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You can dress for success all you want, but if you’re a male, you might want to also make sure you hit the weights. A new study finds that people are more willing to perceive leadership qualities and confer status to men who are muscular. As for females, the study suggests being buff doesn’t make […]
Until she was 18, Chloe Jean Jarvis lived with the secret that she had two moms: her biological mother, Deborah, and a woman she called “Aunt Jan,” who was staying for a really long time. The closeted relationship of her same-sex parents simply wasn’t discussed back then. Nor was it the only thing that distinguished […]
The drought may not have caused California’s water crisis, but it’s certainly brought it to the attention of a public largely uninterested in it until government fiat made shorter showers and dead lawns de rigueur. State water demand has outstripped supply for decades. Water rights claims for the massive State Water Project and federal Central […]
In the weeks after the sudden death of legendary kathak dancer, choreographer and guru Pandit Chitresh Das last January, the Bay Area company that bears his name seemed determined to forge ahead. Das was in the midst of completing a major new work, “Shiva,” which was scheduled to premiere for Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall […]
Consider it a coincidental cosmic intersection of two newsworthy items out of UC Berkeley. The first was the announcement that Twitter—in its ongoing struggle to deter the most savage trolls from the Twitterverse—was forming what it called a Trust & Safety Council, whose members include UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner. As the founding director […]
The American filmmakers knew they were taking risks. They couldn’t expect to smuggle Israelis-passing-as-Americans in and out of the West Bank—not to mention pointing a camera at everything while they were there—without facing any consequences. So when they pulled their car full of women off the road in Nablus to film a b-roll shot, and […]
When Chris Chambers, 55, moved into Oakland’s Lakehurst Hotel, he went from sleeping by the Walgreens on Telegraph Avenue to sleeping in a tiny hotel room in a place where he wouldn’t allow himself to get close with any of his neighbors. But he was used to being alone. “I would get up, and then […]
A veritable wonk storm is erupting over the share-the-wealth plans of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, with the country’s leading Democratic economists joining the hail of public letters, op-eds and blog posts debating whether his numbers add up or are merely magical thinking. In an open letter to Sanders and Gerald Friedman (a University of […]
As the nation waits to see how (or even if) the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia gets filled this year, there’s a lot of buzz on the UC Berkeley campus about one name in particular: Indian-American jurist Sri Srinivasan. Not only do several law professors cite him as their […]
NASCAR drivers, golfers and tennis players won’t be the only ones wearing patches touting their sponsors if a San Diego millionaire has his way. Republican entrepreneur John Cox is bankrolling a proposed initiative for the November ballot that would require members of the California Assembly and State Senate to wear stickers or badges emblazoned with […]
When I was growing up in Queens, NY, mosquitoes tortured us all through the muggy summers. I ran around with pink splotches of calamine lotion covering my arms and legs. The cold of the lotion soothed the itch for about seven seconds. Never stopped me from scratching. We hated mosquitoes. We wanted them to disappear—not […]
Daniel Gallant was an arrant racist—a violent and unstable man who took great pleasure in hurting his fellow human beings. At one point, he made a promise to himself that he would assault at least one person from an “inferior” race daily. It was a vow that he was assiduous in keeping. Although Gallant was […]
All the recent sunshine and budding crocuses and gentle zephyrs may feel like the current El Niño is over, that we can bid adieu to the pounding rain, the surging rivers, the landslides, the Sierra blizzards, the stranded motorists on Donner Summit. Don’t bet on it. “We may be mid-through the winter calendar-wise, but in […]
Photographer and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism professor Ken Light’s new photography collection, What’s Going On, opens with copies from his FBI file. In a confidential memo dated June 28, 1972, the agent assigned to tail Light advised his higher-ups that, considering the young man’s association “with the ‘Underground Press,’ it is felt that […]
Although it’s some 1,480 light-years away from Earth, the mystery known as “Tabby’s Star” has captured the attention of professional and amateur stargazers alike, sparking fantastical speculation about what might explain its erratic light-curve. Some astronomers have gone so far as to suggest that the star’s bizarre flickering and dimming could result from shadows cast […]
It’s virtually impossible these days to imagine an America without those vaunted interpreters of the national mood: polls. They help determine the fate of political contenders, shape social policies, and interpret the mood of the nation. The aggregator realclearpolitics.com lists no fewer than 22 public polls in the past week focused on the Democratic presidential […]
It’s no secret that women still get the shaft in the work world. It will take 118 years before the gender pay gap closes, says the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report. And even though women outnumber men in the workforce, only 4 percent of CEOs in the Standard & Poor’s 500 firms […]
The West Coast has moved a step closer to a functional earthquake early warning system with MyShake—a phone app that’s now ready for download on Android phones and headed for Apple phones as well. It’s designed to detect motion particular to an advancing earthquake, even if carried in a pocket or purse, and to send […]
