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Craig Robinson's Oregon State players prove that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

By Lydialyle Gibson

From the moment Oregon State basketball coach Craig Robinson arrives, his players know what kind of a practice to expect. If he’s not carrying a cup of coffee, they can’t joke around with him. If he’s scowling—“like this,” said senior forward Omari Johnson, twisting his face downward, narrowing his eyes to tiny slits—they don’t even talk to him.

“You have to watch how he smiles around here,” said Johnson. And whether he does.

Johnson and two teammates were describing life under Robinson, MBA’91, who just wrapped up his third season at Oregon State. I’d watched Robinson push his players through three days of practice to prepare for their January 2 game against Arizona. Sometimes he thundered at them; sometimes he almost whispered. Mostly, there was a lot of yelling.

So after practice one afternoon, I took aside a few players, who’ve become keen scholars of their coach’s body language, and asked them: on days when Robinson is in a good mood, how does he walk into the gym?

Immediately, Johnson bounded up and strode across the court, eyes wide, chest out, arms loose, leaning forward eagerly as he pretended to carry a cup of coffee. Teammate Angus Brandt narrated: “See the smile? And the arms are swinging.”

And Robinson’s bad-mood walk?

“If he’s twitching, you’ve gotta watch out,” Brandt said.

Johnson turned and stalked back toward the bench, frowning hard, snatching at his jersey, his arms tight at his sides.

“No arms,” Brandt said.

“He doesn’t have a shave,” chimed in point guard Jared Cunningham.

“His mouth is about this big,” Brandt added, pressing his fingers together.

“His eyes are going back and forth,” said Johnson.

"And," Brandt said, "no coffee."

It’s not a curse that has doomed the Cubs for more than a century. A Chicago economist blames it on the beer.

By Jason Kelly

All those people who think Wrigley Field is more of a bar than a ballpark might be onto something. A Chicago economist attempting to explain 102 years of Cubs futility identified a staple of bleacher appeal as a key culprit: cheap beer.

In his recent book Scorecasting, Tobias J. Moskowitz, the Fama Family professor of finance at Chicago Booth, charts Wrigley Field’s highs (ticket prices) and lows (number of wins). He and coauthor L. Jon Wertheim write that neither factor diminishes attendance—in contrast to most other Major League Baseball teams—but that increased beer prices do.

From 1984 to 2009, “attendance was more than four times more sensitive to beer prices than to winning or losing.” That sensitivity is evident at the concession stand. A beer at Wrigley Field, Scorecasting reports, costs just $5, cheaper than everywhere except at Arizona Diamondbacks and Pittsburgh Pirates games.

Tickets to Cubs games, on the other hand, have followed a different trajectory. Since 1990, prices have increased 67 percent (the league average is 44.7 percent). Only the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox command more.

Yet people have continued to pay Wrigley Field’s escalating cover charge, filling the stadium to 99 percent capacity. Across town at US Cellular Field, ticket prices and attendance rise and fall based on White Sox wins and losses, but the same beer will run you a buck-fifty more than at Wrigley.

Current Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, AB’88, MBA’93, who bought the team in 2009, has made capital improvements to the ballpark, enhanced the players’ nutritional regimen, and invested in a stronger scouting network. “But the fact that this philosophy is such a marked departure from that of earlier ownerships,” the authors write, “goes a long way toward explaining the previous century of futility.”

Futility that has been blamed on supernatural forces from a jilted billy goat to Steve Bartman’s outstretched hand. Not superstitious types, Moskowitz and Wertheim argue instead that Wrigley Field’s unusual economics skew the franchise’s incentives. If ticket revenue flows regardless of the team’s performance, the value of winning—and the investment it requires—decreases.

You might even say it’s a curse.

A yellow Volkswagen Beetle with a giant Peep on its roof? Resistance is futile.

By Ruth E. Kott, AM’07

Driving past the University's Lab Schools: not a huge deal. Driving past the Lab Schools in a yellow Volkswagen Beetle with a giant, yellow Peep on its roof: mayhem breaks loose.

Called the Peepster, this attention-seeking vehicle is currently on a national tour, which started in New York City at the end of March and ends in Washington, DC, in mid-April. The car, says the tour's "chief engineer," Paul Gustafson, "is 100 percent guaranteed to make people smile." On April 4 Gustafson offered to take two Magazine staffers down to campus—the first university-campus stop he's made—to spread the smiles on an otherwise dreary day. And, of course, to help us advertise the deadline extension for the Magazine's UChicago Peeps Diorama Contest. (Come on, peeple, we're giving you more time. Dioramas aren't due until midnight, Sunday, April 10. Take advantage!)

