Kiona from San Francisco is a bright little nine-year old who is battling leukemia. She really wants to travel to Hawaii with her family to swim with dolphins. Who wouldn't? But Kiona deserves this trip.... certainly more than you do, if we may be so bold. However, for her wish to be fulfilled, she needs help. This is where you come in: The Make-A-Wish Bay Area chapter is asking for locals to donate airline miles to help children, like Kiona, for their "Take My Seat" airline miles donation campaign.

Miles donated will help provide Bay Area "Wish" children with the opportunity to take a vacation from their severe illnesses and travel to their most-wanted destination. According to Make-A-Wishj, "the average number of miles needed for one domestic round-trip ticket is 50,000, but your readers can donate as few as 1,000 miles online. More than 70 percent of all wishes involve air travel for the child, as well as their family."

Your donated miles will also go to help these Bay Area kids:

- Analiese from Gilroy (age 4) is fighting kidney cancer and wishes to go to Disney World with her family.
- Oliver from Albany (age 4) wishes to go to Sea World with his family for a vacation from his leukemia.
- Nathan from Santa Rosa (age 5) wishes to conduct his own Thomas the Train experience to escape his cancer treatments for a few days.
- James from Salinas (age 11) is fighting brain cancer and wishes to travel to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

Please, please, please donate here.

BAYCAT, educators and job-finders for underserved youth in the digital media arts, is a local profit notorious for doing damn good work. On Thursday, July 12th, their space in Dog Patch robbed. All of the student laptops were stolen. But wait, it gets worse. "Beyond the cost of equipment, which is substantial for a relatively small nonprofit like us, the most devastating loss was five weeks of students' work, including completed comic books, first cuts of short films, and other projects that cannot be replaced," said Villy Wang, BAYCAT founder and CEO.

With all the laptops now missing, they don’t have enough computers to continue their program In order to replace the stolen laptops and equip the talented kids with all of the tuff necessary for classes, BAYCAT needs to raise $50,000 in 50 days so their students can continue to create award-winning short films. Please -- please! -- go here to learn more about their fundraising effort, The Show Must Go On. If you can't spare a cent, send it to someone who can? (Also, we know very well that a lot of well-to-do tech types and generous socialites read SFist, so, you know, come on, help these kids out. Thank you.)

Video below: heartbreaking scene of BAYCAT after the robbery, testimony from students and teachers.

Big news in the physics community arrives this week: Lawrence Livermore National Lab just successfully shot a 500 terawatt fusion laser at a single tiny target this week, which was the result of fifteen years of work. How powerful is 500 terawatts? That's 500 trillion watts, and it's 1,000 times more power than the entire country uses at any moment. It's also 100 times more powerful than any existing laser on the planet.

So yeah, big laser! It was actually the focused beams of 192 lasers, and it's the work of the National Ignition Facility, which has been working to try to harness nuclear fusion. In a laser. An MIT researcher said this Livermore laser shot created "unprecedented conditions in the laboratory that hitherto only existed deep in stellar interiors."

Basically, don't stand in front in it. Or park your country there either.

Update: Commenter Stephen Zielinski clarifies in ever-so-scientific terms, "500 terawatts, yes, but only 1.85 megajoules of total energy. This means the pulse lasted around 3.7 nanoseconds, with a total energy content equal to a bit over one and a half Snickers bars." Right, of course.

[SF Biz Times]

Cynthia Rodriguez (AKA "C-Rod") is, according to the Oakland Tribune, athletic and enjoys playing softball, soccer and basketball. She's also only 14-years-old. And her life could be cut short if you don't help. See, C-Rod was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2010, and went through painful treatment. "She was doing very well for about 18 months but relapsed in March and now must undergo a bone-marrow transplant." Unfortunately, her immediate family members are not a match. Might you be her life-saving bone-marrow match?

