Northern California: Joining the Party

Burning car in Oakland after ICE protests (Fanjoy/Chron)

Not to be outdone by its bigger brother to the South, Northern California had its own anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) demonstrations, looting, and property damage.

A crowd ransacked a Shiekh shoe store near International Boulevard and 34th Avenue on Tuesday night, according to videos reported by KTVU and police. A car parked on 34th Avenue was set on fire, and trash cans on the sidewalk were knocked over, spilling garbage onto the sidewalk.

The looting and vehicle fire occurred after a peaceful protest denouncing arrests of immigrants by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had ended, according to businesses owners and Fruitvale residents.

Oakland burgled shoe store after ICE protests (Flores/Chron)

The saving grace is that, unlike L.A., there's no suggestion that the looting and property damage were instigated by the demonstrators or actions by the Trump Administration.

It's sad, however, that there are people who will always use mass gatherings (protests, sports championships, cultural celebrations) as an excuse to commit crimes when police are occupied.

There Once Was a There There

What did Oakland use for traffic control before stop signs? Traffic lights!

Oakland is now replacing traffic lights with stop signs due to homeless encampments stealing from Oakland's electrical boxes: pic.twitter.com/Y2lFQ8BJsM

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 19, 2024

Don't blame Republicans. John H. Reading was Oakland's last Republican mayor from 1966-1977. Wikipedia:

In 1968 Charlie Finley moved the Athletics baseball team from Kansas City to Oakland during Mayor Reading's tenure. The Oakland Athletics won three World Series while Reading was mayor. He was instrumental in gaining funding and supporting construction of the new Oakland Coliseum and expansion of the Oakland International Airport.

Inordinately High Gunfire

The headline in this morning's Mercury News triggered my sardonic sensibility: "Gee, if only Alameda road shootings returned to normal."

But it really is puzzling why East Bay gunfire is much higher than the rest of the State:

Alameda County has one-sixth the population of Los Angeles County, but has a freeway and highway shootings-per-capita rate five times higher since 2021, according to the data, which was provided by the California Highway Patrol to this newspaper in March. Last year, Alameda County surpassed L.A. for a first-place finish no one wants: 79 reported highway shootings, compared to 71 in L.A., a place known for being the capital of the nation’s car culture...

Across the state, reports of shootings involving firearms — as opposed to BB guns, pellet guns and the like — last year dropped 27% from 2021, easing from 477 to 347, according to the analysis. Yet reports of shootings in Alameda County jumped to 79 in 2023, up from 66 and 72 the two previous years. The most dangerous highway was Interstate 580, particularly in Oakland and east of Dublin...

“These shootings are notoriously hard to investigate,” said Michelle Rippy, a professor of criminal justice at California State University, East Bay. She specifically pointed to the fact that there are often fewer witnesses to freeway shootings; by their very nature, such incidents mean suspects and victims leave the scene almost instantly.

Criminals are opportunists, and they know that there is very little chance of getting arrested if they take a shot at an enemy on the highway. Reducing these incidents seems to be one of those multi-faceted problems that will take years to solve, even by a competent government.

Meanwhile, I'll avoid driving on certain East Bay freeways, just as I avoid going into certain neighborhoods in San Francisco.

San Francisco Doesn't Look So Bad

...compared to Oakland. Headline:

Oakland crime surge: This major employer is telling workers to eat lunch on site [bold added]

Kaiser Permanente, the city’s largest employer, sent out a memo last month asking employees to stay in their buildings for lunch and throughout the workday, according to a report from KTVU. The memo also directed workers from out of town not to hold meetings in downtown Oakland...

The new precautions come as Oakland residents reel from a 21% increase in violent crime last year over 2022. Robberies climbed 38%, and burglaries increased 23%. For the second consecutive year, the city logged 120 homicides.

Kaiser Center, where I spent many an evening safely 1975-78.

During the mid-1970's I worked more than half the time in Oakland as a junior auditor for a CPA firm. One of its major clients was the Kaiser family of companies, the most notable at the time being Kaiser Permanente, Kaiser Steel, Kaiser Industries, and Kaiser Engineers. All were headquartered in Oakland.

(Digression: it's impossible to overstate the importance of Henry J. Kaiser to the post-war development of Hawaii, to the shaping of health care in California, and even to the nation's history, when his mass production of Liberty ships helped win the War.)

Because of its large Oakland footprint, not to mention its origins in the East Bay, Kaiser is unlikely to depart that benighted city. Nevertheless, if employee safety continues to be a major concern, Kaiser has to be looking at alternatives.

One wonders if Blue Shield is having regrets about its move to Oakland:

A representative of Blue Shield, the health insurance provider that moved its corporate headquarters from San Francisco to Oakland in 2019, said Friday that the company would offer “various options” to keep employees safe when they come to the office. Among them: ride-hail services, secure parking and security guards.

Blue Shield asks most employees to come to the office at least twice a month, and for executives to show up once a week.

Within the past decade the Raiders, Warriors, and Athletics have abandoned Oakland. As businesses and workers flee, Gertrude Stein's famous 1937 quote is truer than ever.

Target Throws in the Towel

Target announced the closure of three (3) Bay Area stores:

Target announced Tuesday that it planned to close three of its Bay Area stores next month, citing “theft and organized retail crime” that was “threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance,” the company said in a statement.

On Oct. 21, the company said it would close its San Francisco store on Folsom and 13th streets. In Oakland, Target will close its store on Broadway and 27th Street, its only location in the city, according to its website. The Target in Pittsburg on Century Boulevard is also closing.

Thirty-two Target stores will remain open in the Bay Area, the company said.

Before Target conceded defeat, it "invested in various security measures, including hiring guards, locking up merchandise and training employees in self-protection and de-escalation." However, the frequency and severity of crime in San Francisco, Oakland, and Pittsburg (pop. 77,000) forced Target to throw in the towel.

Nothing is locked down in the San Mateo Target

We go to the Target Store in San Mateo 2-3 times a month. It's less than two miles from our house, and we are regular users of its pharmacy and optical department.

Nothing is locked down, not even the alcohol, and shopping is a pleasant, safe experience.

It's puzzling why anyone who can afford to move out of the city hasn't done so already.

Oakland Zoo

Diana, 44, seems to like being hosed down.

After nearly 50 years of living in the Bay Area I visited the Oakland Zoo for the first time.

The initial impression was favorable.

The Zoo looks well-designed and well-maintained. Wherever we wandered on the 100-acre property a staff member or volunteer was always in sight. On a Wednesday afternoon most of the customers were families with children.

It needs to be mentioned that the Zoo is in the Oakland hills. The Zoo is close to regional parks and golf courses; it's only ten miles from crime-ridden downtown Oakland, but it may as well be in a different world.

Though we (try to) exercise regularly, we had enough after a couple of hours in the 88°F heat and the hilly terrain. In contrast we have spent the entire day in the flat, cool, sometimes foggy environment of the San Francisco Zoo.

We wanted to see more, so we upgraded to an annual family membership. We'll come back in the fall.

Bay Area Housing: Lease vs. Buy

The original owners bought this Foster City house for
under $200K in 1978. It sold for $3.3 MM in 2021.
And it needs work! (photo February 2022)

Using current data, the Chronicle reports on the results of rent vs. buy analysis for three cities in the Bay Area:

For the three largest Bay Area cities (San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland), these data points were factored in:

Median household income from the U.S. Census.

Typical two-bedroom home value from real estate listings site Zillow from February, 2022.

Estimate of two-bedroom apartment rent from Apartment List from February 2022...

We entered these values into a rent vs. buy calculator, adjusted home appreciation to 5%, set mortgage interest rate to 5.1%, which was the national average as of Sunday, and assumed a 20% down payment on a house.

In all three cities, it’s less costly to rent in the shorter term — no surprise, given the upfront costs necessary for homeownership. But the break-even point occurs at a different moment for the three cities, and later than the national average, especially in San Francisco.

The "break-even point", as defined in the NerdWallet model, is the number of years the prospective buyer would have to live in the home to make it worthwhile to own instead of rent it. The results, using the basic assumptions set forth above, were:

San Jose - 9 years;

Oakland - 11 years;

San Francisco - 26 years.

The NerdWallet model is fairly sophisticated because it takes into account the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest and property taxes, as well as the hypothetical capital gain from the sale of the home. However, I don't think (because we can't see under the hood) it includes the $10,000 SALT cap or the $750,000-mortgage-limit under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The model results are indicators that purchasing is a better value in the East and South Bay, and not in San Francisco or the mid-Peninsula.

If you are thinking about buying a house, you should really use a customized analysis because individual circumstances are so different. And because a home is the largest purchase you are likely to make, you should take the time to build the model or get an accountant or financial analyst to build it for you.

Another unrealistic assumption in almost all lease vs. buy models is that the monthly savings from renting over ownership are assumed to be invested rather than spent. Speaking from personal experience, I know that very few renters have that discipline, and that the lifestyle of new homeowners is less luxurious than if they had continued to rent. The forced-savings aspect of home ownership is often underestimated.

Finally, most models haven't adapted to the newest trends in real-estate, e.g., the ability to live farther away from the office because of the increased possibility of remote work, the changes in the rental market because of corporate ownership and eviction moratoria, the trend towards lower-density housing, etc.

When decisions have so many variables, I'd talk to friends and relatives, play with the numbers, but finally go with my gut. Frankly, if I were 30 years younger, I'd strongly doubt that I would stay in the Bay Area for more than 10 years, and I definitely would not be a buyer.

John Madden (1936-2021)

The 1970's was a miserable decade--runaway inflation, gas lines, Watergate, the fall of Saigon--but at least Bay Area sports fans could find solace in their Oakland teams.

Charles Finley moved the Athletics from Kansas City and won three straight World Series from 1972 to 1974. Both owner and players broke the mold with "Charley O the mule, orange baseballs, mustachioed players, the designated hitter and designated runners."

The Golden State Warriors, led by Hall of Famer Rick Barry, were the surprise winner of the 1975 NBA championship. They dominated the 1975-1976 season, only to fall in the Western Conference finals to the Phoenix Suns.

Both the A's and Warriors were fan favorites--let's not talk about the mediocre 49ers and Giants, who rarely made the playoffs--but by the beginning of the 1970's football was already the most popular sport in America, and the top echelon of the National Football League included the Oakland Raiders.

Celebrating the 1977 Super Bowl Win

Led by its brilliant owner Al Davis, the Raiders were a team of castoffs, misfits, and rejects. John Madden, who died yesterday, molded this unconventional roster into a championship contender and became the most successful coach in Raiders history.

Just 32 when he became the Raiders’ head coach, Madden, who quickly became known for his sideline outbursts and unruly hair, led his team to the playoffs eight times in 10 seasons and compiled a .759 winning percentage (103-32-7) that still ranks as the highest of any coach with at least 100 victories.

Every January, while it was cold and raining outside, we could count on Raider football to entertain us on weekends.

During the '70's the Raiders had to go up against a historically great dynasty, the 4-time-champion Pittsburgh Steelers, as well as the Miami Dolphins, who in 1972 became and still are the only undefeated team in NFL history. Given the competition, John Madden's record was remarkable.

Tom Landry

Prowling the sidelines with his portly frame and expansive gestures, John Madden was the opposite of Tom Landry, the buttoned-down coach of the "America's team" Cowboys.

Madden's game-planning and Hall-of-Fame players made Raiders-Steelers must-see TV. The playoff game between the teams in December, 1972, was decided by the Immaculate Reception, perhaps the most famous play in NFL history. I remember watching that game on a tiny low-res TV screen in Hawaii and thought that Terry Bradshaw's 4th-quarter 4th-down pass was knocked down and the Raiders had won. Then the fuzzy TV showed a Steeler (Franco Harris) racing toward the end zone for a Steeler touchdown and victory.

Huh? What just happened? Similar to the 1969 moon landing, you could hardly see it and you couldn't replay it.

We were sad to see John Madden retire from coaching in 1978, but even in those days it was understood that he was headed for a stress-induced heart attack if he continued.

Again, much to everyone's surprise, he became the most popular TV football analyst of all time and put his name on one of the most popular sports videogames of all time.

I don't know when it was that politicians sought to become a person "you would like to have a beer with," but they should just say "I want to be like John Madden." R.I.P., coach.

Seeing the Light

(Image from Fullerton Observer)

A basic rule of finance is that when risk increases, prices rise in the affected market. As some businesses depart the sector, those that remain must charge more to compensate for their losses. There are many examples: insurance companies that no longer write fire policies, retail stores that close because of rising theft, doctors retiring because of increasing litigation, etc.

