Hints, allegations and other things left unsaid

The Voice continues to repeat the allegations of anonymous letters (sound familiar?), this time accusing senior administrators at the elementary school district of bribing HR director Stephanie Totter and CFO Rebecca Wright in order to help inflate their own pensions. The gist of the story is that Totter denies Wright's recent retirement announcement has anything to do with the allegations. That's better than the original article, I suppose, in that at least somebody was given a chance to respond.

But by repeatedly printing denials, the press can create the illusion of a scandal despite lacking the any direct evidence of one.

Of course, as Donald Rumsfeld said, that's not the same as the evidence of absence. This is particularly true when the people responsible for finding the evidence don't really seem to be trying very hard to find it. (While news reporters often fit this description, weapons inspectors do not).

To be fair, the state pension board is looking into matter. But the board didn't make a determination that the allegations were credible. It responded to a request from the superintendent, who may have been simply trying to ward off pressure from the media.

The next time the Voice questions somebody on anonymous allegations, I hope they respond with my favorite line from Blue Chips (one of my least favorite movies). Nick Nolte answers a reporter's question about alleged incidents of point-shaving by his basketball team by saying:

"How long are you gonna keep this bullshit up, Ed? Huh? You know Goddamn well there was no such incident. There was an alleged incident which you invented. In the same way that if I assert that you sleep with sheep, than it is alleged that you sleep with sheep.

(And yes, I realize that I don't exactly have clean hands here, given what my coverage of the allegations about the city attorney Michael Martello's relationship with the head of the garbage company. But, despicable as that coverage was, at least we were clear about the source of the allegations and ran a front-page story when they turned out to be unfounded).

So the pool will be heated?

I'm not picking on the Town Crier here, just taking advantage of another opportunity to expand the vocabulary of our readers.

Hearty = warm and friendly
Hardy = able to withstand frost, generally in reference to plants

Mission Accomplished

Major combat operations in the battle of Cuesta Park have ended. The City of Mountain View, and its allies (see right), have prevailed.

But now that last throes of the squirrel insurgency are over, the liberal local media is still trying to downplay the threat.

Just look at this week's editorial by the squirrel sympathizers in the Mountain View Voice. According to the Voice, the danger posed by Cuesta Park squirrels is "hardly in the same league" as Yosemite bears or Palo Alto mountain lions. The Voice blames the problem on the human beings and says its the work of a few bad apples. Meanwhile, unable to let any good news go unpunished, the Voice is reporting on a swarm of bees invading downtown.

This kind of reporting is demoralizing to the city recreation staff and comforting to the enemy. I think we should demand an apology.

Supreme Court: Global warming exists (Scalia: So does farting)

Q: How is Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens like Rich Harden's elbow?
A: Everything is riding on their continued health.

Stevens' majority opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA was the subject of today's talk at UCLA Law by Pat Gallagher, legal director for the Sierra Club and national hero. (PDF version here). The case, one of two high court victories for the forces of good on Monday, held that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. If the EPA refuses to do so, it must justify the decision based on Clean Air Act concerns about health and welfare.

It may not sound like such an earth-shattering decision, but, as Gallagher said, "this result exceeded our wildest dreams."

After all, Chief Justice John Roberts fell only one vote short of getting an official ruling from the Supreme Court that the science behind global warming is uncertain. (Antonin Scalia wrote a separate dissent to say that, if CO2 is an air pollutant, "[i]t follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’” Seriously, he wrote that.)

However, as Vin Scully would say, Gallagher might have been looking at the opinion more with his heart than his eyes. In particular, he downplayed the significance of Stevens' discussion of Massachusetts right to sue on behalf of its citizens (under the doctrine of parens patriae). Stevens made a strong case that Massachusetts will lose state-owned coastal land as a result of rising sea levels, constituting enough of an injury for the state to bring suit. The dissenters argued, poorly, the science is not clear, the U.S. is not to blame for rising sea levels, an China and India are not signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. The EPA also argued that the Bush administration has done enough to respond to global warming, but that didn't seem to get much traction.

But the dissent may have got the better of the weird and nerdy debate about parens patriae. Gallagher said he didn't know what to make of that discussion, and suggested it was just dicta (a legal term meaning, roughly, mental masturbation). Most likely, Stevens included this justification so that he could get a majority to agree on the standing issue and move on to the larger question. As a result, the case seems unlikely by itself to broaden standing for individuals under environmental laws as much as Gallagher and others would like.

Still, two very important results flow from this decision. First, even though the Bush EPA will drag its feet and ultimately do nothing, the next administration will now have the authority to regulate CO2 (which could be necessary if Congress stalls). Second, despite automakers' attempt to spin the decision, they are going to have a hard time arguing that California's emissions laws conflict with federal fuel economy law.

My new favorite game

"Guess what I snuck across the border in your car."

I have to say that I prefer my spring break trip to Mexico over Bubba's. But that's only because I don't think free travel, lodging and food is worth having your feet full of sea urchins. And I do mean full. (Pictures to come soon).

You go to print with the facts you have...

A great day, today. My cousin Sarah gave birth. The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush Administration for its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Baseball started. And it was the first night of Passover, allowing us to remember a time when we didn't start all of the wars in the world.

So let's ruin the mood with some mean-spirited blogging...

In rather unsurprising news, Santa Clara County is looking to ax its work furlough center in Mountain View. It basically works like jail, except the inmates get to leave to go to their jobs (and this happens less). The probation department first proposed eliminating the program two years ago, but changed its mind in response to political pressure.

Unfortunately, it seems that somebody from the Town Crier snuck in a paragraph near the bottom of the Voice's recent story:

Though Whisman has always been a mostly industrial neighborhood, a recent letter to the Voice indicates that new residential development in the area could lead to complaints about the facility. The anonymous letter claims that some inmates are prone to "yelling, spitting and making comments towards women who are waiting at the light rail station" in the early morning.

I can't decide what's worse: openly speculating on the basis of a single anonymous letter, or using the news section to reprint allegations that wouldn't have been allowed in the opinion section.

They still haven't apologized for this

The Onion is commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war by running its greatest hits from coverage of the war. My favorites include "Bush announces Iraq exit strategy: 'We'll go through Iran'" and "Point/Counterpoint: 'This war will destabilize the entire Mideast region and set off a global shockwave of anti-Americanism' vs. 'No it won't.'"

What if another of NOE's favorite newspapers decided to rerun its greatest coverage of the war? Read on to find out...

Waiting around for war
(published February 19, 2003 in the Los Altos Town Crier)

Arguments for and against are strong: those for it see war as a must to prevent dictator Saddam Hussein from producing weapons of mass destruction that could kill millions, if not now, then later.

Those against it say there is not enough proof that such weapons exist, and war would incite even more terrorist activities.

Give peace a chance, they say.

Some say peace has been given a chance. President Bush says Saddam has had plenty of opportunities to reveal and surrender his most dangerous weapons. Peace promoters say United Nations weapons inspectors need more time.

There are cynics among us who feel Bush is pushing for war because Saddam can be had. Bush can continue to ride the war on terror that has helped his popularity since Sept. 11, and he can finish up what his dad, George Sr., failed to do during the Persian Gulf War.

War also serves as a deterrent to our failure to find the chief culprit of the terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden, despite his taunting video messages that are surfacing with increasing regularity.

However, we're mostly in agreement that Saddam is a dangerous dictator. He's freed criminals at the drop of a hat while torturing and killing his own innocent people. Such an unstable person, combined with deadly weapons, is a recipe for disaster.

