Of a field of four strong candidates, Bob Begun and Michael Termini offer useful technical expertise.
UCSC Seal Researcher Helps Map Ocean Floor
In Antarctica, unknown forces were shearing pieces off the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The Shelf, with an area the size of Jamaica, began to collapse in 2008, and scientists wanted to know why. If it disappears, they warn, more ice will flow from Antarctica into the ocean, accelerating the rise in sea levels. The problem is that the factors contributing to the disappearance of the ice shelf lie over a mile deep in frigid waters. Enter Daniel Costa, a UCSC researcher who studies elephant seals.
Five Arrested in Kiddie Porn Sting
Five men were arrested Wednesday for collecting and distributing child pornography over the Internet.
Endorsements: Assembly Districts 27 and 28
District 27 incumbent Bill Monning and Watsonville mayor and District 28 candidate Luis Alejo will do well by the Central Coast in Sacramento.
The Curious Esthetic of Charles Burns
Halloween comes early this year with the release of X’ed Out, the new book by Charles Burns. Of the phantoms that stalk it, one of the unquiet is the ghost of punk rock, called forth from the late-1970s setting of this nightmarish but oddly innocent graphic novel created by one of the most notable exponents of the form.
Hospital Prepares for Nurses Strike
Nurses at the Watsonville Community Hospital are preparing to walk off the job on Thursday for a 24-hour strike. They’ve been offered a bonus, but they say the problem is a shortage of staffing and the burden that this places on nurses, even with a pay hike. And, they say, the hospital has been unresponsive to their demands by failing to make alternative suggestions and only meeting with them six times over the past nine months. The strike is intended as a wakeup call to the hospital administrators at Community Healthy Systems, the country’s biggest publicly traded hospital network.
Endorsements: Lompico Water Board
Four candidates are vying for two open seats on the board of directors of this small but troubled water district, which this year has been beset by embezzlement, the firing of its longtime district manager and a grand jury report detailing a history of gross mismanagement.
City About to Get New Beach for Free
Plenty of people frequent Sunny Cove Beach, a three-acre strip of waterfront at the end of 17th Avenue in Live Oak. They come for the sand, the bluffs, and the view—a panoramic outlook over Monterey Bay. What many of those visitors don’t know is that they are only able to go there because of the owners’ generosity. The beach is actually private land, he extended property of a home on one end.
Zipcars Come to Santa Cruz
The national car-sharing program Zipcar has expanded from UC Santa Cruz campus to cover all of Santa Cruz. Now anyone in Santa Cruz who registers for the program can take out one of six Zipcars for anywhere from an hour to four days. The cost of renting the cars is $8 per hour or $66 per day. The cars, which include three Prius hybrids, are parked in four lots, or pods, throughout the city.
Silko Heads for Santa Cruz
In 1977, just a few months after the publication of her bestselling novel, Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko found herself alone in a hospital bed in New Mexico, face-to-face with her own mortality. She was about to undergo emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, a procedure that was risky but without which she would certainly die. The possibility of death helped her, as the saying goes, to focus.
