While your friends at other University of California institutions go back to class this week, most Berkeley students still have about 14 days before sleeping in till 2 p.m. becomes a sweet, sweet memory.

Still, it may serve us well to brush up on important academic skills, like how to pass our classes. The New York Times has come up with a few interesting pointers for highly effective note-taking, which we have organized into neat bullet points. Freshmen, spring admits and desperate seniors–listen up!
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Berkeley’s new YouTube classes are great because instead of actually going to lecture, you can sit back and watch at home. That’s easy. But how much easier would it be if someone watched them for you? That’s where we come in. The Clog is here to help by rounding up our favorite lectures in the bunch. And, yes, this will be on the midterm.

SIMS 141 - Search, Google, and Life: Sergey Brin

The Clog staff is nothing if not ace reporters, and we hear that this “Google” thing might just be the next big deal. Sergey Brin is one of its co-founders. Probably won’t add up to very much, but if it ever explodes, remember, you heard it here first.PACS 164A - Lecture 01

Peace and conflict studies gets a bad rap on campus as the major for people who are regularly too stoned to make it in political science. But that’s not true at all. You can be high as a kite and still pass most polisci courses. We should know.Integrative Biology 131 - Lecture 38: Female Reproductive System

Christine usually covers this base, but we’ll let a professor take a shot at it this time.Physics 10 - Lecture 07: Nukes

Female reproductive system? When are we ever going to need to use that knowledge? Now, nukes, on the other hand, are something that matter.

The Clog has to be candid on this one: We’ve been underwhelmed by quite a few Lakoff lectures. So underwhelmed that we considered placing Robert Reich in front of George in the battle for most prominent height-challenged, bearded, famous, liberal, Jewish Berkeley prof-pundit.

Oh, but what have we here? It looks like GLake just killed it in “his latest Huffington Post blog” (best to use battle rap lingo for liberal vs. conservative beefs). Not to get all Tucker Carlson and coldly pontificate on the “spinning” of an important issue, but Lakoff really showed some fire with this article. After hearing so much of didactic George, it’s refreshing to read genuinely angry George (what about independent George?).

But why is Lakoff so pissed? It’s not like the government is doing anything destructive or deceptive. That kind of thing could only happen when the descendents of a bygone righteous protesting era focused on the wrong things. Like, if those torch-bearing democracy-checkers “obsessed over the sanctity of some old Oak trees” instead of organizing against the war and other important people-centric issues.

If something crazy like that did happen, it would probably be indicative of a massive atrophy in intelligent dissent. Hmm, such misplaced anger might even help give government officials a free pass on a bungled war and the dismissal of constitutional rights. Only at that point of insanity would Lakoff’s current frustration fit within the parameters of propriety. Oh wait … Shit.

Whose Betrayal? [Huffington Post]