Crosses

It used to be that a peach was a peach and a plum was a plum, and that was it. Now, however, breeders are coming up with complex hybrids between species, such as fruits that are a combination of peaches, apricots and plums, and cherries or nectarines and plums. Making these kinds of interspecific crosses opens up a promising range of possibilities for growers and consumers, but what to call the resulting fruits? No one really knows. We're in the initial stages of a paradigm shift in which names of fruit types are becoming unmoored from their genetics and are being chosen primarily for marketing and convenience.

Pam King's San Marino home has solar panels, a drought-resistant yard and an urban farm. Now she'd like some chickens to go with it. The city known as the wealthiest, quietest suburban enclave in the San Gabriel Valley doesn't allow residents to keep farm animals, but that may soon change. This month King asked the San Marino City Council to allow chickens on residential properties, and council members ordered a staff report. If San Marino goes to the birds, it would join Pasadena, South Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, which allow residents to keep fowl under strict guidelines.

Not content with more conventional ways of expressing disapproval, an unidentified Facebook user recently posted a poll asking whether President Obama should be assassinated. The poll was outrageous, and Facebook forced its removal even before the Secret Service called. The larger questions raised by the incident, however, are how much control companies should exert over the use of the megaphones they provide online, and how much information social networks expose about the people who use them.

Tens of thousands of cycling, hockey and basketball fans will converge at Staples Center in a weekend packed with post-season games and the final stage of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California - events that authorities are warning will close streets and delay traffic in the downtown Los Angeles area. The biggest wrench in traffic will be crowds overlapping for the Kings game and the bike race Sunday. Street closures were scheduled to begin after the Lakers game Saturday night - along Figueroa Street from Pico to Olympic boulevards and on Chick Hearn Court/11th Street from Flower Avenue to Georgia Street - when two pedestrian bridges will be erected so Kings fans can cross the bike route Sunday morning for Game 4 of the NHL Western conference finals.

The Dow Jones industrials barely finished in the black Monday, but their rise was enough to mark another bull-market milestone. The blue-chip index rose 8.62 points, less than 0.1Despite the modest size of Monday's move, the crossing of another round number could have a positive psychological benefit. "Over short periods of time, market moves like these are self-reinforcing. They tend to embolden consumers," said Jack Ablin, investment chief at Harris Private Bank in Chicago.

Does Judge Thompson's order relative to the Mt. Soledad and Mt. Helix crosses mean that crosses must be removed from veterans' graves in all the national cemeteries? Isn't this getting a little ridiculous? The suggestion that title to the properties on which the two crosses are located might be transferred to private nonprofit corporations for a small consideration is a good one. Or perhaps a constitutional amendment to clarify the real intent of separation of church and state should be considered.

Our Constitution forbids our government from establishing a national religion and, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, that means there should be a "wall of separation between church and state." I have no quarrel with that, but I do take issue with what appears to be hostility toward religion. I can find no "hostility" clause in the Constitution. I part company with other atheists (or agnostics) who complain about the crosses on Mt. Soledad and Mt. Helix. Atheism means without God, not anti-God, and these complainers are giving atheism a bad name.

Councilman Barry Jantz of La Mesa (Letters to the Times, Dec. 29) favors an appeal from the court order calling for the removal of crosses from Mt. Helix and Mt. Soledad rather than "privatization" of the land, since the latter would be "admitting" that the crosses did not belong on public land. They do belong on public land, he argues, since "by viewing them, no one is coerced into believing anything they would rather not, (and) therefore the landmarks do not constitute an 'establishment' of religion."

Having talked to literally hundreds of people about the issue since 1988, I have no doubt that upward of 90% of San Diego's citizens support our Mt. Helix and Mt. Soledad landmarks, and support them being on public property. Of course, Howard Kreisner and his small band of atheists claim that the Constitution does not provide for a popularity contest in matters of this sort. Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. must also have known on which side the public sentiment would be, yet felt compelled to protect the rights of the minority, as he viewed those rights.

