Keeton House on West Campus
The fourth new residence hall will be named after biologist William T. Keeton and open in August 2008. Here’s a satellite photo from Microsoft Live of the ongoing construction:
The Cornell Cronicle describes Keeton’s career:
Keeton taught at Cornell for 22 years, from 1958 until his death at age 47 in 1980 from a heart condition. An extraordinary and popular teacher as well as an accomplished scholar, Keeton revolutionized the teaching of biology in American higher education. His research centered on avian orientation, including pigeon homing and navigation.
Don’t Do This At Home
Another person has died by falling into the gorge, something Cornell University is famous for. It doesn’t have to happen, though! The Police said they “saw a woman climb onto the railing of the bridge and fall into the water.” Well, the first mistake was climbing onto the railing of the bridge, a definite no no:
I’ve seen students climb up on bridge railings at the CTown Cascadilla gorge or Thurston Ave gorge, and I always wondered when one drunk sorority girl would lurch the wrong way at the wrong time, or a sudden gust of wind would push the Titanic-esque wannabe off the precipice.
Standing on the edge of the gorge is just not a good idea, unless you want to risk your life. It’s just not safe. Maybe only 1 in 1000 of the people that do it fall off, but there’s real, physical danger there. You want a thrill, go skydiving.
Not Everyone Can Be “Beautiful”
The idea that everyone can be beautiful is directly against the definition of beauty:
c.1275, from Anglo-Norm. beute, from O.Fr. bealte, earlier beltet, from V.L. bellitatem “state of being handsome,” from L. bellus “fine, beautiful,” in classical L. used especially of women and children, or ironically or insultingly of men. Famously defined by Stendhal as la promesse de bonheur “the promise of happiness.”
For there to be an idea of beauty there has to be an idea of ugly. The distribution of “beautiful people” in the world is probably Gaussian normal. Most people are of average beauty, while some are exceedingly beautiful, and some are quite compellingly ugly. To say that all are beautiful is to redefine the word in such a way that it has no distinguishing meaning, because no matter whom it is applied to, it has the same meaning. Thus, it becomes not an adjective, but a participle. Meaningless.
I write this in academic protest of the “True Beauty” exhibit in Willard Straight Hall which will be showing shortly. You can go read Jenna’s announcement, but the summary is:
We’re promoting positive self-image among women at Cornell with one message: you’re beautiful.
Practically, if you look at a photo of two people like the below, won’t you agree that one is more beautiful than the other?
True, this example is just physical beauty. But the same rule applies even for mental beauty, or beauty of the soul.
