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Rally Decries Crimes of Columbus; Stresses Importance of Native Cultures October 9, 2009 - 4:02am By Margo Cohen Ristorucci Propped against a podium in Ho Plaza, a poster of Christopher Columbus sat with the message “Hate, Lies, Torture, Slavery and Oppression” inscribed along his face. Anticipating the Oct. 12 holiday, Native American Students at Cornell organized a rally yesterday called "Indigenous Day Rally: Rethinking Columbus." Alia Jones ’10, co-chair of NASAC, explained that the event was aimed to both challenge Columbus Day and to raise awareness about present indigenous communities. “Question: why should the United States of America celebrate Columbus...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- President Obama has announced his intention to nominate a native Ithacan and Cornell graduate to a key post in his administration. Mary J. Miller is up for the position of Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets. Miller grew up in Ithaca and received her bachelor's degree in government from Cornell. She is now the vice president of T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore-based investment firm. The post Miller is up for advises the treasury secretary on financial markets, government debt and credit and lending. Miller must first be confirmed by the Senate.

You’re in luck. For their senior project, two Cornell University computer-engineering whizzes recently built a machine that does just that. After learning in class how breathalyzers work, Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled a fart detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A “slight perturbance in the air” near the detector sets it to work measuring the three pillars of fart quality: stench, temperature and sound. Temperature, Clain explains, is critical. The hotter a fart, the faster it spreads. “It beeps faster if it’s a high...

Friday, September 11, 2009, a 20 year old student at Cornell University, Warren Schor, pictured left, died of complications from the swine flu. IvyGate Blog chose the tragedy as an occasion for mockery and silliness...When Warren Schor died last week, IvyGate published this article, originally under the byline of Molly Fitzpatrick, now under the byline of Adam Clark Estes. The article mocks Schor's death and the administration attempts to encourage students to stay healthy by practicing good hygiene. So intent was IvyGate on its mission of mockery that they couldn't even get the dead student's name right in the original...

The editor-in-chief of an academic journal has resigned after his publication accepted a hoax article. The Open Information Science Journal failed to spot that the incomprehensible computer-generated paper was a fake. This was despite heavy hints from its authors, who claimed they were from the Centre for Research in Applied Phrenology – which forms the acronym Crap. The journal, which claims to subject every paper to the scrutiny of other academics, so-called "peer review", accepted the paper. Philip Davis, a graduate student at Cornell University in New York, who was behind the hoax, said he wanted to test the editorial...

CEN NYC: “The Ramifications of Carbon Mitigation Paradigms: Can the Public Win when Politics Overshadow the Science of Engineering?” featuring Power Plant Developer, Adam Victor ‘74 At this event we’ll explore Adam’s experiences as an energy entrepreneur and passionate supporter of a stronger, more self sufficient USA. Adam is what’s called a PPP or Private Power Producer (i.e. he builds his own power plants). We will discuss what Adam calls the “politicization of engineering” as well as what he views as a necessity for energy solutions for our world. We came across Adam after he was recently interviewed by The...

NEW YORK—Former Vice President Al Gore thinks that financial markets are to blame for environmental problems. Gore, speaking at a Cornell University-sponsored roundtable in New York City on Wednesday (June 3), told the audience that the "tyranny of short-term horizons” forced companies to maximize returns on a short-term quarterly basis. This, the panelists said, undermined long-term progress in combating environmental ills, such as global warming. This "tyranny of short-term horizons is not limited to investing but also to politics," said Gore. But the Obama administration has an opportunity to lead the world, he said, especially at the forthcoming United Nations...

A joint study by Cornell,Harvard and Yale universities reveals conservatives more easily disgusted than liberals by squeamish things like maggots and questionable toilet seats. The concern for "safety" influences their ideology.

Are you someone who squirms when confronted with slime, shudders at stickiness or gets grossed out by gore? Do crawly insects make you cringe or dead bodies make you blanch? If so, chances are you're more conservative -- politically, and especially in your attitudes toward gays and lesbians -- than your less-squeamish counterparts, according to two Cornell studies. The results, said study leader David Pizarro, Cornell assistant professor of psychology, raise questions about the role of disgust -- an emotion that likely evolved in humans to keep them safe from potentially hazardous or disease-carrying environments -- in contemporary judgments of...

