Richard Rider and Richard Carson answer another burning question today: Is bringing in federal subsidies for insurance in fire prone areas -- on top of what the state already gives -- "three shades of crazy or an important step toward rationalizing fire risk in Southern California?"

Carson gives a nuanced answer using four principles. Here's a sample:

The first is ironclad: Fire insurance should not be subsidized by the government.

The second principle is that fire insurance needs to be available to homes that were already built before the current round of fires.

Rider disagrees with the latter, explaining:

Of all the things that government does, legislated risk management (primarily reflected in government insurance programs) is the one area that government almost always does wrong.

Read the full exchange and join the discussion here.

Wired Editor Chris Anderson just acted upon the fantasy of long-suffering MSM muckety-mucks everywhere, by publishing a list of unwanted e-mailers on his personal site for purposes of public shaming. Make sure to read the comments for robust counter-arguments.... (Link via Fishbowl LA.)

Blogger David Ehrenstein performs last rites for Barack Obama's "relevance to gay and lesbian African Americans":

Now a gospel star may have driven a wedge between Obama and his gay supporters and roiled others as well. For, by putting McClurkin in the spotlight, Obama has broken black America's 11th Commandment: "Don't talk about it in front of the white people!"

Environmentalist Andrea Kavanagh finds a National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition very fishy, and Rollins College professor Paolo Spadoni advises the While House that if it wants to free Cuba, it "should stop pandering to a shrinking group of Cuban American hard-liners and start listening to that world he claims to represent." Sharon Browne, Linda Chavez and Ward Connerly condemn a Caltrans plan to "use race, ethnicity and gender when awarding contracts under the federal highway program. What are the agency and the governor up to?"

The editorial board shakes its scandalized head at the news that State Department officials, apparently acting without authority, promised Blackwater USA contractors immunity; and plays down the significance of class-action attorney William S. Lerach's guilty plea. In the wake of a new report on healthcare in South L.A., the board states its case on King-Harbor Hospital:

To be clear: We do not trust the county to run this hospital, and we will oppose, as anyone should, any recommendation that would involve the county in its future management. But we will insist, and others should as well, that the county find alternative ways to care for a population whose needs are so profound.

Readers react to Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky's Op-Ed on dividing Jerusalem. "In reality," writes George Epstein, "giving up a part of Jerusalem will not solve the problem, nor will removing settlements from the West Bank." George Saade reframes the idea: "It's not about 'dividing' Jerusalem; it's about sharing it."

Rick Perlstein did not much care for my column of yesterday criticizing people like him and Naomi Klein for bemoaning the existence of private, supplemental fire protection. He brings up some interesting viewpoints worth further discussion.

First, a refresher on my Perlstein citation:

You would think that the cheap availability of potent fire retardant, and the creation of supplementary firefighting capability -- with costs borne entirely by the homeowners who choose to live in fire zones, instead of everyday taxpayers -- would be a cause for at least mild enthusiasm. Instead, it was greeted with howls of class warfare.

Liberal journalist/historian Rick Perlstein called it "a sickening indication about how the conservative mania for privatization is beginning to create two Americas: One that is protected from fires, and one that is not." (Never mind that no one within shouting distance of power or influence is calling for the privatization of fire departments.)

Now, a sampling from Perlstein's counter-argument, which comes under the headline "Solidarity in Flames":

Libertarian Matt Welch doesn't get it. He really doesn't get it. [...]

In so doing, he reveals how far down conservative ideology has fallen in grasping the most basic facts of collective security. In case Welch hasn't noticed, fires spread. Laying down fire-proof rings around islands of individual private properties does not stop fires from spreading; they'll just go around the island. Now, if every house was provided with Phos-Check (sic), the fires would not be able to spread. Everyone (and not just those with an extra $995 lying around, which is not "paltry" to someone living paycheck to paycheck) benefits. There would be no wildfire.

Before getting to the second half of Perlstein's complaint, I'll jump in and make a few relevant points:
1) Yes indeed, fires do spread (pretty rich for an east coaster to give a SoCal native a lecture on the local ecology, BTW), but the majority of homes that burn do so because of stray individual embers carried by the wind, not a raging wall of fire. In part, that's because firefighters Phos-Chek the hell out of endangered neighborhoods. During mandatory evacuations, the only people who can defend against embers are the limited number of available firefighters (the ranks of whom do not, for dumb bureaucratic reasons, include all the available firefighting talent from nearby military bases), homeowners who refuse to evacuate ... and a handful of AIG firefighting crews. AIG adds to the net firefighting capacity, and saved non-covered houses during the recent fires. If Perlstein indeed wants to provide every fire-zone home with $1,000 worth of Phos-Chek, well, good on him. Though something tells me that the same people who object to the rich having extra fire protection will squawk even louder when millionaire hillside dwellers get tens of millions in subsidized fire retardant every year.

Also, there is no fire-retardant valhalla in which "there would be no wildfire."

2) While I appreciate the "paycheck to paycheck" sentiment, that really, truly does not accurately describe the vast majority of people who live in Southern California's most fire-vulnerable areas. Recall that AIG's hated insurance, according to the L.A. Times, "is offered only to homeowners in California's most affluent ZIP Codes." (This itself is technically inaccurate -- the insurance is not available at such tony addresses as Palos Verdes Peninsula [90274], Manhattan Beach [90266], San Francisco [94123] and San Jose [95120].) It's a neat trick to begrudge the rich in one breath, and then imagine in the next that their next-door neighbors are living paycheck to paycheck. Recall, too, that one of Mike Davis' great critiques about letting Malibu burn was that the city had way too many fire stations compared to the poor folk in the flats. So if we don't want the rich to get more public assistance, and we don't want the rich to get more private assistance, what is it that we really want here?

