FrontPage RSS Feed

The Passing of David A. Park

root — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:28:32 +0000

To the Williams Community,

I am sad to report the death of a legendary figure in Williams physics: David Park, Webster Atwell-Class of 1921 Professor Emeritus.

So remarkable was his mind that he first joined the Williams faculty just after earning his A.B. at Harvard in 1941. He left in 1944 to pursue graduate work, and after obtaining his Ph.D., he spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study before returning in 1951 to our physics department, from which he retired in 1988.

Generations of Williams students recall him as a fascinating teacher, and his renown as a science educator was in fact worldwide. After retiring from the classroom, he continued to write articles and award-winning books on such subjects as the significance of time, the nature and meaning of light, and how humans over the millennia have perceived their place in the Universe.

Here in Williamstown we knew him also as a familiar and comfortable presence, whose sharp wit and warm heart enlivened every encounter, however brief.

Our thoughts are with his family, especially his son Paul Park, lecturer in English; daughter Jessica Park, mail clerk; and daughter-in-law Deborah Brothers, costume director and lecturer in theatre.

We will pass on information about arrangements when they are known.

Regards,

Adam Falk
President

President Adam Falk addresses Williams College community

root — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:57:10 +0000

Via the Williams Website:

Classes Cancelled Due to Hate Speech Incident

root — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:29:33 +0000

Text of President Falk's email to all alums follows:

Dear Alumni,

I am saddened and upset to inform you that a disturbing incident of racist hate speech occurred on campus over the weekend. The details are in the email below, which was sent last night to the campus community from several members of senior administration.

You'll see in the message that as a result of the incident, we've decided to cancel all classes and athletic practices today and gather together as a community on Chapin Lawn at 11 a.m. Today will be an important day for us to unite to begin to heal from this terrible act and reaffirm that such harmful behavior has no place at Williams--or anywhere.

Sincerely,

Adam Falk

All-campus email follows "below the fold:"

John Townsend '46, Former Goddard Center Director, Passes

root — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:09:55 +0000

NASA/PRNewsWire:

John W. "Jack" Townsend, Jr., a space pioneer who was among the first employees of the newly formed Goddard Space Flight Center in 1959 and later served as its Center Director from 1987 to 1990, died October 29 of lung cancer. He was 87.

Townsend was a rocket and satellite pioneer who was influential in creating the first meteorological, communications, and Earth viewing satellite systems.

"Jack Townsend was truly one of the seminal figures in the history of NASA, and certainly, in the history of Goddard," said current Goddard Director Rob Strain. "The story of the space program simply could not be written without a chapter devoted to him. He dedicated his life to the exploration of space and the study of our planet, and humankind is richer for the knowledge he helped generate."

Townsend earned his Bachelor of Arts, Masters of Arts, and an Honorary Doctor of Science in physics from Williams College in ~~Boston~~ [Williamstown, MA...]

He helped form NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and came to the newly-formed space research Center in 1959 as its Assistant Director, Space Science and Satellite Applications...

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Science Services Agency, the predecessor agency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon appointed him to the post of Associate Administrator of NOAA, and he remained in that position until 1977.

...After the Space Shuttle Challenger accident, he returned to NASA at the request of then Administrator James Fletcher and served essentially as general manager until the space shuttle safely returned to service. He retired in 1990 after almost three years as Director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center...

He was a World War II veteran and flew radar countermeasures aboard B-29s in the Pacific Theater. He was a live steam railroader, an orchid hobbyist, sailor, and, for more than 65 years, a ham radio operator.

An Open Letter To Coach McLaughery at Amherst

root — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:55:56 +0000

Dear Mr. McLaughery:

I have followed with considerable interest your recent argument at Amherst that the Amherst football team would not tolerate the policy of having the varsity soccer team featured at the weekly pep-rallies, even in a subordinate role to the football team. I must admit that I find your arguments highly amusing; just about as amusing as I found your rating within “the Top Thirty Teams in the Nation” way back in early October. I wrote an article at the time pointing out just what a “BONER” I thought this rating was. Since that time, your rather unimpressive performances against Rochester, Bowdoin, Coast Guard, Wesleyan, Tufts, and Trinity have more than established me as an infallible prognosticator on this particular issue. Therefore, I felt that perhaps a little opinion on your recent stand against the soccer team at Amherst might be in order. I might add that I feel just as sure on this one as I did early last October.

