While you were a young whippersnapper and only having to deal with fire and earthquake drills, the youth of today have to practice massacre drills--Columbine-style massacre drills, that is. We blame Grand Theft Auto. ...

535 San Francisco Unified School District teachers will receive layoff notices this morning due to state cuts in education funding. Today's pink slip handouts stem from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget '09, which will see San Francisco schools losing around $40 million. According to CBS 5, Mayor Newsom is doing what he can, even if it's a Band-Aid solution to a longterm problem. Mayor Gavin Newsom has said he plans to ask the Board of......

Photo of the newly topped out hotel highrise at 888 Howard...

A manhunt is underway right now at Contra Costa College, searching for a man who shot a Contra Costa College student police cadet three times at close range a little before 1 p.m. today. "The victim was in critical condition when he was taken to John Muir Medical Center...[and] has since been stabilized and has gone into surgery," according to CBS 5. As of now, a whopping 50 police officers from five different police......

Today, a little before noon, a suicide attempt occurred at Hastings Law School. We received the information via our Contribute section (which, by all means, do) and from Introducing Ashley. (Aw) She reports that a "female student had attempted to jump from the 21st floor. Luckily, her friends and local police were able to talk her back inside."...

Someone told us a story of a famous pianist who believed in bringing culture to the people, and went to a factory in Italy to give a lecture in front of a piano. He started to talk about Schoenberg, and after a few minutes, a voice rose from the audience: "Shut up, and play!" Ok, he said, and sat down at the piano, playing the Schoenberg piece. The voice rose again: "Rather, talk!" András......

San Rafael-based Edutopia Magazine, which is brought to us by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, looks to the future in its latest issue, identifying 10 ideas or trends that its experts believe can improve K-12 education. We found them thought provoking, and hope you agree. ...

Servers aren't cheap, so we'd like to take a moment to thank the advertisers on SFist this week: Zipcar for letting those of us who don't have cars where we can rent them from without going to an airport. Cazadores for educating us about tequila - now we know more than just 'Sure, we'll take some tequila in a drink.' Fierce People for making our family seem so much less dysfunctional than the family in......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

-- Sixth Street did not explode. [Chron] -- Neither did Hayward. [CBS5] -- Friday's party for Barry, Bonds/Newsom connection. [GNS] -- Pigeon crap on bridges falling down, falling down, falling down... [Chron] -- Microsoft going after Yahoo? [EWEEK] -- On-air chats with Jessica Aguirre, who already knows how much you want to fuck her with your monster cock, gentlemen, so go easy on her. [Chron] -- Alleged San Mateo blue square to stand trial.......

Hey, everyone loves a list, right? Especially those ranking institutions of higher learning. The yearly U.S. News & World Report list is out -- any wagers on how local schools did? And, really, how much would it affect your choices? We remember mulling the 1991 list saying "can't get in there, can't get in there, nope, not there either . . ." But it's still fun to see how stuff measures up, we suppose. Unshockingly, Stanford University was high on the list, reaching No. 4 this year, undoubtedly driving the next generation of Azia Kims....

Photo of Jesse Jackson's address in the Western Addition. ...

--Spot (at least) four problems with this picture! [zippy_monster on Flickr, from the SFist Flickr stream.] --Fight at the Metreon! [Chron Culture Blog] --Pat Murphy claims to feel bad about his nemesis Chris Daly getting deposed as chair of the Board of Supes Budget and Finance Committee. [SF Sentinel] --Chris Daly takes his reassignment like a man. [Fog City Journal] --Hey! Our Ed Jew coverage goes national! Thanks for the referral, reader DM! [TPMMuckraker.com]......

While San Francisco is known globally for a certain worldview, those of us who actually live here know that when it comes down to particulars, we don't often agree. We can't agree on Blue Angels. We can't agree on a Muni solution. Heck, we can't even agree on what to do about Ed Jew (oh no!). But you know a banner we can all unite under? The One City One Book: San Francisco Reads program. Imagine, hordes of people reading a sort of narrative story on paper! No electricity required (save, perhaps, for reading lights). ...

