Panic

Glendale Unified School District officials have announced plans to bolster security measures at campuses districtwide. At a school board meeting last week, officials said they plan to equip all schools with security cameras. Reception areas at all 30 campuses will also get "panic buttons" that make direct emergency calls to 911 with a single push, said Alan Reising, an administrator of district facilities. Officials also want to create a single entry point at all elementary schools.

Wait. Stop. What are we arguing about? I hate to spoil the fun, but deficit hawks and deficit doves are actually in agreement about how this sucker should play out. There's an old joke in academia about how the disputes there are so vicious because the stakes are so small. In the current debate about the government and the economy, the stakes are not small. But the breadth of disagreement between the two sides is smaller than anyone wishes to acknowledge. Businessman and billionaire Peter G. Peterson is Mr. Deficit Panic.

"Singin' in the Rain" got it wrong. The beloved 1952 musical-comedy spoofing the transition from silent films to sound in Hollywood didn't reflect what really happened after the release of 1927's "The Jazz Singer," the blockbuster starring Al Jolson that featured synchronized songs and limited dialogue. According to UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Paul Malcolm, the studios didn't go into a panic, as portrayed in the Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds classic, when "all of a sudden production stopped and nobody knew what to do. " What actually happened, said Malcolm, was "a very rational, ordered decision to move forward with sound production, and they did it in a very rational and orderly way. " PHOTOS: Behind-the-scenes Classic Hollywood The studios decided to make multiple versions of motion pictures.

Jim Buss, the Lakers' executive vice president of basketball operations, vowed Thursday that now is not the time to panic over the team's 15-20 start. Speaking with John Ireland and Ramona Shelburne, who was sitting in for regular host Steve Mason, on 710 ESPN radio, Buss blamed injuries as the primary reason for the Lakers' struggles. "I don't know if we've had five games where all our players are playing," Buss said. "When you have injuries like that, you can't play enough games together to get chemistry.

Jockey Javier Castellano had a wild day at Betfair Hollywood Park on Sunday. In the Grade I, $250,000 Matriarch, he was riding the 17-10 favorite, Dayatthspa. The horse appeared to panic in close quarters turning into the backstretch of the mile turf race, leaped up on her hind legs and tried to jump over the rail. Castellano was hit in the mouth while steadying her and was applying an ice bag to his face afterward. She finished fifth. The winner was 35-1 Better Lucky, the biggest longshot winner in the history of the Matriarch, defeating Tiz Flirtatious by a length.

Ohmygosh! Thanksgiving is three days away and I don't have a recipe for (fill in the blank)! Relax. You know we're here to help. The Los Angeles Times has two seasonal e-books that will help you get through the next couple of months with a minimum of angst and a maximum of pleasure. The first is “The Los Angeles Times Holiday Handbook” with more than 110 seasonal recipes to help you celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's. Selected from The Times' vast collection of carefully tested recipes, you'll find sumptuous dishes for every occasion.

Doctors told Charlie Beljan he was in good enough health to leave the hospital Saturday morning, but perhaps not to play golf. With his job on the line and his name atop the leaderboard for the first time, Beljan ignored the recommendation. One day after a panic attack so severe that he struggled to breathe and feared for his life, Beljan managed just fine in the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals Classic at Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Despite a pair of early bogeys, and one nervous moment when he felt his chest tighten, he had a one-under 71 that gave him a two-shot lead at Disney.

This fall the Lakers began training camp soaring like the smartest and coolest organization in the NBA. Five regular-season games later, they have collapsed into a puddle of utter and senseless panic. They have fired coach Mike Brown in a move that reeks of poor timing, poor vision and poor leadership in a front office that was once a bastion of continuity and calm. First, if you were going to fire Brown only five games into his second season, why was he even allowed to begin his second season?

For viewers with a taste for schadenfreude, Fox News was the only place to be on election night. From Karl Rove's refusal to believe the network's own projection that Mitt Romney had lost Ohio , to Bill O'Reilly's assertion that the  “white establishment is now the minority,” to Sarah Palin's enormous new Joan Collins hairdo, there was a panicked and slightly unhinged quality to the evening's proceedings. Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart had a field day with the material on Wednesday's “Daily Show.”  He was especially delighted by the fact that it was left to co-anchor Megyn Kelly to force Rove to face the music, via a long walk through the bowels of the Fox News offices and a meeting with their in-house nerds.

It's the holidays, and we know you need help. So the Los Angeles Times has two seasonal e-books to help you get through the next couple of months with a minimum of angst and a maximum of pleasure. The first is "The Los Angeles Times Holiday Handbook" -- more than 110 seasonal recipes to help you celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's. Selected from The Times' vast collection of carefully tested recipes, you'll find sumptuous dishes for every occasion. And, of course, they all have been perfected in our Test Kitchen and come with gorgeous color photographs.