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Archives for August 2012

The Starting Line – Technology breakthrough at UT-San Diego allows website to post news before it happens

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Local Public Radio reporter Katie Orr was the first to spot the new technology in use yesterday, but failed to grasp its significance when she tweeted at 2:50 pm about the story up at the UT-San Diego’s website: “Is it me, or is this story confusing? It makes it sound like Romney’s already given his speech, which happens at 7 PST”.  Others, including local scribe Seth Hall, noticed another story posted Thursday morning featuring a photograph and video of lightning in the East County with a headline and lede indicating that the images were captured on Thursday evening.

Of course, what really happened in the first instance was that editors in Mission Valley had jumped the gun, running an Associated Press story written by reporters with access to an advance copy of Romney’s speech.   [Read more…]

Whatever Happened to Downtown Artists? The Experiences of Three Creative Souls Who Survived

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By Jim Bliesner

It is a familiar story to hear about how artists settle in unwanted areas of major cities, occupy unused space, and begin to create excitement and a sense of uniqueness and a creative spirit. Eventually developers arrive to capitalize on the aura. What happens to the artists who were the urban pioneers? I interviewed three artists who are downtown or were there in the past. Their experiences cover a period of twenty or thirty years and provide lessons for artists today.   [Read more…]

BOOK REVIEW: Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Sandman Slim, otherwise known as James Stark, thinks of himself as a monster. But for fans of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim supernatural revenge series, Stark is a beloved monster — half angel, half human, and avenger through and through. And fans will be thrilled with the release this week of the fourth novel in the series, “Devil Said Bang.”
  [Read more…]

Theater Review: An Iliad – Surely this was, is happening now

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By Karen Kenyon

As we begin to leave the theatre space after seeing “An Iliad,” we leave in silence — after a standing ovation.

After all, it is finished — Hector is dead, Achilles has lost his rage, and the Poet has left the stage with his suitcase of war.
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On a mostly bare set (with a sink, cleaning tools, and other backstage clutter toward the back) one chair, and a table, the “poet,” performed by Henry Woronicz, tells us the story of The Trojan War, focusing on the conflict between the half-god warrior, Achilles of Achaea (Greece), and Hector, Prince of Troy and Commander of the Trojans.   [Read more…]

Field of View: Museum Roadshow at Cuyamaca College

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Each year, the Heritage of the Americas Museum holds a “Museum Roadshow” on the Cuyamaca College campus. Craig Helm, a certified appraiser who has worked in the field for more than 50 years, specializes in Native American, pre-Columbian and Asian artifacts, as well as western memorabilia and antique pictures.

There was a $5 charge to have each multiple of three items appraised–the money was donated to children’s programs hosted by the nonprofit museum.

This museum is really worth a visit. The staff is not only extremely knowledgeable, but they are there because they want to be and that shows. If you go, don’t forget to ask to see Brutus, the very-docile female Chilean Rose-haired tarantula.

All photo by Annie Lane.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — The GOP Jobs Program: More Fact Checkers

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Day 2.5 of the Republican National Convention brought out more big guns for the TV cameras and the party faithful. There were the usual failed attempts at partisan humor (a bipartisan affliction) including rim shots at the President’s golf game, which seemed a bit odd in a hall dominated by the country club set. Oh wait! Maybe the jokes were there because he was the black guy on the golf course…. nah, the Republicans wouldn’t do that, would they?

 The crescendo of the convo’s evening was the speech by Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.  This is the guy on the ticket who is supposed to be everything that Mitt Romney is not. A decisive leader with unquestionable credentials that appeal to the core conservatives and the tea party activists that makes up the bulk of the GOP’s committed voting block. His “white bread” quotient makes him a good bet with uncommitted voters; he’s no grizzly mamma, having crafted a persona going back to Jack Kemp that gives the perception of just enough wonkiness wrapped around a mid-western sensibility to make him a safe choice. And his willingness to play fast and loose with facts and history make him an ideal pairing with the GOP’s Main Man of the moment.

The “liberal” media of the East Coast was all over Congressman Ryan’s lack of command of the facts in his speech. What they didn’t get, apparently, is that facts don’t matter here. Having spent four years buying into the alternative reality crafted for them by their party’s leadership, the party faithful in Tampa and the vast majority of those watching Ryan’s speech on television were certainly not going to be troubled by mere facts. Sally Kohn at Fox News said it, but nobody was listening. The roar of crowd, the sense that, finally, “we” can “take America back” was all that mattered…   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: Who Gets to Say Vanilla Is Boring?

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by Catherine Scott/Bitch Magazine

If we bemoan the oversexualization of culture, should we also be concerned about the kinkification of culture? As BDSM blogger Clarisse Thorn writes, “Being a sex-positive feminist, I worry that other women will read my work and it will increase their performance anxiety … that it will lead other women to feel like, ‘gosh, is this something liberated sex-positive women do? Is this something I should be doing?”. Thanks to a prescriptive media, the competition to be having the most out-there, kinky, freaky, dirty sex keeps escalating, with “Ultimate Perv” engraved on the winner’s medal. Fantastic if you’re antsy to compete, but what if you’re just not into all that stuff? What if you think you secretly might be…[whisper it, now!]…vanilla?

