THE PERNICIOUS CONTENTS OF WILDFIRE SMOKE

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

  

 BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “THE PERNICIOUS CONTENTS OF WILDFIRE SMOKE"

 

 

        The next time authorities issue a smoke advisory telling residents of California areas  previously unaffected by wildfires to stay inside with closed windows and doors until a smoke cloud passes by or dissipates, do it.

 

 

That’s the essential message of an authoritative new study that appeared just as this year’s fire season got started, the report indicating death tolls from smoke clouds loosed by past blazes have been exponentially higher than previously reported.

 

 

        In fact, the number directly or indirectly killed so far by smoke turns out to be far higher than fatalities from the flames themselves. It’s high enough to match almost precisely the human costs of illicit fentanyl consumption. One difference: the state now offers antidotes for fentanyl poisoning, but there is no easy remedy for the unseen and previously unattributed toll of California’s many fires.

 

 

        Fentanyl deaths have made lurid headlines, but smoke-related maladies and deaths are sneaking up on Californians who usually regard inhaling smoke as a mere nuisance.

 

 

        It turns out the health effects of wildfires are far worse than that.

 

 

So says the report just published in the journal ScienceAdvances, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where UCLA researchers found at least 52,000 persons died over a very recent 11-year period from effects of tiny particulate matter left behind in their lungs after inhaling wildfire smoke (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl1252).

 

 

        That’s an average of almost 5,000 persons per year felled by after-effects of fires started by lightning, arsonists and criminally negligent utility companies, which have already been forced to pay more than $15 billion for physical damages from blazes caused by their faulty equipment.

 

 

        The UCLA research, from the Luskin Center for Innovation in the school’s Environmental Health Sciences department, raises the suspicion that recent deaths may have been even more numerous than the report indicates, because it covers only the years 2008 through 2018, ending just as the severe wildfire epidemic of 2017 to 2022 was getting started.

 

 

        “It’s just a major issue at the climate-health nexus,” said Rachel Connolly, the project director.

 

 

        The report says wildfires produce toxic types of particulates, some of them carcinogenic, that can be up to 10 times more harmful to people than other sources of air pollution like auto smog or smokestack emissions.

 

 

        Very small particles floating in smoke can affect both hearts and lungs, causing illness, hospitalizations and premature deaths, wrote the researchers. This can spur temporary problems like coughing, but also potentially fatal effects like emphysema and lung cancer.

 

 

        Some scientists wonder if wildfires are behind a recent nationwide uptick in adenocarcinomas formed in linings of the lungs, also known as non-small cell lung cancers, in persons who have never smoked. The cause of this increase has not previously been explained.

 

 

        Dangers from smoke-induced disease do not figure to reduce much soon, the UCLA researchers imply.

 

 

        What the study calls “questionable wildfire management practices” can combine with longer wildfire seasons to increase “chances of wildfires spreading…toxic smoke,” the researchers said.

 

 

        What’s more, the tiny particles in smoke can threaten people living far from the actual fires. When winds blew smoke clouds over urban centers like the San Francisco Bay area, San Diego and Los Angeles during the last three years, some people there got sick because the smoke does not lose its particulate content quickly while it travels, the study indicates.

 

 

        No one knows yet precisely how many long-term illnesses will result from the palls of smoke that hung over San Francisco and the East Bay hills both in 2022 and last summer.

 

 

        Which gives rise to other questions: If serious illnesses that can take many months to manifest arise a year or more after a smoke cloud has hung over a major population center, are those who started the fires behind that smoke liable for health care expenses of the affected? And how can patients prove the smoke cloud was the direct cause of their health problems?

 

 

        These are dilemmas the courts, filled with judges and lawyers who never studied epidemiology, will eventually decide. No one can yet know if their decisions will be fair or even well informed.

 

  

    -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

RASH OF ANTI-SEMITISM NOW ALLEGED TO INFECT STANFORD

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 6, 2021 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “RASH OF ANTI-SEMITISM NOW ALLEGED TO INFECT STANFORD”

 

        A national rise in anti-Jewish bigotry has allegedly spread to this state’s most prestigious university after earlier infecting the process of creating California’s new ethnic studies curriculum and spurring record amounts of anti-Semitic vandalism and violence over the last year.

 

        The strongest reaction to what’s happening at Stanford University, perpetually ranked among the world’s five leading academic institutions, comes in a complaint just filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by a former decade-long director of Stanford’s student counseling service and a 13-year therapist there.

