"OnCentral," a KPCC/Southern California Public Radio reporting project focused on the communities of South LA, has published a terrific series of very detailed posts by José Martinez on graffitti and gang tagging. Here's part one, here's part two, and here's part three, just published today. The latter digs in to the nuances of gang tags that indicate hostile conversations between gangs, or specific gang members; and tags that reveal the presence of Mexican Mafia or various gangs acting in collaboration with local businesses. The snapshot above shows a handpainted sign on a liquor shop in the area, bearing the name of that shop—but it contains a hidden symbol for one of these organized crime groups, suggesting that the liquor store is in cahoots. (via Tony Pierce)
Marty Halpern sez, "Help me find a home for my father's (he passed away in 1998, my mother passed away this past October) hand-designed Wild West whiskey bottle collection. By 'hand-designed' I mean my father designed the bottles himself. The home would hopefully be in Southern California to avoid packing and shipping these 30-odd full-size (and breakable) whiskey bottles."
So, as I said, there are about thirty of the individual, full-size bottles, and I need to find a home for them. If I can find the right home, I would be more than happy to "donate" the entire set. I have already contacted Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, but their representative informed me that they already have so many items in storage that they are being forced to dispose of them. I have also contacted the Anaheim Historical Society and the Orange County Archives -- all to no avail. I am hoping to find a home for these in Southern California to avoid packing and shipping them outside the area, which would be very expensive (a minimum of eleven boxes at least), with no guarantee that every bottle would survive the journey.
If you can think of a resource, an organization, an individual, etc. in the Southern Cal area who might be interested, please do have them contact me, and/or post a comment below. There are already offers on my parents' house so I may only have a few weeks at most to relocate these decanters. They are all up for adoption, but I'd like to keep all the children together (at least those that are still left2) if at all possible.
Now that California's video-game censorship law has been struck down by the courts, the state finds itself $2 million poorer, having had to pay the legal expenses of all the vendors they sued under it.
A bit over half a decade ago when California legislators felt entitled to protect children across their state by restricting sales of violent video games struck me as deeply amusing from the onset. Not because it would end up costing the state roughly $2 Million in legal fees after a failed appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court nor out of the sheer disregard for the First Amendment. But because the sheer bureaucratic arrogance on the parts of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, the Governor of California and State Attorney during this time in believing it was their responsibility to discern what content children should or shouldn’t have exposure...
Created by California lawmaker Former San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Leland Yee, now a senator, in the hopes of curbing children’s access to games that allow for assassination, violent crimes, rape, etc. – the law would have fined retailers $1000 for each instance of selling a game to a child that depicted any sort of terrifyingly horrible act that could teach children the crimes in games versus reality are exactly on par. Yee also made a provision in the law that violence in a game would be visibly denoted by some sort of label on the packaging, a measure already taken by the game industry’s ESRB.
From Jay Rosen, "Excerpt from UC Davis 2010-2012 General Catalog":
176. Introduction to Pepper Spray. (3) Lecture— 3 hours. Prerequisite: Crowd Control Through Chemicals 122B. Basic uses of pepper spray in threatening, semi-threatening and completely non-threatening and utterly peaceful situations. Common spraying techniques. Overview of rationalization methods. Color choices. Jackboot styles.
177. Advanced Pepper Spraying. (3) Lecture— 3 hours. Prerequisite: Introduction to Pepper Spray 176. Calculating optimum angles in spraying situations. Spraying seated vs. standing persons. History and development of chemical warfare against inconvenient demonstrations. Elements of CYA: basics and best practices.
178: Pepper Spray Practicum. (3). Laboratory— 3 hours. Prerequisite: Advanced Pepper Spraying 177. Working in teams, students locate sites where individuals are exercising so-called First Amendment rights and develop a strategy for spraying them. Emphasis on intimidation and staying calm under awesome hippie threat. Teams are held responsible for escaping responsibility and insulating higher-ups.
A new material developed by scientists at UC Irvine is described as the "world's lightest material," so light it can perch atop a dandelion clock without disturbing the seeds. The material is documented in the Nov 18 Science.
The new material redefines the limits of lightweight materials because of its unique “micro-lattice” cellular architecture. The researchers were able to make a material that consists of 99.99 percent air by designing the 0.01 percent solid at the nanometer, micron and millimeter scales. “The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair,” said lead author Dr. Tobias Schaedler of HRL.
The material’s architecture allows unprecedented mechanical behavior for a metal, including complete recovery from compression exceeding 50 percent strain and extraordinarily high energy absorption.
A five-hour Irvine, Orange County, CA city council meeting ended with the council unanimously agreeing that the Occupy tents on the town hall's lawn were a form of free speech and vowing to "add the needs of 'The 99%' to their official agenda." Afterwards, the mayor asked the protesters if they needed any more blankets.
The council members each spoke in turn to the civility, articulateness and
peaceful process represented by the Irvine Occupation at contrast with the
several other Occupational Villages in California, which were, at that
very moment being tear-gassed. The general sentiment being: 'This is quite
clearly the model. And the occupation most in tune with city needs.'