Also, I said "lousy," not "paltry," though either can fairly describe the comparative and available cost for a SoCal canyon dweller to provide his/her own personal protection against certain catastrophe. For more disproportionate response, read on!

Richard Feldman spent much of the 1980s and 1990s lobbying for gun owners and manufacturers, working first as a regional political director for and consultant to the National Rifle Association, then as executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council. But he had a bitter falling out with top NRA lobbyists when the ASSC -- which represented manufacturers and retailers -- struck a deal with the Clinton administration to voluntarily add child-safety locks to their products. Now he's promoting a juicy tell-all book -- "Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist" -- replete with details on how the gun lobby works. He stopped by the Times today to chat about his experiences and his thoughts on the right way to combat gun violence (hint: it's not more stringent gun control laws). Here are some edited excerpts from his conversation with Jon Healey and Tim Cavanaugh:

The debate over whether Robert Goulet should get a lung becomes moot, as the rafters-shivering singer dies at Cedars-Sinai. Information and slideshow here.

In round two of this week's Dust-Up, Richard Rider and Richard Carson square off over the differences between local and federal responses to the fires in San Diego.

For Rider, "the real issue is where the coordination and planning did NOT improve — the timely use of Navy, Marine and National Guard air assets":

It's popular to blame just the bureaucrats. But the truth is that the real responsibility rests with Gov. Schwarzenegger, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and especially our San Diego County Board of Supervisors. They were ill-prepared to move quickly to get the air assets active. They were too busy holding press conferences and patting themselves on the back.

Indeed, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, State Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, who represents parts of Orange County, said 24 hours after the fires started that "San Diego was eligible for air support and [local officials] didn't even know it."

Carson contends:

I could not agree with you more that (a) the federal response was disastrously slow; and that (b) the state and local government bears substantial responsibility for this slow response. We are also in agreement that FEMA was practically useless in the early days of the fire, and that the military were anxious to help out and should have been allowed to do so. You are, however, much too quick to let FEMA and the military off the hook, and you left out the U.S. Forest Service altogether.

Sparked your interest? Read today's entry and join the discussion here.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg critiques liberals and conservatives who place rhetoric over policy:

...both sides are certain they have staked out the intellectually superior ground. So they fixate on tactics, packaging and spinning. A lot has been written, including by myself, about how liberals consider political strategy more important than ideas. But it's worth noting that conservatives fall prey to such lines of thinking too, even as we take pride in our squabbles about liberty versus virtue.

Duke University professor Henry Petroski follows the evolution of the toothpick through human history. David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks decry the Los Angeles City Claims Board's award of $95,000 to Gloria Jeff, linking it to "a worldview in which racial/ethnic identity is more important than any other factor in judging a person." Meanwhile, Mark Weisbrot cheers the role of Argentina's powerful first couple in their country's economic upswing.

The editorial board tips its hat to the Georgia Supreme Court for freeing Genarlow Wilson, originally sentenced to a decade in prison and branded a child molester. The board eyes upcoming water and power rate changes, and reminds NBC Universal and News Corp. that while joint project Hulu "seems to want complete control over the programming lineup ... the Net isn't television. Content may be king, but the mob rules."

Spooked by Joel Stein's recent column about tomorrow's sexed-up All Hallow's Eve, readers ruminate about the nature of sluttiness. Estin Stewart wonders, "Since when did underwear become a costume?" while Erin Tavano retorts:

Either Stein's column on Slutoween is unbelievably retrograde and sexist — a serious assertion that any woman who wears a sexy costume is a slut or a whore? — or a childish and tiresome attempt at being shocking.

The wildfires were so hot last week they managed to burn "Stonehenges all around us," Craig Childs' long-lived piece about neolithic medicine wheels, out of what had seemed to be a permanent place in our Top 10. Our usual gang of columnists returned to form, with some fire, some nukes and some porn rounding out the most popular stuff. Special bonus: One comment from the blogs about each piece. Here are our ten best-read stories for the week ending October 26:

1) Straitjacket Bush by Rosa Brooks

"by far the roughest thing I've ever read about Bush in a mainstream publication"

2) One strike, Iran could be out by Niall Ferguson

"For about four years now, George Bush has been repeating the mantra, 'All options are on the table.' That seems to be the totality of his solution to the problem of Iran."

3) Candidate Hillary: the GOP's dream by Jonah Goldberg

"Jonah Goldberg watches GOP hopefuls trying to capitalize on Mrs. Clinton's negatives, and he believes they aren't going far enough."

4) The fire last time. And the time before that Cold Copy

"Oh my God!"

5) Where did Mexicans come from? by Gregory Rodriguez

"Mexicans, why not reinvent thyself?" [sic]

6) Our fraying alliance with Turkey by Graham E. Fuller

"Is Graham Fuller really out of his mind?"

7) I'm going to hell by Joel Stein

"Sometimes you can take the Bible just a bit too literally."

8) Mukasey's confirmation: a vote about torture by Jonathan Turley

"should be mandatory reading for the Senate Judiciary Committee and for all the other senators as well."

9) Smarter ways to handle fire by Daniel James Brown

"Then there's the issue of why San Diego and California at large resist embracing the occasional wildfire."

10) The Porn Age's unsexiness by Meghan Daum

"This observation is very similar to the one made by C.S. Lewis — that men and women have an "ever-increasing appetite for ever-decreasing pleasure." Ultimately, images and pleasure lose their "sexiness" when they are severed from the mystery of intimacy that God weaved into marriage."

Ever since the dawn of man, us monkeys have been staring slack-jawed at the awesome sight of flame. For almost as long, we've been making up terrible poetry to describe it. What happens when the doggerel blends with, say, the perennial east coast desire to interpret the land of fruits and nuts for the civilized natives back home? Pure comedy gold, that's what!

From the letters section of the New York Times:

There was an eerie silence as I stood there in the orange smoky haze, ashes falling like snow on Mercury, and blinked two or maybe three times.

By motivation, this had absolutely nothing to do with the fire -- it just seemed like something that would happen in Southern California. As I quietly closed the door, I thought about Joan Didion; she would understand this.
Tom Impelluso

How could you not close the door "quietly" with all those heavy thoughts rattling around your noggin! Letter-writer Martin Kruming also added: "White ashes rain down from blackened skies; residents wear surgical masks outside; estates and homes crumble in seconds and tens of thousands flee."

Lest you think I'm being unkind to Seaboard proles, I give you Janet Fitch of the Washington Post:

All week, it has been like a funeral here in the city. The moon rose orange through the smoke. Although surrounded by miles of concrete, we could feel the million trees burning, taste the fear but even more the sadness in the air [...]

The funeral we Angelenos feel is the periodic funeral of all our illusions about the nature of this place. [...]

California is so dry now, a wet towel hung over a shower bar will be usable within half an hour. Street trees have been looking stressed all summer.

I come not to bury Fitch (or Didion, or Raymond Chandler, or Mike Davis), but to salute the whole lot of 'em for giving it the old college try while fighting an ultimately losing battle -- using the wholly inadequate medium of words to describe a force of nature that's all about the visuals. Like this one, by The Times' phenomenal Wally Skalij:

To see and celebrate the poetry no words can convey, keep on reading after the jump.

Were state, local and federal responses to last week's devastating wildfires above average, adequate or poor? This week, UC San Diego's Richard Carson and San Diego tax fighter Richard Rider debate fire policy, and start by critiquing San Diego's preparedness.

Carson argues the city was "woefully outgunned, with no workable plan to bring in firefighting resources from outside the county in time to stop a runaway fire":

San Diego's pension fund scandal has effectively gutted its ability to increase spending in response to the increasing fire threat. The public bought into belt-tightening as the way to deal with the pension fund issue and believed that public safety was still being protected. Politicians have been afraid to level with the public and reluctant to impose large impact fees on developers, whose ever-growing expansion into fire country is the root source of many of the problems.

Richard Rider counters:

I think you could have shortened your opening essay to two words — "more money." Hardly a new idea, but certainly an ineffective one.

Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the city of San Diego's professional firefighting force to fight a major fire event that happens once every four to 20 years is madness. As it now stands, professional city firefighters spend only 3% to 4% of their average shift actually fighting fires. What will the hundreds of additional firefighters be doing 24/7, 365 days a year between those rare, huge brush fires? Besides getting paid, that is?

You can read the full, fiery exchange here.

Philip F. Mangano and Gary Blasi argue that money spend dealing with homelessness in L.A. could be better spent combating it:

When we add up the arrests, incarcerations, emergency medical care and other crisis interventions, the true costs of chronic homelessness are staggering: $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year. By contrast, the annual cost of supportive housing for a person with serious mental illness or addiction disease is between $13,000 and $25,000. And once stabilized, many can qualify for federal disability and health insurance or get jobs that will further reduce local costs.

Yet Los Angeles seems stuck maintaining the expensive and ultimately unproductive policies of the past. On skid row, for instance, the Los Angeles Police Department deployed 50 additional officers and also expanded its drug enforcement effort. In the first year of that initiative, the LAPD issued about 12,000 citations for minor offenses and made about 9,000 arrests -- in an area with a population of about 12,000, about 5,000 of whom are homeless.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez explores America's reliance on religion during a disaster and dueling tendency toward more worldly finger-pointing in the aftermath. UC Davis professor emerita Sandra M. Gilbert muses over the meaning behind Halloween and other fall celebrations involving the dead.

The editorial board worries that the CIA's inspection of its own inspector general's office "has created the impression that a watchdog is being muzzled." It gives a thumbs-up for filmmaker Ed Burns' decision to distribute his new movie through iTunes, and laments Congress's well-meaning but ineffective move to expand the definition of hate crimes to cover sexual orientation.

Readers react to Rosa Brooks' column regarding the White House's sanity. Ronald Jones counters, "Rosa Brooks implies that the Bush administration and its leaders are the psychotics, but are they any crazier than those she would conciliate with?"

Armadillo Aerospace, John Carmack's Mesquite, Texas-based space startup, has flamed out in the 2007 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge — which was not actually testing competitors' ability to land on the moon but to demonstrate a rocket capable of moon-ready maneuvers. Carmack, whose development of the engines for fabled games Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Quake qualifies him for consideration as the Orson Welles of first-person shooters, has been an X Prize regular (and so far, bridesmaid) with the so-ungainly-it-looks-almost graceful modular "Pixel" vehicle design. The Northrop Grumman proving was held at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico over the weekend. Here's what pixel was required to do to win this year's prize:

The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 100 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse—and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.

