Robert Pastor proposes a North American Investment Fund to get the continent on the same economic level.

In last week's OC Weekly, occasional Times op-ed contributor Gustavo Arellano wrote about a new book by Patrick Mitchell, Santa Ana River Guide: From Crest to Coast - 110 Miles Along Southern California's Largest River System, which Arellano calls "an entertaining, informative read that's part travel guide, history, encyclopedia, biography -- and part activist tome for those who dream of a Santa Ana River restored to its natural state."

This is the latest in a flurry of semi-recent books on Southern California's various embattled rivers. Because it's almost Christmas, I thought it might be fun to compile a list. If there are any missing titles, please add them in the comments:

Down by the Los Angeles River: Friends of the Los Angeles River's Official Guide, by Joe Linton (October 2005).

The Sespe Wild: Southern California's Last Free River, by Bradley John Monsma (July 2004).

Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles, by Jared Orsi (January 2004).

The Definitive Guide to the Waterfalls of Southern and Central California, by Chris Shaffer (March 2003).

The Definitive Guide to Fishing in Southern California, by Chris Shaffer (June 2001).

Rio L. A.: Tales from the Los Angeles River, by our very own Patt Morrison and Mark Lamonica (May 2001).

The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth, by Blake Gumprecht (April 1999).

I'm still holding out hope for the Compton Creek, but mostly I'm shocked to not find on a quick search any Charles Lummis-style odes to the great Arroyo Seco....

From Sigrid Fry-Revere's piece on stem cell research funding yesterday:

In 2004, California voters approved Proposition 71, which provided $3 billion in public funds for stem cell research. Two years later, challenges to its constitutionality are still pending. Religious and taxpayer groups lost a first round in court, but their appeals, or any other state attempts to fund stem cell research, are likely to be tied up in court for at least another year.

Luckily for California, several private philanthropic organizations have loaned the state $14 million to start providing grants. This confirms the conclusions of a September 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., which found that when public funding for research lapses, private funders almost always step in to take up the slack, often funding projects at a higher rate than did the government.

Other states have had similar experiences. The Ohio governor earmarked $19.4 million for Case Western University for stem cell research, but the Legislature banned it. Funds pledged by Illinois and New Jersey — $10 million and $5 million, respectively — are tied up in legislative limbo because politicians can't agree on what types of stem cell research should be funded and where the money should come from. Only one state got it right: Missouri. This month, voters passed a ballot initiative amending the Missouri Constitution to protect the right to pursue and benefit from any stem cell research or therapies allowed under federal law or available to other Americans. Government funding was not the issue; it was the need to guarantee that research could proceed without political interference. The Stowers Institute for Medical Research was standing by with $2 billion in funding. Once the amendment passed, research began within days.

The story of the Missouri initiative reflects one of the main drivers of the original Prop 71. At the time, proponents of 71 were arguing, to me at any rate, that the goal of that initiative was not so much to get public funds as to get the state on record as being in favor of stem-cell research—and by extension, to head off a series of efforts to ban this research outright. Here's how Robert Klein—then head of the Yes On 71 committee and now chairman of the oversight committee for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine—described it:

"In 2002 and 2003, when the Weldon bill was in the House of Representatives, Proposition 71 wasn't even a dream," says Robert Klein, chairman of the Yes On 71 Coalition. "The Brownback bill didn't involve public funding at all. The Bush administration has gotten Costa Rica to front a UN bill outlawing this research worldwide. It's initiatives like this that made our own congressional allies to tell us 'We can't hold this dike back forever. You need to get enough funding to scientists so they can show some results.' Historically, public funding has broadened public support."

That last bit is a perfect specimen of the kind of mad logic public funding brings with it. The best way to convince yourself that a new scientific process is not evil is to spend your own tax dollars convincing yourself it's not evil. The worst part is that I'm not sure Klein was wrong about this.

The LA Weekly's Marc Cooper covers some of the same ground as our Tuesday editorial about the increasingly obstructionist, increasingly irrelevant state GOP and its awkward relationship with the popular governor, then uncorks the following prediction:

Because Arnold values his own personal political legacy and trajectory more than Republican partisanship, sometime in this second term, he, and his Democratic allies, are indeed going to raise taxes. And why not? To make health care universal in California? To make us the national environmental leader? To achieve any of the monumental programs he wants attached to his name and record, Arnold will have no choice. And he’ll most likely have popular approval. Californians rarely balk at reasonable taxes when a clear, beneficial outcome is attached. Probably nothing would serve Schwarzenegger better than to confront a Republican legislative rebellion on his right flank. Staring down his own party’s anti-everything troglodytes would only consolidate his dominance of the political center and, with his current outreach to his left, might even give him the majority he would need to displace Boxer.

Is Michael "Kramer" Richards Jewish, or not? Call me a dehumanizer, but this interests me less than whether the main characters of Seinfeld were Jewish. Which is to say, I never thought about it much, and always assumed all of them were, until reading Cathy Seipp:

[W]hich character was and which wasn't Jewish on "Seinfeld" evolved from casual, almost improvisational whims rather than careful consideration. Take George Costanza's Italian surname, although that character (a stand-in for co-creator Larry David) seemed the most Jewish of all.

"We didn't have any idea we were doing a show," David said, when I asked him about the Costanza business. "We were doing a pilot, and Jerry knew a guy named Costanza, and it was, oh, we'll call him Costanza."

But then why were the Jewish princessy Elaine and Kramer (the name Kramer is typically Jewish) also supposed to be gentile?

"Elaine wasn't Jewish," David responded, sounding like he was thinking aloud when I questioned him about it. "I knew she was from Maryland, and at least in my head she wasn't Jewish. Costanza's half-Jewish. And Kramer ... hmm ... so maybe he wasn't a Jew? He said he wasn't Jewish -- that was in the show? I wasn't there [at that point.]"

Over at Pajamas Media, Seipp also makes the obvious-yet-underexamined point that racism and advancing age often correlate well:

A friend (who, like me, is in his 40s) and I happened to be chatting about the Richards debacle. My friend said he thought the N-word will be with us until those who grew up hearing it as a matter of course pass away. He mentioned in particular his kindly grandmother who, when provoked, could let loose with a stream of racist invective that could curl your hair. One of the many ways daily life in American is better now than it was in decades past is that such vile eruptions are now rare enough to be considered newsworthy.

This reminded me of my own grandmother, who thankfully never used the N-word. But like most Jews of that generation she always said "schwartzer" - always insisting it was not impolite at all, because it's just the Yiddish term for black, so what's the problem? That was disingenious, of course; any insider's term for outsiders is always at least a little rude. If schwartzer just means black, for instance, then how come my grandmother never said she had a schwartzer cat?

Wal-Mart recently jumped into the downloadable movie business, once again coming a bit late to the party. This time, the company's approach is significantly different from that taken by Apple and other rivals: it's selling downloads bundled with the DVD version of the movie (only one movie, "Superman Returns," is available at this point). In other words, the download is a complement to the disc, not a substitute. That's how many of the major entertainment companies would like the business to evolve, with people paying an extra charge to put a copy of their movies onto their portable player or PC. Read more on this topic at the Bit Player blog.

Barry Lando looks at the statistics and concludes that Iraq's conflict is in the same league with the American and Lebanese civil wars.

"So why don't we work out mutually beneficial deals with the world's communist, fascist and religious dictators?"

"When McCain's voting record shows he is indeed a conservative Republican, when he backs down from habeas corpus and kisses up to right-wing ideologues, he loses his "maverick" standing."

"Perhaps the U.S. should consider buying out the Israeli settlements and giving the land back to Palestinians."

"At last, a high-profile politician is willing to go on record with support for the entertainment industry."

"Both sides can now find irony in the fact that the Getty Bronze is actually Greek and sank while being borne to Italy as the spoils of Roman power."

"Yes, L.A.'s finest get away with it again."

What does it all mean? What else are people saying? Find out, in Letters.

Max Boot says regional Iraq peace talks will cost too much and deliver too little.

Folly and faux pas: Between political gaffes, the French talk a good game—but words in wartime are cheap.

Why is movie attendance up? Maybe because there are more movies that suck less.

The pope and the eastern church: Benedict XVI must mend fences with Orthodox Christians as well as Muslims.