Re-ducks

I almost missed it, but this:

,

just happened again.

Does anybody know if there is a reason the openings in storm drain grates are duckling-sized?

Journalism is the new baseball

Two weeks ago, the law firm where I am working this summer took us to Palo Alto Bowl. Shamefully, I rolled an 85 and a 90. My team averaged 107, which, while far better than my own scores, should not have been good enough for us to finish third among the 10 teams that were there.

The Palo Alto Daily News -- which is not actually located in Palo Alto, contains a regular feature dedicated to unsourced rumors, and has gotten so bad even by its own standards that its founders have started a competing paper -- pulled off a similar feat last week, winning 17 awards from the Peninsula Press Club, including one for general excellence. (I know what you're thinking, but there was not a category for Falsest Story.)

This may actually be even less impressive than our bowling prize, as more than 43 percent of entries in this contest win an award. (I have not found out how many the Daily submitted). As Michael Lewis once said about major league baseball front offices, "there really is no level of incompetence that won't be tolerated."

UPDATE, 6/16: I forgot to mention the paper's history of plagiarism.

Local News Almost as Bad as LATC...Almost

So there's an oil spill off the coast of Buenos Aires, but you wouldn't know it by watching local news here. After being sent the BBC article by a friend, I flipped to the numerous local news channels available here. I saw plenty about the continuing farm protests and also an interesting piece on a photo of Pamela Anderson without make-up. But nothing about the oil spill...

"The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination."

Tensions are rising (with an assist to the Daily News) over a rejected proposal to discuss term limits for board members at next week's joint meeting between the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District board and the Los Altos City Council. Just imagine what they will say when they actually do discuss something.

Next Monday's meeting will feature a long-awaited decision on the high school district's request for the city to do something about all those damn taco trucks.

Council member Ron Packard, whose position on this issue won him the blog's endorsement in the fall, e-mailed his reasons for opposing a potential ban to colleague David Casas. He is so thoroughly correct that I am going to reprint them here sans commentary. (Also, I can't think of anything funny to say.)

The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination. Students with vehicles can drive and eat wherever they want. Those without vehicles cannot. If the major concern is quality of food consumption, then the District should consider alternatives (whether closed campus or whatever) that apply to all groups, not just one.

The city has already had to allocate police time and efforts to enforce the parking restrictions around the high schools due to the District's approach to student parking. I suspect the high school would be a vigilant complainer each time the vending vehicle exceeded its limited stay. As such, the city's police resources would often be removed for other important functions to enforce the vending vehicle restrictions during school day. I do not feel that is a wise allocation of our police resources.

While nutritional eating habits are important, here the market-place has met a need for the less-mobile, which is already met by other means for the mobile. Let the District go back to the drawing board to come up with another solution that doesn't tax our police department and smack of discrimination.

A skull-cracking analysis of what ails the Mercury News

After trying and failing to explain to a confused out-of-town guest why the news section of the Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle consisted of only eight pages, I sat down this morning to thumb through a hard copy of the Merc for the first time since I got home two weeks ago. My mom took the front and my dad took the "local," leaving me with sports. A teaser on the front page of the section read:

"The Giants' young lineup did not score till the ninth inning."

There are far better reasons to mock the Merc, but none that require so little work on my part.

A closed mouth gathers no flies

Yesterday was Miss Prescott Day in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.

Parents and former students organized a surprise reception at LAYC to recognize the Egan Junior High language teacher's 40 years of teaching approximately 8,000 students, including all four of Los Wiener. Los Altos Mayor Val Carpenter and Los Altos Hills Vice Mayor Jean Mordo read proclamations honoring her (after which emcee Rick Lanman told them "Thank you mayors.") My favorite story from the reception was about a student whom Miss Prescott (who is blind) caught making spitballs in class -- she made him stay until he had made 1,000. (My eighth-grade history teacher, who earlier told me that I "turned into a stud" and "should have three or four wives," claimed credit for the idea.)

Miss Prescott (soon to be Mrs. Kavinoky) had a regimented style of instruction that gave students a better understanding of English grammar than we ever got from an English class. At her reception, a parade of former students spoke about how she taught them so much that they didn't learn anything new until Spanish IV. I remember when my classmates and I arrived at Los Altos High School as freshman, a large group of us protested that Spanish II Honors was not hard enough. We expected to be learning new tenses and made to conjugate more verbs. We failed to realize that they were none left to learn (until we got to past subjunctive-conditional constructions in the aforementioned Spanish IV).

Miss Prescott also introduced me to the phrase "En boca cerrada no entran moscas," forcing me to write it 50 times after I had mocked a student who was struggling with his oral exam. (In my defense, I was only retaliating against him on behalf of a student that he had mocked). I had no idea what it meant, even after using a Spanish-English to translate it literally. When I finally asked someone to explain it to me, the answer was, "It means you should shut up."

Congratulations to the only teacher to ever get that across to me effectively.

You can always give it back

Last year, the federal government gave John Vidovich $1 million of your money.

Vidovich, a Los Altos Hills developer whose Sunnyvale-based Sandridge Partners was the top recipient of the unconscionable corporate welfare in last year's farm bill, gave what appears to be his first interview on the subject with the Town Crier this week.

You can almost see a little piece of Vidovich's soul dying as you read him telling the TC that he doesn't really want the money, but will reluctantly accept it because the farm bill is a boon to small farmers and an important step in achieving food security. Vidovich received his $1 million for growing cotton, which by the way, you can't eat or even turn into a soft drink.

The (white) couple behind the day workers

If I didn't know better, I'd say Mexicans are boycotting the Voice. The last three articles about the Latino community have relied almost exclusively on people from outside the Latino community for information.

But this is one of the few times in my life that I do, in fact, know better. The best book I ever read about journalism contained a list of what readers like, with talking heads at the very bottom, ahead of only "numbers." (At the top of the list? Furry animals, followed by small children). As you might imagine, though, it turns out that it's much easier to get a quote from a talking head than from somebody you've never met before that isn't accustomed to talking to the press.

That's why the most recent feature story on the day worker center was about a white couple from Los Altos, a story on the deportation of day worker and youth leader Luciano Casiano-Miranda relied on Phil Cosby for perspective*, and a story about the graduation ceremony of sorts for English learners quoted only Maurice Ghysels and Judy Crates (and that one was about Latinos who speak English, no less). Ironically, only the story about the couple from Los Altos had an original quote from a Latino, and it was from Maria Marroquin, director of the center.

Don't get me wrong, I like white people as much as the next guy. But if 40 percent of students in the Mountain View school district really are Latino, it would be nice to hear from one of them once in a while. Unfortunately, given its reliance on real estate advertisements, the paper is more likely to boycott Mexicans and other non-home-buying populations, rather than al reves.

UPDATE: The story on Caciano-Miranda included a lifted quote from him, though the source unknown. And Maria also has a quote -- as does John Rinaldi -- in a story about the unexpected cost of the day worker center's new location. Looks like it's time to get in touch with those white folks from Los Altos again.

