Subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, The Cal Connection.
Here’s the thing: The climate is warming, our population is growing, resource consumption is surging, and it isn’t looking so great for us—or our fellow earth-dwelling organisms. Speaking of which, the UN just released a report warning of “unprecedented” decline in environmental health and the threat of imminent extinction for some 1 million species. I […]
On August 8th, 1973, a small group of hackers and activists calling themselves the Community Memory Project, placed an unusual device just outside the entrance to student-owned cooperative Leopold’s Records. Inside a cardboard box with two arm-sized holes was an electronic teletype machine—basically a remote-controlled typewriter. Beside the terminal sat a young man who called […]
It was more Keystone Cops than Law and Order. On May 10, wielding a sledgehammer and drawn guns, San Francisco police raided the apartment of Bryan Carmody, a freelance videographer who had leaked a police report on the death of popular and progressive public defender Jeff Adachi. The confidential account contained salacious hints of drug […]
On March 29, 2019, fifteen cases of Ebola were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was the biggest one-day spike in an outbreak that started last summer and was deeply worrisome for a few reasons: Ebola has a mortality rate of at least 50 percent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and […]
Noah Berger admits he wasn’t the most diligent student when he attended UC Berkeley back in the early 1990s. He simply didn’t feel cut out for academe. In fact, there was only one thing that really engaged his interest during his freshman year in 1992: taking photographs for the Daily Californian. Berger dropped out of […]
Among those appalled by the 2014 publication of Forcing the Spring was Martin Meeker, a historian with UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center. Subtitled Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality, the book, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jo Becker, spotlighted high-profile attorneys and what proved a limited, statewide victory. But where were the grassroots activists who had […]
For the five women running the food stalls in UC Berkeley’s Student Union, to cook is to connect, and a quick bite of lunch can hold as much history as it does flavor. As graduates of La Cocina, an SF-based incubator for restaurant entrepreneurs, they’re promised a spot at the Student Union for one academic […]
A 2015 Gallup Poll found that a growing number of Americans—almost one-third of them—felt animals should have the same rights as people.
Sometimes the rough draft of history isn’t a newspaper, but a pile of them. Along with moldering manuscripts, reams of correspondence, posters and handbills, memoranda fastened together with rusty paper clips, all of it stuffed into decaying cardboard boxes. Rodents may or may not be involved. It’s a scenario that’s only too familiar to the […]
Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized abortion access as a fundamental right, has been contested by conservative activists and legislators since it was passed. And while the decision remains popular 45 years later, with 71% of voters opposed to overturning Roe, Trump’s recent appointments to the Supreme Court indicate there may […]
On Monday, March 18, HBO will air the documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley about the stunning rise and dramatic fall of the Silicon Valley healthcare company Theranos. The documentary will no doubt be avidly watched by those around the world who even casually followed the tale of founder Elizabeth Holmes, the […]
The extravagantly wet winter notwithstanding, California’s water woes are far from over. But recent moves suggest Governor Gavin Newsom is leading the state into a new era of water policy. Last month, he decided to scale back his predecessor’s decades-long effort, the Twin Tunnels, to deliver water from Northern to Southern California. “Really, the idea […]
For an initiative that would cool a sweltering planet, The Green New Deal is hot. A sprawling and hyperambitious initiative championed by the charismatic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the GND aims to stem both global warming and economic inequity. To date, the “serious” proposals for reversing climate change have been both market-based and incremental: credits […]
Americans have been arguing about taxes for decades. In recent months, soaking the rich with higher taxes has become a battle cry for progressives. Left-leaning politicians argue that higher taxes on the wealthy would reduce inequality and raise substantial revenue without damaging the economy. The latest debate started with a proposal from a rookie, the […]
The African lion is on the ropes. Lions numbered close to 100,000 in 1960 and have since dropped to around 20,000, according to conservation experts. And this trend likely is accelerating, as people continue to convert wildlife habitat into grazing commons and croplands, poach lions for claws and bones to supply the illicit international animal […]
Stu Smith and his brother, Charlie, put down a $500 option on about 200 acres of land on the slopes of Spring Mountain in 1971, eventually purchasing the property for $70,000. The views of the adjacent Napa Valley were stunning, and Smith, who had developed a passion for wine while completing his undergraduate degree in […]