A dispute simmered over how to remember the 15 people who died at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., as 13 crosses made a brief return to a hill overlooking the school. After several hours, builder Greg Zanis removed them. Zanis initially set up 15 wooden crosses, including two in memory of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. That angered the parents of one of the 13 victims, who removed the two crosses for Harris and Klebold. Zanis then took down all the crosses.

MOVIES One of the great films of noir intrigue, "The Mystery of the Double Cross" finds a man bound to inherit a fortune when a mysterious warning to, yep, avoid the "double cross" proves prescient after a woman bearing the mark enters his life. Coincidence or harbinger of doom? Either way, it's a must-see engagement of the episodic series in 8mm format. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. american cinematheque.com.

Ask a Venturan and he or she will tell you that the city is both the end of Southern California and the beginning of the central part of the state. With a gorgeous coastline, an affinity for agriculture, a happening night life and a healthy enthusiasm for all things vino, this duality isn't just a clever marketing campaign - it's the real deal. The bed. The 76 rooms at Best Western Plus Inn of Ventura (708 E. Thompson Blvd.; [805] 648-3101, http://www.best western.com, doubles from $85.49 in spring)

Brooklyn's infighting Hasidim meet the Bard in "Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish," Eve Annenberg's exuberant new feature. Openhearted and kvetching, the comedy filters a very particular slice of contemporary New York through Shakespeare's star-crossed tale and a bit of kabbalistic magic. One joy of the gawky-lovely film is that it probably represents the most extensive use of Yiddish on the big screen in decades. Annenberg ("Dogs: The Rise and Fall of an All-Girl Bookie Joint")

At the world premiere Thursday night of Anne LeBaron's darkly mysterious, troubling yet weirdly exuberant and wonderfully performed new opera "Crescent City," a young Reveler in the production frolicked a few feet from where I was sitting on a folding chair along the perimeter of the experimental art space, Atwater Crossing. She wore a skirt fashioned out of the Arts & Books section of this newspaper, and she was close enough that I could read a few crumpled lines. But she was hardly there to make me or any other Angeleno feel remotely at home.

With the sound of brass instruments coming from above, scenes of wreckage on the floor and an array of abstract sculpture in between, this warehouse space captures music, art and chaos all on a collision course. That's a fitting combination for a performance piece about post-Katrina New Orleans, but director Yuval Sharon wants to be clear: "Crescent City," the ambitious and unconventional "hyperopera" that opens this week at Atwater Crossing, both is and isn't about the hurricane-ravaged city.

SAN FRANCISCO — Dressed in his trademark hoodie and jeans, Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg kicked off a cross-country roadshow to pitch his company's initial public stock offering. Hundreds of institutional investors stood in long lines Monday to pile into a ballroom at New York's Sheraton Hotel to hear the billion-dollar pitch from the 27-year-old chief executive before his company's hotly anticipated IPO. The meeting was closed to the media. Facebook is trying to build excitement for the IPO that in a few weeks could value the company at more than $96 billion.

The coolest place in Hollywood is a sauna inside the health center at El Centro and Selma that's been around since the mid-1980s. I was reminded of this the other day after a conversation with a Guatemalan maintenance man named Romulo and a retired auto mechanic from Ecuador named Victor. We sat sweating together as they discussed Victor's house in Ecuador. He wanted to sell it but couldn't. The idea pained Victor, as he'd bought the house hoping his kids might want to experience his home country.

If the thought of Bugattis, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Alfa Romeos gets your heart revving, then the classic car gawk-fest of the third annual Concours D'Elegance at Greystone Mansion on Sunday could be your speed. Hosted by the City of Beverly Hills as a fundraiser for the restored historic setting once owned by the Doheny family, the upscale auto show is becoming one of Southern California's premier car events. It was recently endorsed by the world's vintage car watchdog, FIVA (Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens)