Brad DeLong

A Very Brief Dialogue on Preparation...

Glaukon: Who did ultimately fill the Federal Reserve governors seat that had been reserved for Alicia Munnell?

Adeimantos: Let me check..,

Platon: Do you always carry with you a list of governors of the Federal Reserve from the beginning of the system in 1914 to the present?

Adeimantos: Doesn't everyone?

Anybody Have an Informed View on Who I Should Vote for for the Democratic Committee for the Fifteenth Assembly District of California?

Berkeley Arts & Letters: Tuesday, May 8: Timothy Noah: "The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality--and What We Can Do About It"

Berkeley Arts & Letters:

7:30 PM

“This is the book the 99% has been waiting for. Crisply lucid and brilliantly argued, THE GREAT DIVERGENCE manages to entertain at the same time that it explains. Best of all, Noah offers some strikingly sensible steps to undo the economic polarization that is tearing America apart.” -- Barbara Ehrenreich

How did “the 1 percent” pull away from “the 99 percent”? A probing and provocative exploration of income inequality in America, and the dangers it poses to our democracy. For the past three decades, America has steadily become a nation of haves and have-nots.  Our incomes are, increasingly, drastically unequal: the top 1% of Americans collect almost 20% of the nation’s income—more than double their share in 1973. We have less equality of income than Venezuela, Kenya, or Yemen.

What economics Nobelist Paul Krugman terms “the Great Divergence” has until now been treated as little more than a talking point, a club to be wielded in ideological battles. But it may be the most important change in this country during our lifetimes—a sharp, fundamental shift in the character of American society, and not at all for the better.

The income gap has been blamed on everything from computers to immigration, but its causes and consequences call for a patient, non-partisan exploration. In The Great Divergence, based on his award-winning series of articles in Slate, Timothy Noah delivers this urgently needed inquiry, ignoring political rhetoric and drawing on the best work of contemporary researchers to peer beyond conventional wisdom. Noah explains not only how the Great Divergence has come about, but why it threatens American democracy—and most important, how we can begin to reverse it. Coming fast on the heels of the Occupy Wall Street movement and at the start of a presidential election year when inequality will be front and center, The Great Divergence is a vitally necessary primer, history, and manifesto that will inform and drive a long-overdue political debate.

“An important, exemplary, and finally passionate work of long-form journalism” -- Hendrik Hertzberg

"A lucid, original, fascinating, and very useful guide to the biggest threat to America's future as a democracy. Noah has pulled together the whole array of explanations for the increasing Third World-ization of America—and he has sorted them out for us, with a guide to which are most important and what we can do about them. This is the book that should have been given out at the Occupy movements and—well, to everyone." -- James Fallows

Timothy Noah was recently named “TRB”, the lead columnist at The New Republic. He wrote for Slate for a dozen years, and previously served at the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and the Washington Monthly. He edited two collections of the writings of his late wife, Marjorie Williams, including the New York Times bestseller The Woman at the Washington Zoo. Noah received the 2011 Hillman Prize, the highest award for public service magazine journalism, for the series (of which Nicholas Kristof wrote in the NYT, "An excellent series") in Slate that forms the basis of The Great Divergence.

Brad DeLong is a professor of economics at U.C. Berkeley, chair of the Political Economy of Industrial Societies major, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was educated at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 1987. He joined UC Berkeley as an associate professor in 1993. He became a full professor in 1997. Professor DeLong also served in the U.S. government as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy from 1993 to 1995. He worked on the Clinton Administration's 1993 budget, on the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, on the North American Free Trade Agreement, on macroeconomic policy, and on the unsuccessful health care reform effort. Before joining the Treasury Department, Professor DeLong was Danziger Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He has also been a John M. Olin Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University, and a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at M.I.T.

Hillside Club (2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley)

Tickets $12 ($6 students, OLLI, and Hillside members) in advance only at Brown Paper Tickets online or 800-838-3006; $15 at the door (all)

May I Say How Disappointed I Am to Discover That the Patrons at Sacks Coffeehouse Do Not in Fact Sit on Sacks of Coffee Beans?

The U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Search

Bob Jacobsen, Academic Senate Chair- Berkeley Div:

Dear Colleagues,

The process for selecting Chancellor Birgeneau's successor is moving forward… the selection committee has been (mostly) formed…. The more central part is five faculty members, plus President Yudof and Regent Chair Lansing serving ex-officio… Fiona Doyle… Marjorie Shapiro… Donald McQuade… Robert Powell… Judith Stepan-Norris….

Why Do 51B Buses Travel in Packs?

Sign of the Yuppie Apocalypse?

Or is Whole Foods simply exploring to see if there is any price at all that makes its target demographic go "Whoa!!"?

Love Your Street Sweeper!

The City of Berkeley says:

Street Sweeping: Residential street sweeping is a City service that not only beautifies our streets and community by removing litter and debris, but protects our environment and keeps the storm drain system from clogging.  Street sweeping reduces the pollutant load (leaves, pet/animal debris, heavy metals, oils, grease, sediment, etc.) to the Bay.  In addition, material removed by street sweeping will not be able to block lines reducing the amount of flooding during heavy rainfall…

Love your street-sweeping parking tickets!

This New Neighborhood Looks Even More Berkeley than the Old One...

Just saying:

Catastrophe!

I am out of caffeinated pods for the Nespresso machine...

Release of UC Davis Pepper Spray Investigation Findings Delayed

Amy Wang:

Release of UC Davis Pepper Spray Investigation Findings Delayed: The public release of the findings of a task force investigating the controversial Nov. 18 pepper spray incident at UC Davis was postponed due to opposition from a university police union.

The task force was originally scheduled to present findings and recommendations to the UC Davis community at 3 p.m. Tuesday, but the Federated University Police Officers Association, which represents UC campus police, and a police officer at the center of the UC Davis incident announced intent Monday afternoon to request a court order halting public disclosure of the report, according to a Monday press release from the UC Office of the President.

Cruz Reynoso — a former California Supreme Court justice, professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Law and head of the task force — delayed the release of the report after receiving information from the president’s office regarding the union’s plans. Reynoso, along with 12 other task force members, was supposed to present the report’s findings.