War should always be the last resort. But history is replete with examples of countries reacting too late to dictators bent on conquest. Europeans tried to look the other way while Adolf Hitler strengthened Germany's military might throughout the 1930s. The result was an invasion of Poland and the start of World War II. Would the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have taken place if the United States had entered the war earlier?

Yes, a war with Iraq will result in American casualties. However, many, many more are likely to perish if Saddam is left alone. A man of Saddam's nature does not stockpile weapons for purely defensive purposes.

The best option for the United States is to take out Iraqi forces quickly, using precision air strikes, as was done in the Gulf War. The worst scenario would be a ground war in the streets of Baghdad that would result in many more casualties.

Beyond Iraq, North Korea, with its dubious leadership and nuclear weapons allegedly capable of reaching the West Coast, poses another threat. We would love peace. But in the face of such leaders, the best defense is a good offense.

The Town Crier eliminates the amendments

Points to the first Town Crier staffer who can correctly identify what is wrong with the following paragraph, the lede in this week's article on the Los Altos Hills general plan:

"Unlike the nation's Constitution, which remains untouched through the centuries as the country's guiding document, towns regularly revisit and revise their municipal constitutions, known as General Plans. Los Altos Hills' plan has gone mostly untouched since it was extensively revised in 1975, and with some prodding from the state, the town has taken on the challenge of updating it.

Here are hints 11-27.

Just like the cotton gin helped end slavery

The nation's paper of record is tripping over itself this morning as it backtracks from Wednesday's apparently poorly-researched puff piece on the greening of Silicon Valley venture capital firms. It seems someone alerted the Times to the fact that many of the firms it had written so glowingly about for their support of clean energy are actually heavily invested in fossil fuels. Oops.

Here's a sampling of quotes from the article, in which the writer and the subjects continue to defend the industry as "helping to save the world:"

First up, Andrew Tudhope, CEO of Sub-One Technology, a Pleasanton company that manufactures a chemical to make oil drilling cheaper and, not coincidentally, has benefitted from millions in venture capital funding:

“We’re not trying to push an agenda. We’re trying to make money.”

Fair enough. Now how about Erik Straser, partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park:

"I’m here to make the kind of green my limited partners can spend."

A terrible pun, but at least he's telling the truth. Next up: Joseph Lacob, managing partner at Kleiner Perkins, just down Sand Hill Road:

“If we can improve the efficiencies of the oil and gas exploration, in some ways that’s a green message as well."

I think Joaquin Phoenix said something like this right before he killed his emperor father in Gladiator. To wrap this up, we turn to Wes Raffel, partner at Palo Alto-based Advanced Technology Ventures:

“Is it irresponsible? That’s a good question,” he said. “The answer is: I try not to do irresponsible things. It’s improving efficiency. People are going to use these Earth-given resources to provide energy. It’s going to happen. If you can create infrastructure that helps them do it for less costs” that is a good thing, he said.

We'll take that as a yes.

What trial lawyers should know about Los Altos

Apologies for the recent slowdown in posting. Unfortunately, most of the amusing news has involved my future employer, so I've had to hold my tongue.* The D.A. down here finally brought charges against the former head of UCLA's body donor program for allegedly stealing bodies and selling off their organs through a middleman.

More on that later, I suppose. For now, I would like to give you a profile of Los Altos (or at least the 94022 zip code) from the Claritas jury selection service on Lexis Nexis. This is the census information supposedly most helpful to trial lawyers in assessing a potential juror's fitness to serve. As Gunn grad and fellow UCLA Law student Josh Mukhopadhyay pointed out when he showed this to me today, people pay a lot of money to have this information.

JURSEL SOCIAL-GROUP: Suburban Wealthy & Affluent
JURSEL CLUSTER-NAME: Elite Super-Rich Families
JURSEL CLUSTER-CODE: 01
Percentage of US Households: 1.18%
Predominant Adult Age Range: 45-54, 55-64
Key Education Level: College Graduates
Predominant Employment: Professional
Key Housing Type: Owners, Single Unit
Lifestyle Preferences:

• Played tennis 20+ times last year
• Traveled to E. Europe last 3 years
• Have $200,000+ homeowners' insurance
• Watch Wall Street Week
• Read Architectural Digest

Socio-Economic Rank: Elite (1)
Ethnic Diversity: White, Asian

* (Yes, that is a backwards way of saying I will be working at the Department of Justice this summer).

$110

That's how much I'm worth. Or, as my friend and classmate Hadley Erskine observed after carefully tracking the bidding patterns at last night's bachelor auction for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, that's what I'm worth if you're also giving me credit for the public's desire to donate to a good charity while drunk.

I was a little nervous when bidding stagnated at $70. But putting on the bandanna earned an extra $20, and taking my shirt off $20 more. According to Hadley's calculation, "as a person," I was worth about $30. It is probably a good thing that I didn't have the emcee mention this blog or give anyone my "business" card.

EDIT: For some reason (perhaps because I was still holding onto a shred of dignity), I forgot to mention the woman who came up to me, pointed at my PILF (Public Interest Law Fund) shirt and asked, "Does that stand for 'Person I'd Like to F*ck?'"

Naturally, I replied, "That depends how much money you've got on you."

Pimping and whoring

One of the Democratic Party's second-best orators was on campus this afternoon.

LA Voice mocked Edwards as a multi-millionaire who lives in a six million dollar home and talks about the class divide, but at least his event was open to the public. Of course, I still didn't go, because I am working on the real cant-miss events campus events this week. The Public Interest Law Fund auction on Saturday raises money for students (like myself) who work for non-profits, government agencies, et al. The Team in Training bachelor auction I agreed to do raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and enables me to get back some of the karma I lost cold-calling every restaurant and law firm in Los Angeles.

Mountain View week in review

Last week was a busy one so far as Mountain View news was concerned. An antagonistic city council meeting threatened the 530-unit Mayfield project. Sears extended its lease at San Antonio Shopping Center at the last minute (news first broken in the comments section of this blog). Sally Lieber rewrote her proposed spanking ban so that, in the words of one staffer, an open-hand smack on the butt is pretty much the only thing not covered. And Cuesta Park squirrels continued their campaign of terror (I don't think Bay Area Parent will be handing it any awards this year).

But instead of stopping there, the Voice gave us this nugget, about a sexual harassment complaint (not, as it seems, a lawsuit) filed against the Mountain View police department two years ago.

Details of the incidents were not included in the court records, probably because the case has yet to make it to trial...

Okay, maybe "nugget" is overstating the depth of the article, which goes on to include no details, comments or explanation.

Ready those pointing fingers

There is going to be a lot of blame to go around if the Mayfield Mall project falls through, something that's looking quite possible after Tuesday's night city council meeting, which left Mountain View nonsensically poised to preserve the vacant office building and surrounding parking lots while developing one of the city's last farms.

The Voice's account of the meeting makes it all seem like a lot of standard negotiation posturing (read: bullshit) from both sides:

Toll Brothers spokesperson Kelly Snider repeated a cautionary message about the financial viability of the project several times, saying that fewer units or more park space would "push us towards the tipping point of non-viability," and make it "difficult to move the project forward."

Honestly, what else would you expect them to say? Every single concession Toll Brothers has to make pushes them "towards the tipping point of non-viability." The issue is how close they are. This the equivalent of asking for a raise and, when the boss returns with a counteroffer, saying that is going to make things "difficult"

[Jac] Siegel shot back.

"I think it's an absurd project as it's proposed," he said, after declaring he had "no baggage" connected to the project as a new council member.

Jac Siegel, of course, was the chair of the environmental planning commission during the environmental impact report hearings. Granted, he only oversaw the environmental review, but, as baggage goes, he has quite a lot of it.

"It's going to hurt the entire area." He added that if Toll Brothers needed more than 500 units the developer "should look in a different area."

Siegel invoked an image of grid-locked streets when he talked about San Antonio Road, Central Expressway and nearby Rengstorff Avenue as already having some of the worst traffic in the city. He said he preferred that the site remain office space.

Here's a win-win solution for both sides. Drop the minimum parking requirements for the project. Just eliminate them altogether. Toll Brothers can adjust their plans to make a little more profit, Monta Loma can move to a permitting program for on-street parking to keep Mayfield residents from overflowing onto neighborhood streets, and the city can stop encouraging people to drive everywhere.

Fighting Rickenbacker, one myspace friend at a time

At first, Rickenbacker Collections ignored Erik Koland. Society mocked him. After that, they fought him. And ultimately, just as is supposed to happen, he won.

But Erik being who he is (see below), he has not stopped fighting. This would be laughable if not for all of the people that he has helped or even just given some hope. (Okay, it's still laughable, but that doesn't make it any less impressive).

They come to Erik from all walks of life -- an ex-marine, an AIDS patient, a forest activist. Down on their luck and tired of being pushed around by the system, they find Erik. More accurately, they find his alter Ego, Fight Rickenbacker. Their e-mails and messages begin as pleas for help, but by the time they finish writing they have been inspired by the mere fact that someone is listening.

"I plan to retaliate big time against them."

"I'm with you on anything you can do to put these criminals out of business...& behind bars!"

"I ... want badly to hurt these people's business without mercy. I signed up at the myspace site going for Rickenbacker's blood, and I want a pint of it for my own."

Many readers will remember Erik as the man who talked his way on to the Los Altos High School Talon student newspaper by telling the advisor about his plan to hold an ultimate frisbee game between the cheerleaders and the mutants. Others will remember him as the man who led out water polo team in purchasing cheap suits to wear to tournaments, or as the man who accrued unreasonably high amounts of store credit at Tower Records, or, alternatively, as the man who carried around 50 pairs of women's shoes in his trunk, or even as the man who broke his wrist skateboarding down a small cliff in Half Moon Bay, tore off his cast bit by bit in the face of common sense and his doctor's advice, only to miraculously recover in time for our West Bay Water Polo trip to Hawaii, where he organized the 14-under water polo team we were coaching in using a garbage can to switch the water in the hot tub with the water in the pool (each of which were reportedly too extreme in temperature).

The list, as you might imagine, goes on. Today, on the occasion of his 27th birthday, we may add one more description: He is the man who beat Rickenbacker.

Just the guys to do it

Does anyone else like to imagine the Los Altos City Council sitting around before their meetings and watching John Belushi's motivational speech from Animal House? I picture the members using it to psyche themselves up before charging out the door into the chambers and passing unconstitutional laws targeting day workers*, bravely taking stands against gay kids, or voting on land use decisions in Mountain View.

*Lucy Carlton's recollection of our conversation (which took place through an eyehole I had cut out of the hat) is not entirely accurate.

Where the sidewalk ends

Housing debates in Mountain View often feature complaints that city council members have forgotten what city they represent. This is usually a rhetorical device.

In Los Altos, however, the city council appears to have quite literally forgotten its jurisdiction. At its last meeting two weeks ago, the council debated and voted on the future of the Grant Road farm, which, for those of you keeping track at home, is in Mountain View.

Council member Lou Becker, casting a dissenting vote, put the objection much more politely than I might have:

"My concerns are (that) I don't want to give them an impression that we're trying to tell Mountain View what to do. The decision is really totally theirs."

Of course, Los Altos has been telling Mountain View what to do for years, just not so blatantly. One of the few things I took from the Voice when I left was a copy of a college paper written by Nick Perry called "Exclusion across El Camino." It documents how land use policies (particularly minimum lot sizes) have enabled Los Altos to remain a wealthy bedroom community while Mountain View, among others, have struggled to survive as full-service cities in the face of rising housing costs (wrought in large part by Proposition 13, but that's for another rant).

This is particularly relevant now with a "slow-growth" majority on the Mountain View council. "Not-In-My-Backyard" mindsets may have a lot to do with that change in Mountain View. But I think that Los Altos' consistent refusal to do anything other than pat itself on the back for adding a condo here or there is largely ro blame. Viewed from that perspective, Mountain View's political climate becomes easier to explain (and defend) as "Not-Just-In-My-Backyard."

My favorite line in Perry's paper, by the way, comes from the introduction: "Where the sidewalk ends, Los Altos begins." It doesn't quite work as an insult, given the tenor of Shel Silverstein's poem. But it might at least explain why the Los Altos City Council got confused about the farm.

At least they still cover San Jose

After a busy weekend spent imposing on people, I received a suggestion from a reader to "tear apart" the Mercury's biennial "isn't Mountain View cute?" drivel. However, the article doesn't give critics much with which work -- it's essentially a summary of (pick one) the census/the state of the city address/the introduction to the budget and even less useful.

It wasn't that long ago that the Merc had a reporter covering Mountain View full-time. Sure, one of them publicly bitched out the council and then baked cookies for all of the members, but at least someone on staff over there was expected to know what was going on in the city. The alternative is to write this kind of embarrasingly condescending garbage -- a 1,200-word complete history of the city the reporter visited once.

Of course, things could be worse. The Monterey Herald, another former Knight Ridder paper recently acquired by Media News, has only reporter covering Monterey, and only half-time at that.

This just in

A reader sends the following...

CITY FINALLY TRAPS A SQUIRREL!

And they say it's the PRIME SUSPECT! How did they know? Was it the tattoos? The cigarette hanging precariously from it's mouth? The miniature toy Harley hiding behind the tree?

As I was driving down Castro, I actually saw the police frisk it for weapons, break out the cuffs and throw it in the back seat. There was an angry lynch mob holding bats and rocks. Women beating their chests. Children crying. Oh Jon, the HORROR!

Make that "not hiring"

Palo Alto Weekly A&E Editor Rebecca Wallace, who also happens to be Embarcadero Publishing's sole competent blogger, is holding a caption contest for Laurie Naiman's photo of Sears Mountain View.

Just what L.A. needs

More highway lanes.

Maybe that's unfair (but, hey, this is a blog). 405 definitely could use a carpool lane. In fact, I think it would even be worth it for California taxpayers to spring for the cost of one. How much do new signs and some white paint cost?

Adding another lane to the highway, besides being shortsighted and defeating the purpose of a carpool lane (to discourage solo driving), would be especially ironic/infuriating given that is less than a mile away from Westwood Village, where Michael Dukakis just became the first person in history to convince Los Angeles leaders that they should dedicate less land to cars.

They would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling adults

The mystery of the headless Los Altos Hills cows reads like a Scooby Doo episode in reverse. The vagrants terrorizing the local populace for no apparent reason are teenagers, while the motley crue of detectives who implausibly solve the case are adults.

Hard to say this story isn't still amusing, but aren't we forgetting who the real criminals are?

