Flights of Fancy

Need a new toaster or coffee maker? Simply go online, choose the model you like, and it will delivered to your door in 30 minutes.

Want a pizza for dinner? One mouse click or phone call and it’s on its way to you in 15 minutes. No tip necessary. Want beer with that meal? A six-pack arrives so fast it’s still ice cold.

Ditto for your dry clearing, groceries, shoes and clothing and other everyday items from baby needs to books.

Just call 1-800-Drone and it will be swiftly directed through the air and gently deposited in your hands before you can say “the future is now.”

OK, we may be getting ahead of ourselves a bit here. But not by much. Drones, familiar to most Americans as military hunter/killers, are about to be tamed. In an unprecedented image makeover, we are on the verge of converting a weapon of war into an airborne convenience store.

And if you think it’s a fantasy, know this: Amazon is developing a fleet of delivery drones called octocopters.

If that project flies, it won't be long before Target and Wal-Mart will be launching their own air forces. Knowing Wal-Mart, it will probably equip its drones with air-to-air missiles to eradicate the competition.

Dominos Pizza has the DomiCopter, which has already been tested in Great Britain. Soon you will be able to get mediocre pizza in minutes.

At a recent music festival in South Africa, small robots provided beer to fans who placed orders through a smartphone app.

Lakemaid Brewery in Wisconsin recently posted a video of their product being delivered via drones to ice fishermen on a frozen lake in Minnesota. However, the Federal Aviation Administration was not amused and shut down the operation. The brewery, not to be deterred, has started a petition on Whitehouse.gov to get their suds in the sky.

Drones are also being developed to assist in firefighting, search and rescue operations, border surveillance and scientific and environmental research. Yamaha has sold more than 2,600 remotely piloted helicopters for agricultural use in Japan. The drone costs $100,000, weighs 140 pounds, stands three and half feet tall and 90 percent of farmers use it for crop dusting, spot spraying, weed and pest control and fertilization.

Several media outlets have experimented using drones to film news events, meaning, I suppose, that reporters will soon be required to have a background in aeronautics.

But wait just a darn minute.

There is inherent personal and professional danger in praising a federal agency for pursuing a wise and prudent path, but the FAA appears to be doing exactly that.

Currently, the FAA issues domestic drone authorizations on a case-by-case basis, according to published reports. They are limited to government agencies, universities and law enforcement. But now the agency must finalize plans for allowing drones in domestic airspace by 2015 under a law passed by Congress in 2012.

The FAA has set six test sites to review safety issues, but has said it likely will not meet the 2015 deadline.

That’s a good thing. We shouldn’t rush into this.

I’m trying to envision life in my neighborhood with drones flying about at all times of the day and night. Would it disrupt the sense of peace and serenity? Would it be hazardous? I assume drones, like many mechanical devices, fail from time to time.

Would packages left on the doorstep attract thieves? Could drones be used by drug dealers?  Or terrorists?

What if some yahoo decided to pump a couple of thirty aught six rounds into a drone to exercise his Second Amendment rights?

If you lived near an Amazon distribution center, the number of drones coming and going could blot out the sun.

And who’s going to be piloting these things? The same kid who used to deliver your pizza? 

What about commercial aviation? According to a story from UPI, the U.S. has one of the largest passenger fleets in the world and its airspace is significantly more complex than, say, that of Japan, especially at lower altitudes where drones fly, said Michael Huerta, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA expects 7,500 drone-like craft in the skies within five years of the regulations being set.

“We don’t have a complete understanding of where this might go in the future,” he said, in what could charitably described as an understatement.

Perhaps most importantly, what about privacy? According to the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. law enforcement is greatly expanding its use of domestic drones for surveillance.

“Routine aerial surveillance would profoundly change the character of public life in America,” the ACLU states. “Rules must be put in place to ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of this new technology without bringing us closer to a ‘surveillance society’ in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the government.”

Some would argue that we’re already in a surveillance society. Having a drone watching your every move because someone considers you “a person of interest” would validate that point of view.

In the meantime, I’ll get my own pizza and beer in the fervent hope that we are making sure we remain in control of technology instead of the other way around.

Robert Rector is a former editor with the Pasadena Star-News and Los Angeles Times. His columns can be found at Robert-Rector.Blogspot.com. He can be reached at Nulede@AOL.com.

Super Bowled

     Can it be?  Why yes, it’s Super Bowl Sunday once again. For the XLVIII time.

      It was just XII months ago that we enjoyed the action of Super Bowl XLVII when XXII football        warriors battled for LX minutes before the Baltimore Ravens emerged victorious over the San Francisco 49ers by the score of XXXIV to XXXI.

      This year the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks will meet at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where the game time temperature is expected to be in the neighborhood of XL, dropping to below freezing at night.

     That’s ridiculous weather for a championship game but, hey, that’s just my II cents worth.

     The Super Bowl is an American institution, Roman numerals notwithstanding. And while we like to think of the game as a tribute to civic pride, skill, fair play and sportsmanship, it’s largely about wagering.

      According to one estimate, more than $8 billion is wagered every year on the Super Bowl alone. An estimated 200 million people bet on the outcome of the game worldwide.

