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Chump Changed
When Shirley Zach graduated from high school in the spring of 1948, she landed a job with Northwestern Bell. The pay was just 95 cents an hour, but being a telephone operator promised security. She learned the ropes quickly, donning a bulky headset and taking up a post at a "cord board," routing calls from Midwestern cities and towns to destinations all over the country.
The board consisted of two metal consoles: a boxy one for incoming calls that sat upright, and another that lay flat in front of it, which she used to direct the calls elsewhere. She would receive a call from, say, Springdale, Iowa, and hold the line while she used a rotary dial to call another operator in, perhaps, Duluth. When she got through, she'd complete the connection by plugging a line from the upright console into the other.
The job sounds simple, but Zach had to master all kinds of tricks in order to meet callers' needs. She learned, for instance, how to "challenge" a connection--squatting on a line when it was tied up and waiting for a a regional operator to become available--and to put a call to New York through Chicago first because it had a better chance of being answered if it came through a big-city switchboard.
"People always say, 'Okay, you were like that Lily Tomlin character'" from the Seventies television show Laugh-In, Zach says. "But I enjoyed taking the calls from all over. I enjoyed talking with people." She worked eight-hour shifts, in a room with 100 other operators. It was, she recalls, a culture of family and dedication that was rare in most companies; everyone took their obligations seriously. "We had to be there," she says emphatically. "We were the phone company."
In exchange for that dedication, every month Northwestern Bell put away money toward Zach's retirement. Zach was positive her nest egg would always be there. After all, the money came from Northwestern Bell's parent company, the monolithic American Telephone and Telegraph Company--known as AT&T and, less formally, Ma Bell. "You had a job for life," she explains. "You worked for that salary, thinking you would get benefits and job security."
AT&T was one of the first companies to offer such a pension, starting way back in 1913. That pension fund, AT&T and its subsidiaries always promised, was untouchable. "The trust funds are dedicated solely to the payment of service pensions and death benefits," promised an article in a 1974 issue of the company's Bell Telephone Magazine. "Not one dollar can be touched for any other purpose." Like her colleagues, Zach envisioned the fund as a kind of savings account that was earning interest for her. Whatever the future brought, there would be money for her when she retired. And the more interest the fund returned, the more money there would be.
Zach, who's now 70, put in more than 32 years with Northwestern Bell. As she sits in a booth at a New Hope McDonald's a few days after Christmas clad in a green Santa sweatshirt that contrasts festively with her reddish, semi-bouffant hairdo, the memories she relates about her career are pleasant. Though she took time off in the 1950s to raise four kids, mostly as a single mother after a divorce, the work allowed her a flexible schedule and gave her a stable environment. "I always say that my kids were raised by the telephone," she says. "I called them at home when I couldn't be there."
Zach stayed with the company until she retired in 1990. In 1980 she transferred to a job in Bell's Plymouth accounting office. That's where she was working in 1984, when federal officials concluded that her employer's parent corporation, AT&T, held too powerful a monopoly over telecommunications. AT&T was split into several smaller companies. Zach continued to report to work, but her employer became U S West. Six years later the office she worked in was closed, and Zach searched for a different job within the company. She decided to try her hand at her old vocation as an operator and sought a transfer. Despite her 32 years of service--22 of those as an operator--the new company required her to take a test in order to get the transfer. It didn't go well.
Instead of testing Zach on her proficiency at connecting customers' calls, U S West asked her a barrage of questions designed to probe her personality. "I flunked the written test," Zach recalls. "The questions didn't even pertain to being an operator. They took all the people questions out of it. I took it personally, because in the old days you went over the top to get somebody connected to somebody else." Insulted, Zach opted to retire five years earlier than she had planned. "I figured I could live on the retirement I was promised," she explains.
When her first monthly pension check arrived, Zach got her second unpleasant surprise. The check amounted to just over $700--far less than she had expected. She lives frugally in a no-frills apartment complex that abuts Highway 169 in New Hope, but even so, were it not for the social-security check she receives for roughly the same amount, she would have to find a full-time job. "There's only been one increase since I've retired, which amounted to a $10 raise [per month]," she says. "And there's no way you can justify that as taking care of an employee." Recently Zach learned that she won't get any more cost-of-living increases, nor would any increases in the cost of her health care be covered.
At its core, Zach's problem is that the company she receives her pension from is no longer Ma Bell. In the old days, the pension would have been just as untouchable as she and other employees were led to believe. Although it was technically a private company, AT&T was carefully watched by governmental agencies. There was, after all, only one phone company, and its rates had to be approved by the government. That meant lower take-home pay for the workers, yet it ensured that the nation's phone service would stay up and running.
But Zach didn't retire from AT&T. In 1984 her lifelong employer, Northwestern Bell, became U S West, and the rules changed. Instead of an untouchable investment account, the pension fund became one more column in the accounting ledger of a giant corporation that's focused on the demands of its stockholders, not the needs of its workers.
And then in June of last year, U S West was bought by Denver-based telecommunications company Qwest, a corporation that had absolutely nothing to do with Ma Bell's tradition of promising employees better benefits and retirement plans as a tradeoff for low pay. Some 48,000 retirees would now be dependent on Qwest's management of the pension fund. Many of them--including Zach--began to have their doubts that their pensions would remain intact after the $85 billion merger was completed. They were told there would be no increases in the size of their pension checks, nor would they get financial help if their health-care costs rose. Never mind that there was plenty of money in the retirement account.
In fact, at the time of the merger, there was a surplus of $5.7 billion in the $15 billion pension fund. Given the way the money had been handled by U S West, Qwest's refusal to commit to a more generous plan, and the weakness of the federal laws that protect people who depend on private pension funds, the retirees feared that their fund would be tapped to pay Qwest's operating expenses, bolstering the company's bottom line.
Another U S West retiree, Nelson Phelps, notes that there are plenty of reasons that a corporation would rather keep a surplus than distribute it to pensioners. "U S West made a lot of money very quickly through managing the pension smartly," he opines. "They look like a profitable company because the stock is valuable, and the stock options are there for current employees, but it's just paper profits to the retirees. All we are asking for is that they share the money they've made off the pension. We are just asking for a couple of crumbs."
It's impossible to say whether Minnesota's newest telephone-service company plans to do anything to resolve the concerns Zach shares with other U S West retirees. Qwest managers referred repeated interview requests for this article to the company's Twin Cities spokesman, who will say only that Qwest is administering the pension plan in accordance with the plan's rules and with federal law.