A campus Christian group that receives funding from the student activity fee is coming under scrutiny after a student was asked by advisors to step down from its leadership team when he told them that he had openly accepted his homosexuality. This incident is also raising questions about the effectiveness of campus mechanisms for addressing instances of discrimination. Chris Donohoe ’09, who joined the Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship when he was a freshman, said he had been openly struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his faith in Chi Alpha before he was asked to step down from the leadership team...

As Cornell University faces greater need for donations in the current recession, it also faces having to get more funds with less money as a result of the economic crisis. In order to better focus its fundraising efforts to meet its needs and in response to the university cutting its budget by 5 percent, Cornell’s Department of Alumni Affairs and Development recently laid off 41 employees, around 10 percent of the department’s workforce. Richard Banks, associate vice president for alumni affairs and development at Cornell, said the positions were cut based on which positions were least crucial. He said Cornell...

Fortunately, we have Keith Olbermann to point out that Rush Limbaugh did not accurately quote the preamble to the Constitution in his CPAC speech last weekend. I'm not sure what scam Olbermann imagined Rush was trying to put over on the American people by saying conservatives believed in the "preamble to the Constitution" and then quoting words from the Declaration of Independence -- but Olbermann put an end to that cruel deception! These small-time opportunities to show off by correcting someone else's teeny-tiny mistakes are the lifeblood of Olbermann's MSNBC show, "Countdown." Olbermann is no more capable of not correcting...

WWW.ANNCOULTER.COM OLBERMANN'S PLASTIC IVY by Ann Coulter March 4, 2009 Fortunately, we have Keith Olbermann to point out that Rush Limbaugh did not accurately quote the preamble to the Constitution in his CPAC speech last weekend. I'm not sure what scam Olbermann imagined Rush was trying to put over on the American people by saying conservatives believed in the "preamble to the Constitution" and then quoting words from the Declaration of Independence -- but Olbermann put an end to that cruel deception!  These small-time opportunities to show off by correcting someone else's teeny-tiny mistakes are the lifeblood of Olbermann's MSNBC...

ITHACA, NY--Love — or, at least, lust — was in the air on Ho Plaza yesterday at 12:15 p.m. A group of roughly 20 students lined up to hold a colorful banner that read “QUEER KISSIN’ … in progress” and then proceeded have a queer kiss-in, which lasted about five minutes. Direct Action to Stop Heterosexism sponsored the event, according to kiss-in participant Ashley McGovern ’09. She explained that heterosexism is “kind of like homophobia except heterosexism has to do with all facets of society … so the normalization of heterosexuality in society.” Heteronormativity refers to the idea that heterosexuality...

Six University Presidents are touring Iran to increase “collaboration in science and higher education” at the same time the nation’s religious government is moving closer to developing an atomic bomb and taking steps to censor more information from its citizens. According to CBS News: The presidents of six leading U.S. universities are touring Iran, the latest in a series of exchange visits involving senior academics and scientists. The American academics include the presidents of Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Rice Universities. "We believe it is important to maintain and renew academic ties between our two countries as a means of laying...

the Cornell Coalition for Life clashed with the College of Engineering administration on Wednesday morning when Dawn Warren, administrative assistant, removed the organization’s “Elena Campaign” signs from the Engineering Quad. The CCFL is a non-partisan, pro-life advocacy group on campus. According to the CCFL, the Elena Campaign is composed of “a series of light-hearted educational signs with pictures and text detailing the biological development of an unborn child.” Tristen Cramer, former CCFL president, explained that the signs did not contain political statements, but rather “biological facts on fetal development,” including ultrasound images and text. According to Cramer, the group put...

