KT and I encountered this guy in the middle of "Cowpies," one of the many stunnning trails among the spectacular red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. We're in the middle of a two-week jaunt through the west, with stops in Las Vegas, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Phoenix and Tuscon. I've put up many more travel photos on Flickr.

Sedona's an amazing place, where the desert meets the mountains. In one hike, you can walk from lizards and cacti to alpine forests - all under the shadows of those luminous red rocks.

There's definitely a special kind of energy in Sedona. Our hotel was nestled among the rocks, and on the last morning I woke up at 6:30 so brimming with vitality I ended up taking a two-hour pre-breakfast hike through the canyon. Those of you who know me know how out of character it is for me to even get out of bed before noon.

Sedonans have concluded that the place is full of what they call "vortexes" - sites where the earth's energy is especially concentrated. The purported precise locations of the vortexes were first mapped out by a local psychic in 1980. Surprisingly, they're all conveniently located within short walks of trailhead parking lots - which may say more about her lack of interest in hiking than in the dynamics of local energy flows.

We had a fantastic tour gide in Sednoa, Dennis Andres, also known in town as "Mr. Sedona." In his invaluable, BS-free guide, What Is a Vortex?, Dennis concludes it may make more sense to consider the entire city one giant vortex, rather than splitting hairs over which spots count as vortex sites. A globetrotting hiker, he compares the energy in Sedona to Peru's Macchu Picchu, California's Mount Shasta, and Mount Everest.

Not surprisingly, Sedona's become a New Age magnet in recent years, leading to traffic, inflation, and a truly boggling number of crystal stores. Land is being gobbled up by rich vacationers, yuppie dropouts, and speculators, As Dennis explains, the top four professions in Sedona today are psychic, jeep tour driver, realtor, and psychic jeep-tour-driving realtor. Out of a population of 10,000, there are 400 reiki healers.

Not to knock Sednoa reiki healers - I had a session the night I got into town that blew my mind. That Sedona energy is powerful stuff, however fuzzy the rhetoric and kitschy the marketing. After three days, I was ready to take a vacation from my vacation, and bring my chi back to more familiar levels. But I'll be back.

Posted by tedf at 01:18 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2006

Container Garden, 2006 version, Day 0

Posted by tedf at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2006

Summer Movie Pool

Every summer since 2001, I've participated with a few dozen film academics and fellow travelers in a summer movie pool. We all predict the top ten summer box office grossers, and whoever's list comes closest wins. (The specific rules are way too detailed to list here, or for me to even remember - these are academics, after all.)

I came in third my first year, but it's been downhill ever since. This year's a real tricky one to predict - I'm very confident in Superman Returns at #1, but after that, it's a real crapshoot.

The ballots were due on May 15, but movies released before then still count. So, we were all able to take into account the disappointing openings of MI:III and Poseidon. I've concluded audiences this year are unmotivated to rush to the theaters for bigger, louder sequels and remakes, figuring they can eventually catch them on DVD. But everybody needs a summer movie fix eventually, so I'm betting on Superman Returns as the movie that brings the nation together, Da Vinci Code as the must-see object of controversy, and Cars as the kids' movie adults enjoy too. (I guess Superman Returns is kind of a remake/sequel, but the previews suggest Brian Singer's produced a fresh take on the material - an idealistic antidote to our ugly era.)

On the other hand, I almost always underestimate the power of the mediocre sequel - junk like Rush Hour 2 and Austin Powers 3 have been my undoing, year after year. But some years, the audience does rebel. So far, this is looking like one of those years.

Not that my entry is full of European art flicks. Here's my complete list:

1. Superman Returns
2. The Da Vinci Code
3. Cars
4. Pirates of the Caribbean II
5. X-Men III
6. Mission Impossible III
7. Click
8. The Break-Up
9. The Lake House
10. Nacho Libre

We also get to pick three "dark horses":
Talladega Nights
Little Miss Sunshine
A Scanner Darkly

And we each pick a catchphrase every year. This year, mine comes from blockbuster savant George Lucas. According to Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, it's the only direction he ever gave them on the set: "Faster, more intense."

All the summer movie pool results since 2002 are online here. You'll just have to take my word for it that I finished in the money in 2001.

UPDATE: I take it back. Complete top finishers since the pool's start back in 1994, including corroboration of my 2001 finish, are available on this Hall of Fame page.

Posted by tedf at 11:24 AM | Comments (1)

May 08, 2006

Democratic Political Consultants: Not Just Incompetent, But Greedy, Too

If you feel like you aren't quite cynical enough yet about American electoral politics, check out Walter Shapiro's horrifying piece in Salon on the slimy world of political consultants. Did you know that both Republican and Democratic consultants pocket commissions of 10-15% of every TV ad buy? That Bob Shrum's company made $6 million (plus reimbursement for production costs) to bungle the 2004 Kerry campaign? That consultants often get "victory bonuses" not only for wins in the general election, but even for wins in barely contested primaries?

Hey - why don't the Dems take a page from the playbook of their trial lawyer benefactors, and make it all or nothing for consultants? 33% if they win, zilch if they lose. Maybe then you'd see them go for the jugular more often.

This morass of sleaze and complacency shows why the netroots needs to do more than just raise money for Democratic candidates. All the money Howard Dean raised in 2004 didn't mean much once he hired the same old hacks to make his ads. And why do incompetents like Bob Shrum still have jobs?

We need to be thinking about ways to shake up every aspect of Democratic business as usual. We need to encourage creativity and fresh blood by funding innovative consulting startups. We need to bring the online world's innovation to the hidebound world of political TV advertising. And we need to do it now, or God knows how bad things will get by 2008.

Posted by tedf at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

May 03, 2006

Save the Internet!

A. J. Liebling warned, "Freedom of press is guaranteed only to those who own one." The internet has spawned millions of printing presses, leading to an explosion of democratic discourse perhaps unmatched in human history. Anybody with access to a computer and a web connection can join the fray.

But don't think it can't be taken away.

Right now, there's a debate in congress over "net neutrality." It's hard to get worked up over something that sounds so technical, but the stakes couldn't be higher.

The end of net neutrality would mean the end of the internet as we know it today in America. The giant corporations which provide internet access to most Americans would be free to sell preferential access to the highest bidder - and to squeeze the bandwidth of the websites that don't pay their protection money.

The internet didn't get the way it is today by accident, or simply because of the "free market." The system was coded - by regulators and technologists - in ways that enforce fair, equal treatment to all speakers. But code can be altered, and don't think big media wouldn't love to see all us uppity bloggers put back in our place, and the net turned from a global public square to just another mass medium.

If you think I'm exaggerating here, check out this shockingly spiteful and incoherent rant from Mike McCurry, onetime Clinton hand, now lapdog for the telcos. (To get some context on McCurry's bewhilderingly aggreived tone, check out Joshua Micah Marshall here, and Adam Green here.)

For more on how net neutrality works, check out this video distributed by MoveOn:

To get involved in this struggle over the future of democratic discourse in the United States, go to savetheinternet.com.

UPDATE: From the New Yorker, here's James Surowiecki on net neutrality. Surowiecki's an extraordinary business writer, and he does a great job of laying out the economics of the conflict, but I think he understates the dangers to democracy posed by the loss of net neutrality. Right now, the internet is America's public square. The end of net neutrality could turn it into a mall.

Posted by tedf at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2006

Our Constitutional Crisis

Bush challenges hundreds of laws - The Boston Globe

Posted by tedf at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)