Something You Won't See in the LATC

Among other newsworthy stories, you probably won't read anything in the Los Altos Town Crier about "Network Power," a book by Los Altos native and scholar David Grewal. His work focuses on globalization; the Financial Times calls it "brilliant" and it is quoted extensively in a piece in today's International Herald Tribune.

Having read advance chapters of the book (an exclusive benefit for being the Foreign Correspondent for a well-respected blog), I can vouch that it is an important work for understanding our world. I'm still awaiting delivery of the book so I can finish it. In my experience, mail delivery in much of the world seems to be holding back globalization...

This is almost too perfect

Imagine you are assigned to write a fake editorial in the voice of the Town Crier. And it has to reference the earthquake in China AND the cyclone in Burma. I bet it would look something like this.

POSITIVE CHANGE AHEAD FROM LOS ALTOS

Every once in a while, the paper caricatures itself so well that the only possible explanation is that someone at the printer slipped in a mock article for their own amusement or that the writers took it upon themselves to satirize the publisher's world view. They could have done a better job with the headline -- something along the lines of "Don't let poverty, death of others get you down" -- but perhaps they were just trying to be subtle.

Recent news beyond Los Altos has been less than sunny, let’s face it: The national economy remains shaky, gas is officially more than $4 a gallon, the death toll from last week’s cyclone disaster in Myanmar could exceed 100,000 and another disaster close behind it – the 7.8 earthquake that hit China on Monday, killing nearly 9,000 people.

I'll give you some time to guess why the paper is bringing up the earthquake in China. (And ignore the disastrous punctuation and the tragicomically low alleged death toll -- I'm posting this at least a week after the editorial went to press).

Did you guess yet? Here's a hint.

All the more reason to count our blessings on the local scene.

This is some great character-writing here by the forger -- bringing up terrible calamities simply so that we can dismiss their importance by discussing our money. Can you think of the last time even tens of thousands of Los Altans died in a cyclone? I can't. We're rich. Leave us alone, world.

Certainly, the high quality of life in Los Altos is well documented, but here’s another thing to consider: Numerous plans and projects under way bid to make this community even better.

In the interests of time, let's use a mathematical equation to express the relative importance the forger places on these numerous plans and projects:

(Burmese cyclone + Chinese earthquake + foreclosures + high gas prices) < (New flowers and plum trees on San Antonio Road + two new downtown buildings + plans to sell lot at State and Main + Safeway expansion + post office replacement + new Loyola Corners landscaping + possible civic center renovation)

I just saved you six paragraphs.

It’s also encouraging that Los Altos residents don’t act like they live in a bubble, but are compassionate and continue to help others. Witness, for instance, the bake sale in front of Starbucks in downtown Los Altos last weekend in support of the Myanmar survivors.

Los Altos residents don't act like they live in a bubble? Sure, the city incorporated mainly to keep out low-income residents, and it has pass laws banning Mexicans and Gypsies from the town, and its local paper repeatedly writes about how great it is that bad things happen other places but not here (even when they actually do happen here). But we had a bake sale.

I like "It's a Wonderful Life" as much as any Jew I know, but this is a little too much.

While the structural improvements are nice and we look forward to them, ultimately we’re proud of the quality of people that make Los Altos the great community it is.

This conclusion is another reason I think this editorial might be a fraud. I suspect the real Town Crier cares more about the structural improvements.

Three things you might believe if you'd been reading the Town Crier instead of studying the last few weeks

1) Day workers sued the City of Los Altos as payback for the termination of a lease to which the city was not a party and not over an unconstitutional law forcing poor people to stand on the other side of El Camino.

2) Enabling more students to park closer to Mountain View High School will somehow reduce traffic there.

3) The South Peninsula Area Republican Coalition gets free advertising for its electioneering efforts because they are somehow newsworthy and not because the publisher founded the organization.

Meanwhile, the Daily News recently discovered that at least three Los Altos City Council members are rich.

I thought we were the Popular Front

My alma mater may change its name today.



Says kindergarten teacher Pam Loebner:

"For the past 3 years we have had parents go to the wrong schools (both ways) substitutes go to the wrong schools (both ways) and there is concern that in an emergency situation that someone might be confused and go to the wrong school."

Unlikely. We all know nothing bad ever happens in Los Altos. But just in case, I suggest "The Real Bullis" or asking the splitters to change their name to "Bullis Charter School for White Kids." More specificity never hurt.

Say It Ain't So!

This is just the latest accusation in the ongoing downfall of NOE's idol.

Please forgive me for overstepping the bounds of my assignments, but I don't think NOE had the courage to post this himself. Or maybe he's considering how to post about this...?

Hi guys

I don't know if you remember me, but I used to write for this blog.

With finals approaching, I've been spending a lot of time studying recently (and, it turns out, inspiring the creation of other blogs). A few things I've learned:

Everybody in Los Altos Hills is rich, which, as a matter of federal law, means its okay to keep poor people out. Ybarra vs. Los Altos Hills, 503 F.2d 250. (9th Cir. 1974).

I live next to the stupidest bike lane in America. The only one that might be dumber is one I lived near last summer.

Minimum sentencing laws still suck. We can blame them both for the large-scale disasters like the unconstitutionally shameful condition of the health care system in our state prisons as well as for the more personal tragedies like the harsh prison term facing troubled Iraq veteran Sarge Binkley. Binkley may yet catch a break from the District Attorney, but other defendants from different backgrounds are unlikely to get the same treatment.

I've got to get back to studying administrative law, so I can explain why the County Board of Education inexplicably prevailed against the Los Altos School District's case alleging that Bullis Charter School's charter was too racist for the County Board to approve. I know that part of the answer has to do with the chemicals used by downtown Los Altos dry cleaners. Stay tuned.

Ahora Mas Malos Aires

Three hundred grass fires are burning just outside the city limits of Buenos Aires. Over the past ten days a huge cloud of smoke has hung over the city further polluting the city's already dirty air.
These types of fires, lit to clear fields for grazing, are not unusual this time of year. However, timing and number of fires so close to the city cannot be coincidence. Farmers, who make up some of the richest Argentines, are locked in an ongoing dispute with the government over export tariffs. With the steep rise in commodity prices, the central government has been recently trying to raise revenues by increasing taxes on agricultural exports. The farmers haven't been having any of it and in March and early April, blocked roads and food deliveries to the capital.

The Foreign Correspondent had the luck of breathing fresh Andean air in Peru until last night. Right now, the skies look like a typical LA day, but the smoke is due to return tonight as firefighters continue to battle the blazes.

For some photos of the smoke, check out the "fotogaleria" link below the photo in this article.

Are you aware this person taught poor children?

Ahh, Los Altos Parents... tirelessly striving to make sure that the term "Los Altos Parent" still conjures up exactly what you'd imagine.

"They [the parents] still do not understand why Justus chose a principal from a school [Oak Grove High School in south San Jose] with different demographics and lower test scores than Almond."

It's nice to see that the running gag, so often exploited on this blog, about folks from The 'Tos not liking folks that aren't from The 'Tos is alive and well -- and thus the main staple of NOE is safe and sound.

Services help inexpert writers

In a rather slow news week on campus, you'd think somebody would have caught the irony in this headline.

If we can't annoy people into thinking they're unhappy enough to give us money, the terrorists have already won

Leave it to these guys to make these guys and these guys seem reasonable in their use of the word "terrorist."

Let's hope the rest of society can still recognize the difference between holding a sign that expresses your opinion and hijacking planes in order to fly them into buildings.

Chorizo's probably not a great name for a boy anyway

I just got back from a Bruce Springsteen concert, which is why I don't have a better joke to make about the following Palo Alto Daily police blotter item (via photobasement). I'm not sure of the date or the details, but it seems to be making its way around the internet, and far be it from me to stand in the way. Feel free to submit your own.

Stupid idea finished, woe is us.

It's time for another NOE Reader Quiz.

A headline in last week's Voice declared "Tunnel's done, time to celebrate." Before I give you the link, guess whether that headline appeared in the news section or the editorial pages.

...

You were right.

I'm as big a fan of the Stevens Creek Trail as anybody, and I understand the importance of maintaining good relationships with people at City Hall. But, just off the top of my head, I can think of enough potential criticisms of this project that it may not be the best candidate to induce the paper to drop all pretense of objectivity. (The article, of course, mentions none of them).

• $3.5 million is a large amount of taxpayer money to spend to extend the trail a very short distance.
• The city used eminent domain to complete this section of the trail, which should always give us pause even when it's justified.
• And, as the residents who posted comments on the Voice website pointed out, the city has yet to address concerns about inadequate lighting, lack of emergency phone access and displacement of homeless people.
  

Does anybody have an image of the page from Our Dumb Century in which the Onion ran a photo of the Hindenburg going down in flames underneath the headline: "AWESOME! Nation wowed by tremendous Hindenburg Explosion." I feel like that would be appropriate here.

Even gang members recognize bad journalism when they see it

Usually, when local papers write about gangs, they generally focus on what gang activity means for white people. They include the perspective of police, teachers, non-profits and government officials, but almost never gang members themselves.

This is not surprising, as most reporters generally don't have a lot of contacts who belong to the economic class that makes up gang membership. And with local newspaper profits largely dependent on real estate advertisements, publishers have little incentive to include the perspective of people who can't afford to buy houses.

So when two recent shootings renewed my alma mater's interest in gang activity in Mountain View, the only person who seemed to be concerned enough to do something about the unbalanced coverage was a Norteno.

The Voice received an unexpected visit last week from a Mountain View Norteno who says he is trying to clean up his life for the sake of his child.

...

The gang member, whose name is being withheld for his safety and his family's safety, wanted to shed light on the gang culture ...

The article goes on to cite a single anonymous source, even when he makes factual claims that could be easily verified or disproved. You almost have to admire a story that is this open about how little work actually went into it.

I would call for a boycott if I thought we'd have any material left

The governments of 113 countries, including our own, agree that the observed rise in global temperatures is "unequivocal."

The Los Altos Town Crier, though, not so much:

There may not be consensus that Earth’s atmosphere is warming, but that’s not keeping governments, groups and individuals from taking decisive action to assess their energy consumption and adopt sustainable strategies in conservation for the future of the planet.

As Earth Day, April 22, approaches, event coordinators are encouraging citizens to deluge Congress with phone calls on that day, insisting that lawmakers enact legislation promoting renewable energy and carbon-neutral buildings and calling for a moratorium on new coal-burning plants.

I don't believe Hell exists, but if it does, I can only imagine there's a special circle reserved for these people.

What would John Rocker do?

Former Atlanta-Braves-closer-turned-essayist John Rocker is making a stand against not speaking English in the U.S. with a 1300 word post on the home page of his official Website.

Rocker may have decided against "Teach English," in favor of "Speak English," because one's investment in improving the English language skills of recent immigrants need not go beyond telling them that they need more practice.

The site offers a glimpse into the impressive consistency that is the legendary Rocker.

Rocker is most famous for 1) taunting New York baseball fans (condoned by NOE) and 2) a notorious expose by Jeff Pearlman where he landed a xenophobic tour-de-force, berating gays, people who drive slowly and/or dye their hair, unwed mothers, minorities, women drivers, convicts, and, of course, foreigners (not condoned by NOE, despite one correspondent's rich use of "Macaca").

But you may not know that he also loves fireworks, hates high gas prices and purveys a remarkable selection of products.

Recession or Depression?

Wow.

Almost ten percent of our population on food stamps? Here's a grim look at the current state of affairs in the Homeland.

Things look worse than I thought. May have to stay out of the country longer than expected...

Los Altos cancels election

Seriously.

It seems that my hometown can save $100,000 every election cycle by moving city council contests to even-numbered years.

You know what else would save money? Not having elections.

In vintage Town Crier fashion, much of its coverage focused on the unruliness of a member of the public, but reassured readers that this sort of rambunctiousness is uncommon.

The Town Crier editorial gets it half-right, criticizing the plan for its potential impact on the school district. Ignoring for a minute whether the district would be smart enough to make the same change rather than shoulder the costs of an off-year election itself, the bigger and more obvious problem is that the change would allow the council to unilaterally extend their own terms. I'm no fan of voters, but not even the Los Altos Water Polo Alumni Security Council is that undemocratic.

22 years ago today

My sister came into my room to wake me up.

"Dad got you a puppy for your birthday! Dad got you a puppy!"

By way of background, I had wanted a dog ever since I could talk. My first word was "dog." My best friend had been the neighbor's cocker spaniel, Molly. (I was three or four years old when she died -- my parents told me it was because she went into the creek in our backyard and got poison oak -- and honored her memory by subsuming her identity and insisting on eating my dinner underneath the table.)

Anyway, this was the most exciting thing I had ever heard in my life (certainly more exciting than when I was three and they told me I was getting a brother). I shot out of bed and bolted upstairs, my sister trailing behind. I ran into my dad standing near the front door.

"Where is it?! Where is the puppy?!"

"It's outside," he said, "playing on the porch."

I opened the door and looked around, but there was no puppy to be seen. Confused, I turned back to see my dad, with my sister standing next to him.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"April Fool's!" they both said.

To clarify, my birthday is not on April Fool's Day, it is today. My father explained that it would be too obvious if they had waited until the one day of the year that is reserved for telling lies to six-year-olds and laughing at them when they believe you.

Any readers out there still trying to come up with a gift idea?

They are going to go far in this field

Yesterday, the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq reached 4,000.

With this milestone approaching, shortly after the fifth anniversary of the invasion, the Daily Bruin ran the following two stories side-by-side on the front page:

Girl Scout cookies popular
Individual responsibility vital to future of Undie Run

The Sacramento Bee marked the occasion by reprinting a year-old e-mail from my sister about her faceplant into a duck pond (which was first published here last year).

I really wish they would identify these kids by their high schools instead

Then the Mercury's story about a property theft ring at Santa Clara would reference "St. Francis water polo."

I probably should have expected this

This week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. How did the Town Crier commemorate this tragic milestone?
Seriously, this was the cover story. Here's the lede:

Many decisions across Los Altos are made under the influence of coffee – companies come together, civic policy is dissected, book club alliances are formed and neighbors nestle for a chat.

The coffee bean is one of the world’s largest agricultural exports by value, and the United States is the No. 1 coffee importer, trailed by Germany and Japan. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans consumed an average of 24.2 gallons of coffee in 2005 – enough fluid to fill two tanks in a typical sedan.

Coffee consumption peaked in volume in the 1940s, when Americans drank nearly twice as much as they do now. But today boutique drinks like espressos, lattes, mochas and coffee-style beverages that totally lack bean, such as chai or high-end teas, share the mass market.

The only mention of the war in this week's issue was Charlotte Jarmy's discussion of why she doesn't care about it.

How to make lawyers work for the public welfare:

Bribe them.

Congrats to our esteemed publisher on managing UCLA's PILF auction two weeks ago, which, sadly, had nothing to with auctioning any of these kind of PILFs. Though lacking sexually attractive Platypi, our publisher raised funds in excess of $100,000 towards grants for UCLA law students who work in summer public interest or governmental legal internships.

Some highlights:
- As our publisher attempted to win a John Wooden Autographed Pyramid of Success, the auctioneer encouraged him to increase his bids because he was, "from Los Altos," and "could afford anything." He however, ducked out when the price went beyond $800.00.
- Later, he auctioned himself and sold for $15.00 (to his Mom).
- The singer was "good looking" and "good."

A pointless post about a pointless article

It's late, I'm tired and nobody is reading, but boy is this awful.

Riding shotgun with LAPD

I did a ridealong once when I was in high school. All I remember is that the cop struck me as rather racist. Something about a prostitute, too.

Head out for a night on the streets with Los Altos Police Sgt. Scott McCrossin, and you’ll be prepared for almost anything.

I doubt this is this case, but I trust you'll show us with some good expository writing.

There’s a riot helmet and gas mask in his trunk. He has books on case law and hazardous materials at the ready, along with a Spanish/English dictionary and detailed maps compiled by the fire department. For quiet moments in the night, the policeman’s pleasure reading: an industry SWAT magazine. But McCrossin’s No. 1 tool, used much more than the AR-15 strapped behind the driver’s seat, is a beefy flashlight. He deploys it through the night on parked cars, construction sites and suspects on the city’s dark streets.

Things the officer appears to be prepared for:

• a riot
• a gassing
• a legal argument
• a Mexican
• getting lost
• doing nothing

Things Eliza Ridgway appears to be prepared for:

• awkwardly watching the officer encounter the things on the above list.

In daylight, Los Altos police often chat with residents taking in sun outside the Sub-Acute Rehabilitation Center, neighbors walking dogs and business owners. At night, it’s a different story. That’s when the illicit and forgotten – the homeless, drug abusers, burglars and vandals – tend to come out.

"The illicit and forgotten" = the homeless? I hope that was a typo.

[Bunch of truly, stunningly boring stuff happens]

...

“All of your reports need to be nice and perfect here,” Langone said, speaking ruefully of what a vocal and close watch the community keeps on the department.

I'm too sleep-deprived to understand sarcasm right now, let alone be able to do it myself. So, rather than try to write something clever, I'll just say that I still can't figure where anybody would get the idea that Los Altos keeps a "vocal and close watch" on the police department. If that were the case, shouldn't more people (perhaps the local newspaper) have opposed the department's effort to enact an unconstitutional law banning day workers and lemonade stands from the city's streets?

Am I missing something?

Terrorists, your game is through

An injunction! (And also one of these!) Why didn't we think of that earlier?!

University officials filed a lawsuit against the Animal Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Brigade and five unnamed individuals because of various attacks on professors who have been conducting animal research over the last two years.

While the concept of filing for an injunction against people you can't identify is funny, the organization's planned defense is even funnier:

“The Animal Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Brigade are two underground organizations that do not exist."

It's not clear how these non-existent organizations are planning to go about filing this defense or the threatened countersuit, but it should be interesting.

You people still aren't getting your land back

Far more stunning than Fidel Castro announcing his resignation in today's edition of Cuba's amusingly-named government newspaper was that BigDra had nothing to say about it. Perhaps he's still paranoid or embarrassed about this.

Speaking of embarrassing, the New York Times had this to say about the leader of the Cuban Revolution this morning:

He embraced a totalitarian brand of communism and allied the island with the Soviet Union. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962, when he allowed Russia to build missile launching sites just 90 miles off the American shores. ... His record has been a mix of great social achievements, but a dismal economic performance that has mired most Cubans in poverty.

As Joc said, that's one version of history. Another might attribute the poverty and lack of political freedom to the Bay of Pigs, the crushing embargo, the CIA's efforts to assassinate him, attempts to seed rain clouds over the mountains in order to kill crops in the plains and the continued harboring of terrorists in South Florida.

I'm not saying Castro's perfect. As a loudmouth, I found the restrictions on the press and other forms of expression particularly bothersome, especially when the social accomplishments of the Revolution are such a source of pride for the people that it's hard to imagine how democratic reforms would endanger them. But choosing from between Fidel and the types of people featured in the Museum of the Revolution's "Hall of Cretins" (Reagan, Bush I, and Batista), it's hard to see Castro as the bad guy.

Also, it's hard to deny that this story, from Tad Szulc's biography Fidel: A critical portrait, is cool. It takes place right after the Granma (the boat for which the newspaper is named) landed in the Sierra Maestre. The rebel army was nearly destroyed in the ensuing ambush, its forces scattering into the mountains, where they hid for several days before a local sympathizer alerted Fidel that this brother was camped out close by:

Just before midnight, the brothers embraced in the canefield. Fidel asked Raul: "How many rifles did you bring?" and Raul replied, "Five..." Fidel shouted: "And with the two I have, this makes seven! Now, yes, we have won the war!"

Viva Kosova Libre!

The dissolution of Yugoslavia was finally completed today as members of the Kosovar parliament declared independence. It's been a long road for the majority ethnic Albanian population of the former Serb province. In 1999, NATO forces led by the US and UK bombed targets in Serbia stopping the Serbian military's latest campaign of ethnic cleansing in the region. Since then Kosova has been in limbo as a UN administered territory. Perhaps now it can move on, garner investment, invest in infrastructure, health, and education and move towards eventual EU membership.

At the independence celebrations today in the capital city of Pristina, many of newly independent Kosovar waved American flags. Kosova is perhaps the only place in the world where NOE can sport his stars and stripes bandana and people won't think he's an asshole. Maybe he should go and have a proud stroll down Bill Clinton Blvd, one of Pristina's biggest avenues. Now the only question is: can he use his Rapid Rewards to get there?

The Town Crier's brave stand against the Kyoto Protocol

Boooo!

Politically correct, yes, but practical?

It's not often the Town Crier actually comes out against anything. It backed the war in Iraq using a sports cliche that it got backwards. It stayed entirely silent when a confessed child molester awaiting sentencing was free to visit local elementary schools. This is no knee-jerk reactionary opinion page -- it takes something that's really wrong to garner criticism from the Town Crier. Gay kids qualify, of course. But efforts to stem global warming? This should be interesting.

The Los Altos City Council’s Jan. 22 decision to allocate $14,600 to begin investigating what the city can do to reduce air pollutants comes across – initially – as the right thing to do in this era of CO2 emissions consciousness.

Please enlighten us as to why it isn't.

As part of the recent action to evaluate current greenhouse gas emissions at the city level, the council directed Mayor Val Carpenter to add her signature to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

Didn't they realize that Mountain View already did this? Shouldn't we just freeload off of their efforts -- we do it for everything else.

It seems politically correct to take this action. But from a practical standpoint, we wonder about the priority and direction of the effort, and whether the study is money well spent.

Zing! It's politically correct! I knew it was a bad idea. Q.E.D.

First, the study is only to determine the current emissions levels in city-operated vehicles, wastewater operations and other sources within the city of Los Altos. This seems like a good first step, but the net needs to be cast citywide. We think the $14,600 could be better used on a marketing campaign beyond city government to reach the community at large, to get people out of their vehicles. Walk-to-School days are fine but not nearly enough.

They better make it more than $14,600, given that the town newspaper consistently belittles the importance of climate change and has in the past advocated against enforcement even of existing parking restrictions.

Will the commendable volunteer energy that has pushed through this first effort be able to take the emissions information and use it to enact change, particularly given the city’s slim budget?

Let’s imagine that the study concludes in part that Los Altos police vehicles emit a high level of air pollutants. The council then recommends that level be lowered as part of the “Cool Los Altos” philosophy. Would this mean replacing an entire fleet of vehicles with more environmentally friendly ones to the tune of millions of dollars?

First of all, asking rhetorical questions is not the same thing as making an argument or taking a position. How in God's name do people give them awards for this sort of garbage? (That's not rhetorical, by the way, I'm really curious about the thought process that leads to the determination that this is good writing.)

Secondly, yes. As in, yes, it might mean that, if the emissions inventory suggested that this was a cost-effective place to make reductions. It's easy to imagine that it would be, considering that the city already spends money replacing its fleet periodically. Mountain View, for example, has rules in place that prioritize emissions reductions when fleet vehicles are being replaced.

We want to lower greenhouse gas emissions as much as the next city. But such thinking also needs to take into consideration bottom-line costs and available funding to address any recommendations.

Hard-hitting stuff there TC. Way to be the voice of reason. It was looking for a minute like the Los Altos City Council might run off spending money willy-nilly on environmental protection.

While the lobbying to get this part of the plan through was clearly effective, it failed to offer any examples of likely action to take. It would be easier to support this project if we had some examples, now, of possible solutions. We shouldn’t need an emissions study to come up with those ideas. We need a task force that is working on it – which is the only thing the city didn’t decide to do.

It's an INVENTORY. You measure things first, then you decide where best to place your effort. That said, here's a suggestion: stop killing trees to print this drivel.

Given a lack of direction and available budget, is this another study that leads to nowhere (most likely created by a new cottage industry)?

Hmm, after reading that cutting parenthetical aside, I am reconsidering my concern about climate change. It's all just a cottage industry lobbying effort. Exxon was trying to tell us all along, but we didn't listen.

Yes, we have nothing better to do

Speaking, as I often am, of the Bullis class of 1992, Becky Remmel has launched one of the best online stalking efforts I have ever seen. "Where in the World is Molly Curfman" is a Facebook group dedicated to tracking down former classmates who moved before the time capsule was buried underneath the Bullis Bear -- not just Molly but also the tall kid known as "Joshua Giraffe" and our one and only Latino classmate. (For the record, I was not the one who made Ms. Kates cry.)

Readers can infer a number of things from our ongoing obsession with elementary school. I choose to focus on the fact that growing up during the drought wasn't so bad -- our parents inability to water our lawns was a small price to pay for it being 80 degrees and sunny every day.

(This means Jon had sex!)

Congratulations to Jon and Kara Sigua, proud parents of Jackson William Sigua, born Feb. 1 in the 8-pound weight class. (Also, congratulations to Jackson. Although upon seeing a picture of him, one of Kara's friends remarked that Kara "should make babies professionally," he deserves some credit for the achievement.)

Jackson's middle name comes from his uncle Will, NOE's choice for Los Altan of the Year. Jackson was born almost exactly one year since Will was killed in action in Iraq, inspiring an unprecedented show of community support and unity. His nephew will be proud to carry the name.

Pressure's on

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. I've been playing hooky and spending my weekends skiing rather than scouring the local news. In the meantime, some of the Wiener children have actually been productive:

Jocelyn won a McClatchy Presidential Award, one of nine the newspaper conglomerate gave out in the second half of 2007, for her article on the fates of the former members of an inner city pee wee football team.

Fifteen years later, Sacramento Bee reporter Jocelyn Wiener tracked down the survivors of a champion youth football team from a rough part of the city. In a series of interlocking profiles she told a heartbreaking story about the terrible risks and temptations that African American boys face growing up. Combined with extensive web presentations, the effort turned stories that might well have faded from view into a compelling and challenging public portrait.

Andy (despite the fact that the last "book" he read was Johnny's Damon's autobiography Idiot) has been left and right getting into law schools that rejected me.

Bubba qualified for boardercross nationals, though I'm betting he's prouder of the following comment on the sophomoric college rumor Web site juicycampus.com (which features recent posts entitled "Being Drunk" and "Jews, thoughts?"):

i agree theres a big difference between hot and well known, but if you were just doing this within the sophmores (which are usually most social) in the greek system I would say...

5 most "popular" boys: (I would do them all)
carmel ashur- social and pretty hot
lorenzo einaudi- sig nu social chair, not as hot but great body :)
asher luzzatto- social and hot, good style
adam groth- knows everyone, one of the coolest guys
matt wiener- phi psi social chair, pretty hot too

Somehow, I feel that correctly answering a trivia question in class last week is not quite the same.

Sports Stars Love Animal Cruelty

Its been well-established that sports fans and even the public generally care more about the way professional athletes treat animals than the way they treat women. The latest example of sports stars lust for violent animal deathmatches brings together past and present baseball greats. A video briefly posted on youtube last week apparently showed perhaps the two best Dominican pitchers of all-time (NOE may dispute that assertion) releasing fighting cocks into the biggest cockfighting ring in Santo Domingo. Juan Marichal and Pedro Martinez were reportedly 'soltadores' for a cockfight in the country's premier cockfighting battlefield. Cockfighting is legal in the Dominican Republic, but that doesn't mean that Americans don't frown upon this off-season pastime. The venue is called Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo which doesn't really compare to Bad Newz Kennels…

Political Gangs Run Riot After Stolen Election

No, this isn´t a post about the 2000 US election. However, where people don´t have bread and circuses (and People magazine) to distract them from thinking about politics, things can turn violent after rigged elections.

For educated insights on the continuing violence in Kenya, see Oxford scholar Dave Anderson´s article from yesterday´s Independent.

Wouldn´t it just be easier if they had computer voting machines like we do here?

Focus the 'Tos

Today is "Focus the Nation," a national teach-in on global warming. It comes amidst a lot of exciting progress on climate change at UCLA Law. Last week's law review symposium highlighted some of the best idea for addressing the problem. The school announced that it had received a $5 million gift to open the country's first center for climate change law. A group of students has embarked on an effort to personally comply with the Kyoto Protocol. And I even got to meet one of the impostor Jonathan Wieners. (Details to follow in another post).

