Police Chase Everywhere in Sacramento Last Night

I heard the sirens and turned on the police scanner app on my phone to learn what was going on. The chase went all over Sacramento, and was in south Sacramento when Joe the Plumber called and interrupted my pursuit by app:

Three men were arrested following a robbery and chase Thursday night that wound across the streets and freeways of Sacramento.

The incident began as an armed robbery about 9:30 p.m. at a business on the 1500 block of West El Camino Avenue in South Natomas, according to Sacramento police spokesman Officer Anthony Gamble.  Police dispatch records indicated the robbery took place at the Shell gas station on West El Camino at Truxel Road.  Callers told dispatchers at least two of the men pulled handguns on the gas station employee before running away on foot.

...After several minutes, the chase was taken over by California Highway Patrol officers, who followed the suspects for more than 90 minutes through Sacramento roadways. The chase, which took to Interstate 5 and Highway 99, according to law enforcement flight logs, wound through downtown and midtown, as well as East Sacramento — before ending in Meadowview.

...The men, a 24- and 21-year-old from Sacramento and a 20-year-old from Concord, were being held Friday in Sacramento County Main Jail and face felony charges of robbery and conspiracy.

When Worlds Collide

When I was in middle school, my favorite novel was the 1933 work "When Worlds Collide," (which was made into a not-very-good movie by George Pal in 1951) as well as its sequel, "After Worlds Collide." I particularly their portrayal of the U.S. President (a la Roosevelt) trying to coordinate the proper response of Bronson A's initial pass around the Earth:

Sven Bronson, a Swedish astronomer working at an observatory in South Africa, discovers a pair of rogue planets, Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta, which will soon enter the Solar System. In eight months, they will pass close enough for gravitational forces to cause catastrophic damage to the Earth. Sixteen months later, after swinging around the Sun, Bronson Alpha (a gas giant) will return to pulverize the Earth and depart. Bronson Beta (discovered to be Earth-like and potentially habitable) may remain and assume a stable orbit. 

Scientists led by Cole Hendron work desperately to build an atomic rocket to transport enough people, animals and equipment to Bronson Beta to save humanity from extinction. Various countries do the same. The United States evacuates coastal regions in preparation for the first encounter. As the planets approach, observers see through their telescopes cities on Bronson Beta. Tidal waves sweep inland at a height of 750 feet (230 m), volcanic eruptions and earthquakes add to the deadly toll, and the weather runs wild for more than two days. Bronson Alpha grazes and destroys the Moon. 

Three men take a floatplane to check out conditions across the United States and meet with the President in Hutchinson, Kansas, the temporary capital of the United States. All three are wounded fighting off a mob at their last stop, but manage to return with a precious sample of an extremely heat-resistant metal one of them had noticed. This solves the last remaining engineering obstacle: no material had been found before to make rocket tubes capable of withstanding the heat of the atomic exhaust.

 

But truth is, the Earth did once collide with another world. The debris from that ancient collision formed the Moon. But what happened with the colliding planet? A new paper discusses the fate of Theia, the colliding planet. I had heard about these blobs in the Earth back in the Eighties, when they were believed (and many still believe) to be sunken oceanic plates. But maybe they are something more!:

Scientists widely agree that an ancient planet likely smashed into Earth as it was forming billions of years ago, spewing debris that coalesced into the moon that decorates our night sky today.

The theory, called the giant-impact hypothesis, explains many fundamental features of the moon and Earth.

But one glaring mystery at the center of this hypothesis has endured: What ever happened to Theia? Direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive. No leftover fragments from the planet have been found in the solar system. And many scientists assumed any debris Theia left behind on Earth was blended in the fiery cauldron of our planet’s interior.

A new theory, however, suggests that remnants of the ancient planet remain partially intact, buried beneath our feet.

Molten slabs of Theia could have embedded themselves within Earth’s mantle after impact before solidifying, leaving portions of the ancient planet’s material resting above Earth’s core some 1,800 miles (about 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

...They were already aware that there are two massive, distinct blobs that are embedded deep within the Earth. The masses — called large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs — were first detected in the 1980s. One lies beneath Africa and another below the Pacific Ocean.

These blobs are thousands of kilometers wide and likely more dense with iron compared with the surrounding mantle, making them stand out when measured by seismic waves. But the origins of the blobs — each of which are larger than the moon — remain a mystery to scientists.

But for Dr. Qian Yuan, a geophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and the new study’s lead author, his understanding of LLVPs forever changed when he attended a 2019 seminar at Arizona State University, his alma mater, that outlined the giant-impact hypothesis.