Shirley Zach knows that the merger, and Qwest's potential appropriation of the pension surplus, is legal. But she also knows that she has very little to show for her decades of service. She feels ruthlessly discarded by her former employer, one that never lived up to its promises of great retirement in exchange for company loyalty. "The money in that fund--it's ours," says Zach. "We worked for it and let the company keep it. They wouldn't have made the money they have now without us."
On a crisp weekday afternoon in December, about 70 former and current telecommunications employees mingle in the upstairs banquet room of Jax Cafe in northeast Minneapolis. The occasion is an annual holiday party, one that, for ten years, has drawn a tight-knit group of former Northwestern Bell employees, some of whom started their careers more than fifty years ago.
Concerned about their pensions, a group of those retirees nine years ago organized the U S West Retiree Association. It has become increasingly vocal and well organized in recent years, now boasting more than 45,000 members, who worked in such far-flung places as Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, as well as Minnesota and the four other Northwestern Bell states of Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.
The air of nostalgia suits the elegant 1920s décor of Jax, but as the party begins to wind down, melancholy sets in. Marian Hauck and Arnie Albrecht, both of whom have been active with the association, nestle into a couple of chairs at a large table in a corner of the banquet room. Both are reluctant to talk, for fear of claiming the spotlight personally, but it's clear that neither thinks anyone who worked for U S West and wasn't upper management is getting a fair shake.
"None of us ever dreamed that the telephone company wouldn't make good on its retirement promises," says Hauck, a former Northwestern Bell and U S West employee from St. Paul. "The culture then was that we gave things up for the company because we cared, and we believed whatever they told us when we walked out the door. Now employees don't care about the company. It's all a personal agenda now. And the company doesn't care about us, about the money we earned, and the handshake agreements that were made."
Hauck, who's wearing a pendant shaped like an old rotary-dial phone, is hesitant to give her age and tenure with the company, saying only that she started as a secretary in the early 1960s and put in more than 30 years. But she's as angry as Shirley Zach about the lack of respect she and others have received. "We were like a family, and that's why we all still get together," she says. "Now, after all the mergers, we feel like we've lost our identity."
Albrecht started selling phones to businesses for Northwestern Bell in 1954. By 1967 he was working with the Federal Communications Commission and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission as a member of the company's regulatory department, a position he held until his retirement in 1990. His job was to help figure out how to keep customers' costs low and the level of service high. After all, there was nowhere else people could turn if they wanted phone service.
"Our approach in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties was that we would go to the commission for rate increases, and when they gave us one, that would go into the pensions," Albrecht explains. "The ratepayers of the state paid that so we could attract good telephone workers." But now, he says ruefully, the money paid by Minnesota customers over the years is going to people who never served Minnesotans.
Albrecht became active in the retirees' association two years ago. "My motivation was ethical, when I found out the company was using the fund for purposes other than paying pensions," he says. "The question is, for successive takeovers, Who is getting our pensions?"
In 1983 the U.S. government decided that the phone company violated antitrust laws: AT&T controlled the nation's long-distance service, and its subsidiaries--regional companies like Mountain Bell, Bell Atlantic, and Pacific Bell--had a lock on local telephone markets. In 1984 a federal judge ordered AT&T to spin off the subsidiaries (known collectively as the "Baby Bells"), whereupon Northwestern Bell became a part of a new 14-state company called U S West. The Ma Bell breakup touched off a race for dominance in a newly deregulated long-distance market and, since then, in myriad new telecommunications venues, from local and cellular to the Internet, and even cable television. And whereas the Ma Bell monopoly had its rates set by the government agencies that represented its captive customers, the new companies were governed by shareholders, whose primary concern was--and continues to be--a profitable bottom line.
From the retirees' perspective, things began to change almost immediately. For starters, in 1986, the pension fund was healthy enough that U S West was no longer obligated to pay into it; the interest the fund was accruing was more than enough to keep it solvent. In fact, over the years, it began to generate a surplus, one that by 1999 had ballooned to $5.7 billion. The company was not obligated by law to maintain the surplus, and indeed, U S West officials had no intention of doing so. And in the meantime, with one small exception, U S West ceased granting cost-of-living increases to its retirees and stopped paying price hikes for health care.
The company also began dipping into the pension fund to pay for the plan's administrative costs. When a retirees' group complained to the company in 1994, U S West responded by editing the rules governing the plan and eliminating the restriction. Only after a subsequent class-action lawsuit was settled did the company back down; in the end U S West agreed to return $8 million to the fund. The company did not, however, rescind the rule changes.
In 1997 John L. Jarvis, a U S West retiree living in Mesa, Arizona, initiated a class-action suit charging that U S West had deleted provisions in the original pension-plan document and had improperly used pension fund assets to benefit employees who retired from a cable-television company U S West bought in 1996. In addition, the suit charged, U S West had "planned to use $60 million in Plan assets to pay retiree medical expenses"--money that had long come out of the company's operating expenses, not the pension fund.
The lead counsel on the Jarvis lawsuit, Denver-based attorney Curtis Kennedy, was no stranger to U S West. In all, Kennedy has been the attorney of record in 45 suits filed against the company. He won all of his cases, until he took on the Jarvis suit. In Denver in August 1999 U.S. District Court Judge Edward Nottingham ruled in favor of U S West. In Kennedy's view, the judge interpreted federal laws as allowing companies to change pension-plan policies on a whim. "Judge Nottingham ruled that U S West could modify the pension plan, [and] take out language prohibiting monies to be used on medical costs," Kennedy explained in a retirees' association newsletter in August 1999. "Last year the company took out $60 million to pay retiree medical costs. No doubt the company will take the same action in 1999 and future years....
"Considering how the company has ignored the needs of its retirees during the 1990s," the attorney continued, "I have long suspected that the U S West plan is to hoard the pension plan surplus--without regard to past practices of regular pension increases--and let the surplus build up to a massive amount that could be used by the company for non-pension purposes."
In 1963 Ohio-based White Motor Corp. took over Minnesota-Moline, a farm-equipment manufacturer with plants in Hopkins and Minneapolis. As part of the purchase, White Motor inherited the Moline pension plan. In 1972 the new company closed its Minneapolis plant and attempted to eliminate the underfunded pension. The union that had represented workers at Moline managed to keep the plan in effect through 1974--when the Minnesota Legislature passed a law requiring full funding of pension benefits whenever an employer ceases to operate a place of employment or a pension plan. In 1978 the matter made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed with the union that White Motor was obliged to continue the Minnesota-Moline pension plan.
In the meantime Congress had gone to work on the issue of protecting employee-benefit rights, noting in September 1974, in a 200-page law known as the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, that the "continued well-being and security of millions of employees and their dependents are directly affected by these plans; that they are affected with national interest; that they have become an important factor affecting the stability of employment and successful development of industrial relations; [and] that they have become an important factor in commerce." The law's main purpose was to stop companies such as White Motor from buying other businesses and eliminating their pension plans. ERISA requires employers to generate financial reports and to disclose information such as pension assets, participation in and payment into pensions by more than one company, and minimum-funding standards.
But former Bell workers and other advocates for retirees complain that ERISA fails to address many of the problems that plague pensions now, 26 years after the law was passed. The law doesn't deal with many health benefits or cost-of-living increases, does not require employers to continue to fund solvent pensions, and, most confusing, does not say what should occur when a retirement fund accrues a surplus. Under federal law, in other words, Qwest is under no obligation to do anything other than to continue making the Ma Bell pension payments.
Equally disconcerting is the fact that virtually every time the law has been tested in a courtroom, it has been interpreted differently, and in the narrowest way possible. In each case, the retirees maintain, the law has been read as too vague to stop an employer from rewriting the company's pension rules.
Dick Johnson, head of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union, remembers the roots of ERISA very well. "The Minnesota-Moline situation made it a national issue, and when we sought protection here for that pension, it went on to change things," he recalls. "The whole thing is much bigger than U S West and various Bell operations. This is a multi-employer issue."
Sitting in an office he still keeps on the fifth floor of the Labor Centre building in downtown Minneapolis, Johnson is dwarfed by three large, framed paintings on one wall of Floyd B. Olson, Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party governor during the 1930s. On the wall behind him is a painting depicting a lineman atop a telephone pole in a snowstorm. Johnson spent 40 years with Northwestern Bell and U S West, becoming a telephone technician, and then working as a union representative. In 1980 he was elected president of the local chapter of the Communications Workers of America. By the time he retired in 1996, Johnson was head of the Central Labor Union, the local federation of labor groups.
Johnson graduated from Central High School in Minneapolis and began working at a local grocery-store chain in the 1950s. In 1955, at the age of 19, he took a job with Northwestern Bell collecting the change in pay phones, gathering nickels and dimes around the metro area. He had to take a pay cut from $100 a week to $46 a week when he went to work for the phone company, but he thought it was a savvy decision. "The supermarkets were always coming and going, but the telephone company was going to stay," he says. "We were working for what they referred to as a deferred-wage pension."
Johnson notes that back in 1974 when Congress passed ERISA, no one imagined that pension funds might accrue surpluses. But when the red-hot stock market of the Nineties changed that, the retirees assumed that under the spirit of the law, all of the money earned by the fund would be used to beef up benefits. "The company used to negotiate cost-of-living increases [for pensioners] every couple years on good faith," he adds, noting that there was no legal obligation to do so. "But it just quit." That same renewed fascination with the stock market made U S West more anxious than ever to appear profitable: "A surplus shows growth, so why would they pay it out?"
Mary Ellen Signorille, a pension attorney for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), says that ERISA is so complex that after 20 years studying the law, even she still isn't entirely clear on its provisions. "A surplus is more dicey than usual pension questions," she explains. "In the late Eighties and Nineties, we were seeing many companies with surpluses, and more pension plans being terminated. There are ways to circumvent certain parts of pensions without taking money out directly. Morally we could talk about it all day, but legally it's okay."
In the aftermath of mergers, Signorille notes, it's not uncommon for companies to reconfigure their pension plans, trading monthly payments for cash balances, stock options, and 401(k) benefits. She has seen the questions the Qwest retirees pose pop up repeatedly at many older blue-chip companies, such as GTE and Lockheed. "ERISA has not afforded the type of protection that people thought it would afford to individuals," Signorille concludes. Which is especially troubling, because no one else--not the court system, not the local regulators who oversee companies like Qwest--has been willing to interfere with the pensions of private companies: "It becomes an issue of a private employer with a private pension."
Shortly after the U S West-Qwest merger was announced in November 1999, the chairman of the U S West Retiree Association, 72-year-old Jim Norby, wrote a letter to Joe Nacchio, who would be chairman and CEO of Qwest should the merger go through. Leaders of the retirees' association had already been talking to U S West officials about the pension; Norby began inviting Qwest managers to the meetings.
The merger needed to gain approval from Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission, the state agency that oversees telephone, electric, and gas service. The five-member board of gubernatorial appointees has the power to bar a company from operating in Minnesota, to set its rates, and to order certain changes in company policy. The panel had the authority to stop the merger, or--at least by the retirees' lights--to order Qwest to make promises concerning its pension fund. The members of the retirees' association saw the process as an opportunity to push the new conglomerate to accede to some of their demands.
"We were afraid that if the merger were approved, this treatment of the pension would continue," explains Norby. "Our position was that there is an obligation for the company--whatever company--to pay us our pension first, take care of our health benefits, and give us a cost-of-living increase out of our pension fund, and not to use it for anything else."
Weeks before the merger was to be approved in Minnesota, Qwest abruptly cut off all contact with the retirees. Greg Merz, an attorney with the Minneapolis law firm Gray Plant Mooty who represents the association, believes Qwest was focused only on getting permission to take over U S West. "I think they were just interested in looking good for merger approval," Merz charges. "Once it looked like they could make concessions elsewhere to get merger approval, they left us in the cold."
In June the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission held its second series of hearings on the merger. The experience was frustrating for Merz, who had gone into the process with a simple mission. "We wanted to investigate the issue: What would Qwest do with all this pension money?" he says. "True, Qwest hasn't changed anything with the pensions yet. But they have yet to tell us they won't." Commission members brushed the issue aside. They said that although they'd like to see Qwest make some concessions to the retirees, such issues were outside their purview. When the merger was approved on June 6 of last year, all Merz and his clients emerged with was a promise from Qwest to report on its plans every 90 days and not to eliminate or reduce any pension payments until 2004--something that's already guaranteed under ERISA.
"During the commission hearings, this got painted as the retirees just wanting more pension money," says John O'Brien, a St. Paul native who lobbied on behalf of Northwestern Bell and U S West from the late 1970s until 1998 but who now works as a spokesman for the retirees' association.
O'Brien disputes the notion that the state regulators' hands were tied when it came to protecting the retirement plan. "This was a regulated monopoly for years, and [the PUC] controlled what went into the pension funds based on rate increases they approved," he argues. "When there was not an increase, we took pay cuts. When there was, we put even more money into the pension fund. We had to keep employees because we were the only phone company. And now they are saying they don't have jurisdiction over the pension? They have a good history of regulating this company fairly. Their hands are all over this money already."
