I’ve just finished watching the third presidential debate, which is the first one I’ve seen in real time when I’ve been conscious (watching at three in the morning in London doesn’t count). I think Kerry came out ahead, particularly because of Bush’s outrageous assertion that he never said he was unconcerned about bin Laden. There wasn’t, however, that much in it: I suspect the polls will show the public judged it as a close-run thing.
My dominant reaction, however, is I can’t believe how poor Bob Schieffer’s questions were. First, the majority of them were closed questions, inviting a yes no answer, instead of an open one. Second, his framing of the questions was terrible. Third, a good number of the questions were of marginal relevance to any significant issue. Fourth, he started on a bizarre note with a question about security, when this was supposed to be the different debate.
The other great thing about watching in an alert mood was following some of the active weblogs, notably Daily Kos, as the debate went on. What a great job of constant fact checking and temperature gauging. I did check some of the major right-wing blogs for the same service, but I didn’t think they kept it up as consistently.
Update: I see commenters on Daily Kos are also excoriating Schieffer. No question about energy policy, no question about the environment, no question about stem cells. You could go on and on.
The other treat about flying to and from Seattle was getting a reasonably close up view of Mt St Helens. I could clearly see the smoke and ash venting out of the crater.
Dinner overlooking Lake Washington 
After breakfast, I flew up to Seattle to see Linda Stone, a friend since we met on the train to Davos. She was then newly in charge of Microsoft’s relationship with the Forum and I was an old Davos hand. I revealed some of the arcana to her and a friendship was sealed.
Linda is famous, among other things, for being one of the technology world’s great connectors and she organised a wonderful dinner with assorted Seattle folk. We agreed at the start of the dinner that it wasn’t bloggable, but it was a great evening, with lively conversation (I didn’t know people could be so passionate about the monorail project in Seattle), some fabulous geek toys (you have to see the OQO to believe it) and a general suffusion of bonhomie that I’m still feeling even though I only had three hours sleep before I needed to get up to catch my plane back to the Bay Area.
I’ve kept the setting for Davos Newbies on London time, my home base, even though I’m on the US west coast. So I think this week, for the most part, my daily filings will be largely retrospective (at least in terms of the calendar).
I had breakfast yesterday morning with Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, at Rick & Anne’s a wonderful Berkeley institution.
Chris is in the throes of preparing an issue of the magazine that will focus on energy. Although Chris was once a climate change sceptic (he worked on The Economist for god’s sake — the home of climate change deniers), he’s come around to the belief that this poses one of the key challenges to the world. I can’t wait to see what the magazine comes up with.
Not incidentally, Chris’s own article in the current issue, The Long Tail, is well worth a look. It’s about the opportunities in micro-markets in books, DVDs, music and other media.