Silicon Valley One World – Page 5 – Demographics, Culture & Life

Using World’s Art to Craft Silicon Valley Community

12Nov

By EditorNo Comments

Culture, Demographics

Using World’s Art to Craft Silicon Valley Community

By Sharon Simonson A Mountain View community school is embracing art and artists from around the globe to appeal to Silicon Valley’s increasingly foreign-born population and diversity of cultures. Vickie Scott Grove, executive director of the Mountain View Community School of Music and Arts, said the school, which serves 22,000 children and adults annually, wants to expand its reach. ArtWorlds, the new three-event series, is conceived to offer more than a gallery experience, adding elements such as an artist’s lecture, food, wine and dance for an event to appeal to a broader range of senses and people. “Silicon Valley is so unique culturally. There is no other place like it in the United States with the tremendous influx from the workforce around the world,” Grove said. “We ha...

Judge Fines Apple, Cisco, eBay Contractors for H-1B Cheating

11Nov

By EditorNo Comments

Demographics, The Web

Judge Fines Apple, Cisco, eBay Contractors for H-1B Cheating

Federal judge says Scopus Consulting Group and Orian Engineers abused the H-1B worker-visa program by underpaying foreign workers, depressing regional wages and unfairly undercutting competitors By Sharon Simonson Chief Administrative Law Judge Stephen R. Henley ordered two businesses owned by Kishore Kumar to pay 21 workers $84,000 in back wages and $103,000 in fines to the federal government after investigators for the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour division found both companies failed to follow federal foreign-worker visa rules. Both worker-placement companies provided workers to Cupertino-based Apple Inc., and San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc. and eBay Inc., according to the government. "Some of the country's most cutting-edge, successful organizations benefit from underp...

African-American Entrepreneurs Drive Black Global Unity

7Nov

By EditorNo Comments

Culture, Demographics

African-American Entrepreneurs Drive Black Global Unity

By Sharon Simonson MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — When you set out to change the world—or just to start a new business—it helps to have “some audacity about you,” Fiifi Deku advises. It’s true, agreed Nneka Uzoh and Uzo Amaka. “You have to have passion,” Uzoh explains, “because you are going to hear, ‘No,’ more times.” “One thing I say to myself often: it’s another human being who told me no. Unless it is impossible, I think that I can do it,” Amaka counsels. The trio, entrepreneurs with one foot in the United States and the other in Africa, dispense their hard-earned wisdom at the first annual Innovate Africa Forum. The event at the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View is a new addition to the six-year-old Silicon Valley African Film Festival, founded by the day's ...

4Nov

By EditorNo Comments

Demographics, The Web

Census Bureau: English Not Required

More than half of the San Jose metro doesn't speak English at home; 370,000 residents aged 5 and older don't speak English By Sharon Simonson More than 2.5 million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area speak a language other than English at home, a vastly greater proportion of the region’s 5.9 million residents than in the nation at large, according to new U.S. Census Bureau research. More than a million Bay Area residents also say they don’t speak English very well. The data, which encompasses the U.S. population age 5 and older, is among the most comprehensive the Census Bureau has ever published on languages spoken in the United States. The research found that 60.4 million U.S. residents, or 21 percent of the 291 million people age 5 and older, speak one of at least 350 langu...

28Oct

By EditorNo Comments

Demographics, Events

Deconstructing Dia de los Muertos

Lara Medina, an expert on Chicano and indigenous American religious practices and spirituality, explains the history of Mesoamerica’s Dia de los Muertos and talks about living the nepantla life and the creativity that blurry boundaries produce. By Sharon Simonson Don’t call Dia de los Muertos the Mexican Halloween, begs Lara Medina. The 62-year-old autora y professora of Chicano and Chicana religious history at California State University, Northridge, has watched and studied the holiday and its U.S. incarnation since the early 1970s when visiting Mexican artists traveling in Los Angeles and San Francisco staged small-scale celebrations as a solace to the deaths of the Vietnam War. What began as a sacred pre-Colombian familial observance by Mesoamericans has evolved into its c...

Judge Grants Hao Zhang Additional Freedoms with Prosecutors’ Consent

26Oct

By EditorNo Comments

Demographics

Judge Grants Hao Zhang Additional Freedoms with Prosecutors’ Consent

By Sharon Simonson A federal magistrate judge has agreed to allow Chinese Professor Hao Zhang the right to leave his Mountain View apartment from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily to permit him to buy food and complete other household errands and chores. Zhang’s wife, Fan Liping, a Chinese citizen, has been with him since his May 16 arrest at the Los Angeles International Airport and has lived with him in Mountain View since he was released from federal custody July 29. Now she must return to China no later than Nov. 15 by the terms of her temporary U.S.-visitor visa. It is the second time Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins has agreed to loosen the conditions of Zhang’s house arrest. The judge previously gave permission for Zhang to leave his apartment and to use amenities on the cam...

Bay Area Professors’ Latin American Cookbook Tops Amazon Sales

24Oct

By Editor2 Comments

Culture, Demographics

Bay Area Professors’ Latin American Cookbook Tops Amazon Sales

Luz Calvo, Catriona Rueda Esquibel to readers: '(R)esist the acculturation that tells us white bread is food.' By Sharon Simonson A cookbook written by two San Francisco Bay Area academics that presents food and health as instruments of social change has climbed to Amazon’s top slot as the best-selling new Latin American food cookbook. “Decolonize Your Diet” by Cal State East Bay Associate Professor Luz Calvo and San Francisco State University Associate Professor Catriona Rueda Esquibel counsels Mexican-Americans to return to the foods and preparations favored by the Americas indigenous peoples before the Spanish conquest, more particularly to their consumption of native legumes, fruits, herbs and vegetables. The book was published Oct. 13. The change in diet is part of disga...

Hatching Future Hipsters: Millennials A Tough Act to Follow

20Oct

By EditorNo Comments

Demographics

Hatching Future Hipsters: Millennials A Tough Act to Follow

U.S. metros vie for a smaller youth population; will millennials ever marry and have kids? The post-millennial generation — the nation's youngest — is smaller than its predecessor, leaving most of the nation's large metros with a shrinking population under age 20. The Bay Area's youngest cohort is growing but not fast. By Sharon Simonson The post-millennial generation is less numerous than the millennials. Even with immigration, in coming years, U.S. metropolitan areas will share a smaller youth-pie, according to research by demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institute: "There are places that will have growth in younger populations, but they will be not the norm," Frey said. Fifty-nine of the country's100 largest metropolitan areas saw a shrinking number of children fr...