But this blog is not about the nation, the globe, or even UCLA Law. It is about the 'Tos, which joined the party last week.

Thanks to the efforts of Kacey Fitzpatrick and the other folks behind Cool Los Altos, our city has pledged to meet the Kyoto Protocol by 2012. This seems like it will require rethinking, among other things, how much we want to continue use free public parking to subsidize driving. I'm not optimistic that we will necessarily pull it off -- at least so long as council member and blog whipping boy Ron Packard believes that the only thing Los Altos should do about the great challenge of our time is promulgate weak revisions to the building code. But at least it will be nice to know that we inspired Iraq.

An exquisitely crafted tribute to folly

If you've got $24.5 million lying around, 47 View St. is unsurprisingly still on the market.

(If this is your first time at the blog, and you are already convinced it is not worth your time, please at least watch the video in the above link).

Whatever else you want to say about the house, you can't deny that it's ironic. The contractor bought it during the tech crash, and is now trying to sell it during a housing crash. Moreover, I'm not an architect, but "modern life as a celebration of nature" probably does not entail living in a house made out of Honduran mahogany.

Perhaps we do still have some shame in this town. Then again, if the Winbigler property sold, why shouldn't this one?

(Speaking of "art," if you only have $41,000 lying around, perhaps you can pay Rachel Slick not to build a sculpture of birds in the Shoreline wetlands)

NOE's Recycled Bullis Bench: Finished or Poised for Revival?

In 1991-92, with help from Karen and Bruce, NOE established an environmental club at Bullis. The hallmark achievement of this group was the acquisition of a bench made from recycled plastic. The bench was subsequently commemorated “from the class of 1992” and proudly placed in front of the school next to the famous Bullis Bear statue.

Sadly, however, NOE’s bench now sits dejectedly among some rusting exercise equipment (that BigDra still uses) behind the school. Perhaps decision makers at Bullis are saving the bench for eventual reinstallation at the front of the new school?

We shall overcome

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., I figured today would be a good time to direct readers to the lawsuit LASD has filed against the County Board of Education for its preposterous approval of Bullis Charter School's effort to restrict poorer kids from enrolling.

After the Voice editorial blasted LASD for picking a fight with rich people, one commenter equated the lawsuit to "ultimately the greatest sin in American history."

"Behind every great man is a surprised mother-in-law."

NOE congratulates The Professor on his ascension to the mayor's office. NOE would also like to congratulate Laura Macias on a successful term in which she spearheaded a climate change initiative and helped beat back the squirrel insurgency.

African no longer welcome in Los Altos Hills

Although he has not been implicated in growing marijuana on the periphery of the "town" as other immigrants have, Los Altos Hills residents still want the African immigrant out of their upscale community.

"I'm getting tired of him," said Thomas Puorro, 82.

At first, the African immigrant intrigued neighbors, even though residents suspected that he was an escapee from a holding area in South San Francisco. A native to Uganda, the immigrant caught the attention of a Ugandan ambassador who sent a friendly note to "The Heights" Hills on the immigrant's behalf.

Despite international goodwill for the African, tensions are high.

Puorro added, "I'm getting closer and closer to getting myself a slingshot."


*John Rocker was unavailable for comment at press time.

For those of you looking for actual information

Perhaps out of post-Rwanda and ongoing Darfur guilt (or because its a big tourist destination), the Western media has been giving a lot of coverage to the recent violence in Kenya. However, the tendency has been to oversimplify the situation and chalk it up as just another example of horrific "tribal conflicts" in Africa. Even the regional head of the ICRC, who should certainly know better, has made ignorant statements along these lines.

The violence began after there were delays in declaring a winner in the recent presidential election. The vote counting was subsequently stopped (sound familiar?) and current president Mwai Kibaki quickly declared the winner after trailing his opponent Raila Odinga. The majority of those killed have been protestors shot by security forces, but because Odinga is Luo and Kibaki is Kikuyu, Western media outlets have quickly jumped to the conclusion that “tribal rivalries” are at the root of the conflict. However, according to an anonymous expert on ethnic conflicts in Western Kenya, the unrest stems more from disenfranchised youths and anger over years of corrupt governments.

"No one is focusing on the real cause of violence ... which is political disillusionment," she said in an exclusive interview with Nemesis of Evil. "It's the young unemployed men who were told to vote and promised change, and who en masse were voting for the opposition, despite the fact that he was Luo."

News articles on the crisis have overlooked another crucial fact: that Odinga's opposition coalition was multi-ethnic in nature.

"What Raila (Odinga) did was tap into leaders in the other provinces and into the general feeling (outside of the central province) of wanting a new political system -- federalism, which to most people on the ground literally means roads," said the expert.

Hopefully a better understanding of the causes of the conflict will lead to a more effective solution. I'm waiting for Obama, whose father is Luo, to weigh-in on the matter. It's too bad he’s got other things on his mind right now, because he’s hugely popular in Kenya and might be able to help the move towards peace.

Problem solved

Facing a severe funding shortfall, Hidden Villa is hosting a community meeting Jan. 13 to discuss how to accomplish its goal of creating a $10 million endowment. The Town Crier favors leasing some space to Bullis Charter School as a start. I have another idea.

That felt weird

Let's get back to founding principles...

The Voice is running a three-part series on the problems media consolidation poses for democracy. Part one includes the following:

"Award-winning media critic Ted Glasser says the Bay Area's media consolidation is emblematic of a larger problem and leads to three things: fewer journalists, homogenization of coverage (with the same story appearing in multiple newspapers), and poor media coverage of journalism itself."

Glass houses, guys.

The article is written by the publisher of the Pacific Sun, which was an independent paper up until a few years ago, when it was purchased by Embarcadero Publishing Company. The story has already appeared in other understaffed EPC papers, including the flagship Palo Alto Weekly (where readers had plenty of critiques of the article itself), the Pleasanton Weekly and the Danville Weekly.

I can't decide whether this is actually ironic, or if it just looks really silly.

Local holiday fund profiles

I figure we might as well kick off 2008 with a positive post.

Two days are left to donate to the Voice Holiday Fund (so named as part of the paper's ongoing War on Christmas). The paper has lined up foundation grants to match donations, so doing so is doubly worth it.

The recipients include:

• Community Health Awareness Council
• Support Network for Battered Women
• Partners for New Generations
• Community School of Music and Arts
• Mountain View Day Worker Center
• Community Services Agency, and
• RotaCare Clinic

The Town Crier's Holiday Fund, which is much older and tends to raise more money, is benefitting 17 organizations this year, including:

• EPA Kids Foundation, Truck of Love, Community Services Agency
• Help One Child, Partners for New Generations, Community Homeless Alliance Ministry
• Rotacare, Mother Branch, Community Health Awareness Council
• Sunday Friends, Challenge Learning Center and Career Closet

(The rest of the profiles either are not yet posted or I just can't find them.)

What do you have in common with residents of San Juan Court?

You haven't had a hostage crisis at your house either.

For a brief tense moment Wednesday, a Los Altos neighborhood came to a standstill as police searched for a gunman with hostages.

