If you own a blue Tacoma, or a black Honda Ridgeline, best to take the bus today. Because even if you’re a 71 year old Hispanic woman delivering papers, LAPD might put 46 rounds through your truck. Because the 270 lb African American guy is also a Master of Disguise.
Oh, wait, that’s not even the right color. Or make. Or model.
Dark pickup trucks of any manufacturer apparently make you fair game.
I’ve got a nickel that says that police procedures were followed, and no one will be reprimanded, or demoted. Certainly not arrest or jailed. Punishment will consist of paid leave (what everyone else in the world calls “paid vacation”).
Initially, the police reported to the news that everyone was in stable condition. Now it turns out she’s in ICU.
Ten will get you twenty that he had a legitimate beef. But no way to pay out because we’ll never know now. Not that that excuses his behavior, but on the other hand, he at least had a reason for going on a rampage. The cops that shot this woman who got up at 3 am to deliver papers had no reason at all. He’ll pay for it with his life (he’ll never be taken alive – see the North Hollywood Bank shootout – they’ll let him bleed out on the street rather than have him face trial), and the cops that shot this woman will be promoted.
Monday was a very nice day, and a holiday, so I took advantage of the light traffic and the wonderful day to put the top down on the fun car and drive over to Santa Monica for Photo LA 2013. Driving the 110 in January in a convertible with the top down and Aviators is one of the things that makes LA such a unique experience. I parked on the street to save me the exorbitant $10 parking charge (nonetheless, I paid SM their $2 bribe to park on an empty street for two hours. Of course they ticket even on a national holiday, but not getting a ticket in SM is not even a possibility – their meter maids still work 24/7/365).
Anyway, my first impression is photography, or at least collecting, is a sport for 1) the rich, and 2) the old. $20k for prints of 60s icons certainly must be addressed to wealthy boomers. Not to me. Not that I'm not old, but like the Beatles music, it's just been done to death.
But once you get away from the obvious cash cows, there were some interesting things. Three of Julius Shulman's Case Study #22 were available (and some other very good, lesser known, work), Ansel Adams street photography (look, he has a telephone post coming out of the subject's head! And out of focus!), a whole wall of gorgeous portraits by Horst, Newton, Avedon, et al. I was playing the guessing game (no labels on this wall), matching style to photographer, when the proprietor came over and gave me a tour.
I also got to chat with Jay Mark Johnson, whose work I very much enjoy. The comparison I can make is with Gursky. Must be seen in person on a large scale to appreciate. Mr. Johnson was a very nice fellow.
It's continually amazing that even to an uncultured cowboy like me, it's easy to walk into any room and see the masterpiece. It's obvious which picture is the Rembrandt, even if you don't know anything about art. It just jumps out. Similarly, Mapplethorpe, Salgado, Weston – I don't have to know the picture or the artist to recognize this is a step above.
I had talked to a pro photographer friend of mine who had seen it and he told me not to bother. “Nothing new, nothing inspirational.” But I think the difference is that I didn't go to art school. I had not seen a lot of these in person (in books and on the web, sure), and in person makes all the difference for all art. So to me, worth it to see Lange, White, Frank, Elliott in person. But yeah, not much new or original.
Not to be a cheap bastard (see above), but $25 is kind of steep for this sort of thing. I wonder if the limited attendance is due to the price.
“No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”
– Gus Grissom, as quoted in Tom Wolfe's “The Right Stuff
But while that maxim is true around here, and at labs and universities in general, the polarity is reversed for staff – no Buck Rogers, no bucks. Staff exists to support scientists who bring in the money from which the overhead is skimmed that pays their salary. If scientists can't do their work because of (insert your favorite annoyance here) policies, then — no Buck Rogers, no bucks, no overhead to pay staff…
This is often ignored. It's weird how the perception becomes that the scientists work for the bureaucrats, and not the other way round.
I mean, we do. We're bad at management, so the scientists who start these institutions set up administration to do the grunt work. Then the admins start hiring new scientists, and it seems like they're in charge. So do scientists have agency, or are we a cash crop, or herd, to be managed in order to bring in money to pay staff?
That's a subject for another time.
Classical Gas. Srsly.
Generic google news:
I suppose I could google the “twin states” but I can’t say that I’ve ever heard that term before in all my days. They could have used Springfield for full genericness.
I am sitting in a building built to the highest standards about four years ago, from the ground up, at great expense. Only the most crucial people get a cubicle in this building, much less an office.
Yet the meeting room I'm spending the day in has no outlets in the walls for the 20 people sitting around the walls in the room. The 12 people sitting at the table get powered, but everyone else – no electrons for you.
On the one hand, laptops are better than they used to be. Mine will almost make it a day. Unless I want to do, you know, actual work. Matlab. So I guess it enforces paying attention. But everyone here has their laptop open. So really it's just bad design.
It's also well known that this state-of-the-art building has some of the crappiest projectors on campus. Some in fact are not even HD, but SD with only component inputs. In other words, useless. Worse than useless, cause we have spent hours trying to get them to work before we all huddled like cavemen around the dying embers of a laptop screen…
Yes, I are a rocket scientist. And yes, I took this screenshot today. Nothing but modern tools for us.
And I wasn't using IE.
and has been for at least the last century. Part N in a series.
This edition: lead.
Aside from the direct deaths, add in all the hundreds of thousands of lives ruined by violence, both the victims and the criminals (whose crimes were likely in no small part due their exposure). And they knew. NY and NJ had already banned lead additives for public health reasons.
Previous editions: injecting random people with plutonium, Tuskegee, forced sterilization, coerced confessions, forced lobotomies.
What puppies are good for.
I remember when…
Kids rode bikes, and old people drove everywhere. Now only old people ride bikes, and kids get driven everywhere.
Walk? Nobody walks in LA.
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