Columnists

As I watch CNN’s man-of-the-moment Anderson Cooper looking quite natty in his rugged, styled shirt (his mother is Gloria Vanderbilt, after all) with billowing smoke, raging fires, guns, blood and death smearing the landscape behind him, it occurs to me that if there were not so much real life suffering going on in the Middle East (and elsewhere), I could be watching yet another war movie, this time featuring the handsome hero/journalist who casts all thoughts of danger aside to hurtle himself past bombs and bullets to get hands-on, first-person accounts of the ravages of war. -more-

It was one of those obscure issues you run into in the back-end of the City Council agenda, when the chambers have all but cleared and the stray staff members are packing away their binders and papers and waiting patiently for the adjournment call, and the only ones who seem to be paying attention are the Sanjiv Handas of the world. -more-

I was in Paris for just a few days. According to carefully devised calculations I had two hours to tour the Louvre. After two hours I was still there. I tried following “sortie” signs toward the exit but they kept directing me through galleries showcasing illuminating artifacts. Once inside I’d get sucked back into the viewing circuit. -more-

In 1974, the Berkeley Daily Gazette published the photo of a “mystery house” on the northwest corner of La Loma Avenue and Ridge Road. -more-

When I show up with my flashlight, there’s one item that most homeowners are holding their breath about and that’s their foundation. People generally believe that this is: a) the most important system of the house, and b) the most expensive. Well, this is close to the truth in both cases, although I can think of plenty of cases where neither is actually the case. -more-

It’s high hot summer and the mosquitoes are peaking, along with the rest of the annoying arthropods. -more-

It’s a famous cartoon setup: Aliens descend from a space ship, walk up to a human, and demand, “Take me to your leader.” If aliens actually did land in Washington D.C., they’d probably be taken to meet George Bush. After all, he’s the nominally elected president of the United States. Ah, but is he our leader? -more-

I’m not a spokesperson for anyone, but myself. I once thought I might have some insights to share with and about the disabled community but this has turned out not to be true. When an organization that represents this community was looking for local authors to speak at a fundraising event, I imagined I was the perfect candidate. -more-

I just finished a book called Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions, which despite the title is not another pop-psychology tract about gender differences. The author, Richard Francis, is an evolutionary neurobiologist, and the book is a rousing polemic against the sociobiologists and their intellectual heirs, the evolutionary psychologists: scientists who believe that just about every aspect of human behavior is an adaptation to something or other. -more-