So Newsweek's come out with its rankings of "the top public high schools in the country," and the Bay Area has 9 10 schools in the top 300: Magnet school Lowell High in SF topped the list at 57, and Monta Vista in Cupertino came in second (85). The rest of your schools: Mission San Jose in Fremont (140), Burlingame High School (196), Mountain View High School (213), Andrew P. Hill in San Jose......

Any news involving Pixar makes our heart go pitter-pat, but this one's strictly for the rich folks: the studio's holding a benefit screening of Ratatouille on Friday, June 8th at 6:00pm, with tickets priced at, gasp, $250. Wine and hores-dee-ovrus are provided, as wealthy types won't show up otherwise. For $1,000, you'll get an additional recognition; for $5,000 you can get a tour of the studio. Proceeds go to Emeryville schools, bless 'em.......

Pacific Gas and Electric has awarded 22 area schools a combined $108,500 for "for innovative solar science projects." Basically, PG&E, with these so-called "Bright Idea" grants, is to encourage young minds to think about alternative energy sources early on, in the hopes that a few of them will go on to pursue careers in the field. A total of $250,000 will ultimately be issued for the year; schools can apply for grants through Sept. 30....

Droll NPR commentator (who was previously fired for cursing) Sandra Tsing Loh brings her one-woman show, "Mother On Fire," to the Women's Building tonight! For a 9 night run! The show's about her travails trying to find an appropriate school for her kindergarten age daughter in the California school system and ran for 7 months in LA. Here's the one-liner. "I looked at public schools, private schools, parochial schools -- even Baptist school. It turns......

When you go to someone's house, do you also make a beeline for their bookshelves and try to wrangle them into lending you some of their books? ("Did you like The Namesake? We heard it was good! No, we haven't gotten around to reading it yet! Are you done with it?") Well, if so, you and us are going to have to arm-wrestle over the selections at SwapSF's big book swap event this Saturday! SwapSF......

Looks like there's a budding trend for private companies to supply healthier school lunches in schools throughout the greater Bay Area. Some of these companies, as seen in the article in the SJ Merc, have plans to expand their school programs and even reach into homes....

Our beloved Muni Driver may have stopped writing for us, but that doesn't mean we can't get another part of Muni to take their chances posting for us. So without further ado, we'd like to start our new feature, Ask a Muni Security Guy. And standard rules apply-- we're really lucky to have this feature and our Muni Security Guy is not a writer, so be nice in the comment section....

Students at Cal protest the store Bear Basics for selling shirts they found offensive. The shirts in question said "Rutgers Nappy-Headed Ho Basketball Team." A manager was asked to stop selling the shirt and refused, so the students organized a protest for the next day. The manager's boss intervened and pulled the shirt before the store opened the next day, but when the students came by a few days later, they found two other shirts......

Here's todays news...

We have our own little bit of PurgeGate on our end of the country. Maybe not the most exciting part of the story, as it doesn't involve voter fraud or missing e-mails, but still a piece of the puzzle. ...

Here's todays roundup of the news...

Funny, the SF-based Tanners never had these issues in Full House -- the Chronicle ran an interesting set of articles yesterday detailing the problems that San Francisco-based families face when trying to stay in the city. The articles profiled a couple who live on Guerrero Street and their two kids (5 and 1) -- on the one hand, an affordable area because of the high-density housing and street traffic, but on the other, not the......

Here's a wrapup of today's news...

Not one to be one-upped in the banning department, California is now considering a ban on trans fats just like New York, Philadelphia and Denmark (Yes the entire country. Those Scandinavians are such goody-two-shoes.) Some cities in California have already taken it upon themselves to ban trans fats including –yes- America’s first Trans Fat Free City, our own Tiburon, California. Sure, the annual income of Tiburon residents is probably equal to a small country’s GNP, but at least they’re doing good with all their money and bay view homes. ...

We were browsing the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate website for information about the infamous HPV vaccine. (Yes, we’re too old to even get it. Yes, we’re confused about the whole vaccine and why it’s so expensive. And yes, we’re kind of sad that efforts to offer a vaccine in schools will most likely not happen). ...

-Barack Obama Superstar is a hit in the Bay Area. -UC Merced runs afoul of some shrimp. ...