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On April 22, 2017, six tour busses left Berkeley for a trip—the passengers called it a pilgrimage—to the place where 15 of them grew up more than 70 years ago. But it wasn’t a sentimental journey. They place they visited was a dusty, heat-baked, windswept prison camp called Topaz in the middle of nowhere in […]
Like everyone else, Robert Bea was appalled when almost 200,000 Californians living below Oroville Dam were ordered to flee for their lives on February 12. The evacuation was necessitated by severe erosion of the dam’s primary and emergency spillways caused by massive releases of water following torrential winter rains. But unlike most citizens, Bea knew […]
Actor Amir Talai says his mass communications courses at UC Berkeley taught him to think about how the choices he makes affect society. In particular, he considers whether the roles he’s offered may perpetuate negative stereotypes. That’s probably less obviously a concern with some parts, like voiceover work for the Kung Fu Panda series and […]
For many swimmers, the bracing aroma of swimming-pool chlorine is assurance that pool water is free of disease-causing microbes.
It’s been about two weeks since the media chatter started about student groups’ trying to bring conservative pundit Ben Shapiro to the UC Berkeley campus—and the hullabaloo has an air of déjà vu. Much like with the Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter fiascos, there have been gripes from conservative student groups claiming that Berkeley is […]
The Islamic State has been largely expelled from Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and a coalition of Syrian, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces are tightening the noose around Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. But while ISIS is rapidly losing territory, its “brand” is proving exceedingly difficult to eliminate. It’s much like a squishy […]
This spring, a handful of college kids were in a basement classroom of Barrows Hall gathered round an overhead projector. On the screen, there was a meme: a photo of a half-naked model with super-imposed text that read, “Real women have curves.” One of the students scoffed and said, “She doesn’t.” Everyone laughed. At about […]
The calving of an iceberg the size of Delaware from the Antarctica Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf made a lot of waves, raising concerns that it might directly contribute to sea level rise or portend a sudden acceleration in the melting of the continent’s gigantic ice cap. But the event pointed to neither scenario, says […]
When two peregrine fledglings took flight from the UC Berkeley Campanile last week, amateur bird watchers and ornithologists alike predicted a plethora of dangers: hungry crows, a steep fall, even ground predators. But there was little mention of what would ultimately lead to one chick’s foul demise—though it should have been transparent. The baby bird’s […]
When UNESCO named Tucson, Arizona a World City of Gastronomy in Dec. 2015, the first U.S. city so named, it put this small desert city on the global map. It also gave a boost to one of its top chefs, Janos Wilder. In June, Wilder, a James Beard award-winner (2000, Best Chef: Southwest), represented Tucson […]
The Sacramento Valley came within a skosh of true catastrophe this winter when both the main and emergency spillways at Oroville Dam on the Feather River eroded due to high water releases necessitated by torrential rains. State officials ordered an evacuation of 200,000 residents in communities below the dam, and for a few days the […]
When I started out as a reporter just a few years back, if you’d told me that this week I’d be standing on the UC Berkeley lawn staring up at live raptors (and documenting their every peep for FOUR days), I would never have believed you. Not just because the raptors are seldom-seen peregrine falcons, […]
This week’s declaration by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service that the massive Delta tunnels proposed by the Jerry Brown administration would not cause the extinction of several imperiled fish species gave a significant boost to the behemoth project. Still, other impediments must be overcome before the digging starts […]
The Turing Award is basically “the Nobel prize of computing,” named after the founding father of the field and given to those who kick the most butt in computer science. So if you had to guess which university has won the most awards over the last half-century, you’d probably say Massachusetts Institute of Technology, maybe […]
What happens when the world’s largest mammal washes up dead on your local beach? Residents of Bolinas, California were faced with this question in May, when a 79-foot blue whale turned up ashore on nearby Agate Beach. According to biologists present, the necropsy (an autopsy for animals) revealed that the whale had collided with a […]
The bunker metaphor may be overdone in regard to the White House and its current occupant, but that’s not to say it isn’t apt. Trump is taking a massive amount of incoming, and it’s having a profound effect on him personally and administratively. Recent staff leaks describe him as “agitated and exhausted” and much, though […]
This summer, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) will be presenting the first US museum retrospective of artist Charles Howard’s work since 1946, charting the trajectory of his career from the early 1920s to the 1960s. Howard was a prominent figure in the surrealist and abstract art movements, and brought together the […]
It happened again: California Magazine has been recognized as a top college and university general-interest magazine by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE)! Over the past decade, California has been awarded two golds and one silver award in this category, and our writers and illustrators have also been honored numerous times by CASE. […]
