Sacramento Woman Pleads Guilty

No other way out:

A California woman has pleaded guilty to punching a flight attendant in the face -- bruising her and chipping three of her teeth -- during an argument over mask wearing and other air safety requirements.

Vyvianna Quinonez, a 28 year old resident of Sacramento, had initially claimed she was acting in self-defense, before accepting Wednesday the federal charge of "interference" of a flight, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The incident took place on May 23, when Quinonez's Southwest flight began its descent into Sacramento, according to the plea agreement.

The flight attendant requested Quinonez to fasten her seatbelt, stow her tray-table and to reposition her mask so that it covered her mouth and nose.

In response, Quinonez pushed the flight attendant and then began "punching her in the face and head with a closed fist and grabbing her hair," the agreement stated.

"The flight attendant who was assaulted was simply doing her job to ensure the safety of all passengers aboard the plane," said Randy Grossman, a federal prosecutor in California.

The prosecutor's office said it intends to ask for a jail sentence of four months plus six months of house arrest.

Quinonez will also be banned from flying for three years.

Leaving 2019; Entering 2022

(h/t Margo)

Werner Herzog Nihilistic Take on "A Charlie Brown's Christmas"

This is just silly:

The End of the Cretaceous Was in Late Spring or Early Summer

(h/t, John) Amazing the detail from 66 million years ago!:

In the new research, scientists turned to the Tanis fossil site in western North Dakota, a part of the vast Hell Creek Formation, a geological layer that spans several states and is dated to have been laid down at the time of the impact. Some 10 – 13 minutes after the impact in Mexico, immense seismic waves passed the Tanis site, causing flooding that most likely came from the nearby Western Interior Seaway, a huge but shallow sea that ran north/south across western North America at the time. This in turn created what’s called a seiche, a huge standing wave in water that can generate waves a hundred meters high. This is similar, for a much smaller and mundane scale, to when you scooch back and forth in a bathtub in time with the waves generated, amplifying the crests enough that you can splash water out of the tub.

Now picture the tub being a lake, and the waves reaching 20 stories high. 

This happened quite suddenly at Tanis, and the geography of the area makes it possible to actually get extremely fine time resolution of the events. It’s also replete with fossils, including fish, insects, plants, and more. Here’s where this gets cool: By examining these fossils, it’s possible to figure out the time of year of the impact.

Oh, Hi Mark!

More analysis than you'll ever need of how Gen-Zers address me:

 

Toys For Thoth

RIP Joan Didion

RIP, Joan Didion, Sacramento's native daughter. Here is her childhood home, just a short bike ride away.

Frickin' Anti-Maskers

"West Side Story" was a success, but I didn't much like the three young women next to us in the movie theater. Unmasked, in open defiance of theater regulations. I directly asked them to mask up, and they directly refused, with a touch of naughty smugness. 

So, what to do? I was inclined to thrash them with my jacket, but I had just purchased a high-quality N95 mask. So I sat next them, masked up (except when I ate popcorn). The seats were of the larger sort, so there was a bit of separation. And thank goodness I'm vaccinated up the wazoo. 

Throughout the movie, I fantasized whipping them with my jacket. 

Maybe next time.

"West Side Story" 2021

 

We went to see the new "West Side Story." I liked it! Better than the original. Much better backstory development, with much better exposition at the start of the movie. I loved all the little details, rendered lovingly by Steven Spielberg and his crew, like the ragtag sign opposing Robert Moses and his vision for the future of New York City. 

I noticed the dancing was a touch slower and less angular than the original. That suited me fine. The character development was better. The cinematography was awesome; light years ahead of the original. And Rita Moreno was in it too! 

The only things I didn't like was scene in the morning at the apartment after the dance - it dragged a bit. And I didn't like the Anybodys character - not as sassy as the original, and somewhat inexpressive, with a disconcerting hint of horror. Still, in the grand scheme of things, very minor complaints.

Just a triumph of a movie!

I Like The Mall!

Christmas season means it's time to start prowling the mall. And I like it. Even in this Covid year.

The greatest mall I ever knew was Cinderella City, near where I lived for a time on the outskirts of Denver, in 1976.  The largest mall west of the Mississippi!  I can't believe it's gone: 1968-1997.  That's just 30 years!  I guess I'm getting old!  It came and went like a dream.  They even have a virtual tour.

 

But Sacramento's Arden Fair Mall is still here....  Let's go!
 

This display in J.C. Penney's is inexplicably ticking.  Like a time bomb.  I won't wait around for the BOOM!

Grande vistas at Arden Fair Mall.

Skylight!

Cool displays.

This display at Barnes and Noble is ticking too.  Apparently there are theft-deterrent devices on these items.

Covid-19 Apocalypse Now

It looks like it's the calm before the Covid-19 storm here in the U.S. Omicron is coming! Omicron is just as infectious as Measles, heretofore the most-infectious disease known to mankind. 

The wave of Delta infections in central and northern Europe is finally waning, as represented on this graph by the Netherlands. Nevertheless, despite improved rates, the Dutch are going into immediate lockdown, because they expect Omicron to start hitting them very soon. In the UK, where Covid-19 rates have been unacceptably high all year, rates are suddenly accelerating, likely due to Omicron. 

It's astonishing how quickly Omicron slammed South Africa. Exponential growth is fearsome to behold! As recently as Thanksgiving, there was very little Covid-19 in all of South Africa. Now, South Africa Covid-19 rates have climbed as high as those in the United States. Suddenly, everyone sickened! 

