Strategies to deal with climate change have focused largely on reducing emissions of CO2 and other planet-warming compounds from industry, transportation and agriculture. The news isn’t particularly heartening on that front. After three years of leveling off, CO2 levels are expected to rise by two percent by the end of 2017, due largely to increased coal-burning in China.
Posted on November 30, 2017 - 4:24pm
When Donna fled her abusive marriage with her two toddlers in tow, she left with nothing but dreams for a better life.
Finding refuge at a domestic violence shelter, Donna—who agreed to be interviewed under a pseudonym—learned about FreeFrom, a non-profit startup founded by UC Berkeley School of Law graduate Sonya Passi, that helps domestic violence survivors become entrepreneurs.
Posted on November 28, 2017 - 2:44pm
Of all the potential flash points around the world these days, none are more worrisome than North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom is a black box, and it’s exceedingly difficult to know what’s going on within its borders. A couple of things, however, are clear: its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities are improving, and the mutual bellicosity between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are making a bad situation worse.
Posted on November 27, 2017 - 4:53pm
Many famous names from the ancient world are mythical figures who probably never lived, like Hercules or Odysseus. Not Croesus (pronounced KREE-sus), King of Lydia, a fabulously wealthy region of Anatolia (now part of western Turkey), who ruled from 561 to 547 BCE. He was the richest man in the world and his wealth was built on gold that was present in abundance in the waters of the Pactolus River, which flowed through his capital, Sardis. The Lydians were the first people to mint coins of gold and silver and were the inventors of coinage itself during the reigns of previous kings.
Posted on November 22, 2017 - 10:30am
Disastrous wildfires are popularly associated with drought. But the North Bay fires followed one of the wettest winters in decades.
The nightly news tends to make things even more confusing. During drought, newscasters sound the alarm about dead trees and the general flammability of parched forests. After wet winters, dire warnings are issued about the abundant growth of grass and brush that will become tinder during the hot, dry days of California’s summer and fall. So are wet winters worse for fires? Or are dry winters worse?
Posted on November 20, 2017 - 4:29pm
As co-artistic directors and founders of Portland-based Imago Theater, Carol Triffle and Jerry Mouawad had a motto: If it’s too complex, don’t do it. That motto had to go out of the window when they began creating La Belle: Life in the world of the Automaton.
Posted on November 20, 2017 - 12:57pm
If the past year has taught us anything about free speech at UC Berkeley, it’s that it comes with a price—and the university has to pay. In February, the damage reaped upon university property by the black bloc protests of Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech cost the university $100,000.
Posted on November 16, 2017 - 5:10pm
Saturday’s Big Game marks the 35th anniversary of the five-lateral kickoff return so legendary that it’s simply known as The Play. Filmmaker Peter Vogt tells the story behind the historic moment in his eponymous documentary which features interviews with Cal coach Joe Kapp, Stanford quarterback John Elway, radio play-by-play announcer Joe Starkey, that one trombone player, and many others. Watch clips of those interviews and raw footage from the 1982 game below.
Posted on November 15, 2017 - 4:12pm
We’re still living large. Very large. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, 39.8 percent of adult Americans and 18.5 percent of American youths were obese in 2016. While these rates aren’t much worse than those from a couple of years ago, they’re not any better either. Obesity, in short, is a slow motion crisis that is stripping health and ultimately longevity from almost half the population.
Posted on November 13, 2017 - 5:07pm
This September, just three weeks into Laurina Sousa’s first semester at Cal, she was in crisis. “I had imposter syndrome,” she says. “I felt like I couldn’t relate to my classmates…I felt lost.”
A child of immigrants, Sousa grew up in Hayward, California. Money was scarce, so when she graduated high school, the thought of going to UC Berkeley struck her as comical. “I wanted to be a millionaire too,” she says, laughing. “College just wasn’t on the horizon.”
Posted on November 11, 2017 - 1:21pm
Representatives from three of Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech firms—Facebook, Google, and Twitter—trooped up to Capitol Hill last week and told senators they were really, really sorry the Russians hacked their platforms and may even have influenced the recent presidential election. But their contrition wasn’t followed by substantive plans to remedy the situation.
Posted on November 9, 2017 - 3:11pm
UC Berkeley played host to myriad free speech controversies this year—including violent Antifa protests of conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos and a proposed faculty boycott of classes during Free Speech Week—much of it predicated on the assumption that speech is harmful.
Posted on November 6, 2017 - 2:20pm
As she was covering the 2016 presidential election, CNN correspondent Brianna Keilar didn’t expect to become part of the story. But that August, her exchange with Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen made headlines.
“You guys are down,” Keilar tells him in the segment, referring to Trump campaign. Before she can finish her sentence, Cohen interrupts: “Says who?”
“Polls,” she responds.
“Says who?”
Posted on November 6, 2017 - 11:29am
It wasn’t long ago that we all watched television on a bulky, cathode-ray TV connected to a pricey cable or satellite service. Now televisions are flat and the pay-TV industry is fading fast as consumers switch to online streaming on a plethora of digital devices. But the companies that pump out the content are still dependent on outdated business models and stubbornly ignore the transformational effects that fan fiction and even piracy could bring, says Abigail De Kosnik, an associate professor of new media studies at UC Berkeley.
Posted on November 1, 2017 - 5:01pm
Richard Muller is a Berkeley physics professor, senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, and founder of the group Berkeley Earth, a non-profit established to systematically address the concerns of climate change skeptics. (Muller considers himself a converted skeptic.) He is the author of numerous books including The Instant Physicist and most recently Now: The Physics of Time.
Posted on October 31, 2017 - 1:19pm
