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Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012. "That date has not one stitch of biblical authority," Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. "It's like a fairy tale." The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011. The Mayans and the recent Hollywood movie "2012" have put the apocalypse in the popular mind this year, but Camping has been at this business for a long time.

A humpback whale freed by divers from a tangle of crab trap lines near the Farallon Islands nudged its rescuers and flapped around in what marine experts said was a rare and remarkable encounter. "It felt to me like it was thanking us knowing that it was free and that we had helped it" James Moskito one of the rescue divers said Tuesday. "It stopped about a foot away from me pushed me around a little bit and had some fun." Sunday's daring rescue was the first successful attempt on the West Coast to free an entangled humpback said Shelbi Stoudt stranding manager for the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County.

Several years ago I heard about this book by some porn star that was yet to be written: It was "How to Make Love Like A Porn Star" by Jenna Jameson. The brainchild of Judith Regan and Jameson, the book was, at first, going to be a sex guide from the most famous porn star in the whole wide world. A big hit, for sure. At the time, I worked closely with a number of other sex educators and sexologists, and we all felt the pain when the book was announced. Here was yet another porn performer, one of those who do athletic and unsafe sex for a living, telling the world to use spit instead of lube (which Jameson did, notoriously)

In collaboration with Rotten Tomatoes and its parent company, Flixster, The Chronicle presents the critical consensus of the Coen brothers' best-reviewed films. Their latest film, "True Grit," is now showing at Bay Area theaters. (The figure is the percentage of critics who have rated the film positively, based on reviews listed at rottentomatoes.com.) No Country for Old Men (2007) 95% This Western-style crime thriller that won Academy Awards for best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor (Javier Bardem)

The federal debt of almost $14 trillion is currently about $45,000 for every person in the United states. Civic discourse about cutting taxes or public services, who should pay and who should get, has been divisive, adversarial, vehement and less productive than ever. I would like to propose a solution. We were delivered "The Moment of Truth" from the nonpartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last month. This presidential commission proposes to achieve "nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020, more than any effort in the nation's history" while reducing "the deficit to 2.3 percent of GDP by 2015" (it stands at 8 percent)

Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand. " All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery.

When Jim Harbaugh and Pete Carroll met at midfield after Stanford completed its 55-21 defenestration of USC here Saturday, their conversation was brief, pointed and seemingly unsatisfying. "What's your deal? What's your deal?" Carroll said, according to two sources near enough to hear. "What's your deal?" Harbaugh retorted, and that was that. Now there's the brevity of wit for you. It is also evidence of what will be a lingering dislike-a-thon between the two men, punctuated by Harbaugh's impish yet gratuitous two-point conversion attempt after Stanford's seventh - yes, seventh - touchdown.

Fourteen years ago, a Castro Valley woman found herself stuck in the same snowy predicament as the Kim family. And Jennifer Stolpa remembers that she and her husband, James, wrestled with the same tough decision -- stay with the car, or set off on foot to seek help. The experts all say to stay with the car. But, said Stolpa, if her husband had not wandered 50 miles to find help, the family might never have been rescued from their eight-day ordeal in the high desert of northern Nevada.

The Loving Dead, by Amelia Beamer (Nightshades Books; $14.95). In Beamer's first novel, the undead uprising finally comes to our own East Bay. When their house party in the Oakland Hills is interrupted by a couple of flesh-chomping zombies, Trader Joe's co-workers Kate and Michael don't really have the presence of mind to engage the threat effectively. "The Loving Dead" is funny, profane and more than a little bit squicky, a worthwhile and perceptive addition to a literary fad that won't seem to lie down and stay dead.

I first met Penny Flame in a high-priced hotel room at the InterContinental, when she was staying in San Francisco, appearing as a star in promotion of her (then) new film, Chemistry #4. I recorded a long interview with Penny then met her, Tristan Taormino , Susie Bright and others for a post-appearance dinner. Flame was hard-edged but funny and kind; full of stories and humor about her job and the world. Later, she performed in many more films, becoming a true star and a force to be reckoned with in the world of mainstream porn, and directed a female-centered series of hardcore sex-ed videos.