Bomb scare at the Coffee Bean

The police are keeping people away from the intersection of Weyburn and Gayley (the bomb squad is on the scene right now), so, since I can't go get dinner and don't really feel like cooking, get ready for a flurry of posts.

UPDATE 9:26 P.M.: Something just blew up.

Welcome disappointed perverts

As many of you know, I've long been upset about all of the impostor Jon Wieners out there that are more famous than I am. So after a recent talk with Jesse Lewin, I've decided to do some shameless Mike Cassidy-style self-promotion. Okay, fine, I'm somewhat ashamed of it.

As a first step, I installed a handy stat counter on the site. The best thing about this tool is seeing the stray search terms that lead unsuspecting surfers from all over the world to Nemesis of Evil.

Three of my recent favorites:

1. Places to visit in Somalia -- And BigDra thought that nobody read the foreign dispatches.
2. Taser vagina -- I blame Erik Koland for this one.
3. Rebecca Wallace porn -- This led to the main page, even though I had already removed both NOE's porn coverage and a link to Palo Alto Weekly arts and entertainment editor Rebecca Wallace's blog.

You know what? As long as we're linking to everyone and their mothers, Mountain View Voice managing editor Don Frances.

An unnecessarily complicated attempt to brag about my sister without sacrificing my usual mean-spiritedness

We here at NOE seek to be educational as well as entertaining, so here are some tips for aspiring journalists:

1) Myspace is not a source. But if you for some decide to use it as such, say, for an obituary about a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and it tells you that the sergeant was actually employed as a papier machet artist, and -- not getting the joke -- you print that information without verifying it, don't get defensive when the grieving family calls and ask you to correct what you've written.

(To be fair to the Merc, they corrected the story and ran an excellent article excellent article by Patrick May about Will Sigua's memorial celebration.)

2) If you are going to run an article about an award your paper won, say, for a story written by my sister Jocelyn, you should probably have the article on-line somewhere so that people don't have to go to an anti-immigration message board to read it.

3) Keep your opinions about squirrels to yourself.

So far, off to a bad start

As if knocking over my cereal this morning weren't enough of a bad omen to begin the week, the Nixon dollar is coming.

If anyone wants to design a Bush $1,000 or a Hoover penny, I'll be happy to post the images here.

R.I.P. Will Sigua

Los Altos grieves today for Will Sigua, who died in a firefight in northern Iraq Wednesday.


I won't try to encapsulate his life here, but the support that (I've heard) the community has been displaying makes me proud of my hometown, and should be a source of both comfort and pride to his family. Family friends and visitors have been pouring in, some from many hours away. Former coaches have been calling. The fifth-graders from Santa Rita, with whom Will kept in regular touch, delivered a banner that they made for him when they learned the news.

Though we owe them much more, our thoughts and prayers are with the Siguas.

[UPDATE: Feb. 2, 8:55 p.m]. Will's mother released a statement about Will to the press, saying "he loved serving in the 82nd Airborne" and that he "believed his unit would make a difference."

The AP is reporting that Will's patrol was attacked in a town called Bayji. In the story, Will's commanding officer describes him as "the type of leader you want your men to be."

[UPDATE: Feb. 3, 10:26 a.m.] The Mercury has a very touching story this morning about Will, featuring some of his correspondence with his mother.

Will's friends have been paying their respects on his myspace page. From his commanding officers:

"From the moment he was an E-5, he held the position of squad leader—the toughest and most rewarding job in the Army. He kept his men safe and shared their hardships with them; he was truly an exemplary leader."

[UPDATE: Feb. 8, 8:41 a.m.] Will's memorial service is scheduled for 3:30 Friday at the Crowne Plaza in Palo Alto. Donations can be made to the William Sigua Memorial Fund, c/o the Los Altos Community Foundation, 183 Hillview Ave., Los Altos 94022.

Also, the Town Crier article is up, with a few more comments from Will's friends. I was half-expecting to find an apology for the paper's thoughtless beating of the drums for war four years ago. Maybe next week.

[UPDATE: Feb. 27] Kudos to the L.A. Times for running a great article about Will this weekend, based on an interview with David and stories from his memorial service. It leaves out the part about four different girls referring to him as their first boyfriend, but it's great nonetheless.

Kids Play Chase on Freeways Get Smashed

This just in from the USC Department of the Obvious: Living near freeways is not good.

From Thomas Maugh's article in the L.A. Times:

"In the largest and longest study of its kind, USC researchers have found that children living near busy highways have significant impairments in the development of their lungs that can lead to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives."

Environmental injustice. Not just for poor neighborhoods anymore. Towards the end of the story, Maughs delivers the punchline:

"All the researchers conceded that there is little that can be done to mitigate the effects of the traffic pollution now."

Little other than, oh I don't know, maybe drive less?

(Points to anyone who gets the reference in the title. "You like to make obscure references," while true, is not a valid answer.)

How Many Britishers Are There in China?

During my previous foray into journalism (at Foreign Policy magazine in DC), I was told never to use anything in a British newspaper to fact-check an article. Apparently there are more lenient standards for what gets printed in a newspaper in the UK than in the states.

I was reminded of this today while reading the Guardian, which was honored last year as newspaper of the year by the British Press Association. An article about Britons abroad asserted that there are approximately 3.5 million British citizens living in China. I found this curious because a BBC article on the same subject estimates 36,000 British ex-pats living in China. Strange that the Guardian figure is 100 times larger than the BBC's. Both articles note that roughly one in ten Britishers lives outside of the UK. However, if there actually are 3.5 million British citizens in China, then the numbers just don't add up right. There would have to be more than one in ten abroad.

Perhaps we should see how many Britishers the Guardian thinks there are in "Mauretania." According to the BBC, there are 1600 Britishers in Mauritania. So...roughly 160,000?

Goodbye to the Grant Road Farm (for now)

Add the Grant Road Farm to the list of places that once made growing up in Los Altos but now no longer exist. According to Daniel Debolt's story in this week's Mountain View Voice:

In a surprise move, the owners of the city's beloved Grant Road farm told the Schmitz family that it is time to leave the property — in all likelihood to pave the way for a housing tract proposed by SummerHill Homes last year.

I don't quite get the part about this being a surprise. Potential buyers had been making offers on the property for years before the owners finally closed the deal with Summerhill. David Schmitz himself told Debolt last summer that he realized the farm could be sold at any time. And when I wrote about the sale a year ago, the headline began with the word "finally." Schmitz seems at least somewhat hopeful about the future, but its not clear whether he's talking about the efforts of the Mountain View Farmlands group.

Meanwhile, the friends of the Rengstorff House (now out at Shoreline Park), are planning to save the farm's windmill. I can't decide if this is touchingly appropriate or just pathetic, like NASA's plan to mark the historical significance of Hangar One by drawing a chalk outline around its base.

Reprieve for apron parkers

Parking enforcement officers are delaying a plan to ticket "apron parking" in Westwood Village until the end of the spring quarter, according to an uncomfirmed report in the Daily Bruin this week.

This, of course, is a small setback for Michael Dukakis, Democratic nominee for President turned solver of local parking problems. It also, unfortunately, complicates Flexcar's plan to capitalize on the crackdown by heavily recruiting UCLA students.

Dukakis, at least, is not letting this development temper his commitment to public service. A Daily Bruin letter-writer spotted Dukakis picking up trash on his way to school this week.

At right: Dukakis overcomes reputation as soft on crime
and prepares to ticket apron parkers himself.

