Yale Law School Professor Ian Ayres LAW ’86 is helping people make good on their New Years resolutions to lose weight.
Ayres argues in “The $500 Diet” that people fail to lose weight in the new year is because they lack sufficient motivation. “The $500 Diet,” the new companion to Ayres’ recent book “Carrots and Sticks,” tells people that they must use incentives — in this case, the loss of $500 — to encourage weight loss.
“Ayres knows whereof he speaks,” the press release on the Law School website said. “After creeping up to 205 pounds, he managed to lose more than 20 and since then, has kept his weight below 185, all by putting money at risk through his Stikk.com website, an eBay auction, and a Twitter feed.”
The $500 Diet” is currently available on www.ianayres.com and will become available on Amazon January 19.
Imma let you finish Yale. Cassius Clay, Yale’s very own connection to Kanye West, misses us, according to a recent article.
Fellow Yalie Sofia Cavallo ’10, interviewed Clay, West’s “personal stylist and creative consultant” for Opening Ceremony and asked him about his top holiday fashion picks. She wrote:
I caught up with Cassius right here at OC, where he is a familiar face, before he returns to the world of academia that he realized he dearly missed.
In addition to revealing other facts like how his mom got a Twitter account in order to follow West not Clay, Clay told Cavallo about his style. At the age of 10, he rebelled against his school’s dress code of khakis and collared shirts in favor of white turtlenecks and grey flannel pants.
Now, Charles Dickens, taxidermy and Givenchy Fall/Winter 2010 gloves are just a few of his obsessions.
Three Yale freshmen scored Wednesday night at Ingalls Rink in an exhibition game as the No. 1 Bulldogs (11–1) outgunned the Russian Red Stars, a traveling team of elite young players from Russia, Belarus, and Latvia, 5–3.
Associate Head Coach Kyle Wallack, who led Yale in the absence of head coach Keith Allain ’80, kept the team’s top four scorers out of the lineup. Broc Little ’11, Andrew Miller ’13, Denny Kearney ’11, and Brian O’Neill ’12, all of whom are top ten in the nation in points per game, watched as the team’s less established players stole the show.
Goaltender Ryan Rondeau ’11, another star who has neither lost a game this season nor allowed a goal in his past two games, also saw limited playing time. He stopped 12 of 13 shots in the first period before giving way to Nick Maricic ’13 and Jeff Malcolm ’13. It was the first action Maricic had seen all season, and Malcolm’s first since allowing four late goals in Air Force’s upset of Yale earlier this season.
In the absence of the veteran talent, Yale may have caught a glimpse of its future. Kenny Agostino ’14 scored twice, and classmates Jesse Root ’14 and Brad Peltz ’14 contributed tallies. Antoine Laganiere ’13 notched the other Eli goal. None of the underclassmen had registered more than two goals before the vacation, and Peltz had not seen any playing time.
The Bulldogs pressured the Red Stars early. Laganiere sent a perfect feed from Root over the shoulder of visiting goalie Rafael Khamikov just 1:11 into the game.
The goal marked a remarkable display of cohesion for a team that had managed just one practice this week. Players were expected back on campus on Dec. 26, but most encountered difficulty as snow blanketed the northeast.
Allain also missed the exhibition, though not due to weather. He is coaching the United States team at the World Junior Hockey Championships. The Americans have won their first two games of the preliminary round, most recently 6–1 over Slovakia on Tuesday. If Allain’s team keeps winning, he may miss Yale’s Jan. 2 return to official play against Holy Cross. The World Junior semifinals are scheduled for Jan. 3 in Buffalo, New York, and the finals for two days later. The United States won the tournament last year.
Neither weather nor Allain’s absence stopped the Bulldogs. They led 3–1 going into the third period. The Red Stars brought pressure on Jeff Malcolm, and scored twice on 18 shots. But Peltz scored the game winner on a power play. He was assisted by Danny Otto ’12, who had been unable to compete for the past two years due to an injury.
Agostino clinched the win with an empty net goal 23 seconds before the final whistle, and the Bulldogs skated away with some momentum going into their Holy Cross contest, the first of 17 regular season games Yale has left in its hunt for the national championship.
Speculation that University President Richard Levin could be appointed director of the National Economic Council has left many wondering who would step in as his replacement if he leaves Yale.
Levin has served since 1993, so Yale has not witnessed a presidential search in nearly two decades. Those familiar with past searches said that the process is substantial, and it would likely be more than a year before the University would have a new president. Still, the Yale Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, would need to select an interim replacement almost immediately, and experts said precedent suggests this would be a high-ranking Yale insider.
A temporary successor
Yale historian Gaddis Smith ’54 GRD ’61 said he assumed Provost Peter Salovey would be selected for the role of interim president, given that in the past, the provost has often been selected to serve as interim president when the president steps down.
“[Salovey] certainly has great administrative experience and a lot of knowledge of Yale,” said former Deputy Provost Charles “Chip” Long, who worked at the University for 44 years before retiring last summer.