In its attempt to get that first-level prize, worth a cool $350,000, Pixel went down in flames, according to Wired News:

"After a loud explosion, a pool of fire spread approximately 30 feet away from the rocket, according to one photographer watching through a telephoto lens. Firetrucks were summoned, but the fire was out before their arrival."

The money from this year's prize may be rolled over for 2008, and the big winner will be the developer who can perform not only the takeoff and landing feat described above but a more taxing second level:

The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.

The awarding of X Prizes and related awards for engineering breakthroughs great and small has become a pleasing hum of progress. You may come down on the other side of the Hickam/Simberg divide in the development of space, but regular competition for incremental  improvements strikes me as a saner and more lasting way forward than massive do-or-die commitments to singular high-value goals. I'm sorry to see the Armadillo didn't pull this one off, but then I'm not sure how you can really simulate lunar-landing conditions on heavy old Earth. Do you just get the thing to fly and figure you'll divide all your specs by six when you get up to the moon?

Fire imp: id software; Pixel: Armadillo Aerospace

"I do not believe in bothering famous people when they are out in public."

That's Rick Jacobs at HuffPost describing how he interrogated and photographed an unwilling Ann Coulter in West Hollywood Saturday night while the xanthochroidal xenophobe tried to dine. Photographic evidence of Coulter dining on a NASA soundstage in a WeHo restaurant included.

Jacobs burns to know what would bring the supposedly gay-unfriendly Coulter to the alleged center of gay living on the West Coast. Maybe she's boy crazy. I suspect she's not there for the food: Jacobs starts his post off with a stemwinder about the restaurant's design and chandeliers, and you know about restaurant reviews that start off praising the decor.

At last, an interlude — a piece on smoking that spares us the obligatory moralizing on our "right to breathe clean air." In The Wall Street Journal today, Beijing-based magazine editor Hugo Restall takes us through his odyssey of adopting a smoking habit in China — and declares, "I enjoy it so much that I don't know why I didn't take it up earlier." More:

After years of resisting, a friend in Shanghai gave me the perfect excuse to start smoking. China has become so polluted, he told me, that it's better to breathe through a cigarette filter than just take in the air on its own. And if your lungs are going to get shot to hell anyway, you might as well enjoy it. So, well into middle age, I figured that it was probably a good time to take up the smoking habit.

Restall writes parts of his piece the way others would a wine or restaurant review, treating the habit as if it were a legal behavior adults shouldn't feel guilty about savoring (which, in case you forgot, smoking is, even in California — minus the feeling guilty part):

Chunghwas run you almost $10 a pack, and Pandas, if you can find them, are $12. But it's worth it. Not only do they offer a pungent sense of history, they taste fantastic. Both are exceptionally smooth, almost like an Indonesian kretek clove cigarette. But they kick like a Camel unfiltered.

Pandas are made with a dark tobacco and hence are woody and nutty, with hints of pine shavings and hickory. They are a bit strong, and have a very long filter to compensate. But they leave a spicy aftertaste, which perhaps is why Deng, who was from Sichuan, the land of chilies and peppercorns, loved them so much.

When you open a pack of Chunghwa cigarettes, you can smell the bouquet of preserved plums, and they convey a fruity flavor even when alight. If smoking puts you on the road to early death, as some spoilsports say, then Chunghwas make the journey an extremely pleasant one. I would go so far as so say that, if you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of being offered a last cigarette, make it a Chunghwa. This is a smoke to be savored like a vintage wine.

Too bad I kicked my smoking habit months ago.

From Lompoc, Mathew Andresen sends in a reaction to Shawn Brown's Blowback "Katrina vs. The Witch" ...

I think Shawn Brown needs a bit of a reality check.  Most of Southern California response to the fire was due to proficient local and state agencies, and had nothing to do with the federal system.  Quallcom Stadium didn't dissolve into the ghetto because local agencies had their act together, and local people chose to act right when put into an emergency situation.   Both San Diego, and it's citizens worked together to make the most out of a horrible fire storm.  Could the federal government have done more, of course.  But in the end it boils down to local governments, and local citizens stepping up and doing the right thing.  Stop trying to turn everything into some type of class or race war.  Don't wait for someone else to come rescue you, do it yourself.

PS. Raise the character limits for responses on your website.  It's hard to make a well reasoned response with so few characters.

Keep those cards and letters coming to opinionla@latimes.com.

There's been plenty of talk today about a Pew Hispanic report parsing immigrants' ties to their new country and their homeland. The survey figured out how many foreign-born immigrants send remittances, call or travel to their countries of origin, and how often. It also found out whether immigrants see themselves as "American" (relative to naturalized citizens), and whether they intend to return home.

An AP story puts it sunnily in its headline: "Most Immigrants See Future In U.S." It's true — and the number of immigrants who plan on sticking around rises with the number of years they've been here, even if they don't all identify as "American." The Washington Post sees it less simply, saying that the study explored the "complexity" of national ties. The Immigration Prof Blog links it to a New York Times piece finding that remittances have fallen sharply (at least in cash value) this year, possibly due to fear of stricter immigration enforcement. (This despite Pew's findings that 51% of Latino foreign-born immigrants interviewed — albeit in 2006 — send remittances home.)

But as if all the remittance-sending and non-American-identifying weren't enough to rile anti-immigrant conservative types, there's a buried bit that ought to inflame them even more: a third of immigrants think that compared to their countries of origin, the U.S. has worse morals. Or maybe conservatives can finally find common ground with immigrants.

Columnist Joel Stein wishes everyone a Happy Slut Day:

People vastly prefer Halloween parties because New Year's Eve involves dressing up like an adult, whereas Halloween involves dressing up like a slut....