Another example is the risk to all landlords from the eviction moratorium, originally imposed for three months and now stretching to two years. Once the taking-from-landlords started it was very difficult to shut off. As we wrote one year ago

This law, through its one-size-fits-all approach, has permanently changed the rental market in California. It has permanently increased the risk of being a landlord by showing how easily California can override contracts for a year in the name of a health crisis...I doubt the State intended for landlords to remove rental units from the market, but that's a very foreseeable consequence of imposing a new risk on an industry.

Landlords are also selling their properties to owner-occupants. A reduction in the supply of rental housing is an inevitable consequence of government intervention in the market, as was rent control.

Landlord Ruth Schwarz (Chron photo)

The Chronicle reports that an individual Oakland landlord has been trying to evict her tenant since February 2020. [bold added]

After September 2019, Schwartz alleges in court filings, Lewis stopped paying rent. Lewis declined to comment....

With the attempted eviction at Schwartz’s house stalled by the pandemic, the situation escalated again in September 2020. Schwartz claimed in a court filing that she returned home from a trip to find a large, unpermitted shed in the front yard — and then noticed that the structure with a shingle roof and electrical wiring also had a bed, indoor plants and art on the walls, according to photos filed in county court.

The twist in the story is that the landlord, Ruth

Schwartz, 59, says the rent debt has climbed to nearly $34,000. For the former AIDS activist and Bernie Sanders supporter, it’s a strange reversal to be advocating for landlords in a changing Bay Area.

“This is the best place in the world to be who I am, and I love that there are such strong tenants’ rights,” she said. “Except in a situation like this.”

To Progressives property is theft and should be controlled by the government, but not if it's their own property.

His Life Matters, Too

(Chronicle photo)

David Patrick Underwood, 53, was shot and killed during Friday night's "unrest" in Oakland while serving "as [a] contract security officer for the Department of Homeland Security, guarding the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building."

After graduating from Pinole Valley High in 1985, Underwood enrolled at Contra Costa College, where he went out for both the basketball and baseball teams. When those didn’t work out, he hit a wall, and Underwood drifted up to Sacramento, where a lot of his high school buddies had moved.

But he never really left the family home in Pinole and was always there when his parents needed him. When their health failed, he ended up moving home for good to take care of them until they died.

He was still in the family home and assumed his own father’s role as something of a patriarch to a slew of cousins, nieces and nephews.

“Pat was someone you could depend on,” said [brother] Greg Underwood. “If you said ‘Pat, I need a ride to work at 9,’ Pat was there at 8:59, beeping his horn. Anything that he would put his mind to, he did it.”

...Witnesses to Friday’s shooting reported that the two guards were ambushed by gunmen who pulled up in a white van. The other victim is said to be in stable condition and has not been identified.

Everyone but a few crazies rejoiced when they arrested the officer responsible for the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. I hope there will be similar joy when they catch those who killed Mr. Underwood.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland: “We should never conflate the actions of murderers with the motives of protesters demanding justice.”

Winning by Losing

QB's Mahomes and Garoppolo after the game (Chron photo)

When the 49ers lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs on February 2nd, Bay Area fans were, of course, disappointed.

But not too badly.

The 49ers had far outperformed expectations for the season.

It was a terrific game that wasn't decided until the final minutes.

The 49ers have a good, young team that should make them contenders for years.

2017 Warriors parade, Oakland (WSJ photo)

Now comes the report that many lives were possibly saved because the 49ers did not have a victory parade:

It’s impossible to know precisely how many people would have packed the streets to fete quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, coach Kyle Shanahan and the rest of the 49ers. But it’s possible to offer a rough estimate: a lot of people.

When the Golden State Warriors won their three recent championships, the parades in Oakland attracted reported crowds of between 500,000 to 1.5 million fans.

But wasn't San Francisco's gain Kansas City's loss? Not this time.

...the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl turned out to be a public health savior. Kansas City happened to be one of the last NFL cities to report its first case of the virus, and the hundreds of thousands of long-suffering fans who celebrated on Feb. 5 were about six weeks behind San Francisco. Not until March 18 did Kansas City report its first case. Bay Area residents had been ordered to shelter-in-place by then.

San Francisco fans lamented that Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes was perhaps the only player in the league who could have overcome a 10-point lead against the 49er defense in the fourth quarter.

Thank God he was there, as both cities won.

