The Conversation

Like much in Vegas, the façade of Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital is deceiving.

If California voters are ever going to be happy with the $3 billion stem cell bond they passed overwhelmingly in 2004, it might be due to a company called ViaCyte. By next year, the modest lab in San Diego hopes to begin human trials for a treatment that could essentially cure type 1 diabetes.

Sacramento County jailers released Matthew Herrera a week ago Saturday after keeping him separate from other inmates for his safety and theirs. Because he had no clothes, jailers issued him a disposable paper jumpsuit and flip-flops, and sent him on his way.

$7.15 billion. That's the tax burden shifted by wealthy residents and multinational corporations to Californians. We have rules to thwart such gaming of the system – but they lack teeth.

The slow degradation of cooking expertise in America has given nearly half our population an unofficial new ailment – Cooking Deficit Disorder.

January is usually an altogether dreary time to be in London. But it was in that month 160 years ago that an inventive American named Samuel Colt, a genuine Connecticut Yankee, opened a factory in the capital of Queen Victoria's empire to manufacture his signature product, a sidearm then in great demand worldwide.

Efforts to fix Proposition 13 have a problem. A pink elephant problem.

Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act in 1970, a monumental year for the nation's environmental movement. That was the year the nation first celebrated Earth Day and that President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

As the economy faltered over the past several years, the number of people living in poverty in California reached record levels. By the official count, more Californians are living in poverty – 6.3 million – than at any point since the U.S. census started tracking state poverty. And a new poverty measure puts the number of Californians in poverty at 8.7 million, giving our state the dubious distinction of having the highest poverty rate in the country.

The call over the newsroom police scanner came in shortly before noon. A vehicle on fire. A shooter. An elementary school. We looked at each other quizzically.

There's an old riddle: What is always coming but never arrives? Tomorrow, because when tomorrow comes it will be today.

About this time of year, as the holidays and cold weather press in upon us, I invariably think of my father, pine cones and fireplaces.

If this year's election was a referendum on President Barack Obama's first term, then it was also a test of the voters' support for his biggest

Because those of us who pretend to understand politics should always admit the errors of our ways – that and, unlike the Munger siblings, I don't have the resources to endure a lengthy state tax audit – I offer this apology to Gov. Jerry Brown: You were right; we, the not so bright, were wrong.

Contributors have given $340 million to pass and defeat the 11 measures on this November's statewide ballot, by my count. You can assume some of them expect a return on their investment.

California produces some of the world's finest olive oil, yet one of its biggest obstacles in the struggle for market share isn't competition from Italy or Spain, it's from the United States government.

The recent firing of Rio Americano High School football coach Christian Mahaffey, though behind us, opens the door to a larger, troubling issue: the professionalization of youth sports.