From the What's It Worth? Department - big news in the world of finance today:  the great minds at Goldman Sachs have conjured up a way for wealthy investors to get a piece of the Facebook action without actually having to take the company public.

Plunking down $450 million of its own… Read full post »

Apple has booked the stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco for "several days" in late January, according to a report at Financial Times, leading to increased speculation the company is preparing to unveil the long-awaited "Apple Tablet."

Coming on the heels of … Read full post »

While it is absolutely dead-certain you will hear about Sarah Palin's much-hyped memoir when it comes out on November 17, the mainstream media PR machine is likely to give short shrift to a compelling collection of essays that ought to make a lively companion piece to Palin's ode to… Read full post »

In response to a Federal Communications Commission Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published Thursday, John McCain introduced his own Internet Freedom Act of 2009 in the United States Senate, revealing the administrative style the U.S. would likely have faced had he won the 2008 presidential el… Read full post »

Only the educated are free.
          -Epictetus

President Barack Obama addressed the nation's school children without incident Tuesday, imploring millions of Americans aged 5 - 18 to "get serious this… Read full post »

Dakini Dancer's ashes rest in that pretty box, there, with the colorful bow and the lovely beads wrapped around it, looked over by a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Christian Saint with whom she had a personal visitation late in her life, and who became an important… Read full post »

In the fall of 1986 I traveled to Mainland China for the first time, with my friend Howie, a classmate from law school who shared my love of adventure and a predilection for exploring altered states in all their terrifying, magnificent glory.

I was just coming off a nine month stint… Read full post »

Image © CoastRanger

OK, well, Kerry has thrown down the gauntlet and I know there are a whole pack of Bay Area OS peeps, so we should be able to put something together to rival anything in New York, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge ... uh ... sorry, I've got… Read full post »

OK. Fine. You don't like foul-mouthed Tony Soprano and his menagerie of equally verbal etiquette-challenged friends and family? Then sit back and soak up the feel-good story of the season here.

This one especially goes out to all the OS peeps with differently-abled kids.

  Read full post »

I've never had a bad job. By some magical confluence of good fortune and an extreme aversion to doing anything I don't absolutely have to do, I have avoided working any job where I was likely to be killed or maimed or poisoned, or shamed by some sadistic boss with self-esteem… Read full post »

Those of us who follow in some detail the Kaubki Theater that is late-stage capitalism are sad to note the passing yesterday of one of the wisest, wittiest voices calling the play-by-play of the mortage industry and housing market collapse during the past few years.

Doris Dungey, a former mortg… Read full post »

I'm back with six more pics from the iPhone, taken on a jaunt yesterday afternoon to one of my favorite places here in the Bay Area. See if you can guess wehre I took them before you get to the final photo.

I know of at least two OS members who… Read full post »

Something I've observed with joy here at OS is the inspiration we contributors give and take among each other.

Whether it's someone starting a meme designed to let us take a look inside and bring something more of ourselves into the open, or a posted rebuttal to something one of… Read full post »

They are known as the barkless dog. Basenjis originally came from Africa and were bred for hunting. I like them because they are on the smaller side, have short hair and a nearly non-existent slobber factor. That and the no barking thing. Plus, when they can sing like this, well,… Read full post »

So, here's the deal.

Despite being unemployed, I don't have a lot of time during the week to put together posts on OS.

I steal the odd half hour here and there to keep up with the goings on, and I chip in a mental farthing or two… Read full post »

My father was called many things by many people in his life. But I and my friends, once we became teenagers and found the temerity to approach him on what we fancied was something like equal footing, called him The Chief.

In reality, he and his accomplishments towered… Read full post »

You think you're pretty smart, don't you? I mean, really, why else would you even be here?

Well, here's a little Sunday diversion for you while you wait for the late NFL game, or the exciting Seventh Game conclusion to a great American League playoff series, or perhaps while… Read full post »

It's been said we've been dumbed down over the past couple of generations in America. Our schools have failed us, turning out apathetic, underachieving mediocrities with short attention spans, overinflated egos and insatiable expectations of entitlement.

The thinking goes, that, even at the highest… Read full post »

Building on the theme I raised a few weeks ago regarding the unique degree of creative inspiration Barack Obama's candidacy has engendered among the American body politic, I bring you this morning Rene Wanner's Poster Page, on which are collected dozens of posters inspired by the original Oba… Read full post »

There's a buncha ways to skin a moose, as they say in some parts, but I think it's safe to say there ain't a state in the Union that doesn't have a heckuva lotta 7Eleven stores.

Those stores do a mighty fine bit of business in the coffee trade, too,… Read full post »

In looking for a way to withstand the fusillade of verbiage that passes in some quarters for "analysis" about the various abilities and appearances of the candidates, be they "presidential," or "pretentious," or merely "pretending," I believe I have found a salient hook, one which, pleasingly… Read full post »

In 1902, William F. Cody brought his then hugely popular Buffalo Bill's Wild West to San Francisco, where more than 100 American Indians on horseback posed for the photograph above on Ocean Beach, below the City's famous Cliff House.

Cody called his show "an educational exposition on a… Read full post »

"Dude, I really need your help."

Bear's voice is insistent, though not frantic, and I know the difference with him.

He is a successful stock broker at the biggest firm in Memphis and we go back a long way. As kids we used to… Read full post »

When I poured my first beer from behind the bar at Nickie's BBQ on Haight Street in San Francisco back in the winter of 1989, I didn't consider that I might still be pouring beers there nearly fourteen years later.

I couldn't have imagined at that point how my little dive… Read full post »