Not Getting into Harvard

My brother Keith sent me a link to a New York Times article titled Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard by Michael Winerip. Winerip is a Harvard alumnus who interviews students applying to his alma mater. He realizes that the highly qualified applicants will probably not be accepted. Moreover, he accepts that his own kids will not be going to Harvard. Perhaps he can accept this because he knows (based on his interview experience) that so many excellent students are also not going there.

It good to read an article about how not getting into Harvard (or any other elite school) is not the end of the world. I doubt it will stop the flood of students trying to do so. Elite schools are elite because everyone wants to go there and have that awe-inspiring credential.

My brother and I both have had numerous experiences of mentioning our alma maters (his is California-San Diego and mine is Florida; both of us went to Georgia Tech as undergrads) and not getting the kind of reaction that folks from Cal-Berkeley and Michigan and MIT get. But I suppose that is simply envy. Thanks to our parents and other gifts that God gave us, he and I and my siblings have had opportunities that many others have not. Not getting into Harvard is not the end of the world.

Mystery Writers

Despite my best intentions, it has been too long since my last post.

First is a post by Joseph Bottum over at First Things. The post is about mystery writers but is mostly a tribute to Melville Davisson Post, who wrote the Uncle Abner mystery stories in the early 20th century. (Don't try Wikipedia: there's no entry on him yet.) Along the way, the post mentions numerous fine mystery writers, including Ellery Queen and G.K. Chesterton.

As a kid I read numerous Ellery Queen stories. I had little books of them (about the size of an issue of Readers Digest), and there were more at my grandfather's old cabin (Brookside Cabin) on Shooting Creek in North Carolina. I can still remember the little bookshelf in the cabin living room. Did those make the trip to the "new" cabin?

More recently I've read and listened to G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, which are very good, and I don't read mysteries at all these days.

No news from College Park

Just wanted to let everyone know that things are fine here in College Park.
Like you, Laury and I were shocked by the news from Virginia Tech. Because I work every day on a campus like that one, it has always been clear to me that building security (except for dorms) does not exist. (The student paper today reported that the campus police do have the ability to lock all of the buildings electronically.) But I'm not sure that turning classroom buildings into fortresses is a good answer, either.

Many of the students here have friends and siblings at Virginia Tech, and some faculty know colleagues there; it was a very stressful day for them. (Last summer two students from there worked on our mass vaccination clinic research project; both are fine.)

There was a small fire in a rubbish pile in a construction site near the middle of campus yesterday afternoon. No injuries or damage, but lots of smoke, so they had to evacuate a building for a short time. The police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks, sirens and lights added to the sense of crisis.

My colleague Linda Schmidt led off our lecture today encouraging the students in our class to accept that they cannot understand this event. The instinct of engineers is to try to understand; instead we should have compassion even without understanding, especially for those under unusual stress, and we should remember to treat each day as a gift, to maintain some perspective, to reach out to those who care about us.

Conservation

In his post today, my friend Mike Warner discusses how the British are quite conservation-minded and how he hopes to maintain some of those values when he returns to the United States.

His attitude is admirable, in my opinion, unlike the calls of many environmental activists to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide. The impact of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities on global warming is controversial, to say the least, but the downside from increased energy costs is not. The Washington Post this week had an article on Europe's experience with limiting carbon dioxide emissions. According to the article:
"People in Washington have begun to focus on the cost of climate change," said Paul Bledsoe, strategy director at the National Commission on Energy Policy. "But it's important to recognize that legislation to mitigate climate change is going to have significant economic costs, as well."

I think that I'll follow Mike's example, be a good steward, and avoid wasting resources. I can recycle, drive at a sensible speed, and install energy-efficient appliances, light bulbs and windows, for example. If our nation follows Europe's example by capping carbon dioxide emissions, I expect that we will be paying even more for energy.

Tolkien and the Gift of Mortality

Those who have read The Lord of the Rings may find Anna Mathie's November 2003 article Tolkien and the Gift of Mortality interesting. Mathie highlights a little-known story about Arwen, the elf who marries Aragorn and becomes mortal, and discusses the ideas of mortality and immortality that occur throughout the whole work. (The story can be found in Appendix A, Part I, Section v.)

Tolkien claims that mortality is the gift of the One to Men. It is denied to the elves, who go into the West. Aragorn's last words to Arwen clearly call for hope: In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold, we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell.