Weekend news and notes

LAUSD schools evaluated using the L.A. Times' newly adopted "value added" method of looking at test scores often did better, or worse, than under other performance measures.
Fomer Bell city manager Robert Rizzo became the owner of several thoroughbred horses while he was the highest-paid city official in the state.
As many bloggers are learning, falsely defamatory remarks online can land you in court for real.
Here's one way TV writers and show runners get their revenge out on critics and other people who wrong them.
Next month's opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel will, at $578 million, "mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever," says AP.
Favorite headline of the day: Big rig tosses carrots near Grapevine, sparks fire
Filmmaker Thom Andersen protests Los Angeles car culture in "Get Out of the Car," his new "34-minute sketch of Los Angeles and 'response to my last movie.'"
The Los Angeles Fire Department unveiled a newly informative website that, among other things, tells you how many calls have been answered in the last hour.
The state of California has, finally, formally expressed its "deepest regrets" to Americans of Italian descent along the coast who were treated as "enemy aliens" during World War II.
Jack Shakely, president emeritus of the California Community Foundation, suggests in an op-ed that PBS "market itself as a network to cable and satellite providers rather than having each individual affiliated station across the country offer itself for free." In other words, become the PBS Channel.
Al Martinez wonders, not surprisingly, on a drive along Ventura Boulevard: who is this Piken guy whose name is on so much real estate in the Valley?
Los Angeles Alleys is a photo blog on the topic of alleys from City Hall deputy Jeremy Oberstein.
Louise Roug, the former L.A. Times Iraq correspondent who's now an editor at the Daily Beast, has a new book out in Danish ("Hvad Der Ikke Slår Dig Ihjel") and will be having an opening champagne reception in Copenhagen this week.
Former KTLA anchor Terry Anzur, now doing news on KFI on Saturday mornings, recently returned from training journalists in the Maldives.
Steve Harvey recalls when an oil well divided traffic lanes on La Cienega Boulevard on the block where Beverly Center now stands.
CBS correspondent Harold Dow, who spent a decade in the Los Angeles bureau before taking a key role in "48 Hours" and other shows, died at age 62.