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Good heavens Wherever you are, however far from Berkeley, you can now look skyward and feel a little closer to your alma mater. The ASUC Senate recently passed a resolution adopting the twin blue-and-gold star system Beta Cygni, in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan), as the official campus star. (Star-gazers with small telescopes can find Beta Cygni at the base of the Northern Cross.) To the naked eye, Beta Cygni (also known as Albireo) looks like a single star. But a telescope reveals that there are in fact two stars, closely coupled—one blue, because of its incredible heat; the other gold, because it is cooler. Astronomy professor Alex Filippenko (below) has been showing the binary star to students in his Astronomy 10 class for years, always believing that it should get official recognition. His wish was granted after ASUC Senator Lauren Bausch attended his class. She had no trouble persuading the Senate to pass her bill, along with the addendum that Ursa Major (the Great Bear) also become the campus’s official constellation. Put on that Red’s shirt You all remember The Play, back in 1982, Kevin Moen on our side going into the endzone and trampling trombone player Gary Tyrrell to give Cal the Axe and put Stanford into an enormous snit. One of the young ladies who attended that game was Lynae Anderson, then three weeks old, in the arms of her father, Mike. Last fall, for Lynae’s 18th birthday, Mike had a splendid idea for a present: one of those old Play T-shirts. A minor problem: How do you track down such an item 18 years later? Mike entered cybear space and turned up several leads, including an intriguing post from a Gary T., who wrote that if Mike’s search came up empty, he might be able to help. Mike could not find a shirt. True to his word, Gary T. came up with the goods. Turns out Gary Tyrrell’s not such a bad guy after all, despite his choice of school. For it was the former trombonist who made Mike and Lynae happy on her 18th birthday. The three of them met last November before the 103rd Big Game, about which no more will be said. Grin and bear it What’s black and white and cuddly all over? Electrical engineering professor Richard White found the answer last summer when he met nine-month-old Gu-Gu at the Wolong Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in China’s Sichuan Province. For a small donation, visitors to the Center get to have a close encounter of the furry kind, and an adorable photo to prove it. “It was incredible; she was so fluffy and soft,” White says of his bamboo-nibbling chum. Give us a “C”
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 Alex Filippenko
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