Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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Students in Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District returned to class Thursday for the fall semester. They had to wear masks indoors and outdoors on campus but they were happy going back to classrooms and feeling a sense of "normality" during the pandemic. Students didn't have to log in to Zoom classes or remember the rotating class schedule or contend with six-foot spacing between desks as they had to do when school first reopened last spring. On Thursday, the students managed to find...
It's the summer, nothing's on TV and the top story in the world are the bikini bottoms worn by the Norway Women's Beach Handball Team. Personally, I'll take this over any Covid related story. Beach Handball has not yet made the Olympics permanently. At the 2020 games, it is an exhibition sport striving for world attention. The ladies look just awesome dressed that way. Sorry, but who really wants to see the guys dressed that way, anyway? "Norway's Women's Beach handball team just took a stand fo...
A pedestrian in Palisades Park recently recorded video of a dragon consuming a giant June Beetle. The video has been posted to YouTube and has gone viral. Ok, fine, it was really a Western Fence Lizard, not a dragon. And the other character is probably a June bug. But it was June 16th, 2021, that part is verifiably true. The western fence lizard (or blue belly), common throughout Southern California, is one of the few lizards found in Santa Monica, which is generally too cold and too wet for...
The statistics coming out of Peru are concerning. Some in the world's medical community are beginning to express concern that the Lambda variant is more resistant to vaccines and antibodies, than other known variants of novel coronavirus. In June 2021, the Peruvian government reviewed the number of Covid-19 deaths, increasing the official death toll from 69,000 to 187,847 deaths. The new figure placed Perú with the highest death rate per capita in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins...
Photo: Sean Alexander Graves in a mugshot released by the SMPD. Graves has not been charged with a crime. The DA's office has declined to file charges after one man stabbed and killed another on the Third Street Promenade and Broadway. The SMPD says that the District Attorneys Office reviewed the evidence, and determined that Graves had acted in self defense. The updated press release from SMPD dated 6/24. It says that suspect Alexander Graves was with a woman. The couple was confronted by the...
Oh the humanity! An employee who neglected to close a gate, released 34 cows from a slaughterhouse near Pico Rivera, in South LA County. Saving them from certain death and the Golden Arches. The 1000 pound animals ran wild for the next six hours, as they were tracked down one by one. One cow was shot and killed by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies, because she was charging directly towards a stroller holding a baby. This on Walnut Avenue in Pico Rivera. One cow was lasooed and broke free...
Washington is quietly buzzing about what should be the single biggest news story of the 21st Century: UFOs are real. And the pentagon, the headquarters of the US Armed Forces, has the evidence. In any other year, we would be talking about nothing else. But this is 2021, and we are consumed with masks and viruses and vaccines. In April, former CIA director James Woolsey said that he was not "as skeptical as I was a few years ago, to put it mildly, but something is going on that is surprising to...
Local residents and visitors – including those vaccinated – must continue to wear face coverings indoors and around crowds in Santa Monica, city officials declared this week. Interim City Manager Lane Dilg signed on Wednesday morning the 36th supplement to the local emergency aligning Santa Monica's guidance for face coverings with Los Angeles County and the State of California, which will keep its mask mandate until June 15. "This supplement further signals the return to normal we've wor...
A new report on the Researchgate.com website reports on a group of US, European and Chinese researchers who believe the "blueberries" of Mars are not rock formations. They are actually hardy fungi, the report claims. Which would mean there's life on Mars. The report theorizes that the fungus, or fungi, could be used as food or fuel by future human colonists. Personally, I think I prefer the deep fried mushroom burger at Shake Shack, but I digress. The objects in question show“chalky-white c...
About 15 years after California's last Republican Governor, elected in a recall, complained about all the "girly men" in Sacramento; the leading Republican candidate in California's next recall election is, well, a girly man. As a Republican, I couldn't be happier about it. At a 2011 graduation, Arnold Schwarzenegger jokingly shared with Cal Berkeley graduates his secrets to success in America. "Rule number three: Marry a Kennedy," he said. Marrying into the Kardashian family was a brilliant...
4/20 The jury in the Derek Chauvin trial reached a guilty verdict after about 16 hours of deliberations. The judge read their verdict just after 5 PM in Minneapolis. Unintentional second degree murder they found him guilty. Count two, third degree murder, also guilty. Count three, Culpable Negligence, also guilty. Chauvin blinked, and wore a mask, but showed no emotion. The emotional decision seemed fitting, given the video of the incident. The jury was polled and each of them agreed it was his...
Santa Monica launched yesterday a new 311 assistance program to improve customer service for all non-emergency City services. Santa Monica 311, available in English and Spanish, is an integrated program accessible via phone, email and web, city officials said a press release yesterday. The city has also launched a new mobile app that replaces the Santa Monica Works/Go system to make it easier to contact city departments and submit requests. "Our new 311 program will allow Santa Monicans to...
3/29: Egypt's President Sisi bragged today (justifiably), about his country's massive technical achievement in refloating and moving the 400 million metric ton Evergreen Ever Given, and moving her out of the place where it had been stuck since Tuesday in the lower Suez Canal. Breaking Monday Morning Cairo time: “MV Ever Given was successfully re-floated at 04:30 lt 29/03/2021. She is being secured at the moment. More information about next steps will follow once they are known. “ Tweeted the...
