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.
Friday, 20 November 2009
1. A Crown Jewel of Education Struggles With Cuts
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. — As the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA struggles to absorb its sharpest drop in state financing since the Great Depression, every professor, administrator and clerical worker has been put on furlough amounting to an average pay cut of 8 percent....
Among students and faculty alike, there is a pervasive sense that the increases and the deep budget cuts are pushing the university into decline....
“Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that’s the path the Legislature has embarked on,” said RICHARD A. MATHIES, DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRY HERE AT BERKELEY, long the system’s premier campus. “When you pull resources from an institution like this, faculty leave, the best grad students don’t come, and the discoveries go down.”...
No wonder, then, that people like BRUCE FULLER, A BERKELEY PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AND PUBLIC POLICY, are asking themselves whether it is time to move on.
AS CO-DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, an interdisciplinary research group that suffered big cuts, Mr. Fuller worries that the unit is losing its intellectual excitement and its ability to support his grant proposals. Then, too, he lost his two best graduate students last year to Stanford....
THE CHANCELLOR OF BERKELEY, ROBERT J. BIRGENEAU, expresses optimism that more money can be saved without cutting into the educational muscle of the university. “If the budget doesn’t get worse,” he said, “we can recover in two years.”
Dr. Birgeneau tells of a recent meeting with a student leader, who said students were most unhappy about the decision to end Berkeley’s tradition of keeping the library open 24 hours during finals, and an hour later, a parent meeting where he mentioned that complaint — and immediately got a $30,000 pledge to pay for round-the-clock library access during finals.
“If they keep cutting, it’ll take us longer to recover,” Dr. Birgeneau said. “But Berkeley can always recover.”
[A blog about this story appeared in the New York Times Online] Full Story
2. Chemist named director of Lawrence Berkeley lab
San Francisco Chronicle
November 20, 2009
PAUL ALIVISATOS, a chemist whose pioneering research seeks promising new low-cost sources of solar energy, was named the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Thursday.
The UC regents, meeting in Los Angeles, confirmed the appointment recommended by UC President Mark Yudof after a special search committee had screened 140 candidates.
Alivisatos, 50, is the laboratory's seventh director since it was founded in 1931 to focus largely on high energy physics, and he has been the laboratory's interim director since Nobel Prize-winning physicist [and UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR] STEVEN CHU became President Obama's secretary of energy in January.
In the past year, the laboratory has received $220 million in federal stimulus funds, and its scientists have intensified their research into solving the world's increasingly acute problems of energy and the environment, Alivisatos said.
As a chemist, he has long focused on those issues, and his work goes far beyond traditional approaches like today's "solar farms" to capture the sun's rays or biofuels to replace gasoline....
With a DOCTORATE IN CHEMISTRY FROM UC BERKELEY, Alivisatos joined the school's faculty in 1988 and is a PROFESSOR OF NANOTECHNOLOGY. He is ALSO A PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY'S MATERIALS SCIENCE AND CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENTS....
[Other stories on this topic appeared in the San Francisco Business Times, Contra Costa Times, and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
3. Regents Raise College Tuition in California by 32 Percent
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
As the University of California’s Board of Regents met Thursday at U.C.L.A. and approved a plan to raise undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — 32 percent next fall, hundreds of students from campuses across the state demonstrated outside, beating drums and chanting slogans against the increase.
ISAAC MILLER and IRENE VAN, who traveled to U.C.L.A. late Wednesday night in a bus caravan from BERKELEY, said they worried about how higher fees would affect illegal immigrant students, who are not eligible for financial aid, and minority students, already dwindling in number since Proposition 209 prohibited affirmative action.
“Diversity is central to this,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s at stake here.”
Mr. Miller and Ms. Van wore shreds of the red armbands adopted at a Sept. 24 walkout, when more than 5,000 students demonstrated outside SPROUL HALL AT BERKELEY....
[Other stories on this topic appeared in the Los Angeles Times, NBC Nighly News (link to video), and Christian Science Monitor] Full Story
4. UC Berkeley students protest student fee hike
Washington Post Online
November 20, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. -- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY STUDENTS protesting a 32 percent increase in student fees barricaded themselves Friday inside part of a campus building.
The demonstrators occupied WHEELER HALL and hung a sign out of a window that read "32 Percent Hike, 900 layoffs," with the word "Class" crossed out in red. A group of students also rallied outside the building.
Campus police said they had arrested three of the demonstrators inside.
Police would not say how many protesters remained in the building. UNIVERSITY POLICE LT. ALEX YAO said demonstrators were barricaded behind fire doors on the second floor, but police had control of the rest of the building.
