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Monday, 19 October 2009
1. Letters to the Editor: Questions for Mark Yudof
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
October 18, 2009
We, the LEADERS OF FACULTY GOVERNANCE OF THE 10 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES, read Deborah Solomon’s interview of President Yudof (Sept. 27) with concern. While we realize that these interviews are edited, we worry that the interview gives an impression that U.C. has given up on state financing. We, too, recognize a trend of definancing public education, but we are emphatically not ready to concede the defeat of California’s exceptional experiment.
Collectively, the campuses of the University of California include six that are counted among the elite of American research universities, and our faculty have 23 awarded Nobel laureates since 1995 and 12 MacArthur fellows since 2003. We educate eight times the number of the poorest Americans as the entire Ivy League and produce more than 7 percent of the nation’s Ph.D.’s. If the legislators and the public have come to see investment in an educated citizenry as anything less than the central pillar of social and economic growth, then we educators must redouble our efforts to make the case. As our (other) president said: “We are not here to fear the future. We are here to shape it.”
CHRISTOPHER KUTZ, U.C., BERKELEY
Robert Powell, U.C., Davis
Judith Stepan-Norris, U.C., Irvine
Robin Garrell, U.C., Los Angeles
Martha Conklin, U.C., Merced
Anthony Norman, U.C., Riverside
William Hodgkiss, U.C., San Diego
Elena Fuentes-Afflick, U.C., San Francisco
Joel Michaelsen, U.C., Santa Barbara
Lori Kletzer, U.C., Santa Cruz Full Story
2. UC students defy image with work for poor
San Francisco Chronicle
October 18, 2009
UC BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU recalls an "absolutely packed cocktail party" that followed a Board of Regents meeting at UCLA in 2005 where Regent Richard Blum approached him and posed an intriguing question.
"Does the current generation of students care about poverty?" Blum asked him.
Without hesitation, the chancellor answered affirmatively. The conversation that followed led within a year to creation on the Berkeley campus of the RICHARD C. BLUM CENTER FOR DEVELOPING ECONOMIES. An ambitious academic enterprise, the center supports research and the practice of ideas and methods with "real-world impact" in improving the lives of the 3 billion people on Earth who subsist on less than $2 day.
...In just two years, global poverty and practice has become the most popular academic minor on campus, with oversubscribed enrollments in its core courses and overflowing attendance in its lectures.
"We're training the next generation of global citizens," said PROFESSOR ANANYA ROY, THE CENTER'S EDUCATION DIRECTOR. "The next generation of Americans could have a different relationship to the world."...
The center operates on two tracks.
Its "innovation initiatives" program supports faculty and student researchers in 30 departments, from the HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Multidisciplinary teams work on issues like safe water, sanitation and energy systems, often linking up with global companies and nongovernmental organizations around the world. The ad hoc partnerships seek "scalable and sustainable" technology transfers and solutions for the root problems of poverty. For example, the center supports a program in Bangladesh to remove arsenic from drinking water; another group has developed the "Darfur stove," a low-cost, fuel-efficient cookstove that not only benefits refugees on the ground but also spurs economic benefits in the region, where it is assembled.
And the global poverty and practice minor offers students both academic studies about poverty alleviation and on-the-ground, fieldwork experience, working with those living under conditions of misery in more than 25 countries.... Full Story
3. Students tackle global inequities face to face
San Francisco Chronicle
October 18, 2009
[The following profiles of UC BERKELEY STUDENTS IN THE BLUM CENTER'S PROGRAM accompanied the previous story]
JACQUELINE BARIN
MAJOR: PUBLIC HEALTH, FOURTH YEAR
Hometown: Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County)
Fieldwork: India
In sweltering rural India, I traveled with a mobile medical team, visiting two villages a day to provide prenatal care, counseling, vaccinations and health education to pregnant women in remote communities....
CARLO DE LA CRUZ
MAJORS: ART HISTORY AND ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES, FIFTH YEAR
Hometown: Los Angeles
Fieldwork: Philippines
Before leaving for the Philippines I was advised to be grateful for the generosity and hospitality of the people I would work with, which would be impossible to repay. I did not understand what this meant until a colleague and I interviewed an elderly couple in the Bicol region....
