The links to the stories summarized on this page are time sensitive, so stories might no longer be online at that URL. We also include links to the original source publication itself.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
1. UC leaders propose state-federal "hybrid"
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
October 7, 2009
Berkeley — The federal government should step in to save chronically underfunded public universities, University of California leaders say.
UC BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU has proposed that top public research schools become state-federal "hybrids" that receive basic operating funds from the U.S. government. The federal government also should match private funding raised by universities at a 2-1 ratio, Birgeneau and VICE CHANCELLOR FRANK YEARY wrote in opinion pieces published in newspapers on both coasts.
The idea has been well received in Washington, the two men said in an interview this week, but it is unclear when and if the Obama administration would take it on.
"They were enthusiastic," said Birgeneau, who said he had spoken with Department of Education officials and was told not to expect any movement for at least the next two years. "But they told me they had no money."...
If nothing else, the Berkeley proposal is sparking that discussion....
The chancellor plans to discuss his plan with the leaders of the nation's top schools at this month's meeting of the Association of American Universities. ...
Birgeneau said he is open to criticism. Like Yudof, he said his main goal is to get the country thinking about taking higher education more seriously.
"Someone else may have a better idea, and that's great," he said. "Our basic intention here is to stir the pot."
[This story also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune. Another story on this topic appeared in the California Progress Report] Full Story
2. Pentagon Research Director Visits Universities in Bid to Re-energize Partnerships
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
October 7, 2009
The new director of the Pentagon’s research arm has started visiting university campuses around the country in an effort to rebuild bridges that were severed under the Bush administration.
The director, Regina E. Dugan, who was appointed in July to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, made visits last week to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY; Stanford University; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the California Institute of Technology. She had previously visited Virginia Tech and Texas A&M.
She replaced Anthony J. Tether, a Bush administration appointee who had pushed the agency toward more classified research and who had embarked on several controversial research projects, including the Total Information Awareness system proposed by the former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter.
Under Dr. Tether, the agency’s relationship with some of the nation’s leading technology universities had become decidedly chilly as basic research financing declined....
“She [Duggan] came by Berkeley on Wednesday and had a frank chat about the past and the future, and I’m pretty encouraged,” said DAVID PATTERSON, A COMPUTER SCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. “She seems to genuinely value academic input into the defense research enterprise and really wants to re-engage the research community in the Darpa mission.”...
“I also want to urge Congress to fully fund the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency because since its creation it has been the source of cutting-edge breakthroughs from that early Internet to stealth technology,” said THOMAS A. KALIL, the deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy [and FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE CHANCELLOR FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT UC BERKELEY]. Full Story
3. Basic Research Loses Some Allure
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
October 7, 2009
This year's three Nobel laureates in physics carried out their groundbreaking work while working at corporate research labs decades ago. The conditions that led to their breakthroughs are harder to come by today.
Big companies now tend to spend less on such basic research, investing instead on projects likely to pay off quickly. Much of the action in long-term research has shifted to universities, often working in collaboration with government agencies and companies....
"Innovation now is more of a relay race than a marathon," as it was in the days of Bell Labs, said HENRY CHESBROUGH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR OPEN INNOVATION AT THE HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. The baton of an idea might start at a university and move to multiple companies before being commercialized. "Of course," he said, "batons can be dropped along the way."
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
4. Filipino students push for Philippine Studies at Berkeley
GMA News TV [Philippines]
October 7, 2009
Berkeley, California - FILIPINO AND FILIPINO-AMERICAN STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (UC) IN BERKELEY continue to push for the establishment of Philippine Studies classes amid a budget crisis faced by the school.
“We are now focusing on getting more Philippine classes while securing our current Tagalog classes," LEAN DELEON said, referring to his group, the COMMITTEE FOR PHILIPPINE STUDIES (COMPASS)....
On September 24, Compass joined over 5,000 UC students, faculty and staff in the mass walkout and protest held in the Berkeley campus. The rally, considered to be the biggest in California since the 1960s, was held in response to the recent actions by the UC Board of Regents, the 26-member panel that governs the system.
The regents approved a plan last July that consisted of widespread lay-offs along with other budget cuts. A 32-percent tuition hike was also included in the plan. ...
UC BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU blamed the United States’ economic recession for the cutbacks and fee increases, even saying that the layoffs have helped to save hundreds of jobs within the UC system. Birgeneau further blamed state legislators for the $813 million cut from the UC budget for 2008-2010.
The chancellor, in a teleconference after the protest, said that he hopes the rally would raise the consciousness of Californians “so that they will vote for legislators that support public education." ... Full Story
5. Letters to the editor
San Francisco Chronicle
October 7, 2009
...Finding facts on pay of UC administrators
In a letter to the editor on Oct. 3 ("UC's sacrifice time"), it was suggested that, instead of proposed fee increases and furloughs to offset cuts in state support, the University of California simply reduce the salaries of top administrators, even though their pay accounts for only 1 percent of the budget for employee salaries.
The letter writer incorrectly stated that one UC administrator makes $2.3 million a year. The truth is that no UC executive makes a salary of even one-quarter of that.
The vast majority of university administrators have salaries well below $400,000 a year. Most of those making more than that are physicians receiving compensation for medical services, and that money comes from medical center revenues. Others are athletic coaches whose base salaries are supplemented by individual donors and revenues from broadcast contracts, marketing arrangements with equipment and clothing manufacturers and summer sports camps.
The $2.3 million figure cited in the letter was for the head coach of a football team.
UC's top administrators voluntarily cut their salaries by 5 percent in June, then increased the reduction to as much as 10 percent as part of a furlough plan that began Sept. 1.
One of the biggest obstacles to a unified effort to counter the deep cuts in state funding for core educational costs across UC's 10 campuses is misinformation. The facts are at www.ucop.edu and www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compensation.
Steve Montiel
Office of the President
University of California
* *
A chilly winter for struggling students
Re: "UC Berkeley: $3 million fee for consultant to find savings" (Oct. 5):
Like many BERKELEY STUDENTS, I am dismayed and confused by the university's decision to spend $3 million on professional consulting to solve the budget crisis while cutting and restricting programs vital to the central mission of the university (ostensibly to provide a world-class education).
PROFESSOR CHRIS KUTZ compares the decision to a homeowner who buys a new furnace to save money on heating in the long term. However, to students struggling to pay inflated tuition, complete assignments in libraries that are seldom open and obtain help from staff and teaching assistants whose jobs are in constant limbo, it's shaping up to be a cold winter indeed.
PAMELA MEJIA, Berkeley Full Story
6. KQED Radio News: Ironing Out the Details on High-Speed Rail
KQED Radio
October 6, 2009
Last year, Californians approved a $10 billion bond issue to build a high-speed rail system that would link the Bay Area to Southern California. But details of the project, including how to pay for all of it, are still up in the air. A symposium at UC BERKELEY this evening will look at some of the key economic, environmental and infrastructure issues still to be ironed out.
Guests:
SAMER MADANAT, DIRECTOR OF UC BERKELEY'S INSTITUTE OF TRANSPORTATION STUDIES
[Link to audio] Full Story
7. Reviving Local News
Inside Higher Ed
October 7, 2009
Professional schools are in the business of teaching men (and women) to fish, letting them go fishing for a year or two, and then letting them out into the world and hoping they’ll be able to find a way to keep fishing for life.
One journalism school’s efforts involvement in a project intended to bring local news coverage to a major metropolitan area could end up enlarging the pond, assuming it doesn’t kill all the fish swimming and spawning there.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY’S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM announced late last month that it would team up with public broadcaster KQED and a small full-time staff funded by a $5 million donation from investor-philanthropist F. Warren Hellman to create the Bay Area News Project. When it begins next year, the venture promises to offer “high-quality, original coverage,” as its press release put it, of the region that includes San Francisco, Oakland and Silicon Valley.
NEIL HENRY, DEAN OF THE JOURNALISM SCHOOL, says his institution -- the only graduate journalism program in the University of California system and a top ranked program nationally -- signed up because it needs “to be front and center in figuring out a way to give news to local communities at a time when the industry is losing its ability to do that kind of work.”
Involvement in the project, he adds, is a logical extension of the local work it already does. Many courses include assignments that require students to become “immersed in the local region providing journalism and engaged in a way local reporters used to be, but haven’t been able to because of cuts in the industry.” ...
Henry said that because all of Berkeley’s journalism students take courses that involve local work, “it’s conceivable that every student in some form will touch on the Bay Area News Project itself” during his or her two years of work toward a master’s degree....