Haikus for the Hills

Dear secessionists,
Neener neener neener. Love,
Bullis alumni.

County board rejects
racist redistricting plan.
Too many white kids.

Lowland and Hill folk,
can't we all just get along?
We are all still rich.

The Town Crier is keeping me down

Before I became a doctor of journalism, I had a hobby of writing at least one letter every week, to reporters, businesses or elected officials. One day, I thought, I'd compile them in a book called Jon Complains.

The Los Altos Town Crier ran about half of my newest installment, which criticizes the paper for rewriting local history in order to project its own image of my hometown. Ironically, the paper (perhaps for space) entirely cut out the portion of the letter where I accuse them of being silent on the story of Gregory Wagner. Here's the text of the original letter:

Dear Editor,

I enjoyed your year-in-review (Dec. 27) but was disappointed to see the paper's news judgment once again clouded by the publisher's politics. You wrote that the city council's rejection of a gay pride day proclamation drew fierce criticism "mostly from outside Los Altos." This is wishful thinking at best, and makes the Town Crier look like it's sticking its head in the sand. Students, business leaders, churchgoers and others from Los Altos all mobilized in opposition to the city council's action. The resulting parade was one of the largest political demonstrations in the history of the town. [The rest of the letter did not make it in]. The article should have read that the criticism came "mostly from outside the pages of this newspaper."

Additionally, it was a glaring omission to once again leave out any mention of Gregory Wagner, one of two Los Altos youth leaders sent to prison this year for child molestation. It appears that the Town Crier would prefer to ignore anything that might reflect poorly on its coverage area, a goal made easier by the departure of those reporters who fought to keep the story in the paper. But the Wagner story has another side that is important for the community to recognize. That side of the story is about the former scouts whose courage in facing and talking about their past helped bring Wagner to justice. By repeatedly downplaying the story, the Town Crier abandoned those who most deserved the community's support.

Sincerely,

Jon Wiener

Sudanese Police AKA Darfur Party Poopers

Sudanese "security forces" have been accused of a lot of horrible things in the "troubled" Darfur region. However, this time, they may be in the right. Apparently they broke up a party that was thrown by African Union peacekeepers and UN personnel the other day. UN workers complained of being detained and assaulted.

But, hey, you know what? If you want to party, don't go do it where the genoicide is at. And, if you do, don't be surprised if you catch a little beat-down.

Here's a safer alternative: wait until your little tour of duty is over and, when you're home, go use that generous UN salary of yours to buy yourself some booze. Then go drink it somewhere where there isn't sharia law or people dying all around you. Though it may be hard to find some AU soldiers to party with...

Standing up for their right to hit babies

Sally Lieber's plan to ban spanking children younger than three is probably not going to pass the State assembly, would be incredibly difficult to enforce and arguably will distract the legislature from more important legislative work.

But that's not what its detractors are saying. Instead, they are attacking Lieber, a former Mayor of Mountain View and the second ranking Democrat in the assembly, for being childless. (I'm still waiting for Tony Snow and Fox News to leap to her defense).

It turns out that Americans have a surprising predilection for hitting small children. At Palo Alto Online, Diana Diamond proudly tells the story about a "swat" she gave to her 13-month old, which doesn't seem like the kind of thing most people would brag about.

UCLA faces lawsuit for Taser incident

The UCLA student Tasered multiple times for his failure to show idea is suing UCLA for violating his civil rights. Mostafa Tabatabainejad's complaint, which is supposedly on the Daily Bruin Web site somewhere (if anybody can find it, let me know), includes allegations of excessive force, battery and, curiously, an American with Disabilities Act violation.

Not surprisingly, the account of the incident in the complaint looks even worse than the original story. According to the complaint (or at least Sara Taylor's description of it in today's Daily Bruin), UCPD officer Terrence Duren fired the Taser more than once after Tabatabainejad was already in handcuffs.

Notably, the complaint does not raise an issue of racial profiling, an accusation which would seem difficult to prove given the facts of this case. I expect that a lot of people are likely to lose interest as a result. But the constitutional question has more significant ramifications. If Tabatabainejad can resist the temptation to settle and end up prevailing on that issue, it will put a lot of pressure on police departments across the state to prohibit the use of Tasers on suspects who are passively resisting.

Acting Chancellor Norm Abrams has released a rather bland statement, saying "We regret that Mostafa Tabatabainejad has filed a lawsuit at this time," and asking everyone to wait for the results of an independent investigation. No word yet on when those will be coming.

Add a circle of hell for the auto racers

People have long spoken out against the Paris-Dakar rally car race, but this may be the first time the Vatican has joined them. I don't usually agree with the Vatican and I won't make a habit out of it, but it's good to see it finally weighing in on the right side of something. The Vatican newspaper strongly condemned the rally Tuesday in an article called "Paris-Dakar: The Bloody Race of Irresponsibility."

The race is a curiosity for most Americans, but is, for some reason, considered a legitimate sport in Europe. We have a similar event, called the Baja 1000, where we tear up the closest foreign desert. But that's a Cannonball Run-style race of eccentric millionaires and other nutbags with a perverted sense of adventure.

The Paris-Dakar, on the other hand, is a race for "professionals" driving multi-million dollar prototypes from Europe and Japan's top car companies. The contestants, needless to say, are almost all Europeans (not counting South African Dirk von Zitzewitz). They race through some of the most impoverished communities on earth endangering anyone who might be crossing the "track" (i.e. the dirt road near their home) and sometimes wind up in horrific crashes that kill locals and competitors alike. If a prototype car crashes and the team is unable to repair it, they are under instructions to torch it, so as to prevent Malian villagers from taking note of the design and starting their own car company to rival BMW.

Some of the places that the rally course passes through are so forsaken by the press that even spelling their names is a challenge. Today's edition of the Guardian (UK) featured photos from "Mauretania," a mistake that appeared twice, including once in the headline, even though a map had the correct spelling.

Another vanity museum for Mountain View

Let's nip this in the bud before it goes any further: John Mozart is not a "car mogul." Just like I am not a baseball card mogul.

Mozart, who I am sure is a perfectly nice guy even if his son did used to get rides to Bullis in what I believe was a Rolls Royce, is a rich developer who collects fancy old cars. Fine, good for him. But please, let's not give his plan to show off those cars any more attention than absolutely necessary. We don't need to be encouraging this sort of behavior.

Rose-colored cataracts in Los Altos

I love playgrounds as much as the next guy. I even campaigned for student body president in college on a platform of "No homework, longer recess," and promised to install a twisty slide if elected. (I wasn't). I'm just not sure that the fact that Los Altos is getting some new playground equipment is one of the biggest stories of the coming year.

On the other hand, we got a green light for our baby-killing policies

UCLA has "at least one policy" that substantially restricts freedom of speech, including, apparently, the freedom of reporters to explain what the hell they're talking about.

I thought the speech policy in question, bizarrely never mentioned in the front-page story in today's Daily Bruin, might be the one that prohibits hanging signs out from the windows in college-owned housing.

I'm sympathetic to those who think that colleges can do students a disservice by trying to protect them from challenging, offensive or even stupid views, especially since my brief turn as the campus racist at Williams. I suspect the reason so many of my fellow alumni become Republicans is that few of us had to justify our beliefs in college. When we eventually discover that those beliefs have weaknesses, some people feel betrayed or perhaps wiser.

