Friday, February 28, 2020

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

VOLUME CLV, ISSUE 26

ARTS & CULTURE

Fashion@Brown hosts annual runway show Student organization showcases original, handmade clothing from 12 designers

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Computer science grants will fund two new projects Projects work to improve human-robot interactions, efficient searching

BY CHANIKARN KOVAVISARACH SENIOR STAFF WRITER A bright array of bold, vibrant looks designed and modeled by Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students captivated audience members in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts Thursday at Fashion@Brown’s 10th annual runway show.

“It’s a terrific landmark,” wrote Sasha Pinto ’21, president of Fashion@ Brown, in an email to The Herald. The show has been a “labor of love” for everyone involved as a celebration of the success and history of the organization.

“Each collection tells a story,” she wrote. “Brown students are immensely creative with a myriad of interests (and) … our designers are the true embodiment of this sentiment.”

“I thought it was really great,” said Glory Lee ’24. “With each collection I could tell how much students put their history, their culture into their work.”

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

BY KAAN SAYIN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

ANDREW DING / HERALD

Thursday night, creations from 12 designers were showcased at the Fashion@Brown runway show in the Granoff Center.

Directors of Design Lynn Hlaing ’21, Sebastian Immonen ’23 and RISD student Kasia Hope are responsible for recruiting designers, helping them create their collections and pulling the show together artistically.

With 12 designers and almost 50 models, this year’s show has been “the biggest and best show there is so far,” Hlaing said. He noted that there were “more designers than previous years.”

According to Hope, there was no specific theme for the runway – apart from a general celebration of the 10th anniversary – in order to allow the designers as much creative freedom as

possible. “We decided against choosing one theme because everyone had such wildly different interests,” she said.

In addition to the variety of artistic visions, Hlaing said, there was “such a diverse range … of experience” among designers. “It definitely makes for a more interesting and cool adventure,” he continued. “Everyone’s bouncing creativity off of each other.”

“It’s really fun to see the concepts develop differently among every designer. Everyone’s pulling from either

SEE F@B PAGE 10

In today’s world, people turn to their phones and computers in search of information, expecting relevant results at the click of a button. Computers use their ability to recognize language to return personalized results to users in seconds. Two grants awarded in January will allow computer science researchers to improve the capabilities of computers and search engines to retrieve and understand human language.

With support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity grants — the latter of six million dollars being the largest grant received by the University’s computer science department to date — Assistant Professor of Computer Science Ellie Pavlick and her collaborators aim to solve these problems with two separate projects.

The project “Better Extraction from Text Toward Enhanced Retrieval” aims to solve the efficient searching problem, and the “Grounded Artificial Intelligence Language Acquisition” project seeks to teach computers to learn language like humans do.

Project Better Extraction from Text Toward Enhanced Retrieval The BETTER project is about information retrieval, said Carsten Eickhoff, assistant professor of medical science and computer science. Information retrieval involves searching through large amounts of data, he said. “It’s a needle in a haystack problem. You want to find the relevant webpages that correspond to your query in the available billions of pages,” he added.

Traditionally, relevant results appear based on the terminology typed into the search engine. The degree of overlap between the terms present in the search query and the terms present in a document, including synonyms and related terms, decides how much the document or link will be promoted in the results, Eickhoff said. Two words

SEE CS PAGE 12

UNIVERSITY NEWS

UNIVERSITY NEWS

GSC, CAPS address graduate student mental health needs

MRHS, BOMBS, MASH host Loving Week

Two graduate students will participate, advise on CAPS Student Consultation Board

BY JACK WALKER SENIOR STAFF WRITER The Graduate Student Council and Counseling and Psychological Services are collaborating on new programming to address graduate student mental health needs.

At its February meeting, the GSC executive board focused on increased mental health support in its plans for the new semester, The Herald previously reported.

These efforts follow the release of a draft of the GSC’s Graduate Student Strategic Initiative. The GSSI highlights graduate students’ desire for better support surrounding mental health and wellness, including resources specifically designed for graduate students, programming to address work-related stress and social support to foster a stronger graduate student community.

Kathryn Thompson GS, GSC presi-

dent, described several new programs the Council is working to implement.

These programs include increased graduate student representation and inclusion in conversations surrounding campus mental health and a staff representative from CAPS who will meet exclusively with graduate students and is specifically trained to address their needs. Thompson also noted that the ability to book appointments with CAPS online to protect student anonymity and privacy is currently being developed.

Thompson said graduate students have increased need for mental health support, noting the longer amount time many graduate students spend at Brown as a result of their increased responsibility from managing work, research and classes.

“Anxiety and depression (are) very high ... within the graduate community because of the unique circumstances” graduate students face, Thompson said. “Academic life, and especially grad student life, is full of ups and downs, and so, sometimes, graduate students just need (additional) help recovering from

SEE CAPS PAGE 2

Loving Week celebrates Loving v. Virginia decision, which legalized interracial marriage

BY SAMANTHA MOLINA SENIOR STAFF WRITER From March 2 through March 6, the Brown Center for Students of Color’s Multiracial Heritage Series, the Brown Organization of Multiracial and Biracial Students and the Mixed-Asian/Pacific Islander Students’ Heritage group will commemorate the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case with their annually-hosted Loving Week.

The landmark case legalized interracial marriage in 1967. Each year, the University’s multiracial community dedicates Loving Week to the celebration of not only the court decision, but also multiracial identity.

“For me specifically, (and) for multiracial people who are oftentimes products of interracial marriages, the significance (of the case) is that we can exist,” said MRHS Programmer Anna Aguto ’22.

“That’s why we frame (Loving Week) around this case: it’s legitimizing our existence and celebrating that.”

Loving Week will begin with a Comic Strip Workshop, held by the BCSC as part

Sports

S&R

A&C

Athlete of the Week Bastianelli ’21 closes wrestling team season with win Page 2

Physics professor’s book chosen for the 2019-2020 Brown University Book Award Page 3

New Yorker editor Ann Goldstein discusses translation at conference Back

SUMMER ZHANG / HERALD

of the MRHS and led by Jewels Smith, the author of “(H)afrocentric,” on March 3. “(H)afrocentric” is a “comic book that follows undergraduates of color navigating a predominantly white institution,” said leader of BOMBS Pazia Bermudez-Silverman ’20.

On March 4, MRHS, BOMBS and MASH will host a Karaoke Night in The Underground Coffee Co., which leader of MASH Anna Kerber ’22 hopes will be “lighthearted and fun.”

Following on March 5, MASH will host a Bone Marrow Registration Drive with Be The Match in the Stephen Roberts ’62 Campus Center from 12 p.m. to

3 p.m. “It’s often difficult for mixed-race people to find (bone marrow) matches,” Aguto said. “So there’s a registry to swab your cheek and send it in, so (that) it’s easier for mixed-race people to find matches if that needs to happen.”

To wrap up the week on March 6, BOMBS, MASH and MRHS will collectively put on the Mixed Heritage Showcase.

According to the Loving Week Facebook page , the Mixed Heritage Showcase “will involve singing, dancing and spoken word.” Bermudez-Silverman said that the showcase is a celebration of art with

SEE LOVING PAGE 2

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

SPORTS

Nino Bastianelli ’21 edges wrestling association rivals Wrestler earns pin in 1 min, 17 seconds, decision against EIWA rivals

BY RYAN HANDEL SPORTS EDITOR Nino Bastianelli ’21 picked up two crucial victories this weekend to close out the wrestling team’s regular season, helping the Bears edge Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association rivals Harvard and Sacred Heart.

Bastianelli, who competes in the 197 lb weight class, decked his Crimson opponent for a pin in just 1 minute, 17 seconds Saturday and earned a 7-2 regular decision against Sacred Heart Sunday. As a team, Brown finished its dual against Harvard tied 18-18 and was awarded the tiebreaker of most pins due to Bastianelli’s victory.

Bastianelli’s win over Sacred Heart was also essential in a hard-fought 18-15 Bruno triumph.

Bastianelli has battled to a 17-11 record this season, including three pins and three technical falls. He leads the Bears in dual points scored with 33. Before coming to Brown, he was a four-time high school AllState wrestler in Michigan and a state champion as a senior. Next, Bastianelli will look to qualify for the 2020 NCAA Championships by placing highly at the EIWA Championships March 6 and 7. For his im-

pressive performance this weekend, Bastianelli has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week.

Herald: In both of this weekend’s duals, your match ended up deciding the outcome. How do you handle the pressure of a close dual meet and focus on your own match?

Bastianelli: It’s a team effort out there. There are 10 matches, and we need everyone in the lineup doing their job. And that’s all it is — just going out there, doing your job (and) doing what you’re supposed to do.

Against Harvard, you earned a pivotal pin for the Bears, and you have an impressive 12 career falls.

Are you always looking for the big move?

Definitely. You definitely want to get the pin — when it comes, it comes.

What was the importance of getting an Ivy League win over Harvard in the final home match of the year for you and your team?

It was a big win. They’ve beaten some teams that we lost to, and we’ve beaten some teams that they lost to, so it was a big dual. You want to win at home in the last dual of the season, get the fans into it, get ready for (the EIWA Championships) coming up and ride that momentum.

You’ve had a breakout season this

year, cementing yourself in the starting lineup and earning a career high 17 wins and counting.

What changes have you made that have led to that jump?

I haven’t made really huge changes. I just keep listening to the coaches like always and keep working.

Throughout this season you’ve been a strong wrestler from the top position. How have you been working to improve that aspect of your game?

Pretty much the same thing. I’m just working hard at it, listening to the coaches and making the necessary adjustments.

How are you working to peak at the right time as the end of the season approaches?

We’re getting ready for the (EIWA Championships) coming up in two weeks. We’re getting our practice schedule right, making sure we feel good and making sure everything is prepared and we’re ready for March 6 and March 7.

What are your goals heading into this year’s postseason?

The goal is always the same every year — to win and just keep moving forward. I want to place at EIWAs, qualify for NCAAs and place there.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

Bastianelli has fought to a 17-11 record this season, which includes three pins and three technical falls.

CAPS FROM PAGE 1

LOVING FROM PAGE 1

those downs.”

Recently, campus organizations have made efforts to better incorporate graduate student needs into mental health programming. In an email to The Herald, CAPS Director Will Meek described recent developments to address graduate students’ mental health needs, including adding “two graduate student representatives from the strategic planning group to (the) CAPS Student Consultation Board effective immediately.”

“All of these things make access better for grad students as well as the rest of our students,” Meek wrote.

“They are just flat-out good ideas.”

Meek also said that an anonymous feedback form is currently being developed for students, which would serve as another means of expressing their opinions, needs and concerns.

Thompson describes the GSC’s advocacy for graduate student mental health as representative of the collective needs and desires graduate students have expressed. “GSC gives a voice to graduate students,” she said. “We are very much a collective that is speaking for the entire graduate student body,” adding that leaders in CAPS and campus life “can really make a change. ... GSC is there to provide the pressure.”

performances by people from all racial backgrounds.

Planning for Loving Week begins in the fall, according to Aguto, Bermudez-Silverman and Kerber. “We usually take the last year’s events that we did, and see what we want to repeat,” Bermudez-Silverman said.

BOMBS, MASH and MRHS leaders each choose which events their group wants to focus on.

Initially, planning was led by BOMBS and MASH. “MRHS has just (recently) been pulled into it,” Aguto said. “We provide support and organize different events.

We have meetings and try to find ways to support each other.”

According to Bermudez-Silverman, Loving Week began as a day-long spring celebration of the Loving case, separate from the national holiday Loving Day on June 12. The Loving Week celebration did not become week-long until 2015, Bermudez-Silverman said.

“Every event is open to everyone. Anyone is welcome to come,” Bermudez-Silverman added. “Anyone who identifies with this experience, or wants to be involved — we want them at each and any of these events.”

“Everyone can be aware … and celebrate the legalization of interracial marriage, as well as just the multiracial experience,” Kerber said.

“It’s an exciting time, and we hope people show up,” Aguto agreed.

ROSLYN CORIZ / HERALD

Counseling and Psychological Services director discussed recent developments, including adding two student representatives to the student consultation board to address mental health needs.

