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SAT Success Is Best Left to the Boot Straps

I find it extremely hard to believe that just because a test-taker comes from a low-income neighborhood or family, answering questions about high school mathematics is so much more difficult for them ...
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In Memory: El Canario (1988 – 2001)

The weatherbike was stolen last week. It was parked, whistling cheerfully at passerby in its bright, yellow fashion. The weatherbike was always cheerful, even when it lost its handlebars and the brake...
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A Living Wage for the Upper-Middle Class

It's possible to get the Santa Barbara City Council to care about the cost of living for city employees, but only if said employees are making about $190,000 per year.
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One Nation, Under God, Uncoerced …

Gail Marshall's request that her advisory commission itself decide whether to make the Pledge was squarely in line with that Court ruling and with longstanding American distaste for coerced patriotism...
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Weather: We’re The Golden Children Turning Bronze

The Hometown WeatherQuintilogy: #3 Santa Barbara is too expensive for people with actual problems. Ridiculous local apartment rents equal a house mortgage in any rural shithole, so you can’t aff...
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Rughe Elephant

The Lompoc Economic Development Committee member is in trouble for sending letters to south coast newspapers, stating that "Muslims are out to destroy our world."
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Please, Please, Please Gimme Some o’ Dat Plover Lovin’, Baby

Beach coitus interrupted by a Frisbee to the dome is harsh for any species, but the snowy plovers, whose breeding problems have closed Sands Beach, will get no sympathy from me.
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Something for Which To Give Thanks

Thanksgiving meant something very different to me this year than it has before. I was the victim of the first reported sexual assault this year, on Sept. 23, but this incident has had a very different...
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There’s Something Fishy About Rigs to Reef

California's been trying to decide whether to allow oil companies to convert their used oil platforms to artificial reefs for several years, and in the latest development, the governor vetoed a bill w...
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Drugs, Babies and Marriage

Going home is always heavy. Friends and family can really jack up their lives while you’re away. I’ve found the majority of the hometown heaviness involves just three things: Drugs, babies...
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Living Without Vowels: New Law Is a Smoke Screen for Stupidity

The board of supervisors just handed Santa Barbara County residents a 20-foot length of hose and told them to go blow smoke up their butts.
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We Can’t Afford High Rents for Grad Students

Higher rental fees incurred by graduate and undergraduate students slow their academic progress and discourage them from applying to UCSB.
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Red Tape: We’ve All Got Tickets for the Attack of the Clones

U.S. politicians have generally agreed, to the point of grandstanding at times, that cloning a human would be an unconscionable and unethical act. They just never got around to outlawing it.
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Jesus Mutants!

My home town is full of mutant people! Obese mutants! Acned mutants! Jesus mutants! Mutated Mutants! Witness to such perverse genetic disaster require months of trauma counseling among Santa Barbara&#...
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Sands Beach Closure Leaves Room for Plovers and People

A rope-and-post fence will delineate a 1,300-foot long area, to direct people around the roost on the wet sand. This will protect 90 percent of the roost area. The majority of the beach is still avail...
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