UO E-clips, Sept. 20-22

Forum planned to gather ideas on new UO president (Register-Guard): Have any ideas about what kind of person should replace University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer? The state wants to hear them. Oregon University System Chancellor George Pernsteiner will hold a public forum in Eugene to gather comments about the type of candidate to take Frohnmayer's place. The forum will be held from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sept. 30 in the Erb Memorial Union's Gumwood Room on the UO campus. Pernsteiner, the chief executive of the state's seven-campus university system, also held a forum in Portland earlier this month.

'No Time to Lose' to Start Thinking Sustainability (Kansas City infoZine): In a new book, the director of the University of Oregon's Climate Leadership Initiative says that addressing human contributions to global warming requires a mindset tuned to "The Power of Sustainable Thinking." … The 240-page book published by London-based Earthscan Publications Ltd. is targeted at decision makers in the public and private sector, but its content is accessible to "anyone interested in changing thinking and behavior about the climate and sustainability," [author Bob] Doppelt said.

Climate change, human activity and wildfires (Science Daily): Climate has been implicated by a new study as a major driver of wildfires in the last 2,000 years. But human activities, such as land clearance and fire suppression during the industrial era (since 1750) have created large swings in burning, first increasing fires until the late 1800s, and then dramatically reducing burning in the 20th century. The study by a nine-member team from seven institutions -- led by Jennifer R. Marlon, a doctoral student in geography at the University of Oregon -- appeared online Sunday ahead of regular publication in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team analyzed 406 sedimentary charcoal records from lake beds on six continents.

When did people first come to North America? (Associated Press, appearing in the Boston Globe and on MSNBC.com): For some 85 years, homesteaders, pot hunters and archaeologists have been digging at Paisley Caves, a string of shallow depressions washed out of an ancient lava flow by the waves of a lake that comes and goes with the changing climate. Until now, they have found nothing conclusive -- arrowheads, baskets, animal bones and sandals made by people who lived thousands of years ago on the shores of what was then a 40-mile-long lake, but is now a sage brush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin. But a few years ago, University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins and his students started digging where no one had dug before. What the team discovered in an alcove used as a latrine and trash dump has elevated the caves to the site of the oldest radiocarbon dated human remains in North America.

Mexican artisans try to survive Oaxacan unrest (Women's E-News): When Hermelinda Aurora Martinez Rios was recently asked about the damage caused by the tourism downturn here, she drew a finger across her neck. "One thousand percent," she said, "totally." That's hit her women's cooperative hard. This year the Women Artisans of the Oaxaca Regions--called MARO, for its acronym in Spanish--marked its 15th anniversary as the city's most successful craft cooperative. ... Lynn Stephen, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon and author of 2005's "Zapotec Women: Gender, Class and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca," agrees.

East left its mark in a Western corner (The Australian, guest commentary by UO professor Andrew Shultz): In A.D. 711, a small North African army crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic forces of king Roderick. This rather insignificant event began more than seven centuries of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula. Among many other accomplishments, the successive dynasties of al-Andalus (as Muslim Iberia was known) created some of the world's most significant works of architecture and visual art. These include the Great Mosque at Cordoba (begun in 827) and the Alhambra in Granada (1238-1390), as well as remarkable ceramics, textiles, ivories, manuscripts and metalwork.

Big Oil sows confusion, reaps Ike (Register-Guard guest viewpoint by Bob Doppelt, UO Institute for a Sustainable Environment): America has the technological capacity today to increase the health and well-being of each citizen many times over. This should be an era of excitement, hope and prosperity. Yet few people feel this way. The future seems clouded by problems, not opportunity. Systemic troubles are becoming ever more evident. The recent destructive Atlantic hurricanes and the Wall Street meltdown are the latest ordeals that give people a deepening sense that something is fundamentally wrong. Paradoxically, these events also provide insights into the deep-seated changes needed to right the ship, resolve global warming, and enhance prosperity.