Posts by Heeyoung Min

The student group MEChA de Brown is collecting signatures for a petition against Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, which grants broad police authority to detain anyone suspect of being in the country illegally. Critics of the law, concerned with potential civil rights violations, say it essentially sanctions racial profiling.

The Brown group’s petition, which currently has over 600 signatures, states:

“As an institution that stands for the indiscriminate treatment of all human beings, regardless of race or ethnicity, it is imperative that President Ruth Simmons, as a representative of Brown, stand alongside MEChA de Brown and express public disapproval for S.B. 1070.”

[Read more →]

After nearly a decade of studying computer science at Brown, Meier headed to Los Angeles to lend her talents to animation and visual effects production companies (her projects include Batman Returns, Toys, Fantasia 2000, Devil’s Advocate, True Lies and Michael Jackson’s iconic Black or White music video).

But Meier found, it seems, the world within the CIS building more animating than studios like DreamWorks, Cinesite and Hammerhead Productions, where she has worked as art director or senior animator. She left Tinseltown to return to College Hill, where she’s been teaching since 2003. Meier’s Intro to Computer Animation is offered this fall, but be prepared to fight for a seat in the popular course capped at 20  students (it helps to have some CS courses under your belt, or an artistic background, or good groveling skills).

Name: Barbara Meier

Age: Over 21 is all that matters [Read more →]

According to BrownObGyn‘s twitter account, Dr. Sarah Fox’s undergraduate course, Reproductive Health: Science and Politics, is one of the top 3 seminars (ever?!).

Name: Sarah Fox

Age: 42

Occupation: Physician

What’s your job description, in one sentence? Teaching undergrads, medical students, residents and patients about reproductive health.

What’s the best part of your job? Meeting a patient who is scared about a problem and being able to provide the information she needs to feel less scared and more empowered.

The worst? Dealing with the insurance companies.

How long have you lived in Providence? 11 years

What’s your ringtone? Chi gong

Your homepage? On my home computer –– the eruption update for the Kilauea Volcano.

What newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to? New York Times, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Journal of Lower Genital Tract Disease

Nice Slice or Antonio’s? Fellini’s

Blue State or Starbucks? Both. I am a coffee addict!

Which three words would you use to describe Brown students? Idealistic, creative, chilled.

Ken Miller ’70 P ’02 is a professor of biology and is nationally reputed for his debates against anti-evolutionists. Miller was the plaintiff’s lead expert witness in the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case in which he challenged the school board’s requirement of teaching creationism alongside evolution.

But he is more  famous among his students, Miller previously told The Herald, for his 2006 appearance on a certain Comedy Central program: “I don’t know if this is a sad commentary on the state of American higher education, but nothing I’ve done in my whole scientific career has gained me as much credibility among my students as appearing on ‘The Colbert Report.’”

The Herald gave Professor Miller a diamond back in 2004 for defending evolution as a fact witness in Selman v. Cobb County — but also a coal earlier this year for being appointed to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (“How can we even be sure he was appointed?”). I propose that we either retract his coal, or give him another diamond for taking the time to answer these ten questions:

[Read more →]

Professor Andreas (not the 19th century astronomer!) is an expert on illicit cross-border activities. His past research includes fieldwork in Latin America, Western Europe, and the Balkans, but currently he is writing a book on the political history of smuggling in America. The book’s tentative title is Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (this reporter thinks he should keep the title).

Name: Peter Andreas

Age: Almost middle-age

Occupation: Professor

What’s your job description, in one sentence? Teaching, research, and writing.

[Read more →]

Professor Van Hentenryck has authored 5 books and more than 170 scientific articles. He calls CS 31  (Introduction to Computer Systems) and 258 (Solving Hard Problems in Combinatorial Optimization) his “dream courses,” and believes he was “born…to work on constraint programming.”

Name: Pascal Van Hentenryck

Age: 0x2E

Occupation: Professor of Computer Science

What’s your job description, in one sentence? I teach undergraduate and graduate courses, do research with my students, and write optimization software.

What’s the best part of your job? All the above

The worst? The elevators in the CIT (Center for Information Technology) drive me nuts.

How long have you lived in Providence? 18 years, if you count Barrington as part of Providence. [Read more →]

Oscar-nominating producer Noah Baumbach‘s next film centers on the lives of three Brown alumni—a writer struggling to complete a novel, a television producer, and a freelance critic—as they transition into their 30’s with personal and professional woes. The film based on Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Child (2006) is praised by literary critics (“near-miraculous perfection”), but apparently loathed by Amazon reviewers who gave it two-and-a-half stars.

After scanning the novel (thanks, Google books!), I’m going to have to side with Amazon-ers on this one. Not only are the fictional Brown alumni pretentious (and self-absorbed) but the writing is. I had trouble turning the pages–er pressing the arrow key–because of the unreadable prose. Maybe I’m just an unsophisticated reader of contemporary literature. Maybe this epic sentence is actually literary genius!?:

“She was writing, in this chapter, about the long-standing Western habit of dressing a child like someone else: like an older child, or like a parent, or like someone entirely; and she was comparing this to those ventriloquists whose dummies were attired to match them, among other things, and making, or attempting to, a broader point about how children have been seen as emanations of their parents, and she needed to fit in there somehow the inverse argument, based around, say, the Laura Ashley ensembles of the seventies, in which mother and daughter both were swathed in frilly floral smocks in a reenactment—or curiously ironic restatement, perhaps, in the era of women’s sexual liberation—of Victorian girlhood, in which case the question was, were they all, mothers and daughters, celebrating the repression of their sexuality, or its untrammeling”?

I’ll probably watch the film adaption anyway because I liked Baumbach’s most recent work Greenberg. Hopefully he’ll tweak the characters in The Emperors’ Child so they’re not so whiny and dull.

Name: Alex Payson

Age: 28

Occupation: Chief Operating Officer of Blue State Coffee

What’s your job description, in one sentence: Carrying out Blue State Coffee’s mission of philanthropy, education, zero waste, and of course, keeping you caffeinated!

What’s the best part of your job? Getting to share our passion for great coffee with customers and teaching people about alternative brewing methods (cold brew tower, pour over, etc…) [Read more →]

Fruit flies can turn several U-turns, without much thought, in the time it takes you to blink, according to a study by Attila Bergou, postdoctoral research associate in engineering. Bergou is the first author of the paper, “Fruit flies modulate passive wing pitching to generate in-flight turns.”

Watch the “aerial stunt” here!

Name: Stuart le Gassick

Age: 51

Occupation: Director of squash

What’s your job description, in one sentence? I coach the Men’s and Women’s squash programs at Brown

What’s the best part of your job? Working on a daily basis with the incredible students of Brown

The worst? I cannot think of one

How long have you lived in Providence? 20 years

What’s your ringtone? I do not own a cell phone, but my family does possess a cuckoo clock

Your homepage? Brownbears.com

What newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to? The Economist and the Wall Street Journal

Nice slice or Antonio’s? Nice Slice

Blue State or Starbucks? Blue State

Which three words would you use to describe Brown students? Energetic, inventive, happy