X
-- Robert Farris Thompson, the Col. John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art, "Vibrant Voices
of African Art; Exhibit at Atheneum Is Symbolic
Link to 1936 Show Brought by Chick Austin,"
Hartford Courant, Feb. 13, 2005.
§
"[N]ot every architect is a genius, and not every building can or should be explosive."
-- Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the School
of Architecture, "Out & About,"
The New York Sun, Feb.10, 2005.
§
"The caliphs [who once ruled in Iran] never had absolute authority. It was limited government, government according to the rule of law. I'm not saying that medieval Islam was a modern democracy, any more than medieval England was. What I am saying is that the historical roots are there for modern Muslims who want to draw on a historical narrative. In the Islamic world it won't do for people to say that democracy is Greek or Roman. They need to identify origins for democratic practice that resonate with their own communities. And there is ample material for that in Islamic tradition."
-- Noah Feldman, visiting professor of law, "Witness: The Mother of All Elections," Prospect, Feb. 2005.
G
"Children in orphanages, children in homes for the mentally retarded. I mean, these are all "good populations" from the sense of medical research because you have an easily accessible group of people living in controlled circumstances, and you can monitor them. ... One of the ways that medical directors of such institutions sort of connected themselves to the world of medical research was simply to provide their patients as commodities. [Y]ou know, 'We can provide this many guinea pigs for you.'"
-- Susan E. Lederer, associate professor of the history of medicine, of African American studies and of history, criticizing the long history of using disabled individuals in experiments, "Searching for Mark; Painful Experiments Performed on Physically and Mentally Disabled Children," "60 Minutes," Feb. 9, 2005.
§
"The thing that makes [wider testing for HIV] so imperative is that there are 900,000 people infected with HIV in this country, and 280,000 don't know it. They're unable to get access to lifesaving therapy, and we are unable to counsel them to prevent transmission of this disease. That's a huge failure of the public-health process."
-- Dr. A. David Paltiel, associate professor of public health and managerial sciences, "Routine HIV Screening Cost-Effective, Studies Say Price Is About $40,000 for Year of Quality Life," USA Today, Feb. 10, 2005.
§
"No one is born evil. Rather, heinous, sadistic acts tend to be perpetrated by people who act on feelings and fantasies that the rest of us are able to control. The behavior results from the interaction of neurobiological vulnerabilities (a predisposition to severe mental illness, for example), early and continuing severe physical or sexual abuse, and environmental factors."
-- Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, clinical professor of psychiatry, in her letter to the editor, "Disturbed, or Just Plain Evil?" The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2005.
§
"Class-action litigation has proven a problem in this country because of the conflation of three separate changes in our civil-justice system: the adoption of very loose procedural requirements for class certification; the acceptance of vastly more lenient substantive standards for allowing claims to reach juries; and the expansion of liability standards since the mid-1970s based on vague and unproven ideas about how liability judgments can improve societal welfare."
-- George L. Priest, the John M. Olin Professor of Law and Economics, hailing the passage of legislation that would shift some class-action lawsuits from state to federal courts in his article, "Tackling Tort Reform," National Review, Feb. 11, 2005.
§
"One of Hitler's motives for the construction of Auschwitz was to destroy the Jews directly, but other genocide perpetrators have pursued different goals -- communism (Stalin and Pol Pot), conquest (Indonesia in East Timor), 'ethnic cleansing' (in Bosnia and Darfur) -- which resulted in more indirect cases. If those perpetrators did not set out to commit genocide, it was a predictable result of their actions."
-- Ben Kiernan, the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, in his article "Letting Sudan Get Away with Murder," The Korea Herald, Feb. 11, 2005.
§
"This consensus [to reduce greenhouse gas emissions] exists because the evidence of global warming is abundant. An ice sheet the size of Rhode Island has broken off in Antarctica; fresh water is pouring into the North Atlantic so fast that some scientists fear the Gulf Stream could eventually be disrupted. Scientists estimate that 25 percent of plant and animal species could disappear over the course of this century. In the United States, however, efforts to take global warming seriously remain paralyzed as the Bush administration sits on its hands."
-- James Gustave Speth, dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and professor in the practice of sustainable development, and Daniel L. Sosland, in their article "States Lead the Way in Fighting Global Warming," The Hartford Courant, Feb. 11, 2005.
§
"Academic freedom is not the freedom to be incompetent. If one is incompetent, then one goes beyond the boundaries of academic freedom."
-- Robert Post, the David Boies Professor of Law, "Threat of Dismissal for Colorado Professor Whose Controversial Comments Lead Many To Wonder if Universities Are Still a Haven for Academic Freedom," "Morning Edition," National Public Radio, Feb. 10, 2005.
