Departments
In the News
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Week of 5 February 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 22 |
In the News
Most drivers probably prefer to fill their tanks and run rather than examine too closely why they're paying less these days for the privilege. But CAS Associate Professor of Geography Robert Kaufmann does think about the global economics of oil, and he shared his views in a story on WBZ-TV on January 25. "In the fall of 1997 Asian economies collapsed, and that really reduced the demand for oil," he said. "In addition, the Russian economy's demand for oil has fallen faster than its ability to produce it. And that has freed up extra quantities of oil."
There is an existential complexity to evil, which Roger Shattuck, University Professor emeritus, illustrates with several literary glimpses. But evil à la mode, "cool" evil -- exemplified, he believes, in the movie Pulp Fiction -- is reprehensible. In an essay in January's Atlantic Monthly, he condemns the movie's stylish violence. "Nothing suggests that this film sees around or beyond the horrible actions it portrays with the utmost cool. By depicting evil in this fashion the film neutralizes it -- absorbs it into ordinary life, broken by a few thrills and laughs, and desensitizes us to evil." After the experience of the 20th century, Shattuck exhorts, "Let us beware of applying our intellects to condoning evil [or] to embrace the morality of the cool."
"If the church is to continue to fulfill its role of advancing the Christian Gospel, it must be done with a solid understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and political context of modern society," asserts Robert Neville, dean of BU's School of Theology, in the January 23 Boston Globe. "We need to consider altered institutions, if not entirely new ones, if we are to be successful." A recent $1.49 million grant from the Lilly Endowment will help Neville revamp how STH trains ministers. "Unless Christianity is able to tell people in an intelligent way why it's good to be a Christian, many mainline churches are going to die," Neville says.
"Good people go where the money is," according to SMG Professor James Post, director of SMG's Public Management Program, in a January 24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The article describes efforts in Orleans Parish to raise salaries of its public sector employees to the level of adjacent parishes. "People look at the market, and places paying below that are going to lose people," he says. "We see that in public systems all over the country."
In a story on the WHDH-TV news on January 25 suggesting ways to stem the effects of obsessive compulsive disorder, CAS Psychology Professor David Barlow said, "People have horrific, terrible, intrusive thoughts that are out of control, and they're followed by what we call rituals or compulsions." Barlow, director of BU's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, added, "It begins to interfere with your life, and/or really interfere with your ability to enjoy life by causing significant distress."
"In the News" is compiled by Alexander Crouch in the Office of Public Relations.