Yiying Lu makes splash with Twitter's 'fail whale'

Hidden Perks of the Marines' Memorial Association
The Marines' Memorial Association founded in 1946 as a "living memorial honoring Marines and other Veterans of the United States Armed Forces" and to aid and assist these veterans, is open to all active and honorably discharged service members. The Association runs an elegant private hotel and club in Downtown San Francisco, near Union Square. The rates are reasonable, the view is incredible, the food is excellent,  and there's a great gym downstairs. The Association runs lectures and speci...

Facebook, PayPal tycoon embraces sci-fi future
A San Francisco Billionaire who co-founded PayPal and gave Facebook its first big investment now wants Silicon Valley to buy into a bigger idea: the future. Peter Thiel is urging Silicon Valley leaders to change the way they think about charitable giving by funding ventures that sound like Science Fiction. Thiel is backing groups that see a future when computers will communicate directly with the human brain. Seafaring pioneers will found new floating nations in the middle of the ocean. Science ...

Assange Signs $A1.5 Million Book Deal
© AP Photo The founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange speaks to members of the media as he leaves a Police Station in Beccles, England, after complying with bail his conditions, Friday, Dec. 24, 2010. WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has said in an interview he had signed deals for his Autobiography worth more than one million pounds(($A1.57 million). Assange told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of Sexual Assault made by two w...

Assange Signs $1.5 Million Book Deal
(AFP) - Wikileaks chief Julian Assange said in an interview published Sunday he had signed deals for his Autobiography worth more than one million pounds (1.2 million Euros, 1.5 million dollars). Assange told Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of Sexual Assault made by two women in Sweden. “I don’t want to write this book, but I have to,” he said. “I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal co...

Assange signs $A1.5m book deal
© Unknown The founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange speaks to members of the media as he leaves a Police Station in Beccles, England, after complying with bail his conditions, Friday, Dec. 24, 2010. The two Swedish women accusing Julian Assange of Sex Crimes are supporters of WikiLeaks, not pawns of the CIA, and they simply seek justice for a violation of their "sexual integrity," their lawyer says. Claes Borgstrom, a self-professed feminist who used to be Sweden's Ombudsman for gender equa...

Assange: I signed $1.5 million-worth of book deals
Stumble This! London — Wikileaks chief Julian Assange said in an interview published Sunday he had signed deals for his Autobiography worth more than one $1.5 million. Assange told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of Sexual Assault made by two women in Sweden. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he said. "I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep Wikileaks afloa...

David Wallechinsky: Bud Greenspan, Olympic Filmmaker
Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan died in New York City, at age 84, on December 25, 2010, with his partner and business associate, Nancy Beffa, by his side. As the vice-president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, I had the honor of presenting Bud, during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, one of our awards, the Vikelas Plaque, for his contributions to Olympic History. As I said that day in Vancouver, it was I who felt honored to have the opportunity to express my appreciation ...

Wild Oats XI leads yachts out of Sydney Harbour
Favored supermaxi Wild Oats XI, winner of line honors four of the past five years, led a fleet of 87 yachts out of Sydney Harbour in the start of the annual Sydney to Hobart race. Wild Oats XI sailed between Sydney Heads and into open ocean, facing favorable light wind as it began making its way down the New South Wales coast. The fleet was expected to be hit by a gusty southerly change later Sunday that would slow the boats and make a race record unlikely. Wild Oats XI set the record of 1 day, ...

Thom Loverro: Schroeder made his mark
Bob Martin/Getty Images Quarterback Jay Schroeder owns the franchise record for passing yards in a single season, throwing for 4,109 in 1986. Jay Schroeder didn't know he was in the Washington Redskins' record books until a few years ago, when a friend told him he held the single-season passing yardage record for the franchise. So when Donovan McNabb appeared to be on his way to breaking Schroeder's record of 4,109 yards from 1986 -- still the record 24 years later -- Schroeder started paying at...

REFILING: FEATURE: Kabuki plays well-received by Americans on West Coast+
Over a three-week stretch in November, the group introduced audiences in Los Angeles and San Francisco to two kabuki classics and a new historical play, which they also performed in Hawaii. The performances were a unique opportunity for people on the West Coast to appreciate Japanese dramatic art and history live. And both kabuki neophytes and aficionados alike appeared to have enjoyed and understood distinctive features of the traditional shows. In the first kabuki play, Chatsubo (tea chest),...

FEATURE: Kabuki plays well-received by Americans on West Coast+
Over a three-week stretch in November, the group introduced audiences in Los Angeles and San Francisco to two kabuki classics and a new historical play, which they also performed in Hawaii. The performances were a unique opportunity for people on the West Coast to appreciate Japanese dramatic art and history live. And both kabuki neophytes and aficionados alike appeared to have enjoyed and understood distinctive features of the traditional shows. In the first kabuki play, Chatsubo (tea chest),...

Who (What) Is Forescee?
The power of truth rests in our desire to seek its source — whether that truth is the reality of our current circumstances and our desires to understand why things are the way they are, or the truth in the reality that there is a better way, a better life, a better reality that can be attained if we choose to see that reality as one we desire to attain. Part of changing a reality is having the capacity to change it. Another part is having the desire to change it. We live in an age of chang...

Year in Ideas: Looking at survival in a new way
Mr. Monsigrace would stubbornly go on surviving another 18 days. When his emaciated, but living, body was at last rescued on Feb. 9, he emerged to a world that had mostly lost hope, that had given up on the possibility that hearts still pounded under all that grey, amid all that death. Six months later, pessimists would again be proven wrong: After 17 days spent deep beneath the Earth’s surface, a group of 33 Chilean Miners would offer their first sign of life — a note, passed upward...

When it all comes together, the tears fall
There's a nail sticking out of the side of the manger. We don't want to impale one of the sheep.'' The final dress Rehearsal for the Children's Christmas program revealed a crush of last-minute fixes that remained before the church's young folk would be safely transformed into angels and stars, wise men and donkeys, Mary and Joseph. Two of the three kings were swallowed up by their robes, necessitating some hurried tailoring with basting tape and safety pins. In response to a question about the...

Paying For Privilege To Drive Into Any Big City: It's Coming
Commuters from south of San Francisco dodged a bullet this month when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors abandoned a proposal to charge $3 each way to people entering and leaving the city from the south. Local State Legislator Jerry Hill threatened to sponsor Legislation disallowing the move, and with that dark cloud over their heads, the supervisors relented. The plan would have raised $80 million annually for transportation projects. The proposal may be dead for now, but it is likely to b...

Irony: San Francisco to protect blob of cells after all - may vote to ban circumcision, even for Jews (but abortion still AOK!)
A follow-up on a post 2 months old: Irony: In SF you can abort your baby, but you can't circumsize him. It is perhaps the most pro-abortion city in the US. You can have your baby torn apart limb from limb before he's born and the city will smile down upon your courageous 'choice.' But right after birth, the kid is a ward of the state. If the baby is a boy, you will have to pry his foreskin from the city Bureaucrat's cold, dead hands! And don't you dare buy him a Happy Meal when he's older - tha...

San Francisco airport defends security in wake of pilot's videos
Source: CNN (CNN) -- The leadership of San Francisco's airport fired back Saturday at critics who had rallied around a commercial pilot who had posted videos online showing what he described as shortcomings in security. The series of videos featured scenes from inside the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and were narrated by the pilot, who pointed out the contrast between the passengers, who were heavily scrutinized, and airport employees who just passed through a single door. The foota...

San Francisco Airport defends security in wake of pilots videos
An airline passenger submits to a full-body scan. A commercial pilot recently posted a video on the web The leadership of San Francisco’s airport fired back Saturday at critics who had rallied around a commercial pilot who had posted videos online showing what he described as shortcomings in security. The series of videos featured scenes from inside the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and were narrated by the pilot, who pointed out the contrast between the passengers, who were he...

TSA probes pilot critical of airport security
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Federal authorities are investigating a pilot who posted videos on YouTube that were critical of security at San Francisco International Airport, the pilot's attorney said Friday. Don Werno of the Santa Ana-based Law Firm Werno and Associates said the Transportation Security Administration is looking into whether his client revealed sensitive information. The pilot remains employed with a major airline, but he has withdrawn from a program that trains flight crew to help pr...

R.I. working overtime to lure America's Cup
One of the biggest names in worldwide sailing says he had no doubt that America’s Cup organizers at first wanted to use negotiations in Rhode Island to sweeten a faltering deal with San Francisco. But Newporter Kenneth Read, CEO and skipper of PUMA Ocean Racing, said the negotiations here have taken a fast and furious turn. “We’ve come a long way since then in a miraculously short period of time,” he said Friday. Read, who has been involved with dozens of world-class s...

Keep New Year partying safe
Happy New Year for the U.S. Economy? Will Facebook friend China? As in years past, thousands of revelers are expected to ring in the New Year throughout San Francisco on December 31, 2010 and into the wee hours of January 1, 2011. This year, San Francisco City Officials are reminding partiers to keep it safe, sane and sober on City streets. “Let me be absolutely clear: there will be Zero Tolerance for public drinking, much less public drunkenness, on New Year’s Eve on the streets of ...

San Francisco will enact drastic hire-locally rules
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — This city is about to enact one of the nation’s toughest ordinances requiring its officials to hire locally, over the objections of neighboring counties that say it will hurt their residents. Under the ordinance, city contractors and subcontractors working on city-financed construction projects worth $400,000 or more would be required to hire at least 20 percent of their workers from San Francisco. The requirement will increase by 5 percent each year until it rea...

Judge awards $2.5 million to attorneys in Yoo case
Source: San Francisco Chronicle Judge awards $2.5 million to attorneys in Yoo case Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer San Francisco Chronicle December 25, 2010 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. John Yoo's November 2001 legal justification for a secret Wiretapping program was a hit with George W. Bush's White House but got bad reviews from other quarters, including Yoo's successors in the Justice Department and the department's inspector general. Add another critic to the list: Chief U...

Lawyer: Feds probe pilot critical of air security
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A pilot who posted videos on YouTube that were critical of security at San Francisco International Airport is now the subject of an investigation, the pilot's attorney says. The pilot placed several videos on YouTube in late November or early December that showed how ground crew members can enter secure areas by swiping security cards and without undergoing further screening. The Transportation Security Administration is looking into whether the pilot revealed sensitive in...

Lawyer: Feds probe pilot critical of air security
San Francisco — A pilot who posted videos on YouTube that were critical of security at San Francisco International Airport is now the subject of an investigation, the pilot’s attorney says. The pilot placed several videos on YouTube in late November or early December that showed how ground crew members can enter secure areas by swiping security cards and without undergoing further screening. The Transportation Security Administration is looking into whether the pilot revealed sensit...