Ashi

Being vegan and eating organic are separate issues, but since sometimes they overlaps, so I'm going to mention both here. Certified organic foods are more expensive because they're more costly to make. Well, that's assuming they went through the certification process and the manufacturing plant is dedicated to making a particularly product only (e.g., you can't make olive oil with the same plant that makes peanut oil, since some people are allergic to peanuts). That's why some foods in markets like Whole Foods are more expensive. They did their research, so whatever you see on their shelves are certified by Whole Foods to be organic or allergent-free. So customers don't have to their research, but you have to pay for the convenience. If you are not allergic to anything, you can buy non-organic vegan foods without costing arms and legs. But given how complex our food sources are, can you be sure your foods are really vegan? Genetic modified soy beans for example, is a product of crossing soy bean DNA with fish DNA (that's why even insects and other herbvorous pests don't eat them, free farmers from using pasticide). If you're vegan for religious reason, and you ate those GM soy beans, you're screwed. Many restaurants probably cook their "vegan foods" in pans that seared lambs for previous customers... (I am not vegan, but my body has some reaction to lamb. Not lethally allergic, but I know the frustration). So being a true vegan isn't as easy as most people think. If you're just being vegan for the appearance, none of what I said matters anyways. And do take a course on nutrition before turning into a vegan. I just googled, soy beans and quinoa are the only plant products that contain all nine essential amino acids for proper human protein synthesis (we could the other twelves amino acids ourselves. Animal proteins are all complete protein with all 21 amino acids, so you only need to eat smaller amount to get the protein your body needs). You could die from malnutrition if not all nine are fed sufficiently. And I ate all three soups you posted. My Manhattan chowder is very yummy. And I do love gumbo back in my work place. So I like all of them. Depends on who's cooking, of course. You only need to be pinched by its claws once.... They ain't that cute. They're all meanies.... LOL But they're yummy. These dungeoness crabs have been a little bit over-harvested. I remember no one could catch them (except for the licensed commercial fishermen) for a while, so they could repopulate (and the same fate goes to tuna..., another yummy food that's endangered by overharvest). At that time, if you came to San Francisco with a cage, you could only catch rock crabs and must release the dungeoness crab back to the bay. Rock crabs' meat is much rougher.... And the shells are much tougher to crack, and the meat inside is so much smaller than dungeoness crab of the same weight.... Speaking of the cuteness factor of foods.... Bulls aren't that cute either.... I don't know how I got the idea bovines are peaceful creatures (must because I think they are grazing animals), but I only had to be scorn by them once to know they don't smile like the ones you see on milk cartons.... Actually pigs aren't that cute either. What's wrong with farm animals these days? Did someone put George Orwell in their head or something?

Fish is healthier. It has omega group and less cholestrols.

OMG! Happy birthday Mann!

"Regret changes the nature of man" is my all time favorite quote from a computer game. Though sometimes only after one have done the irreversible act would one feel regret. I hope the politicians would understand that one day, hopefully before they dropped the bomb. It's not just their lives that worth a while, how about the people who live under their direction. In any case, we're not ready to receive our outter space friends just yet. Gotta show some form of intelligence first before they mistaken us as barbarians and nuke us all.

#hash2much

Oh, please write it. And make it juicy to read....

Given politicians are still busy contain wars from breaking out within this little planet, do we have the energy or intelligence to deal with an intergallactic diplomacy?

Don't call me little. I am older than you. Anyways, have you heard of Divinity: Original Sin?

Happy belated.

When are we going to have the GA RPG?

@Y_B I thought dresses came in even numbers.... But then I don't wear them. @Method I thought I read something like that some years ago, though a different dad/son pair. I wonder when we're going to have a "My son dates a man, but that's okay with me" and the dad dates a man and got on the Huffington Post. Just kidding....

That Twinkie looks like.... pr0n

My gay life is non-existent. The city I live in does have gay clubs, bars, stores that are listed as gay owned and probably the rest of your list (not sure about bath houses..., but I never checked). I read it was the gay hub before SF took over, then receeded afer SF took over as the gay hub of the area, but now I do see a little resurgence. It has a gay video bar in downtown, not sure what that is.... I never really like going to downtown after dark. The few gay people I knew back in one of my old jobs prefer to go to SF (or the City, as most people here prefer to call it). SJ is just more of a bedroom society.... But you can always go to SF for fun activities. There are gay parades and festivals in SF, too. And AIDS walk and Bay-to-Breakers that are not gay specific athletic events, but certainly of interest to some. And then there is Folsom Street Fair and Baker Beach....

