In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The current news about the Los Angrles fires carries a remarkable echo of the great LA noir film Chinatown (1974). The MacGuffin of that film involves the suspicion of Hollis Mulwray, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Departmnent of Water and Power, that huge quantities of water are being diverted from a city reservoir every night despite a drought. Mulwray is murdered as he tries to investigate, which leaves private detective Jake Gittes to unravel the mystery. Much of this year's story involves Janisse Quiñones, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and why a city reservoir intended to store water for the Pacific Palisades area was empty and unable to provide water to fight fires in that part of the city , which resulted in local hydrants going dry at a critical time. On Mayor Karen Bass's orders, the city maxed out its budget to 'attract private-sector talent', hiring Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñ...

sd1002055 Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency https://t.co/b0iygizkHt pic.twitter.com/Hqmnt2STLs — The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 10, 2025 As I seem to keep pointing out here, I've worked in the disaster recovery and crisis management fields, and what puzzles me about the state and local response to the LA fires is the total ignorance by anyone in leadership, either at the political or operational level, of basic principles. For instance, there needs to be a central figure who can deliver regular and credible reports on what's being done, like the FBI's James Kallstrom with the TWA 800 explosion. With no one competent available to fill this role, it's fallen to Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass. Both of them, rather than being available to answer questions, have hidden from the press and stonewalled or ducked obvious questions about the dry fire hydrants or the empty reservoir. A competent Kallstrom type would acknowledge the situation and go on ...

As the title of this blog implies, we live in Hollywood, which is a considerable distance from either the Palisades Fire or the Eaton Fire. and thanks be to the Almighty, we were neither burned out nor ordered to evacuate. On the other hand, the powerful wind gusts that fed the fires also brought down trees across the whole region, which in turn took down power lines and left several million households without electricity. Our own neighborhood was out from Wednesday morning to noon yesterday, so although we and our neighbors were safe, we were incommunicado. The emerging consensus seems to be that the fires cmnstitute the worst disaster in Los Angeles history, which would put it above the previous top, the 1938 Los Angeles floods . Other lesser disasters include the 1933 Long Beach eartrhquake, the 1961 Bel Air fire, the 1965 Watts riots, the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, the 1992 Rodney King riots, and the 1994 Northridgw earthquake. But there were also strong reminders of the 1942 Bat...

As I reflected further on Archbishop Garcia-Siller's history of intemperate posts -- oddly reminiscent of Trump's own back in the day -- I thought about the timeline of his tenure as Archbishop of San Antonio. He was named to that post in 2010. I first learned about him when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement parish in early 2017, and my editorial position on the old Cold Case File blog was that Phillips was overrated and something of a charlatan, and the archbishop's move was fully justified . I still think this way. Oddly, the archbishop's current pattern of making posts on X that he's had to delete, walk back, and apologize for, didn't begin until 2019. But then he stayed away from open controversy until this past year, when in May he had to delete, walk back, and apologize for two posts critical of Israel and the Jews in general. Then, following the New Orleans Bourbon Street attack, he indirectly blamed "tr...

Roman Catholic Archishoop of San Antonio Gustavo Garcia-Siller became a prominent figure at my old Cold Case File blog when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement "Anglican use" parish in that diocese. Phillips was highly popular in some traditionalist Catholic circles, especially those that favored a hybrid Anglican-Catholic liturgy that was anything but traditional. At the time of that controversy, I was on the archbishop's side. A vocal minority at the Atonement parish objected to Phillips's cult-like leadership, and as matters developed, it appeared that he had tolerated highly questionable conduct by his deacon with teen boys. There were also allegations of financial mismanagement. In that circumstance, as I got reports from parishioners, former parishioners, and other San Antonio Catholics, the archbishop struck me as a solid, even courageous, figure. Over the weekend, a visitor sent me links to a new controversy invol...

According to Breitbart News , Allstate, the sponsor of Thursday’s Sugar Bowl contest between Notre Dame and Georgia, appears to have deleted CEO Tom Wilson’s post-terror attack message, which aired before the game and ignited a firestorm of controversy online. As I noted Friday , Allstate had already issued a mushy statement sorta-kinda walking back wilson's original wording: On Thursday, Allstate issued a statement to Fox News Digital condemning the terrorist attack and attempting to clarify its CEO’s message. “To be clear, Allstate CEO Tom Wilson unequivocally condemns this heinous act of terrorism and violence in all forms,” the statement read. “We stand with the families of the victims, their loved ones, and the community of New Orleans. The reference to overcoming divisiveness and negativity reflects a broader commitment to fostering trust and positivity in communities across the nation.” This need to clarify had me wondering where the pressure came ...

A lot of people, I think, get a lot wrong about security and AI. Twenty years ago, when I was briefly involved in the Dartmouth alumni trustee movement, I participated in online discussions among students and alumni that taught me a lot. I discovered that a major complaint among conservative students was that they had to swap electronic ID cards to get in and out of the dorm buildings. They felt this was a restriction on their freedom. I had a career spent partly on the road, and I thought that electronic key cards in hotels were a major advance in traveler safety. Why would anyone object to something like this? Well, they didn't like the idea that someone could look up where they'd been and when they'd gone in and out. I tried explaining that a record like that could actually be in their favor -- in an age of unsubstantiated rape accusations, for instance, it could prove you weren't in someone's dorm when they claimed you were. They still didn't like it, an...