Croc

Excuse me? That seems more than just a little bit...um...bigoted.

Oh of course--I'm well aware that most Americans really don't get "out there" enough.

I need to try Filipino Town fer sher...it's the one "Town" in LA I haven't hit up, and I know next to nothing about Filipino food.

Oh I love the bread--it definitely has texture to it. It's weird...kinda like foam in texture, but the taste is similar to sourdough. Yeah the raw meat is the best...love the "kitfo" as they call it. I tried a place that was "meh alright" on yelp, and I now want to go to the highest rated Ethiopian place in LA: Meals by Genet. I just had a great dinner with some friends at Sushi Gen in Little Tokyo. Had the sashimi dinner w/ Tempura and a side of natto with a quail egg. The sashimi was pretty good. Would have liked a little more variety, but still good. Tempura was top notch. Natto? Meh, it wasn't very fermented to be honest. Too mild for me, and nowhere near as good as the natto at Suehiro Cafe, which has the best natto I've had in LA thus far.

I don't pay attention to what other people are doing--it doesn't concern me, so it's not my business. I cannot stand the random chatter. It isn't nice, it's annoying--these people aren't trying to be "nice," either--if someone wants/needs human contact so badly, get a cell phone and/or make some friends. I am not your friend, I have things to do, things to think about, tasks and people to balance, and I really couldn't care any less about Muffy and her chew toys. Now, if you want to ask me how to get to Third and Fairfax, if Roscoe's is open late tonight, whether to take the Hollywood or Ventura Freeway, if an ATM is nearby, or even if you can bum a cigarette and/or light...fine. But don't start complaining to me about the length of the line, your hopes/dreams about tomorrow, how awful the weather is, or if I heard the latest about Michael Jackson's doctor. And DON'T insert yourself into a private conversation I am having with am acquaintance unless there's a very damn good reason for doing so and you do it as politely as possible. Need/want human contact? See above.

You can't have had REAL Mexican food: Salbutes Cochinita Pibil Mmmmmmmmmm

Not a fan of Indian, still trying to warm up to Ethiopian, cannot stand Americanized Chinese, "American" and "New American" food doesn't do much for me, but I still eat it occasionally. Japanese rocks--healthiest diet hands down. Authentic Chinese is pretty damn good, too. Love Thai, enjoy some Vietnamese, some Hawaiian (no spam, gross), LOVE LOVE LOVE Jewish food.

Excuse me?

No way. Social boundaries are a great thing. I love old people who just do whatever and don't give a $h!, even though her chatter would have likely annoyed the $h! out of me.

This is exciting. More info at the HotHardware link embedded in the story. Think of it: cell phones as thin as credit cards? Sign me up!

Thank God no one ever really does this in SoCal, aside from the random cracked-out drunk bummer.

Yeah but as annoying as it is, it happens. Every so often, it will happen. If you're a pretty good waiter/waitress, you will be raking in tips left and right, and that one table a week that fails to leave a tip isn't that big of a deal anymore.

Oh, I have. But never twice. Also, California is one of the states that enforces minimum wage even for tipped employees. I generally do tip, unless service really sucks, but I was mainly getting at the earlier post that strongly implied tip entitlement. It doesn't exist--there are too many lazy young people who don't realize they should be doing something extra if they are to expect tips. So is abysmal service.

Tips are not required.

I can't stand people who start talking to me randomly, especially when I'm out with a group of people and someone just tries to insert themselves in the conversation. I was at Target this past December with a good female friend, and we were joking around in the checkout line about placement of the separator bar, and how I wanted it to be perfectly clear that we were NOT together. Just goofing off. Creepy dude behind me in line leans in at this moment and says "What do you two not want me to see?" And I just turned around, weirded out expression on my face, and said "Okaaaaaaaaaaaay?" and slowly turned back around...and then moved to the end of the checkout station to get away. Weird. Last summer some old man interrupted my conversation with the same friend at a Starbucks. Started telling us his life story for 20 minutes. We really could not get away, and I obviously have no problem being blunt in those situations. As we walked away, we were both dazed and confused and couldn't figure out a) what just happened, and b) what we had even been talking about.

HOT. I heard Tik Tok and Blah Blah Blah on the radio this morning, and DAMN. Just hearing how she talks I knew she was from LA, likely the Valley, and yes wikipedia confirmed this. I'm a fan. Valley girls are so f@#king hot.