Okay, actually I was one of those guys quite interested in the response to the outcome of the experiment. But I think I'll not see the final outcome, but just observe you guys' reaction of the outcome. I really love to hear a real artist's POV of art, and I really glad you post this, Mann. Art does come in many types and shapes and I think it just confuses people further. For those who don't know, I do photography (though not commercially successful). I do call myself a craftsman rather than an artist because calling my own work art is a bit strange (it's the job of the critics). I do hope my work can inspire viewers, but by whatever label I am called, I don't really care. That said, my work is usually more representational than abstract (I really don't want to use the term modern, as the last period I would call something modern is 1950's, which is quite dated already). In fact, I call my work existential (and opposite of conceptual. Though ironically, my current photo project is conceptual), because I am not trying to make any statement with my photos other than they are beautiful scenes and wish they would make people appreciate the nature a bit more (i.e., become environmentally responsible). That said, I do agree with your last statement as some of the arts are products of pseudo-intellectual crowd. My Flickr friends are diverse, they do all sort of things. Some do what you usually considered to be museum pieces and some don't, and I don't mind either, nor would call one type of art more art than the other, though my own definition of art is pretty set in stone: art makes people think. Though I must say the focus of my work isn't exactly inline with the East Coast Photographers (the more conceptual and intellectual school of photography). My work is pretty standard Ansel Adams (i.e., West Coast Photographers), and what he believed: I am merely bringing a scene to you, via technical excellence I hope the photo of it would awe-struck the viewers as the scene did to me when I was there at that moment in time. I brought up the differences of the two schools of photography because you see, as a photo taken by a West Coast photographer could easily be judged as "lack of intellectual stimulation," while I could easily say a photo by East Coast photographer is badly taken, with no understanding of lighting and exposure. But I don't judge them that way. Otherwise, my flickr friends would consist of one type of people making one style of photos only. Matt's (TetRefine's) thought on art is pretty typical of people who aren't doing art. And my background wasn't art either, so perhaps the art czars might consider my works as Neolithic, though I prefer to say my work is counter-revolutionary (going back the root of a photo taken well from the get-go, with minimal post-processing). After all, art is a constant rebellion of the previously estabilished work. Once one style art is accepted by the general public, a new wave of style would overthrow the establishment. That obviously doesn't make defining "what's art" easier.... Now back to the original topic, I do think the guy is an attention whore.... Though I tend to think one has to have a little bit of ego to market your work successfully, if you seek to be successful commerically.

Happy Birthday W_L.

Happy Birthday Stellar.

Sounds like a nice vacation to me.... Except nobody ever tells surfers not to undress in public, not in Northern California anyways. What you saw was kinda exception, really, or maybe that's what Southern Californians do. Next time bring a camera to take photos or doing some sort of activity so you don't feel all by yourself. I am used to go on a day trip with just my camera. so I don't feel that lonely. I really don't think seeing people holding hands makes me lonely. I usually just smile at them and be happy for them.

Unlikely name for a game, Always Sometimes Monsters When I bought this game, after reading some reviews, I know it's not going to be your typical RPG where you hack and slash through your enemies, loot their gold and possessions, and buy yourself some equipments and pose yourself as the knight in shiny armor. No, this is game where the reality sinks in, and before you know it, you are robbing homeless people of their sandwich, selling fake drug to a stranger girl, and blackmailing the doctor who refused to give your friend free treatment (who ODed), because you have a need..., to get your life back. Ironic? Maybe. Self-entitlement? Perhaps. This game gives you gray areas to explore, and sometimes too easy to legitimize our final decisions as essential to get ahead in life. I played a white guy with scruffy goatee, who was dating a beefy black guy. In the early part of the game, the agent of the the main character hosted the party. While you're in his POV, you get to select the main character you'll end up playing (it's creative and confusing at time), and you'll get to select your sexual orientation, when your MC picked the friend you're going to introduce to the agent. In the beginning, everyone presented in the party, though in various degrees of politeness, are somewhat hopeful to the future, though some might sounds a little cynical than others. The game flash forward one year ahead, and you found out your main character is full of broken dreams and had trouble getting the rent paid. I am not finished with the game yet, but my character was giving some advices to NPCs which they should have taken themselves. I feel hypocritical at times while playing the game, because I am the guy who's behind my main character.... Most of my decisions were made to minimize the damage done to others, while I still could still get my objectives done, that is, get my rent paid, my past mistakes undone. I could also blatantly out to hurt people by playing the zero-sum game, though I didn't, but inevitably, people still get hurt along the way in some form. I almost got a kid killed, for example. I was merely trying to make a few bucks reselling a convention ticket, the kid stole his drug-dealing uncle's money in order to pay me. I could have just taken the money and ran away, and let the kid shot by his uncle and lay dead in the backyard pool. I ended up paying the uncle (and lose the profit), hoping I wouldn't get killed myself (and fortunately I was still alive by the end of the ordeal). There are many examples of such dilemmas in the game. However, one could also legitimizing it by saying it's the boy's poor decision that got him killed. After all, my ex-boss in real life also said we were only selling people store credit cards. It's their own responsibility if they got into debts. So the scenario is definitely observable in real life. In fact, "legitimizing" was the buzz word back in Organizational Behavior class. And the entire course was around mental maturity: how to move ourselves from the mindset of personal interests and the mindset of using company interests to disguise our personal interests, and transcend them to the mindset that's beyond self. I'll end my rant here. This game doesn't have the best graphics (the pixelated 16-bit graphics cries out indie garage game), and occasionally has a few quirks that I thought could have been done better, but it's a game for people who like to think deeper. It is the way we live now. What does an evil person look like? As one professor asked. Do they have evil written on their face? Probably not. Because if not careful, we could be the monsters that we always look out for sometimes. A few indie games that are thought-provoking: Dangerous High School Girls (warning, has rape scene, though in literary form, not shown on screen. The game might not run well in modern computer), Canvasser (a free online game where you play as political canvasser to save the forest, and it's very depressing). A review of the game perhaps sums up better than my rant here. http://www.gamingnexus.com/Article/4418/Always-Sometimes-Monsters/

Happy Birthday Myr.

Happy Birthday Graeme.

Anyways, we should have something like "Do you speak Californian?" Quiz or something similar. Or do you speak Silicon Valley or do you speak like a San Franciscan.... LOL

Though pretty much a cosmo speaker in general, but it turns out I resemble a New Yorker the most..., how ironic. EDIT: took the test again, now I am a San Joser. LOL

Happy birthday TW!

Why the strange appearances Bill asked. Why? Because orchids are attention whores. That's why.

OMG, OC!