§
"The bulk of the universe -- 99 percent -- is dark matter. This stuff doesn't interact with (regular) matter, but it has mass and so has gravity. Every galaxy has a dark matter halo. Only 10 percent of the mass of a galaxy is visible."
-- Priyamvada Natarajan, assistant professor of astronomy and physics, "Yale Researchers Prove Cold Dark Matter Exists," New Haven Register, Feb. 13, 2005.
§
"Chinese officials often think of their country as a poor developing nation that needs a huge amount of time to integrate itself into the global financial system. The Middle Kingdom's per-capita income may be tiny, but by virtue of size, indigenous entrepreneurship, and smart policymaking, the country has forced a massive change in the global industrial structure in less than a decade."
-- Jeffrey E. Garten, dean of the School of Management, in his article, "Dealing with the Declining Dollar," The Jakarta Post, Feb. 14, 2005.
§
"I think we're going to look back and say what we're seeing in the Republican Party today is a different kind of party -- something completely new."
-- Stephen Skowronek, the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science, on the GOP's tight regimentation of its constituencies, "Democrats Seek to Outmaneuver Republicans by Imitating Their Strategy," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 14, 2005.
§
"Improved patient safety efforts would thrive in a nonadversarial climate that promotes disclosure of errors. If we couple this approach with a cost-effective and impartial medical court system [for malpractice suits], fair compensation can be provided to those injured and eliminate the legal-lottery mentality."
-- Dr. Robert D. Auerbach, lecturer in obstetrics and gynecology, and Dr. Charles J. Lockwood, the Anita O'Keefe Young Professor, in their letter to the editor "Data Ignored in Column on Malpractice," New Haven Register, Feb. 11, 2005.
§
"What Social Security does right now though is it pools the contributions of many workers and protects those who through no fault of their own end up needing more income. For example, about a third of Social Security benefits go to the disabled and to survivors of deceased people covered by Social Security. In addition, Social Security offers insurance if the market goes south and your own investments dry up, if you end up having low lifetime earnings so you're not able to save adequately for retirement, if you end up living a long time after retirement, if there's high inflation that erodes your assets. All of those things are protected against with the current social insurance structure, Social Security, and all of them would be seriously jeopardized by the president's proposal. So what's really being talked about here is not ownership per se. It's really shifting risk away from government, risk that in many cases cannot be adequately borne by individuals on to workers and their families.
-- Jacob Hacker, the Peter Strauss Family Assistant Professor of Political Science, "Social Security," "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," CPTV, Feb. 16, 2005.
§
"Sweet is a cue for calories. Bitter is a cue for poison."
-- Dr. Linda Bartoshuk, professor of surgery and of psychology, on why human brains are hard-wired to prefer sweets, "Studies May Help Kids Clean Their Plates; Research Suggests Finicky Eating Is a Taste Acquired by Genetics," The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 13, 2005.
§
''Since the 1790s, the Japanese have always been worried about Russia, and the Russian-Japanese relationship has always been tense. Without the growing China threat, I don't see the two sides coming together.''
-- Michael R. Auslin, assistant professor of history, "Japan and Russia, with an Eye on China, Bury the Sword," The New York Times, Feb. 13, 2005.
§
"But [information about the underseas earthquake that triggered the recent tsunami] didn't get to the right people, to the affected governments and then to the people in those countries. ... For instance, satellite passed over the Bay of Bengal when the tsunami was crossing it and actually detected it. It saw about one meter of sea level change on the sea surface."
-- Jeffrey Park, professor of geology and geophysics, "Possible Adoption of a Plan To Monitor the Globe with a Network of Instruments that Will Detect Earthquakes and Tsunamis," "Morning Edition," National Public Radio, Feb. 16, 2005.
T H I S
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Staff, students unite to stage benefit concert for tsunami victims
New track pays tribute to Eli Gold Medal winner
Three students named All-USA College Academic Team
Volunteers lend support to students with special needs
Scientists cited for groundbreaking work on kidney disease
Exhibit, symposium highlight work of architect Eero Saarinen
Law School symposia to offer new views on timely topics'Breaking With Tradition' will explore the issues surrounding . . .
'U.S. Colombia Policy at a Crossroads' to assess potential . . .
Researchers find missing genes of ancient organism
'Body Memories' explores breast cancer through arty
YaleGlobal Online reaching record number of readers
Neuro-oncology fellowship supports the study of brain tumors
Forlorn forecast: Spring is near, but not yet hereh
Sletcher, editor at Benjamin Franklin project, to talk about his book
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