The Forgotten Hero of Williams College

root — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 04:21:49 +0000

Tim Layden, Sports Illustrated - November 1, 2011

FOR FIVE DECADES WILLIAMS COLLEGE KEPT THE NUMBER 50 JERSEY PACKED AWAY IN A BOX, UNOFFICIALLY RETIRING IT EVEN THOUGH THE SCHOOL DID NOT RETIRE NUMBERS. NO ONE REMEMBERED WHO HAD LAST WORN IT OR WHY IT WAS NOT GIVEN OUT. UNTIL LAST YEAR

On the last day of his short life Mike Reily awoke in a hospital bed at Touro Infirmary in his native New Orleans, barely a mile from the house in which he was raised. It was Saturday, July 25, 1964, and the temperature outside would climb to a sticky 91°. A single intravenous fluid line was connected to Reily's body, which had been a sinewy 6'3" and 215 pounds before being withered by Hodgkin's disease and by the primitive treatments that couldn't slow its progress. Mike's mother, Lee, had been in the spartan room with... Read Original Article »

The Hazards of Confidence

root — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:45:00 +0000

NOTE: This is the first of two articles of general interest which pose questions of both educational process and current events. The Eph Log will be reworking its Williams-related news feed mechanism, altering formats and seeking beta participants in the next weeks.

Princeton Professor Daniel Kahneman has a piece "Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence" in the recent NYT. While I'm sure many Williams Professors have already read and thought about it, it is worth reading for its reflection on the human (and academic tendency) to overestimate the value of our own knowledge and belief. The piece is also rather long and unstructured-- it dives into an extended consideration of financial markets, anecdotal but lacking summary points or principles.

Kahneman's largest point is that humans often overvalue their own conclusions and judgments, and ignore this even when confronted with direct evidence. He begins with his youthful experiences as a psychologist for the Israeli Army, supposedly giving methodical predictions of which officer candidates were likely to suceed as leaders in the future.

His conclusions are almost bleak:

...watching the candidates go through... tests, we had to summarize our impressions... with a grade and determine who would be eligible for officer training... Some of the men looked like strong leaders, others seemed like wimps or arrogant fools, others mediocre but not hopeless. [Often...] we were completely confident in our evaluations and believed that what we saw pointed directly to the future. The soldier who took over when the group was in trouble and led the team over the wall was a leader at that moment...

Because our impressions of how well each soldier performed were generally coherent and clear, our formal predictions were just as definite. We rarely experienced doubt... We felt no need to question our forecasts, moderate them or equivocate. If challenged, however, we were fully prepared to admit, “But of course anything could happen.”

[A]s it turned out, despite our certainty ... our forecasts were largely useless. The evidence was overwhelming. Every few months we had a feedback session ... The story was always the same: our ability to predict performance at the school was negligible.

What's the take-away lesson here? We often form impressions or evaluations of individuals based on observation of their actions or "performance." We see someone make a crowd laugh, and we think "they're a funny guy." But if we'd seen them bomb their comedy act the night before, we might have formed the other impression. In fact, our impressions and judgments may be more a sort of prejudice than reality, a point Kahneman makes on the next page:

[W]e did so by evaluating his behavior over one hour in an artificial situation. ... We had made up a story from the little we knew but had no way to allow for what we did not know a... When you know as little as we did, you should not make extreme predictions ... The stars we saw on the obstacle field were most likely accidental flickers, in which a coincidence of random events — like who was near the wall — largely determined who became a leader. Other events — some of them also random — would determine later success in training and combat.