Ed Garvey has been a member of the commission since 1997. He remembers hearing Merz out at the hearings. "In the context of those meetings, they sought commission input about fears about the use of the pension," Garvey recalls. "We felt this was not really the jurisdiction of the commission. We didn't want to get involved, because of ERISA."
Garvey, who once headed the commission, says the debate about the pension fund was irreparably complicated by the AT&T breakup and the mergers and spin-offs thereof. "There were promises on that pension that U S West ultimately didn't want to keep," he says. "The question is now, six months after the Qwest merger: What's the fate of the pension right now?"
The pension is intact and being administered fairly and legally, replies Qwest spokesman Bryce Hallowell. "Our general feeling is that the PUC heard all of the facts and approved the merger," says Hallowell. "People have looked at this numerous times and found no problem. We have an ample body of law that we have to comply with, and that does not leave anybody out in the cold. Qwest is living up to every aspect of the pension agreement, and that means the spirit of the law as well as the letter. To suggest otherwise is irresponsible."
In September, three months after the merger was approved, Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio finally provided the retirees with some clues to the future of the pension. "Qwest has no plans to terminate the U S West pension plan," Nacchio wrote in a letter to U S West Retiree Association chairman Jim Norby. "Qwest will continue to provide employee and retiree benefits from the plan as permitted by law." Payments would never be decreased, he promised, but "the U S West pension plan does not call for and the company does not plan to provide a cost-of-living adjustment for participants."
A stout man with a gray buzz cut, Joe Pugaczewski probably knows the phone company as well as anyone. In 1951, after graduating from Johnson High School on St. Paul's East Side, he went to work for a subsidiary of AT&T for $1.12 an hour. He installed telephone switchboards for big businesses like Northern States Power, and he repaired switches and circuit boards in "central offices"--little buildings filled with circuitry and cords that are still found scattered around the Twin Cities. During the Korean War he did a stint in the navy repairing airplane cockpits, then went back to work for Northwestern Bell. He remembers hearing the pops and crackles caused by the electrical impulses that carried conversations from rotary-dial phones to switchboards. He probably handled--literally--some of the same calls as retired operator Shirley Zach.
And just like Zach, Pugaczewski remembers that people went to work for the phone company for one primary reason: security. "In those days you'd work and pay for exactly what you needed," he says. "There was no big income. We had to work for every little benefit; we had to fight to make sure our benefits and our pension were in place."
Having logged 48 years on the job, Pugaczewski will probably retire on a pension that's more comfortable than Zach's. Nonetheless, he plans to work for as long as he can. If Qwest suddenly decides to treat its pensioners better than its predecessor did, "I'll retire," he jokes. "But if they treat me bad, I'll stick around."
Pugaczewski is already active in the retirees' association. "I can take care of myself, as long as I'm healthy," he explains. "But I've got to remember the people who can't, the people who are living on $500 a month."
Turned away by the court system and state policymakers and left in the cold by the federal law that was supposed to protect their rights, the association earlier this month took one last shot at persuading local officials to remedy their situation. On January 4 Pugaczewski and some 80 other association members crammed into the PUC's hearing room at the Metro Square Building in downtown St. Paul for yet another hearing. Commissioner Garvey wasn't there, a fact that upset the retirees, who had perceived him to be sympathetic during their talks over the years.
The association's attorney, Greg Merz, spoke first. The PUC should reconsider its decision not to put restrictions on what Qwest can do with the pension fund, he argued. "We want to point out that we didn't know the future [when the merger was approved], Merz said. "We know the future now, and the concerns we expressed were dead-on."
Commissioner Greg Scott was unmoved. "What difference does that make to me?" he asked sternly. "Is it illegal, what Qwest is doing?"
How much of a surplus was in the pension fund? the commissioners asked. At the time of the merger, the figure was $5.7 billion, a Qwest attorney replied. At the start of 2001 the number hovered around $4.5 billion. Where had the $1.2 billion gone? the retirees demanded to know. Qwest's response: They'd have to wait for the release of the 2000 annual report in order to find out. (Hallowell says the money was lost in the recent stock-market decline.)
A few minutes later, Joe Pugaczewski lost patience with the process. He strode to a microphone at the front of the room. "After all the mergers and pension transfers we've gone through," he addressed Greg Scott, "I have to ask you, Commissioner: Would you want to be in business with a company like this? Can you see why we are worried?
"Look, you can put fertilizer in the garden and call it scent," Pugaczewski concluded, "but to me it's still manure."
In the end, the commissioners agreed that the retirees had a valid point. But as one of them put it, "What can we do about it now?" The regulators voted 3-1 to leave the merger exactly as it stands.
The only place left to take the fight, Norby says now, is Congress. Of course, he notes, U S West has expended a lot of energy in recent years lobbying that august body to ensure that the climate remains favorable to large employers.
Last year a "senior senator" from the Midwest told Norby exactly how high the stakes were from U S West's perspective. "The halls of Congress were stacked like cordwood with lobbyists prepared to take on anyone who tried to tamper with the current ERISA law," he says the lawmaker told him.
U S West spent more than $7 million lobbying Congress in 1997 and 1998. During those two years, the communications and electronics industries spent more--$400 million--trying to influence policy than every other industry except for the financial sector. And according to federal campaign finance data, U S West was the eighth-biggest spender in its industry. During the same time period, the industry gave almost $55 million to congressional candidates, of which U S West ponied up a tidy $1 million.
The association, by contrast, doesn't have a war chest. But Norby says what it can do is place a retiree lobbyist in each congressional district. "So far there's been nothing but legal fees and heartbreak," he concedes. "But we have reloaded and decided that our last foray is through legislation. This is a literal misuse of a pension fund, and we can't win in the courts."
Norby knows how hard it is to convince official Washington to make sweeping changes in policy. But the retirees are prepared to try, he insists. "We are tired of companies that can literally hide behind ERISA," he goes on. "We have, however, been told that we'd better have very deep pockets."
Research assistance for this article was provided by City Pages interns Natasha Uspensky and Ben Ganje.
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Weird Al Yankovic began his tour in Las Vegas yesterday and he couldn't figure out what to do with his hair. So he came up with a creative way to decide, but I think the decision was already made.
If I can weigh in on his hard decision I say he should go as is! What do you think?
To find out if he is taking to The Mandatory Tour to a city near you, then click here.
