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:

"Somebody has to do the bread-and-butter work, go into the archives and tell us what happened. You can have theory forever, but if it's irrelevant to what actually happened, it's not going to be very good theory."

-- Walter LaFeber, the M.U. Noll Professor of American History, discussing the state of diplomatic history in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 24.

"We are seeing 100-year floods much too often, so either the statistical theory is wrong, or global warming has created a lot more floods. The insurance companies in some ways prefer global warming, because it doesn't mean they're doing their statistics wrong. We think the latter."

--Donald Turcotte, the M.M. Upson Professor of Engineering, discussing his application of chaos theory to statistical analysis, which predicts that certain natural disasters may happen more often than conventional statistics predict, in the Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 28.

"This fury of entrepreneurial activity is draining the very best talent ... It is cannibalizing many of the researchers who would have produced the next generation of major innovations."

--Kenneth P. Birman, professor of computer science, commenting on the flood of bright students who are leaving academia to form new high-tech companies, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 24.

"When the auto workers negotiate a major agreement, it doesn't carry over like in the '50s and '60s because other unions are getting creamed by membership losses, growth in the nonunion sector and the fear they'll lose their jobs to permanent replacement workers if they strike."

--Harry Katz, the J. Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, discussing the recent GM-UAW settlement, in The New York Times, Sept. 23.

"We want to promote an optimal learning environment. Heavy drinking can undermine the mission of a university."

--Tim Marchell, director of substance abuse services in University Health Services, discussing a national campaign to educate students and parents about the dangers of binge drinking, in USA Today, Sept. 13.