It could have been worse
That's what should be our mantra, in the wake of yesterday's water main break North of the UCLA campus. No one died. While there was significant damage to the campus, nothing irreplaceable was lost (so far). We lost 10 million gallons of water during a major drought, but when you consider that the City of Los Angeles uses many times that amount daily, it isn't as bad as it seems.
Or is it? I don't drive Coldwater Canyon but I hear that it still isn't completely back to the condition it was in before the major water main break it suffered in 2009. A Department of Water and Power spokesman was asked how long it is expected to take before the entire underground system of water mains is replaced and his response was "300 years."
The water main that blew yesterday was installed in 1921. It is going to take a custom-made piece of pipe to repair the break. That piece can't be installed until DWP manages to stop the last two leaking pipes. They estimate that Sunset will reopen on Friday. I think they are entirely too optimistic.
Our local system of roads was operating at capacity during rush hour before this mishap. Now that one major East-West thoroughfare is temporarily eliminated, it's causing near gridlock conditions on other adjacent arteries that flow East-West. I saw the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard as I left the VA this morning and it looked like an utter nightmare.
Infrastructure matters. Delay its repair and upgrade for too long and you pay a much heavier price.
* * *
Accidentally shooting yourself in the leg. Stomping another player. Being accused of but never charged with sexual assault. Missing a drug test. Gambling. Taking illegal benefits while playing football in college. What do they have in common? All of them are things that NFL players were suspended for doing, for more games than Ray Rice was suspended for domestic violence.
We hear about how professional athletes are supposed to be role models. So why is it that people sometimes refer to the NFL as the National Felony League? Is that the behavior we want modeled for youth? I think not.
The fact that a suspension for using a performance enhancing drug is four games and Ray Rice only got a two game suspension tells me that the league is a lot more worried about cheating than it is about women being abused and assaulted. That's a particularly poor set of priorities.
If the NFL wants to be a responsible organization and take action against players and coaches for their behavior off the field, it needs to make sure that penalties for such behavior are at least as harsh as those for things done on the field.
* * *
Just to clear things up, most veterans are not happy with what Jesse Ventura did in choosing to continue his lawsuit against the widow of Chris Kyle. Upon reflection, I'm with them. Once Kyle had been murdered, there was no reason to continue the lawsuit. Ventura is already worth millions and he could choose to make more if he wishes. He doesn't need the money.
His reputation wasn't seriously damaged by Kyle's claims. He should have leveraged the lawsuit to get the publisher to remove the reference to him in the book. That's happening now anyway. That would be sufficient to "restore" the truth.
I don't know if what Kyle claimed happened or not. I really don't care. You don't torture the widow of a veteran who has been murdered by forcing her to continue defending a lawsuit.
Just so we're clear, Jesse Ventura was never a Navy SEAL.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
The last member of the crew of the Enola Gay has died. The end of a link to the dawn of an era. For those who didn't know, the Enola Gay was the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima.
Kind of sad that what Congress is busiest doing at the moment is raising money for the November elections. Doing their jobs rather than worrying about keeping them would be nice.
I would lose all respect and admiration I have for Miranda Kerr if it turned out she had slept with Justin Bieber.
When I owned a dog, I loved him dearly. But I wouldn't have taken him with me on a vacation to a foreign land.
How generous of Governor Moonbeam to volunteer our state to house more of the children entering the nation illegally...NOT.
Did the rebels really lay mines near the wreckage of MH-17?
People who write "informative" articles about the so-called Social Security trust funds are either delusional, or don't understand accounting. If we as a nation are $17 trillion in debt, the $2.8 trillion supposedly in the trust funds is a myth. Our profligate Congress already spent that money.
I'm thinking that the resume that has the email address of "DominantMistress@sadomasochism.com is probably not going to generate any interview invitations.
It has to really suck to be dealt pocket aces when you're playing head-to-head with someone who also has pocket aces and then lose. Especially when you ponied up $1 million to enter the tournament.
If there was an iconic fiction role that was written as female and a man was cast in the role, there would be outrage all over. But cast a woman to play Peter Pan, and no one says a word.
Lois Lerner calling conservatives "crazies" doesn't help support the argument that her actions while working at the IRS weren't politically motivated.
* * *
July 31st in History:
30 BC – Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.
781 – The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).
1009 – Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII.
1201 – Attempted usurpation of John Komnenos the Fat.
1423 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant – the French army is defeated by the English at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1451 – Jacques Cœur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France.
1492 – The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1498 – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
1588 – The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.