You may be surprised by our failure: ... But the exaggerated expectation of consistency is a common error. We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it ...is, because our memory... maintains a story about what is going on, and because ... memory tend[s] to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives. Fast thinking is not prone to doubt.

What I immediately ask here-- is it possible to arrange one's thinking in a "non-fast" way, perhaps filled with doubts, that is not prone to these "errors?" What's the alternative?

But what Kahneman seems to be saying here is that we tend to make judgments based on entirely random or superficial factors, and stick to them. And that has enormous implications-- for instance, we may believe that certain kinds of speech, or grammatical "errors," are indicative of intelligence or its opposite. But this may not be at all true, or there may be other factors involved (speech habits may, for instance, indicate and reinforce class or race differences.

The potential for pigeonholing individuals, groups or other decisions is largely unexplored in Kahneman's article, but significant. We have the impression that someone is a lawyer or politician or factory worker-- how much do these impressions contain judgments, that limit individuals to these roles and identities? What if the seeming differences, are in reality not so great?

Kahneman, however, turns to the financial industry and the current crisis, with some effect:

I first visited a Wall Street firm in 1984... Mutual funds are run by highly experienced and hard-working professionals who buy and sell stocks... Nevertheless, the evidence from more than 50 years of research is conclusive: for a large majority of fund managers, the selection of stocks is more like rolling dice than like playing poker.

Some years after my introduction to the world of finance... I was invited to speak to a group of investment advisers in a firm that provided financial advice and other services to very wealthy clients. I asked for some data to prepare my presentation ... It was a simple matter to rank the advisers by their performance and to answer a question: Did the same advisers consistently achieve better returns for their clients year after year? Did some advisers consistently display more skill than others?

While I was prepared to find little year-to-year consistency, I was still surprised to find that [the result was] zero. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.

No one in the firm seemed to be aware of the nature of the game that its stock pickers were playing.

Did you catch that? Do stock brokers have skill? Hedge fund managers? The whole "financial industry"? Here's the answer: no. Really. At least according to Kahneman, it's basically a crap game, in which some people convince themselves and others that they know what they're doing. And even if you present the people involved with this fact, they, of course, go on doing what they were doing.

Bethany McLean's reflections are relevant here. The finance industry has convinced itself that it has some kind of competence, in fact, that it is really good, and that its "stars" are in fact "the brightest guys in the room." It believes that "the market" can solve all problems, and that nothing else is worth thinking about. But in fact-- this is all an illusion. There's nothing there.

What happens, then, if we follow such illusions for a decade or two, or half a century?

An Eph(b)Log: Three Preliminary Definitions

1kenthomas — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:04:22 +0000

The purpose of this blog is to post information about the 15th year reunion for the Williams College class of 1988.

-- David Kane, 6 January 2003

2) We have a "blog" for the reunion available at http://quant.blogspot.com

Those who don't know what a blog is can read about them at http://www.blogger.com/about.pyra. The purpose of the blog is to generate interest in and excitement about our upcoming reunion. I am currently the only maintainer, but I would be eager to have other people join me. I certainly need help with graphics and the like.

-- David Kane, 29 January 2003

Eph Blog (or EphBlog or ephBlog) is a collaborative effort among purple people to provide news, discussion and debate about anything and everything having to do with Williams College. Eph Blog began life as an effort to generate interest in the 15th year reunion of the class of 1988. It later morphed into the Williams College Blog.

-- David Kane, 2 March 2004 (at the conversion from "Blogger" to "Moveable Type")

There is much that might be learned, from these small fragments of discourse.

Negativity, Discourse & Decline (Online): Another Example

1kenthomas — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:39:02 +0000

NOTE: We're taking an approximately week-long break from focusing on Williams News (of which there is more than will fit our current format), to review Eph(b)log history and focus on online community and its problems; as well as do a bit of evaluation and planning.

The following is another example of "negativity" or "negative comments" online, --

Two days ago, the New York Times published an article on Krista Branch's music and its relationship to the Tea Party, "Song Adopted by Cain’s Campaign Also Aims to Be a Tea Party Anthem". (The characterization may be inaccurate of Branch's intent).