A video posted by Al Yankovic (@alfredyankovic) on May 9, 2015 at 7:40pm PDT
A video posted by Al Yankovic (@alfredyankovic) on May 9, 2015 at 7:40pm PDT
The thing we love most about Weird Al Yankovic, is not only his music, but his quirkiness. On Saturday, the Schlock Rock singer saw one of those mechanical elephant rides, he paid the $.50 and went on one of those another one rides the bus. He is so happy on it, it looks like he's in an Amish paradise.
Hopefully, he will buy one for his tour and perform this way.
I will stop because even I will admit, I am becoming tacky!
I guess Weird Al Yankovic has way too much time on hands as he preps for his world tour because he was able to watch what happens to Ivory Soap if you cook it in the microwave. Not only did he watch it with his own eyes, he used a camera to document his experiment.
So what's the results? Something so beautiful that you will find yourself watching this video over and over and over again. I don't know about you, but I am running out to Costco to get the cheapest soap they have. This way I can do the same thing and use the finished product as art pieces around my house. It will go great with the the Peeps I made in the microwave.
Weird Al Yankovic might be 55 years old, but that doesn't mean he can't act like a 5 year old every now and again. Case in point, the man who is White & Nerdy decided to slip and slide on a Slip 'N Slide. At first he loved it because he felt like a kid all over again. But then when he got to end he remembered why he doesn't do it anymore. That's cause he made like his song, Eat It. I wonder if he will write an Achy Break Song about his adventure. Either that or it knocked some sense into him and he's done singing parodies. Which I hope is not case.
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The flexibility of the classes and instructors has been phenomenal. I am able to have my life and attend college without the stress of tone of homework.
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What's News—
Business & Finance
Investors are moving into financial stocks, attracted by the prospect that rising interest rates in the U.S. will expand profit margins at banks and insurers.
Japan is finally reaching out to the international community for help with a cleanup operation after the disastrous nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011.
Heirs of Siemens's SIEGY -0.41 % founder called for a return to calm at the top of the company, as a leadership battle grips the German engineering giant.
Enthusiasm over China's plans for a free-trade zone in Shanghai has sent stocks seen as potential winners rallying.
Enrique Razon Jr. terminated the contract of a high-profile group of former Las Vegas Sands LVS 1.31 % executives to run the Solaire casino in the Philippines.
Germany's Bayer said it is being investigated by Chinese authorities, adding to the number of firms targeted in a crackdown on the pharmaceutical industry.
Temasek hired Wu Yibing, chief of the private-equity arm of Citic Securities, to lead the Singapore state investment firm's operations in China.
Companies and governments have returned to Asia's bond markets in droves as many emerging-market financial assets have rebounded following big selloffs.
Japan Display plans to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by March, in an offering that could raise as much as $2 billion.
Mongolia moved to resolve a dispute with Rio Tinto that has threatened the operation of the $6.2 billion Oyu Tolgoi mine.
Malaysia's UMW Oil has found eight cornerstone buyers for an IPO of up to $850 million.
A mine collapse in northern Afghanistan left at least 27 people dead, dealing a setback to an industry that has been touted as the best hope for bringing new wealth to the country.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed a Pakistani general, potentially damaging the government's plan to hold peace talks with the militant group.
Cambodia's main opposition force filled the capital with supporters in a bid to pressure Prime Minister Hun Sen to resolve a protracted postelection standoff.
Passengers started to leave a Chinese cruise liner that was detained in South Korea on Friday amid a legal dispute, stranding over 2,300 passengers and crew.


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In a Hogwarts art class, the students are learning to work with colors. Three magical words (operations), EXTRACTO(UPWARD ARROW), COMBINARO(DOWNWARD ARROW) and MUTATIO(ARROW POINTING RIGHT) may be applied with proper wand motion to beakers of red (r), green (g), white (w) and black (b) paint (elements). Here is what is supposed to happen when the magic is done properly. (The (UPWARD ARROW) sign means mixing two colors together simultaneously with an upward wand motion. The (DOWNWARD ARROW) sign means mixing two colors together simultaneously with a downward wand motion; the (ARROW POINTING RIGHT) means changing the color within its beaker by means of a rightward wand motion.)
EXTRACTO: w(UPWARD ARROW)w=w; w(UPWARD ARROW)r=w; w(UPWARD ARROW)g=w; w(UPWARD ARROW)b=w; r(UPWARD ARROW)r=r; r(UPWARD ARROW)g=w; r(UPWARD ARROW)b=r; g(UPWARD ARROW)g=g; g(UPWARD ARROW)b=g; b(UPWARD ARROW)b=b
COMBINARO: w(DOWNWARD ARROW)w=w; r(DOWNWARD ARROW)w=r; g(DOWNWARD ARROW)w=g; b(DOWNWARD ARROW)w=b; r(DOWNWARD ARROW)r=r; r(DOWNWARD ARROW)g=b; r(DOWNWARD ARROW)b=b; g(DOWNWARD ARROW)g=g; g(DOWNWARD ARROW)b=b; b(DOWNWARD ARROW)b=b
MUTATIO: w(ARROW POINTING RIGHT)b; r(ARROW POINTING RIGHT)g; g(ARROW POINTING RIGHT)r; b(ARROW POINTING RIGHT)w
The set of 4 color elements together with the magical operations are a Boolean algebra: ({w,r,g,b}, (DOWNWARD ARROW),(UPWARD ARROW), (ARROW POINTING RIGHT), w, ?)
If w is the zero element, then:
a. What is the 1 element?
b. Show that the identity laws hold.
c. What is the complement of each color w, r, g, b?
d. Show that the complement laws hold.
e. State the two distributive laws using variables x,y,z, and validate each for the one case x=r, y=g, z=b.
f. State the two associative laws using variables x,y,z, and validate each for the one case x=r, y=g, z=b.
PLEASE EXCUSE (UPWARD ARROW), (DOWNWARD ARROW), (ARROW POINTING RIGHT). Can't insert symbols here.
Thank you!


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Do all map features, e.g. villages and ruins, appear if difficulty=0 is set on my SMP Minecraft server?
World Generation (including the generation of structures) is not affected by the difficulty setting of the world.
You can find villages/strongholds on peaceful as well as on hard.
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I would like to ask if someone has compiled a list of other linker flags for Xcode. On which Stack Exchange site is this question appropriate?
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 158 Stack Exchange communities.
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What is meta?
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This is a question about an IDE/linker which makes it appropriate to Stack Overflow, though you may want to phrase it as a proper question, something to the tune of:


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It's his best "sorta stoned" face, as well.
2)Enemies of Slog-
The Bonzai Chronicles
Dan Savage
Discovery Institute
Daniel Schorr
Focus on the Family
The George Bush White House
1)Great post.
