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KALW

KALW

KALW is a public radio station based in San Francisco, California, USA. It is a FM radio signal broadcast over the immediate San Francisco Bay Area at 91.7 MHz. In addition, KALW is webcast with live streaming audio available. KALW is operated by the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and is a National Public Radio affiliate, carrying content from NPR, Minnesota Public Radio, Public Radio International and the BBC World Service. In addition, KALW produces its own local music and interview shows, and is the flagship station for West Coast Live, a two-hour live variety program broadcast on Saturday mornings. As KALW is operated by the San Francisco Unified School District, it also carries broadcasts of the monthly SFUSD Board meetings and daily listings of school lunch menus, with said menus occasionally read by celebrities who have come to the station for interview shows. KALW is the oldest FM station west of the Mississippi, having launched as an experimental station for a demonstration exhibit by owner General Electric at San Francisco's world's fair at Treasure Island, CA in 1939-40. The station was licensed to the SFUSD in April 1941 when it was given to the district by GE. KALW originally operated on 45.1 MHz in the old FM band, which was re-assigned to police and fire departments after World War II. KALW's original transmitter was a modified GE medical diathermy machine. While the original transmitter had not been used since the switch to the modern FM band in the late 1940s, it was still located at the John McConnell technical high school until the school was demolished in the mid-1990s. KALW was instrumental in helping KQED television sign on the air in the 1950s as one of the first "educational" non-commercial TV stations in the country, by providing technical training, studio space, and engineering advice to the KQED founding staff.

Legal troubles

In 1997 a group of full and part time KALW employees filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission to deny the renewal of KALW’s broadcast license, alleging that station management had covered up violations of hiring rules and had lied about required record keeping. The case was inactive for several years and according to KALW's website the group that filed the petition, known as Golden Gate Public Radio, went defunct.[http://www.kalw.org/sched74.html] In July of 2004 the FCC resurrected the case. While it issued only a warning to KALW about employment practices, more significantly, the FCC decided that allegations of lying were supported by sufficient evidence to warrant hearings.[http://www.frontiernet.net/~ibs/00%20FCC-04-114A1-IBS.pdf]. The hearings concluded in June of 2005 and a final ruling is pending. If found guilty the San Francisco Unified School District could face a fine of as much as $300,000 or forfeiture of its license to operate KALW.

External links

- [http://www.kalw.org/ KALW]
- [http://www.kalw.org/kalw_stream.ram KALW audio stream]
- [http://www.wcl.org/ West Coast Live]

San Francisco, California

: The City and County of San Francisco (2004 estimated population 744,230) is the fourth-largest city in the state of California, in the United States. A consolidated city-county, mainland San Francisco is located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula. Insular San Francisco includes several islands in the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Strait, notably Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the Farallon Islands 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean and also most of the privately owned Red Rock Island near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. (See Islands of San Francisco Bay) The city is a focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, and forms part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA), whose population is over 7 million. U.S. census data show that San Francisco has the highest population density of any major U.S. city aside from New York City. The first Europeans to settle in San Francisco were the Spanish, in 1776. With the advent of the California gold rush in 1848 the city entered a period of rapid growth. Devastated by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the city was quickly rebuilt. The phoenix on the city's flag represents San Francisco's "rebirth" from the ashes of the fire that resulted from the quake. Long enjoying a bohemian reputation the city became a counterculture magnet in the second half of the 20th century. It was a center of the dot-com boom and explosive growth of the internet at the end of the century. San Francisco has unique characteristics when compared to other major cities in the U.S., including its steep rolling hills, an eclectic mix of architecture including both Victorian style houses and modern skyscrapers, and unmatched physical beauty, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. San Francisco's famous hallmarks include its cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge, which are recognized worldwide.
History
Golden Gate Bridge European visitors to the Bay Area were preceded 10,000 to 20,000 years earlier by Native Americans. When Europeans arrived, they found the area inhabited by the Yelamu tribe, belonging to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people") living in the coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay. San Francisco's characteristic foggy weather and geography led early European explorers, including Juan Cabrillo and Sir Francis Drake (who would instead land a few miles north in Point Reyes), to pass by the Golden Gate and miss the San Francisco Bay. Eventually, a Spanish party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, discovered the bay in 1770, claiming it in the name of Spain. In 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza arrived and established the sites for the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asis (named for Saint Francis of Assisi and now popularly known as "Mission Dolores"). In 1792 British explorer George Vancouver set up a small settlement near the village of Yerba Buena (later downtown San Francisco) which became a small base for English, Russian, and other European fur traders, explorers, and settlers. Due to its distance from Mexico City and the decline of Spanish power, the area was isolated, remaining sparsely populated and undeveloped. It became part of an independent Mexico in 1821. Following the passing of the Secularization Act of 1833, effectively ending the Mission period, Mission San Francisco de Asis was abandoned. The local indigenous tribes of Ohlone and Miwok had became virtually extinct by this time due to disease and warfare with the European settlers. In addition to Spanish and European settlers, Russian colonists also visited the Bay area. From 1770, lasting through 1841, Russia colonized an area that ranged from Alaska south to Fort Ross in Sonoma County, California. The naming of San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood is attributed to the remains of Russian fur-traders and sailors found there. Serious development by non-Spanish speakers began in 1822, when William Richardson, an English whaler redeveloped a section of Yerba Buena in what is now Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. Yerba Buena remained a small town until the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846. The British Empire briefly entertained the idea of purchasing the bay from Mexico in 1841, claiming it would "Secure to Great Britain all the advantages of the finest port in the Pacific for her commercial speculations in time of peace, and in war for more easily securing her maritime ascendency". However little came of this, and San Francisco become a prize of United States continental imperialism rather than that of British thalassocratic power. A naval force under Commodore John D. Sloat claimed it in the name of the United States and renamed it "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a nineteenth century settlement. These natural disadvantages forced the town's residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. The first of many environmental transformations was the city's reliance on filled marshlands for real estate. Much of the present downtown is built over the former Yerba Buena Cove, granted to the city by military governor Stephen Watts Kearny in 1847. Stephen Watts Kearny The California gold rush starting in 1848 led to a large boom in population, including considerable immigration. Between January 1848 and December 1849, the population of San Francisco increased from 1,000 to 25,000. This included many workers from China who came to work in the gold mines and later on the Transcontinental Railroad. The Chinatown district of the city became and is still one of the largest in the country; the city as a whole is roughly one-fifth Chinese, one of the largest concentrations outside of China. Many businesses founded to service the growing population exist today, notably Levi Strauss & Co. clothing, Ghirardelli chocolate, and Wells Fargo bank. Many famous railroad, banking, and mining tycoons or "robber barons" such as Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford settled in the city in its Nob Hill neighborhood. The sites of their mansions are now famous and expensive San Francisco hotels (Mark Hopkins Hotel and the Huntington Hotel). Huntington Hotel, 1856.]] As in many mining towns, the social climate in early San Francisco was chaotic. This was exacerbated by squabbling in the United States Senate, where the Compromise of 1850 was igniting a fierce fight over slavery. Committees of Vigilance were formed in 1851, and again in 1856, in response to crime and government corruption, but also had a strong element of anti-immigrant violence, and arguably created more lawlessness than they eliminated. This popular militia movement lynched 12 people, kidnapped hundreds of Irishmen and government militia members, and forced several elected officials to resign. The Committee of Vigilance relinquished power both times after it decided the city had been "cleaned up." This mob activity later focused on Chinese immigrants, creating many race riots. These riots culminated in the creation of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 that aimed to reduce Chinese immigration to the United States by limiting immigration to males and reducing numbers of immigrants allowed in the city. The law was not repealed until 1943. Chinese Exclusion Act San Francisco County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. The parts of the county not in the city limits were split off to form San Mateo County in 1856. San Francisco became America's largest city west of the Mississippi River, until it lost that title to Los Angeles. It was also briefly the state capital in 1851, until San José received the title. (Sacramento is the current capital.) In autumn of 1855, a ship bearing refugees from an ongoing cholera epidemic in the far east (authorities disagree as to whether this was the S.S. Sam or the S.S. Carolina) docked in San Francisco. As the city's rapid gold-rush area population growth had significantly outstripped the development of infrastructure, including sanitation, a serious cholera epidemic quickly broke out. The responsibility for caring for the indigent sick had previously rested on the state, but faced with the San Francisco cholera epidemic, the state legislature devolved this responsibility to the counties, setting the precedent for California's system of county hospitals for the poor still in effect today. The Sisters of Mercy were contracted to run San Francisco's first county hospital at the height of the cholera epidemic, and in 1857, the order opened its own charity hospital, Mercy Hospital of San Francisco, which is still in operation today at its original location on Stanyan Street. By the 1890s, San Francisco was suffering from Boss politics and corruption, and was ripe for political reform. Adolph Sutro ran for mayor in 1894 under the auspices of the Populist Party and won handily without campaigning. Unfortunately, except for the Sutro Baths, Mayor Sutro substantially failed in his efforts to improve the city. The next mayor, James D. Phelan elected in 1896, was more successful, pushing through a new city charter that allowed for the ability to raise funds through bond issues. He was able to get bonds passed to construct a new sewer system, seventeen new schools, two parks, a hospital, and a main library. After leaving office in 1901, Phelan became interested in remaking San Francisco into a grand and modern Paris of the West. When the San Francisco Art Association asked him to draft a plan for the beautification of the city, he hired famed architect Daniel Burnham. Burnham and Phelan's plan was ambitious, envisioning a 50-year effort to transform the city with wide diagonal boulevards creating open spaces and squares as they crossed the orthogonal grid of existing streets. Some parts of the plan were eventually implemented, including an Opera house to the north of City Hall, a subway under Market Street, and a waterfront boulevard (The Embarcadero) circling the city. In 1900, a ship from China brought with it rats infected with bubonic plague. Mistakenly believing that interred corpses contributed to the transmission of plague, and possibly also motivated by the opportunity for profitable land speculation, city leaders banned all burials within the city. Cemeteries moved to the undeveloped area just south of the city limit, now the town of Colma, California. A fifteen-block section of Chinatown was quarantined while city leaders squabbled over the proper course to take, but the outbreak was finally eradicated by 1905. However, the problem of existing cemeteries and the shortage of land in the city remained. In 1912 (with fights extending until 1942), all remaining cemeteries in the city were evicted to Colma, where the dead now outnumber the living by more than a thousand to one. The above-ground Columbarium of San Francisco was allowed to remain, as well as the historic cemetery at the Mission Dolores Church and The San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio of San Francisco. On April 18 1906, a devastating earthquake resulted from the rupture of over 270 miles of the San Andreas Fault, from San Juan Bautista to Eureka, centered immediately offshore of San Francisco. The quake is estimated by the USGS to have had a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale. Water mains ruptured throughout San Francisco, and the fires that followed burned out of control for days, destroying approximately 80% of the city, including almost all of the downtown core. Many residents were trapped between the water on three sides and the approaching fire, and a mass evacuation (similar to that of the later Battle of Dunkirk) across the Bay saved thousands. Refugee camps were also set up in Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach, and other undeveloped sections of the city. The official death toll at the time was 478, although it was officially revised in 2005 to 3,000+. The initial low death toll was concocted by civic, state, and federal officials who felt that reporting the actual numbers would hurt rebuilding and redevelopment efforts, as well as city and national morale. Ocean Beach In 1915, the city hosted the Panama-Pacific Exposition, officially to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, but also as a showcase of the vibrant completely rebuilt city less than a decade after the Earthquake. After the exposition ended, all of its grand buildings were demolished except for the Palace of Fine Arts which survives today in an abbreviated form. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. During World War II, San Francisco was the major mainland supply point and port of embarkation for the war in the Pacific. The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco has been the site of some significant post World War II history. In 1945, the conference that formed the United Nations was held there, with the UN Charter being signed on June 26. Additionally the Treaty of San Francisco which formally ended war with Japan and established peaceful relations, was drafted and signed here six years later in 1951. After World War II, many American military personnel who fell in love with the city during leaving to or returning from the Pacific, settled in the city prompting the creation of the Sunset District and Visitacion Valley. During this period, Caltrans commenced an aggressive freeway construction program in the Bay Area. However, Caltrans soon encountered strong resistance in San Francisco, for the city's high population density meant that virtually any right-of-way would displace a large number of people. Caltrans tried to minimize displacement (and its land acquisition costs) by building double-decker freeways, but the crude state of civil engineering at that time resulted in construction of some embarrassingly ugly freeways which ultimately turned out to be seismically unsafe. In 1959, the Board of Supervisors voted to halt construction of any more freeways in the city, an event known as the Freeway Revolt. Although some minor modifications have been allowed to the ends of existing freeways, the city's anti-freeway policy has remained in place ever since. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the Embarcadero Freeway and portions of the so-called Central Freeway. Over the course of several referenda, San Francisco's residents elected not to rebuild either structure. The neighborhoods once covered by these freeways have been rebuilt, and the restoration of the Embarcadero, San Francisco's historic bay waterfront, as a public space has been especially successful. In the 1950s San Francisco hired Harvard graduate Justin Herman to head the redevelopment agency for the city and county. Justin Herman began an aggressive campaign to renew blighted areas of the city. Enacting eminent domain whenever necessary, he set upon a plan to tear down huge areas of the city and replace them with modern construction. Critics accused Herman of racism for what was perceived as attempts to create segregation and displacement of African-Americans. Many African-Americans were forced to move from their homes near the Fillmore jazz district to newly constructed projects such as the near the naval base Hunter's Point or even to cities such as Oakland. He began leveling entire areas in San Francisco's Western Addition and Japantown neighborhoods. His planning led to the creation of Embarcadero Center, the Embarcadero Freeway, Japantown, the Geary Street superblocks, and Yerba Buena Gardens. San Francisco has often been a magnet for America's counterculture. During the 1950s, City Lights Bookstore in the North Beach neighborhood was an important publisher of Beat Generation literature. Some of the story of the evolving arts scene of the 1950s is told in the article San Francisco Renaissance. During the latter half of the following decade, the 1960s, San Francisco was the center of hippie and other alternative culture. In 1966 the Church Of Satan opened their headquarters, and in 1967 thousands of young people poured into the Haight-Ashbury district during what became known as the Summer of Love. At this time, the "San Francisco sound" emerged as an influential force in rock music, with such acts as the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead achieving international prominence, blurring the boundaries between folk, rock and jazz traditions and further developing the lyrical content of rock. During the 1980s and 1990s San Francisco became a major focal point in the North American--and international-- punk, thrash metal, and rave scenes. On the rave scene, the city was the first to host the Love Parade outside its birthplace of Berlin, Germany in 2004. It was also a hot spot during the 1980's for comedians like Ellen DeGeneres and Robin Williams who got major career boosts thanks to the presence of the city's popular comedy clubs. San Francisco's frontier spirit and wild and ribald character caused it to become known as a gay mecca beginning in the nineteenth century. This reputation was enforced greatly during World War II, when thousands of gay male soldiers spent time in the City, while en route to and from the Pacific theater. The late 1960s also brought in a new wave of lesbians and gays who were more radical and less mainstream and who had flocked to San Francisco not only for its gay-friendly reputation, but for its reputation as a radical, left-wing epicenter. These new residents were the prime movers of Gay Liberation and often lived communally, buying decrepit Victorians in the Haight and fixing them up. When drugs and violence began to become a serious problem in the Haight, many lesbians and gays simply moved "over the hill", to the Castro replacing Irish-Americans who had moved to the more affluent and culturally homogenous suburbs. The Castro became known as a Gay Mecca, and its gay population swelled as significant numbers of gay people moved to San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. The growth of the gay population caused tensions with some of the established ethnic groups in the western part of the city. On November 27, 1978 Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supervisors and former police officer, assassinated the city's mayor George Moscone and San Francisco's first openly gay elected official, Supervisor Harvey Milk (see "Twinkie Defense"). The murders and the subsequent trial were marked both by candlelight vigils and riots within the gay community. In the 1980s, the AIDS virus wreaked havoc on the gay male community there. Today, the gay population of the city is estimated to be approximately 15%, and gays remain an important force in the city's life. San Francisco has a higher percentage of gays and lesbians than any other major US city. During the administration of Mayor Dianne Feinstein (1978-1988), San Francisco saw a development boom referred to as "Manhattanization." Many large skyscrapers were built — primarily in the Financial District — but the boom also included high-rise condominiums in some residential neighborhoods. An opposition movement gained traction among those who felt the skyscrapers ruined views and destroyed San Francisco's unique character. Similar to the freeway revolt in the city decades earlier, a "skyscraper revolt" forced the city to embed height restrictions in the planning code. For many years, the limits slowed construction of new skyscrapers, but recent (2000-2005) housing pressures have led to master plan changes which will allow new construction of high-rise structures along The Embarcadero and in the South of Market district. South of Market During the 1980s, homeless people began appearing in large numbers in the city, the result of multiple factors including the closing of state institutions for the mentally ill, and social changes which increased the availability of addictive drugs. Combined with San Francisco's attractive environment and generous welfare policies the problem soon became endemic. Mayor Art Agnos (1988-92) was the first to attack the problem, and not the last; it is a top issue for San Franciscans even today. Agnos allowed the homeless to camp in the Civic Center park, which led to its title of "Camp Agnos." The failure of this policy led to his losing the election to Frank Jordan in 1991. Jordan launched the "MATRIX" program the next year, which aimed to displace the homeless through aggressive police action. And it did displace them - to the rest of the city. His successor, Willie Brown, was able to largely ignore the problem, riding on the strong economy into a second term. Present mayor Gavin Newsom's policy on the homeless is the controversial "Care Not Cash" program, which calls for ending the city's generous welfare policies towards the homeless and instead placing them in affordable housing and requiring them to attend city funded drug rehabilitation and job training programs. On October 17, 1989, an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter magnitude scale struck on the San Andreas Fault near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz mountains, approximately 70 miles south of San Francisco, a few minutes before game 3 of the 1989 World Series. The quake severely damaged many of the city's freeway's including the Embarcadero Freeway and the Central Freeway. The damage to these freeways was so extensive that they were eventually demolished. The quake also caused extensive damage in the Marina District and the South of Market. Known in most of the United States as the "World Series Quake," but in California and by seismologists as the Loma Prieta earthquake, it caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the greater Bay Area. During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer software professionals moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals, and changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified. The rising rents forced many people and businesses to leave, and this caused considerable tension in the city's politics. The resulting backlash resulted in a progressive majority winning control of the Board of Supervisors in the 2000 election. By 2001, the boom was over, and many people left San Francisco. South of Market, where many dot-com companies were located, had been bustling and crowded with few vacancies, but by 2002 was a virtual wasteland of empty offices and for-rent signs. Much of the boom was blamed for the city's "fastest shrinking population", reducing the city's population by 30,000 in just a few years. While the boom has helped put an ease on the city's apartment rents, the city remains expensive nonetheless. In February 2004, San Francisco became the first city in the United States to grant marriage to gay couples when Mayor Gavin Newsom, elected the previous year, ordered the City Clerks office to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The California Supreme Court later invalidated these licenses, holding that Newsom had acted without proper authority. In 2005 San Francisco hosted the United Nations annual World Environment Day conference, the first in the United States, and banned outdoor smoking in all city-owned parks, plazas and public sports venues. Also as of December 2005, the crime rate has gone up, with more than 90 killngs throughout the year. San Francisco is also facing serious budget deficits, and, for such a small city, the homeless problem is still one of the worst in America.
Geography and climate
banned outdoor smoking Landsat 7]] San Francisco lies near the San Andreas Fault and Hayward Fault, two major sources of earthquake activity in California. The most serious earthquake, in 1906, is mentioned above. Earlier significant quakes rocked the city in 1851, 1858, 1865, and 1868. The Daly City Earthquake of 1957 caused some damage. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which also did significant damage to parts of the city, is also famous for having interrupted a World Series baseball game between the Bay Area's two Major League Baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The threat of another major earthquake like the 1906 one plays a major role in the city's infrastructure development. New buildings must be built to very high structural standards, while many dollars must be spent to retrofit the city's older buildings and bridges. Entire neighborhoods of the city such as the Marina and Hunters Point were created and sit on man made landfill (made up of mud, sand, and rubble from past earthquakes) and other reclamation projects over the San Francisco Bay when flatland became scarce. Such land is extremely unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction during earthquakes causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The most impressive example of an "infill neighborhood" is Treasure Island. It was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from tunnelling through Yerba Buena Island in the construction of the Bay Bridge. It was a site for the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair, and it was originally envisioned that Treasure Island would serve as the site for San Francisco's municipal airport, but it became a Navy base at the start of World War II. In 1997 Treasure Island was returned to the city and it provides a unique vantage point to view the San Francisco skyline. San Francisco is famous for its hills. A "Hill" in San Francisco, is an elevation that is over 100 ft (30 Meters). There are a total of 42 hills within city limits. Some of these hills are neighborhoods such as Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill, while some of these hills are public parks and open space such as Twin Peaks, Mt. Sutro, Mount Davidson, and Buena Vista Park. Near the geographic center of the city and away from the downtown area are a series of less populated hills. Dominating this area is Mount Sutro, which is the site of Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio transmission tower, that is a well known landmark to city residents. Nearby are the equally well known Twin Peaks, which are a pair of hills resting at one of the city's highest points. About 1.2km (1 mile) south of Mount Sutro is San Francisco's highest mountain, Mount Davidson, which is over 282 meters (over 925 feet) high. On top of Mount Davidson is a 31.4 meter (103 foot) tall cross built in 1934. Twin Peaks Not to be missed are the beautiful homes and area of the city known as Pacific Heights as well as victorians in the Haight-Ashbury and the "painted ladies" of Alamo Square and the Castro. San Francisco is also famous for its Cable cars (narrow gauge, 1067 mm (3'6")), which were designed to carry residents up those steep hills. It is still possible to take a cable car ride up and down Nob and Russian Hills. Along with New Orleans' streetcars, San Francisco's cable cars are one of only two mobile United States National Monuments. Coit Tower, a notable landmark dedicated to San Francisco's firefighters, is located at the top of Telegraph Hill.
Climate
Surrounded on three sides by water, San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean. The weather is remarkably mild all year round, with a so-called Mediterranean climate characterized by cool, foggy summers and relatively warm winters; average daily high temperatures in the summer typically range from the upper 60's to mid 70's (15-22 degrees Celsius), while in the winter it virtually never reaches freezing. Rain in the summer is quite rare, but winters are very rainy. Snow is very rare. The Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the city is particularly cold year round. The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland creates the city's characteristic foggy weather that covers the western half of the city in fog all day during the summer and early fall, as well as the rest of the San Francisco metropolitan area as far as 35-50 miles inland in overcast and fog. Thus, the summer temperatures are significantly lower in San Francisco than in other parts of inland California. The fog is less pronounced during the months of September & October and during the late spring, which is generally the warmest, most summer-like months of the year. In January, morning lows average 46 °F (8 °C) and afternoon highs average 58 °F (14 °C). In August, lows average 56 °F (13 °C) and highs average 72 °F (22 °C). San Francisco receives an average of 22.28 inches (56.6 cm) of precipitation annually with July and August being almost completely free of precipitation. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city and county has a total area of 600.7 km² (231.9 mi²). 120.9 km² (46.7 mi²) of it is land and 479.7 km² (185.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 79.86% water. The city proper is often reputed to be roughly a seven mile square, and in fact is only slightly smaller. The geographical center of the city is on the east side of Grandview Avenue between Alvarado and Twenty-third Streets. mi²
Neighborhoods in San Francisco
mi² San Francisco has a Japantown and Chinatown; both are among the largest and oldest in the US. It also boasts a budding Vietnamese community in the Tenderloin neighborhood, Filipinos in Crocker-Amazon and South of Market, an Italian community in North Beach, a French Quarter, and Irish and Russian communities in the Richmond District. The predominantly Hispanic Mission District is the oldest neighborhood in the city, being the site of Mission Dolores, established in 1776. Russian Hill is a residential neighborhood most famous for Lombard Street "the crookedest street in the world". Haight-Ashbury gained prominence during the "Summer of Love" 1960s for its counter-culture and concentration of hippies. The Castro neighborhood has the world's highest concentration of homosexuals. In addition to the predominantly gay Castro, there are significant concentrations of gays in NoeValley, Diamond Heights, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, Haight-Ashbury, Hayes Valley, and SOMA. (See The Castro for more gay demographics.) The Castro") at Alamo Square]] Current demographic and land use expansion is concentrated in the east and south. The South of Market neighborhood was an epicenter of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. A new neighborhood, Mission Bay, is being redeveloped from an industrial area at the far eastern end of South of Market. The cornerstones of this development are the SBC Park baseball stadium and an extension of the University of California, San Francisco medical school.
Parks
The best-known, as well as biggest, park is Golden Gate Park which is 174 acres larger than New York's Central Park. Another notable park is The Presidio at the south edge of the Golden Gate. The Presidio is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Alcatraz, and many other large local parks. Buena Vista Park located in the Haight-Ashbury, is the city's oldest, established in 1867, nearby Alamo Square is famous for its views of the city and the famous Victorian houses known as the Painted Ladies. A large fresh-water lake, Lake Merced, is located in the south west corner of the city near San Francisco State University and Fort Funston. San Francisco also contains many public beaches such as Baker Beach and Ocean Beach.
Demographics
Ocean Beach, Richmond District, and in Chinatown.]] As of the census of 2000, there are 776,733 people, 329,700 households, and 145,068 families residing in the city. The population density is 6,423.2/km² (16,634.4/mi²), making it the second densest city of 500,000 or more, as well as the fifth densest county, in the country [http://gislounge.com/features/aa041101c.shtml]. . There are 346,527 housing units at an average density of 2,865.6/km² (7,421.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 49.66% White, 7.79% African American, 0.45% Native American, 30.84% Asian, 0.49% Pacific Islander, 6.48% from other races, and 4.28% from two or more races. 14.10% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. The ethnic makeup is 19.6% Chinese, 8.8% Irish, 7.7% German, and 6.1% English. San Francisco has the largest Chinese population in America and the largest Asian population outside of Hawaii. The City has the highest percentage of gay families (as well as a large numbers of single gay people) of any American county or large city. Gay men outnumber lesbians, who are more concentrated in the suburban East Bay. There are 329,700 households out of which 16.6% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.6% are married couples living together, 8.9% have a female head of household with no husband present, and 56.0% are non-families. 38.6% of all households are made up of individuals and 9.8% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.30 and the average family size is 3.22. In the city the population is spread out with 14.5% under the age of 18, 9.1% from 18 to 24, 40.5% from 25 to 44, 22.3% from 45 to 64, and 13.7% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 36 years. For every 100 females there are 103.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 103.1 males. The median income for a household in the city is $55,221, and the median income for a family is $63,545 one of the highest in the United States at 15th place overall and 3rd in a single large city. Males have a median income of $46,260 versus $40,049 for females. The per capita income for the city is $34,556 which is ranked as the 19th highest in the country. 11.3% of the population and 7.8% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 13.5% of those under the age of 18 and 10.5% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
Government and politics
As the official name implies, the City and County San Francisco is a metropolitan municipality, being simultaneously a charter city and charter county with a consolidated government. It is the only metropolitan municipality in California and the only California county with a mayor, who is also the county executive. San Francisco is the only California city with a board of supervisors, which is also the city council. San Francisco's unique status also makes it a municipal corporation and an administrative division of the state. It is in the latter capacity that San Francisco exercises jurisdiction over property that would otherwise be located outside of its corporation limit. San Francisco International Airport, for example, would be located within San Mateo County but for the fact it is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. Because counties are administrative divisions of the state, it is legally impossible for two counties to occupy or exercise jurisdiction over the same piece of land. Thus, the airport, which is about 15 miles south of mainland San Francisco, is legally part of San Francisco because the municipality owns it. San Francisco exercises jurisdiction over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed, in Yosemite National Park, pursuant to a perpetual leasehold granted by Act of Congress in 1913, the Raker Act. Under the current charter, the Government of San Francisco is constituted of two co-equal branches - the executive or administrative branch, which is headed by the mayor and includes other city-wide elected and appointed officials, and the civil service; and the legislative branch, which is constituted of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which exercises general oversight over all city and county functions. The mayor is elected every four years, in the odd-numbered year that precedes the U.S. presidential election. The current mayor, Gavin Newsom, was elected in December 2003 in a runoff competition against Matt Gonzalez (see also List of Mayors of San Francisco, California). Gonzalez was president of the Board of Supervisors, representing District 5, and Newsom was a member of the board representing District 2. If the mayor dies or resigns, the President of the Board of Supervisors assumes the office until a special election can be held. The eleven members of the Board of Supervisors (as of January 2005) are listed in the table at right by district number[http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=4385]. The current president of the Board is Aaron Peskin, who represents District 3. How the Board of Supervisors shall be elected has been a bone of contention in recent San Francisco history. Throughout the United States, almost all cities and counties with populations in excess of 20,000 divide the jurisdiction into electoral districts (in cities, often called "wards") to ensure proportionate representation of the whole community and to evenly distribute the community interaction workload evenly among the members of the governing body (city council, county board of supervisors, etc.) But California has always been disinclined to follow examples set by the rest of the country; and San Francisco, notwithstanding a population of 0.7 million, has been no exception. Prior to 1977 and again from 1980 through 2000, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was elected at-large. All candidates appeared together on the ballot. The person who received the most votes was elected President of the Board of Supervisors, and the next ten were elected to seats on the board. The first district-based elections in 1977 resulted in a radical change to the composition of the Board, including the election of Harvey Milk, only the third openly gay or lesbian individual (and the first who was male) elected to public office in the United States. Following the assassinations of Supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone a year later, by Supervisor Dan White who had just resigned, district elections were deemed divisive and San Francisco returned to at-large elections until the current system was implemented in 2000. Under the current system, Supervisors are elected by district to four-year terms. The terms are staggered so that only half the board is elected every two years, thereby providing continuity. Supervisors representing odd-numbered districts (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11) are elected every fourth year counted from 2000 (so, 2000, 2004, 2008, etc.). Supervisors representing even-numbered districts (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10) were elected to transitional two-year terms in 2000, thereafter to be elected every fourth year (2002, 2006, 2010, etc.). The President of the Board of Supervisors, under the new system, is elected by the members of the Board from among their number. This is done by secret ballot, typically at the first meeting of the new session commencing after the general election. The Mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors are subject to term limits under the San Francisco Charter. None may serve more than two consecutive terms. As part of the change to district elections, however, this provision applies to supervisors only as of the first full term of election following its implementation in 2000. Thus, Tom Ammiano, who was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1994 and 1998 under the old system, then again in 2000 under the new system, was able to run yet again in 2004 (and won). A single vote transfer system of elections was approved by the electorate and implemented in time for the 2004 general election. This system replaced the old, expensive system of run-off elections. Under this new ranked-choice system, whenever there are more than two candidates for an office, voters rank their choices in order of preference. If a candidate does not achieve a majority of votes cast when the first choice votes are counted, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and the second choice votes on those ballots are tabulated and "transferred" to the remaining candidates. The process continues, as necessary, until one candidate achieves a majority of votes cast and is then declared the winner. Eyed warily by some and optimistically by others - in both cases owing to the belief that single-transfer voting might favour so-called "progressive" and "minority party" candidates over so-called "conservative" and "mainstream party" candidates - the 2004 general election results showed that belief to be unfounded, as all incumbent Supervisors were returned to office. Vacancies on the Board of Supervisors are filled by mayoral appointment, subject to special election (except as the Charter permits an appointee to remain in office until the general election for the seat is held). A person appointed or elected to fill a vacancy of less than two years is not deemed to have served a full term for purposes of term limits, whereas a person who fills a vacancy with more than two years remaining in the term is deemed to serve a full term and will be able to run for a consecutive term only once. The Mayor's 2005-2006 proposed budget forecasts general fund expenditures of $2.44 billion. As the largest city on the west coast before World War I, San Francisco became and remains the legal hub for the western United States. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and the Federal District Court for Northern California are headquartered in San Francisco. The Supreme Court of California is also headquartered in San Francisco, making The City the de facto judicial capital of the state. California is the only U.S. jurisdiction whose highest court and judicial seat is not in the official state or territorial capital. The California Supreme Court also maintains branch offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento. In addition, the city is the seat of the First Appellate District of the State Courts of Appeals and the San Francisco County Superior Court.
City flag
The flag depicts a rising Phoenix, symbolic of the City's recovery from the 1906 fire. Underneath the phoenix it has a motto written in Spanish: "Oro en Paz, Fierro en Guerra," which translates into: "Gold in Peace, Iron in War."
City seal
The seal, which was adopted in the 1850s, depicts two working men, on one side a miner and on the other a sailor with a sextant. Above is a rising phoenix and behind is the bay with sailing ships. The Phoenix symbolizes the city's emergence from the ashes of several devastating fires in the early 1850's.
Economy
Because of the California gold rush, San Francisco became and remains the banking and financial center of the U.S. West Coast. It is the home of the twelfth district of the U.S. Federal Reserve as well as major production facilities for the U.S. Mint. The Pacific Exchange is located in the financial district. Many major American and international banks and venture capital firms have all set up their regional headquarters in the city. Fortune 500 rankings indicated in parenthesis. Companies headquartered in San Francisco are: Companies headquartered near San Francisco include:
Education
The city is served by San Francisco Unified School District. Despite its limited geographical space, San Francisco is home to a multitude of Universities and Colleges. Public universities include:
- University of California, San Francisco, primarily a Medical School, located north of Forest Hill
- San Francisco State University located in the southwest corner of the city near Lake Merced
- University of California, Hastings College of the Law located downtown at its Civic Center
- City College of San Francisco, one of the largest community colleges in the country is located in the Ingleside, with several extension campuses. Private universities:
- The Jesuit-run University of San Francisco, one of the first universities established west of the Mississippi, located in the center of the city
- Golden Gate University, a business and law school located downtown
- modulation which represents information as variations in the instantaneous frequency of a carrier wave. (Contrast this with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant.) In analog applications, the carrier frequency is varied in direct proportion to changes in the amplitude of an input signal. Digital data can be represented by shifting the carrier frequency among a set of discrete values, a technique known as frequency-shift keying. FM is commonly used at VHF radio frequencies for high-fidelity broadcasts of music and speech (see FM broadcasting). Normal (analog) TV sound is also broadcast using FM. A narrowband form is used for voice communications in commercial and amateur radio settings. The type of FM used in broadcast is generally called wide-FM, or W-FM. In two-way radio, narrowband narrow-fm (N-FM) is used to conserve bandwidth. In addition, it is used to send signals into space. FM is also used at intermediate frequencies by most analog VCR systems, including VHS, to record the luminance (black and white) portion of the video signal. FM is the only feasible method of recording to and retrieving from magnetic tape without extreme distortion, as video signals have a very large range of frequency components -- from a few hertz to several megahertz. FM is also used at audio frequencies to synthesize sound. This technique, known as FM synthesis, was popularized by early digital synthesizers and became a standard feature for several generations of personal computer sound cards.
Applications in radio
sound card Edwin Armstrong presented his paper: [https://michael.industrynumbers.com/fm.pdf "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation"], which first described FM radio, before the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers on November 6, 1935. Frequency modulation requires a wider bandwidth than amplitude modulation by an equivalent modulating signal, but this also makes the signal more robust against interference. Frequency modulation is also more robust against simple signal amplitude fading phenomena. As a result, FM was chosen as the modulation standard for high frequency, high fidelity radio transmission: hence the term "FM radio" (although for many years the BBC insisted on calling it "VHF radio", which is quite logical, since commercial FM broadcasting uses a well-known part of the VHF band; in certain countries, expressions referencing the more familiar wavelength notion are still used in place of the somewhat mysterious modulation technique name). FM receivers inherently exhibit a phenomenon called capture, where the tuner is able to clearly receive the stronger of two stations being broadcast on the same frequency. Problematically, however, frequency drift or lack of selectivity may cause one station or signal to be suddenly overtaken by another on an adjacent channel. Frequency drift typically constituted a problem on very old or inexpensive receivers, while inadequate selectivity may plague any tuner. An FM signal can also be used to carry a stereo signal: see FM stereo. However, this is done by using multiplexing and demultiplexing before and after the FM process, and is not part of FM proper. The rest of this article ignores the stereo multiplexing and demultiplexing process used in "stereo FM", and concentrates on the FM modulation and demodulation process, which is identical in stereo and mono processes.
Theory
If the signal to be transmitted is : $x_m(t)\,$ which is restricted in amplitude to be : $\left| x_m(t) \right| \le 1 \,$ and the sinusoidal carrier is : $x_c(t) = A \cos (2 \pi f_c t)\,$ where f_c is the carrier's base frequency in hertz and A is an arbitrary amplitude, the carrier will be modulated by the signal as in : $x_c(t) = A \cos \left( 2 \pi \int_^ f(\tau)\, d \tau \right) = A \cos \left( 2 \pi \int_^ \left[ f_c + f_\Delta x_m(\tau) \right] \, d \tau \right)$ :where, $f(t) = f_c + f_\Delta x_m(t)$ In this equation, f(t) is the instantaneous frequency of the oscillator and f_Δ is the frequency deviation, which represents the maximum shift away from f_c in one direction, assuming x_m(t) is limited to the range ±1. Although it may seem that this limits the frequencies in use to f_c ± f_Δ, this neglects the distinction between instantaneous frequency and spectral frequency. The frequency spectrum of an actual FM signal has components extending out to infinite frequency, although they become negligibly small beyond a point. For a simplified case, the harmonic distribution of a sine wave signal modulated by another sine wave signal can be represented with Bessel functions - this provides a basis for a mathematical understanding of frequency modulation in the frequency domain. A rule of thumb, Carson's rule states that nearly all the power of a frequency modulated signal lies within a bandwidth of : $2(f_\Delta +f_m)\,$ where f_Δ is the peak deviation of the instantaneous frequency f(t) from the center carrier frequency f_c (assuming x_m(t) is in the range ±1) and f_m is the highest modulating frequency of x_m(t). Note that frequency modulation can be regarded as a special case of phase modulation where the carrier phase modulation is the time integral of the FM modulating signal. Frequency-shift keying refers to the simple case of frequency modulation by a simple signal with only discrete states, such as in Morse code or radio-teletype applications. Manchester encoding may be regarded as a simple version of frequency shift keying, where the high and low frequencies are respectively double and the same as the bit rate, and the bit transitions are synchronous with carrier transitions. When used in supervisory signaling in telephony, the term frequency-change signaling has been used to describe frequency modulation. The phrase frequency-modulated, an adjective, should have a hyphen when used attributively.
Modulation Index
As with other modulation indices, in AM this quantity indicates by how much the modulated variable varies around its unmodulated level. For FM, it relates to the variations in the frequency of the carrier signal: : $h = \frac = \frac \$ With a tone-modulated FM wave, if the modulation frequency is held constant and the modulation index is increased, the (non-negligible) bandwidth of the FM signal increases, but the spacing between spectra stays the same. If the frequency deviation is held constant and the modulation index increased, the bandwidth stays roughly the same, but the spacing between spectra decreases.
See also

- Frequency modulation synthesis (FM as an audio synthesis method)
- Modulation index
- Modulation, for a list of other modulation techniques
- History of radio
External links

- http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/frequency_modulation.htm
- http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/es310/FM.htm Category:Radio modulation modes ko:주파수 변조 ja:周波数変調

San Francisco Bay Area

]] The San Francisco Bay Area, referred to locally as The Bay Area, is the metropolitan area that surrounds San Francisco Bay in northern California. Home to more than 7 million people, it is composed of cities, towns, villages, military bases, airports, and regional, state, and national parks sprawled over nine counties, connected by a massive network of roads, highways, rail, and commuter rail. Because San Francisco was the largest city in the region (it was surpassed by San Jose in the 1990 census) and remains the traditional and cultural center, the region is often identified by outsiders with the city of San Francisco proper. However, San Francisco has only 11% of the Bay Area's population. The Bay Area also differs from most other metropolitan areas in that, instead of having a single urban center surrounded by dependent suburbs, its population is distributed across several regional urban and suburban centers. Realizing the independent and relatively 'Balkanized' nature of the region, it is referred to as the "Bay Area" instead by its residents. Ultimately, the city of San Francisco with Oakland and San Jose comprises the fifth largest metropolitan area in the United States, after New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C.-Baltimore.

The region

Washington, D.C.-Baltimore Washington, D.C.-Baltimore
- The City and County of San Francisco is generally placed in a category by itself geographically, mentally, and culturally. It is separated by water from the north and east, and by a county line from its neighbor cities to the South. San Francisco serves as the cultural and financial center of the region, and once was the population and economic center.
- The eastern side of the bay, dominated by the city of Oakland but also including Fremont, Livermore, Hayward and several small cities, is known as the East Bay. The East Bay is split into two regions, the inner East Bay, which sits on the Bay coastline, and the outer East Bay, consisting of inland valleys separated from the inner East Bay by hills and mountains.
- The inner East Bay consists of Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Berkeley, and smaller suburbs surrounding or surrounded by these four major cities, such as Emeryville, San Leandro, and Richmond. The inner East Bay is more urban, more densely populated, has a much older building stock (built before World War II) and a more ethnically diverse population. Oakland is the region's chief seaport. The East Bay regional basketball, football, and baseball teams play from Oakland.
- The outer East Bay consists of the cities of Walnut Creek, Concord, and Antioch, to the north (also referred as Central Contra Costa County) and the cities of Dublin, Livermore, Danville, San Ramon to the south (sometimes referred to as the Livermore-Amador Valley or the Tri-Valley), as well as other smaller towns, such as Alamo and Orinda. They are connected to the inner East Bay by BART and by highways and the Caldecott Tunnel. The outer East Bay is mostly suburban to rural and was mostly built after World War II.
- The communities along the southern edge of the Bay are known as the South Bay and Silicon Valley, although some Peninsula and East Bay towns are sometimes included in the latter. It includes the city of San Jose, and its smaller neighbors including Gilroy and the high-tech hubs of Santa Clara, Cupertino and Sunnyvale, as well as many other suburbs. A booming Silicon Valley has shifted the regional population and economic center away from San Francisco and Oakland and towards the South Bay; San Jose is now the largest city in the region. The technology boom has also brought large numbers of immigrants and driven housing and rent prices to the highest in the nation.
- The area between the South Bay and the City and County of San Francisco is known as the San Francisco Peninsula, locally just as The Peninsula. This area consists of a series of small cities and suburban communities along the Bay such as Palo Alto and Stanford University, San Mateo, and Foster City, as well as various towns along the Pacific coast, such as Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. Because of the influence of Stanford University, lack of space, and high cost of living, Silicon Valley has been slowly creeping up the peninsula.
- The region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known as the North Bay. This area consists of Marin County and extends northward into Napa, Sonoma County and eastward to Solano County. With some exceptions, this region is extremely affluent, and is generally the least urbanized part of the Bay Area, with many areas of undeveloped park and farm land. It is the only section of the Bay Area that is not served by a commuter rail transit service, though Sonoma-Marin service has entered the planning phase.

