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Evolution subject of first Georgia Genetics symposium
Annual House Lecture focuses on judicial confirmation process
Business profs enjoy a liquid lunch (that's tax deductible)
Chemistry professor's research turns into 'bonding experience'
Lesson Plan
Phillips named director of American Languages Program
McPhaul 301
Creationism and Kansas
In an article entitled “Inherit an Ill Wind” in The Nation, UGA’s Ed Larson teams with Washington writer Larry Wilham to tackle the recurring American debate over Darwinism--embodied most recently in the Kansas decision to strip evolution from state science-education standards. They contend this episode is “not a home-grown Kansas anomaly,” but arises from forces that are national in origin and scope. The first step to understanding those forces, they say, is to disregard--and look beyond--the Hollywood version of the Scopes trial that pitted Clarence Darrow against Williams Jennings Bryan. Larson won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize in history for his book on that trial and the issues surrounding it.
Studying bioterrorism
The New York Times reports that the U.S. Agriculture Department is seeking money to turn the Plum Island (N.Y.) Animal Disease Center, located one mile off Long Island, into a biosafety level-four facility to study dangerous diseases that can affect plants and animals. Corey Brown, head of the pathology department at UGA’s College of Veterinary Medicine, is quoted on the costs of biological terrorism. The largest animal-disease outbreak in recent history was caused by avian influenza that erupted in Pennsylvania 15 years ago, she says. Agriculture officials had to kill all exposed chickens, at a cost to the federal government of $63 million. Had they not been killed, the cost to U.S. agriculture would have been as high as $3.6 billion, she notes.
Turner South launch
Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting System’s new cable network tailored to the Southeast went on the air Oct. 1. The first six to 12 months will be crucial in determining whether Turner South is a hit or miss, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Industry experts say the network’s regional focus should appeal to advertisers. But portraying the region in programming can be tricky, says UGA sociologist and demographer Doug Bachtel. “I really don’t think there’s anything different [between] Southern living and Midwestern living,” he says in the article. “With TV, there’s been a tremendous homogenization between the regions of the United States.”
‘Angela’s Ashes’ sequel
Hugh Kenner, emeritus professor of English, reviewing the sequel to Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Angela’s Ashes in the Wall Street Journal, finds it missing the good humor of the preceding book. Kenner calls ’Tis, which takes up where the last book left off, “dreary” and says the main character is too full of self-pity. After a few pages, Kenner says, he was “doused in pity” for himself for being obliged to read the book through to the end.
Requiring summer school
A proposed law in Ohio would require students who fail state-mandated proficiency tests to attend summer school. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, in an article on the issue of holding students back a grade, uses UGA education professor Charles Holmes as a resource. Holmes examined 63 studies that measured the performance of students who were held back. Nine showed positive effects on students and the remaining 54 studies showed that students forced to repeat a grade could be harmed. Students who were held back often suffered from lower self-esteem and increased their absenteeism, he concludes.
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