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A Mall for the Reluctant Shopper

by Brian on February 15, 2013 in California, Travel, United States

For all our travels there are still places I hesitate to go. Shopping malls, with their dreadful combination of crowds and consumerism, generally top that list. Westfield Horton Plaza in San Diego is an exception.

Covering six and one half blocks and seven stories of the city’s historic Gas Lamp District, Horton is remarkable for its complete lack of in-your face store fronts. We toured a large section of the complex and still can’t tell you what shops are there; our attention instead riveted to the twisting and elaborately colored architecture of the place.

Urban Fisherman

by Brian on February 13, 2013 in Photo of the Day, Travel

Coronado, California

Who Needs SeaWorld?

by Brian on February 11, 2013 in California, Travel

The more we see animals in the wild the less we enjoy seeing them in cages. Even the wonderfully clean and professionally administered San Diego Zoo left us feeling a bit sad when we originally visited it seven years ago. Now that we’re back in the area, we have no plans to return.

Nor do we intend to visit SeaWorld even though it sits just six short miles from our San Diego campground. Ubiquitous advertisements beckoning us with images of trained dolphins and whales literally jumping through hoops for humans only reinforce our disinterest in a theme park constructed around captured creatures. Fortunately, we found an alternative.

The Madness of Crowds

by Brian on February 8, 2013 in Travel

For a guy who doesn’t get terribly excited about hamburgers or, for that matter, fast food, how is it that I deliberately went out of my way to find one of the worst fast food hamburgers I have ever eaten? I blame crowdsourcing. More specifically, I blame Yelp.

In many ways user review websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are brilliant. Their millions of members review far more locations than a professional opinion writer ever could. In fact, it’s hard to find something in the world these days that hasn’t been assigned a specific number of stars. And unlike the magazine or guidebook reviews of old, these never go stale because they’re updated continuously.

They’re also supposed to be better. Instead of turning to a crusty old food critic, Yelp relies on “the wisdom of crowds” for its rankings. In theory, the collective view of a large population is better than that of a single individual, even a very knowledgeable one. This idea is the basis for everything from the efficiency of capital markets to Wikipedia. A million internet users, after all, can’t be wrong.

Why, then, are they so often wrong?