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More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I saw this at the blog "The Daily Clog" by The Daily Californian and it reports on a cool event held at the very comfortable Morrison Library within Doe Library at Cal in Berkeley this Thursday. It's called simply "Lunch Poems" and starts at 12 noon. According to the website for Lunch Poems , the series is hosted by Robert Hass , who served as America's Poet Laureate of The United States (POLTUS) from 1995 to 1997 and is a Pulitzer-Prize winner. Joining him Thursday will be members of the UC Berkeley English Department reading their own work. They are: Melanie Abrams, C. D. Blanton, Vikram Chandra, Eric Falci, Mark Goble, David Landreth, Namwali Serpell, and Emily Thornbury. Visit Morrison and get there early to grab a couch before they're taken. Almost like the old Parkway in Oakland!

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I just happened upon Berkeley professor and dweller, Robert Reich's blog and a post title that caught my eye: "The Guns of August and Why The Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on Health Care" and a particularly true statement he wrote: "The Left had ideas; the Right has discipline" Prof. Robert Reich The former professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former Secretary of Labor is right. I'm stunned over the almost "Borg-like" efficiency the right brings to the effort of getting out a message consistently, and getting its members to follow the cue cards chapter and verse, time after time. (Oh. The Borg were characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation who were part machine and part human and ran by a central computer system.) Now, if one thinks about my Borg analogy, they might say I'm

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I happened to run upon an article in today's edition of "Editor and Publisher" which reported that the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper ( SFGate.com is the Chronicle website) was planning more layoffs after Labor Day. It may not happen, let's pray not, but staff reductions could come as soon as next week. Apparently, even after the last round of job cuts about two months ago or so, the newspaper is still losing $1 million a week or about $4 million a month, or a whopping $48 million-a-year loss. That's really, really sad news as a paper is nothing without the personalities who made it, but I think there's something that can be done to at least save some jobs and stem the tide of revenue losses. There are as of this writing 2,780,000 pages that make up SFGate.com. My idea is simple: add a donate button to each one of them. The button would

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com In a blockbuster development, Ecuador Judge Juan Nunez, the key legal figure in the Chevron Ecuador environmental damage case, is captured in a video shown here explaining that he plans to rule against the oil giant and for an award of $27 billion "more or less". The judge explains that the verdict will happen and that Chevron will be blocked from filing an appeal of his ruling. In that segment of the video, the Judge explains he's only there to talk about the verdict, not about "the other stuff" which refers to a $3 million payoff request. Later in the video its implied that Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa will benefit from the bribe amount. On video today I talked to Chevron Media Relations representative Sean Comey about the video and Chevron's investigation. In the video Judge Nunez, Aulo Gelio Servio Tulio Avila ("Avila"), an

San Francisco Peninsula Press Club: No numbers yet in next round of layoffs

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On Saturday, the New Orleans Saints clobbered the Oakland Raiders 45 to 7, and it could have been worse were it not for one dropped pass in the end zone in the second quarter. One item of good news is that only 32,585 people saw the beating at the Oakland Coliseum. But the bad news is that only 32,585 people saw the beating at the Oakland Coliseum, and that causes me to ask this question: Will the Oakland Raiders' Monday Night Game against the Chargers fail to sell out thus preventing the Bay Area from seeing the game? The Bay Area economy is in terrible shape and it seems with all of the plant closures, the Raiders blue collar fan base is being harmed. The Washington Post reports that NFL sources point to the Raiders as one of the teams that could have problems selling tickets this year. Now, the Bay Area's unemployment is at nearly 10 percent, with rates over 9

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Last night I happened by the Conga Lounge Tiki Bar in Oakland's Rockridge District and the owners Mano and Michael Thanos treated me to a great Mai Tai and a cool t-shirt, and informed me that on Sunday (today) they're having a party to celebrate the creation of that tasty cocktail. The party runs from 5 PM to 10 PM at 5422 College Ave (above Cafe Rustica), and Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large) will arrive to official read the proclamation proclaiming The Mai Tai "The Official Drink of Oakland" but here's some background. According to Mano Thanos, the Mai Tai was created in Oakland in 1944 by Victor Bergeron, the owner of the famed Trader Vic's Restaurant chain. His experiment, which you can read about in detail on the Trader Vics's website , and the growth of his restaurant chain led to the word-of-mouth re-creation of the dri