California magazine blog

The Lightbulb and the Invisible Hand

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Nobel laureate in physics and Berkeley's mainmost man in Washington, was part of a White House energy forum yesterday morning. The Times' science reporter Andrew Revkin live-blogged some highlights, including the following gems:

10:30 a.m.: Energy Secretary Steven Chu rebuts the argument of skeptical economists who pose this riddle and answer: How many economists does it take to change a light bulb? None, if the bulb needed changing the freemarket would do the job.

11:00 a.m.: Dr. Chu: “People leave stuff on, often for no reason. And sometimes they leave stuff on for years.” He cites a tour he did of laboratories while  director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In one door, a dusty lab maintained as a bit of history had been essentially locked up for 15 years, but the computers and other equipment were left on.

Adaptation

Airing tonight on most PBS stations is the documentary version of Botany of Desire, Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan's "plant's eye view" of evolution. The story ranges far and wide, from the wild apple forests of Kazakhstan to the underground pot-growing operations of suburban America, all the while explaining how (metaphorically speaking) plants have used us for their own ends. It promises to be an interesting show, but we're still sorry we missed the musical. 

This Is Radio KAL

It's fundraising time at KALX, 90.7 FM, the radio station that started life in the Cal dorms in 1962 as Radio KAL. The first control board was fashioned from a cigar box and the signal was transmitted through the pipes of the dorms. Or so goes the story anyway. 

If you give to KALX, you can score some supercool swag -- t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, etc. Head over to their Fall Fundraiser page to get the details. Also at the site, you can check out playlists, learn about volunteer opportunities, and, if your machine is equipped to play MP3 files, you can even stream the programming live. So check it out: listener-supported college radio. 

Finally, stay tuned for California magazine's music issue -- coming this summer.

Advice for Budding Boswells

In the Fall issue we ran 5 questions past "serial biographer" Jeffrey Meyers (p. 90), who took his doctorate in English at Cal in 1967. Since that time, he has written 43 books, including more than 20 biographies -- most recently, Samuel Johnson: The Struggle. In addition to providing answers to our questions, Meyers sent his "12 principles of biography." They are:

1.      Read everything in print and follow up every lead.
2.      Be persistent and see everyone who will talk to you.
3.      Weigh all the evidence like a lawyer. A biographer is an artist on oath.
4.      Get the subject born in the first five pages.  Nothing is duller than genealogy.
5.      Describe the subject's personal habits and tastes.
6.      Portray the minor characters as fully as possible.
7.      Illuminate the recurrent patterns of the life. Look at the big picture, not the small details.
8.      Keep up the dramatic narrative, employing the same techniques as the novelist, and concentrate on your readers' interests rather than your own obsessions.
9.      Don't focus on the events of the life, but on what they mean.
10.     Be selective rather than exhaustive, analytical rather than descriptive.  Aim for 400 pages and remember that a shorter book, though much harder to write, is easier to read than a long one.
11.     Complete the book in a few years, at most, or you'll begin to hate the subject for eating up your life.
12.     Always remember that the responsibility of the biographer is to do justice to the subject.
--As a lagniappe I should add: marry a woman who shares your passionate interest in biography, and is an excellent linguist, indexer, researcher, critic and editor.

And there you have it all you aspiring Boswells: A baker's dozen.

Postcards from the Past: Idora Park

In our new "Back Then" feature in the revamped Sather Gate section of the magazine (see page 89), we celebrate Berkeley's illustrious past -- everything from once-famous but now-forgotten personalities to the bygone wonders of yesteryear. We kicked things off with Idora Park, which wasn't in Berkeley proper but just a short ride from campus on the streetcar line.

Idora, which attracted performers like Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle boasted an assortment of spectacles, including captive grizzlies, an opera house and what was at that time the world's largest skating rink. The park was razed in 1929. Driving through present-day Temescal neighborhood of North Oakland, you'd never know it existed. 

Click here to see images of Idora as it was ... back then. 

What Ails Us?

On October 23, the campus will host a conference on the question of "What Ails California?" For now, here's former Secretary of Labor and Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School, Robert Reich, with his Top 10 list (with which everyone agrees). Do you?

Country on the Brain

Kary Mullis got his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cal in 1972 and went on to win a Nobel 21 years later for the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction. An eccentric who readily embraces astrology, Mullis writes in his quasi-autobiographical book Dancing Naked in the Mind Field that: "There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for "melancholy of relationships past." It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your better judgment, to listen to country music." Wonder if any neurologists on campus are looking into that?

Reactions to the Economics Nobel

How did working economists react to the announcement that Berkeley's Oliver Williamson and Indiana's Elinor Ostrom were chosen to share the Nobel in their field? The Wall Street Journal rounds up some of the reactions here. And Time's Justin Fox does a similar service here.

Clearly, the two scholars are viewed as relative outsiders (Ostrom is in fact described as a political scientist, and Williamson works in the business school) -- persons of estimable academic achievement deserving of wider recognition to be sure -- but outsiders all the same. Maybe that's not at all a bad thing, but for his part The New Yorker's John Cassidy thinks it was a missed opportunity. 

In Defense of Edible Food-like Substances

"In Defense of Food" author and Berkeley J-school professor Michael Pollan is in the news today. Apparently, Pollan was scheduled to lecture at a Cal Poly fundraiser, but the plug was pulled on the event after a donor from the beef industry wrote to university administrators to say that the Pollan appearance had "caused him to rethink his continued financial support" of the institution. Cal Poly higher-ups deny kowtowing to that pressure, but have agreed to change the format to a panel discussion nonetheless.

If the ag industry is worried about Pollan's influence on American food consumers, they should just enlist the aid of comedienne Paula Poundstone. At a live recording of the NPR game show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" last February at Zellerbach, the Ring Ding-loving Poundstone delivered a comedic smackdown to Professor Pollan, the likes of which has rarely been heard on radio.

She Cares

Dr. Laura Stachel was one of the Berkeley people we featured in our "Learning to Serve" package in the Fall issue of California magazine (see "Delivering Health," page 74). She also spoke at our premier Live! event about her work bringing solar power (and with it, things like communications, illumination and refrigeration) to maternity wards in northern Nigeria through an initiative called WE CARE -- Women's Emergency Communication and Reliable Electricity. Dr. Stachel was recently selected as a "Half the Sky" Contest winner by New York Time's columnist, Nicholas Kristof. The contest is named after Kristof's latest book, written with his wife Sheryl WuDunn. The two joined Dr. Satchel this morning on KQED's Forum with Michael Krasny. If you missed the show, you can listen to the it here.