MetaFilter posts tagged with berkeley

Heavy Metal Music

Esteemed Offendi — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:15:38 -0800

The oldest known recording of American voice has been restored and replayed for the first time in over 100 years. Dating to June 22, 1878, the recording was made for an early Edison phonograph on tin foil which had become too fragile and torn to play back. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory optically scanned the foil and developed a program to replay it digitally. The recording is evidently of a newspaper writer named Thomas Mason (who went under the pen name I.X. Peck) who purchased the phonograph from Edison and made an exposition of it in St. Louis. The recording features cornet music as well as Mason reciting nursery rhymes and laughing. Flubbing a line to Old Mother Hubbard, he also creates the first recorded blooper. Three weeks after making the recording, Mason died of sunstroke. The oldest playable recording of any voice dates to 1860, a phonautograph of a Frenchman singing Au Clair de la Lune. Previously and Previously

Christopher Alexander lectures at Berkeley

Rory Marinich — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:46:11 -0800

Legendary architect-philosopher Christopher Alexander delivers a fascinating lecture at Berkeley, in which he criticizes "modular" design and offers a radical new vision of architecture's relation to nature. Alexander is best known for A Pattern Language, which aimed to make buildings and towns more "alive" through a series of pleasing and comfortable patterns (five sample patterns can be found here). His most recent work, the four-part The Nature of Order, theorizes that life, whether organic or inorganic, emerges from a single simple process, which can be found on page 4 of Amazon's preview of the third volume. In the first volume Alexander lists fifteen properties that make a structure whole. Also worth reading: Alexander's classic essay A City is not a Tree.

Coursera

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:44:50 -0800

Coursera - free, online, introductory- to upper-undergraduate level classes in a wide variety of subjects, led by instructors from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and the University of Pennsylvania

LaeCharles and DJDave

finite — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:02:59 -0800

Regift It, Secret Santa, and Grinchin are three holiday raps from LaeCharles aka Lovey Love The Plus Size Playa
via Berkeley Enough from DJDave of Whole Foods Parking Lot [previously, Berkeley Remix, see also: Yoga Girl]

"There are some people, who don’t wait."

zarq — Fri, 13 May 2011 10:03:38 -0800

On May 7th, Robert Krulwich (of WNYC's RadioLab and accompanying NPR blog Krulwich Wonders) gave the commencement speech to Berkeley Journalism School’s Class of 2011 on the future of journalism. (Via) Mr. Krulwich's blog is a frequent source for MeFi posts. Here are Two previous threads.

Hate Man

zarq — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:00:23 -0800

Hate Man. "How a New York Times reporter dropped out and became a hate evangelist in Berkeley." The subject of this story, Mark Hawthorne, was also interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2010 and The Daily Californian in 2002. The Chronicle piece was picked apart at the time by author Avery Glibert on his blog.

Orgasms! Sex! Biology!

parmanparman — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 06:34:08 -0800

"We don't use the word 'vagina'. Because, it's the Latin word for 'sheath'. Yes, as in a sword. (Somewhat NSFW) Virgie Tovar, the writer, blogger, sexuality educator and academic looks at UC Berkeley's Female Sexuality class and asks whether one class can change the way women see their bodies and their educational experience. More on DeCal at UC Berkeley.

"UC Berkeley offer to test DNA of incoming students sparks debate"

andoatnp — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:32:50 -0800

LA Times: "When UC Berkeley officials came up with the idea of asking all new students to volunteer a DNA swab as part of an unusual fall orientation program, they expected to stimulate discussion. They weren't quite prepared for how much."
Inside Higher Ed: "Unwinding Berkeley's DNA Test"

"The Muslim Georgetown"

escabeche — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:01:04 -0800

Zaytuna College in Berkeley, CA will accept its first students in the fall of 2010 or 2011. Founded by Sheik Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, it will be the first accredited Islamic college in the United States, open to men and women of all religions.

Tom Lehrer has some work to do...

darkstar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:07:20 -0800

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

(Experience is especially long at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley – not least because Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium here early in 1941.)

The Periodic Table will continue to refer to the element by its IUPAC systematic element name, ununquadium, until agreement is made on a final "trivial" name for the element. Previously on MeFi: Element 112. Tom Lehrer's classic song, "The Elements".

Information from the School of Information

ocherdraco — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:10:52 -0800

Great free lectures online from the School of Information at Berkeley. The lectures are from 2007 to the present and include (among many others):

"The Internets We Did Not Build" (Dave Clark, MIT)
"Combating the Participation Gap: Why New Media Literacy Matters" (Henry Jenkins, MIT)
"(Re-)Defining the Public Domain" (Carl Malamud, Public.Resource.Org)
"Sustainable Innovation" (Judith Estrin, JLabs)

The School of Information "is a graduate education and research community that crosses the boundaries of law, economics, sociology, business, library science, engineering, design, publishing, linguistics, computer science, and information science."

What happens when the Big One hits?

rtha — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:38:13 -0800

Is Oakland supposed to...ripple like that? When the Hayward Fault finally flips out - and it will - what will it do to the Bay Area? Geologists have created simulations, from Berkeley to San Jose. warning: pop-up quicktime movies in the last link. Previously on MetaFilter; currently on AskMe (yes, you should buy earthquake insurance).

Man can moonwalk straight to the 9th Circuit

Navelgazer — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:14:00 -0800

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rap, by the Notorious B.O.A.L.T. (audio NSFW) This may be in the "Dennis Miller Ratio," but for those who get it, it's something awesome. Plus, the man can also dance.

