Here comes the justice. Lotteries for a talk with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 begin this week in residential college master’s offices. Sotomayor will be talking to law school professor Kate Stith in Woolsey Hall at 2:30 p.m. Saturday.

Everybody, Backstreet’s not back. The Backstreet Boys concert at BAR has been cancelled. Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell was diagnosed with swine flu, the band said in a statement last Monday.

You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip Squirrel. An anonymous blogger launched Branford College’s own gossip blog over the weekend, posting items about Family Weekend (“boooring”), the bladderball game and the sudden chill in the weather.

A fire alarmed malfunctioned in Sterling Memorial Library, briefly drawing in the New Haven Fire Department.

Allez cuisine! Students with skills in the kitchen can begin signing up to compete in the second annual Iron Chef Yale contest. The first round will be held Sunday, Nov. 8, with the schoolwide finale coming this February.

Going to the dogs. The end of The New York Times’ feature on Cesar Millan, best known as the National Geographic Channel’s “Dog Whisperer,” reveals that Millan and his wife are collaborating with Yale on “Mutt-i-grees,” a program designed to help to “foster empathy in young children.”

Athletes and pizza. Yum. Yale’s radio station, WYBC, moved its weekly Yale Sports Monday broadcast, which featured Yale Football Coach Tom Williams, to Yorkside Pizza & Restaurant this past Monday.

Harvard senior Ariel Shaker passed away last Wednesday after suffering injuries in a horseback riding accident the previous week. Shaker, who was a member of the Harvard Polo Club, was honored in a memorial service on Harvard’s campus Friday.

In observance of Indigenous People’s Day, which coincides with Columbus Day, Native Americans drummed and sang traditional tribal chants in Beinecke Plaza Monday.

Bus tickets to the Yale-Princeton game on Nov. 14 are on sale from Associated Student Agencies for $30 each way.

This day in Yale history

1968 Professor Nicholas Giarman, noted pharmacologist at the Yale School of Medicine, dies at the age of 48 from injuries sustained in a traffic accident 10 days before.

Correction: October 13, 2009

An earlier version of today’s Cross Campus mistakenly said that deceased Harvard student Ariel Shaker remained in critical condition. The News sincerely regrets this error.