UO E-clips, Dec. 13-15

Representative of University of Oregon speaks before U.S. Senate (Portland Daily Journal of Commerce): Cassandra Moseley, director of the Ecosystem Workforce Program in the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon, spoke before the U.S. Senate last week, encouraging significant investment in green jobs and projects to aid rural communities affected by the recession. Moseley testified before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, citing the restoration and stewardship of national forests, sustainable wood-based energy development and green retrofitting of federal building as projects that should be funded to provide jobs and an instant boost to the economy in the short term. She said such jobs were most needed in rural public lands and communities. She also recommended capital improvement projects, such as bridge replacements and facilities improvements, such as solar panel insulation and building weatherization.

Study: Racial identity more than skin deep (Chicago Tribune, blog): A lot of readers have asked why the media are intent on referring to President-elect Barack Obama as our first African-American president when, in truth, he's biracial. One reason we call him African-American is because that's how he self-identifies. But what many of these readers (most of them white, some mixed-race) really want is for Obama to identify himself in a way that acknowledges his white ancestry. What's interesting is that folk probably wouldn't care how he identified racially if he didn't have such an impressive background; if he instead fit more of the stereotypes we hold about black males. I thought about this as I read the findings of study posted last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. … The study, which is an analysis of data from a long-running national survey, shows that how we define race is not a fixed social construct, but ever-evolving. Indeed, race is about skin color. But the study also looked at the way negative stereotypes, socioeconomic class and myriad other factors give us racial cues into how we see other people as well as ourselves. … "We need policies to address underlying racial disparities," said (University of Oregon sociology professor Aliya) Saperstein. "But we also have to have people like Obama who can dispel some of the stereotypes."

Arena named for Matthew Knight (Register-Guard): Matt Court? Nike founder and longtime University of Oregon benefactor Phil Knight said he liked the ring of that new nickname when he suggested the university name its basketball arena after his son Matthew, who died four years ago at age 34. UO President Dave Frohnmayer was happy to comply and on Saturday, at a news conference in the Rose Garden arena just before the Papé Jam basketball double-header tipped off, he announced that excavation will begin on the Matthew Knight Arena this week. The $227 million stadium will replace 82-year-old McArthur Court — Mac Court to students and fans. An official groundbreaking ceremony will come in mid-January with completion in time for the start of official Pac-10 Conference play in 2011. In a rare news conference appearance, Knight said that his son Matthew, while not an extraordinary achiever, had found a real niche in charity work in the last years of his life. He died in a diving accident in El Salvador where he was doing fundraising work for Mi Casa Su Casa, an orphanage with Oregon ties, Knight said.

UO and the Knights get this one right (John Canzano column, The Oregonian):
The thing might have ended up named Snickers Arena. Or the Pacific Gas and Electric Dome. Or GoDaddy.com Pavilion. The University of Oregon's new basketball arena could have been called Swoosh Hall. Or Progressive Insurance Court. Or the Alaska Airlines Center. When you're naming a $200 million venue, you're really only naming a price anymore. In fact, I once heard someone suggest the Vatican should sell its naming rights, which would make the Catholic church millions in revenue and also probably make the Pope's robe look like the side of a NASCAR entry. So what about Matthew Knight Arena? The name feels perfect here.

Duck fans react to Matthew Knight Arena (KVAL-TV, Eugene): The University of Oregon's basketball arena has a new name. So do duck fans like it? Yesterday, U of O President Dave Frohnmayer and Nike founder Phil Knight announced the $200 million dollar facility would be called Matthew Knight Arena. That's in honor of the Knight's eldest son, who drowned in a SCUBA diving accident four years ago. KVAL News caught up with some Duck fans to see what they think of the name. (Story & Video) http://www.kval.com/news/local/36141364.html)

Oregon DBs join boy’s fight against cancer (Register-Guard): NEWBERG -- When it came time to name the pet, there wasn’t any doubt, and no hesitation. The Chinese fighting fish was small, lean and aggressive, and the name just fit, though he isn’t sure why. Andrew Meinert called it Walter Thurmond IV. What does a fish mean? A lot when you’re 16 and you’re trying to beat this aggressive cancer that came from nowhere. Plenty when you’re spending months in a strange city, hundreds of miles from home, getting treatment after surgeons removed an egg-sized tumor from your brain. What does a visit by the fish’s namesake mean? A lot when you’re 17 and you’re spending your days in bed, unable to leave home. Plenty when you’re trying not to think about how the cancer suddenly reappeared, and hit you “like a bullet train.” Everything when you recognize that this second time around, the disease does not intend to be beaten. And as you follow the instructions you received from Walter Thurmond III: “Keep fighting.”

'People, environment should be kept in mind while constructing buildings' (ANI, as appearing in Newstrack India): Architects should keep human and environmental situation when designing buildings, according to Kingston Heath, a professor of historic preservation at the University of Oregon. He said that a building designed to recapture the past may bring nostalgia, but the end product may not capture current realities of a place. "It is a humanistic inquiry that recognizes that buildings and settings, alone, do not make place. People, in their interaction with the natural and built environment, make place," he said.