But there is not enough precedent to say definitively who the successor would be, Long said. For instance, he said, when President Benno Schmidt stepped down in 1992, Howard Lamar — who had formerly served as dean of Yale College rather than provost — was selected to serve as interim president. Salovey also served as Yale College Dean beginning in 2004 before taking the position of Provost in October 2008.
Long said the selection of an interim president would depend on who is best equipped to deal with the current issues facing the University.
“Obviously [the interim president would be] someone with deep knowledge of Yale, great administrative experience and good judgment,” he said. “I think their consideration would be what is the best move for Yale right now.”
In a Dec. 15 interview with the News, Salovey declined to comment on whether he would be a primary candidate to succeed Levin as University President.
Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer said in an e-mail to the News that it is “premature and speculative” to consider Levin’s replacement, but she added that she has not spoken with the Yale Corporation about serving as interim president.
Former Dean of the Graduate School Jon Butler, who was recently tapped to fill the role of University Librarian, declined to comment on whether he would be willing to serve as interim president.
The search for a replacement
Although the appointment of an interim replacement would occur quickly, the selection of Levin’s long-term replacement would be a more drawn-out process, conducted by a committee appointed by the Corporation.
If Levin should step down to fill a role in the Obama administration, the task of selecting his interim and eventual successors would fall to the Yale Corporation. In a Dec. 16 interview with the News, Yale Corporation Senior Fellow Roland Betts ’68 declined to comment on whom the Corporation would select as Levin’s interim successor, but said they are prepared to appoint one early next semester if Levin steps down to work in Washington.
Before Levin was selected as University President, it took an entire year to perform the search that led to his inauguration, Smith said.
“I think the University needs a very thorough search,” he added.
The committee that led the search process invited alumni, faculty and students to send in suggestions for candidates for the selection process, Smith said, adding that he believes hundreds of names were submitted.
Long said past presidential searches have always been both “very deep” and national in scope, including candidates from both inside and outside the University.
Although presidents of the University have often been alumni and members of the faculty — Levin received his doctorate degree from Yale in 1974 and has been a member of the economics department ever since — neither of these criteria are mandatory for a president, Smith said.
“That is not the determining factor,” Smith said. “It’s quite possible that [the replacement] wouldn’t be a member of the Yale faculty or someone with a Yale degree.”
Smith noted that the search that led to Bart Giamatti’s ’60 GRD ‘64 appointment as University President in 1978 had offered the position to Henry Rosovsky, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, who declined the position.
It remains too early to tell who would be selected as Levin’s permanent replacement if the University president is appointed Obama’s economic adviser.
But at least one candidate under speculation for the job of University President, when interviewed, seemed to indicate he would not be interested in the role.
When contacted by the News to ask if he would be interested in serving as University President, Richard Brodhead ’68 GRD ’72, former dean of Yale College and current president of Duke University, described the reporter as “imaginative… Wildly so, in this case.”
Levin has been University President since 1993. He is currently the longest-serving president in the Ivy League.
Alison Griswold and Zoe Gorman contributed reporting
Two Yale professors are doing what they can to counteract the expansion of Bush-era tax cuts.
Law School professor Daniel Markovits and political science professor Jacob Hacker, along with Cornell Law School professor Robert Hockett, started a website – giveitbackforjobs.org – that allows people to donate part or all of their tax cut to charity. Markovits told the Huffington Post Wednesday that extending tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans is “unconscionable.”
“Americans who have the means should collectively give back our Bush tax cuts by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class,” giveitbackforjobs.org says. “Such joint action, by all visitors to this site, will begin to replicate good government policy, outside the government and free from the grip of obstructionists within it.”
The website calculates people’s tax cuts based on a simulation model of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.
Correction: December 30, 2010
An earlier version of this post misspelled the last name of Daniel Markovits.
It’s hard to believe it, but another year of 140 characters or less has passed. We followed! We tweeted! We re-tweeted! And we, in turn, were followed and re-tweeted by friends and creepy strangers alike. The twitterverse seemed to join us all into one big, happy info-sharing family. Well, almost.
I’m not a Twitter-hater. In fact, I love Twitter. Really! My phone buzzes constantly with mobile updates whenever @randomperson posts a new tweet, and sometimes (and usually quite unsuccessfully), I even try to post biting witticisms of my own. Nonetheless, it really pisses me off when people go crazy with the hashtags and make up unwieldy, indecipherable phrases just because they can’t play by the rules. Seriously, people: “I think, therefore I am” is 22 characters; how many more do you need?
Twitter’s character limit can seem absurd at times. I get that. But if you want to write eye-gougingly long pieces that no one is going to read, just give in to your destiny and get a tumblr. Put an end to the abuse of the noble hashtag! We should aim to keep the hashtag’s purpose pure and only append it to real things, like words and stuff. #Running #out #of #space #does #not #justify #this #vulgarity. It makes you look stupid and pretentious, but more importantly, it’s a pain trying to decode what on earth you are trying to say.
Consider this is a warning: tread carefully – or face the wrath of me and my seven followers.