During the drive down Lake Shore, Gustafson shared stories from the tour, like the tweet from Rumor Willis about her Peepster sighting and the school principals who wanted to take a photo with the "hot chick." Once we got to campus, we thought we'd be prepared for the people storming the car looking for photos and free marshmallow candies.

Unless those people were children. As soon as the Peepster came into view of the Lab Schools, children in tidy blue uniforms jumped up from their stretching and started waving their arms. Kids on the playground sprinted up to the gates and grabbed onto the bars. "Can we have some Peeps?" they shouted, before running out and crowding around us—Gustafson had given us packages of chocolate-dipped Peeps to hand out, essentially feeding us to the wolves.

The U of C students and staff were a bit slower to win over. Hesitant at first to approach the truck, the passersby usually responded to a simple call-out: "Do you want some Peeps?" (But not always: a group of faculty somehow ignored the sugary siren call.)

Third-year Megan St. John was excited enough to take a photo with the car to send to her mother. "I love Peeps," she said. "I eat way too many of them. I actually decided ten minutes ago that I was going to start a diet today, and then I walk out and see this car."

More good news for up-and-coming campus singers Voices in Your Head.

By Asher Klein, ’11

Remember when we mentioned that the UChicago a capella group Voices in Your Head was experiencing a "rarefied moment in the sun" this winter because it had been featured on all three major a capella compilation CDs this year?

Well, there's more summery news for Voices: the group won best scholastic original song from the 2011 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards for "Boomerang," written by MD/PhD student Chris Rishel, with lyrics by Elspeth Michaels, AB'09. The song is available for purchase from iTunes or you can listen to it on YouTube .

The group barely missed out on a trip to the International Championships of A Cappella with a third place finish at the Midwest regional qualifier, held at Northwestern in March. But they did win Outstanding Arrangement for another Rishel-arranged piece, an adaptation of pop tune "Break Your Heart," by Taio Cruz.

Journalist Ted Cox disguised himself as a gay man at meetings and retreats that aimed to “cure” homosexuality.

By Michelle Lee, '14

Can you turn a gay person straight? Perhaps more importantly, is it ethical to try?

Those were the questions underlying journalist Ted Cox’s lecture last month about his experience going undercover at Christian straight camps. A straight Mormon-turned-atheist, Cox disguised himself as a gay man and, for two years, attended various meetings and retreats that aimed to “cure” homosexuality—that is, turn gay people straight. What Cox discovered was a distorted world of brainwashing, electroshock therapy, and “healing-touch” sessions.

Cox’s lecture, hosted by the University of Chicago Secular Student Alliance, Queers & Associates, The Sacred Flame, and Student Government, was a multimedia presentation involving music, video clips, and audience participation. At one point, to demonstrate an aversion-therapy technique camp participants were taught to overcome their homosexuality, students were instructed to snap rubber bands they had been given beforehand against their arms.

Cox revealed that camp participants were also taught that their homosexuality stemmed from strained father-son relationships—dubbed “The Father Wound”—and other dysfunctional relations. If campers never had such problems, they were convinced otherwise.

The “healing-touch” therapy sessions were purported to fill the supposed void of fatherly love. At Cox's Chicago lecture, several male students were selected from the audience to reenact this therapy. One sat between the legs of and was hugged by another while the others gently rested their hands on his body. Meanwhile, music that had been played at actual therapy sessions filtered through the room: “How could anyone ever tell you/That you’re anything less than beautiful?/How could anyone ever tell you/That you’re less than whole?”

Cox ultimately demonstrated how the tactics of straight-to-gay rehabilitation programs are ineffective at best and, at worst, inflict mental and physical pain on gay people. He further revealed what he suggested was hypocrisy underlying Christian straight-to-gay rehabilitation programs. Many of the founders were discovered to be gay themselves; one was discovered to be an ex-convict. The Christian organizations were also found to be reproducing the letterheads and pamphlets of scientific societies, but replacing the professional counsel with their own in an attempt to mislead educators and prompt them to rehabilitate gay children.

