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Relay for Life -- Bakersfield a leader Lay off the old people, you NFL bruisers Scratching and rubbing, good feelings Female-only buses in Mexico City, but not Bakersfield A $200,000 ride to space, how nice How healthy are your dogs? Mother gives up newborn to Bakersfield fire station A $2,000 puppy stolen in Oildale How much of a hassle are fog delays? Fog, the thing I like least about Bakersfield July 06 August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 June 06 May 06 April 06 March 06 February 06 January 06 December 05 November 05 October 05 September 05 Blog RollAsk The Californian Editorials Entertainment Eye of Bakersfield Faith Forum Fired Up! Inside Sports Neighbors Right Thinking Sound Off Talk of the Town 
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This is the year that if you fly out of the country, you need a passport. Next year you need one if traveling by land or sea (including ferries).
Get it early — I mean a month or two early — or you may find yourself unable to get it in time.
We have a trip to Mexico planned in June. I went in yesterday and found out I'd get mine by March 26, although there's a number to call if it is late.
There are only two post offices in town where you can apply to get a passport...
We got into a discussion this morning about whether people spit more in Bakersfield than most places.
Who says we aren't in touch with the issues of the day?
But the premise was made that it appears more people, including girls and women, spit in Bakersfield than other towns we have visited.
I used to think the only people who spit were professional baseball players and then only when the camera was focused on them.
One person at the meeting said he's seen evidence of people...
I guess the annual performance reviews are a necessary component in the workplace.
I was going to say necessary evil, but if done right, they can be affirming and helpful.
Chicago Tribune columnist Barbara Rose wrote a good piece on how specific and accurate comments in reviews are a useful tool.
A listing of expectations for the future is also valuable so both the boss and employee have direction on where to proceed.
I have receive both valuable reviews and reviews which made...
E-mail has gone from the cute premise of "You've Got Mail" movie romance, to a burden that weighs us down and hampers productivity.
Reporter Katherine Reynolds Lewis of Newhouse News Services asks the question, "Do you ever sit down to check your e-mail 'for a minute' and the next thing you know, two hours have passed?
The story explains how people in business can reduce the time wasted by writing better e-mails.
But my question is whether e-mails have become a burden...
People claim all the time that they are not superstitious or magical.
But most are, according to a New York Times story by Benedict Carey.
People may disregard being passed by a black cat or walking on a sidewalk crack, but they generally have a lucky something, or they wear certain clothes or jewelry to give them luck, or they feel their favorite team will win or lose a game depending on whether they watch.
I fall into this group. The Dallas Cowboys did much better this year when I...
Ok. We can't let this go.
COVINGTON, La. (AP) — Police said they caught a 16-year-old robbery suspect who previously eluded them after his baggy pants fell down, causing him to stumble as officers chased him.
“We literally caught him with his pants down,” Lt. Jack West said."
“He started to run, but his low-riding pants fell down and he stumbled to his knees,” West said.
That is a beautiful...
A good reporter gets a source bias high up in the story. I am a union president here at The Californian.
An Associated Press story says the number of wage and salary workers who were union members dropped to 12 percent of the work force last year, the lowest percentage since the government started tracking that number over two decades ago.
The number of workers in a union was 20.1 percent in 1983, when Bureau of Labor Statistics first provided such comparable numbers, and that number...
It only took 58 years for me to figure this out.
Yesterday, I was getting sick — had a sore throat, the same first symptom my wife had the week before that cause her to be sick for about 5 days.
Being sick for five days would seriously hamper my golf schedule, so I decided for the first time in my life, to stay home on the first day.
My usual practice was to tough it out until I didn't have to stay home at all, or I had to stay home because it was so bad I couldn't work. Me...
I don't know Steve and Nancy Bacon. They look like a nice couple by the picture that was in Tuesday's paper.
The story was about them receiving a letter from the Kern County District Attorney's staff saying that either their phone was tapped or the phone of someone who called them was tapped.
The Bacons aren't sure why their phone might have been tapped between Sept. 28 and Oct. 27 — they speculate that maybe it was their making phone calls for a Dec. 10 Peace Pole event at...
It was a simpler time when my kids were growing up — we got them Osh Kosh B'Gosh, Disney or Gymboree clothes and they were in high fashion.
Now, some want high fashion for toddlers to be on a par with high fashion for adults — hard-to-spell brand names that cost a lot.
A story by Samantha Critchell of the Associated Press talks about Earnest Sewn jeans, a Splendid top or a Lucy Sykes dress in a Liberty of London print.
Those pint size jeans might cost upward of $100.
I...
The Antelope Valley Board of Trade would like to build a campus of California Polytechnic University in the Kern desert (the one up Mojave way) to try to keep smart kids in the area.
The idea is there is a lot of technically savvy young men and women in the greater Edward AFB—China Lake Naval Weapons Center area who could be influenced to stay in the area and then work there too after graduation.
Kind of like stuck in the desert for life.
The possible sites: one is on Edwards...
Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D- (that goes without saying) Mountain View, will introduce a law to ban spanking of children under the age of 3.
Lieber has no children. She has a cat. That figures.