Then there are the side bets. For example, you can bet on what color Gatorade will be dumped on the     winning coach.  Or how many members of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, the halftime entertainment, will appear shirtless.   Or the jersey number of the first player to score a touchdown.   Or how long will it take Renee Fleming to sing the national anthem, if she will forget or omit one word or if she will be wearing gloves. If so, you can wager on what color gloves she will wear. 

You can also put your hard earned cash on who the Super Bowl MVP will mention first in his speech:  Teammates are at 2/1, followed by God (5/2), Fans (5/1), other team (7/1), coach or family (12/1), owner (25/1) and none of the above at 4/1.

Besides betting, the Super Bowl is about eating.  Super Bowl Sunday can make Thanksgiving look like a day of fasting.  And we’re not just talking about your famous football shaped cheese log or 50-layer dip. 

The National Chicken Council estimates that 1.25 billion chicken wings will be consumed during the Super Bowl. There are expected to be 48 million take-out pizzas ordered. Some 80 million avocados will be consumed along with 11 million pounds of chips.  It will be washed down with 325 million gallons of beer.  The diet business will take in millions the following week.

The Super Bowl pregame show on Fox will last four hours.   I defy you to find anyone who will admit to watching the entire thing.  Somewhere in the midst of hours of sleep-inducing analysis, commentator Bill O’Reilly will interview President Obama.   Expect some frank but cordial trash talking.

 The game, including half-time show, will last another four hours.  That should just about take up your day.  But rest up.  Marathon coverage of the Winter Olympics will begin and last more than two weeks. Break out the Stroganov and vodka and raise a toast to the fact that you don’t live in Russia.

Of course, there’s more to the Super Bowl than gorging and gambling.  In fact, there’s more than just football involved.  Who can forget these memorable moments?

The great blackout:  In the middle of the 2013 game at the Superdome in New Orleans, the lights went out giving the proceedings an eerie third world feel.  It lasted 35 minutes and was blamed on a faulty relay switch.   That explanation didn’t sit well with Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis who opined, “You cannot tell me somebody wasn’t sitting there and when they say, ‘The Ravens [are] about to blow them out. Man, we better do something.’ … That’s a huge shift in any game, in all seriousness. And as you see how huge it was because it let them right back in the game.”

The worst national anthem.  Christina Aguilera’s version in 2011 was pretentious and bizarre ("What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last reaming.")  Fortunately for her, it sounded like grand opera compared to the “Star Spangled Banner” as performed in other venues by the likes of Steven Tyler and Roseanne Barr.

Worst (or maybe best) halftime show:  The great wardrobe malfunction of  2004 in which Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed for about half a second by the ham fisted Justin Timberlake.  Also known as Nipplegate , it resulted in one of the greatest overreactions in the history of American entertainment:  The FCC fined media conglomerates involved with the broadcast including Viacom and CBS, and subsidiaries MTV, Clear Channel Communications, and Infinity Broadcasting,  It also enforced a blacklist of Jackson's singles and music videos on many radio formats and music channels worldwide.  Timberlake, meanwhile, faced no such backlash.

Worst commercial:   Anything produced by Go Daddy, which every year offers up cheesy ads that are just this side of porn.  After all, sex sells.   And what does it sell?   Go Daddy is primarily an internet domain registrar and web hosting company.  Could have fooled me.  Based on their ads, I thought it was an escort service.

A close second was the Bud Bowl commercials in which a bunch of long neck beer bottles banged into each other in a simulated football game.   It was so cartoonish and silly, it couldn’t hold the attention of a five-year-old.  

Honorable mention:  an ad showing Fred Astaire dancing with a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner 10 years after he died.  Dishonorable mention:  In 1996, Giants quarterback Phil Simms became the first Super Bowl champ to announce “I’m going to Disney Land.”

Let the game begin.

.

Fault Frauds and Fantasies

I sat at a desk in the disheveled offices of the Los Angeles Times Valley Edition on Jan. 18, 1994.

It was the day after the great Northridge Earthquake and we were not far from the epicenter.   Just the day before, the office resembled a junkyard, a jumble of broken windows, spilled file cabinets, toppled desks and computers, books and newspapers, all soaked by a sprinkler system unleashed by the quake.

Through some miracle it was up and running the next day and we were deep into the herculean task of covering what at the time was the biggest natural disaster to befall an American city.  We paused only occasionally to dive under our desks when an aftershock rolled through.

Late in the morning the phone rang.  It was a woman who called to tell us that she always experienced a bout of gastro-intestinal distress before an earthquake.  And it happened the evening before the Northridge quake.   Would we like an interview?

I thanked her for the call and joked that many of us had experienced gastro-intestinal distress during and immediately following the quake.  She was not amused and threatened to call another newspaper the next time her symptoms struck.

We received a lot of calls like that, from psychics and pseudo scientists who were convinced they had found the Holy Grail of earthquake prediction.   Clearly, they had not.

One call, however, turned out to be at least partially correct.  A regular caller to our office was a woman once married to a small-time hood who operated in our zip code called Sid the Squid.  Sid had departed this planet some years ago so we referred to her as the Widow Squid.

Ms. Squid explained that some years back, she would share a bottle of booze and her favors with a building inspector who would drop by to visit.  On one such occasion, he told her that if there was ever a major earthquake in the Valley, all those apartment buildings with parking areas built beneath them would come tumbling down.

All of them didn’t.  But a lot did, including the infamous Northridge Meadows collapse which left 16 people dead.  It was a good tip that came too late.

The 20^th anniversary of the Northridge quake has raised the question once again about earthquake predictions.   Many scientists believe it could become a reality sometime in the future.   Many believe it never will.

While the research continues, there are plenty of folks out there that will fill the void with their own theories.

Just a couple of months ago, a website called Catholic Online published a story headlined, “Major Quake Predicted for California.”

In it, the story pointed to the mysterious appearance of two oarfish washed up upon California shores as a precursor to an earthquake.

“In Japan, there is a traditional correlation between oarfish and earthquakes that dates back for centuries,” the story reports. “Traditional Japanese folklore says that oarfish beach themselves as a warning to the people before an earthquake. The normally elusive fish, which can be up to five meters in length, are said to be messengers from the palace of the Sea God.”

“A possible scientific explanation may be that deep-sea fish, such as oarfish, are more sensitive to seismic shifts and stress, and somehow respond to the tectonic pressure that builds before an earthquake by coming to the surface.”

It goes on the explain that “to be clear, the only evidence then is traditional Japanese folklore, which in a scientific sense isn't evidence at all.”

But it adds, “However, not all folklore is nonsense either.”

Maybe not, but the story certainly is.

Britain’s Daily Mail breathlessly reported to its readers this month that floating orbs that  “ have been linked to UFOs and hallucinations and thought to be harbingers of doom” could be a tipoff to a quake. 

“The lights, which take many forms and appear before or during earthquakes, could provide an early warning sign,” the paper reported.

Of course, if those lights happened to be stars or moonlight or aircraft or search lights or swamp gas, well, forget it.

The idea that animals can predict earthquake has been around for centuries.   It is still studied in Asia.   But here, according to the National Geographic, even though there have been documented cases of strange animal behavior prior to earthquakes, the United States Geological Survey says a reproducible connection between a specific behavior and the occurrence of a quake has never been made.

"What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes," said Andy Michael, a geophysicist at USGS. "Animals react to so many things—being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators—so it's hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal."

Just to be on the safe side, if you run across a beached oarfish with strange lights dancing above it while a dog howls somewhere in the night, you might want to get under a table.

There are well-intended but bogus predictions, then there is downright fraud.   A classic example was one that hit the Internet in 2010 claiming that Caltech was sending all of its students and faculty home because of an impending quake.  

Adding to the paranoia was the unspoken belief that, heck, if anybody knew a major quake was going to strike, it would be Caltech.

This, of course, kept the public relations staff at Caltech quite busy for a number of days,  telling the curious that scientists so far are unable to predict quakes  and that no one had been sent home.

It was my second favorite outrageous rumor, the first being the alarming disclosure some years back that Zero Population Growth had booby-trapped men’s toilets with razors to castrate the unsuspecting.

The most accurate prediction about earthquakes is that they will indeed occur, some small, some large, somewhere in California.  Always have, always will.   And the best advice to take away from the prediction community is to always be prepared.

We're Not All Weirdos

Welcome honored Rose Bowl guests.

Especially those from Michigan State. But first a word of caution.

No unsuspecting Midwesterner should be dropped willy-nilly into Southern California, a place so defined by clichés that reality becomes blurred.

To hear tell, we are a massive community of surfers who sprinkle our conversation with the word “dude,” drive convertibles on gridlocked streets, spend a lot of time poolside, are surgically attached to our cell phones, wear sunglasses indoors and are mostly air kissing bores who end each conversation with “let’s do lunch.”

Some of that is true. Some isn’t. So as a public service, this column is a primer on the Southern California lifestyle and how to deal with the natives here.

Lesson one: There are damn few natives here. While there are undoubtedly a lot of folks from your home state who are residing in L.A. now, you have a better chance of bumping into people from Thailand or Tokyo, Uruguay or Uganda. We are truly the Ellis Island of the 21st Century. The good news: We mostly all get along just fine. And if you’re an adventuresome foodie, you’ll find a restaurant representing every nook and cranny in the world here.

Some other truths:

Yes, there is a sizable group of surfers here. But most people are content to surf the menu board at In-N-Out Burgers. The real surfers I know are indistinguishable from other human beings. They speak actual English and are not known to show up for a dinner in a wet suit. Everyone needs a hobby. Theirs is jumping into the ocean at dawn to ride the waves. Yours is ice fishing. Judge not.

If someone calls you “dude,” don’t be offended. After all, it was originally a new word for “dandy,” an extremely well-dressed male who paid particular importance to how he appeared. According to the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, the best known of this type is probably Evander Berry Wall, who was dubbed “King of the Dudes” in 1880s New York and maintained a reputation for sartorial splendor all his life. Nowadays, it’s an informal way of addressing someone (“Dude, the house is on fire.”).

Yes, we are devoted cell phone users. Be careful in approaching a native. He or she may be startled by an attempt to initiate a conversation that does not emerge from a hand-held device. Confusion may ensue and it may take a few minutes to establish eye contact.

