Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 1-8, 1999

Volume 28, Number 11

. . . In the News . . .

"At five-and-a-half to six hours [of sleep], you're not at your best mentally. People are not aware of this. They feel fine. They don't struggle with decisions, but their performance declines."

-- Dr. Vahid Mohsenin, director of the Yale Center for Sleep Disorders, "Bedtime Story," New Haven Register, Oct. 21, 1999.

"Microbiology was viewed as a science of the past. We know now that was a serious mistake. Infectious agents have come back with a vengeance."

-- Dr. Jorge Galan, the Lucille P. Markey Professor of Microbiology, "Viral Diseases Catch U.S. With Guard Down," The Hartford Courant, Oct. 17, 1999.

"[S]ociety has never addressed this question: how do we ensure now that we provide youngsters an education that will make their race or their gender or their class unimportant?"

-- Professor Emeritus of Psychology Edmund Gordon, "Committee Hopes to Narrow Gap Between Black, White Test Scores," The Associated Press, Oct. 20, 1999.

"The message here is that the whole nonproliferation regime of the last 40 years is unraveling in the late 1990s, and one treaty is not going to reverse that trend."

-- Political scientist Paul Bracken, "Test-Ban Vote Delay Won't Kill U.S. Arms Control," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 13, 1999.

"At the same moment that Clinton is talking about [the dangers of] isolation, American foreign investment is off the charts [and] American economic engagement around the world is breaking all records. In some subtle way this has ricocheted back to Washington, and perhaps there are a lot of people who feel that you can reject an arms control treaty and still not be withdrawing from the world."

-- School of Management Dean Jeffrey E. Garten, "The Real Power Struggle Isn't Just About Nukes," The New York Times,
Oct. 17, 1999.

"It's like the early days of Lyme disease."

-- Rheumatologist Dr. Jacob IJdo, about the discovery of the disease ehrlichiosis, "Test Zooms In on Tick-Borne Ailment," The New York Times, Oct. 19, 1999.

"[Dr. Harold E. Varmus] really led NIH into a golden era. He set NIH on a course for decades to come as a national gem and it would take a lot to reverse that."

-- Yale School of Medicine Dean David Kessler, "Health Institutes Chief Quits to Run N.Y. Cancer Center," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8, 1999.

"The central issue is the quality of human life. How would the world do in a different climate, if rainfall, sea level, and weather change? How far is it going to go?"

-- School of Forestry & Environmental Studies lecturer Frederick A.B. Meyerson, "6 Billion and Counting: Global Birth Rate Creating Worries," New Haven Register, Oct. 10, 1999.

"That's kind of a marketing ploy. People want to be good parents, so they save the umbilical cord blood. This idea of saving your baby's stem cells is sort of a for-profit thing. The idea of keeping it in case the baby needs it is kind of a waste of money. I'm not sure how good insurance it is."

-- School of Medicine professor Dr. Dennis Cooper, "Umbilical Cord Blood Seen By Some As Potential Life Saver," The Associated Press, Oct. 14, 1999.

"Many troubled with Asperger's are really quite bright, especially in terms of their verbal skills. ... What is harder for people to appreciate is how impaired they are in other areas."

-- Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Fred Volkmar, about a syndrome characterized by poor social skills, "Asperger's Syndrome and Why It's Hard to Diagnose," CBS News, Oct. 18, 1999.

"In principle, indexing capital gains is the right thing to do. In reality, however, it's so complicated that doing it would be wrong."

-- School of Law professor Michael Graetz, "Tax Report: A Special Summary and Forecast of Federal and State Tax Developments," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 13, 1999.

"The current reform effort will never succeed, but there is one that can be made to work: Give every registered voter a $50 voucher that he or she can only spend to support candidates or political organizations in federal elections. Rather than struggling in vain to suppress the flow of private money, drown out the threat of private influence with a huge injection of citizen-dollars into the political process."

-- Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Bruce Ackerman, from his commentary "How $50 Can Beat Big Money," Los Angeles Times, Oct. 18, 1999.

[T]here is a correlation between climate and CO2 (carbon dioxide). ... You can only put so much carbon on the land, or in the ocean. You have to be balanced ... in inputs and outputs."

-- Geology and geophysics professor Robert A. Berner, "Visiting Expert Says Man Contributing to Hotter Earth," The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), Oct. 18, 1999.

"There were criticisms that there was a kind of moving target, there's a roving mandate [in Kenneth Starr's investigation of Clinton]. I think the real problem is the statute. The statute basically tells Ken Starr, 'You are in the business of investigating Bill Clinton.' This is basically a flawed system when you create special prosecutors who basically are given first their target and then told, 'Here's the man, find his crime.'"

-- Law School professor Akhil Amar, "Five-Year Tenure of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr Comes to an End," National Public Radio," Oct. 19, 1999.

"Bronze would be better than gold, and fewer signs would be better than more. None would be better still. The building speaks for itself. Sometimes it's nice to hide your light under a bushel a little--but that's not Donald."

-- School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern, about four-foot-high T-R-U-M-P signs on the General Motors building in New York, "Towering Case of Trump Writ Large," The New York Times, Oct. 18, 1999.

"[High-tech firms] are trying to explore and exploit the social change possibilities of technology ... Their proclivity is to abandon the model of corporate foundations."

--Divinity School research scholar Peter Dobkin Hall, "Charity Begins Online; New Sites Ease Consumers' Research Into Philanthropies," The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 1999.

"History works like that: Our view of the past is so much clearer than our vision of the future that we tend to forget that the past once had a future, and that it was just as opaque to those who lived through it as our own future is for us today."

-- Historian John Lewis Gaddis, from his article "Face-Off: East-West Tension Defined the Cold War, But Its Legacy is the Victory of Hope Over Fear," U.S. News and World Report, Oct, 18, 1999.

"[On January 1, 2000] I will probably be glued to the TV -- if it's running -- and trying to judge how far off I was in my estimation [of countless system failures]. I'm still intrigued to the idea that it's a test of my social theories about our society. Are we a hard-wired grid or a loosely coupled web that allows resilient opportunities for recovery?"

-- Sociologist Charles Perrow, "For a Scholar of 'Normal Accidents,' Risky Activities Bring Danger and Data," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 15, 1999.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Yale gets $10 million to study smoking

Scientists offer their views on art in series

Divinity School honors washerwoman's legacy

'Hear Us' recalls influential words of six women

Yale President to be cited for community leadership

Study shows long-lasting effects of low-dose amphetamine use has long-lasting

Noted sports-world entrepreneur to visit as Gordon Grand Fellow

Support grant helps safeguard the Peabody's marine collection

Would-be advocates get lesson in fine art of lobbying

Robert Penn Warren Lecture to examine poet's observations about illness

Bridgeport school is now a showcase for Yale ideas

DMCA series will focus on high-tech projects in the arts

. . . In the News . . .

Campus Notes

Banding Together: A Photo Essay