The United States has been on a high but eerily-calm Covid-19 plateau for the past two weeks. If Omicron slams the U.S. as hard as people fear, things will deteriorate so fast that it will break the U.S. health care system, perhaps as soon as the end of January.

Update: Omicron is spreading with astonishing speed. At Thanksgiving it was beginning to spread from Johannesburg, South Africa. Last week, 70% of new cases in the U.S. were Omicron (in purple). By New Year’s, Delta variant will be essentially gone; thoroughly outcompeted by Omicron. Not even forest fires spread this fast.

Lucking Out With Rain This December

Such an erratic rainy season so far! Wetter than we usually get in a La Niña year. 

At the end of October, following the immense rainstorm of October 24th, Sacramento was a surreal 700% above average precipitation for the water year, which started October 1st. Then November was mostly dry, so by last weekend, we were only 190% above average. With the most recent rainfall, we are now 237% above average. We've already surpassed normal December rainfall amounts. 

There are more storms coming too! After a few days of sunshine, Dec. 21-22 will be rainy, as will Dec. 23-24, and Dec. 25-27. 

December will be very rainy, but we've got to bank the water we get, La Niña might kick us with drought again, the way she's kicking the Southwest right now.

Leonora Carrington The Lost Surrealist

Watching this BBC documentary. Lots of empathy for her.

 

Did Somebody Say Something?

I was walking behind a young man on the sidewalk. Bum calls out, “Hey, do you have any money?” Young man replies, “No, sorry.” Bum replies, “I wasn’t talking to you, but to the old man behind you.” (I affected deafness)

Belated RIP: Ken Young

This weekend, after about 35 years, I spoke to my graduate school officemate. We compared notes about the professors at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. So many have passed on! 

My Master's Degree advisor, Ken Young, passed away in 2018. Even though he lived in Petrolia, California, and ran in the Sacramento area, I never met him here.  I wrote a paper regarding equilibrium rainfall drop distributions under him. Many people cite that paper these days. We are still having an impact! I should see how our reputation is standing up these days.

I recall the first time I met Ken. I was a new graduate student.  I told him, "I understand you like to jog." His jaw dropped in shock.

"JOG????!!!!" he replied with overwhelming sarcasm. "JOG!!!!???? I AM A RUNNER! I RUN!" 

I stood corrected.

He had problems with injuries later in life.  I remember his difficulties with two of his Grand Canyon runs: running from the South Rim to the North Rim, and back, in one day.  Twice, he had knee issues on the very last leg of the runs. So hard!  (I'm amazed anyone thought to do that at all!)

Runner and statistician Ken Young, who practically single-handedly revolutionised the way road running is tracked, passed away on 3 February, aged 76. 

While working on his Ph.D at the University of Chicago, Ken joined the school’s track club where he met Ted Haydon, an assistant coach for the USA Olympic team. Haydon got Ken to help him with statistics for a handicap race which launched his lifelong passion for computer analysis of running data. He began to compare results from different distances to determine who the faster runners were and developed a model to predict race times. He visited libraries across the US and Canada to collect running data from their archives. In 1973 he founded the National Running Data Center.

Under Coach Haydon’s guidance Ken targeted particular records. In 1972 he succeeded in setting a world indoor marathon record of 2:41:29 in Chicago. Later that year, on an outdoor track, he set an American Records on separate occasions for 40 miles (4:08) and 50km (3:08).

Through his National Running Data Center he became the official record keeper of the USATF Long Distance Running Committee from 1979–1988. He also took a keen interest in the measurement and certification of running courses.

In the early 1990s these various interests coalesced in the publication of a statistics-heavy newsletter, The Analytical Distance Runner. 

In 2003 he banded together with other like-minded statisticians to establish the Association of Road Racing Statisticians (ARRS) which maintains the website arrs.net. By 2016 the ARRS database included more than 1.1 million performances from 214,000 races. He maintained a system of ranking elite runners worldwide for head-to-head competition which race directors used to decide who to invite to their races. 

Over about a 40-year period he spent about 40 hours a week sorting through running data. “The world is full of so much chaos, and I’m a born planner, an organizer,” he said. “I try to make sense out of things and look for an underlying structure.”

Kentucky's Rand Paul and Thomas Massie Sure Have Balls For Asking For Disaster Aid For Kentucky

These two bastards have opposed disaster assistance for large hurricanes for the last decade if the storms focused their damage on blue areas: Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Maria - all of them! These GOP clowns treat disaster assistance as a red state piggy bank. It's time to smack them in the face! The hell with them!:

When former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey requested federal aid for Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Paul criticized Christie for having a "gimme, gimme, gimme," attitude. In 2017, the Senate passed a disaster relief bill for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, with Paul being one of 17 senators — all Republicans — who voted No. Paul, speaking against the bill, said "People here will say they have great compassion and they want to help the people of Puerto Rico, the people of Texas, and the people of Florida. But notice they have great compassion with somebody else's money." Aaron Rupar, former journalist at Vox, wrote on Twitter, "Turns out, @RandPaul, that people can't bootstrap their way out of a storm destroying their house."

Still Plenty of Toilet Paper

Today in the pandemic, I’m finally nearing the end of the bundle of paper towels I bought in the frantic early days of March and April, 2020. Still, haven’t made much of a dent in the bundles of toilet paper purchased at the same time. I’ll have to think of something.

Bagpipes in the Cathedral

Steady Rain Today

2.36 inches, and counting! Rainfall since October 1st jumped from about 189% above average, to 237%, and climbing. And there is more coming too, over the next week. Such an erratic season, so far!

Green Valley Theater Company's VerteFée Cabaret's Merry Krampusnacht - December 11, 2021