One of the reasons I didn’t dare join a fetish community website, or go to a play party, ’til years after I was first curious about BDSM, was a subconscious sense that I was probably “too vanilla.” I didn’t dress head-to-toe in latex or own any seven-inch heels, and I didn’t take my partner down to the local shops on a dog leash. I’ve since realized that the scene is open to anyone who feels their sexual tastes land outside the mainstream—there’s no test you have to pass. However, by labelling every non-kinky person as effectively the same, is the BDSM community just as judgmental as those who judge us?   [Read more…]

Companies You Need to Avoid That are Giving Money to Stop Proposition 37 (GMO Labeling)

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The next time you take a swig of Odwalla’s Organic Carrot Juice, or munch on a bowl of Orville Redenbacher’s Organic popcorn, take note: A lot of popular organic and all-natural brands are made by companies that are spending thousands of dollars to defeat Proposition 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.

Donations are pouring into the campaign to defeat Prop 37. Among the big donors are companies like J.M. Smucker, Hormel Foods, Kellogg Co., Coca-Cola North America and PepsiCo. – companies that make a fortune marketing ‘natural’ and organic brands with slogans like “We’re good to the earth.”

All of these companies are members of the powerful Washington, DC-based Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA), a multi-billion-dollar trade association which represents America’s $1.2 trillion “Big Food” industry. The GMA itself has already pitched in $375,000 to the anti-labeling campaign. And it’s still early in the game.
  [Read more…]

Looking Into Google News: A Week’s Worth

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by Bob Dorn

Like the news industry on which it depends, Google News is a big, sprawling mess. There’s little consistency in what it chooses to emphasize hour by hour, day by day, week to week. But, lurking not far beneath Google’s aggravating, aggregated news site is the larger industry’s basic conservatism.

This year Google News intensely chased, first, the Romney/GOP nomination, and secondly the Romney vs. Obama mini‐series as slavishly as the news industry itself did ‐‐ not saying much given the fact that Google News doesn’t originate stories; it reprints them. The media’s obsessive preoccupation with Romney began to sag by mid‐summer along with his polls. But then the August 11th nomination of Paul Ryan by the Romney gave the national press corps something to believe in again, sending them hyperventilating down to Florida to cover Ryan‐‐ “the next president of the United States,” in the Romney world – where the new guy appeared with his mother at campaign stops ‐‐ a kind of Immaculate Perception that gripped the media as if something had happened.

Then the Missouri man, Todd Akin, took the top spot away from the Romney/Ryan and Obama.   [Read more…]

San Diego for Free – Salk Institute for Biological Studies – An Architectural Gem Nestled Above the Pacific

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 A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free!  We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Neighborhood & Address:  Torrey Pines Mesa; 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, San Diego, CA 92037

Best For: Architecture students and fans

Hours: 8:30 – 17:00 daily, closed holidays

Free Hours: Free guided tour Monday through Friday at 12:00,  online registration required.  Visitors are also welcome to explore public areas on their own during regular hours.

Website: http://www.salk.edu/

Just south of the famed Torrey Pines Golf Course lies the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.  The institute was created in 1960 by Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine.  Salk wanted to build on the success of the polio vaccine and create a institute to increase knowledge of biology and a unique, inspiring environment for researchers to work in.  Today the research at the Salk Institute is focused on molecular biology and genetics, neurosciences, and plant biology.  Over 50 years after being created, the Salk Institute continues to build on past successes.  As described by Jonas Salk:  “The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.”
  [Read more…]

San Diego’s morphing water policy

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by George J. Janczyn / Groksurf’s San Diego / August 28, 2012

The San Diego City Council has been working on a comprehensive water policy for several years. While incremental developments have been sporadically reported in the news media, it’s easy to lose the thread, so here’s a backgrounder.

In late 2010, anticipating an eventual announcement that the drought was officially over, then San Diego City Councilmember Donna Frye proposed that the city’s temporary Drought Response Level 2 restrictions on water use be made permanent, rather than be discontinued.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Reporter Assaulted by Goons at Mission Valley Hilton Press Conference Exposing Mistreatment of Employees

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Mission Valley mayhem… A press conference being held yesterday by the Employee Rights Center to air charges that the hotel’s operator, Connecticut-based HEI Hospitality, had been named in a complaint alleging wage theft totaling approximately $250,000, was disrupted by loud music apparently at the direction of hotel management.

Reporter Dave Rice, whose account of the incident is online at the SDReader, found the source of the noise behind a hedge over a hundred feet from the presser. Photographs published with the story clearly demonstrate the Hotel’s involvement:

When I walked around the corner to ascertain the source of the music, I found two men next to a limousine with large speakers aimed at the crowd and a power cord leading back toward the hotel….   [Read more…]

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