naacpnvf.org

SAN FRANCISCO - Something frightful is brewing in the city’s Castro District, home to the largest Halloween happening in the San Francisco Bay area that draws thousands of locals and tourists.

After nine people were shot at last year’s street party, San Francisco officials have put the kibosh on the annual event. They are warning the hundreds of thousands of people who flock to the neighborhood every Oct. 31 to go elsewhere or stay home tonight. The scary prospect for the city is that no one knows whether the Castro will be the ghost town officials want, or an impromptu gathering of costumed hordes who are all dressed up with no place to go.

City officials have tried to advise would-be revelers through fliers, public service announcements and juvenile probation officers that they won’t find many treats in the Castro this Halloween. What they will find are hundreds of extra police officers, shuttered restaurants, stepped up sobriety checks and no bus or train service after 8:30 p.m.

“This is really a public safety decision,” said Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents the Castro and spent the better part of a year trying to arrange an alternative city-sanctioned gathering. “I’m disappointed my message is one of, ‘Please don’t come.”‘

The festivities started decades ago as a homegrown celebration for San Francisco’s gay and lesbian community.

In recent years, though, Halloween has drawn a spookier element to the once-spontaneous event. In 2002, five people were stabbed. Three years ago, someone wandered the crowds wielding a chain saw.

Last year, nine revelers were shot when a confrontation between two groups of young people erupted into gunfire, despite ramped-up security at the event. No one has been arrested in the shooting.

“It’s absolutely eerie when you are looking around seeing people, most of them not in costume, looking each other in the eye with suspicion,” said Castro resident Betty Sullivan, who narrowly missed getting caught in the gunfire last year when she went out with her adult daughter and son-in-law.

“Here I am trying to walk around in my own neighborhood with this huge predominance of non-Castro people. It felt so strange,” said Sullivan, who runs a Web site that publicizes Castro-area events and businesses.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A giant solar wing ripped as it was being unfurled by astronauts aboard the international space station on Tuesday, creating another problem for NASA at the orbiting outpost.

The next shuttle flight on Dec. 6 could be delayed if this latest problem isn’t resolved quickly, said NASA’s space-station-program manager, Mike Suffredini.

“We don’t clearly know what we’re dealing with yet, and as soon as we know what we’re dealing with, then we can talk about what our next steps are,” Suffredini said.

The astronauts halted the wing extension when they noticed the damage. By then, the solar panel was extended 90 of its 115 feet. Space-station commander Peggy Whitson said the sun angle prevented her and the others from seeing the 2 ½-foot tear sooner.

The torn solar wing was producing 97 percent of anticipated power despite the damage, Suffredini said. NASA’s bigger concern is the structural problem posed by a partially deployed panel.

The damage was especially troublesome for the 10 space travelers because it came on the heels of an otherwise successful day. Two of Discovery’s crew members had finished a seven-hour spacewalk and were reveling in the smooth extension of the first of two retracted solar wings on a newly installed beam.

During the spacewalk, Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock installed a massive beam holding a pair of solar wings, which were folded like an accordion. It took three days to move the beam from one location on the space station to another 145 feet away and was considered one of the hardest construction jobs ever attempted in orbit.

The astronauts beamed down pictures of the torn solar wing so engineers could determine how bad it was and what, if anything, could be done to fix it. Suffredini said they could cut whatever might be snagging the solar wing, like a hinge, and possibly sew up the tear.

“We have a lot of options,” he said. “We’re in a good [configuration] to sit here and work through this problem.”

Really, does it get any cooler than testing out the classic cartoon joke involving a trail of gunpowder and a big explosion?

Not for “Mythbuster” Adam Savage, who deems this blow-up one of his favorites. You can’t swing a comatose Sylvester without hitting a rerun of “Mythbusters” on Discovery Channel, but finding fresh episodes can be a challenge since the network rolls out a few at a time throughout the year. The good news is that fans can look forward to seven new episodes beginning Wednesday.

