tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post9025576681625661817..comments2023-04-16T13:03:08.852+02:00Comments on Déjà vu - down memory lane in California: EARTH DAY A LA BERKELEYEmil Emshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07815643585218883358noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-5032594583089452392010-05-07T08:45:09.689+02:002010-05-07T08:45:09.689+02:00Dear Lars,
I am very pleased to welcome you back a...Dear Lars,<br />I am very pleased to welcome you back as commentator with your always welcome and this time also very gastronomical informations. Upon reading you, I immediately checked the UCB catalogue and found that, indeed, both the Men's and the Women's Faculty Club still exist. I will pay them a visit soon and report back to you, with pictures and all, at a future blog. <br /><br />Dear Tamera,<br />Thank you kindly for reminding me that I am only human (who would have believed it) and may have overstepped the thin line between satire (a trait in my writing stemming, no doubt, from my Austrian background) and sarcasm. Following your comment, and in line with the admonishment "Gå till läggen!" (Go to the ledgers), issued by our famous Swedish Marxist/Leninist, I have revisited the video recording of Ray's speech, which can be watched at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6470774<br />Thereafter I have made some minor changes in the text, so as, whilst maintaining my slight satirical flavor, to stay firmly with reporting of what is my understanding of his words. <br /><br />Dear Per,<br />Welcome back also to you, our most creative commentator, this time with poem and all! I will make sure to keep writing during the rest of my stay here in Berkeley, as long as my cherished commentators keep letting us know their reactions!Emil Emshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07815643585218883358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-40521698200722632392010-05-07T01:48:56.262+02:002010-05-07T01:48:56.262+02:00Emil seeks him here, others seek him there
those d...Emil seeks him here, others seek him there<br />those dismal economists seek him everywhere.<br />Is he in Oakland<br />counting his rent<br />that ever-elusive professor Bent?<br /><br />While Emil enthusiastically seeks to locate Bent Hansen's apartment overviewing five Bay-bridges, I have been engaged in the less exiting task of cleaning out the attic in preparation of a move.<br />Today I got to the boxes with economics books. Should I throw out such classiscs as Arrow, Baumol, Dorfman-Samuelson-Solow? Wiksell? I contemplate what to do with copies of dissertations or other writings which proud authors have kindly dedicated to me? And I barely dare mention the quandries I face about what to do with the few copies of texts which I myself am the modest author of. Judge therefore my relief when I come across Bent Hansen's two volumes of Lectures on economic policy published by Studentlitteratur and his Finanspolitikens ekonomiska teori, published by same, well-known to many of Emil's readers. This time the answer was easy. Feeling as though I had reseen an old friend I put these copies in the To Save Box. As I did so I could in my mind's eye see the bashful and reticent author reclining in a chair in his unknown apartment watching the sun set across the Bay while calculating in his head the number of cars passing per minute on the five bay bridges in the distance.<br /><br />Emil! Please keep the travelogues coming!Per Wijkmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-13832835816116801912010-05-05T22:29:47.101+02:002010-05-05T22:29:47.101+02:00Getting curious aren't we? Where did Bent Hans...Getting curious aren't we? Where did Bent Hansen live? Actually I checked the econ. dep., but they only list current faculty. There are ways to find old pages of www, hmmm. An old phone-book would also do the trick?<br /><br />It would make a worthy pilgrimage for you?<br /><br />When I saw Oakland, I was there to sing with a black Gospel choir. The area was very flat and close to the sea. Few posh white people there.kari_lanttohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05948494087986287320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-7356400905561975082010-05-05T19:28:47.071+02:002010-05-05T19:28:47.071+02:00Hey Emil. Just a heads up on the Emergency Confere...Hey Emil. Just a heads up on the Emergency Conference event. I was there too. Raymond Lotta did say something like 'We have a worked out strategy for Revolution' (not sure what he exactly said) but I did notice he pointed people to a pamphlet called "Revolution and Communism, A Foundation and Strategic Orientation."<br />It is something that I had read before the conference, and it does go into strategy for Revolution.<br />So if your serious about wanting to know-they have it at Revolution Books Berkeley for a couple bucks. <br />Also, man don't misrepresent what Lotta said, if you read the article that was around by him he laid out how you could begin changes. Not that the world would happily fall in line. <br />If you are unconvinced, thats cool.. and its your blog, I just think be unconvinced on the basis of what someone actually says. <br /><br />Allright cheers<br />liked your picturesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-35008585293666898892010-05-05T18:43:33.591+02:002010-05-05T18:43:33.591+02:00Emil, it’s a pleasure reading about your strolls, ...Emil, it’s a pleasure reading about your strolls, adventures and contacts on and around the Berkeley Campus. But I take it as a duty for us, your grateful readers, to try to hook on and present some further aspects. They have to be trivial compared to what you are producing. So let me speak of eating in Berkeley. I have already recommended Restaurant Chez Panisse to you, and you tried it and found it acceptable. I came to think of another nice place, the Metropole, also at Shattuck Avenue (I think where the avenue broadens into a rectangular square). But when I looked it up on Google, I found that it has shut down rather recently, to the chagrin of many Berkeleyans as it was the first place in Berkeley that tried to deviate from the American steak house or Tex-Mex models. Sorry about that, but you save some money.