Blame it on a preoccupation with the US by US policymakers. Blame it on studying the wrong things for a long time. Blame it on whatever you want, but the fact is that "climate change" refers to the entire changing climate--the warmer temperatures at the polar ice caps, the increase in intensity and frequency of Gulf hurricanes, the changing precipitation rates in certain parts of the world, the increasing humidity in Sun City, AZ...it just took a little bit for scientists to realize more than warming was taking place, and it took even longer for this to be recognized in the public consciousness. ...and? The green concrete has already been implemented in Italy and Japan, and is being implemented in the US in the Pac-NW. Like many things, it'll go through the demonstration project phases and then migrate from the coasts to the middle of the country over a period of decades. That's just not how the world works. Google "policy window" and see the above .gif on the scientific method.

Why? Technology got us to the point we can actually start making significant progress in curbing our pollution output...it's not like we can't curb our pollution--we've developed alternative fuels, created air scrubbers for factory smokestacks, and we're even beginning implementation of pollution-cleansing concrete. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Bull. If we just staved off an ice age then we would be MAINTAINING climates instead of watching the polar ice caps disintegrate at a rapidly increasing pace. False substitution. Huh? We just need to join the rest of the developed world in beginning to regulate this stuff. Your assertion--that because we cannot police the rest of the world, we should do nothing ourselves--is just asinine. Seriously, the irony--that I, a "socialist" Democrat, am arguing for climate change legislation to protect existing individual property rights from accelerated environmental forces at the hands of collective man against a self-proclaimed "Libertarian"--is not lost on me.

Um, yes, that's common sense...including the common sense that this is limited to the industrial and post-industrial eras. That's not that long ago, and is a quite testable hypothesis. =========================== Let's talk about those volcanoes, too, while we're at it. How often do volcanoes erupt? How often do big eruptions occur? What do we know about large eruptions...that they have altered earth's climate for years following? Oh, yea, that's right. Now think about all those sudden carbon emissions and how long it takes for things to go "back to normal" following an event. Now compare that to a sustained, daily pollution of carbon from factories all around the world. How many years of global factories would it take to equal a single, moderate volcanic eruption? These are the questions to consider. But to assert that there is no effects on climate from pollution just shows such a fundamental ignorance of basic knowledge and scientific principles.

Doesn't help much at all when you consider the deforestation rates around the world.

Asinine and ignorant. The atmosphere is made up of many gases, and they interact and react with each other, ultraviolet radiation, and water. Increases in ozone-eating gases allow more UV light to pass through to earth, leading to increased levels of sunlight intensity. This can cause more evaporation from water on the ground. Gases in the air interact/react with UV light forming compounds that retain heat in the atmosphere--the "greenhouse effect." The reason "global warming" has given way to "climate change" is because it isn't just warming that takes place--scientists have figured out that excessive carbon outputs have thrown off equilibrium, and while warming effects have been observed, it seems frequency and intensity of weather events has been increasing as well. This makes sense when you think about it--the environment is a system, and a change in one part, like heat levels, has logical consequences like increased evaporation. What does this cause? It's unfolding like a domino effect, but we don't yet know with certainty what the end results of these chain reactions will be--but what has been observed over decades is that certain meteorological phenomena are increasing in frequency and intensity. Check out how dramatic it's been; cliffside hasn't changed in 40 years: <a href="http://www.historicaerials.com/?poi=9792"><img src="http://www.historicaerials.com/featuredPOIImage.aspx?poi=9792" /></a> <a href="http://www.historicaerials.com/?poi=9793"><img src="http://www.historicaerials.com/featuredPOIImage.aspx?poi=9793" /></a> <a href="http://www.historicaerials.com/?poi=9794"><img src="http://www.historicaerials.com/featuredPOIImage.aspx?poi=9794" /></a> Go to Bing Maps aerial photography and see what it looked like in most of 2009. Additionally, this video shows some birds-eye views from news coverage of how, in the last few months, the cliffs have eroded: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=" name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Look at some aerial photography--those buildings, when built, were far from the cliffside. Erosion has been pretty bad around there. Another area with similar issues is the Isla Vista neighborhood right by UC Santa Barbara. There, they used to have a really wide beach between the sea cliffs and the ocean, but after a La Nina in the late 70s, the beach got washed away and now many of the buildings are overhanging the edge of the cliff. Now let's put on our thinking caps here--of COURSE this has happened in the past and happened naturally. What's at issue is the acceleration due to climate change. To act like we, humans, are completely blameless in this is just asinine and ignorant. Given this situation, what are we going to do about it? That's the real test of humanity--how are we going to solve these problems? Burying our heads in the sand like ostriches pretending it doesn't exist isn't going to solve anything.