2008 May June Beijing Primer
From Oscar to Opera
The Little Prince lands at Zellerbach. Rachel Portman journeyed by camel through the Sahara desert when she began composing her opera The Little Prince. She wanted to know what it felt like to be stranded in that desolate land, like the downed pilot in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s beloved book. “I needed to listen to the sound […]
Daisy Rockwell
Not your grandfather’s painter—nor hers, either. Once you’ve seen Pervez Musharraf posing with a Pekingese, or Vladimir Putin snuggling up to a poodle, it’s hard to think of these 21st-century strongmen in the same way ever again. That’s fine with Daisy Rockwell. Such geopolitical titans are rendered fluffy, with a touch of glitter, by her brush […]
Use It or Lose It
At Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, adults fire up the old neurons. In a conference room in University Hall, Professor Michael Thaler’s bioscience class listens intently as he describes research on the genetic manipulation of longevity, his black crew-neck sweater and white goatee lit by the glow of an overhead projector. When he shows a graph upside-down […]
Rules to Work By
Further proof that humans are emotional beings: Workers care more about their employer’s intentions than about their take-home pay. Economics professor David Levine of the Haas School of Business and UC Santa Barbara economics professor Gary Charness divided 244 students into two groups, “firm” and “worker,” and randomly paired them. Each firm could choose to […]
Looking for a Few Good Computers
The nexus of SETI@home, the world’s most popular volunteer computing project, is tucked away in what might be a broom closet. At the Space Sciences Laboratory in the Berkeley hills, David Anderson opens a set of nondescript doors. Inside, a roaring air conditioner cools three head-high stacks of computer hardware. The acronym SETI (search for […]
Numberstruck
Think you know where you stand on the issues? You might be surprised. Michael Ranney says a single salient statistic—provided it’s both credible and unexpected—can change the way we think and feel about an issue. And he has the research to prove it. In experiments, Ranney, a cognitive scientist with appointments in both the education and […]
Civil Works for Cynical Times
A geographer brings new life to the New Deal It’s hard enough to imagine 3 billion trees, let alone plant them, but that’s how many were put in the ground by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Established in 1933, the CCC became one of the most popular of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which […]
Liver Chips? Pass the Dip!
In less than a year, all cosmetics sold in Europe will have to be “cruelty-free—that is, developed without the use of animal testing. As the industry sweats over the new regulations, chemical engineering professor Douglas Clark, together with Jonathan Dordick of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the team at Solidus Biosciences, the company Clark co-founded, are […]
Bang You’re Alive
In search of a truly non-lethal bullet. The ballistics lab is in a vault in the basement of Etcheverry Hall. That’s where Dennis Lieu uses scuba tanks to launch silicone projectiles. Lieu, a mechanical engineering professor, uses a huge, table-mounted air gun to fire golf-ball-size silicone projectiles at a model torso, also made of silicone. If […]
Olympics Fever
Beijing locals may appear restrained, but enthusiasm for the Summer Games is breaking out all over. On a sunny “Blue Sky day” (an official meteorological phrase in smog-plagued Beijing), the very kind of clear morning all Chinese hope for on the opening day of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, I take a taxi to the Olympic […]
Wrong Trajectory
America is losing its higher education advantage, with enormous repercussions. International observers have long viewed America’s higher education system, including a cadre of high-quality major research universities such as Berkeley, as one of its most important socioeconomic advantages. As the first nation to pioneer the idea of mass higher education, the United States proved that the […]
Anti-Revolutionary Art
The Sigg collection tracks the rise of Chinese modernism. The vast complex called the Dashanzi Art District was originally built to house workers and to manufacture Chinese military electrical parts and, some say, munitions. Which explains its other name, 798: Designations beginning with 7 were given to all military factories in China, helping camouflage their identity. […]
The Body Politic
China’s body image shifts from cultural revolution to sexual revolution. There came a startling moment when everything shifted. A man carrying two plastic bags, one in each hand, stood directly in the path of a column of armored tanks, effectively preventing them from proceeding down the avenue toward Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The day before, on […]
The Great Leap Nowhere
After decades of rampant cultural destruction by communists and then capitalists, what does it mean to be Chinese? At noon one day before Chinese New Year, my landlord rapped on the red lacquered doors leading into the small traditional courtyard house in which I live. My courtyard lies near the southern end of Zhuzhong Hutong, or […]
China’s Black Hole
Does anyone—including China’s central government—have the power to rein in the country’s soaring emissions? On the north bank of the Yangtze River near Nanjing, countless smokestacks emerge from the vast industrial sprawl and fade into thick smog. Inside the compound of Nanjing Iron & Steel, a six-story-high, geodesic dome houses the plant’s nerve center. Standing before […]
Explore the
Archives
View All Issues