“We lit a line of gunpowder to a keg leading to an explosion,” Savage says of the segment airing Wednesday. “It was one of the more minor explosions we’ve done on ‘Mythbusters,’ but more deeply satisfying from a cartoon perspective.”

The series has gone beyond merely being a hit cable series. It’s a cultural icon, based in co-host Jamie Hyneman’s special effects studio on San Francisco. The No. 1 question the ‘busters get asked is if they will ever run out of myths?

“We say we’ll run out of ideas when people ever stop believing stupid things,” Savage says. “We just finished one that has confounded us our entire careers.”

The episode, which airs in December, finds Savage and Hyneman tackling a question baffling everyone from bloggers to pilots: If a plane is traveling at takeoff speed on a conveyor belt, and that conveyor belt is matching the speed in reverse, can the plane take off?

“We put the plane on a quarter-mile conveyor belt and tested it out,” says Savage about the experiment using a pilot and his Ultralight plane. “I won’t tell you what the outcome was, but the pilot and his entire flight club got it wrong.”

Savage often describes “Mythbusters” as ” ‘Jackass’ meets Mr. Wizard.” And when you think about wacky stunts done on the show, Tory Belleci’s name invariably pops up. On the Nov. 14 “Supersized” two-hour episode, Belleci will attempt to wakeboard from the back of a cruise ship.

Not, he says, the craziest thing he’s had to do on the show. In fact, this season also has him testing out whether your pants can catch fire while being dragged behind a horse. Other seasons has seen him sticking his tongue onto a frozen pole and getting in a pen with a bull to see if the animal would indeed charge him because he was wearing a red outfit.

“When I was in the arena with the bull or with the crocodile, everything inside my body was saying don’t do it, but you know you have to do it,” Belleci says. “I feel like I spent my whole life preparing for this job. I loved playing with fire and at 19 I was almost arrested for making a pipe bomb. Everything I used to get in trouble for I’m now doing as my job.”

Both Belleci and Grant Imahara came to “Mythbusters” after working at Industrial Light and Magic.

“People always ask why I would leave ILM, and it’s because ‘Mythbusters’ sounded like fun. Working on movies and TV is a blast, and ILM has the most talented people in the world,” Imahara says. “But on ‘Mythbusters’ I’ve been able to go places I would never have access to otherwise.”

Not only that, but Imahara says he believes “Mythbusters” just may be responsible for making nerds cool.

“Look at ‘Heroes’ and ‘Numb3rs’ and all these new shows coming out now and we were on the forefront,” Imahara says. “The nerd is the protagonist, the hero. I worked at ILM the same time Masi Oka was there. Who would have thought that two Asian-American nerds from ILM would be on hit shows?”

British politics were dominated for three decades by the strong personalities of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the faces of Conservative and Labor governments from 1979 until 2007. Totally different in approach and style, they dominated their parties with their personal political skills.

They confounded the theory that under a parliamentary system, policies and performance, not personality, should drive debates and elections.

Don’t bother telling that to Gordon Brown. The new British prime minister, selected by Labor this summer when Blair stepped down, had one of the briefest honeymoons on record. I watched it implode during a recent visit to Britain. He is reeling under attacks from opposition parties, a hostile media and an unexpectedly aggressive independence movement in Scotland.

Brown started strong, his government handling a banking crisis, terrorist incidents in London and Glasgow, and in general looking like the no-nonsense Scot who had earned respect as Blair’s chancellor of the exchequer.

He was riding high, buoyed by polls, and at Labor’s annual conference in September his backers widely talked of a “snap election,” a hastily called national vote to elect a new Parliament and (hopefully) give Brown a personal mandate. He must hold an election by 2010, but under the parliamentary system he can call it at any time, or be forced to call it by losing a vote of confidence in Parliament.

Had Brown lost a snap vote, he would have become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. For someone who had waited 10 years for his opportunity and who seems naturally cautious, it was a chance too far. He dithered, procrastinated, and allowed Conservatives to steal the spotlight with their own annual conference and a strong television performance by leader David Cameron.

