In the News

By Henry Fountain

SAN FRANCISCO — Venture deep inside the new skyway of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and it becomes clear that the bridge’s engineers have planned for the long term.

At intervals inside the elevated roadway’s box girders — which have the closed-in feel of a submarine, if a submarine were made of concrete — are anchor blocks, called deadmen, cast into the structure. They are meant to be used decades from now, perhaps in the next century, when in their old age the concrete girders will start to sag. By running cables from deadman to deadman and tightening them, workers will be able to restore the girders to their original alignment.

The deadmen are one sign that the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which includes the skyway and a unique suspension bridge, is meant to last at least 150 years after its expected opening in 2013. (The existing eastern bridge, which is still in use, will then be torn down.)

But to make it to the 22nd century, the new span may at some point have to survive a major earthquake, like the one that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906 or the one that partly severed the Bay Bridge in 1989. With two faults nearby that are capable of producing such large quakes, survival is no simple matter.

Paid-for petitions

It's a familiar sight as you push a shopping cart out of a supermarket. A stranger waves a clipboard under your nose and asks if you will lend your name to a ballot measure that would lower taxes, preserve your rights or keep the ocean blue.

It may sound great, but beware. What's going on is electoral bounty-hunting, the underside of the state's big bucks election industry.

The signatures of hundreds of thousands of registered voters are needed to qualify initiatives and constitutional changes for the statewide ballot. To get the job done, signature gatherers are deployed by deeppocket sponsors, who pay these field-workers by the numbers of names collected. The rates might total a few dollars per name, but it's not hard to see what happens. Signature-gatherers devise misleading pitches to woo signers.

Fleshy, dark-haired, stuttering Paul Noe II sits at a document-laden table with an elderly veteran. Noe asks the man about his military years, about what life has been like since, and offers a patient, sympathetic ear.

Noe is doing what he has long done best: persuading a senior to enter into a financial transaction he doesn't fully understand, one that stretches what the law allows, and one that stands to benefit Noe or his business associates in ways his new friend isn't fully aware of.

How many times have you changed your privacy settings on a social-networking site?

If you've lost track, you're not alone.

Nor are you alone in your nagging fear that your private information, or that of your child, is lurking out there despite your best efforts - because it very well may be.