Transportation: A Fantastic, Fossil-Fuel-Free Future

Because they know what's best for us, Bay Area central planners have been discouraging driving by means of high gas taxes, underfunded road repairs and road building, high parking fees, unique (i.e. high-priced) gasoline formulations, and shrunken driving lanes. If they want us to take mass transit, at least they're making trains more attractive, right?

Wrong: ‘I was scared for my safety’: Harassment, threats, violence follow women onto public transit

I often disembarked at Montgomery St. Station, 1988-2008

In August, Alliance for Girls released a report titled “Together, We Rise: The Lived Experiences of Girls of Color in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.” According to the report, girls in each city said they’d been harassed and stalked on public transportation.

“Girls know that this is an issue, and we ignore it until it’s too late,” said Emma Mayerson, the executive director of Alliance for Girls. “Public transportation is one of the greatest barriers to access services, to basic mobility, to economic empowerment.”

A 2019 report jointly released by four organizations, including the UC San Diego Center on Gender Equity and Health, found that 77% of women surveyed had been sexually harassed in a public space. Twenty-nine percent said it happened on public transportation.

BART logged 535 reports of sexual assault and lewd behavior on its BART Watch app this year through October. During the same period in 2018, there were 501 reports.

In Bay Area transportation there are fewer choices, higher prices, and low reliability. And with BART there's a bonus: sexual assault and lewd behavior with most of the victims being lower-income women of color.

It's too bad that some people are getting hurt on the way to a fantastic, fossil-fuel-free future.

If I Can Do It, You Can Do It

It's a familiar sports story: an athlete becomes associated with a political position, some fans object, and boycotts ensue. In this case the athlete is Draymond Green, and the politics are about being pro-Israel, not anti-American.[bold added]

Chef Reem Assil (Chronicle photo)

[Palestinian-Syrian chef] Reem Assil, who has been praised by publications like The Chronicle and Food and Wine, has played a vital role in sparking Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood as a food destination. One of her signatures at her Arab bakery, Reem’s California, has been the “Draymond Green,” a seasonal vegetable wrap.

The chef’s decision to stop selling the dish is linked to Green’s 2018 visit to Israel. While there, Green posed for a photo holding a military rifle as though he were a sniper, during a stop at the base of an Israeli Defense Force counter-terrorism unit, the Yamam.

Draymond Green was one of the leaders in having the Warriors reject a visit to the Donald Trump White House after the team won the NBA Championship, so I'm sure he has empathy for Reem Assil. In his words

“In order to effect change, you have to stand for something. If you go about it the same way, you do the same things you do if everything is normal, then you won’t effect change.”

And I Don't Even Know What's SUP

I haven't even tried Standup Paddle boarding (SUP)--the placid Foster City lagoon is perfect for beginners--and the next thing, electrically assisted water bikes, is already here.

(Chronicle photo)

The bikes, which [Jessica] Schiller invented in 2013, resemble mini-catamarans: a standard bicycle frame suspended over two inflatable pontoons, with a drop-down propeller powered by pedals and a 750-watt motor. The pontoon design provides stability so users can ride the bikes without having to worry about tipping or getting wet.

There's a practical application for this invention. Residents of Alameda Island typically drive across bridges or through the Webster and Posey underwater tubes to get to jobs in Oakland and the rest of the Bay Area. The bikes are a way for solo commuters to traverse the Oakland-Alameda estuary.

Oakland (top) and Alameda (bottom)
are 200 yards apart (Google Maps)

Oakland and Alameda officials have given the Mill Valley entrepreneur the go-ahead to install a fleet of 25 electrically assisted water bikes that will allow commuters to ride between the Jack London Square area in Oakland and either Mariner Square or the Grand Street dock in Alameda.

As with the land-based scooters and e-bikes that fill the roads, commuters will use a mobile app to claim a bike on either side of the estuary, ride across the 200-yard expanse of water and surrender it on the opposite side, paying by the minute.

There's no practical commuting application here in Foster City, but I can see my neighbors getting these for their backyard docks, and yes, for some of them money is not a problem.

Front Runner, C'est Moi

I thought I was a sports fan, but it's become clear that I'm a front runner, aka bandwagon-jumper (on when my teams are winning, off when they're losing).

I followed the 49ers and Raiders through the 1980's and mid-90's, after which both became perennial losers (the Raiders somehow made it to the 2002 Super Bowl but were blown out 49-21 by the Buccaneers). I didn't regularly watch football again until Jim Harbaugh coached the Niners to three straight Conference championships and one Super Bowl in 2010-2014.

