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Friday, May 8, 2009

Massive Amount of Lead Discovered in San Franciscan's Herbal Remedy

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 6:45 PM

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San Francisco Department of Public Health
Lead is bad for people, and it's particularly bad for children, older folks, and anyone with kidney problems. So when a 60-year-old South Asian man walked into Dr.Vivek Bhalla's office with diabetes and kidney disease, and his lead levels tested three times higher than what's acceptable, that was a big problem.

It became crucial to find out how the lead poisoning was getting into the man's body, and Dr. Bhalla, at the time working at San Francisco General Hospital, enlisted an investigator from the San Francisco Department of Public Health to figure it out.

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Guild: Chron Layoff Count From Past Two Days Reaches 39; 151 Have Departed Since March

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM

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The Media Workers Guild announced this afternoon that the final tally for the San Francisco Chronicle's two-day layoff binge was 39 departed Guild workers: 18 on the newsroom side and 21 in advertising, ad production, and other commercial departments.

As reported yesterday, the Chron dismissed a number of its most veteran and respected writers; seven reporters and an editor were reported to have been laid off from the Metro Desk alone.

The Guild announcement notes that 151 union employees have voluntarily or involuntarily left the paper since the Chron's much-publicized existential crisis/hardball union negotiating tactic reached its boiling point earlier this year; 150 was seen as the "magic number" of employees management hoped to shed.

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Inevitable Porn Deal Offered to Miss California

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM


It's been a downward spiral for the beleaguered Miss California, Carrie Prejean. During the interview portion of the Miss USA contest, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton asked Prejean about her thoughts on gay marriage. Prejean replied that "...marriage should be between and man and a woman. That's how I was raised." That's also how several eyebrows were raised. Prejan stuck her pink pump in her mouth with such swiftness and finality, it was difficult to imagine things getting much worse. But then she teamed up with the National Organization for Marriage and shot an anti-gay marriage ad. (Posted above.)

Then there was the rumored comradery between Prejean and Sarah Palin. And then news broke that the Miss California pageant paid for Prejean's breast augmentation. And then a Web site posted nude photos of a woman they say is Prejean, which led pageant officials to explore whether or not Prejean had violated her contract, enabling them to strip her of her title. (Parsing the reasoning of an organization that pays for breast implants but wags their fingers over topless photos is a separate conversation.)

Well, things may be looking up for Prejean as the inevitable offer of a well-compensated porn debut has been made. Vivid Entertainment has offered Prejean one million dollars to star in an adult movie. The porn industry is such that it hardly requires promotion of any kind, but offering a scanalized woman a porn gig for an eye-popping amount of money that will inevitably be turned down is a surefire (and free) way to drum up some publicity.

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Human Rights Watch: Pelosi Has Some 'Splaining To Do About Torture Briefing

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 1:50 PM

Oh, that waterboarding...
  • Oh, that waterboarding...
Oh, for a return to the days when a troupe of miscreants breaking into Democratic Party headquarters was the source of our national angst -- and not nightmarish, government-sanctioned torture techniques.

A memo released yesterday by the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA reveals that Nancy Pelosi was explicitly briefed -- in 2002 -- that "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" (i.e. "torture") was being used against specific terror suspects such as Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein. Pelosi's office issued a statement explaining she flunked that drug test because of prescription medicine obtained from a Florida doctor ... whoops! Wrong delicately worded statement. Actually, Pelosi claims she was only informed that waterboarding et al. were techniques the government felt it could use, not that it was actively using them.

A representative of the organization Human Rights Watch tells SF Weekly that Pelosi's waterboarding explanation doesn't hold water.

"It doesn't sound like a very good defense," says Stacy Sullivan, a counter-terrorism adviser at the human rights organization.

Sullivan reiterated HRW's call for an independent commission to get to the bottom of who was waterboarding whom -- and who knew about it when.


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Instant Karma: Police Arrest Woman Accused of Portraying Injured Pedestrian, Robbing Good Samaritan Who Helped Her

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 11:59 AM

Thanks for the ride! Now gimme your money!
  • Thanks for the ride! Now gimme your money!
Is there a more effective way to reinforce callousness and crush the drive to help those suffering beside us than posing as an accident victim and then robbing the people who show up to help you?

For our money: No.

Just such a situation allegedly occurred this morning according to the San Francisco Police Department. A 30-year-old man driving northbound on the 1500 block of Larkin Street a little after midnight noticed a woman on her hands and knees in the middle of the road. When he jumped out of the car to ask if she needed help, she said yes -- then when he was assisting her off the street, she pushed him away, drew a handgun, and robbed his cell phone and money.

A foot chase ensued, but the suspect leaped into a waiting car. The Good Samaritan/victim flagged down a passing police car.

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Civil Grand Jury Finds 'Lack of Leadership' From Mayor Newsom, Who Governs Via Press Release. Also: Sky Is Blue And Sea Is Green.