Rumors rife over buried jersey (Associated Press via Corvallis-Times): Rumors are swirling that some sneaky Oregon State baseball fans have buried a Beavers jersey or T-shirt at the construction site of the Oregon Ducks' new ballpark. PK Park is being built in the shadow of Autzen Stadium. … Rumors of the buried jersey, or a back-to-back National Champions T-shirt, spurred Oregon to excavate the area around home plate on Dec. 5 just to check, Joe Giansante, Oregon senior associate athletic director, told the Corvallis Gazette-Times. "We had heard the rumors, so we had some equipment come out and take a look to make sure there was nothing there," Giansante said. "We're 100 percent sure there's not a jersey under home plate."

Portland sign owner backs university's bid (Associated Press, appearing on KGW.com, Portland): The owner of the landmark "Made in Oregon" sign in downtown Portland says it has always promoted the institution paying the bills to keep the lights on. And, now, the University of Oregon is picking up the tab. The school has consolidated its Portland programs at a waterfront building and has created a stir by proposing to change the message on the sign to "University of Oregon." … When built in 1940, it read "White Satin" for a sugar company. In 1957, it was changed to "White Stag" for a clothing company. In 1995, it was changed to "Made in Oregon" for a retail chain. … Darryl Paulsen, president of Ramsay Signs, said Made in Oregon's lease ended in January, and the University of Oregon has been paying the maintenance costs. "Without a sponsor, we would have to take it down, and I don't think anybody wants that," he said.

RV makers furlough thousands for month (Register-Guard): Thousands of employees at local RV manufacturers are off work without pay for a month this holiday season because of the economy. Country Coach employees are accustomed to getting a two-week, unpaid vacation each December as the RV maker shuts its plant for the holidays. But this year, the Junction City company has extended its December shutdown to four weeks in light of the slumping market for motor homes, spokesman Matt Howard said. … "Although the furloughs are temporary, University of Oregon economist Tim Duy, said, “It’s hard to downplay that this is a lot of workers, and they’re coming out of work all at once, at a time of the year when they’d be more inclined to spend, otherwise. This is something that can’t be ignored."

Details on arena coming today (Register-Guard): Will it be the Knight Arena? How about the Phil Pit? University of Oregon officials couldn’t be talked into revealing the new basketball arena’s name a day early. But figure that “Knight” already graces some impressive UO structures — the library, the law center — and that Nike’s founder did cut loose a cool $100 million to get the new project rolling in 2007. So it makes sense that the $227 million building will likely bear whatever name suits Phil Knight’s fancy. All will be revealed at an 11 a.m. news conference in Portland today preceding the Papé Jam basketball games.

Breaking News: Knight appears (The Oregonian): This just in: the University of Oregon's new basketball arena will be called Matthew Knight Arena in honor of Phil Knight's son who died in 2004. The arena, scheduled to open in late 2010, was a long-languishing project that sprang to life with the August 2007 announcement that Knight would donate $100 million toward a UO athletic department legacy fund. The donation was contingent on Oregon securing the arena's $200 million design and construction cost in state-backed bonds from the Legislature, which Oregon officials did last winter.

Food banks forced to partner with farms, fishermen (Associated Press): Vermont's only food bank is buying a farm. In California, commercial fishing boats donated 260 pounds of rockfish this month. And in Tennessee, groceries that are fine to eat but deemed unmarketable by retailers are being collected and prepared for those in need. As traditional sources of donations dry up and demand rises amid a worsening recession, food banks and their volunteers are finding creative ways to make the best of a growing challenge -- while the hungry try to make less food go further. (Hunger) has been a persistent problem but it's radically gotten worse in the last year since the economy has tanked," said Ross Fraser, a spokesman for Feeding America, formerly Second Harvest. … Of course, today's hunger problem isn't nearly as bad as during the Great Depression -- an era that is often invoked when experts talk about the magnitude of the country's current financial crisis. Those who are hungry in America today have a safety net in food banks, soup kitchens and a federal food stamp program, said John Bellamy Foster, a sociology professor at the University of Oregon. "We have these programs in place that didn't exist in the 1930s and (they) will help a lot," he said.

Did magnetic blip trigger mass extinction? (Discovery Channel): It was a dying on a scale never seen before or since on Earth. The slaughter was everywhere; the fertile ocean and balmy supercontinent Pangea were transformed into killing fields, littered with the bodies of ancient animals. By the time the dust had settled on the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, 90 percent of life on the planet had been snuffed out. Now a new theory suggests the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years earlier, deep in the Earth. On the edge of the molten outer core, a plume of super-hot material began rising through the mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet's magnetic field into disarray. The weakening of Earth's magnetic field exposed the surface to a shower of cosmic radiation, says Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo. He believes the radiation broke nitrogen in the atmosphere into ions that acted as seeds for clouds enshrouding the planet. … Gregory Retallack of the University of Oregon agrees that the late Permian round of extinction was bad -- as much as 67 percent of species were eradicated. But he doesn't think the two events are related. In the 10 million years after the first punch in the late Permian, he said, life recovered. "The late Permian looks good all over the world," Retallack said. "You've got corals, healthy marine communities, and lots of fossil flora on land." There's no questioning the severity of the Permian-Triassic crisis -- "We almost lost it there," Retallack said -- but whether the two can be traced a single mantle superplume, or they were unrelated, remains a mystery for now.