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Monday, 21 September 2009
1. Op-Ed: A university that's under assault
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 19, 2009
On Wednesday, a raucous protest interrupted a meeting of the president and regents of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Next Thursday, a walkout will bring picket lines, empty classrooms, closed offices and mass rallies from BERKELEY to San Diego. What brings this assault on the calm of the world's finest public university? Is it free speech? The Afghan war?
No, the University of California is under assault of another kind. It is in grave danger from draconian budget cuts coming down from Sacramento and decisions made in the heat of the moment by the president's office. In response, a broad coalition of professors, unions and students are banding together to defend the institution they love....
We know, however, that the blame should not be laid only at the door of UC's Oakland headquarters or the campus chancellors' offices. It starts in Sacramento. We call for the restoration of majority rule in the Legislature for budgets and an end to the two-thirds voting rule...
As long as Sacramento starves our educational system, we all suffer. Studies show that the university pumps billions of dollars into the economy each year. More important, it trains tens of thousands of young people for an increasingly sophisticated job market. Beyond that, university research underlies technologies that put California among the top 10 economies in the world.
Most of all, the university is a fountain of ideas, which go out from the campuses to change the worlds of politics, economics, culture and everyday life. If we continue down this road, the spring will soon dry up. Full Story
2. Money problems sowing discontent in University of California system
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
Berkeley — Financial problems are causing more angst than ever at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, where some faculty members have pledged to walk out of class on Thursday to protest budget cuts and students are trying to figure out how to band together to fight tuition and fee increases....
"It's going to explode pretty soon, if it hasn't already," said WILL SMELKO, A SENIOR POLITICAL SCIENCE MAJOR AT UC-BERKELEY AND THE STUDENT-BODY PRESIDENT.
The growing rumbles come after a rough year for the university, which has cut enrollment and raised student fees to make up for state budget cuts. In November, the Board of Regents is expected to vote to increase tuition by 32 percent over the next year, pushing it to more than $10,000 annually....
"We regard it as a matter of individual conscience," said CHRISTOPHER KUTZ, CHAIRMAN OF UC-BERKELEY'S ACADEMIC SENATE.
He and others have tried to direct the rising tide of anger to the right places. Legislators are the people the university needs to persuade, he said, not the UC leaders in UC's administrative office in Oakland....
Undergraduate and graduate students have been affected differently. Staff cuts, for example, have slowed reimbursements to graduate students who pay some of their own expenses upfront, said MIGUEL DAAL, A DOCTORAL STUDENT OF PHYSICS AT UC BERKELEY AND PRESIDENT OF THE CAMPUS GRADUATE ASSEMBLY.
"That's important for a student who has to shell out a month's rent for a research trip," he said....
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
3. Democratic activists, political pros split on two-thirds vote
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
Sacramento — A split between Democratic activists and the political pros who run the party may be growing over how to approach the issue that has bedeviled the party for years: the two-thirds vote required to pass taxes and budgets in the Legislature.
Most Democrats in the upper echelons of the party apparatus are convinced it's a fool's errand to try to persuade voters to hand the majority party unchecked power to raise taxes. Instead, they're gearing up for a campaign next year to lower the threshold — from two-thirds of both legislative bodies to a simple majority — on budget votes only, a path they believe voters can embrace....
"This is a doable thing, but it requires getting Democrats together and deciding to really do it," said GEORGE LAKOFF, A UC BERKELEY LINGUISTICS PROFESSOR who has become a de facto leader of the cause and is preparing to submit by next week a ballot measure for the November 2010 election that would drop the two-thirds requirement on both taxes and budgets. "Either they want to give the state a future or they can let Republicans continue pushing it into disaster."
Lakoff gained national prominence in 2004 with his New York Times best-seller, "Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate," which urged Democrats to start combating the Republicans' superior spin machine. He's also become a favorite among California liberals, receiving a standing ovation from Democratic state party delegates last spring after urging them to pursue a ballot drive on the two-thirds vote on taxes. He will address a union convention next week in Los Angeles on the issue.
But party leaders see him as quixotic, and dismiss his position as misplaced and uninformed.
"People are not ready to pass it," said John Burton, the Democratic party chairman and a former Senate leader. "He's got a theory. Good luck to him."...
