2023 Fall/Winter Archives - Cal Alumni Association

_{Unabomber Cabin, Sacramento, CA, 1998}

The Man Who Shot the Unabomber’s Cabin

By Leah Worthington

The hideout was evidence, a symbol, and in Richard Barnes’s photos, art.

Ken Goldberg Isn’t Scared of Artificial Intelligence

By Coby McDonald

Robots can do a great many things, but they can’t make art. That view, common even among AI boosters, has taken a hit.

What’s on Your Berkeley-Inspired Playlist?

By Pat Joseph

While music may not be the first thing most people think of when they think of Berkeley, both the campus and town have been home to an enormously influential and eclectic music scene across the years, one with deep roots in the folk and blues revivals of the mid-20th century.

How the Pac-12 Meltdown Sent Cal Packing

By Margie Cullen

The Bears’ new conference is all the way across the continent.

_{Architect, I.M. Pei / Institute of Personality and Social Research}

Spying the Secrets of Creativity

By Coby McDonald

In late January of 1958, five of America’s most renowned writers converged in a repurposed frat house just off the Berkeley campus for what promised to be a long, strange weekend.

_{NATIONAL PARK SERVICE}

Walk of Life

By Pat Joseph

According to what has long been the dominant theory, the first humans to settle North America arrived via the Aleutian land bridge from Asia sometime between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago, after Ice Age glaciers receded.

glass of splashing orange juice isolated on white background. Orange juice splash. Pouring orange juice

_{istockphoto/urfinguss}

Blog Calls out Bogus Data

By Pat Joseph

It was a new wrinkle in a bombshell story. Not one, but two superstar researchers appear to have independently faked data for two separate, highly publicized studies about (irony of ironies!)

Sunset in Badwater, Death Valley National Park

_{ISTOCKPHOTO/OLICLIMB}

How to Turn Desert Air Into Water

By Esther Oh

Metal organic frameworks offer solutions to "the greatest problems facing our planet."

As one ages the brain becomes smaller, illustration of an adult and a child on a brick wall

_{ISTOCKPHOTO/ANDREA NICOLINI}

What Your Brain Sounds Like On Music

By Pat Joseph

Using artificial intelligence software, Berkeley scientists successfully reconstructed the Pink Floyd song “Another Brick in the Wall” from recordings made of electrical activity in patients’ brains as they listened.

_{Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images}

Same Bat Channel

By Margie Cullen

Bats, they’re just like us!

_{Botox / National Museum of American History, Gift of Edward J. Schantz}

Botox, Green Screens, and “Factor X”

By Pat Joseph

More things you never knew came from Cal

the fictional characters mentioned in this article

_{Illustrations by Patrick Welsh}

They Don’t Exist, But They Went to Cal

By Pat Joseph

Fictional characters with Berkeley backgrounds

6 Questions for Pulitzer Prizewinner Hua Hsu

By Hayden Royster

The New Yorker writer and author on his memoir of Berkeley

Normal (Asian) Lives

By Esther Oh

Fans of comics wunderkind Adrian Tomine may have rested easy upon seeing the film adaptation of his 2007 graphic novel Shortcomings this past summer.

_{People participate in a climate protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023. / Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP}