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With so many world-class athletes, UC Berkeley is always well represented at the Olympics. The joke in 2012 was that if Cal were its own country (and isn’t it, in its own way?), it would have tied for sixth in the world for the number of gold medals won. That number was 11, by the way.
With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump unprecedentedly unpopular—55 percent of voters view her unfavorably, and 70 percent hold a negative opinion of him—third parties see a chance to make a real dent in this presidential election. And the third party in the best position to do so? The only one likely to be on the […]
Andrea Broaddus considers herself pretty lucky—she and her husband recently closed on a Berkeley duplex next to BART. “We leveraged ourselves to the hilt, but we managed to do it,” says Broaddus, a lecturer in regional and city planning at Cal’s College of Environmental Design. Still, it was nip-and-tuck to the end. The couple were […]
The weather has typically been the go-to form of small talk—what you bring up when you want to avoid the weighty subject of say, politics. But no more! Politicos have long known that the weather, and rain in particular, affects voter turnout. But a new study takes it even further, suggesting that the weather on […]
So a lawyer with a disability and a Catholic monk walk into a bar… What would be considered a bar joke for some is actually a description of a night with a friend for me. In an era where the only difference between American politics and a WWE match is the amount of spandex involved, […]
People aren’t products. Or are they? We’re in the age of the “personal brand,” after all—where your online persona effects your reputation, the bonds you form with others, your career. And now, your dating life. Perhaps you’ve heard of Peeple, also known as Yelp for People, where you can rate a human being with a […]
The decision by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration to lift mandatory water restrictions is good news for any Californian who likes to raise petunias and zucchini and take showers lasting longer than three minutes. But is it really a good idea? After all, last winter’s greatly hyped and much-anticipated El Niño turned out to be something […]
Thirty years ago, the most-prized wines in California—including Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet, Duckhorn Three Palms Merlot, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet—sold for under $30. Opus One got attention with its shocking price of $50. Inflation since then has roughly doubled the value of money. But the cheapest of those famous wines now costs about four times […]
One might safely assume that Philip Stark is a genuine apocalypticist. Although he’s known for his urban foraging project—where he scours the “food deserts” of the Bay Area for edible plants such as dandelions, blackberries, oxalis and nasturtiums—his survivalist skills go much deeper. From persistence hunting with his “tribe” to handcrafting his own shoes, he […]
Much ado has been made of the Latino demographic in this election year. Democrats see reports of rising voter registration and immigrant naturalization rates among Latinos in Texas, California and elsewhere as good news, given that Latino voters tend to skew Democratic. Needless to say, Trump Republicans see things differently—most don’t care about a potential […]
This weekend commencement season gets into full swing, with colleges and universities across the country bestowing honorary degrees on the great and the good as part of their graduation celebrations. Some notable recipients over the years: Donald Trump, who was named an honorary Doctor of Business Administration by Scotland’s Robert Gordon University in 2010, only […]
Lock ’em up and throw away the key: For several generations California’s response to rising crime rates consisted of a variation on this theme, culminating with 1994’s severe Three Strikes law. But for the past two decades, violent crime in California has been falling, and by 2012, California voters took the unprecedented step of approving […]
When he embarked on his freshman year at UC Berkeley in 2014, Esteban Vasquez was set to become the first in his family to graduate from college. A couple of months in, he was ready to drop out. During Vasquez’s first week in school, his grandmother died, robbing him of a loved one as well […]
UC Berkeley sophomore Anthony Carrasco loves his Monday afternoon class lecture on the History of Punishment, but sometimes the torture feels a little too literal. “Instead of thinking about the Panopticon, I start thinking about heating up the stove and frying eggs. I start to imagine all the things I could put on the eggs: […]
Peter Hanff was 3 years old when he stumbled across the Land of Oz; his father had 10 Oz titles and began reading them to his son before bed. The boy quickly became entranced by L. Frank Baum’s stories and the illustrations. It was the start of an obsession that would lead him to his […]
Bernie Peyton is profoundly dyslexic, and that made his early years growing up in New York City difficult. School was hellish: He struggled to read, he was bullied, and it was hard to make friends. Then when he was 9, his stepfather gave him a book that changed his life. Peyton still has the book—a […]
Tales of internship compensation are typically depressing, in that there is, all too often, no compensation. But in the spirit of misery loving herself some company, recent findings by a UC Berkeley student revealed how much students are being offered for summer internships at top U.S. tech companies—finally giving people with “real jobs” a turn […]
It is April 12, one day before the Golden State Warriors will barge into NBA history with their 73rd victory of the season, and practice is winding down at the team’s downtown Oakland headquarters. Stephen Curry lofts majestic three-point shots at one basket, as usual. Klay Thompson sharpens his silky-smooth release nearby. And on an […]
