Errors

The two errors he made in his third-base debut Friday night were difficult enough for Mark Trumbo to absorb, but a bigger concern for the Angels and the converted first baseman could be the mental scars left by the rocky performance.  “I'd be lying if I said otherwise,” Trumbo said Saturday when asked if his confidence was shaken a bit. “It's not that I don't have confidence in myself, but I know how hard pitchers work to get those outs, and any time you don't pick them up, I feel as bad as anybody.

Although there's still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama's bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency. "We're portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It's actually closer to us being idiots. " So far, this is the administration's best defense. It was offered to CBS' Sharyl Attkisson by an anonymous aide involved in the White House's disastrous response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

There are episodes of “Family Guy” with more depth than “The Comedy of Errors,” but that doesn't keep the Independent Shakespeare Company from having a ball at its free outdoor festival in Griffith Park. A reboot of two ancient Roman comedies, “Errors” is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, and you can see the young writer trying to master the mechanics of farce. Let's start with the high-concept premise: A merchant (Joseph Culliton) and his wife (Bernadette Sullivan)

School district officials have reversed a decision that cost a top-performing Los Angeles campus about $300,000 in funding after parents uncovered evidence that a bureaucratic error led to the loss of funds. Five other schools also are likely to get more dollars as well. L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy acknowledged Friday that internal confusion resulted in several schools failing to qualify for federal Title 1 money. "Services that they had counted on will not be lost," Deasy told The Times.

As if employers don't have enough causes of lost productivity to worry about, here comes a new one: insomnia. A new study projects that the disorder leads to about 274,000 mistakes that cause over $30 billion in losses due to accidents and workplace errors. Though it may seem obvious that a lack of sleep would lead to more mistakes on the job, only two previous studies - both relatively small and carried out in France - had tried to determine how many workers were affected. The new study, published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, is by far the largest to look at the effect of insomnia on the workplace.

A mountain lion in Griffith Park, Webster's adds "F-bomb" to the dictionary, a 17-foot python is found in a Florida swamp, a Belarus female shot-putter is stripped of gold … and we ignored the most shocking news story of the day: Mark Ellis committed two errors in one game. Coming soon - college tuition plummets, Lady Gaga shops at Gap, MMA fighter breaks into church naked (whoops, too late on that one). Ellis has been a grand discovery for most Dodgers fans this season.

A Miami artist who created a mural for the Livermore, Calif., library found to be riddled with spelling errors has agreed to return and fix the mistakes. Maria Alquilar, who originally refused to fix the misspellings despite being paid $40,000 for the project, said Assistant City Manager Jim Piper persuaded her to rethink her decision. "He convinced me the easiest way to lay the matter to rest is to correct it," Alquilar said.

It's an official spiral now, and not just because the losses are piling up, though they certainly are. Now it's the way the Dodgers are losing, which Friday night meant simply giving a game away. The Dodgers committed four errors in suffering their fifth consecutive defeat, this one an unsightly 13-3 loss to the Colorado Rockies in Denver. Until this skid, the Dodgers had not lost more than two consecutive games all season. But they're injury-riddled and playing youngsters and guys out of position, and coupled with an early-morning arrival to Denver, the Dodgers were a world away from sharp.

Yahoo Inc.investor Third Point, which is fighting for representation on the Internet company's board, criticized Chief Executive Scott Thompson for inaccuracies in his educational record. Thompson lists a bachelor's degree in computer science from Stonehill College, but the school didn't begin offering such a degree until four years after he graduated, Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb said Thursday in an open letter to the board. Thompson has an accounting degree from the school, Loeb said.

At one point Jerry Hairston Jr. looked as if he might be the Dodgers' hero Sunday. That is, until he was the goat. After Hairston had singled in the go-ahead run, the third baseman's two throwing errors on similar plays led to a three-run seventh inning that helped lift the San Diego Padres to a 7-2 win over the Dodgers. "It's going to happen," Hairston said. Third base is "probably the toughest position on the field. They don't call it the hot corner for nothing. " The Dodgers committed five errors, the most by the club for a game since 1995.

