Oddities in tonight’s LA Times

So, just for fun, I opened up the Los Angeles Times web page tonight and found all sorts of odd articles on the front web page:

• TED conference to move from Long Beach to Canada
  The TED conference to be in Monterey – which to my ear sounds much more “resort”-like than Long Beach – and now that it has become an unstoppable force, it is moving to Vancouver?  Don’t get me wrong – Vancouver is a nice town (and home of when of the sharpest biblio-bloggers around, the always perceptive Suzanne) – but I don’t understand the logic here.  (I can only surmise that Vancouver offered some sort of concession – there’s a reason so many films and TV series ostensibly set in the US are filmed there.)  But the oddity just increased with this line:  “The main conference only allows for 1,400 attendees, and organizers plan to reduce that number to 1,200 next year to make the event more intimate.”  Yes, that’s exactly how I would describe a party with 1,200 attendees:  “intimate.”

• Black daughter of Strom Thurmond dies at 87

  For those who do not follow politics, it is enough to know that Strom Thurmond was an outspoken extremist (white) segregationist.

• Church mulls $200-million fundraising drive

  Remarkably bad timing.  Here, “Church” = the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which has been in the news for the last few days after releasing documents related to sex abuse and stripping Cardinal Mahoney of all formal duties based on how he handled those incidents. 

• Southern California Tales:  Anonymous artist makes Oakland his gnome town

  A cute (in fact, going beyond “cute” to “saccharine”) story, to be sure.  But why complain about China being expansionist – according to the Los Angeles Times, Southern California now encompasses the San Francisco Bay Area!