Uber drivers in Los Angeles are losing their collective minds. At least some of them. As a way of protesting new rate fees Uber is rolling out in Los Angeles and Orange County, drivers there are going on a 25-hour strike beginning midnight tonight. Why a 25-hour strike? Because Uber is lowering the per mile fee from 80 cents to 60 cents, a 25 percent decrease.
Los Angeles
It looks like the Los Angeles Chargers are legit good
When I heard the San Diego Chargers were moving to Los Angeles, I thought they would be the Los Angeles Clippers of the NFL. Just another San Diego team moving to Los Angeles. They obviously wanted the benefits of having one of the greatest cities in the world as its base of operations.
I also thought it was strange for Los Angeles to go from not having an NFL team for twenty years to suddenly having two teams, the Rams and the Chargers.
Are the Chargers the Clippers of the NFL?
In my mind, I couldn’t shake the idea that the Chargers were just like the Clippers. I hate the Clippers with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.
I was wrong. The Chargers are not like the Clippers. First of all, the Chargers are not forever linked to a racist owner. They also never announced the former racist owner’s wife, a racist in her own right as their official number one fan.
Something else that sets the Chargers apart from the Clippers is the Chargers are good.
The Chargers went into to Kansas City last night and beat the Chiefs 29-28 to clinch a playoff spot and tie the Chiefs for first place in the AFC West, but not really. Both teams are now 11-3, but the Chiefs get a slight advantage because they have a better in-division record.
Los Angeles’ other NFL team, the Rams, have a record of 11-2. They stand alone at the top of the NFC West.
I wanted to get behind the Rams after it was announced they were leaving St. Louis for Los Angeles. I just couldn’t do it. As a kid, it bugged me the Rams moved from Los Angeles to Anaheim. Then, years later, they moved to St. Louis. They ended up winning a super bowl, something they never could do in Southern California.
Then, when they moved back to LA, they had Jeff Fisher as their head coach. I cannot express how much I dislike Fisher and his stupid mustache. His creepy smile has been known to cause women to go into immediate menopause and turn holy water into vinegar.
St. Louis is a terrible place
There was another problem I had with the Rams: they still have that St. Louis stink on them.
I’m not a big fan of St. Louis. I’ve been there a few times when I worked as a field service engineer for Gretag Imaging. They were a Swiss company that made photo-finishing equipment. I can say St. Louis was one of the worst places I ever been. It was like the entire city was on the bad part of town. I once stopped at a grocery store to buy Tylenol and I feared I was going to get robbed. Not by other shoppers, but by the people working there.
The best thing about St. Louis is the giant arch. The best way to see it is driving Interstate 70 making sure not to stop.
I probably could have gotten behind the Rams if when they fled Southern California, they went anywhere else other than St. Louis.
The Chargers, unlike the Rams, have no stink upon them. The moved to LA from San Diego, but the Chargers played their first season (1960) in the AFL in Los Angeles. They moved to San Diego before the AFL 1961 season.
In conclusion
The Chargers give past and present Los Angeles residents an alternative team to support. Even though I haven’t lived in the Los Angeles area for over 34 years, I still keep a fondness for the area’s sports teams. It’s where I grew up. Unlike the Rams, I can get behind the Chargers. I’m glad they came to their senses and left Northern Tijuana and returned home to LA where they belong.
San Francisco Giants Brandon Belt has a 21-pitch at bat
San Francisco Giants first baseman Brandon Belt made Jaime Barria of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Orange Country throw 21 pitches in the first inning of Sunday’s game. Belt eventually lined out to right field, but it doesn’t really matter.
The at-bat lasted 12 minutes and 45 seconds. When you make a starting pitcher throw that many pitches, it is a quality at-bat.
Belt broke the MLB record set in 1998 with 20 pitches between hitter Ricky Gutierrez and pitcher Bartolo Colon.
Jaime Barria escaped the first inning with no hits but threw a total of 49 pitches. Ouch.
A Giants-Angels game is one of those weird events where I truly hate both teams. I normally want both teams to lose whoever either team is playing, but when they play each other, that cannot happen. I don’t even know which team I hate the most. If I had to pick one, I’d probably pick the Angels. I don’t like how they’re constantly changing their name or how they now pretend to play in Los Angeles. There’s only one team that plays in Los Angeles and it ain’t the Angels.
The North Korea nuclear threat
From the Huffington Post:
Though analysts said Sunday that they doubt North Korea has truly developed a hydrogen bomb, experts said the country’s nuclear capabilities were evidently improving.
