I lived in California for a few years years (mostly in SF) and I absolutely hated it! I got off the plane in New England in mid-October and found I was home. Loved the outdoors in Califonia and the Northwest, but was never that comfortable with the people or the culture. And most of the friends I made were from back East, even if they had been in CA for twenty years.

That said, stay a while. A friend of mine moved out to LA in her early twenties and absolutely loves it. She's never coming back. But as other have suggested, try LA or San Francisco -- SD is a little weird. It's not really a "city" city. Or try Portland or Seattle.

Some people just aren't West Coasters. That's not good or bad, it just is. But eight months isn't long enough to find out.

If Manjoo had ever written anything creative or time-consuming instead of this high-tech high-tech bibble-babble, he might understand the concerns of creators (and those who heart their copyrights).

Google is starting to act an awful lot like Microsoft. They try to take over your computer, they try to take over your search functions, and they are beginning to arrogate to themselves certain very dubious "rights". Is a song a physical or intellectual property? I can hum a song or quote a book - I don't need the actual disk or page. Is it therefore my right to collect the actual physical embodiment and sell off pieces of it, under the guise that it is not "the complete work"? If that's the case, I have some ringtones I'd like to sell you.

Follow the money. Copyrighted works in Google Book Search have links to various booksellers. Buying the book via a Google link puts money in Google's pocket. So if Google copies the literal text of a library book, posts it on the internet, and then profits off that text, how is that fair use?

If I take my twenty favorite copyrighted books to a good old-fashioned copier, and then copy my favorite passages, and then invite people to read those passages, and then just happen to have a conveniently handy copy of said novel for sale should they want to read the whole thing, how is my copying even remotely consistent with fair use? It's not.

Google is looking to make money from copyrighted works, by deliberately copying exact text from those works. They are stealing copyright for financial gain. I think that's pretty clear. If authors or publishers want to opt-in to Google Book Search, that's fine. That would be akin to a band posting one of their songs on the internet as a sample to entice consumers. So let's use that analogy.

Would it be okay for me to post snippets of songs (in this case, from my entire collection and the collection of all my friends and their friends and their friends) to the internet, with links to Amazon and eBay so that, should someone buy the CD via my link, I get paid? Because that is what Google proposes to do with copyrighted works.

It's out-out vs. opt-in. I assume that pretty much everyone involved in creative content (or their managers, agents, assigns, publishers, whomever) are aware at some level of Google Books and the various issues surrounding copyright in the internet age.

And I think that Google Books and iTunes and various other content delivery schemes provide a pretty workable model for accessing lesser known and out-of-print content.

What I don't agree with is Google ceding this right to itself. How many publishers are there? How hard would it be to write to each and ask for a list of books they would like posted to Google Books? Why, they might even send a remaindered copy, obviating the need for Google to send someone to the library.

And somehow, I'm missing that great big OPT-OUT! link on the Google Book page.

Nothing wrong with making money. Hell, my supermarket makes money selling me the farmer's vegetables. What the supermarket doesn't have a right to do is go to the farmer's land, take some vegetables for free, and provide them as a "sample" to their customers. "If you liked this tomato, you might also like these tomatoes! Or these peppers! Or this onion!"

In this case, there is an ethical difference between opt-out and opt-in. If you don't get that, I can't help you. You can gnash your teeth all you want about old vs. new models of content delivery. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing, and in this case, I think Google is clearly in the wrong.

Is, like, the Valley Girl accent spread everywhere like a virus? And it's everywhere anymore? And like, they are all cute these days, with their like ballet slippers and flip-flops and everything? Even if they really aren't?

Come here to Boston, aka College Student National Park, and see for yourself.

But you forgot to mention that the song is pure crap.

I think Greenwald addresses a sort of inverse American Triumphalism - that only the United States (or its government)could be so evil, so all-powerful, so manipulative and Machiavellian - that all action must spring from the actions of the United States. No other state or non-state actor could possibly act on its own agency. No sir. The Japanese could not possibly have attacked Pearl Harbor on their own hook. They had to be goaded and tricked into attacking by FDR.

It's a curiously chauvinistic self-hatred, and frankly, racist as hell, evincing the same belief in the natural inferiority of our "little brown brothers" which is alleged to be the hallmark of the right.

I cringe every time I hear such bullshit.