Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 8-15, 1999

Volume 28, Number 12

. . . In the News . . .

"Merit is greatness cut down to size. Beauty and courage are heroic feats, and fashionable ancestors are luck; but anyone can achieve merit. The substitution of merit for approved bloodlines in awarding prizes and building institutions was one of this nation's most humane, democratic accomplishments. It is now unraveling."

-- Computer science professor David Gelernter, "What the Deserving Deserve and Whether They Get It," The New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999.

"We joke that business isn't war and it isn't peace -- it's war and peace, or marriage."

--Yale School of Management professor Barry J. Nalebuff, "Special Report: Partners," Business Week, Oct. 25, 1999.

"That can be a pain if you retrieve 500 files and all of them are numbered."

--Computer specialist H. Morrow Long, on how some computer softwares rename the deleted files they recover, "Lost and Found," New Haven Register, Oct. 28, 1999.

"I think this is roughly the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with Bradley being more adventurous and Gore trying to make a mountain out of a molehill."

--Yale School of Management professor Ted Marmor, on the candidates' stances on health care, "Largely Similar Democrats May Use Meeting to Cite Differences," Washington Post, Oct. 27, 1999.

"These data suggest that this approach may lead to the development of a new therapy for spinal cord injury patients."

--School of Medicine professor Dr. Jeffrey D. Kocsis, "Pig Cells May Heal Brain and Spinal Cord," New Haven Register, Oct. 26, 1999.

"A person's ability to control eating varies over time and you cannot attribute that to biology. There's a collective public loss of willpower because of this terrible food environment. ... One needs much more than willpower now more than ever just to stay even."

--Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders director Dr. Kelly Brownell, "Beyond Brushstrokes; Willpower a Myth in Dieting," Business World, Oct. 25, 1999.

"That's what really turns decision-makers on."

--Psychologist Edward Zigler, of studies showing early childhood intervention programs reduce the level of taxpayers' dollars spent on crime, "Study: Early Care Helps Adult Life," AP Online, Oct. 21, 1999.

"It's as if you took the dendritic tree and just stripped away all the branches."

--School of Medicine professor Dr. Robert Kalb, about the changes in the brains of young rats that had been in orbit, "And This Is Your Brain Without Gravity; Biologists Raise Caution About Colonies in Space," The San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 25, 1999.

"Take the heat-loving archaebacteria. They evolved 3.5 billion years ago, when life was just beginning and the Earth was very hot. Today, they live in water at boiling point in places like Yellowstone Park, and the essential features of their habitat are still the same."

--Paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba, "The Creatures Time Forgot," New Scientist, Oct. 23, 1999.

"We have looked systematically over four full years, and we have not had a documented case of genetic discrimination. In fact we have had many patients, particularly cancer patients, who've decided to use their insurance companies, and the insurance companies have been surprisingly good about paying for testing, increased surveillance, and prophylactic surgery."

--Genetic counselor Ellen Matloff, "Experts Say Fears About Biased Use of Genetic Testing are Exaggerated; There Are No Documented Cases of Health Insurance Discrimination, Termination," St. Louis Post-
Dispatch and elsewhere, Oct. 25, 1999.

"A lot of women's knowledge of well-being is yet to be tapped, analyzed and understood. ...Women's health is not just going to the o-b-g-y-n."

--School of Nursing professor Ann Cowlin, "Health Issues Next Women's Frontier," Connecticut Post, Oct. 23, 1999.

"If you think about it, most scientific problems are either inherently visual or inherently mathematical, and the words are a human code, a layer of abstraction away from the underlying mathematical or visual phenomenon. It's hard to imagine how you could reason about anything of any complexity that's physical without involving vision."

--School of Art professor emeritus Edward Tufte, "When the Image Is the Idea," The New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999.

"Women are not little men. That results in a real disparity in care. Women don't receive some treatments they should."

--University Health Services director Dr. Paul Genecin, "Conference at Yale Aims to Get Women into More Medical Studies," New Haven Register, Oct. 23, 1999.

"This is not Heidi-comes-to-Aspen."

--School of Architecture dean Robert A.M. Stern, of the Ritz-Carlton resort he designed, "Buying into Time Shares," USA Today, Oct. 22, 1999.

"There have been no adequately effective treatments for cocaine addiction because we know very little about changes in the brain that are responsible for addiction. Our new findings help us understand addiction, so that eventually we can better treat it."

--Psychiatry and neurobiology professor Dr. Eric Nestler, "Health Care: Bad News for Dub-Yah," Business New Haven, Oct. 4, 1999.

