As we age, it is normal for our brains to slow down, to forget things and to have more difficulty concentrating on more than one thing. With normal aging of the brain, this diminishment can be managed so that it is not interfering with our ability to live a normal life. The problem is that [...]

I grew up in a household where we didn’t celebrate the 4th of July. We aren’t usually together as a family on the holiday and we certainly didn’t celebrate it at home. Our family must have gone on some road trips when we were little but that might have been it. My memories of the [...]

As the headlines kept coming about the horrible aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, I was struck by the similarities to New Orleans after Katrina. Leaving politics out of the conversation, the reality is that when the disaster is big enough, the best laid plans of any government are probably going to fail. It’s just [...]

I love California’s state parks, beaches, and recreational areas.  Ask me why I do not mind paying my taxes and one of the first things I will mention is state parks (usually behind police and fire services, water delivery, and freeways).  Unfortunately, parks are seen “extras,” “luxuries,” or “fat,” by our government officials, and are [...]

Photo by Bruce Mac, via The Big Picture

The Big 4 Bank CEOs testified for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this week. Instead of reading the approximately 15 pages that each of these blowhards presented to the Commission, please allow me to offer a layman’s translation.  I suffer so you don’t have to.
Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman [...]

Every year we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday.  We are supposed to reflect on the life of a great man who struggled to free people from segregation, racial prejudice, discrimination, and hate. We pause to celebrate his victories achieved without resorting to the kind of violence practiced by those who [...]

As people used to the ground shaking on a regular basis, we see the events in Haiti and think “that could be us”. While we are young site, we still feel the need to ask our readers to help.
Or, as Sacagawea put it:
I was thinking of whether we should do something or not (is it [...]

The water system in California is a complex combination of reservoirs, rivers, pipelines, pumping stations, and canals.  Most of Southern California’s water comes from the Sierra Nevada range north of Sacramento, where it flows into the Oroville basin (the top green dot in the map below), and then is released into the delta, where it [...]