 

        The complaint filed for psychiatrist Ronald Albucher and therapist Sheila Levin, an eating disorder specialist, claims anti-Semitism created a year-long hostile work environment for them and others. What allegedly occurred at the counseling service is not unique either at Stanford or in California and the nation.

 

        Federal authorities and the Anti-Defamation League report anti-Semitic episodes, up dramatically over the previous year, rose even more after a nine-day exchange of rocket and missile fire between Israel and the Palestinian terror organization Hamas in mid-May.

 

        One incident saw pro-Palestinian activists drive several cars up to a Los Angeles restaurant and ask if anyone there was a Jew. They then bloodied several startled individuals before driving off.

 

        Violent anti-Semitism like this revives one of the world’s oldest plagues. The Los Angeles beatings occurred in a far more publicly visible place than the deadly synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway.

 

        The anti-Semitism evidenced in the Stanford complaint and the creation of the ethnic studies curriculum has not been so open. While creating the curriculum, for example, advocates of Critical Ethnic Studies quietly included Jews in stating that pale-skinned immigrant groups gave up all or most of their prior identities after arrival in America, eagerly accepting “white privilege.” That’s obviously false.

 

        This pattern repeated at Stanford, the complaint charges, when a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program in the student counseling service “advanced anti-Semitic tropes concerning Jewish power, conspiracy and control and endorsed the narrative that Jews support white supremacy…”

 

 

        In fact, Jews were leading supporters of civil rights in America long before the Freedom Riders of the 1960s, where they made up about half of all white participants.

 

        The EEOC complaint says the DEI program “refused to address (increasing on campus) incidents of anti-Semitism including…drawing of Nazi-style swastikas in prominent locations, including within Memorial Church,” a Stanford landmark.

 

        A week before the complaint was filed, Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, head of Stanford’s Jewish student organization Hillel, wrote to Jewish alumni that anti-Semitism has infected student-to-student relations on campus.

 

        She said multiple Jewish students have been confronted by fellow students saying things like “Don’t talk to me if you’re Jewish.”

 

        Imagine the strong response if the targets had been Black or Latino. So far, Stanford has done nothing.

 

        The EEOC complaint also cited a presentation to pre-doctoral students by the counseling service that announced a program exploring “how Jews are connected to white supremacy.” Stanford administrators allegedly ignored objections to this for more than a year before the federal complaint was made.

 

        “These things reinforce anti-Semitic stereotypes,” said Alyza Lewin, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights, which filed the complaint. “They create a false picture of Jews as negative beings. That encourages the kind of anti-Semitism we are seeing nationally.”

 

        Neither accepting nor denying any of this, Stanford deplored the alleged incidents. “Stanford forcefully rejects anti-Semitism in all its forms,” a spokesperson told a reporter.

 

Added Dee Mostofi, Stanford’s assistant vice president of media relations, “…We are launching a…program this summer and fall aimed at recognizing and addressing bias and discrimination.” This action may be too little and too late to prevent harm to Stanford’s reputation and could harm recruiting of faculty and students.

 

        Rabbi Kirschner told alumni she will soon meet with Stanford President Marc Tessier Lavigne, “who has assured me he is committed to deploying university resources to address anti-Semitism…”

 

        Meanwhile, the university responses look tepid to many alumni.

 

        Said Lewin, “What happens to the university’s reputation depends on how it responds. Stanford has the opportunity to become a real leader in fighting all kinds of bias, including racism and anti-Semitism.”

 

     No one knows yet whether it will do that.

     

   -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

ARE LONGTIME ALLIES NEWSOM AND HARRIS DESTINED TO CLASH?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 9, 2021 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “ARE LONGTIME ALLIES NEWSOM AND HARRIS DESTINED TO CLASH?”

     Vice President Kamala Harris took a lot of heat for her performance in her first foreign trip as the nation’s No. 2 official, some bloggers calling her excursion into Latin America “a continuation of her failure theater.”

        That phrase came from a conservative website, but the far left also blasted Harris for telling the poorest of the Central American poor “Do not come” to the United States.

         The remark had future electoral implications because Harris’ fellow Democrats of most stripes are sympathetic to poor but enterprising immigrants from countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They blanched upon hearing her simple statement of the immigration preferences of the current administration and all other recent ones.

        Donald Trump, for example, took heat for his treatment of immigrants, especially children. But Barack Obama’s administration, with current President Joe Biden as vice president, actually deported more prospective newcomers to America.

        Whether Biden seeks a second term or becomes a caretaker president who leaves after just one, it’s all but certain Harris will one day run again for America’s highest office.

