OPINION
April 24, 2014 | By Harold Meyerson
The most fundamental problem Los Angeles faces is that a huge number of Angelenos can't even afford to live here. Their pay is too low; their rent is too high. Last week, the real estate website Zillow released a survey commissioned by the New York Times that identified the 90 American cities where the median rent exceeded 30% of the median household income. (The 30% figure is the threshold at which rent is generally deemed unaffordable.) The survey ranked those 90 cities by the percentage of their residents' median income devoted to their median rent.
SCIENCE
April 21, 2014 | By Deborah Netburn
The annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight, and you can watch it live online, right here. Beginning at 5 p.m. PDT, the astronomy website Slooh.com will live-stream video of the shower from one of its telescopes in North America. Each year in mid-April our planet passes through a trail of dust and debris left in the wake of comet Thatcher -- a long period comet that makes a complete orbit around the sun once every 415 years. As the Earth moves through Thatcher's debris stream, tiny bits of dust slam into our atmosphere at about 110,000 mph, creating streaks of light that shoot across the night sky. The Lyrid meteor shower is not the brightest or the biggest of the annual meteor showers, but it is one of the oldest known meteor showers.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 11, 2014 | By Deborah Vankin
INDIO, Calif. - In the sprawl of desert scrub brush and freeway ramps that is this industrial part of Indio, the sun burns brightly in a barren office park. Light and shadows flash off the scorched asphalt, and the landscape is a spare palette of dusty brown, faded green and gray. Inside one tucked-away structure, however, artist Phillip K. Smith III is preparing to paint the sky red. Or pink. Or green, depending. FULL COVERAGE: Coachella 2014 "Welcome to the different sides of my brain," Smith says, leading the way through his studio, which looks like an airplane hangar and is filled with elements of a light installation premiering at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
SCIENCE
April 8, 2014 | By Deborah Netburn
Mars is in opposition tonight, and if you look up any time after nightfall, you can see the red planet shining brighter in the sky than it has in 6½ years. On April 8, the clockwork of our solar system places the Earth between Mars and the sun, so that Mars is positioned directly opposite the sun in our night sky. The red planet will rise in the eastern sky just as the sun sets in the west, and it will dip below the horizon just as...
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 21, 2014 | By Jason Wells
Returning to the skies at full force after being grounded by federal budget cuts, the Navy's famed Blue Angels aerial demonstration squad will be the headline act when the inaugural Los Angeles County Air Show kicks off Friday. The air show will be the squadron's first of the 2014 season after spending much of 2013 training at the Navy facility in El Centro, Calif. The Blue Angels were forced to cancel most of their 2013 season, including dates this fall in San Diego, Ventura and San Francisco, after the automatic federal budget cuts known as sequestration took effect.
NATIONAL
March 4, 2014 | By Evan Halper
WASHINGTON - As international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions stall, schemes to slow global warming using fantastical technologies once dismissed as a sideshow are getting serious consideration in Washington. Ships that spew salt into the air to block sunlight. Mirrored satellites designed to bounce solar rays back into space. Massive "reverse" power plants that would suck carbon from the atmosphere. These are among the ideas the National Academy of Sciences has charged a panel of some of the nation's top climate thinkers to investigate.