As an LA pedestrian, I can agree that auto and SUV drivers can really suck. I've been hit in more crosswalks than I care to recount -- well, three times in the last seven years. If I wasn't extra vigilant, I'd be dead. Fortunately for me, I've been able to get almost completely out of the way. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that a huge percentage of SUV drivers are hopelessly clueless, and shouldn't be piloting tons of steel.

That being said, some cyclists are also an incredible hazard. There seems to be a breed of arrogant cyclists who think they deserve to have *your* right of way. I've been assaulted by a cyclist because I was in the crosswalk, and he didn't want to stop for the light.

I certainly don't mean to impugn all cyclists. But the ones with the attitude are a real problem.

In traditional LA style, I want to ask: Can't we all just get along?

If you like this, you should track down the Technicolor Web of Sound (Psychedelic radio), http://techwebsound.com.

They replay old radio tapes from the late 60s on classic old LA stations like KJOY. You can hear stuff like 13th Floor Elevators, and more.

Listening to "hipster" ads for places that are long gone really brings back the memories...

Well, visual artists can probably make it with some true fans iff they produce their Great Works but also produce high-volume, low effort works as well.

For example*, a painter who sells one $10-15k oil painting a year may also need to sell 100 giclee prints at $500 a piece and/or 1000 $50 proofs/small prints.

Throw in crass T-Shirt, Mug, Mouse-pad, and poster sales, and it's a living.

(*Numbers are all imaginary).

If you think the carpenter bees are loud in ordinary flowers, you should hear them when they're going up into the not-quite-large-enough openings of the bell-shaped flowers on a cassia tree.

I can sit in the back yard, and they sound like someone firing up a dremel tool against the garage...

Why do words like "eldritch" and "chthonic" come to mind?

It always pisses me off that people talk about Darwinism as "survival of the fittest." Darwinism is all about survival of the adequate.

Furthermore, "fittest" is localized to a set of environmental conditions. But environments are not constant over time -- they're really quite ephemeral (on a geologic timescale).

Anybody interested in the intelligence of corvids, their cultural differences from place to place, and more, should really read In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell (http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780300122558-1). It has lots of great information, and is a fun and interesting read.

It also discusses other animals that pass cultural habits on to their offspring.

Julianr: actually, Eucalyptis are very fast growing. That looks like a 20-25 year old to me. Not that that would make it any more pleasant to watch.

Irregardless of weather its misuse of "beg the question" is literally a mute point.

Do I win?

As for the actual subject, it never ceases to amaze me how we as a culture welcome violence (war toys are fine) but fear sexuality. We're obsessed with both.

Hm. Maybe Steve Allen should have offered attribution:

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." -- E. B. White

What's interesting is the bi-directional aspect of this; if one feels a sneeze coming on (but not quite there), mentally picturing a bright light can trigger it.

If you use the "brain as a black box that can't truly differentiate inputs" model, this makes a lot of sense. But I suspect that the phenomenon will tell a lot about the neurology, regardless of model.

As a developer on a F/OSS package, I can say that there are a lot of factors that are involved.

But to generalize the whole situation as an epic F/OSS v. Commercial Software battle is just applying a manichean metric to something much more complex.

Some F/OSS *is* designed to compete with commercial software. In some cases (Mozilla, Linux, Apache) it does that very well. In some cases (Chandler, evidently) it does not. But not all F/OSS software is designed to be competitive to, replace, or be the equivalent of some commercial package.

I work on an Open Source CMS package. I've worked on the core, and I write a lot of add-in modules. I do it because 1) I like doing it, 2) it's a package that meets my needs and works in a way that's intuitive to me, 3) it serves as a framework for when I want to build custom solutions, and 4) I like the idea of collaborative work and contributing to the community.

Tens of thousands of people have downloaded my code, presumably some of them use it. Is it perfect for all of them? Judging by the number of feature requests and bug reports I get sent daily, it's anything but! Some of the feature requests I add to my list of things to implement, some I don't. Same with bug reports. Sometimes, I say that I have no intention to add a feature, but if someone wants to sponsor it, I'll add it for pay. Sometimes, I'll point out where in the code they would need to do work to implement the feature.

They're getting my work for free. I spend many hours each week helping people track down problems, consulting, frequently fixing *their* mistakes, all gratis. If some user feels entitled to *demand* his pet features, screw him! I can't tell you how many emails I get saying "I need feature X by next week, otherwise I won't use your product! Any anyway, Product Z already has that!" Hey, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Hope you find Product Z rewarding.

If this is being arrogant, or throwing back in people's faces, so be it. I produce something that I'm proud of. I honestly feel that I help make the world a better place (especially when I see nonprofits using my work to help publicize disease-prevention information or fight for social justice). But beyond that, I'm helping empower small-time web designers in the creation of feature-rich, standards-complaint web sites.

/rant off

I have to say, though, the original Last Man on Earth is still my favorite.

That'd be The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It's really great SF, especially given that it was written in the 1820s.

Shelley is probably one of the most underrated SF writers, probably because she only really wrote two books, and one was reduced to a Hollywood genre.