A bone marrow drive for C-Rod will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the first floor of the Fabiola building at Kaiser Permanente located at 280 West MacArthur Blvd. in Oakland. (Look, here's a map!) Bring a friend. Bring three. Have lunch someplace nice afterwards knowing that a) you might have helped save a young girl's life, and b) your chances of getting into heaven (if you believe in such things) are even greater. Anyway, please spread the word. Thank you.

These guys sure are lonely. They could really use a home and family (likes yours!) to call their own. Maybe you would like a little love in your life too, yes? Well, why not adopt one of these lovable, needy, remarkable creatures today. Or tomorrow. Just do it soon! You can visit them at the SF SPCA (2500 16th Street) to see if you're a match. (Hint: you are.) If you have a heart or are in need of some karma, or both, please take a look at these guys. Their eyes are brimming over with sadness because they aren't with you. However, they're just waiting to explode with love and joy all over your life.

Our point? One or all of these wonderful pets could die alone if you don't help.

Adoption Info:

All pets adopted from SFSPCA have received a pre-adoption veterinary exam and behavior assessment, vaccinations, spay/neuter surgery and a microchip.

Where: The San Francisco SPCA’s Maddie’s Adoption Center
Address: 250 Florida Street (at 16th - Street)
Hours: Open Tues - Friday 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday/Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Closed Mondays and major holidays.
Contact: 415-522-3500, www.sfspca.org

Follow SPCA at facebook.com/sfspca and twitter.com/sfspca.

Police ned your help finding a man who went missing from his home on Saturday. "Salvador Ceja, 77, apparently walked away from a residence on the 100 block of Schwerin Street at about 8:45 a.m. Saturday," reports BCN (via SF Appeal).

Ceja (who suffers from dementia and diabetes) is described as 5', 4", 150 pounds, black hair, brown eyes, and was last seen sporting a white shirt with black dots, and black jeans.

Anyone with information is asked to call 415-558-5508.

As the preternaturally calm Brandon Wong rose this morning to take in the sunrise over by Anza in the Richmond, he saw something in the east that didn't make sense.

"It's just bizarre," he wrote, "I thought it was a volcano."

What is that? A fire? Chevron venting something? What could create such an odd plume?

Did you see it? you see it? Weigh in with your comments.

These pictures were taken around 7:30 AM. Full-size images after the jump.

But wait, there's more: in addition to joining a family that refers to themselves as a "team," you--a "highly poised, polished, professional, and articulate" cad--will also conduct interviewing, hiring, firing, scheduling, resolving issues, and performance reviews of all household staff; be able to make all bill payments through Quicken (heh); act a grease monkey to their many fine automobiles; help their little brats out at school; assist in the maintenance of organization throughout household (i.e., labeling and organizing CDs, toy-bins, pantry, garage, storage locker etc.); make numerous trips to the pharmacy under an alias (we'll assume), and be this Marina/Cow Hollow clan's self-starting doormat.

And all this and more must be accomplished between a tight 15 to 20 hour week schedule. A firm grasp of reality, it seems, is not a qualification.

But the questions remains: whose family will you get to be a part of? Whose children born into what dynasty will get to call you "mom" or "dad" until you're fired for dipping into the Xanax jar or blowing papa in the conservatory? All these questions and more can be found out if you apply here. We're hoping it's a gig for Vanessa; otherwise, you're pretty much screwed.

For the full CL ad, follow the jump.

"This is Gavin Newsom, what the hell do you want?" Newsom (might have) said when he answered yesterday's one millionth call to 311.

Since its launch in April, 311 helps SF residents bypass "over 2,300 telephone numbers that existed previously to access city services...[and] reduces calls to the City’s 911 center, where over 50% of calls received are for non-emergency services." (Really? Like, "Hi, I just called to chat, is all" or "I just saw Loni Anderson over on Chestnut!" kind of non-emergency calls? Because there should be an eleven-number just for those. That would be awesome.)

And what was the one millionth call concerning? A report of upturned newspaper racks at Geary and Kearny. Newsom told the man that he would make sure the problem was fixed right-quick, and to have a nice day. Us, we would have asked him if his arms were broken.

San Francisco's other and inferior eleven, 511, has no comment as of this time.