2018 Winter Play
Preparing for the ‘Big One’: ShakeAlert 2.0 May Save Your Life
Early earthquake warnings come to California. This fall, the Seismology Lab at UC Berkeley launched ShakeAlert 2.0, California’s first earthquake early warning (EEW) system. It employs a West Coast–wide network of sensors to detect the quakes before they hit, in hopes of spreading the word as far and wide as possible. On October 8, just […]
Editor’s Note: Kids Don’t Play Like They Used To
Kids don’t play like they used to. For one thing, they are too often locked to their screens. For another, we’ve got ’em on tight schedules, shuttling from play dates to practices, music lessons to ball games. When I was growing up in the 1970s, we had some of that as well, but what I […]
Life After Berkeley: How an Alum Survived Running with the Bulls
All you need is a priest, a bandanna, and a strong stomach. I blame Hemingway. Looking for something to read last year, The Sun Also Rises fell into my unwilling hands. I’d never understood why so many people lived and died by his writing, so I decided to offer him a second chance. There it […]
Chancellor’s Letter: In the Zone
When I heard that the theme for this edition of California magazine was play, my thoughts turned to music and sports. Both are forms of self-expression, closely linked in ways that are at once intuitive and surprising. We have many campus programs in each—another way we seek to embrace the fullest possible range of human […]
Big Changes Ahead: Q&A with Cal’s New Athletic Director
26-year Army veteran Jim Knowlton wants to make major changes at Cal Athletics in the next year. In May, new UC Berkeley Athletic Director Jim Knowlton took over a tough job, spearheading a department in upheaval. Cal Athletics currently finds itself burdened with about $439 million in debt from the Memorial Stadium renovation, including millions […]
Cal Performances Sings the Saga of the Undocumented
A newly commissioned work gives voice to student stories. Cal Performances isn’t in the habit of weighing in on topical controversies, but when it comes to defending Cal students, the organization decided it was time to raise a voice. Make that many voices—Cal Performances has assembled a stellar roster of artists to create an oratorio […]
Berkeley Brains of Yore: Wendell M. Stanley & Joel H. Hildebrand
Eureka! The Diving Bell and the Bullet Wound On August 4, 1919, Berkeley chemist Joel H. Hildebrand (above, right) was shot and wounded by a lab assistant who accused the professor of opposing his application for appointment. Hildebrand survived—fortunately for the Navy. Twenty years later, in 1939, his work on the properties of gasses being […]
How to Sit Better, and Other Questions
Five Questions for Galen Cranz, Professor Emerita of Architecture. You’ve been working on ethnography and space. What are some examples of other cultures’ uses of space that we could learn from? The English pub offers a wide range of ways to sit or stand while socializing. The English have barstools at perching height that support […]
Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Gambling and the Inevitable Remorse
So you’re in Vegas at the penny slots, and you promise yourself you’ll only play a dollar. That’s it! No more. Just enough to have the Vegas experience. If you win, you may regret not wagering a ten-spot to get a bigger jackpot. If you lose, you’ll probably regret sitting at the machine at all. […]
These Robots Are Learning the Old-Fashioned Way—By Playing
For all the loose talk about the Singularity and Skynet, it’s pretty clear we have a long way to go before we’re in the thrall of a malign artificial intelligence (AI) intent on harnessing us for our precious mammalian bio-electricity, à la The Matrix. Still, some of the robots at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research […]
Necessary Roughness
A century ago, football was in big trouble. History has a way of repeating.
Go Play! You Can Read This Later.
Back already? Okay then, read on. It was during the Great Malaise of the Jimmy Carter years that Zippy the Pinhead, clown prince of non sequiturs, first wondered, “Are we having fun yet?” The questioner was a simpleton, but time has endowed his question with the ring of profundity. Or is that an alarm bell? […]
