Columnists

Military alliances are always sold as things that produce security. In practice they tend to do the opposite. -more-

Some years ago, my brother and I and a friend were in Los Angeles at the opening of Che, the Omar Sharif movie that was considered by some to be favorable to the late Cuban revolutionary leader. L.A. had a large Cuban exile community that was not so sympathetic to Che, and so we had to walk through an angry picket line to get inside the theater. The movie itself went off without a hitch until the climactic battle scene in which Che was killed. During the gunbattle on the screen, someone inside tossed a couple of smoke bombs into the crowded seats. -more-

Some people follow soccer; I follow taxonomy. A slower game, but it has its regards. -more-

Recently I have been doing a few repairs to my back porch, which has required taking it apart in places to replace various structural members which are rotting. -more-

California is burning down. This is the real Shock and Awe. As of this writing, there are over 1,300 fires burning in the state and nearly a third of a million acres have burned. Since I’m not good with acres, I decided to convert this to square miles. At 640 acres to a square mile, this means that close to 500 square miles have burned. Again, I’m not that good with areas so I like to find something to compare this with. The city of Los Angeles is about 500 square miles. San Francisco is less than half that size. Imagine, two San Franciscos have completely burned down in this recent spate of fires. We’ve currently got over 17,000 fire personnel working on fighting these fires, over a thousand engines in the field, three hundred bull dozers cutting fire breaks and 85 helicopters (mostly dropping water on these many blazes). -more-