Rhumba Ray’s Rhapsodies: Meet the Man With the Horn on the Berkeley Campus
Walk on the UC Berkeley campus, you’re likely to hear Rhumba Ray’s music. Strike up a conversation, and you can listen to the rhythms of life behind that music.
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Strength in Numbers: Inside the Berkeley Institute Where Math Geeks Rule
Ever see the TV game show Let’s Make a Deal? Contestants are given a choice of three doors and told that behind one of them is a shiny new sports car. If they pick door No. 1, the host may open door No. 2 to reveal that there’s nothing behind it. Then he asks if […]
A Line in the Darkness: In Solitary, a Letter from the Outside Can Be Everything
I have been incarcerated most of my life, in and out of juvenile facilities as a minor, and as an adult I’ve been in and out of the prison system therefore spending many years in solitary confinement. My first experience of solitary confinement was in 2001. Being behind bars in a cell is bad enough, […]
What Sparked This Pulitzer-Winning Novelist? Dual Life, ‘Mind-Blowing’ Berkeley & a Movie
For over 20 years—before 9/11 and Black Lives Matter and Trump’s wall-building scheme, before “white privilege” and “male privilege” were common phrases—Viet Thanh Nguyen was wrestling with questions of social justice and power. For years he dreamed of writing a novel that would explore these important concepts in a well-crafted, entertaining, even funny way. And […]
The Blind Leading the Blind: Designing an Inclusive World
Joshua Miele has been blind ever since a violent acid attack took away his vision before his 5th birthday. But he says he no longer spends time wishing he could see. Instead, from his office at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, he dreams up new technologies for the blind, and helps turn […]
More Than It’s Cracked Up to Be: Cal Crowds to ‘Hear’ World’s Biggest Bell
For three centuries, the largest bell in the world has stood silent in Moscow, unable to be rung. But this weekend—thanks to 21st-century computer wizardry—crowds visiting the Cal campus will be among the first to hear it. Well not it, exactly. But a team of scholars and musicians from UC Berkeley and elsewhere devised a […]
Mattering, at Last: How Californians Will Determine If the GOP Is Truly Trumped
Some political analysts are showing laudable restraint by deeming the current election year anomalous, or unprecedented, but many are just saying the hell with it, and calling it as they see it—crazy. Or deeply, savagely weird, as Hunter S. Thompson might have characterized it. (And if ever there were an election cycle that needed the […]
Not Supremely Tech-Savvy—Can High Court Keep Up With the Cyber Revolution?
A popular opinion on the Internet lately is that the members of the Supreme Court are a bit superannuated. You know: supremely old, dated, over the Capitol Hill, if you will. The presumption seems to be that with our geriatric justices aged to imperfection, they’re not only physically impaired, but technologically impaired as well. And […]
Poor Journalism: Is Media Coverage of the Poor Getting Better or Worse?
In 2000, Tina Rosenberg, a journalist for The New York Times, pitched a story for its Sunday magazine about the AIDS epidemic ravaging the world’s poorest nations. She wanted to show how pharmaceutical companies had pressured governments in sub-Saharan Africa, where 1 in 12 adults were living with HIV or AIDS, to deny access to […]
Battling Extremism By and Against Muslims: Cal Students to Stage “True Islam” Event
You hear the plaint often enough from Americans of a certain political persuasion: Muslims aren’t doing enough to condemn extremists in their ranks. Even if they don’t advocate violence, the rationale goes, they encourage it by refusing to confront those who do. Of course, advising other people to “confront” violent extremists is all well and […]
Stretch Your Appeal: In Fast-Paced Dating World, Take Up Space to Stand Out
In online dating, a picture is worth much more than a thousand words. When Christian Rudder, a founder of OKCupid, analyzed the dating website’s data, he found that profile photos drove 90% of users’ choices. With so much riding on a split-second impression, what’s the best way to impress potential mates? Apparently, changing your posture. […]
Beyond Minimum Wage Hikes: With Universal Basic Income, “Everyone Gets a Check”
The pact to raise the minimum wage in California to $15 in six years is but the latest attempt to address the economic crisis of our times: income inequality. The facts are that the middle class is shrinking, the rich are getting ridiculously richer, and the poor are—well, staying really poor. As data from the Pew […]
Preparing to Launch: Inside SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s Start-Up Accelerator
SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s start-up accelerator program, is housed on the top floor of the tallest building in downtown Berkeley. All four walls of the 10,000 square-foot penthouse have floor-to-ceiling windows, offering up a 360-degree view. This is where Cal’s fledgling entrepreneurs come for free office space and guidance while preparing to launch their product or […]
‘Once a Doper, Always a Doper’—Olympic Runner Denounces 2nd-Chance Racers
The way Alysia Montaño sees it, she should have one Olympic and two world championships medals, instead of none. The former UC Berkeley runner finished fourth in the 800 meters at the 2011 world championships, fifth in the 2012 London Olympics, and fourth again at the 2013 world championships. In each of those races, she […]
Shooting on the Edge: War Photographer at Cal to Sharpen His Storytelling Skills
When Shawn Baldwin talks about the “discomforts and mishaps” of life, he doesn’t mean the little pebble-in-your-shoe inconveniences that annoy the typical American. He’s referring to the time he was kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq, blindfolded, and had a gun pushed against the side of his head, on and off, for about 12 hours. (A […]
Retraction Action: Science Fraud Is Up, but More Retractions Could Be a Good Thing
Scientific retractions are on the rise. In 2001 there were 40 incidents in which published results of scientific research were retracted, but in less than a decade that number had ballooned to 400. And yes, the publication rate had also increased during that time, but by only 44 percent—not nearly enough to explain away a […]
Artist Interned: A Berkeley Legend Found Beauty in “Enormous Bleakness” of War Camp
During World War II, some of the most important work connected with UC Berkeley was done not in a library, lecture hall, or lab—but from within the barbed-wire confines of internment camps.
Division Street Debacle: Nothing Else Works—Why Not Legalize Homeless Encampment?
For superstitious reasons, 13th Street in San Francisco is called Duboce, and Duboce eventually becomes Division Street, running beneath a freeway that splits right to Oakland and left toward the Golden Gate Bridge. It was here, where the sidewalks had little foot traffic and there was some shelter from the rains, that a settlement of […]
Capturing the College Vote: Law Students’ Bill to Register for Classes and Voting
What to do about typically anemic voter turnout among young people? Two UC Berkeley law students are behind a proposal that would automatically register students to vote when they enroll for classes in any public college or university in California. Berkeley Law third-year Cindy Dinh and first-year Paul Monge drafted the bill with its sponsor, […]
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