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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

September-October 2009

Letters

Letters from our readers

The College Pump

<em>"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by"</em>

Hollis professor of divinity Harvey Cox will lead a cow through Harvard Yard.

Treasure

From Mary A. Robinson's scrapbook, now in the Farlow Herbarium

Seaweed and seaside scenes of Martha’s Vineyard

In this Issue

Gawande in his various environments: in his office at the Harvard School of Public Health

Atul Gawande, surgeon and health-policy scholar, never expected to be a literary voice of medicine.

Financial regulation, moral hazard, and the end of “too big to fail”

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Mlle. Marie Gabrielle Capet [at right] and Mlle. Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond (1785)

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY

A brief profile of an enterprising French artist

Latanya Sweeney

The erosion of privacy in the Internet era

Letters

Letters from our readers

Right Now

Even at the scale of cities, planners can work with the local ecology to create lasting interventions that minimize disruptions to the landscape, such as Khed Sez (shown) and Lavasa, both in India.

Architects are beginning to employ biomimicry, studying nature as a model for building design.

“Super-recognizers” have an astonishing ability to identify faces.

In her research, Anat Keinan asks people to reflect on their regrets over choices made in the near and distant past.

Why a little self-indulgence makes sense.

Gas jets punch out of the collapsing star and blast into space, producing gamma rays that can be detected billions of light years away.

A star more than 13 billion years old

New England Regional

Volunteer guide Al Levin at the Lily Pond in Garden in the Woods

Alumni take up community service

A copy portrait of Samuel Johnson by Gilbert Stuart, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, from <em>A Monument More Durable Than Brass</em> at Houghton Library

Suggestions for your autumn schedule

Who volunteers where

Gaslight aims to offer patrons the ambience and food of a Parisian brasserie.

A French bistro in Boston’s South End

John Harvard's Journal

An update on the University's economic situation

Drew Faust

President Faust on Harvard's finances, intellectual momentum, and future

Jane Mendillo

Harvard Management Company president Jane Mendillo offers an update

A. Lawrence Lowell, president when the Extension School was founded

A new history by its dean, Michael Shinagel, documents the school's emphasis on accessibility and continuing education.

Federico Cortese

Meet the new conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra.

In 1871, the Pierian Sodality, 16 strong, posed with their instruments.

A new book relates the history of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra.

The Harvard University Press display room closes its doors.

On the arrest of Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and its aftermath

Headlines from Harvard history

Arrests and indictments in a case linked to drugs

Gary King

Social scientist Gary King and systems biologist Marc W. Kirschner are named University Professors.

Short takes on recent news

If courses aren't as exciting as extracurriculars, what’s a college for?

Melanie Long and Spencer Lenfield

Harvard Magazine’s new Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows

Soccer’s Lizzy Nichols ’10 uncorking one of her killer kicks. Though she’s a defensive specialist who plays center back, Nichols has a knack for free kicks and penalty kicks, and ice water in her veins.

Soccer’s Lizzy Nichols has a gift for penalty kicks.

Football preview, and Cleat’s blog

Montage

With a front page from <i>The Onion</i> projected in the background, Thurston emcees the 2009 SXSW Interactive Web Awards.

Baratunde Thurston ’99 of The Onion combines comedy, politics, and technology.

The Levy family in 1928; Jacob holds the cane. Only he and Rivka Levy (far left, flounced dress) survived the Nazis.

Socialism as family inconvenience

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Richard Peña at Lincoln Center, with a New York Film Festival banner at right, behind him

Richard Peña ’75 is program director of the New York Film Festival.

From <i>On the Loose in Boston: A Find-the-Animals Book,</i> by Sage Stossel

Recent books with Harvard connections

A review of Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Alumni

Brian Mullaney with a Haitian patient before her surgery this past February. Smile Train has provided roughly 160 surgeries in Haiti and recently launched “Cleft-free Haiti” to completely eradicate cleft there.

Smile Train's Brian Mullaney ’81 aims to correct cleft-palate deformities around the world.

Teresita Alvarez-Bjelland

HAA president Teresita Alvarez-Bjelland knows what makes people happy.

Two Harvard seniors are honored for improving House life.

Seven alumni are honored for schools and scholarships work.

The Harvard Arab Alumni Association meets in Cairo.

Teresa Chen honors the restorative powers of delicious hot liquids.

Teresa Chen ’64 promotes healthy soup-making and -eating.

Once Amy Nathan learned to love piano lessons, she decided to share the joy.

Amy Nathan ’67 aims to help kids over musical rough patches with <em>The Young Musician’s Survival Guide</em>.

Sophie and Philip Wharton show off their pre-Montreal style.

Philip Wharton ’82 and daughter Sophie ’11 pedal 100 miles for Afghan and Pakistani children.

Forthcoming Shared Interest Group events

The College Pump

<em>"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by"</em>

Hollis professor of divinity Harvey Cox will lead a cow through Harvard Yard.

Treasure

From Mary A. Robinson's scrapbook, now in the Farlow Herbarium

Seaweed and seaside scenes of Martha’s Vineyard