The task force to investigate the pepper-spraying of students by police officers at UC Davis was commissioned by UC President Mark Yudof in November. Yudof also initiated an ongoing systemwide review of police policies and responses to campus protest activities.

“I was very frustrated to receive the news today,” Reynoso said in the press release. “However, let me assure you that I am undeterred in my commitment to release the complete and unredacted work of the task force, a view shared by President Yudof”…

Not a Staged Photo

In Berkeley, that's four, in a row:

Earthquake!

Well, that is certainly an alarm clock for you…

Clark Kerr on Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor

About Dorothea Lange: Lange's Berkeley Connections: Professor emeritus Clark Kerr, former Berkeley chancellor and President of the University of California, earned his Ph.D. in 1939 under Paul Schuster Taylor, M.A. '20, Ph.D. '22. Taylor achieved international notice for his writing and for the work he did with his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange, on the poor and dispossessed. Kerr's recollections of these two Californians are adapted from his chapter in Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life, edited by Elizabeth Partridge '74 and published by Smithsonian Press.

Clark Kerr, 1994:

Paul Schuster Taylor was an explorer, not of seas and continents, but of nearly unnoticed social events as they began to take form. He was among the first to put several of these events on the map of history, to make them part of terra cognito. He began with the early migration of Mexicans to California, to south Texas, to Colorado, to Chicago, to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in a series of studies published by the University in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

He turned then to the unemployed, when one-quarter of the American labor force was fully unemployed and another quarter was partially unemployed. It was at this point that I first met Paul; he invited me to be his research assistant, starting in the fall of 1933.

I had hardly arrived in Berkeley when the largest and bloodiest strike of agricultural workers in American history began in the San Joaquin Valley. I spent six weeks in the Valley, and Paul came down on weekends. He gave me only two instructions: to record what people said -- their own words -- and to send him my notes as soon as possible. I gathered later that these were the same instructions Paul first gave to Dorothea Lange, except that she worked with photographs and I with notes.

Paul first came in contact with Dorothea's photographs in the summer of 1934, when he saw her picture of a strike orator in a local art gallery. Dorothea was then a studio portrait photographer of local fame in San Francisco, but she also had started to go out into the streets in the deep Depression years. Thus she was already moving toward Paul's history-in-the-making before she met him. Their joint interests moved her all the way in that direction, and she became one of the great documentary photographers of all time.

Paul and Dorothea had complementary skills but contrasting personalities. She was always moving, mostly talking, reacting in a flash, living in the moment. Paul thought carefully about everything, spoke seldom and then softly. An illustration: During the cotton picker's strike, he drove us back to Berkeley one Sunday night in my Model A Ford roadster. We stopped at a rural gas station, and he got out. Another car -- identical to mine -- drove up and the driver also got out. I was asleep in the front seat of my car and woke as the driver of the second car -- which was now missing -- yanked open the door and grabbed me by the throat. He wanted to know what I had done with his wife! Once I grasped the situation, I wanted to know what he had done with my professor!

Some time later, Paul drove up and got into my car, and off we went to Berkeley. I sat there wondering: Did the wife wake up screaming? Did he suddenly realize that his research assistant was not female? All the way back to Berkeley, he never said a word.

While Dorothea was not interested in politics -- she was interested in people -- Paul did have political concerns in addition to human compassion. He was appalled at mass unemployment and at exploitation in the fields and of the fields. This was not the America he had fought for in World War I as a lieutenant in the Marines, commanding a platoon with 95 percent casualties, himself one of them, at Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood. (He prized his Marine uniform all his life.) Paul was also the subject of Red-baiting due to his support of sanitary labor camps for agricultural workers and his long opposition to the illegal diversion of water intended for family farms to the owners of the vast "factories in the fields."

Although Paul's original interest in Dorothea stemmed from his conception of the camera as a tool of research, their relationship became far more than a professional collaboration. It became a great love affair. Paul later said: "It was always a wonderful thing to see her. Always. Just to come into the room where she was." Years later, I would visit Paul in the old redwood house on Euclid Avenue which Dorothea had chosen for them. As Paul played Beethoven softly on his hi-fi set, we would talk about being on the ground in the Thirties. Dorothea' name would come up and Paul would sit there with tears streaming down his face as I recalled his tender words -- "just to come into the room where she was."

Dorothea in her very last days said what a pleasure it was to take a picture and to see that what you have done is "true." Paul and Dorothea wrote, in An American Exodus, "We have let them speak to you face to face." The "them" were the unemployed man in the breadline; the migrant mother and the children clinging to her; the Okie in the Model T Ford, moving west, fleeing the dust; the Mexicans living alongside the irrigation ditches; the Japanese Americans crowded into detention camps. Through the notes and the photographs of Paul and Dorothea, we are indeed brought face to face with "them" and with their histories, which are a part of the history of our nation, and we know that what we read and see is true.

This Is Horrible!

It is too cold to sit outside in the morning Berkeley sun to prepare for lecture! I have to go sit in the windowless Wheeler Green Room instead!

Exhilaration...

Flying back up the California coast in the late afternoon was glorious.

Fun fact: flying from LAX to 0AK, from when you cleared 10,000 feet after take off to Quincy they start the approach is just enough time to listen to Inagaddadavida twice.

Fun fact: Siri does not recognize Inagaddadavida.

A $1.12 Million Bet on the Berkeley, CA Housing Market

Western U.S. Precipitation Since July...

Inches of Rain:

Percent of Average:

I know, I know that California has two normal climate modes:

• One in which there is a substantial amount of rain in December, in which people then write "ZOMG!! BUILD AN ARK!!" stories, and in which January is then relatively dry and things are about normal.

• A second in which there is little rain in December, in which people then write "ZOMG!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, CLUBBING EACH OTHER WITH THE GOLD BARS IN OUR BASEMENT AS WE TRY TO GRAB HOLD OF THE LAST DROPS OF WATER!! stories, and in which January is then relatively wet and things are about normal…

But, guys, it's January 9 already. We had our very dry December. Where is our wet January? (Looks at to sea…)

The U.C. Berkeley Faculty...

…hereby condemns the over-reaction of police to demonstrations on our campus on November 9; formally alerts the Chancellor and those who report to him that this incident has greatly diminished confidence in the Campus’s leadership; calls upon the Chancellor to institute special training for police forces employed on campus to deal with acts of political expression and civil disobedience in the University and, more generally, to immediately implement the recommendations of the Police Review Board (The Brazil Report) as issued on June 14, 2010.