That’s when he learned new details about Theia, the mysterious projectile that presumably struck Earth billions of years ago.

And, as a trained geophysicist, he knew of those mysterious blobs hidden in Earth’s mantle.

Yuan had a eureka moment, he said.

Immediately, he began perusing scientific studies, searching to see whether someone else had proposed that LLVPs might be fragments of Theia. But no one had.

...Their work, which assigned a certain size to Theia and speed of impact in the modeling, suggested that the ancient planet’s collision likely did not entirely melt Earth’s mantle, allowing the remnants of Theia to cool and form solid structures instead of blending together in Earth’s inner stew.

...The combination of high-resolution giant impact and mantle convection simulations, mineral physics calculations, and seismic imaging suggests that the lower half of Earth’s mantle remained mostly solid after this impact, and that parts of Theia’s iron-rich mantle sank and accumulated atop Earth's core nearly 4.5 billion years ago, surviving there throughout Earth’s history.

...Dr. Seth Jacobson, an assistant professor of planetary science at Michigan State University, acknowledged that the theory may not, however, soon reach broad acceptance.

...One other theory, for example, posits that LLVPs are actually heaps of oceanic crust that have sunk to the depths of the mantle over billions of years. 

“I doubt the advocates for other hypotheses (about LLVP formation) are going to abandon them just because this one has appeared,” Jacobson added. “I think we’ll be debating this for quite some time.”

Breaking Down "Breaking Bad" Filming Locations with Adam and Billy - Episode 2

 

 I remember hearing that "Break Bad" is a Southernism that Vince Gilligan picked up while growing up in Virginia. Gilligan was surprised to learn that no one else seemed to recognize the phrase. 

I remember once using hydrofluoric acid in graduate school in about 1985 in order to etch glass. I read about its effects, so I was scared shitless. It doesn't burn you from the outside in. Upon contact, your skin sponges it up and you dissolve from the inside out. 

It's interesting how Adam and Billy didn't quite treat the Little Girl in the Gas Mask as a separate filming location. For that matter, I didn't do so either. Still, the Little Girl in the Gas Mask scene is important. She represents Alice in Wonderland - a direct reference to the artistic tradition of Giorgio De Chirico (starting from his painting “Mystery and Melancholy of a Street,” from the year 1914), then Salvador Dali and his paintings from the 1930s, and the world of Surrealist art, especially the Disney short film "Destino." I talk about it from times 24:40 - 30:45 in this video: 

 

Taylor Swift, Halsey & Camila Cabello - 2019 AMAs Medley

Ah, so that's Camila Cabello there in "Shake it Off," with her trademark long hair! 

 

"Killers of the Flower Moon"

 

What an excellent movie Martin Scorsese's new project! It's a long movie - three and a half hours long - but the time doesn't feel heavy. I was pleased to see so many character actors from the Southwest Noir world - "No Country For Old Men," "Breaking Bad," "El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie," and "Better Call Saul."

What a creep that Ernest Burkhart is, that Leonardo DiCaprio plays so well!  Burkhart does whatever he is told!:

What Roth’s adaptation does allow is for “Killers of the Flower Moon” to blossom into a compellingly multi-faceted character study about the men behind the massacre. Even more importantly, it invites the most recent of Scorsese’s late-career triumphs to become the most interesting of the many different movies that comprise it: A twisted love story about the marriage between an Osage woman and the white man who — unbeknownst to her — helped murder her entire family so that he could inherit the headrights for their oil fortune. 

That sepia-toned saga of slow-poisoned self-denial is sustained by the best performance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s entire career. The former matinee idol has never been shy about playing low-lifes and scum-bums, but his nuanced and uncompromising turn as the cretinous Ernest Burkhart mines new wonders from the actor’s long-standing lack of vanity.

Joan Baez - I Am A Noise

 

I saw this documentary about Joan Baez and her career at the Tower Theater. There was lots of interesting imagery from her childhood - home movies from the Fifties with her gifted family - plus photos and film clips from the folk singing and civil rights movement days of the Sixties. 

Once the Vietnam War ended, Joan Baez's career started fading. The movie discusses this period when she seemed to lose her way; when her career came down to Earth. 

I was saddened to learn that Baez subscribed to the 'recovered memory' movement of the Eighties and Nineties. That was something my sister subscribed to as well, at least for a time, but it was an error, leading to estrangement in the family. As it turns out, nothing is as flexible as a memory. Memories can be manufactured pretty easily. So, Baez became estranged from her father for no good reason. She seemed to shrug off the harm to her father. 

A little disturbing to me.