Branch's production firm, Sound Mind Productions, had placed a video of one her recent songs, "Lead Me On," on YouTube on 22nd August. Before the NYT article, the video had about 3,000 views and 10 comments, mostly positive.

By yesterday evening, the YouTube page had just under 6,500 views and had garnered another 25 comments. Almost all of the comments were entirely negative, either criticising Branch or attempting to engage in some form of criticism of Israel's current policies.

By early this morning, Sound Mind Productions had disabled comments on the YouTube page.

Immediately, there is nothing profound to see here. Sound Mind represents Branch. As in my previous example from Sound Thang, they have no interest in exposing Branch to extremely negative comments, nor in having her work portraid in such a light.

This much is obvious, but where I want to aim here is at grasping a little more of what's going on.

One thing we might observe, is that all else aside, Sound Mind made a somewhat courageous decision in not responding and closing comments in such a situaiton. I know a lot of young artists whose work is morally or politically charged, and many of them face difficult choices between management groups that are very responsive and beholden to negative criticism, and often smaller management groups which preserve might be called "the integrity of their work." Sound Mind's move seems more consistent with the latter.

Another matter, is the integrity of discourse or what we might term "free speech" concerns. One might argue that the comments left on the page are a matter of free speech and deserving of some protection. Against this, we might well spend some time thinking of the creative nature of Branch's expression, that its message is not easily interpreted as a simple message-- and judge the quality of comments and their value, in comparison.

You cannot see those comments because they've been turned off-- indeed, the discussion (if it was a discussion!) has been cut off. I assure you-- they were largely vile, and in sum not very thoughtful. If an artists' goal is not to "control the message" to "achieve a predefined result," but to spur thought and consideration, it's hard to see what allowing a wall of negative comments acheives.

From the point of view of a technologist considering the nature of discourse and what media it takes to nurture and encourage it, the YouTube comments section, as well as this situation, is clearly problematic. Ratings and other gadgets aside, there is little in the way of community building-- the kind of tools that allow individual posters to get to know each other-- or opportunity for sustained discussion. It's very easy for a random group ("mob") to "enter the room" and take over the conversation.

Equally, there's not much room for defining the conversation. YouTube is primarily a tool for sharing videos. Its comments section is more of an afterthought or generic add-on, not meant to be a discussion-- and someone like Sound Mind Productions, has little in the way of tools to control a sudden downturn such as yesterdays, except to turn off discussion altoghter.

To return to our binding theme, "negativity," we might ask why someone would post a negative or largely off-topic comment on an artist's page. Any amount of thought might result in one thinking of how inappropriate it is to "trash" an artist's effort-- but in the end, it boils down to the fact that it is too easy to post such a reaction, and that negative reactions are the strongest and thus the most likely to provoke the effort of posting (composing a message).

Tearing down what one doesn't bother to take the effort to understand is too easy-- witness the various "posters" controversies between groups in Paresky.

Another way one might put things is that YouTube does not define any "purpose" for its discussions-- its more of a "bathroom wall" format. And while the bathroom wall may have its function, the possibility of acting as a place to express what is not normally expressed, it also has a great potential to encourage nothing but the worst.

But sometimes-- sometimes you'd like to see better!

On Negativity, Discourse and Decline (Online)

1kenthomas — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:32:41 +0000

"We're using... we dropped the forums, we thought they were going to be all great and touchy-feely, but they just became filled with negativity. We just decided to get rid of them, they really weren't what we were about."

A. J., Creator / Founder of Beat Thang (Beat Kangz Electronics), personal discussion 10 October 2011

On Database Integrity, Security and Industry Standards

1kenthomas — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Earlier today, I received the following (somewhat disturing) email (full version available in extended post):

[Wine] WineHQ database compromise

Jeremy White jwhite at codeweavers.com Tue Oct 11 14:13:23 CDT 2011

Hi,

I am sad to say that there was a compromise of the WineHQ database system.

What we know at this point that someone was able to obtain unauthorized access to the phpmyadmin utility.  We do not exactly how they
 obtained access; ...

We do not believe the attackers obtained any other form of access to the system.

On the one hand, we saw no evidence of harm to any database. We saw no evidence of any attempt to change the database ...

Unfortunately, the attackers were able to download the full login database for both the appdb and bugzilla.  This means that they
 have all of those emails, as well as the passwords.  The passwords are stored encrypted, but with enough effort and depending on the
 quality of the password, they can be cracked.

This, I'm afraid, is a serious threat; it means that anyone who uses the same email / password on other systems is now vulnerable to
 a malicious attacker using that information to access their account. ...

This is again another reminder to never use a common username / password pair.  This web site provides further advice as well:
http://asiknews.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/best-practice-password-management-for-internet-web-sites/

I am very sad to have to report this.  We have so many challenges in our world today that this is a particularly painful form of salt
for our wounds.

However, I think it is urgent for everyone to know what happened.

Cheers,  Jeremy

First, I'd like to say thanks to Jeremy for this warning. It's great to see people striving for best practices, and work with them. Next, and explanation of the problem: the reports I read say that over 35% (that's one-third) of computers in the US are now comprimized / under the control of others, often groups loosely aligned with non-US intelligence operations.

These people want to steal your data, and your and our money, and worse. Ignoring the security aspects which both scare the hell out of me and keep me up at night (does your iPhone have counterfiet chips designed to probe US nuclear defence?), these groups are looking to committ fraud on a serious scale (and I've watched millions be stolen by their schemes).

These people are just bad. And if they can find a way to access your accounts (anywhere: bank, securities, email)-- they will. And "to boot," (skipping long discussion of passwords and security mechanisms)-- the reality is that most (real person) users will use common combinations and variations of usernames and passwords. And for me-- the days in which I want to remember or manage 100s of usernames/passwords are long in the past, even if I can rememeber Pi to 12 decimal places (the default on my first scientific calulator), etc.

For my own systems, I carry a secure crytographic ID card. In addition to username, password, and something called an "ssh keyfile", I have to press a button and enter the cryptographically generated ID # that results. But this is hardly a system that my bank uses or lets me use (though maybe they should).

What's the point here? Well, there's nothing like the note I got from UC Berkeley a few years ago, after some enterprising hackers broke into Grad Division and stole records detailed enough to open credit accounts in my name. And the time before that, when a UC employee left a laptop with student records in a cab. And of course, the various stories of diplomatic, government and corporate email accounts compromised and monitored by various groups, agencies and governments.

My first point is that this is serious business. The information contained in a database such as the Wine Project's, can be used to topple bank accounts, stock information and, perhaps, governments. The issues are serious.

My related point concerns Eph-Log. We currently run under Drupal 6; passwords are stored in "short MD5 hashes" which could certainly be broken with sufficent computing power-- I coulddo it. And that means there are a lot of other people who, with access, coulddo it.

I take this seriously. If we imagine an alumni community with many more users-- the problem expands (and think of some of the people who are alums!). The nature of the problem is much greater, as well-- not just usernames and passwords, but a large domain of "fuzzy" data, starting with birthdays and life events, and extending into matters such as personal location data, work details and the like, which might be "data mined" to provide resulting information which might compromise security in any number of ways.

My email to an ambassador, reveals his attendance at a private conference, which is combined with information from others to access another attendee's email. Such is my world-- but in the "more mundane," it is certainly possible that the mere location of an Eph Log poster, combined with a hint or two about their job, might lead to compromising the credit accounts of a collegue, and a scam that steals hundreds of thosands of dollars and sends it to those who will use it for harm.

In Drupal 7, both the encryption protocol for information, and the levels and options for securing data on a more fine-grained level, are at least "much better." It would take much more effort to compromise your passwords-- not the resources of governments, alas, but serious resources outside the scope of the average hacker ring. And we can begin to do more, to secure your location data, your professional and identity information, and so forth.

