A daily selection of stories about UC Berkeley and higher education that have appeared in the local and national media.
Monday, 23 November 2009
1. Cal ruins Stanford's Rose Bowl hopes in Big Game California 34, No. 14 Stanford 28
Washington Post
November 22, 2009
Stanford, Calif. -- The California players listened quietly all week to the pregame talk about how powerful Stanford had a chance to go to the Rose Bowl.
THE GOLDEN BEARS provided their emphatic answer in one of the most exciting and important Big Games in recent memory.
SHANE VEREEN ran for a career-high 193 yards and three touchdowns on 42 carries and MIKE MOHAMED intercepted a pass from Andrew Luck at the 3 with less than 2 minutes left as Cal beat No. 14 Stanford 34-28 Saturday.
"We've heard a lot of talk about, 'Oh, they're going to go to the Rose Bowl,'" Mohamed said. "We felt like they were overlooking us a little bit. For us to come out and to prove all these guys wrong, it feels good. And we're keeping the Axe in Berkeley another year. You can't get much better than that."...
[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide]
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2. Berkeley Protest Ends Peacefully
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
November 22, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. – A student protest on the campus of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, over large fee increases at UC campuses statewide ended peacefully late on Friday.
Police arrested 41 demonstrators, according to the Associated Press, after as many as 50 students and their sympathizers occupied a building before dawn on Friday....
The takeover, which echoed the unrest here during the 1960s, took place a day after the UC Board of Regents approved a 32% increase in student fees to cope with California's long-running fiscal crisis.
...The action at Berkeley follows unrest at a number of UC campuses following the fee increases. At UC Los Angeles, protesters tried to block regents from leaving after they made their fee decision in a meeting there Thursday, while at UC Davis dozens of students were arrested following demonstrations Thursday.
UC Berkeley officials condemned the action at their campus. "We certainly understand the students' frustrations and concerns, but it's disappointing they expressed their frustrations in this way," said JANET GILMORE, A UC BERKELEY SPOKESWOMAN....
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3. Students Protest Tuition Increases
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 21, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. — The day after the University of California Board of Regents approved a 32 percent increase in fees that are the equivalent of tuition, protests continued on several campuses, with students occupying buildings at Santa Cruz and Berkeley.
On the BERKELEY CAMPUS, at least 40 students took over a classroom building, Wheeler Hall, barricading themselves on the second floor. Hundreds of students surrounded the building, huddled under umbrellas, tarps and plastic, chanting slogans like: “Fee hike! We strike!”...
CLAIRE HOLMES, A BERKELEY SPOKESWOMAN, said that about 500 people participated in protests across campus on Friday, becoming more confrontational as the hours went by.
“One of our officers has gone to the hospital with injuries,” she said, “so we are in the process of getting some help from the Alameda Sheriff’s Office and the Berkeley Police Department.”
On Thursday, when the Regents voted to raise undergraduate fees to $10,302 next fall, from $7,788 this year, protesters dumped a five-foot mound of trash bags outside California Hall, Berkeley’s administration building.
“They made their symbolic point, and then they cleaned it up, because they knew it would make more work for the workers they were trying to support,” Ms. Holmes said....
[An Associated Press story on this topic appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide. Other stories appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, and Sacramento Bee. Broadcast stories aired on NewsHour and KRON TV (link to videos)]
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4. Editorial on protests at UC Berkeley
San Francisco Chronicle
November 21, 2009
It almost feels like 1968 again. Students are occupying buildings at the University of California. The police have strapped on riot gear. Officials are recalcitrant. Even some of the old slogans: "Fight back!" and "We can't take it no more!" have made a comeback.
The difference? This time, the students are fighting for a chance to join the system, not break free of it. It's a sign of the times that what the students want - an opportunity to establish a decent life through a college education - seems far more elusive these days than identity battles.
And there's no doubt that the UC regents' decision on Thursday to hike tuition and fees by 32 percent will cost some current students and many potential ones that opportunity. Despite the university's insistence that an expansion of the Blue and Gold Opportunity plan (wherein students who come from households of $70,000 and lower have all their systemwide fees covered if they meet financial aid criteria) will continue to make the UC accessible, there are many current students who haven't even heard of the plan. And there will be many more potential students from struggling middle-class families who will simply look at the skyrocketing sticker price and walk away. When the students say that their future is at stake, they aren't exaggerating.