In This Issue

Small Pieces, Big Picture ANNA HARVEY 6

About Coming Home

JORDAN HARTZELL 5

Insights on Coronavirus

SYDNEY LO 4

Walking Through Museums ALISA CAIRA 8

The Book of All My Hours DAVID KLEINMAN 7

postCover by Joanne Han

FEB 28

—

VOL 25 —

ISSUE 15

FEATURE

Insights on Coronavirus sniffles, sickness, and stigma

BY SYDNEY LO ILLUSTRATED BY GABY TREVIÑO

A

few days before the start of the spring semester, I walked up the steps of Brown’s Health Services building. I pried open the heavy doors, escaping the frigid Providence weather. As I entered, I sniffled and blew my runny nose, a side effect of the trek across campus. A stranger in the waiting area looked up at me, seeming wary, and I fought to ignore a fear that had grown throughout January: a fear of someone thinking I’m sick. Specifically, of someone thinking that I’d contracted the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Aside from my time spent in airports traveling from my home in Minnesota back to campus in Providence, there was little to no reason for anyone to consider me at-risk for contracting SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. First reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), COVID-19 had not even had its first confirmed case in the United States when I climbed the stairs of Health Services to visit the campus pharmacy. Even as I write this a month later, there are only 60 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States—the virus remains concentrated primarily in mainland China.

Nevertheless, I am half-Asian. Therefore, even though I have never traveled to Asia and my Asian

heritage lies in Laos with the Hmong people, I cannot escape the suspicion others now have toward my every sniffle. I worry, as I did entering Health Services, that I will be stigmatized—or worse.

This is not to say that concerns about COVID-19 in general are unwarranted. According to the CDC, “the clinical spectrum of COVID-19 ranges from mild disease with non-specific signs and symptoms of acute respiratory illness, to severe pneumonia with respiratory failure and septic shock.” According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it has a case-fatality ratio (total number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases) of 2.3 percent within China as of February 24, with a lower estimated ratio outside of China. Yet, with a wide range of contributing factors, including geography, healthcare access, disease course, and transmissibility, case-fatality ratios only represent one of many ways to measure an infectious disease’s threat, current or potential.

Still, SARS-CoV-2 is a novel coronavirus, meaning it has never before circulated in a human population— and its severity shouldn’t be understated. Several health officials—like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease— have predicted that the virus will become a pandemic (the

worldwide spread of a new disease). I discussed the virus with Dr. Richard Bungiro, a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Brown who teaches BIOL1550: Biology of Emerging Microbial Diseases (among other courses). He voiced a similar concern of a pandemic: “[COVID-19] does have that capacity—it spreads very effectively. It seems to be capable of being spread even when a person is asymptomatic, which is obviously troubling because it’s not like you can just isolate people who are symptomatic and contain the virus, because there are going to be people that aren’t.” Dr. Bungiro cited the 2009 strain of H1N1, a novel strain of the influenza virus originating in Mexico, as one recent example of a novel virus turned pandemic. At the same time, while the prospect of a pandemic may feel panicinducing, it is important to remember that in 2003, many experts also predicted that SARS would become a pandemic—possibly an annual one like the flu—but the outbreak was contained before it could infect a global population. Unfortunately, wide gaps remain in the scientific community’s knowledge of COVID-19, and in many ways the virus’s future path remains unknown.

Although the COVID-19 outbreak is a serious matter, the paranoia and panic that have arisen from it are not necessarily proportionate. Dr. Bungiro said, “I think we have to be careful not to forget what traditionally have been infectious diseases that have infected a lot more people and killed a lot more people than new coronavirus [sic]...I think that [COVID-19] should be taken in context of the larger picture of global infectious disease.” For instance, the influenza virus causes annual pandemics, with 9 million to 45 million illnesses and 12,000 to 61,000 deaths per year, but public responses to influenza rarely echo the panic surrounding COVID-19. Additionally, while measles has much greater infectiousness than COVID-19, many still choose not to vaccinate or treat the disease seriously.

Ekim Luo, a psychology student at the University of Southern California and my friend from high school, encountered the consequences of COVID-19 panic firsthand. She described her experience visiting family in Shanghai after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global emergency on January 20: “At this point, all public places (malls, grocery stores, restaurants, temples, etc.) were closed down. We were technically free to go outside, but

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, We are a little over a week into Pisces season. Ah, yes, I can hear your collective groans all the way from the editorial office. What even is a Pisces? Just say fish, goddamn it. I hear you—but I choose to ignore you. Because, beloved reader, I am a Pisces, and I am inviting you to suspend your disbelief for a short while to indulge in this wildly exciting time with me. If you are unfamiliar with this star-steered season, it means that the next few weeks are going to be emotionally tumultuous, deeply insightful, and, quite frankly, chaotic. In short, you’ll be crushed but ultimately come out better because of it.

If you truly don’t believe in the stars, take solace in the fact that this prediction also rings true due to the fact that we are well into the semester. With all the meetings, midterms, and deadlines that are fast approaching, it’s easy to feel like we’re hamsters in a wheel, running interminably toward nothing. And I don’t want to sugarcoat your semester, but I truly believe all of us are getting one stop closer to somewhere.

Whether that’s a degree, a newly realized passion, a roughbut-adequate understanding of organic chemistry—whatever goal is at the end of the tunnel, you’re getting there.

4!POST–

Leaps

This week, post- takes it slower to contemplate the people and world around us. In Feature, a writer interviews people about the coronavirus and touches upon the cultural panic that has ensued. In Narrative, one writer considers her relationship with her sister through hypothetical letters, and another writer discovers puzzles as a hobby that allows her to appreciate the little things in life. And in Arts & Culture, a writer uses his favorite novel to analyze his insecurities, and another evaluates how trips to museums have impacted her relationships.

During these hectic weeks, please take the time to sit down every now and then to recharge. Check in with your loved ones, enjoy the few warm days our mercurial Providence weather gods are bestowing on us, and be kind to yourself. It’s cliche, it’s overused, and it’s easier said than done. But so long as we are caught in a frenzy, either induced by the stars or the academic calendar, it’s important we give ourselves the space to breathe as we grow. Thinking about you all here at post-.

1. Leap Day 2. Leapfrog 3. OLEEP 4. LeapPad 5. sLEEP 6. Leaping to conclusions 7. “One giant leap for mankind” 8. Leap of faith 9. Leaps and bounds

Take care,

Amanda Ngo Editor- in-Chief

10. Lords a-leaping

the streets were empty...Face masks were all sold out, and some businesses jacked up the prices, but the [Chinese Communist Party] stepped in and I believe people went to jail for it.” She continued to describe how the closures and panic resulted in a mild food shortage as well as price spikes, heavily impacting China’s working class. Ekim observed people losing their jobs and businesses going bankrupt with no customers to visit them.

This frantic rush to secure resources is not limited to China. News sources like the New York Times have reported a worldwide scramble to obtain surgical masks in the wake of COVID-19, with pharmacies in the United States selling out for weeks on end despite evidence that such masks don’t actually protect healthy individuals from contracting airborne diseases—they only prevent sick individuals from spreading them. Ekim managed to fly out of China just a few hours before a travel ban went into effect, but her family and friends remain behind. She described her correspondence with them, telling me, “For now, it's still really grim over there, and most places remain closed. China is probably going to suffer economically in the long term, so the primary concern for most people is how they will be able to sustain financially in the recession that follows.”

This pervasive and sometimes irrational fear in response to outbreaks is, lamentably, nothing new. Dr. Bungiro offered a historical perspective, explaining, “In disease outbreaks in history, there have been people who have died not because of the disease itself, but because of the fear of the disease, they might not have been able to get services, get food, what have you. So the fear, in some cases, can be worse than the disease itself. You can look back on just about every major infectious organism we’ve dealt with and see fear.”

Disease panic can often be characterized by xenophobia and stigma. The article “Stigmatization Complicates Infectious Disease Management” in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics describes the danger of stigma within public health: “Stigmatization looms large in global health ethics because it prevents those with disease from seeking care, engenders fear of those who have disease, causes prejudice against entire groups or communities, and has, in some cases, led to violence against the stigmatized group.” In the case of COVID-19, Ekim witnessed a wave of prejudice in China directed against those from Wuhan. In Beijing, some citizens have taken it upon themselves to track and register those from Wuhan with local authorities. South of Beijing, the local government of Zhengding county even offered 1,000 yuan ($145) to individuals willing to disclose information about unregistered people with suspected links to the Hubei province.

In the United States and many other countries, the panic around COVID-19 has reignited a not-soold form of xenophobia and racism: yellow peril. This racist ideology discriminates against those of East Asian descent, though individuals of other Asian descents are often included. In the case of COVID-19, yellow peril depicts Asian people as disease-carrying “others” who could contaminate the rest of the world. Ekim shared her perspective: “What's happening now rings a bell to when the first wave of Chinese immigrants/indentured laborers came to the US. There is nothing original about xenophobia, and I still believe misinformation and the lack of education play a big role.” With the spread of COVID-19 and the resulting panic, incidents of yellow peril remain abounding: a man assaulting a woman with

a face mask on a New York City subway, people throwing rocks at Chinese students in Southampton, high schoolers assaulting a boy and accusing him of having COVID-19 in California. As Ekim mentioned, yellow peril doesn’t follow reason, but prospers instead off of unawareness and historic intolerance.

Beyond the occasional look of suspicion, like when I picked up my prescription at the Brown pharmacy, I’ve been mostly spared from direct stigmatization. However, I have little cousins, also Hmong, who have been teased in elementary school for “spreading coronavirus.” I have a friend from home whose grandmother ordered her not to sit next to Chinese people. In my position as a physician’s shadow, I have watched patients at Rhode Island Hospital refuse or complain about treatment because the attending physician is Asian.

Dr. Bungiro voiced his thoughts about the recent rise in prejudice: “It is troubling to see some people react with xenophobic tendencies. There was some of this with SARS, and there was some with MERS as well. I think that the thing that we have to keep in mind is that nobody wants to make other people sick, or at least not anyone I interact with. The Chinese population has borne the brunt of this infection, and a lot of people have gotten sick, and over 2,500 people have died, mostly in China.

That’s something that we should all be aware of and not use as justification to be hateful or hurtful. On a campus like Brown, I’d like to think that we are usually able to put aside prejudices.”

As a co-head teaching assistant for Dr. Bungiro’s course BIOL1600: Development of Vaccines, I know that a vaccine for COVID-19 is months away at the earliest.

While we wait for a “cure” or the rise of herd immunity (people getting infected, building an immunity, and thus preventing further disease transmission), we have a responsibility to resist xenophobic panic and support those most affected by the outbreak today. When asked how best to do so, Ekim recommended supporting local Chinese businesses who may not be able to sustain months of minimal revenue. She also suggested calling local representatives and advocating against racist travel restrictions. Others have advocated donating medical supplies like surgical masks to medical professionals and sick individuals (who actually need them) or seeking out trustworthy organizations to help support evacuees.

On the disease’s social impact, Ekim added, “I want [people] to rationally think about the situation. The xenophobia and mass paranoia have already caused many severe consequences. People are losing their jobs, small businesses are going bankrupt, and this is happening in China and outside because people are scared of Chinese people.”

Similarly, Dr. Bungiro advised students to respond to COVID-19 with informed and reasonable precautions, not panic. He said, “I would want them to understand some of the basics of how infectious diseases are typically transferred so they have a realistic understanding of what the risk is. I would want them to get a flu shot, if they’re medically eligible to get one, which almost everyone is. I want them to pay attention to it but not panic and turn to information sources of dubious quality.”

During periods of global crisis like this, we must make extra efforts to advocate for solidarity, empathy, and knowledge. We must fight against the suspicious stares, unfounded prejudice, and moments of weakness where unreasonable panic wins out. Dr. Bungiro put it best: “Fear feeds on ignorance, and there’s no vaccine for that.”

About Coming Home letters for syd

BY JORDAN HARTZELL ILLUSTRATED BY HEE WON CHUNG

Dear Syd, I don’t know if you remember this. When we traveled as kids, Dad let us each pick out one treat to take on the airplane. I’d get Sour Skittles and you’d get Regular Skittles, but you’d eat all of yours before the flight attendant even showed us where the exits were. And then you’d do this devious thing—this terrible thing—where you’d tell me that if I put a Sour Skittle in your mouth, you’d guess the color, and it would be tons of fun for us both. Red and purple were the best, and you always got them right. We’d play until you ate my entire bag of candy, guessing colors and licking your lips and never saying thank you once, because, wow, was I lucky to get to play this game with you.

Dear Syd, You’ve always walked so much faster than the rest of us. Told us that if we weren’t in a rush, we must not be going somewhere that mattered. So, one day, on a trip through some city—I don’t really remember where—Mom and I ducked into a CVS while you were walking ahead. When you turned around, we weren’t there, so you called and we said we’d taken the subway back to the hotel because you had walked ahead again. So you hung up and figured things out, and never stopped walking fast because you already knew how to ride the subway by yourself.

Dear Syd, Today, someone at work asked what I plan to do with my degree when I’m out of here and I said I’ll probably hang it above my desk. It takes too long to explain: Well, I like math, but I’m not sure if I want to teach in the long run and, if I’m being honest, I’d like to live with my sister in California someday because we once visited San Francisco and she can go to business school there and maybe I’ll work in tech and we can go hiking on Mount Tamalpais on the weekends.

I think, the next time someone asks, I’ll just say that I want to be a farmer. Roots return to roots return to roots.

Dear Syd, I killed a mosquito today and when I picked its legs off the wall, I remembered getting sick in Peru. So many mosquitoes at Machu Picchu, but not enough repellant at Machu Picchu. Alérgico. How do you say antibiotic again? I remember being dazed in Cusco, Mom on the phone at 2 a.m. with an emergency doctor: “But they’re having trouble walking…sure, I’ll hold.” We lay in our beds holding glass soda bottles from the hotel kitchen against our legs to bring down the swelling. Sprite and Coca-Cola, just like the doctor ordered.

Dear Syd, We both loved The Parent Trap because I was Hallie and you were Annie and then we could be twins instead of being 16 months apart. There’s a scene in the movie where the twins learn this elaborate handshake, so you and I made one up. Do you remember how it goes? You start with your hands crossed on your chest, fingers to shoulders, then uncross and tap your knees. There’s a double-fist-bump somewhere in there, but I’m starting to forget. I haven’t seen The Parent Trap in a while.

“Ethnographers basically ask, ‘What’s the tea?’”

“As a lit arts major, I would rather die than attend a Goldman coffee chat.”

FEBRUARY 28 , 2020!5

NARRATIVE

Dear Syd, You’ve co-opted some of my memories and I’m not sure if that matters. We had this babysitter, a 19-yearold with a tongue ring who let us watch movies half an hour later than Mom said we could. I told Mom that, when I turned 19, I’d get a tongue ring too, and that if I couldn’t get a tongue ring, I’d take a motorcycle instead.

And now we sit at dinners with family friends and they laugh when you tell them how you wanted to pierce your tongue and that if you couldn’t pierce your tongue, you’d have a motorcycle instead. I used to fight back. It was me! Me! But now I laugh too, deciding that it probably was you, anyway.

Dear Syd, I was thinking about Croatia today—orange and burnt sienna and aquamarine. Do you remember how we refused to eat the octopus salad? They’re too clever to eat, you said. Lots of olive oil, too, but we had no praise for olives. I think of your slice of New York in colors as well—maybe gray and dark purplish-red and champagne. Like steel and bruises and diamonds. Light orange, too, but just for the sandwiches at Katz’s Deli across the street.

Dear Syd, I never realized how badly my seizures scared you. All I knew was that Dad was crying and Mom was crying but that I got to buy a new skateboard. “Benign Childhood Epilepsy” was doctor-speak for “she doesn’t have brain cancer,” and everyone let out a breath they didn’t realize they were holding. We don’t talk about it too much because feeling it wasn’t so scary for me, but you were the one who had to sit there and hold me. The doctor was right when she said I’d grow out of it by 14, but by then we didn’t share a bed anyway.

Dear Syd, My favorite place of ours is the fairy tree at the old house on Fay Lane. A willow with a crook at six-yearold-shoulder level. We’d leave acorn tops full of honey and red autumn leaves and daisy chains tucked into the bark: gifts for the fairies that lived inside. Overnight, they’d make an exchange, leaving candy and trinkets and notes in Mom’s handwriting. The next morning, we’d sneak into the neighbor’s garden and sit on the bench next to their koi pond. There, we’d comb through our treasures in secret, gold sparkles on our hands.

Dear Syd, Feeling homesick. Call me?

Yours, J. 6!POST–

Small Pieces, Big Picture the healing power of puzzles

BY ANNA HARVEY ILLUSTRATED BY NINA YUCHI

Two weeks ago, my housemate came back from Boston with a puzzle. It was a staggering thousand pieces because, as she told her dad, we’re smart and capable women who can handle a challenge. The box displayed an intricate map of snaking rivers, pine trees, and log cabins; the top third sported a large bald eagle clutching a banner reading “Historic New England.” Lighthouses perched on the craggy coastline studded with all manner of sailing vessels, and a diverse array of wildlife—birds, fish, even a pair of seals—dotted the puzzle’s interior. Tiny scrolls of parchment strewn throughout the landscape boasted historical facts about the various landmarks painted in bright blues, reds, and greens. Yellow highways linked together major cities and pointed to interesting rest stops: “America’s Stonehenge,” for example, is in New Hampshire, just off I-93. My three housemates and I cracked open the box and set to work separating out the edge pieces.

Until recently, I wouldn’t have called myself a puzzler. That’s a title reserved for my mom, who, every winter break, takes over the dining room table with whichever design she has chosen for the year—classic novels, Broadway plays, Art Nouveau posters—and spends hours each day rapt with

concentration. She even has a felt pad that she places underneath her puzzles which allows her to roll them up and store them without dismantling them entirely.

She is a puzzler; I am a casual fan. My attention span is too short to devote myself to something requiring such focus—I am easily frustrated and dislike sifting through hundreds of cardboard pieces just to find the one piece I need. At least, that’s what I thought.

It took a little over a week for us to finish “Historic New England.” I spent most of my time painstakingly working on Maine, where my dad is from. I exaggerated his accent as I searched for pieces—had anyone seen Pen-awb-scawt Bay recently? What about Bah Hahbah? I found Bowdoin College, where he went to school, and slotted it alongside a tiny thicket of trees.

I found Brown as I moved down to Rhode Island for a change of perspective and smiled to myself. New England really is compact, I thought, in contrast to the suburban sprawl of the Midwest, where I’d grown up. In three months, I will graduate and I will leave New England, likely forever. My dad did, right after graduation: he went first to Minneapolis and then to Chicago, where he stayed. I thought of migration as I pieced together the hooked elbow of Cape Cod. My housemates and I are getting ready to scatter—two of us aren’t even staying on this continent—but for a few days, as we belted “What Dreams Are Made Of” from The Lizzie McGuire Movie and drank mug after mug of herbal tea, we were, each of us, rooted to this tiny slice of land.

Some find puzzles calming. I usually find them infuriating. But, after conquering “Historic New England,” we cracked open another, this one a little more my speed. Painted in rich jewel tones, it depicts “Jane Austen’s Book Club.” Jane and Virginia Woolf perch on a plush crimson couch, while Mary Shelley, George Eliot, and Zora Neale Hurston preside over the back. I notice that Virginia Woolf, the subject of my senior thesis, is disconcertingly blonde in the puzzle, as blonde as I am. Though Woolf was, after all, a brunette, I take this mistaken similarity as a sign that the universe is working out as it should. This is perhaps a lot to ascribe to a historical inaccuracy in a jigsaw puzzle, but puzzling has taught me to see the connections between even seemingly insignificant details. A splotch of red might be a stripe on the American flag or it might be part of a lobster’s tail.

Sometimes, it is easier to look for the tiniest smudge on the corner of a piece rather than its larger picture, because only that way will you know where it connects. Sometimes, it is worth it to just try pieces at random until you find the one that fits.

There is no particular strategy to puzzling, other than doing the edges first, but I would call that

ARTS & CULTURE common sense. You can move methodically, either by separating pieces by color or focusing your attention on one particular area while excluding all others, but there are no hard and fast rules. I find puzzles frustrating because they require me to recognize that I can’t know everything—I can imagine how the pieces will fit together, but I can’t know for sure until the whole thing is done. They require me to confront my failures, one after the other, until, finally, something clicks. They require me to stop worrying about putting my thoughts into words and to focus on images instead, to understand that things probably won’t make any sense until, suddenly, they do.

Puzzles allow me to see the big picture, which is exactly what I have been trying to avoid. The next year of my life is starting to coalesce; a picture is forming, in streaks and smudges. I am going to graduate school, moving once again, this time across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. I do not know where my life goes from there—I am trying to be okay with that. I may not know what the finished product will be, but I do know that I can find out. I am, after all, a strong, capable woman who can manage 1,000-piece puzzles. For now, I can focus on the small pieces: making the most of my last three months here at Brown, accepting failure, and spending as much time as I can at our narrow table, trying to keep the puzzle pieces from falling onto the floor. I can trust that the big picture of my life is out there somewhere—I just need to pay attention to the details until the day it all comes together and I realize, for once, everything is in its place.

The Book of All My Hours

on living forever and obscure scottish novels

BY DAVID KLEINMAN

ILLUSTRATED BY YUAN PU

In October 2017, I realized I might have unknowingly been holding the key to immortality my entire life. When I cracked open a new copy of my favorite novel, Vellum: The Book of All Hours, a relatively obscure 2006 work from a relatively obscure Scottish author named Hal Duncan, a bizarre feeling washed over me—almost like deja vu, but far more intense. It’s not that I was transported to the first time I opened it back at the beginning of high school, nor was it like catching up with an old friend. The best analogy I have for the way I felt was that re-opening Vellum was like closing down a video game: For some amount of time, I had been operating under the rules of a life that was but an artificial extension of my own, and now I was returning to the real world. Within that subset, time moved impossibly quickly; in the pages of Vellum, no time had passed at all, and I was still what I had been when I began the game.

It felt, to a degree, like coming home—not to a person or place, but to myself.

I think, on some level, I’ve always wanted to be immortal. Not in the sense of eternal life—though that’s obviously a concern—but in the sense of unchangeability.

Poets of the past hoped that their works would be monuments to their personalities in the future; with the advent of mass, permanent communication, we suffer not from a dearth but from an excess of monuments.

There are now records forever of my dressing up as Archie Andrews for Halloween before Riverdale was popular, as well as digital copies of truly embarrassing songs I wrote one summer when I thought I was deep. I cringe at these childhood faux pas, but in those moments would have fought tooth and nail to prove the validity of my emotions. For a risky decision to be met with a parental “are you sure that’s what you want?” would

merit an exhaustive and inexhaustible defense of myself.

Hallmark movies, moreover, warn that regret stalks even the most successful among us: All it would take to completely destroy my life would be just one magical night with my soulmate, or a missed offer from my dream job, or what have you. The last person I’d want threatening my legitimacy would be myself. And with Vellum, I think I found my magic cure. Side effects may include total selfalienation and reading one very good book.

Vellum’s conceit is simple in the same way that religions or political ideologies are simple: one clear-cut idea troubled by a hundred nuances and complications of putting it into practice. In Vellum, the world as we know it is but a single fold in the titular Vellum, the grand fabric of space-time on which all people, places, things, and ideas are inscribed. Rather than a patchwork of planets, the Vellum is a massive quilt of stories. Travel a few folds away and you may end up in a faerieland where the residents’ idea of Adam and Eve is the Shakespearean fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania; lying between your fold and that one would be a world similar to yours save for a few key differences that may cost you your sanity.

Narrative is both description and transportation—a “fold” is as much a place as it is a moment, and some characters even learn to time travel by dropping cigarettes in puddles. This dropping is not a loophole in physics or an act of magic, but rather a method of accessing every time someone has dropped a cigarette in a puddle: The cigarette briefly becomes the very concept of a cigarette dropped in a puddle and you can change the time and space surrounding it to fit your fancy. Like I said, simple.