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 8:30 AM

AUDREY FUKUMAN
  • Audrey Fukuman
Fortunately for Gavin Newsom, no one pays attention to Civil Grand Jury reports.

Unfortunately for the people of San Francisco, according to the Civil Grand Jury, Newsom isn't paying attention to following through on his grand plans, making it damn near impossible to tell if San Francisco is living up to its "Performance Measurement" goals -- in other words, it's exceedingly difficult to tell if we're spending our billions wisely. The Grand Jury faults Newsom and his department heads for a "lack of leadership," and opened its 19-page salvo by pleading that the mayor govern "by the numbers rather than just publicizing the ones favorable to him."

In typical San Francisco -- and, one could argue, Newsom -- fashion, the Jury found the city has devised many excitingly named systems of measuring things. And we ignore them and do whatever it is we do.

The Jury notes Newsom and his staff referring to an "Accountability Matrix" "Accountability Index," and, for good measure, an "Accountability Report." This matrix-index-report covers 380 policy items spread over nine policy areas -- which is odd, because last year, the mayor established "10 Strategic Pillars." The nine policy areas of the matrix-index-report and the 10 Strategic Pillars do not jibe and "as of February 2009 there was no link between the two documents." 

Similarly, every department is required to draw up an "Efficiency Plan" each year -- and they do. However, the Jury found that "little attention was paid to the Plans, either inside or outside the department." What's more, nearly 75 percent of city managers were paid a bonus for meeting their "Performance Planning and Appraisal" goals last year. "The remaining managers were not paid bonuses but the City could not explain why."

Oh, the irony. How to measure accountability in a city where no one is ever held accountable? For goodness sake, the Grand Jury itself released a bombshell about this last year!

Oh, but there's more:

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Paint Ball -- Time For Annual S.F. Baseball Art Show (And Not a Portrait of a Syringe In Sight)

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 7:30 AM

Now there's a guy who never imbibed female fertility drugs. Say Hey! - CHRIS FELIX
  • Chris Felix
  • Now there's a guy who never imbibed female fertility drugs. Say Hey!

Yesterday's revelation that Manny Ramirez -- arguably the greatest right-handed hitter in a generation -- tested positive for artificial testosterone from a female fertility drug was a worldview-altering event. I did not think it possible that Ramirez -- the sort of idiosyncratic, half-bright fellow one can imagine driving away from a Chevron station with the nozzle still dangling out of his gas tank, or ordering "fresh wine" at a restaurant, or stuffing millions of dollars worth of checks in a shoebox in his locker (wait -- he really did do that) -- could be organized enough to adhere to a drug regimen. Even still, it's a miracle he didn't leave his drugs at a Dunkin' Donuts or insert them in the wrong orifice.

At times, one feels a sucker for following baseball (or, indeed, any government subsidy-hogging, steroid-munching pro sport -- or the ridiculously hypocritical world of "amateur athletics"). Sometimes you just want to take a break and stroll into a place where the grass is always green and Willie Mays is still batting third. Thank God for the George Krevsky Gallery's annual baseball exhibit. It couldn't come soon enough.

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'Air Sex' Championships Headed for San Francisco

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 6:30 AM

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Preceding next month's Air Guitar Championships at San Francisco's Independent will be the "Air Sex" showdown -- meaning all we need are some folks pantomiming the shooting up of heroin or toking a bong and we'll have Air Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll.

What, you may ask is "Air Sex?" Well -- and we're not going to make a Paris Hilton joke here, we promise -- it appears to be folks comically re-enacting sex with invisible partners in front of a quasi-inebriated crowd ... and hilarity ensues. The traveling circus is the offshoot of monthly contests held at the Alamo Cinema Drafthouse, a Parkway-esque cinema, bar, and, it would seem, place to re-enact sex with invisible partners in Austin, Texas (the video above features, among other entrants to last year's championship, a Sarah Palin look-alike and what appears to be a man in a wolf suit; the stars at night are big and bright -- deep in the heart of Texas!). 

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Who's San Francisco State's 'Alumnus of the Year'? We'll Give You 1,000 Guesses. You Won't Get It.

Posted By on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 5:30 AM

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If you've ever peered through the media guides for college sports teams, there are several sources of unintended joy: Mini-bios querying the players about their favorite foods or movies (Really? Scarface, again?); upbeat recaps of 2-9 seasons, or, best of all, the list of a school's "notable alumni."

Yes, the Kenny Gorelick who attended the University of Washington is Kenny G (they must be so proud). Both Gary Larson and Linus Pauling are Washington State alums. My own alma mater of U.C. Berkeley is thrilled to have actor Bill Bixby prominently placed in its guides (maybe you don't know who he is -- but you wouldn't like him when he's angry).

San Francisco State doesn't have a musician of Kenny G's stature (make of that statement what you will) to boast about on its alumni honor roll. Yet it does have Johnny Mathis. But can you guess who the Alumni of the Year is for 2009?

Last chance ... click the jump to see who it is.

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