STYLE MEETS FUNCTIONALITY
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Candlelight Service An Annual Community Gathering of Remembrance Each year Kara invites the community to join together to remember loved ones and significant others who have died. This is a non-denominational, interfaith service open to all. A time of fellowship and refreshments will follow.
With candles of love, hope, memory and courage we remember. Thursday, December 5, 2013 at 7pm First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street, Palo Alto (directly behind the Kara office on Kingsley Avenue)
For more information on Kara or our Candlelight Service, call 650-321-5272 or visit www.Kara-Grief.org
Upfront 450 Cambridge Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94306 (650) 326-8210 PUBLISHER William S. Johnson (223-6505) EDITORIAL Editor Jocelyn Dong (223-6514) Associate Editor Carol Blitzer (223-6511) Sports Editor Keith Peters (223-6516) Express & Online Editor Eric Van Susteren (223-6515) Arts & Entertainment Editor Rebecca Wallace (223-6517) Assistant Sports Editor Rick Eymer (223-6521) Spectrum Editor Tom Gibboney (223-6507) Staff Writers Sue Dremann (223-6518), Chris Kenrick (223-6512), Gennady Sheyner (223-6513) Editorial Assistant/Intern Coordinator Elena Kadvany (223-6519) Staff Photographer Veronica Weber (223-6520) Contributors Andrew Preimesberger, Dale F. Bentson, Peter Canavese, Kit Davey, Tyler Hanley, Iris Harrell, Sheila Himmel, Chad Jones, Karla Kane, Kevin Kirby, Terri Lobdell, Jack McKinnon, Jeanie K. Smith, Susan Tavernetti Intern Kimberlee D’Ardenne ADVERTISING Vice President Sales & Advertising Tom Zahiralis (223-6570) Multimedia Advertising Sales Christine Afsahi (223-8582), Adam Carter (2236573), Elaine Clark (223-6572), Connie Jo Cotton (223-6571), Janice Hoogner (223-6576), Wendy Suzuki 223-6569), Brent Triantos (223-6577), Real Estate Advertising Sales Neal Fine (223-6583), Carolyn Oliver (223-6581), Rosemary Lewkowitz (223-6585) Inside Advertising Sales David Cirner (223-6579), Irene Schwartz (223-6580) Real Estate Advertising Assistant Diane Martin (223-6584) Legal Advertising Alicia Santillan (223-6578) ADVERTISING SERVICES Advertising Services Manager Jennifer Lindberg (223-6595) Sales & Production Coordinators Dorothy Hassett (223-6597), Blanca Yoc (223-6596) DESIGN Design Director Shannon Corey (223-6560) Assistant Design Director Lili Cao (223-6562) Senior Designers Linda Atilano, Paul Llewellyn, Scott Peterson Designers Rosanna Leung, Kameron Sawyer EXPRESS, ONLINE AND VIDEO SERVICES Online Operations Coordinator Ashley Finden (223-6508) BUSINESS Payroll & Benefits Susie Ochoa (223-6544) Business Associates Elena Dineva (223-6542), Mary McDonald (223-6543), Cathy Stringari (223-6541) ADMINISTRATION Assistant to the Publisher Miranda Chatfield (223-6559) Receptionist Doris Taylor Courier Ruben Espinoza EMBARCADERO MEDIA President William S. Johnson (223-6505) Vice President & CFO Michael I. Naar (223-6540) Vice President Sales & Advertising Tom Zahiralis (223-6570) Director, Information Technology & Webmaster Frank A. Bravo (223-6551) Major Accounts Sales Manager Connie Jo Cotton (223-6571) Director, Circulation & Mailing Services Bob Lampkin (223-6557) Circulation Assistant Alicia Santillan Computer System Associates Chris Planessi, Chip Poedjosoedarmo
The Palo Alto Weekly (ISSN 0199-1159) is published every Friday by Embarcadero Media, 450 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306, (650) 326-8210. Periodicals postage paid at Palo Alto, CA and additional mailing offices. Adjudicated a newspaper of general circulation for Santa Clara County. The Palo Alto Weekly is delivered free to homes in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, East Palo Alto, to faculty and staff households on the Stanford campus and to portions of Los Altos Hills. If you are not currently receiving the paper, you may request free delivery by calling 3268210. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302. ©2013 by Embarcadero Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The Palo Alto Weekly is available on the Internet via Palo Alto Online at: www.PaloAltoOnline.com Our email addresses are: editor@paweekly.com, letters@paweekly.com, digitalads@paweekly.com, ads@paweekly.com Missed delivery or start/stop your paper? Call 650 223-6557, or email circulation@paweekly.com. You may also subscribe online at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Subscriptions are $60/yr.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
If you’re the captain of the Titanic and you’ve just been hit by two icebergs, what do you do? —Stuart Flashman, a local attorney, on two Superior Court rulings against the California High-Speed Rail Authority. See story on page 5.
Around Town
ROLLING IN THE GREEN ... Palo Alto leaders wax ecstatically about the city’s achievements in the field of sustainability, from a carbon-free electricity portfolio and an aggressive green-building code to a freshly adopted requirement that all new homes be prewired for electricvehicle chargers. Now, the city is preparing to jump into the ring with other eco-conscious communities, with the goal of finding out who is the greenest of them all. The City Council will consider on Dec. 2 a staff recommendation to enter the Georgetown University Energy Prize competition, a three-year effort to boost energy efficiency. It’s not just bragging rights on the line. The winner in this wonkish war would get a prize of $5 million, which would be set aside for further energy-efficiency efforts. Communities with populations between 5,000 and 250,000 are eligible to compete. If the Palo Alto council agrees to enter the fray, the city will be asked to put together a long-term energyefficiency plan and to demonstrate sustainability over a two-year period. Between August 2014 and August 2016, the communities will see who can most greatly reduce residential and municipal use of electricity and natural gas (savings will be tallied by taking total usage in these buildings and dividing it by the number of accounts). City Manager James Keene is asking the council to submit a letter of intent to participate in the competition, which according to a Keene staff report seeks to “develop an implement innovative, replicable, scalable and continual reductions in residential and municipal energy use.” BECAUSE WHY NOT? ... It’s been a good week for the Cardinal in the age-old contest over Bay Area bragging rights between Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley. Berkeley’s Golden Bears received a sound thrashing in last Saturday’s 6313 Big Game loss, leaving the Stanford Axe, the Big Game’s trophy, on Palo Alto’s side of the Bay for the fourth year straight. It was the 116th time the two schools had squared off. On Monday, the Rhodes Trust announced the 32 American scholars that would travel to study at Oxford University
under the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, another opportunity for the big schools in the U.S. to flex their brain power. Stanford had three students chosen for the program and Berkeley had one. To compound the ache of these two bruises, Stanford Magazine on Tuesday tweeted a link to a list that ranked the schools in the U.S. with a Rhodes scholar by the success of their football programs. In the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, which Cal and Stanford share, the list put Stanford at the top (with the double whammy of the bestranked team and the most Rhodes scholars) and Cal at the bottom. The Magazine’s sly comment to accompany the link? “Because why not?”
MONEY IN THE BANK ... Supporters of the Aurora lightsculpture project were biting their nails this week, watching the clock tick by on a Kickstarter campaign that needed to raise $35,000 by Tuesday, Nov. 25, at midnight, or else would lose all the money that had been donated via the crowd-sourced funding website. But they made it. The project was fully funded around 8 or 8:30 on Monday night, said project organizer Harry Hirschman, and actually surpassed the $35,000 mark, raising a total of $36,155. The funds will pay for expenses the artist who designed Aurora, Charles Gadeken, has already incurred for installation of the piece in front of Palo Alto’s City Hall. The interactive light sculpture’s server was also down for a few days but is now running smoothly, Hirschman said. FEELING FESTIVE? ... Saturday, Nov. 30, will be Palo Alto’s day to celebrate the holiday season, and it’s doing so with a raft of events and activities at Lytton Plaza from 4 to 7 p.m. This year’s new addition is a mini snowman-building contest, in which contestants can provide their own materials to create and dress up 12-inch snowmen. Leave your portable freezers at home: The city will provide the snow. There will be live music from five local student groups and a lighting of the city’s 20-foot-tall Christmas tree. Attendees can slurp some hot cider to warm up and are invited to bring a warm coat to donate to Palo Alto’s nonprofit Downtown Streets Team to help those in need. N