---

Whereas, The “right of the people peaceably to assemble” is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States; Whereas, Section 9(a) of Article 9 of the California Constitution establishes that “the University of California constitutes a public trust”;

Whereas, Demonstrations consisting of both explicit and symbolic speech are a fundamental part of the public discourse in modern democracies and have been an important part of many social movements both nationally and internationally;

Whereas, Police violence against non-violent demonstrators on the Berkeley campus involving the use of batons, pepper spray, and direct physical force has caused personal injuries to students and faculty including broken bones; Whereas, Police violence against non-violent demonstrators has been consistently and repeatedly perpetrated over the last two years in at least five separate incidents on the Berkeley campus;

Whereas, The repeated incidents of police violence suggest that the Administration and the UCPD have adopted a policy of preemptive use of force against non-violent demonstrators who they anticipate may engage in acts of civil disobedience; and

Whereas, The Administration and UCPD appear to have not followed the recommendation of the June 14, 2010 Report of the Police Review Board (“Brazil report”) to clarify the proper lines of authority and their approach to non-violent civil disobedience on the Berkeley campus despite this confusion having been identified in the Report as a possible source of unnecessary violence;

Be it therefore RESOLVED, that:

1. It is the sense of the faculty that the physical safety of campus community members (including police officers), and respect for their rights of political expression, dictate that police should not be deployed preemptively with riot weapons and tactics in response to non-violent demonstrations.
2. The faculty calls upon the Administration to implement the recommendations of the June 14, 2010 Report of the Police Review Board (“Brazil report”).
3. The faculty calls upon the Administration to immediately clarify the division of civilian and police authority over the response to campus demonstrations including requests for mutual aid to outside police forces.
4. The faculty calls upon the Administration to make public the specific conditions under which it is prepared to authorize UCPD (as well as other forces operating under mutual aid) to use weapons and forceful tactics including, but not limited to, batons, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, tasers, flash-bang grenades, and pressure point grips, against demonstrators engaged in non-violent actions including linking arms and other forms of passive resistance to arrest.
5. The faculty calls upon the Administration to announce that it will not authorize the use of such forceful tactics to prevent or preempt the formation of any assembly deemed unlawful that is composed in substantial part of students, faculty, or staff, and that remains non-violent.
6. The faculty recommends that if a demonstration turns into an unlawful assembly (e.g., an occupation of a building) then the Administration should engage in dialogue, communication, and negotiation as the primary and preferred resolution approach.
7. The faculty recommends that if and when arrests are deemed necessary to restore core university functions, the Administration not authorize the preemptive or disproportionate use of weapons and forceful tactics including, but not limited to, batons, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, tasers, flash-bang grenades, and pressure point grips.
8. The faculty recommends that following any incident in which forcible methods were used, the Chancellor should convene a public meeting with a minimum of delay to explain the rationale of the decision to employ them.
9. The Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate shall establish a Senate Committee on Demonstrations and Student Actions composed solely of faculty members to consult with the Administration, UCPD, and students.

---

Whereas, nonviolent political protest engages fundamental rights of free assembly and free speech, and

Whereas, the campus has established time, place, and manner guidelines by which it encourages such activities, and

Whereas, protesters may sometimes engage in political noncooperation which includes acts of civil disobedience – including the deliberate, open and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, and

Whereas, there is a clear chain of command ending with the Chancellor, which implements training and deployment of police to respond appropriately to protests, and

Whereas, campuses should exercise restraint in responding to peaceful protests and seek to resolve the situation through dialogue, and

Whereas, we are outraged by the brutal and dangerous police responses against members of the University community at UC Berkeley and other campuses,

Therefore be it Resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate

1. calls upon the Chancellor, EVCP, and Chief of Police to officially apologize to the campus community for the behavior of the UCPD on Nov. 9, 2011
2. calls for immediate revision of policies and practices to minimize the danger of excessive use of force by the police, and to better train the police to employ nonviolent law enforcement that respects the rights of nonviolent protesters
3. affirms its support for the right of free speech and peaceful protest by all members of the University community
4. affirms its strong opposition to the State’s disinvestment in higher education, which is at the root of the student protests.

---

Whereas, Non-violent political protest engages fundamental rights of free assembly and free speech, and

Whereas, November 9th efforts by protestors to set up and remain in a temporary encampment near Sproul Hall constitutes non-violent political protest, and

Whereas, These non-violent actions were met with a brutal and dangerous police response (see, e.g., >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ&feature=share>), a response authorized in advance as well as retroactively justified by Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs LeGrande, and

Whereas, This is the third time in two years that such police violence has been unleashed upon protesters at Berkeley, with resulting bodily injuries to protestors, student and faculty outrage, a series of expensive lawsuits against the university, a tarnished university image, and a severely compromised climate for free expression on campus;

Therefore be it resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate:

1. Opposes all violent police responses to non-violent protest, whether that protest is lawful or not.
2. Condemns the UC Berkeley administration’s authorization of violent responses to non- violent protests over the past two years.
3. Demands that Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer, and Vice Chancellor LeGrande take responsibility for and repudiate such policing as it occurred over the past two years.
4. Demands that these administrators develop, follow and enforce university policy to respond non-violently to non-violent protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests, and to minimize the deployment of force and foster free expression and assembly on campus.

Tomorrow's UC Berkeley Faculty Meeting

Michael O'Hare:

Occupy UC « The Reality-Based Community: On Monday, the Berkeley faculty will have a special meeting to consider several resolutions condemning the police behavior at the Nov. 9 Occupy Cal demonstration, and another resolution that says in part:

Therefore be it Resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate has lost confidence in the ability of Chancellor Birgeneau, EVC Breslauer and VC LeGrande to respond appropriately to non-violent campus protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests, to minimize the deployment of force and to respect freedom of speech and assembly on the Berkeley campus.

