Renowned babies scholar

First off: we pay our respects to Norman Ryder, a revolutionary Princeton sociologist who passed away at the age of 86. Ryder pioneered the “cohort” approach to demographic study, which analyzes a group of people of the same age as they “go through life and share similar experiences,” sort of like that movie about babies.

Speaking of babies, Ryder did a lot of massively influential research on fertility. He and another Princeton professor, Charles Westoff, co-directed the National Fertility Studies in ‘65, ‘70, and ‘75, interviewing thousands of American women and eventually demonstrating, among other cool things, “that a drop in unplanned births accounted for nearly the entire decline in U.S. fertility following the post-World War II baby boom.”

And speaking of unplanned births …

This past week, LeBron James, one of the best humans to have ever touched a basketball, decided where he was going to bounce and shoot that basketball for the foreseeable future. For those who managed (somehow) to miss it, it was a big deal. The national media salivated, tongues lolling dumbly, as Mr. James managed to scientifically pinpoint himself as the center of the known universe (I don’t want to talk about it here it will get ugly I’m going to stop right now). It was a spectacle – and in the midst of it all a strange 55-year-old man decided to smack LeBron with a lawsuit, claiming to be his father and accusing his “son” of a fraudulent cover-up.

Is he really LeDaddy?

You may be wondering why I am talking about this. The fact is …

… Leicester Bryce Stovell ‘??, as the media never fails to gleefully mention, is an alum of Princeton University. He says that he met LeBron’s mother at a D.C. nightclub back in the day and impregnated her. This unsavory fellow also says that Ms. James sought him out months later to inform him that she was bearing his child; apparently his only request was that the little guy play basketball one day. The kid turned out to be pretty good, so maybe Stovell is some kind of weird soothsayer or something.

Despite a negative paternity test, Stovell remains convinced he’s LeDaddy, and thus has started building his own case. (Yeah, he’s a lawyer too, by the way, though this degree’s not our fault, it’s the University of Chicago’s.) Said case is ostensibly based on rock-solid evidence, including:

• The fact that they are both tall.
• The fact that they both have bearded, prominent jawlines.
• The “fact” that LeBron’s name is an homage to him: the “Le” borrowed from “Leicester,” and the “Br” from “Bryce.”

Meanwhile, LeBron’s camp denies all connections, points to that negative paternity test, and just sort of watches as this odd, sad man takes his case to (non-hardwood) court, seeking $4 mil in damages. Oh, and Stovell assures us that the timing was coincidental: “This is not one of those popping out of woodwork to exploit a celebrity’s fame and fortune.” Right.

And now, for a significantly less offensive yet equally shocking assertion: gravity is not what we think it is! That is, according to physicist Erik Verlande, a former professor of physics (he left for the University of Amsterdam, though twin bro Herman stuck around). This audacious string theorist thinks that we’re looking at gravity entirely the wrong way, thinks it’s a mere consequence of something much deeper: the laws of thermodynamics.

“For me, gravity doesn’t exist,” he quips (and I visualize him smugly puffing at a bubble pipe while chilling in a bath tub full of money).

His incendiary paper, “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,” is apparently lot more incendiary than the title might immediately suggest since it has sparked an uproar in the physics world. Plenty of smart physicists are baffled by this theory, while other smart physicists believe there’s some merit to it. The Times attempts to explain Verlande’s notion to the layman:

What up Newton

Dr. Verlinde’s argument turns on something you could call the “bad hair day” theory of gravity.

It goes something like this: your hair frizzles in the heat and humidity, because there are more ways for your hair to be curled than to be straight, and nature likes options. So it takes a force to pull hair straight and eliminate nature’s options. Forget curved space or the spooky attraction at a distance described by Isaac Newton’s equations well enough to let us navigate the rings of Saturn, the force we call gravity is simply a byproduct of nature’s propensity to maximize disorder.

He could be onto something. Regardless, he should probably come back to Princeton so we can take credit for this … because in all likelihood, we cannot take credit, even indirectly, for LeBron James.

(images via www.princeton.edu, www.huffingtonpost.com, www.nytimes.com)

For those too lazy to look, these are Professor Krugman’s nuggets of deadpan humor:

1. Uh, yeah.

2. Thank you.

3. Oh boy.

from aolcdn.com

From “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” a 2003 Esquire article by Tucker Carlson on an unlikely peace-negotiating trip to Liberia led by Al Sharpton:

Cornel West, the writer and scholar, led the prayer. “Lord, keep us safe,” West intoned as we bowed our heads. “But more important, keep us soulful.”No one looked more soulful than West himself, who was dressed, as always, like a slightly flashy undertaker: white shirt, black three-piece suit, silver pocket watch and chain. He could have been on his way to meet the next of kin. In fact, he was coming from a jazz club. West had stayed in the city until 4:00 A.M. before returning to his “crib in Jersey” (Princeton, New Jersey, where he teaches), then catching a ride to the airport. Along the way, he’d neglected to pack. West boarded the flight for Ghana with two books and a tiny carry-on the size of a woman’s cosmetic case. That was it. He had no suitcases or garment bags or luggage of any kind. Nor did he have any real idea where we were going or how long we might be there. “When are we coming back?” he asked me as we walked down the ramp onto the plane.

