Soundbites

Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:

"It is worth examining whether we want people's entire careers to be derailed by a bunch of snitty undergraduates who didn't want to do an extra term paper."

-- Wendy Williams, professor of human development, discussing the value of student evaluations, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 16.

"She was the one who kept an eye on the children. These kids had grown up all their lives in this situation, where they could do anything in their father's name. And with their mother's death, the last buffer was gone."

-- Benedict Anderson, the A.L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies, describing the role of Siti Hartinah Suharto, the deceased wife of the embattled Indonesian president, in The New York Times, Jan. 16.

"We're really reverse-engineering the brain."

-- Harold G. Craighead, professor of applied and engineering physics, discussing research he is helping lead on making electrical connections between neurons and electronic devices, which could lead to computers built from living brain cells, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 9.

"There was very little if anything documented about African American women [who served in the military during World War II]. The type of racial and gender discrimination they faced was harsh."

-- Brenda L. Moore, a visiting fellow at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, discussing her book about black women veterans of World War II, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 6.

"... there is still the possibility that there are ice deposits in the bottoms of deep craters."

-- Donald Campbell, associate director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, discussing the possibility of finding ice on the moon after the launch of the Lunar Prospector in January, in the Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 3.

"These are beautiful laboratories up in the sky. We can sit down here and look at them and learn a lot of physics."

-- Yervant Terzian, chair of the Department of Astronomy, describing new Hubble telescope images of dying stars in The New York Times, Dec. 23.

"I'd tell servers two things. First, sell more because your tip is most likely to be based on the total of the bill. Second, build a rapport with the customer so they will be more concerned about your opinion of them. [Wanting to be liked] ... isn't rational, but it is part of being human."

-- Michael Lynn, associate professor of hotel administration, discussing tipping in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dec. 24.

"Most adult children greatly overestimate how likely their mothers were to name them as the closest child....Mothers tended to report greater closeness and fewer problems among their children than did the adult children."

-- Karl Pillemer, associate professor of human development, discussing his study on favoritism among older mothers, in the Buffalo News, Nov. 25, as carried by the Associated Press.