Leno defines "hack".
I'd love to get the smug bastard on the phone!
My Dad lifts all his jokes from Leno, and they're even less funny when reheated. It sucks having to listen to Leno's humor, and worse when I feel family-generated pressure to laugh at it.
Jay Leno is the best living example of why individuals of a species must die so that the species as a whole may evolve.
Were getting worked up over a hack named Leno? Jokes and humor for people who have no sense of humor.
Ziggity is right tho his jokes that are reheated are pretty lame.
I've never been able to "get" Leno. He's one of those people who just isn't funny and doesn't seem to realize it.
OK, I'll change that a bit. Maybe Mr and Mrs Average American find him funny at whatever-o'clock-at-night, but people with any kind of above the cornfield sensibility don't.
Poor Leno.
Only losers watch Leno, like Phillipe, think Whitty is witty, and are fans of Savage.
At least I'm only 1/4 of a loser...
Yes, Leno sucks. Next.
Since it's so evil for Jay Leno to imply that there are stereotypically gay behaviors, I'm sure Dan Savage would never do something like tell a parent that he is 90% certain that her six-year-old son is gay because the kid likes dolls and dresses. Oh, wait...
Jay Leno's remarks about gays aren't as important as global warming.
When Obama says it is time to deal with gays, we will do it.
Please begin holding your breath.
patrick @12: You are a fucking humorless moron.
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to laugh.
Next is Conan O'Brien scheduled to take over The Tonight Show in 2009 when Jay retires. Conan's funny enough, but I'm not crazy about his tendency to step on people's lines or his apparent need to do comedy oneupsmanship whenever a guest does or says something funny.
I think the change in The Tonight Show once Conan takes over will be even greater than the change that occurred when Jay took over from Johnny. I wish I could say that it'll be an improvement, and I don't think the gay jokes will disappear.
David @ 11,
So are you claiming that Jay Leno was only "imply[ing] that there are stereotypically gay behaviors" when he made those comments, and not mocking gay men and the actors who play them? Or are you saying that Dan Savage was making fun of a six-year-old for being gay? (!)
Or maybe you're just not clear on what homophobia is. Tell you what: try considering Leno's jokes from the point of view of Billy Wolfe, the 15-year-old target of homophobic bullying in Eli's post below. That might help you understand.
Jay Leno is supposed to be funny?
I am with Whitty all the way on this one. He's spot on with his commentary. Leno's "humor" says a lot about what is wrong with America.
Leno's chin looks even bigger in real life, and it looks really weird. He looks like a caricature of himself.
I won't watch the NBC news at 11 becuase I'm afraid I will fall asleep and wake up during Leno. I can't stand him.
Conan will flop. Much of his humor is too esoteric to find a broad audience. Although his contract is iron-clad I give him, at best, 1 year as the Tonight Show host.
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Welcome to Wargames Foundry
We manufacture the world's largest range of 28mm white metal miniatures for gamers, collectors, modellers and painters. We also have a comprehensive range of 300 different paints. To view our ranges you can use the navigation bar above or click on the logos below. Feel free to give us a call on +44 1636 526886 or email us at email@example.com if you need any help or have any questions . We are happy to take orders over the phone and you can pay by credit card or we can send you a Paypal invoice.
Our shop in the village of East Stoke near Newark, Nottinghamshire is open for visitors 9am to 4pm on weekdays and 10am to 4pm on Saturdays. If you would like to vist at any other time please ring us up and we'll open for you if we can. Occasionally we have to close on Saturdays, so please check if you are making a special journey to see us.
Events at Foundry. We host all sorts of events at Foundry, including birthday parties, day time 'stag' dos, gaming days for groups and clubs, and Oldhammer,now in its fourth year. Email or telephone to book your event at Foundry.
We are still adding to the logos above so please use the navigation bar at the top if you can't find what you're looking for.
Opening times: Mon to Fri 9am to 4pm. Sat 10am to 4pm
Get in touch if you'd like to visit at any other times and we'll open up if we can.
We have thirty thousand packs of miniatures on display as well as our entire range of paints and books. We also have gaming tables set up for our visitors to use and if you'd like to have an event here at Foundry we can even arrange food.
Click here for information on how to get here and some pictures of our 1812 courtyard.
For the last year Kevin Adams and Bryan Ansell have been working on their Greenskins project. We will be casting the first fifty Viridian Warmongerers out into the multiverse fairly soon.
We have been putting images up on our Warmonger Miniatures Facebook site if you fancy a peek: https://www.facebook.com/warmongerminiatures
Recently we launched the Warmonger Miniatures website and so far we have managed to bring several dozen of Kevin's fantasy models from 15 years ago back into production. Lots more of his older models will be made available again in the near future and simultaneously we will be launching the new Warmonger range.
All our paint pots contain a whopping 20ml of paint, and we have range of 288 different individual colours organised in matched sets of three. You can also purchase our pots individually.
SHIPPING is FREE on orders of £80.
We Have an Email Newsletter!
Next Wargames Shows:
Phalanx 18 June
at Foundry
5, 6 & 7th August


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This is way too basic. It assumes the categories from Posts, which is confusing. It does not have a recurring events feature. Too limited in scope.
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Getting to experience to beauty of Northern California
HP's office in Roseville is terrible. A sea of cubicles with absolutely no perks. Very little employee interaction, HP payed hourly and would not pay overtime, yet workload demanded 50 hours a week. Employees at HP are not inspired, bar is not set high. Management have very little insight, project I worked on was a trainwreck. Felt like I was in a Dilbert cartoon
If you are looking for a large corporate experience HP might be for you. Also, if you are in a different office or department things may be more enjoyable.
Wake up. IF you want the top recruits from top schools you are going to have to start innovating. Your work environment is bland and life draining. Your employees are not passionate nor are they inspired (which based on how you ran the project I worked on, I could see how work has such little intrinsic value at HP). I want to be challenged, I want to work in an environment that is leading the field, not 2-5 years behind the competition. I want to work in an office that I enjoy showing up to every day, not a sea of grey and pink cubiciles. There are absolutely no office perks, not even cups to put water in. My cubicle was vacuumed twice in 3 months. If you are satisfied with the status qou Management, keep it up.
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The latest Rabobank beef quarterly said export prospects were
Strong demand was likely from the United States and China and
supplies from Australia would be significantly tighter.
However, the dollar continued to put downward pressure on
returns along the supply chain.
It was expected to trade around the US85c range during the
year, which would limit possible gains for both export and
farm-gate prices.
