dogtown commons

During all the rain we had in January, many people consoled themselves with the thought that California needs this rain and snow to fill our reservoirs. And given how low the water level in those reservoirs had been, the rain was indeed a blessing.

As with so many things, though, it all comes down to timing. Ideally, rain in the winter keeps the reservoirs in good shape through the spring, then snowmelt in the spring replenishes the reservoirs to get us through the summer and fall until the rains begin again. This requires rain at the right time, then snowmelt at the right time, or else you can end up with too much water in winter and spring or too little water in summer and fall.

A new study, described in Friday’s Los Angeles Times, has found that we have a timing problem — the balancing act we depend on to keep our water supply at manageable levels is no longer working out as well as it did when those reservoirs were built. The problem is that temperatures are rising, so snow is melting earlier than it used to. Instead of replenishing the reservoirs during late spring as mountain snow slowly melts, that water is flowing out of the mountains earlier, arriving in reservoirs when they are still flush with winter rain. As the Times story puts it:

But in California, reservoirs already operate on a delicate balance.

They are kept well below capacity during the winter as protection against flooding. After the rainy season, they are filled with the spring snowmelt, storing up water to be released during the dry summer months.

Heavier winter rains and earlier snowmelt are likely to overwhelm reservoirs, forcing an early release of water. That would leave too little water for the summer.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” said lead author Tim Barnett, a marine geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. “Mother nature is going to stop being our water banker.”

Sometimes I wonder why I even read the news. Every day I discover a brand new way to worry about the future…

I don’t throw the word “evil” around lightly, but I think it may be the only word that conveys the enormity of the meat industry’s sins. While the videos secretly taken by the Humane Society and first written about in yesterday’s Washington Post provide particularly heinous and nauseating footage, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that even factory farms and slaughterhouses which obey the law are evil — the animals live unspeakably miserable lives, the meat produced by industrial farming is notably less healthy to consumers than meat produced humanely and naturally, and the industry is an ecological and economic disaster in all sorts of other ways.

The Los Angeles Times, in its Friday article on the Humane Society’s slaughterhouse expose, included this tidbit:

the society said it had turned over the results of its investigation to the “appropriate California law enforcement officials.” Local authorities, the society said, had asked for “extra time” before the information became public.

I hope reporters follow up on that. Which law enforcement agency was informed, and why did the state allow this slaughterhouse to continue going about its business while the authorities asked for “extra time” before the information became public? It sounds like not only was USDA inspection lax, but someone in a California law enforcement agency actually knew that a major public health risk was occurring, and did nothing.

As for the more general problems with the industry, I encourage people to read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, or at least to read his long 2002 article on beef in the New York Times Magazine (The NYTimes also had an article last Sunday on the energy and environmental problems with our meat-heavy diet). Pollan, like Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation fame, is still not a vegetarian. But Pollan took a closer look at the meat industry than most people would ever want to, and he came away wondering if he could ever eat beef again. He makes the case — persuasively — that there is a world of difference between eating animals raised on corn, hormones, steroids and antibiotics in an industrial feedlot and eating animals raised in a natural and sustainable manner with the dignity and respect befitting a sentient creature.

Obama supporters seeking camaraderie, or Edwards refugees seeking a new home, or history buffs keen to see the Last Kennedy Brother Standing, take note: Ted Kennedy’s national tour promoting Barack Obama will be passing through Oakland on Friday:

Kennedy to Host Community Gatherings in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Angeles and Oakland

Chicago, IL - On Thursday, January 31, 2008 and Friday, February 1, 2008 Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will host “Change We Can Believe In” community gatherings in New Mexico and California. Senator Kennedy will make stops in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico on Thursday and Los Angeles and Oakland, California on Friday.

Details still to come. here:

Beebe Memorial Cathedral
3900 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609

Friday, February 1, 2008
Doors Open: 2:00 p.m.