But Freedom and Individual Rights in Education, the group who issued the report cited in the Daily Bruin article, doesn't specify how UCLA's student codes are illegal. That is the reason the article doesn't specify which code it is or how it infringes on free speech. The blanket allegations make it close to impossible to come up with an informed response. The report, it's worth noting, was already at least six months out of date when it was published in December, as it still listed Albert Carnesale as chancellor.

David Lazar is about to blow your mind

Over at Gold Star Mother Speaks Out, Karen Meredith is pleading with readers to write to Congress in opposition of the President's call for an escalation in Iraq. I'll probably do that myself, but first I figured I'd make fun of this schmuck named David Lazar who writes for the undergraduate Daily Bruin here at UCLA.

Iraqis can be unified through separation

Here we go. Try to look past the non-sequiturs, as they'll distract you from the brilliance of his arguments.

Saddam Hussein's execution is a pivotal event, one which calls for a re-evaluation of the positive consequences of the American-led invasion of Iraq, as well as our present strategy of attempting to rebuild Iraq.

It's pivotal because now we can finally settle the question of whether those positive consequences have been just awesome or super-awesome.

The U.S. has achieved several crucial accomplishments in this war, primarily the liberation of millions of people, which are downplayed in the pessimistic media environment as most reports focus on the ongoing sectarian violence.

So far, it looks like super-awesome.

The current violence, though, requires that we consider a more comprehensive political solution than simply deciding whether to increase or decrease the number of U.S. troops. Rather than establishing a single democracy which forces bitterly warring sects together, it should instead consider more of a loose confederation with autonomy for each group.

We. It. The important thing is to get these bitterly warring sects out of a republic and into a confederation.

Within hours of Hussein's execution -- a seemingly key positive event -- media outlets reported that the event could serve to increase violence, something that has yet to be clearly manifest.

Can you believe the nerve of these cut-and-runners?

But the same reporters have been spreading these claims for some time, playing up reports that the removal of Hussein's regime and the continued American presence destabilizes the region into open violence. Some even suggest that Iraq was more peaceful under Hussein's brutal regime.

But you'll show them, won't you?

Yet thousands died in the mass graves of Hussein's brutal regime, including 5,000 Kurdish villagers killed in a single 1988 attack. Some accounts put the total number murdered under Hussein's regime at more than 200,000.

For comparison, IraqBodyCount.org puts the number of Iraqis killed since the U.S. invasion between 53,000 and 59,000, and even that number may be inflated due to its heavy reliance on unofficial eyewitness accounts.

Liberal estimates of the number of Iraqis who died under 25 years of Saddam exceed the conservative estimates of Iraqis who have died from the violence in the nearly four years since the U.S. invaded. Definitely super-awesome.

Hussein's government-sanctioned killings have been decisively put to an end. Many of his murders occurred under a brutally enforced veil of secrecy in which his opponents simply disappeared.

Probably just awesome. The government-sanctioned killings still go on but they are no longer Hussein's government-sanctioned killings, plus the bodies are no longer being hidden.

The situation is far more positive than media reports let on; there is no question that Iraq is far better off than it was under Hussein.

Too bad awesomeness doesn't sell.

There is the lower death toll achieved by removing a tyrant who massacred his own people and who invaded Kuwait. The U.S. eliminated an exporter of terror -- Hussein harbored terrorists and funded suicide attacks in Israel. In addition, Iraqis now enjoy priceless freedoms, as well as healthy economic growth, which the Global Insight firm estimates had a gross domestic product growth rate of 17 percent for 2005.

Let that sink in for a while. ... Iraq had a gross domestic product growth rate of 17 percent for 2005. 17 percent! I'd like to see the Defeatocrats try to spin that one.

...But, in light of ongoing violence, rather than continuing to forge a country from such fundamentally different groups such as Sunnis and Shiites, the U.S. should look into creating a confederacy in which each of the sects would be largely autonomous....

David Lazar took a class on Iraq once. Or maybe he looked on Wikipedia. Either way, he knows about Iraq.

There is some precedent for such a system of representation based on consensus between self-governing regions. Termed consociational democracy by political scientists, the system seeks to resolve struggles for control between ethnic groups within a country, according to Michael Thies, assistant professor of political science at UCLA. He mentioned Belgium, Switzerland and Lebanon as possible examples of the strategy's success.

We should probably call it New Lebanon. By the way, David Lazar also knows what "consociational democracy" means.

The fact that the control over oil is at the center of disputes lends itself to a relatively easy compromise. According to Thies, "Oil is a resource that is sold for money, which can be distributed easily, since it is infinitely divisible."

Wait, there's oil there? Perfect. I can't even think of the last time a dispute over oil wasn't easily resolved.

Establishing a system of this sort would not be admitting defeat, but it would be acknowledging past errors -- which the U.S. did not commit -- in the creation and brutal enforcement of the borders of a country which only really existed on paper.

As long as everyone agrees that we didn't make any mistakes or lose or anything like that.

Lasting peace would then be within reach because, as the cliche goes, good fences make good neighbors.

What do awesome fences make?

Sam Bennion wants to give you a special treat

That's NOE's favorite Mormon channeling Teddy Pendergrass, and, as promised, making their panties drop at the American Legion Hall in Redwood City on Friday night. This performance was immediately followed by me singing "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," by the Animals. Speaking of which, here's a short but growing list of songs I'd recommend against performing on karaoke night at the American Legion Hall:

1) Eve of Destruction, Barry Maguire
2) Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen
3) We Gotta Get Out of This Place, The Animals

How to write a column in five steps

1) Open your gmail account.
2) Click on the Ask Yahoo! link across the top of your inbox.
3) Click on a random embedded link to make it look like you did further research.
4) Flesh out the column by copying and pasting an e-mail from a reader. Say it is your New Year's resolution.
5) Congratulations. You are now a Professional Journalist.

2006: The year our peace was shattered by a bunch of gays

The Town Crier is making one last effort to remind readers of all the good news in Los Altos in 2006.

"Some stories didn't impact schools or pocketbooks yet made big headlines, such as the controversy over a Los Altos City Council move not to issue proclamations pertaining to sexual orientation - an action that seemed in response to previous Los Altos High School student requests for a Gay Pride Day. Reaction, mostly from outside Los Altos, was fierce, leading to a gay pride parade downtown..."

I suppose someone at the Town Crier might be able to explain how a decision made specifically in response to a request from a Los Altos High School student group "didn't impact schools." But the only way they could believe that the resulting negative reaction did not come from within the city would be if they got their information solely from the paper's editorial pages. Besides the students, plenty of business owners and local politicians organized in opposition to the council's decision. The members of a local church marched in support. And let's not ignore the influence of this blog.

Relatedly, for the second year in a row, the story of a Los Altos Hills scoutmaster confessing to nine counts of molestation apparently was not worthy of a mention in the year in review. I'm sure this is purely a news judgment that this story is less important than the other items that did make it in, such as the monthly fee for a sewer connection increasing by $2.75 per home.

Yet another reason to visit Somalia now

Somalia has always been at or near the top of places I want to visit. The Horn of Africa has so much to offer and Somalia in particular -- over 1,000 km of coastline on the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, quick, easy, affordable citizenship, and, as if that wasn't enough, the price of an AK-47 has just dropped from $300 to only $120.

After dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, the country descended into chaos as regional warlords divvied up the country. About 6 months ago, the Union of Islamic Courts took control of the capital and brought a measure of stability along strict enforcement of Draconian laws. However, now the fledgling government attempts to establish itself further after wresting control of the capital city, Mogadishu, from the Union of Islamic courts last week with the help of the Ethiopian military and US financing. The government now wants citizens to turn in their arms. Since the government did not offer financial incentive to do so, many have taken to selling off their guns rather than surrendering them to the government and not seeing any cash in return. This has flooded the Mogadishu arms market, which led to the fall in prices.

So, instead of heading to Wal-Mart for your gun needs, why not take a vacation to Somalia? You'll get more firepower than anything legally available outside of Nevada at a good price as well as the chance to pick up dual citizenship and hit up the beach - just keep an eye out for the pirates.

Introducing NOE's foreign correspondent

One of Nemesis of Evil's goals this year (besides being more less reactive when it comes to relationships) is to give readers news about a broader range of topics (beyond, say, what I did the previous night). To that end, it is my pleasure to introduce NOE's first correspondent, former Los Altos High School valedictorian and Bullis class of 1992 graduate BigDra. Many readers will already be familiar with his regular comments and his burrito-making abilities.

BigDra's responsibilities as foreign correspondent will include third-world dictatorships, the expatriate community and how these things relate to our time at Bullis Elementary. He has been to nearly 60 countries, and once wrote of a Mexican state, "This place is not different enough to be interesting, just different enough to be annoying."

So, to paraphrase President Bush: Drew, I guess you're the best asshole who knows about the world. Tell us why we should care about Turkmenistan.

Why we loved Greg Perry

So it has come to this for Greg Perry. The local paper can not find a single person to offer a comment in its farewell article. A more likely explanation is that the Voice never bothered to ask, but it doesn't take much imagination to see Perry's colleagues invoking the "if you can't say anything nice" rule.

In his one term on the seven-member city council, Perry was alone on the losing side of so many votes that my coworkers and I began using the phrase "6 to Perry" as a shorthand description of council decisions. Perry proposed more ordinances than anyone else, falling just short in two of his most controversial attempts -- proposals to eliminate the prevailing wage requirement for city construction contracts and the affordability taxes on new housing developments. He accused council candidates of ethical misconduct, questioned fellow members' motives and commitment, and criticized city staff more often than others. He exposed the free VIP tickets city council members receive for Shoreline Amphitheatre concerts, and took his job so seriously that he once reported $6.25 worth of buttons as a campaign contribution.

At one point or another, Perry antagonized pretty much every interest group in the city. His behavior and outspokenness alienated his colleagues, who often trashed him in the elevator or even on the dais. But it made him popular with reporters (whom he was always quick to call back). The Mercury ran a biographical story about Perry in which it embarrassingly dubbed him "Mr. Fight City Hall, From Within." And, after this story, a jealous colleague of his introduced me to a city staffer as "the reporter from the Mountain View Greg Perry."

But it wasn't just that Perry was always good for a quote or a story idea. He was also the kind of diligent public servant society needs. He more than once put his political career on the line when he cared about an issue, and frequently paid a price for it. Admirably, though, the losses never seemed to discourage him from trying again.

And in looking back at his four years on the council, it's important not to lose sight of his victories. At a time when few public officials had the courage to oppose VTA's push for a BART extension, Perry was calling attention to serious concerns about the agency's funding plans. And long before neighboring condo owners organized an effective opposition to the location of the city's child care center, Perry was speaking up on behalf of Rengstorff Park. And he was a constant force pushing the council towards its defining achievement (or sin, depending on whom you ask) -- the significant increase in the number and density of new housing projects.

Sure, he may have lost more votes than anybody else, he may have been distrustful at times and politically tone-deaf at others, and he may have more than occasionally made a mountain out of a molehill, but the people of Mountain View should thank Greg Perry. They were lucky to have someone so dedicated to serving the community.

Wiener Family Holiday Letter 2006

Dear Friends (and blog readers),

Fifty years from now, when history textbooks will be written by those with a vague understanding of 9th-grade geometry, 2006 will be remembered as a point of inflection. Like Jethro Tull once predicted would happen to a train, the spread of evil across the nation and the world did not stop, but it did slow down. [Sentences deleted in light of Letter's prospective interviews with the federal government].

Meanwhile, states continued to amend their constitutions to outlaw gay marriage, but those who waste the nation’s time on such vitriolic demagoguery met defeat for the first time, and in Arizona of all places. Others continued to react, defensibly, to the Supreme Court's Kelo decision by moving to ban the use of eminent domain for private economic development. Many activists tried to capitalize on the public’s disgust with corporate welfare by coupling such bans with crippling restrictions on environmental regulations, but the good people of California and Idaho saw through the ploy.

But we here at the Holiday Letter don’t want to waste your time telling you things you already know. We want to waste your time telling you about ourselves.

In the Wiener household, 2006 will always be known as The Year Our Fourth Cousin Emunah And Her Allergies Kept Us From Finally Getting A Dog.

In addition, Karen and Bruce became empty-nesters, after 29 years with at least one child at home (26 with two). This fall, they celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary at Incline Village in Lake Tahoe. Said Bruce, “You know, things were actually pretty good before you came along.” More on him, and Karen, later.

Matthew, whom many of you may remember from previous letters as Bubba, graduated from Los Altos High School this June, ending a 15-year run of Eagle Wieners. Despite breaking his wrist and getting kicked off the swim team (only to be let back on by order of the school administration), he was named co-Athlete of the Year for the senior class and also earned the inaugural Ronald Grady Burke scholarship for leadership on his sports teams and in the community. “I feel like I’ve been pretty awesome this year,” said Bubba. “Haven’t I?” This summer, he introduced the town children to water polo and once again worked as a lifeguard. And in September, he started his freshman year at UCLA, where he played on the club water polo team, rushed a fraternity and still managed to get a higher GPA than the Letter ever did. However, the Letter does not remember having to buy his friends. Did the Letter mention that Bubba joined a fraternity? Cause he did.

Andy wrote an honors thesis, took the LSAT and graduated summa cum laude from Brown this spring. (Everybody but Emunah came. Although, in her defense, she did have Red Sox tickets). Then he put it in cruise control for the next six months, tutoring SAT classes and getting good at frisbee golf. Right now, he’s lying on a beach in Peru with his girlfriend Annie, and probably will still be doing so by the time you read this. Their “plan” is to go to Buenos Aires with his girlfriend Annie and teach English, despite the fact that a large percentage of the residents of that city who can afford to learn English already have. As per usual, readers of the Letter will miss out on the most interesting stories about Andy’s year under the terms of various confidentiality agreements.

Jon, in the words of a respected neighbor and friend, “quit f***ing around” and finally moved out of his bedroom and enrolled in law school. Unfortunately for Bubba’s efforts to change his name to Matthew, Jon is also at UCLA. Living in Los Angeles is probably some sort of karmic payback for the bitterness Jon spread on his blog this year. Jon further cut his umbilical cord to Los Altos by leaving the Western Hemisphere for the first time and spending three weeks aimlessly wandering around Europe. He also added left ankle to the list of body parts that his brothers cite as evidence that his body is broken.

Joc still writes about the plight of the poor for the Sacramento Bee, which recently decided it doesn’t want its readers to have to think about the plight of the poor. “Try to avoid getting me fired,” said Joc. She still enjoys turning happy stories into sad ones, such as the one about a homeless man who tracked down two young men who attacked him and brought them to justice (she focused on the effects of the violence on the attackers’ families). And she continues to date Will, who spent the year publishing hatchet jobs on federal judges simply for illegally ruling on cases in which they had secret financial interests or giving a few thousand bucks to the people who are supposed to be evaluating their credentials. Joc and Will went to the Kentucky Derby together and acted like dandies. Afterwards they toured rural Appalachia and mocked its newspapers.