This is going to be a complicated, awkward (not that that’s a fatal flaw) exercise that will probably not clarify much for anyone.  In the first place, the “Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate” is not a representative body but a committee of the whole 2000-odd of us, and its meetings are rarely attended by more than 100. Obviously it meets in a dense cloud of selection bias that obscures its legitimacy, so its resolutions and actions don’t seem to be taken very seriously by the campus authorities, who can easily say, “well, that’s what several dozen malcontents think, end of story”.  In the second place, the motion uses very strong language. Despite having signed the call for the meeting, mainly because I think this stuff desperately needs to be discussed, I’m not sure I’ve lost confidence precisely in the leadership’s ability to protect protesters from beating and chemical assault.

Admittedly, it’s hard to reconcile the chancellor’s public words from two years ago on the occasion of excessive police force at the Wheeler Hall occupation

Any tactics to exercise crowd control on campus must provide a safe platform for expression of free speech and freedom of assembly and we expect that, as a result of this review, modifications will be made. We must strive to ensure that there is no possibility in the future of the alleged actions of police brutality and that our actions are guided by non-violence.

with what happened three weeks ago, but probably the latest quite broad outrage and criticism have got their attention and they will not make that mistake (whether of omission or commission doesn’t matter too much) again.

But that’s not the big mistake, outrageous as it was. Another reason the meeting and the resolution are somewhat off-target is the blurring of different issues in the protests themselves. At Cal, public action has been pretty specifically directed at the chancellor, president, and regents, demanding increased state funding for higher education and reducing student fees (as though any of them had money to give out).  I regret this focus, because it looks self-serving and narrow; if tuition at Berkeley dropped to zero, (i) the students would still be facing terrible trouble because their state political machinery is broken, they will have trouble getting jobs and keeping them, and we have run out of tricks with which to pretend it isn’t necessary to pay for essential state services (like schools for their kids) (ii) the majority of the population not lucky enough to go to college at any price are already much worse off than they are.

In any case, the chancellor and president have been vocal (though ineffectual – probably inevitably) advocates for restoring state funding for higher education, and while I don’t have a good sense of the President Yudof’s personality either way, I believe Birgeneau to be a decent person who genuinely believes in educational access for everyone, in social and economic mobility generally, and also in not breaking his students’ and faculty’s ribs or dragging them on the ground by the hair.

The Occupy Cal protests, however, are part of a larger movement directed at the unconscionable increase in US economic inequality over the last thirty years and a widespread perception that the 1% who have been scooping up everything in sight have not contributed social value to society in any way proportional to the loot they have been collecting.  Income is supposed to reflect the value you create; Steve Jobs made a lot of people a lot better off in many ways, but what the financial sector’s big winners have done for us is, um, less clear. The big mistake is that campus (and university) leadership is a day late and a dollar short on the disintegration of the American economic and political systems.

Leadership is supposed to shape, direct, clarify, and empower a group’s values, and to represent those values to the larger environment (and to the group).  In the end, what I don’t have confidence in is our current leadership’s ability to do is any of that on the larger issues.  I brought this up with my public policy students in one course, mentioning that in 1986, Berkeley had divested itself of South African investments, manifesting and implementing (not just stating) an institutional position against apartheid.  I asked if they wanted the president or chancellor to represent, in their name,  that UC Berkeley is against endlessly increasing income inequality in America.  I was surprised to learn that their support for this idea was tepid at best, mainly (I think) because they sense a slippery slope of public university officials taking positions on all sorts of things without a real mandate.  And of course we have no machinery by which to unambiguously give such a mandate; it’s not even possible to email everyone on campus, the faculty senate is a noisy channel, and student government…well, the less said about its political efficacy the better.

As I rarely do, I think my students (at least this sample) are wrong.  I fault Birgeneau for being both invisible to the troops except as a source of inept spam emails, and the author of managerial choices that are incomprehensible to me, dithering around the edges of the crises rather than doing consequential things.  Why hasn’t he had a big meeting in the Greek Theatre of students and faculty to make some noise about the economic and political crisis in the state and nation, and put duties and tasks before us; if not us, who? Why hasn’t his discourse on police violence here been a real cry of rage that his instructions from 2009 were ignored, backed up with rolling heads and visits to the injured students?  Why isn’t he out walking around during demonstrations, getting between the cops and student bodies and putting good quotes on TV news?  There’s a lot of energy being released diffusely, and he should be the one directing it usefully. Afraid the regents will fire him? There are a lot worse things to lose than your job.

The crisis we’re enduring, like any crisis, is the occasion for a real leader to focus attention and break some habits and bonds of tradition, even at the cost of some collateral crockery. That’s not happening: instead (for example, my own hobbyhorse) of setting up a real quality assurance program that would reach every session of every course so we could show the public we’re going to overdeliver the learning the state has traditionally paid us to provide, he fired the Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning, rolled her functions into another administrator’s very large portfolio, and hired a consulting firm to cut administrative costs. Instead of bringing the intercollegiate athletics program to heel as though it reported to him, and stanching $12m a year of bleeding, he’s allowing us to be saddled with a half-billion dollar debt for an over-the-top stadium upgrade and a conditioning center/coaching office palace/booster party venue that will crush us financially.

I will probably vote for the resolution, even though it’s not exactly what I want to say and despite my discomfort making such a strong statement against someone whose heart is in the right place. But Birgeneau is way over his head in his job, served by inadequate lieutenants, or both. Some kind of wakeup call is in order, and this is the motion on the table.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING: BERKELEY DIVISION OF THE ACADEMIC SENATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Monday, November 28, 2011, 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Chevron Auditorium, International House, 2299 Piedmont Avenue 

The forty-seven members of the Division who requested the special meeting propose one resolution as the business for the meeting.

Gary Holland Secretary Berkeley Division  I. Business

ORDER OF BUSINESS

Consideration of the following resolution.

Resolution proposed by: Wendy Brown, Professor, Political Science; Barrie Thorne, Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies/Sociology; Judith Butler, Professor, Rhetoric.

Whereas, Non-violent political protest engages fundamental rights of free assembly and free speech, and

Whereas, November 9th efforts by protestors to set up and remain in a temporary encampment near Sproul Hall constitutes non-violent political protest, and

Whereas, These non-violent actions were met with a brutal and dangerous police response (see, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ&feature=share), a response authorized in advance as well as retroactively justified by Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs LeGrand, and

Whereas, This is the third time in two years that such police violence has been unleashed upon protesters at Berkeley, with resulting bodily injuries to protestors, student and faculty outrage, a series of expensive lawsuits against the university, a tarnished university image, and a severely compromised climate for free expression on campus;

Therefore be it Resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate has lost confidence in the ability of Chancellor Birgeneau, EVC Breslauer and VC LeGrande to respond appropriately to non-violent campus protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests, to minimize the deployment of force and to respect freedom of speech and assembly on the Berkeley campus.

II. Other matters authorized by unanimous consent of the voting members present

Department of English, UC Davis, Calls for the Immediate Resignation of Chancellor Katehi

Not your standard department webpage:

Welcome — Department of English, UC Davis: The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis.

Michael O'Hare: "University of California Protests and, um, Leadership"

Michael O'Hare:

University of California protests and, um, leadership « The Reality-Based Community: When the Alameda County Sheriff’s cops suited up in their riot armor and, AFAIK with our campus officers , beat a bunch of our students and faculty with batons, my chancellor was in Shanghai…. I don’t know who was nominally in charge and forgot to be in charge.  When the chancellor got back, he sent a remarkably tone-deaf and misinformed letter to everyone, regretting the injuries to police as though there were any…. The violence at Berkeley was mainly a major fail at high administrative levels. What’s genuinely astounding, however, is this, at Davis more than a week later….

The LA Times reports “the [Davis] chancellor initially didn’t criticize police but later said seeing the images ‘left me with a very bad feeling.’” Uh, huh. What is the matter with these people? What have they trained their subordinates to be?…

I hope our own chancellor gets out among his students and faculty, on his feet.  A couple of spam emails don’t cut it, and neither does his bizarre public demand that legislators from Sacramento come to Berkeley to debate education funding….

The president of the system has finally taken notice.  For some reason the chancellors have his “full trust and confidence” . But he’s “appalled”, and…calling a meeting with “full and unfettered discussion” – woah!  His board, the regents, are really out front; they cancelled their meeting last week fearing protest...

Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau: "Sadly, These Events Point to the Dilemma We Face in Trying to Prevent Encampments and Thereby Mitigate Long-Term Risks to the Health and Safety of the Community"

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, today:

To the Campus Community:

We all share the distress and anger at the State of California's disinvestment in public higher education.

IN THE SPIRIT OF TODAY'S DAY OF ACTION, I AM URGENTLY CALLING ON THE POLITICAL LEADERSHIP FROM SACRAMENTO TO COME TO CAMPUS TO ENGAGE WITH ME AND STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES IN A PUBLIC FORUM TO DEBATE THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION.

The issues require bold action and time is short. I will inform you of the time and place as soon as possible.

Robert J. Birgeneau,
Chancellor

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, yesterday:

Dear Cal Campus Community:

I returned to Berkeley yesterday after a week-long trip to Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai where we successfully advanced some important new partnerships that will benefit our campus.

While away, I remained in intermittent contact with Provost George Breslauer and other members of our leadership team and was kept informed, as much as possible, about the Occupy Cal activities on campus. However, it was only yesterday that I was able to look at a number of the videos that were made of the protests on November 9. These videos are very disturbing. The events of last Wednesday are unworthy of us as a university community. Sadly, they point to the dilemma that we face in trying to prevent encampments and thereby mitigate long-term risks to the health and safety of our entire community.

Most certainly, we cannot condone any excessive use of force against any members of our community. I have asked Professor Jesse Choper, our former Dean of Law, and current Chair of the Police Review Board (PRB) to launch immediately a review of the police actions of last Wednesday and Thursday morning. As is normal process, University Police Chief Mitch Celaya is concurrently undertaking an operational review of last week's events. He has requested that it be conducted by a senior member of the command staff at one of our sister UC campuses. This report will be provided to the PRB. I am confident that Professor Choper will provide a fair and balanced judgment as speedily as possible.

We believe that we can best move forward by granting amnesty from action under the Student Code of Conduct to all Berkeley students who were arrested and cited solely for attempting to block the police in removing the Occupy Cal encampment on Wednesday, November 9. We will do so immediately.

I believe that as a campus community, we can and must join together and focus on our common goals - inducing the state to reinvest in public education, working to repeal Prop. 13, finding a way to reverse Prop. 209, and instituting reforms that will help California regain its status as the door to the American Dream through public higher education. Thanks to the efforts of our students who worked effectively with Assemblyman Cedillo, myself and other members of our campus community, we were able to ensure that the legislature in Sacramento passed AB 130 and AB 131 which Gov. Brown ultimately signed. This example of successful and peaceful activism with students and campus leaders working together can guide us in how we can collaborate to effect real change that will benefit us all. We share the aspirations of the Occupy movement for a better America. I am confident that as a campus community we will find a peaceful and productive way forward.

Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor, UC Berkeley

An Announcement from the Chair of the Berkeley Faculty Senate: Free Speech and "Occupy"

I am very pleased to see this:

Dear Colleagues,

Divisional Council (DIVCO) strongly supports free speech and nonviolent demonstrations.

We have scheduled a meeting this afternoon, Monday, November 14, 2011, in 105 Stanley Hall at 5:00 PM for faculty to discuss the principles of free speech and the practice of nonviolence. We encourage faculty to discuss these issues with students.

We endorse an investigation of the use of force last week. Should there be a finding that excessive force was used, disciplinary actions must be taken. We also urge those who choose to engage in protest or civil disobedience to do so nonviolently.

We are calling a meeting of the faculty of the Berkeley Division on Monday, November 28, 2011 from 3:00 - 5:00 PM, at which we will consider faculty resolutions on these events. Details about the meeting will be forthcoming soon.

Sincerely,

Bob Jacobsen
Chair, Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate
Professor of Physics

Quote of the Day: November 13, 2011

“We are Bay Aryans from Berkeley: prepare to be reengineered in an attractive range of colour schemes for your safety and comfort!”

--Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives

Yes, I Frequently Carry an EmptyCardboard Box to Put Over Parking Meters. Why Do You Ask?

Hmmm...

Why would it ever be a good idea to renumber all the rooms?

40% of the Cars Driving Up Marin in Berkeley Are Prii...

Where Is Friedrich A. von Hayek When You Need Him?

Another failure of central planning: the U.C. Berkeley Graduate Economics Association runs out of ketchup at the annual opening-of-the-school-year picnic.