        If she does, she could collide with Gavin Newsom, provided the governor survives this fall’s recall election, as every nonpartisan poll indicates he will – and by a handy margin. As a rule, politicians who triumph over recall attempts are strengthened, the best California example being Dianne Feinstein, an unbeatable U.S. Senate candidate after she trampled a recall attempt while mayor of San Francisco.

        If Newsom beats the recall and then wins reelection next year, he could choose to run for Feinstein’s Senate seat in 2024, when she will be 90, or he could opt to run for president and thus crash into Harris.

        That would be a huge change. Newsom and Harris have shared campaign managers for many years and have long had an informal understanding never to oppose each other’s ambitions.

        That’s why Newsom, then lieutenant governor, stood by quietly awaiting a 2018 run for governor while Harris won an open Senate seat with little competition in 2016. But their understanding might not survive the reality that time is passing and neither is getting younger.

        Until Harris’ Latin American trip, Newsom had never uttered a critical word about the vice president, who – like Newsom -- got her start in San Francisco politics, winning two terms as district attorney before becoming California’s attorney general and then a senator.

        But Harris no sooner returned to Washington, D.C.. from her trip than Newsom checked in on the side of left-wing Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who earlier blasted Harris for her anti-immigration remarks. In a press conference just after Harris’ return, Newsom observed that “California has long had a different approach to immigration, a more inclusive approach.” He added that he has consulted with other federal officials about “how California can be more supportive in terms of the needs of asylum seekers.”

        That’s not exactly the Harris approach these days. In fact, her blunt advice for the Central American poor to stay put was reminiscent of her generally pro-police responses to law enforcement excesses while she was attorney general.

        So could Newsom and Harris ever face off in a presidential primary? Their mutual campaign manager, Dan Newman, did not respond to emails seeking to ask him about that possibility.

        For sure, it would be entirely unprecedented for two top politicos from the same state to vie for the same party’s nomination for president. It could set up a situation where they split what amounts to a pro-California vote, letting someone else slip past and get the nomination.

        Right now, Harris is best positioned to win the next Democratic nomination race, whenever and however Biden leaves the Oval Office. But she could be weakened in a primary by alienating the party’s left, which demonstrated its clout by keeping Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders a prominent candidate for most of the last decade.

        Newsom, of course, could also opt to play the waiting-his-turn game again and spend years in the Senate if he took the Feinstein seat.

        There’s a lot uncertain here for both Harris and Newsom, but the possibilities are entertaining, at the very least.

       

   -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

FIRES GIVING UTILITIES VAST NEW POWERS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2019, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “FIRES GIVING UTILITIES VAST NEW POWERS”

          From the ashes of last year’s huge fires in Butte, Shasta, Lake and Los Angeles counties, this state’s utilities have suddenly acquired vast new powers to control and influence the lives of millions of Californians.

          The new reality is that no one living near a potential fire area – and that includes wide swaths of this state – now can be sure when the lights will go off and come back on.

          It’s all because California’s big utility companies have accepted blame for contributing to the start of several multi-billion-dollar fires and want no part of anything similar in the future. So anytime they deem wind and weather sufficiently threatening, they’re shutting down power to prevent arcing and sparking on their lines, whether or not they’ve been maintained.

          This would be fine if standards existed for what constitutes fire danger from power lines, which helped start and spread fires from San Diego to Paradise, from Simi Valley to the Sierra Nevada in 2017 and 2018. There are no such standards.

          So when Pacific Gas & Electric Co. announced it would undertake the year’s first power shutdown in early June because of possible record-setting temperatures and high winds in Napa, Solano and Yolo counties, anyone without immediate access to newspapers and electronic media had no way to know their lights, TVs and appliances would go dead for an unpredictable time.

          That exercise, also affecting parts of Butte and Yuba counties, affected “only” about 21,000 electricity customers. No one knows how many had electric-powered oxygen supplies, CPAPs for sleep apnea or other medical devices. No one knows how many had independent power supplies, whether solar or from generators. But a lot of people and businesses were suddenly imperiled.

          PG&E figured fire risks outweighed all others. “The safety of our customers and the communities we serve is our most important responsibility,” said one company vice president. Too bad PG&E hadn’t realized that before last year’s Paradise Fire, or before the Wine County fires of 2017, both admittedly at least partly the products of corporate negligence.

          One thing for sure: Before this year’s just-opened fire season is over, PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric (along with several municipal utilities) will be doing the same kind of thing to many, many more people, with the same kind of notice under the same whimsical standard.