Henry says he considers nonprofit newsrooms like the Bay Area News Project “the best prospect on the horizon” to create jobs for laid off professionals and for recent graduates. “Very few if any of the newspapers in this region offer opportunities for our graduates. This could.”... Full Story
8. Drummond: Newspaper journalism not so easily replaced
Oakland Tribune
October 7, 2009
A few years back, a movie came out called "A Day Without a Mexican."...
I wonder what would happen if we all woke up one day and there were no more newspapers?...
The current mantra is that newspapers like the one you are reading now will be replaced by "hyperlocal" news sites that are less costly to operate and more geared toward what people want to read about.
The Knight Foundation is funding a number of these initiatives around the country — including one in Oakland. OaklandLocal, which had announced a September launch date, had yet to go live as of this writing. Meanwhile, San Francisco financier Warren Hellman has donated $5 million toward a collaboration between UC BERKELEY'S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM and KQED Public Media called Bay Area News Project....
Last week, I attended a multimedia and technology conference organized by UC BERKELEY at Google's Mountain View headquarters.
It was an invitation-only gathering of news media and technology executives for a meeting of the minds on how news will be delivered and consumed in the future. And to explore new business models for news organizations in an increasingly interactive, Web-centric world.
There was a lot of talk about hyperlocal sites....
[This column also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
9. In E-Books, It’s an Army vs. Google
New York Times (*requires registration)
October 7, 2009
San Francisco — Whenever it can, Google likes to have programmers solve its problems. But now it faces a dispute that even its ranks of lawyers and lobbyists are finding hard to smooth over.
A broad array of authors, academics, librarians and public interest groups are fighting the company’s plan to create a huge digital library and bookstore. Their complaints reached the ears of regulators at the Justice Department, which last month helped derail the plan by asking a court to reject the class-action settlement that spawned it.
That request led to a last-minute decision by Google and its partners, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, to redraft the agreement. A federal court hearing in New York on Wednesday will shed light on their progress....
Even before the agreement was signed last October, however, opposition began to brew. Harvard University, which along with a few other libraries had been invited to participate in some of the negotiations, withdrew....
Around the same time, PAMELA SAMUELSON, A RESPECTED INTERNET LAW AND COPYRIGHT EXPERT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, convened a meeting of concerned scholars who began spreading the word at universities.... Full Story
10. Origins Blog: Yes, Ardi Evolved From Apes
Science Magazine Online
October 7, 2009
“Ardi,” the oldest known skeleton of a hominin, or member of the human family, has grabbed headlines around the world since her unveiling in Science Thursday. Not surprisingly, the press coverage of the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus has sometimes been sensational—and, in some cases, completely wrong. Some newspapers and broadcasters have misinterpreted the authors’ finding that Ardi did not look like a chimpanzee or gorilla. Based on this anatomy, the [UC BERKELEY] AUTHORS proposed that Ardi shows that humans did not evolve from a “chimpanzee-like ape.” By that, they meant that Ardi evolved from an ancient ape that didn’t look like a chimpanzee or gorilla does today and that humans have retained some of those primitive traits.
But the word “chimpanzee-like” sometimes got lost in translation. Even the first version of a press release from Kent State University, where co-author C. Owen Lovejoy is on the faculty, said “Man Did Not Evolve From Apes.” ...
Most disconcerting to the [UC BERKELEY] AUTHORS was the reporting on Ardi by the Arabic news network Al Jazeera, based in Doha, Qatar. A translation of the article written in Arabic starts with a headline that reads “Ardi Refutes Darwin’s Theory,” and the first sentence reads “American scientists have presented evidence that Darwin’s theory of evolution was wrong.” The article states that Ardi’s discovery “refutes the long-standing assumption that humans evolved from monkeys.”...
For the record, all of this is plain wrong. Ardi is a primate descended from more ancient apes, as are all humans and human ancestors. Apes in turn are descended from monkeys. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives— we share 96% of our DNA with them, and our lineages shared an ancestor sometime between 6 million and 8 million years ago, possibly earlier. The authors’ point is that the last common ancestor we shared with chimpanzees didn’t look like a chimp—which means that chimpanzees also have been evolving since the two lineages diverged. Finally, Ardi confirms rather than refutes Darwin’s prediction in 1871 that our progenitors lived on the African continent, as well as providing another link in the evolutionary chain from primitive apes to humans.
[Another story on this topic appeared in ABC News Online] Full Story
11. Op-Ed: Climate change is already making us sick
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
October 6, 2009
As Congress debates health care reform, we risk missing a critical opportunity to combat one of the greatest threats to human health — climate change.
The urgency is driven by evidence that the effects of climate change are having immediate impacts on human health: The World Health Organization estimates that at least 150,000 people have died annually of causes related to climate change since 1970. Heat-related illness and mortality are increasing: More than 35,000 Europeans died in 2003 when a heat wave swept the continent. Increased temperatures exacerbate levels of lung-damaging chemicals and cause more respiratory allergies: The number of "bad air" days will likely double in many U.S. cities by 2050....
Critics of climate change legislation argue it will cost the public too much, when in fact slowing the pace of global warming will save us money: less money spent on energy, less money spent treating refugees displaced by floods and rising sea levels, and less money spent on health care. The increase in heat- and air-quality-related health care costs in California alone could total as much as $24 billion annually by 2100, according to a 2008 report by two UC-BERKELEY ECONOMISTS.
Investing in preventive climate medicine now will generate large health care savings.... Full Story
12. Forum with Michael Krasny: Healthy San Francisco
KQED Radio
October 7, 2009
The U.S. Supreme Court is delaying action on a lawsuit filed against the Healthy San Francisco program until after it hears President Obama's stance. At issue is whether companies with more than 20 employees should have to either provide health care, or pay into a public pot. We talk with city officials and the plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Guests:
...WILL DOW, HENRY J. KAISER ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HEALTH ECONOMICS AND CHAIR OF THE HEALTH SERVICES AND POLICY ANALYSIS GRADUATE GROUP AT UC BERKELEY'S SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH.
[Audio forthcoming. An interview with Professor Dow also appeared in the New York Times Online] Full Story
13. Op-Ed: On Security
A broken promise of 'smart' immigration enforcement
San Francisco Chronicle
October 7, 2009
California is now a prime hunting ground for expanding federal programs to deport illegal immigrants. Assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton visited Los Angeles in August, promising a "smart" enforcement approach that goes after the "worst of the worst." At the same time, ICE announced that all inmates in the city's jails would have their immigration status checked, as part of the Secure Communities Initiative - a federal-local police partnership that supposedly targets serious offenders.
In theory, immigration checks of prisoners sound sensible. But they can lead to racial profiling, according to a new report by the WARREN INSTITUTE, A THINK TANK AT THE UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW....
The report supports what advocates in cities nationwide have been saying for a long time: These enforcement programs result in rampant racial profiling by local police. No surprise. Police know that if they increase the pool of Hispanics sent to jails with immigration checks, then a greater number of people will be deported by federal authorities. As it turns out, the majority of Hispanics arrested for minor offenses in Irving since the ICE partnership were living lawfully in the United States....
Ever since 9/11 and the launching of the "War on Terror," we've been asked to accept racial profiling as a trade-off for increased safety. We need to reject this Faustian bargain. Our history is replete with instances showing that, when we violate the civil rights of an ethnic group, we weaken our democracy, security and community. Full Story
14. Real Estate: Hotel defaults, foreclosures rise in California
In the state, defaults and foreclosures are up fivefold since Jan. 1.
Los Angeles Times
October 7, 2009
More California hotels are being pushed into foreclosure as tourists and businesses alike scale back their travel plans and owners are unable to pay their mortgages.
Statewide, more than 300 hotels were in foreclosure or default on their loans as of Sept. 30 -- a nearly fivefold increase since the start of the year, according to an industry report released Tuesday....
Owners of such hotels are increasingly handing the keys back to the lenders, and the problem is likely to get worse: As many as 1 in 5 U.S. hotel loans may default through 2010, UC BERKELEY ECONOMIST KENNETH ROSEN said.... Full Story
15. Joblessness hits white-collar workers hard
San Francisco Chronicle
October 7, 2009
A new analysis shows that nearly half of the 5.4 million Americans who have been out of work longer than six months held white-collar or professional jobs that are rarely subject to long spells of unemployment.
"These are people who are shocked it is taking so long for them to find work," said John Challenger of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which based its analysis on Labor Department data....
UC BERKELEY PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR DACHER KELTNER said research suggests two ways people can help themselves in dealing with the stress of unemployment.
The first is easy to say but difficult to do: Take a positive attitude that sees challenges as opportunities. The other tactic is to write about the experience, perhaps in a journal or a diary, to make it part of a person's life story, an approach that has been shown to alleviate the effects of stress, he said.... Full Story
16. Crisis boosts once-hated IMF with new mission
AFP
October 7, 2009
Istanbul — The havoc wrought by the economic crisis has given the IMF a new sense of purpose as the world's emergency lender -- and even some of its fiercest critics are starting to mellow.
It is a remarkable turnaround for an institution targeted by anti-globalisation protesters and reviled by millions of people after imposing harsh conditions on its loans during previous crises....
"The International Monetary Fund has been one of the few beneficiaries of the global economic crisis," said BARRY EICHENGREEN, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
"Just two years ago, it was being downsized, and serious people were asking whether it should be closed down. Since then, there has been a renewed demand for IMF lending," he said.... Full Story
17. Expert View: Building The Labor Force With Forced Labor
Forbes
October 7, 2009
The number of people eligible for work is known as the Labor Force. It should not now, nor should it ever, be thought of as the number of people government can force into labor. I would hope ROBERT REICH (former labor secretary under Bill Clinton) would understand that by now.
REICH is a gentleman I respect and like. However, in a commentary published Oct. 2, 2009, "The Truth About Jobs That No One Wants to Tell You," the NOW PUBLIC POLICY PROFESSOR AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, makes it clear that he doesn't know where viable labor growth must emanate from, or how it must be achieved. To be sure, he does get a few things right in his article. For example, he points out that the real rate of unemployment and underemployment is closer to 20%, rather than the current 9.8% unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics....
I have some questions for the professor. How is it, Mr. Reich, that a group of people located in Washington, D.C., can know what "we need" as consumers? Do we really need more parks? Does "forcing" people to build roads to nowhere increase the country's ability to produce goods, which can help balance our trade deficit?... Full Story
18. Excerpt: First Chapter: A Bomb in Every Issue
New York Times (*requires registration)
October 7, 2009
On a bright spring day in 1962, two months before Edward Keating published the first issue of Ramparts magazine, President John F. Kennedy stepped to the podium at BERKELEY'S MEMORIAL STADIUM to address 88,000 eager listeners. It was the largest live audience Kennedy ever addressed and the biggest event in the University of California's history. The occasion was the university's ninety-fourth anniversary, but Kennedy's presence had turned it into something else: a celebration of cold war liberalism at its peak.
Draped in a dark ceremonial gown, Kennedy began by thanking his many hosts. One was CLARK KERR, president of the University of California, whose career up to that point was an unbroken series of triumphs. A former Berkeley graduate student, he was a leading labor arbitrator before returning to Cal to direct a new institute after World War II. When the spirit of McCarthyism settled over the campus a few years later, Kerr supported a ban on Communist professors but opposed the dismissal of faculty who refused to sign a new and more specifically anticommunist loyalty oath. That compromise earned him the respect of some faculty and the suspicion of several university regents. After Kerr became Berkeley's head administrator in 1952, one regent referred to him openly as the "Red Chancellor."
Another Kennedy host on the dais that day was California governor Pat Brown. ...
Kennedy's visit to Berkeley was meant to support Brown's reelection bid against Richard Nixon, Kennedy's rival in the 1960 presidential race.... Asked by the New York Times about Kennedy's visit to California, Nixon called the president a carpetbagger. Kennedy laughed off the comment at a White House press conference and casually asserted his right to go where he pleased.
Using the same light touch at Memorial Stadium, Kennedy played to his massive audience. Many of his top advisors were Cal men, and he singled out his secretary of state, secretary of defense, CIA director, and Atomic Energy Commission chairman. "It is a disturbing fact to me, and it may be to some of you, "Kennedy said, "that the New Frontier owes as much to Berkeley as it does to Harvard University." The crowd roared its approval. Kennedy didn't mention his attempt to recruit yet another Cal man, Clark Kerr, as secretary of labor. Kerr regretfully declined so he could finish his work on California's Master Plan for Higher Education....
[A review of this book also appeared in the New York Times] Full Story
19. Venezuelan ambassador defends his country's
relationship with Iran, nuclear energy
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
October 6, 2009
San Francisco -- In his first California visit since he was kicked out of the United States in a diplomatic row last year, the ambassador of Venezuela defended his country's exploration of nuclear energy and said there was nothing secret about it.
"We have a lot of oil, but we have to start thinking of when there's a prospect of running out," said Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez. "It's good to explore that potential."...
Along with giving a wide-ranging talk Tuesday hosted by the business school at the University of San Francisco, he met community groups in the Mission and was scheduled to speak at the World Affairs Council.
He said he was also meeting with members of the California Legislature.
And on Wednesday, he will talk from 4 to 6 p.m. at 103 Mulford Hall, on the UC Berkeley campus, in an event co-hosted by the CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAS AND THE SCHOOL'S LABORATORY OF AGROECOLOGY.
[This story also appeared in the Oakland Tribune] Full Story
20. Blog: The Best College Food
From celebrity chefs to lobster bakes to chocolate fountains, The Daily Beast tracks down the 15 best college meal plans in the country.
The Daily Beast
October 7, 2009
Once upon a time, colleges served boiled veggies and mystery meat, assembly-line style. Then, in the ‘90s, campus food courts began upgrading to brand-name fast food and fancy salad bars. But to impress today’s prospective students, who were weaned on organic produce, [UC BERKELEY JOURNALISM PROFESSOR] MICHAEL POLLAN, and the Food Network, schools are rolling out dining options fit for a visiting head of state. Sushi chefs, gourmet coffee, and organic food are standard now, and large cafeterias are being traded for smaller, more intimate restaurant-style dining. But some schools have upped the ante beyond even that, flying their chefs to far-flung regions where they’re taught to cook authentic international haute cuisine, infusing their campus tap water with hints of cucumber and lemon, and hiring celebrity architects to build dining halls that resemble exclusive Manhattan brasseries—plunked down in the middle of verdant Iowan campuses....
In a world where Thai tom yum gai and steak tartare are essential to any menu, The Daily Beast examined 15 of the country’s award-winning college dining services and what they do to stand out....
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA—BERKELEY
A 2004 study at Berkeley showed that 2,850 pounds of food and 357 gallons of soda were thrown away every day at the school’s dining facilities, a waste that students blamed on the poor quality and variety of foods served. "This ran like a middle-of-the-country state college, not like a university in a food Mecca," CAL DINING DIRECTOR SHAWN LAPEAN has said. But things have changed. Soon after, Berkeley became the first school nationwide to have a certified organic kitchen and a 100 percent organic salad bar. All of the food served is also trans-fat free. LePean’s staff pioneered many of healthy initiatives that other schools on this list now tout, and today one of the most popular Web sites on campus is the dinner menu. Full Story
21. Brooks on Beer: 99 Bottles of Beer at the Museum
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
October 7, 2009
For nearly 99 percent of mankind's existence on planet Earth, human history has been roughly unchanged: small, nomadic tribal societies hunted and gathered for subsistence. But 10,000 years ago something changed.
The people of the Neolithic Age slowly realized that they could grow and store their own food, which allowed them to settle down and create civilizations....
But for a long time, historians and archeologists assumed that it was the discovery of bread making that was the catalyst for civilization. That view has come increasingly under fire, starting in the 1950s when scientists began questioning whether perhaps it was a thirst for beer that turned early humans from foragers into farmers....
...Now, its history is coming to UC BERKELEY in a new anthropological exhibit....
At the PHOEBE A. HEARST MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UC BERKELEY, CURATOR IRA JACKNIS, flush from the success of earlier exhibitions on chocolate and, more recently, tea, was brainstorming exhibition ideas with his staff a year ago....
This weekend, the museum unveils "99 Bottles of Beer: Global Brewing Traditions 2500 B.C. to the Present." The event will include a Beer Fair and Symposium with such speakers as Fritz Maytag, from San Francisco's Anchor Brewery; Charles Bamforth, the Anheuser-Busch endowed professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences at UC Davis; and beer chef Bruce Paton....
The yearlong exhibit kicks off with the Symposium, Beer Fair and Workshop on Oct. 10 from noon-6 p.m. at the museum, which is located on the UC Berkeley campus on the corner of College and Bancroft. Tickets are $20 for either the Symposium or the Beer Fair and Workshop, or $30 for both, and may be purchased online at hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/beer. To see additional photos and read more about the history of beer and civilization, check out the Bottoms Up Blog today at ibabuzz.com/bottomsup. Full Story