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Posts published in “Essays”

Disaster Capitalist University

Part Two of Will Parish's and Darwin Bond-Graham's series on disaster capitalism, UC-style.

Fake Pinot

The worldwide wine industry is abuzz with the recent conviction of a French wine combine which defrauded Gallo Wines by delivering at least 18 million bottles (the equivalent of 460 oil tanker loads) of “cheap…

PC Police 1, Alternative Media 0

The alt-weekly in Richmond, Virginia, apparently canned a reporter yesterday for being mean to a blind motivational speaker and his PR guy.

Timothy Pearce on Glenn Sunkett

Mendo County Jail Commander Timothy Pearce talks (briefly) about Glenn Sunkett's allegations of abuse.

Bird’s Eye View By Turkey Vulture

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comforta­bly then I shall begin. Let’s go straight to The Whine of the Week. I was disappointed to miss the Sweet­hearts Dance on Saturday at The Grange…

The Howl Of The Coati Mundi

The most efficient way to become familiar with the wildlife of the southern Arizona desert is to visit the Sonoran Desert Museum, which is actually a zoo, and one of the world’s finest. Situated on…

Farm To Farm

Dandelions are blooming along Lambert Lane. When I walk into town in the mornings or evenings I work up a sweat, overdressed for the balmy condi­tions. With water flowing audibly in the creeks, the grass…

Sacto Salmon Run Hits Record Low

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC), a quasi-governmental body that manages West Coast fisheries, on February 11 released alarm­ing numbers showing that California’s once most abundant salmon run collapsed to an all-time record low in 2009.

Dispatches From The Emergency Room

I spent my early childhood in a trailer park in Texas so, until I became an emergency physician in Oakland, I thought I knew something about barriers to healthcare access, and maybe even something about poverty. The Emergency Department at the Oakland county hospital has around 75,000 visits a year — say, 200 a day. It has 43 beds; because of overcrowding, there are ‘extra’ patient beds in the hallways, which have ended up being designated as official patient-care areas: first came Hallway 1, then, a year later, Hallway 2, and now Hallway 3 as well. At night the ED usually has one supervising physician with a couple of housestaff — trainee doctors — a student or two, and around ten nurses; there is double supervising cover­age from the late morning through to about 2 AM, the hours of heaviest traffic.

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