Cameron epitomizes the politics of today’s media. His background is in public relations, his skills are those of presentation (he delivered his conference speech without notes) and understanding today’s 24-hour news cycle. At first, he urged Brown to call the snap vote, although Brown had the upper hand. But when Cameron’s conference appearance produced a bounce in the polls (Conservatives 43 percent, Labor 36, Liberal Democrats 14), he went on offense, taunting Brown and forcing him to back down from a fall vote.

If that weren’t sufficiently embarrassing, Brown tripped over an old British land mine, the European Union. Britain has always been divided on the EU, and still refuses to adopt the euro as its currency. Labor, under Blair but with Brown on board, promised in 2005 to call a national referendum on the proposed EU Constitution. But, rejection by French and Dutch voters made a British vote unnecessary.

This year, however, EU leaders proposed a “treaty” similar to the defeated constitution, and Brown’s opponents and most of the British media pushed him to honor Labor’s 2005 pledge. Cameron, urged on by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, the biggest tabloid in the country, clamored for a vote. But, Brown met other EU leaders in mid-October and agreed to the treaty without calling a referendum, which might have rejected the treaty.

Brown’s decision found little media or public support, brought grumbling in his own party, and left him looking indecisive and defensive. Compared to the nimble Tony Blair, Brown looked dogged, determined but dull, marshaling complex arguments while his critics were trashing his image.

The ascent of the Scottish National Party to control of Scotland’s semi-independent government in May brought its separatist crusade to the fore, and forced Brown to emphasize his “Britishness” over his “Scottishness.” If Scotland were to secede, Labor would lose its most reliable voter base, including Brown’s own constituency in Fife. Separation, unlikely now, would advance if Tories return to power in Parliament.

Speaking to the Labor conference, he used the terms “British” or “Britain” 74 times. Now he’s in a wedge between his Scottish heritage and voters and Conservative anti-Scot “Little Englanders” to the south, with plenty of parochialism on both sides.

Hoping to benefit from the pile-on, Liberal Democrats, Britain’s perpetual third party, drove into retirement its respected 66-year-old leader, Menzies Campbell (another Scot), who unfortunately looked his age on television. The search for his replacement features two young men who look a lot like David Cameron and a lot unlike Gordon Brown.

Watching this develop, I felt for this dour Scot, so in need of charisma to combat the creations of 21st-century media. We’ve exported sound-bite politics to the world, something I’m not sure it needed. Brown may eventually prevail, but there’s sure to be a young Blair-Cameron waiting in the wings.Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com

SPOKANE - A Republican state legislator from Southwest Washington was the target of an extortion attempt by a man he met at an erotic-video store and later had sex with, according to police documents released Tuesday.

State Rep. Richard Curtis, of La Center, Clark County, who on Monday vehemently denied he was gay, was the victim of the reported extortion attempt by a man he brought to Spokane’s Davenport Tower hotel Friday, according to search-warrant documents.

The man told police Curtis agreed to pay him $1,000 for sex and also said Curtis purchased two gay pornographic films from the hotel for them to watch in his room.

Numerous efforts to reach Curtis were not successful Tuesday.

Curtis was among state GOP lawmakers in Spokane last Wednesday through Friday for a retreat to discuss the upcoming legislative session. He went to the Hollywood Erotic Boutique in Spokane on Friday and met a man, who accompanied him back to the hotel, the documents said.

The two arrived at the hotel around 3:34 a.m. and engaged in sexual activities, after which Curtis fell asleep, the documents said.

The man allegedly took Curtis’ wallet and later offered to return it for $1,000, the documents said. Curtis said he only had $200 and left the money at the hotel desk, the documents said.

The man told police Curtis gave him his wallet to hold as collateral for the remainder of the money.

The man called Curtis back and demanded $800. But Curtis had already contacted Spokane police, and a detective was present when the man called, the documents said.

The man, who appeared Tuesday at a Spokane news conference with his lawyer, said the lawmaker “has completely changed what actually happened and turned it around for his favor.”

The man told police and reporters that Curtis gave him his wallet to hold as collateral “for the money that he promised me.”

