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Editor: In TV parlance, a “showrunner” is a person who handles the daily operations of a television series. Here is an interview with Shawn Ryan, the showrunner for “Terriers” – the great 13-episode TV series filmed in Ocean beach last year.

by David Chen / SlashFilm / March 25, 2011

Shawn Ryan is one of the most exciting people working in the entertainment industry today. With an ear for crackling dialogue and a penchant for labyrinthine, satisfying plots, Ryan re-invigorates any genre he touches. He created the hit FX show The Shield, and was the showrunner on Lie To Me, Terriers, and The Unit. His newest show, The Chicago Code, airs on Fox on Monday nights and it’s one of my favorite new shows of 2011. …

by Jeoffry Gordon, MD, MPH

Our country is at the edge of a precarious cliff that presents the biggest danger to the survival of our democracy than anything since the Civil War…….Or like Wiley Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons – we may have run off the precipice already – but it just has not yet sunk in. The problem is one of domestic social justice and economics.

By John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food / March 22, 2011

In an article March 18, 2011 in the San Diego Union Tribune, Qualcomm said “it would spend $975 million to build a factory in Taiwan to manufacture low-power Mirasol display screens for e-readers and smart phones.”

However, there is a caveat. Qualcomm would like to imply that, if it could repatriate the $9.8 billion in cash it is holding offshore without paying taxes or at a sufficiently reduced tax rate, it would build the factory in the US instead thus creating jobs.

by Don Bauder / Scam Diego – San Diego Reader / March 21, 2011

Union-Tribune employees are wondering once again just who will own their company, or whether the U-T could be folded into a conglomeration of Southern California papers.

Two management missteps fomented the worry.

Darrell Issa has a long history in the tech industry, with close ties that continue today — and have recently gotten him in some trouble . More personally, he’s also a notorious tech junkie, unable to resist fiddling with new gadgets and the tech toys of everyone around him. So if anyone should understand how important net neutrality is, you’d think it would be Darrell Issa. But instead, he’s been steadfast in walking the corporate conservative line, adopting the favorite industry astroturf demand .

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State lawmakers called on California utilities Monday to delay efforts to relicense nuclear power plants until the companies complete detailed seismic maps to get a true picture of the risks posed by earthquakes and tsunamis.

State senators raised sharp questions about whether California’s nuclear plants can withstand a major natural disaster such as the one on March 11 that has left Japan scrambling to control radiation coming from some of its reactors.

We’re talking about true legislative sadists looking to go medieval on America.

By David Sirota /AlterNet / March 21, 2011

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that states are the “laboratories of democracy.” Oft repeated over time, the aphorism has helped impart legitimacy to the rough and tumble of state lawmaking. We’ve heard “laboratory” and we’ve imagined staid scientists in white coats rigorously testing forward-thinking theories of societal advancement.

It’s certainly a reassuring picture—but there is a darker side of the metaphor. States are indeed laboratories. The problem is that today, those laboratories are increasingly run by mad scientists.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing blog / March 20, 2011

Last Thursday, I visited a professor in her temporary office. She was perched at an oddly placed desk amid unpacked boxes, all under a light patina of dust and the discomfort of passing disorder. She apologized when I arrived — an unnecessary courtesy, albeit a noted one, but I didn’t care. She was doing me the favor of providing guidance on an analysis of The Koala, a tabloid publication that started at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 1982, spread to San Diego State University (SDSU) in 2004, and mutated into an edition at Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) this January.

Try though I may, there are times when I can’t stop complaining:

“Gas is too high.”
“Food prices have gone up.”
“Why is this phone bill so high?”
“It’s too hot to go walking.”
“It’s too cold to go walking.”
“There’s nothing good to watch on T.V. anymore.”
“The service is awful in this restaurant.”
“My feet, head or back hurt.”

Oh, there is so much to complain about­­– some days more than others. There are lots of people like me; you probably know a few, or you may be one yourself.

(All details and links inside:)

After Thousands March in Michigan, Recall of Governor Floated

Michigan Governor’s Anti-Union Power Grab Is Unconstitutional

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin judge issued a temporary restraining order Friday blocking the state’s new and contentious collective bargaining law from taking effect, raising the possibility that the Legislature may have to vote again to pass the bill.

Lawmakers had passed Gov. Scott Walker’s measure last week, breaking a three-week stalemate caused by 14 Senate Democrats fleeing to Illinois. Demonstrations against the measure, which would strip most public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights, grew as large as 85,000 people.

By E.A. Barrera / Originally Published on March 17, 2011

“We may now imbibe freely of the contents of bottles and forthright books”

Morris L. Ernst, Co-Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. December 11, 1933.

The same week this country ended Prohibition, America opened the doors to let people legally read James Joyce’s Ulysses. With St. Patrick’s Day once more at hand, the greatest of 20th Century novels and the author whose genius gave us at look into our own daily souls, deserves a brief remembrance.

Ulysses is the story of a working man named Leopold Bloom during a single day of his life. Making his way through the streets of Dublin on June 16, 1904, Bloom’s day is an adaptation of the story of Odysseus trying to get home, from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.