Columnists

Dispatches From the Edge: Stories From The Year That Was

By Conn Hallinan
Thursday February 04, 2010 - 08:44:00 AM

News tends to vanish from our radar screens when the attention of the media moves elsewhere. But the stories go on. This week Dispatches revisits four subjects it has covered in the past year. -more-


Undercurrents: Quan, Dellums Put the Slowdown on the Perata Machine

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday February 04, 2010 - 08:45:00 AM

Remember when at least one overenthusiastic Don Perata supporter was crowing that the former state senator was going to cakewalk into the office of mayor of the city of Oakland in 2010? (“With the dark cloud of a lingering federal probe behind him, there is nothing standing between former state Sen. Don Perata and the Oakland mayor’s office but time, opportunity and blue skies,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle’s Chip Johnson.) -more-


East Bay Then and Now: Ghosts of Old Greeks Populate Campus Northside

By Daniella Thompson
Thursday February 04, 2010 - 08:55:00 AM

                  Phi Omega Pi house, 2601 Le Conte Ave., was designed by B. Reede Hardman in 1928.

The current class-action lawsuit by Southside residents against 35 Berkeley fraternities serves to highlight the overwhelming concentration of Greek chapter houses in that part of town. It wasn’t always so. -more-


About the House: A Few Thoughts on Working With Contractors

By Matt Cantor
Thursday February 04, 2010 - 08:58:00 AM

As a longtime contractor and one who inspects the work of contractors, I have had the good fortune to see both sides of this curious and often heated area of commerce. -more-


Wild Neighbors: Old as an Albatross

By Joe Eaton
Thursday February 04, 2010 - 08:59:00 AM
Courting Laysan albatrosses on Tern Island, Hawai'i.

Last week I wrote about a recent study out of Cornell that attempted to find ecological and life-history factors correlated with longer life-spans in birds. The authors reported that larger birds lived longer than smaller species. Sociality, herbivory, and the tendency to nest on islands were also associated with long life, as measured by extreme records for banded birds. -more-