The public, the press and many politicians (at least on the right) can’t stop fulminating over Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server to conduct government business when she was Secretary of State. Little attention has been paid, however, to the IT systems that are supposed to guide, support and monitor functionaries with security clearances.
Posted on September 8, 2016 - 3:12pm
In a letter to the editor in The New York Times last October, Susan Neely, president of the American Beverage Association, wrote: “Taxes on beverages do not improve public health.”
Posted on September 7, 2016 - 11:40pm
Daniel Acland’s addiction to tabletop games began when he was a child, starting with the gateway game: Monopoly— “arguably the worst-designed board game ever to achieve commercial success,” he said. As a professor of public policy at Berkeley, his gaming experience often intersects with his expertise. For instance, in a brief analysis of Monopoly, Acland says the game sells because it allows people to “bicker, and trash-talk one another, and to watch as, once again, one totally undeserving player, for absolutely no justifiable reason, utterly destroys all the others.”
Posted on September 1, 2016 - 2:32pm
The weekend of September 9, the Cal Alumni Association’s family camp, The Lair of the Golden Bear, hosts its inaugural musical festival, Bear Music Fest. Part of a typical all-inclusive Lair weekend, the festival performances will take place across two of the three primary campsites, and feature artists representative of the Bay Area music scene.
Posted on August 31, 2016 - 2:11pm
What’s in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spiritKing of hell no quarrel have I left thee
No lovely maid who gleaned in fields or skies
One pair of lines above is the work of Shakespeare. The other was written by a computer. Can you tell which is which?
Posted on August 30, 2016 - 12:54pm
Since 2000, at least 160 “active-shooter” incidents have occurred in the United States, according to an FBI study from 2000-2013. And shootings have become more frequent—from 6.4 incidents annually in the first seven years of the study, to 16.4 in the last seven. Like many institutions, the University of California has responded by making training available.
Posted on August 29, 2016 - 12:19pm
Venezuela, whose citizenry and economy have both been unhealthy, is enduring yet another economic collapse, which has triggered yet another outbreak of disease. This time, it’s malaria. During the first six months of this year, 125,000 cases have been reported—a health crisis the government has tried to minimize, if not repudiate, and not for the first time.
Posted on August 22, 2016 - 5:15pm
In Apulia, Italy’s boot heel, the olive tree is sovereign.
“Olive trees pretty much cover the entire province,” says Rodrigo Almeida, an associate professor in Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. “The olive tree defines Apulia’s identify. The people have a deep emotional connection to their trees. Families plant them to mark the births of their children. They cherish them.”
Posted on August 15, 2016 - 12:41pm
The debate raging about testosterone tests in track and field will come to an ugly climax in Rio, and reasonable people on both sides agree it is unfair that the ugliness has landed squarely on the shoulders of women like South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya.
Posted on August 11, 2016 - 10:43am
Girls matter. That’s the philosophy behind a successful secondary school in Tanzania that is educating the perennially poor in a country where only one in four females continues past seventh grade.
Posted on August 9, 2016 - 1:25pm
“When was I introduced to fat phobia?” Virgie Tovar hardly has to pause to answer this. “I had a fantastic body image until I was in kindergarten,” she says. “That was my introduction to fat shame.”
Posted on July 6, 2016 - 12:12pm
The California Legislature’ recent decision to establish a firearms research center in the University of California system has stimulated the expected response: Public health and gun control advocates are heartened and Second Amendment stalwarts are up in arms. But both sides profess to be in accord on one point: The need for reliable data on guns. Where they differ, of course, is on the definition of reliable data.
Posted on June 22, 2016 - 3:21pm
It was all going entirely too well, beginning with the weather.
The campus was shining as only our spectacular splotch of Bay Area real estate can do. Clusters of high school kids posed for pictures at the university they hoped to attend. Cal T-shirts, sweatshirts, shorts, and athletic jackets sauntered by. Frisbees flew, and a giant dog galloped over to offer a passionate greeting that left me happily cloaked in white fur.
Evidence of Islamophobia has spiked in the United States—with 78 anti-Islam mosque incidents recorded last year alone—according to a new report that suggests the tone of the 2016 election has triggered anti-Muslim hostility.
Posted on June 21, 2016 - 5:20pm