Speed Limit: Cars 30 - Skateboarders 40+

maxwelton — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:52:07 -0800

Adam Kimmel shares a video of a couple of sane and sedate runs down Claremont Avenue in Berkeley, California. (The likely route.)

"We made up worlds as dirty as our minds."

amyms — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:26:22 -0800

The Doll Games emerged in Berkeley, California, at a time when race, gender, politics, and sexuality were fiercely and publicly debated... The Doll Games held up a funhouse mirror to their times, and what survives of them are historical documents of a wobbly, comical sort. But the Doll Games transcend their epoch. Intricate, obsessional, moral, violent and sexual, funny and tragic... Obedient to no rules except those its practitioners invented for themselves, completely collaborative, the Doll Games defined a truly interactive art form. In this theater of two, every audience member was a co-creator. [some text and pics NSFW]

The Chain of Command in Coercive Interrogations

digaman — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:53:05 -0800

“You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A Vanity Fair reporter investigates the chain of command that tossed out the Geneva Conventions and instituted coercive interrogation techniques -- some might call them torture or even war crimes -- in Bush's Global War on Terror. UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo's now-obsolete 81-page memo to the Pentagon in 2003 [available as PDFs here and here] was crucial, offering a broad range of legal justifications and deniability for disregarding international law in the name of "self-defense." Others say that Yoo was just making "a clear point about the limits of Congress to intrude on the executive branch in its exercise of duties as Commander in Chief." [previously here and here.]

The Shipyard

treepour — Tue, 15 May 2007 10:06:18 -0800

Founded in Berkeley by artist Jim Mason, The Shipyard, a collaborative industrial arts space constructed from recycled shipping containers, has hosted numerous large-scale projects and events including a Survival Research Labs show, Power Tool Drag Races, gassification experiments and workshops, and various large-scale Burning Man projects such as 2005's Clockworks. Short documentary here (quicktime). However, relations with the city of Berkeley have been consistently tense. Recently, the city shut off the Shipyard's power, to which the Shipyard responded by going off grid. On May 8, Berkeley issued 3-day vacate and abate notice, with which the Shipyard is attempting to comply (auto-playing video).

Physics for Future Presidents

quite unimportant — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:06:56 -0800

Physics for Future Presidents is a class taught at UC Berkeley by Physics professor Richard Muller. It's a class specifically for non-physics majors and teaches the real world results of the sometimes impenetrable math involved in university physics. After every lecture, you should come away with the feeling that what was just covered is important for every world leader to know. I just sat through the entire hour and 13 minute nukes lecture and was riveted.

A&P for future health professionals or interested peeps.

dog food sugar — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 08:01:44 -0800

Curious about what a college class in Anatomy and Physiology is like? Here's Berkeley's version on Google Video, complete with adorable professor with a great collection of colorful scarfs. via Nurse Sean

In Praise Of Loopholes, Part II

scrump — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 12:55:40 -0800

For Orthodox Jewish mothers with small children, the Shabbat can be challenging. The answer, for many communities, is the establishment of an eruv (discussed previously here, in passing). This San Francisco Chronicle article details the history behind Berkeley, California's unique instance. This isn't the first time an eruv has been attempted in the Bay Area: the failed effort to create one in Palo Alto was covered by the Chronicle, as well as the Jewish News Weekly. Berkeley isn't the only United States city with an eruv—the Boston eruv maintains a large list of domestic and international eruvim—nor is it the city with the most unusual eruv, or even the largest. Inevitably, perhaps, there's a blog entirely dedicated to the subject of eruvim, and vigorous commentary on the subject from several others.

Looking back on the Golden State

Gamblor — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:09:18 -0800

The Online Archive of California brings together historical materials from a variety of state institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. These materials include letters, legal documents, manuscripts, works of art, diaries, and historical photographs. Thousands of photographs.

From just the Bancroft Library at Berkeley: Artistic homes, 1887-1890, agricultural laborers, 1906-1911, the San Francisco earthquake and fire, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Quentin Prison, and war relocation camps. And that's barely scratching the surface.

Broadsword calling Danny Boy

nthdegx — Tue, 17 May 2005 06:53:25 -0800

Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films as voted for by their (generally more clued-up than average) viewership has plenty for you to disagree with, but much to recommend. Filmsite.org has a history of war films (as does Berkeley) for the completists among you. There are more war films from and about Vietnam and Indochina than you can shake a bayonet at (see also the 1999 NYT article, Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films to learn a little about the Vietnamese government's 1960s and 70s archive of war film). The [British] national archives have archived film from pre-WWI to the Cold War.

So are we at high tide or low tide?

furtive — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 21:29:09 -0800

Fossil records show Biodiversity comes and goes in a 62 million year cycle. The analysis, performed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UBC, has withstood thorough testing so that confidence in the results is above 99-percent.

One Made Over The Cuckoo's Nest

fandango_matt — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 11:29:58 -0800

The Birdhouse Man of Berkeley builds birdhouses from scrap wood, license plates, doorknobs, and other assorted items. SFGate article.

Lies, Damn lies, and everything looks like a nail

allan — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 06:59:00 -0800

We conclude that the study is entirely without merit and its “results” are meaningless. Remember Florida and those electronic voting machines? Remember those plucky Berkeley grad students who proved something was wrong with the evoting counties? It turns out they were completely wrong.