I do not intent to offer reassurances here, rather information and warnings. The issues are serious-- what is happening, from the perspective of we who have followed developements for years, disturbing. I'm providing only a very high-level overview (with some obvious deficincies), in the belief that beginning to ring the alarm bell, and to provide some transparency, is the best approach.

Equally, while these discussion normally and regularly occur in the tech industry, public perception of them is relatively low and often characterizable by the sensationalism and generality common to contempary journalism. Corporations, especially in the United States, tend to provide little transparency about data breaches and threats, and to act reactively rather than proactively-- always behind the curve. Equally, there is no unified and simplistic group of "rogue" "hackers" doing "bad things" -- "hacker" groups in the US are more likely to be your friends, while true threats more likely are from organized criminal activity supported by governments.

My overall point is thus neither to blithely assert that we at Eph Log have done all that is necessary and "it is safe," nor to say "it's not safe" but "at your risk." The issues, especially technical ones, are complex, and I hope to raise some awareness if not discussion of them, and provide an accurate picture. To give an assessment: we're probably not as safe to use as your bank, but we are very aware, and probably much more secure than, for instance, the average site or blog you use. (The NYTimes comes to mind!). We will be following these issues and reacting to them proactively in the future.

Mountain Day!

root — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:33:59 +0000

Williams College Mountain Day Coverage is here. Previous EBL articles on Mountain Day, here.

Williams Record Changes URL to TheWilliamsRecord.com

root — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:37:54 +0000

Please note: the Williams Record has a new home:

www.TheWilliamsRecord.com
Glad to see them back! Unfortunately, they're still using WordPress, unlike my friends at the Vanderbilt Hustler. C'mon guys! Step up!!! (<-- said with a smile).

Michael Powers '77: Lessons from a Linebacker Father

root — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0000

"Finish What you Start"

Via the Salem News:

'Finish what you start' was lineman's motto

DANVERS — Alfred Michael Powers was a man of few words, so the code he lived by was short: "Finish what you start." It's a motto that has served his family well.

Powers, who went by the nicknames "Al," "Fred" and "Mike," died Sept. 28 at home surrounded by his family after his second battle with cancer.

He was 77. Mike Powers ['77], his eldest son, eulogized his father, a 37-year lineman for New England Telephone, at a funeral Mass celebrated at St. Richard's Church.

Michael Powers' father taught him never to quit while playing Danvers Youth Football...

Turns out, the younger Powers did not take to the game right away, ... Alfred Powers was a referee in the league and advised his son to gut out the rest of the season. Michael Powers, then around 10, didn't like the idea of hitting or getting hit.

"'You should finish what you start, and not quit,'" Michael Powers said his father told him. He could stop playing after the season was over. Then, during a game, the running back ran into the young player. The announcer said Michael Powers made the tackle. The son found football was to his liking, after all. "'Next time, why don't you try hitting him,'" Alfred Powers told his son.

Michael Powers went on to play four years at Danvers High and four more at Williams College. He became known as a blue-collar linebacker who could give a good hit.

"You don't walk away from it," Powers said his father told him. ...

"He loved what he was doing," Michael Powers said. "He was one of those people, you know — you find the job you love, and it's not work, it's a passion; and he found that with the phone company." ...

Michael Powers noted how the world his father wired has changed, something that struck him the day his father died. "After a few minutes of emotion ... everybody pulled out a cellphone," Powers said. It symbolized the passing of the his father's generation's technology.

Our deepest condolences to Mr. Powers and his family.

@Parents: Newspapers Don't Matter to Recruiting. Chill.

root — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:30:00 +0000

Players Should Be Proactive!

MassLive's High School Sports section offers advice to parents on Athletics' Recruiting:

"No connection between newspaper[s] and athletes being recruited for college"

            We got another one last week – a mom of a high school athlete calling to tell the sports department we had something wrong in the paper and if we could fix it because her son was trying to get recruited for college. ...

[P]lease high school parents, you need to know something: your child being recruited to play sports in college has nothing ... to do with what’s in the newspaper. There’s no connection.

