University of California-Riverside

Natashia Deon: Defense Attorney By Day, Novelist By Night

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here. At 24, Natashia Deon thought she had her whole life figured out. Despite hanging around L.A. nightclubs while working as a teenage promoter for radio station 92.3 The Beat, she ... More >>

Five Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week, From a Boy Band Terrorist to Frances McDormand Doing Performance Art

See also: *Getty's Pacific Standard Time Series on L.A. Architecture: A Preview *Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A. This week, a panel of architects and a performance at a science fiction conference imagine a high-tech future L.A. and an artist uses Pig Latin to title th ... More >>

Byron Adams, Bill Rosendahl, Stevie St. John and L.A. Gay Equality Warriors Stunned, Thrilled by Obama 2013 Inaugural Promise

From revered gay UC Riverside professor and brilliant classical composer Byron Adams to Spectrum L.A. gay blog editor Stevie St. John, prominent Los Angeles-area lifelong fighters for equality were stunned by President Obama's surprise inaugural promise to bring full, unprecedented human rights to g ... More >>

UCLA Is No Longer Crime Leader Among U.S. Colleges, Website Admits (Sort Of)

A website's declaration that UCLA is the most crime-prone campus in the nation last week had many of us in the L.A. news media shaking our heads with doubt. WTF? It's a question LA Weekly posed to the publication in question, Business Insider. It responded with crickets. Until last night. A publici ... More >>

University of California Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Affirmative Action

Just call us the Bleeding Heart State: Yesterday, leading up to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Texas that will determine once and for all the constitutionality of considering race in university admissions, California Attorney General Kamala Harris joined the nation's most prestigious public unive ... More >>

Hot Weather Makes You Buy Convertibles, Homes With Pools

This weather making you want to ... shop? Us to. We get all hot and bothered thinking about a good discount. UC Riverside associate professor of marketing Jorge Silva-Risso says in a recent study that the heat definitely has its effect on the way consumers behave:

John Fischer, UC Riverside Philosopher, Gets $5 Mil to Study Afterlife (No Joking)

A SoCal philosopher just got $5 million to study what happens after you die. Really. Give the money to us and we'll refund $4 mil, save you a lot of time, and tell you what our mama always said: You die, you die. Anyway, the lucky winner is John Fischer, who got the grant from the John Templeton F ... More >>

Art Students Blow Up the Blue Whale

James Holmes, Dark Knight Massacre Suspect, From Southern California, Attended UC Riverside

Updated at the bottom: L.A. mayor wants to ban assault weapons nationwide. And: New York's top cop says the suspect fashioned himself as "The Joker." First posted at 1:10 p.m. See also: *Dark Knight Massacre: LAPD Sends Undercover Cops Into Area Theaters. The 24-year-old suspected of killing 12 an ... More >>

Brown Widow Spiders Have Taken Over Southern California, And They Bite ...

If you're getting sick of all these brown folks invading Southern California, they're not done yet. A new research paper co-authored by Richard Vetter, professor of urban entomology at UC Riverside, confirms a long-feared invasion of brown widow spiders in SoCal. The spiders are indeed coming fro ... More >>

UC Engineers Want to Base Military Armor on Three-Layer Supershell of Mantis Shrimp

UC Riverside just got 20 times more impressive. Engineers at the oft-overlooked UC campus are reportedly thinking up a new type of body armor that would be one-third the weight and capable of deflecting 50,000 bullets. But the most fascinating aspect of their research is the model: a notorious dude ... More >>

Los Angeles Review of Books Founder Tom Lutz on His Literary Site's Relaunch Today

Tom Lutz is one happy man. He has every reason to be. This morning, Lutz watched as the online literary behemoth that he founded, the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), finally launched its new website. With more than 250 contributors, including Jonathan Lethem, T.C. Boyle, Jane Smiley, Jeffrey Eu ... More >>

Rubus Ursinus: A Guide to the Elusive Pacific Blackberry

Israel's Shimon Peres Joins Facebook, Makes Dubstep Music Video on Wild Trip to California

Unlike Israel's stodgy old prime minister, President Shimon Peres is one with Gen Y. On his wild trip to California, Peres has far surpassed the call of duty to schmooze with rich Jews. (Though he's done plenty of that, too.) Apparently unphased by Occupy San Francisco protesters and a vandalized ... More >>

Geek Chicks: PyLadies, a Gang of Female Computer Programmers

Nanette GonzalesKatharine Jarmul, PyLady​It's not that the PyLadies are intimidated by the men who dominate computer programmer events and workshops. It's just that they got tired of feeling like outsiders.Katharine Jarmul, 29, remembers the day they first identified the problem. She and t ... More >>

What's In Season at the Farmers Markets: Persian Sweet Limes (or Lemons)

