Forty years ago today, Leonard Kleinrock and a team of engineers at UCLA connected to Stanford Research Institute and typed (an incomplete) message between the first two nodes of the Internet: "lo." [more inside]
posted by starman on Oct 29, 2009 - 35 comments

"For over half a century, the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory has collected recordings of hundreds of languages from around the world, providing source materials for phonetic and phonological research, of value to scholars, speakers of the languages, and language learners alike. The materials on this site comprise audio recordings illustrating phonetic structures from over 200 languages with phonetic transcriptions, plus scans of original field notes where relevant." (Description from website.) Many more recordings -- indexed by language, sound, and geographic location -- are available here.
posted by cog_nate on Dec 9, 2008 - 12 comments

The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has an extensive, searchable online collection. It focuse on material art and household items and has objects from all over the world. The website can be browsed either by geographic orgin: Africa, Asia, North and Central America, Pacific, South America, or through its two exhibits, Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives and Fowler in Focus. Some of my favorite objects (but really, everything is entrancing) are The Blind Scholar (a Taiwanese handpuppet), Chikunga (a Zambian mask) and a stirrup spout bottle which looks like a puma eating a piglet (Peruvian). All items have accompanying descriptions and some have short texts or audioguides with further information.
posted by Kattullus on Jul 23, 2008 - 3 comments

Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990
posted by miss lynnster on Jan 13, 2008 - 15 comments

An Unholy Act. This is the story of when two Jews disagree. Nothing new there. But a violent confrontation at UCLA brings to light the emerging divide among American Jews in regards to the most contentious issue of modern Jewish identity: Israel.
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth on Sep 10, 2007 - 60 comments

UCLA releases the results of an independent investigation into an incident where a UCLAPD officer repeatedly tasered a passively resisting student (previously on MetaFilter). The investigation found that the officer violated UCLA's use of force policies. Furthermore, it found that these policies are "unduly permissive" and that "the UCLAPD policy stands alone in its legitimization of the Taser as a pain compliance device against passive resisters." An internal investigation by UCLAPD previously determined that there was no violation.
posted by grouse on Aug 6, 2007 - 31 comments

Gene2Music: "We assigned a chord to each amino acid," said Rie Takahashi, a UCLA research assistant and an award-winning, classically trained piano player. "We want to see if we can hear patterns within the music, as opposed to looking at the letters of an amino acid or protein sequence. We can listen to a protein, as opposed to just looking at it."
posted by Alvy Ampersand on May 17, 2007 - 30 comments

Muslim UCLA student tasered for not having ID
"It was beyond grotesque," said UCLA graduate David Remesnitsky of Los Angeles, who witnessed the incident. "By the end they took him over the stairs, lifted him up and Tasered him on his rear end. It seemed like it was inappropriately placed. The Tasering was so unnecessary and they just kept doing it."

Some additional coverage. Patriot act craziness or simple police overreaction?
posted by cgs on Nov 16, 2006 - 369 comments

UCLA's Awaken A Capella does some strange, beautiful things with the power of combined human voices. From Ave Maria to Mr Roboto, their oeuvre spans the spectrum. More clips, including Like a Prayer and Walk Like an Egyptian, available on their MySpace page. Their version of Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek," available through KCRW's daily podcast, is sublime.
posted by gottabefunky on Sep 14, 2006 - 42 comments

2%. (bugmenot login fleeb@fleeble.com, password fleeble) That is the percentage of students in UCLA's incoming freshman class that self-identify as black. Only 96 students in an entering class of 4,852, and the lowest percentage since 1973. Many believe Proposition 209 is to blame, but some want to stop collecting this data altogether.
posted by fugitivefromchaingang on Jun 8, 2006 - 46 comments

"Radical" UCLA professors targeted by alumni group.
An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes exposing University of California, Los Angeles professors who allegedly express extreme left-wing political views.
posted by ericb on Jan 18, 2006 - 72 comments

Affirmative Action hurts Black Students? Richard Sander, a professor of law at UCLA, examined empirical data on black law students' graduation rates and BAR results, and found that affirmative action reduces the number of total black lawyers. He claims that there is a mismatch-effect between the school a student matriculates in and one that he is qualified to attend. Dissenting opinion. Sander's remarks at Volokh. Hat Tip: Kevin Drum.
posted by nads on Dec 22, 2004 - 35 comments

The Visualization Portal's default description page starts off kind of slow and ho-hum, with some pretty basic and dated looking graphics. And even a little weird, artsy. The actual main news page is better. The Visualization Portal is nearly a Heinlein-esque 3D 3D visualization tank. These pics of past events are cool. You can visit the portal at UCLA for free.
posted by loquacious on Sep 25, 2004 - 2 comments

Why Stock Markets Crash : Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems. Professor Didier Sornette of UCLA has some very interesting things to say about stock markets. In his book, he explains how his "theory of cooperative herding and imitation [...] has detected the existence of a clear signature of herding in the decay of the US S&P500 index since August 2000 with high statistical significance, in the form of strong log-periodic components." Although his timing has been just a bit early, the theory, the predictions to date and the pictures are all pretty uncanny. This is easily the most interesting book on the stock market I have ever read and provides interesting and believable hypotheses about things I never imagined could have rigorous explanations. For an overview, here is an interview with the author.
posted by muppetboy on May 14, 2004 - 19 comments

Quake to hit LA "by September 5," predicts a geophysicist at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. Some skeptical, while others say it's not junk science.
posted by valerie on Apr 15, 2004 - 34 comments

Girls night out can save your life. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible... (Old news, but I don't think it's been posted before.)
posted by badstone on Dec 11, 2003 - 30 comments

Do you know what the Second Amendment actually says? UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh presents a remarkably clear, educated, and non-inflammatory explanation of the amendment, including plenty of historical references. As with my previous post (about Liberalism and Conservativism), I submit this not to promote a viewpoint, but to (hopefully) educate those who would debate about it.
posted by oissubke on Sep 29, 2002 - 33 comments

"Universities have a serious problem. The type of liberalism so heavily favored by the intellectual elite has crossed the line. Professors throughout the educational world are supporting murderers and terrorists; they are justifying despicable actions because of the political philosophies of the actors. Murder, slaughter, and terrorism are OK, they say, as long as they are directed at law-enforcement officials or civilian Westerners. It's fine as long as the murderer is anti-capitalist, anti-establishment or anti-conservative." -- Written by a UCLA student
posted by Steven Den Beste on Nov 23, 2001 - 50 comments

Internet To Be Bigger Than TV - UCLA Report "For the first time in the history of television, TV usage by children under 14 declined," recalled Cole. "Kids finally found something that was more interesting than TV. It was an epiphany moment for me." Download the report here.
posted by owillis on Oct 25, 2000 - 5 comments

Today, I wandered down the center of campus and noticed there was a big clothing sale. My favorite find? My new Mars Polar Lander commemorative t-shirt. There's a voice in the back of my head telling me to buy 50 of them to auction off on eBay. Who wouldn't want a souvenir like that? I know it's kind of morbid to laugh at the $165 million loss, but I bet others would want one.
posted by mathowie on Jan 20, 2000 - 1 comment

There have been minor scuffles over the past year at UCLA that balloon into 'riots,' which then get covered in the local news. I work at UCLA and I can tell you that the local/UC police have overreacted before. This past June, students got together to drink champagne by one of the big fountains. It's an tradition going back at least 15 years, but for some reason last year, there were about 20 police in riot gear standing near the fountain at night, and at least one officer stationed there 24hrs. a day for the entire finals week. A couple students were arrested for protesting the police presence, but everyone else there was just plain perplexed as to why they showed up in the first place. Yesterday's event at UCLA looks to be the same thing again. Local residents complaining about an old tradition, in which the police overreact. The sad thing is this is happening everywhere.
posted by mathowie on Dec 16, 1999 - 0 comments