The accolades keep coming for men’s hockey coach Keith Allain ’80.
Allain, who has led the Bulldogs (11–1–0) to a No. 1 ranking in college hockey, was recently named the 2010 New Haven Register Sports Person of the Year. In a column focused mainly on the “body language” of Yale hockey, the Register praised Allain for the way he has turned a formerly struggling program into one of the nation’s best.
The Blue went 10–20–3 in 2005-’06 — their final season before Allain took the helm as head coach. But it didn’t take long for Allain to make Yale’s record a winning one. In the 2008-’09 season, the Elis clinched the ECAC regular season championship, tallied a record-setting 24 wins and secured their first NCAA Tournament slot since 1997. By March 2010, the then-No. 8 Elis had finished up the season 21–10–2 to win the Cleary Cup outright for the second straight year, and notched their first NCAA playoff victory since 1952 with a 3–2 upset of North Dakota.
Allain is currently serving as the head coach of the U.S. National Junior Team in Buffalo, New York. It is Allain’s third time heading the squad, as he also filled the post in 2001 and 2002.
Morris L. Cohen, beloved librarian and professor at Yale Law School, died last Saturday at his home in New Haven. He was 83.
Cohen was Professor Emeritus of Law and a lecturer at the Law School since 1991. He served as the Law School librarian from 1981 to 1991.
In his obituary, the New York Times hailed him as “one of the nation’s most influential legal librarians,” who brought both the Harvard and Yale law libraries into the digital age. Prior to his work at Yale, Cohen also directed the law libraries at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and SUNY-Buffalo.
“Morris was admired throughout the entire community of legal education. We share with many others a great loss to the world of legal scholarship,” Yale Law School Dean Robert Post LAW ’77 said in the obituary published on the YLS website. “We will miss his humor, his kindness, his gentle wisdom, and his fascination with books and research.”
Cohen, who received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1947 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1951, published extensively on legal history. His six-volume “Bibliography of Early American Law” catalogs all law books published in the U.S. before 1860. His other books include “The Bench and Bar: Great Caricatures from Vanity Fair…” and “A Guide to the Early Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
In 2009, Cohen donated his “Juvenile Jurisprudence Collection” to the Yale Law Library. The collection included books for children about law and justice that he had been collecting since around 1960. Collecting these books became a hobby he shared with his son, who was six years old at the time.
“Morris Cohen is one of the great law librarians and book collectors of the twentieth century, and it is an honor to have this unique collection. I don’t know of any other collection like it anywhere,” Michael Widener, Rare Book Librarian at the Law Library, said in a YLS press release at the time.
Cohen’s wife, Gloria, told the New York Times that he died of Leukemia. He is survived by his wife; his son, Daniel; his daughter, Havi Hoffman; and granddaughter Rachel Hoffman.
His funeral was held last Monday at the Robert E. Schure Funeral Home in New Haven.
University President Richard Levin has been reported to be on President Barack Obama’s short list of three candidates for the position of director for the National Economic Council, but in writing a list of the “final contenders” for the job, a Thursday New York Times article did not include Levin’s name — instead listing only former NEC director Gene Sperling and investment banker Roger Altman.
Obama is expected to name the new director of the National Economic Council in January, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Sunday, Bloomberg reported.
Levin declined to comment on whether he remains under consideration for an appointment to direct the NEC.
Still, the Thursday New York Times article did not mention the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB), which Levin has also been under consideration to lead. Although Levin would be required to step down from his presidency at Yale if appointed to direct the NEC, he would be able to lead PERAB as a part-time position while remaining at Yale.
Heartbroken? Call on Taylor Swift to guide you through any of your love troubles. Looking to get the party started? Ke$ha will never let you down. But while Taylor’s love therapy and Ke$ha’s contributions to weekend debauchery are always appreciated, there are only so many songs these one-dimensional artists can release before a newer, flashier successor comes around and steals the spotlight.
So here’s a New Year’s Resolution for Ke$ha and Ms. Swift: in 2011, try to broaden your musical range.
They must be getting tired of trying to think of clever ways to say “Let’s get drunk or “Wahhh I miss my boyfriend” anyway.
Traveling to India around the holidays never fails to surprise me. I never expect Christmas to have as much of a presence in the predominantly Hindu country, but the city of Chennai is ripe with its own Christmas traditions:
The Christmas tree, tropical-style. The absence of fir trees from many parts of India leads many to decorate mango or banana trees with a variety of decorations including garlands of palm fronds, colored stones, gold paint, green silk and red-orange bows.
Poinsettias, anywhere and everywhere. Local Indian churches make use of the abundance of tropical flowers to fill every room with a vibrant display.
Small, clay Diwali lamps. The small lamps, traditionally used during the Hindu holiday of Diwali, are an indication that in the eyes of some, all holidays really are the same.
And most importantly, food. Christmas is accompanied by treats like ginger wine, fruit cake and the Indian pork dish Vindaloo, served with saffron rice. If you’re feeling some ethnic holiday food, you can try this recipe.
