Inside Patriot Circles
In February, Barack Obama, U.S. senator from Illinois and presidential candidate, attracted a crowd of students from across the country when he appeared in the Johnson Center on the Fairfax Campus in an event sponsored by Mason’s College Democrats.
Science Diction: It was a standing-room-only crowd for a lecture by Nobel laureate William D. Phillips. While discussing “Time, Einstein, and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe,” Phillips tossed a balloon dipped in liquid nitrogen into the air. Phillips’s lecture was the first in the Aharonov Distinguished Lecture Series, which includes other world-renowned scientists, such as Sir Anthony Leggett and Sandu Popescu.
Sound Bite
Candidates Show They Can Take the Heat on Humor Circuit
“Candidates subjecting themselves to the biting wit and ribbing of faux newsmen and comedians seems like a modern-day version of cruel and unusual punishment—and an oddity when much of politics has become heavily scripted. Robert Lichter, [director] of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., calls the phenomenon the ‘piñata circuit’—candidates have to show they can take a bashing without bursting. ‘You’ve got to show you can take being the butt of a joke,’ Lichter said. ‘Being good-humored about yourself is considered a positive quality. But more important is that people watch these things.’”
From the Miami Herald, Sunday, February 4
Nobel Pursuits
James Buchanan, advisory general director of the Center for Study of Public Choice and distinguished professor emeritus at Mason, was one of 10 recipients of the National Humanities Medal in 2006. Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986, was honored in an Oval Office ceremony in November by President George W. Bush. Buchanan joined Mason in 1983.