I avoid bad movies like germs. If I'm not working, and if I think a movie might be bad, I'll no sooner touch it than I would a toilet seat in a bus station restroom. But I actually know a guy - nice guy - who has a mellow attitude toward bad movies. He says, "What's the worst thing that can happen? So I watch a bad movie, big deal. " This fascinates me. I have never once considered thinking this way, any more than I've ever considered becoming a samurai. So there are two attitudes here, and I invite you to choose between them, because it will affect how you receive this year's list of the worst movies.

The effort to boost the pensions of the University of California's highest paid executives is about what's best for their families and the university's integrity, UC Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley said Thursday. Edley, a leader of the effort, brushed off criticism being heaped upon him and dozens of other University of California executives who are threatening to sue unless UC dramatically raises their pensions as they believe was promised by the regents years ago. "I accept the criticism of me personally for insisting that UC stick to a promise that is financially important to my family," Edley told The Chronicle, offering the first public remarks by any of the executives since the paper broke the story earlier this week.

Q: We would like to hang pictures, some of them rather large, on a plaster wall. Can you tell us the best way to do this? We are afraid of cracking the plaster. A: With proper technique, hanging pictures on a lath-and-plaster wall isn't a problem. If the pictures are small and equipped with a wire on the back, use a small picture hook and nail. To install small picture hooks all you need is a hammer. Gently tap the nail provided with the hook diagonally into the wall using the hook itself as a guide.

If it wasn't for Joel Davis, Richard Hirschfield might be a free man, out on the streets, not locked up in the Sacramento County Main Jail awaiting trial for murder with special circumstances. Davis is not a cop or a lawyer or a private investigator. He's a 43-year-old reporter with the shakes and a lumbering gait from premature Parkinson's. On disability and unable to work full time, he decided to write a book about the most shocking unsolved murder in his hometown, Davis. Then, during five years of digging, he got sucked in and became part of the story.

Three dozen of the University of California's highest-paid executives are threatening to sue unless UC agrees to spend tens of millions of dollars to dramatically increase retirement benefits for employees earning more than $245,000. "We believe it is the University's legal, moral and ethical obligation" to increase the benefits, the executives wrote the Board of Regents in a Dec. 9 letter and position paper obtained by The Chronicle. "Failure to do so will likely result in a costly and unsuccessful legal confrontation," they wrote, using capital letters to emphasize that they were writing "URGENTLY.

It seemed like the perfect event for a girl like me: the Castro Theatre, approximately 1,600 hot men in Armani and Prada, and possibly five other women in the whole packed house. Kathy Griffin, one of those five women and the host of last Saturday's 2007 GayVN Awards (a.k.a. the "gay-porn Oscars") was clearly feeling the same way. In her opening monologue she exclaimed, "Someone pinch me on the nipple. I hope I never have to wake up." I was in total agreement -- We were the few!

Navigating past the junkies and hustlers in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, You Mi Kim found the metal security door she was looking for, and pressed the buzzer. Inside Sun Spa massage parlor, the manager saw You Mi on the surveillance camera and threw some sea salt over the threshold -- a Korean practice to ward off bad luck. It was July 2003. It had been five months since You Mi was lured from her home in South Korea by international sex traffickers, who had tricked the debt-ridden college student with promises of a high-paying hostess job in America.

Disproportionate to their football success or lack of same Cal and Stanford consistently have produced outstanding quarterbacks. The sport's tradition at both schools is characterized by flashes of glory interrupted by decades of frustration. Still the QBs keep coming: Plunkett Morton Albert Kapp Elway Pawlawski. For followers of local college football first names are not necessary when it comes to the men who have ahem passed through the local scene. Going into this year when Aaron Rodgers at Cal and Trent Edwards at Stanford seem poised to add their surnames to the ledger The Chronicle thought it would be fun to rate the top 10 QBs at each school.