From a passive wagering pastime in the 1930s to the fast-paced flashy games today, the lure of a colorful pinball game has been a constant in a corner of American pop culture.
Pinball has hardly disappeared from the contemporary landscape, but it isn't as prominent or widespread as it was in the 1970s and '80s. For a pinball game maker such as Gary Stern, a hit game now equates to sales far less than in that golden age. But he recognizes that pinball has a lot more competition now.

Dan Miller shows off and explains the inner workings of a electro-mechanical pinball game from the 1980s, during a tour at the Pacific Pinball Expo.Even in its heyday, the pinball business consisted of just two or three manufacturers. Stern's company is the last one standing today, but Dan Miller, one of the board members of the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, says some new, small-volume makers are entering the field today, with an eye toward selling mainly to collectors.

When Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein stopped off in the North Bay Tuesday, there were no motorcades or fancy fundraisers. But there were lots of progressive policy proposals bundled under the banner of a Green New Deal.

Part of the Green Party's political strategy lies in building support among young people, and Stein makes policies that address the needs of the current college generation a central part of her campaign.

To enable the broadly progressive social policies embodied in the Green New Deal, Stein also calls for a dramatically different approach to international relations.

To date, the Green Party of the United States has been largely successful in their efforts to gain access to the presidental election ballots in most states across the country. Write-in efforts for the ticket of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkana are underway in most of the other states. The campaign has also launched a modest television advertising effort, including the one featured here.

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Voter ID laws and registration hurdles are just two of the tactics being deployed to suppress voter turnout in presidential battleground states, charges investigative reporter Greg Palast. And others that have gotten less attention could have a bigger effect.

Although he personally is thoroughly American, Greg Palast does most of his reporting for the BBC and the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, where, he says, his exposès attract a great deal of attention, while they are generally ignored here at home.

Palast's previous book, Vulture's Picnic, digs deeply into the history of British Petroleum (BP) and the company's dubious  track record for safety. But that story, too, garnered scant attention in the US.

An elusive but key figure in Palast's recent investigations is the man he calls "the Vulture," who turns up again in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

Greg Palast will talk about his reporting and his new book at an appearance at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Tuesday evening, Sept. 25. The event is co-sponsored by and benefits KRCB.

Cradle to Career, a comprehensive new partnership between education and the broader Sonoma County community, was introduced at the annual Community Dialog Conference yesterday (Thursday) to boost the long-term health and job prospects for the area's children and youth.

The existing educational system is distinctly segmented, observes Dan Blake of the Sonoma County Office of Education, so one goal of the Cradle to Career program will be to find ways to help students negotiate the big transitions they face.


The Cradle to Career initiative is even more comprehensive than its name suggests, says Kellie Noe of the County Health Services Department, as it is out to bolster young children's future prospects even before their birth.

It may seem a bit odd to have the county Health Department championing a youth educational support effort, Noe, acknowledges, but in the big picture, that makes perfect sense.