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Nikki Raney has advice for Tila Tila Tequila is a celebrity who's very familiar to readers of this space. The combative reality TV show star, and former wife-to-be of the late Casey Johnson, loves to get in the mix with people.  First it was Perez Hilton and now its Nikki Raney. Nikki Raney is a star blogger and journalist at Zennie62.com .    But before we look more into that and her row with Tila Tequila, some background on Tila Tequila from this space' perspective. In the middle of accusing San Diego Chargers Linebacker Shawne Merriman of assault, when he was just trying to stop her from driving drunk, this space revealed what Tila said about herself : "i like people who are really fucked up...I am very high strung and suffer from multiple personalities...I do a lot of things that are self destructive. I try not to...I am also bi-polar so that should explain my irratic postings." Here's the video on the entire incident between Merriman and Tila Teq...

YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler Oakland, CA - Note. This was originally posted on Memorial Day, 2009. It's worth reporting as this blogger prepares to make the same trip in 2010. I went to my stepfather's burial place today. Even though I was really ill, I forced myself to go and place flowers at his grave site as I've made it a habit to visit him on Memorial Day each year. He fought in World War II. But this time, I took my biological father's burial flag with me. Both my father and stepfather died in 2005. To some who are anti-war, the title of this video-blog will upset them. It should not. I'm against war and always have been, but the reality of my life is that both my late father and stepfather fought in World War II, and in my father's case, Zenophon Abraham Sr. I have his name (he lives in Chicago), and I am the proud owner of his neatly folded burial flag and two bulle...

Arrington and Carol Bartz New York, NY - (Zennie62's trip to TechCrunch is sponsored by Christine Smith Associates, Inc. , the Premier Female Contractor in NYC.) Yahoo!'s CEO Carol Bartz is known via Fake Carol Bartz on Twitter for getting off the occasional "F-bomb." But even with that, one doesn't actually expect a person to live up to a Twitter persona created by someone else. Not the case with Carol Bartz; she did. Bartz, who's taken a beating from a very critical Michael Arrington in TechCrunch, walked into what TechCrunch Co-Editor Eric Shoenfeld called "the lion's den" and talked with Michael for 25 minutes. While we have the entire 25 minute interview, this exchange on video was the talk of TechCrunch Disrupt and served to solidify Carol Bartz' combative reputation. To set the stage, Arrington was pressing Bartz on the idea that the best companies are often "single-revenue-source" producers, and was implying...

To characterize Oakland Mayor's Race Green Party candidate Donald Macleay as upset that U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D - California) endorsed former California State Senator and Oakland Mayor's Race candidate Don Perata for Mayor, is an understatement. Donald Macleay, who I now give the name "Donny Mac," and who I interviewed here .... ...is just plain pissed off. Macleay fired off this hot letter to me just 10 minutes ago and that I'm about to present to you for inspection below. Indeed, Don sent the letter to a number of media people, which means he really was hopping mad over the issue and wanted to pick a fight or draw attention to himself or some combination of both. That's politics. It's also necessary. The problem Donald Macleay has is he's a "Don" like Perata, so his name gets lost in the sea of Don. Call this a scream for help from someone lost on a castaway island in Oakland politics. Donny Mac's competing in...

In a great online video Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland's President & CEO, Bertram Lubin, MD, talked about why parents should bring their kids to Children's Hospital. He says the main reason is "You get a feeling of warmth. That you're around people who care about your children. The children are why we are here." In all, Children's Hospital has 58 videos in its well-designed YouTube channel . What's missing is a link to a blog where the videos can be housed in an online publication. In this way the videos can have another source of viewers and not just the channel itself. The channel also needs to group the videos in playlists. I could go on, but the videos themselves are excellent. The videos come together to show and tell a compelling story about a great environment for both parents, kids, and employees. And as a note to Children's Hospital, my request to be a friend on YouTube is still outstanding; friend...

