Noam Chomsky explains why American Libertarians don’t understand that “Anarcho-Capitalist” is an oxymoron. It also explains why American “conservatives” are the least conservative people on the planet.

So I’m Back from a week of San Francisco and WWDC, and almost at the end of another week of work. But what can we learn from this experience?

1. Virgin, the airline, is not the blissful airline I remember. Bulkhead seats now cost an extra $130 and provide the stuff that was always free before. Everyone else has to pay. Worse still, the mandatory Safety Video is tail-ended with three commercials that are also mandatory; you can’t turn the little TV off while it bombards you with coca-cola flavoured shite. It was one of the worst TV experiences I’ve ever had: the power button doesn’t work! It was like 1984!
2. According to the WWDC keynote video, us Apple developers don’t just help ourselves and Apple to get rich, we also help blind men see and beggars to become doctors! That made me feel special.
3. San Francisco reminds me a lot of Brighton – not just in appearance but also because the improbably wealthy mingle with the homeless while the acidic odour of piss permeates every street.
4. Mountain Lion, Xcode 4.5, “modern” Objective C, Instruments and LLDB all look like essential keystones in a utopian world.
5. The weather in San Francisco is genuinely excellent, even for a heat hater like me.
6. Philadelphia is a nice place to come home to.
7. The Philly Police are dimmer than a 1mW energy-efficient bulb during a power-cut.
8. Tom, thankfully, hasn’t changed.
9. America now has higher quality beer than Britain. If you disagree then get on a plane and let me educate you.
10. The area of SF that intersects Nob Hill and Tenderloin is known colloquially as “Tender-nob”

A great deal has happened over the last 10 months, and very little of it was blogable; not because it was naughty or libelous, but because I needed a source of income and so I couldn’t risk upsetting my employers any more than I had already.
Things have now changed, lessons have been learned (on all sides), and the company feels like it’s together enough to produce what it promised: a genuinely good suite of products that all work together. That they’re also flying me and a colleague out to WWDC tomorrow also helps immeasurably; it’s exciting for too many reasons to articulate in my current state of mind.
Obviously I’ll try to bore you, dear reader, as much as I can about WWDC and San Francisco – but be warned that there’s a strong possibility of meeting up with My Dear Dirty Tom while I’m there so it may turn out to be ever so slightly interesting.
San Francisco alone is an exciting prospect, but the WWDC schedule makes it look like a geeks paradise.
Happy.