April 18, 2002
Etc.
KITTEN FEVER: Spring is kitten season, and if you’re in the market for a pet of the feline persuasion, Gaile Gamble wants you to know there’s an organization on campus that can give you a hand, or maybe a paw. Gamble, who works as an office assistant in registration, is the proud owner of three cats, all acquired with the help of the Friends of Campus Cats. Friends, which was featured in University Week early in its history, was co-founded by another UW employee, Sharon Talbert, a program assistant in Teacher Education. Talbert noticed there were ownerless cats prowling the campus, and began spending time trapping them, getting them spayed or neutered and finding them homes — an effort she made on her own time and largely funded out of her own pocket. These days the Friends are a nonprofit organization holding occasional fund raisers, but they still see their main purpose as finding loving homes for cats who need them. And according to Gamble, they do a good job. “I don’t know how they know which family a particular cat will be happy with, but they do,” she says. Friends of Campus Cats can be contacted by phone, 206-524-7326, by e-mail, feralcat@serv.net or through their Web site, http://www.campuscats.org.
BIG NAME IN NEW YORK: Their last names are spelled (slightly) differently, but UW professors David M. Levy and Margaret Levi both recently served as sources for The New Yorker magazine. Levy, a professor in the Information School, was praised in Malcolm Gladwell’s March 25 review of Levy’s new book Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. Gladwell endorsed Levy’s analysis of how Melvil Dewey’s filing inventions helped make modern American business possible by enabling vast organizations to keep track of information. Before joining the UW in 1999, Levy was a Stanford computer scientist, Silicon Valley researcher and calligrapher. Levi, the Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies in the political science department, is quoted in the April 22–29 New Yorker by financial columnist James Surowiecki about the harm inflicted by tax cheaters on what Levi calls “contingent cooperators” — people who are willing to pay taxes as long as they think that everyone else is paying, too. Levi is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the author of four books and the former chair and director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies.
MATH MANIA: It’s a big month for math up at the UW Bothell, where they are celebrating Math Awareness Month with a theme of “Math at the Movies.” Today at 4 p.m., for example, there will be a lecture explaining the math behind the Kevin Bacon “Six Degrees of Separation” game. And at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 30 there will be a showing of IQ, featuring Meg Ryan as a mathematics genius (no snickers, please). There will also be weekly contests throughout the month. A problem will be posed online and anyone who solves it will get his or her name placed in a drawing for a prize. To access the problem, go to http://www.bothell.washington.edu/qsc/mam
STOP TRAFFIC(KING): A UW staffer played a key role in the passage of a recent piece of state legislation that is the first of its kind in the country. Sutapa Basu, director of the UW Women’s Center, served as an advisor to State Rep. Velma Veloria, who sponsored the bill banning trafficking — the buying and selling of persons for slavery, domestic servitude or prostitution. The bill was recently signed into law by Gov. Gary Locke. Basu, who has studied the issue extensively, says the State Department’s estimate of more than 50,000 documented persons trafficked into the United States on an annual basis is a conservative estimate and the real number may be significantly higher due to the illicit nature of the trade. “This groundbreaking legislation will provide a review of support programs such as essential health care, emergency housing, and legal assistance needed by trafficked victims,” Basu said.
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