AKASH PATEL
Major: Political economy, third year
Hometown: San Diego
Fieldwork: Cape Town, South Africa
I worked with refugees in Cape Town as an intern for the South African Human Rights Commission....
URSULA WAGNER
MAJOR: ANTHROPOLOGY, FOURTH YEAR
Hometown: Medellin, Colombia
Fieldwork: Colombia
I met a remarkable couple while conducting research and working with internal refugees in Colombia. They had been displaced for eight years, driven from their village by insurgents. They cannot find work because they are deemed to be too old, and started receiving government "emergency" aid only eight months before. By then, government family services had taken their four children, whom they are not allowed to see. They told me that they survive by begging at stoplights in wealthier neighborhoods, where people call them "lazy," in the best case, or in the worst, threaten to kill them.... Full Story
4. Weekend Edition: Berkeley's Prize For Nobel Winners: Free Parking
NPR
October 17, 2009
Winning a Nobel Prize is difficult enough. But on the campus of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, there is something that might be even more difficult to get: a parking space on the central campus.
That's why Berkeley has made it a practice to offer its Nobel laureates an extra-special perk: a free lifetime permit to park in the highly coveted spaces near the central campus. The spots would normally cost about $1,500 a year.
BERKELEY PROFESSOR OLIVER WILLIAMSON won the Nobel Prize in economics earlier this week. He's been showered with the congratulations from colleagues and students. But, perhaps even better, he's getting that Berkeley parking perk.
"Oh, I plan to receive a copy of that parking permit and put it to good use," said Williamson, who's the eighth Nobel laureate on Berkeley's current faculty. ...
PHYSICS PROFESSOR GEORGE SMOOT, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006, said there's a catch to the permit: It's free, but it's not automatically renewed each year. Some of Berkeley's Nobel laureates have let their permits lapse....
Earlier this week, Williamson said he was hoping to get his parking permit quickly. The university's chancellor was holding a banquet in his honor, Williamson said, "and I'm hoping that he has in his pocket the parking pass, but we'll see."...
As it turned out, Williamson did not receive the permit at the chancellor's dinner, but upon hearing of his interview with NPR, the chancellor produced a handwritten temporary parking permit for Williamson on the spot....
[Link to audio] Full Story
5. Earthquake warning system closer to reality
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
October 18, 2009
It is the Holy Grail of seismology, sought by earthquake scientists for more than a century: the ability to provide advance warning of the Big One, so the public can react before a massive quake unleashes its rolling thunder upon the land.
On today's 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, a magnitude 6.9 shocker that took seismologists at the U.S. Geological Survey completely by surprise, that elusive prize is nearly within reach. Earthquake early warning — a system that could have provided up to 15 seconds of advance notice to Oakland before the Loma Prieta quake killed 42 people there — has just begun a final round of tests in the Bay Area. If the system receives a costly round of state and federal funding, sensors buried deep in the Earth could start flashing nearly instant warnings to densely populated urban centers within three years.
When this safer city of the future arrives — assuming the warning system being devised by seismologists at three California universities and the USGS receives an additional $50 million for geophysical observation stations — its warnings could:
# Stay the scalpel of a surgeon seconds before an earthquake rocks his — and his patient's — world.
# Halt elevators at the nearest floor, so people in high-rises don't have to be rescued and can evacuate safely.
# Open doors at fire stations automatically, so vital emergency equipment and first-responders aren't trapped inside....
"At the beginning of this project, it's fair to say that most people didn't think early warning was technically feasible in California," said UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY SEISMOLOGY PROFESSOR RICHARD ALLEN, principal architect of the far-larger USGS network. "The question now is to what extent it could be useful. How would you take advantage of those few seconds of warning?"...
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times] Full Story
6. Weekend Edition: California Develops Earthquake Early-Warning System
NPR
October 17, 2009
September's devastating earthquakes in Indonesia and Samoa were a brutal reminder of the sudden force of seismic shifts. That hits close to home in California's San Francisco Bay Area, which experienced a magnitude 7.1 earthquake 20 years ago. Sixty-three people died in that quake.
Lives could have been saved with an earthquake early-warning system — the kind that's already in place in Japan and Mexico. But here in the U.S., such a system is still several years away.
