SoCal train wreck death toll rises to 17

Train collision rocks quiet L.A. neighborhood

(I reported from the crash site until the sun rose with help from colleagues back at the office.)

By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ A quiet neighborhood on the city’s northwest tip was transformed Friday into a scene of incredible devastation when a commuter train carrying hundreds of people home during the afternoon rush collided head-on with a freight train.

The engine pulling the sleek Metrolink commuter train from downtown Los Angeles to the suburbs collided with the Union Pacific freight, forcing it backward, crumpling the car behind it like a giant aluminum can and tossing passengers in all directions. The freight’s first several cars came to rest in a giant, jumbled pile that, from the air, looked strangely like a collapsed stack of huge toy blocks.

It was immediately evident that the injury toll would be high, and that there had likely been fatalities. Police and firefighters flooded the scene, threw ladders up the side of the crushed commuter car and began pulling dazed and bloodied commuters from the wreckage. More than four hours later, long after the sun had set, they were still at it.

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I’m a (student) Emmy award-winning producer!

When I was a grad student at UC Berkeley’s Journalism School, I produced a half-hour weekly show on the theme of religion which won a student Emmy in 2007. I pitched the topic to my co-producers, vetted my classmates’ story ideas and designed an anchor-less format that let MOS interviews transition between the packages, all within a week.

I can’t take full credit for the awesome graphics, but I love the way the natsound of the meditation chime punctuates the beginning of each piece. I also shot a lot of the interstitial interviews – there’s nothing like talking about God with people on the street in Berkeley! Here’s a short version of the half-hour show.

 

Strike reveals lack of women writers

As recent picket lines suggest, female writers are still relatively scarce in Hollywood

By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ As Hollywood’s striking scribes ventured out to their picket lines over the last two months, it’s been plain to see – female writers are outnumbered by their male colleagues.

“I’m surprised when I see a woman on the picket line and I always wonder, Hmm, do I know her?'” said Sarah McLaughlin, who wrote for “That 70s Show.” “If I don’t know a woman writer personally, I know of them.”

Women writers on the picket line in Los Angeles

AP Photo | Ric Francis

Women make up 27 percent of television writers and 19 percent of feature film writers, according to the most recent Guild membership report from 2005, according to figures supplied by the Writers Guild of America.

Writers attribute the scarcity of women in their midst to tokenism, a tradition of bawdy humor in the writers room, and the dearth of women in key managerial positions.

Others say women have made significant strides toward parity in recent years, and feel increasingly comfortable working in an historically male-dominated field.

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Fossilized walrus “oosik” up for auction

4-foot mummified bone from extinct species of walrus highlights interest in ancient artifacts

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON

Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Among all the fossils, skeletons, meteorites and gemstones for sale Sunday at the I.M. Chait Gallery natural history auction, lot #127 stands out.

AP Photo – Kevork Djansezian

It’s a mummified baculum, or penis bone, from a species of walrus that went extinct 12,000 years ago. The piece is more than 4 feet long, curves to a point and is covered with weathered skin and dry muscle tissue.

Who would want to own such an odd thing? Lots of people, including technology executives, Hollywood producers and A-list celebrities. Bidding starts at $16,000.

“Size matters, and the walrus has got everybody beat,” said Josh Chait, operations director for his family’s auction house in Beverly Hills. “It’s a little sick, but where else are you going to get another one? That’s how collectors think.”

For the rich, famous, and scientifically literate, collecting such things has become a trendy hobby, despite concerns from scientists who say such artifacts belong in museums where they’re available to researchers, educators and the public.

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Stolen milk crates feed black market

Dairies crack down on stolen milk crates that feed black market for plastics

Ran on AP Business wire, in USA Today and in LA Times business section (without a byline)

By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ For decades, college kids have used stolen milk crates as the basic building blocks of coffee tables and dorm room shelves.

Now, a new breed of crate rustler is cashing in by swiping thousands of the containers from loading docks and selling them to shady recyclers.

AP Photo

AP Photo

The containers are chopped into bits and shipped to booming factories in China to be made into a variety of products, from pipes to flower pots.

Facing an estimated $80 million in annual losses from the thefts, dairies across the country are moving to stop the plastic pilfering. In California, companies are even hiring private detectives and staging sting operations.

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‘Lolcats’ toy with language

Do you speak Kitteh?

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON for ASAP (AP’s now defunct multimedia service)

LOS ANGELES (AP) _It looks like the inspirational posters found in a guidance counselor’s office — a Siamese kitten playing with balls of colorful yarn. Then there’s the caption: “I’m in ur fizx lab, testn ur string therry.”

Lolcats — deceptively simple photos of cats with absurd captions — are cute and fluffy. And that’s all they’d be, if they didn’t talk so funny.

The captions adhere to a strict grammar of “kitty pidgin,” an amalgam of texting acronyms, poorly translated movie subtitles and leet speak, or hacker lingo. Proper lolcat features consistent misspellingz, subjects and verbs that disagrees and lotsa typos.

The “meme,” or an idea that propagates through culture, is so popular that the exhaustive lolcats library gets almost 200,000 unique visitors per month.

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Mi Triqui: Life in Three Languages

Back by popular demand: Mi Triqui: Life in Three Languages. This is a real Throwback Thursday, going back to 2007.

Several people contacted me on Twitter after blip.tv took down this old video. So here it is!

This is the story of Bernandina Hernandez, a 23-year-old Hollister woman who speaks three languages: English, Spanish and Triqui. It was a third of my masters thesis at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

I met Bernadina and her family at an indigenous cultural celebration at a Catholic church in Windsor, while on assignment at my part-time job reporting for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.  After the Mass, the long speeches, and the traditional Oaxacan dances, I interviewed Bernadina, got a glimpse of her life and knew she would be good on video and worth following around for a few days.