“They say times have changed, and they have,” a well-dressed plump woman in her fifties told me. “But some things are still the same.” I listened attentively as I pushed the cart out to her car, and she continued talking with ease, perhaps because she was a regular customer of mine. She explained that she was shopping in produce and thought the cherries looked a bit old, so she asked Vinny, who was working nearby, if there were any newer ones in the back. He said no, but a short time later a second customer asked him the same question, and he said yes, and dutifully went to the back to retrieve them. The second customer was white. Vinny was white. My customer was black. Curious after her explanation, I asked Vinny what the deal was. Very thin and not exactly attractive, Vinny adjusted his glasses 20 years out of style. “I know, she said something to me. I thought we had no cherries in the back when she asked. Then next time I was back there, I see that we did have more. What am I supposed to do, lie to the next customer because she happened to be white?”

Arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport and armed with the motivation of contributing to Senator Obama’s campaign as a “springtern” – a colloquialism for a spring internship – little did I know what to expect. But experience I did, and it was uncompromising, rewarding and ultimately, eye-opening. Philadelphia is a city that is distinctly heterogeneous. Buildings appear segmented, even aloof, from each other. On the one hand, the neoclassical architecture harks as a reminder of the past, intent on maintaining the memories of patriots pursuing independence. Meanwhile, symbols of the capitalist advance – the leaden, towering skyscrapers – juxtapose these cultural ancients. Coexisting, they both brim and bore, at times seemingly conflicting between a steely desire for progress and a poignant nostalgia to preserve.

LIVE MUSIC Internal Conflict, Plead the Fifth, Knuckle Puck, Wipeout Friday, 7 p.m. Turtle House I always enjoy a good movie reference, especially from a childhood classic like D2: Mighty Ducks. What’s more enjoyable about Vacaville’s Knuckle Puck is that they belong to the dying breed of two-step, thrashy hardcore like the Bay Area greats Ceremony and Sabertooth Zombie or the classics, Infest and Minor Threat. Keep shredding, brothers. Whole Earth Benefit Dance Party Friday, 8 p.m., $3-5 Delta of Venus Help WEF build up some funds for the festival you all know and love by coming out for a night of electronica and more. Here’s the breakdown of genres by DJ: Tao will cover the dubstep, drum ‘n bass; Kelly D will spin the electro, breaks and tech-house; N’Demik has a change of pace with psychedelic and progressive and Ian Lesperance brings the funk. Half-handed Cloud, LAKE, G2 Friday, 7 p.m. Scrambled Eggs House Berkeley’s interesting soloist John Ringhofer will be entertaining Scrambled Eggers with both song and side notes tomorrow evening. The Asthmatic Kitty Records artist sounds pretty odd, he works part time and is a doodling addict. Hopefully he will share some of these stories at the show. Aftershocker, Shayna and the Bulldog Friday, 10 p.m., $3-5, 21 The G St. Pub It’s locals’ night for this G Street Concert, matching two very different acts. Aftershocker’s (you guessed it) hair rock meets Shayna’s charismatic pop rock, which has taken a surfy side on their Basement Love Explosion EP, due out next week and can be picked up at their Burgers ‘n Brew release party Apr. 18. Preview the EP Friday night! Apple Pie Hopes, Katie Delwiche, Pete Bernhard, Connecticut Saturday, 7 p.m., $5 Delta of Venus Apple Pie Hopes… you’ll eat it? That’s my best guess about this happy-go-lucky Americana band from Oakland. If the idea of a pirate anthem scares you, then the opening acts are the ones you’d like to see, such as the pleasant townies Katie D and Pete Bernhard (fans of Willy Mason or M. Ward will dig him!). They’re likely to slow down the evening with bluesy-folksy-perfection.

Today “Determining the Mechanism of Transmission of Xyellla fastidiosa by Sharpshooters” Elaine Backus 122 Briggs, noon to 1 p.m. Sponsored by the entomology department “Cling Peach Mechanization – Chapter 2: Thinning, and the Rest of the Story” Kitren Glozer 3001 Plant and Environmental Sciences, 12:10 to 1 p.m. Sponsored by the plant sciences department

You hit your snooze button for the third time and suddenly realize you have 10 minutes before your next class starts. You clamber out of bed, jumping around and stabbing a leg through each pant leg while attempting to read the blurry lines of numbers on the bus schedule. As you try to figure out which bus you could catch, you take a chance and hope the bus that arrives in less than a minute will be late. This game of chance could soon become a distant memory, as Global Positioning System mass transit tracking systems are beginning to be launched through the country’s university campuses.

The Community Outreach Club is sponsoring a quarter-long campaign to raise awareness about the Solar Electric Light Fund, a non-profit organization that brings solar power to underdeveloped nations. The community service based club became inspired to work with SELF after learning that over 2 billion people in the world are living without electricity. SELF’s mission is to bring solar power and modern communications to developing worlds, said King Tong, president of the Community Outreach Club.

Leading physicists say “God particle” soon to be found Forty years ago, British physicist Peter Higgs argued that there was a force that gave mass to the universe, enabling life to exist. From this invisible force, named the Higgs field, comes a particle called the Higgs boson. Now, as a particle accelerator in Geneva is nearly ready to begin functioning in May, Higgs says he is 90 percent sure that the particle will be found.

Something I’ve come to realize about UC Davis, the public school system and perhaps the whole of American intellectualism is just how much emphasis there is on reason, so much so that I believe that there is an over-emphasis on it. A quick word of caution to all you rationalists out there – stop for a second, take a few breaths into a little brown paper bag and read the rest of this before you decide to somehow reason me into a small poof-cloud of nonexistence. In order for any claim or argument to be accepted by our community, it must first be logically proven or at least sound enough to provide a working foundation to build upon with further claims to knowledge. In many cases, this is rightly so because it’s not wise to take anyone’s word on just anything. In the process of learning, being scrupulous is fundamental. However, I wish to distinguish between learning and discovery.

Employment opportunities are shrinking, food and gas prices are rising, houses are being foreclosed and banks have stopped their liberal lending policies. Does this mean our economy is in a recession, that daunting word that strikes fear in the hearts of the government and consumers alike? Not necessarily. Does the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States, have a plan to help stimulate the economy beyond a temporary fix? Only time will tell, say economists. First of all, it must be noted that recession has a complicated definition, and can only be officially announced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, said Kevin Salyer, professor of economics at UC Davis, in an e-mail interview. “A rule of thumb definition is two quarters (6 months) of negative GDP growth,” Salyer said. “We are not technically in a recession yet (but some economists believe we are … and today’s jobs data suggests that they might be correct).”

Senate Bill 1168, known as “Michelle’s Law,” was passed last week by the Senate Health Committee without opposition. Authored by state Senator George Runner (R-Antelope Valley), the bill will allow dependent college students to continue receiving health insurance for up to one year due to serious illness or injury. Michelle’s Law is named after Michelle Morse, a New Hampshire college student who contracted colon cancer. The doctor’s request that Michelle cut back her course load raised a dilemma: losing full-time student status meant she would need to pay monthly continuation premiums of approximately $550 to keep her policy in effect.

There’s this picture that sometimes rotates as my desktop background – the shadows of four girls splayed against a nondescript sidewalk somewhere in residential Willow Glen. I’m the one in braids and a skirt raising my hands like claws; my best friend is the hooded figure (this was during her Little Red Riding Hood phase). I guess everyone has a picture like this – one where the faces are not visible, but the memories are. I keep it there because it’s one of the few pictures I have of my friend Krystine where she’s not covering her face (probably because you can’t actually see her face). I keep it because the four of us used to call ourselves Los Banditos and roam the quiet residential streets in bandit masks and plaid skirts. And perhaps there’s some part of me that likes it because there’s a lack of clarity there – the blurred outlines of our 16-year-old knees and elbows serving as the only markers to a specific memory.

Despite average precipitation this year, Californians might be experiencing a water shortage. As snow melts in the Sierra Nevadas this spring, that water collects in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, which traverse the state to the San Francisco Bay. Pumps at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta supplies water to the California Aqueduct, which provides water to agricultural fields in the Central Valley and large parts of Southern California. However, the pumping stations have been limited this year by a court order, the result of a legal case brought against the federal government by the Natural Resources Defense Council. In December of last year, a judge in Fresno ordered restrictions placed on pumping in 2008 to protect the delta smelt.