The Cornell Review controversy over printing an article about campus “ghettos,” “bitter minorities” and affirmative action became even more pronounced yesterday when students proposed a resolution to the Student Assembly to ban the use of the Cornell name by the biweekly journal’s title. The article, “What to Expect: The Angry Minority,” said students in program houses — only at Cornell because of affirmative action and scholarships — complain about brutal oppression from “whitey.” Students Nikhil Kumar ’11, minority representative-at-large, and Nicole Rivera ’09, president of the Minority Business Student Association, brought the resolution to the table. “As a student here...

Climate change and its effects on ecosystems is the No. 1 crisis facing the world, according to Cornell faculty -- but it is a phenomenon not easily reversed. The most important problem that is more easily solved? Insufficient education in science, critical thinking and environmental issues.That is according to a new study that surveyed Cornell's academic staff on the world's leading crises. The new study is published online in Frontiers e-View and will be published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. How Cornell faculty rate the world's most important and the most solvable problemsOn a 5-point scale,...

Can you be an obscure, self-indulged, theory-laden, post-modern scholar and manage to be an effective university president?  University of Wisconsin at Madison is hoping “yes.� It has picked Biddy Martin, Cornell provost and women’s studies professor, as its new chancellor. Her best-known work is a little something called Femininity Played Straight, which features chapters entitled “Sexualities without Gender and Other Queer Utopias� and “Teaching Feminism.� The one review that Amazon.com has picked up on the book is truncated to a single sentence, though it pretty much sums up the obtuseness of Ms Martin’s field: “Martin's eccentric use of the body...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University will create a new nanotechnology research center with the help of a $25 million grant from a Saudi Arabian educational partnership. Cornell says the money from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology's Global Research Partnership will be spread over five years. Cornell was among four universities out of 41 that applied to receive one of the grants. Oxford, Stanford and Texas A&M were also selected. The center will study nanomaterials for the use in oil recovery, carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, water desalination, and photovoltaics and solid state lighting.

ITHACA--As international attention on the situation between Tibet and China has increased over the past few weeks while China prepares for the Olympics, a Cornell anthropology professor was the subject of personal attacks posted to two University listservs last week in response to a film screening and discussion she organized on “the prospects for peace in Tibet.” After Prof. Kathryn March, anthropology, began publicizing the event several weeks ago, it immediately provoked a wave of impassioned e-mail responses, most of which criticized the event. A handful of the responses on the listservs were personally directed at March. “I … was...

ITHACA--The Chaplain at Cornell University has announced his support for the racist and anti-American sermons of controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.Speaking on Thursday (March 27) Rev. Kenneth Clarke defended those sermons by Wright, called them “a different style of patriotism.” According to the Ithaca Journal: Clarke challenged the audience to go beyond the sound bites and listen to Wright's entire sermon from Sept. 16, 2001 where he criticizes America. Clarke compared Wright's criticism of America to commentary found in speeches by Fredrick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr.The critiques are not unpatriotic, Clarke said.The statements “reflect a different style of...

In the face of shouting dissenters and shrouded protesters, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft stood firmly behind his conviction Thursday that the 2001 USA Patriot Act strengthened America's freedom and continues to protect the country from terrorist attacks. Ashcroft spoke about the need for the change in national security thinking after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to a crowd of more than 700 at Cornell University's Statler Hall. The former attorney general described his experience on 9/11 and how the increased ease with which a terrorist could cause harm to civilians changed the way the government needed to...

ITHACA, N.Y.--Ben Nichols, a professor emeritus at Cornell University and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who served three terms as mayor of Ithaca, has died. Nichols, a professor of electrical engineering at Cornell for 40 years, died Saturday of natural causes after being admitted to Cayuga Medical Center. Nichols was rooted in the American left and spent much of his life in politics. He was born on Staten Island in 1920 to parents who were Communist Party members. He helped his parents organize a union, supported the Spanish Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s,...

Writing a conservative column is an art, and like any art, it takes talent. Despite what you may assume, however, the ability to write a conservative column is not a genetic trait that one simply does or doesn’t possess; you too can learn to write a conservative column. In fact, consider it your civic duty. Just follow the pointers below. One note before we commence. In the same vein of my last column, which dealt with media coverage of Iran, this column is about framing and language. It is not about the substance of conservative thought, nor do I mean...

