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Friday, 16 September 2011
1. UC regents want better options than perpetual 16 percent tuition hikes
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 16, 2011
San Francisco — University of California leaders on Thursday chose to delay a painful solution to chronic funding problems, declining to take steps toward a possible $22,000 annual price tag on a UC education.
But, with only unpalatable options left, the university may soon be left with no other choice but to raise tuition up to 16 percent per year....
"There is something repugnant about knowing your future," UC President Mark Yudof told regents, noting that the university's portion of the state budget has declined steadily in the past two decades. "But this is the history of this place over the past 20 years."...
"The fiscal problems facing UC, along with (California State University) and the community colleges, are the new reality, not simply a detour," said JOHN AUBREY DOUGLASS, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW AT UC BERKELEY'S CENTER FOR STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION.
"Controlling costs and increasing tuition in a progressive fashion — where more wealthy students help subsidize middle- and lower-income students — are the two major levers necessary for sustaining quality at UC," he said....
[This story also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
2. Where Universities Can Be Cut
Inside Higher Ed
September 16, 2011
What a group of management consultants found when they analyzed several research universities in 2008 and 2009 to identify potential savings probably didn’t come as a surprise to most people in higher education.
The key findings section of Bain & Company’s report on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill summarizes the issue: “UNC has a complex [organizational] structure,” the slide states. “Multiple layers of management can exacerbate complexity. Complexity and related operating issues lead to inefficiency.”
The report on the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY sounds similar....
What the consultant reports show, and what other universities learned through their own efforts, is that major budget savings could be obtained through cuts in administrative services....
All three institutions are about halfway through implementation, and each maintains a fairly detailed web site listing individual projects, the amount they will save, and timelines for their adoption (see UC-Berkeley's OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE project, Cornell's Administrative Streamlining Program, and UNC-Chapel Hill's Carolina Counts program). ...
At UC-Berkeley, the major cost savings, much of which have already been realized, are slated to come from a reorganization of the university’s administrative structure. ...
While it's easy to compare metrics such as graduation rates, faculty salaries, overall budgets, and student aid across institutions, more specific metrics about the efficiency of certain administrative or spending practices are not widely available. ANDREW SZERI, FACULTY HEAD OF OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE AT UC-BERKELEY, said the university's implementation of its efficiency program has been "intensely metric driven," but putting the metrics in context is difficult.
“Becoming more efficient would be easier with an understanding of what the benchmarks are and what the targets across the higher education industry should be,” he says. ...
...The savings the university identified would reduce expenditures by $75 million a year once the changes are implemented, but the institution spends about $1.8 billion annually on teaching, research, and public service. Szeri says the implementation would not have been as effective were the program not allowed to invest in making improvements. The university authorized administrators to spend a total of $75 million to implement changes.... Full Story
3. Bay Citizen: Skeptics Cast Wary Eyes on Plan to Finance Cal Stadium Upgrade
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 15, 2011
Are there buyers for $225,000 college football tickets?
That is the question haunting the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, which is engaged in a $321 million upgrade of its football stadium in the midst of the worst budget crisis in its history.
As the Cal Bears get ready to open their home season on Saturday at AT&T Park, their temporary residence, university officials are eyeing the progress of an elaborate financing plan for California MEMORIAL STADIUM that relies on selling 50-year rights to 3,000 special seats for $40,000 to $225,000 each.
If the seats get sold, Cal will be able to pay off the stadium renovation and establish an endowment to support all of its athletic programs. But if sales fall short, the university could be on the hook for tens of millions in construction costs even as it wrestles with up to $80 million in budget cuts for the next fiscal year as well as plans for huge tuition increases....
The stadium financing plan was created in 2008, when the football team was on a roll under COACH JEFF TEDFORD. The U.C. Regents had ordered the campus either to fix the stadium — it sits on top of the Hayward fault in a ravine above the Berkeley campus — or to find a new place for the Bears to play....
“The fans and donors we’re talking about have a bigger picture in mind: to create this endowment,” said SANDY BARBOUR, THE CAL ATHLETIC DIRECTOR...
A recent analysis by CAL MOORE, AN EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF MATH, projects that E.S.P. will raise more than $300 million by 2052. Supporters also note that E.S.P. is a long-term project, and only one piece of a financial puzzle that includes ticket revenue, naming rights, corporate sponsorships, and tens of millions of dollars in TV revenue from the new Pac-12 media contract....