            Don’t believe me? OK, let’s ask a college coach. ...

            LaBranche:     “College coaches only truly recruit players that they or a trusted staff member has evaluated in person,” LaBranche said. “The recruiting of that player is based entirely on an evaluation of current skills, projected skills and needs of the program. It is not based on stats or all-league or reputation or anything else.”

            That sort of sums it up, doesn’t it?...

...Let’s take something a little more realistic. Let’s pick Williams College, which is a remarkable academic school in Berkshire County with one of the best Division III athletic programs in the country. How are those coaches at Williams recruiting? Do they read all the newspaper websites in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, etc . . .? ...

            College coaches want to see potential recruits in person and in action. And, here’s a little tidbit most parents don’t know – the player, ... is usually the one who needs to be proactive. If a player wants to get on a college coach’s radar, the player usually needs to make the first move.

Well, "there you have it." Like it or not.

Mitchell Reiss '79: Liberal Elitist for Romney?

root — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:30:00 +0000

The "New American" declares:

Late last week GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney released the names of his foreign policy and national security advisors ...
"I am deeply honored to have the counsel of this extraordinary group of diplomats, experts and statesmen. ..."
His campaign continues to be plagued with an increasing chorus of doubters about his conservative posture. ...
Russert: The head of the Bay State Council of the Blind said that your name was “Fee-Fee”; that you raised fee after fee after fee. That’s a tax … a fee’s not a tax?

Romney: A fee — well, a fee — if it were a tax, it’d be called — it’d be called a tax. But…

Russert: Governor, that’s…that’s a gimmick [Lie? Go read WJB.]

Romney: No, it’s, it’s reality. It is. But — and I have no ... I’m not trying to hide from the fact we raised fees. We raised fees $240 million.

It turned out that the amount raised by “fees” was closer to $750 million, but Romney claimed that didn't count, because they weren’t taxes. ...

The heaviest burden Romney must bear is his support of RomneyCare and his failed and failing attempts to differentiate it from ObamaCare. ...

Critics note that the latest announcement by Romney of his advisors should finally put to rest any idea that he represents conservative or Tea Party values. He named the following people to his board of advisors:

Mitchell Reiss — served as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department under Colin Powell. He received degrees from Williams College, Tufts University, Columbia University, and Oxford University. He worked at the National Security Council under the direction of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell. He served on the National Security Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Ford Foundation. [CFR]*

Analysts note that it should be more than abundantly clear that Romney has little or no interest in deviating in the slightest from the foreign policy trajectory the country is currently on. If he does waver, he’ll have plenty of pressure from the elitists surrounding him to stay the path to building the U.S. empire abroad with America's blood and treasure. [Full list available in extended article.]
*Member of the internationalist Council on Foreign Relations

OK, OK... the fact that this list looks like the Heritage Foundation's short aside, here's the problem with this process. "Best and brightest" or not also aside, people with enormous capacity are forced to hitch their wagons to a candidate -- and generally, a candidate who doesn't really represent much. Then these groups divide into opposing, hostile camps. And when it is all over, the process has excluded most (ideas, people, possibilities) instead of moving towards "best solutions."

Colleen Gerrity, Alexander Hogan ('07s) Wed at Thompson Chapel

root — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:30:00 +0000

From the New York Times:

Colleen Rogers Gerrity and Alexander Hannafey Hogan, both fourth-year medical students, are to be married Sunday at the Thompson Memorial Chapel at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. The Rev. Christopher J. Devron, a Roman Catholic priest, is to perform the ceremony.

The couple, both 26, met at Williams, from which they graduated.

Ms. Gerrity will keep her name. She is studying at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington. She is a daughter of Ann Clarke Gerrity and Dr. Michael L. Gerrity of Williamstown. The bride’s father, a pediatrician, is a partner in Northern Berkshire Pediatrics, a group practice in North Adams, Mass. Her mother is a ceramic artist.
Mr. Hogan is studying at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. He is a son of Leslie M. Hannafey and Stephen Hogan of Brooklyn Heights. The bridegroom’s mother retired as a managing director in Manhattan for corporate finance at the investment banking unit of Prudential. She was until May the president of the Heights Casino, a tennis and squash club in Brooklyn. His father is a partner in Yeskoo Hogan & Tamlyn, a Manhattan law firm.