Kim Dong-yub, a defense analyst in Seoul, told The New York Times he believed the test on Sunday involved a “boosted” atomic bomb. Nuclear weapons expert David Albright told the paper the power of the device suggested it contained “thermonuclear material.”
Vipin Narang, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who specializes in nuclear strategy, described the weapon tested as a “city buster.”
“Now, with even relatively inaccurate intercontinental ballistic missile technology, [North Korea] can destroy the better part of a city with this yield,” Narang told The Washington Post.
So North Korea now has a weapon that can destroy the better part of a city. What are we going to do about it?
North Korea has made it very clear they plan on using a nuclear weapon against the United States. So far, our policy towards this threat is to whine to China a about it. That plan of action doesn’t seem to be working. China doesn’t seem to be doing anything about North Korea as evidenced by this latest test.
When it comes to defending American cities against nuclear attack, we shouldn’t rely on the kindness of others to save us.
The United States will eventually have to take North Korea off the board. By that I mean destroy North Korea. The only question remaining is if we first wait for North Korea to destroy an American city, or if we neutralize the threat before it’s allowed to take full fruition.
I don’t want to wait for North Korea to kill an American city before taking action.
The North Korean nuclear attack will not come from space
Anyone who thinks North Korea doesn’t pose a real threat until they fully master their missile technology is delusional. North Korea does not need to attack from space to kill an American city. Somali pirates easily hijack oil tankers traveling the Indian Ocean. How hard do you think it would be for a North Korean commando unit to hijack a container ship traveling from South Korea to the United States?
Not very hard at all. They could jam communications, board the ship, kill the entire crew, transfer the nuclear weapon, and then proceed to the United States. They could do all this without anyone knowing anything even happened.
Show me a nuclear device small enough to fit in the nose cone of a North Korean missile and I’ll show you a nuclear device small enough to be transported by a North Korean commando team to a container ship.
Watch out Los Angeles
Los Angeles is by far the most likely target for a North Korean nuclear attack. The two most active container cargo ports in the United States are both in Los Angeles: the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach.
Los Angeles sits in a basin. It has mountains behind it and the ocean to its front. It’s one of the things that make smog such a problem in LA. It would also make a nuclear blast and its radioactive fallout a very serious problem.
If we continue to react to North Korea’s aggression with a wait and see attitude, it’s not a matter of if North Korea will attack us, it’s a matter of when.
The Baltimore Orioles are now back to .500 baseball
The Baltimore Orioles beat the California Angels of Anaheim of Orange Country near Los Angeles last night 6-2. It means the Orioles are back to an even record, 56 – 56.
It’s like the season starts all over again for the Orioles, except of course that Boston Red Sox are seven games ahead of them.
Orioles pitcher Dylan Bundy went seven innings and got the win. He struck out 10 and allowed two runs.
I don’t like the Angels. I liked them fine when they were the California Angels, but when they began changing their name to make it sound like they play in Los Angeles, I wanted no part of them.
The Angels don’t play in Los Angeles. The play in Anaheim, a few miles from Fullerton, the city in which I was born. That’s right. I was born in the OC.
The Angels play across the street from Disneyland. If you can see Space Mountain and the Matterhorn from your parking lot, you’re not in Los Angeles.
It’s not like Los Angeles doesn’t have a baseball team. Not only do they have one, it’s very popular with people who actually live in Los Angeles.
The Anime Expo 2017 is why I don’t go to events like this anymore
Anime Expo 2017 was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center this weekend. Things didn’t go as smooth as they should have. People were forced to stand in long lines for hours just to get in.
The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA), the event’s organizer, blamed the problem on safety and security.
Welcome to Anime Expo 2017 now get in line
Attendees were first forced to stand in long lines to get passes. Once attendees had passes, they then were forced to stand in another long line to use those passes.
If the SPJA truly cared about the safety and security of the event’s attendees, they would have made sure those attendees were not standing on the streets of Los Angeles for hours without the benefit of security.
If you were someone who wanted to visit harm and violence on attendees of the Anime Expo 2017, the easiest way to do it would have been to do it when people were standing on the street waiting to get it.
That’s just a fact.
Hold event organizers accountable
The real problem is that the SPJA knows it can get away with treating people like shit and they will never be held accountable for it. Next year, people will still go to the Anime Expo. Fans will never hold them accountable for their poor management and general attitude of rabid apathy.
I’m not like that. I look at situations like this and it only cements my option that these type of events are poorly managed and I don’t want any part of them. Standing in long lines for no good reason is a young man’s game. I’m not a young man anymore.