The lecture was solemn yet entertaining, alternating between moving narratives, photographic examples, and comedic asides. It also seems to have provoked an ongoing discussion among University students, as evidenced by the number that stayed afterward to ask questions and continue the conversation.

A 100th birthday celebration attracts some very U of C scholars—and very U of C conversation.

By Amy Braverman Puma

I took a spot in the back of the Quad Club solarium, leaving room for A-list guests closer to the luncheon's honoree, Nobel Prize–winning economist Ronald Coase. Still, in the end pretty much everyone who’d come to celebrate Coase’s 100th birthday was A-list, and my out-of-the-way table filled with notables including economist Allen Sanderson, University provost Thomas Rosenbaum, and, sneaking in just after the salad was served, 2007 Nobelist Roger Myerson.

Myerson was still pulling in his chair when economist and New York Times columnist Casey Mulligan shot him a question: “Roger, do you think we should be in Libya?” It took Myerson only a moment to collect his thoughts and respond that, from his perspective, Arab-League and UN approval for the no-fly zone made it a justifiable intervention.

Meanwhile, Sanderson was delighted to be sitting next to Rosenbaum, he told the physicist, because he had a burning question—about the physics of kids’ soccer. “At my granddaughter’s games,” Sanderson said, “whenever the goalie gets the ball, she throws it. Wouldn’t kicking be better?” Yes, Rosenbaum agreed: legs are stronger than arms, so kicking, although less accurate, would get the ball farther down the field.

Ten minutes before the luncheon was scheduled to end, I worried aloud that perhaps no one would speak and I’d have nothing to write about Coase. Myerson generously launched into stories about the Law School professor emeritus, who had turned 100 this past December but whose University celebration had been postponed until late March because it had been too cold for him to venture out. Myerson recalled how, after a 2001 dinner to honor then-incoming University President Don Randel, everyone had left but the Myersons and the Coases, who stayed and talked awhile. On the Myersons' way home, they agreed that, should they live into their 90s, they hoped to be as sharp and interesting as the Coases.

Soon economist Gary Becker, AM’53, PhD’55, a Nobel Prize-winner himself, did get up to speak. He told the room how Coase had been born in England, attended the London School of Economics, and later came to the United States, first to the East Coast but in 1964 settling at the University of Chicago Law School. “It was the first law school, to my knowledge, that had an economist teaching full time,” Becker said. Law School professor Aaron Director had started the Journal of Law and Economics in 1958, and after Director retired in 1965, Coase “really made it into a major and influential journal.” Becker noted that when he first met Coase in 1970, Coase “didn’t say a lot, but I began to realize that every time he did say something, it was really profound.”

Becker discussed Coase’s “four most important papers,” including his 1937 article “The Nature of the Firm" and 1960’s “The Problem of Social Cost,” which was cited when Coase won the 1991 Nobel. When that paper, about bargaining, social costs, and efficiency, was published, Becker said, “I read it, and it seemed revolutionary. I called [George] Stigler [PhD’38] and said, ‘This seems like an important paper.’ George said, ‘Yes, but a lot of people around here don’t think it’s correct.’ I read it again. It seemed correct to me. I assigned it to my class.” The paper laid out what’s now known as the Coase Theorem (although so many people misinterpret it that there's an academic paper (PDF) on whether economists teach it correctly).

“He’s still working,” said Becker, noting that Coase has coauthored a book coming out later this year, How China Became Capitalist (Palgrave Macmillan).

After a tasty chicken meal, Sanderson remarked that we were having “an intimate lunch with four Nobel Prize winners.” Along with Coase, Becker, and Myerson, 1995 laureate and Chicago professor Bob Lucas, AB’59, PhD’64, was also at the lunch. Intimate indeed: afterward I felt like I knew some of them myself.

Filmmaker Marissa Flaxbart, AB'05, revisits her old glee clubs in Chesterton, Indiana, to make a documentary about high-school show-choir life.

By Ruth E. Kott, AM'07

It's hard enough to sing in front an auditorium full of people. But add choreography in unison with a group of other singers—on risers!—and it becomes a whole other animal. In Marissa Flaxbart's new documentary, show/choir, shot during the 2005–06 school year at her alma mater Chesterton High School, she follows two of her high school's singing groups, the Sandpipers and the Drifters.

Show choir "was the thing that most dominated your time and your life,” Flaxbart, AB'05, told the UChicago News Office. “The excitement of being on stage is very real, very exhilarating.”