There's no chance that harrumphing will return Halloween to the innocent and carefree days of threatening neighbors who don't give you candy and vandalizing trees with toilet paper. So we need to invent a separate holiday when adults can get drunk and finally wear that pair of boots that seemed OK in the store but it turns out go up a little higher than you thought.

That's why, after much research and consultation, I have founded our nation's newest holiday: Slut Day.

Contributing editor Gustavo Arellano introduces America to the postmodern Mexican, USC's Mark Sanchez. UCLA's Michael L. Ross deems Myanmar the world's newest petro bully.

The editorial board charts a new course for Cuba policy and praises Maria Shriver for making relevant her retro First Lady role. The board also thinks Argentina's leading presidential contender --a Peronist former First Lady -- will be good for the U.S.

Readers continue to respond to the fires. Whittier's John L. Peel says, "When these fires are out and the crews have made their way home, I hope that the respect continues -- that when we see the red lights and hear the sirens, we can set our own hurry aside, move over and stop so that fire, rescue and law enforcement can do their jobs."

Turns out that 1,000 degrees might just beat a fence of wire and concrete. The 80,000-plus acre Harris fire straddling the California-Mexico border east of San Diego is causing a few would-be illegal immigrants to think twice about crossing the border into the United States, according to the Associated Press. The story — a few days old, for the record — reports:

Many illegal immigrants appeared to heed the advice of the Border Patrol and the Mexican government, aired on television and radio in Tijuana, Mexico, to stay away from the fires. The Border Patrol radio was unusually quiet Tuesday. Its motion sensors laced throughout the canyons, which escaped damaged, did not set alarms.

Some illegal immigrants, however, took the risk.

About 50 migrants have surrendered to the Border Patrol since the fires began Sunday, fearing for their safety. One was seriously burned Monday when he and five others sought help from firefighters and they were all taken to a San Diego hospital, according to the Mexican consulate in San Diego. No deaths have been reported.

The Harris fire has also cleared some of the desert flora border-crossers use to their advantage:

The Harris Fire, which has burned 70,000 acres (28,329 hectares), will almost certainly cause migrants to rethink whether it makes sense to cross in the area. Mahler said the exposed hillsides mean migrants can no longer hide in the thick brush.

"Sometimes fire makes our job a little easier, I hate to say it," [Border Patrol Agent Mark Mahler] said.

I love J.K. Rowling. I really do. But I take issue with her Saturday bombshell, which landed in the midst of a Carnegie Hall book reading and set the audience cheering: “I’ve always thought of Dumbledore as gay.”

When inquiring minds asked about why she lit the fuse on this otherwise inert plot point (Dumbledore seems pretty asexual in the Harry Potter novels) she testily replied, “I was asked a very direct question at Carnegie Hall.”

Well, yes, she was. And that direct question was whether Dumbledore had ever found true love.

The direct answer to that question should have been, “Yes, with Gellert Grindelwald” — i.e., it would have been a plot point. And then, after stunned silence, she could have explained her answer — “He’s gay” — for the slow and hard of hearing. Cue tumultuous applause.

While it was probably not conscious on her part, Rowling’s peculiar phrasing prioritized a politically loaded topic over the answer to a question. A simple response about character backstory became a matter of identity.

Aside from her choice of words, the fact that she’s revealing it at all rubs me the wrong way — though not because Ian McKellan would have made an awesome Dumbledore (so true) or because some observers claim that this could potentially throw the Harry-Dumbledore bond into a Catholic-priest sort of light (so not). Now, if she had a Dumbledore prequel in the works, her revelation wouldn’t be so jarring, since it would shortly have made it into the canon anyway.

The point is that it isn't in the canon. I’m fine with re-envisioning, or reframing or even rewriting: Orson Scott Card did it, George Lucas kind of did it. But they did it by making more stuff. Dumbledore’s dalliance with double-G, although it's probably been in Rowling's files all along, never made it into the books. Except for one slightly homoerotic quote, “You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me,” she didn’t even give any real hints to that effect, tongue-in-cheek hindsight notwithstanding.

Everyone's comparing — or at least talking about comparing — this year's wildfires to 2005's Hurricane Katrina, especially since the federal government got involved in disaster relief.

On Tuesday, President Bush deemed the California wildfires a "disaster," following up the next day by upgrading it to "major disaster" and starting the flow of federal money, supplies, and other assistance to displaced residents. Bush came to Southern California (more quickly than he ventured to New Orleans) and had this exchange:

Q Mr. President, a lot has been made about the contrast between this response and the Katrina response. Do you have any thoughts on that, and how you're doing?

THE PRESIDENT: You better ask the Governor how we're doing. I will tell you this: On all these responses, the thing that has amazed me most is the courage of our first responders. The firefighters here in this part of the world are incredibly brave people. The police force has done a fabulous job.

And same in the Katrina area. I mean, I know there was a lot of criticism of effort, but remember, there was 33,000 people pulled off roofs by brave Coast Guard men and women flying those choppers. A lot of people's lives were saved.

LAist.com blogger Andy Sternberg noted that in both disasters, media incorrectly referred to fleeing residents as "refugees":

While "refugee" can be inferred to be descriptive of one who "takes refuge," the fact is that — at least since the 1951 approval of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees — the word "refugee" is used in relation to persons fleeing to escape danger imposed by foreign countries or persecution. Yes, a fire is dangerous, but Mother Nature cannot be considered the sole antagonist of a refugee situation (the political implications of the word "refugee" force the argument that in fact, those still displaced because of the government's failings in the aftermath of Katrina can now be considered "refugees," but I digress).

