Overheard at Cornell

A number of interesting one-liners at Cornell seminars recently:

Research Priorities:
"More is known about the operation of medieval merchant guilds than" about school boards.

Lack of creativity:
It's really hard to get people to think out of equilibrium.

Allowable Research:
Yes, that's a very interesting, relevant question. I doubt the human subjects board would let me ask that.

Value of non-tenured faculty:
The thing is, if you want to do multi-disciplinary research, you need creative coauthors; so I work with a lot of younger faculty.

Zen:
What we do to combat climate change may be more important for poverty than climate change.