Black at UC Berkeley. Plus: we're the weirdest people in the world

JOB rolling papers are a popular brand
of cigarette paper produced by Republic Tobacco
in Perpignan, France.

✅Black at UC Berkeley: Professor Tyrone Hayes on discrimination in academia -- In a nation where Black people make up fewer than 5% of full-time college and university professors, UC Berkeley biology professor Tyrone Hayes stands as an exception. But the road has been hard and even at Cal, with its long history at the center of social justice movements, he’s still fighting for equal treatment. Ethan Baron in the San Jose Mercury$ -- 9/13/20

 

✅Willie Brown: Six reasons Joe Biden is likely to win the election -- The polls are beginning to show a consistent trend that has Joe Biden waxing President Trump’s wig. Willie Brown in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/13/20

 

✅150 million dead trees could fuel unprecedented firestorms in the Sierra Nevada

—LA Times

✅Why Are We in the West So Weird? A Theory
—NYT
     In a groundbreaking new book, “The WEIRDest People in the World,” an anthropologist argues that people from Western countries have a unique psychology

 

9-13: is the war against the plastics lobby "unwinnable"? Milton Friedman reconsidered. Cal lawmakers are asshats.

A grisette is a variety of beer originating 
from the mining regions along the border
of France and Belgium. The Gay Grisette 
is a musical comedy by George Dance
with music by Carl Kiefert, first staged in 1898

✅If California won't enact a plastic waste overhaul, will anyone?
—Politico
     SAN FRANCISCO — The plastic waste revolution died in the California Legislature this year.
     Environmentalists have pinned their hopes on the nation's most populous state ever since China rejected American recyclables two years ago, literally dropping the problem on the public's doorstep by forcing cities to raise garbage fees and ban more plastics from recycling bins.
     California's working solution: Transform the entire recycling chain by cracking down on America's love affair with single-use plastic materials that have reliably contained meals, snacks and beverages for decades.
     Such legislation would seem a slam dunk in California, where Democrats have unprecedented supermajority control of the Legislature and have long made the state a national leader on recycling and climate change. But intense lobbying from container manufacturers, retailers and the plastics industry — coupled with legislative mismanagement — doomed the proposal for the second straight year.
     If California can't solve plastic waste, who can?.... 

✅Plastic waste cuts probably headed to California ballot as advocates give up on Legislature -- After the California Legislature killed bills designed to combat plastic pollution for the second year in a row, environmentalists say they’ve concluded the fight might be unwinnable at the heavily lobbied state Capitol. Instead, they’ve resolved to take the battle to voters, with an initiative aimed at the 2022 ballot. Dustin Gardiner in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/13/20

✅Will This Be a Lost Year for America’s Children?

—NYT

     School in the United States is nowhere near normal this fall. Most students are not walking through schoolhouse doors, sitting at desks next to their classmates or meeting their new teachers face to face. They’re at home, trying to learn through screens. (This is even more likely to be the case if the students live in cities or suburbs.) If they’re lucky, they have a laptop or a tablet and a fast internet connection — the bare minimum that remote education requires. If not, they may be cut off from school through no fault of their own or of their families. According to the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a nonpartisan research group, students in high-poverty districts are the most likely to start the year with fully remote learning.

     The debate over what form school should take this fall foundered amid political division and uncertainty....

 

✅A Free Market Manifesto That Changed the World, Reconsidered

—NYT

     [On Milton Friedman’s libertarian economics; inspired “greed is good”]

✅Shinzo Abe Vowed Japan Would Help Women ‘Shine.’ They’re Still Waiting.

—NYT

     Women remain largely shut out of management jobs, and many take part-time work, deSpite policies that the prime minister said would elevate their standing in society.

 

✅The U.S. shows all the signs of a country spiraling toward political violence

By Rachel Kleinfeld

It’s not too late to bolster our democracy’s resilience and pull back from the brink.

—WashPo

      [N.B.]

From Rough&Tumble

 

Bourgeois was an absinthe brand during the
Belle Epoque

✅Neighborhood group wins round in suit with UC Berkeley over impact of rising student population -- The California Supreme Court is allowing a neighborhood group to sue UC Berkeley for allegedly failing to consider and reduce the local impacts of an enrollment increase of more than 8,000 since 2005. Bob Egelko in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/13/20

 

✅Trump to Visit California After Criticism Over Silence on Wildfires -- After weeks of public silence about the wildfires devastating the West Coast, President Trump scheduled a visit to California on Monday, where he will join local and federal fire and emergency officials for a briefing on the crisis. Annie Karni in the New York Times$ -- 9/13/20

 

✅‘Terrible role-modeling’: How California lawmakers flouted pandemic safety practices -- As the end-of-session frenzy gripped the state Legislature in late August, pandemic no-nos spiked: Lawmakers gathered indoors in large numbers and huddled closely, let their masks slip below their noses, smooshed together for photos and shouted “Aye!” and “No!” when voting in the Senate, potentially spraying virus-laden particles at their colleagues. Samantha Young, Rachel Bluth in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/12/20

 

✅Trump visa restrictions add obstacle to California winery harvest season: no international interns -- Around this time every year, thousands of young winemakers-in-training from countries like Australia, Chile, South Africa and Italy descend on the Bay Area to participate in a long-standing, international wine industry tradition: the harvest internship. Esther Mobley in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/12/20

✅Today's OC Covid numbers: 170 new cases; 0 new deaths.