The lawyer refused to let his client tell reporters what he did for the money.

In his only public comments about the incident, Curtis told The Columbian newspaper of Vancouver, Wash., that he did not solicit anyone for sex and was not gay.

“I committed no crime,” Curtis told the newspaper. “I did not solicit sex. I was trying to help somebody out.”

Curtis, a former firefighter, said, “I am not gay. I have not had sex with a guy.”

Police spokeswoman Jennifer DeRuwe said the evidence found by police would be given to the Spokane County prosecutor, who will decide if criminal charges are warranted.

There have been no arrests, she said.

Republican leaders have declined to comment, saying they had no information about what happened.

Curtis was elected to the state House of Representatives in 2004.

His voting patterns suggest he is a fiscal and social conservative, and he has opposed gay-rights legislation.

My mother was big on Halloween. And by that, I don’t mean she spent that hallowed day baking ghoulish cupcakes with teensy candy pumpkins, or admiring the costumes she’d handcrafted for her four kids.

Mom was in it for the costumes and the candy, all right: her costumes - and our candy.

On a particularly memorable Halloween, she arrived to pick me up from a Girl Scout bonfire-fueled jamboree. Jumping out of her ‘69 VW Bug, she made her way through the crisp autumn leaves to find me. I can’t recall how - or even if - I was costumed that night, but I’ll never forget how I felt when I lifted my bobbing head from a vat full of tooth-bitten apples:

Wiping cold water from my eyes, I focused on a 5-foot-2-inch figure dressed like Bozo the Clown - complete with white-face makeup, Joker lips and a spiky Halloween-orange bathing cap that looked suspiciously like the one my mother wore that summer at our local swim club. “Surprise!” yelled Bozo. Having earned my Girl Scout Mortification Badge then and there, I slunk to the car and promptly burst into tears.

Ah, golden memories of Halloween! I’ve got a million of them. And not a single one involves “snack-size” candy bars, “Harvest Festivals” or trick-or-treating in a Costco-bought costume under the fluorescent lights of an indoor shopping mall.

Celebrating Halloween as a kid in Philadelphia - where decorating for the holiday remains a citywide imperative - I had the great fortune of living in a 500-tract subdivision where kids ruled, candy was king and our rallying cry was, “Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!”

Back then, we actually did get something good to eat. Trudging up and down the streets and cul-de-sacs with pillow cases and UNICEF boxes in hand - devoid of flashlights, reflective gear or, God forbid, our parents - we’d score big on Hershey Bars, Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews and the occasional caramel-coated apple that we’d scarf on the spot, never considering the need to X-ray that special treat for razor blades.

And when, our sacks full-up to nearly bursting, we’d arrive home to empty our loot onto the dining-room table and trade candy (”I’ll give you two Butterfingers for a Necco Wafer”), justice had to be served. Her name was Mom. We paid her in dividends of Nestle Crunch and 3 Muskeeters, which she’d stash in a cookie tin kept out of our reach - or so she thought - atop our “side-by-side refrigerator-freezer.”

These days I spend All Hallow’s Eve in the company of a Sweet-Tarted-up grade-schooler, whose dad - bless him - lovingly makes the boy’s costumes. Tonight, in the company of a woman whose “costume” involves an Eddie Bauer jacket and mom-jeans, my son will traipse through downtown Edmonds in a small-town scene straight out of “Hocus Pocus.”

Eschewing last year’s costume (Count Dracula) for this year’s (an M&M), we’ll join 5,000 merrymakers who hit-up the local merchants, amassing umpteen miniversions of the same six candies (enough already with the Tootsie Rolls!). We’ll stop at the movie theater for a bag of popcorn and Just Say No to the line that snakes down the block from the local bake shop, where fresh doughnuts are free for those who can stand the wait.

Meanwhile, my husband will be sitting home with a cocktail and the dogs, waiting for the next wave of local urchins who know where to knock for full-size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Starburst candies and (if they’re very lucky and I haven’t been entirely too busy) a homemade caramel apple - hold the shaving implements.

If they’re smart, they’ll go across the street to our neighbors, the Smiths, who one-up us by a mile with their movie- theater-size candy boxes. And they’ll stay away from “Spooky Dave’s” - the neighborhood electrician who’s known to scare the yell out of the little ones when they ring his doorbell and he jumps out from behind a porch pillar dressed as a ghoul.

When we return home from our town’s communal festivities, cold, tired and hungry for the pizza that awaits us, we make certain to first pay a visit to the Smiths, and Spooky Dave, and the many neighbors who beg us to take an extra helping of candy - lest they’re forced to eat the leftovers themselves.

Back in the day - my day - there weren’t any “leftovers”: only lights turned out, doorbells unanswered and, occasionally, nickels and dimes doled out in lieu of sweets. But these days, with kids heading out to private parties, shopping malls and other clean, well-lighted places on Halloween, neighborhoods don’t see the kind of action they saw when I was growing up.

It’s enough to make my mother melancholic.

Mom recently moved from South Jersey to a fancy-pants retirement community in sunny South Carolina where, in the spirit of the season, I sent her a box of Nestle Crunch. I did it just so I can imagine her sitting poolside, soaking up some sun, sharing her Halloween candy with her gal-pals and clowning around in that spiky orange bathing cap. It’s a vision that still brings tears to my eyes.

Nancy Leson: Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com.

More columns available at seattletimes.com/nancyleson.

British politics were dominated for three decades by the strong personalities of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the faces of Conservative and Labor governments from 1979 until 2007. Totally different in approach and style, they dominated their parties with their personal political skills.

They confounded the theory that under a parliamentary system, policies and performance, not personality, should drive debates and elections.

Don’t bother telling that to Gordon Brown. The new British prime minister, selected by Labor this summer when Blair stepped down, had one of the briefest honeymoons on record. I watched it implode during a recent visit to Britain. He is reeling under attacks from opposition parties, a hostile media and an unexpectedly aggressive independence movement in Scotland.

Brown started strong, his government handling a banking crisis, terrorist incidents in London and Glasgow, and in general looking like the no-nonsense Scot who had earned respect as Blair’s chancellor of the exchequer.

He was riding high, buoyed by polls, and at Labor’s annual conference in September his backers widely talked of a “snap election,” a hastily called national vote to elect a new Parliament and (hopefully) give Brown a personal mandate. He must hold an election by 2010, but under the parliamentary system he can call it at any time, or be forced to call it by losing a vote of confidence in Parliament.

Had Brown lost a snap vote, he would have become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. For someone who had waited 10 years for his opportunity and who seems naturally cautious, it was a chance too far. He dithered, procrastinated, and allowed Conservatives to steal the spotlight with their own annual conference and a strong television performance by leader David Cameron.

Cameron epitomizes the politics of today’s media. His background is in public relations, his skills are those of presentation (he delivered his conference speech without notes) and understanding today’s 24-hour news cycle. At first, he urged Brown to call the snap vote, although Brown had the upper hand. But when Cameron’s conference appearance produced a bounce in the polls (Conservatives 43 percent, Labor 36, Liberal Democrats 14), he went on offense, taunting Brown and forcing him to back down from a fall vote.

If that weren’t sufficiently embarrassing, Brown tripped over an old British land mine, the European Union. Britain has always been divided on the EU, and still refuses to adopt the euro as its currency. Labor, under Blair but with Brown on board, promised in 2005 to call a national referendum on the proposed EU Constitution. But, rejection by French and Dutch voters made a British vote unnecessary.

This year, however, EU leaders proposed a “treaty” similar to the defeated constitution, and Brown’s opponents and most of the British media pushed him to honor Labor’s 2005 pledge. Cameron, urged on by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, the biggest tabloid in the country, clamored for a vote. But, Brown met other EU leaders in mid-October and agreed to the treaty without calling a referendum, which might have rejected the treaty.

