san francisco
kkrisberg | December 12, 2014The week of midterm exams is stressful for any college student. For San Francisco State student Michelle Flores, it was another stress-filled example of the unfair conditions she and millions of other retail workers face on a regular basis.
Flores, a 20-year-old labor studies and public policy undergrad, is a cashier at a national grocery store chain and usually works a 24-hour week, though she’d like to work more. Just before midterms, she found out her supervisor expected her to work 30 hours the same week as her exams — and he gave her just two days notice.
“I said I'd work them,” she said…
kkrisberg | November 14, 2014As paid sick leave policies gain momentum across the country, a new study finds that such policies do indeed improve worker morale and have little overall effect on employer profitability.
Published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study examined the effects of a 2007 paid sick leave policy in San Francisco, which became the first U.S. jurisdiction to enact a paid sick leave ordinance. (A number of states and cities have followed San Francisco’s lead — most recently Massachusetts, which passed a statewide earned paid sick leave policy by ballot measure…
tsmith | February 18, 2013I have a post up today at the Scientific American Guest blog, discussing how an earthquake and denial led to prairie dog plague. It details an outbreak of plague in Victorian San Francisco--the first time plague hit the United States--and the many downstream consequences of that outbreak (which began in 1900 and wasn't really contained until 1908). While the story is over at SciAm, here I wanted to talk more about why the outbreak became such a public health disaster.
The outbreak was first recognized by Dr. Joseph Kinyoun, a bacteriologist who had been, until his transfer to San Francisco,…
grrlscientist | May 26, 2010tags: animal adoption, pets, birds, parrots, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, San Francisco
Image: orphaned (like the birds).
In response to an email I received on Sunday morning, I wrote a short plea for help finding homes for some of San Francisco's famous Telegraph Hill parrots. But the situation these birds face was far from clear, so I did some investigating to learn more about these birds' plight.
For those who might not be familiar with them, these parrots were made famous by the 2005 documentary, "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," [regular people's DVD and collector's DVD] based…
awild | February 25, 2010The Great Ant Escape
Incidentally, what's up with the obvious photoshop job in the accompanying image? It looks like a chorus line.
*update* - it seems they've swapped the image out for a more sensible one. The original is here.
zooillogix | December 12, 2008So I was showing Zooillogix to a few folks at my friend's party in San Francisco and this guy broke out this sweet dumbo octopus tattoo. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours can be a risky move for a straight guy in SF, but it worked out this time around.
Dumbo octopus action
He also had this spotted owl tat, which appears to be nesting in a dense thicket of some sort...
Thanks to Nicky Crane (not the deceased gay neo-Nazi skinhead activist) and Cassie Abel for providing the booze and camera.
zooillogix | August 22, 2008It's long overdue. Time for a Zooillogix writers, friends, and lowly readers party.
On Friday, Sept. 26th, we will be having our get together at Tonic, in San Francisco, starting at 9:00PM. We think it will be fun to see what weirdos (that's you!) come out of the woodwork. At worst, Ben and I will get quite drunk alone. Actually, that's not true. At worst one of our readers will be insane and will knife us. But either way, we are forging ahead with this plan.
Craig from Deep Sea News will also be there and there is a good chance that some of your other favorite science-type bloggers will also…
bleimanb | January 10, 2008Yesterday I noticed a group of people standing in a circle on Mission Street in downtown San Francisco. "One of our amusing drunken homeless people must have fallen over," I thought to myself. To my surprise, however, I poked my head through the circle to find a northern goshawk (at least I think that's what it was) tearing a pigeon to shreds in the middle of the sidewalk.
Apparently the hawk had swooped down only seconds before my arrival, snatched the pigeon, and was now totally content to spend the afternoon in the...
...middle of an extraordinarily busy San Francisco sidewalk, directly…