Columnist Rosa Brooks has figured out why the Bush administration seems eager to start a new war:

Forget impeachment.

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

Contributing editor Timothy Garton Ash praises European multi-party democracy. Blogger Garin K. Hovannisian says the timing may actually be right for the Armenian genocide resolution. Columnist Patt Morrison is sure people don't go to fast food joints to eat healthy, so companies shouldn't mind posting nutritional charts.

The editorial board thinks the Senate's cap and trade plan to address global warming is second rate. It's also not wild about Countrywide's attempt to ease sub-prime loan pains. And finally the board explores why the Michael Mukasey confirmation process is growing more rancorous.

Readers react to the specter of another war on the horizon. L.A.'s Anthony Shay says, "If I were an Iranian official, I can think of no greater spur to developing nuclear weapons as quickly as possible than having the world's greatest war-mongering power threaten me...."

Local and non-local bloggers warm up to the fires raging throughout Southern California. Topics range from bad-taste wildfire cash-ins to who qualifies as a blogger (hang in there long enough and we may even get back to the old who invented blogging controversy), and there's some real public service going on as well.

The Fishbowl points out The Times’ continuous coverage, remarking,

The LAT's fire blog is exactly what newspapers will be doing with all breaking news coverage some day. And that's not a bad thing.

Thanks, we think. Meanwhile, a Times columnist finally gets his weblogging wings courtesy of Central City East:

Steve Lopez is even submitting his own photos, which in my opinion, by doing that, makes him a full fledged blogger.

Twitter Love gets kudos from Big Action for its role as

a valuable emergency communication tool.  People who probably had no clue about Twitter three days ago are using it to stay abreast of fire evacuations and the latest news. [...] Go Twitter.

LA Observed is also staying abreast of fire news, and posts a photo of a phenomenally dismal scene at Long Beach.

LA.com links to a post about a sushi chain that “turns tragedy into publicity”:

A good portion of the state of California might have been burning yesterday, but that doesn’t mean high-end sushi chain Nobu couldn’t turn tragedy into publicity by deciding to selflessly offer their delicious Miso Hamachi to Malibu firefighters looking for a little raw fish break from the flames swallowing the nearby homes. Nobu’s good deed was made even better by their just so happening to mention it to TMZ, who whipped up this cheeky little photoshop, slapped an “EXCLUSIVE!” on it, and gave it a hilarious headline (”Hottest Reservations In Town” - Get It?) for you to enjoy if your internet connection wasn’t on fire. Too bad the Tribeca Grill didn’t think of this during 9/11.

Laist.com wonders whether Orange County’s got the short end of the matchstick when it comes to resources, concluding,

The federal response is so shaky and unreliable that even Michael "heckuva job" Brown had the nerve to offer himself up for interviews on the fire response in a press release last night.

We may really have to reconsider California Secession after this.

While they urge readers to “keep this all in perspective,” the blog hosts another interesting post about the effects on LA sports teams:

- The San Diego Chargers are practicing in Arizona and may have to play their next game there, as over ten thousand evacuees are currently camping out in Qualcomm Stadium.
- Pepperdine's homecoming weekend was wrecked. Practices and games were canceled, and players returning from road games couldn't get back to campus.
- USC practices have been altered by the bad air quality.

Even Craigslist has jumped into the fiery fray, providing an all-purpose forum with everything form emergency information to lost-pet posts. Jason Burns at blogging.la:

Here's one entry that would make anyone tear up:

golden retriever found in santee < evacueedog > 10/23 19:52:47
we found a stray dog in santee golden retriever male looks like possible evacuee it drank three bowls of water and ate a bunch of food. call 858 414 1414.

It's fascinating, because it keeps updating. I can't seem to look away.

On a more human level, signonsandiego.com has also set up a blogspot not for news, but “A list of people, places and things to help San Diego live through and recover from the wildfires.”

From snarking at sushi restaurants to feeding lost pets, witness the power of the Web.

The DREAM Act — which would have let at least 100,000 young illegal immigrants work toward citizenship — lost a key vote in the Senate today. The measure, claimed by opponents to be a backdoor amnesty that may have legalized closer to two million people, fell eight yeas short on a cloture vote.

Of the four senators who didn't vote, two are presidential candidates: Chris Dodd, who cosponsored a very similar bill this spring but didn't join Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on this bill or its vote, and John McCain, whose hot-and-cold relationship with immigration reform is well known. (Notably Sen. Edward Kennedy [D-Mass.], McCain's co-sponsor on the 2005 comprehensive reform bill that launched over two years of debate, also missed the vote.) Other presidential candidates in the Senate — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — voted in favor of considering the bill.

A round-up of reactions...

George Washington University's Jonathan Turley makes the case for why Michael Mukasey shouldn't become the next attorney general:

It was perhaps the most awaited moment of the confirmation hearings when Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Mukasey directly about water-boarding, a now-infamous process in which an individual is strapped to a board, a towel pulled tightly across his face, and water is poured on him to cut off air and simulate drowning. Although the technique is known to have been used by the CIA on suspected terrorists, it is a clear and unambiguous act of torture under international and U.S. law.

When asked about it, though, Mukasey suddenly seemed to morph into his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales -- beginning with a series of openly evasive answers that ultimately led to what appeared to be a lie.

