Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national news media:
"I can't think of a good reason to think of why they wouldn't be living today."
-- Steven Squyres, professor of astronomy, commenting on the possibility of microbial life under the Martian surface, in a Knight-Ridder wire story printed in the Newark (N.J.) Sunday Star-Ledger, Oct. 13.
"...when visiting Assos one is conscious not merely of an extinct community, but also of an extraordinarily privileged one. There's a quality of brashness in a population of just 5,000 or so having such a formidable city on such an ostentatious site -- a brashness born, no doubt, of Greek zeal for city life, and the conviction that participation in it was the essence of civilization."
-- Nicholas Nicastro, graduate student, in an article he wrote for The New York Times, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, Oct. 11.
"Humans have a biphasic cycle -- a huge need to sleep at night and a trough between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, even if they aren't sleep-deprived."
-- James B. Maas, professor of psychology, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, Oct. 15.
"It gives the impression that this student doesn't care much about this particular application."
-- Nancy Meislahn, director of undergraduate admissions, commenting on spelling and grammar errors by applicants, in USA Today, Oct. 22.
"I believe [middle-class retirees] are happy. But they may not feel they are contributors who lead purposeful lives. The ones who are most happy are the ones who are in some way employed after retirement."
-- Phyllis Moen, the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies and director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center, quoted in an Associated Press article in the Daily Oklahoman, Oct. 11.
"Our tolerance for exercise at age 60 depends, more than we realized until recently, on the development of our lungs 60 years and some months before we climb on that treadmill."
-- Peter Nathanielsz, director of the Laboratory for Pregnancy and Newborn Research in the College of Veterinary Medicine, quoted in a New York Times News Service story in the Toledo (Ohio) Blade, Oct. 7.
"Even though they use the word 'values' on occasion, they have not gone beyond a rather vague association of themselves with all that is good -- and a rather clear implication that their opponents have been ... responsible for all that is not good."
-- Glenn Altschuler, professor of American studies and dean of continuing education and summer sessions, discussing the presidential candidates in a Gannett wire story published in the Greenville (S.C.) News, Oct. 13.
"The land is considered safe, a place of the home and family. But the sea is everything else. It is all the horrors of the half-known life."
-- Dan McCall, professor of English, on the sea in film and literature in USA Today, Oct. 24.
"The horror that many people have is sitting at home in front of a screen -- and never leaving. That's not what will or should happen. Virtually no one should be working at home all the time."
-- Franklin Becker, professor of design and environmental analysis, discussing home offices in the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 20.
"My hypothesis is this: If marketers can create guilt in a population saturated by fat, they can use obesity to sell both health and unhealth. Two messages simultaneous, contradictory, very effective: The ostensible message is to eat no fat; the cynical, maybe unconscious one is EAT."
-- Richard Klein, professor of French, discussing his new book Eat Fat in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 8.