Unfortunately, the regents aren't exaggerating about the need for a fee increase, either....
We highly encourage students to take their fight to Sacramento. Politicians need to hear their voices - and their struggles to afford an education - this year and next year, when times will continue to be tough and the budget will stay broken.
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5. Editorial: UC on the brink
Another increase in 'fees' hits students hard, but the system itself may now be at risk.
Los Angeles Times
November 21, 2009
Sorry to say, the University of California Board of Regents took the easiest route possible out of its crushing financial dilemma Thursday by placing the burden squarely on the shoulders of students. We can't help wondering whether the regents understand that the nearly one-third increase in undergraduate tuition -- it's time to dispense with the euphemism of "fees" for UC students -- could prove the tipping point for the nation's greatest public university system, including its star campus, UC BERKELEY, the top-ranked public university in the world.
UC is still cheap, relatively speaking, though its tuition is higher than average for public colleges. Even tuition of more than $10,000, which will start next year at UC, compares well with the $26,300 average at private universities and colleges. But that's more than twice what it was a decade ago, meaning it grew at four times the rate of inflation. And room and board at UC costs another $14,000 or so, about the same as at private schools....
Some kind of fee increase was inevitable. The state's budget ax has fallen heavily on UC, and families had to expect to share some of the pain. But there were ways to soften the blow, including by greatly expanding plans to recruit and enroll more out-of-state students, who pay higher tuition, and brokering a deal with Sacramento to temporarily reduce overall enrollment without losing funding. Such measures would be easy to calibrate up or down as future needs demand, and they are more likely to be reversed in better times than the newly approved tuition increase.
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6. Op-Ed: The right to a great public education
Sacramento Bee
November 19, 2009
Alvaro Huerta
ALVARO HUERTA IS A DOCTORAL STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY and a visiting scholar at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine....
November 19, 2009
We've got to stop cutting public education. To ease the budget crisis, one state after another is taking an ax to higher education. This is cruel and shortsighted....
I'm a product of the worst and best public education California has to offer. I grew up in an East Los Angeles housing project in the 1970s and 1980s. I attended overcrowded public schools in the inner city. Like many racial minorities from America's barrios and ghettos, I received an inadequate education. ...
I taught myself how to properly read and write while going through college to compensate for my poorly funded K-12 education. But what will happen to those without this same self-drive that I learned from my Mexican immigrant mother? Fortunately, I also benefited from affirmative action and from numerous educational outreach programs and policies like Occident College's Upward Bound - a preparatory program for students from disadvantaged communities.
If not for such programs, I wouldn't have made it to UCLA as an undergraduate. I wouldn't have earned a master's degree in urban planning there. And I wouldn't be pursuing my doctorate at Berkeley....
If we care about equality of opportunity, if we are concerned about our ability to compete in the global economy, it's time to give everyone, including those from America's barrios and ghettos, a shot at a great public education.
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7. Libraries Innovate to Counter Cuts
Tough times are taking a toll but spurring innovations in handling collections
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
November 23, 2009
At many university libraries, the toxic economy has eaten away at staffing levels and at collections-and-acquisitions budgets. It has deflated endowments and disrupted plans to build new facilities and upgrade equipment....
The slice was 18 percent, or more than $4-million, last year at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, says THOMAS C. LEONARD, THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN. In California, higher education has received a succession of body blows as the state's finances collapse, and Mr. Leonard has had to roll with some very hard punches.
"I can tell really sad stories about our budget," Mr. Leonard says. "We're really, really hurting." His library has lost 30 full-time employees in recent months. The money Mr. Leonard has to employ student workers has been cut by 25 percent, and the budget for library work stations has been halved. On the plus side of the ledger, the library's acquisitions budget has been protected by order of the chancellor, according to Mr. Leonard.
Mr. Leonard is not a pessimist. He points out that numbers alone do not tell the whole story at institutions like his. Libraries have made significant and, in some cases, relatively cheap progress in digitizing their collections. "So we're realizing tens of millions of dollars in benefits, but it's not reflected in budget figures," he observes.
