Memory I like to say that my favorite class at UC Davis was Math 16A. I enjoyed it so much that I took it twice. I managed to pass it the second time. It wasn’t just that I was lazy. I was absolutely disinterested in calculus. I couldn’t see how it would be useful after college. It was as if the doors of the lecture hall sealed off any connection to the real world. Attending class was like learning in a vacuum. All context was erased. It was simply calculus. It was simply suffocating. My teacher never told us why we should drill ourselves endlessly on derivatives. It seemed the sole reason for the course was that it was required for an economics degree. So I switched off during lecture, bored by abstract concepts that seemed applicable to nothing but the dreaded midterm and final. I skated by with a low grade my second time through, changed my major and vowed never to take the subject again. Incidentally, the mathematician Eric... ...

Sequestration, enacted by the Budget Control Act of 2011, went into effect on March 1. As part of the deal reached in 2011 regarding the debt ceiling, $85.4 billion in cuts will be enacted, slashing budgets for federal agencies across the board. This is bad news for the United States, for California, for UC Davis and for us. It is the ill-begotten child of a dysfunctional congress that places politics and dogma above proven facts and the nation’s well being. It will have dire consequences for the University of California and its students. We must hold our elected officials accountable.There is a problem when so many Americans find Congress less favorable than lice, Genghis Khan and colonoscopies.There is a problem when those in charge of the nation don’t seem to care. More than $335 million in federal research support, the lifeblood of scientific research, will be lost as a result of the sequestration, according to the University of California Office of the President (UCOP). And according to The Davis Enterprise,... ...

In a recent NPR piece, UC Davis “Director of Energy Sustainability,” Amy Jaffe, was quoted saying, “Once we reduce our [oil] consumption, we can have the luxury of rejecting Canada’s oil.” As a UC Davis alumnus, I am appalled that this message, apparently supporting the ultra-dirty Keystone XL pipeline, came from my campus. Yes, it’s true that we need to reduce our energy consumption and our carbon footprint through smart government policies that change our collective behavior. But, if President Obama stands up to big oil and rejects Keystone XL, it would be just that — a smart government policy that would keep a huge amount of carbon pollution underground, where it belongs. Because Canada’s tar sands are so thick and take so much energy to process, gallon-for-gallon they dump about twice as much carbon pollution into the atmosphere as normal gas. Constraining access to the dirtiest and most polluting oil would result in more sustainable collective behavior. Joseph Stewart UC Davis class of 2008 Environmental Biology and Management ...

There’s a book whose name I will not mention, as I’ve seen it so often that I’m tired of reading it. All I’ll say is that it’s title involves the words “50” and “Grey,” and that it involves graphic depictions of BDSM sex. Once it came out, there was a surge of interest in BDSM. Unfortunately, the book itself does a terrible job of representing what real, healthy BDSM sex looks like. BDSM, for those of you who may not know, stands for bondage, discipline/dominance, submission/sadism and masochism. It encompasses a wide range of behaviors and lifestyles, so giving a comprehensive how–to guide is a heavy task for a column. Instead, I want to focus on one of the aspects of BDSM that the aforementioned book really gets wrong: how to do dominance and submission in a safe and consensual way. Today’s advice is primarily aimed at vanilla folks who have some BDSM inclinations but aren’t sure how to get started. Now, there are a few main things that need... ...

Having followed the Christopher Dorner manhunt with the sort of scrupulous and morbid curiosity that today’s sensationalist mass media seems to arouse at every possible opportunity, I began to notice remarkable parallels with an incident not too dissimilar that took place across the pond back in 2010. I refer to the case of Raoul Moat who — two days after being released from prison — sparked the biggest manhunt the UK has ever seen after shooting his former girlfriend and her new partner before targeting a police officer the following day. While the grievances motivating the two fugitives derive from opposite sides of the law (Dorner being an ex-officer, Moat an ex-convict), there are still some striking similarities to be drawn. The two shared a common enemy in declaring war against the police, and both published lengthy, aggrieved and hate-fuelled manifestos via social media in which they named targets, before going on the run and provoking widespread manhunts. Both expressed feelings of isolation and having seemingly relinquished any semblance of... ...

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks talking about money: spending it, saving it, bathing in it, etc. I have no say in whether money will bring about happiness or anything deep and cosmic like that, but it’s something that the majority of the population is in constant need of. Money to eat, money to go out, money to make it rain at the strip club, money to pay for the rent, money to pay for gas, money to pay for alcohol, the list goes onward to infinity. There is the old adage of “time is money,” or the updated classic, “If I ain’t getting paid then I’m getting laid,” which are both venerable mottos to live your life by. But more importantly, they bring up an alternate currency that is just as valuable (or possibly even more so) than money: Time. Time is an incredibly deceitful beast. In a morbid sense, I don’t think anyone in the world knows how much time they have, save... ...

In this column I want to set aside the usual polemics to focus on some examples of heroic figures who provided us with enormous values in their pursuit of profit. If possible, I recommend listening to your preferred epic movie soundtrack while reading this, to enhance the experience (my choice would be Hans Zimmer – “Time”). In no particular order: J.P. Morgan: American financier who funded Thomas Edison’s research to invent the lightbulb. He later financed the railroad industry to make it more profitable and stable, and helped consolidate the steel industry to make it more profitable and efficient. His activities benefited millions in the U.S. economy and he ultimately became one of the wealthiest men of all time. James Watt: Scottish inventor who contributed enormously to the Industrial Revolution via his improvement on the steam engine (which at first was used primarily for pumping water). He made possible the wide use of steam for transportation via steam boats and trains. His firm produced steam engines with great success for... ...

Hello UC Davis Students, faculty, staff and community partners, As the proud representative of California’s third congressional district, which includes UC Davis, I need to alert you to events in Washington that directly impact our campus. Mandatory across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration” came into effect on Friday. We can still avoid the worst damage, but Congress needs to act soon. Under sequestration, research at UC Davis could experience an 8.4 percent cut — more than $42 million. This would be the equivalent of 445 jobs, but that’s not the whole story. Students on campus will see their work hampered, with research labs operating at reduced capacity. If we fail to abate sequestration, class offerings will also likely be reduced in the coming academic year. The harm from sequestration doesn’t stop there. The UC Davis Health System will see a $4.6 million loss in Medicare revenues. Some students already struggling to pay for their education, already saddled with debt, will see hundreds of dollars taken out of their pockets with cuts... ...