Cornell University has been making an effort in recent years to foster diversity and tolerance, promoting concepts like gender-neutrality to ensure the comfort and safety of students who Gwendolyn Dean, coordinator of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered or Questioning Resource Center called “gender non-conforming.” One event at Cornell featuring a gender-neutral environment occured last fall in the form of Hillel-sponsored speed dating. Ga’avah, Cornell’s LGBTQ Jewish group, held speed-dating for members of the LGTBQ community upstairs in Trillium. Graduate students also had a speed-dating event on the second floor, so that, according to Nomi Fridman, Ga’avah’s faculty advisor, no one...

ITHACA--Amid preparations for the arrival of an Iraqi judge involved in the trial of Saddam Hussein, local law enforcement and public officials are expressing concerns about exactly what will be needed to keep the judge — and his family — safe. Based on their limited research, police say the judge — Ra'id Juhi Hamadi Al-Saiedi, who is to be the Cornell Law School's first Clarke Middle East Fellow — has been the target of assassination attempts and they don't have enough information to assess the risk he represents and prepare for it. “Cornell University Administration representatives confirm that they have...

ITHACA--With all the sobering projections about the Earth's climate, former Vice President Al Gore probably wishes he could clone himself a thousand times to present slide shows about warming temperatures and rising greenhouse gases, such as the lectures documented in his award-winning 2006 film, "An Inconvenient Truth." Instead, Gore has achieved the next best thing by personally training 1,000 volunteers -- including two Cornellians and a researcher and an educator affiliated with Cornell -- to give at least 10 presentations within a year. The training sessions, dubbed The Climate Project, were held in Nashville, Tenn., for an assorted group that...

A letter to the editor of the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal is titled "Clarifying a Quote": Your story about the rally for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney ("Protesters call for Bush's ouster," April 30) accurately reported that in my speech I called myself a "defeatist." The story, however, did not explain what defeat I advocated: Not that of our coalition troops in the field, nor the forces of the Iraqi resistance fighting to end the imperialist occupation of their country, but Bush's and Cheney's proxy war against the U.S. constitutional democracy. Bush is using his war on Iraq as a...

Cornellians in Sage Chapel fell silent April 19 as the university organist struck the first notes of a prelude in a ceremony memorializing the 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech university who had lost their lives three days earlier in a campus shooting by a Korean student, who subsequently killed himself."We are one," said Cornell President David Skorton. "We are one community, one people, one planet. We are here today to affirm that oneness ... We are here to bear witness to the passing of the 33 members of our family at Virginia Tech University who have met an...

Robert Novak, nationally syndicated columnist, television news commentator and the self-acknowledged “Prince of Darkness” of the Washington press, spoke at Schwartz Auditorium (Cornell University) last night. In his opening remarks, Novak, who served in the Korean War and worked for 50 years in Washington, D.C., revealed the origin of his sinister moniker. “I believe in limited government, low taxes and individual economic freedom. And in Washington that makes you The Prince of Darkness. It may well make you The Prince of Darkness at Cornell,” said Novak. In his speech, Novak offered an analysis of the 2006 Congressional power shift, a...

ALBANY -- Imagine if summers in New York were more like those in Georgia. Huge rainstorms cause massive floods that are followed by months of drought. Snow-belt strongholds such as Rochester and Buffalo see only a few days of snow every winter. This is the picture that a climate change expert painted here Friday. Arthur DeGaetano, a Cornell professor and head of the Northeast Regional Climate Center, said that climate change is already inevitable, but humans could adapt to those changes if greenhouse-gas emissions are reduced now. However, if we continue in our trend of fossil fuel dependency and global...

Helen Thomas, tough-talking journalist and one of the first female members of the White House Press Corps, spoke to a packed Statler Auditorium last night at a lecture organized by the Cornell Political Coalition. Thomas, whose career has spanned over 55 years and nine presidencies, was critical from her opening remarks, condemning the United States’ involvement in Iraq, President Bush’s “primitive drive for war” and the American public’s toleration of the “dumbing-down of our country.” “It is wrong to ask the ultimate sacrifice without a good reason, and we have yet to hear that, because truth has taken a holiday...

