UC Crisis Website Round Up

Much has happened with the UC budget crisis in the past couple of weeks.  I've been in a hole trying to finish an analysis so I've largely skipped out on the events.  Anyways, here is a list of good websites about the issues.

Most comprehensive:

Keep California's Promise
Remaking the University

Others:
Save UC
The Phoenix Project for UC Democracy
Checking Education
Berkeley Alliance Against the Cuts
Saving UCLA
UC Faculty Walkout 

Roasted Squash with Bok Choy and Edamame

I don't like tofu.  Since I'm a vegetarian I'm supposed to eat it three times a day, but I can't.  I think it tastes like the sponges women use to put on thick, oozy foundation.  I used to eat it when I was bike racing, but I never truly enjoyed it.  Tofu can be good, for example well marinated tofu is often delicious, but it still feels like a sponge.  I just can't get over the sponginess so I don't cook it.  This is irrelevant information unless you read the following recipe and wonder why I didn't use tofu, since it would seem to be the natural choice.  I find edamame to be a more palatable protein and use it instead.

Now that I've preempted the question that probably would not have occurred, let's move on to the recipe.  It's very simple, healthy and satisfying.  Enjoy!

Roasted Squash with Bok Choy and Edamame.

A winter squash, I used red kuri
Several heads of bok choy or baby bok choy
1 cup Edamame
2 cloves of garlic
Vegetable or peanut oil
Soy sauce
Rice vinegar

Rice, cooked the way you like it.

optional: 
Toasted sesame oil
2 Tbsp sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 375F.

Slice the squash into thin 1 inch pieces and toss with a few tablespoons of the vegetable or peanut oil, a couple splashes of rice vinegar and a couple splashes of soy sauce.  Put in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast until soft and the edges are starting to brown, about 25 min.  You should probably stir it a couple of times so it doesn't get blackened.

While the squash is cooking, clean the bok choy and slices it into 1 in thick strips (very approximately).  Mince the garlic.  Heat 1 tablespoon of veg/peanut oil over medium heat.  Add the garlic and cook, stirring for one minute, then add the bok choy and stir.  You can put a tablespoon or so of water into the pan and cover to wilt the bok choy.  It should take about 7 min.  While the bok choy is wilting, heat a small sauce pan over med-hight heat.  Add the sesame seeds and stir frequently for one minute or until the seeds are lightly toasted.    When the bok choy is just about done, add the edamame to heat it through.

Once the squash is done, add it to the pan with the bok choy.  Toss with a splash of soy sauce and another of rice vinegar.  Drizzle with some toasted sesame oil and the sesame seeds.  Serve over rice.

UC Finances

This letter by UCSC Professor Bob Meister, President of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, explains how, beginning in 2004, UC has depended on tuition raises, or the ability to make arbitrary tuition raises to provide the collateral for bonds for construction.  The construction is not merely for research facilities but for adminstrative, athletic and other non academic buildings. 

I don't understand the full contents of the letter, although the summary here is clearer, albeit lacking in details.  The bottom line is that the UCOP set the University's feet on the path to privatization at least 5 years ago and that it needs to stop now, before it is too late.

The Crisis of the Public University: Mon. Oct 24th, 2009

Stuffed Vegetables for Two Seasons

It's nearing the end of October and I have yet to post a recipe!  Traveling has kept me out of the kitchen, however I have several recipes stocked piled to share.  This post concerns the stuffing of vessel-like vegetables.  September and October are wonderful months produce-wise, because the last of the summer bounty, such as summer squash,  peppers, and tomatoes are still readily available but fall and winter favorites are beginning to make their way into the markets and my CSA box.  Within the span of a couple of weeks I made two very different stuffed vegetable recipes: polenta stuffed bell peppers and creamy rice stuffed winter squash.  Both feature a spicy filling, since poblano peppers were a constant element of our box for a couple of months.  Enjoy!

Polenta Stuffed Bell Peppers

2.75 cups of broth
1.5 cups of milk
1 cup of coarse ground cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika or other chile powder

1 medium onion, diced
2 poblano or other spicy peppers, seeded and diced

4 bell peppers
crumbled goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 400F.

You can use precooked polenta, or, if making your own, bring the milk and broth to boil in a medium sauce pan.  Add the salt and cornmeal, whisking while adding, and continue to whisk until it becomes smooth and creamy.   You need to stir it constantly for about 5 minutes, after that you can stir it occasionally, for a total of 20-30 min.  When the polenta is finished, stir in the butter.  While the polenta is cooking, heat some olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan on medium-low heat and add the garlic.  After a minute, add the onion and cook for about 8 minutes, then add the poblanos and cook until soft.

