This is a time of year when we could seriously endanger the earth further, simply by trying to be good to each other and give each other gifts. I’m usually someone who likes to give the latest and greatest technology, like robotic vacuum cleaners or iPod shuffles, but this year I’m doing something completely different.  I’m going to make my gifts part of the solution, not part of the landfill.

Greensender which launched recently, offers a box of goodies that can make you feel somewhat less guilty about gift giving. From the convenience of your office (no driving to the mall), you can order a box that contains a re-usable plastic water bottle, a recycled cotton t-shirt, a re-usable canvas grocery bag, and a compact fluorescent light bulb.

This package can help your friends and relatives get started on the sustainability trail without making gigantic sacrifices. The philosophy of the Greensender is that even small changes can make a differences, and that no one thing is going to save the planet. It’s a matter of everyone doing a little something.

Another "green giving" site, Let’s Go Green, sells eco-friendly products for the home.  It sells paper, plastic, light bulbs, lighting, and canvas totes, and it encourages green giving. On its home page is one fairly shocking statistic: if every family replaced one roll of toilet paper with a recycled roll, we’d save a mllion trees, and if every household replaced one light bulb with a CFL, it would be like taking a million cars off the road.

While these statistics sound too optimistic for me, I hope they encourage everyone to consider giving things that help the earth rather than things that pollute it. The One Laptop per Child program makes an eco-friendly, inexpensive laptop designed for use by children in developing countries. But there’s no reason American children can’t use it as well, and for the next week OLPC is running a promotion where you can give one laptop away and get one free for a child in your life.

Last, Amazon.com has a book called Simply Green by Danny Seo, that teaches you to make wrappings, ornaments and decorations from every day materials.

So there’s no excuse this holiday season for the plastic trash bags full of cast off boxes, bags, wrappers, and garbage that have been the byproduct of past Christmases.

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I was pleased to read that I was not the only person to see a low-flying 747 in the area yesterday.  Here’s the photo I took of it as it flew over Mavericks.  I am experiencing photographer’s lament, of course: if only I had been able to capture a landmark in the photo!

After first being startled that such a large passenger jet emerged from behind the lands-end cliff at Pillar Point and into my field of vision, I imagined—in a few nanoseconds—some possible explanations for this anomaly: 1). passenger jet in distress—but no visible signs of flight instability; 2). Air Force One—but no known disaster photo-opportunity and, besides, I’ve seen the real Air Force One and this isn’t it; 3). California One—maybe Arnold and Dianne have borrowed a squat version 747 from their corporate buddies and are circling the Bay Area continuously to monitor the oil spill cleanup, ever vigilant; 4). another Silicon Valley company has outfitted a 747 for business trips and has special permission to fly the scenic approach to Moffett Field.

Then I finally snapped the photo.  Thanks to your readers for publishing the explanation that the renovated vintage 747 Pan Am "Clipper America" was flying about.  Without image enhancement software, however, I cannot quite decipher the tail markings.  It does not look like Pan Am to me; I’m inclined to believe that Arnold and Dianne do, indeed, have their secret California One 747 and are being very vigilant on our behalf.

Don Baldwin

I was looking out my window towards Montara Beach tonight about an hour ago (5:00 PM) and saw what looked like a 737 flying less than 1,000 feet in a southbound direction over the old Chart House Restaurant. Very strange!  It looked like it was in an approach for the HMB airport.

I called the San Carlos Airport and they didn’t know anything about it. Did anyone else see this?

Bruce Hultgren

"The promiscuous use of anonymity breeds distrust. Readers react to anonymous online postings with the same skepticism that they have for newspaper articles that rely unnecessarily on unnamed sources. They wonder if the anonymous blogger is a paid shill, or has some other conflict of interest, just as they wonder if a newspaper’s anonymous source is objective or has an ax to grind. And if the use of anonymity is not explained or apparent from the context, readers will question a blogger’s good faith, just as they may wonder whether a newspaper’s anonymous source really exists.

"And anonymity corrodes the conventions of civil discourse, giving vent to impulses that, for society’s sake, are perhaps best held in check. Viciously personal attacks, racist screeds and paranoid rants are commonplace on the anonymous Internet. While such displays may provide an interesting laboratory for Freudian psychologists, they contribute nothing to debate on matters of public interest. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this invective, you know that it is impossible to reason with people who are screaming at you from behind a one-way mirror. The volume of their screaming only goes up."

It sounds like a perfect description of what TalkAbout has become. Yet Peter Scheer, a lawyer and journalist writing an opinion piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle Insight Section (Sunday, November 18, 2007, page E2) probably has never visited our own TalkAbout site.

He is Executive Director of the California First Amendment Coalition (http://www.cfac.org) and rationally discusses situations where anonymity is crucial - for example, "a Chinese blogger, defying a government censorship decree, publishes information about the crash of a military transport plane." Anonymity in that situation protects the Chinese blogger’s life.

But "[f]or bloggers who publish in the relative security of the United States (compared with, say, China or Iran or Singapore), fear of reprisals, the most commonly cited justification for anonymity, is greatly exaggerated. When a blogger in California mentions the risk of reprisals, he is really talking about the discomfort of having to stand in a supermarket checkout line next to a city council member whom he has criticized."

It is a very interesting opinion piece. Some of you will disagree. Others will find Mr. Scheer’s full article very informative. His conclusion:

"Most anonymous speech is just digital graffiti. Although it is protected from government regulation under the First Amendment, private publishers - whether bloggers or news media Web sites - have a duty to take responsibility for materials that they publish. In all but the most extreme cases, taking responsibility means identifying the author."

If you didn’t purchase today’s Chronicle at the newsstand or get it by home delivery, you can read the entire piece online. It is headlined "Anonymity vs. Responsibility: Balancing political freedom with journalistic credibility in the Age of Blogging".
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/18/IN23TC0K5.DTL

I have no expectation that the Half Moon Bay Review will change its policies for TalkAbout. But there is very good reason for the Review to think through their position and consider good journalistic ethics.

Paul Perkovic
Montara

• Proclamations, Presentations, Announcements [2 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Oral Communications [4 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• City Council Reports [6 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Staff Reports [3 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Consent Calendar [2 min] | Quicktime | Flash |
• Application for Coastal Development Permit, Rzoning, Lot Merger of 9 lots into 4 at Magnolia St and Second [29 min] | Quicktime | Flash | Docs |
• Set Feb 5, 2008, as the date for a vote in increasing Transient Occupancy Tax from 10% to 12% [62 min] | Quicktime | Flash | Docs |
• Disposal of land donated to the city by Labuda Family Foundation [12 min] | Quicktime | Flash | Docs |
• Staff update on administrative order on 450 Wavecrest Road continued to a date to be set, but not before Jan 10, 2008. | Docs |

Friday morning the California Coastal Commission unanimously found No Substantial Issue on George Muteff’s appeal of the Carnoustie subdivision—as recommended by the Commission staff report. The development was supported by citizens from across the Coastside political spectrum.

Mr. Muteff spoke first, in support of his case.

Speaking against were Bruce Russell of Kenmark (the project’s developer), and Half Moon Bay City Council members Bonnie McClung and John Muller.

Letters supporting Muteff’s appeal were filed by Dale Dunham, Terry Gossett, Jerry Steinberg, Lucy Lopez, and Ron Sturgeon.

Letters supporting No Substantial Issue were filed by John Lynch, Mike Ferreira, Hal Bogner, Sofia Freer, Kathryn Slater-Carter, Kenneth King, James Henderson, Dana Kimsey & Scott Boyd (League for Coastside Protection), Stephan Freer, Lennie Roberts (Committee for Green Foothills), Edie Cook, Bob Cook, Terence Ainscow, John and Marcia Traversaro, Alan Alifano (Ocean Colony Homeowners Association), and Charise McHugh (Chamber of Commerce).

From Pacifica Riptide:

From Greg Cochran of Pedro Point Surf Club: "I just got off the phone with Supervisor Jerry Hill (San Mateo County Board of Supervisors). He so graciously called the San Mateo County Director of Environmental Health at home and got this word from the Director, Dean Peterson.  They (County, City, Feds) are going to do one more walkthrough on our beaches at 8AM tomorrow morning (Friday, November 16th). At that time, if all goes well and there is no evidence of oil, the County will issue a Press Release, opening the beaches by 10AM."

There’s more information about cleanup efforts, etc. in the linked article.