The Daily Californian student newspaper said it received a text message from a protester inside the building who put the number still inside at 60 undergraduates and graduate students.
The occupiers were demanding the university rehire laid-off custodial workers and give amnesty to anyone arrested in the protest....
[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide this morning, including the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, and Sacramento Bee. Others appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle Online, CNN Online, NBCBayArea.com, and CBS5.com] Full Story
5. Comments Blog: Comments War
UC students and non-UC students discuss the student fee hike
Los Angeles Times Online
November 19, 2009
It seems the recent decision by the University of California Board of Regents to increase student fees by 32% has caused not only a "students vs. regents" demonstration at UCLA's campus today, but also a "students vs. non-students" quarrel in our comments sections....
[The following comments were posted by a "UC BERKELEY STUDENT"]
...There are so many inane things the public mutely accepts while it lashes out at students struggling for what really matters: education.
Sure, cutting education funding and closing budget gaps by levying higher fees may seem like the easiest way out for the Regents and the State today... but just wait two, three, or four decades and observe, if we continue down the same easy-fix road, as rest of the world begins to eclipse us in educational attainment, in innovation, in creativity, in brainpower... and ultimately in prosperity and general welfare. Americans need to realize that the fate of the nation in the 21st century depends not on Iraq, not on Afghanistan, not on healthcare nor immigration nor gay marriage, not on big government versus small government... but on the education of its citizens. Without accomplishing that effectively, in the long run, nothing else will be possible.... Full Story
6. Bucks Blog: Taking Time Off: An Option for California University Students
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
How do you cope with a 32 percent increase in tuition?...
One possibility worth considering is taking a semester or more off from school, as my colleague Jonathan Glater noted in an article several months ago....
Did you take time off from college to work, or are you considering it? Please share your tale in the comments below.
[Among the posted comments is the following, by PROFESSOR NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES, UC BERKELEY]
The majority of UC BERKELEY UNDERGRADUATE, NOT TO MENTION OUR GRADUATE, STUDENTS are already working. The average graduating senior in the DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY works 15-20 hours a week outside the lecture halls, discussion groups, individual tutorials, library, and labs that are part of their required curriculum. Many of our undergraduate students are older, experienced, and have seen a good part of the world already through global and national humanitarian and human rights work, Peace Corps or the military. Some are refugees from war torn countries. Some of our dedicated undergraduate students share tiny bedrooms with other students, do not own a personal computer and must use the university libraries to think and write and access the internet. Ron Lieber's advice is asking students to risk the minimal security they have and their futures. Don't drop out now, you may never get back in if you do. Trust the dedicated faculty and staff of UC Berkeley to do everything in their power to help you complete your degree, not only for your sake but for the sake of the state of California who need you.... Full Story
7. Arts, Briefly: University of California Drops New Museum Plan
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, has decided to scrap its ambitious designs for a new BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE, saying that it has been unable to raise enough money, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The building, to have been designed by Toyo Ito and estimated to cost from $143 million to $200 million, was to be constructed in downtown Berkeley and replace the museum’s current on-campus home, which was declared seismically unsafe a decade ago. LAWRENCE RINDER, THE MUSEUM’S DIRECTOR, told the newspaper that the decision was a consequence of the economic downturn. The museum’s capital campaign, whose goal was $200 million, raised only $81 million by this month. “The gap was just too great, looking forward,” Mr. Rinder said. The museum hopes to announce another plan by early January. “While architectural plans are changing,” ROBERT BIRGENEAU, THE UNIVERSITY’S CHANCELLOR, said in a statement, “the goal of building a dynamic, welcoming and seismically safe new museum downtown is not.” Full Story
8. Op-Ed: Stanford-Cal rivalry aside, coaches agree on goal for poor kids
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
November 19, 2009
This weekend, Stanford and CAL will renew their most storied rivalry: The Big Game. Naturally, we disagree on who will bring home The Axe this weekend, and we'll be watching the game from rooting sections at opposite sides of Stanford Stadium.
But we're joining together — along with many other coaches around the country, including Mike Singletary, Pete Carroll, Joe Torre and Tony La Russa — to recruit college students to work as volunteer coaches for kids in low-income communities.
We're doing this because we have seen the transformative impact of engaged, caring coaches on the lives of young people. The greatest reward we've enjoyed as coaches has been witnessing the growth of our players into confident, focused and thoughtful young adults. Every good coach has watched a player experience that "aha" moment when he or she discovers some previously untapped quality within — selflessness, perhaps, or perseverance or courage.
We believe every child ought to have that experience.... Full Story
9. Effects of judge's Katrina ruling could be huge
The finding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is liable for much of the New Orleans flooding could change how levees are designed nationwide.
Los Angeles Times
November 20, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and New Orleans -- The harshly worded legal ruling that held the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responsible for much of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina could have a far-reaching effect on national flood-control policies and on the federal government's long-standing refusal to take responsibility for its errors.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. issued the stinging rebuke to the corps late Wednesday for its failure to properly manage a navigation channel and levees, which he ruled were directly responsible for much of the flooding that devastated New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish....
"The American public frequently believes they are protected by these piles of dirt that we call levees, when they are not," said ROBERT BEA, A UC BERKELEY CIVIL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR who testified during three days of the trial. "I hope this ruling would serve as a wake-up call."... Full Story
10. Wheels Blog: Study Says Air Cars Are Inefficient
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
There’s no question that people love the idea of compressed-air cars, which have long been under development by the French company Motor Development International and, according to a company spokesman, could be on American roads (after many delays) by 2012.
“It sounds ideal, like we could be free from the constraints of petroleum dependence,” said ANDREW PAPSON, a transportation engineer and associate at the consulting firm ICF International.
But as much as the idea is attractive, Mr. Papson is skeptical about air cars. HE FINISHED GRADUATE STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, last year and was PART OF A TEAM AT THE SCHOOL that published a paper this week that was critical of air-car claims.
The “Economic and Environmental Evaluation of Compressed-Air Cars,” published in Environmental Research Letters, examined the life cycle of the compressed-air car and concluded that the air car “fared worse than the battery-electric vehicle in primary energy required, greenhouse gas emissions and life-cycle costs, even under very optimistic assumptions about performance. Compressed-air-energy storage is a relatively inefficient technology at the scale of individual cars and would add additional greenhouse gas emissions with the current electricity mix.”... Full Story
11. Protein motor springs to action
R & D Magazine
November 20, 2009
Using a state-of-the-art protein crystallography beamline at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, researchers have captured a critical action shapshot of an enzyme that is vital to the survival of all biological cells.
The atomic-level action of a remarkable class of ring-shaped protein motors has been uncovered by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) using a state-of-the-art protein crystallography beamline at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). These protein motors play pivotal roles in gene expression and replication, and are vital to the survival of all biological cells, as well as infectious agents, such as the human papillomavirus, which has been linked to cervical cancer.
JAMES BERGER, A BIOCHEMIST AND STRUCTURAL BIOLOGIST who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY’S DEPARTMENT OF MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY, and NATHAN THOMSEN, A GRADUATE STUDENT IN HIS RESEARCH GROUP, have captured a critical action shapshot of an enzyme known as the Rho transcription termination factor. In bacteria, the Rho motor protein binds to a specific region of messenger RNA and translocates along the chain to selectively terminate transcription at discrete points along the genome....
This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation. Full Story
12. San Francisco's Health Care a Model During Debate
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
San Francisco (AP) -- This city did not wait for Washington's health care overhaul. Most uninsured adults here are already reaping the benefits of a government-run health care program -- seeing doctors, filling prescriptions, and getting surgeries they could not otherwise afford.
Healthy San Francisco is the nation's first city-run universal health care plan. While not insurance and not valid outside the city, it does illustrate how some hotly debated elements of plans being considered on Capitol Hill might play out....
While business contributions are significant -- $1.85 per hour worked for employers with more than 100 workers -- research found this has not translated into layoffs, said WILLIAM DOW, A HEALTH ECONOMICS RESEARCHER WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY....
[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide, including the Washington Post and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
13. California median home sale price rose in October
The 2.4% month-to-month gain was still down 7.6% from a year earlier.
Los Angeles Times
November 20, 2009
California home prices edged higher last month as first-time buyers took advantage of a federal tax credit and foreclosure properties made up a smaller slice of the market, fresh data showed Thursday.
The median price paid for a home statewide was $257,000 in October, up 2.4% from September and down 7.6% from October 2008, according to MDA DataQuick, a real estate research firm based in San Diego. It was the narrowest year-over-year decline in the statewide median home price since September 2007....
"The low-end housing market is recovering, but slowly," UC BERKELEY ECONOMIST KENNETH ROSEN said. "Prices have bottomed at the entry-level part of the marketplace."... Full Story
14. Forum with Michael Krasny: Class Size Reduction
KQED Radio
November 20, 2009
A state program that has invested billions to shrink class sizes is coming apart, and the number of kids in many California classrooms is at the highest level in more than a decade. That's according to a new investigation by California Watch, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting in collaboration with KQED Public Radio. We'll find out how teachers are coping with kindergarten through third grade classes that have as many as 30 students, a situation now common in districts like San Jose and Contra Costa County. Meanwhile, some argue that with pressing budget cuts and inconclusive evidence about the benefit of small class sizes, class size reduction should not be a priority. We explore the debate.
Guests:
...NORTON GRUBB, PROFESSOR OF POLICY, ORGANIZATION, MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION AT UC BERKELEY'S SCHOOL OF EDUCATION and author of "The Money Myth"...
[Link to audio] Full Story
15. Forum with Michael Krasny: Bridge Toll Hike
KQED Radio
November 20, 2009
Drivers on seven Bay Area bridges may soon see tolls go up $1 for cars, and for the first time see a $3 toll in the carpool lane. The Bay Area Toll Authority is holding hearings through next month on how much to raise tolls. Officials say they need to charge more due to rising costs, decreased bridge traffic and the need to seismically retrofit the Dumbarton and Antioch bridges. We discuss the various proposals, and how they might impact drivers.
Guests:
ELIZABETH DEAKIN, DIRECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH CENTER AND PROFESSOR OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING AT UC BERKELEY....
[Link to audio] Full Story
16. Science Insider Blog: Japan's Scientists Fight Proposed Budget Cuts
Science Magazine Online
November 20, 2009
Tokyo—Nothing rouses a research community like a threat to its funding, as could be seen this week here in Japan after a task force recommended deep cuts ... in the Ministry of Education's budget for fiscal year 2010. Grass-roots efforts have sprung up to defend individual projects, while community leaders are asserting the importance of research to Japan's future....
Arguing against the task force's recommended freeze on spending on the $1.3 billion Next-Generation Supercomputer, two dozen leading computer scientists issued a statement calling the project "of life and death significance to the future of Japan as a nation built on science and technology." Akira Ugawa, a vice president of the University of Tsukuba and the group's representative, says similar statements from user groups are on the way. Others are organizing e-mail campaigns to support various grant programs dissed by the task force. Several scientific organizations organized a joint press conference on 19 November to protest the method and the outcome of the review. HITOSHI MURAYAMA, A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, PHYSICIST, started an international e-mail campaign for the World Premier International Research Center Initiative, facing a possible 50% funding cut, that supports the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo, which he directs. He says fellow BERKELEY PROF AND PHYSICS NOBEL LAUREATE GEORGE SMOOT has promised to personally write to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.... Full Story
17. Sounds During Sleep Aid Memory, Study Finds
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
Science has never given much credence to claims that you can learn French or Chinese by having the instruction CDs play while you sleep. If any learning happens that way, most scientists say, the language lesson is probably waking the sleeper up, not causing nouns and verbs to seep into a sound-asleep mind.
But a new study about a different kind of audio approach during sleep gives insight into how the sleeping brain works, and might eventually come in handy to people studying a language, cramming for a test or memorizing lines in a play.
Scientists at Northwestern University report that playing specific sounds while people slept helped them remember more of what they had learned before they fell sleep, to the point where memories of individual facts were enhanced....
“We haven’t before been able to manipulate very specific memories,” said MATTHEW WALKER, A NEUROSCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, who was not involved in the study. “If you can experimentally amplify the memory-reinforcing process by forcing those sounds back into the brain while we’re asleep,” he said, it “may actually give us some clues as to what that mechanism is.”... Full Story
18. Op-Ed: My Word: Invite 1.2 million for Thanksgiving? Let's feed the hungry all year
Oakland Tribune
November 20, 2009
What if you could invite every Bay Area adult who has struggled to put food on the table to join you for Thanksgiving dinner? You'd need 350,000 place settings, 43,750 pumpkin pies and 23,333 turkeys. But it wouldn't end there.
While you're at it, you'd invite their entire household because when adults go without food, it's likely the children in their lives are doing the same....
This is a complicated issue with many potential solutions, but one stands out. We know it works, and works now. We need to continue supporting improvements in the food stamp program, urging our legislators to consider public policy geared toward increasing quality, access and enrollment, policies focused on eliminating an unnecessary hardship faced by an unacceptable number of Californians.
Thanksgiving marks the start of a season that involves a whole lot of giving. This year, spend a little time giving your local legislator your opinion on ending food insecurity in California. I just don't think any of us can manage a Thanksgiving dinner forall of the needy Bay Area folks (though I wish I could). Full Story
19. Dot Earth Blog: A Dim View of U.S.-China Electric Car Plan
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 19, 2009
Should the United States and China be teaming up on clean urban transportation systems instead of clean cars? After the announcement of a suite of new energy partnerships between China and the United States, I sought feedback on the electric vehicle project from LEE SCHIPPER, AN ENERGY AND TRANSPORTATION SPECIALIST WHO SPLITS HIS TIME BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and Stanford. He’s quite worried that the program is looking at cars mainly from an energy-efficiency context, instead of how they will shape and affect China’s fast-expanding cities in a larger sense. “Creating a zero-carbon car for China tomorrow won’t solve the much bigger problems of urban congestion, traffic fatalities and the paving over of once-beautiful cities to make room for more cars,” Dr. Schipper said. “The discussions should back up. Energy is only a means to an end. What are the ends, urban access and mobility, or cars for a small minority?”... Full Story
20. Media Decoder Blog: The Times to Begin Chicago Edition on Friday
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 19, 2009
The first Chicago edition of The New York Times, with added pages of local and regional news, will be published Friday, The Times announced Thursday, a month after the paper began publishing a similar regional edition in San Francisco....
The additional content in the San Francisco edition is being produced by Times staff members, but the paper hopes to find a local organization, akin to the Chicago cooperative, to take over that work. Talks are underway with a Bay Area start-up involving the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, GRADUATE JOURNALISM SCHOOL and KQED, a local public radio station. The Wall Street Journal also recently started a San Francisco edition, and is looking into regional editions in other cities. Full Story
21. YouTube to add automatic captions to aid deaf
San Francisco Chronicle
November 20, 2009
Google Inc. announced Thursday that it is using speech recognition technology to create automatic captions for certain videos on YouTube, helping the deaf and hearing impaired to access a rapidly growing form of online content....
For the initial launch, the so called auto-caps program is limited to a handful of YouTube content partners, including UC BERKELEY, Stanford, MIT, Yale and UCLA. Full Story
22. Bookshelf: Mercantilist Destiny
America as 'an imperium with the look of a great emporium.'
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
November 19, 2009
'There is the East, there is India and China," said Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton in the Senate chamber in 1855—as he pointed over his shoulder due west.
Both the statement and the paradoxical gesture neatly sum up the argument of "Dominion From Sea to Sea." Bruce Cumings traces American history along its inexorable drive westward, not merely to California and the limits of the continent's frontier but all the way to the Pacific Rim. He argues that such westward outreach has transformed America's character and helped to write its destiny, if not always for the good. "I chant the world on my Western sea," Walt Whitman sang in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. "I chant the new empire, greater than any before." The American story, in Mr. Cumings's telling, starts at Plymouth Rock and finishes well beyond Silicon Valley—in Okinawa, Hiroshima and, not least, the trading desks of Shanghai banks, where U.S. Treasurys are not routinely bought and sold....
For Mr. Cumings, California is the staging ground for America's Pacific future. He sees the state's wealth and prosperity since World War II as the product of an enlightened merger: between an unfettered, idiosyncratic individualism, nurtured on the frontier, and the rich material resources of the liberal New Deal state, including its mega-universities, such as BERKELEY and Stanford. Bill Gates and Ronald Reagan, DreamWorks and Lockheed Martin: This is the West Coast constellation that now beams out across the Pacific to distant shores....
It is a provocative thesis and a plausible one. But events may be passing Mr. Cumings by. Far from the culmination of the American Dream, California looks more and more like a stupefying, bankrupt failure.... Full Story
23. Good tidings: Critics reveal picks for best shows of season.
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
November 20, 2009
Uh-oh, there are too many presents to unwrap.
With so many holiday-themed shows going on in what's already a busy time of year, it's hard to pick which ones to get to.... So our critics serve up their selections of some of the most promising shows in the Bay Area through New Year's....
While I love a traditional "Nutcracker" as much as the next person, offbeat retellings of Christmas classic such as Mark Morris' "The Hard Nut" really put me in a holiday mood. Who can resist the renowned choreographer's deliciously campy twists on the tale of a little girl and her beloved wooden soldier?
The group's annual performances Dec. 11-20 at UC BERKELEY'S ZELLERBACH HALL tend to sell out quickly, so it's a good idea to get tickets now — the sheer pleasure of seeing Morris himself, decked out as a disco-dancing partyer, is worth the price alone.
Details: $36-$62; 510-642-9988, www.calperformances.org. Full Story