          The lack of predictability here is the problem. Certain temperatures, wind directions and speeds must soon be written into firm standards for when deliberate power cutoffs can occur. Given sufficient notice via printed inserts in electricity bills, customers could know what to expect and when. Now they don’t. Which leaves some folks as vulnerable to power company judgments as they are to actual fires.

          It also puts great power in the hands of power companies that have repeatedly proven themselves irresponsible.

          The real question here is why state regulators, principally the Public Utilities Commission – now many months after the last big wave of fires –  still have not yet developed firm guidelines for utilities to live by.

          This leaves many customers vulnerable to chancy, unreliable weather forecasts and the will of utility executives.

          Last fall, when PG&E staged its first modern-era fire-prevention power cutoff, one reader near Nevada City called the move “blatant terrorism,” which was exacerbated when winds in the area turned out never to exceed a paltry 7 mph. He called it a form of blackmail, designed to accustom consumers to accepting the will of the utility.

          The PUC already allows utilities to dun customers steadily for maintenance: they took in more than $6 billion in such funding over the last four decades without accounting for most of it. The new charges are for tree-cutting (often done against the will of tree owners) and other long-neglected fire prevention tactics.

          So far, it’s all random, chancy stuff. Utilities and the public need rules for the companies to live by, giving millions of Californians some ability to predict when their power will be turned off, just in case they can’t or don’t want to read or listen to the news 24 hours a day.  

                  

    -30-       
     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

MESSAGE TO PUC: CHARGE EDISON FOR SAN ONOFRE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “MESSAGE TO PUC: CHARGE EDISON FOR SAN ONOFRE”

          More consumerism from the California Public Utilities Commission – that was a fond hope of at least some of the voters who gave Jerry Brown a rare third term in the governor’s office.

          So far, they’ve been disappointed, even though Brown appointees now make up a majority of the five-member commission that decides what Californians pay for electricity, natural gas and (in some places) water.

          Under Brown's appointees, the commission has encouraged a profusion of huge solar thermal energy projects guaranteed to fatten the coffers of companies like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. It has done little to punish PG&E for the negligence leading to the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight and destroyed many more homes. It has kept secret the costs customers will eventually pay for several new power sources. And more.

          This is California’s most powerful regulatory agency because once they’re appointed, commissioners can’t be removed even by the governor who named them. Now comes a rare opportunity for the PUC to prove it is just as interested in the welfare of state residents and small business as it is in helping giant utility companies.

          That chance sprang up when Ted Craver, chairman of Edison’s parent holding company, announced unexpectedly in early June that his firm will retire the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station beside the I-5 freeway on the Orange-San Diego county line. The plant is partially owned by San Diego Gas & Electric Co., but majority owner Edison operates it.

          Before that announcement, most effects of San Onofre’s troubles were in the hands of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which waffled for many months over whether to let the plant restart. It has produced no electricity since early 2012, when a leaking generator tube released a small amount of radioactive steam into the atmosphere.

          That quickly raised fears of a rerun of Japan’s Fukushima power plant disaster, in the long term the most frightening aspect of the monster tsunami that struck northeast of Tokyo in 2011.

          Ironically, it was a Japanese firm – Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – which built the generator that failed. Edison and Mitsubishi are currently battling over how much that company should pay as a consequence of all the problems caused by failure of its $700 million component.

          Edison has said the San Onofre problems came as a surprise, but a 2004 letter from a company executive shows the firm may have known years earlier there could be design flaws in replacement steam generators. Yet Edison still certified the new generator as a like-for-like replacement. The letter was released in May by Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who pushed for extensive federal hearings while Edison was still trying to get the plant at least partially reopened.

          The issue for the PUC now is how much consumers should pay for the complex, lengthy process of taking down the plant and storing its high-level waste on site.

          News stories on financial aspects of the shutdown sometimes mention that San Onofre’s owners over decades have paid more than $2.7 billion into a plant-retirement fund. But that’s not really company money; it all came from customers, built into electricity rates just as retirement expenses are for every nuclear power plant in America.

          Now it turns out that amount is not enough; there may be another $1 billion or so in costs. The PUC will decide whether consumers or company shareholders pick up that expense.

          The answer is obvious: the company should pay. Yes, many of its shareholders are senior citizens on fixed incomes who depend on steady dividends. But shareholders put in place the executives who let the generator tube problem fester for years while they hoped it would just go away.

          Like most corporate shareholders, they periodically elect the directors who hire management. So if management failed, that is ultimately their responsibility. So shareholders should now pay all expenses beyond the billions consumers have already kicked in.