Author Daniel James Brown says there are better ways to fight fire, even before it starts. Dave Zirin and Tom Krattenmaker wonder, when winning collides with religious values, which evangelical athletes would choose.

The editorial board explores the religious right's options for throwing support behind a third party. The board also asks the EPA to save California a costly legal fight and grant the state permission to tighten clean air standards. Finally, the board laments that the city gives handouts to fired department heads just to avoid lawsuits.

Readers respond to the ongoing California fires. Ventura's Cathy Schwemm says, "We know that the Santa Anas blow hot and dry in the fall and that dry chaparral plants burn. What we don't apparently know is how to say no to campaign contributions from developers."

Poor Jews. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Even on such seemingly non-Jewish issues as ... symbolic U.S. congressional recognition of the Armenian genocide. From the Jerusalem Post:

When a US Congressional committee approved a resolution recognizing the World War I-era massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide, Turkey's reaction was swift and harsh: Blame the Jews.

In an interview with the liberal Islamic Zaman newspaper on the eve of the resolution's approval October 10 by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said he had told American Jewish leaders that a genocide bill would strengthen the public perception in Turkey that "Armenian and Jewish lobbies unite forces against Turks." Babacan added, "We have told them that we cannot explain it to the public in Turkey if a road accident happens. We have told them that we cannot keep the Jewish people out of this."

The Turkish public seems to have absorbed that message.

An on-line survey by Zaman's English-language edition asking why Turks believed the bill succeeded showed that 22 percent of respondents chose "Jews' having legitimized the genocide claims" - second only to "Turkey's negligence."

Since a good chunk of the foreign policy commentariat appears to be 100% baffled why any Americans would want their government to call a historical horror by its accurate name -- or in The Economist's memorable phrasing, "Foreign-policy experts, too, are aghast" -- the field is open for explanations of what's really behind the resolution. Which inevitably leads to ... The Lobby. Wayne Madsen has the goods:

Experts on U.S.-Turkish relations in Washington report that the recent deterioration in relations between Washington and Ankara are primarily due to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Turkey's other erstwhile friends, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), pulling support for their former allies in Turkey because of increasingly closer Turkish relations with both Syria and Iran -- two countries that are being targeted by the neocon cells operating in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and among Kadima and Likud circles in Jerusalem.

There are some problems with this analysis. For one, Israel itself hasn't officially recognized the genocide. Another, is that a ballyhooed data point in the Lobby-is-behind-the-resolution thesis is that the Anti-Defamation League switched its longstanding position this summer and now officially recognizes the genocide. But the ADL remains steadfastly against the resolution, for the usual reasons of not wanting to irritate one of Israel's (and America's) most strategically important allies. Armenian-American groups, for example, are still twisting the screws on the ADL:

Nearly two months after the Anti-Defamation League reversed itself by acknowledging the World War I-era massacres of Armenians as "tantamount to genocide," activists in the Boston area are pushing ahead with their campaign against the organization.

On Monday night, at the urging of Armenian American activists and some Jewish allies, two Massachusetts towns -- Lexington and Arlington -- voted to sever ties with the ADL's highly touted No Place for Hate anti-bigotry program. Three other towns -- Watertown, Newton and Belmont -- already had decided to end their ties with the ADL, and several more municipalities are considering similar steps. [...] The campaign against the ADL was launched this summer after the organization refused to use the term "genocide" to describe the 1915-18 massacres out of deference to Turkey, an American and Israeli ally.

Though the ADL backtracked from that position, declaring in August that "the consequences" of the killings "were indeed tantamount to genocide," Armenian activists continue to accuse the Jewish organization of genocide denial.

Some critics claim the ADL hedged its words, while others say the organization's statement was insincere. In addition, they cite the organization's continuing opposition to a congressional measure recognizing the killings as genocide.

An ADL spokeswoman dismissed the charge that the formulation was a hedge, noting that "tantamount" means "equivalent to."

The resolution -- which looks like it won't make the House floor, due to fears that it might not pass (a vote "no" being much worse than no vote at all, from supporters' point of view) -- has indeed divided the Jewish community in interesting ways. And its main backer, local Congressman Adam Schiff, is indeed Jewish (check out Schiff being interviewed on the topic by the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot). But no matter what happens to the vote -- yeah, nay, put away -- it's clear that for a non-insignificant portion of interested parties, the outcome will be the Jews' fault.

Count on a few scientists to point out a silver lining to widespread misery. Using satellite data, scientists at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory found in 2004 that the warm Santa Ana winds benefited the aquatic ecosystem off Southern California's cost by churning up nutrients normally found in deeper, colder water. Here's part of the explanation for the more science-literate:

"These strong winds, which blow from the land out into the ocean, cause cold water to rise from the bottom of the ocean to the top, bringing with it many nutrients that ultimately benefit local fisheries," said Dr. Timothy Liu, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Quikscat project scientist. Santa Ana consequences include vortices of cold water and high concentrations of chlorophyll 400 to 1,000 kilometers (248 to 621 miles) offshore[. . .]

The latter instrument showed sea surface temperatures dropped four degrees Celsius (seven degrees Fahrenheit) during the February 2003 Santa Anas. That was a sign that upwelling had occurred, meaning, deep cold water moved up to the ocean surface bringing nutrients. Images from SeaWiFS confirmed the increased biological productivity by measuring chlorophyll concentrations in the surface water. It went from negligible, in the absence of winds, to very active biological activity (more than 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter) in the presence of the winds.

Read the entire story from 2004 here.

