Davos Newbies

I’ve lived in Berkeley for nearly three years now, and I couldn’t be happier. But my family and I took a major step last week when we moved into a new house, our first home purchase (we’ve been renters until now). Our house is in precisely the neighborhood we wanted — the Elmwood — which allows us to walk to stores and restaurants. And come Halloween, we’re at the Bay Area’s epicenter, a few steps from Russell Street. People have already advised us that we’ll need a minimum stock of 1,000 pieces of candy for the night.

So my enthusiasm for Berkeley is now matched by increasingly deep roots here. Sadly, needless to say, yesterday was a really bad day for Berkeleyites. I agree with Timothy Burke’s puzzlement over John Yoo’s continued employment by the University of California Berkeley.

(Then again, I’m adopting the standard local stance of amused bewilderment at some of the actions of the Republic of Berkeley. Today’s San Francisco Chronicle reports that my city spends $1 million annually “on domestic and foreign policy matters hatched by its 45 citizen commissions, which outnumber those in virtually every other city in America and debate everything from regime change in Iran to the plight of nonneutered dogs”.)

It’s easy to miss Jeremy Paxman and BBC’s Newsnight. His evisceration of the huckster behind Brain Gym is a classic. You can watch it at about 35 minutes into last night’s program. First he calls in “arrant nonsense” and then he goes on to point to “idiotic statements”. Here’s Prospect’s summary:

A wide-eyed mumbo-jumbo spouting Californian would-be guru like Dennison was always going to prove easy fodder for the likes of Paxman; and so it proved. “Can you just explain what a brain button is, please?” Paxman began, feigning interest, before having fun with Dennison’s wackier claims—among them, the belief that the human body is “electrical” and that “processed foods do not contain water.”