Who Reads Yesterday's Papers?
-A big proposal by Ross Mirkarimi for public funding of Mayoral races was looked over by the Ethics Commission and approved, moving the proposal up to the Board. Some experts say, however, to Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. The reason is because in doing something proposed by the progressives to help progressive candidates, it might help conservative candidates too. And as we all know, that would be bad. The reason is that in limiting candidates to a certain amount of tax-payers money to spend on campaigns, it'll open things for people on the fringes, like progessives. Or conservatives.
-Some committee named the U. N. Plaza as one of the most "underachieving" squares in the world. How underachieving? Fourth worst in the world. All this because the plaza is getting low grades and behind on it's homework. The committee, Project for Public Spaces, a committee completely proving the fact that anybody can form a committee anywhere, dinged U.N. plaza for not enlivening the neighborhood, as if that could be possible. Mentioned is the water fountain in the plaza, which they call "a sunken pit with water raging within [when it is on] that has become a bathing pool for San Francisco’s homeless.”
-Despite rules saying they can't do it, the University of California has been giving administrators paid leaves when they want to take the occasional break. The paid leaves are at the same rate as their administrative salaries, which is a pretty, pretty, pretty good deal, especially when it's usually double the amount of money they all made as teachers. It's also against a policy established in 1994 that banned such activities. All of this comes at the same time as the UC system has been under fire for handing out big huge bonusses and other perks while simultaneously raising fees and services.
-So yeah, the SNL "Chronic (What) of Narnia" thing. It's amazing how fast these things go these days. The damn thing was shown just about a week ago and it's already all over the place. There's already t-shirts out and references are flying all over the internet. It's become such a big thing that the noticeabley trying-to-be-hip Slate already has one "What It All Signifies" articles posted. Which is kind of cool but kind of bad, and not just because Wonkette beat us to "true dat, double true". Didn't these buzz things have more than a shelf-life of a week? Wasn't there a time to enjoy the phenomenon before getting sick of it? Because while the whole thing might not be over already, but it sure is putting on the water skis.