Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 11-18, 1999

Volume 28, Number 8

. . . In the News . . .

"The Internet is more important when you're abroad than when you're at home, because when you're at home, you can get the local paper or the local TV or the local radio."

-- Yale SOM student Jose Pablo Coello, "Far-Flung Sports Fans Get Home Advantage," The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, 1999.

"For me ... the story is secondary. The people are really the important element -- rendering a character complete with consciousness. You can base a character sometimes on overheard laughter, or a gesture that you see. Or a momentary glimpse of somebody, some type. You make a world emanate from those characteristics you've thrown together."

-- Adjunct professor of English and Rosencrantz Writer-in-Residence Robert Stone, "The Voices of Connecticut Writers," Connecticut Magazine, Oct. 1999.

"The West Nile virus outbreak has shocked New Yorkers with the realization that a single mosquito bite can be fatal. They may be even more shocked to know that such outbreaks are preventable."

-- School of Medicine professor Durland Fish, in his Op-Ed article "When a Disease Gets Wings," The New York Times, Sept. 28, 1999.

"By creating this whole cohort of millionaires, [Bill Gates has] also created a philanthropic community."

-- Senior research scholar Peter Hall, about Microsoft employees' donations to charity, "Tech Millionaires Follow Gates Idea," AP Online, Sept 30, 1999.

"It's not at all uncommon to have one parent want to know [the sex of their unborn child] and one not."

-- School of Medicine professor Dr. Joshua A. Copel, in a column titled "The Ethicist," The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 26, 1999.

"It's a very difficult business to juice the baseball up without it being obvious."

-- Physicist Robert K. Adair, "A Hard-Hitting Debate," The Hartford Courant, Sept. 25, 1999.

"The dilemma right now is over what people mean by Asperger's syndrome. We don't have enough data yet. It's likely that in the next 10 or 20 years, we'll discover a great many new syndromes that we don't understand well enough now."

-- Child psychologist Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, about a possible form of mild autism, "The Cutting Edge: Even If 'Geekness' is a Disorder, There's No Rush To Find a Cure," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 1999.

"The Cleveland Free-Net was absolutely one of the pioneering network applications. It certainly predated the Web. It indicated how a university could fulfill its public service mission in the modern age."

-- Information Technology Services director Dan Updegrove, "Early Virtual Community Calling It Quits," The Associated Press, Sept. 26, 1999.

"The star is rotating and the planet is whipping around it every few days. The magnetic field lines are being stretched and stretched. Sooner or later, they're going to break and reconnect, and emit these bursts of energy."

-- Astrophysicist Bradley Schaefer, describing "superflares," "Guiding Light," New Scientist, Sept. 25, 1999.

"Any large collection of people are going to have some deviant behavior. I don't see any unifying theme that makes me think there is something systemically wrong at the university."

-- School of Medicine professor Dr. Robert Levine, on ethics violations at the University of California at Irvine Medical School, "UCI's Spate of Scandals Alarms Some Observers; Experts Suggest An Encompassing Review of Policies and Procedures at the University's Medical School," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24, 1999.

"The U.N. would be delighted to serve U.S. interests if the U.S. would not deprive the U.N. of resources. We could get a lot of things done that we want done, if the U.S. didn't do things that stuck a finger in the U.N.'s eyes."

-- Visiting lecturer in political science and international affairs Charles Hill, "U.S Lag on U.N. Dues Irks Other Nations," The Boston Globe, Sept. 26, 1999.

"Some of us, at least, believe that five decades of development experience [in India] since the end of the second world war has shown that policies for poverty alleviation are not mysterious or new, but mundane, tried and tested. They are policies that bring about rapid and labour-intensive growth based on a better educated and healthier labour force, participatory democracy and fuller integration with the world economy."

-- Economist T.N. Srinivasan, in his Letter to the Editor, Financial Times, Sept. 28, 1999.

"Herceptin is one way that has been developed to interfere with HER-2 function but not necessarily the only way to be done, and it may not be the best way."

-- School of Medicine researcher David Stern, about a bioengineered antibody that prevents breast cancer, "Natural Protein Found to Block Cancer Gene," Omaha World-Herald, Sept. 29, 1999.

Bans [on guns in churches] create safe havens for attackers, not victims. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported on Aug. 13 that Buford O. Furrow Jr. scouted three Jewish centers before he happened upon the Jewish nursery school. Why didn't he attack the first three? They were guarded by people with guns."

-- Law School senior research scholar John R. Lott, Jr., in his Letter to the Editor, The Washington Times, Sept. 28, 1999.

"[Former Yale football star John Pagliaro] said, 'Can't you be my coach one more year?' He probably had more influence than any other one person on my decision."

-- Special assistant in the Athletic Department Carm Cozza, about a time he considered stepping down as the Bulldogs coach to be Yale's athletic director, "Former Yale Standout is Busy on Another Field," New Haven Register, Sept. 30, 1999.

"I think it is important to note that the availability of generic medicines means the difference for many patients between compliance and noncompliance, and between choosing between their health and other needs such as food and rent."

--School of Medicine professor Dr. Lawrence S. Cohen, in his Letter to the Editor, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 29, 1999.

"Because of the cultural vacuum in their earlier education and because of the informal but potent education they receive from the communications media, which both shape and reflect the larger society, today's liberal arts students come to college, it seems to me, bearing a relativism verging on nihilism, an individualism that is really isolation from the community. Each one resembles, as Aristotle puts it, a single checker apart from a game of checkers."

-- Historian Donald Kagan, in an excerpt from "Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 1, 1999.

"[Mixing too much uranium in a small vessel] made the density of the uranium so high that the neutrons didn't get absorbed by the other material around."

--Physicist Peter Parker, about the cause of Japan's recent nuclear accident, "A Flash, and an Uncontrolled Chain Reaction," The New York Times, Oct. 1, 1999.

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

The Yale Endowment reaches $7.2 billion

'Yale Nursing Matters' magazine debuts at YSN

Yale's Year 2000 Project is preparing campus for the new millennium

As population grows to 6 billion, Yale expert warns of future scarcity

Alumnus actor says of his craft, 'You have to be a sponge'

Yale completes self-study as part of reaccreditation process

Award-winning journalist Roger Simon to visit as Poynter Fellow

Scholar will offer 'personal response to philosophy' in Terry Lectures

Scientists unraveling building blocks of memory

Exhibit features 'treasures' from the Lewis Walpole Library

Symposium pays tribute to noted Brazilian writer Haroldo de Campos

Sneak previews now part of the cinematic fare at Yale Film Society

Seminars examine genocides by Nazis and Cambodians

Yale Concert Band's first show of the season features film scores

Historian is next speaker in book review series

. . . In the News . . .