"This lemon will cure that cough of yours," advised a fellow market-goer. It turned out that her motherly advice wasn't simply anecdotal. The Sweet Lemon, or Sweet Lime depending on who you talk to, is incredibly high in Vitamin C and has been a favorite of Mediterranean and Persian cultures for c ... More >>

VIDEO: UC Students, Occupy L.A. Protesters Shot With Rubber Bullets at Out-of-Control Regents Meeting

University of California police became iconic "bad guys" of the Occupy Wall Street movement back in fall, when an officer from UC Davis pepper-sprayed a peaceful line of protesters directly in the eyes as they sat, motionless, on the ground. (That incident has since been ridiculed, memed and Christm ... More >>

Angelique Deleon: Mountain High Snowboarding Session Ends in Freak Death For 23-Year-Old UC Riverside Student

A 23-year-old snowboarder died riding at the Mountain High resort near Wrightwood over the holiday weekend. The San Bernardino County coroner's office reports that Angelique Deleon of Riverside Anaheim fell while snowboarding yesterday about 3:55 p.m. The office states that the rider was taken to ... More >>

A Recipe From The Chef: Austin Szu's Coconut Curry with Chicken and Pork Belly

Austin SzuCoconut Curry​ When he was 16 years old, Austin Szu realized that his calling was culinary. After receiving his BA in Business Administration from UC Riverside, he went on to attend culinary school in Pasadena. Along the way, Szu did stints on the 2004 World Pastry Team Championship ... More >>

Sharon Renee Higgins and Otis Lee Hall -- SoCal 20-Year-Olds -- Killed by Semi on Shoulder of Pomona Freeway

Twitter20-year-old freeway victim Sharon Renee Higgins​A brutal accident at 3:15 a.m. this morning took the lives of two young victims and backed up traffic on the 60 East for more than three hours. Sharon Renee Higgins, a 20-year-old UC Riverside student, and Otis Lee Hall, a 20-year-old Upl ... More >>

Good News for Undocumented Workers: Legalization Leads to More Money

​Undocumented workers and those in favor of legalizing them received a dose of inspiring news when a pair of local economics professors announced the results of their recent study: Legalizing illegal immigrants will significantly increase undocumented workers' wages. But wait, that's not all.

Mito Aviles, West Hollywood Candidate: Overcoming Adversity, Aviles Seeks to Open Up Government to Residents

Jennie WarrenWeHo City Council candidate Mito Aviles​Update, 11:50 a.m.: Aviles, who hung a Sarah Palin mannequin in effigy from his rooftop in 2008, has received an endorsement from the gay Republican web site GayPatriot.net. More after the jump. For West Hollywood City Council candidate Mi ... More >>

Porn Machete Murder

Mopes and mayhem in the Valley

Vanessa Fulladosa, 23-Year-Old UC Riverside Graduate, Killed During Mercedes-Benz Stall on 405 Freeway

Facebook23-year-old Vanessa Fulladosa was killed on the 405 in the wee hours of February 18​Updated after the jump: Friends and family remember Fulladosa as a "beautiful person," and more witnesses of the crash come forward. Update: The crash actually occurred at 11:43 p.m. on Thursday night. ... More >>

Dethroning West Hollywood's Martinets

Can five intriguing gay men upset the City Council's 26-year dynasty?

Tom Lutz: Keeper of the Printed Word

Smart Art

Daedalus endorses Obama! Hot MP3!

The prognosticators have been speculating for weeks on who LA-based producer Daedalus was going to endorse for president. We had our money on Ron Paul, but in fact he's going with Barack. This track is from Daedelus' newest side project, FMB (Fire Magic Blood), featuring Shafiq Husayn (Sa-Ra) and Ta ... More >>

He Stands and Delivers

Obama at Garfield High

Let It Burn

The battle between firefighting and fire guiding

Fuel to the Fire

A smoldering argument over the causes of the Sawtooth fire. Did the wildflowers do it?

UCLA's Black Shadow

If God's Good Word Goes Unspoken

Feeling Sublime, 10 years after

Marching Orders

The president speaks, and the immigration fight is far from over

A Cheap Life

A shop owner tries to stop shoplifters

Snapped Shots

Photography out of bounds

The Color of Music

The Thin White Line

Two Against One

Teenage love and murder in Redlands, California

Juvee Delinquents

Edited by Kateri Butler

Invisble Man

Novelist Percival Everett on the wrong kind of success and his desire for anonymity

Pharm Phresh

Frankenfoods II

Demon Seed

Can the Exorcist save us from genetically modified foods, or is it another freak in disguise?

Reading Between the Dots

Mary Rakow on her unusual first novel, The Memory Room

The Back Story

A week 11 reading list

Mending Fences

Two L.A. garment-district workers settle over back wages

A Whimper From Venus

Sweating It Out

UC’s ban on sweatshop products may be hard to enforce