Driscoll, who was one of four players from San Jose State to earn a spot in this year’s World Championships, says he owes his success entirely to the judo legend Uchida. “It came from the instruction of one of the best coaches in the nation,” the 29-year-old grad student says. Driscoll says he was intimidated weighing in with his heavyweight division competitors at the competition in Tokyo earlier this month. “This was the first time that I was by far the smallest guy in the room,” the 6-foot-3-inch, 255-pound judoka says.
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In the South Bay, foodies are expected to know their northern curries from their southern dosas. The new Steps of India seeks to hone that curry consciousness even further, billing its cuisine as Northwest Frontier fare. That’s a good hook for this area, especially as it lands in a crowded field of South Bay Indian restaurants. Even right in its Cambrian Park neighborhood, just down the street on Union Avenue, Rangoli has long held court as the most popular Indian cuisine this side of Amber India.
Google planned on turning one of its Mountain View properties into a recreational area, complete with a soccer field, basketball court, disc golf area, and horseshoes and bocce ball pitches. The problem is that the area is home to the burrowing owl. After some consideration, the city has decided that a $20,000 donation to preserve the rare bird could mitigate the problem.
Santa Clara County’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to opt out of the Secure Communities federal program, also known as SCOMM. Members of the Board of Supervisors and the public claim that the program, which submits all fingerprints taken in the county to the Department of Homeland Security, only drives illegal immigrants deeper underground, and encourages them to avoid the police at all costs.
What can we do to make the world a better place? That was a question asked by Google, who took their motto of “Do no evil,” and expanded it to “Do good instead.” They asked for ideas to improve government, education, transportation, the environment, and offered to provide seed money to “the most innovative approaches to solving some very pressing problems.”
A satirical farce targeting sex and the social awkwardness that often accompanies it, “First Day of School” is a play that does indeed “bring sexy back,” the stated goal of City Lights Theater Company for its new season.
Michael Moore is set to receive the John Steinbeck Award, which is given to those who prove their worth as “planetary patriots” as Steinbeck’s son Thomas put it and has previously been given to Garrison Keillor, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen and Studs Terkel.
San Jose was listed as the city with the second highest incidence of drunk driving nationwide in a survey of 20 major metropolitan areas. The survey was conducted by Insurance.com, an online marketplace for auto insurance. The ranking was based on information submitted by users seeking car insurance. Among the factors taken into account were drunk-driving convictions and a number of other alcohol related violations.
Professor Carlos D. Bustamante, a professor of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, is one of just twenty-three recipients nationwide of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.” Bustamante is a population biologist who mines DNA sequence data for insights into the dynamics and migration of populations and the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection. He will receive $500,000, paid quarterly over the course of five years.
The story of a fifteen-year-old San Jose boy who was falsely arrested by his girlfriend’s cop stepfather is receiving national attention. The boy’s parents, who have lodged a complaint against the officer, appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday to tell their side of the story. Paul and Nicole Villarruel maintained their claim that the girl’s stepfather abused his authority.