Two Door Cinema Club - Sure Enough

Breaking Down "Breaking Bad" Filming Locations with Adam and Billy - Episode 1

I'm just getting around to Adam Ramirez's and William Dickey's ten-year retrospective series of videos on "Breaking Bad." There were several of us filming-location hunters, each looking for their own special nirvana among the junk yards and fast food joints in the South Valley and elsewhere, but I thought Adam and Bill made the best location-hunting team, not just because they worked so hard, but because they were so LUCKY! Doors opened for them that were closed to everyone else. And luck doesn't just happen - it's a skill too. And they had it! 

From 39:00 to 44:00 they discussed my role, which was to consult my Albuquerque geographic instinct from afar, plus consult Google Earth, and home in on locations (with the valuable help of Sven Joli in Virginia). Adam and Bill discuss one particularly-obscure location, and I wanted to discuss that one: a row of condos. 

The location sits on western bluffs above the Rio Grande. When I was attending West Mesa High School I had a friend who lived about half a mile north of there. Particularly in the years 1972-73 (ages 15-16), I would frequently visit the general neighborhood. Among other things, my friend had built a hang glider, and (with considerable risk) was trying to get the overbuilt thing airborne. At some point, I likely passed by the condos - and remembered them. 

So later, in the 2010-11 timeframe, more than 37 years later, when I was trying to find that obscure filming location, I remembered.... 

It's interesting. Even though I moved from Albuquerque at the age of 23, I still have that instinct. I've lived in Sacramento now for 33 years, but I haven't developed that instinct for there yet. Childhood is a special time. 

Watch Adam and Bill's series!

 

Catastrophe Near Acapulco

But communications are out so the scale of the disaster is unknown. Hurricane Otis blew up too fast for people to prepare:

The hurricane’s intensification was among the fastest forecasters have ever seen: its top-end windspeed increased by 115 mph in 24 hours. Only one other storm, Hurricane Patricia in 2015, exceeded Otis’ rapid intensification in East Pacific records, with a 120-mph increase in 24 hours.

The term rapid intensification refers to when a storm’s winds strengthen rapidly over a short amount of time. Scientists have defined it as a wind speed increase of at least 35 mph in 24 hours or less, and it generally requires significant ocean heat. The National Hurricane Center said Otis strengthened so fast on Tuesday that it had “explosively intensified.”

Otis “took full advantage of a warm patch of ocean” that was roughly 88 degrees Fahrenheit, said Brian McNoldy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami – more than enough ocean heat to fuel a monster storm.

...Otis’ strengthening “was extremely unusual,” McNoldy told CNN. “It’s unfortunate it happened right before making landfall, but if this had occurred over the open ocean, it still would have been very remarkable.”

Tropical storms usually take several days to grow into powerful hurricanes, but with human-caused climate change, rapid intensification is becoming a more common occurrence, said Suzana Camargo, hurricane expert and professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” Movie

On Saturday, I saw Taylor Swift's Eras Tour movie. I'm not a Swiftie, but I had previously thought her "Love Story" was the best-crafted pop tune of all time. I liked how she was working with Jeff Bhasker (from Socorro, NM, so basically a hometown boy). I worried about the lyrics of her various songs (maybe showing mental disturbance). A little scary. Still, in general, I was favorably disposed to her. Clearly incredibly talented. 

My first impression was that her concert was strange. I thought her style of music was better-suited for a more-intimate setting, not for a huge space. At the same time I was amazed by the concert technology. The technology gives you lots of options (like effectively-using a huge space for music that might not otherwise be best-suited). 

The choreography was strange too, with Taylor and her dancers striding in unison. Reminded me of high school: Taylor and her friends, heading in unison to the cafeteria at lunchtime. Mandy Moore ("La La Land") was apparently chief choreographer. 

What a good concert! (Or the best parts of several concerts at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA). There were several teenage girls seated near me. The closest girl seemed unmoved by the concert (maybe a Goth sensibility, or just reserved?), but her two friends were singing all the songs and dancing when the spirit moved them. 

On Sunday, I talked with a woman whose Swiftie daughter attended two of the concerts, including spending one evening at stage side. Not only did she get some of the best videos ever, which she can match exactly with the movie, but she was featured in an audience-reaction shot for a full five seconds of the movie (Birthday Girl). Girls she hasn't talked to since elementary school are getting in touch! Life-changing stuff. This woman filled me in a bit on the fandom, in particular, with the friendship bracelets. No question, Taylor Swift takes her fans seriously! 

Here is more on SoFi Stadium - the unsung hero of the movie:

“It’s becoming an identifiable place for music globally,” said Christy Castillo Butcher, SoFi Stadium’s senior vice president of programming and booking. “The shots filmmakers can achieve here are gorgeous. It becomes another character in these films.”

...“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” will easily place among the year’s top grossing films. One guest at Swift’s doc premiere at the Grove last week? Beyoncé, who will debut her own “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” on Dec. 1.

...The still-gleaming SoFi doesn’t have the same mystery of a Colorado sandstone crevasse, nor is it a technological marvel like the newly opened Sphere in Las Vegas. But when SoFi debuted to the public in 2020, fans noticed the surprising intimacy of it, as far as 70,000-capacity stadiums go. The main floor is built well below ground, and the vertical rake of the seats puts more fans closer to the action. The semi-enclosed roof adds some punctuation to the scene. If you’re a performer, it creates more of a wall of bodies than a sea of them.

For a filmmaker trying to lend intimacy to the biggest pop shows on the planet, that’s an invaluable asset.

“There is a thoughtfulness at SoFi that really added architectural texture and class to the world of our film,” said Micah Bickham, director of “The Weeknd: Live at SoFi Stadium.” “Rather than at an older stadium with a tremendous first section, SoFi has all these different levels; it’s more of a cascading effect where the camera’s almost climbing a wall.”

Kiwi Hobbies Can Spread Quickly

Watch out!:

Residents of the small coastal city of Porirua, New Zealand, are asking local music geeks to think twice about blasting Celine Dion hits from bullhorns at earsplitting levels in the middle of the night, according to reports.

Dubbing themselves the Siren Kings, groups of people strap multiple massive speakers to their cars and blare music ranging from reggae to Dion classics including “My Heart Will Go On,” robbing residents of sleep. The goal is reportedly to see whose music broadcasts the loudest and clearest. 

While some people in the 62,000-population city outside of Wellington are fine with the music itself, they wish the dueling would stop so that their sleep will go on. Recently residents petitioned Porirua’s city council to do something, anything.

Disco Came and Disco Went

I remember the 70s as a glorious time, with the musical beat accelerating as the years passed. I adopted disco music as my favorite, so I was crushed when people dropped it like a hot potato. Then a funny thing happened. The music was back in two years, led by Michael Jackson, but by universal agreement no one called it disco anymore. The music morphed into House and EDM, and thrives today in many guises. 

My favorite disco memory was dancing away in a club in 1979 when someone stepped on the back of my foot. I figured I was dancing too close to the person behind me, so I started dancing across the floor. To my surprise, the pain on the back of my foot only intensified. I finally looked down and was shocked. The woman behind me had stepped into my shoe, with the thin needle of her stiletto fitting snugly between my sock and the inside of my shoe. As I started shuffling across the floor I wrenched her shoe off her foot and she came limping angrily after. I tried to present her shoe to her a la Cinderella, but she wasn’t interested.

But for a few flashy years in the 1970s, disco was the dominant force in the entertainment and nightclub scenes, with Dingbat’s, Bistro, Faces and dozens of other clubs dotting the Chicago area, mirrored balls spinning over packed dance floors.

The program argues persuasively that disco was born of a time — ”a decade of fear” — in a country suffering soaring unemployment, rising gas prices, factory closures and other ills. At the same time, Black Americans, Latinos, women and gay people were eager to have recognition and cultural prominence. Disco represented a liberation of sorts, offering freewheeling oases where the marginalized could express their energies. The beats were catchy, the lyrics fervent and the scene flamboyant. Discos were places of self-expression, relatively safe and undeniably lively. They sprouted across the land.

And the scene skyrocketed when John Travolta hit the sidewalks, dance floors and movie screens in 1977′s “Saturday Night Fever.” That same year the famous Studio 54 opened in New York City.

By then, disco was firmly mainstream, with almost half the radio stations in the U.S. playing the music. But not WLUP-FM and its leading disc jockeys, Steve Dahl and Garry Meier. Dahl had come to that station only months before, fired from his former radio home at WDAI-FM, when it went all disco all the time. Proudly anti-disco, Dahl was paired with like-minded Meier and the pair concocted a promotional event as a way for listeners to express their distaste for disco.

Bone

I’ve been apprehensive ever since Saturday night. I gave Jasper a bit of rib from a flanken-style steak, thinking he could chew on it. Instead, he swallowed it whole. Could he pass such a large object? 

Jasper remained healthy, to my bafflement. Tonight, I discovered the bone remnant in my bed (with a quarter for comparison). Jasper threw it up at some point. To which I say, thank goodness!

