Columnists

Ben Bernanke has a lot in common with the next president. The pinnacle of his career will mostly involve cleaning up someone else’s mess. When he took over as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in 2006, Bernanke stepped into a quagmire so deep and wide that he sometimes has that stunned, wide-eyed look of a drowning man. -more-

On April 8, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker told the Senate the president’s Iraq surge strategy has “worked” and, therefore, current troop levels should be maintained. The hearings came at a time when public attention has shifted from the occupation to the economy. Given the looming recession, why should Americans care how long our troops stay in Iraq? -more-

Last week’s column gave an overview of expansion plans by the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, including two huge new buildings in Strawberry Canyon: the Computation Research and Theoretical Facility (CRT) and the Helios Facility. A group called Save Strawberry Canyon is fighting the expansion for a whole litany of reasons: earthquake and fire risks; impacts on air and water quality and greenhouse gas emissions; damage to a significant cultural landscape; procedural flaws in the lab’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP); and, not least, endangered species issues. -more-

Running for elected office—especially for local elected office—can be an extraordinarily stressful time, as candidates struggle to get their messages heard and understood amidst the general cacophony. -more-

John Albert Marshall (1868-1924), commonly known as J.A., was a small and hot-tempered man. In 1906 he had two brushes with the law—one as a recalcitrant witness for the defense, threatening to thrash a much larger prosecuting attorney, the other when he was convicted of battery after pummeling John Koch, owner of a delicatessen at 2520 Bancroft Way. -more-

So I was licking nectar off the base of an orchid blossom the other night ... See?That’s why people keep pets, in which category I place houseplants. Most of us don’t live the wildlands any more, which of course is why they’re still “wildlands,” and there’s all this unpredictable, unrepeatable, unmediated experience we don’t get to have every minute of every day. -more-

As you go for that morning jog ( You are jogging every morning, right? Immediately after that low-fat, lemon, poppy-seed, caramel muffin and the soy latte) you probably note amidst the quiet and still of the neighborhood that there are little puffs of smoke that come from the tops of every house and business. -more-