There was a time when it was common to spot a celebrity or two while driving around Hollywood. Those days are gone. Most celebrities these days spend their days hiding from the paparazzi behind the walls of their mansions, only emerging at night to attend a Lakers game. Or to punch the aforementioned paparazzi.

We’re not all weirdos. After all, there are some 38 million people living in California so the chances of encountering some goofball are greater than in, say, North Dakota. Besides, if we’re smart enough to live here, we can’t be all bad.

Whatever you do, do not watch the local news on TV. If you do, you’ll be convinced that the streets are awash in blood. That’s because TV is devoted to the “if it bleeds, it leads” school of reporting. The fact is that crime figures for 2012 show that the overall crime rate in Los Angeles fell 1.4 percent. Notching a decline for the 10th year in a row, Los Angeles now has the lowest crime rate in the country for cities with a population over 2 million people. Does that mean you should loudly poke fun at a biker gang in a dark alley? Only if you want to skew the statistics.

Contrary to popular opinion, we do not all live on the beach. In fact, most of us don’t. If you want to sample beach living, drive out to Malibu where an ocean-front lot costs more than the entire city of Detroit. While you’re there, stop at an eatery and try the free-range sushi at $25 a pop.

Traffic? It’s bad. Depending on what source you choose to use, the worst cities for traffic are either L.A. or Washington, D.C. or San Francisco or Honolulu. Why split hairs? It’s like determining whether you’d like to be stabbed by a Philips head screwdriver or shot with a crossbow. Either way, it’s going to be painful. Finding a cab in this town is like looking for an albino rhinoceros. Buses usually display a destination that most residents would have trouble identifying. Best advice: walk or take the lite rail.

Last but not least, if you’re looking for Stanford fans, they’ll be the group down at the end of the bar dressed in white lab coats and horned rim glasses discussing Higgs boson. If you don’t know what that is, don’t bother speaking to them.

Mea Culpa: The Year in Corrections

Cue the trumpets, please.

It’s time for the annual Mea Culpa awards, presented annually by this column to honor the very finest in corrections and retractions to appear in the media.

Why commemorate mistakes?  After all, journalism is a profession that prides itself on accuracy.  But sometimes in the production of countless words spread across countless pages, mistakes are made.  And some are funny.

So once a year we pause long enough to laugh at ourselves.  After all, a little humor is good medicine when you spend your days covering a world that seems to have gone mad.

Consider these oldies but goodies, both personal favorites.

From a Texas newspaper:  “Norma Adams-Wade's June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite.”

Or this from a British tabloid:  “Recent articles in this column may have given the impression that Mr. Sven Goran Eriksson was a greedy, useless, incompetent fool. This was a misunderstanding. Mr. Eriksson is in fact a footballing genius. We are happy to make this clear.”

You get the idea.

Rising about all others this year was the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.  It seems that in 1863, the paper then known as the Patriot & Union published an editorial about Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Talk about bad reviews.

“We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.”

On the 150^th anniversary of the address, the paper issued a retraction.

“In the editorial about President Abraham Lincoln’s speech delivered Nov. 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, the Patriot & Union failed to recognize its momentous importance, timeless eloquence, and lasting significance. The Patriot-News regrets the error.”

Not far behind was the New York Times that published this:  “This just in: we made a mistake – 136 years ago. It was in a Jan. 9, 1877 article about a police officer shot by a saloon burglar. The Times called him Officer McDonnell. His name was McDowell…The record is now set straight.”

The Guardian in Great Britain was on a correction roll this year.  Consider:

“The Duchess of Cornwall might have been somewhat surprised to read in an article that she is due to give birth next month. It is the Duchess of Cambridge who is expecting a baby.”

“An article about eating mutton referred to the disastrous effects of the prolonged winter on sheep farmers and their livestock but said ‘resilient mutton are coping well.’ A farmer points out that it is the sheep that are resilient; mutton is the meat that comes from them.

“An interview with Carrie Underwood asked the country music singer if she decided to become a vegetarian after seeing her parents castrate a cow. Unlikely. Only bulls can be castrated.”

“An…item about the enduring – and, for many, irritating – popularity of ‘Gangnam Style,’  the pop song and video by the South Korean rapper Psy, said it was ‘like a virus that is immune to antibiotics.’  A doctor writes to point out that all viruses are immune to antibiotics, which are used to treat bacterial infections.”

“A television listing for the BBC program ‘Wartime Farm’ described it as recalling ‘the acute foot shortage of 1943.’  That might have made an interesting program, but this one was looking at a wartime food shortage.”

The Washington Post came up with this gem:  ‘An Oct. 14 Style article about access to the prison camp for terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, incorrectly referred to Navy Capt. Robert Durand as ‘thickset.’   He should have been described as muscular.”

From The Sun, United Kingdom:  “On 14 December, we published an article listing the ‘laziest’ MPs (members of Parliament) based on their voting record.  We acknowledge that Lucy Powell MP was absent during the concerned voting period due to being on maternity leave.  It was therefore wrong for us to say she is lazy. We have therefore withdrawn the article and apologize to Ms. Powell and others listed.”