When the polenta is finished, stir in the paprika or chile powder, adding more or less to your taste, and add more salt if you need to.  Then stir in the onion-pepper mixture.

You can prepare the peppers by either cutting off the tops or cutting off the top 1/4 lengthwise, as I did in the photo.  Fill the peppers with the stuffing and then top with the crumbled goat cheese.  Put in a baking pan and bake until the peppers become soft and the goat cheese is lightly browned.

WARNING: There is much more polenta than fits in most peppers--you could cut the polenta part in half if you wanted.  We ate the extra as leftovers the next day. 

Creamy Rice Stuffed Winter Squash

1 stuffable winter squash, I used red kuri
Salt, Pepper, optional chili powder

1 cup long grain rice

1 poblano, diced

1 onioin, diced

1 bell pepper, diced

2 cups water

1 tsp ground annatto (achiote) seed

1 bay leaf

3oz of cheddar cheese (I used white)

1/3 cut of heavy cream

handful of chopped fresh oregano

1 cup frozen fresh corn

1 tbsp mild green chili powder (optional)

crumbled goat cheese

optional: black beans, diced tomatoes.

Heat oven to 400F.

Halve the squash and remove the seeds.  Rub the inside and and cut edges with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt, pepper and chili powder, if you want.  Here my memory fails me.  I know I baked the halves face down for about 40 minutes (until it was soft), but I don't remember if it was on a bare baking sheet or if I put it in a roasting dish, filled the bottom with a quarter inch of water and covered it with foil.  I think I did the later...

While the squash is cooking you make a variation of my favorite rice recipe.  I found it on the Food Network website via a google search.  They have an awesome black bean recipe too. 

In a medium sized pot, heat a couple table spoons of olive oil and saute the onions and peppers with the anatto seed.  Once they are soft, add the water, rice, bay leaf and 1 tsp of salt and bring to a boil.  Cover tightly and cook for 20 min.  This will make about twice as much rice as you need.  Save half of it for another meal.

While the rice is cooking, grate the cheddar and chop the oregano.  Once the rice is finished, stir in the cheese, cream, oregano, corn and black beans into the half that will go in the squash.  I didn't add tomatoes, but afterwards thought they might've been nice.

Fill the squash with the rice mixture and top with crumbled goat cheese.  Put in oven, baking until its warmed through and the goat cheese is browned.

I've Been Adopted

Through the Adopt-A-Physicist program of the National Society for Physics Students and several other national physics organizations, I've been adopted by three high school classes for the next three weeks.  The purpose of the program is to demystify physicists and physics by letting high school students interact with them through online forums.  I've been chosen by three very different high schools: an all girls catholic school in southern california, a large rural high school in South Carolina and an international prep school in New York.  Couldn't get any different, could they?  So far I have only heard from the girls at the Catholic school.  They seem to be bright and inquisitive!  They are asking me questions ranging from "what is a muon?" to "how is it to be a woman in a male dominated field?" to "what are your hobbies?" (in less generic form than I have written).  I'm curious to see how the questions differ from student to student and class to class.  It should be an interesting experiment!

More Tacit Support from Berkeley Administration?

Today Berkeley campus community members received an email from the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs regarding the restoration of library hours to their normal level.  Due to the budget cuts most libraries were closed on the weekends and they would not be open for 24 hrs during finals week.  The hours were restored using donations from parents.  Contained in the email was the following sentence:

Recent events and concerns raised by students, faculty and staff served as important reminders to all of us that libraries are a critical resource for students and a vital part of this university.

This is an allusion to the library 'study in' which occurred at the anthropology library last weekend.  I might be reading too much into it, but I imagine that its a bit of tacit approval.

Score another one for the ladies (and the UC system)!

First woman Nobelist in economics today!  Elinor Ostrom, a professor at Indiana University, is a political scientist (Nobel committee decided that perhaps honoring traditional economists wasn't the best idea this year) and got her PhD from UCLA.  She was a co-recipient with Oliver E. Williamson, a Berkeley professor.

Update: Paul Krugman, last year's Econ Nobelist, explains why they got the award.

So much to blog about, so little time!

I'm in Boston for a weekend with my girlfriends from undergrad.  We haven't all been together since our trip last year to New York, and before then we hadn't seen each other in years, so it's going to be awesome.  I believe some movie watching, wine drinking and apple picking are on the schedule, along with a bit of sight seeing and general we-aren't-really-girly-girls girliness.

