Subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, The Cal Connection.
UC Berkeley alumni turn up in the most unusual occupations, including bullfighter (Bill Wong, aka El Chino, the world’s first Chinese matador), online gaming mogul (Frank Ng, Eric Yang, and Adam Pliska), and even rocket scientist (Ashley Karp). Now, add another to the list: Terry Smith, caterpillar wrangler. She’s a founding member of the Pollinator […]
One of the best ways to flaunt your Earth-hugging bona fides these days is to buy an electric car. It shows you’re willing to put your money—a lot of your money—where your mouth is, assuming your mouth spends a fair amount of time declaiming on global warming, atmospheric carbon emissions, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, and […]
In 2012, Cal biochemistry and molecular biology professor Jennifer Doudna and microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, now of the Max Planck Institute, changed the world. They invented CRISPR-Cas9, a gene editing tool that uses a protein found in Streptococcus bacteria to chop up and rearrange viral DNA with precision. The implications of the technology were immediately apparent, […]
Cal Performances will stage the first ever modern-day performance of the original The Temple of Glory, a gem of the music library’s collection, this weekend at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.
Chuck Berry is dead at age 90.
In celebration of Earth Week, we’ve rounded up the best of Cal in environmental news this week. Living for the City The remote locations of tech company campuses have provided certain benefits for employees and a creepy setting for every techpocalypse novel and film EVER, but they also have their drawbacks, as a recent UC […]
Donald Trump’s critics say he’s the worst president ever; his fans say he’s one of the best. That’s par for the course: Barack Obama and George W. Bush got mixed reviews, too, depending on who was doing the reviewing. So what do historians say? Nothing yet about Trump. Before his inauguration, C-SPAN conducted a survey […]
Natalie Rhae—contortionist and assistant director of Circus Spire, a pre-professional youth circus troupe— gives CALIFORNIA a peek behind the scenes of the contemporary circus and shows us why she wants to spread her love of the aerial arts.
During the 1950s and 1960s, there was a perpetually cheerful older gentleman who wore a white smock and cap while peddling ice cream on the Berkeley campus. He was known as the Crunchy Munchy Man and was a fixture on campus from 1952 to 1968.
The abject failure of Republicans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act gave Democrats the opportunity, rare of late, for some gloating. It also got them thinking in grandiose terms about the future. With public support on their side—a recent Gallup Poll shows support for Obamacare at a record 55 percent, a Quinnipiac Poll […]
Join the conversation on immigration on Tuesday, April 11 at the Cal Alumni Association’s panel discussion “A Dream Denied? The Immigrant Experience in the Campus Community.” Click here for information on how to attend and watch the live online broadcast of the event. If you missed the event or would like to watch it again, […]
When Sonia Nazario was 14 years old, she and her mother came across a pool of blood on the sidewalk. It had been about a year since they’d moved from Kansas to her mother’s native Argentina, right at the onset of the country’s “Dirty War.” She asked her mother about the blood. “The military killed […]
After President Donald Trump’s inauguration, information was altered and links up and died on government websites. In response, citizen programmers, scientists and activists met up at UC Berkeley for Data Rescue SF, an event created to preserve publicly accessible data, specifically from NASA Earth Sciences and the Department of Energy National Labs. In Toronto, New […]
President Trump’s positions on immigration and trade are causing some queasiness among people who largely supported him during the campaign: farmers. The reasons are straightforward enough. Oft-repeated protectionist sentiments raise the possibility of a trade war that could throttle U.S. food exports, and Trump’s fixation on building a “beautiful wall” on the nation’s southern border […]
Most of the discussion surrounding the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court has, quite properly, centered around the jurist’s judicial philosophy and political leanings, and the opinions he has issued from the bench. (In case you’re just tuning in, court watchers place Trump’s nominee on the right of the spectrum, more […]
Feminism has come roaring back, from the recent popular vote to pussy hats and other forms of protest. And so have its opponents. Whether happenstance or part of the Zeitgeist, Counterpoint Press last fall reissued a feminist classic, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. Written by Susan Griffin and originally published in 1978, the […]
The Health of the Gig Economy Living that gig life isn’t always easy. The repeal of Obamacare would likely mean more challenges for the state’s many independent workers who aren’t entitled to health coverage through their work, according to a UC Berkeley Labor Center study. “A February study from the UC Berkeley Labor Center found […]
The Bay-Delta, comprised of San Francisco Bay and the shared delta of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers, is the largest estuary on the west coast of the continental United States. It sustains valuable salmon and Dungeness crab fisheries, supports hundreds of family farmers who work the rich peat soils of its reclaimed islands, serves […]
One might not think the subject of kink figures much into Christian intercourse (verbal or otherwise). But apparently, evangelical marriage is actually “spicy,” and that’s “the way God intended it to be.” Or at least, that’s what some are preaching as gospel on Christian sex websites, information hubs and support groups for “Jesus-is-love”-makers who want […]
