Hubris, Wi-Fi and "community character elements" in 2005

Just read this on SFGate: Hubris is the word of the year, just as it could have been 24 centuries ago.

The Greek term for "excessive pride or self-confidence" was chosen by 41 percent of 2,300 SFGate readers who participated in an online poll. "Disaster" finished second.

My word for '05 is Wi-Fi. Not only is it a new listing in the Associated Press stylebook for wireless networking, but when I got my laptop and started traveling to other towns where we now own newspapers, Wi-Fi in offices and coffee shops became my lifeline.

I noticed other words dropped into conversations for the first time this year: intelligent design, insurgency and Katrina, God rest her soul.

Locally, streetscape was bantered about, as downtown roadwork continued in 2005. The term identity theft became more mainstream as more people experienced it. And Community Character Element, in the vernacular of Tracy’s new General Plan, found its way into numerous news stories. Who coined that mushy mouthful?

My favorite dictionary site lists the most-looked-up words of 2005, including xenophobia and ubiquitous. Now those are great words.

Word Spy lists fun words that plugged into vocabularies in 2005, such as podcasting, vodcasting and podcatching.

Pupperware and puggle are words worth looking up, if you're a dog lover like me.

Meanwhile, with this wicked wind in Tracy today, the satellite on my roof may go the way of my lawn furniture, which means my Wi-Fi will die and Mother Nature will get the last word.

So blogmates, send your words of the year and feel free to take over this conversation!

Hi Cheri,
Hubris is a great word, I'll add it to my vocabulary. Have a great new year!

Posted by: Ed Gable at January 3, 2006 02:32 PM

One more look at 2005

The year 2005 is almost over, and in these waning hours of the old year, we've come up with a list of the TP's Top 10 news stories. What do you think of our choices? Did we miss anything big? Do you have any predictions for 2006 in Tracy?

Here's our Top 10 for 2005, in no particular order.

1. Sheriff in shackles
Former San Joaquin County Sheriff Baxter Dunn pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges and served jail time during the year. The high-profile corruption case forced Dunn and three co-conspirators, including former Supervisor Lynn Bedford, to make plea bargain agreements with prosecutors in January. Monte McFall, a former court marshal, went to trial and was convicted in March, and now he demands a new trial.

2. Downtown digs
Tracy’s downtown facelift was mostly completed in 2005. Central Avenue was torn up in the spring and repaved in time to show off a new streetscape for some of the city’s big events in the fall. Crews from Granite Construction didn’t find any tunnels leading from the buildings that once housed old saloons, but they did find at least one basement entrance that served to keep speculation alive that a secret passage under Central Avenue had existed at one time. The project won’t be complete until the Grand Theater and old City Hall are restored. Work on those projects will continue through 2006.

3. Major medical work
Sutter Tracy Community Hospital opened its new outpatient surgery center and emergency room in December 2004, but the hospital’s $24 million expansion continued through 2005 with a new maternity wing in February and more recently the new parking lot that takes the place of what used to be part of Beverly Place between Tracy Boulevard and Bessie Avenue.

4. West’s speedstersIn June, the girls on West High School’s track team became the first since 1994 to shatter Southern California’s dominance in California state track and fields events. The team ran away with the state title. The team, led by Olympic hopeful Brittany Daniels, beat Long Beach Wilson High, 48-43, for the California Scholastic Federation’s Division I crown.

5. Hate-mongering Kansans
A high school math teacher’s remarks about homosexuality caused a minor controversy at the school, but it was enough to draw the attention of Kansas minister Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church with protests against gay rights groups, other churches and the United States of America. The congregation came to town to protest at local graduation ceremonies and at churches.

6. Water, water In July the South San Joaquin Irrigation District completed a new $126 million water treatment plant and pipeline that will bring water from Woodward Reservoir to Tracy and three other cities. The pipeline took about 16 years to plan and a couple years to build, but it was encouraging for district and city officials, who were pleased to find a way to make inter-agency cooperation the key to a valuable public works project.

7. Tough Little Leaguers
Tracy’s National League All Stars represented their city well in the Little League World Series. Tracy’s top youth baseball players made it to the Western Regional Tournament in San Bernardino in August but lost the title game.

8. Hurricane’s helpersHurricane Katrina may have been a big story for New Orleans and for the nation, but Tracy people got involved, too, and not just in fundraisers for disaster relief. Tracy people went out to the disaster site to help victims, and San Joaquin County also welcomed people who had to move away from their homes.

