Reports say the bill comes up for a Senate vote on January 24. A special House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the legislation is set for January 18, with Ohanian – a founder of social media site Reddit – as one of the witnesses.

On Sunroom Desk’s upload portal, WordPress, whose software powers this and millions of other blogs and websites, announced today that it is against the legislation (joining Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and a bunch of other sites I use), citing the countless numbers of independent publishers and social media users threatened by the bill’s scope.

The first post was a critique of Halloween costume stores dotting Brand Blvd. I wondered then what impression their merchandise made among Chinese factory workers. This October, three years into the Great Recession, I’ve seen no temporary costume shops at all on Brand Blvd., and in fact only one in Glendale (but I haven’t driven around looking for them). This is progress. The less environmentally unfriendly, useless junk imported and sold in the U.S., the better.

My second post lamented the death of a Toll Middle School student in a crosswalk. Even before then, but certainly with intensity since then, city council, city staff, the school district, and the community have focused on improving safety for all users of our roads. Glendale’s Safe and Healthy Streets Plan was created from 2009-2011 and approved this April. GUSD, the city, and concerned parents reached out to National Safe Routes to School and other transportation safety groups, and Glendale has since been awarded more than $2 million in competitive grants to improve pedestrian and bicycling safety around schools.

Reporting on a neighbor’s fight against a parkway cell site led to Sunroom Desk’s focus on wireless technology deployment issues. Cell towers, cell sites, wireless broadband, cell phones, smart phones, wi-fi, smart meters, and more. There’s a lot to consider and a lot to write about. Just yesterday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is hearing the wireless industry’s lawsuit challenging San Francisco’s cell phone radiation warnings, ordered the city to tone down its requirements for retailers. According to the San Francisco Chronicle report on the decision, “City Attorney Dennis Herrera said he would appeal the ruling.”

News continues to arrive faster than the morning haze clears, but the blog posting schedule is slowing to once or twice a week as the editor completes other publishing projects this summer.

Recently launched: Beyond the Blue Domes, which covers topics ranging from memories of the Iranian revolution to Glendale Peace Vigil organizers. The most recent post is a fascinating reflection on “Armenia’s Stonehenge.”

Just discovered: Karine Armen established her site two years ago, but has posted more frequently since publication of her book Inner Heaven. Bookstores carrying the collection of her mother’s self-help articles are listed in her latest post.

Aimee Bender and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum will give readings from their works, followed by a question and answer session.

Bender, a professor of creative writing at USC, published her 2010 novel “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” and the 1998 short story collection “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt,” which spent seven weeks on the LA Times best-seller list.

Bynum’s debut novel, “Madeleine is Sleeping” was nominated for the 2004 National Book Award. She made the New Yorker’s 2010 Top 20 Under 40 list. She also wrote “The Ms. Hempel Chronicles,” and heads the creative writing program at UC San Diego.

The biannual Los Angeles Writers Reading Series at GCC celebrates local writers and gives students opportunities to meet with authors of the books they have been reading in their English classes.

Altadena Hiker, whose Homestead of Urban riposte on this situation is an entertaining read. Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s move to put those homesteaders back in their common usage place.

Financially inKleined, whose People: Food or Friends? post objects to Andy Kessler’s prediction and apparent lack of concern that almost all of us will soon be out of work. (Kessler’s ideas on increasing “productivity” got prime placement on the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages two days running: here and here).

Metroduo: LA by Metro, is the project of two people who each live near Metrorail stops, in Pasadena and in Culver City, and offers personal views of Southern California Metrorail destinations.

Open Mouth Insert Fork, is a great local foodie blog with excellent cooking and restaurant insights. Porto’s potato balls are celebrated in this post from 2007.

Pasadena Daily Photo’s publisher generously features fellow travelers and local businesses. This post promotes the upcoming Re:Launch workshop for small business owners, with Glendale-based financial planner Donna Chaney and Friday lunch speaker Karen Klein (publisher of Financially InKleined).

Instead of attributing financial motives or industry ties to climate change detractors, Conway suggested they are motivated by “free market fundamentalism,” and act in the belief that they are defending the U.S. against its enemies. The irony, said Conway, is that delays in addressing climate change means future solutions could be more draconian.

The research he and co-author Naomi Oreskes completed for Merchants of Doubt is a fascinating look at 20th century science, and made for an interesting evening of questions and discussion at the library.

For those who missed it, read Merchants of Doubt, and be sure to follow the city of Glendale on Twitter to learn about upcoming author events at the library. Better yet, become a member of the Friends of the Glendale Library, to support free community programs like this.

On the first theme: In Huffington’s new book, Third World America, she issues a wake-up call and blames Wall Street for “shorting the middle class.” She also echoes some of the accusations and recommendations in The Road From Ruin (author Matthew Bishop also spoke at the Drucker Forum earlier this year – Sunroom Desk published a four-part review of his book).

On the second theme: Seth Godin, author of Linchpin and another dozen best-sellers on business success, attracted a full crowd to the Colburn School’s Zipper Hall on November 9 to discuss his views on “the industrial revolution of our time.” Godin stressed that everyone must become a marketer, and that the internet revolution is not about leveraging capital but leveraging ideas and connections. He observed that gatekeeping as a business success strategy is a losing proposition, while making connections with clients and customers is an imperative.

Larry Kramer, founder of MarketWatch, discussed his new book C-Scape on November 17 at KPCC. Kramer created a successful financial news site, took it public, managed it successfully through the dotcom crash, and eventually sold it to Dow Jones. His observations tracked Godin’s: Every company now has to be a media company, content is the key to success, successful media sites need to do a great job curating the news for readers, and the convergence of these trends are forcing changes in business models that favor the consumer.

From the Glendale Library’s event webpage: “Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.”

This FREE event, sponsored by the Friends of the Glendale Public Library, will be held at
Glendale Central Library Children’s Room
222 E. Harvard St.
Glendale
Wednesday, November 17, 7 p.m.
(818) 548-2042
Free 3-hour parking is available at the municipal parking garage across the street (validate ticket at the circulation desk).

Journalists are now trained to be videographers, mentioned Patt Morrison last night at the Glendale Public Library, where she appeared to discuss Los Angeles Noir insights gained during her career. Video stories bring a human dimension to difficult topics.

Links to documentaries that inspired posts on this blog include Full Signal, Public Exposure, Bad Reception, and Radiant Day, all about cell tower proliferation and communities’ health concerns related to cell sites.

Contested Streets, which the Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets Program screened during Bike Month, featured the 20th century’s progression from using streets as pedestrian spaces to transforming them into high-speed or congested lanes full of vehicles. The documentary showed planners now intentionally redesigning such streets to ensure more pedestrian and local community- and business-building uses.

I wonder whether the buildout for smart phones, which rely on microwave signals and require transmitting hardware that people distrust, will proceed through a similar cycle and eventually result in policies that foster more human interaction.