ITHACA--Prof. Jeremy Rabkin ’74, government, recently announced his resignation from Cornell, effective July 1. According to the government department, Rabkin has accepted a position teaching international law at George Mason School of Law in Washington, D.C. Rabkin will finish teaching this semester at Cornell. Faculty, staff and graduate students have been notified of his departure. During his time at Cornell, through debates, lectures and other speaking venues, Rabkin has developed a reputation as a dynamic, informative professor with a conservative viewpoint. “It’s a terrible, terrible loss, not just for conservatives throughout campus, but for Cornell as well,” said Megan Sweeney...

WASHINGTON — More than 50 Cornell students joined tens of thousands protesting the war in Iraq in front of the Capitol Building Saturday in one of the largest demonstrations in recent years. Protesters listened to more than two hours of speeches by politicians and celebrities including Jane Fonda, who had not spoken publicly at an anti-war rally in 34 years. Among the Cornell undergraduates present at the rally were those participating in the Cornell in Washington program, a semester during which students live, work, and take classes in the capital. Cornell undergraduates attending from Ithaca were organized by a variety...

Gitanjali Gutierrez is an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group based in New York City that was the first group to offer legal representation to detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison. Gutierrez, also a Cornell Law School adjunct professor, was the special guest last Friday at a dramatic reading of the play "Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom." The show played to enthusiastic crowds of about 150 people each night. After each performance, Gutierrez held a discussion with the audience about Guantanamo Bay, asking questions and giving answers. "We had to chase people out at the...

ITHACA—A contributor to Cornell University’s “premier liberal voice” has pled guilty to a hate crime, in connection with a February stabbing of a black student on the university’s campus.According to the Ithaca Journal, student Nathan H. Poffenbarger pled guilty to “one count of assault as a hate crime, and one count of tampering with physical evidence in the stabbing of a Union College student.”The plea, made Wednesday at Tompkins County Court, stems from a Feb. 18 stabbing. On that date …Poffenbarger, 21, of Woodsboro, Md., stabbed Charles Holiday, a student from Union College in Schenectady who was visiting the Cornell...

A new robot, dubbed "Starfish" because of its size and shape, has the unusual ability -- in the mechanical world, that is -- of fixing itself. The Starfish is programmed to recognize its parts, but not how they're arranged or meant to be used. It figures that out for itself, using trial and error. Cornell University researchers have created a robot capable of self-awareness, learning and adapting -- all keys to the intelligence and technology needed for robots Latest News about robots to function in adverse and changing environments. The Cornell researchers, who published their findings in the Nov. 17,...

In his first appearance at Cornell since President David J. Skorton's September inauguration, former President Jeffrey S. Lehman '77 lectured on welfare and globalization yesterday as part of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs' colloquium series. Lehman, who will present another lecture today, was the University's 11th president, serving from July 2003 to July 2005. Lehman spoke on the challenges posed to the welfare state by globalization and suggested that one solution to both issues would be the broadening of the welfare state into a "welfare planet." Lehman said that because of the phenomenon of globalization, the way policymakers study...

Hello, Thank you for your continued interest in seeing Ann Coulter return to the East Hill. The Ann Coulter lecture originally scheduled to occur on April 24th has been successfully rescheduled for Sunday May 7th at 6:00pm in Statler Auditorium. Tickets for the April 24th show are to be used for admission to the May 7th show. Doors will open at 5:00pm and all available seats at 5:40pm will be released to non-ticket holders. You are asked to arrive early, as security will be tight, and everyone and everything entering the venue are subject to search. Ticket holders are asked...

That would be Cynthia McKinney. Probably few people besides me noticed that during her 2 years out of office McKinney was a professor at Cornell and toured college campuses at the invitation of faculty and administrators to provide students with a chance to sit at the feet of an academic role model. I bring this up to introduce a sobering note into ongoing controversies with arrogant academics who argue that conservatives don't have the proper respect for reason and evidence, as a way of explaining why so few of them get hired. A simple, more obvious and more reasonable explanation...