Graduate students help tell the story of a Smart Museum exhibit as a part of their coursework.

Each student in the Materialities of Modern Art course researched, wrote, and revised object labels for two pieces in the Smart Museum's After the Readymade exhibit, curated by PhD student Emily Capper in consultation with art history professor Christine Mehring and assistant curator Jessica Moss.

The exhibit's works are on display until May 1 and include pieces of art that make use of materials from everyday life, like coloring books and sweaters.

A stolen moment captured the judges' affection in the Magazine's Peeps Diorama Contest.

By Jason Kelly

The bagpeeps and tearful parents were sweet. Court Theatre’s Peep and Bess set was a treat too (see below). But in the end, Lee Pruett’s (AB’99) depiction of the 1996 theft of former University President Hanna Gray’s portrait from Hutchinson Commons (above) gave the Magazine’s Peeps Diorama Contest judges the biggest sugar rush. So much so that we were willing to overlook an anachronism: Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf (2001) had not been published at the time. That aside, the masked-bandit bunnies—and the lookout chick—stole our hearts. All three winners will receive a gift card and a treat box from Just Born candy. Still: one does wonder how Pruett knew enough to recreate the portrait caper in such detail. She didn’t make a peep about that.

Left: The entry from Jim Vanides, father of Aaron Vanides, AB’10, captured parents’ emotions on Opening Day when dean of the College John W. Boyer, AM’69, PhD’75, declares, “Now we must divide.” (We love the tiny tissues.)

Right: The entry from Court Theatre’s Melissa Aburano-Meister; Drew Dir, AB’07; Jennifer Foughner; Brea Hayes; and Allison Rich reveals the high production—and caloric—value of Peep and Bess. (Note the circus-peanut Gershwin brothers.)

See all of this year's entries on Flickr.

After Egypt’s revolution, a Chicago archaeologist keeps close watch on the ancient past.

By Elizabeth Station

Egypt had not yet reached a boiling point on January 20, the day I interviewed a group of young faculty in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations for Tableau, the Humanities Division magazine. But for weeks afterward, I couldn’t help wondering how closely Nadine Moeller, an assistant professor of Egyptian archaeology, was tracking events there.

Since 2005 Moeller has directed a major archaeological excavation at Tell Edfu, some 475 miles south of Cairo on the Nile River. The site has garnered attention for its unusually well preserved buildings that cast light on early Egyptian economic life. Moeller and her team—which includes her husband, archaeologist and Oriental Institute research associate Gregory Marouard, and three Chicago graduate students—spend every autumn quarter at the site.

With the Middle East in turmoil, Moeller and other scholars have worried about the safety of cultural sites. Egypt differs from Iraq, where looters have raided countless archaeological sites in search of antiquities to sell on the international market. But concerns have been raised about the security of Egyptian sites and storage magazines. Last week, Moeller spoke about the situation from her Chicago office.

When you’re in Chicago, what happens to the excavation site at Tell Edfu?

The site is in the middle of the modern town of Edfu, next to the Temple of Edfu, which is a major tourist attraction. So it actually is located within a protected area that’s marked as an ancient site. The local inspector and the people who are part of the antiquities organization have an on-site office. There’s a fence around it; people can’t really access it. In that respect we’re really lucky compared to sites in the desert where you have no fence and no protection. At Edfu there is also usually a police presence, mainly for the tourists, but they obviously stop anybody from walking on the tell, on our excavation site.

How do you stay in touch with colleagues there?

I usually call them once every couple of months. There are Egyptians who are really good friends—some of the workers and people from the Edfu inspectorate. When the revolution happened, I called several people just to see whether they were OK, more than anything. And I asked whether they knew anything about the sites and our magazine, which is a protected storage building half an hour north of Edfu. Every object we find on the site is shipped there at the end of our season.

What kinds of artifacts do you find and keep?

We don’t have anything like statues or gold or precious materials. We have a large number of ostraca stored there—around 150 pieces. These are pottery sherds that were inscribed with ink in Hieratic, which is a cursive script of the hieroglyphs, with administrative notes. One of my students, Kathryn Bandy, is writing her PhD on that material. The ostraca give you an insight into the economy of an ancient town at a given period. These are objects that don’t necessarily have a great value for an art museum—but they have a great value for research.