BRIAN BARSKY, A COMPUTER SCIENCE PROFESSOR and longtime critic of athletic department spending, calculated in January that 82 percent of E.S.P. participants had opted for the 30-year payment plan, and that most opted for the cheaper seats.... Full Story
4. Culture Monster Blog: First look at Diller Scofidio + Renfro's plans for BAM/PFA
Los Angeles Times
September 15, 2011
Even as Eli Broad begins to build his own Diller Scofidio + Renfro museum on Bunker Hill, the busy New York firm has released the schematic design for a new facility for the UC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE, known as BAM/PFA, in downtown Berkeley. The plans are classic DS+R, which is to say they are canny, sleekly attractive and conceptually overstuffed all at once.
A photo gallery of the design is here.
The proposal replaces an earlier plan for the complex by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito that was exquisitely designed but turned out to be, at nearly $150 million, prohibitively expensive. ...
Unlike Ito's plans, which would have required razing an existing printing plant at the museum's new downtown location, the new design calls for turning the interior of the 1939 plant — a spare, low-slung Art Deco building topped in part with north-facing, sawtooth skylights — into about 23,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors, one at sidewalk level and the other newly excavated below ground....
The real question is whether this project will prove to be the one where DS+R shows a clear ability to turn smart conceptual ideas into really affecting built space....
The place where that question will really be answered, of course, is in the galleries inside the repurposed printing plant. If they turn out be thrilling — in their spatial character and in the quality of their light — the university’s decision to save the plant as a way to trim the budget will seem validated, even obvious. If not, we may find ourselves looking again at the Ito design ... and contemplating what might have been — or, for that matter, wondering anew why exactly the university decided not to retrofit its existing home, which from a purely architectural point of view is one of the most striking buildings in Berkeley.
[Other stories on this topic appeared in the San Francisco Business Times, International Business Times, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, and Chronicle of Higher Education Online—link by subscription only] Full Story
5. OneWorld’s malaria drug moves closer to reality
San Francisco Business Times (*requires registration)
September 16, 2011
Seven years, nearly $50 million in Bill Gates’ cash and a web of partnerships later, nonprofit drug developer OneWorld Health is on the verge of delivering a synthetic ingredient key to making new anti-malarial drugs cheaper.
To get there, the organization has had to ditch highrise offices in San Francisco’s financial district for a nondescript two-story building in South San Francisco and cut half of its employees to conserve cash. But OneWorld and French drug maker Sanofi, which recently started scaling up production in a 100,000-liter fermentation facility, expect to release their semisynthetic version of artemisinin in about 12 months....
Chalk it up to working together.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2004 granted $42.6 million to OneWorld — then known as the Institute for OneWorld Health — that the Bay Area nonprofit drug developer used to work with UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, PROFESSOR JAY KEASLING and his startup, Emeryville-based Amyris Biotechnologies Inc.
Amyris used two genes that OneWorld licensed from UC BERKELEY, but that didn’t produce a high-enough yield, Chin said. OneWorld then turned to the National Research Council of Canada, which had identified two genes, and another small biotech company, Allelix, for another gene....
[Link to full text by subscription only] Full Story
6. Biotech SF Blog: Final Five go to the polls in QB3 science contest
San Francisco Business Times (*requires registration)
September 15, 2011
QB3’s version of “American Idol” is down to five finalists, and unlike the TV show, all of these contestants should be cheered, not jeered.
I reported on the contest — designed to raise the profile of science developed at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, UCSF and UC Santa Cruz — back in July. At the time, judges like former Genentech CEO Art Levinson, Chiron Corp. founder Bill Rutter and Five Prime Therapeutics founder Rusty Williams were cutting 38 entries down to 10.
Now it’s down to five. Online voting by students, staff and postdoctoral fellows at the three UC campuses covered by QB3 — the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences — will determine the winner.
Here are the five:
• Magnetic particle imaging, by PATRICK GOODWILL OF UC BERKELEY;
• Yeast engineered for biofuels, by JON GALAZKA OF UC BERKELEY...
The winner of the Deloitte-sponsored $10,000 prize will be announced at a ceremony at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus on Oct. 27 and will deliver a talk at the Bay Area Science Festival on Nov. 1. Full Story
7. Real planet 'Tatooine' - with two suns
San Francisco Chronicle
September 16, 2011
Mountain View — Astronomers hunting for distant planets far off in the Milky Way with the spacecraft Kepler have discovered a single planet flying in an oddball orbit around two sun-like stars at once — the first double-solar system ever seen, and there may be many more, they say.
The discovery offers a rare opportunity to study the evolution of such so-called binary systems and the planets that are born with them, says Laurance R. Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, a member of the planet detection team at NASA's nearby Ames Research Center.
Astronomers like Doyle are calling their newfound planet "Tatooine" instead of its stodgy designation Kepler-16b, because it recalls their own youth as "Star Wars" fans and the fictional planet that was Luke Skywalker's home — where "the sands of Tatooine bake beneath the glare of two bright suns," as it says in the video game "Star Wars: the Old Republic."...
Since Kepler has demonstrated that planets can indeed form around double-star systems, Doyle says, the next thing is to look for systems like these in "habitable zones" where planets might hold life — perhaps like Luke Skywalker's old home on Tatooine.
"This is a wild system," said GEOFFREY MARCY, THE UC BERKELEY ASTRONOMER and pioneer in the quest for these exoplanets who is ONE OF THE REPORT'S CO-AUTHORS. "It's a head-spinning carousel of a planetary system."
[Other stories on this topic appeared in the Wall Street Journal (link by subscription only), Science News, and Slate. A transcript of a forum on Kepler discoveries, quoting Professor Marcy at length, appeared on the Kavli Foundation website. An interview with Professor Marcy aired on CNET TV—link to video] Full Story
8. Real Time Economics Blog: Unemployment Benefits Extensions Have Small Impact on Jobless Rate
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
September 16, 2011
Generous unemployment benefits have had little effect on the unemployment rate, according to a new study that may help ease concerns that benefits give sidelined Americans a disincentive to hunt for jobs.
Unemployment insurance, which is available for up to 99 weeks in some states, nudged the jobless rate up 0.2 to 0.6 of a percentage point higher than it would have been otherwise, according to a new paper by JESSE ROTHSTEIN, A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ECONOMIST and released at the Brookings Institution this week.
“Any negative effects of the recent unemployment insurance extensions on job search are clearly quite small, too small to outweigh the benefits of transfers to people who have been out of work for over a year in conditions where job-finding prospects are bleak,” according to the report....
Mr. Rothstein’s research found that at least half of the increase in the unemployment rate from extended benefits came from workers staying attached to the labor force as opposed to Americans not searching as hard for jobs or being pickier about the ones they would accept....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
9. Tyson Says U.S. Economy Needs Additional Fiscal Support
Washington Post Online
September 16, 2011
Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — LAURA TYSON, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and a member of President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, talks about the U.S. economy and fiscal and monetary policies. Tyson speaks at the World Economic Forum in Dalian, China, with Stephen Engle on Bloomberg Television's "On the Move Asia."
[Link to video] Full Story
10. Robert Reich's Blog: The Republican weapon of mass cynicism
77 percent of Americans mistrust the government. But a lack of faith is bad for all of us.
Christian Science Monitor
September 16, 2011
According to the latest ABC New/Washington Post poll, 77 percent of Americans say they “feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track” in this country. That’s the highest percentage since January, 2009.
No surprise. The economy is almost as rotten now as it was two years ago. And, yes, this poses a huge risk to President Obama’s reelection, as it does to congressional Democrats.
But the truly remarkable thing is how little faith Americans have in government to set things right. This cynicism poses an even bigger challenge to Obama and the Democrats – and perhaps to all of us....
Decades of Republican rhetorical scorn ... have contributed. But the most powerful sources of cynicism have been actions rather than words.
One has been the misuse of public authority...
Another source has been a flood of money pouring into government from big corporations, Wall Street, and the super rich – in return for public subsidies, bailouts, tax breaks, and a steady lowering of tax rates. ...
A third source has been regulatory agencies staffed by industry cronies more interested in protecting their industries than the public. ...
Times are tough again, but the Weapon of Mass Cynicism has convinced most Americans they can’t rely on government to help them out now. ...
But if we can’t trust government at a time like this, whom can we trust? Corporations? Wall Street? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett?
Or is each of us now simply on our own? Full Story
11. Marchionne letter snags UAW talks
Negotiators return to table under 1-week contract extensions
Detroit News
September 16, 2011
The breakdown of talks between the United Auto Workers and Chrysler Group LLC has derailed what had been a carefully crafted timeline for negotiating new contracts with all three Detroit automakers.
Sources close to the negotiations told The Detroit News that a deal was imminent with General Motors Co. when Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne sat down at his Mac computer and fired off a sharply worded letter to UAW President Bob King at 10 p.m. Wednesday, accusing the union leader of violating their gentlemen's agreement to sign off on a deal by the 11:59 p.m. deadline....
The UAW declined to comment on the letter, but labor experts close to the union believe Marchionne overreacted.
"In negotiations, it's not unusual to lose your temper in the endgame — but it is unusual to do it in a letter," said HARLEY SHAIKEN, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, who has served as an adviser to the UAW in the past. "It doesn't just break new ground, it breaks new china. I cannot recall an incident like this before, but this is a very different context."
What makes this different is the fact that Chrysler is controlled by Italy's Fiat SpA. Marchionne is the head of both companies, and his experience with labor unions has been colored by bitter confrontations with European syndicates. Shaiken said Marchionne also does not understand how things have traditionally worked in Detroit....
[Reuters also issued a story quoting Professor Shaiken on the UAW talks] Full Story
12. EPA gives nod to green company Method
KGO TV
September 15, 2011
San Francisco (KGO) — The downfall of the solar plant Solyndra has many skeptical about the emergency industry focused around green energy and technology....
PROFESSOR CARLOS ZABIN WITH THE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION AT UC BERKELEY says green jobs are a positive but relatively small plus for the economy.
"It can't solve the whole problem," said Zabin, "and that's the part I think was hyped up — that green jobs would be like manna from Heaven and solve our huge, huge unemployment problem."
According to Zabin, these green industries are just a part of the economy, and she believes those who say the jobs are pipe dreams have the wrong idea of what constitutes a 'green job.'
The professor believes, even if a construction project doesn't include solar panels, it could include green jobs — the person who installs double-pane windows or the latest energy-efficient air condition — jobs you might not consider to be green.
"It's really about greening the economy," Zabin said. "Not so much about producing products that we consider green."...
[Link to video] Full Story
13. Jury awards Gundlach $66.7 million in TCW battle
Portfolio Online
September 16, 2011
Los Angeles (Reuters) — Star bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach was awarded $66.7 million by a jury over his messy divorce from money management firm Trust Company of the West, in one of the ugliest battles ever to grip the multitrillion-dollar bond-fund world....
Trade-secrets law can be murky, often boiling down to whether someone conspired to steal confidential information for a new enterprise. Unlike patents or trademarks, trade secrets are not registered with the government, and the definition of what is a trade secret can be subjective.
Since the jury recognized that each side had been wronged by the other, the judge could award TCW the exact same amount in trade-secret damages — $66.7 million — that Gundlach won in back pay, said ERIC TALLEY, A PROFESSOR AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW.
"As a general matter, this could be a cautionary tale about trying to litigate the bejeezus out of an unhappy situation," Talley said.
While the jury decided that TCW was harmed by Gundlach's trade-secret misappropriation, it also found that he did not act willfully. That means any damages awarded by Superior Court Judge Carl West cannot be multiplied under the law, Talley said.
It also may mean the judge will opt for a smaller damages measure. "If a person didn't act willfully, then there's nothing to deter," Talley said....
[Professor Talley was also quoted in an earlier Reuters story] Full Story
14. The World: New immigration deportation policy, one month in
Public Radio International [PRI]
September 16, 2011
A month ago, the Obama Administration announced a new policy that would suspend the deportation of undocumented immigrants who don't pose a threat to public safety.
US officials said they'd review 300,000 pending deportation cases. However, they're still working out the details of how they'll wade through them and have yet to act on any case.
Across the country, the new policy has given hope to many undocumented immigrants, but has also caused confusion....
Legal analysts say the new deportation policy is not amnesty.
AARTI KOHLI, DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION POLICY AT THE UC BERKELEY'S BOALT LAW SCHOOL, says the policy has the potential to affect only a small minority of the undocumented immigrants in the US.
"We're talking 300,000 people, not the estimated 11 million who are in the country. You don't actually get legalized. You just don't get deported."...
[Link to audio] Full Story
15. NY Culture: Younger Soros Tries to Learn From Father's Giving
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 16, 2011
Though he's following the philanthropic path established by his family, ALEXANDER G. SOROS is looking to take risks to support unpopular causes.
Mr. Soros, 25 years old, is a FULL-TIME STUDENT PURSUING A PH.D. IN HISTORY AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. He says his knowledge of and interest in philanthropy was honed over the dinner table in conversations with his father, billionaire hedge-fund manager and philanthropist George Soros.
Philanthropy, jokes Mr. Soros, is "in many respects, more the family business than the actual family business, which I think is a good thing." Mr. Soros believes that if you have the ability to give back, it's a duty as well as a luxury. "At least that's the way I was raised by my parents," he says.
Organizations that support the concepts of an open society, justice and minority rights are dear to the younger Mr. Soros. He says that's he's not interested in the "sexy" philanthropic areas of health or technology.
"Those are non-controversial things that a lot of people will do," he says, adding that charities that "err on the side of more risky are definitely appealing."...
"Who's going to do the unpopular stuff like dealing with issues of drugs and prisons," says Mr. Soros. "I'm much more interested in doing things that are more experimental and controversial because I think they could have the greatest impact. My dad's view was always instead of building a hospital in a war-ravaged area, why not try and make peace or solve the actual problem."
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
16. Book Details Dissension in Obama Economic Team
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
September 15, 2011
By Mark Landler
Washington — A new book claims that President Obama’s response to the economic crisis was hampered by a White House economic staff plagued by internal rivalries, a domineering chief adviser and a Treasury secretary who dragged his feet on enforcing decisions with which he disagreed.
The book, by Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, quotes White House documents that say Mr. Obama’s decisions were routinely “re-litigated” by the chairman of the National Economic Council, Lawrence H. Summers. Some decisions, including one to overhaul the debt-ridden Citibank, were carried out sluggishly or not at all by a resistant Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, according to the book....
A copy of the book, “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President,” published by HarperCollins, was obtained by The New York Times before it officially goes on sale on Tuesday....
In this rough-and-tumble environment, the book reports, female staff members often felt bruised. At a dinner with Mr. Obama in November 2009, several top female aides — including Anita Dunn, who was the communications director, and CHRISTINA ROMER, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers — told the president about being talked over in meetings by male colleagues or cut out altogether.
Ms. Romer, the book says, once passed a note to Mr. Summers threatening to walk out of a dinner with Mr. Obama and outside economists after the president polled his guests for their recommendations but failed to recognize her.
“It was lighthearted. It was not me threatening to walk,” Ms. Romer said in an interview from Berkeley, Calif., where she is a PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. “My God, who would walk out on the president?”
Mr. Summers, who has returned to a teaching position at Harvard, did not comment.... Full Story
17. Kenya: Sex-trafficked women and girls also vulnerable to organ trafficking
Global Human Traffiking Watch
September 14, 2011
Nairobi: With the highest rate of human trafficking in East and Central Africa, several nongovernmental organizations in Kenya are now under investigation by INTERPOL , the world’s largest international police organization, with 188 member countries. The Interpol Sub-regional Bureau for Eastern Africa is based in Kenya’s capital in Nairobi.
Young women as well as girls who are trafficked can also become a living supply for human body organ transplants.
“Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of using their organs, in particular kidneys, is a rapidly growing field of criminal activity,” says INTERPOL. ...
The situation for organ trafficking is strongly dependent on supply and demand.
“In the United States for instance, kidney donations between 1990 and 2003 increased by only 33% while the number of patients waiting for kidneys grew by 236%,” says author and PROFESSOR OF MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES....
“...the circulation of kidneys followed established routes of capital from South to North, from East to West, from poorer to more affluent bodies, from black and brown bodies to white ones and from female to male or from poor, low status men to more affluent men. Women are rarely the recipients of purchased organs anywhere in the world,” says Professor Scheper-Hughes.... Full Story
18. Iraq joins talks on Iran bail for jailed UC Berkeley grads
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 15, 2011
Muscat, Oman (AP) — Arab countries Oman and Iraq are involved in negotiations for the release of two Americans jailed in Iran for spying.
A private plane from the Gulf state of Oman has been dispatched to Tehran and an Iraqi official says a delegation of lawmakers is in the Iranian capital amid intensified efforts to seal a $1 million bail-for-freedom deal for SHANE BAUER and JOSH FATTAL.
They were detained along the Iran-Iraq border in July 2009 with their friend SARAH SHOURD. She was released last September following mediation by Oman.
Their defense lawyer says talks are under way, but there is no timetable on a possible release.... Full Story
19. Ryann McKellar finds fossils of colored feathers
San Francisco Chronicle
September 16, 2011
San Francisco — For more than 20 years scientists have been finding fossils of dinosaur species that bore feathers, and their evolution was clearly echoed in the plumage of their descendants, the early birds that first flew millions of years ago.
But no one has ever known the colors of those evolving feathers, or what their functions in dinosaurs were before the first bird flew.
Now a Canadian researcher has discovered a rich collection of ancient colored feathers, perfectly preserved in amber, that may possibly have once adorned the body of an unknown dinosaur species. They come from a time known as the late Cretaceous period, when the age of the dinosaurs was nearing its end and the birds were starting to flourish widely....
"Spectacular fossils," was the reaction of KEVIN PADIAN, A DINOSAUR EXPERT AT UC BERKELEY, when he saw images of McKellar's collection.
"They represent a mix of primitive 'dinosaurian' feathers and more advanced 'bird' feathers — which is just what you'd expect in the Cretaceous," he said.
"Because some Cretaceous birds still retained feather types that other dinosaurs had, but that don't exist in today's birds, it's hard for those authors to determine whether these feathers are from birds or nonbird dinosaurs.
"And that shows the continuity of evolution, which is pretty cool." Full Story
20. New Yorker illustrator enlivens Cal Performances programs
Berkeleyside
September 15, 2011
When concertgoers attend Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in the Zellerbach Hall tomorrow night, the opening performance of this year’s CAL PERFORMANCES season, they’ll encounter famed choreographer Mark Morris in the novel role of conductor.
They’ll also catch the first sight of the whimsical caricatures by Tom Bachtell that will be gracing the Cal Performances programs this season.
Bachtell’s style is well known from his illustrations for The New Yorker‘s Talk of the Town, which he has been doing for the last 20 years. Bachtell trained as a pianist at the Cleveland Institute of Music and remains an active chamber player. He’s a self-taught artist.
In addition to the Morris illustration, Bachtell has drawn Russian composer Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, whose six symphonies will be performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev October 14-16, and actor John Malkovich, who stars in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer, October 21. Bachtell will be doing other illustrations throughout this year’s season.... Full Story
21. Calder Quartet, Terry Riley to play Blum & Poe gallery
The young players (and their mentor) perform to raise money so they can commission new works.
Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2011
Los Angeles is teeming with places to perform if you're a rock band stoking dreams of becoming the next Arcade Fire, but what about a classically trained string quartet, one that can play with party guru Andrew WK or the National's stormy rock? The art world, ready to foster the kind of cross-pollination that sparked between Merce Cunningham and John Cage, is ready to receive you with open arms....
On Wednesday, the Calder Quartet will perform, followed by a piano set from their mentor TERRY RILEY, at an event designed to raise money for the group to commission new pieces. ...
The seeds for Wednesday's event were sown in 2006 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Minimalist Jukebox festival when Calder Quartet performed some of Riley's works written while HE WAS A STUDENT AT UC BERKELEY in the early '60s, before his 1964 breakthrough composition, "In C," helped launch the Minimalist movement. After not hearing his student works for more than 40 years, Riley listened to the Calder Quartet perform them and had a change of heart.
"When I heard the Calders play it, I thought, 'I really like this,'" Riley said from his home near Sacramento. "I had dismissed them as student works but then I thought that maybe I should've pursued that direction more."... Full Story
22. Jeff Tedford near Cal football coaching standard
San Francisco Chronicle
September 16, 2011
Berkeley — On Jan. 16, 1926, an airplane came in low over MEMORIAL STADIUM carrying solemn cargo. The pilot released his payload and the ashes of ANDY SMITH were scattered onto the playing field, as per the coach's wish.
The most successful FOOTBALL COACH AT BERKELEY would become one with the sod where his Wonder Teams of the 1920s went five years without losing a game and won four consecutive national titles.
For one week at least, Smith and CURRENT COACH JEFF TEDFORD are linked in the long history of Cal football, each man with 74 victories spread over 10 seasons nearly eight decades removed from each other.
"That's probably all it says, that I outlasted all of them," said Tedford, who has coached more games than anyone in school history with 116. "I haven't really thought about it much. It's more to do with the players who have played here over time. I'm fortunate to be the head coach here, thankful to be the head coach here."... Full Story