Well, This Is More Like It...

Reasons to Love Berkeley: The Two Weeks Before Classes Begin

Enough people are back that you run into by accident to make life really interesting, but people are not yet so harried with term-time work as to be running around with heads down grunting. So you learn a lot--and are entertained a lot by your colleagues.

For example, yesterday I spent four hours outside at Nefeli on Euclid, where we talked about (among other subjects):

Frida Kahlo's back brace, the descendents of Leon Trotsky's cats, how Europe has managed to step into the same Heraclitan river twice in 1931 and again in 2011, why Barry Eichengreen and I were so confident back in 2008 that we would not step into the same river twice, Tim Geithner's unwillingness to have people call for his impeachment on the floor of the House of Representatives, whether the Obama Administration is lying when it claims that its desires to use Fannie and Freddie to boost the housing market are being blocked by Acting Director Ed DeMarco of the FHFA and there is nothing it can do, whether the Congressional Republicans are prisoners of or masters of their base, how Nelson Polsby missed an opportunity to say something truly gracious upon the death of Aaron Wildavsky, fights among the intellectual children of "Polyarchy" Dahl, whether it is a benefit or a curse to have a student of Soviet politics as a provost, the Rural Electrification Administration, the reliability of public utilities in the Berkeley Hills, what Obama will surrender to the Republicans in order to get a one-month continuing resolution passed on September 30, how to teach political economy to undergraduates, and assorted other topics.

Thank-Eee Mister Rooz-Eee-Velt!

No sooner did we move into our rented house at the top of the Berkeley hills, but our electricity went out.

That seemed to carry the heat with it, either from the thermostat or the electrical igniter. Moreover, since everything was in boxes, we needed a flashlight to find the box with the flashlights in it. And our movers in trying to install our refrigerator had somehow switched off and then broke the valve to the water in the kitchen.

We were--barring expeditions down Marin, watching regenerative braking recharge the Prius's battery followed by purchasing prepared foods at Andronicos--suddenly reduced to the 19th century: no running water, no central heat, no electricity, no phone, no Internet, no cable.

Then over the next five days all of these services were restored, and we went in less than one week from the 19th to the 21st century.

And now my wife occasionally chirps up and says: That rural electrification initiative shoor is something! Thank-eee Mister Rooz-eee-velt! I am going to vote for him for life!

In Which Charlie Stross Complains That California Is Insufficiently Terraformed...

The reason that the Lincoln Town Car is available as a "free" rental car "upgrade" is that nobody wants to drive a Lincoln Town Car: its gas mileage is too poor for anybody driving The Five to want it, and its handling characteristics are such as to make driving it on The One a knuckle-whitening experience.

Nevertheless, Charlie Stross appears to have survived…

But let us add "never drive a Lincoln Town Car on The One" to "never get involved in a land war in Asia", "never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line", "never accept a battle of wits where iocane powder is a factor", "never call your own website 'poor and stupid'", "never attempt a reductio ad absurdum argument on talk radio", "never read My Pet Goat when death is on the line", "never blithely download and install a file from Microsoft without carefully, carefully researching what it will do beforehand", "never post about human genetics on you weblog", "never play poker with a man called 'Doc'", "never eat at a place called 'Mom's'", and "never use vodka to try to remove bloodstains from white linen", and "never fire your best polemicist if your dork quotient is over 30%"…

Back again: My wife and I needed to be in Portland by Friday evening... so we hired a car and drove. Note: this was the first time in 18 years that I'd attempted to drive on the wrong side of the road.

Things I learned:

1. California State Route 1 is a scenic route, for values of "best enjoyed from a helicopter or light plane". I would, however, characterise it as somewhat more exciting than one wants if the objective is to get from SF to Portland within a fixed time frame… landslides, holes in the crash barriers on cliff-edge hairpin bends, and lots of detours around trees…..

2. A Lincoln Town Car is not the right vehicle in which to enjoy Highway One…. (In my defense, we don't have Lincoln Town Cars in the UK….)

3. The combination of charming cliffside switchbacks and a five litre V8 results in gas mileage such that it's a good thing for my wallet that fuel is so cheap in California. About the rural gas station where they only take cash and amuse themselves with a banjo between customers we'll say no more.

4. Dear brown black bear, please learn to look both ways before bounding across the road twenty metres in front of a wheeled avatar of Father Darwin. This will enhance your life expectancy, not to mention that of the folks in the car….

5. Highways 101 and 199 were better than Highway 1, and still scenic (for values of "where did that three metre wide tree jump out from?")….

6. A Lincoln Town Car is the right vehicle for pounding up the interstate [The Five] we eventually decided to divert onto. Still, no love — as I discovered after I accidentally did 450 miles on the second day then nearly collapsed…

Let me just say that driving the whole Ellay-Portland route on The Five has scenic charms of its own to not quite match those of The One but that are still very impressive: whether the aqueduct-siphons cresting the ridge to your right around Santa Clarita, the long descent from the Angeles National Forest--for a value of forest = "high desert"--to the Central Valley with its runaway truck ramps, the straight shot across the Central Valley itsef--land of heat (dry heat), sunshine, phosphates, soil, flatness, and huge amounts of water from the Sierra snowmelt--the CHiP fixed-wing aircraft followed by the appearance of people in mirrored sunglasses writing tickets, the exploded caldera of Lassen off to the right, the distant snow peak of Shasta visible from more than 100 miles south on a clear day as a floating island in the sky, the unexploded peak of Shasta as you pass by, the high prairie (and if you are lucky, a thunder snow storm) between Shasta and the Oregon border, Grant's Pass, the Willamette garden spot, Mt. Hood off to the right, and ending up at the Columbia River and the exploded caldera of Mt. St. Helens

Our View of the Golden Gate and San Francisco This Morning...

With the imminent departure of the Youngest Child for college, we have sold our five-acre Mediterranean palazzino in Lafayette--the land beyond the tunnel--and are renting a small house for six months in Berkeley at the top of Grizzly Peak (because I was hinky about running the risk of owning two houses in a largely-frozen yet still overpriced housing market).

So now we have a comfortable hunk of change to serve as a down payment on our next: over 15 years 30% cumulative inflation, 20% real house price appreciation, 30% improvements that our buyers were willing to pay for, and 40% forced savings via amortization of the nominal principal do add up. Where should we buy next>

Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa

Recommended...

Dawn Patrol...

No, we cannot see the sun rise this morning:

Do I Perhaps Have too Many Electronic Gadgets?

Which of these should I take to Berkeley for the first day of the semester today:

• iPhone (for communicating).
• iPad (for taking notes during pointless bureaucratic meeting).
• Four-year-old laptop with busted screen (to drive the projector in the lecture hall).
• New laptop (to consult my notes while lecturing).
• Livescribe Pulsepen (to make backup copy of lecture audio in case Webcast system punks out).

I must say that I am very tempted to take all of them. They only weigh twelve pounds all together...

Arabian Nights Returns to Berkeley Rep

Arabian Nights Returns to Berkeley Rep

After Barrington Moore: Draft for September 25, 2010 50th Anniversary Conference

20100921 Social Studies:

John Stuart Mill was perhaps the last who was substantially at home in and competent in all the branches of moral philosophy: political theory, psychology, history, public administration, political economy, sociology, etc.

Afterwards young scholars paying their dues found it simply impossible to learn everything and still have time to write anything. And since it is much easier to teach undergraduates what you know than what you don't, specialization in research drove specialization in curriculum as well. But dividing up the social sciences makes sense even for professors and graduate students only if the beast is cut at the joints, so that the problems in understanding the world that fall in the debatable lands between two disciplines are few and unimportant. And dividing up the social sciences makes no sense for undergraduates: What use are economics B.A.s who know no political science or history? None at all. What good is a government department where, in my day, an undergraduate without trying could find himself assigned Graham Alison's Essence of Decision five times in five different classes?

But to try to construct an undergraduate education with its foundation as a simple injunction to read widely in the social sciences would be an enterprise doomed to failure. We think in patterns--analytical classifications and narratives. A program needs a backbone, something to give it enough structure to make sense to the minds of nineteen year-old East African Plains Apes with our limited brains and yet not reproduce the narrowing blinders imposed by each of the disciplinary straightjackets? And how could such a program attract teachers when the incentives are all on the side of working on the core concerns of the disciplines in which they must eventually make their homes?

The project of building a Social Studies was "rescued," if that is the word, by history. The Eurocentric view of the world before 1914 was of one in which the wonders of science drove prosperity, prosperity drove order, order allowed the spread of liberty, and liberty promoted peace and thought, and peace and thought drove science. All was not for the best in the best of all possible worlds but, in the words of Lennon and McCartney, getting better all the time,

Then came World War I. Lenin. Mussolini. Stalin. Hitler. Franco. Mao. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Augusto Pinochet. A host of others. The virtuous circle was not the natural path but instead a fragile accident. No discipline was designed to or qualified to think how to get the North Atlantic world at least back to its happy place, back to something like the society of progress in which people once thought they had lived--a world in which the extra-judicial slaughter of thirty-five Europeans at Kishinev excited horror and condemnation, even if they were Jews.

Call this problematic presented by the history of the world from 1914 to 1975 the "Barrington Moore problematic": it is to understand the historical and social origins of dictatorship and democracy, of slavery and freedom, of ideology and rationality, of poverty and prosperity. Humanity had moved from societies of illiterate farmers producing little more than subsistence dominated by thugs with strong arms and sharp spears to urban, literate, industrial orders. That produced Abraham Lincoln but also Vladimir Lenin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt but also Mao Zedong, Konrad Adenauer but also Augusto Pinochet. And Adolf Hitler as the sole member of the my-regime-killed-50-million club. Why? How? And what could be done to make it stop?

The Barrington Moore problematic provided the spine of the Social Studies major--of pretty much all the interdisciplinary social sciences majors on the North American continent for two generations. Few "majored" in it. It was too big. They found some other smaller, more manageable pool of issues. But in their gallop through the issues of the Barrington Moore problematic they had, as one early observer of Social Studies put it, read an awful lot of books that were very good to have read--if not fun to read. And so the major has been a fifty-year success--not just because budgetary restrictions capped it and the best Harvard students will gravitate like lemmings toward anything that promises to exclude some applicants.

Can the Barrington Moore problematic serve a role similar in the next generation to the one it has served in the past two?

I would say not.

Adolf Hitler is sixty-five years in his grave. Societies in transition to urban-market-mass political modernity and how to keep more Lenins and Hitlers from arising in them does not seem to be the globe's most urgent problem any more. And our most recent modern monsters seem of a different and perhaps older kind: Saddam Hussein reminded me more of the Caliph Uthman or of Mehmet II than of Hitler. Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah seem more like updated versions of the Assassins of Syria rather than of the Comintern. Rwanda seems more like the Sicilian Vespers with radios than like the terror-famine of the Great Leap Forward.

Outside we have demonstrators.

They are answering a question posed by Martin Peretz. "Do I have to pretend," he asked, "that I think Muslims are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which they are so likely to abuse?"

I take it that the demonstrators are saying that the answer is "Yes, he does."

But focus on the fact that the asking of that question and the ire of those who answer it is a powerful sign that the concerns of the Barrington Moore problematic are not our big concerns.

The demonstrators are not there calling for a more equal distribution of income. They are not calling for true participatory democracy. They are not calling for a reorganization of work or the abolition of the gulf between existence and essence or of an end to hierarchy and bureaucracy.

They are calling for a very different transformation.

So how then should Social Studies organize itself for the next generations?

What intellectual thread should you follow as a guide through the labyrinth that is the study of human society? You need to expose students to the broadest range of ideas and perspectives. You need to avoid dissolving into a blooming, buzzing confusion. And yet you need to avoid the narrowing--I would say crippling--straightjackets of our current disciplinary perspectives. And you still need to allow individual students to find and study their own ultimate interests.

We at Berkeley face the same problem.

We do not have good answers.

I occasionally play with "global history" a la Ernest Gellner, James McNeill, and Jared Diamond.

I occasionally play with a narrower dialogue of centralization vs. decentralization a la John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, and James Scott.

I have had only one really good idea: that is to invite your Chair Richard Tuck out to Berkeley this fall for our internal review of our Political Economy major, so that he can come down from the mountaintop, reveal the tablets, and tell us what the answer is.

