Los Angeles

Apparently the LA Galaxy aren't bothering with that whole "losing a game thing" this season. After today's 4-1 victory over the Houston Dynamo, the Herbalife boys are 12-0-2 so far, tying the MLS unbeaten record. And they're continuing that streak without a couple of their big stars, in South Africa for the World Cup.

What's crazy is not just the streak. In the 14 games they've played, they have 22 goals for...and just 3 against. That's right: in the 1,260 minutes of Galaxy soccer this year (not counting added time), their opponents have managed three goals.

Landon Donovan's possible final game with Everton FC ended in a 2-2 draw at Birmingham City today. He came on in the 67th minute for Nigerian striker Ayegbeni Yakubu, who had scored one of the Toffees' pair. Unfortunately, Everton let a two-goal lead slip away, losing a chance to make up ground on the team directly above them in the League standings.

Whether or not this actually is Landon's last Everton fixture, Galaxy coach Bruce Arena expects his star back in Los Angeles right away. This despite the MLS players voting to strike if a new agreement can't be reached with owners by March 25th. Not that there's ever a great time to strike, but for a league still struggling for respect in the US, it seems like a particularly inopportune time.

Everton seriously want him back. We'll see how it plays out.

The Eastsider LA: "Life's last journey on a street car named Descanso" (via @MetroLibrary):

Railway fan and Angeleno Heights resident Kevin Kuzma was checking out a railroad preservation forum when he came across a recent photo of the Descanso, a 101-year-old Los Angeles street car built to transport mourners as well as the deceased to burial services.

CarFree.us: "By the Numbers: My Financial and Environmental Impact of Commuting by Bicycle" (via @bikecommutenews):

I knew I was benefiting myself and the environment by commuting without a car, but to see the real impact is very amazing. These numbers don’t take into account the savings because of improved emotional and physical well being I am getting because of the exercise. They also don’t take into account the benefit to my community from interacting with my neighbors and fellow commuters. These numbers don’t measure the impact of the 40,000 people every year who’s lives are cut short because of car crashes.

LA Times: "Women pilots from World War II to be honored":

The groundbreaking Women Airforce Service Pilots were buried without military honors and long denied benefits. But now they'll receive the Congressional Gold Medal.

Cool video describing the upcoming sbX E-Street transit project.

There's also a new website describing the planned Intermodal Transit Center in downtown San Bernardino: Are You In?

The new intermodal center will connect 13 existing Omnitrans bus lines, along with forthcoming sbX Bus Rapid Transit routes, 2 Metrolink route extensions, and a future light rail line to downtown Redlands.

The downtown center will not only be an iconic, world-class transportation gateway, but will be a catalyst for economic revitalization and development in San Bernardino. This will be the center point for a new transit village, where pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use neighborhoods with sustainable urban design encourage walking, bicycling, and using transit. The Village will include new public spaces- such as parks and plazas, new retail centers, new restaurants and cafes, new office spaces and meeting places, as well as new housing units for people with varying incomes.

Can't wait for that new light rail service to Redlands, but it'll likely be another five years at least.

My dream is to ride my bike to the train and take it to Union Station in Los Angeles, then bike up the hill to Dodger Stadium to see a game. :)

Vendr.tv combines three of my favorite things in their latest episode: cycling, food, and Los Angeles.

"One thing about LA – you can’t escape the sun. Everywhere you look people are tanning, swimming, and running. So, a mobile ice cream vendor is often the perfect fix to beat the heat. Enter Locali, a bicycle powered ice pop shop that focuses on serving local, organic, and sustainable ice cream products all over Los Angeles."

Google is teetering towards being On Notice, if not Dead to Me yet.

/. "Google CEO Says Privacy Worries Are For Wrongdoers"

In a surprising statement to CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'

Yeah, and you shouldn't mind getting arbitrarily pulled over and searched by the cops for no reason if you don't have anything to hide.

The key, apparently, is to drink coffee with friends.

Drinking coffee could help to cut the risk of advanced prostate cancer, a US study suggests.

and

Fresh evidence adds weight to suggestions that loneliness makes cancer both more likely and deadly.

BBC: "Hubble sees most distant galaxies"

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has captured its deepest view of the Universe, producing images of galaxies that have never been seen before.

As Bad Astronomer Phil Plait says,

I haven’t heard much from the Hubble Space Telescope folks since it was refurbished earlier in the year. Maybe that’s because they’ve been busily working on putting together an incredible image, the deepest ever taken in the near infrared. Feast upon this:

LA Times -- "Expo Line project costs and delays are ballooning"

The rail line from downtown L.A. to Culver City is $220 million over budget and a year behind schedule. Officials hope to open part of the route next year.

I gotta get one or both of these T-shirts from zero per gallon:

ComputerWorld: "High-Energy Linux: Linux & the Large Hadron Collider"

The biggest, most powerful atom smasher the world has ever seen, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), with its 17-mile underground loop and TeVs (Teraelectronvolts) of proton beams, is finally up and running, with Linux in control.

Beware the Atom-Smashing Penguin! ;)

The New Yorker: "I Dreamed I Met William Burroughs", poem by Franz Wright.

I met William Burroughs in a dream.
It was some sort of bohemian farmhouse,
and he was enthroned, small and skeletal,
in a truly gigantic red armchair.

Continue...

LA Times -- "Santa Muerte in L.A.: a gentler vision of 'Holy Death'

The sect is linked to narcotics trafficking in Mexico. As it moves north, it takes on the benign glow of virtue.

The prayer in Spanish sounded like one from an ordinary Catholic Mass. But the man who led it wore a coyote-skin headdress and called himself the last of 13 generations of brujosbrujos -- witch doctors -- in his family.

The name the worshipers invoked was not that of the Virgin Mary but of Santa Muerte, or "Holy Death," a Mexican folk saint linked to narcotics trafficking, a kind of female grim reaper with a skull for a face.

About two dozen devotees recited a rosary and stood and sat on cue to offer praise to this unconventional icon one Sunday at a storefront shrine near MacArthur Park.

"Angel created by faith," they chanted, "allow the power in me to be released."

Santa Muerte is not a Catholic saint, and in recent decades her popularity in Mexico, especially among the poor and criminal classes, has led to clashes with church officials and government authorities. Her first adherents included Mexican prisoners, drug dealers and prostitutes, and those in legitimate but dangerous nighttime work, such as security guards and taxi drivers.

"It's sort of like the Virgin for people on the edge," said Patrick A. Polk, a folklorist and curator at UCLA's Fowler Museum.

Closing out some Firefox tabs of awesomeness...

Warren Ellis on Wired.co.uk -- "Look out for Hollywood films about spelunking on the Moon"

2010 is here. "The year we make contact", if you like SF novels or watched the film 2010, while looking at your watch and wondering how long until Helen Mirren got her baps out. In keeping with Wired’s position as "futury magazine about all the futures that will happen in your pants in the future", I now bring you "predictions of things that will definitely happen in 2010". Happy New Year, and try not to scream too loudly. That sort of thing wakes up the flesh-eating EATR robots.

LA Times -- "L.A. City Council wants bullet train officials to weigh two options for Union Station"

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously urged officials at the California High Speed Rail Authority today to consider two proposed alternatives for the bullet train stop at Union Station downtown.

Councilman Ed Reyes said the alternatives were crucial to protecting the residents in East Los Angeles as planners determine the route for the 800-mile bullet train between Northern California and San Diego. Proponents say the train would carry passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 2½ hours.

NY Times -- "E-Reading, in 2 Authors’ Eyes"

What do authors think of the new electronic replacements for bound paper? Some are traditionalists who want nothing to do with electronic readers — one book editor said that most of his authors avoided the devices.

Ars Technica -- "How Robber Barons hijacked the 'Victorian Internet'"

Ars revisits those wild and crazy days when Jay Gould ruled the telegraph and Associated Press reporters helped fix presidential elections. Is government supervision really the worst thing that can happen to a communications network?

/. -- Is Linux Documentation Lacking?

"A number of blog posts are surfacing that are calling out the helpful open source community on their documentation. No, not the documentation for the highly skilled technical people, but the documentation from beginner to apprentice. [...] Is it really as bad as these blogs paint it? Has it come down to using Google before a man page?"