What differentiates Vellum from a run-of-the-mill multiversal story is the way the characters grapple with the Vellum’s existence. I’ve always had trouble with, for instance, multiversal superheroes—since so many of these heroes are so personally motivated, avenging a death or righting a personal wrong, it’s unclear to me how they could stand up to an infinity of possible worlds. Batman’s parents are alive somewhere, ripe for resurrection-by-dimension-hopping, as are Superman’s, and the Flash’s…I’m detecting a theme. The answers these stories give tend not to satisfy me, since even apocalyptic threats pale in the face of such an expanse. Who cares about the fate of one Gotham when there are countless others unaffected or facing threats of their own? How can you claim to serve as a symbol when you’ve seen worlds upon worlds where your symbol doesn’t exist? Vellum answers this problem by inverting it. The characters do not trespass from their multiversal backwater into the great infinity of reality, but are rather extensions of something within that infinity that reach every fold of the Vellum. They don’t meet up with their alternate selves so much as understand exactly what and who they are,

getting a glimpse of everything their presence couldand will mean—a glimpse of the Vellum. In one chapter, we see a character manifest as an escaped prisoner, a deserting soldier, a blues singer running to make a deal with the Devil, and a shepherd in the distance of an ancient cave painting. This character is not merely one who always runs away, but is also the embodiment of the concept of running away, and every time he gets caught, he slips free in some other time, some other place, some other story. He is beyond humanity: In the language of Vellum, he is “unkin.”

Reading Vellum felt like my first glimpse into the Vellum, my moment of becoming unkin. For the longest time, I’d felt like I wasn’t truly a real person. I had managed to be an outcast at a middle school with a graduating class of 19 students; I had substituted my lack of real desires with plots borrowed from Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, removed from the real world. Yet seeing the grand patchwork of stories around me made being outside of them a blessing, not a curse, because it was only from the outside that I could see their true pattern. Circumstance of any kind became my enemy, and being “in” any group meant being outside of the transcendent truth. So long as I didn’t do anything a person would do, I was immortal.

Needless to say, this has made living as a human being somewhat difficult. Choosing concentrations, classes, plans for a Friday night—each has been fraught with intense knowledge of the sheer existential dread of insignificance accompanying the slightest wrong move. I had always thought that someday down the line, I’d regret being trapped in whatever fold of the Vellum I’d sewn for myself, wishing for the days when the vast expanse of possibility stretched out before me. And yet, in a moment out of The Bell Jar, I woke up one somewhat recent morning to find out I was running out of choices not to make and wished for nothing more than to go back in time and be able to grow and change. There was comfort in thinking that, in whatever passes for a realworld Vellum, my story had already been told and would be told and re-enacted forever, but I had forgotten how it felt to actually live and break new ground.

Immortality, it turns out, has its share of unforeseen costs. With that said, I still highly recommend reading Vellum. It’s a world concept I had never seen before and have never seen since, coupled with prose so suited to a poetic worldview that any passage captivates the heart.

Beware, though, of time travel—the moment to which I was sent back was the first time I closed the book and said, “I don’t know how I can ever read another one.”

FEBRUARY 28 , 2020!7

ARTS&CULTURE

Walking Through Museums it's harder than it looks

BY ALISA CAIRA ILLUSTRATED BY TALIA MERMIN

If we haven’t gone to a museum together, I probably don’t like you very much. This isn’t to say anything against you—I’m sure I’m the problem in our potential relationship. It’s just that, at this point, I feel like I’ve gone to a museum with everyone I know—so many people, in fact, that I feel qualified to write an entire piece on it. So, if we haven’t gone together, I could tell you it’s nothing personal, but the truth is that it probably is.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a community where kids were regularly taken to museums by their family members. However, that generality didn’t include my family, and I learned of this apparent norm only as I fell behind my friends in conversations and experiences.

The things my family did together, from watching sports games to watching crime television, didn’t feel appropriate any more as I learned of the times my friends’ families spent exploring downtown Boston’s museum scene.

As I grew older, I started to walk to the closest train station from my first boyfriend’s house, the two of us using our student passes to take the Green Line into downtown Boston. We learned which places we could get into for free because we were under 17. We also learned which places it was better to visit while pretending (unconvincingly) that we were college students.

Soon enough, the world of museums began to open up its heavy doors to me. Eventually, that boy and I went to every museum in Boston. With time, we broke up. I went to the same places with new people. I went to new places with even newer people. I got my license and drove for hours to go to that contemporary art museum everyone had always told me about visiting during their family vacations.

With more time, going to museums became a habit of mine, and was increasingly anticipated by my friends.

The discomfort I felt when people shared their museum memories faded as I began to accumulate enough of my own to feel like I could keep pace. I began to pull people into the world of museums, to jokingly take friends of mine who said they hated modern art to my favorite exhibitions, to go back to the same places with the same friends time and time again.

When I arrived at Brown, taking trips to the RISD museum was the way I cemented some of my first and longest friendships here. When friends visit me, it’s a traditional stop, one of a grand total of roughly three Providence must-sees. But beyond that, art exhibition and creation have become essential tools for relaxation, connection, and nostalgia for me. A space that once felt far from me has become familiar and known.

The walks I’ve taken with friends, partners, and family members through these spaces have all been deeply informative and valuable, even if the art wasn’t at the center of the moment. Museums have become a rare way for me to glimpse the ways in which people I care about interact with a world that is bigger than them. Whether those interactions become "deep" or remain silly isn’t the point. What I have found matters more than anything else is simply showing up for those moments and letting them root themselves deeper into my foundations.

I’ll be the first to admit how difficult it can be to connect with the environment of museums as someone who, for so long, felt uneasy and unaccepted in their world. But I think it’s important that these places are not just for people of a particular appearance or personality.

Museums are places for almost anyone—in fact, everyone—to connect with each other and experience things that could emerge in no other setting.

up to each other more than we had previously. Just as he laughed at the art, he also began to share more of his life with me. In those moments we shared together, I think we began to feel more real to each other as the museum triggered intimate responses from us.

I was the last person he had opened up to about the experience, just earlier that day. Accordingly, I was the first person who came to mind as he thought through the list of people he had to tell.

Museums certainly can be about the history or the art they have on display. On many of my visits, they have been about that, and, at this point, art is something I know a decent amount about. But museums don’t have to be that way. They can just as well be places where people share their experiences and grapple with their emotions. Many of my greatest memories are from time I've spent in museums across the world, the groups of people I go with and learn from growing bigger with each visit.

One of my most poignant museum memories comes from going to a museum with someone who was a self-declared hater of art.

