Snapshots of life in the Golden State

Just as Your Legislature at Work has decided to continue a program permitting intersection cameras to catch red light runners. . . .

. . . . comes a study from the Department of Health in San Francisco, where red light cameras are effective, but so expensive the city’s installed fakes at some intersections. The cameras--real or faux--may make drivers mind their Ps and Qs, but the study found that much of the bad conduct comes down to Xs and Ys, as in chromosomes.

Focus groups of 500 residents who admitted running a red light at least once --65% of them were men and the rest women--found two distinct categories of red light runners: the aggressive and the distracted. Lo and behold, the aggressive drivers were men usually driving too fast, and the distracted drivers were women who had other things on their minds.

Abbie Yant, who coordinated the health department’s program, said the survey characterized distracted drivers as the daydreamers, eaters and appliers of makeup. Leadfoots exhibit animosity toward other drivers and dodge their own culpability with excuses like, “The yellow is too short.”

Students of human behavior would find no surprise in this survey result: Most respondents regard themselves as good drivers, and say it’s all those other red light runners who are the problem.

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Name brand: In his press releases, Chief Deputy California Atty. Gen. Dave Stirling, who’s running for attorney general in the state’s June 2 primary, touts his “Stirling record.”

A campaign slogan using his birth name might have been unworkable, like “Kahn job.” Stirling, who once represented the San Gabriel Valley in the state Assembly, changed his name when he was in his middle 20s. His original name was Moses David Kahn Jr. Shades of ex-Colorado senator and Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart, who shortened his name from “Hartpence.”

As was the case back when he entered public life, Stirling won’t discuss why he chose to become an ex-Kahn. “It’s a private matter, not for public consumption,” he says. Stirling did say it had nothing to do with any sort of a family falling-out, and that there is nothing nefarious about it. “It’s nobody else’s business. It’s just not part of the public domain.”

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From Cabin to Prison Cell

Now that convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski has been sentenced to four life terms in federal prison, let’s compare his new accomodations in Florence, Colorado, with his now-infamous woodland cabin in Montana:

Size

Cell: 7x12x10 ft.

Cabin: 10x12x13 ft.

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Composition

Cell: concrete & steel

Cabin: tar paper & plywood

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Lighting

Cell: electricity

Cabin: candlelight

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Plumbing

Cell: shower & toilet-sink-water fountain combination

Cabin: none

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Bed

Cell: mattress-covered concrete slab

Cabin: narrow cot

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Windows

Cell: 1: 6”x4 ft.

Cabin: 2: 12” square

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Books

Cell: 3-paperback limit

Cabin: Shakespeare & Thackeray

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Typewriters

Cabin: none

Cabin: 3

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TV

Cell: yes, built-in 12” B&W;

Cabin: none

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Counseling

Cell: available on the TV

Cabin: none

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Meals

Cell: delivered mechanically

Cabin: home-style: hunted deer, coyotes, squirrels, rabbits and porcupines; broiled in the yard.

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Daily Housing/Living Costs

Cell: $60.66

Cabin: $1

Source: L.A. Times news files; Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

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Got boiled milk scum? Just as scum is beginning to get some respect--a UCLA paleobiologist who found that early life on Earth resembled pond scum was elected to the National Academy of Sciences--the town of Saratoga wants nothing to do with it.

For decades, the restaurant-intensive upscale town south of San Francisco has labored under the belief that its name--like that of its New York namesake--means “floating scum on the water” in the language of the Mohawks.

Given that a U.S. congressman has been scolded for using a scum-related word to describe President Clinton, no self-respecting city would want to have anything to do with it, so Saratoga, after having researched historical records in New York, is getting behind a new translation: “Hillside Country of the Great River, Place of Swift Water.”

Otherwise, it could have gone back to the town’s original name--McCarthysville.

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One-offs: Activists in plastic ponchos and paper masks protested Mexican policies in Chiapas by splashing employees at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco with barbecue sauce and red paint. . . . The Boy Scouts’ stand against gay members has cost it a place as one of the paycheck-deduction charities in San Francisco’s annual giving campaign among city employees; and in Berkeley, where the Texas-based Sea Scouts had enjoyed a waiver of $12,000 in annual marina berthing fees, the City Council revoked the waiver because of the Sea Scouts’ affiliation with the national Boy Scouts. . . . A man brandishing a butcher knife hijacked a Fairfield city bus because he wanted to go to Vacaville for pizza, police said.

EXIT LINE

“His freneticism makes me look like I’m on Valium.”

--Cyclonic state Senate President Pro Tem John L. Burton (D-San Francisco), speaking of his colleague on the other side of the state Capitol, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles).

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.