Daily Archives: September 29, 2016

Where Will The Middle Class Live?

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Parker Berkeley is the newest apartment house in town. This place is huge! Parker Berkeley covers a whole block plus part of the block across the street. It is not on a spiffy section of Shattuck Avenue, and it is a long way from campus, but it is walking distance to the Ashby BART station. My guess is that the owners of this building are planning to rent to commuters who work in San Francisco. The rental office is now open and here are the rents:

Studio $2,900.
One bedroom $3,400
Two bedroom $4,500
Three bedroom $6,300
Parking is extra, plus the rent is higher if you have a cat or a dog.

If these rents seem high to you, remember that rents for similar apartments in downtown San Francisco are much higher than this. Like all new apartment houses in Berkeley and San Francisco, Parker Berkeley has inclusionary apartments for the poor, but all the other apartments are rented at market rate. So here is my question. If all the new apartment houses in town only have apartments in them for the rich and the poor, then where will the middle class live? I have been asking that question for 30 years. Consider a schoolteacher who makes $70,000 a year. This teacher doesn’t make enough money to rent a market rate apartment at Parker Berkeley but makes far too much money to qualify for an inclusionary apartment. So where will this schoolteacher live? Certainly not at Parker Berkeley or  any of the new apartment houses going up in Berkeley or San Francisco. America has long been a middle class society, but we are building no housing here for the middle class. None at all. Zero. Zip. What kind of society are we going to live in if we only build housing for the rich and the poor? I never, never hear local politicians talking about this issue, the complete lack of new housing for the working middle class. It never comes up. I wonder why.

Why Do Clocks And Watches With Roman Numerals On Them Use IIII Instead of IV For 4?

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Every schoolchild knows (or should know) that the number 4 in Roman numerals is IV. So why do clocks and watches that show the time in Roman numerals almost always use IIII for 4? (Take a look at the photo below of the clock tower atop the Ferry Building in San Francisco.) All the other numbers are shown correctly in Roman numerals. Only 4 is wrong, and it is wrong on most clocks and watches. It doesn’t seem to matter when or where the clock or watch was made. This has been going on for a long time. European clock makers have been using IIII for 4 for centuries. We don’t know who started this practice or when. There are a lot of theories about this, including conspiracy theories involving the Freemasons, the Illuminati, King Louis XIV of France, and the Pope. (There are a lot of wacky conspiracy theories floating around on the internet about the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Pope, but not many about Louis XIV.) One theory that has a lot of internet followers right now is that the Romans started putting IIII on clocks instead of IV as a way of honoring Jupiter (the god, not the planet). The problem with this theory is that mechanical clocks weren’t invented until centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. However, the Romans made sundials with Roman numerals on them, so I suppose it is possible that the Romans started this practice themselves. I don’t know what the Romans put on their sundials for the number 4.

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So what is the explanation? I have always been a firm believer in Occam’s Razor which states that the most obvious solution to any problem is usually the correct one. The most obvious explanation here is that clock makers started putting IIII on clock faces simply to avoid confusion. It is very easy to confuse IV with VI, or 4 for 6 on a clock face. The number 6 on a clock face is at the bottom and therefore upside down. By writing the number 4 as IIII, it can’t be confused for another number.

A lot of what people think they know about ancient Rome isn’t true. That all comes from Hollywood of course. Many of the most expensive and memorable movies ever made were about Rome. While movies about gladiators and deranged emperors are fun to watch, they are usually extremely inaccurate. One of the first movies I ever saw was about gladiators. It was a Saturday matinee at the Forest Theater in Baltimore. The movie scared me, which is why I remembered it. The gladiators in this movie were fighting dinosaurs in the Colosseum. Even though I was only about 8 years old at the time, I recall that I had serious doubts about the historic accuracy of this movie. Hollywood studios put dinosaurs into all sorts of movies back in those days. Remember Godzilla? gwangi1Westerns were very popular in the 1950s, so Hollywood sometimes put dinosaurs in them too. My favorite dinosaur Western was ‘The Valley of Gwangi’ in which cowboys on horseback chased down really big dinosaurs and then lassoed and hogtied them. I don’t remember why they were doing that.  Below is a still shot from this movie. In this scene, the cowboys are taking a lassoed dinosaur off to market.

As I often tell my students – it is important to remember when you are watching movies about real historic people and historic times that Hollywood is in the entertainment business, not the education business.

P.S. – I am pretty sure that Roman gladiators did not fight with dinosaurs, but I will try to get confirmation of that from my Latin-teaching cousins in Cincinnati.

Bringing Stuff To U.C. Berkeley Football Games.

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Because of the increased number of terrorist attacks in the U.S., U.C. Berkeley has further restricted its bag policy for fans coming to football games at Memorial Stadium. Backpacks and gym bags have been banned for years, but until this year fans could bring opaque bags up to 14 inches wide to games. Under the new policy, which is now in effect, fans can only bring 1 gallon clear plastic zip-lok bags or clear plastic bags up to 12 inches by 12 inches by 6 inches. The new bag policy will also be enforced at games at Haas Pavilion. Medical necessity bags will be excepted. By requiring that fans bring things in clear plastic bags, the university expects that this will also speed up the time it takes fans to get through security lines. Just within the last few months, U.C. Berkeley students were killed in terrorist attacks in Nice, France on Bastille Day and in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

How To Make A Hard Chocolate Shell For Ice Cream.

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chocolate-shellThis recipe only contains 2 ingredients and takes 5 minutes to make. If you want an excellent chocolate sauce that instantly hardens into a shell when poured over ice cream, here’s the secret: coconut oil. At room temperature, coconut oil is solid but spoonable; however, it becomes hard and brittle at colder temperatures, like the temperature of ice cream. You can buy coconut oil at many supermarkets and Trader Joe’s. To make a really good hard chocolate ice cream topping, place in a microwaveable bowl 1/3 cup (2.5 ounces) of coconut oil and 1 cup (6 ounces) of semisweet chocolate.  Microwave at 50 percent power in 30 second intervals, stirring the mixture between the intervals until the mixture is thoroughly combined. That’s all there is to it! You can store your chocolate topping at room temperature and spoon or pour it over ice cream. If the mixture is too thick, add a little more coconut oil or microwave it slightly to warn it up. You can also use this mixture to make chocolate covered frozen bananas on a stick and other frozen desserts. (A jar of this stuff also makes a very nice Christmas gift from your kitchen!)

This chocolate topping tastes much better than the bottled chocolate ‘magic shell’ toppings sold in supermarkets. This recipe is made with real chocolate. Nearly all of the commercially made products you find in supermarkets are made with inferior ingredients like palm oil. It’s cheaper to make this stuff that way, but predictably, it doesn’t taste as good. At the bottom of the pile, there are chocolate shell products sold at dollar stores that are made out of something called ‘natural chocolate flavor.’ I don’t know what it is, but isn’t made from cocoa beans.

The Protestant Reformation.

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Here’s another gem from my collection of badly written history homework assignments by junior high school students.

“In 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door in Germany. That started the Protestant Reformation. After that, Protestants exploded all over Germany. Protestants also exploded in Denmark, Holland, and England. The Pope excommunicated Martin Luther King, but even that didn’t stop the Protestants from exploding, so the Pope gave up and threw in the towel.”

Hmmm. As I said a few months ago, I know a Catholic priest who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union here in Berkeley. I’ll check with him about this the next time I see him. I wonder what he knows about Martin Luther nailing theocrats to a church door and exploding Protestants.