An emergency phone system warned residents to stay inside; police helicopters circled overhead and SWAT vans filled the street.

As it turned out, nothing had happened. It was all a hoax.

Kudos to the Town Crier for having the restraint not to blame this on Mexican nationals.

(While this is sort of a "things that are not happening in Los Altos" story, it differs from the prototypical entries in that series, because -- unlike contaminated pet food, bowling and Black Friday -- a hostage crisis would be interesting if it were to actually happen.)

Bullis Charter School: not just for poor kids anymore

The County Board of Education believes that allowing Bullis Charter School to reserve spots for the richest areas of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills will increase its minority enrollment.

Which minorities could they mean? Children of people who think Toni Casey ought to hold elected office? Gypsies?

As a sidenote, BCS board president Ken Moore cites Bullis's historical efforts to serve rich neighborhoods as a reason to let it continue to do so. Aside from the fact that appeals to tradition tend to be logical fallacies, Bullis has been around for fewer than 3.5 years. By comparison:

• This blog has been around for 2.1 years
• The Red Sox have been officially better than the Yankees for 3.2 years
• The Navy has been promising to have a final proposal on Hangar One for 3.5 years
• Major combat operations in Iraq have been over for 4.6 years
• And the "tradition" of private individuals illegally trying to reserve portions of the public-right-of-way for themselves in advance of the Festival of Lights parade has been around for 9 years

In conclusion, sucks to your history.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Below is an e-mail from the principal of Los Altos High School sent out to all coaches earlier today.

From: Satterwhite, Wynne
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 12:02 PM

To: Cave, Kim
Cc: Cave, Ralph; O'Neal, Morenike; Dawson, Cristy
Subject: Music at Athletic Events

Hi Kim,

At the Board of Managers meeting this morning, we voted that lyrics will no longer be allowed at athletic events. Please make sure that your coaches know that this rule goes into effect immediately. (Minutes to follow).

Thanks!

Wynne

The Daily Bruin violates the Best Evidence Rule

A year after repeatedly electrocuting a kid who was lying on the floor of the library in pain, UCLA has finally come out with a new policy regarding when officers can use Tasers. (This according to the Daily Bruin, which has not actually seen a copy of the new policy).

The highlights include a prohibition on Tasing people engaged in passive resistance and a requirement that police officers actually get trained by someone other than the company who makes the weapon.

Can someone please tell me why it took more than a year to come up with this?

Who owns the sidewalk?

I don't know of any studies that conclude one way or another whether there is in fact enough room in downtown Los Altos for everyone who wants to get a good view of the Festival of Lights parade. But, if there were, why would Town Crier-letter writer Anna Durante feel the need to tape off space and claim it as her own? And wasn't she just "scoring a spot" at another family's expense?

This supposed "tradition" of reserving spots has quite a few problems: it encourages private individuals to monopolize public space (for longer and longer periods of time), it creates a lot of litter, and it smacks of Los Altos's embarasingly recent efforts to exclude the poor and the brown through an unconstitutional and costly ordinance that forced day workers to cross the street and stand on the sidewalk in Mountain View.

Another letter writer, Honor Spitz, raises one other concern I didn't think to include. It makes downtown Los Altos look like "one great big outdoor emergency shelter." (Isn't "Spitz" a Jewish name? I guess Mark Zuckerberg isn't the only Member of the Tribe who wants to ruin Christmas.)

Next year, I'm going to kidnap somebody, blindfold them, drive them around for a while, and drop them off in downtown Los Altos, just to see if they think they have arrived at an emergency shelter.

Honoring our choices

Today marks one year since my friend and teammate Nate Krissoff died in Iraq. After writing and rewriting drafts of this post several times, I've decided I can not articulate what an inspiring person Nate was. Here's someone who can...

At 61, doctor joins Navy to honor his son

After his eldest child is killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff decides to enlist. With help from the White House, he joins the medical corps.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 1, 2007

SAN DIEGO -- When Marines came to his door a year ago to tell him that his eldest son had been killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff reacted like any father: with confusion, devastation, then numbness.

Nathan Krissoff was so young, a lover of poetry, a champion athlete, a leader whose maturity and selflessness had impressed fellow Marines.

The father in Krissoff found no resolution to his grief. The physician in him did.

At an age when many people think about retirement, Krissoff decided earlier this year that he would enlist as a doctor. He was 60 years old, decades above the military's preferred demographic.

Catching up with a former Voice intern (unfortunately not THAT one).

The Economist has apologized for plagiarizing a story that former Voice intern David Herbert wrote while in Uganda this summer. Yes, that David Herbert. (Turns out I'm not the only Voice alum who's "basically ethically bankrupt.")

Suggests Herbert, "If you reference this on your blog, try not to talk about my own indiscretions."

Sorry Dave. Maybe next time you'll think twice about telling a higher-up, "That's your lede? Why don't you print that out so I can wipe my ass with it."

Things that are not happening in Los Altos, Part III

The newest entry in the Town Crier's award-winning series on what's outside Pleasantville: Black Friday.

What part of "public right of way" doesn't Los Altos understand?

My guess is either "public" or "right."

Festival of Lights Parade-goers have taken to "reserving" their spots on downtown sidewalks days in advance of the event. This is the same mindset that led the City of Los Altos to try to ban Mexicans from its sidewalks eight years ago. It's so distasteful that even the Town Crier mentioned the conflict that it caused. (I have to think Mary Beth Hishop got reprimanded for not focusing exclusively on the smiling children.)

Next year, please join in following the lead of the Portland Mercury Civic Clean-Up Squad and reasserting the public's right to the public right of way. NOE welcomes suggestions for less fascist-sounding names.

Sad news for the reality-based community

The once great San Jose Mercury News is surreptitiously trying to poll readers on how it should destroy itself. I suppose it's better to do these things intentionally and all at once, but that hardly makes ideas like naming the sections of the paper Live, Play and Innovate or scrapping every section but Business any less tragicomic.

If they are having trouble figuring out how to support their operation, they should call Bob Novak, who somehow manages to get paid for columns like the one he wrote this weekend. It consisted of a claim that some anonymous had told Novak that some another anonymous person or people had told him that anonymous people who work for the Clinton campaign had some unknown information about Obama but weren't telling anybody what it was. I can't imagine any other profession in which you could turn out that kind of work product and still keep your job.

Or if that fails, maybe they should take the advice of my former boss and try to "make it not suck."

Dinner with Mike Gravel

I know who I am voting for.

Mike Gravel -- the man who ended the draft (and therefore the Vietnam War) and entered the Pentagon papers into the public record -- joined a small group of UCLA law students for dinner Friday night.

Gravel is the first candidate I've heard come out in support of the Wiener platform, my proposal to eliminate our country's stupidest policies. (I did not ask him not know how he feels about the penny). He has a plan to end the war (stop fighting it), and has both the best environmental record of any on candidate (he cosponsored much of our key environmental legislation in the 70's) and the best plan for new solutions (a carbon tax).

