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Janet Napolitano may have earned the support of the UC Board of Regents, but at Berkeley, the Associated Students of the University of California are not so easily swayed. Convening for their weekly meeting, the student senators of ASUC have offered their collective assessment of the UC system’s controversial new president. And, lo, the former […]
Academics have a First Amendment right to criticize the administration of their own public universities without being subject to any retaliation for doing so, according to a little-noticed decision last week from a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The author of the ruling? A former academic himself—from Berkeley. Judge William A. […]
Many things—from relationships to assembling IKEA furniture—are not as simple as they seem on the surface. Turns out that’s the case for marine volcanoes as well. Most island chain and seamount volcanoes are found at the juncture of oceanic tectonic plates, where subduction, meaning one plate plowing under another, makes it relatively easy for magma […]
To those who have just commenced their law studies at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, a hearty congratulations! Now, for your own peace of mind, stop reading. As those with their eyes on the bar know, law school is no longer the safe bet that it once was. Tuition is up, government grants are withering, and legal […]
At precisely 3:26 p.m. on July 17, Britney Spears was recording music at the corner of West Oak Street and South Glenwood Place in Burbank, California. On August 23 at 4:21 p.m., Katy Perry was in rural northeast Colorado, at the intersection of Highways 46 and 55. And on August 5 at 3:56 p.m., Oprah […]
Bad news keeps leaking from Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant—literally leaking, as in 400 tons of highly radioactive water a day. Or it may be more than that. No one is really sure. The squabbles between the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), and Japan’s nuclear regulators are further obfuscating the […]
The new Bay Bridge has officially opened, but the bitter dispute between UC Berkeley engineers and transportation officials over the safety of the span is far from resolved. Several professors have expressed misgivings, citing everything from basic design to snapping anchor bolts, faulty welds and corroding girder tendons—the most outspoken critic being civil and environmental […]
They say that breaking up is hard to do—but that’s never stopped Siskiyou County, where an aggrieved county board of supervisors just declared its intent to secede from the state of California. It’s but the latest twist in a dysfunctional relationship: more than 200 times since California’s founding, would-be separatists have campaigned to split the […]
It’s still ricocheting around cyberspace, shared via Facebook from alum to alum. Indeed the BuzzFeed post “40 Signs You Went to Berkeley” has proved an irresistible 2013 hit with its narrow niche of an audience, racking up more than 200,000 views and counting. But it’s also become a flash point of controversy about what, if […]
If a transcendent lesson is emerging from the Rim Fire, it’s this: we need to manage our forests aggressively, thinning thick stands of young trees and clearing deadwood on the forest floor. Doing so would reduce fuel in second-growth and third-growth coniferous forests—the kind of fuel that has driven the Rim Fire to become the […]
As the Bay Area celebrates the opening of a new Bay Bridge—an eastern span that transportation officials are hailing as elegant and seismically secure—UC Berkeley engineers are expressing serious misgivings about whether the structure is safe. And at least one professor labels it far less stable than the old bridge. Cal professor of civil and […]
Imagine craving a healthy gourmet meal and having it appear minutes later—fresh and piping hot—on the curb outside your front door for just $6. That’s the idea behind the startup SpoonRocket, launched by two UC Berkeley grads who aim to revolutionize the very concepts of fast food and delivery. Enterprising engineering major Anson Tsui and social […]
With the Rim Fire still sweeping out-of-control through Sierra woodlands, something tugged at our memory: Wasn’t this the same area that burned a couple of decades ago? In fact, yes—the Lightning Complex Fire of 1987 (also called the Stanislaus Complex Fire) torched almost exactly the same terrain. So are we in some kind of vicious recursive wildfire […]
The Rim Fire, which by Friday was declared 32 percent contained, has already scorched more than 202,000 acres—destroying Berkeley-owned Tuolumne Family Camp, devouring prime acreage within Yosemite National Park, and menacing other camps and thousands of homes. And yet, nothing about this fire is anomalous. Large and destructive wildfires ravage the state with metronomic frequency, and for […]
What does it take to be a self-made success in America? Our national mythology points to gumption and gusto—the ability to think strategically, act aggressively, and possess an unfailing if not occasionally irrational self-confidence. It also still helps to come from relative affluence, and to be a guy. So far, so obvious. But if you’re […]
As smoke settled into the valley of Yosemite National Park on Labor Day, firefighters continued to gain ground against the fourth largest wildfire in California history. On Monday, they declared the Rim Fire—which has torched more than 228,000 acres including Berkeley-owned Tuolomne Family Camp, and forced the evacuation of the Cal Alumni Association’s Lair of the Golden Bear camp—60 […]
Berkeley is about to become the nation’s first. Yes, other cities have toyed with the idea of creating a student-centric city council district—most notably Burlington, Vermont, home of the University of Vermont (and perhaps not incidentally, the jam band Phish). But Berkeley City Council is actually doing it, having given preliminary approval to a redistricting map […]
The Berkeley corner of Telegraph Avenue and Channing Way is on the verge of becoming a very rocky road indeed. On one side of the corner stands CREAM, typically identifiable by the line of people stretched down the sidewalk waiting to purchase one of its signature ice cream cookie sandwiches. Since opening in 2010, CREAM—an […]
Late last week, the news that famous (and in some circles, infamous) Berkeley endocrinology professor Tyrone Hayes had lost his UC lab funding leapt from campus squabble to scandal-dom. The professor accused the school of acting in cahoots with its corporate benefactors. The university, in turn, said Hayes had run out of money to pay […]