If you ever find yourself with five seconds in front of you — five seconds before you know that a major earthquake is about to hit — RICHARD ALLEN gives this warning: "The best thing you want to do is get under a table," he says. "It's that simple. There's nothing else. Get under a table."...
ALLEN IS A SEISMOLOGIST WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. He's spent the past decade working on a system that can warn people when a major earthquake is on its way. The system, which receives federal funding through the Interior Department, undergoes a final testing phase this fall, and researchers say it should be up and running by 2013. It's based on a network of seismic monitoring stations — some 400 of them — hidden around the state.
The detection instruments are stored in a narrow concrete vault that extends 100 feet into a rocky hillside above the UC Berkeley campus. Like many of these monitoring stations, it was built during the Cold War, to eavesdrop on nuclear bomb tests around the world....
[Link to audio] Full Story
7. 20 years after earthquake is the Bay Area safer?
Washington Post
October 16, 2009
San Francisco -- When an earthquake collapsed two 50-foot sections of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the 1989 World Series, the nightmares of hundreds of thousands of commuters who cross the Depression-era span each day were brought to life.
On this 20-year anniversary of the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that killed 63 people, injured almost 3,800 and caused up to $10 billion damage, the bridge reconstruction has become the largest public works project in California history and is still years from completion....
The new span wound up costing billions of dollars and is less quake resistant than the existing bridge, said ABOLHASSAN ASTANEH-ASL, A CIVIL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
"You are going to get a bridge, in my opinion, that is less safe than the existing east span. The bridge didn't need to be replaced," said Astaneh-Asl, who was the lead investigator in the NSF and Caltrans five-year study of the seismic performance of the bridge's east span, and who submitted an alternative design after officials chose to replace it. "This replacement is worse than what we have."...
[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide, including the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, and San Jose Mercury News] Full Story
8. Fiscal impact of state climate law disputed
Sacramento Bee
October 19, 2009
A local academic has emerged as the leading source of dark forecasts in a recession-fueled debate over whether California's war on global warming will hurt or help its economy.
Sanjay Varshney, dean of the business school at California State University, Sacramento, predicts dire consequences if the state moves forward with plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions....
Studies funded by environmental advocates and foundations have concluded that efficiency gains and demand for new energy technologies will deliver an economic boost. A study last year that assumed somewhat more aggressive emissions cuts than required by AB 32 predicted a roughly 3 percent boost to the state economy and 403,000 new jobs by 2020. The study was commissioned by Next 10, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit.
"Every time we're able to save money on fossil fuels, we can spend more money on in-state goods and services," which are more job-intensive, said DAVID ROLAND-HOLST, the study's author and an ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
AB 32 calls for the state Air Resources Board to produce a peer-reviewed economic analysis that would, in theory, settle the issue.
The agency's first attempt, incorporating Roland-Holst's modeling, found AB 32 would boost gross state product by about 0.3 percent and save households about $500 a year.
But outside economists weren't convinced.... Full Story
9. The Catastrophic Option
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
October 19, 2009
Three major problems plague American health care. The cost of premiums is eating up an ever larger share of take-home pay. The cost of our public health care programs is eating up an ever larger share of the federal budget. And millions of people who need insurance are priced out of the market.
Now that Max Baucus’s version of health care legislation has been blessed, at least provisionally, by the hands of Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, it’s increasingly likely that Congress will pass reforms that address the third problem, while making the first two problems somewhat worse....
But there’s another path, equally radical, that’s more in keeping with the traditional American approach to government, taxation and free enterprise. This approach would give up on the costly goal of insuring everyone for everything, forever. Instead, it would seek to insure Americans only against costs that exceed a certain percentage of their income, while expecting them to pay for everyday medical expenditures out of their own pockets....
The details would vary depending on your political predilections. ... Under a more liberal version, like the one sketched out by BERKELEY’S BRAD DELONG, the government itself would act as the insurer. And liberals and conservatives would no doubt disagree about where to set the income threshold, and what additional interventions to support.
The basic outline, though, could find support across the ideological spectrum. The problem is finding champions in Washington, where the political incentives always cut against reforms that fundamentally disrupt the status quo.
DeLong called his vision “an unrealistic, impractical, utopian plan.” For now, he’s right.... Full Story
10. Seeds of crisis sown in dot-com: Rogoff paper
MarketWatch
October 19, 2009
Santa Barbara (MarketWatch) - The roots of the most recent financial crisis stem from the collapse of the dot-com bubble, which triggered a global reduction in interest rates, a new paper by UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY PROFESSORS argues. The dot-com crash "led to the low long-term real interest rates at the start of the 2000s," according to a paper on global imbalances and the financial crisis presented by MAURICE OBSTFELD AND KENNETH ROGOFF on Monday. These low rates encouraged the bubble in housing. High savings in China and large deficits in the United States also contributed. Full Story
11. The Basil Fawlty effect – bosses bully you because THEY feel incompetent
It explains why Basil Fawlty bullied Manuel – incompetent bosses are always the nastiest, claims a study.
Telegraph [UK]
October 16, 2009
Researchers have found that leaders who feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities lash out at others to temper their own inferiority.
They found that the combination of incompetence and empowerment brought out the worst of human nature – and led to bullying in the workplace. ...
The new study by the [UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and] University of Southern California challenges previous assumptions that abusive bosses are solely driven by ambition and the need to hold onto their power.
RESEARCHERS LED BY NATHANAEL FAST, A [UC BERKELEY] SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIST, conducted separate tests for the study published in the journal Psychological Science, to get to the bottom of why bosses are bullies. ...
"Incompetence alone doesn’t lead to aggression," said SERENA CHEN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA [BERKELEY] and co-author of the study.
"It’s the combination of having a high-power role and fearing that one is not up to the task that causes power holders to lash out. And our data suggest it’s ultimately about self-worth.” ...
[Other stories on this topic appeared in Newsweek and UPI] Full Story
12. Supergirl meltdown: How middle-class girls today are under unprecedented pressure to succeed
Daily Mail [UK]
October 19, 2009
On the phone to a friend, the talk soon turned to her teenage daughter. At 17 she is beautiful, popular and doing well at school - yet, despite this, she is also, her mother revealed, increasingly unhappy....
So why have so many teenage girls come to the conclusion that anything short of perfection is failure?
STEPHEN HINSHAW, PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and author of the bestselling book, The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls From Today's Pressures, believes that they are suffering from the weight of expectations: society's, their parents', and, most crucially, their own.
He says: 'In many ways at least in the U.S., Europe and the UK, this is an unprecedented time to be a teenage girl - it's what their mothers and grandmothers fought for and we certainly don't want to take the level of choice available away from them.
'However, we must also acknowledge that there is a problem with our culture's growing insistence that girls must excel at everything: school, sports, relationships, looks.'...
'No one can achieve that. It's putting an insane amount of pressure on yourself to try. Girls are now expected to excel at "girl skills", achieve "boy skills" and be models of female perfection 100per cent of the time.
'This triple bind is putting girls at risk of eating disorders, depression, and even suicide.' Worryingly, the statistics seem to bear Hinshaw out.... Full Story
13. Barbara Ehrenreich questions positive thinking
San Francisco Chronicle
October 19, 2009
It was almost 10 years ago that Barbara Ehrenreich, newly diagnosed with breast cancer, discovered a subject that really made her mad: positive thinking.
"When I reached out, all I could find were these exhortations to be positive or cheerful because it will make you better," she said. "It was either smile or die."
She refused to do either, preferring instead to explore what she considers an epidemic of forced cheerfulness. Her just-published book, "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America," is a provocative look at the happiness industry, which she believes is partly responsible for some big bummers, everything from our slide into war to the economic crisis....
DACHER KELTNER, CO-DIRECTOR OF UC BERKELEY'S GREATER GOOD SCIENCE CENTER, dedicated to the study of positive emotions, said he expected the book - which he had not yet read - to be a much-needed review of positive psychology.
"I think this is a necessary critique of a movement that we need to take stock of," said Keltner, whose research focuses on emotion and social interaction....
Keltner said he differentiates between two strains of positive psychology. "My take is that there is an East Coast version, which is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and be optimistic, you'll beat cancer," he said. "The Berkeley version is more, 'Let's turn on the compassion switch and make people think about others and how to cultivate empathy.'"... Full Story
14. Beware The Reverse Brain Drain To India And China
Washington Post
October 17, 2009
I spent Columbus Day in Sunnyvale, fittingly, meeting with a roomful of new arrivals. Well, relatively new. They were Indians living in Silicon Valley. The event was organized by the Think India Foundation, a think-tank that seeks to solve problems which Indians face. When introducing the topic of skilled immigration, the discussion moderator, Sand Hill Group founder M.R. Rangaswami asked the obvious question. How many planned to return to India? I was shocked to see more than three-quarters of the audience raise their hands....
Why would such talented people voluntarily leave Silicon Valley, a place that remains the hottest hotbed of technology innovation on Earth? Or to leave other promising locales such as New York City, Boston and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina? My team of researchers at Duke, Harvard and BERKELEY polled 1203 returnees to India and China during the second half of 2008 to find answers to exactly this question. What we found should concern even the most boisterous Silicon Valley boosters.
We learned that these workers returned in their prime: the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held masters degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a masters and 12% had PhDs. These degrees were mostly in management, technology, and science. Clearly these returnees are in the U.S. population's educational top tier?precisely the kind of people who can make the greatest contribution to an economy's innovation and growth. And it isn't just new immigrants who are returning home, we learned. Some 27% of the Indians and 34% of the Chinese had permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. That's right--it's not just about green cards.... Full Story
15. Obituary: First Amendment prof, Stephen Barnett, dies at 73
San Francisco Chronicle
October 16, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. (AP) -- STEPHEN BARNETT, A FIRST AMENDMENT PROFESSOR EMERITUS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW and prominent critic of the state court system, has died. He was 73....
Colleagues said Barnett, who retired in 2003, was a tireless advocate of free speech rights and had spent his last years as a vocal critic of the speed with which the California Supreme Court handed down its decisions.
"In his scholarship, Steve was a devastating critic of the practices of the California Supreme Court and the California State Bar Association," BERKELEY LAW PROFESSOR MELVIN EISENBERG said. "He did a lot of acute, penetrating research that no one else has done regarding judicial transparency and legitimacy."...
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Barnett graduated from Harvard Law School in 1962 and clerked for a year for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. before moving to California to teach at Berkeley.
He left the school for two years in the 1970s to serve in the U.S. Justice Department as a deputy solicitor general, where he argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Later in his career, Barnett fought for the rights of attorneys to cite unpublished lower court opinions that could help exonerate their clients, a practice currently forbidden by the state's high court....
[This obituary appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide, including the San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
16. Passings: Stephen Barnett, Douglas Duitsman, Erich Lehmann
Stephen Barnett, 1st Amendment professor, dies at 73; Douglas Duitsman, publicity executive, dies at 81; Erich Lehmann, statistics professor, dies at 91
Los Angeles Times
October 18, 2009
Stephen Barnett
Vocal critic of California court system
STEPHEN BARNETT, 73, A 1ST AMENDMENT PROFESSOR EMERITUS AT THE UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW and a prominent critic of the state court system, died Tuesday in Berkeley of complications from cardiac arrest, the school said.
Colleagues said Barnett, who retired in 2003, was a tireless advocate of free speech rights and had spent his last years as a vocal critic of the speed with which the California Supreme Court handed down its decisions and the way it went about much of its day-to-day business....
ERICH LEHMANN, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF STATISTICS AT UC BERKELEY known for his texts "Testing Statistical Hypotheses" (1959) and "Theory of Point Estimation" (1983), died Sept. 12 at his Berkeley home. He was 91. Full Story
17. City Brights Blog: Destroying our libraries: A water story
San Francisco Chronicle Online
October 16, 2009
In 49 BC, parts of the priceless Library of Alexandria burned, when Julius Caesar set a fire to the Egyptian fleet in the harbor and the fire spread. ... Today, the destruction of the Library is considered one of the worst tragedies of ancient times.
Well, the barbarians are back.