9. Campus here or thereSan Joaquin Delta College’s plans for a Mountain House campus seemed to hit a snag when it came down to negotiations with one of the new town’s developers. The city of Tracy stepped in and offered the college the city’s community park site on 11th Street at Chrisman Road. That apparently brought everyone back to the negotiating table, and in October, the college and developer were able to confirm plans for the Mountain House campus.

10. Half-million-dollar houses
How could we get to the end of the year without construction of new homes in Tracy as a top story? It turned out that a slow-growth measure from 2000 finally took hold in 2005, and by the end of November, the city had issued permits for only 373 new houses. December’s numbers aren’t in, but we could see the fewest new homes built during the past year since 1996. At the same time, the city also saw unprecedented home prices. The real estate market started to cool off by the end of summer, but median-priced homes reached $540,000 in October, compared with $430,000 for the same month in 2004.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Merry Christmas to all!

Posted by cmatthews at December 23, 2005 11:14 AM

Best season's greetings, too!

And it's good to be back in Tracy.

Posted by: Amadeo at December 24, 2005 12:27 PM

Merry Christmas to the Tracy Press, best wishes for a prosperous 2006.

Posted by: JimF at December 26, 2005 01:47 PM

But what about the names on Our View?

A longtime Tracy Press subscriber called to say my comments on the gutless letter-writer sparked a thought: Speaking of names, why doesn't the TP sign its own editorials?

I'm asked that question often. Actually, we do put our names on every editorial. Our Voice represents the voice of the publisher and the editorial board, and each of those names is listed on the Voice page.

That's not unlike most professional newspapers in the country, which publish unsigned editorials.

At the Tracy Press, our Associate Editor Jack Eddy, a member of the editorial board, is paid to pen most of the editorials. But he takes several weeks of vacation a year, so some of the editorials are written by me (editor) or Bob Matthews (publisher) or Sam Matthews (publisher emeritus). Regardless of who is doing the writing, each editorial represents our views as an editorial board.

What if we can't all agree on a position to take?
The publisher decides.

No room for bogus letter-writers

Last week we published a letter to the editor that likely was written by someone other than the person named on the letter. If there’s no Jimmy Briggs in Tracy who wrote about the Tracy High School football program and said the coaches should step down, the real writer should be publicly lambasted for his gutless dribble.

Only a bottom-feeding coward would spew forth an opinion and allow it to be printed in 20,855 papers under a phony name.

With that said — and yes, I feel better — we caretakers of the Voice pages admit we should have checked out this so-called letter-writer with more than a cursory glance at the information he listed. A coach who knew that a Jimmy Briggs had never played football for Tracy High, as he wrote that he did, tipped us off that the name might be bogus. Sure, he used a real address on Chrisman Road, but as it turns out, the man who lives there is perfectly happy with the high school football program and has never written to the editor.

Tracy used to be small enough that almost every letter was hand-delivered and signed by someone we knew. Even today, we know many of our contributors and their well-penned prose. I can spot a K.L. Vosburg letter, for instance, from 10 feet away. His satiric letters on random topics appear on my desk every week typed on a manual typewriter, with no spell-check but lots of white-out — if you can remember what that is.

Scott Hurban is another prolific writer who fills our e-mail inboxes. In fact, you can set your clock to his letters. As soon as one publishes, up pops another. Politics, religion, economics. He’ll tell you what he thinks.

Then there’s Earl Jess, Clif Schofield and Tom Benigno. We know their distinct writing styles and their messages that are as unique as they are.

Those writers — and lots of others — make the letters section what it is, the prime forum of democracy in a newspaper, where anyone gets to have his say. But some people don’t follow the rules, and their letters face either the dreaded delete key or the shredder. Anonymity finds a home on Web blogs and bathroom doors, but it doesn’t make it into credible letters sections.

Which brings us to our recent conundrum. What if people lie about their names? Well, that’s a crime, for one thing.

California Penal Code 538a: “Every person who signs any letter addressed to a newspaper with the name of a person other than himself and sends such letter to the newspaper, or causes it to be sent to such newspaper, with intent to lead the newspaper to believe that such letter was written by the person whose name is signed thereto, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Such a crime, we’re convinced, was committed again this week. Someone picked a name and address on 21st Street out of the phonebook, we surmise, and used it at the bottom of a scathing letter about West High School athletics, submitted for publication.

