A Sampling of Clips for February 23, 2010

* UCSD faculty and staff may obtain a copy of an article by e-mailing the University Communications Office

University TV Show Mocking Blacks Sparks Freeze
The New York Times, Feb. 23 -- UCSD has halted funding for student media after a TV segment ridiculed black students outraged by a party mocking Black History Month. More

Similar story in
Contra Costa Times
San Diego Union-Tribune (news story)
San Diego Union-Tribune (editorial)
10News
San Diego News Network

The (Good and Bad) Future of the Internet
Scientific American, Feb. 22 —“We know even now that we are at some fundamental limits of what the Internet can handle,” warned UCSD Professor KC Claffy at the beginning of her talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego. “We have one big expectation—being able to innovate,” she said. “And it is unclear whether we will be able to do that.” More

Similar story in
Voice of San Diego

Tic Toc Goes the Bacteria Clock
Reuters, Feb. 17 - Blinking bacteria cells glow as the world's first genetic clock, developed by UCSD researchers. More

Breaking Waves
The Economist, Feb. 18 -- The Wilkins shelf may or may not have been the victim, ultimately, of climate change. Regardless of what weakened it, though, it was not rising temperatures that caused the sudden break up. Peter Bromirski of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego thinks he knows what did: a little-studied phenomenon called infragravity waves. More

Climate Sceptics are Recycled Critics of Controls on Tobacco and Acid Rain
The Guardian, U.K., Feb. 19 -- Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. "Merchants of Doubt," a new book by UCSD Professor Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. More

Searching for Saddam
Slate, Feb. 23 -- The raid on Mohammad al-Hadooshi's farm had to happen fast. The plan had been to storm several targets in nearby al-Oja, where Saddam Hussein was born, as a way to divert the enemy.  (Mentions Nicholas Christakis and UCSD Professor James Fowler and their recent book “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives”) More

Alaska Loses Status as Top Earmark Recipient
Miami Herald, Feb. 22 -- Alaskans may have lost their title as the No. 1 per capita recipients of earmarks, but it doesn't mean the federal spigot has run dry for the state that made the so-called "bridge to nowhere" a buzzword for wasteful spending. (Quotes UCSD political scientist Gary Jacobson) More

Mortal Coil
Artforum, Feb. 19  -- MORTALITY LIVES! That could have been the tabloid headline for several exhibitions that opened in New York last Thursday, when the parallel world of Fashion Week began with the jolting news of designer Alexander McQueen’s suicide by hanging. (Mentions Haim Steinbach, who is on the UCSD faculty) More

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