Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Pix from S.D.

What with doing ninety-seven panels, I didn't have a lot of opportunity in San Diego to take photos. But you kinda have to make the time to snap a giant figure of Batman made completely out of Lego blocks.

• Posted at 8:48 PM · LINK

Restaurant Reprieve

Back in February, I broke the sad news that The Old Spaghetti Factory in Hollywood was soon to be demolished. Here's a flashback to that item. My pal Corey Klemow writes...

Went to eat at Spaghetti Factory tonight and asked the server when they were closing. She said they were going to close at the end of this month, but they struck a deal that will allow them to remain open for two more years. More opportunities for garlic butter and for spumoni, yay!

And more opportunities for me to get up there for one more meal. I don't eat spaghetti these days but it might be back on my menu within two years. Nice of them to keep the place open for me.

• Posted at 8:18 PM · LINK

Warming to an Idea...

I posted a message the other day about Global Warming here, figuring that — given past response to any current events comment here — I'd receive a few hundred agreements and arguments. Perhaps because much of this blog's readership was standing in lines at the San Diego Convention Center, I received a grand total of one message. It's from Roger Taylor and here it is, along with my response...

In response to your comment about the high temperatures we've been having, are you going to tell me that if we have some record cold days we will be plunging into an ice age? This planet is always changing and also always "fixing itself." Let's not forget how Greenland got its name (hint: it wasn't because humans were making it warm).

Money spent on preventing "Global Warming" would be much better spent elsewhere: feeding hungry people, disease research, security from people who want to murder and maim as many people as possible under the guise of their "religion"...

The premise of the Global Warming theory is that what is happening is making our weather more extreme — more droughts, more floods, wetter storms, bigger snowstorms, etc. So record cold days would be more evidence that Global Warming is occurring, not less. ("Global Warming" is probably an unfortunate popular name for what should be called something like "Extreme Climate Change." The popular name allows people to dismiss a perfectly valid theory, overwhelmingly supported in the scientific community, every time it snows.)

Yes, the planet is always changing and repairing itself. If Global Warming is occurring, it will doubtlessly correct itself, perhaps in a few thousand years. The threat is not that the planet will be irreparably damaged but that an awful lot of people will suffer and die before the correction takes place.

In other words, Roger: I think you're completely misrepresenting the theory you're arguing against.

And you seem to have missed my point, which I'll restate here because repeating myself is ever so much easier than thinking of new things to post on this blog. It's that I hope people like you are right. I hope Global Warming is a myth. I hope that before I die, we can all have a good laugh about it and file it away with Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and Bill O'Reilly's integrity. But if someone comes up with evidence of a possible problem that might cause millions of people to die, you don't wait until the case is airtight. We invaded Iraq because Saddam's pending nuclear arsenal seemed probable (or at least possible) and we couldn't take the chance. There's way too much evidence of the kind of thing Mr. Gore is talking about to not take action as if it's definite. The potential loss if all those scientists are right is just too great.

Okay now, I have something really important to post about so I'm going to go on to the next item...

• Posted at 8:12 PM · LINK

Jack Warden, R.I.P.

I never met Jack Warden. I have no neat anecdotes about Jack Warden. But I did want to say that I never saw him not be wonderful in whatever he did...especially his dual role in Used Cars. Greatest dying scene in the history of movies. I hope his real exit wasn't as tumultuous.

• Posted at 5:33 PM · LINK