One councilman stated clearly, 'I disagree with most of what you're
saying. But you've clearly shown that this is an issue of free speech. So
if you need to sleep on our lawn, by all means, sleep on our lawn.'
Shortly after, a motion was brought to the council to grant license to the
occupiers to occupy the public space overnight citing the unusual form of
the movement. (Another first in council history.)
Photo: Oakland North. Navy veteran Joshua Sheperd holding Veterans for Peace flag, Occupy Oakland, Tue. night.
Last night, hundreds of police in riot gear from divisions throughout Northern California descended on the Occupy Oakland encampment, armed with tear gas, an LRAD sonic weapon (the "sound cannon"), and various projectiles -- by some sources, rubber bullets and bean bags.
According to various reports, more than a hundred arrests were made. Two police officers were injured, and an untold number of protesters.
Oakland North was one of a number of small, independent publications on the scene last night live-tweeting photos and a blow-by-blow of the crackdown. One of their photos is above.
Our own Dean Putney took the train over from San Francisco a little later on in the wee hours. He has posted photos here, mostly after things had quieted down somewhat. One of those is below.
Photo: Dean Putney.
This video shows "Veterans for Peace member Scott Olsen wounded by a less-lethal round fired by either San Francisco Sheriffs deputies or Palo Alto Police on October 25, 2011 at 14th Street and Broadway in Downtown Oakland." He appears to have been shot in the face.
California governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that required the police to get a warrant before searching a telephone. Without this law, California's police will continue their practice of searching the cellphones of people they arrest, "which in the digital age likely means the contents of persons’ e-mail, call records, text messages, photos, banking activity, cloud-storage services, and even where the phone has traveled."
Brown blamed the Supreme Court, which found that current US laws don't protect against this sort of snooping, saying that the court's finding should stand. But all courts can do is tell you whether or not something is legal in the current system -- it's not their job to say what the law should be.
That's the legislature's job, and they did it: California's lawmakers passed this bill because deep, intrusive snooping without a warrant is an affront to human rights, privacy and dignity. In Brown's view, it seems that no laws should be passed -- rather, we should just freeze the current legislation and let courts refine it for the rest of time.
Brown’s veto message abdicated responsibility for protecting the rights of Californians and ignored calls from civil liberties groups and this publication to sign the bill — saying only that the issue is too complicated for him to make a decision about. He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message, he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not.
Instead, he says the state Supreme Court’s decision is good enough, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court let stand last week.
“The courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case-specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizure protections,” the governor wrote.
Because of that January ruling from the state’s high court, the California Legislature passed legislation to undo it — meaning Brown is taking the side of the Supreme Court’s seven justices instead of the state Legislature. The Assembly approved the bill 70-0 and the state Senate, 32-4.
My friend Yasuko is the most talented massage therapist I know, not least because she's always studying anatomy and related subjects. Last week, she raved to me about the Integrative Biology 131 classes that UC Berkeley puts on YouTube, taught by Professor Marian Diamond, who has many claims to fame, including working with Albert Einstein's glial cells. She's also an engaging and clever lecturer, charming and informative. The class runs to about 48h worth of lectures, and it really is fascinating stuff.
A visually impaired man who'd recently undergone intestinal surgery answered the door to find a woman who announced that she was there to give him an enema. He complied, but later felt that there was something suspicious about the proceeding, so he called his doctor, who confirmed that no enema had been ordered in his case. His visual impairment is severe enough that he can't describe his assailant.
A day later, on Monday, the enema recipient began wondering about what had happened to him but took no action. By Tuesday, he felt compelled to shed some light on the experience, so he contacted police. An investigating officer promptly called the man's doctor and was told no enema had been prescribed, ordered or approved.
Sonoma police turned the case over to the domestic and sexual assault unit of the Sonoma Sheriff's Office who have yet to make sense of the caper.
The Police Chief of Long Beach has confirmed that his department's policy is to detain photographers who do nothing more than take pictures in public places, and that he neither has, nor plans to implement, any guidelines for these detentions. He classes photography with other "suspicious activity" such as "attempts to acquire illegal or illicit biological agent (anthrax, ricin, Eboli, smallpox, etc.)" and "In possession, or utilizes, explosives (for illegal purposes)."
"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.
McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."
This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."
The Jitney, a legendary form of transportation said to be available in The Hamptons, is explained here by Nina Katchadourian. Headphones at respectable workplaces, if you please. [via The Awl]
The council members each spoke in turn to the civility, articulateness and
peaceful process represented by the Irvine Occupation at contrast with the
several other Occupational Villages in California, which were, at that
very moment being tear-gassed. The general sentiment being: 'This is quite
clearly the model. And the occupation most in tune with city needs.'
Brown’s veto message abdicated responsibility for protecting the rights of Californians and ignored calls from civil liberties groups and this publication to sign the bill — saying only that the issue is too complicated for him to make a decision about. He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message, he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not.
"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.