[This story also appeared in the Oakland Tribune] Full Story
4. Web site helps students choose college
San Francisco Chronicle
September 21, 2009
Seventeen-year-old Tatiana Castro visited a college fair near her small Southern California town and had a chance to talk with representatives of Yale, New York University and a half dozen other East Coast colleges she's interested in.
The senior learned about the fair not from her Riverside County high school - which has one counselor for every 462 students - but during a live Web chat on CollegeWeekLive.com, which allowed her to correspond with college counselors about everything from her SATs to college sports....
CollegeWeekLive.com has exploded in popularity since it premiered in 2007. For students like Tatiana, whose family can't afford to take her on an East Coast college tour, the online site - billed as "the world's biggest virtual college fair" - is one alternative....
Universities like it, too. BOB PATTERSON knew about it when he worked in admissions at the University of North Carolina. So when he became DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS AT UC BERKELEY six months ago, he invited the undergraduate UC campuses to join - and they did....
"We're not able to recruit as much as we used to because of budget restrictions," Patterson said. "CollegeWeekLive serves any student interested in coming to a virtual environment."
Apart from that site, UC Berkeley and other schools are finding value in conducting more business electronically. For example, Berkeley admissions representatives are available for live chats with prospective students from 4 to 5 p.m. every Wednesday from now through Nov. 18.... Full Story
5. Former Clinton aide calls for civility
Ventura County Star
September 18, 2009
A law professor and former top White House aide urged local leaders and activists at a luncheon Friday in Oxnard to commit to civility and community during this transformative moment in American history.
MARIA ECHAVESTE, President Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and the highest-ranking Latina in White House history at the time, said if inequalities are allowed to continue, the nation will lose its special place in the world as a land of opportunity.
Growing emotional as she recalled her childhood in Oxnard, Echaveste said, “I have had other people from other countries say to me there’s no other place a farmworker’s daughter who is of immigrant parents with no education could go from Channel Islands High School to Stanford to Berkeley and go on to work in the White House.”...
ECHAVESTE, NOW A LAW PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, grew up in Oxnard and graduated from Channel Islands High School in 1972. She praised Ventura County for preserving agriculture and open space and not allowing the region “to become Orange County.”
Echaveste warned that if people turn away from their communities and focus only on themselves, they risk changing the fabric of the country.
“We have to recommit ourselves to helping our community,” she said. “No matter where you go, people want the same thing. We all want to be able to provide for our families, take care of them when they are sick, find a house to live in and a safe community we can grow old in. Now can someone explain to me, if we all want that, why we are incapable of achieving it?” Full Story
6. San Ramon honors one of its own for Garrido capture UC Berkeley police specialist Lisa Campbell.
San Francisco Chronicle Online
September 21, 2009
UC BERKELEY POLICE SPECIALIST LISA CAMPBELL will be honored by the city of San Ramon tonight for helping capture kidnap-rape suspect Phillip Craig Garrido.
Campbell, 40, who lives in San Ramon, and UC BERKELEY POLICE OFFICER ALLISON "ALLY" JACOBS are widely credited for setting the wheels in motion that led to the arrest of Garrido and his wife, Nancy Garrido.
CAMPBELL, MANAGER OF UC BERKELEY POLICE'S SPECIAL EVENTS UNIT, realized that something was amiss when Phillip Garrido showed up on campus Aug. 24 with two young girls, who authorities now believe he fathered by his alleged kidnap victim, Jaycee Dugard....
Tonight, Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, and local dignitaries will honor Campbell at San Ramon City Hall. They will present Campbell with a Congressional Record Statement that was added to the record of the U.S. House of Representatives, in which McNerney hailed both Campbell and Jacobs for their efforts to "make our community safer and save an innocent mother and her two young children from horrific circumstances." Full Story
7. Now, an Invention Inventors Will Like
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
The world can be a rough place for independent inventors. They can often find themselves in court, battling big corporations, spending piles of money on lawyers and leaving it up to judges and juries to determine the value of their hard-won patents....
“What you want is a market that can promote innovation and reduce the huge costs of litigation,” said ROBERT P. MERGES, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY AND A DIRECTOR OF THE BERKELEY CENTER FOR LAW AND TECHNOLOGY. “And that market is starting to take shape.”
A classic small-inventor firm, Zoltar Satellite Alarm Systems, is planning to sample that market by auctioning off its patents next month. Professor Merges and other patent experts point to it as an intriguing case to watch....
