some practical uses including: post-rapture pet care, counseling for the damned, last minute expressions of love and sympathy, and many, many, more. Prices range from $4.99 for a Class I, 1,500 character message to $799: “Your message of up to 3,000 characters is hand-scribed on medieval style parchment sheets, and then rolled and wrapped with a fine Italian ribbon. The Class III message is delivered immediately after the Rapture, so expect delivery in as little as one day, depending on the transportation options available to those rejected from the Kingdom of God.”

My hat is off to you Post Rapture Post, you’ve cracked the code on how to fleece the faithful in a perfectly crafted service that, unlike their own religious organizations, is not in the least bit deceitful. BTW, do you have an affiliate program? (Just kidding, this site has gone non-commercial…)

It’s year two of my Super Bowl boycott, I will not be watching the game. In fact, for the 2008/9 season/post-season I haven’t watched a single minute of NFL football. Why you ask? Because it’s an unwatchable product for one, I have a real life to live, and there are a few other things we might be paying attention to; at home and abroad.

If you haven’t read Frank Rich’s Op-Ed piece on the current state of affairs, then you’re missing a good piece. A long, but salient read. HT: Bob.

Meanwhile, the fabric of society continues to shred as upstanding Christian men continue to screw one another while attempting to cover it up and deny that they are homosexual. This hurts themselves and their families. Why not man up and simply be who you are? It’s not like the alleged almighty is going to smite you, you’re doing a fine job smiting yourself. See: Ted Haggard on Oprah. Yuck. Haggard, you suck. Wake up!

As our economy dies due to a massive confidence crisis, the politicians in Washington blather about what to do about it. The democrats at least have a proposal on the table – generally, if we’re going to go into debt for something, I think infrastructure is a good bet. I too share the worry that it doesn’t stimulate fast enough, but at least when it’s finished, you’ve got something to show for your borrowing. Clearly, the idea of tax cuts and shoring up financial institutions hasn’t worked, I don’t know why we would spend another cent on those failed programs. For those of you who are confused: borrowing for infrastructure == investing. Borrowing for tax cuts == spending.

Meanwhile, we’re still bleeding (literally and figuratively) off in Iraq and Afghanistan – what’s the exit strategy again? Now is the time. At least we won’t torture anymore and the end is in sight for Gitmo.

When it comes down to it, I think education is our opportunity (yes, we should rebuild roads, bridges, transmission lines, and the information backbone as well) but now having a child in the public school system, the reality of the decline has become real. When I was in school, years ago, the facilities were in excellent to reasonable shape. The teachers worked to educate, not to train students to take tests. Not only were we able to learn the readin’ writin’ and ‘rithmatic, we had access to art, music, and physical education.

In our little school district, the facilities are in disrepair, the teachers try mightily, but are fighting an uphill battle against standardized tests dictating the education process. Without the actions of the PTO, there would be no access to art, music, or PE – and even so, it’s 1/2 year and it’s now over for students at this school. The class sizes are huge, the spread of skills in the school is huge from some kindergartners not knowing which way to orient a book to read and others reading. It’s a real mess.

The test scores go up, but the actual effectiveness of education seems to be sinking, and sinking fast.

Moving back to religion for the moment, the Catholic diocese is attempting to stiff the city of San Francisco out of $15M in property transfer taxes on the basis that they are a religious organization. Further afield, the Vatican is now claiming that birth control pills are bad for the environment and lead to infertility in males, no really, I’m serious. To be inclusive, our Muslim friends seem to have something against coloring hair issuing a fatwa on the subject. Seriously.

And the band played on…..guess I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning….