Featured events- 03/10/2012 - Ton Koopman & The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir
- 02/27/2012 - Classical at the Freight: Rossini Birthday Celebration
- 02/23/2012 - Michio Kaku: Physics of the Future, How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
- 02/23/2012 - 2012: a Turning Point? And If So, Which Way?: A Talk by Robert Reich
- 02/19/2012 - Takacs Quartet
Category Archives: UC Berkeley
Cal frat boy Kyle Crews a hit with Jennifer Lopez & co
American Idol fans know that when a judge says “you’re going to Hollywood”, that’s very good news. These words were spoken by former Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler to UC Berkeley undergraduate Kyle Crews recently when he auditioned for the show in San Diego, which also happens to be his hometown.
Crews, who dedicated his rendition of Monica’s “Angel of Mine” to Tyler’s fellow judge Jennifer Lopez (telling host Ryan Seacrest beforehand that he couldn’t stop thinking of her “voluptuous lips”), made an impression despite his loud plaid shirt (“you’re going to have to lose that shirt,” said Tyler). Third judge Randy Jackson simply whooped and declared: “That’s crazy. You sound nothing like you look.”
The 19-year-old, whois an enthusiastic member of Cal’s Kappa Alpha fraternity, will now go through to the next rounds in Hollywood. … Continue reading »
A latchkey kid roams Berkeley ghost town full of promise
By Greg Fuson
Nostalgia, like politics and real estate, is local.
Which helps explain how a 40-something man returns to the Berkeley California School for the Deaf and Blind (Clark Kerr Campus, as you know it today) and becomes the 11-year-old boy of his childhood.
I spent the better part of two years at that school, daydreaming in its classrooms, kicking a football across its playing fields, climbing its rooftops when adventure or mischief (or both) swelled up in me, but mostly just wandering its hallways in idle search of who knows what.
I confess: I broke some things. Windows. Drywall. Light fixtures. Toilet paper dispensers.
No teachers ever told me to stop. How could they?
The place was abandoned. … Continue reading »
The “before” pictures: Berkeley Art Museum/PFA
Call it “beautiful decay”: these stunning photographs, taken by David Stark Wilson, show the interiors of the future home of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA).
Just as with the new Magnes, which unveiled its new space on Sunday, BAM/PFA is to be housed in a 1920s-era 1939 building originally designed as a printing plant for UC Berkeley. It is located at 2120 Oxford Street at Center Street, in the heart of downtown.
Is it not fitting that, as the demand for printed thesis, documents, books and monographs has waned, the engine rooms that produced these volumes are now being put to good use while remaining in the cultural realm?
Berkeley High student wows with poetry, spoken word
Noah St. John is the antithesis of the archetypal awkward teenager. A sophomore at Berkeley High, he exudes a quiet confidence and has a magnetic stage presence.
Last year he won the 2011 Bay Area Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam after performing “Strawberry Blonde,” a piece about his crush on a girl in school, and NPR broadcasts him reading his pieces.
In a profile published in the Chronicle yesterday, St. John said: ”For me, it’s about communicating with the audience, not so much getting caught up in the rhythm or sound of your own poem.”
In the video above, he performs a spoken word piece about capoeira in the first round of the poetry slam he went to win. Watch out for the almost nonchalant body flips.
Breaking: Berkeley Lab chooses Richmond for 2nd campus
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has selected Richmond as the site for its second campus. The Lab annnounced the news this morning on its website, saying the University of California-owned Richmond Field Station site “presents the best opportunity to solve the Lab’s pressing space problems while allowing for long term growth and maintaining the 80-year tradition of close cooperation with the UC Berkeley Campus.”
Three Berkeley-connected sites were on a shortlist of six for the campus. They were: Berkeley Aquatic Park West, located in West Berkeley; Emeryville/Berkeley, (which included properties currently occupied by the Lab in Emeryville and West Berkeley); and Golden Gate Fields, spanning the cities of Berkeley and Albany.
The Lab had originally said it would announce its decision in November 2011, but revised that to “early in 2012″ in late November, saying it needed more time to fully evaluate its options. … Continue reading »
Tagged Berkeley Lab
UC professor Howard Bern, pioneer in endocrinology, dies
By Alan Bern
Howard A. Bern, a professor emeritus of integrative biology and research at UC Berkeley, and an endocrinologist at the Cancer Research Laboratory, died Jan. 3 at his Berkeley home after a nine-month bout with cancer. He was 91.
With his colleague and friend Aubrey Gorbman, former zoology professor and department chairman at the University of Washington, Bern co-authored the definitive volume, A Textbook of Comparative Endocrinology, in 1962. It “contained concepts that were key to the development of the emerging field of comparative endocrinology and guided the thinking and careers of a vast number of scientists around the world,” according to colleague and friend Stacia A. Sower, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of New Hampshire. … Continue reading »
Tagged Alan Bern, Estelle Bern, Howard A Bern
Occupy food: College co-op advocates gather in Berkeley
Taking matters beyond burritos, pizza, and beer, a boot camp for college food activists from across the country kicks off today at Berkeley Student Cooperative‘s Cloyne Court Hotel. The intensive, three-day retreat is designed to help train students who want to run campus co-op food cafés and stores stocked with wholesome foods for college kids seeking something other than a steady diet of fast food.
The event, dubbed “Occupy Your Plate,” is sponsored by the year-old Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFED), a Berkeley-based program that was inspired by the launch of the Berkeley Student Food Collective (BSFC), across the street from campus on Bancroft Way. Speakers at the training include People’s Grocery executive director Nikki Henderson; cookbook author Mollie Katzen; CoFED supporters include Cal professor and author Michael Pollan.
We spoke with CoFed co-founder and UC Berkeley graduate Yoni Landau — who was instrumental in getting the BSFC up and running and, in 2009, lead a protest to keep the Chinese fast-food chain Panda Express off campus – about what’s cooking with the CoFED crew this weekend and in 2012, which has been dubbed the International Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations. … Continue reading »
In Berkeley: Occupy (the) wall (across the) street
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment on Berkeley’s Channing Way found a novel way to enlarge on their research into income inequality last week.
Taking advantage of the white plastic-wrapped building under construction across the street (the Anna Head student housing complex), the IRLE decided to Occupy (the) Wall (across the) Street.
Visiting economist Jared Bernstein, former chief economist and economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, marked the event on his blog.
From the king a medal, from Berkeley a parking permit
By Derrick Schneider
When news broke in October that physicist Saul Perlmutter had won the Nobel Prize, most people focused on his astonishing discovery that the universe’s expansion is accelerating.
In Berkeley, we focused on his parking spot.
Every Nobel Laureate gets prestige, influence, and money, but UC Berkeley’s winners also receive a large, yellow parking permit, known as the NL permit, and a guaranteed parking space on campus. Although Perlmutter receives his Nobel Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf on Saturday in Stockholm, he already received his NL permit in October.
When Perlmutter gave a press conference about the prize he joked, “Probably the single most important thing about the Nobel Prize for most people is whether they get the coveted parking space on campus.” … Continue reading »
No “leading theory” yet on Haas shooting
The UC Berkeley police investigation into the fatal shooting last month of Christopher Travis has not yet reached any conclusions, according to Lt. Alex Yao, the department’s spokesman. The investigation is continuing and Yao said he did not know when it would be concluded.
Berkeleyside and other media reported yesterday on an email sent by Haas Business School Dean Richard Lyons which said that suicide by police officer was the “leading theory” for Travis’ actions on November 15. … Continue reading »
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