Brown’s decision found little media or public support, brought grumbling in his own party, and left him looking indecisive and defensive. Compared to the nimble Tony Blair, Brown looked dogged, determined but dull, marshaling complex arguments while his critics were trashing his image.

The ascent of the Scottish National Party to control of Scotland’s semi-independent government in May brought its separatist crusade to the fore, and forced Brown to emphasize his “Britishness” over his “Scottishness.” If Scotland were to secede, Labor would lose its most reliable voter base, including Brown’s own constituency in Fife. Separation, unlikely now, would advance if Tories return to power in Parliament.

Speaking to the Labor conference, he used the terms “British” or “Britain” 74 times. Now he’s in a wedge between his Scottish heritage and voters and Conservative anti-Scot “Little Englanders” to the south, with plenty of parochialism on both sides.

Hoping to benefit from the pile-on, Liberal Democrats, Britain’s perpetual third party, drove into retirement its respected 66-year-old leader, Menzies Campbell (another Scot), who unfortunately looked his age on television. The search for his replacement features two young men who look a lot like David Cameron and a lot unlike Gordon Brown.

Watching this develop, I felt for this dour Scot, so in need of charisma to combat the creations of 21st-century media. We’ve exported sound-bite politics to the world, something I’m not sure it needed. Brown may eventually prevail, but there’s sure to be a young Blair-Cameron waiting in the wings.Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com

VANCOUVER, Wash. - Vancouver police say a 15-year-old boy playing with a .38 caliber pistol he thought was inoperable, accidentally shot an 11-year-old relative.

The boy was shot in the torso but doctors say his injuries are not life threatening.

Clark County Sheriff Sergeant Steve Shea says several adults were in the house, southeast of La Center. But the boys, three of them, were playing in a back bedroom Monday night. The teenager and the boy who was shot, do not live in the home, but all are related.

The preliminary investigation indicates that the adults also believed the pistol did not work. When the teenager pulled the trigger the gun fired a single bullet.

No arrests have been made and due to the ages of the children, no names were released.

WASHINGTON - The real story on Wall Street isn’t that E. Stanley O’Neal, whose grandfather was born a slave, is being shoved out of the top job at Merrill Lynch, the gargantuan investment bank. More important is the fact that … well, Tom Wolfe said it best in “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” his romp through the world of hubris and high finance, with this description of the novel’s protagonist:

“On Wall Street he and a few others - how many? - three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? - had become precisely that … Masters of the Universe.”

Actually, O’Neal rose to such heights that the number of his professional peers was nowhere near 300 - more like three or four. That a black man who picked cotton as a child in Alabama could have spent the past five years as an Uber-Master of the Universe, running one of the world’s leading financial institutions, is more significant than his downfall.

Granted, the downfall has been pretty spectacular. Merrill Lynch had to disclose last week that the company took a loss of $8.4 billion in the subprime-mortgage meltdown - much greater than the damage suffered by other huge investment firms such as Goldman Sachs.

Merrill’s board of directors - most of whose members were chosen by O’Neal - has to share responsibility for that debacle; it’s not as if the board was unaware of how O’Neal was investing the firm’s money. Apparently, though, there was one thing that O’Neal failed to tell the board: that he had approached the CEO of Wachovia Corp. about a possible merger of the two companies.

That’s not the sort of thing you want your board to hear through the grapevine.

On Monday, O’Neal was reportedly negotiating the terms of his departure. If you’re worried that he’ll be destitute, dry your eyes. O’Neal has been one of the best-paid executives on Wall Street - he took home around $48 million last year - and The New York Times reports that he may get a severance package of at least $159 million.

That’s crazy money, and people don’t get crazy money unless they’re worth it. What I find striking about O’Neal’s story is that it so thoroughly demolishes the racist assumption that some people will make: that the job was somehow handed to him because of some feel-good commitment to diversity.

Puh-leeze. Diversity is about leveling the playing field, opening doors and giving people a chance. By all accounts, O’Neal rose to the top the old-fashioned way - fighting, scraping, biting, scratching.

