November 11, 2025
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Hot Flash: I Need My Beauty Sleep

By Barbara Bishop I need my beauty sleep! We always say it, but is there some truth to sleeping that helps us be more beautiful? I’ve been developing a habit of sleeping only about five […]

OpEd: SMa.r.t – A Thankful City

2016 gave Santa Monica a lot to be thankful for. SMa.r.t. (Santa Monica Architects for a responsible tomorrow) would like to highlight those we feel are particularly praise worthy. First, the important improvements in mobility […]

OpEd: Swimming in Cartoon Movies

By Steve Stajich It’s almost mandatory that anybody with a weekly newspaper column occasionally wrings their hands in angst over popular culture. I don’t think I dip into that as often as some others, but […]

Greed

Opinion: SMa.r.t. Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow: The Alchemy Of Greed

Opinion: Our City is experiencing an identity crisis fueled by gluttony. The powers in the City of Santa Monica have apparently decided that bigger is better and that that this “bigger” needs to be fueled constantly by more…more development, taller and denser buildings, structures that are out-of-scale with our town…more people…more tourists…more workers…more residents.

Thane Roberts for SMa.r.t. Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow.Thane Roberts AIA, Architect, Robert H. Taylor AIA, Mario Fonda-Bonardi AIA Planning Commission, Daniel Jansenson Architect, Samuel Tolkin AIA, Phil Brock, Santa Monica Arts Commission.

SMa.r.t. OpEd: A Sense of Place:

By SMa.r.t In the mid-19th century, America’s West held the promise of cheap land and riches. In some ways, this myth still holds. Last year, Oregon and California had the fastest growing economies in the […]

Reading, Sharing

Reading: The Antidote To Loneliness:

They don’t ask for much – just a good story now and then. Sometimes, a lot of the time, they may not be able to ask, but you can see it in their eyes. Tired eyes that are saying “I can’t make out the words anymore.”

Light Rail Doing Fine: Not So For Bigger Trains:

A little more than one month from now, the Metro Expo Line’s final portion will open for business, making it possible to take trains from the far eastern portions of Los Angeles County to the often-crowded beach in Santa Monica. This will come barely two months after a new section of Metro’s Gold Line opened, allowing a simple, cheap 31-mile jaunt from downtown Los Angeles to Azusa. Barely any protests have afflicted any of these projects, which together will have cost many billions of dollars.

OpEd: State and National GOP in Suicide Pact?:

Watch the primary election process now playing out both nationally and in California, and you almost have to wonder whether the state and national wings of the Republican Party have made a suicide pact.

A man brandishing a flip phone protests outside the Apple store in Santa Monica Tuesday night.

OpEd: Apple Vs. FBI:

My column last week concerning the dust-up between the FBI and Apple over access to the data contained on the phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, the male perpetrator in the San Bernardino killings, brought interesting reader responses from divergent viewpoints. One comment included the confirmation that I am not the only person in Santa Monica still using a flip-phone and highlighted that cell phones might not be operating in a disaster when land lines might still be working.