2014 Winter Gender Assumptions
How to Train Your Robot: Now They Can Follow Human Demonstrations to Tie Knots
BRETT the robot is a knot-tying whiz; it can tie an overhand knot, square knot, figure 8, and hitch. Sure, there are robots out there that drive cars, detonate roadside bombs, and even collect rock samples from the surface of Mars, but what makes BRETT special is not what it can do, but how it […]
Fear Factor: In Business and Life, It May Separate Smart Luck from Dumb Luck
Taking big risks might actually keep you from succeeding. John Morgan is haunted by the prospect of failure. However, he tells his classroom of aspiring entrepreneurs, this fear might not be as unhealthy as your “clinical psychologist will tell you.” We may like to peg successful entrepreneurs as overconfident thrill seekers, but such thrill seekers […]
The Giving-Out Trees: Drought-Stressed Sequoias and Blue Oaks May Start to Vanish
Todd Dawson’s research has taken him to forests, savannas, and deserts all over the world. But his recent investigations close to the UC Berkeley campus have taken him to the edges where ecosystem types transition. The professor of Integrative Biology has found that the blue oaks (Quercus douglasii) at Berkeley’s Blue Oak Ranch Reserve near […]
Love, Life and Baseball: A Filmmaker Follows Little Leaguers from Oakland to Havana
There are men of vision, and there are men of vision about men of vision. This is a story about both kinds of men, and about a movie, and about kids, and baseball. If Hollywood were to make a movie about the movie, the opening scene would be in a blue-collar bar in Berkeley, two […]
Radicalizing Life Events: If I Was Truly Feminist, What Was I Doing About It?
From the moment I got engaged last year, everything I touched became fraught with meaning about my role in the world as a woman, wife, and future mother. Just a few of the questions that came up in the months surrounding the wedding: Would I circle around Dave seven times under the chuppah to signify […]
My Scarf, Myself, and You: Hijab Is About More, and Less, than Religious Expression
The tiny, default, unisex photo thumbnail haunted me for days.
What Stalled the Gender Revolution? Child Care That Costs More Than College Tuition
I am probably a familiar type to you. I went to college, got a master’s degree, started a career, married, and had my first child late, at 35. I was working as editor-in-chief of a fiction magazine called Zoetrope: All-Story when I became pregnant. The magazine, founded and published by Francis Ford Coppola, had long […]
Engendering Sons: Is It Doable—or Even Desirable—to Raise Gender-Neutral Children?
I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s and ’70s as the middle of three sisters—no brothers—and I took the “boy role.” I was athletic, did more of the outside chores (although we all had to weed the lawn), and wore pants in elementary school as soon as school rules changed allowing us to […]
The Book of Proverb: In a New Autobiography, the ‘Last of the Biblical Tackles’ Tells All
To say Proverb Jacobs has written his memoirs is a little like saying that Herman Melville wrote a story about a whale. That’s not to exaggerate the literary accomplishment, only to say that when it comes to sheer bulk, Jacobs’s humbly titled, self-published Autobiography of an Unknown Football Player makes even Moby-Dick look like small-fry. […]
Cracking the Code: Jennifer Doudna and Her Amazing Molecular Scissors
This Lilliputian virus-killing machine is transforming molecular biology research throughout the world.
The Politics of Consent: At UC Campuses, Why ‘No Means No’ Was No Longer Enough
In September, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the Yes Means Yes rule, the first law in the nation to require California colleges to adopt an affirmative consent standard in sexual assault cases. The legislation is controversial, but advocates see it as an acknowledgment that a “rape culture” is prevalent on university campuses, and politicians […]
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