1655 – Russo-Polish War (1654–67): the Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
1658 – Aurangzeb is proclaimed Moghul emperor of India.
1667 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Treaty of Breda ends the conflict.
1703 – Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
1715 – A Spanish treasure fleet seven days after 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1741 – Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.
1763 – Odawa Chief Pontiac's forces defeat British troops at the Battle of Bloody Run during Pontiac's War.
1777 – The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."
1790 – The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
1865 – The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Queensland, Australia.
1913 – The Balkan States sign an armistice in Bucharest.
1919 – German national assembly adopts the Weimar Constitution, which comes into force on August 14.
1930 – The radio mystery program The Shadow airs for the first time.
1931 – New York, New York experimental television station W2XAB (now known as WCBS) begins broadcasts.
1932 – The NSDAP (Nazi Party) wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.
1938 – Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).
1938 – Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius the Great in Persepolis.
1941 – The Holocaust: under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question."
1945 – Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
1948 – At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
1948 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.
1954 – First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio.
1956 – Jim Laker becomes the first man to take all 10 wickets in a Test match innings as he returns figures of 10/53 in the Australian 2nd innings. This combined with his 9/37 in the first innings gave him match figures of 19/90 in the 4th Test at Old Trafford.
1961 – At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in Major League Baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning because of rain.
1964 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
1970 – Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
1972 – The Troubles: In Operation Motorman, the British Army re-takes the urban no-go areas of Northern Ireland. It is the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. Later that day, nine civilians are killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy.
1988 – 32 people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
1991 – The United States and Soviet Union both sign the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.
1992 – Georgia joins the United Nations.
1999 – Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector – NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.
2006 – Fidel Castro hands over power to brother Raúl Castro.
2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.
2009 – Three members of the popular South Korean group TVXQ, (Kim Jaejoong, Kim Junsu, and Park Yoochun), filed lawsuit against their Korean management S.M. Entertainment.
2012 – Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the greatest number of medals won at the Olympics.
Famous Folk Born on July 31st:
Emperor Nijo of Japan
Philip the Good, son of John the Fearless
William S. Clark
Fred Quimby
George Liberace
Milton Friedman
Bryan Hextall
Bill Todman
Curt Gowdy
Ahmet Ertegun
Jimmy Evert
Ted Cassidy
France Nuyen
Geoffrey Lewis
Lobo
William Bennett
Gary Lewis
Evonne Goolagong Cawley
Faye Kellerman
Michael Biehn
Dirk Blocker
Wesley Snipes
Pat Finn
John Laurinaitis
Jim Corr
Dean Cain
Peter Rono
Ben Chaplin
Or is it? I don't drive Coldwater Canyon but I hear that it still isn't completely back to the condition it was in before the major water main break it suffered in 2009. A Department of Water and Power spokesman was asked how long it is expected to take before the entire underground system of water mains is replaced and his response was "300 years."
The water main that blew yesterday was installed in 1921. It is going to take a custom-made piece of pipe to repair the break. That piece can't be installed until DWP manages to stop the last two leaking pipes. They estimate that Sunset will reopen on Friday. I think they are entirely too optimistic.
Our local system of roads was operating at capacity during rush hour before this mishap. Now that one major East-West thoroughfare is temporarily eliminated, it's causing near gridlock conditions on other adjacent arteries that flow East-West. I saw the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard as I left the VA this morning and it looked like an utter nightmare.
Infrastructure matters. Delay its repair and upgrade for too long and you pay a much heavier price.
* * *
Accidentally shooting yourself in the leg. Stomping another player. Being accused of but never charged with sexual assault. Missing a drug test. Gambling. Taking illegal benefits while playing football in college. What do they have in common? All of them are things that NFL players were suspended for doing, for more games than Ray Rice was suspended for domestic violence.
We hear about how professional athletes are supposed to be role models. So why is it that people sometimes refer to the NFL as the National Felony League? Is that the behavior we want modeled for youth? I think not.
The fact that a suspension for using a performance enhancing drug is four games and Ray Rice only got a two game suspension tells me that the league is a lot more worried about cheating than it is about women being abused and assaulted. That's a particularly poor set of priorities.
If the NFL wants to be a responsible organization and take action against players and coaches for their behavior off the field, it needs to make sure that penalties for such behavior are at least as harsh as those for things done on the field.
* * *
Just to clear things up, most veterans are not happy with what Jesse Ventura did in choosing to continue his lawsuit against the widow of Chris Kyle. Upon reflection, I'm with them. Once Kyle had been murdered, there was no reason to continue the lawsuit. Ventura is already worth millions and he could choose to make more if he wishes. He doesn't need the money.
His reputation wasn't seriously damaged by Kyle's claims. He should have leveraged the lawsuit to get the publisher to remove the reference to him in the book. That's happening now anyway. That would be sufficient to "restore" the truth.
I don't know if what Kyle claimed happened or not. I really don't care. You don't torture the widow of a veteran who has been murdered by forcing her to continue defending a lawsuit.
Just so we're clear, Jesse Ventura was never a Navy SEAL.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
The last member of the crew of the Enola Gay has died. The end of a link to the dawn of an era. For those who didn't know, the Enola Gay was the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima.
Kind of sad that what Congress is busiest doing at the moment is raising money for the November elections. Doing their jobs rather than worrying about keeping them would be nice.
I would lose all respect and admiration I have for Miranda Kerr if it turned out she had slept with Justin Bieber.
When I owned a dog, I loved him dearly. But I wouldn't have taken him with me on a vacation to a foreign land.
How generous of Governor Moonbeam to volunteer our state to house more of the children entering the nation illegally...NOT.
Did the rebels really lay mines near the wreckage of MH-17?
People who write "informative" articles about the so-called Social Security trust funds are either delusional, or don't understand accounting. If we as a nation are $17 trillion in debt, the $2.8 trillion supposedly in the trust funds is a myth. Our profligate Congress already spent that money.
I'm thinking that the resume that has the email address of "DominantMistress@sadomasochism.com is probably not going to generate any interview invitations.
It has to really suck to be dealt pocket aces when you're playing head-to-head with someone who also has pocket aces and then lose. Especially when you ponied up $1 million to enter the tournament.
If there was an iconic fiction role that was written as female and a man was cast in the role, there would be outrage all over. But cast a woman to play Peter Pan, and no one says a word.
Lois Lerner calling conservatives "crazies" doesn't help support the argument that her actions while working at the IRS weren't politically motivated.
* * *
July 31st in History:
30 BC – Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.
781 – The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).
1009 – Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII.
1201 – Attempted usurpation of John Komnenos the Fat.
1423 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant – the French army is defeated by the English at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1451 – Jacques Cœur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France.
1492 – The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.
1498 – On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.
1588 – The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.
1655 – Russo-Polish War (1654–67): the Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
1658 – Aurangzeb is proclaimed Moghul emperor of India.
1667 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Treaty of Breda ends the conflict.
1703 – Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
1715 – A Spanish treasure fleet seven days after 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1741 – Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.
1763 – Odawa Chief Pontiac's forces defeat British troops at the Battle of Bloody Run during Pontiac's War.
1777 – The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."
1790 – The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
1865 – The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Queensland, Australia.
1913 – The Balkan States sign an armistice in Bucharest.
1919 – German national assembly adopts the Weimar Constitution, which comes into force on August 14.
1930 – The radio mystery program The Shadow airs for the first time.
1931 – New York, New York experimental television station W2XAB (now known as WCBS) begins broadcasts.
1932 – The NSDAP (Nazi Party) wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.
1938 – Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).
1938 – Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius the Great in Persepolis.
1941 – The Holocaust: under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question."
1945 – Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
1948 – At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
1948 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.
1954 – First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio.
1956 – Jim Laker becomes the first man to take all 10 wickets in a Test match innings as he returns figures of 10/53 in the Australian 2nd innings. This combined with his 9/37 in the first innings gave him match figures of 19/90 in the 4th Test at Old Trafford.
1961 – At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in Major League Baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning because of rain.
1964 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
1970 – Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
1972 – The Troubles: In Operation Motorman, the British Army re-takes the urban no-go areas of Northern Ireland. It is the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. Later that day, nine civilians are killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy.
1988 – 32 people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
1991 – The United States and Soviet Union both sign the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.
1992 – Georgia joins the United Nations.
1999 – Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector – NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.
2006 – Fidel Castro hands over power to brother Raúl Castro.
2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.
2009 – Three members of the popular South Korean group TVXQ, (Kim Jaejoong, Kim Junsu, and Park Yoochun), filed lawsuit against their Korean management S.M. Entertainment.
2012 – Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the greatest number of medals won at the Olympics.
Famous Folk Born on July 31st:
Pat Finn
John Laurinaitis
Jim Corr
Dean Cain
Peter Rono
Ben Chaplin
posted by me at 10:48 PM
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