Change takes a turn for the worse in a sombre week

For one thing, we've had a second child at Palo Alto's Gunn High School commit suicide by jumping in front of a commuter train and a third attempt it, only to be pulled off the tracks by his mother and a passing motorist. Is this a copycat "suicide cluster", people are asking, or the sign of something much more ominous?

Parents at the school are frantic, grateful only that the school term ends soon. Until it does, area teens have taken it upon themselves to patrol nearby crossings.

Then a week ago, Stanford computer science professor Rajeev Motwani was found dead at the bottom of his pool in Atherton, home to many of the tech elite. Motwani, who was 47, pretty much embodied the Valley's way of doing business.

Extraordinarily well-connected, he'd been a mentor to the founders of Google and an early adviser to, and investor in, a number of other major Valley successes, including PayPal.

Born in Jammu, India, Motwani was a prize-winning and popular professor and a key member of The Indus Entrepreneurs, a network of south Asian engineers known for their consummate ability to grow companies here and abroad. It seems as though Motwani's drowning was simply an awful accident. But as a result, said the San Jose Mercury, the Valley ecosystem has "suffered a major blow".

Even for those of us less directly affected by these tragedies, it's a strange time. Most area schools are finishing up this week or next and all the students from the universities are moving on. Change is usually relished here. Right now, though, we'd all welcome a little less of it.

ON a happier note, as of Monday, Cisco has joined the Dow. It replaces GM, which had been on the index for 83 years but is now ineligible thanks to its declared bankruptcy. Dow Jones called Cisco a fitting addition because its products "are vital to an economy and culture still adapting to the Information Age, just as automobiles were essential to America in the 20th century". Ouch.

APPLE'S famous Reality Distortion Field was up and running nicely this week. The press showed up in droves to the company's annual developers conference in San Francisco. No big surprises were announced but coverage was nevertheless massive, as usual. And no, Steve Jobs didn't appear. The feeling here is that Apple both wanted to "take the Steve Jobs premium out of the stock" (to quote one analyst) and to hold him back until the company has a new big product to announce.