But Gravel is thinking even bigger than that. He wants to change the way we write laws and the way we tax ourselves. His real motivation for running is to draw attention to his National Initiative for Democracy, a popularly ratified constitutional amendment that would institute a version of California's initiative process at the national level. The plan eliminates the worst feature of California's system by making it a crime to spend any corporate dollars in campaigns. Of course, it still has some drawbacks, as Gravel admitted. For one, people are kind of stupid. However, unlike legislatures, they have no need to raise massive amounts of money and have more freedom to fix their mistakes.

Gravel has been shut out of recent Democratic debates, because he hasn't met the arbitrary and disturbing standard of needing a million dollars, clearly designed to keep him out. (This is a perverse reversal of spending limits that other jurisdictions employ). As he is unlikely to solve that particular problem if he keeps spending 2.5 hours with a handful of students, look for him next at a Dec. 10 afternoon rally outside NBC studios.

Good idea, bad idea

Good idea: Giving high school students a glimpse of local government by holding a meeting of a local government agency at the high school.

Bad idea: Holding out the Los Altos City Council as an example of how government works.

The Los Altos City Council is holding its Dec. 3 meeting at Los Altos High School to introduce students how the local government decision-making process works.

For those just joining us, the Los Altos City Council:

• once passed a law forcing day workers to stand on the other side of the street. (After several defeats in court, the city had to settle the case for $65,000).
• responded to a request by an LAHS student group to proclaim a Gay Pride Day in Los Altos by instead passing a proclamation that it would not issue proclamations about issues the mayor, who at the time happened to be a Mormon guy, found offensive. (In response, the students filed for a parade permit that the city legally had to grant, costing the city about $12,000 in police services).
• repealed a law against claw machines only to leave intact an anti-gypsy ordinance.

Another reason to hate your orthodontist

Congratulations on your retirement, UCLA orthodontics residency program chair Dr. Eric Ting.

The Daily Bruin came out swinging today against UCLA's school of orthodontics, documenting its practice of selling residency spots to the relatives of big donors. In one case, the admissions committe told one applicant he was in, only to call him back the next in an attempt to shake him down for $60,000.

The headline, "Donations influence admissions," was somewhat laughable until I remembered that I went to a public university. One professor called it a "mockery of the merit based traditions and social values that have made the University of California the best and most admired public university system in the world today."

Kudos to the Daily Bruin for a well-researched story.

UPDATE, 11/14: Our future dentists are crooked, too.

Evil 11 - Good 10 (overtime)

The Forces of Good were defeated 11-10 by Menlo-Atherton in overtime today in the quarterfinals of CCS.

Los Altos had the lead for most of the game (and looked to be the better team), but gave up a goal with 0:22 seconds left to allow M-A to tie the game and force overtime.

With 0:07 left in the second overtime period, M-A ran a successful play to free their star player, who got high out of the water to and shot unobstructed at four-meters, center cage. By sheer luck he missed the wide open shot. However, disaster was not averted. The ball ricocheted directly to his teammate who squeeked a meathook shot past the Los Altos goalie from an extreme weakside angle as time expired.

Truly tragic.

How will we get to Punta Del Este?

Buenos Aires -- Uruguay closed its border with Argentina yesterday in the latest move in an escalating diplomatic dispute between the two countries. The tensions began when Uruguay recently gave the green light to Finnish multinational Botnia to operate a paper mill on the banks of the Rio de la Plata river just across from Argentina. Argentina contends that the mill will seriously pollute the river which, according to a government lawyer I spoke with, the Argentine government is finally trying to clean up.

However, with the summer quickly approaching down here, if Uruguay closes its border, how will we all get to the chic summer resort town of Punta Del Este? And how will the Uruguayan government make up for all the lost income from tourists? Makes me think they'll open the border soon.

Pictures of the mill showed huge piles of logs ready to be made into paper. That made me think: This is the 21st century and we're still making paper out of trees? For all our technical advances and environmental consciousness, we haven't adopted any alternatives? A few years ago Canadian old-growth was being used to make phone books...

Forces of good march on

Fresh off recapturing the league championship by upsetting evil archrival Paly, the Los Altos boys water polo team easily dispatched #12 seed San Benito in the first round of Central Coast Section playoffs. Senior Connor Smith described the win as "not much of a game."

The starters were pulled after the first quarter. Final score 14-3.

Los Altos will face #4 seed Menlo-Atherton at Lynbrook High School no earlier than 10am* on Saturday.

(*The game is NOW scheduled to start at 11:20 am. Your reporter will be in attendance.)

Introducing NOE's newest correspondent

Please join me in welcoming Los Altos's greatest character writer to the team. Readers will remember Erik Koland as the man who stood up to Rickenbacker Collections, as well as his many informal contributions to the site since its inception.

After years of trying to talk his way onto the blog, Erik becomes the only contributor who actually resides in Los Altos. He will be responsible for our efforts to become Los Altos's leading news source on high school water polo, death, pestilence, and both legally and illegally downloaded video.

Time to sit back and wait for the federal clerkship offers to roll in

Member, City Council CITY OF LOS ALTOS
Completed Precincts 19 of 19
		Percent	Votes
DAVID CASAS		27.59%	4,435
RONALD D. PACKARD		26.41%	4,246
UCLAW alum MEGAN SATTERLEE		24.11%	3,876
RANDALL HULL		21.89%	3,519

My brother informs me that Towelie and I tied for last place with one vote apiece.

Los Altos election special (with special guest star, my mother)

Though this Tuesday's election will not inspire the attention that last year's did, we here at NOE still take seriously our duty to inform the public about local politics.

Four candidates are running for three open seats on the Los Altos city council.

Ron Packard: Readers no doubt expect us to jump at the opportunity to get rid of Packard, who is largely responsible for the most embarassing thing to happen in Los Altos this millenium and sometimes seems to think he's mayor of Pleasantville. Not so. Packard has a lot of experience, having also spent two terms on the Mountain View council. He has a reputation as a thoughtful and generous man, and serves on the board of the Day Worker Center. Of course, the real reason I'm voting for Packard is that I need material for this blog, and he provides it.

David Casas: Casas was somewhat of a shit-disurber on the VTA Board at a time when it sorely needed its shit disturbed. He also always returned my phone calls when I was looking for a comment or an interview. On the other hand, his kid was kind of a brat the one time I met him. That would likely be enough for my mom not to vote for him, but that was few years ago.

Randall Hull: Hull seems like a friend of bicycle commuting and renewable energy usage. However, he used to do some contract work for the Town Crier, so he's already got one foot in the grave.

Megan Satterlee: I know almost nothing about Satterlee other than that her ballot statement refers too frequently to "preserving" Los Altos. However, she's an alum of UCLA School of Law. The added prestige that my degree would carry with an alum on the Los Altos City Council is too great to pass up. Sorry Randall.

The only other thing on the ballot is Measure O, which would revise the city's phone tax to include cell phone and broadband users while lowering the rate from 3.5% to 3.2%.

Nobody has written a argument against this idea, though there is this:

Mom: "I don't know what this one is about. I'll probably vote yes. I usually vote yes on everything."

Me: "That one is a tax cut." [Yes, I know this is only partially true.]

Mom: "Okay, I'll vote no then. Why would they cut taxes?"

My mom's voting system for candidates: vote for women.
My mom's voting system for other measures: yes on everything (except tax cuts.)