Over the last 25 years, Malibu has repeatedly threatened to form its own school district and leave SMMUSD. At last week's City Council meeting, the Santa Monica City Council affirmed its support for splitting Santa Monica and Malibu into two separate independent school districts. It listed a number of caveats, however The terms of separation, including the division of revenues and assets, "have to be fair and just to students in Santa Monica schools and must provide a robust and equal educationa...
The Santa Monica City Council held a special meeting last Saturday to discuss the community priorities that will guide the biennial (2021-23) budget. In a 4-3 vote, the Council selected the following priorities: addressing homelessness, creating a clean and safe Santa Monica, and cultivating an equitable and inclusive economic recovery. "The City Council chose to focus for the next two years on the two issues overwhelmingly favored in the unscientific survey of the public's priorities, addressin...
Lady Gaga’s English Bulldogs were stolen from her on February 24th and later recovered. But this is apparently not the only case of guns being used in canine robberies. “My roommate was walking the dog on the Venice Boardwalk in the early evening on February 19th,” say RJ. “when he was approached by three young men. One of them was armed. “My roommate said he decided not to pursue them, having just had a pistol pointed at his chest. Once they got the dog, they walked away.” What was the motivat...
A winter storm rolled through So Cal early Wednesday morning and into Thursday night. The storm brought a rare burst of hail in Santa Monica. According to some social media reports, it was the first hail that fell in SM since 2015. Some mountain areas received over a foot of snow, while on-and-off rain fell in low-lying areas throughout the rest of the region. Several pockets of the Southland saw heavy rainfall and lightning strikes Wednesday morning, including Glendale and Burbank. Hail was...
Passover 2021 will begin in the evening of Saturday, March 27. This year, Easter Sunday falls on the last day of Passover; Sunday April 4, 2021. That is, for most Christians; Eastern Orthodox rites celebrate it a little later. Passover commemorates the central miracle in Judaism: The exodus from Egypt, as orchestrated by God through Moses. Easter celebrates the main miracle in Christianity: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the U.S., Christmas tends to get more attention. But...
When Lady Gaga’s dog walker Ryan Fisher was shot by a couple in a white Nissan, he may not have known that the purpose of the assault was to steal her dogs. Fisher is expected to make a complete recovery. Lady Gaga meanwhile has offered $500,000 for the return of her two French bulldogs, no questions asked. Fisher was walking three dogs owned by Lady Gaga, when he was shot four times in the chest before two men stole two of the singer's French bulldogs. Two suspects fled the scene, with The D...
The number of Covid-19 cases is declining in LA County. Schools in Santa Clarita opened one day a week Monday. The Big Blue Bus Company in Santa Monica is now charging fares again. Passengers no longer need enter through the rear door. They enter up front and pay the bus driver, again. The number of coronavirus cases and deaths appear to be declining, just as the lockdowns reach a one year anniversary on March 16th. Cases and deaths have fallen 70% in six weeks. MTA busses in Los Angeles remain...
Long Beach Unified School District plans to resume in-person classes for grades K through 5 in March 2021. Schools have been closed since March 19, 2020 due to Covid-19. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia announced on Twitter that LBUSD will begin in-person elementary school instruction on Monday, March 29. Garcia said all elementary school teachers and school staff "will have had an opportunity to be vaccinated with both doses before reopening." Wednesday's announcement comes two days after Los...
The Weeknd's super weird, Superbowl half time show made no sense to anyone. The guys marching in masks was half Michael Jackon's Thriller, Half pandemic fears. It sucked as much as Bruce Springsteen's let's all get together ad, but we watched anyway because we had nothing better to do. Is anyone else has lost as I was? I turned on the TV to see some Canadian guy in a field full of people wearing masks in redcoats marching around the field. Completely not sure what it supposed to represent. To...
The Santa Monica City Council voted to approve a temporary pay increase of $5 per hour for grocery and drug store employees in the city. A similar measure in Long Beach resulted in Kroger (parent company of Food-4-Less and Ralphs) closing two stores in less affluent parts of Long Beach. Sponsored by Kevin McKeown last week, the "Hero Pay" measure is similar to a temporary urgency ordinance that Los Angele County Supervisors approved on Jan. 26. It applies to unincorporated areas of Los Angeles...
The best footage of a UFO taken from an airplane in several years was posted to Reddit and to Twitter on February 2, 2021. The footage may be seen here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/lcalco/best_footage_of_an_ufo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 In the footage, a woman points to a oblong object seemingly following the airplane about a kilometer away, off the starboard side. "oh wow it teleported huh that's pretty cool", she says. The object is seen to reverse direction and...
Tonight tonight the highway's bright. Out of our way mister you best keep! 'Cause summer's here and the time is right, For racing in the street. -- Bruce Springsteen, Racing in the Streets. If you're young and in high school or college, street racing has become the thing to do to get out of the house during this pandemic. There are reports of street racing in Pacoima, in South LA and East LA. The cars are often modified. They spin out and turn donuts as a mostly male, mostly minority crowd watch...