From the London Evening Standard: “…we referred to the exhibition of the late Sebastian Horsley’s suits at the Museum of London and the Whoresley show, an exhibition of his pictures at the Outsiders Gallery. By unfortunate error we referred to Rachel Garley, the late Sebastian Horsley’s girlfriend, who arranged the exhibitions, as a prostitute. We accept that Ms. Garley is not and has never been a prostitute”

 From Wired:  “A previous version of this story incorrectly quoted Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston saying ‘anyone with nipples’ instead of ‘anyone with a pulse.’”

From the New York Times:  “An article …about the documentary maker Morgan Spurlock, who has a new film out on the boy band One Direction, misstated the subject of his 2012 movie ‘Mansome.’  It is about male grooming, not Charles Manson.”

From the Wall Street Journal:  “A Bloody Mary recipe…called for 12 ounces of vodka and 36 ounces of tomato juice. The recipe as printed incorrectly reversed the amounts, calling for 36 ounces of vodka and 12 ounces of tomato juice.”

From the Sun:  “In an article on Saturday headlined ‘Flying saucers over British Scientology HQ’, we stated ‘two flat silver discs’ were seen ‘above the Church of Scientology HQ.’  Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologize to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists.”

The Tampa Bay Times:  “ A Tampa Bay Times reporter not strong in the ways of the force (or Star Wars lore) quoted the event’s moderator, Croix Provence, as asking: ‘Are you ready to find love in all the wrong places?’  What Provence actually said was: ‘Are you ready to find love in Alderaan places?’ She was referring to Princess Leia Organa’s home world, which appeared briefly in the 1977 film. Regret the error, we do.”

From the New York Times  “ An article on Monday about a lawsuit filed against the Internet Movie Database by the actress Junie Hoang  for disclosing her age in an online profile misstated her age.  She is 40, not 41.”

A Lot Like Christmas

Christmas news and notes from all over collected from the Internet and local media but mostly my own dogged research:

•In Australia, David Richards and his family strung more than half a million bulbs around their house in the capital city of Canberra to reclaim the Guinness Book of Records title for lights on a residential property. That’s 31 miles of lights.

Richards has been the champ before. He set the world record in 2011 with 331,038 lights, but decided not to do it again because the display took months of effort, according to published reports.

In 2012, the Gay family in Lagrangeville, N.Y., snatched away the title with a display of 346,283 lights.

Richard rose to the challenge. He not only wanted to take back the record, he wanted to “smash it” so it would stand for a long time.

This time, the number was 502,165 bulbs.

Left unreported was how many of his neighbors fled town for the holidays.

•Speaking of smashing things, the number of holiday injuries has increased for the fourth year in a row, according to a government report.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said there were about 15,000 injuries involving holiday decorating between November and December.

“There are about 250 injuries a day during the holiday season. Adding safety to your checklist can keep a holiday tradition from becoming a holiday tragedy,” CPSC Acting Chairman Robert Adler said in a press release.

The most common injuries included falls (34 percent), followed by lacerations (11 percent) and back strains (10 percent).

Actually, I suffered all three of those injuries while assembling a bike one Christmas eve.

•Meanwhile, the folks in Great Britain are taking no chances when it comes to holiday safety. In Wales, a girl playing Mary in a re-enactment of the Christmas story will have to wear a helmet when she parades through her town on a donkey.

“We’ve got to consider that Mary will be riding a donkey on a public highway,” said Mark Barrett, 44, a youth worker at The Bridge Church in Neath, who has organized the performance.

“If she is going on a public highway, then she has to wear a riding hat,” he said.

Since solemnity and tradition are not a consideration, maybe they should dress her in bubble wrap just to be on the safe side.

•Also in Merry Olde England, a British tabloid is reporting that several department stores are offering polygraph (lie detector) tests to determine if your little angel has been naughty or nice this year. Prison sentences are optional.

•Odd, yes, but nothing says odd like California. Here, some churches are offering drive-through nativity displays this year featuring angels, shepherds, wise men and, of course, Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Said one church: “Guests view the scenes from the comfort of their own cars while listening to scene narratives through their car radios.”

You want fries with your scripture?

•In the gift-that-keeps-on-giving department, a 1941 fruitcake has sold for $525 to an Arizona man in an Ohio company’s online auction.

Elite Estate Group sold the cake in an auction on its website. Company owner Larry Chaney says the man, who wanted to remain anonymous, probably bought the cake as an investment.

Chaney says he doubts anyone would eat a 71-year-old fruitcake even though it was vacuum packed and contained rum that probably helped preserve it.

The cake was made in 1941 by The Kroger Co. It was returned unopened to a Kroger store in 1971. The manager took it home and kept it until recently, when his son was helping him get rid of some things and gave the cake to Chaney.

•Finally, there is always one feel-good story that surfaces each year during the holidays. This one, which combines elements of tragedy and triumph, will be hard to beat:

A young Northern California woman recently posted an ad on Craigslist, asking to rent a family for Christmas.

Jackie Turner is a college student in Rocklin, near Sacramento. “On the outside, it looks like I’m the American dream kid,” she said. “But I have a back story that most people wouldn’t believe if they looked at me today.”