It says something depressing about Oakland — or maybe about me — that my first thought when I read about the following incident was, “How strange that the knife fight didn’t quickly escalate into a gun fight”:

OAKLAND — As many as eight people suffered knife wounds early Sunday at an East Oakland house party when a fight broke out after a woman pushed a man who had pushed her, police said. Some of the brawlers later kidnapped the woman who rented the house where the party was given — along with her niece and a man — but the abducted trio were able to escape, police said.

Those wounded — the woman who was initially pushed and at least seven men — are expected to recover. Some of them sustained only minor cuts while others suffered injuries ranging from punctures to gaping wounds that required dozens of staples to close, police said. They were being treated at local hospitals and none of their names were released.

It’s also a reminder of why it’s so ridiculous for people to say, “Guns don’t kill, people do.” If guns had been involved, we would likely be reading about several people dead, not several people wounded.

How much would I have to pay you to get you to push a Honda Civic about 30 miles on a flat surface?

Since pushing a small sedan is exhausting work, and it would take all day (at least!), I’m guessing that I would have to pay you more than 4 bucks to push the car a mile, never mind 30 miles. I think I’d be really lucky to find someone willing to push a Honda Civic 30 miles for 50 bucks, and if I had to pay minimum wage, it would surely cost more than that.

This thought experiment illustrates (I hope) just how energy-rich petroleum is, and how inexpensive. Just think — for a bit over $3 at street corners all over America, you can buy a gallon of fuel that will easily accomplish in half an hour what it would take a hard-working human being all day to do. It’s no wonder we’re addicted to fossil fuels, given how much energy they manage to store in such small packages. I don’t have any grand point here, but it’s something to think about next time someone says that gas is really expensive. You get a lot of bang for your buck even at 3 or 4 bucks a gallon. And when you think about it that way, it’s no longer a surprise that we are having trouble finding energy sources to replace hydrocarbons like oil — there are very few things, at least on this planet, that can pack as much punch into such a small, portable package.

Brittney Gilbert’s new gig at the CBS5 (KPIX) website:

What you are reading is the inaugural post of a blog about blogs known as Eye on Blogs. That may sound like a lot of blogs, because it is. That’s the whole idea behind this CBS 5 blog you are currently reading. It’s a weblog about blogs in the Bay Area. There is an aggregator on the right-hand side of the site that automatically displays the latest feeds from the most recently updated blogs in the area. I’ll be acting as a human aggregator, reading local blogs and selecting posts to highlight here in the center column of the blog.

So the job desciption is “Read zillions of bay area blogs, sort wheat from chaff, add two cents as desired.” Nice work if you can get it! (Yeah, I know, almost anything gets tiresome if you have to do it all day, every day…)

The New York Times reported on Thursday that Chinese officials are expected to cut Beijing’s automobile traffic in half during the summer Olympic Games, as part of their strategy to reduce the pollution that pervades the city’s air. (A separate article describes plans by athletes and their coaches to cope with the pollution, including doing their preparatory training outside the area and possibly even wearing masks during competitions.) Beijing did a test of this anti-smog tactic last August, when cars with license plates ending in odd and even numbers were only allowed to be driven on alternating days. Traffic delays were dramatically reduced, but it is not clear that there was much short-term effect on pollution levels.

The Beijing plan got me daydreaming earlier today about what would happen if for some bizarre political or environmental reason, all motorized vehicles were suddenly removed from roadways forever. (Yes, I know this is an absurd fantasy, and no, I am not proposing this as a goal.) What would become of our urban geography, if all those millions of acres of pavement were suddenly available for carfree use?

(An empty Bay Bridge shown during the closure of labor day weekend 2007. Flickr photo by The Artist™ used under a creative commons license.)

One model for imagining new uses for old spaces is the conversion of abandoned rail lines. Nationwide rail-to-trail conversions like the Iron Horse trail in Contra Costa county are one example, but more exciting, at least to me, is the high line project in New York. The high line is an abandoned elevated rail line that snakes for well over a mile down the far West side of Manhattan, where it used to bring freight to and from the area’s warehouses and factories. It marches unperturbed over busy surface streets and passes right through several buildings as it makes its way through 25 or so blocks of the city.

(The high line shown passing through a former Nabisco factory — now the gourmet Chelsea Market complex — at West 16th Street and 10th Avenue. Flickr photo by Zantony used under a creative commons license.)

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There’s a lot of senseless drug policy in this country, both in our laws and our corporate policies, as I was reminded by today’s California Supreme Court decision affirming an employer’s right to fire (or refuse to hire, as in the case at hand) an employee who tests positive for marijuana, even if the employee has a physician’s recommendation for the use of marijuana to treat chronic pain under California’s 1996 voter-approved medical marijuana law, and even if the employee’s marijuana use is strictly during off-duty hours, and even if there is no allegation that the employee’s marijuana use is affecting his or her job perfomance.

For an example of a drug policy that’s more sensible, here is a snippet from a new Tribune Company handbook (pdf), distributed to employees after the company recently changed ownership (rule #1 is “Use your best judgment”):

This common-sense approach is apparently typical of the new owner, Sam Zell, who seems to believe in giving people responsibility for their actions rather than viewing workers as children and managers as their nannies. Another example: when Zell learned that the company was filtering the internet content of editors, reporters, and producers at the company’s newspapers and TV stations, he sent the following memo:

From: Talk to Sam
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 11:03 AM
Subject: Censorship, the First Amendment and the Fourth Estate

Everyone, I learned on the first leg of our tour of Tribune’s business units that some of them were filtering Internet content. I do not see how a member of the Fourth Estate, dedicated to protecting the First Amendment, can censor what its own employees and partners can see. I have instructed that all content filters be removed. You are now exposed to the dangers of You Tube and Facebook. Please use your best judgment.

Let’s focus on what is important, and go for greatness. Sam

Imagine that — allowing workers to use their best judgment, and implicitly relying on managers to take responsibility for the people that they hire, promote or fire, instead of relying on one-size-fits-all policies that are designed to prevent management from actually having to use any judgment or make any tough decisions.

It’s easy to understand why employers, and especially their lawyers, like to rely on drug testing and internet filters to help them manage employees. After all, if an employee is fired, it is easier to justify the termination by a cut-and-dry violation of a drug policy than by more squishy judgments about whether the employee was slacking off or spacing out too much on the job. Similarly, it is easier to simply block internet sites en masse than to get into the murkier business of worrying about which employees are exploiting their Facebook privileges and which ones are pulling their weight.

As understandable as blanket policies like drug testing or internet filters may be as a way to avoiding the responsibility of actually managing their employees, it’s nice to see a company put some responsibility back on the shoulders of workers and their supervisors instead.

So tie-shy Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein is leaving the Editor’s post for a new “editor-at-large” position with that sounds like part strategic planning for the Hearst papers, part community representative for the Chronicle, and part writer/editor/whatever for the Chronicle and SFGate.com. SFGate’s story on his move
neglected to mention whether he wore a tie during his newsroom announcement today, or whether he will start wearing one more often in his new role, but it did note that he once wore scuba gear in a hunt for an alligator (no word on whether the alligator hunt is what prompted a Komodo dragon to bite his toe in 2001 — a gesture of reptilian solidarity, perhaps?).

Hearst laid off 90 of the Chronicle’s 400 newsroom employees last year. How many of those salaries could have been paid with the small fortune Bronstein will probably earn in his vague-sounding new job?

If I’m ever a presidential candidate, and you are the editor of a big city paper who is coming to interview me in a formal setting at the St. Francis hotel, and you happen to be male, then I just have one request: please wear a tie! That applies even if you are known for your hunky looks and your marriage to Sharon Stone.

(San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein, Barack Obama, and Editorial Page Editor John Diaz on January 17th before or after a long interview with the Chronicle Editorial Board at the St. Francis Hotel.)

I promise, no more posts about Bronstein’s sartorial choices for a while. I’m not usually in favor of dress codes and the like, but I think Bronstein looks pretty silly in that picture. This white shirt/dark suit/no tie trend isn’t my favorite in the first place, but in a newsroom it’s fine. At a formal interview in a nice hotel, it’s ridiculous. So please, if I’m ever a presidential candidate, just do me this one little favor…