November 18, 2004
Tales of humor, noodling, outsourcing and the Donner Party
FUNNY THING, HUMOR: What’s in a laugh? Richard Gonzalez, chair of the University of Michigan’s department of psychology (and formerly of the UW), intends to find out, with access to of one of the best cartoon archives in the world.
Gonzalez and other researchers have begun a three-year project at the UofM called Humor at Michigan that will study humor using the New Yorker’s huge database of cartoons as well as episodes of Seinfeld and other funny stuff. The researchers have enlisted the help of Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor for The New Yorker, and a fine cartoonist in his own right.
“When you start doing the research, you’re going to be surprised by what you find,” Mankoff told the campus newspaper The Record about the study. “You might find that humor is a good predictor of the onset of depression or Alzheimer’s. You might find that humor is like the canary in the coal mine that it’s a good predictor of things going wrong.”
IF NOODLING IS WRONG, I DON’T WANNA BE RIGHT: Ever been noodling? Pacific Northwesterners don’t noodle much, but it’s big in the south and midwest, and it’s legal in 11 states. Except Missouri, however, where Mark Morgan, an assistant professor of parks and recreation at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has been studying the studly sport.
So, what is noodling? The university’s newspaper, MizzouWeekly, describes it thusly: “Noodlers jump in lakes or rivers and blithely stick their hands into dark, scary places to wrestle large catfish underwater.”
The state says noodling — it’s also, less charmingly, called “handfishing” — is reducing the catfish population, but groups such as Noodlers Anonymous disagree. Yes, Noodlers Anonymous.
Enter Mark Morgan, who surveyed about 100 noodlers through the mail and learned about their habits. Noodlers go out for fish about a dozen times a year, he learned and catch about 10 fish a year. But the average weight of each fish is a healthy 17 pounds. But in tournaments, fish caught the noodly way weigh in at 50 pounds or more.
“The average noodler starts around age 13 and once they get involved in this studly sport they don’t give up very easily.” Morgan has given the results of his survey to his state conservation department — and to Noodlers Anonymous, too.
TO STUDY OUTSOURCING: The University of Michigan Business School opened a new research center in Bangalore, India, in summer, the U-M’s newspaper, The Record, reported. It’s called the Center for Global Resource Leverage: India, and its research will focus on the connection between global resources and Indian firms, and on the challenging issues of services and manufacturing outsourcing.
At first, about a dozen U-M faculty will be affiliated with the center. Business School Dean Robert Dolan said the center is a good fit for the university, which has already forged close ties in India. “Our goal is to become a world leader in research at one of the leading edges of change — global restructuring of industries and global resource leverage.”
C. K. Prahalad, a professor of corporate strategy and co-director of the new center, said, “We will focus on next practices, not best practices.”
NEW MATH: The University of Arizona’s mathematics department, its College of Science and its department of language, reading and culture in the College of Education will team up for a new center dedicated to improving math skills among the fast-growing Latino population.
The new Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos/as (CEMELA) is being paid for by a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The center’s scope will cover four states and include universities and public school districts in Arizona, Illinois, California and New Mexico.
The UA news Web site quoted Ron Marx, dean of the university’s college of education, saying, “The growing presence of Hispanic students in the nation’s schools, particularly in Arizona, and other southwestern states, requires new approaches to curriculum and instruction. The cultural and linguistic diversity that Hispanic students bring to the classroom needs to be recognized as a resource that can benefit all students.”
ENTERTAINING STUDY: A new institute at the University of California at Los Angeles’ Anderson School of Management has been formed to study the changing nature of the entertainment business.
One of the first jobs of the new institute will be to conduct a two-year study called Media 2010 to study possible futures for the entertainment industry.
The UCLA News Web site quoted Gigi Johnson, executive director of the new Entertainment and Media Management Institute, saying, “Every sector in these industries is undergoing change at an ever-accelerating pace and in such complex and intricate ways. Our mission is to bring together interested constituencies to find ways to best manage and make decisions in the face of greater uncertainty.”
DONNER DISCOVERY?: Did members of the infamous Donner Party really resort to cannibalism when they got stuck in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range on their way from Illinois to California in the fall of 1846? Survivors said yes, but there has never been any actual physical proof.
A cooking hearth found by University of Oregon researchers at a site near Truckee, Calif., unearthed last summer by The Discovery Channel, however, may solve that question, and others.
The researchers, led by Julie Schablitsky of the UO’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, found the hearth in Alder Creek Camp in California’s Tahoe National Forest in July, a site they say may well have been the Donner Party’s winter camp. The team also found broken china, jewelry pieces, musket balls, parts of a wagon and a writing slate — and bones. But were they human bones?
“Here’s where archaeology can come to the rescue and put contradictory statements and myths to rest,” Schablitsky told the UO publication Inside Oregon. “If we are able to confirm that some of these bones are human, the debate over whether this is the Donner camp will be put to rest.”
And as for cannibalism, a bone specialist is studying the finds, Inside Oregon reported, to determine if they were human and to look for “pot polish,” which occurs when bones are boiled and which would be a strong sign of cannibalism.
Schablitsky, who is in touch with Donner Party descendants as more is learned, was quoted as saying, “We’re going to really be able to talk in depth about the entire four-month period out here. At the very least we will be able to show a sequence of events that ultimately may have led to cannibalism.”
COMPUTER CRIME-FIGHTING: Michigan State University’s department of computer science and engineering and its School of Criminal Justice are teaming up to fight crime.
The university’s news Web site reports that starting this fall, undergraduates studying computer science at MSU will have the option of a cognate — much like a minor — in criminal justice. In addition to their computer courses, students in the computer sciences program also will take criminal justice courses covering topics such as criminology, investigative procedures, cybercrime, identify theft and computer forensics.
Edmund McGarrell, director of the School of Criminal Justice, said the program will help answer a growing need, and help homeland security, too. “The demand for people with skills that bridge computer science and criminal justice is very large and growing daily.”