Whether the patents will prove to be a hot property is not clear. “They were certainly innovative over the years, but I do think there is a question here if the industry and technology has passed them by,” said Professor Merges of Berkeley.... Full Story
8. Trade tiff highlights U.S.-China interdependence
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 18, 2009
Beijing — If the tiff between the United States and China over tires, chickens and cars were to flare into a full-blown trade war, it could be catastrophic for both countries.
No serious observers are yet predicting that will happen, but experts say that while leaders on both sides know the economies of the two nations are now deeply intertwined, populous sentiments could push them dangerously close to the brink....
Trade tit-for-tats can "boomerang out of control," said PAUL TIFFANY, A SENIOR LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS who specializes in emerging Asian economies. And the consequences can be grave.
He noted, for example, that China has helped finance much of the United States' debt and that if it stopped buying U.S. Treasuries, or dumped the ones it holds, "the standard of living in America would drop precipitously."... Full Story
9. A flat-wrong flatter-tax plan
Even its creators are unable to predict the effect it would have on the state.
Los Angeles Times
September 21, 2009
The most obvious thing about the big, complicated tax reform scheme that will go to the Legislature this week is that millionaires would save an average of $109,000 a year. Taxpayers making between $40,000 and $50,000 would save $4. This is not a typo.
The plan, still awaiting a final draft, is the work of the grandly named California Commission on the 21st Century Economy, which held its final official meeting last Monday. But it's been clear from the beginning that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in setting it up last fall, was aiming to do precisely that: enact big cuts for upper-income taxpayers and create what's become a pea-under-the-shelltax system to make up the lost revenue....
It's surprising that the panel members, including liberals such as the highly respected CHRIS EDLEY, DEAN OF THE BOALT HALL LAW SCHOOL AT UC BERKELEY, would endorse a plan that's so uncertain and regressive. It's "absolutely" not a tax system he'd design, Edley said, but somehow Sacramento's inertia had to be broken.... Full Story
10. $30 billion home loan time bomb set for 2010
San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2009
Thousands of Bay Area homes have a ticking time bomb embedded in their mortgage. The homes were purchased with loans known as option ARMs, short for adjustable rate mortgages....
The option ARM scenario will unfold over several years, which offers some hope that there may be time to avert a deluge of foreclosures. The bulk of option ARMs recast dates are spread out from 2010 through 2012. Especially for the loans that recast later, it's possible that a solution will arise, either through rising home prices allowing them to refinance, or through extra intervention from the government or lenders to help these borrowers....
"This will be another factor keeping home prices from recovering," said CYNTHIA KROLL, SENIOR REGIONAL ECONOMIST WITH THE FISHER CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE AND URBAN ECONOMICS AT UC BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS. "It should be a message to policymakers in Washington that there is a big group out there that falls outside the parameters of what's being addressed by current policy."... Full Story
11. Health reform's 'gang of 6' reaps political cash
San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2009
The bipartisan "gang of six" senators who helped craft the health care reform bill going before a key Senate committee Tuesday represent less than 3 percent of the U.S. population - but they hold a lot of power at a crucial policy-shaping moment in Congress.
That's why, analysts say, health care industry lobbyists have showered them with more campaign cash on average than other senators this year, in an attempt to influence the outcome....
"Money buys access," said HENRY BRADY, A PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AND DEAN OF THE GOLDMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AT UC BERKELEY.... Full Story
12. Letters to the Editor
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 20, 2009
...To the Editor:
Re “Judge Rejects a Settlement Over Bonuses” (front page, Sept. 15):
It was a single person who insisted that some of the culprits in our financial calamity not only be identified but actually be held accountable. It wasn’t the executive branch, or the regulators, or Congress. It was Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
All those who are interested in equality before the law should be grateful to our founding fathers for their wisdom in establishing an independent third branch of government that isn’t susceptible to campaign contributions and lobbying. He is the kind of judge they envisioned, and he has met their highest expectations.
JAMES P. TUTHILL
Lafayette, Calif., Sept. 15, 2009
THE WRITER IS A LECTURER AT THE SCHOOL OF LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. Full Story
13. RIT Trades Invention Rights for Research Dollars and Says You Should, Too
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
The Rochester Institute of Technology was not the likeliest of institutions to lead a revolution in the way universities think about partnerships with companies.
Luckily, nobody told that to Bill Destler.
Two years ago, as RIT's new president, Mr. Destler began to champion a new approach to the sometimes-stormy negotiations surrounding corporate-research relationships, believing the dissonance was nothing less than a threat to America's economic competitiveness....
Looking to make RIT a test bed for a new approach, Mr. Destler took to the stump, arguing in speeches and op-eds that it was time for universities and companies to break from common practice, stop the haggling, and simply let corporations own the inventions or other intellectual property that might result from the work they sponsored....
As the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY'S INNOVATION GURU, HENRY CHESBROUGH, was quick to note, the most creative academics tend to be attracted to "inquiry-driven research" rather than projects with narrow goals, so this model might not appeal to the very people industry most needs for breakthroughs.
Mr. Chesbrough prefers a model now being used at Berkeley and a few other institutions, in which companies pony up for more open-ended research projects and then receive nonexclusive rights to the findings, but not ownership. He says that model is more aligned with the mission of a university, although he allows that companies don't get the same competitive advantage from that program as they do from RIT's. The Berkeley model is better suited to the kinds of projects that have come to be known as "precompetitive" research.
Still, as he points out, the disconnect between companies and universities is a real problem, one with ramifications for academe and the economy....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
14. Tech Crunch Blog: What Have VCs Really Done for Innovation?
Washington Post Online
September 20, 2009
Back in 1986, when Bill Gates was still making sales calls, he pitched my group at First Boston on why we should bet the farm on Windows. Despite the risk involved, we gave his fledgling startup the deal. This wasn't because of his financial backers (he didn't even drop any names), but because we believed in his vision and nerdiness. In the same way, Google became a huge success long before the deep pocketed VC's arrived to ride Larry and Sergey's coattails. They simply had a great technology and winning strategy.
So I'm miffed by the National Venture Capital Association's (NVCA) claim that companies like Microsoft and Google "would not exist today without the funding and guidance provided during their early stages by venture capitalists." And I'm amused that the NVCA claims credit for creating 12 million jobs and generating $3 trillion in revenue (that's only 21 percent of U.S. GDP). In the software industry (which includes Internet/Web 2.0), they stake claim to 81% of the all jobs created. Yes, 81%. Can they please give the entrepreneurs who risk their life savings, max out their credit cards and put their families in the back seat a little more credit? We're not talking about divvying up the company's stock here, just a pat on the back.... Full Story
15. Silicon Valley venture capitalists nurturing growth of green technology
Start-ups often need big money and investors steeped in big science and big government.
Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2009
Reporting from Menlo Park, Calif. -- In what would have been an unaccustomed move for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist not too long ago, Alan Salzman recently flew to Copenhagen to attend a conference on climate change and schmooze government policymakers.
His mission: Explain the role of venture capitalists and their green-tech start-ups in cleaning up the environment....
Venture capitalists poured $4 billion into green-tech start-ups in 2008 -- nearly 40% of all tech investments in the U.S., according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Green-tech investment plunged in the first half of 2009 to $513 million as the recession dragged on, but there are signs of a rebound: Silicon Valley's Khosla Ventures announced this month that it had raised $1.1 billion -- the biggest first-time fund in a decade -- that would be largely devoted to investing in green-tech start-ups, many in Southern California....
For instance, Khosla is backing Calera, which was founded by a Stanford University professor to create "green" cement by combining carbon dioxide emissions from power plants with seawater. Another Khosla-backed company, Amyris, was started by UC BERKELEY RESEARCHERS.
"When I met them they were working on malaria drugs," he said of Amyris' founders. "Six months later the same genetically engineered bugs were producing diesel."... Full Story
16. The Internet is proof that government doesn't bungle everything
Los Angeles Times
September 21, 2009
Since it's so fashionable these days to question whether government can do anything right -- whether it's regulating banks, bolstering the economy or overseeing healthcare -- it's worth noting that we're about to celebrate the 40th anniversary of one of the most important federal initiatives of our time.
The event was the launch of the Internet, which we date from Oct. 29, 1969, when a refrigerator-sized special-purpose computer in Leonard Kleinrock's engineering lab at UCLA transmitted its first message to a twin machine in Menlo Park, Calif. (The message was the first two letters of the command "Login.")
That was the first exchange over what was then known as the ARPAnet, which evolved, after many intermediate steps, into what we know today as the Internet.
The ARPAnet had been hatched many years earlier in the mind of a Pentagon research official named Robert W. Taylor....
As the chief of the information technology office at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1966, Taylor demanded that the computer research projects he was funding around the country learn to talk to one another.
Taylor was deeply frustrated that while his researchers were in constant communication with one another coast to coast, their computers labored in mutual unintelligibility. Terminals cluttered his own office -- one to interact with his government-funded computer project at BERKELEY, another to speak to MIT, and so on. By the end of the year, he had secured a $1-million appropriation for the design and construction of a network that would seamlessly interconnect MIT, Berkeley and other university research computers nationwide.... Full Story
17. Strong ethnic media market gets new weekly
San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2009
A group of community leaders and journalists did something seemingly unusual last week - they started a newspaper, the Nichi Bei Weekly.
But while its introduction comes as economic pressures are forcing publications to scale down or close, it also comes at a time when the audience for ethnic media is bigger than ever....
LING-CHI WANG, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AT UC BERKELEY, noted that although the recession claimed the 5-year-old Ming Pao Daily, Chinese Americans in the Bay Area are still served by four vibrant papers.
"The ethnic media is suffering, though to a lesser degree than the mainstream press, perhaps because immigrant communities do not have as much access to the Internet, especially the working class," Wang said.
Also, he said Chinese language readers have a "different relationship" with their papers, which have a higher literary standard than American papers, including "poetry, short stories, essays about simple things, about life."... Full Story
18. Stop the Presses! Revamped Journalism Courses Attract Hordes of Students
Even as job prospects dim, a focus on new media and entrepreneurship produces record enrollments
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
At a time when the newspaper industry is in free fall and thousands of jobs are being cut each year, one would think that the halls of the nation's journalism schools would be awfully quiet. Think again.
Many universities report that journalism enrollments are up this year. Over the past few weeks, a lot of these budding journalists have been blogging, broadcasting, and tweeting their way through introductory courses that have been revamped to embrace the digital age....
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY'S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM also requires incoming graduate students to participate in a multimedia boot camp, which runs from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for five days. Lessons in multimedia storytelling are reinforced in a required class in Web publishing skills that runs parallel to one in basic reporting. Students learn how to use digital video, audio, and photo equipment....
Other journalism schools, including those at Berkeley and the City University of New York, have been pursuing such "hyperlocal" reporting, sending students into diverse neighborhoods to report on the day-to-day news that shrinking mainstream newspapers don't cover. But while hyperlocal Web sites are springing up, and some community newspapers are growing, salaries remain low. "Our students are saddled with an average of $30,000 in debt," says Mr. Harper. "They can't pay that back on a $25,000 salary at a community newspaper."...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
19. Islamic Scholars Plan for America's First Muslim College
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. -- Sheik Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir share a vision for the next step in the evolution of Islam in America: creating the country's first four-year, accredited Muslim college.
The two men, American scholars of Islam and leaders in the Muslim community, are criss-crossing the country building support for an institution they call Zaytuna College, which they plan to open next fall. The college will serve the nation's growing Muslim population, blending traditional Islam and American culture and establishing a permanent place for the religion in American society....
HATEM BAZIAN, A LECTURER IN THE NEAR EASTERN-STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, has seen the growing need and is working with Zaytuna officials to raise money and develop a curriculum.
"Something real is taking place," he says. "Zaytuna College is part of this transformation."...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
20. By Degrees: Plugged-In Age Feeds a Hunger for Electricity
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 20, 2009
With two laptop-loving children and a Jack Russell terrier hemmed in by an electric fence, Peter Troast figured his household used a lot of power. Just how much did not really hit him until the night the family turned off the overhead lights at their home in Maine and began hunting gadgets that glowed in the dark.
“It was amazing to see all these lights blinking,” Mr. Troast said.
As goes the Troast household, so goes the planet....
Part of the problem is that many modern gadgets cannot entirely be turned off; even when not in use, they draw electricity while they await a signal from a remote control or wait to record a television program.
“We have entered this new era where essentially everything is on all the time,” said [UC BERKELEY LECTURER] ALAN MEIER, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a leading expert on energy efficiency.... Full Story
21. Bay Bridge S-curve slows drive time
San Francisco Chronicle
September 21, 2009
Maybe the "S" in the new S-curve detour on the Bay Bridge should stand for "Slow."
Since the final segment of the curvy, double-deck replacement roadway was rolled into place on the east span of the Bay Bridge during a Labor Day weekend construction project, the drive time from San Francisco to Oakland during the evening commute has taken 57 percent longer, on average, than it did a year ago, according to data compiled for The Chronicle by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission....
UC BERKELEY TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING PROFESSOR MICHAEL CASSIDY suggested that with the S-curve design on the bridge, the worse-than-usual bottlenecks won't go away entirely.
"You approach a nasty maneuver, what do you do? You don't hit the gas, you slow down," said Cassidy, who noted that he has not studied the new Bay Bridge configuration specifically.... Full Story
22. Back-seat Driver: U.S. transportation chief -- and a gruesome video -- target distracted drivers
Sacramento Bee
September 21, 2009
... Gruesome texting video
There is a very intense video on the Web called "Texting Can Be Deadly" that's getting lots of hits and creating some controversy....
It uses actors but looks real. In it, a teenager is texting while driving with friends. She drifts into oncoming traffic, causing a multiple-fatality crash....
But be ready to hit the stop button. It's more gruesome than the California Highway Patrol's "Red Asphalt" scare movies shown in some driver ed courses....
But UC BERKELEY TRAFFIC SAFETY EXPERT SIMON WASHINGTON points out that scare messages may shock, but not have a lasting effect.
Studies show some people simply tune out. Others with thrill-seeking personalities just find them exciting.... Full Story
23. Op-Ed: Eating is an Agricultural Act
San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2009
A few days after Michelle Obama broke ground on an organic vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House in March, the business section of the Sunday New York Times published a story bearing the headline "Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?" The article said that "after being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House."
These are heady days for people who have been working to reform the way Americans grow food and feed themselves - the "food movement," as it is often called. Markets for alternative kinds of food - local and organic and pastured - are thriving, farmers' markets are popping up like mushrooms, and for the first time in many years the number of farms tallied in the Department of Agriculture's census has gone up rather than down. The new secretary of agriculture has dedicated his department to "sustainability" and holds meetings with the sorts of farmers and activists who not many years ago stood outside the limestone walls of the USDA holding signs of protest and snarling traffic with their tractors. Americans today are having a national conversation about food and agriculture that would have been impossible to imagine even a few short years ago. To many Americans, it must sound like a brand-new conversation.
But the national conversation unfolding around the subject of food and farming really began in the 1970s with the work of writers like Wendell Berry, Frances Moore Lappé, Barry Commoner and Joan Gussow. All of these writers are supreme dot-connectors, far ahead not only in their grasp of the science of ecology but in their ability to think ecologically: to draw lines of connection between a hamburger and the price of oil or between the vibrancy of life in the soil and the health of the plants, animals and people eating from that soil.... Full Story
24. Input sought on Antelope Creek
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
The Tehama County Resource Conservation District is conducting a study of channel conditions on lower Antelope Creek for the US Fish and Wildlife Service....
The district has partnered with Stillwater Sciences and DR. MATT KONDOLF, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING, UC BERKELEY, to conduct the study.
The purpose of the project is threefold.
It will determine existing channel conditions, the location and causes of fish passage barriers in the Antelope Creek system and identify opportunities to improve fish passage along Antelope Creek. For the purposes of this effort, New Creek, Craig Creek, Little Antelope Creek and Butler Slough are all considered part of the Antelope Creek system.
The goal is to understand the type of habitat that migrating fish species will encounter as they make their way downstream through the lower eight miles of creek system. An important area of study is how water, at different flow levels, passes through the system.... Full Story
25. Bay Area colleges and universities brace for stressful flu season
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 21, 2009
Study hard. Call home. And when playing Beer Pong, please don't share cups.
College students — perhaps nature's most social creatures — are descending on local campuses, trading germs as quickly as class notes. Awaiting them is not just the traditional collegiate advice but also instruction in flu prevention....
California has not yet felt the full impact of the virus, and no local campus tests specifically for the H1N1 virus. The UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY, where students from all over the world do summer course work, reported about 40 to 50 cases of influenza-like illnesses per week over the summer — but the campus has halted testing this fall because the virus is so prevalent, according to KIM LAPEAN OF UC-BERKELEY'S UNIVERSITY HEALTH SERVICES....
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
26. Hikers 'need to be punished,' Iran leader says
San Francisco Chronicle
September 19, 2009
THREE UC BERKELEY GRADUATES arrested in Iran in July broke the law and must be punished, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said this week - but implied that a U.S. decision to release some Iranian prisoners could make a difference in their fates.
The Iranian president's comments, made Thursday to NBC News, may say less about the prisoners' likely fates than about the complicated political chessboard on which they are now pawns, said Kamran Bokhari, regional director for the Middle East and South Asia at Stratfor, a private global intelligence company.
"What he's saying is we can work out a deal - without actually saying it," Bokhari said Friday....
The Iranian president is coming to the United States to address the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday in New York. Families of the three imprisoned Americans - SHANE BAUER, SARAH SHOURD and JOSHUA FATTAL - sent a letter to him this week asking for their release.... Full Story
27. Focus on Schools Blog: Elite Schools Don't Make Elite People
Washington Post Online
September 21, 2009
I promised a high school counselor in California I would update a very old online column whose printout on her wall is too faded to read. It asked a question I think students immersed in college visiting and application writing should consider: Where did your heroes go to college?
...Often it's not the best-known schools....
Check out the alma maters of the first 25 state governors listed in the 2010 Almanac of American Politics: Alabama, Pacific Lutheran, Glendale Community, Arkansas State, Wisconsin at Superior, Colorado State, Old Dominion and Western Connecticut State (no degree), Brown, Florida State, Georgia, Cal State Northridge, Albertson College of Idaho, Georgetown, Princeton, Virginia Tech, Wichita State, Kentucky, Brown, Maine, Catholic, Harvard, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, Minnesota, Mississippi (did not graduate but got a law degree later) and Missouri....
Researchers Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger found that admirable character traits -- persistence, imagination, energy -- produce success in life no matter which college a person attends.
So relax. Be happy about your chance to spend four years at any school, soaking up the wisdom of the world and deciding what kind of life you want. Those of you who become heroes will discover most of the qualities that made you so were already in your possession.... Full Story
28. Mark Morris Dance Group's ethereal 'Visitation'
San Francisco Chronicle
September 19, 2009
In a world of dizzying and doubt-inducing complexity, there's something refreshing about the kind of direct and lovely simplicity that marks "Visitation," which the Mark Morris Dance Group performed to open the CAL PERFORMANCES season at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday night.
Seemingly suspended in a state of expectancy, "Visitation" (set to Beethoven's sonata No. 4 for cello (Wolfram Koessel) and piano (Colin Fowler) is suffused with a kind of intimate anticipation. Groups break into pairs, dancers shift partners, intermingling duets for Joe Bowie, Noah Vinson, Michelle Yard and Rita Donahue pulse between sharp and soft, but throughout there's an ecstatic impulse in repeated arched backs and faces upturned toward the heavens as if hunting for salvation. And at the heart of the piece is a pensive Maile Okamura - a kind of outlier, though not an outsider to the group of nine dancers. Okamura invests the Beethoven score with a delicate yet passionate touch and it's infectiously delightful to watch her take to the air, hair flying across her face....
Mark Morris Dance Group: 8 p.m. today and 3 p.m. Sun. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave. Tickets: $38-$68. For information, call (510) 642-9988 or go to www.calperformances.org. Full Story
29. 12 inductees set for Radio Hall of Fame
San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2009
The Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2009 on Sept. 29. The ceremonies for the 12 honorees (including one radio station) take place at the Broadcast Legends' fall luncheon at the DoubleTree Hotel in Berkeley.
Here are sketches of the fourth group of Hall of Famers, dominated by past and current employees of KGO and sister station KSFO. Voting was open to the public on the hall's Web site at www.barhof.org.
...JOE STARKEY: The increasingly frantic and hoarse voice calling "The Play" that ended the 1982 Big Game for UC BERKELEY belongs to Starkey. Originally a bank VP, he switched, at 28, to sports, calling local pro hockey and college football games before joining the 49ers (from 1989 to 2008). He was sports director at KGO from 1975 to 2005 and remains THE RADIO VOICE OF CAL BEARS FOOTBALL.... Full Story