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I guess we use different working definitions for the word "anything".

But OK, for CA then: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/sidewalks.aspx

Assuming the city of Berkeley isn't lying then (it's always suspicious when they don't give the darn reference for to the law in question of course): "State law has long held that property owners are fully responsible for keeping sidewalks in safe condition. However, to ensure that sidewalks provide safe passage for everyone, the City has been performing many needed repairs.".

The Adventure Playground in Berkeley, California lets kids run around with hammers, nails, paint, wood, and, in fact, saws, allowing them to build what they want with adequate but limited supervision. They even have a zip line.

"C. Th. SÃrensen, a Danish landscape architect, noticed that children preferred to play everywhere but in the playgrounds that he built. In 1931, he imagined "A junk playground in which children could create and shape, dream and imagine a reality." Why not give children in the city the same chances for play as those in the country? His initial ideas started the adventure playground movement.

The first adventure playground opened in Emdrup, Denmark in 1943, during World War II. In 1946, Lady Allen of Hurtwood visited Emdrup from England and was impressed with "junk playgrounds." She brought the idea to London. These "junk playgrounds" became known as "adventure playgrounds." "
http://adventureplaygrounds.hampshire.edu/history.html

"The Adventure Playground at the Berkeley Marina was opened 31 years ago in 1979. It is a wonderfully unique outdoor facility where staff encourage children to play and build creatively. Come climb on the many unusual kid designed and built forts, boats, and towers. Ride the zip line or hammer, saw, and paint. By providing these low risk activities Adventure Playground creates opportunities for children to learn cooperation, meet physical challenges and gain self confidence. Pictures of a fort building project. The concept for Adventure Playgrounds originated in Europe after World War II, where a playground designer studied children playing in the "normal" asphalt and cement playgrounds. He found that they preferred playing in dirt and lumber from the post war rubble. He realized that children had the most fun designing and building their own equipment and manipulating their environment. The formula for Adventure Playgrounds includes Earth, fire, water, and lots of creative materials."
http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/contentdisplay.aspx?id=8656

And here's a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtwb3lQ_c0

Here's a copy (PDF) of the form in question.

The RFP also demands that contractors pay all of their employees a decent living minimum wage ($12.20 with medical benefits, or $14.23 without), and that domestic parters of workers receive the same benefits as are available to workers' spouses. There's even a provision that paper reports to the city be printed double-sided on recycled paper.

The people of Berkeley are holding companies to higher ethical standards by the only means that are effective -- cash and contracts.

If you detonate a nuclear bomb in Berkeley, you could be fined up to $500 and go to jail for thirty whole days.

No, I am not kidding.

You misspelled Ann Arbor, MI. Not surprisingly, Cambridge, MA is first. In addition, I know a guy in Brookline (Chestnut Hill), MA who has four Nobel winners on his street.

According to this PDF, "In 2003, the City converted to 100% Biodiesel for its diesel vehicles. Berkeley it is the first city of its size in America to convert to 100% Biodiesel for virtually an entire fleet. B100 is in use in over 180 of the City's diesel vehicles representing 90 percent of its fleet of 200 diesel vehicles. (The remaining 10 percent of diesel vehicles are Fire Department vehicles that will be converted to 100% Biodiesel when accommodations are made for delivering Biodiesel to the more remote Fire Stations throughout the City"

Also, "The City is committed to reducing its negative impact on air quality through alternative fuel use in the city fleet including electric, CNG and biodiesel. In 2001, Berkeley received a TFCA grant and purchased four compressed natural gas (CNG) refuse trucks, and one bus for homeless transportation. The City also leases one electric vehicle for housing inspections. These new vehicles expand the City's alternatively fueled vehicle fleet which already includes 10 CNG vehicles, two electric pick up trucks, one electric sedan, 10 electric parking scooters, 2 electric utility carts and 9 fleet bicycles. The City provides an electric vehicle recharging station in Center Street Garage and preferential street parking for electric vehicles."

Plus, I saw a cop on a segway once.

Since 1988, Berkeley has an ordinance banning Styrofoam aka polystyrene foam.
As recently as June 2000 they restated that The City will continue to enforce its Styrofoam ban ordinance.
Go Berkeley!

SETI is quite different. It gets data from some misterious source, does some unknown analysis of it (in theory), draws pretty pictures, and sends processed data back. It could as well work on cracking encryption, and I bet nobody would notice.

Perhaps I am not nearly as concerned that Berkeley is actually a front organization for Ashcroft and the rest of the "right wing conspiracy".

But seriously, I consider the source. It is sponsored by a university known for protesting against every military action, located in a town that was one of the first to pass a resolution against the current war.

Also, SETI@home major users of the client include Sun, Ohio University, Intel and others, who have surely looked inside. If you go to SETI@home they explain in great detail what the program is doing.

Because Berkeley is so liberal and what I consider "anti-USA" I had considered NOT participating in SETI. In the end, I decided the science was more important than the politics.

Basically, I am saying that there is so much info out there, you would have to be paranoid to be worried that Berkeley is actually a front to have us decrypt stuff for the govt. I have done my homework (more than the moderator who modded this as a troll). I know what server it connects to, its not a mysterious source. (I have a firewall that only lets it connect on port 80 to one FQDN)

We may disagree on principal, which is fine. But don't be under any illusion that I have not done my homework. I trust seti because I feel I have good reason to trust them. More so than other distributed computing programs.

Oh, and Adobe Photoshop ALSO is for editing pictures. It tries to connect to mysterious servers all the time. Ask anyone who has it behind a firewall.