<br /> <br />Now for a rather interesting thing. When I spent six weeks in Berkeley in the spring of 1982 (28 years ago!!) there were two faculty clubs on the campus, one for men, one for women, housed in different buildings. But a big revolution had occurred rather recently: the men’s club was opened for women as well, and vice versa. I was invited to the women’s club twice by male colleagues, and they said they took me there because the food was much better than in the men’s club. And certainly the food was excellent and the ambience great indeed. But perhaps my hosts just wanted to show that they were modern, non-prejudiced persons? I never went to the men’s club. Now compare with the campus at Stockholm University in the same period. There was no faculty club, and as soon as someone said there ought to be one, he or she was reprimanded. You can’t have a place where only teachers can eat and the students are not allowed. What a difference in outlook! How do we explain it? Note another difference: there is much, lively student activity going on in Berkeley — as obvious from your chronicles. Very little of that sort in Stockholm. Perhaps because of the climate? Now, long after I left Stockholm University a faculty club was indeed set up there. Times are a-changin’! I have had lunch there a few times, and it has struck me that about half the guests come from either the Department of Economics or the place that, misleadingly, is called the Institute for International Economic Studies. Are economists more affluent than other academics, more class-conscious, or?Lars Werinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-19029017513788564482010-05-05T01:53:39.178+02:002010-05-05T01:53:39.178+02:00Dear Kari,
I am very glad you made the remark &quo...Dear Kari,<br />I am very glad you made the remark "Oakland; a lower class suburb?", since this gives me the occasion to extemporate some more on Bay Area peculiarities.<br /><br />Whereas Berkeley is the big exception to the US rule of maintaining cities, Oakland is indeed the rule. This means that, in one area, you can have both the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. Whilst the downtown, as well as the low marches towards the Bay, is almost exclusively populated by the poor black community, the Hills tell a different story.<br /><br />Going up there is like visiting a City in the Sky, with beautiful villas we could not even dream of possessing, a hotel shaped like a royal castle (the Claremont), shopping centers and schools that outshine our own and, last but not least, a "city park" consisting of nought else but a venerable Redwood forest. As of yore, there resided the mightiest Redwoods ever, so huge that they were used as landmarks for navigating the coast from far off the Bay. Even now, the third generation trees (after two logging circles) easily outperform the largest trees they can show us in Europe. <br /><br />In these Eleusinian fields, the poshest among the posh surroundings is the quarter called "Piedmont", where I presume that our good old Bent was residing in style!Emil Emshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07815643585218883358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-19736994410972612052010-05-03T18:20:19.796+02:002010-05-03T18:20:19.796+02:00Thats the way it is: Never check too good a story ...Thats the way it is: Never check too good a story too well. BH didn't even live in Berkeley, but Oakland; a lower class suburb?<br /><br />Still he could count the cars on a lot of bridges? Well, lets not check that any further.<br />Karikari_lanttohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05948494087986287320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-26948646998780447722010-05-03T02:21:34.992+02:002010-05-03T02:21:34.992+02:00Those equations on the board have a simple and unf...Those equations on the board have a simple and unfortunate meaning: the Govt. of California will not even provide UC Berkeley with sufficient funding for basic janitorial services, so the boards are not cleaned up from previous lectures! Faculty are on furlough, library budgets are squeezed, but of course football is thriving. <br />JohnJohn Hartenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-81075061487443599532010-05-03T02:20:15.759+02:002010-05-03T02:20:15.759+02:00Dear Kari,
That's a tough one! Looking at the ...Dear Kari,<br />That's a tough one! Looking at the map, I don't think you can do it from a Berkeley location. However, the hills extend South a good distance along the Bay. I gather that our old friend Bent must have lodged in the upper reaches of Oakland, probably Piedmont. Even from there I judge it difficult, if not impossible, to see all five Bay bridges. But, with a bit of good will, you can count the Bay Bridge (going from Berkeley to San Francisco, and photographed on the upper picture of the posting) twice, since it consists essentially of two bridges, linked by Yerba Buena Island. If so, Bent probably lived in Piedmont or thereabouts and saw, counting from the North: (1) the Richmond Bridge; (2) the Golden Gate Bridge; (3) the "two" Bay Bridges; and (4) the San Mateo Bridge. So there, mission accomplished!Emil Emshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07815643585218883358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-73602210278325080432010-05-02T18:59:51.529+02:002010-05-02T18:59:51.529+02:00Two bridges! I have to do Hasse Alfredsson's &...Two bridges! I have to do Hasse Alfredsson's "Roger Moore" stunt. Two bridges, thats a house for paupers. Let me explain. And you can check the fact as you are at the site.<br /><br />At Princeton I met a grad student who had been an undergrad at Berkeley. When I told him I was from Sweden, he told me about Bent Hansen and the value of real estate in the Bay Area. He said, as did Lars, that the value increased with the number of bridges you overlooked. And that he did not know much about Bent Hansen's success as an economist, except that his house overlooked all FIVE bridges. <br />I never checked whether the geography really allows such a house. But I still think fondly of that story of Swedish success.kari_lanttohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05948494087986287320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2242228370300474063.post-24308915047732007052010-05-01T21:23:53.634+02:002010-05-01T21:23:53.634+02:00Vielen Dank für die wunderschönen BilderVielen Dank für die wunderschönen BilderMicha040678https://www.blogger.com/profile/02152089788945129573noreply@blogger.com