          If the PUC doesn’t decide the issue in just that way, it will be continuing the consistent pro-corporate, anti-consumer stance it has adopted throughout PG&E’s San Bruno penalty process and many other questions for most of the last 40 years. By contrast, making Edison pay would be a signal things may be changing.

         

     -30-       
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most'

Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

BACKDOOR LNG EFFORTS CONTINUE AS IN-STATE LNG FADES AWAY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 9, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“BACKDOOR LNG EFFORTS CONTINUE AS IN-STATE LNG FADES AWAY”

There’s been plenty of good news lately for Californians who oppose setting up import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in this state. But the jury is still out on whether that means California consumers will be freed from the prospect of becoming dependent on that pricey form of imported energy.

The good news first: Only one active effort to build a California LNG import facility remains active and it isn’t very active. That would be the proposed but almost dormant Esperanza receiving terminal, which would be built 15 miles off the coast of Long Beach.

The list of possibilities dwindled to that one when the state Lands Commission during the late spring formally terminated a bid to build a terminal tentatively called “Clearwater Port” on the coast just north of Ventura. The termination was automatic because there had been no activity by Clearwater’s would-be builder, Houston-based NorthernStar Star Natural Gas.

Shortly after the Lands Commission action, NorthernStar declared itself bankrupt.

The demise of Clearwater marked the third LNG proposal to go under in the last 10 years, joining other failed plans to site facilities near Eureka and off the coast near the Los Angeles-Ventura county line.

LNG is natural gas supercooled to a liquid and shipped thousands of miles across oceans in gigantic, multi-hulled tankers, then reheated back to a gaseous state and pumped into existing pipeline networks. The only foreign LNG now able to reach California comes through Sempra Energy’s Costa Azul receiving plant north of Ensenada, not far south of the Mexican border.

There’s further good news for California consumers in the forecasts of both the U.S. Energy Information Agency and several leading private natural gas consultants indicating there will be no need for LNG anytime in the foreseeable future.

One reason for that is a fast-increasing effort by U.S. companies to exploit the gas contained in shale deposits in Wyoming and Colorado.

Consultant Ben Schlesinger, who has worked for Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell Oil, Tokyo Gas, Nigeria LNG and other industry giants, is one who predicts the glut of American gas coming on-line in the next several years will create an oversupply of gas not only here, but also in Europe – which imports almost all its energy.

This suggests it’s likely that some American LNG facilities will be converted from receiving gas to sending it overseas – the very thing that’s about to happen to a just-approved facility at Kitimat, Canada, on the British Columbia coast north of Vancouver. First designed as an import plant, Kitimat now will become an exporting facility.

And yet, there’s still some potential bad news out there for California gas customers worried about the high cost of LNG. It comes from Oregon, where a plant at Coos Bay is well along in the approval process. Oregon’s Public Utilities Commission estimated long ago that three-fourths of all imports coming to any terminal in that state would end up in California.

Why should that concern consumers? Because each specially-built LNG tanker costs more than $1 billion and it takes at least six to keep any receiving plant supplied. The plants that first turn natural gas liquid and then turn it back to an invisible gas cost more billions. Those costs are inevitably included in the price consumers pay for whatever gas they use that stems from LNG, raising them substantially. No matter how piously companies like PG&E, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric (SoCal Gas and SDG&E are both fully-owned by Sempra) deny that LNG will increase rates, the sheer amounts invested in LNG facilities guarantee it.

Which means millions of Californians have a major interest in a very local-looking Oregon dispute. For the longer farmers in two Oregon counties can delay building of a link between Coos Bay and PG&E’s existing pipeline for Canadian gas near Roseburg, Ore., the greater will be the predicted American natural gas glut.

And the greater the glut, the lower the price of all natural gas worldwide. If the price gets too low, there will be little incentive for building any new LNG plants. That’s what happened in the early 1980s, when both PG&E and Southern California Gas insisted LNG was critical for California’s energy needs – only to see crashing gas prices make their plan for an LNG plant at Pt. Conception in Santa Barbara County economically infeasible. As a result, Californians have paid an estimated $40 billion less in gas bills over the last 30 years than they otherwise would have – and there have been none of the shortages the big utilities predicted. The sky did not fall when Pt. Conception was left in its natural state.

A lawsuit by the Chumash Indian tribe created the delay that killed that effort. Citizen groups in Oregon are using every delaying tactic they can devise while trying to duplicate the consumerist triumph of the Chumash.

Californians need them to succeed – or we will pay untold billions more in gas bills over many decades to come.

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net