News

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Brown Joins Harvard in Rejecting Fossil Fuel Divestment

Byuclafaculty

We have noted in previous posts that there is a student group that has been using the public comment period at the Regents to push for pension and other fund divestment of fossil fuels. (The demand involves both extraction industries and some utilities.)  It is part of a national student movement.  If you scroll back to our links to Regents meetings, you will be able to hear those demands. Recently, as we have noted, Harvard rejected the demand.  See http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/04/harvard-rejects-call-divest-fossil-fuels.  Today, Inside Higher Ed is reporting that Brown University has also rejected it.  See http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/10/28/brown-u-rejects-call-sell-holdings-coal-companies. Given the current anti-pension initiative…

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A “Hole” Lot of Money

Byuclafaculty

We have noted in previous posts that progress on the UCLA Grand Hotel seemed leisurely whenever yours truly dropped by with his trusty cell phone camera.  However, there is now a big hole at the work site for the Grand Hotel where once Parking Structure #6 stood as you can see from the photos taken last Thursday.  Many parking spaces were removed by the demolition.  A small number will be built under the Grand Hotel for use only by the Grand Hotel’s guests, not by general campus parkers.  (The Hotel will have fewer spaces relative to the number of rooms…

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The Whitaker-Baxter style campaign for the anti-pension initiative continues

Byuclafaculty

An earlier post on this blog provided a bit of California political history regarding Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, the couple in the photo, who developed an approach to campaigning in the 1930s.  As we noted, they developed a network that provided editorial content to newspapers around the state, pushing whatever cause they were paid to promote. The proponents of the anti-pension/anti-retiree health care initiative that was recently filed and which sweeps in UC, seem to be following the Whitaker-Baxter playbook, as we have previously noted.  Yet another example can be found below in which one newspaper reprints a pro-initiative…

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Hints While You Puzzle Through Your Health Insurance Options from a Blog Reader

Byuclafaculty

As we are coming up to the open enrollment period for the various health insurance options, Prof. Bill Zame of Economics sent me an email with a cautionary note readers may want to consider.  (Edited excerpt): When insurance plans use the term “out of pocket maximums,” they do not mean what an ordinary lay person would mean by the term. As used by the insurance industry and the [open enrollment] plans, only healthcare expenses that are “ordinary and necessary” (by [industry] standards) are included toward  “out of pocket maximums” and only charges that are deemed to be in the range normally…

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More Waiting

Byuclafaculty

Our previous post involved waiting until Wednesday for a revelation about the future of UC. This post involves waiting for UC-Berkeley and LA City to reveal more about the earthquake safety survey in the LA area.  Blog readers will recall that at least one building in a related survey by the LA Times was UCLA-owned. Ending days of mixed messages, the city of Los Angeles sent a request Thursday formally asking a UC Berkeley engineering professor for a list of concrete buildings that could be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake. The professor, Jack Moehle, responded quickly, saying…

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You’ll have to wait for Wednesday

Byuclafaculty

From the Daily Bruin: For her first major public appearance as University of California president, Janet Napolitano will outline her plan for the UC system at a public event in San Francisco on Oct. 30 (Wednesday). Napolitano has said she dedicated the beginning of her term, which started on Sept. 30, to listening and learning. So far in her term, she has largely kept to hosting private meetings with students, administrators and other members of the UC during her quiet and unpublicized visits to UC campuses. She has also given few and brief comments to the media. At the upcoming…

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More Problems for Night Owls on the 405 Near UCLA

Byuclafaculty

Segment: Mulholland Area: Skirball Bridge and Full I-405 Closures On Saturday, October 26, 2013 and continuing through Monday, October 28, 2013, the contractor will be pouring the Skirball Bridge deck which requires:  Full southbound I-405 closure from Valley Vista Bl to the southbound Skirball Center Dr on-ramp on Sunday, October 27, 1am to 4:30am with lanes closures starting on Saturday, October 26 at 10pm Full northbound I- 405 closure from Getty Center Dr to the northbound Skirball on-ramp on Sunday, October 27, 3am to 6am with lane closures starting on Saturday, October 26 at 10pm  The Skirball Bridge will be…

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Report: Berkeley drops ball on athlete graduation rate

Byuclafaculty

From the San Jose Mercury-News: The No. 1 public university in the country has the least success graduating players among the 72 teams in the major football-playing conferences, according to NCAA data released Thursday. Just 44 percent of Cal’s football players graduated within the parameters established by the NCAA. For comparison, archrival Stanford is among the national leaders at 93 percent; state school neighbor San Jose State checked in at 51 percent.  Nor is football the only Cal team struggling to graduate players. While many sports are performing well, men’s basketball posted a Graduation Success Rate of 38 percent —…

A cautionary note (and the naked truth) about email attachments

Byuclafaculty

The item below reminds us that it is easy – when sending email attachments – to pick the wrong file.  Most email programs will give you some way of seeing at least the name of the file you have attached before you send it.  You probably can click on the file itself and verify that it is what you intend to send.  Gmail has an option for setting a delay in sending an email (e.g., 30 seconds) if you realized you made a mistake. A University of Iowa teaching assistant who accidentally e-mailed nude pictures of herself to math students…

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Disclosure Decision Will Make It More Difficult to Hide Funding for Anti-Pension Initiative

Byuclafaculty

You may recall the brouhaha that developed around secret funding by a group that opposed Proposition 30 (the governor’s tax initiative) and supported Prop 32 (an anti-union initiative).  It became an issue late in that election.  Large fines have now been levied by the California Fair Political Practices Commission.  While this development may seem like old political news, it will be relevant for whatever groups are pushing the anti-pension initiative about which we have been posting and which covers UC.  It will be more difficult – but not impossible – to continue to hide behind the friendly faces of a…