* Javanese shadow-puppet theatre

"It's just money," people say. But reading this article, one recalls that money talks.

Multi-layered escape from responsibility

Somewhere in an arid state to the east someone is figuring out the odds on a levee break in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. And the latest move by the US Army Corps of Engineers reported below may alter the morning line on the Great Delta Collapse.

The Army Corps, somewhat less controlled by the Obama Peripheral Tunnel Axis than is the Department of Interior, which contains both the Fish & Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation, declared yesterday that "the city of  Sacramento and 15 other areas of the Central Valley ... have failed federal maintenance criteria.