In the magazine we also have a lot of seal impressions; these are pieces of clay impressed by scarab seals. At their base, they have different motifs. Every ancient Egyptian official had his own scarab with his own motif—sometimes it was a name, sometimes just a decorative pattern. They would stamp objects like wooden boxes, doors, baskets—any sort of commodity that was going from Edfu to the capital, for example, or coming from another place to Edfu. We find only the little pieces of broken seals that were discarded once these things were opened.

What do seal impressions tell you?

In some cases, the seals have the complete names and titles of people like the mayor or the overseer of the temple. When we know their names, we get a glimpse of the people who lived and worked at ancient Edfu and we learn more about their roles within the town and temple administration, which are closely linked. These pieces can also help to date archaeological remains in conjunction with ceramics.

But these objects are very small and fragile. They’re just pieces of sun-dried clay that’s not even fired. We have almost a thousand pieces and they’re just a few centimeters wide, so we store them in a variety of boxes and plastic containers. All this material goes to the magazine and of course, if somebody broke in and went through all that, it would be a mess. But luckily we have managed to take photographs of most of them as well as all the ostraca.

During the protests and revolution, were you afraid of looting at Tell Edfu?

I haven’t heard anything that would make me feel worried about the site. The locals and the inspectorate at Edfu have said that everything was fine, even though they had some time without a police presence at the magazine. There’s nothing that made me think there was looting going on.

What about elsewhere in Egypt?

I can only say from hearsay. I also consult a website called the Egyptological Looting Database 2011, which is a site-by-site database of damage to antiquities in Egypt. The looting is nothing on the scale of Iraq, first of all. It’s absolutely not comparable. There are certain instances of problems but mainly in the north, the area around Cairo and the Nile Delta. For example, I heard—which means I have no proof of what the real situation is—that the Austrians working at the site of Tell el Dab’a, in the eastern Delta, had their magazine broken into and some objects were removed.

The south seems pretty normal. I have not heard about problems at Luxor, where we have Chicago House and the Oriental Institute’s Epigraphic Survey. The director, Ray Johnson, has been in Egypt through the revolution; he never left. They just finished the season and he was saying everything was fine.

When will you return to Tell Edfu and what will you work on next?

I’m planning to go back in the autumn again because we have an NEH grant for the project. I don’t think there’ll be much change from before—that’s just my feeling.

We basically finished our main excavation area for the past five years that focused on the excavation of a large granary court, a major grain reserve for the town; there are lots of silos for grain storage as well as an earlier administrative building complex.

And now we’re going to start work on a new area to find out about the earliest settlement remains at the town. We’re looking for the origins of Edfu and for any types of buildings from official to private houses. We’re going to be excavating in an area that’s very close to the much-later temple. So I think we might be in more of an official quarter than a purely domestic area.

What do you hope to find?

I’m hoping we’ll find proof that Edfu already existed in the Third Dynasty, at the time of King Djoser [2667–2648 BC]. There are some indications that Edfu already existed then, but we don’t have any archaeological evidence yet. I would like to find some archaeological data or proof to show that Edfu was actually founded much earlier than we thought it was. We know so little about these very early periods of ancient Egyptian history, so it would add a lot to our research and understanding of the origins of an urban center and regional capital, which is what ancient Edfu was.

Are you nervous about returning?

Obviously we have to see what the situation at the magazine is. We are also starting a new project at a small pyramid about four kilometers south of Edfu. We'll focus on the cleaning and conservation of this monument to create public awareness for its protection, since it's currently endangered by a fast-growing modern cemetery and village in the vicinity. This is also the last undisturbed pyramid among a group of small step pyramids that were erected in the provinces at the end of the Third Dynasty.

But the site is currently not protected very well, and the local people saw us spending two days there last year. So you never know; they might think there must be treasure there—why else would foreigners be interested in a heap of stones? Whether you have a revolution or not, unfortunately, it’s something that can happen from time to time regardless of the political situation.

What’s the best way to protect sites from looting, regardless of politics?

The best strategy is to create awareness among the population about the importance of their cultural heritage and the need to protect ancient sites—to make them realize that this is not a treasure hunt; we’re actually trying to understand and study the Egyptian past. The more you can educate people about the meaning and importance of their own past, the more they will protect the sites.

A sampling of what UChicagoans want—or at least what they’re advertising for in the Wanted section on Marketplace.

By Carrie Golus, AB'91, AM'93