Month: May 2015

This large tree was cut down or chopped up after it fell. It was living in Collier Park for decades until this past weekend.

If we find out any more information about what happened, we’ll let you know.

By Jenifer McKim /New England Journal of Invest. Reporting/May,9 2015

Artificial turf fields, cushioned with recycled crushed tires and increasingly in demand for US athletic complexes, are getting some serious pushback.

In Swampscott last week, town meeting members approved plans to install a new synthetic field with silica sand, a more expensive product touted as a nontoxic alternative to the small rubber pellets known as crumb rubber ubiquitous on thousands of synthetic fields across Massachusetts and the nation.

San Diego’s local NBC affiliate, 7SanDiego, has a videotaped interview with a man who saw surveillance footage of the recent fatal police shooting in the Midway area and quotes him as saying,

“This guy shouldn’t have been shot based on what I saw on the video.”

“This was wrong,” the unidentified man said, who works across the alley where the shooting occurred on last Thursday, April 30. He said in the newsvideo:

This guy shouldn’t have been shot based on what I saw on the video. The guy was walking, just normal, lazical lazy walking. If he (the officer) said ‘stop’, that’s all he said. He just opened the door, and said ‘stop’ and shot.”

By Lois Lane

A Report of the Sunset Cliffs Advisory Council Meeting – Monday, May 4, 2015

In 2007 a kick-off meeting was held at the OB Rec Center to plan the future of Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. Dudek & Associates took public input for the Sunset Cliffs Park Drainage Study they were initiating.

Now, eight years later, something is about happen. Not drainage and erosion, but making the park look like a park, with an ADA-compatible walkway, signage, and more native plants.

Celebrations are breaking out in some quarters of San Diego today as it was announced that the LA Times is buying the U-T San Diego.

Here is the LA Times account:

The parent company of the Los Angeles Times has agreed to buy the U-T San Diego, uniting the newspapers of California’s two largest cities under common ownership. Tribune Publishing — owner of The Times, the Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers — announced Thursday that it will pay $85 million in a cash-and-stock deal for the U-T, eight community weeklies and related websites.

Despite long and continued opposition by native peoples in California, the Vatican is making it official that Junipero Serra will be declared a saint.

Serra of course is the friar that began California’s string of missions, beginning with the one in San Diego.

The process to canonize Serra has taken decades but the current Pope Francis has personally given his weight to the effort, which some call “steamrolling” or “fast-tracking” the process, and now it all seems certain.

There are now two very curious things about last week’s fatal shooting by a San Diego police officer of a knife-wielding man in the Midway area.

First, the police officer’s body camera was not on – or at least was not recording.

And second, there was no knife – as first reported – but some kind of “shiny-looking object” in the suspect’s hand, as the U-T San Diego reported today, 5/7/15.

This much we do know: a man named Fridoon Zalbeg Rawshannehad, 31 years of age, was shot to death by San Diego police officer Neil Browder right after midnight, Thursday April 30th. The shooting occurred behind a Midway District adult store, the Hi-Lite Theatre and Bookstore. Browder is a 27-year veteran of San Diego’s police force and he was wearing one of the newly-purchased body cameras.

Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Topped 400 PPM Throughout March In Unprecedented Milestone

By Nick Visser /Huffington Post / May 6, 2015

Average global levels of carbon dioxide stayed above 400 parts per million, or ppm, through all of March 2015 — the first time that has happened for an entire month since record keeping first began, according to data released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Scientists with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory have called the news a “significant milestone” in the growing scourge of man-made climate change.

“This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global carbon dioxide concentrations to rise more than 120ppm since pre-industrial times,” Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s greenhouse gas network, told The Guardian on Wednesday. “Half of that rise has occurred since 1980.”

April Showers Turn Violent

By John Lawrence

As April drew to a close, drenching rain expanded across the Southeast states, bringing the threat of flooding and travel delays. Strong thunderstorms were also a concern for Florida.

April has been a particularly wet month across the Southeast due to several slow-moving storms that soaked the region over the past several weeks. Mobile, Alabama, has been one of the last month from a series of storms – recording over 13 inches of rain.

This is nearly three times higher than their normal rainfall for the month.

By Anthony D. Romero / ACLU

Surveillance reform, like marriage equality, will come about because of generational change

About a year ago, a thirtysomething sculptor in Los Angeles began working on a bust of Edward Snowden. When he was done, he shipped the bust to his artist friends on the East Coast. Just before dawn April 6, the artists crept under cover of darkness into Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park and installed the 100-pound bust atop a Revolutionary War memorial.

“We chose to pay tribute to Snowden through the medium of a bust because that is one of the visual pieces society uses as a guidepost to who a hero is,” one of the artists said in a video released after the bust was installed.

By 3 p.m. the New York Parks Department and police had taken the bust down. But the next morning, a different group of artists cast a holographic image of Snowden where the bust had stood.

The message to the authorities could not be clearer: Snowden is not going away.

UPDATE: It has been confirmed by the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office that Anne Gillin’s body was found in the bay on April 28th. Her case is pending and no more details will be released for 30 to 90 days.

OB Crime Watch Facebook Describes Death of Anne Gillin – A Local Character – Possibly Homeless

The OB Crime Watch facebook has been carrying a story about the death of a local OB woman by the name of Anne Gillin.

Climate Action Plan, Apple Tree Market, Community Plan and Various Transportation Issues on Agenda

It looks like the Ocean Beach Planning Board has a full plate on their agenda for their upcoming monthly meeting, Wednesday May 6th. Newly-installed Board Chair John Ambert will gavel the meeting to order at 6pm in the community room of the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica Avenue.