He was hired as CEO in 2002 to shake up what was seen as a complacent, slow-moving corporate culture. He did just that, cutting nearly 24,000 jobs, eliminating corporate perks and taking the company - once known as “Mother Merrill” for its comfortable ambience and its settled predictability - into riskier and more-lucrative arenas. Such as the subprime-mortgage market.

O’Neal produced huge profits for the firm; last year, net income was a record $7.5 billion. On the job, at least, he made no attempt to be a nice guy. The Wall Street Journal reports that O’Neal would rake his executives over the coals if quarterly earnings reports showed that rival Goldman Sachs was outperforming Merrill in some area. Now that O’Neal is on his way out, of course, people who worked for him are saying things to reporters - he was aloof, he was brusque, he didn’t tolerate strong-willed subordinates - that they wouldn’t have said to his face.

It’s the classic high-flying modern Wall Street story - you claw your way to the top, make a lot of money for your stockholders, make a lot of money for yourself, hold on as long as you can. O’Neal lasted five years in the top job at Merrill, which is about the average tenure of an American CEO.

What’s really significant is that there is a Stan O’Neal. And a Dick Parsons, the African-American CEO of Time Warner, rumored to be on his way out, too, after a long and profitable run. And a Ken Chenault, the African-American CEO of American Express, who is staying put, far as I know. And a Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, widely acknowledged as the first African-American billionaire.

Just two or three generations removed from slavery, they rose to control big chunks of the American economy. They attained Master of the Universe status by being smarter and tougher than their peers - and now a much bigger cohort of black corporate executives is coming up behind them. It just goes to show what happens when you open a door.

Eugene Robinson’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A force as insidious as Dracula is quietly sucking a nickel of every dollar’s worth of the electricity that seeps from your home’s outlets.

Insert the little fangs of your cell phone charger in the outlet and leave it there, phone attached: That’s vampire electronics.

Allow your computer to hide in the cloak of darkness known as “standby mode” rather than shutting it off: That’s vampire electronics.

The latest estimates show 5 percent of electricity used in the United States goes to standby power, a phenomenon energy efficiency experts find all the more terrifying as energy prices rise and the planet warms. That amounts to about $4 billion a year.

The percentage could rise to 20 percent by 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

In California, lawmakers passed a proposal last year - dubbed the Vampire Slayers Act - to add vampire electronics labels to consumer products, detailing how much energy a charger, computer, DVD player, PlayStation, microwave or coffee maker uses when on, off or in standby mode.

“It’s something people don’t know about,” said Dave Walton, home ideas director for Direct Energy, a utility and energy services company that has one of its four main offices in Dublin, Ohio.

The issue is particularly pressing in Ohio, the nation’s No. 1 emitter of toxic air emissions - mostly from electricity production at the state’s coal-fired power plants. Walton said skyrocketing energy costs mean everyone should worry about the vampires in the house.

The International Energy Agency has estimated standby energy use by vampire electronics at 200 to 400 terawatt-hours a year. The entire country of Italy consumes about 300 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, according to the agency.

Picture any appliance that displays a clock while otherwise idle, such as a microwave oven, coffee maker or DVD player. They constantly consume little bits of energy.

“About 40 percent of the electricity being used to power your home electronics is consumed while they are in that standby mode,” Walton said. “If you just focus on that piece, you will be making a big step.”

Ditto for things that charge, such as cell phones, PDAs, toothbrushes or portable tools, some of which trickle a charge even after the device that’s charging is at capacity.

Some chargers halt the flow of current when it’s not needed, which should happen automatically with chargers for lithium-ion batteries. If you’re uncertain, Walton advises unplugging chargers when not in use.

He recommends hooking up your home computer system, including accessories like a printer or scanner, to a single power strip that can be easily switched off each night. He advises shutting off the other vampires too, though the inconvenience of resetting the clocks, channels and timers on those devices each morning will discourage most people.

The government-backed Energy Star program, coordinated jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, identifies appliances that consume less energy.

If one in 10 American homes used only appliances endorsed through the program, the Energy Department estimates, it would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by the same amount as planting 1.7 million acres of trees.