Sunshine The Clown  The month of June means San Francisco Festival Season and that means events like The Union Street Festival and San Francisco institutions like The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl. The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl , is "Sunshine The Clown" and appears at San Francisco festivals from Union Street and the North Beach Festival, to The Folsom Street Fair. But one thing happened at Union Street last year which should not happen to the San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl: harassment from so-called festival representatives. What the San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl is make flower balloons for money, and not a lot. But the nature of what Sunshine The Clown does such that she's mobile. Asking Sunshine The Clown to get some kind of festival booth permit, which runs into the thousands in some cases, is anti-business. The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl should be hired by the festival producer to add to the ambiance of the event. Let...

YouTube turns 5 years old and this is my third installment to celebrate YouTube's fifth birthday.  This blog post presents the video called Y ouTube Turns 5: My YouTube Story . For me, all of this started when I was using a camcorder at the 2006 NFL Draft and interviewed my friend Oakland Raiders Legend and Stanford Hall of Famer Michael Dotterer as we were walking to 21 Club restaurant in New York City. On the way, Michael said "you're a vlogger, You should start video-blogging" or words to that effect. He also mentioned an online show called Rocketboom.   That was here : Later that year I was lucky enough to attend Vloggercon in San Francisco, and met a lot of interesting people including Irina Slutsky and Schlomo Rabinowitz, who produced the event : The stars of Vloggercon were Amanda Congdon and Andrew Michael Baron the founders of Rocketboom. While not YouTube stars, Amanda and Andrew's daily video news show with videos hosted on their ow...

This blogger just received a letter from an unnamed source and written by Jeff Leung of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco that announces a formal economic relationship between Hong Kong and The United States beneficial to California wine makers. The bottom line is that for winemakers in America, and particularly in California, Hong Kong has made doing business there much easier. US wine exports to Hong Kong totaled $49 million in 2009-2010. The U.S. is Hong Kong's fourth largest wine importer; America wants to be number one. The Secretary of Commerce of the United States, Gary Locke, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Rita Lau, in Hong Kong. The "Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Wine-related Businesses" (MOU) was signed between Hong Kong and the United States on Monday, May 17, 2010. Because of the MOU, Hong Kong will facilitate in the pairing of wines with regi...

BRT Along Geary in San Francisco  AC Transit has embarked on a program to construct Bus Rapid Transit in Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and the East Bay. Bus Rapid Transit is best described as combining the "dedicated lane" advantages of light rail systems with the cheaper equipment purchase and maintenance costs of buses to have a new kind of urban transit system. Bus Rapid Transit has become "the thing" Worldwide; there are scores of examples of successful programs and systems. While AC Transit has worked for four years to advance Bus Rapid Transit, the latest round of voting by elected officials in Berkeley proves that more education is required. In Berkeley, the City Council was under the impression Bus Rapid Transit would harm deliveries to businesses along Shattuck Avenue. In the last blog post this blogger presented a photo where a Bus Rapid Transit system was in the middle of Shattuck Avenue and asked how such a configuration would harm busine...

According to the City of Oakland, Ca, Yahoo! Cleveland Heights Neighbors Group , two African American men attempted a home invasion on the 500 block of Montclair 5 AM, May 10th. This is the Oakland Yahoo forum report: Sorry (and scared) to report another home invasion robbery attempt. My neighbor just informed me that there was a home invasion and robbery attempt at the house next to him. This occurred on the 500 block of Montclair Saturday Morning at about 5:00 am, the suspects are two young, African American males (no other description). The main house is a rental and the owner and his family live in the in-law downstairs. The suspects gained entry through a back upper window by stepping up on a garbage can (not sure if the window was locked or not). The upper unit was empty, so nothing was taken. The owners downstairs heard the noises, came up to investigate and the suspects fled. Unfortunately that was not the only crime of that kind; note the word "another....

Mark Hyman, MD recently wrote an article which can be found on Huffingtonpost.com, which outlined how Americans have been convinced by skewed scientific research to believe that antidepressant medications are an effective treatment for depression. Here is what he had to say: "Here's some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don't work. What's even more depressing is that the pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have deliberately deceived us into believing that they DO work. As a physician, this is frightening to me. Depression is among the most common problems seen in primary-care medicine and soon will be the second leading cause of disability in this country. The study I'm talking about was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They have published nearly all the studies that show benefit -- but almost none of the studies that show these d...

Most of us have had that "OH NO! I think I have that!" moment, after poking around online, trying to figure out the cause of our vague physical symptoms. A 2004 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 79 percent of Internet users -- roughly 95 million Americans -- have researched health information online. People now have access to incredibly complex medical information, with little ability to sift through it or interpret it accurately. The abundance of health information available online, valid or not, has contributed to what the media have coined ‘cyberchondria’ (researching diseases on the internet, and then worrying that you have the symptoms of that disease.) These people are often frustrated when their self-diagnosis does not prompt their doctor to order the tests and/or medications they feel necessary. Yet after getting checked out by a doctor and getting a clean bill of health, most of us feel reassured, and are then ready to move on. For hypoch...

Berkeley AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit The latest phase of the AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit issue is that Berkeley's City Council's 4-2-2 vote that effectively reject the kind of study that AC Transit wanted to do in connection with the environmental report for a dedicated-lane Bus Rapid Transit Route was confusing. The vote, which got 4 yes decisions, just one less than five needed, reflected Berkeley's overall lack of understanding of what Bus Rapid Transit was and the many ways that it could be done. There was concern about a hypothetical loss of parking spaces when BRT becomes a reality. However, AC Transit did make it very clear that any parking spaces that are displaced to mark off the dedicated bus - only lane would be mitigated. AC Transit told the East Bay Express that it is ready to build parking lots and to work closely with these people who are concerned to find solutions that work for them. Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland’s At-Large member of the City Counc...

WIth more and more celebrities adopting children from different racial and/or cultural backgrounds than themselves, some of you may be wondering what experts say on inter-racial, or 'transracial' adoption, and what laws pertain to this issue. This article serves to briefly summarize key points on this issue. "What is transracial adoption? Transracial adoption is the placement of infants and children of one race with parents of another race. Black children are more likely to be in foster care than white children, stay in foster care longer, and thus, are more likely to undergo multiple placements. Due to the developmental risks associated with long-term residence in foster care, a few strategies have been attempted to reduce the number of children in the welfare system (Taylor&Thornton, 1996). Transracial adoption is one of the most controversial methods currently being utilized to improve the welfare of black children" (from Issues in Transracial Adoption, Mauree...

Last week this blogger wrote that Chevron and Richmond needed to "kiss, make up, and think. Well, it seems all the time both parties were doing just that. Communications from the Richmond Progressive Alliance and from Chevron report the completion of an amicable agreement that stops the chance that Richmond will lose millions due to a June ballot measure that looked like it was going to pass, and Chevron stopped paying out $15 million more than it had annually given to the City of Richmond. The Chevron press release neatly bullet-points the resolved issues: • Chevron will pay an additional $114 million to The City of Richmond over the next 14 years. • The City of Richmond will stop its ballot measure to change the Utility Tax and Chevron will remove its proposal. • The City of Richmond will drop its appeal of the Measure T Ballot measure, which was ruled unconstitutional. • Chevron would wave $1.2 million it sought from the City related to Measure T. • Chevron will ma...

Dallas Braden  The Oakland Athletics Dallas Braden became the 14th player in Oakland A's history to throw a no-hitter or a perfect game, and just the second A's player to pitch a perfect game - the other being Catfish Hunter in 1968. Braden led the A's to a 4-0 win against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in Oakland on Mother's Day. Now lost in all the celebration is what a "perfect game" in baseball is. It's not a "no-hitter"; it's beyond that. It's a game where no player from the opposing team gains a hit or gets on base in any way, even by a walk or a hit batter. Nothing.  Nada.  Zip. Here's the video : That's what Dallas Braden did today. Braden's the first Oakland A's pitcher to throw a perfect game in 42 years. That's incredible. Much has been made of Braden's feud with The New York Yankees' Alex Rodriquez, who's behavior has been rather salty since he was dumped by Kate Hudson afte...

Suburban Atlanta, GA - Happy Mother's Day everyone! I can't remember missing celebrating Mother's Day and it was vitally important for me to give my Mom the gift of my help here in Georgia. See, my Mom still insists on working, and I see that as a personal failure on my part because I believe if I made enough money she would not have to work. I give her money each month, as of this writing it helps but not enough to compel her to just stay at home. Yet as I write this, i'm not sure that would keep her at home cooking and tending garden. While she does do that - tend garden and cook - I really think working around people is Mom's way of staying connected. She's a United Airline retiree but if United called, she'd answer it in a heart beat. Mom's tried working for me but following Internet trends can be boring if you really like being out and about with folks. Not that I don't, but that's my Mom. It's good therapy for the passing of ...

This isn't something that calls for the amount of time that Oakland Local's given to it , but there's someone in Oakland who has this silly idea that Oakland Local's going to "gentrify" the web. The idea is that Oakland Local will take traffic away from his website. Well, there's one answer: make a better site. The web is a wide open space. Not that there's room for everyone, but there's a lot of room. If the person who's concerned about losing traffic wants to have more of it, all they have to do is learn Search Engine Optimization. And if they're concerned about Oakland Local, study how the site is designed and go from there. But calling Oakland Local a name or saying that it's going to "gentrify" the World Wide Web is just plain silly. Not something to Rock The Casbah about.

The battle between Waste Management and Recology for garbage supremacy in San Francisco has an interesting twist. To recap, Houston-based Waste Management has owned the contractual right to collect San Francisco's waste and dump it in a place called the Altamont Landfill, which is located in Livermore, California. NorCal Waste, now called "Recology,' has been the company that collects garbage in San Francisco, then hands it over to Waste Management for storage in Livermore. But Recology wanted to have the piece of the business Waste Management held for years. To that end, the upstart San Francisco-based firm submitted a bid for the contract this year, and to the San Francisco Commission on the Environment, and to the surprise of many, beat Waste Management. So it's all over, and Recology gets to work, right. No. Both Recology and the San Francisco Commission on the Environment unknowningly swatted a giant bat at a hornet's nest of interlocking interests c...

The Oakland Museum on 10th Street next to Laney College in Oakland, California had a great all-night block party that was a ton of fun. You know it was a perfect Oakland event when you run into people you know from all over the town, as was the case for this blogger. Before I install the video from that fun event, this post was necessary if only to gush about how nice it was to see a free Oakland event that reflected the true sprit of the City. Yes, the Museum looked great, but the people looked even better. The drinks flowed, the food was good considering much of it was either free to cheap, and the artwork was excellent. I didn't stay all night because my dear friend insists on getting up early to do her endurance training. Were it not for that, I'd have stayed until 3 AM; the party closed at 6 AM. We spent time with Susan Mernit and Amy Gahran, and Editor and Publisher and Senior Editor of Oakland Local (who had staff all over the Museum) as well as a number of ...

The annual May Day march in Oakland began at the Fruitvale BART drew an energized crowd that grew to over 3,000 by early afternoon. Filipino Advocates for Justice Executive Director Lillian Galedo was a featured speaker facing a crowd who gathered under the slogan, "We are all Arizona". On stage, organizers invited City Councilmembers Jean Quan and Jane Brunner to announce their proposal for a city boycott of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses. (The full City Council will consider the proposal this Tuesday at a 5:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza.) But talk soon turned to national immigration reform issues. Lillian Galedo addressed the congressional immigration reform proposal introduced late last week, which emphasizes enforcement over legalization. A move, Galedo said, "basically puts legalization on hold". According to an article in today's Washington Post , the proposal takes a Republican "secure the border" approach. ...