Laughter for Dessert

Author(s):  
Steve Zeitlin

The author reflects here on the important role that laughter has played in his life. His brother Murray laughs harder than anyone else he knows—and he caps it off by clapping in wild applause. The author's daughter, Eliza, once quipped: “We had laughter for dessert.” He even imagined a mystery story in which the murderer kills by devising a perfect joke that convulses people with laughter till they die. He also can remember a girl whose infectious laugh inspired a poem entitled Lily. His friend and Ping-Pong partner Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, is a student of humor; he also teaches a class in humor theory at the University of Michigan. And like many long-married couples, he and his wife have developed routines for their own personal comedy team of sorts. The author adds that banter is a key ingredient of folk culture and family folklore.

Author(s):  
Michael V. Metz

Stoddard, president of the university from 1946 to 1953, was a controversial man, an East Coaster, a liberal, and an internationalist. Through much of his tenure he had difficult relations with both the university’s board of trustees and the state legislature, and he also faced opposition from conservative faculty at UI. A scandal over a phony cancer cure brought undesired publicity to the school and was the last in a series of controversies that led to his dismissal by the board in a late-night Illini Union meeting.


Author(s):  
Thomas Basbøll

In September of 2012, the American novelist Philip Roth published an open letter to Wikipedia in The New Yorker. “I am Philip Roth,” it began, and proceeded to explain how the editors of Wikipedia had gotten  the inspiration for his novel The Human Stain wrong. Though the article had in fact only mentioned a theory about his sources, Roth was adamant that it did not belong anywhere in a discussion of his novel. He wanted the idea removed entirely. This, it turns out, was a profound misunderstanding of the editorial practices of Wikipedia, and the theory that Roth would prefer we forget remains in the article to this  day. His letter in The New Yorker, of course, is duly cited. How well should librarians understand the editorial process behind Wikipedia’s articles? In this workshop, we will take a practical approach to the problem and have a look at what goes on behind the scenes, even edit some pages if we feel so inclined. The workshop will be led by Thomas Basbøll, a philosopher and writing consultant who has spent a few years working as a volunteer editor at Wikipedia and even has even been banned from editing certain pages for a time. The overall goal of the  workshop is to demystify one of the most accessed sources of knowledge in the world and help librarians  decide how to best help people like Philip Roth, and his readers, make sense of its “authority”.  Thomas Basbøll is the resident writing consultant at the Copenhagen Business School Library. He holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen, and a PhD from the Copenhagen Business School. He works closely with students, teachers and researchers in their attempts to master “the craft of research” and is an avid blogger (blog.cbs.dk/inframethodology/). 


Author(s):  
Steve Zeitlin

In this chapter, the author looks at the poetry of Ping-Pong, his favorite sport. According to Marty Reisman, the game of Ping-Pong died in Bombay, India, in 1952. Reisman, nicknamed “The Needle,” was favored to win the World Table Tennis Championship that day. The author says he has always loved Ping-Pong because you can get into a rhythm, hit the ball back and forth across the net for hours, with any racquet, and simply talk. Ping-Pong, like poetry, is a players' sport, not ideal for spectators. Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, claims that there is palpable humor in the game. With Ping-Pong, the author insists that we are all capable of attuning ourselves to the hidden life of sports, a relationship that is about kinesthesia and embodiment.


1979 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 96-101
Author(s):  
J.A. Graham

During the past several years, a systematic search for novae in the Magellanic Clouds has been carried out at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The Curtis Schmidt telescope, on loan to CTIO from the University of Michigan is used to obtain plates every two weeks during the observing season. An objective prism is used on the telescope. This provides additional low-dispersion spectroscopic information when a nova is discovered. The plates cover an area of 5°x5°. One plate is sufficient to cover the Small Magellanic Cloud and four are taken of the Large Magellanic Cloud with an overlap so that the central bar is included on each plate. The methods used in the search have been described by Graham and Araya (1971). In the CTIO survey, 8 novae have been discovered in the Large Cloud but none in the Small Cloud. The survey was not carried out in 1974 or 1976. During 1974, one nova was discovered in the Small Cloud by MacConnell and Sanduleak (1974).


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (9) ◽  
pp. 601
Author(s):  
Tonia J. Buchholz ◽  
Bruce Palfey ◽  
Anna K. Mapp ◽  
Gary D. Glick

Skull Base ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (S 2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Ward ◽  
Lawrence Marentette

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