---

SOCIAL STUDIES 50th Anniversary Celebration. September 25th, 2010

8:30. Continental Breakfast. Science Center Lobby

9:30. Welcome from Richard Tuck. Science Center B. Film of Stanley Hoffmann

10:00. Panel: Social Studies and the Social Sciences. Science Center B. Charles Maier, Chair. Seyla Benhabib, Yale University. Rogers Brubaker, ‘79 UCLA. J. Bradford DeLong ‘82, UC Berkeley. Sherry Turkle ’70, MIT

12:00. Lunch . Adams House. Welcome from Grzegorz Ekiert. Recognition of Head Tutors and Directors of Studies: Robert Paul Wolff, Richard Hunt, Martin Peretz, Michael Donnelly, Cheryl Welch, Judith Vichniac, Anya Bernstein. Principal Speaker: Robert Paul Wolff

2:00. Panel: Social Studies and Social Change. Science Center B. Michael Walzer, Chair. Jarrett Barrios ‘91, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. EJ Dionne ’73, Washington Post. Jamie Gorelick ‘72, Former Deputy Attorney General. Adele Simmons ’63, Chicago Metropolis 2020

4:00. Coffee Break. Science Center Lobby

4:45. Welcome From Drew Faust. Science Center B

5:00. Navin Narayan Memorial Lecture. Amy Gutmann ’71, President of the University of Pennsylvania

6:15. Reception. Northwest Science Building Atrium

The First Rain--OK, Drizzle--of the Season

Kings Canyon Loop Trail starting at EBMUD Valle Vista Staging Area...

19 Turkeys in My Yard. Somebody Call Michael Pollan...

Local backyard fauna count for the entire day: 19 turkeys, 3 red-tailed hawks, 2 owls (heard: not seen), 4 deer, 2 raccoons, innumerable squirrels and small birds.

It's a real party out there...

The End of Summer...

Tomorrow's high is forecast to be 30F lower than today's high.

Microclimates Are Evil II

Well, I found a windbreaker in my office. And it has warmed up to 60. And they have turned on the big heat lamps at Cafe Strada at Bancroft and College. So I will not have to cancel my outdoor office hours due to inclement weather at all...

The Not-So-Peaceable Kingdom: A Drama

I think this has all the Aristotelian unities:

Time: Dawn
Place: Ten yards off of our deck
Dramatis personae: Four full-grown fifteen-poound adult male turkeys and one small thirty-pound bobcat
Stage directions: When are scene opens, the turkeys are arranged in a line abreast, facing the bobcat ten yards away.

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

Bobcat: (silence)

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

Bobcat: (silence)

Occasionally one of the turkeys' nerve will break and it will start sidling away from the line, saying: Gobble gobble gobble.

Bobcat: (silence) watches the deviant turkey attentively as the turkey turns its tail and begins walking away...

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

But when the lily-livered turkey gets more than three yards away from its feathered companions, it turns around and returns to the line of battle, thus walking in a roughly ten-foot circle.

Returning Turkey: Gobble gobble gobble.

Bobcat: (silence)

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

Bobcat: (silence)

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

Bobcat: (soliloquy) If only one of them would break away from the flock...

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

Bobcat: (soliloquy) But if I pounced, they might not run. And there are four of them. Four sharp beaks. Eight claws. Thirty-two sharp talons. Eight sharp two-inch bone spurs. If they did not run, I would win--but then I might have disabling wounds which would mean I would have a difficult time hunting in the future. It's risky...

Turkeys: Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE gobble gobble. Gobble! Gobble gobble gobble gobble. Gobble gobble! Gobble gobble gobble GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!1! Gobble gobble gobble!

Bobcat: (soliloquy) Better to find a gopher...

Bobcat sidles off behind the house...

The (Bob) Cat Came Back the Very Next Day...

... and a ten-year old Labrador Retriever charging uphill is not the most effective huntress of bobcats conceivable...

Hoisted from Comments: SomeCallMeTim Reports from Portland

SomeCallMeTim:

It's Like Ra-a-a-a-ain on Graduation Day!: Ha! We've only had dribs and drabs of sun, and last week the weather catchphrase was 'March weather in May - unusual, but not unheard of.' Also, don't forget that 'sunbreaks' was popularized here in the Willamette Valley decades ago, as a way to celebrate 2 minutes of sun or very bright clouds on an otherwise thick gray blanket day in November-midJune.

[I wouldn't wish this weather on the Bay Area - I have fond memories of two weeks a month of sun all through the winter in Berkeley and Oakland.]

PS Sent more prozac and full spectrum lighting!

I Am Buridan's Ass

I couldn't decide whether to take my tweed jacket or my raincoat, so I took neither...

It's Like Rain...

...well, it is somebody's wedding day.

But it is not supposed to rain--hard--in Berkeley on October 13. I'm told they opened the ski runs at Lake Tahoe yesterday...

From <>:

Loretta Kalb: California: Typhoon remnants threaten to bring Central Valley flooding, mudslides, weather service says: The remains of super typhoon Melor, which is barreling across the Pacific at high speed today, threaten to bring flooding to some areas of California's Central Valley and mud slides in recently fire-ravaged areas, the National Weather Service reports. Up to 6 inches of rain could fall starting Tuesday in the foothills and mountains east of the Sacramento Valley in the season's first major storm for Northern California, meteorologist Felix Garcia of the National Weather Service said. The valley could see up to 2 inches of rain during the entirety of the storm, he said.

The snow level will stay above 7,000 feet or 8,000 feet, meaning virtually all the precipitation will be in the form of rain, Garcia said.... Growing winds will accompany the heavy rain, with gusts of up to 40 mph on Tuesday at lower elevations and higher in the mountains.

Typhoon Melor clobbered the Philippines and Japan in the western Pacific before its remnants were swept into the jet stream now West Coast bound. "The typhoon intensified so that the remnants were caught up with the jet stream and carried the moisture," Garcia said. He said the fast-moving storm front should reach the West Coast by Monday afternoon, then slow somewhat, and begin dumping its wet cargo in the Central Valley in earnest starting Tuesday morning. That will push rivers and creeks higher and cause local flooding in areas unable to absorb the heavy rainfall...

Best Play I Have Ever Seen at the California Shaxpur Theater...

...is their current production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Doug Hara, as Puck, is a God...