Obviously the owners of the Angels and Dodgers have never heard of team chemistry. Arte Moreno and the Guggenheim Guy thought they could build better teams just by adding more expensive elements. Here's a lesson from Chemistry 101: You won't improve water (H2O) by replacing the O (oxygen) with Au (gold). H2Au won't work: Just ask Torii Hunter, the professor of Team Chemistry 101. Steve Stanage Corona :: I hope Angels management, and fans, can look between the lines of T.J. Simers' smarmy Josh Hamilton piece and realize that what they have in Hamilton is nothing compared to what they had in Torii Hunter.

It's early, but it's not that early. The Angels began the second quarter of the season with another ugly loss Thursday night, committing two errors plus a crucial mental mistake, throwing a wild pitch that scored a run and issuing a four-pitch, bases-loaded walk to a .185 hitter who had not drawn a free pass all season. The 5-4 loss to the Chicago White Sox dropped the Angels to 15-26, their worst 41-game start since 1976, and 12 games behind Texas in the American League West. There is still time for the Angels to make up ground, but the task ahead is daunting.

HOUSTON - At this rate, teams will soon look at the Angels as a welcome respite on the schedule, an opponent that, like the lowly Houston Astros, they can use to fatten up their record. There was no such feast for the Angels in Minute Maid Park on Tuesday night. Hank Conger became the first catcher in Angels history to commit three errors in a game, C.J. Wilson gave up a three-run homer in a five-run third inning, and the Angels lost to the Astros, 7-6. The Angels, despite home runs by Mark Trumbo, Howie Kendrick and Alberto Callaspo and a career-high 12 strikeouts from Wilson, have lost 10 of 13 games to fall to 11-21, matching the worst 32-game start in franchise history.

An inmate charged with murder in a 2010 Baldwin Park gang shooting was mistakenly released from the Los Angeles County jail system last month because of a clerical error, sheriff's officials revealed Friday. The department waited nearly a month before alerting the public that Johnny Mata was on the loose. Mata was set free April 4 from the Sheriff's Department's Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles, according to Capt. Chuck Antuna. "A clerical error occurred and he was released," Antuna said.

Each day the sports pages teem with wins and losses, statistics and scores, victors and runners-up. But that's not all. "Sports don't just have to be about touchdowns and three-point shots and goals," said Los Angeles Times sportswriter David Wharton while moderating the panel discussion "Great Balls of Fire: Sports & Sports Writing" at the L.A. Times Festival of Books on Sunday morning. "We can find some real true things about life in what we see on the field. " The three panelists in attendance -- Celia Walden, Steven Travers and John Rosengren -- shared Wharton's philosophy.

A surgeon cut an Orange County woman's aorta during Lap-Band weight-loss surgery in 2011 and an anesthesiologist failed to detect her hemorrhaging, events that led to her death, according to a Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy report. The report found that the injury and the failure to respond adequately during laparoscopic surgery at Valley Surgical Center in West Hills constituted "an extreme deviation from the standard of care" on the part of the doctors. Shortly after surgery, Paula Rojeski, 55, of Ladera Ranch went into cardiac arrest and was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reached a settlement with the state of California over allegations of price-scanning errors for some products. As part of the agreement, Wal-Mart will give customers $3 back when pricing errors are found at the cash register, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said.

The Vigilantes committed three errors that resulted in three unearned runs and a 6-5 loss to the Peppers in a Western League baseball game Saturday in Salinas. With one out and runners on first and second in the second inning, third baseman Bret Barberie threw the ball into right field, which resulted in two Salinas runs and a 3-2 advantage for the Peppers. In the eighth inning, second baseman Chris Ashbach and catcher Carl Nichols each made an error that led to a run.

One of the most fearsome statistics in the war against the federal deficit has always been the country's ratio of debt to gross domestic product. When this ratio reaches 90%, the argument goes, watch out -- lower economic growth is on the horizon. And that's scary, because that's where the U.S. has been heading. This idea comes from Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, who featured it in a 2010 paper and popularized it in a book entitled " This Time is Different : Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.

Health insurers don't exactly enjoy a reputation for timely payouts when people submit claims. They've been known to make policyholders jump through all sorts of hoops before coming across with a little cash. But when you owe them money, that's another story. Karen Fairbank, 60, of Pacific Palisades discovered this recently when Blue Shield of California sent her a letter demanding that she return a payment of more than $2,400, and that she do it pronto. Plus $4.70 in interest.