Dan Turner

Dan Turner, a Times editorial writer for nearly a decade who was known for his sharply witty observations on a broad range of subjects, died Saturday at his Los Angeles home. He was 49. The cause was pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed two years ago, said his wife, Jocelyn. "No matter what the subject - and no matter how nerdy - he approached it with the same extraordinary voice and sense of humor," Nicholas Goldberg, editor of The Times' editorial pages, said in an e-mail to the staff announcing Turner's death.

From: Goldberg, Nick Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 12:31 PM To: Los Angeles Times Staff Subject: Dan Turner Dan Turner, an editorial writer at The Times, died this morning after a two year struggle with pancreatic cancer. Though he suffered a lot of pain in recent months, he died peacefully.   It's overwhelmingly sad and terribly unfair.  Dan was about to reach his 50th birthday next month. He was a lovely colleague, a mild, kind, smart voice in our editorial board meetings.

Dan Turner, who survived eight years with AIDS, becoming in the process a personification of hope to those with that fatal disease, has lost his historic struggle. The one-time playwright and actor was 42 when he died Monday in San Francisco, ending a battle that had begun in February, 1982, when doctors--who then were seeing the undiagnosed illness for the first time--were able to tell him only that he had "gay cancer."

Dan Turner, a Times editorial writer for nearly a decade who was known for his sharply witty observations on a broad range of subjects, died Saturday at his Los Angeles home. He was 49. The cause was pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed two years ago, said his wife, Jocelyn. "No matter what the subject - and no matter how nerdy - he approached it with the same extraordinary voice and sense of humor," Nicholas Goldberg, editor of The Times' editorial pages, said in an e-mail to the staff announcing Turner's death.

From: Goldberg, Nick Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 12:31 PM To: Los Angeles Times Staff Subject: Dan Turner Dan Turner, an editorial writer at The Times, died this morning after a two year struggle with pancreatic cancer. Though he suffered a lot of pain in recent months, he died peacefully.   It's overwhelmingly sad and terribly unfair.  Dan was about to reach his 50th birthday next month. He was a lovely colleague, a mild, kind, smart voice in our editorial board meetings.

Ken Burns' latest work, "The Dust Bowl," a two-part documentary that wrapped up Monday night on PBS, told a familiar story to any of us who read John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" in high school, or whose personal histories are tied up in those calamitous Depression-era years when America's Great Plains states were ravaged by drought and soil erosion that prompted an exodus to California and other coastal states. I might not be here if not for that exodus -- my mother was an Okie.

Despite Friday's slaughter of innocents in Newtown, Conn., it turns out that gun violence isn't particularly common in that state. Per-capita firearm homicides are about average compared to other U.S. states, and Connecticut actually gets high marks from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, whose score card rates it fifth best in the nation for its legislative efforts to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals. As Congress and the states examine ways to toughen gun laws in the wake of the elementary school rampage that left 20 children and seven adults dead, figures like that aren't very encouraging.

With this month's seizure of 7 tons of marijuana at the U.S.-Mexico border, it's probably time to stop pretending that the assorted statewide legalization measures sweeping the country in recent years are the foundation for a domestic pot-growing industry that will create jobs and can be taxed and regulated like other industries. Marijuana -- medical and otherwise -- has already been largely taken over by the Mexican drug cartels, which enforce their personnel regulations with bullets and do not pay taxes to ship their goods across the border.

This post has been updated from its original version. A new paragraph, marked by an asterisk, has been added. Walking the dog the other morning, I heard an odd whistle and hum behind me; it was one of my neighbors returning home (I happened to be standing in front of his driveway at the time), driving his new Nissan Leaf electric car. "How do you like your Leaf?" I asked, while dragging the pooch out of his path. "Man, I absolutely love it. I haven't been to a gas station in, like, two months.

With Californians facing decisions on 11 ballot measures Tuesday, which range from the straightforward (doing away with the death penalty under Proposition 34 ) to the annoyingly arcane (doing whatever Proposition 31 would do), it's probably just as well we don't have another hot-button social issue to agonize over. But Massachusetts is showing why we should in the near future. Mitt Romney's home state is confronting Question 2, a ballot measure to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

Dan Turner, who survived eight years with AIDS, becoming in the process a personification of hope to those with that fatal disease, has lost his historic struggle. The one-time playwright and actor was 42 when he died Monday in San Francisco, ending a battle that had begun in February, 1982, when doctors--who then were seeing the undiagnosed illness for the first time--were able to tell him only that he had "gay cancer."

A veteran policeman who was named officer of the year in 1989 for rescuing two people from fires was charged Friday with setting a blaze in the parsonage of the city's oldest black Baptist church. Sgt. Oliver Brown was relieved of duty pending the outcome of an investigation into the Thursday night fire that heavily damaged the pastor's home at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, police spokesman Dan Turner said.

Still skeptical about solar power -- and especially about the wisdom of installing panels on your own rooftop? One can hardly be blamed, given horror stories about the difficulties in getting assistance from local utilities such as the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Yet more and more Californians are doing it anyway -- because it's paying off. The California Public Utilities Commission, which tracks solar installations statewide, on Thursday updated its ticker to show that California has now installed 1.5 gigawatts of rooftop solar, roughly equivalent to what would be generated by three medium-sized coal-fired power plants, according to clean energy expert Michelle Kinman at Environment California.