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The SF Sentinel now reports a story we first broke at this blog where Larry Bowoto , the Nigerian man who claims he was shot by persons employed by Chevron, and whom Chevron points to as the person who held their employees hostage for several days, has dropped his lawsuit claim of human rights violations. The Sentinel observes: It is looking more and more likely that Bowoto and 150 of his compatriots took over the Chevron oil platform off Nigeria in a hostage takeover — which is far different from their claims of human rights abuse. The trial is in September.

Look, now Cal's being down right silly and arrogant. On Sunday, I understand that there was another rally -- I was resting from a busy week -- and that even Berkeley Councilmember Donna Sprng got involved. Now, UC Spokesperson Dan Mogulof seems to imply that the University doesn't want to talk to anyone. Dan Mogulof, just do it. Let's stop this silly game, find something clever and political to say to get them to go home. Why not offer the protesters a chance to be part of the action of planning? It's called a Citizen's Review Commitee. Look, I know Cal can do better. The way Cal's behaving is not what I learned at the Department of City and Regional Planning, where I got my Master's Degree...at Cal. Cal needs to grow up.

I just saw the SFGate online article about Oakland City Admininstrator Deborah Edgerly and it has the headline, "Paid to do nothing". That's an insult and a smear, especially since the same article explains that Edgerly ran a meeting because Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums was late to attend it. The Chronicle's Chris Heredia wrote: On Friday, Dellums asked all city department heads to report directly to him until further notice. Edgerly, however, ran the first half of a weekly meeting of city department heads on Monday when Dellums was running late. So that means she's not paid to do nothing -- she's doing something . But most SFGate readers will just see that stupid headline and then make dumb comments in the comments section. Then they will communicate that to others and the public will have the wrong view of Miss E. Look, I don't think the SF Chronicle should do that. It's not right and it's certainly a smear of the first order.

Sf Chroncle's scribe and my cantankerous friend Chip Johnson wrote an article that saw the light of day , and then was forgotten -- until now. It involves Larae Brown, who was a Controller with the City of Oakland and according to Johnson, doing her job, which was finding flaws in bookkeeping. Seems she found a huge one: Chip Johnson reports: The trouble began in 2006 when Brown completed a reconciliation of more than 100 city bank accounts, a task she alleges had not been performed since 1999 - and what she found was extremely troubling. In her review, she discovered the city's cash balance was overstated by $172 million and 77 of 111 city accounts showed negative fund balances. By her estimates, all that was left in city coffers were bond funds, whose use is restricted by state law. When she raised concerns with her superiors, the suit claims, she was told that City Administrator Deborah Edgerly had devised a 10-year repayment plan to cover a half-dozen negative fund balan...

Well, when the Cody's Books on Telegraph closed, that was it for me. It was the end of a long era. A Berkeley tradition of reading and learning and flirting. Yes, flirting. Say, Cody's Books on Telegraph played host to some totally hot women during my days and even up to its closing. Speaking, er, writing of hot women, Cody's played host to someone who's kind of an expert on the subject: Former President Bill Clinton. Clinton came to Berkeley to present and sign copies of his then-new book "My Life". It was no surprise to me that of all the book stores in America, President Clinton would choose Cody's Books to visit. He drew about 5,000 people. Now, having closed the famous Telegraph location for a new place on Shattuck, that's going to the past too, closing today . Where will Bill go now?

According to today's NY Times , the newspaper industry is in trouble, as papers suffer from competition from the Internet. The SF Chron has been losing $1 million a week since last year. As Tim O'Reily wrote last year, he reads the online version of the SF Chron 95 percent of the time, and the "offline" version about 5 percent of the time. That's probably true for me, as well, but Tim and I are both in the Internet business. What can be done? Well, my answer is "nothing" -- the offline news people have to adjust to this New Media world, as do institutions and PR people who have been oriented toward using offline newspapers to get the news out. This also includes sports leagues like the NFL, which has a long standing relationship with such organizations as The Associated Press, but not the Huffington Post , which draws 14 million visitors a month. The SF Chron seems to be trying to find its way on The Internet, where it gets about 5 million visitors...

I appreciate that you are friends with Deborah Edgerly , and take your comments with that grain of salt. I also agree that there is no doubt more to this story, and it may play out in her favor. We will all have to see what happens, and I for one await further insights and will suspend judgment. However, 2 thinhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifgs regarding her being a scapegoat for nepotism: 1. Just because it happens a lot doesn't make it right. You know this, as does everyone who's made it out of the 3rd grade. 2. I'm trying to think of anyone else who could or WOULD call the OPD repeatedly to make sure that their child gets preferential treatment. Can't think of anyone. Certainly no elected official would risk that - assuming that they carried that much political weight. And certainly only a few appointed individuals have the clout to force something like that. So to suggest that everyone does it strikes me as a bit of a mis-characterization. At least you're ...