At that big meeting, an insulting guy who called us "stupid" claimed that you'd have to suck an exhaust pipe to suffer respiratory damage. I've never heard of anything so stupid.

A recent study by UCLA said that people who live near traffic suffer more from respiratory problems.

Now this new study from USC shows that pollution causes a reduction in lung size.

http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/story.php?id=8212

Folks have been emailing me about the latest Wal-Mart offense: messing with the spiritual energy at Teotihuacan, a pre-historic pyramid just outside Mexico City. A small pre-Hispanic altar was found on the parking lot site. (No, the odds of finding this on the Rosemead site are slim. The soil here appears to be fill, built up on top of the riverbed. Any ancient remains are well below the asphalt.)

A community member asked about Wal-Mart's practice of purchasing life insurance on its workers, aka "dead peasant insurance."

Here's the story.

1. Register yourself.

2. In the right column, a new menu will appear, with an item in it "create content". Click on that.

3. On the page that appears, click on "personal blog entry."

4. Write your test story, and hit "preview".

5. If it looks okay, scroll all the way to the bottom, and click on "submit."

Senate Bill 1056 is State Senator Richard Alarcon's big-box legislation. (It passed from the Assembly on August 16th. Judy Chu voted "aye" on it.)

The proposed law mandates that a "big-box" retailer (not just Wal-Mart) must prepare an study of the economic impacts of a project on the local economy, and that this report be open to public comment. Click on that link above for more details.

This is another article that's not an SOC opinion, by a long shot. (These blog entries I write are not SOC, they're me.)

There were people on both sides at the Planning Commission hearing night who expressed some, let's say, distate, for Asian malls. On the PRIDE side, one person griped about the old Ole's site and having to smell food, another made some veiled remarks about how there were no protests as businesses like Ole's, Target, and Builder's Square became converted into Asian malls. I don't think anyone in SOC said anything about them, but privately, there are some who don't find them that inviting.

The meeting structure that the city has proposed is biased to favor Wal-Mart.

The normal way to have a hearing is to have every person go up and say their issue. There are no "sides", just individuals stating their issues to their representatives.

The proposed structure is to have a 30 minute period for "SOC", a 30 minute period for "Wal-Mart/PRIDE", and then open it up to other speakers. This will give the false impression that SOC is the same size as PRIDE. SOC is larger than PRIDE.