Higher returns at the farm gate would, therefore, be
dependent on processor willingness to attract additional
cattle beyond the usual seasonal culling period, the report
The New Zealand beef industry had a positive start to 2014.
Conditions were good throughout most of summer and strong
international export demand provided an improvement, after
the severe drought conditions of the same time last year.
Total January slaughter stabilised at 242,665 head. Lower cow
slaughter was offset by rising bull slaughter levels,
resulting in higher farm-gate prices.
With winter approaching, seasonally higher cull cow supplies
were likely to build, resulting in gradual downward price
pressure and into the second quarter.
Beef exports increased 8% in January to 34,203 tonnes
(carcass weight equivalent) and average export returns were
up $1 to $5.66kg.
Shipments to China surged to 3233 tonnes, up 23%
year-on-year. However, the United States (up 2% to 16,864
cwe) remained the key market.
Poor climatic conditions continued in Australia this year
through large areas of Queensland and northern New South
Wales, keeping slaughter levels historically high.
Total cattle slaughter in 2013 increased 1.1 million head to
9.1 million, which underpinned record beef production.
January slaughter increased 17% year-on-year to 678,000 head
and processing volumes in February and March were also
forecast to be higher than last year.
Beef demand growth would continue to come mainly from China,
although Rabobank did not expect Chinese 2014 beef imports to
reach the growth levels experienced in 2013, which was up
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The 'stache is thriving again and is currently unthreatened, all 22 inches. He plans to enter it as the longest handlebar mustache in history. He washes it each night and the next morning he requires 10 minutes to get it ready for the day (you can watch the process in an online video). He sprays it with hairspray and then coats it with styling gel so that both wings point straight to his shoulders. He can pull them down and they spring right back into place. Snarr actually poked himself in the eye one night with the mustache and his eye got so infected that it glued itself shut.
"I'm a showboat, but I'm an honest one," he says.
Poets and philosophers
On the wall of Snarr's office are framed posters with quotes from many of the world's great philosophers and statesmen — Longfellow, Thoreau, Frost, Wordsworth, Mandela, Ghandi, Mother Theresa and those mentioned early in this article. He calls Longfellow's "Psalms of Life" his personal inspiration, and he can quote it from memory, along with countless other poems.
Not everything is high-brow. The mayor has written dozens of what he calls "cowboy" poems over the years about everything from a BYU-Utah dodgeball tournament to his mustache and Murray itself. A few years ago the mayor was invited to speak to students at Murray High School as part of the day's events for the Great American Smokeout, the anti-cigarette campaign. He dashed off one of his "cowboy" poems for the occasion in about 10 minutes, read it to his attorney, who begged him not to read it, and then debuted it at the assembly.
The poem closed this way: "It's the manufacturers who do you harm, for profits are their charm, and they know it all too well, your life they take to make their profits swell. Let's all just stand and tell them to go to h---!"
He then proceeded to lead the students in a chant that repeated the last line. It wasn't appreciated by parents and school officials, even if the sentiment was right, but that's Snarr. He calls himself a child at heart; others say he should act more like a mayor.
For all of that, he has reached out to the community in his loud, here-I-am-world way, and not just when it comes to repairing yards. He instructed his assistant to leave Fridays open so he can talk to people in the community. He is a regular visitor to grade schools and especially anti-drug events.
Over the years he has received scathing emails from citizens who are upset about something. He shows up at their door at night, unannounced, emails in hand. It scares them until he says, "I want to hear what you have to say and then I want to explain why we did things the way we did."
That sort of personal touch has won over at least part of the population. For some reason he receives frequent invitations to perform marriages — about 265, by his estimate. "He's a people person," says April. "He's always hugging people and talking to them and waving to them."
Privately, he gripes about politics. His pet peeve is dishonesty in politics (in a face-to-face showdown after a debate, he once threatened to punch out a political rival for telling lies about him, but wasn't taken up on the invitation).
"The greatest advocate for progress is truth, and that's what's missing in politics," says Snarr.
Snarr's mayoral term ends with 2013, but he is probably not done with politics. The Democrats have asked him to consider running for a seat on the Salt Lake County Council. As his days as a mayor wind down, he turns reflective: "We got some nice things done. Now new adventures are on the horizon. There are still a lot of great things left to do."
Doug Robinson's columns run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
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A winter storm is expected to cross into Kentucky and bring snow to the region.
Forecasters say Hardin County will see rain changing over to snow today. The latest forecast says local accumulation will be a half inch. Snow is expected into the afternoon but south winds will push temperatures into the 40s.
A winter storm advisory covering 35 counties stretches from Bowling Green to Ashland. LaRue, Hart and Nelson counties are included under the National Weather Service advisory but Hardin and other counties to the north and west are not.
The state's southeastern counties, including much of the mountains, are listed in a more severe winter storm warning. More than five inches of snowfall is anticipated in that area.
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Do Opposites Attract?
How do you balance the need to be client-, customer-, and employee-accessible while protecting the same people from potential physical threats? Here are some tips that can help:
Initially, the concepts of wayfinding and security seem diametrically opposite. Simply put, wayfinding helps you get some place, and security – more often than not – helps keep you out of certain places. So, how do you help people find their way around, while at the same time, keeping them away from places where they do not belong?
In essence, wayfinding techniques enhance our natural spatial navigation. They provide clues specifically designed to help negotiate the unfamiliar. These hints help us reach destinations, minimize our anxiety in getting lost, and can often help keep us safe.
According to a recent Booz Hamilton Allen study, at least three-quarters of the executives surveyed expressed increased interest in security issues. Interestingly, most of their concerns centered on day-to-day activities such as mail processing, travel, employee protection, and protection of offices and physical plants. Considering this increased interest in the security of daily activities, one wonders if current security practices are still valid.
Christopher Alexander's seminal work, "A Pattern Language," describes spatial problems that occur repeatedly in the environment. His methodology and writings are primarily based on towns, buildings, and construction; however, his work has interesting correlations to office planning.
His reference to roads is easily applicable to the need of directing high volumes of people away from high-security office areas. He states, "Lay out local roads so they form loops. A loop is defined as any stretch of road that makes it impossible for cars that don't have destinations on it to use it as a shortcut." To further discourage high volume, he recommends specific roads be designed considerably narrower than other roads. With that in mind, routes that lead to secure areas should not be on the main path and should not be shortcuts to other locations.
There are also patterns for where and how roads intersect. The concept of a junction is applicable to people meeting and converging at workstations and office hallway intersections. Random meetings are great for collaboration and building social capital; however, they should not occur near high-security areas. Therefore, when considering wayfinding and security, three-way stops are preferable over four-way stops.
