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What to fix, and what to replace? That’s the big question for Orville Dam. It has been almost a year since water brimmed to the top of Oroville reservoir and the tallest dam in the United States suddenly showed signs of possible, even imminent failure. Emergency releases eroded both the primary and secondary spillways with […]
Despite the post-Golden Globes buzz about Oprah Winfrey being the next Commander in Chief, polls say that most voters don’t want her to run.
Viral killer, qu’est-ce que c’est? Influenza cases continue to rise in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control (which briefly shut down last week along with the rest of the federal government) reports that this year’s flu epidemic has so far had the greatest impact on those over 65, followed by those ages 50-65. The […]
Daniel Ziblatt has spent a career studying why democracies develop and how they die. Along with his co-author and fellow UC Berkeley alumnus, Steven Levitsky, he has done so from a perch at Harvard, and his focus has always been different places and times: Ziblatt is an expert on democracy in modern Europe, including the age […]
On a tour of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibit Jewish Folktales Retold: The Artist as Maggid, running through January 28, participants passed around a silicone squash representing Michael Arcega’s sculpture The Enchanted Island. The piece is inspired by a story about a shipwrecked rabbi going into a mansion and finding two objects on a table: […]
The annual flu season is in full career across most of the country and parts of California have been particularly hard hit. We reached out to Arthur Reingold, head of epidemiology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, for some answers about the nature of the influenza virus, what we can do to control it, […]
President Trump, as usual, dominated the news this week, first with his “Fake News Awards.” As Ed Wasserman, dean of the Berkeley J-School pointed out in a panel discussion last year, “fake news” as Trump uses it is simply “a catch-all, a pejorative, for news that you don’t like or you disagree with or that […]
There appears to be a consensus among UC Berkeley law professors that despite his offensive views, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulous had a legal right to speak on campus last September. And the UC administration has taken a hard and fast stance when it comes to speech, saying that any suppression of it would go against […]
The radio station we now call KALX began life as an oddity in the basement of Ehrman Hall, a dormitory on Dwight Way. It had at its disposal a collection of records, mostly classical, a couple mics, a cheap recorder, and a Corina cigar box containing the most basic of mixing boards. The year was […]
Good Robot, Bad Robot MIT Technology Review says 2017 was the year robots backflipped into our hearts, with exhibit A being Atlas, Boston Dynamics’ incredibly gymnastic bot, which (resisting the urge to say ‘who’) not only sticks the landing on an honest-to-god backflip, but raises its arms afterward as if in celebration. Exhibit B: UC […]
The poem was originally titled Easy Rider. Westering, as it is now known, is probably the first poem Nobel Laureate in Literature Seamus Heaney wrote in Berkeley, after arriving here from Belfast in 1970 for a stint as a visiting professor in English. The poem’s original title evokes the 1969 film of the same name, starring Peter Fonda, […]
What’s the upside of being old? “I can only quote what George Burns answered when someone asked him what was the best thing about being 95,” said Troy Duster, a comparative youngster at only 80: “No peer pressure.” Duster, UC Berkeley emeritus professor in sociology and former President of the American Sociological Association, is one […]
Rude Awakening Millions in the Bay Area were rattled awake early this morning by a magnitude 4.4 quake epicentered just north of the Claremont Hotel, which puts it smack dab on the Hayward Fault—the same one that runs under Cal’s Memorial Stadium. The fault line is a fact of life on the Berkeley campus—something we […]
Feel it yet? That dire sense of déjà vu? It probably depends on your livelihood or interests. If you’re a Bay Area boulevardier or the type once described in singles ads as a lover of long walks on the beach, you’re no doubt delighted by the unceasing blue skies and unseasonably pleasant temperatures. But it’s another matter if you’re a farmer, salmon fisherman, water agency manager, skier or whitewater kayaker. Your income—or at least, your sense of well-being— is directly determined by what falls from the sky.
The tenure of Federal Reserve Board chairwoman Janet Yellen is drawing to a close. In February, she’ll leave her post—arguably the second-most powerful position in Washington after the presidency—and will be replaced by Trump appointee Jerome Powell, a member of the Fed Board of Governors. Most Fed chairs serve two four-year terms, but Yellen, likely […]
Blockchain is all the rage right now, but most people don’t know what it is. Sure, we get that it’s somehow revolutionary, but it’s mostly strange and confusing—much like watching a Lars Von Trier movie or eating a Japanese water cake.
Bugs and the Power Ranger In life, as in fishing, there are always a few that get away. And so it is with most issues of the magazine. Take our Bugged issue, for example. We had all kinds of bugs in there: insects, cyberbugs, surveillance devices, viruses, even VW bugs. The one thing we wanted […]
This —2017—has been the year of liberal vs. conservative free speech arguments—from qualms over t-shirt logos at polling places to violent protests of alt-right speakers. Coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally) the Supreme Court has decided to take on four free speech cases this year, all brought by conservative plaintiffs. This decision, according to UC […]
Ill Winds California fires are dominating the news again, this time in the Southland. The names of the North Bay fires (Tubbs, Atlas, Nuns … ) are being supplanted by a new list of blazes (Thomas, Creek, Rye, Skirball…). They all have in common the exacerbating effect of the sustained offshore winds, known in the […]