Karen has asked the Letter to highlight “my desire to make the world a better place. For women.” Karen also plans to rekindle her interest in her job teaching resource classes at Gunn High School. To aid her in achieving this goal, her students would be well advised to act more like stocks – talk back less and be easier to trade over the computer. Karen recently learned how to text message and sends a nightly note to Bubba (and a monthly one to Jon).

Bruce turned 60 this year, and the family celebrated with a trip to a surprise location in July. This was particularly frustrating for Bruce, who hates it when he doesn’t know everybody else’s business, let alone his own. Ultimately, the family arrived in San Diego, joined by Emunah, Will, Bruce’s sister Carol and her children. The highlight of the weekend came when Bruce saw his nephew Joey floating out to sea, swam out to him and used his superior shouting ability to attract the attention of a nearby surfer. In a related story, Bruce reneged on his agreement with the Letter to become a water polo referee. He will undoubtedly blame this on someone else, namely Jon, who can tell Bruce when the certification clinics are scheduled but cannot attend them on his behalf.

Doris, known to all as Gammy, saw the most changes this year. After recovering from a broken hip, Gammy has moved into the assisted living facility at the Hyatt in Palo Alto. “I have nothing special to say other than that I’m a very proud grandmother,” says Doris, who has apparently yet to read the Letter.

Best wishes from all of us for a 2007 marked by good health, peace of mind, and, as always, the triumph of the opposition.

Sincerely,

The Wieners

Person of the year: My dad

Time magazine's annual Person of the Year edition arrived yesterday. For those that haven't seen it (spoiler alert), the cover consists of a reflective strip, with a caption underneath that says "You. Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world."

Kudos to Time for figuring out that its readers are so self-absorbed that we would cancel our subscriptions if it didn't name us all persons of the year. (If Dustin Picasso is reading, you can not put this on your resume).

But, unfortunately, the mirrored material on the front is rather cheap. So when my dad got the magazine, he stared at it for over a minute. "Who is that?" he asked.

Thanks to Pat Neal for pointing out the likelihood that Time's "decision" committee got the idea while getting high and watching the Big Lebowski.

Andronico's bans bellringers

Andronico's has jumped ahead in the race to be the snottiest establishment in Los Altos, with an unprecedented move to ban Salvation Army bellringers this Christmas. As we wait for Bill O'Reilly to seize upon this as further evidence of "San Francisco Values" and the "War on Christmas," let's take a quick look at the scoreboard in the grocery store division:

1) Andronico's
2) Draeger's
3) Whole Foods

The Duke of Westwood

John Kerry. Al Gore. George Bush I. Jimmy Carter. You probably have have heard from these presidential runners-up recently. Some of you may even have a vague notion of what Walter Mondale and Bob Dole have been doing with their free time. Michael Dukakis is a different story.

On the night Dukakis lost the 1988 election, I echoed the chants of the audience at his concession speech by defiantly scrawling a block-letter " '92 " in pencil on the wall in my bedroom (where it still visible). But it was not to be. Dukakis did not run again, and few, outside of Massachusetts or the community of Amtrak aficionados, would ever hear from him again.

Until now. Dukakis is capping off his post-candidacy political "career" by sparring with spoiled UCLA undergrads over so-called apron parking in North Westwood Village (a college town apparently designed by 16-year olds). Apron parking, which is illegal in California, basically works like this: landlords sell tenants the right to park their cars in front of their apartments with their noses in the driveway and their butts in the street. This creates a ridiculous situation in which landlords are renting out land they don't own for illegal uses and in the process encouraging driving and creating hazards for disabled residents and pedestrians. But the police have not enforced the law out of fear of inconveniencing those students who can't be bothered to walk, bike or ride the bus the mile or so to campus.

Some students, like those on the editorial board of the Daily Bruin, say things should stay this way, because, well, no good reason, but we really want to be able to keep our cars wherever we want. Maybe it is unfair to students who are in the middle of their lease terms and are unlikely to get a rent abatement from their landlords. But that's a problem between the students and the landlords, not a reason to ignore the law and dedicate every possible square inch of Los Angeles to parking spaces. It shouldn't take a former presidential candidate to explain that.

Remembering a hero

1st Lieutenant Nate Krissoff, U.S.M.C.
1981-2006

It is easy to look at Nate Krissoff's life and call him a hero because of what he accomplished. He was a tremendous athlete -- captain of the water polo and swim teams at Williams, a phenomenal skier and world class kayaker. He was studious and ambitious, becoming commissioned as a marine officer and serving as a counterintelligence officer for his battalion in Okinawa.

But Nate's heroism was more subtle than that. It was in many ways his defining personality trait. It derived from the unfailingly loyalty he showed to friends and family, the courage he demonstrated in the face of adversity, the seriousness with which he approached life and the joy he took in everything he did. Few of us will ever even hope to match his deeds. But all of us can aspire to those characteristics that made him what he was.

To a friend and hero. Rest in peace.

Read more about Nate:
Reno-Gazette Journal, 12/12: Reno Marine killed in Iraq
Monterey County Herald, 12/12: Stevenson grad killed in Iraq
Sierra Sun, 12/13: Son of area physician dies in Iraq roadside bombing
North Adams Transcript, 12/13: Williams grad killed in Iraq


UPDATE 5/26/07: The North Tahoe Bonanza reported last week that Nate has been awarded the Navy and Marine Commendation Medal with the Combat Distinguishing Device for Valor.

The Mercury News is a slu-ut

Hola Amigos.

Please accept my apologies for my failure to comment in recent weeks on all the big local news: An anonymous water polo teammate's devious scam finally led to the collapse of Tower Records. My fellow UCLA students organized a protest against the police department's multiple uses of a Taser on an unarmed and non-violent student only to implore rally-goers to "talk to your parents [and] have them call the chancellor." (Viva la revolucion). San Jose Mercury News reporters were told to wait by their phones to find out if they would keep their jobs. And the corner bar across the street from my apartment changed ownership but still refused to add a single window.

Yes, much has gone unremarked. Luckily for you all, today's Mercury News has something that is just too good for even a diligent student like yours truly to pass up without commentary.

According to the story, Stephanie Herrerra -- a "Christian mother with values" -- was terribly mortified to discover the toy Little Mermaid doll she bought her daughter as a present was saying impolite things about her daughter's sexual habits. Herrerra was appalled, but the worst part is that now her daugher got stuck with some lame nativity scene instead.

The funny part about this story is that it took an astute reader to point out the very strong possibility that Herrerra is using the Merc in order to drive up the price for the dolls she had already been planning to sell on E-bay. I suppose it's possible the writer may have been trying to hint at that in the story as a way of getting back at whoever assigned it to her. Or maybe debasing the paper is some new hardball strategy in the labor negotiations with MediaNews. Still, somebody should have caught this before the story ran.

Not so long ago, the Mercury was shining light on the toxicity of consumer electronic waste and linking the CIA to the spread of crack in the inner-city. Now it is giving ink to small-time con artists like Herrerra and Anna Ayala, the woman who falsely claimed to find a finger in her bowl of Wendy's chili. Ayala got on the front page at least 11 times last year. So we probably haven't heard the last of Herrerra.