Cornell is on the cusp of a massive wave of faculty retirements, and administrators are scrambling to make up the difference. A hiring surge 30 years ago means that a group of faculty who came to Cornell around the same time is on its way out. “It’s like a gazelle going through a python,” said Dean of Faculty Charles Walcott. Administrators say that the trend reaches across academia, setting Cornell up for a high-stakes competition to lure the next generation of professors. According to institutional planners, up to 600 faculty — about one third of the University’s total force —...

Using a fast, low-cost fabrication technique that allows inexpensive testing of a wide variety of materials, Cornell researchers have come up with nanoscale resonators -- tiny vibrating strings -- with the highest quality factor so far obtainable at room temperature for devices so small. The work is another step toward "laboratory on a chip" applications in which vibrating strings can be used to detect and identify biological molecules. The devices also can be used as very precisely tuned oscillators in radio-frequency circuits, replacing relatively bulky quartz crystals.When you strike a bell or pluck a guitar string, it will vibrate within...

A report released on Wednesday on the political views of faculty members accuses professors of liberal "groupthink," a stance that the report says puts them at odds with the beliefs of most Americans on national and international issues. The report, by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, was based on an online, nationally representative survey of 1,259 professors at four-year colleges and universities in the spring of 2005. It found that, in general, professors are critical of American business and foreign policy and are skeptical of capitalism. Professors, says the report, are at the "forefront of the political divide"...

Letter to the New Scientist October 4, 2006 Ithaca, NY Dear Editor of New Scientist, I am the president of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club at Cornell University. In late September, 2006, we were contacted by someone writing us saying “I am a student at Cornell and am interested in coming to an IDEA meeting” and identifying herself as “Maria.” This person subsequently wrote us via e-mail using the e-mail address “Cel Biever < XXXXX@gmail.com>.” At the time I was surprised at the incongruency between her assumed name and email, and later discovered that Celeste Biever is...

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- The Cornell University Law School has agreed to help defend convicted murderer Donald Fell in his death sentence appeal. Fell's public defenders asked lawyers and students with the university's Death Penalty Project to act as co-counsel, said John Blume, a law professor and director of the project. Fell, 26, is on death row at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., after being convicted more than a year ago of federal carjacking and kidnapping charges stemming from the 2000 abduction and murder of Terry King of North Clarendon. Cornell's Death Penalty Project typically doesn't help defend cases...

History lesson: Second Amendment requires regulation First, a calming caveat: Saul Cornell doesn't want to take away your guns. He's neither antigun nor progun. He really isn't a gun guy at all. His thing is history. Cornell, a professor at Ohio State University, passed through town the other day with much to say about regulating guns. Yet his aim isn't to take sides in the modern gun-control debate -- a squabble he thinks has strayed rather off-topic. It's far more interesting, he thinks, to look back to learn what this country's founders actually thought about gun regulation. They couldn't imagine...

LONDON: Being promiscuous in the female species may not be such a bad thing after all, for a new research on queen bees has found that those who indulge in lengthy sex marathons with multiple drones, are the ones who build the healthiest colonies. The study was conducted by apiculturalists (bee experts) David Tarpy at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, US and Thomas Seeley at Cornell University in Ithaca, US.

In public elementary schools across the nation, students are taught that America is a land of equality and tolerance. We are all created equal, and we should treat each other with dignity and respect, regardless of race, gender or religion. However, it appears that some of us have forgotten these grammar school lessons. We have turned our fear of living in a post-9/11 society into intolerance towards Arabs and Muslims. A poll done earlier this year by the Washington Post and ABC News found that 46 percent of Americans think poorly of Islam today, along with 33 percent that believe...

Students of some of the best-known colleges in America score worse on American history after attending.According to the Wall St. Journal: In a 60-question multiple-choice quiz, "college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale." And at many schools "seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy." The schools with the worst records, the Journal notes, include some of the top-ranked colleges in the nation: Cornell, UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins were the worst three, their seniors scoring between 3.3 and 7.3 percentage...