This time we reached the person who lives at the address listed before the letter ran, and when he insisted that no one in the household had written a letter — zap! No letter.

So now, armed with our newly polished policy of verification, we’re determined to track down letter-writers before they go to print, unless we’re sure they are who they say they are. I know that someone skilled at falsifying identities can trick us, but the chances of that happening diminish with added checks and balances.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Briggs, if you read this and you really did write the letter we published Dec. 9, come on down to the Tracy Press at 10th and A streets with your photo ID. Otherwise we’ll have to assume you’re a pretender with something to hide. Otherwise, we'll know we were duped.

And for the record, we apologize to Tracy High and to our readers.

"We vote for Sudoku"

Got 10 phone messages in the first few hours and lots of blog comments (see below) in response to my plea in the paper for opinions about whether we should run a numbers puzzle, like Sudoku. Here's a sampling of their comments:

• "I enjoy playing Suduko very much and would like to see it in the Tracy Press."• "I'd like to see the numbers puzzle in the paper every day. I'd also like to buy the hand-held game."

• "I'm a 10-year subscriber of the Tracy Press, and I'd love both of the puzzles mentioned, in addition to the crossword."

• My brother and I love it. We vote for Sudoku."

Posted by cmatthews at December 15, 2005 04:35 PM

I definitely vote for Sudoku. It's a blast to play. I'm addicted to it. Please be sure to post some easy ones.
Thanks, Linda

Posted by: Linda Somma at December 15, 2005 05:43 PM

I do the harder Sudokus that are in the Chronicle and would be happy to see them in the Press. I don't know Kakuro. Maybe give us several weeks of alternating daily between Sudoku and Kakuro and then see if one is preferred over the other or if we like the mixture. One suggestion is to print the puzzles at least 4 inches by 4 inches in size so they could be done without having to copy them to a larger puzzle grid. Simple ones can be done in the size you printed but more difficult ones need more space to pencil in possible numbers as one is working.

Posted by: Sylvia Ahn at December 16, 2005 11:13 AM

I'd love to see Tracy Press feature Sudoku. I'm not addicted, but like to do them when I have the chance. As for Kakuro? Don't know since I haven't tried it yet. By the way, I also like the Word Warp very much and so does other members of my family.

Posted by: Desiree Hirsch at December 18, 2005 11:22 PM

Sudoku, anyone

A reader recently wrote this tiny note at the bottom of a survey she returned to the Tracy Press:
"Can you add Sudoku to the paper?"

I wondered when readers would start to ask for this newspaper puzzle, a brain game (pronounced soo-doe-koo) that's been described as the "Rubik's cube of the 21st century."

I read that some Chicago White Sox players competed in Sudoku between games in the World Series to get their minds off baseball.

I've also heard it's addictive — just fill in the grid so that every row, column and 3X3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

What do you think? Should we should add it to the paper? Would you play?

Universal Press Syndicate is selling a puzzle that's called Kakuro, described as a cross between a traditional crossword and Sudoku. Just like Sudoku, you fit the numbers 1 to 9 into a grid of squares so that no number is repeated within the defined area. And just like a crossword, there's a grid of filled blocks and clues to solve.

"A Kakuro player's best tool is logic," according to Universal. "Similar to the logic used in Sudoku, you'll also need a bit of math, because in Kakuro, there is a second hurdle: Not only must the numbers not repeat within a clue run, they also must add up to given totals — these totals replace the word clues found in a traditional crossword."

Here's what USA Today has to say.

To check out the samples: Universal Press Syndicate.

The Sudoku puzzle that King Features Syndicate offers for newspapers runs every day and gets harder toward the weekend.

Posted by cmatthews at December 11, 2005 12:09 PM

Cheri,
I read your blog and yes — add Sodoku.

I buy the Valley Times every morning when I get to work for the daily Sodoku.

Have you tried one yet?
Tom

Posted by: Tom at December 14, 2005 05:40 PM

Hi:
Yes, please add Sudoku.

It is definitely addictive. I'm already playing the crossword in the Tracy Press every day but have to get my Sudoku on line.

I've not tried Kakuro yet, but it sounds great too.

Cynthia

Posted by: Cynthia at December 15, 2005 07:52 AM

Cheri,
My Mom, daughter and I were on a trip to Norway this past summer, and our tour guide had the whole bus play Sudoku, fastest finisher winning a prize. My daughter Stacey won! She loved the game so much we had the guide sent us these puzzles by mail. When Stacey saw this first in the Stockton Record, she was so excited. Please put it in the Tracy Press. I'll save them for her to do when she comes home from college.
Maybe you could challenge the high school students in a contest of some sort like the tour guide did.

Posted by: Carolyn at December 15, 2005 09:08 AM

Given the choice between the traditional crossword and Sudoku or Kakuro, I would still choose the crossword. I like Sudoku. Can you do both? I am not familiar with Kakuro.

Posted by: Alegra at December 15, 2005 09:11 AM

Yes, I would like to see Sudoku and Kakuro in the Tracy Press. Don't know if it would be daily, but that would be the best way to go

Posted by: Gene at December 15, 2005 09:47 AM

I would love it if we had this puzzle in the paper!!

My mom got me hooked on them. She and her friends are all addicted to it. The 60+ crowd is like that, I guess. You can't control them. ha ha.

Thanks!
Denise

Posted by: Denise at December 15, 2005 09:51 AM

Yes, please add Sudoku, and we will play it.

Posted by: Lynn at December 15, 2005 10:57 AM

PLease add Sudoku. My 8-year-old granddaughter and I play the easy ones together. Her confidence level and problem-solving skills and reasoning have grown so much from the first puzzle to where we are today, and this has carried over into all aspects of her life. It also is a great vehicle to bond a wonderful relationship.

Crosswords are great, but they can't forge what I now have with my granddaughter because of her age knowledge bank and skill level in relationship to mine.

Posted by: Julie Galeazzi at December 15, 2005 12:12 PM

My vote is for SUDOKU! But I wish you had put an example of Kakuro in the paper because I'm not sure how the two differ.

Also KEEP the traditional crossword puzzle, of course.

Posted by: Amanda at December 15, 2005 02:20 PM

Oh, I didn't read your whole blog. Kakuro actually seems cooler now...

Posted by: amanda at December 15, 2005 02:22 PM

I've been hooked on Sudoku since September and have added several friends and students to the "addicted" list. It would be terrific to have it daily in the TP — but then, or course, at our house we would have to go without clean clothes, scrubbed bathrooms, a mowed lawn, dinner any time soon! But it would be worth it!

Posted by: Karen Tietmeyer at December 15, 2005 06:48 PM

I vote for Sudoku.

Posted by: Alicia at December 16, 2005 06:54 AM

I love this puzzle! Please add my name to the list of those who would like to have it appear in the Tracy Press (and if you could include strategies that would help us novices, that would be even better!).

Posted by: Barbara Noble at January 9, 2006 10:08 AM

hi, if you're into kakuro you should check this online kakuro version

Posted by: online sudoku at February 23, 2006 07:03 AM

You guys are the 22615 best, thanks so much for the help.

Posted by: Caty Tota at August 14, 2006 06:47 PM

Keep biomedical research in the light

The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government has drafted a letter to the U.S. Senate in opposition to a bill that would significantly hamper the ability of the public, the press and even Congress to oversee efforts to protect the population against bioterrorism and pandemic outbreaks.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has already passed S 1873, the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005. The bill would create a new Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) within the Department of Health and Human Services. However, this agency would be excluded from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act and large portions of federal acquisition regulations.

Under this act, records of this agency or meetings of any advisory committees created to further its work would simply not exist.

As the American Society of Newspapers Editors puts it, under these unnecessary and overbroad secrecy provisions, the public would be prevented from participating in its own defense against bioterrorism and pandemic such as the Avian Flu.

The legislation has received significant criticism by those few people and organizations who are aware of its existence, with the secrecy provisions opposed even by those who advocate for the creation of the agency itself. However, the legislation could come to a floor vote in the Senate at any time.

Clearly, rapid research and vaccines for bioterrorism and pandemics need to progress as quickly as possible to protect the America public. S. 1873 takes a step in that direction; however, excluding an entire agency from FOIA will reduce the ability of the public and Congress to hold the new agency accountable and to ensure that important health information reaches the public.

The Freedom of Information Act already exempts from public release information that would threaten national security. A sweeping exclusion for BARDA is not needed for this purpose.