2009 May June Go Bare
Ill Informed
Health care reporting requires years of experience to get right. Can we afford to wait? In March, the National Sleep Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., released the results of its annual poll, Sleep in America. The survey reported some worrisome statistics: More than half of adults have in the past year driven at least […]
Playing Ball
A Cal thespian goes to the Big Show. Jean Afterman ’79 defines herself professionally as an attorney. That she is the vice president and assistant general manager of the New York Yankees comes next. Being one of only three women holding front office executive positions in Major League Baseball is also part of the deal. Nine […]
The Connected Commute
Berkeley assistant professor Alex Bayen was floating mobile phones down the Sacramento River one day in 2007 when he received a call that would change his life. Nokia, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, was on the other end. They wanted to know if Bayen, a researcher in Berkeley’s Department of Civil and Environmental […]
Teaching Method
After launching the Understanding Evolution website as an educational source for the public in 2004, researchers at Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology quickly discovered that many people lacked a grounding in the fundamentals of science. For example, some didn’t grasp the distinction between scientific fact and theory, or didn’t fully appreciate the complex workings of the […]
Do Babies Spell Doom for Marriages?
Two Berkeley psychologists plot a course for “happily ever after.” If you believe a recent study that’s been all over the news, children are wrecking your marriage. According to the study, many couples complain of marital discord within a year after the arrival of the first baby. Another study out of Berkeley that was covered by […]
The View from Above
An architecture professor finds the right perspective with kites. Charles Benton began by choosing the right kite for the strong April winds blowing at San Francisco’s Crissy Field. He had three “soft” kites stuffed into his backpack—soft because they don’t rely on stiff frames to hold their shape. He pulled out the largest one and attached […]
Berkeley Agora
The new home of BAM/PFA will enfold spaces free and paid, open and closed, cyber and real. Centuries after being built, a Gothic cathedral sends its stone spires heavenward in timeless aspiration. The woman reading a letter in a Vermeer oil bends over her task in the very bar of sunlight that first glazed the right […]
Reorientation
No matter how far Robert Lepage’s characters travel, they never escape vexing questions about the knotty nature of identity. The innovative French-Canadian playwright, actor, and director last collaborated with Cal Performances on The Andersen Project, a slippery, often hilarious, fish-out-of-water tale about Lepage in Paris trying to write a commissioned libretto for a children’s opera […]
Touching Bass with Susan Muscarella
A jazz degree with roots in Cal. When jazz pianist Susan Muscarella told other musicians 13 years ago about her plans for teaching America’s indigenous art form, they were more than a little skeptical. “She called me up very late one night and said, ‘Mimi, I have an idea; I want to open a jazz school,” […]
Essential to Life
Robert Cole reflects on 23 years at the helm of Cal Performances. The 2006 season celebrated 100 years of Cal Performances—a proud fulfillment of the promise in its 1906 inaugural performance by Sarah Bernhardt in Racine’s Phèdre at the Greek Theatre. After the star-studded centenary celebration, Robert Cole announced he would step down as director at […]
The Documentary Eye
How economist Paul S. Taylor pioneered the use of photography as social documentary. As Paul Taylor and I topped Strawberry Canyon and turned west, a pastel sunset spread across the sky. Below us was the San Francisco Bay, with a clear view through the silhouetted Golden Gate Bridge. In the soft, oblique light, Taylor’s face was […]
Above the Influence
New research suggests that power doesn’t always corrupt. He may be the most powerful man in the world, but Barack Obama seems determined not to act like it. Making his official international debut at the G20 summit in London recently, the new president laid out a striking manifesto of modesty. “We exercise our leadership best when […]
The Skinny on School Lunches
How to get kids to eat their vegetables. Elementary students in the Berkeley Unified School District have some strange eating habits. No Pop-Tarts, no cheese-flavored Doritos, not even those little doughnuts with the powdered sugar. They prefer weeditos—their own version of burritos. At recess, the kids run to the garden—all 16 of the schools in the […]
Viagra Falls
Why the market for the little blue pill is softer than expected. In March 1998 when Viagra was first approved, Maryland anesthesiologist Ken Haslam ’56 was 64, single, and dating. “I was meeting lots of women. It was exciting. And for me, new relationships lead to great sex. I heard about Viagra, of course.” But with […]
Here Below
Pristine Edens of soil may be science’s best tool for radically altering earth. Several months ago, as winter had begun darkening the afternoon landscape and we were driving along the rolling fields of central France, my friend Christophe said, “There’s something almost erotic about these bare fields.” “Comment?” I said, as he had made the comment […]
Out of Eden
The fall of Andrew Martinez. The “How Berkeley Can You Be!?” parade and festival—an event local organizers proudly bill as “part question, part challenge, all celebration”—will mark its 14th anniversary this September. Berkeleyans of every stripe will march down Telegraph. Following tradition, some of the marchers may be nude, many will be costumed, and nearly all […]
Tierra del Fuego
Darwin Visited (Near to) Here. Of all the places I visited, Ushuaia, the biggest city in Tierra del Fuego, most aggressively marketed itself as a Charles Darwin destination. Which is how one explains “The Adventure of the Beagle,” the musical, or as it’s called there, “El espectáculo del fin del mundo,” the “show at the end […]
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