Remember last year when a flock of hipster towns were promising to provide free citywide wireless networks? Apparently financial issues have forced that idea out of fashion. From Sacramento and San Francisco to Houston and Chicago, Wi-Fi plans have been hitting snags or falling apart altogether.

That's a shame, since total coverage in our high-tech age would be a pretty valuable service. Is there a way for cities to provide wireless coverage?

But, as Tim Wu of Slate.com points out,

The basic idea of offering Internet access as a public service is sound. The problem is that cities haven't thought of the Internet as a form of public infrastructure that—like subway lines, sewers, or roads—must be paid for. Instead, cities have labored under the illusion that, somehow, everything could be built easily and for free by private parties. That illusion has run straight into the ancient economics of infrastructure and natural monopoly. The bottom line: City dwellers won't be able to get high-quality wireless Internet access for free. If they want it, collectively, they'll have to pay for it.

Establishing a citywide wireless hotspot is a matter of scale. Wu goes on to point out that Wi-Fi has succeeded not in high-tech metropolises, but in smaller municipal venues:

St. Cloud, Fla., a town of 28,000, has an entirely free wireless network. The network has its problems, such as dead spots, but also claims a 77 percent use rate among its citizens.

Business models and laws of scale aside, the San Francisco Chronicle says that clear purpose and tangible benefits also help:

The most popular uses that are motivating municipalities are public safety, remote worker access, meter reading and surveillance cameras. The city of Ripon (San Joaquin County) recently installed 71 Wi-Fi-enabled video cameras that allow police to monitor intersections and trouble spots remotely. Police officers using the city Wi-Fi network can pull up pictures from their cars and also broadcast live from cameras in their vehicles, allowing other officers to get a sense of what's happening at a specific location.

"What you'll find is cities are now selling the networks on things that are quantifiable, like public safety or public works," said Craig Settles, a Wi-Fi consultant. "You've got to establish that before you can pursue other social goals."

And apparently, in Minneapolis, the city's public safety wireless network took pressure off cellular networks and made rescue efforts easier following the August bridge collapse.

So perhaps, in the near future, those cities will be able to build public-access service from existing networks like these. Before giving up on the muni-Wi-Fi dream, cities should consider models like these. According to the Chron, leaders in the Wi-Fi industry

are backing off some of the talk of broad public access and bridging the digital divide. The more immediate goals are concrete applications and services that can be sold to cities looking to go Wi-Fi.

Despite the slowdown in the municipal Wi-Fi space, leaders say there is still a bright future ahead, especially with the introduction of new Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as the Apple iPhone. Metro-Fi CEO Chuck Haas said 6 percent of Metro-Fi users last month accessed the network through an iPhone. [...]

Here's a thought: If you have an iPhone, you're already on the right side of the digital divide, and you don't need a city government to provide you with free wireless. Muni Wi-Fi was meant to be a public service; under this model, it becomes another way for private enterprise to benefit the privileged. Let's hope that as plan Bs for municipal Wi-Fi evolve, cities remember why they took to this idea in the first place.

Truly, I did not think we made 'em that dim any more.

I was driving out of a Los Angeles hillside neighborhood today and I stopped for a red light. The driver of the car in front of me was smoking, languidly hanging his cigarette hand out of the window between drags.

The wind was up and dry leaves were stirring in the street. I watched his hand, his cigarette, the way the fellow in the crow's nest on the Titanic must have watched the looming iceberg.

And then he did it. He dropped the burning cigarette butt in the street.

No other word for it: I was gobsmacked. The radio was reporting more houses, more miles of land chewed up by fire. The sun was caramelized by the haze of smoke. The ash was still blowing in wisps off my windshield wipers. And this man flicked his lighted cigarette out of his car.

I leaped out of my car and hurried to stomp on the smoldering butt, grinding it out in the street. ''Are you nuts?'' I asked him. ''The state is burning up around here, and you toss out a lighted cigarette? That's how these fires start! Be careful!''

I half-expected a ''Geez, I'm sorry, I just wasn't thinking.'' Instead, I got a torrent of obscene abuse. Then the light changed.

I called the cops to report it, but they said they couldn't do anything. Yes, it's a misdemeanor, but they had to see it happen.

Something of the same happened to me in February, in stopped traffic on the Golden State Freeway — a man dropped his burning cigarette out of his truck. When I told him that he'd get a ticket if the CHP saw him, he assured me that they'd let him off — he was a sheriff's deputy.

I wonder about that deputy now. Is he out directing traffic as people evacuate their smoky neighborhoods? Does he live in Canyon Country or Santa Clarita, and is his own home threatened by fire?

And what do you suppose he'd do if it turned out some idiot tossing away a glowing cigarette butt had started the fire that burned down his house?

The Malibu Schadenfreude identified by Steve Lopez and others today contains a legitimate public-policy issue within its (even more legitimate?) naked class envy/hatred. Namely, that many rich folk who build mansions in canyons -- and their less-rich compadres who build McMansions in foothills -- do so with subsidized, artificially inexpensive, actuarily unsound, government-secured insurance of last resort, called the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR for short (and ironic). FAIR, as I wrote after the last truly awful fire season, came into existence as a direct response to ... horrendous inner-city rioting in 1968. Insurers were refusing to underwrite housing in places like Watts, so Congress passed the Housing and Urban Development Act,

which allowed states to obtain federal reinsurance money if they established property insurance pools of last resort to make homeowner and business policies available to those who lived and worked in areas the insurance companies considered to be too "high risk."

It started in the ghetto, but soon branched out to floodplains, hurricane country, faultli