To get a sense of how Berkeley's library makes do with less, The Chronicle spoke with CHUCK ECKMAN, ASSOCIATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN AND DIRECTOR OF COLLECTIONS. He describes a three-pronged strategy, the first part of which is to look for sources of revenue other than state money. (The library has its own development office, and raised more than $10-million last year, according to Mr. Leonard.) Berkeley's library now covers 15 to 18 percent of its collection-development expenditures with money from private sources, Mr. Eckman says. "We're hoping to up that over time."...
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8. National plan wouldn't mean end of Healthy S.F.
San Francisco Chronicle
November 23, 2009
Health experts say it would be great if national health reform legislation would render San Francisco's groundbreaking health program unnecessary - but they don't see that happening anytime soon.
None of the bills under consideration in Congress promises to cover everyone living in the United States, leaving some people without coverage. Those include new immigrants who can't afford coverage but are not yet eligible for public programs, low-income people who wouldn't qualify for subsidies, and illegal immigrants....
A UC BERKELEY STUDY released in August, which relied on U.S. Labor Department data through December 2008, found San Francisco's job trends across all employment sectors were the same or better than other Bay Area counties.
"Since the health spending requirement went into effect we haven't seen any negative employment" fallout as a result of the program, said WILLIAM DOW, ONE OF THE STUDY'S AUTHORS AND AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HEALTH ECONOMICS AT UC BERKELEY....
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9. Letters: The Risks and Benefits of Cancer Tests
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 21, 2009
To the Editor:
Re “Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests” (front page, Nov. 20); “The Controversy Over Mammograms” (editorial, Nov. 20); and “Addicted to Mammograms,” by Robert Aronowitz (Op-Ed, Nov. 20):
...To the Editor:
Robert Aronowitz points out that one of 1,900 women in their 40s will be saved by 10 years of mammography. This must total many thousands of women in America, and it has not been adequately explained why these lives should be sacrificed. Obviously, the lives saved must be balanced against the consequences of false positives, but few media accounts spell out these consequences.
Dr. Aronowitz, at least, gives us a number: for every life saved, there are 1,000 false positives, all of whom will needlessly suffer great anxiety. Arguably, though, that is a reasonable price to pay to save one life.
What has not been adequately explained are the other consequences of these false positives. How many of those 1,000 women die, and how many suffer greatly, as a result of needless surgery and toxic therapy? This crucial information is missing from every account I have read.
DAVID H. RAULET
Berkeley, Calif., Nov. 20, 2009
THE WRITER IS A PROFESSOR OF MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY IN THE CANCER RESEARCH LAB, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
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10. An American Catastrophe
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 21, 2009
Detroit -- In many ways, it’s like a ghost town. It’s eerily quiet. Driving around in the middle of the afternoon, in a city that once was among the most productive on the planet, you see very little traffic, minimal commercial activity, hardly any pedestrians....
I was in Detroit with HARLEY SHAIKEN, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, who specializes in labor issues. He grew up in Detroit and his love for the city and its people are palpable, as is his grief for the horrors the city has endured.
The popular narrative of what happened to Detroit contains a great deal of truth but its focus is too narrow to account for the astonishing decline of this former industrial colossus. Yes, there were the riots of 1967, and white flight; and political leadership that was not just shortsighted but at times embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt. And, yes, the auto industry was a case study in self-destruction.
But as Mr. Shaiken points out, Detroit was still viable enough for the Republican Party to hold its convention here in 1980, when it nominated Ronald Reagan. And it was not the riots, but the devastating recession of the early ’80s that really knocked the city senseless. “That’s when the place really cracked,” said Mr. Shaiken, “and that was about aggressive globalization and the lack of an industrial policy, not the riots.”...
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11. Op-Ed: Time for a new New Deal for California
San Francisco Chronicle
November 22, 2009
The Great Recession hit California hard. Long the largest and most dynamic part of the American economy, the state has fallen far and fast. Unemployment stands at the third-highest level of any state, and underemployment is catastrophic: 1 in 5 Californians....
It's an old lesson, first learned in the Great Depression of the 1930s. ....
The lesson was taught the nation by the New Deal....
During the New Deal, the Public Works Administration (PWA) built fundamental infrastructure, like dams and buildings; these are costly, require long lead times and employ mostly skilled workers. This is what Obama is doing.
By contrast, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built smaller and simpler projects, such as roads, sidewalks and picnic grounds, but put to work many more ordinary people.
It was money well spent. Not only did the New Deal give millions of desperate people hope, it served vital public needs.....
The benefits of California's public schools (once the nation's finest) and the world's greatest public university system have been incalculable. We know - we're both products of that educational opportunity. Now is the time for Californians to remember the lesson of what a great, public-spirited generation did for us. Instead of leaving our children a ruined public sector, we should be crying out for a new New Deal.
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12. Budget crisis may be harder to solve this time
San Francisco Chronicle
November 22, 2009
Sacramento -- Leaders at the Capitol will have about six months to resolve the new $20.7 billion deficit, and some believe the job will be tougher than the $62 billion budget hole they plugged earlier this year....
UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND LAW ALAN AUERBACH said extending the tax increases is an obvious place for lawmakers to look for a solution.
"But that is only part of the solution. Where the rest of it comes from who knows?" said AUERBACH, WHO IS DIRECTOR OF THE ROBERT D. BURCH CENTER FOR TAX POLICY AND PUBLIC FINANCE AT BERKELEY. He predicted the Legislature would "muddle through" the problem with spending cuts and tax increases, adding, "I don't think the world is going to end."...
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13. Opinion Shop Blog: Lois Kazakoff: Who creates the jobs?
San Francisco Chronicle Online
November 21, 2009
More economists are saying that continuing job losses and moribund job creation will require a second economic stimulus. What they don't agree on is where to create jobs -- in the private sector or in the public sector....
The Bay Area, with ... one of the most highly educated populations in the country, has suffered fewer job losses than other parts of California, most notably the Central Valley. Yet jobs are hard to come by here and those struggling to keep afloat financially are suffering. The region needs to restart the job creation engine quickly for its economic health and, as UC BERKELEY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIST DACHER KELTNER says, for the residents' long-term well-being....
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14. Errors riddle accounts of stimulus spending
San Francisco Chronicle
November 23, 2009
Nine months after President Obama promised that his $789 billion stimulus package would be the most transparent spending bill in history, much of the information available to the public for the Bay Area and the rest of the nation is incomplete or inaccurate.
The White House's Recovery Act Web site - www.recovery.gov - shows that $660 million has been awarded to Bay Area transportation projects to create 997 jobs, which amounts to a staggering $661,986 per job.
Last week, the site showed that California Congressional Districts 00 and 99 received millions of dollars in stimulus funding even though neither district exists....
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15. US bets $150m on high-risk renewable energy
New Scientist
November 23, 2009
If you had $150 million to spend on boundary-busting energy research, where would you put the cash? The US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has committed that amount this year, with one lofty aim: to transform the planet's energy future. But which technologies are its best bets?
ARPA-E knows it's taking some huge gambles: it fully expects that many of the 37 projects it picked will fail. "Our model is to look for risky, high-potential technologies that don't currently have a means of funding to see if they will work," says ARPA-E's deputy director, Shane Kosinski....
...ENERGY ANALYST DANIEL KAMMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, says the agency needs a more radical approach. "I think there are some nice projects in there, but I think we're going to need to see a more 'pie in the sky' portfolio over time," he says.
Such projects may include super-high wind turbines that tap into the jet stream, space-based solar power, and solar panels integrated into the skin of buildings, he suggests....
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16. Transbay plan bumps into 'sunlight ordinance'
San Francisco Chronicle
November 22, 2009
Redrawing San Francisco's skyline could come down to sunlight and shadows.
The proposal that city planners recently unveiled to allow seven new skyscrapers near a rebuilt Transbay Terminal, including one that would crown a changed skyline, appears to have at least one problem - a 1984 voter-approved initiative that protects sunlight for city-owned parks and open space.
Proposition K, the "Sunlight Ordinance," blocks construction of any building over 40 feet that casts an adverse shadow on Recreation and Park Department property unless the Planning Commission decides the shadow is insignificant....
PETER BOSSELMANN, THE UC BERKELEY URBAN DESIGN PROFESSOR who crafted the original shadow modeling for Prop. K, was cautious about the proposed changes, saying any new shadow findings had to be corroborated.
"If the language is changed to allow it to be more flexible in the permitting process, then that is probably not the intent of what the voters wanted," he said....
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17. Medical Marijuana: No Longer Just for Adults
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
November 22, 2009
At the Peace in Medicine Healing Center in Sebastopol, the wares on display include dried marijuana — featuring brands like Kryptonite, Voodoo Daddy and Train Wreck — and medicinal cookies arrayed below a sign saying, “Keep Out of Reach of Your Mother.”
The warning tells a story of its own: some of the center’s clients are too young to buy themselves a beer.
Several Bay Area doctors who recommend medical marijuana for their patients said in recent interviews that their client base had expanded to include teenagers with psychiatric conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder....
“How many ways can one say ‘one of the worst ideas of all time?’ ” asked STEPHEN HINSHAW, THE CHAIRMAN OF THE PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. He cited studies showing that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, disrupts attention, memory and concentration — functions already compromised in people with the attention-deficit disorder....
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18. 2 sentenced in crash that killed 3 UC students
San Francisco Chronicle
November 23, 2009
Berkeley -- Two Oakland men have each been sentenced to more than eight years in prison for their roles in a street race and fiery chain-reaction collision on Interstate 80 that killed three UC BERKELEY DOCTORAL STUDENTS in 2005, authorities said Sunday.
Eric Barnes, 28, and Stanley Jacks Jr., 25, were each found guilty last month of three counts of felony vehicular manslaughter in the July 16, 2005, crash that killed GIULIA ADESSO, 26, BENJAMIN BOUSSERT, 27, and JASON CHOY, 29.
An investigation stalled until RESEARCHERS AT UC BERKELEY'S TRAFFIC SAFETY CENTER told California Highway Patrol investigators that magnetic sensors on I-80 used for studying traffic density showed that the suspects' cars had been traveling at more than 100 mph, said CHP Officer Sam Morgan.
PAUL ALIVISATOS, A UC BERKELEY CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR who served as the adviser for Boussert and Adesso, said Sunday that he is grateful that another campus department was able to provide key evidence in the case.
"I personally had no idea that there was that type of research going on. To find out that was what was ultimately able to crack the case, it's really remarkable," said Alivisatos, who was named director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Thursday....
THE THREE VICTIMS, ALL DOCTORAL CANDIDATES STUDYING NANOSCIENCE AT UC BERKELEY'S COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRY, were returning home from an event in San Francisco's South of Market area when the collision occurred at 2:30 a.m.
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19. Room for Debate Blog: Haves vs. Have-Nots at Public Universities
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 22, 2009
The University of California, which has already received $716 million in federal stimulus funds to offset a $1 billion budget gap, announced on Friday that it is raising student fees by 32 percent. That works out to about $2,500 per student a year.
Student protesters said that the higher costs will make it even harder for middle class and poor students to go to college, and will widen the education gap between the haves and the have-nots. But the students at the 10-campus California system are, on average, from far wealthier backgrounds than the average household in the state. This gap is pronounced at other prominent public universities, like Michigan and Virginia.
As they deal with tighter budgets, what should public universities do to balance fiscal responsibility and equal opportunity?
* Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, former college president
* Alfonso Trujillo, engineer
* Cindy Mosqueda, U.C.L.A. graduate student
* Richard Vedder, economist, Ohio University
* Jane Wellman, executive director, Delta Project
* Ronald Ehrenberg, economist, Cornell University...
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20. Corrections & Amplifications
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
November 23, 2009
Annual fees for an undergraduate student from California at the state's university system will rise from $7,788 to $8,373 this academic year and to $10,302 next year. A Nov. 20 U.S. News article about the fee increases incorrectly said they were per semester. In addition, CAMILLE PANNU paid $31,000 for her first year at BERKELEY'S LAW SCHOOL. The article incorrectly said she paid $27,000.
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21. Op-Ed: Agrarian reform policy and selfish sectors
Jakarta Post
November 23, 2009
In a speech on Jan. 31, 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono proclaimed that the agrarian reform program would start gradually in 2007. Implementation will be preceded by allocating land for the poor, with the land originating in forest conversion, as well as other land to be allocated in the interest of the people, as allowed by our land law....
But the land distribution platform is not easy to implement. The government has never been able to create effective teamwork among government agencies, especially the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) the Forestry Ministry and Agriculture Ministry. Each government agency works for itself and is very reluctant to cooperate with other state institutions....
Eleven years since Reformasi started in 1998, we need to find ways to make the agrarian bureaucracies pursue social justice for all Indonesian people. This will only happen if government bureaucracies take social justice seriously as their main organizing principle, including for their agrarian policies.
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22. Book Review: 'Becoming Americans': Immigrant writing
San Francisco Chronicle
November 22, 2009
Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing
Edited by Ilan Stavans
(The Library of America; 724 pages; $40)
Pete Hamill's foreword to "Becoming Americans" offers caveats for cliches brewing in the 85 essays, short stories, novel excerpts, poems, letters and bits of memoir that this anthology of "Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing" collects.
He warns against "sentimentalizing the tale of the immigrants" but then goes ahead and caricatures its main features: predatory con men; the wreckage of alcohol; tottering, collapsing family structures; the will to endure. Along the way, American culture receives myriad gifts, including the selections in this anthology, which indeed display - with humility, panache, disgust, outrageous pride, irony and ambivalence - all these links on the great chain of immigration....
The title, perhaps plucked from John Lukacs' pithy "it is easier to become an American than to become American," has a panoply of images to vivify it. Apart from the passport, becoming American is to join the "mess," "kaleidoscope," "Babylon," "Babel," "griddle" (the new melting pot), "wretched refuse" of all the other e pluribus Americans.
But "Becoming Americans" raises another question too, of grace: How "becoming" is America itself? This is a question of beauty - the motley landscape, the protean face of America are gorgeously rendered - but also of etiquette, the proper province of a nation that has often played poor host. The answer has been detained; it is in custody at Guantanamo. Its release is pending.
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23. 'Geeks' take on red planet
Oakland Tribune
November 20, 2009
Berkeley — About 100 self-proclaimed geeks were at the LAWRENCE HALL OF SCIENCE on Wednesday night to learn how to survive on Mars and then design and build a replica of a base station where they could live.
UC BERKELEY'S PUBLIC SCIENCE CENTER has joined other Bay Area museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or MOMA, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, in offering evening programs for adults....
At the Berkeley hall, there was a geek challenge going on Wednesday.
"I basically created an event that I wanted to go to," said GRETCHEN WALKER, THE HALL'S DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY AND VISITOR PROGRAMS. "I like to go to science museums but you are always crawling over 10-year-olds to get to the stuff and you feel guilty. So we thought, 'Let's get the 10-year-olds out of the way and have a nighttime event for adults.'"
First there was a brief talk from MATT FILLINGIM FROM THE SPACE SCIENCES LABORATORY AT UC BERKELEY and Adrian Brown, who works at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, or SETI, in Mountain View and the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, about how to survive on the Red Planet....
Head base station builder GIO GIORDANO, WHO IS A HALL SCIENCE EDUCATOR BY DAY, led the way, showing the group all the fixings for base station building. Set out on several long tables were metal and plastic tubing, plastic and aluminum sheeting wood blocks, tiles, plastic bowls, plastic plants and flowers — and miniature dolls....
The next "geek out" event will be 7 to 10 p.m. on Dec. 10. It's called "Why We Must Colonize Space," and will feature Seth Shostak, a SETI astronomer, who recently appeared on Comedy Central. He will discuss why space exploration and colonization are not only good ideas — but an essential ones, hall officials said. The cost is $10. For more information, go to www.lawrencehallofscience.org.
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24. Film programmer Anita Monga's 5-star places
San Francisco Chronicle
November 22, 2009
Anita Monga was recently named the artistic director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Stockton native's programming career started in 1980 with a successful run at the Roxie Cinema before she took the post for 17 career-defining years at the Castro Theatre, where her stewardship earned awards and the attention of film buffs around the world. She is also the director of programming of SIFF Cinema in Seattle and co-founder of the Noir City Festival. She tells us about some of her favorite places outside the darkened theater....
THE OLD POWERHOUSE MOSAIC MURALS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY. "On campus, there's an old brick building used as a storage space that's nestled in a little grove eastward from Sather Gate, whose side-entrance walls are exquisite WPA-era mosaic murals depicting the arts. There are picnic benches where you can pause to consider the wonder of the New Deal."...
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