Year: 2013

  • Supermajority Gone for Now

    Byuclafaculty

    There were many speculative stories around about what the legislative Democrats would do in the current session with their new two-thirds supermajority.  In theory, they could enact taxes, override vetoes, and put constitutional amendments on the ballot.  Of course, all of these speculations hinged on total Democratic unity. But there is the old Will Rogers quote: “I don’t belong to an organized political party; I’m a Democrat.”  So some of these possibilities were fanciful.  In any event, now one state senate Democrat has quit to go to work for Chevron.  [In this instance, oil seems to be troubling the political waters…

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    More on the Tobacco Tax for UC & CSU Student Aid

    Byuclafaculty

    Prior posts have noted that an initiative written by a law firm with experience in electoral matters has been filed that would impose a tobacco tax to fund student aid at UC and CSU.  As previously reported, the use of the law firm suggests some serious money is involved – which would be needed to fund a petition drive and then a subsequent election campaign which tobacco interests would surely oppose. We now have the official summary text that will be seen by voters who are asked to sign the petition. The text is below, courtesy of the California Secretary…

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    Allegations of Monkey Business

    Byuclafaculty

    From the Winston-Salem Journal 2/23/13:  Wake Forest University Health Sciences is suing to end a joint venture with the University of California at Los Angeles involving the primate colony in southern Forsyth County, and UCLA is accusing Wake Forest of financially mismanaging the research center. The colony contains 475 vervet monkeys, many of which came from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. They contain family trees that have been tracked for eight generations by researchers.The Wake Forest group said it is willing to shut down the primate center in the Friedberg community if UCLA doesn’t agree to continue to pay…

  • UC Consequences of the DC Chicken Race

    Byuclafaculty

    Like so many political debates, the standoff in the nation’s capital over federal spending has been somewhat of an abstraction for months on end. That could change, though, starting next week. With just about everyone now agreeing that the March 1 deadline for avoiding automatic spending cuts — sequestration — will be missed, the real question seems to be how long before those cuts are felt and where will they hit hardest. In the Sacramento region, the impacts could be numerous: less money for community policing programs that rely on federal cash, $42 million less in research funding at UC…

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    Bear with us

    Byuclafaculty

    With the massive 405 Project now two-thirds complete, officials have unveiled a staggered endgame schedule which calls for major portions of the project to wrap up this year while work on one troublesome segment continues into 2014. The delay involves the project’s middle segment—chiefly in the area around Montana Avenue and Church Lane—where utility relocations and the necessity of shifting Sepulveda Boulevard have proved vastly more time-consuming than expected. Overall, unforeseen utility relocation issues have not only eaten up valuable time but also have driven up the cost of building the project, according to a briefing presented this week to Metro’s…

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    UCLA Reports Battery Technology Advance

    Byuclafaculty

    From KCET …We told you that researchers at Ric Kamen’s lab at UCLA had found a way to make a non-toxic, highly efficient energy storage medium out of pure carbon using absurdly simple technology. Today, we can report that the same team may well have found a way to make that process scale up to mass-production levels…  The recap: Graphene, a very simple carbon polymer, can be used as the basic component of a “supercapacitor” — an electrical power storage device that charges far more rapidly than chemical batteries. Unlike other supercapacitors, though, graphene’s sturcture also offers a high “energy…

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    Finally, some common sense about juries and why it matters to UCLA

    Byuclafaculty

    Editorial: Anyone who works for UCLA, or any local public entity, and has been called for jury duty knows that the jury pool in LA County is not a random sample of the population.  Apart from the fact that only citizens serve on juries (but anyone can be tried), public sector institutions are likely to have liberal policies for jury duty and jury leave, unlike many private employers.  Those called who show up (many don’t) are often excused for hardship reasons, or excused from lengthy trials, because of the economic hardship of missing work.  Yours truly’s last experience was being…

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    Tobacco Tax Initiative for UC & CSU Student Aid Advances

    Byuclafaculty

    Earlier posts on this blog in late December noted that an initiative had been filed to impose a tobacco tax with revenue largely earmarked for student aid at UC and CSU.  Unlike many initiatives filed by amateurs that go nowhere, this one was filed by a law firm noted for election work.  So there must be some serious funding behind it.  Whether there is enough serious money to fund a signature-gathering campaign is unclear.  In addition, a tobacco tax would attract well-funded opposition from tobacco firms.  (Remember that a  tobacco tax initiative for cancer research was narrowly defeated last June.)…

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    UC-Irvine Gets Some Good Press

    Byuclafaculty

    Warm welcome to University of California Irvine By Anat Maor, Jerusalem Post, 2-17-13 When I first arrived at the University of California in Irvine, I didn’t know a single person there. To tell you the truth, I was feeling apprehensive about my new role as a professor in Israel studies here, especially given the reputation of the school. This was the same university which saw confrontations between student protesters and Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2010, which culminated in arrests and the Zionist Organization of America branding UCI as “a campus that permitted bigotry.” Yet after just one month I…

  • Rethinking Professor Snodgrass

    Byuclafaculty

    A recent posting on this blog replayed President Yudof’s comment that online courses have to be more than putting a camera in the back of the room and letting Professor Snodgrass drone on. You can replay his comments below for your listening pleasure.  But maybe the Snodgrass approach has merit at this time. Note that UC-Berkeley, among other universities, has put courses that essentially are video recordings of courses on YouTube for free. Anyone can view them.  It’s a relatively costless production method. You can find one such course at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMV45tHCYNI&list=EC4BBB74C7D2A1049C At a modest cost, those now “taking” such courses could…