Then later, as the group tours the slavery museum at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana:

I was sweating profusely.

Cornel West, I noticed, was not. I looked at him closely as he prayed. Though it was at least 100 degrees in the dungeon, he had not taken off his coat or loosened his tie. (I never once saw him do either.) He had on the same clothes he’d been wearing when we boarded the plane in New York six days before. They looked perfect. There was not a speck of lint or dandruff or dust on his suit. His shoes were shined, the creases in his trousers crisp. His shirt was so white it looked luminescent. The next day I broke down and asked him how, with no change of clothes, he managed to stay so clean. He laughed cryptically but didn’t answer. I began to suspect that I was witnessing some sort of supernatural event, a low-grade miracle. I still can’t think of a better explanation.

"Bros, anybody care to lax?"

John McPhee’s doing a reading at Labyrinth tomorrow, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if our esteemed Ferris Professor of Journalism walked in wearing a practice pinny and a backwards fitted. That is, judging by his recent writings: last month, he reported on ex-Princeton lacrosse coach Bill Tierney’s sudden move to Denver, and his latest book, Silk Parachute, includes a sprawling, 59-page dissection of the game, its origins, its stars, its stereotypes. It’s literally everything you (I) ever wanted to know about the sport, spun wittily in his iconic style. The piece, titled “Spin Right and Shoot Left,” follows our lacrosse team to an exhibition match in Manchester — he’s the team’s Faculty Fellow, which, he says, is “an official position, not unlike shaman.” McPhee packs in plenty of Tierney one-liners and some fascinating Tiger lax trivia:

In 1888, Princeton’s face-off man was Edgar Allan Poe. His granduncle (ibid.) wrote “The Raven.”

Throughout the article, he comfortably slings lax slang such as “whip” and “FOGO,” like he wouldn’t sound out of place in the Cottage taproom (he is, after all, a ‘53 alum of the UCC). His laxicon is most definitely up-to-date. At one point he modestly recalls his only season of competitive play, a postgraduate year (classic bro move) as a Deerfield Academy middie. Apparently the game caught him by surprise:

… after a close and raucous [basketball] game one Saturday night, a teacher came through the departing crowd, stopped me on my way to the locker room and said his name was Mr. Haviland, and that he was the coach of Deerfield lacrosse. He said come spring he would like me to try out for his team … I told Mr. Haviland that I had fiddled around with lacrosse sticks maybe ten times ever while I was growing up in Princeton, but I didn’t play lacrosse, did not know how to play lacrosse.

And the rest is history. Dude’s a lax bro at heart; you can tell by the way he writes about the game, all tangled in a certain wide-eyed poetry. All I’m saying is I might bring my (nonexistent) stick to his creative nonfiction class next spring. Provided I get in. At least now I know which sport to awkwardly allude to on my application.

(image source: goprincetontigers.com)

Juxtaposition of high and low culture! (Especially enjoyed the Lear reference.) It’s funny! Apparently, it’s this funny. And this funny. And this funny. They throw up an adorable shoutout to their poetry editor: “Oh Paul, you totally make it pop.”

So, Tiger Mag, a tip of the hat — for making this video, for making waves. And for enriching the vocabulary of a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. (Notable additions: “crunk,” “junk.”)

UPDATE: These guys picked up on it too. Viral status is imminent.

UPDATE II: And also the Village Voice and the New York Times (!).

(image source: www.en.wikipedia.org)

As all of you enjoyed this sunny Easter weekend, I know exactly what you were thinking about: the weather, bunnies, dyed eggs, and…solar panels? If you found yourself squinting up at the sun and saying, “Wow, if only we could find a cheaper way to harness all that energy,” you weren’t alone. Enter a brand new technique developed by the lab of Princeton’s own Yueh-Lin Loo, associate professor of chemical engineering, that promises the ability to harness solar energy at a cost low enough to allow for viable solar energy programs.

Loo’s lab developed a power-conducting plastic that could very well replace the expensive indium tin-oxide previously used in the construction of solar panels. These polymers are by no means new to the engineering scene, but past attempts to manipulate and process them have compromised their ability to conduct electricity.

“We have figured out how to avoid this trade-off. We can shape the plastics into a useful form while maintaining high conductivity,” said Loo.

Loo’s lab solved the mystery of just why molding these plastics cuts their conductivity so drastically (making the polymers moldable causes their structures to become more rigid, preventing the flow of electricity through the sample), and was then able to solve the problem. After processing the polymer, Loo and her colleagues applied an acid to them to prevent this rigidity and—voila!—plastic conductor extraordinaire.

Part of the appeal of this technology is how easily the electrodes of the plastic transistors they built can be reproduced. Much like the process you see in action every time you print something off of an inkjet printer, these electrodes are printed on a sheet that makes up the transistor.

As for what these findings mean for the future, Loo anticipates that the simplicity of this process will allow for easier access to these transistors, possibly to the point that they’re sold like ink cartridges in the corner store. Also, her lab has expressed interest in pursuing the possibility that these polymers could replace other expensive metals in various devices, as well as indicate infectious disease in patients when used as biomedical sensors.

And although some are skeptical that these advances will make solar power competitive with nuclear and fossil fuel due to the transience of solar energy, it’s clear at least that these easy, low-cost mechanisms open the door for a future of solar power that’s looking a lot brighter (yes, pun intended) than it ever has before.

For more on this work, check out http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/plastic-electronics-could-slash-cost-of.html.

Loudon busking away in praise of Old Nassau (source: www.lw3.com)

It’s been a big month for Princeton economists: between everyone asking Alan Blinder and Uwe Reinhardt for their take on the economy/health care and an in-depth profile of Paul Krugman in a March issue of the New Yorker, it seems like everyone’s got saltwater economics on the brain.

Including, apparently, rock-and-folk music legend Loudon Wainwright, father to Rufus and Martha and guitarist extraordinaire.  His latest album, “10 Songs for the New Depression,” features “The Krugman Blues,” a tribute song to Krugman’s left-leaning take on the Recession. Loudon croons:

I read the New York Times, that’s where I get the news.

Paul Krugman’s on the Op Ed page, that’s where I get the blues.

He also takes a potshot at Old Nassau along the way:

Sometimes when he’s on the TV in the background you can spot his school logo.

Paul teaches at Princeton U, so Krugman ought to know.

To watch the full performance, click here.

image source: collegejolt.com

Every year, the University sends out “The Thesis: Quintessentially Princeton” to incoming freshman and rising seniors. This booklet is meant to give students a taste of the thesis-writing process, and it contains the perspectives of several ’02 Princeton graduates and their thesis advisers. As you seniors trudge through the final weeks and days of your writing process, here’s the best and worst of what you can hope your advisor to say about his/her experience with you:

“Advising Matt was a stimulating experience, from our first conversation to his outstanding oral presentation. My only regret is that I have no way of making Matt’s thesis required reading for every member of the United States Congress.” – Professor Peter Singer about Matt Frazier ’02.

“Some senior theses are much more enjoyable to supervise than others. The ones that are most frustrating typically begin with something like, ‘Hello professor, I was told to come see you. I don’t know what you teach, but could you give me an idea to work on for my thesis?’ Then the student toys with one idea after another until sometime in January, panics, and works frantically to catch up. Those are usually the students, too, who have somehow failed during their first three years at Princeton to learn how to use the library.” – Professor Robert Wuthnow

If you’ve got a renowned ethicist recommending your thesis to Congress, you should be golden. If you fear you may be in the category of advisees Wuthnow speaks of, get thee to a library!

Ah, the good 'ole days of SHR: "I'm just a bill..." (source: pastemagazine.com)

One week after the health care jump, and the Tea Partiers are all busy rallying their troops (to the extent that Obama publicly acknowledged the movement in an interview on the Today Show this morning).  As the rumors fly and rallying cries are shouted, it’s a relief to find a writer who outlines what the new health care actually does in a clear way.

Enter Uwe Reinhardt, Woodrow Wilson’s James Madison Professor of Political Economy. Reinhardt’s specialty is Health Care policy, and as such, he’s been everywhere this past week.  His most recent post on the NYTimes’s Economix blog (a site which is meant to “explain the science of everyday life”) helps demystify the process a great deal: read it here.

In a recent interview with Ezra Klein over at the Washington Post, Reinhardt compared the health care reform process to the belabored process of home-improvement:

It’s a bit like moving into a house. You’ll spend another half year having workmen come fix the house. The individual mandate, for instance, is not good enough. You could still have young people pay the fine, and you’ll get the death spiral. I think they should have a window, if you enroll now, you’re in the club. But if you don’t enroll now, if you decide to play the adverse risk selection game, then if you try to reenroll, you can be discriminated against for health status.

If you’re looking for trendier take on the bill (albeit a less tiger-toned one), check out this great new article from Paste Magazine, which has indie rockers from groups like OK Go and Death Cab for Cutie weigh in on the bill’s ramifications. Read on, Tigers!

Sejima and Nishizawa, feeling the excitement!

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa will be the next recipients of the prestigious Pritzker Prize (pretty much the Nobel Prize of architecture). The pair currently work for the Japanese firm SANAA but used to lecture at Princeton, so we’re still counting this as a victory for Old Nassau. Full story here.

(image courtesy of SANAA)