Nobel Laureate to Speak on Greenhouse Dangers

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WILLIAMSTOWN - Thomas C. Schelling, who won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics, will deliver the talk "What is the Greenhouse Danger, and Can We Manage It?" on Thursday, April 10, at 8 p.m.  

The event will be held in the '62 Center on the Williams College campus. The public is invited and the event is free.

The talk is the keynote address of a conference on "Global Warming and Developing Countries: Addressing and Coping with the Challenge," which will take place on Friday, April 11. The conference is open to the public. A schedule of events can be found here.

Schelling has been involved in the global warming debate since chairing a commission for President Carter in 1980. He is presently a participant in the Copenhagen Consensus, which analyzes the world's great challenges and establishes a framework in which solutions to problems are prioritized according to efficiency based upon economic and scientific analysis.


Schelling, who is Distinguished University Professor at the Maryland School of Public Affairs, was previously at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy. He has held positions in the White House and Executive Office of the President, Yale University, the RAND Corporation and the Department of Economics and Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

He has published on military strategy and arms control, energy and environmental policy, climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, organized crime, foreign aid and international trade, conflict and bargaining theory, racial segregation and integration, the military draft, health policy, tobacco and drugs policy, and ethical issues in public policy and in business.

The lecture and conference is being hosted by the Center for Development Economics, Center for Environmental Studies, and the department of geosciences, with the generous support of the Mellon and Luce Foundations.
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WCMA: 'Cracking the Code on Numerology'

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opens a new exhibition, "Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art."
 
The exhibit opened on March 22.
 
According to a press release: 
 
The idea that numbers emanate sacred significance, and connect the past with the future, is prehistoric and global. Rooted in the Babylonian science of astrology, medieval Christian numerology taught that God created a well-ordered universe. Deciphering the universe's numerical patterns would reveal the Creator's grand plan for humanity, including individual fates. 
 
This unquestioned concept deeply pervaded European cultures through centuries. Theologians and lay people alike fervently interpreted the Bible literally and figuratively via number theory, because as King Solomon told God, "Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight" (Wisdom 11:22). 
 
"Cracking the Cosmic Code" explores medieval relationships among numbers, events, and works of art. The medieval and Renaissance art on display in this exhibition from the 5th to 17th centuries—including a 15th-century birth platter by Lippo d'Andrea from Florence; a 14th-century panel fragment with courtly scenes from Palace Curiel de los Ajos, Valladolid, Spain; and a 12th-century wall capital from the Monastery at Moutiers-Saint-Jean—reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender, and timekeeping. 
 
"There was no realm of thought that was not influenced by the all-consuming belief that all things were celestially ordered, from human life to stones, herbs, and metals," said WCMA Assistant Curator Elizabeth Sandoval, who curated the exhibition. "As Vincent Foster Hopper expounds, numbers were 'fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning.' These artworks tease out numerical patterns and their multiple possible meanings, in relation to gender, literature, and the celestial sphere. 
 
"The exhibition looks back while moving forward: It relies on the collection's strengths in Western medieval Christianity, but points to the future with goals of acquiring works from the global Middle Ages. It also nods to the history of the gallery as a medieval period room at this pivotal time in WCMA's history before the momentous move to a new building," Sandoval said.
 
Cracking the Cosmic Code runs through Dec. 22.
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