The 26-year-old says she comes from a broken home, where she had been abused. To escape it, she spent years living on the streets, which created even more problems.

“I was in gang life, on the streets, fighting, doing drugs, just making a mess of my life,” Turner said.

She was eventually arrested for grand theft and spent close to a year in jail. When she got out, she went to a camp for troubled young adults in Grass Valley called Christian Encounter Ministries. Now she’s a student with a 4.0 grade-point average at William Jessup University on scholarship.

But her past lingers on.

“There’s still something deep inside of me,” Turner said. “There’s this void, my biological parents aren’t here, and it’s kept this hole inside of me.”

So she turned to Craigslist.

Her ad read, “I am looking to rent a mom and dad who can give me attention and make me feel like the light of their life just for a couple of days because I really need it.” The ad offered to pay $8 an hour.

Many families contacted her, saying they would take her in for free, according to media reports. However, she also received responses from people with similar stories of traumatic childhoods.

Turner said she was touched.

“When you speak up, people start learning that they’re not by themselves. Often we lock things inside of ourselves, like a lockbox of our secrets. But then you let one out and realize, ‘I’m not by myself after all, am I?’ ”

So, rather than renting a family, Turner has decided to form one by getting all of the people who contacted her together for the holidays.

May their celebration last a lifetime.

Stormy Weather

This is my favorite time of year for watching local television news.

It’s not the car crashes or the quirky videos lifted directly from social media and presented as fact.

It’s certainly not the nightly murder and mayhem report, complete with lingering close-ups of grieving loved ones.

It’s not a local sports anchor doing his segment wearing a L.A. Kings jersey, demonstrating that impartiality has no place in his corner of the world.

If you really want to see TV strut its stuff, bring on the weather.

A cold snap, a bit of rain, and it’s all hands on deck for team coverage.

Case in point: It’s been a bit nippy this week in Southern California. Not Upper Peninsula of Michigan cold but enough to warrant a sweater. As TV host Jimmy Kimmel disclosed, “I had to wear two tank tops to work today.”

He was joking, of course, but I did see a guy this week wearing flip flops and cargo shorts topped with a North Face ski jacket and a stocking cap. Ah, Southern California.

Against this backdrop, the local TV reporting ranks have been unleashed like hounds at a fox hunt, while their anchor cohorts urge them on by chirping phrases like “Arctic blast” and “bone-chilling.”

They descend on an unsuspecting public, firing queries like, “Cold enough for you?” or “How do you like the rain?”

The answers are usually as deep and insightful as the questions.

The result is compelling entertainment, especially if you disdain originality and enjoy a laugh at what passes as “breaking news.”

But wait a minute. Is it really “news” at all?

I noticed the locals this week beating a path en masse to the Antelope Valley to report on our brush with winter.

Why? By heading north, they’re guaranteed a bit of chill. That’s because the average low temperature in Lancaster for the months of December and January is about 30 degrees.

So when our intrepid reporters, bundled up like Arctic explorers, announce that it’s cold outside while doing a remote from the high desert, it’s rather like disclosing that the sun sets in the west.

OK, we understand that TV is a visual medium and there is a lot of air time to fill, even if it’s filled with, well, so much air.

And we understand that if it drops below 40 degrees in L.A., it’s news although we would prefer it without all the apocalyptic overtones. We need facts, not FEMA.

Look in on the weather folks in Denver, for example, and you see a decided lack of drama in the forecasts.

One young woman on the NBC affiliate this week described a high of 8 and a low of minus-10 as “pretty chilly.” Over on CBS, the forecaster conceded it was “a little on the chilly side” while predicting wind-chill temperatures of 30-below zero.

Back in Los Angeles, a reporter advised people to stay inside while the current temperature flashed on the bottom right of the screen. It read 56 degrees.

So are we the worst weather wimps in the world? It’s a chicken-and-egg question. Is the local TV community merely reporting what all of us feel as we bundle up when it falls below 60? Or do we feel cold because TV tells us we should?

Who really cares? Personally, I wouldn’t live any place else. I lived for awhile in San Francisco where dampness seeps into your bones and moss will grow on your legs if you’re not careful. And I lived in Washington, D.C., where I was introduced to the snow shovel. It was loathe at first sight.

Nice places to visit, as the old saying goes.

And just for the record, the lowest recorded temperature in downtown Los Angeles was 24 degrees on Dec. 22, 1944.

Now, that’s cold.

Animal Style

Forget the foi gras. Lay off the lamb. Refuse the ribs. Shun the sushi. Pass on the prime rib.

Drop that cheeseburger and put your hands in the air.

PETA is back in town. And they’re mad. So mad they’re taking aim at the Rose Parade with their peculiar brand of anthropomorphic totalitarianism.

Or, to put it more simply, to force upon us their view that the Earth’s animals are our buddies, not brunch.

PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It claims to have 3 million members and supporters and to be the largest animal rights group in the world.

The group opposes factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment. It also campaigns against eating meat, fishing and the killing of animals regarded as pests.

Of course, PETA isn’t the only passenger on this particular bandwagon. The Humane Society of the United States claims it is the nation’s largest and most effective animal protection organization.