Best of wishes to Colleen and Hogan!

Berkshires join the Occupy Wall Street movement

root — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Via the Berkshire Eagle:

The "Occupy" movement is coming to the Berkshires... Organizers have outlined the local gathering to be "a peaceful, upbeat rally," which will be held along the street outside of Great Barrington Town Hall from 1 to 3 p.m.
Occupy the Berkshires is one of countless other meetups being held in 905 cities across the country, according to the website Occupy Together... [T]wo other such events are scheduled in the Berkshires this coming week: Occupy Images on Monday at Images Cinema in Williamstown and Occupy Lenox on Wednesday at Lenox Town Hall.
Bill Shein, 44, of Alford, a co-organizer of Occupy the Berkshires, offered a reason of the growth of and interest in this movement. "People realize it's time for fundamental and transformative change. What has been discussed since the beginning of this recent financial crisis has been marginal, if [discussed] at all. The young folks in Liberty Square realize that the old ways just don't work any more, that they're just not effective," ...
Occupy Wall Street began on Sept. 17... the overarching mission of the movement seems to be to inform citizens, enabling them to demand for more fairness and accountability of financial systems in the United States.
People like Justin Adkins, Shannon Toye and Thomas Winstanley, all from Berkshire County, have also become involved, and even arrested, for the cause.
Justin Adkins, 33, of Williamstown is the assistant director of the Multicultural Center at Williams College,... "My students, some of the smartest and brightest in the country, are living on their parents' couches, not able to find work. Even though I got some of the largest scholarships at my school [Marlboro College in Vermont], I'm $39,000 in debt from my bachelor's degree, ... All this has made me passionate about the Occupy Wall Street movement," he said.
[Justin] has spent the past two weekends in New York City, joining the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was also among the 700 protesters arrested while trying to march across the Brooklyn Bridge...
Adkins' arrest, his first, has become quite public in the news blogosphere, from the Huffington Post to Instinct Magazine. Adkins, ... issued a public statement on his website, detailing his claim of unfair treatment ... he has chosen to focus on sharing more information about the Occupy Wall Street movement, which he will do during a public panel and screening of live Occupy Wall Street footage on Monday at Images Cinema.
"Our country has been stuck in a polarized two-party system for a very long time. It's like a wad of hair stuck in a drain. All these issues, all these hairs are clogging our system, clogging our country," Adkins said.
(Events and times list in full article).

Could we possibly be seeing the start of a demand for serious critique and change of the institutions in the United States?

Chase Coleman '97's Technology Picks For the Long Term

root — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Seeking Alpha reports:

Seeded by legendary investor Julian Robertson, Chase Coleman is only 35 years old and a graduate of Williams College. His fund Tiger Global Management returned 71% after fees in 2007. Tiger Global's Chase Coleman is one of the more successful 'tiger cubs'. Coleman's Tiger Global has nearly $5 Billion under management and achieved an average 21% return per year since 2001. Coleman mainly invests in technology companies.
Below we compiled a list of stocks that Coleman has been holding since the beginning of this year. These are Coleman’s holdings with at least $100 Million at the end of June. Chase Coleman is one of the best technology investors around. He made billions from his investments in Facebook. He also invested early in LinkedIn (LNKD). His investments in publicly traded companies also performed spectacularly. Here are his best technology stock picks for the long term:

Apple Inc. ... Viacom Inc. ... Amazon.com, Inc. ... MasterCard Worldwide ... Priceline.com ... Visa Inc. ... MakeMyTrip.com ...
(Full rundown in extended post.)

Hmm. How much of Apple's revenues are due to iPhone sales alone?

כָּל נִדְרֵי

root — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:30:00 +0000