The Sacramento Bee

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- At Molina Medical Group clinics here, a vending machine rather than a pharmacist dispenses prescription drugs.

Molina officials say the big machines make life simpler for patients, but their use has drawn objections from some pharmacists.

The refrigerator-size kiosks hold a stock of medications for common illnesses such as colds, flus and rashes, so patients can have their prescription filled before they leave the clinic.

Spring passed California by, and summer remains in hiding.

Nine tornadoes have torn up the Sacramento Valley from Oroville to Fairfield. A giant Sierra snowpack, still frozen fast, has put innumerable summer adventures on hold.

The weather has gone haywire.

"It's what I call global weirding," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "This has been a very strange year all over the planet."

He calls it the UnCollege movement.

Nineteen-year-old Dale Stephens is urging his peers to rethink the need for college, arguing that they can get more out of pursuing real-world skills than completing homework assignments and studying for exams.

"I want to change the notion that a college degree is the only path to professional success," said Stephens, a San Francisco resident who is building the UnCollege movement and developing a Web-based company.

Stephens is part of a small but growing chorus of entrepreneurs, free thinkers and former students who are questioning the value of higher education. The attack is coming from multiple directions: those who say college costs far more than it should; those who say students learn far less than they should; and those who argue the graduation rates are abysmal.

The $100,000 pension club is growing fast.

Almost 9,000 retirees in the California Public Employees' Retirement System receive at least $100,000 in annual benefits, more than quadruple the number getting that much during 2005, according to a review of CalPERS data.

Collectively, these pensioners will receive about $1.1 billion in benefits this year.

Theodore Kaczynski's worldly possessions went on sale Wednesday, with iconic items like his handwritten manifesto and his hoodie and sunglasses drawing immediate interest from online bidders.

But even as the federal government used the sale to raise money for victims of the Unabomber, new signs emerged that Kaczynski is under investigation in another series of crimes: the infamous 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people.

Heartburn is the new normal.

Acid reflux is on the rise in America, with 25 million people experiencing daily symptoms, according to the American Gastroenterology Association, up from 15 million only a decade ago. Another 60 million people say they have heartburn once a month.

That's a whole lot of tummy trouble. Blame stress and an aging population -- and above all, experts say, blame Americans' habit of eating too much.

Sitting across the table from Adorian Deck, it is difficult to imagine him as a groundbreaking legal warrior.

Cherub is more like it. He chooses his words carefully, speaks quietly and has an unassuming manner punctuated with a slight, almost-shy smile.

Yet, the stage is set in Sacramento federal court for an epic clash between Deck, a senior at Nevada Union High School in Grass Valley, Calif. who will soon be 18, and Emerson Spartz, another whiz kid of the cyber era, over what intellectual property rights mean in the burgeoning universe of social media.