"I think we ought to have a law against beating children," she said.
We have that law. It's called child abuse. That's different from spanking.
I have two well-adjusted children, one a stock broker in Phoenix, the other a news photographer in Klamath Falls.
We...
Last night, I stopped in at Jack-in-the-Box and ordered my favorite, No. 6, the Ultimate Cheeseburger meal.
In my mind (and tummy), there is no better burger at any fast food restaurant.
A new study suggests fast food places have unhealthy food and Bakersfield has a greater share of fast food places in relation to healthy food places than anywhere else in California.
We're number one, baby!
The California Center for Public Health Advocacy did the study. That group thinks we...
The latest rent figures show that the average apartment rent in Bakersfield is higher than Fresno.
A real estate research firm with a great name, RealFacts, says the average rent in complexes of at least 100 units in Bakersfield was $822 during the fourth quarter of 2006.
That puts Bakersfield 16th highest out of 26 California metropolitan areas, with Fresno 21st at $771 and Visalia-Porterville 19th at $782.
Rents actually went down in Bakersfield from $834 in the third quarter.
...
Below is an interesting Associated Press story:
LITTLE ROCK — An escaped chimpanzee at the Little Rock Zoo raided a kitchen cupboard and did a little cleaning with a toilet brush before sedatives knocked her out on top of a refrigerator.
The 120-pound primate, Judy, escaped Tuesday into a service area when a zookeeper opened a door to her sleeping quarters, unaware the animal was still inside.
As keepers tried to woo Judy back into her cage, she...
As I get older, I get rankled by societal advice.
There is some in this story about decorating your bachelor pad.
The story suggests an old Joe Montana poster isn't a suitable decoration.
While I agree that all 49ers are evil, I'd be in favor of a Troy Aikman poster, or better yet, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders calendar. Indeed, when I was a bachelor a few years ago, I had such a calendar, that upon my marriage has been relegated to the closet floor behind my clothes.
The point is...
I can't resist this story.
Ralph Crozier, a criminal defense lawyer in Waterbury, Conn., is now charged with disorderly conduct because a female judiciall marshal was offended when he kissed her on the cheek in the courthouse on Christmas Eve.
That's a crime that carries up to 6 months in jail.
Crozier, 55, calls the charge political correctness run amok. He said everyone in the courthouse was in a friendly, Christmas spirit mood, and the whole thing was caught on video camera.
...
I love oranges — not so much the ones you buy in the store, but the ones you get at fruit stands that come right from the tree.
Actually, the best ones, if you are so lucky, come from the tree in your yard. I used to eat three a day when I had navel orange trees in my yard.
This freeze will make oranges in short supply and higher in price.
This is devastating news not only for the growers, but their workers and the consumers who like the sweet taste of an orange which also...
Brooke Burke and David Charvet, who are married and have very nice names, welcomed their first child and named her Heaven Rain.
They said they chose the name because "rain grows everything."
A blog poster offered this alternative, "they should have named her Heaven Brain because with parents that cluless that’s what she’s really going to need to grow."
Here are some other peculiar names for celebrity children including Fifi Trixbelle, Moxie...
Reporter Meredith Moss of Cox News Service has suggested that a New Year's resolution you might want to consider is to say no to people who drag you down.
She calls it emotional detoxification.
The concept comes from a book by Susan Newman who authored, "The Book of No, 250 ways to say it and mean it and stop people-pleasing forever."
She's talking about people who call you a lot seeking advice because they have so many problems. Or people who always leave it up to you to...
I don't know this for a fact, but apparently there are some people who don't watch the Super Bowl.
Or, they may choose after the game is over, to watch only what they want to watch — and that just might be the commercials.
It amazes me that we allow this kind of diversity in America.
But, nonetheless, we are interested in hearing from people who have alternative Super Bowl lifestyles.
Such as using TiVo or DVRs to record the game while they take advantage of nearly deserted...
Yes.
Associate Editor Martha Martinez wrote a column on Sunday's editorial page about text messaging and instant messaging. TM and IM.
She said a generation gap exists on these techniques.
Not so much with instant messaging -- a lot of old folks can do that well enough.
But text messaging on phones is a whole different deal.
It takes me forever to enter someone's phone number on my cell phone list — you have to hit that 7 key four times just to get an...
Effective July 1, 2008, people in California may not use hand held cell phones in their cars unless it is an emergency.
I think that stinks.
Or, I want an exemption for me.
I do lots of things in my car that can cause a crash. I eat, change cd's, talk to my passengers, change radio stations, take off jackets and look at pretty women on the sidewalk.
Every time I do those things, I make sure that I'm not going to hit anyone else on the road, and that no one else is likely to...
During the Rose Bowl game the announcers mentioned several times that bloggers were sure to rag on Michigan's coach and may have an impact on whether he keeps his job.
Whether that's true or not, it was interesting that bloggers have become a force in America. I'm pretty sure a year or two ago, I didn't hear much of anything about bloggers in the national news. That seems to be changing.
Blogging in Bakersfield seems to be having an impact. The instant sharing of opinions seems to be...
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