So, the highlights of things I wanted to blog about but didn't have time:

1. It's been a good year for women and science Nobels this year!   Two out of the 3 recipients of the physiology and medicine prize were women: Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol W. Greider.  They did the prize-worthy work while at UC Berkeley, Blackburn, now at UCSF,  as a professor, and Greider as a graduate student.  Blackburn used her platform as Nobelist to speak about the troubles of the UC system:

"Blackburn stressed that she and her colleagues thrive in the academic research environment that the University of California offers. The goals of academic research are very different than those of corporate research enterprises, she explained, because scientists are free to pursue questions that are not necessarily for commercial purposes or for finding an end product.

“This is such a recognition of the UC system that I was able to have the opportunity to do this research,” she said. “The UC system lets research happen in ways that go in all sorts of unexpected directions.”
Blackburn is hoping for more of the same, but acknowledges that budget challenges are taking a toll on the academic and research missions of UCSF and the University of California. She says it is important for the UC system to maintain access and affordability, so students can get a quality university education.
“I think UC is a huge boon to the state of California,” Blackburn said. “It’s a wellspring of ideas, of educated people, of innovation. And it sort of breaks my heart to see it being under attack – I do not mean that literally, but in this sad state. So we really need to do what we can to ameliorate this situation because what UC brings to the state is huge.
“I have been a tremendous beneficiary of it,” Blackburn added. “I was able to do research with really tremendous colleagues, students and trainees who were attracted to the UC system because it has such high standards.”"

She also talked about graduate students and women in science.  I think I like this woman.

 A woman, Ada Yonath, was a co-recipient of the Chemistry prize.  She was the first woman to win one since the 60s!  Physics also hasn't had a female prize winner since the 60s, although there have been some notable absence of prizes where they were deserved.  In fact, there have only been 6 women physics or chemistry Nobelists in its 105 year history and half of the went to Curies (two to Marie Curie, she won for both physics and chemistry, and one to her daughter in chemistry.  what a family!).  Also, I like that the newspapers are reported she found out she received the prize while working and watching her 13 year old grand daughter.

2.  The pro-public education advocates have been hitting the op-ed pages of major news papers.  The New York Times had two columnists write recently about the need to invest in public education.  Paul Krugman (Nobelist, incidentally), talks about public higher education in general and specifically about the California community college system, which is an important feeder, through junior transfers, for the UCs and CSUs.  Bob Herbert went to Berkeley for the September 24th protests and wrote a column on the troubles of Berkeley and what it means for the nation.  Judith Butler, a Berkeley professor, published an Op-Ed in the UK Gaurdian's fantastic Comment Is Free section (some amazing posts by very interesting people, check it out), explaining why the system is in uproar and why its partially about the direction of the UC system.  I'm not sure why it's in the Gaurdian, but they have a Comment Is Free section on the US so maybe it's not too out of place.  Lastly, Berekely's Chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, floated some ideas on the future of public education in the Washington Post.  I don't think they will ever fly, but at least he is thinking about solutions. 

3...I'll write more later.  Expect to hear about the connections between women, science and competitive sports, along with some new outreach that I'm working on.  I also have a backlog of recipes that I hope to get up soon.  Time to have fun!

Links, Videos and The Trouble With Mark Yudof

First some links:

On October 24th at Berkeley there will be a conference to organize a plan to save public education in California. All are welcome.

Remaking the University is a blog by Chris Newfield, a UCSB English professor, linking to coverage of the budget crisis as well as his own insights.  He wrote an interesting piece in the Chronicle for Higher Education which is worth a read (you need a subscription to read the full text but students should be able to get it for free through the campus network or vpn). 

And some videos:

If you want to get fired up for saving public education, watch this articulate, funny and impassioned speech by Robert Reich, Berkeley Professor and former Secretary of Labor under Clinton. Even if you don't want to get fired up, it's worth a watch because he is entertaining.




  
This video is part of a series of videos from Save the University's teach in the night preceding the walk out. They are all lectures by faculty and in general they are quite good and informative.

And Yudof:

Lastly I want to address the people who don't understand why the protesters are frustrated with Mark Yudof and UCOP from an ardent, Berkeley loving protester's point of view.  We know that the roots of the problem are much deeper than Mark Yudof, however, we cannot understand why he won't sacrifice, won't bleed, to save the UC we know and believe in. It is a University built on inclusion, unlike its Ivy walled brethren, where any undergrad who is capable can take classes from world class faculty (and grad students ;) ). The trouble with Yudof is that he wants to retain the UC system's accolades for outstanding faculty, students and research, but to do so he is willing to sacrifice the access that has made the system truly special.  He won't stand up to the legislators nor make the public case that this model system for education is worth saving. To us idealists (a large fraction of the Berkeley population) it is unacceptable.

More Fun with AutoTune: Carl Sagan Edition

I meant to post this a while ago but got caught up in the walk out blogging.  Its Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking autotuned.  Cool.