Then there are groups like the Animal Welfare Society, Best Friends Animal Society, D.E.L.T.A. (Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals), Friends of Animals, PetSmart Charities and Wildlife Conservation Society. All are well funded and run by dedicated staff.

Animal welfare is not a stupid idea. In fact, it’s a noble undertaking. But like any idea, it can be carried to stupid lengths. And that’s where PETA excels.

PETA is noisy. It is angry. It is crude. It believes in getting its message across by staging outrageous stunts.   Its members are self-described “press sluts.” You might even call them “ham-fisted.”

For example, the PETA people are upset that Sea World will have a float in this year’s Rose Parade depicting killer whales frolicking in the waves.

The group is demanding that the float be changed to show an Orca whale trapped in a fish bowl surrounded by locks and chains. A banner reads “SeaWorld of Hurt Where Happiness Tanks.”

There is a point to be made here. A recent documentary called “Blackfish” calls into question the treatment and training of killer whales at Sea World, focusing on the very grisly and public death of a trainer who was killed by an Orca.

So what does PETA do? They picket outside the coronation ceremony for the Rose Queen. Of course, the queen and her court have about as much to do with the selection of the floats and themes as PETA does in choosing the entrees at Taco Bell. So all they accomplish is to irritate those who are there to celebrate a memorable moment in the lives of these young women.

Score it Anger 1, Converts 0.

PETA has been here before. In 2011, they objected to a city of Glendale float that depicted an elephant towing a calliope. Glendale city fathers, seeking to appease PETA by embracing mouselike timidity,   agreed to change the name of the entry from “Stepping Out in Style” to “Just Imagine the Music, Fun and Freedom.” Which pleased no one.

PETA has a record of shooting itself in the foot.

In 1991, less than a month after police arrested Jeffrey Dahmer for murdering 17 men in Ohio and Wisconsin, PETA paid the Des Moines Register $11,214 to run an ad likening the gruesome crime spree — which involved sodomy, necrophilia and cannibalism — to practices within the meatpacking industry.

NBC declined to air a PETA ad featuring scantily clad women embracing their vegetables during a Super Bowl. The commercial claimed that “studies show vegetarians have better sex” and showed simulated foreplay between the nearly nude women and their veggies of choice.

When PETA launched its “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign in 2003, an exhibition featured eight 60-square-foot panels juxtaposing scenes from Nazi death camps with images of factory farms and slaughterhouses.

In 2008, PETA put a naked pregnant woman in a pen in London to encourage people to eat vegetarian — and to call attention to the fact that all days are bad days for pregnant sows.

Gary Yourofsy, a paid PETA lecturer, once declared that “every woman ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever.”

You get the idea.

PETA believes any publicity is good publicity, even if it angers and inflames. By embracing that philosophy, they have done more harm than good to their cause.

The irony of their Rose Parade shenanigans is that there are several other animal welfare floats in the parade including the Beverly Hills Pet Care Foundation dedicated to the advocacy of shelter animals and the Lucy Pet Foundation which provides spay/neuter clinics across the country.

I’m betting their appearances will result in a lot more support than PETA’s in-your-face gimmickry.

Flight Risk

Some years back, the airline industry came to a startling conclusion: They held the traveling public hostage. The service they provided offered the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B and there was no one in second place.

So to improve their economic bottom line, they began to systematically dump basic amenities along with courtesy and comfort. So what if people complained? Are they going to drive from Los Angeles to New York in five hours?

Thus, air travel became the  cattle drive that we loathe today.

It’s hard to imagine it could get worse. Then, these developments last week.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is one of the busiest days at the airport. On average, airlines across the country see a passenger increase that day of up to 259 percent, according to a new study conducted by the U.S. Travel Association.

But soon, the increased volume of travelers seen around the holidays could become more of an everyday occurrence, the study found. To be exact, within a mere five years, 24 of the top 30 U.S. airports will experience passenger levels that they usually only see on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

“Every projection holds that the demand for travel will continue to dramatically rise,” U.S. Travel President and CEO Roger Dow said in a news release. “But that rising demand will be stifled without a significant effort to modernize infrastructure.”

If that is true, get ready to arrive at the airport five hours before takeoff to avoid nightmarish traffic jams. Be prepared for security lines that make today’s TSA checkpoints look like a supermarket express lane. Overbooked flights will be commonplace. So will lost luggage. And the relative mental health of your fellow travelers will be dark if not downright hostile.

Surely, this is as bad as it gets. But no. Now, the nation’s top telecom regulator will propose allowing passengers to make cell phone calls and use their data plans while on an airplane.

The proposed rule change by the Federal Communications Commission would allow phone use once a plane reaches 10,000 feet, according to a story in the Washington Post.   Restrictions would still be in place during takeoffs and landings.

The agency’s commission is set to discuss the proposal in their upcoming December meeting. According to the Post story, the new rule has the backing of Tom Wheeler, the FCC’s new chairman, who was sworn in just weeks ago.

So let me understand this: After clawing your way onto the airplane and getting stuffed into sardine class, you face the daunting prospect of facing hours being bombarded with cell phone conversations bouncing around the cabin like so many ping pong balls. If you’re stuck in a middle seat, you could be listening to a guy arguing with his wife on one side while the passenger on your right discusses his roofing business inventory.

