A Merced Sun-Star blog
Another "most miserable cities" list came out, and Merced's not on it. Business Insider published a list of the country's 20 most miserable cities , based on unemployment rates and housing prices, among other criteria tallied by The Brookings Institution. You may recall Forbes Magazine named Merced the country's third most miserable city back in February. Then, in July, Forbes said Merced was country's worst place to do business. Unfortunately, Merced's absence from the Business Insider ...
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Like any good movie about the undead, Merced's Zombie Walk is getting a sequel.
More...One southland politician's plans to carve a new state from 13 California counties, including Mariposa and Madera, isn't so popular with his colleagues. Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone presented a proposal Tuesday to create the 51st state of "South California" from Republican-leaning counties stretching from San Diego to Mono counties. The North County Times reports that his fellow Riverside supervisors were cool to the idea -- particularly to his proposal for using county funds to l...
More...Forbes staffers just can't help themselves when it comes to kicking Merced around. After declaring Merced America's third-most miserable city in February , the magazine published in June its list of the nation's best places for business and careers. Not surprisingly, Merced's dead last. Merced comes in at No. 200, behind Atlantic City, NJ, and Flint, Mich., in a list of 200 cities ranked according to the cost of doing business, job growth, education and population. Like the 'Misery' in...
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Merced would become the new southern border of California if one Riverside County supervisor has his way. But Mariposa and Madera counties would join 11 other counties as part of a new state that Jeff Stone, a Riverside County supervisor, is calling "South California."
More...Like a game of Whack-a-Mole, a small group of Yosemite enthusiasts are flagging posts on Craigslist by ticket scalpers trying to sell passes to the National Park. The Sun-Star ran a story in April saying that ticket scalping is a growing problem for National Parks , notably at Yosemite, the third-most visited park in the country. According to the story, the 900 Yosemite campsites can be reserved for $20 a night through the website ReserveAmerica, but park officials say they've seen Craigs...
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Merced arts supporters are turning to social media to raise money for the Merced Multicultural Arts Center.
More...Merced's Red Sky Comics promises plenty of action this Saturday -- it's Free Comic Book Day and the comic shop in Downtown Merced is also hosting a Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 video game tournament. Thousands of comic shops around the country participate in Free Comic Book Day, which started in 2002. At Red Sky, owner Michael Smid says the store has a number of free comic books to pass out and will offer sales throughout the store while costumed characters wander around. Registration for the Marv...
More...There's a silver lining to the dark clouds hanging over Merced and Mariposa. It's kept plenty of Yosemite-bound tourists in town, according to Karen Baker, manager of the California Welcome Center on 16th Street. As snow and bad weather closed all highways leading into the National Park, tourists and park employees had to spend time elsewhere, meaning local hotels, restaurants and attractions could be seeing an economic bump from all this bluster. One man from Japan has been "stuck" in Mer...
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Almond orchards and cows, with a few people living among them, are all that's left of the little town of Amsterdam. I spent some time there Friday afternoon as Belgian filmmakers Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck filmed a portion of their documentary, "called "Amsterdam Stories USA." The film tells the story of people living in the 16 American towns that share the "Amsterdam" name.
More...Here's the full trailer for "The Chronicles of Rick Roll," starring Mariposa's Paul Vasquez. It's pretty much what you'd expect of a movie that tries to pack as many Internet celebrities and memes into a mashup of parodies of films such as "Alice in Wonderland," "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Lord of the Rings."
More...Mariposa's Paul "YosemiteBear" Vasquez, of "Double Rainbow" fame, is joining other viral Internet stars, including Antoine Dodson ("Hide Your kids, Hide Your wife,") and World of Warcraft berzerker Leeroy Jenkins in a full-length feature film. The movie is called "The Chronicles of Rick Roll," and the scenes for the trailer, released Wednesday on YouTube, were filmed about six weeks ago in Colorado Springs. Vasquez said that if funding can be found, most of the movie will be filmed on...
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The world's tallest model, "Amazon Eve," is from the Central Valley. Donna Cordova at Sacramento-based Fox 40 News scored an interview with the 6-foot-9 beauty from Turlock.
More...Scientists at UC Merced and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab discovered a new family of jellyfish floating around the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery of 'Drymonema larsoni,' otherwise known as the "Pink Meanie," represents the first "true jellyfish" found since 1921. "It's rare that something like this could escape the notice of scientific research for so long," said Keith Bayha, a Sea Lab scientist, in a press release. Bayha worked with Michael Dawson of UC Merced on researching the bulbous sea c...
More...A few weeks ago, Sun-Star reporter Jamie Oppenheim wrote about UC Merecd's archaeology exhibit, "3D Archaeology at Çatalhöyük." Professor Maurizio Forte and some of his students spent the summer at an ancient settlement in Turkey, scanning artifacts into a 3D format. Their work can be viewed in an exhibit that spans two floors of the Kolligian Library. This week, UC Merced released a video showing some of the exhibit, complete with an interview with Forte. It's interestin...
More...UC Merced was featured recently on FailBlog.I'm told this picture was taken at the Yablokoff-Wallace Dining Center.
More...Google might be promising lightning-fast Internet connections with its upcoming fiber network, but the process of getting there is proving to be a crawl. Merced was one of nearly 1,100 communities to apply for Google's expirimental fiber network that would offer Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than what most users have access to today.
More...UC Merced made FailBlog I'm told this picture was taken in UC Merced's Yablokoff-Wallace Dining Center.
More...I got an e-mail from " Double Rainbow Guy ," otherwise known as Paul "Yosemitebear" Vasquez of Mariposa, who recently returned from a trip to Iceland to visit high school students who raised money to meet him. He wanted to remind Merced readers that voting for the People's Choice Awards ends on Dec. 7. He's nominated in the Favorite Viral Video Star category.
More...Update: Vasquez said in an e-mail that he's "beyond excitement." He's planning to attend the awards ceremony in January, and he has already written his acceptance speech. Vasquez says he's also working with a television production company, hoping to develop a reality show based on his life.
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