The wealthiest region in the nation

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the wealthiest regions in the United States. According to the United States Census Bureau, of the 280 defined metropolitan areas, the San Francisco Bay Area has the highest median household income in the nation with $62,024. Washington-Baltimore Metro, Anchorage, Alaska, Minneapolis-St. Paul (Twin Cities), and Greater Boston make up the rest of the top 5. Six of the top ten California places with the highest per capita income are in the San Francisco Bay Area:
- 1. Belvedere, California $113,595
- 3. Atherton, California $112,408
- 5. Woodside, California $104,667
- 6. Portola Valley, California $99,621
- 8. Hillsborough, California $98,643
- 9. Diablo, California $95,419 Of the 100 highest income counties by per capita income in the United States, (richest counties), six are in the San Francisco Bay Area:
- 1. Marin County, California $44,962
- 14. San Mateo County, California $36,045
- 19. San Francisco County, California $34,556
- 25. Santa Clara County, California $32,795
- 45. Contra Costa County, California $30,615
- 96. Alameda County, California $26,680 Of the top highest income counties by personal per capita income, five San Francisco Bay Area Counties made the top 50:
- 3. Marin County, California $67,710
- 7. San Mateo County, California $58,913
- 10. San Francisco County, California $55,735
- 12. Santa Clara County, California $54,188
- 32. Contra Costa County, California $44,484 Of the top 100 highest income counties by median household income, eight California Counties made the list, and half of those are in the San Francisco Bay Area:
- 9. Santa Clara County, California $74,335
- 14. Marin County, California $71,306
- 18. San Mateo County, California $70,819
- 45. Contra Costa County, California $63,675 According to Forbes Magazine, published in 2005, 29 out of the top 50 most expensive Zip Codes are located in California, of which 12 are in the Bay Area. The dollar figures are denoted by median home sale price in 2004:
- 1. 94027 Atherton, CA $2,496,553
- 6. 94957 Ross, CA $1,910,263
- 18. 94528 Diablo, CA $1,452,500
- 19. 94920 Belvedere Tiburon, CA $1,421,336
- 20. 94022 Los Altos, CA $1,392,522
- 23. 94946 Nicasio, CA $1,370,000
- 27. 94028 Portola Valley, CA $1,316,417
- 29. 94024 Los Altos, CA $1,306,432
- 31. 95030 Los Gatos, CA $1,278,645
- 37. 94123 San Francisco, CA $1,183,307
- 40. 94010 San Francisco, CA $1,152,066

Weather

Because the hills, mountains, and large bodies of water produce such vast geographic diversity within this region, the Bay Area offers a significant variety of microclimates. The areas near the Pacific Ocean are generally characterized by relatively small temperature variations during the year, with cool foggy summers and mild rainy winters. Inland areas, especially those separated from the ocean by hills or mountains, have hotter summers and colder overnight temperatures during the winter, with an occasional snowfall dusting the highest peaks (including Mount St. Helena, Mount Hamilton, Mount Diablo, Mount Tamalpais). The Bay Area is generally subdivided into several smaller subregions.

Transportation

Airports

- San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
- :The largest and oldest airport in the region, and a major international hub airport in California second only to LAX (Los Angeles).
- Oakland International Airport (OAK)
- :The second largest airport in the region and a hub for mostly low-cost domestic flights.
- Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
- :The smallest of the major airports. Undergoing a major expansion and renovation to handle more major flights.

Public transportation

Bus

Numerous and often overlapping bus transit agencies service the area: see Muni, AC Transit, SamTrans, VTA, County Connection and Golden Gate Transit

Light rail

Muni and VTA also operate light rail networks.

Mass transit

The Bay Area is served by a number of mass transit systems:
- Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) - A subway/commuter rail service that serves parts of the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont, and Walnut Creek. It has a direct connection to San Francisco's airport while a direct connection to Oakland's airport is in the planning stages.
- Caltrain - A commuter rail service that connects San Jose and cities along the Peninsula with San Francisco, California, and with the BART system by way of the Millbrae Transit Station.
- Amtrak - There are several Amtrak stations throughout the Bay Area. Major stations in Martinez and Emeryville feature Coast Starlight and California Zephyr service. The Starlight also services Oakland and San Jose. The Capitol Corridor connects Bay Area cities to Sacramento, and features BART transfer stations at Richmond and the Oakland Coliseum.
- ACE - Altamont Commuter Express; a rail service that mainly serves commuters to and from the Central Valley to the Silicon Valley. It travels from Stockton through Pleasanton, Fremont, Santa Clara, and ends at San Jose. It operates only during commute hours on weekdays.

Ferries

Public ferry services cross the bay to serve both commuters and leisure travelers. Operators include Golden Gate Transit, Blue and Gold Fleet, and Red and White.

Freeways and highways

Red and White and the East Bay.]] Red and White as the Eastshore Freeway). This section of freeway is among the busiest in the region, carrying a peak average of roughly 300,000 cars per day.]] The Bay Area possesses an extensive freeway and highway system. ;Trans-bay crossings
- Interstate 80 - The western terminus of I-80 is located in San Francisco, just west of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The interstate continues to the east, connecting to Oakland and the north coast of the East Bay, and then on to Sacramento, Reno, and New Jersey.
- Interstate 580 - This spur route's western terminus is in Marin County. The Interstate crosses the San Pablo Bay over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, passes through Oakland, then continues to Livermore, through the Altamont Pass to Tracy, where it intersects with Interstate 5.
- California State Route 92 - CA-92's western terminus is in Half Moon Bay. The two-lane highway crosses the Santa Cruz Mountains, connecting to Interstate 280 and U.S. Highway 101, becoming a freeway as it passes through San Mateo before crossing the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge to Hayward.
- California State Route 84 - CA-84 begins at the Pacific Coast near San Gregorio State Beach, and crosses the Santa Cruz Mountains on a scenic route between La Honda and Woodside. It then crosses the Bay over the Dumbarton Bridge from Redwood City to Newark. The route then passes through Fremont, continuing as Niles Canyon Road to Sunol and Livermore. ;The Peninsula to the South Bay
- Interstate 280 and U.S. Highway 101 - Eight-lane and, in some parts, 10-lane freeways connecting San Francisco to San Jose, passing through the Peninsula. Highway 101 continues south to Gilroy and Salinas, California, before continuing to Los Angeles. For most of its route I-280 runs along the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and is very scenic, while 101 is highly urban and is locally known as "the world's longest parking lot."
- California State Routes 1 and 35 - Two-lane highways also traveling down the Peninsula, CA-1 along the Pacific coast, and CA-35 near the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. CA-1 connects to Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, before continuing to Los Angeles.
- California State Routes 17 and 9 - Highways through the Santa Cruz Mountains, connecting the South Bay to Santa Cruz. Part of CA-17 in San Jose is an 8 lane freeway.
- California Routes 237 and 85 - Freeways connecting the west Santa Clara Valley to the east Santa Clara Valley, bypassing Downtown San Jose.
- California State Route 87 - North-south freeway entirely in San Jose, connecting Downtown to the Almaden Valley.
- California State Route 152 - Two-lane highway from Watsonville, crosses the Santa Cruz Mountains to Gilroy, then crosses the Diablo Range through Pacheco Pass to I-5 near Los Banos.
- California State Route 82 - Highway running from San Jose to Interstate 280 in San Francisco. It is designated a State Route, although it is more similar to an inner-city boulevard, and contains either 2, 4, or 6 lanes. Through much of the San Mateo County, it is also known as El Camino Real. It runs from Daly City in the north through the Peninsula and beyond.
- The freeway system in Santa Clara county is augmented by its expressway system. ;North Bay
- US-101 and CA-1 - Continue north of San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and connecting San Francisco to Marin and Sonoma counties, and eventually to Oregon.
- California State Route 29 - Four-lane expressway connecting Interstate 80 in Vallejo in Solano County to the towns of American Canyon and Napa. North of Napa, SR-29 is a two-lane rural highway through the towns of the Napa Valley, California's Wine Country, to Clear Lake.
- California State Route 37 - Four- and two-lane expressway connecting US-101 in Novato with Interstate 80 in Vallejo, along the northern shore of San Pablo Bay.
- California State Route 12 - A highway connecting Santa Rosa with suburbs to the east and west. ;East Bay
- Interstates 880 and 680 travel up the East Bay from San Jose, 880 close to the bay to Oakland, and 680 inland from San Jose north through Fremont, Pleasanton and Concord; then crosses the Benicia-Martinez bridge and ends at Interstate 80 in Fairfield.
- Interstate 980 is entirely in Downtown Oakland and begins at Interstate 880 and travels north to become California State Route 24 at Interstate 580.
- California State Route 13, or the Warren Freeway, is entirely in the Oakland Hills and travels north from Interstate 580 to California State Route 24, where the freeway portion ends. Beyond SR 24, SR 13 is Berkeley's Ashby Avenue.
- California State Route 24 begins at Interstate 580 in Oakland and travels east through the Caldecott Tunnel to Interstate 680 in Walnut Creek.
- California State Route 238/Interstate 238 (Mission Boulevard) is an arterial from Fremont to Hayward, along the base of the hills, then becomes a freeway near Oakland.
- California State Route 4 - Western terminus at Interstate 80 in Hercules, travels east through Martinez, Pittsburg, and Antioch, where the freeway portion ends. The highway continues to Brentwood and east to Stockton.

