Betraying the Planet

A landmark climate change bill comes up for vote in the Congress and what does our local congressman Pete Stark do? Vote against it! Sheesh … yet another DINO in our midst.

As Krugman explains ever so eloquently:

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Meatless Mondays

Ok … I recognize that folks can’t stop eating meat all of a sudden. Here’s another approach towards a more healthy living for yourself and the rest of us (i.e: the planet)!

Meatless Monday is a non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns, in association with the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health. Our goal is to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.

Street Date: Park St

Today’s 96 hours section in the Chronicle features our very own Alameda Marketplace!

Large rectangular and curved windows allow natural light to fill the cavernous red brick building at 1650 Park St. in Alameda. Once housing a car dealership, today it’s home to the Alameda Marketplace, where specialty food proprietors create a culinary community. The feeling here is downright neighborly, thanks to the small-town nature of this island city and the fact that, while very knowledgeable, the people here are unpretentious and welcoming.

The future of journalism?

As is perhaps well known by now,  the Chronicle has launched an Alameda specific website called In Alameda. Congratulations to Lauren and John on this achievement.

While coverage of local issues by the mainstream newspapers continues to shrink as a result of the cutbacks, alternative business models are attempting to fill the gap. For instance, in San Diego:

He launched the San Diego News Network (SDNN) using a “regional aggregation strategy”– akin to a blogging model for news. Those who bring their buckets and shovels get a big slice of the ad pie, if the money arrives. Payroll costs will be minimal, says Senturia, because SDNN reporters are paid an 80% cut of the ad revenue generated by the pages on which their stories appear (they also get a small stipend).

In other words, writers get a percentage of the ad money that their articles generate! Could it be only a question of time before this idea catches on?

$100k pensions in Alameda?

The CalPERS $100,000 pension club has several entries for employer “Alameda”. Is that our fair city? (btw, there is a separate entry for “Alameda County”).

Merit pay for teachers: Redux

I thought it was weird that the teacher’s union would simply reject the notion of merit pay by trotting out lame excuses. Obama is attempting to shake things up now and I hope he succeeds!

“Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools,” he said in a wide-ranging education speech before a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

Cue the same old tired response from the union:

Teachers’ unions say merit pay causes teachers to compete against each other, rather than collaborate, and is unfair to those who work in disadvantaged areas where it can be harder to boost student performance.

Showing how much the union is disconnected from reality!

But polls show the policy is overwhelmingly supported by the public, and it offers Obama a chance both to burnish his reformer credentials and point to a split from party orthodoxy.

Mad(off) map!

Nobody from Alameda, but a lot of (former) investors in our vicinity!

Enroute to a post SF Chronicle

It looks like the Chronicle is bleeding red ink and might cease operations if they can’t make “significant” cuts!

In a statement, Hearst said that if the savings cannot be accomplished “quickly,” the company will seek a buyer, and if none comes forward, it will close The Chronicle. The Chronicle lost more than $50 million in 2008 and is on a pace to lose more than that this year, Hearst said.

A couple of writers from wired.com are proposing a mashup to replace the paper.

Imagine what you could do with a daily news organization if you subtract the paper and assume the Internet (and iPhones and Twitter and…). That’s what we said to ourselves around our dinner table the night that the Chronicle news broke. What could San Francisco look like post-Chronicle? We made a wiki, wrote down some thoughts, and released it into the world as the San Francisco Post Chronicle.

Webster House

In today’s Chronicle:

Known as the Webster House – named after its original owner, Forty-Niner John Nelson Webster – the 155-year-old dwelling is the oldest structure in the city. Designed and fabricated in New York in the early 1850s by the architect Andrew Jackson Downing, it was disassembled, loaded aboard a sailing vessel and shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco in 1854.

And … it is for sale

The 17-room Webster House at 1238 Versailles Ave., now a bed and breakfast with second-floor quarters for the owners, is on the market at $1,795,000, offered by brokers Ellen Anderson and Linda Harrison of Sotheby’s International Realty in San Francisco.

Spare a fruit or two?

From the Oakland magazine:

Forage Oakland, a neighborhood produce networking effort, makes it so easy. Started in mid-April by Asiya Wadud, 26, of Oakland, the project harvests and exchanges crops from local neighborhoods. Folks with too many ripening peaches, avocados, blackberries or pluots, for instance, can e-mail or call Wadud, telling her what they have to give and what they’d like in return for their edibles. Wadud then schedules a time to pedal her basketed bike over with a buddy or two, picker in hand, to retrieve the perishables that will be bartered, and she later delivers the requested foodstuff, identified with a Forage Oakland card. The model allows gardeners with ready-to-harvest goods to trade for later-producing herbs, fruits or vegetables.

The Chronicle reported on another venture, with a different goal.