January 7, 2010
Etc.: Campus news & notes
TOPS IN DOGGEREL: Professor of Anthropology Steve Harrell got an award that was out of his field recently. It was, in fact, way out in left field. Harrell was one of many readers of the New York Times column, “Prescriptions” who answered the call to write a poem about the national health care debate.
The call went out after Prescriptions writers concluded, “after an outbreak of Capitol Hill doggerel exposed a few senators’ falling woefully short as they tried to combine health care and the rhyme scheme of The Night Before Christmas,” that readers could do a better job.
Harrell’s version of the familiar poem was chosen the winner by a panel of NYT writers “who couldn’t get Christmas Eve off.”
Upon being notified, Harrell told the Times, “I am, needless to say, deeply and humbly touched by this great honor. I am not a poet by training or any other route, but come from a long family tradition of doggerelists. I love Gilbert and Sullivan, whose songs I have frequently used for parodies of anthropology, academic pretense, and other easy targets. Maybe when I retire and have more time I can start doing this regularly on a bloggerel.”
So Harrell can now claim to be top doggerelist. Or maybe we should say top dawgerelist. To read his winning entry click here.
STARDUST STAR: Donald Brownlee knew that the return capsule from the Stardust mission that he led was going to join some heady company when it went into the Smithsonian Institution in late 2008. He just didn’t know how close by that company would be. On a recent visit to “the nation’s attic” in Washington, D.C., the UW astronomy professor found the return capsule sitting just beneath the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane that Charles Lindbergh flew in the first solo crossing of the Atlantic, and just a few feet away from the Apollo 11 capsule, which carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins to the first human landing on the moon. Stardust, launched in 1999, captured particles from a comet called Wild 2 and ended its nearly 3 billion-mile journey in 2006 by safely parachuting into the Utah desert with its treasure of comet dust.
ALL ABOUT EMOTIONS: Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and professor of psychology, was featured in the first episode of the PBS series This Emotional Life. Paul Allen conceived the series that looks at human emotions in a variety of contexts. For further information about the program, see http://tinyurl.com/meltzoff or www.clearblueskyfilms.com or
www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife.
Do you know someone who deserves kudos for an outstanding achievement, award, appointment or book publication? If so, send that person’s name, title and achievement to uweek@u.washington.edu.