Bridges

Due to the central location of the San Francisco Bay, several bridges cross the Bay or Bay tributaries.
- The Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco with Marin County
- The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
- The San Mateo-Hayward Bridge
- The Dumbarton Bridge, connecting Menlo Park in San Mateo County with Fremont in Alameda County
- The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
- The Carquinez Bridge, connecting Vallejo in Solano County with Crockett in Contra Costa County
- The Benicia-Martinez Bridge, connecting Solano and Contra Costa Counties
- The Antioch Bridge, connecting Antioch in Contra Costa County with Sacramento County

Universities & colleges

The region is home to several universities and seminaries, most notably the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. Most studies rank the San Francisco Bay Area population at or near the top in the Nation for overall education level. (The other two candidates would be Greater Boston and Washington D.C.)

Religious Life

The San Francisco Bay Area has a very diverse religious life with thousands of churches, mosques, temples, and religious centers. The Bay Area is home to Budhist, Sikh, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Shiite-Muslim [http://www.basma.us], Sunni-Muslim, and numerous other religious communities.

Sports

Regional counties, cities and suburbs

The following lists are based on the ten-county definition of the Bay Area. Cities in bold serve as county seat. Those places listed in italics would be excluded by the nine-county definition that excludes Santa Cruz County.

Counties

Cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants

- San Francisco
- San Jose

Cities with 100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants

Suburbs with 10,000 to 100,000 inhabitants

Suburbs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants

;A through La

Continued...

;L through Y

External links

-
- [http://www.bayareaexperiences.com Bay Area Experiences.com] Community-built site with fun, non-touristy things to do in San Francisco and surrounding areas.
- [http://www.basma.us Bay Area Shiite-Muslims Association] Meet the Bay Area Shia Category:Geography of California Category:Metropolitan areas of the United States
- ja:ベイエリア (サンフランシスコ湾)

Webcast

A webcast is similar in intent to a broadcast television program but designed for internet transmission. Webcast clients allow a user to connect to a server, which is distributing (webcasting) the webcast, and displays the televisual content to the user. Initially webcasts were non interactive, in other words, the user was not able to alter the content of the webcast or to interact with the subjects of the webcast. For the most part they were also hosted live (with recordings retained for later dissemination), however more recently there has been greater overlap between video conferencing and webcasting such that webcasts have been generally consigned to being recordings of video conferences and training material where there is much less demand for an interactive session. A notable webcast took place in September 1999 to launch NetAid, a project to promote internet use in the world's poorest countries. Three high profile concerts were to be broadcast simultaneously on the BBC, MTV and over the internet; a London concert at Wembley Stadium featuring the likes of Robbie Williams, George Michael; a New York concert featuring Bono of U2 and Wyclef Jean; a Geneva concert. More recently, Live8 (AOL) claimed around 170,000 concurrent viewers (up to 400 Kbit/s) and the BBC received about the same (10 Gbit/s) on the day of the 7 July 2005 bombings in London. The growth of webcast traffic has roughly doubled, year on year, since 1995 and it directly linked to broadband penetration. On July 26-29, 2004, the Democratic National Convention in Boston gave 40,000 potential voters the chance to interact with and ask questions of politicians, convention delegates, and media personalities.

External links

- [http://www.webcasters.org/ IWA] (The International Webcasting Association, founded 1996)
- [http://www.nab.org NAB] (National Association of Broadcasters - USA)
- [http://dowire.org/wiki/Webcasting_exchange Webcasting Exchange] - Short articles on webcasting
- [http://www.lionhardt.ca/wps/ How to create WebCasts] (Software and articles on Web & Podcasting)
- [http://www.istreamplanet.com/managed_webcasting/ Webcasting in Convention Markets] - Growth of webcasting in convention market Category:Internet radio ja:インターネットテレビ

San Francisco Unified School District

San Francisco Unified School District, was California's first public school district when it was established in 1851. It currently serves over 60,000 students in more than 160 institutions. It is the only public school district in the City and County of San Francisco.

Schools

Secondary schools

Continuation schools

- Downtown Continuation
- Ida B. Wells Continuation

High schools

Comprehensive schools
- Balboa High School
- Galileo Academy of Science and Technology
- Abraham Lincoln High School
- Mission High School
- Washington High School Alternative schools
- School of the Arts Alternative
- Philip & Sala Burton Academic Alternative
- Hilltop School
- Independence High School
- International Studies Academy Alternative
- June Jordan School for Equity
- Leadership Charter School
- Life Learning Academy
- Lowell High School (Academic)
- Thurgood Marshall Academic Alternative
- Newcomer High School
- John O'Connell Technical Alternative
- Raoul Wallenberg Alternative High School

Middle schools

Traditional
- Aptos Middle School
- Luther Burbank Middle School
- Benjamin Franklin Middle School
- James Denman Middle School
- Everett Middle School
- Francisco Middle School
- A.P. Giannini Middle School
- Herbert Hoover Middle School
- James Lick Middle School
- Marina Middle School
- Enola Maxwell Middle School
- Presidio Middle School
- Roosevelt Middle School
- Visitacion Valley Middle School Alternative
- Gloria R. Davis Alternative School
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Alternative
- Horace Mann Alternative

K-8 schools

Traditional
- Treasure Island K-8 School Alternative
- 21st Century Academy K-8
- Creative Arts Charter K-8
- Lawton Alternative K-8

3-8 schools

Alternative
- Claire Lillienthal Alternative

External links

- [http://portal.sfusd.edu/ San Francisco County Unified School District] Category:School districts in California Category:San Francisco, California

Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is a regional public radio network based in the U.S. state of Minnesota that has been broadcasting since 1967. The network includes more than 50 FM transmitters ranging from low-power translators in small and hard-to-reach areas up to full-power stations serving large markets. The organization provides receive three different services in the state: "news and information," classical music, and another "eclectic" music service known as "The Current" that plays selections from a broad range of musical genres. The main studios for MPR are located in St. Paul, Minnesota. MPR is affiliated with the National Public Radio network, but also uses content from Public Radio International. Through its production and distribution arm of American Public Media, MPR produces a host of programs for national distribution. Included is the signature show A Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor. Following a 2004 decision to distribute programming itself, Minnesota Public Radio is now the second-most powerful public radio organization in the United States behind NPR, though the network is still in close contention with PRI for the spot (PRI produces a higher number of programs, but American Public Media shows have higher listenership).

Services

Minnesota Public Radio began by broadcasting a mix of talk and music programming. Two dozen years later, a split was made where listeners had a choice between talk programs and classical programming (although one station in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan carries a mixture of those two services). A recent acquisition of a third powerful s