"Over the last decade, we've had a renaissance of technology and prosperity in America driven in large part by patented inventions. At the same time, there's a concern we may have gone too far and taken too many steps to protect inventors."

--President Richard Levin, "Patent Stampede: As Firms Try to Lock Down New Technologies, Critics Say the Process Has Become Too Lax," The San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 18, 1999.

"Stocks are risky; they're very risky, certainly in the short run. Some of that risk has mitigated over the longer run. But they're risky. And I think we're going to find out they're risky when we see a down market. We just haven't seen one in a while."

--Yale School of Management professor Roger Ibbotson, "Stock Predictions Five Years Out," CNNFN's "Street Sweep," Oct. 21, 1999.

"The whole arms control system that was designed for the cold war, which worked very well, is falling apart."

--Yale School of Management professor Paul Bracken, "New Rules for the Nuclear Age," The Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 19, 1999.

"I don't know about the past, but coach [James] Jones has everybody, who is wearing a Yale jersey, a believer right now."

--Yale basketball player Onaje Woodbine, "Yale Plans to Have Guards Up," New Haven Register, Oct. 26, 1999.

"Almost no right known to the Constitution is absolute and unlimited -- not even the rights of free speech and religious exercise. Thus, it has been a terrible mistake for both sides in the gun control controversy to insist that the Second Amendment bans virtually everything or virtually nothing."

--Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar, from an op-ed piece he co-authored with Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe, "Well-Regulated Militias, and More," The New York Times, Oct. 28, 1999.

"[P]art of an artistic director's job that I know to be very interesting to me ... is the matchmaking part of it: finding the play and asking a director to take a harder look or to look where she hasn't looked before -- to put both of those elements in a beaker and swish them around and see what you get."

--Yale Repertory Theatre artistic director Stan Wojewodski Jr., "Faith and Faithlessness: Unlocking the Secrets of a Play that Goes Backwards in Time," New Haven Register, Oct. 24, 1999.

"It's not a real predictor but it's the next best thing."

--Campus police chief James Perrotti, of the Mosaic-2000 software that evaluates the potential for violence of individuals who make threats, "Computer Project Seeks to Avert Youth Violence," The New York Times, Oct. 24, 1999.

"While we have tried to avoid getting in a public debate about the merits of affirmative action, implicitly, what we are talking about is instead of special privileges in the assignment of rewards; let's assume a special responsibility for the development of resources present in this population."

--Professor emeritus of psychology Edmund W. Gordon, "Raise Demands on Minority Students, Task Force Urges," Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 17, 1999.

"We should work with the [brain] cells we have. That's where our long-term memories are stored. We should work to preserve the cells we have."

--Neurobiologist Dr. Pasko Rakic, "Scientists Find On-Off Switch in Brain Cells; Yale Research May Help Explain Effects of Aging," The Hartford Courant, Oct. 22, 1999.

"We [at the Yale School of Management] are not just training people to run companies, but to handle some of society's most important and complex tasks."

--Yale School of Management dean Jeffrey Garten, "Schools in No Hurry to Plug the Ethics Gap," Financial Times (London), Oct. 18, 1999.

"Greater numbers of these students [in Yale's Science, Technology and Research Scholars program] are continuing as science majors than would have in the past, and their grades are better."

--Yale College associate dean Judith Hackman, "Science Career Path Eased by Yale's STARS Program," The Hartford Courant, Oct. 25, 1999.

"Once these partnerships touch on price, you have an added concern."

--Yale School of Management professor Ira M. Millstein, of joint marketing ventures, "When Is Cozy Too Cozy?", Business Week, Oct. 25, 1999.

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

Levin cited for community leadership

Study reveals benefits of new prostate cancer therapy

Grant to fund national test of new teaching method

Expert on care of minority elders receives nursing field's top honor

Alumni Whiffenpoofs will reunite for 90th musical 'spree'

Perspectives on Richard Levin

Psychologist Kazdin proposes new way to assess the effectiveness of therapies for youngsters

Scientists' find vastly enhances computer memory

Library gets grant to preserve rare films from Yale's past

Yale Art Gallery exhibit traces key themes in American art and design across four centuries

Museum joins U.S.-French consortium

Marks is new director of Pierson Lab

Karl M.Waage, renowned for his geological discoveries, dies

Yale scientists to speak at NAS symposium on campus

Symposium on global climate change marks anniversary of landmark report

Reading to feature letters of Revolutionary War partners

U.S. national identity will be topic of talk by noted writer

Wrap up your holiday shopping at one-day event

And the winners are...

Chinese delegates

. . . In the News . . .

Campus Notes