Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that the 51-mile Los Angeles River is mostly unnavigable, leading to fears that developers will use this as an excuse to flout environmental restrictions.
But anyone who has seen Grease, Terminator 2, and The Transformers knows that the L.A. River is an excellent shortcut past jammed city streets, whether for racing, apprehending Bumblebee, or tracking down a teenaged John Connor prior to his valor in The Robot Wars.
Regulators and conservationists...believe the ripple effect of the decision will make is easier to develop large areas of the Santa Susana, Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains because landowners will not be required to obtain certain federal permits. Some federal and state officials fear that the decision also may undermine rules against discharging wastewater and storm water into the river's tributaries.
Corps regional supervisor Col. Thomas H. Magness IV told the L.A. Times that, just because The Terminator was able to drive an 18-wheeler down a half-mile stretch of the concrete-surfaced waterway, doesn't mean time-traveling cyborg warriors could battle throughout the 834-sq. mile watershed.
"This decision does not in any way lessen the protections on the L.A. River itself," he said.
Researchers have determined that infants who view "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby"-type videos are less verbally adept than their peers whose parents substituted TV time for actually talking with them.
I believe watching these videos, with their vivid colors, morphing shapes, and absence of words are the equivalent of cats watching an aquarium. Can my cat talk? No she cannot.
More than 1,000 parents took part in an assessment of their children's skills as judged by the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI).
Among infants (age 8 to 16 months), each hour per day of viewing baby DVDs/videos was associated with a 16.99-point decrement in CDI score...
...some children could not identify the word "cookie", indicating that parents hoarded all the sweets while they parked their children in front of the TV.
This is why we only let our daughter watch Baby Geddy videos. I asked Marisol what she thought of this.
"One likes to believe in the freedom of music," she said. "But glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity, yeah."
"That doesn't make any goddamn sense," I said, enunciating each word clearly so she understood. "You are a horrible disappointment."
Officials: "No chance" of Catalina fire spreading to L.A.
Fire spokesmen (as if the four Empedoclean Elements can have a spokesperson ... fine, I'm the Earth spokesman) say there is "no chance" the thousand-acre fire raging on the island of Santa Catalina can reach Los Angeles, 40 miles across the Pacific Ocean.
Firefighters maintain the blaze is about 70 percent contained and "couldn't possibly" spread to Hollywood.
This is just another example of The Man trying to keep us fat and ignorant.
Firefighters came from as far away as Los Angeles and Camp Pendleton to save the hills of Santa Catalina Island and its main city, Avalon. How? By plane and boat. Don't tell me some fire couldn't sneak on a plane or boat and disembark on this side to kill our fish and ducks.
I am not naturally an alarmist, but in the same way it has been scientifically proven that earthquakes can use trains to threaten any city that Amtrak services, so can fire hop on a boat. Those killer ants did it, so why can't fire?
According to El Diario del Trovador Cientifico, a trade journal, the newer, more compact mariachi will be easier to transport across borders, less expensive to clothe, and is a natural tenor. Pitfalls include greater vulnerability to el chupacabra and ducks.
It appears from this news clipping from a Michigan paper that, since there is no real law against being Satan, the Vice President was hauled in for having relations with a dead dog.
Michigan's Bay City Times posted this article about Ronald E. Kuch, a man charged under the state's existing sodomy law for a tryst with a dead dog behind a daycare center, next to a photo of Dick Cheney after the latter's escape from a Taliban suicide bomber.
Kuch was charged with sodomy because there's nothing on Michigan's books about what a man and a dead dog (who love each other very much) can or cannot do.
Kuch's attorney, Kathryn Fehrman, argued that a dead dog is not an animal and therefore cannot be violated against its will. I agree. I believe a dead dog is actually a desk.
Cheney used similar logic when he said that waterboarding was not torture. It's just "a dunk in water," he said.
I asked the article's author, Crystal Harmon, if the juxtaposition of Cheney and Kuch's story mightn't have been accidental.
She responded:
We don't post photos with our stories...the website guys who work for our chain in Ann Arbor, I believe, post photos for each of our 7 papers in Michigan, and the local stories that run alongside them are unrelated. I have heard from a couple people who found this amusing, though.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that the 51-mile Los Angeles River is mostly unnavigable, leading to fears that developers will use this as an excuse to flout environmental restrictions.