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Flight From Albuquerque to Burbank, and on to Sacramento - October 14, 2023

Pescado, NM, west of Ramah along Highway 53, south of Gallup, NM.

Meteor, AZ.

That's the Ivanpah Solar Generating Station glimmering there in the distance!  I used to do air quality modeling for that facility when I worked at Sierra Research!

Mojave City, CA/ Avi Resort and Casino, along the Colorado River.

Bullhead City, AZ/ Lake Mohave.

The Ivanpah Solar Generating Station.

Edwards AFB/ Rogers Dry Lake.

There are those mountains again!

Castaic Lake.

East of Castaic Lake?

Castaic Lake.

Camanche Reservoir.

Cooling towers of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant (built, but never commissioned).

Annular Solar Eclipse in Albuquerque - October 14, 2023

It was a crazy, busy weekend, but there was time for me to watch an eclipse. And also time enough to lock the keys in the rental car's trunk. None of my pictures of the eclipse worked out - digital cameras by themselves aren't good for that purpose. But in Albuquerque, only about a mile from the eclipse's centerline and cloud-free (aside from a few contrails), it was a PERFECT annular eclipse, with the moon precisely centered on the sun's face. And Albuquerque won't see another one like it in 375 years! And so, I watched the eclipse as I waited for AAA (chosen at Rachel's suggestion).

We couldn't find a collander with circular holes, so we used a vegetable steamer instead to see the multiple eclipse crescents.

Watching the eclipse with the Buck family.

Caption and image from The Atlantic (Sam Wasson / Getty): The moon crosses directly in front of the sun during an annular solar eclipse on October 14, 2023, above Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Time-Lapse

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta - Chasing Balloons - October 14, 2023

I was surprised to see this empty lot at Osuna and Edith Blvds.  Until recently there was a Blake's Restaurant here.  I have fond memories of coming here with my dad, for burgers.  One afternoon, we ate burgers as a rainstorm hammered the parking lot outside.  With the splashing raindrops, suddenly, the parking lot was filled with tiny jumping toads.  We watched the tiny toads jump and jump.  Then the rainstorm was over and the toads completely disappeared.

Uh oh, here comes trouble!  Heading north on Edith Blvd. on Saturday morning October 14th, we see a balloon in distress, barreling south, the opposite way, barely clearing treetops and the clutter of powerlines.  The balloon is desperately trying and failing to climb, trapped in some kind of wicked, low-level jet of air between the heights and the valley floor.

Climb, baby, climb!

Not climbing enough!

See you soon!

Returning south on Edith Blvd., here is clearly a balloon in distress.  The balloon crashed into the embankment of the Alameda Blvd. overpass over Edith Blvd.  The trouble here is that they desperately want to deflate the balloon, package it up, and take it away, and out of the wind, but the hot air is caught inside the balloon's canopy.

And here is that balloon that flew past overhead, having landed, but the balloon fell over on power lines.  The people in the basket were still there.  I pulled over and took one photo.  Then a man across the street yelled at me, "This is a sensitive situation! No photos or videos, please!"  So, I drove on.  Apparently the people here were OK.  I saw nothing about them in the press.  But it's clear there is an active effort by Balloon Fiesta supporters to quickly bury anything resembling bad news.  There are likely dozens of bad landings at an event like this, but just a few of them make it to TikTok.  

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta - Mass Ascension - Saturday, October 14, 2023

Dawn Patrol, as seen from jammed traffic on Alameda Blvd., before sunrise, at, oh, maybe 6:40 a.m.

Starting about 7 a.m., as seen from our illegal parking space, after stuck in traffic for more than an hour and failing to find a legal parking space.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2023

Most of our interactions with the Balloon Fiesta proper were pretty dispiriting. We struggled through the traffic and the crowds and went down on Wednesday night, October 11th, to see the Glowdeo, but it was cancelled due to high winds. Instead we saw the drone light show (cool, but tacky, due to an emphasis on slot machines, due to being sponsored by Sandia Casino and Resort), plus fireworks. 

We went down again on Thursday night, after taking a nap, but we arrived too late, and saw just a few balloons lit up. We saw the drone light show and fireworks again. The festival grounds were like a state-fair concessions midway from hell. 

On Saturday morning, we wanted to see the Mass Ascension. We overslept, leaving the house at 5:50 a.m. for the 7:00 a.m. event. People recommend you arrive no later than 4 a.m. We were far too late. We were in a traffic jam for an hour, and when we arrived, all the parking lots were full. All we could do was park illegally, daring the cops to arrest us for blocking a route for emergency vehicles, and eventually, just chase balloons.