Mike Graydied recently, at 77 years of age, with prominent obituaries in some publications due to his status as a successful movie screenwriter -- his most famous screenplay being for The China Syndrome, which was released in 1979 and garnered him an Oscar nomination. The film had considerable...

Has the vast amount of money and time spent to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake and long-term poverty really helped much? How about in other places worldwide? As national budget crunches spur more debate about "bang for our bucks," "foreign aid" comes under increasing scrutiny -- even though...

Prince might have been the oldest guy at his club gig in San Francisco this week. That is a trip in itself, but if his actual show is evidence, he's some sort of positive freak of nature for which age is just a number. Seeing him up close, full of...

Back in the murky pre-history of San Francisco's fabled Haight-Ashbury, even before the fabled "Summer of Love" in 1967, let alone the ever-ongoing evolving tourisic version of it, were the Diggers. Not the "Digger Indians" or Paiutes -- although those Native Americans were close...

Two years ago this month, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale off the northeastern coast of Japan unleashed the energy of 600 million Hiroshima bombs, followed by massive seismic tidal waves. The world's media reported intently on the...

At the recent 40th anniversary dinner of the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) at San Francisco's beautiful City Hall rotunda, a tablemate remarked "If the big quake hit now and this place collapsed, American health care would have to start all over."

Way back in 2004, I received a semi-urgent request from then-Mayor Gavin Newsom that I show up down at San Francisco's City Hall to help preside over an expected onslaught of weddings. Happy to serve if needed, I showed up as requested. As it turned out, there were plenty of...

This is something of a belated "best of year" list, although there are some older titles I only got to last year included. An eclectic list, modestly offered -- a bit heavy on books on music, but many others, and perhaps something will strike the interest of other readers.

Waging...

A local saloon changing owners is rarely front-page news in the big city, but the recent sale of Tosca, in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, has received much attention. The much-beloved establishment had reportedly been losing money for some time, even though it has a great location on Columbus Avenue...

Headline: - A lone gunman opened fire today in (San Francisco, Aurora, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Oak Creek...) and shot _____ innocent people, killing _____ people and wounding ____ more. " Politicians offered sympathy, but no solutions. Survivors were left to grieve without hope of change that might prevent more...

Nobody gets out of here alive, as somebody said -- we all eventually die. But we don't like to talk about that, even with our doctors. And as the New York Times just editorialized, some politicians like it that way...

Normally, I don't watch much television, but when the San Francisco Giants made the playoffs I made sure to catch every game. As an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect, I was exposed to many commercials and political messages. The ads -- which must have been extremely expensive ones -- were...

Perhaps the most notable endorsement of a candidate in this year's heated Presidential campaign has been relatively unremarked, and begins like this:

Nowhere has Mitt Romney's pursuit of the presidency been more warmly welcomed or closely followed than here in Utah. The Republican nominee's political and religious pedigrees, his...

"Sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessities of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation." -- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Some of the nastiest political battles in the health arena these...

"This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang but a whimper." -- T. S. Eliot

Writers and filmmakers have long liked apocalyptic stories. In the last century the dominant cause of the end of humanity became a nuclear Holocaust, but a giant asteroid hitting Earth has also...

"This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang but a whimper." -- T. S. Eliot

Writers and filmmakers have long liked apocalyptic stories. In the last century the dominant cause of the end of humanity became a nuclear holocaust, but a giant asteroid hitting Earth has also...

On the morning of 9/11, I watched the tragedies in New York City with horror, as did millions. In San Francisco, I live in a neighborhood with some of the fanciest mansions in town just up the hill. Some of them are on a very curvy little one-lane street. Our...

Recently I was lucky enough to introduce a screening of the new documentary Marley on the life of reggae icon Bob Marley, at the wonderful Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, Calif. The "HML" has become the community center for that far-flung community, hosting films, musical performances...

Dear Mr. Ryan:

A belated congratulations on being selected as a candidate for vice president. However. One of your colleagues, Representative Todd Akin, is justly reaping his rewards for positing something idiotic and insulting about rape. Your party is justly asking him to step aside. Now, to be not only...

Poet Lew Welch wandered off into the Sierra Nevada mountains back in 1971, leaving a brief note, a few books of poetry and other writings, and many friends and fans. No word has been heard from him since, and very little more of his...