One of the most remarkable library treasures of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SYSTEM is the WATER RESOURCES CENTER ARCHIVES, a unique and irreplaceable collection of current and historical scientific, political, educational, and personal materials on California, western US, and global water history, science, and policy. THE WRCA IS AT UC BERKELEY. In a stunningly shortsighted, self-serving, and disgraceful move, those responsible for the Archives, in particular, the Agricultural and Natural Resources Division (headquartered in Oakland), have announced that the Archives may be shut down in June, unless they can find some other University home for it willing to cover the costs. The move is ostensibly for "budget" reasons, but the budget involved is pathetically small -- on the order of $300,000 a year, supporting four staff. Just for comparison the top administrator of the ANR division receives salary and benefits on the order of $400,000 a year (yes, for a single person). In fact, the budget crisis is being used as an opportunity (or excuse) for ANR to restructure in a way to support new initiatives that apparently don't require the kind of critical fact- and information-based services that the Archives provides.
The WRCA serves the entire state: not just students, faculty, and staff of the University of California, but hydrologists, engineers, historians, authors, journalists, lawyers, scientists, and the general public -- anyone with an interest or stake in water issues (no library card needed!!). ...
[A disclosure: I have been serving on the Archives Board of Directors for the last few months -- an unpaid, volunteer position that I took on as a public service because of the unique and invaluable nature of the library.] Full Story
18. Can't Afford Solar Panels? Lease Them
Solar Leasing Programs Boast No Upfront Cost and Can Cut Energy Bills, or Even Leave Consumers with a Monthly Surplus
CBS Online
October 18, 2009
Sunlight is free. But installing solar panels to heat your home is beyond the means of many Americans.
If you live in California, Oregon or Arizona though - and other states starting next year - a bright idea can save you a bundle, as CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker explains....
"Some of the deals out there right now allow you to essentially go solar right away and do so with a lower average utility bill than you had before, even though solar energy is still more expensive than conventional power," said DANIEL KAMMEN, A PROFESSOR AT U.C. BERKELEY.... Full Story
19. Presumption of Guilt
In Mexico's dysfunctional legal system, an arrest most often leads to a conviction. How one street vendor, wrongly convicted of murder, won his freedom.
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
October 17, 2009
Mexico City -- Antonio Zuñiga's life changed when he went for a walk on Dec. 12, 2005. As he crossed a busy Mexico City avenue, two burly cops grabbed him from behind and shoved him into a patrol car.
So began a nightmarish journey into Mexico's legal system that seems lifted from the pages of Franz Kafka. For nearly two days, the street vendor was held incommunicado and not told why he was arrested. His questions met with hostile stares from detectives, who would say "You know what you did." He says in an interview that he only learned of the charges after walking into a holding cell and being asked by a prisoner: "Are you the guy accused of murder?"...
Mr. Zuñiga's story has a twist. His plight attracted the attention of ROBERTO HERNÁNDEZ AND LAYDA NEGRETE, a married pair of lawyers who are also GRADUATE STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY. The couple took on his case, won a retrial, and in a stroke of luck, convinced a Mexican official to let them film the ensuing trial, which lasted for more than a year.
The result is a 90-minute documentary called "Presumed Guilty" that offers a rare—and chilling—glimpse of Mexico's dysfunctional legal system. The film was an official selection at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival, and won top documentary honors at Mexico's Morelia Film Festival. Festival organizers decided to screen it in the city's central plaza, where 2,000 people turned up to watch. At a screening in Mexico City on Thursday night, the audience gave a standing ovation. Many were in tears....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
20. Scientists try to calm '2012' hysteria
As an upcoming action movie fuels Internet rumors, several scientists make public statements: The world will not end in 2012, and Earth is not going to crash into a rogue planet.
Los Angeles Times
October 17, 2009
Is 2012 the end of the world?
If you scan the Internet or believe the marketing campaign behind the movie "2012," scheduled for release in November, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Dozens of books and fake science websites are prophesying the arrival of doomsday that year, by means of a rogue planet colliding with the Earth or some other cataclysmic event.
Normally, scientists regard Internet hysteria with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. But a few scientists have become so concerned at the level of fear they are seeing that they decided not to remain on the sidelines this time....
[NASA scientist David] Morrison said he attributes the excitement to the conflation of several items into one mega-myth. One is the persistent Internet rumor that a planet called Nibiru or Planet X is going to crash into the Earth. Then there's the fact that the Maya calendar ends in 2012, suggesting that the Maya knew something we don't. ...
According to ROSEMARY JOYCE, A PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UC BERKELEY, the Maya never predicted anything. The 2012 date is approximately when the ancient calendar would roll over, like the odometer on a car; it did not mean the end -- merely the start of a new cycle.
Some authors have tried to merge that idea, Joyce said, with Maya mythology that said the Earth had gone through multiple ages of creation, each ending in a disaster. "But there's no prediction," she said. "They did not predict the end of the world."... Full Story
21. That Viral Thing
Where's Balloon Boy? Ask the Web
Time Magazine
October 19, 2009
The mysterious metallic balloon thought to be carrying a Colorado boy had scarcely returned to Earth last week when a new website launched, its domain name asking the question that much of the nation was wondering: WhereIsBalloonBoy.com. ... Within 24 hours, the site had been viewed by more than 23,000 people....
The Internet is teeming with whimsical websites that really don't do very much. Or, better said, they do simply what their straightforward domain names advertise....
These clever, if rudimentary, Web destinations are dubbed "single-serving sites," and they range from marginally useful (IsItChristmas.com answers "No" 364 days a year) to handy (HowMuchIsAStamp.com) to the surprisingly interesting (HowManyPeopleAreInSpaceRightNow.com)....
RYAN GREENBERG, A GRADUATE STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, SCHOOL OF INFORMATION, has assembled a list of more than 200 such sites. "It's your chance to get 15 seconds of fame on the Internet," explains Greenberg, whose 2008 paper on the subject is available at IsThisYourPaperOnSingleServingSites.com. "There's something innately funny about a website that goes on for 60 characters, or an entire sentence."... Full Story
22. Grenade found buried in Novato backyard
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
October 19, 2009
Novato — A bomb squad was called to Novato over the weekend to remove an intact grenade found buried in a resident's backyard.
Novato police were contacted shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday by a homeowner on Wallace Court who, while digging in his backyard, found what officials described as a heavily corroded, completely intact fragmentation grenade.
"As soon as he found it he called for help," said Novato police Lt. John McCarthy. "God knows how long it had been there." McCarthy said a BOMB SQUAD FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY removed the grenade to a remote area, where it was rendered safe.... Full Story
23. Smoke in Pasadena is UCLA getting burned
Los Angeles Times
October 18, 2009
The wheels haven't just fallen off. On Saturday, for UCLA, the wheels fell, then tumbled down the side of a hot road, then settled into a dry Pasadena canyon.
There they were doused by a gallon of gas and lit afire with a blue and gold matchstick.
That's UCLA right now: a messy mass of overheated and very pliable goo.
Setting aside the final score -- CALIFORNIA 45, UCLA 26 -- just look at a few relevant statistics.
At halftime of this latest debacle -- the third straight this year, one of at least half a dozen since the new crop of coaching geniuses took over last season -- the GOLDEN BEARS had a trio of passing touchdowns and a pair of running backs who'd gained just shy of 190 yards. Ninety-three of them came on a single play: JAHVID BEST twisting, bending and speeding past what seemed like every last defender wearing a golden helmet and powder blue. For Cal, this was a highlight for the ages....
[Stories on this topic appeared in hundreds of sources nationwide, including the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News] Full Story
24. Dramaturge dilvulges her favorite hangouts
San Francisco Chronicle
October 18, 2009
PHILIPPA KELLY, an Australian Shakespeare scholar, has found her place in the East Bay as the resident dramaturge for Cal Shakes, the California Shakespeare Theater.
It's just one of the hats the writer and PART-TIME FACULTY MEMBER AT UC BERKELEY'S OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE wears. She's also a writer, finishing her latest book, "The King and I," a memoir and a meditation on her lifelong relationship with "King Lear"; spends two months a year working for the Australian government's Endeavour Foundation; and is raising son Cole with her husband, composer Paul Dresher. We asked her to tell us about some of the places where she takes intermissions.
Peet's Coffee & Tea, 2124 Vine St., Berkeley. "I love the one in Walnut Square because it has the most egalitarian feeling of them all and it's somehow emblematic of a little local neighborhood. I can also take my work there and it looks normal, not weird. I order my own special custom blend of teas. "...
Jinjin Therapeutic Massage, 11100 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. "An acupressure masseuse in El Cerrito who hammers you for an hour with incredible intuition and who won't take a penny over $45."... Full Story