The desire for a high-security area in a building is also reflected in Alexander's pattern for housing that is more "private than public." In this same regard, high-security areas should be more remote and not share boundaries with public spaces, café areas, or other gathering places.
No one pattern lives in isolation. A physical environment can support the overlapping needs of wayfinding and security, but only to the extent that one understands the relationships between business objectives, human behavior, and the physical space. An increased awareness in security creates wayfinding challenges – but with thoughtful evaluation and planning, these challenges can be understood and overcome.
Pam Brenner is manager of workplace issues at Grand Rapids, MI-based Steelcase (www.steelcase.com).
Visit our website today to learn about the design flexibility of a Morton building and the endless possibilities of partnering with our designBUILD team.
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Galapagos has been awarded a €2.5 million (approximately $3.4 million) grant from the Flemish agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) research and development. The goal of this two and a half year project is to identify new therapeutic compounds for future treatment of IBD patients.
The purpose of the IWT-funded program is to gain better insight into the roles of GPR43 and two undisclosed targets in the pathobiology of chronic inflammatory disorders, in order to understand their therapeutic value. Galapagos will collaborate in this project with Paul Rutgeerts, M.D., Ph.D., and Séverine Vermeire, M.D., Ph.D., from the Catholic University of Leuven, and the research group of Professor Dr. Martine De Vos at Ghent University.
The first compound that will be tested in IBD patients is GLPG0974, an inhibitor of target GPR43 (also known as FFA2). This target is one of the three whose role in IBD will be investigated. Galapagos recently completed a second Phase I clinical study with GLPG0974, and results are expected to be reported later this quarter. In April, Galapagos will start a proof of concept study with GLPG0974 in ulcerative colitis.
Earlier this month, Galapagos was awarded a €2.7 million grant (approximately $3.6 million) from the Flemish agency to discover new antibiotic treatments.
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MDMA (commonly known as the empathogen "ecstasy") is classified as a Schedule 1 drug, which is reserved for compounds with no accepted medical use and a high abuse potential. Two researchers from Stanford, however, call for a rigorous scientific exploration of MDMA's effects to identify precisely how the drug works, the data from which could be used to develop therapeutic compounds.Do you agree that ecstasy should be studied for its potential therapeutic benefits?
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5 years ago | Film Reviews
This year's Academy Award-nominated shorts at the Lagoon Cinema offer a little something for every viewing temperament, though in 2012 the best bet is in the animated category. In the live-action field, first up is "Pentecost," a forgettable comed...
6 years ago | Film Reviews
In past years, the theatrical release of the Oscar-nominated live-action and animated shorts has provided a fun peek into intriguing bite-size cinema from across the globe. But for the 2011 edition, the series is at last making room for the five n...
It's hard to know what Dwayne Johnson has less faith in: his talent or his audience. Though hardly a comedic dynamo, Johnson has generated laughs with his easygoing charm in forgettable studio products like Get Smart and Planet 51,...
7 years ago | Film and TV
Because they're crafted outside the Hollywood system, you might assume that this year's Oscar-nominated live-action and animated shorts stand in sharp defiance to conventional mainstream cinema. But the best of these 10 entries are, in some w...
8 years ago | Film Reviews
Nobody in the film industry wants to be pigeonholed. Personal assistants long to be studio heads, gaffers want to direct, and name actors fantasize about hanging it up and doing something that, y'know, matters. In such an environment, director Ran...
8 years ago | Film Reviews
STREET KINGSdirected by David Ayerarea theaters, starts FridayFor a movie built around questions of failed ethics and duplicitous behavior, Street Kings is just as dishonest as its characters. Though conceived as yet another sobering frontline rep...


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SF officer suspected of making prohibited assault rifle
Bones found near Point Reyes IDd as missing UC Berkeley student
We got Berned: Sanders camp stiffs Sonoma town for $23,000
Rio's waters so full of human sewage, Olympic swimmers told to...
SF doctor advises against following Kardashian vagina...
'My Sweat Life' blogger Kelsey Wells posts photo showing that...
Trump dings both Clintons in rollicking press conference
Oh my god, San Francisco has a baguette vending machine now
Mom beats daughter live on Facebook
$500K knocked off price of Hume Castle in Berkeley
Monthly Archive for November, 2006
Fool takes Stanford in the Big Game; Fantasy Man says play Moss
Firing with both barrels, The Betting Fool and The Fantasy Man unleash a high-energy podcast of epic proportions. Or at least one with some eyebrow-raising picks. The Fool has several "locks" in …
New offensive coordinator already making changes
New Oakland Raiders offensive coordinator John Shoop is a "high-energy guy" who is already having an impact among the players, The Chronicle's David White reports in his weekly podcast. David talks …
Nolan's reacts to second-guessing in loss
In his weekly podcast, The Chronicle's Kevin Lynch describes how San Francisco 49ers Head Coach Mike Nolan reacted to the second guessing he received for a critical fourth-down call in Sunday's loss …
Big Game preview – Cal a heavy favorite over rival Stanford
The Holiday Bowl-bound California Golden Bears are a four-touchdown favorite against the arch-rival Stanford Cardinal in the 109th Big Game. Yet in their weekly podcast, The Chronicle's Rusty Simmons …
Chef's Night In – Crispy Skin Salmon
Chef Khai Duong Chef Khai Duong, executive chef of San Francisco's Ana Mandara restaurant, tells Chronicle food writer Olivia Wu about how his improvised recipe for Crispy Skin Salmon turned into his …
Interview with Alexa Ray Joel
The Chronicle's Shelah Moody interviews Alexa Ray Joel, singer-songwriter and daughter of Grammy-winning musician Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley. Alexa Ray Joel is a classically-trained …
Overcoming domestic violence in the Filipino community
Cherie Querol Moreno is known to many Filipinos in the San Francisco Bay Area for her work as a journalist and community advocate. Four years ago, she took on a new challenge: focusing attention on …
Questions over Hunters Point development plans; Ultimate Fighting popularity surges; brown Zune squirts, but is it selling?
With plans for a new football stadium at Candlestick Point dead in the water, urban design writer John King talks about what might happen to the development of new housing in the Hunters Point …
Combo GPS navigation and entertainment devices for the car
A combination Global Positioning System navigation and entertainment unit could be a good holiday gift for your car and yourself, so CNET.com senior editor Wayne Cunningham chats with The Chronicle's …
Surprising Estevez turns "Bobby" into one of year's best movies
San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle remembers Emilio Estevez hauling garbage in the 1990 movie "Men at Work." So in his weekly podcast, Mick says he was surprised that the new film …