Mix in a few cocktails and you have a mixture more volatile than jet fuel.

This is a bad idea on so many levels.

For example, mounting evidence suggests that the habits encouraged by mobile technology — namely, talking in public to someone who is not there — are tailor made for hijacking the cognitive functions of bystanders.

One reason, said Veronica V. Galván, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of San Diego, is the brain’s desire to fill in the blanks.

“If you only hear one person speaking, you’re constantly trying to place that part of the conversation in context,” Dr. Galván said. “That’s naturally going to draw your attention away from whatever else you’re trying to do.”

It is also a control thing, Dr. Galván and her colleagues said. When people are trapped next to a one-sided conversation — known nowadays as a “halfalogue” — their anger rises in the same way it does in other situations where they are not free to leave. Like trapped on an airplane.

Author Dave Barry has an ever better take: A study by researchers at the University of Utah proves what many people have long suspected. Everyone talking on a cell phone, except you, is a moron.

To underscore the problem, we leave you with the following “halfalogue” recently reported on social media. Your job is to imagine what the other half of the conversation was:

“I woke up this morning on the beach, without my pants.”

...

“I don’t know.”

...

“Jagermeister”

...

“Nah, I’m on my way to work now.”

This conversation could soon be coming to a seat near you.   Happy landings.

The Skins Game

It wasn’t that long ago that a wave of political correctness swept over the country, causing spasms of guilt at every college and university nicknamed the Indians or Braves or Warriors.

It was, we were told, a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping that should be eliminated.

Chancellors and athletic directors moved quickly to wipe out every offending name even though the intent of identifying a team with Native Americans was not mockery but a tribute to their bravery and dignity.

Never mind a 2005 Washington Post article that argued a large majority of Native Americans are not at all offended by “Indian” mascots and that many are proud of the mascot names.

The American Psychological Association saw it differently. Its members issued a resolution “Recommending the Immediate Retirement of American Indian Mascots, Symbols, Images, and Personalities by Schools, Colleges, Universities, Athletic Teams, and Organizations due to the harm done by creating a hostile environment, the negative impact on the self-esteem of American Indian children, and is discrimination that may violate civil rights.”

So the Stanford Indians became the Cardinal (although Robber Barons would have been more appropriate). The Marquette Warriors became the Golden Eagles. The St. John’s University Red Men became the Red Storm. The College of William and Mary changed from Indians to The Tribe, but was chastised because its logo contained two feathers.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania was forced to change its name from Indians to Crimson Hawks. The school gets its name from the city of Indiana in which it is located. Indiana, of course, means land of the Indians. So exactly what was accomplished here?

In the meantime, Central Michigan University (Chippewas), Florida State University (Seminoles), Mississippi College (Choctaws) and University of Utah (Utes) were granted waivers to retain their nicknames after gaining support from those respective tribes. Meaning money trumps a real or imagined assault on one’s dignity.

The reason we are rehashing all of this is because the war on inappropriate ethnic representations rages on. This time the Washington Redskins of the National Football League are the target.

And this time, I’m on board. If I owned a sports franchise, I would no more call the team the Redskins than I would name it the Savages, Slaves or Wetbacks. Imagine what the reaction would be if Washington was awarded a franchise now, in 2013, and decided to call it the Redskins. The hue and cry would be deafening.

Dan Snyder, who owns the Skins, defends the name thus: “Our franchise has a great history, tradition and legacy representing our proud alumni and literally tens of millions of loyal fans worldwide,” Snyder wrote. “We are proud of our team and the passion of our loyal fans ... They speak proudly of ‘Redskins Nation’ in honor of a sports team they love.”

Yet, in the very same city, the owner of the NBA Washington Bullets changed the name of the franchise to Wizards out of a concern for the violent overtones in the original name.

There’s little reason to get misty eyed over the history of the Redskins. The original owner was George Preston Marshal, who ran the franchise from 1932 to 1969. Whatever else he may have accomplished, his reputation as a racist is what many remember. As late as 1962, Marshal refused to have African-Americans on his team. “We’ll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites,” he once remarked.

Finally, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy issued an ultimatum — unless Marshall signed a black player, the government would revoke the Redskins’ 30-year lease on the year-old D.C. Stadium (now Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium), which had been paid for by government money. Marshal relented.

When he died in 1969, he bequeathed $6 million to the George Preston Marshall Foundation that serves the interests of children in the Washington, D.C., area. The gift had the qualification that none of it could be used “for any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration.”

Since Marshall is long since dead (strangely enough, he is buried at a site in West Virginia called the Indian Mound Cemetery), his unfortunate legacy should die as well.

We’re not talking about rewriting the Tax Code here. We’re just changing a name. Let your imaginations run free.

In keeping with the current atmosphere in Washington, we could call the team the Bureaucrats, or the Do Nothings, or the Spendthrifts, the Fillibusterers, Gridlockers or Can Kickers. Better yet, the Partisans.

In a more serious vein, my choice would be the Warriors. This not only honors the men and women who have fought and died for this country but acknowledges the bravery of the American Indians who fought to preserve their lands.

Anything but the Redskins. It’s not a racial reference, it’s a slur.