Klay Thompson and fan in 2014

I first went to see the Giants in the Oughts to see Barry Bonds hit home runs in the new AT&T Park. I continued to attend games during the championship runs in 2010, 2012, and 2014 but gave up on the Giants after 2016.

As the football and baseball teams faded, the Golden State Warriors picked up the slack by winning an NBA title in 2015. After losing in the 2016 finals, the Warriors astounded the basketball world by signing Kevin Durant, one of the top-three players in the NBA.

The Warriors were champions in 2017 and 2018 but this year seem to have found another gear. Their two superstars and shoo-in Hall-of-Famers, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, have regained their MVP-level form.

Tonight the team's third- or fourth-best player, Klay Thompson, set the record for three-point shots by making 14 in a game against the Chicago Bulls. Sports Illustrated: Klay Thompson Scores 52, and Now the Warriors’ Death Star is Fully Operational

Thompson’s 52 shows what the Warriors can do when they are singularly focused on maximizing their talent on a night-to-night basis, and not taking a long-term view about saving it for the postseason. We aren’t even two full weeks into the NBA season, and we’ve already seen top-level performances from Curry, Durant and Thompson.

The Warriors appear to be fully living up to the hype placed on them in 2016, and at a more sustained level than we’ve seen in the past, at least during the regular season, and certainly never this early. We don’t even need to discuss what that means for the rest of the league. It’s the same as what they feared the moment this team was put together.

Experience has shown that I can't be a fan the entire year; work and family (sigh) have their own demands. Thank you, Warriors,--and 49ers, Raiders, and Giants, too-- for allowing this front-runner to strike the right balance.

California: The Government We Deserve

The Bay Area tops another list, one not to be proud of: [bold added]

In 2017 potholes closed Highway 101 by Palo Alto (NBC)

The Bay Area has the worst roads in the nation, according to a new report by TRIP, a Washington, D.C.-based transportation research group, that seeks to bolster a campaign by California transit officials to preserve the state’s recent gas tax hike.

Seventy-one percent of the streets in San Francisco, Oakland and nearby cities are dilapidated, and the average motorist loses $1,049 a year in repair costs from driving on the bumpy pavement, the report said. The San Jose area has the second-worst roads, with 64 percent in poor condition.

Last year California raised its State gas tax to the second highest in the nation (53.5 cents per gallon). Coupled with our unique, expensive gasoline formulation, California is neck-and-neck with Hawaii, which has to ship in its petroleum, for the country's most expensive gas.

In two weeks we'll vote on Proposition 6 , a measure that would repeal the gas-tax increase. Naturally all the powers that matter want to leave the taxes in place to fix the "worst roads in the nation", but the real question, of course, is how come we have paid so much and the results are so abysmal?

The one-party State says it's my way or the broken-down highway. We keep voting them in, so I guess we're getting the government we deserve.

The Joys of Almost Summer

Bill from Pittsburg, CA exults

While sports no longer provides the escape from reality that it once did, it still has the capacity to surprise. The surprise in this case occurred in the stands.

On Sunday an Oakland Athletics fan caught two consecutive foul balls. Commentators have opined that the odds against this event were one in a billion or one in a trillion.

At first blush, statistical analysis suggests those odds are wildly overstated. Here's a back of the envelope calculation: with a little over 15,000 in attendance, and assuming that 40 foul balls were hit into the stands during a game, the average fan has a 1 in 375 chance of catching a ball. The chance of getting two balls in the same game is one in 375 squared, about 141,000-to-1. Of course, the probabilities can be adjusted by seat placement--the upper decks in large stadiums get hardly any--but we're still a far cry from one in a billion.

If we layer in another filter, the odds of back-to-back balls landing in the same place must be at least 1 in 10,000. Now we're at 1 in 1.41 billion (141,000 x 10,000). OK, you can cheer now.

Another phenomenon is how much joy one derives from snagging a fly. Every guy is an excited little boy again when he catches a ball that costs about $30.



Female fans show their joy, too. This San Diego fan became an internet celebrity and received several marriage proposals due to her one minute of fame.

San Francisco / Oakland Comic Con

When the storm trooper asked for ID
(yes, really) the proper response is, "I am
not the droid you are looking for."

If the New York Giants can play their football games in New Jersey, then it can't be a problem for the San Francisco Comic Con to be held at the Oakland Convention Center.

A weekend pass for $80 seemed a bit much for this newbie (to conventions, not comics), so your humble blogger bought a $50 Saturday ticket and strolled around the convention floor.

Most people seemed happy to be there, with about 20% garbed in costumes---Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, and Star Wars characters were the most prevalent.

The booths consisted of comic collections--no surprise--but it was disheartening to discover that half the titles and most of the artists were unfamiliar to me. Also disheartening was the monetization of everything; one could easily blow $100 on an autograph and selfie with a C-list celebrity. Even the Oakland Convention center got into the act, charging $22 for 4 hours parking on a Saturday. (I paid $15 for all-day Saturday in SF a couple of weeks ago.)

I'm glad to have experienced Comic Con, but once is enough.

Diversity in Pedagogy

(Photo from eljay.org)

Mills College of Oakland has fired five tenured professors in a cost-cutting move [bold added].

Mills, one of only 36 women’s colleges remaining in the United States, is again deep in the hole. But unlike dozens of other women’s schools that have voted in recent decades to admit men to solve financial woes, Mills trustees made a controversial decision of a different kind this summer: They fired tenured professors, a move rare in academia and unprecedented at Mills.

With 1,400 students--about two-thirds undergraduates--Mills has long been known as an excellent private college. Wikipedia: [bold added]

In 2015, U.S. News & World Report ranked Mills sixth overall among colleges and universities in the Western U.S. (regional universities) and one of the top colleges and universities in the Western U.S. in "Great Schools, Great Prices," which evaluated the quality of institutions' academics against the cost of attendance. The Princeton Review ranks Mills as one of the Best 380 Colleges and one of the top "green" colleges in the U.S. Washington Monthly ranks Mills as one of the top 10 master's universities in the U.S.

I attended college in the 1970's, after men's universities, including mine, had gone co-ed. I wondered why the arguments that applied to admitting women to men's schools (enriched educational experience, diversity of opinion, enhanced preparation for "real life," social benefits, etc.) weren't relevant to men attending women's schools. The double standard was one of the reasons that I became disenchanted with the progressive agenda.

Today I'm glad that Mills has chosen to remain the way it is. Women's colleges are disappearing, now that the main reason for their existence has vanished:

The earliest women’s colleges were founded in the mid-19th century to give women access to higher education. This was a time when many people believed that it was unnecessary to educate women whose place was in the home, and that rigorous study could be unhealthy for women.

In 1960 there were about 230 women’s colleges.

In 2014, there were 47 women’s colleges in the U.S. and Canada.

There's a sameness to university education across the country: high costs, racially diverse student populations, women in the majority, leftist politics, and poor job prospects for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) majors.

Schools that once catered to specific groups--blacks, women, military, Christian--have become rare. It's important to preserve them, not just for students who wish to learn in a different environment but also because innovation springs from a diversity in pedagogy. Two cheers for Mills.

Inconvenient Truth: the Crime Edition

For your own sake put your laptop away 

On Saturday night dozens of "minors" swarmed a BART train at the Oakland Coliseum station [bold added]:

Witnesses told police that 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders...

[S]even people were robbed — with the victims losing a purse, a duffel bag and five phones. Six people were robbed inside the train car, with a seventh confronted on the platform, she said. Police received no reports of guns or other weapons being brandished.

A police summary prepared after the incident said that at least two victims suffered injuries to the face or head that required medical attention.

The story resonates because it's easy to identify with the victims. BART has hundreds of thousands of daily riders, and the Coliseum station is along one of the busiest arteries.

BART isn't sharing surveillance videos "because the attackers appear to be minors." That's not the real reason, IMHO.

Crime is rampant in the area--notorious gangs are headquartered nearby---and BART doesn't want to strike fear in the heart of suburban customers commuting to their jobs in San Francisco. Also, the crime is very likely to have been committed by young, mostly non-white men who reside in the area, and BART doesn't want to inflame already-negative emotions. For the record I'm in favor of releasing the videos, not only to catch the perpetrators but also to protect the public.

In the March for Science this weekend marchers, and many California authorities, proudly said that they were on the side of "truth." Apparently, they meant only truths that they agreed with.

[Update - 4/25: BART keeps riders in dark about teen mob robbery.]