One of my most poignant museum memories comes from going to a museum with someone who was a self-declared hater of art. We went to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art on one of the first days of summer. He disliked most of it, and we talked about all of it, along with the rest of our lives, as we wandered through the galleries. Later that day, when he got into his dream school after being accepted off of the waitlist, I was the first person he called about it. Why? Well, I can’t say for sure. He didn’t tell me. What I do know is that our visit to the ICA had allowed us to open EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amanda Ngo

“Seniors may still remember walking into Leung at 4:50 p.m. in the spring of 2016 to do homework, setting themselves up for a productive afternoon, and then being jolted by the sounds of Justin Timberlake blaring over the sound system at 5:00 p.m.”

-Sarah Lettes, “forever leung” 3.1.19

“On the brick wall behind the counter, beers, juices, open tea containers, and decaf espresso beans sat alongside T-shirts and tote bags, arranged like 3D wallpaper.”

-Liza Edwards-Levin, “faces, places, cable car spaces” 3.2.18

FEATURE Managing Editor Liza Edwards-Levin Section Editors Alice Bai Erin Walden Staff Writers Gaya Gupta Anna Harvey NARRATIVE Managing Editor Nicole Fegan Section Editors Michelle Liu Minako Ogita

Really, walking through a museum is about more than looking at what’s on the walls or reading the information on the plaques. It’s a more difficult activity with a lot more potential for growth and vulnerability than I think we often allow it. It’s about letting oneself open up to an experience that changes every time a ticket is acquired and used. This is what we truly learn from and store in our memories. It is what we share each moment when we exchange stories and recollections. These experiences become our own museums, nostalgia and experiences held in frames and returned to frequently.

Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Kahini Mehta ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Griffin Plaag Section Editors Olivia Howe Maddy McGrath Staff Writers Rob Capron David Kleinman Julian Towers

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney

SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Paola Solano

Section Editor Christina Vasquez

Editors Cecilia Barron Tessa Devoe

Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto COPY Copy Chief Moe Sattar Copy Editors Kyoko Leaman Aditi Marshan Emma Schneider

Want to be involved?

Email: amanda_ngo@brown.edu!

8!POST–

HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Gaby Treviño LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche

9

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

U. physics professor Jim Gates pens book, ‘Proving Einstein Right’ Gates’s Sept. 2019 book will be presented as prize to high school juniors

BY CLAIRE LIU STAFF WRITER While Professor of Physics and Director of the Brown Theoretical Physics Center S. James Gates, Jr. has only taught at the University since 2017, Gates has an astounding body of achievements in the physics field under his belt. Recently, Gates co-wrote the book “Proving Einstein Right: The Daring Expeditions that Changed How We Look at the Universe,” which was selected as the prize for the 2019-2020 Brown University Book Award. His book will be given to high school juniors as a part of the award.

This was the first book written by a physics professor to be chosen by the University for the award, Gates said. The book will be presented at participating high schools to juniors “who best (combine) academic excellence with clarity in written and spoken expression,” according to the Brown Bookstore’s website.

This is not the first accolade Gates has received: He has previously been recognized by the likes of former President Barack Obama with the National Medal of Science in 2013 and was named Harvard’s 2014 “Scientist of the Year.”

Gates, who insists on being called “Jim” by students and friends alike, became enraptured by science at the age of four, when he watched a science fiction movie with his mother, he said.

Since that eventful moment, Gates’ love for mathematics steadily grew throughout primary school. In high school, he was drawn into the field of physics with the guidance of his teacher and mentor.

Now — decades since his first encounter with a science-fiction film — Gates has been featured in over 20 science documentaries, including a NOVA documentary series also featuring Neil Degrasse Tyson. Still, Gates does not consider himself a public figure, joking that he is “still worried

about plus signs, minus signs, zeros and over two billion equations at the same time.” Although Gates primarily works to develop his own research, he has helped explain complex physics concepts to the average person.

In September, Gates co-published “Proving Einstein Right” with writer Cathie Pelletier. Described as “a scientific band of brothers story,” the book follows seven astronomers who worked for nearly ten years to prove Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

To measure the bending of starlight during a total eclipse of the sun, the scientists traversed areas of war, famine and other dangerous conditions.

Though the experiment was successfully completed in 1919, it had actually almost been finished in 1914.

At that point, the mathematics behind Einstein’s theory from 1911 were incorrect — meaning the scientists would have disproved Einstein’s theory if their experiment had succeeded.

Einstein corrected his mathematics in 1915, and the scientists provided proof for his theory with the 1919 experiment.

“So much of life is not predictable, it’s uncertain, you can’t be confident about how the story is going to end; the only thing that you can do is to work really, really hard to get it right, and if you’re lucky, you will,” Gates said.

Gates came across that same stroke of good fortune when co-author Pelletier reached out with a book proposal after uncovering old interviews with Einstein’s secretary and learning about total eclipses. Pelletier contacted Gates after seeing him speak in a Turbo Tax commercial on television, she said.

A well-established fiction novelist, Pelletier sought a collaborator of great scientific knowledge and reputation, she said.

Gates accepted her proposal — he had long “wanted to write a book that explained what science is like for real people, how they really do it; (scientists are) people — they’re not magical alien zombies who just think genius thoughts,” he said. While Pelletier brought her literary sensibilities to the writing process, Gates was able to fact check the scientific concepts.

“Our combination (of efforts) set

the tone for the book,” Pelletier said.

“One professor told me, ‘This is the first book that I can teach to students who are not really physicists … but might become called to (physics) because of this book. Suddenly, these people are human beings. They’re not just names in a book; they have families.”

“The audience … likes to read, to know, that there is adventure behind the discovery — that this is not just people toiling away in labs and attics,” Pelletier said. The book is unique because it “tries to embrace human beings first, and then the physics and science later.”

Over the process of writing the book, Gates and Pelletier developed a tightknit relationship, calling themselves “Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle,” after the pair of characters in the musical “My Fair Lady,” Pelletier added.

“This is a very magical kind of journey that you go on … (Gates) was just simply always there when I needed him. … He is a gentleman of the highest order — so knowledgeable, yet not vain.”

Brown Bookstore Director T.J. Cochran and Trade Books and Promotions Manager Tova Beiser wrote in an email to The Herald that the decision process for choosing the Book Award involves several rounds of voting, narrowing down candidates to the book receiving the most votes from the award committee. “This particular book was fresh, has broad appeal and was written with young people in mind. … Those who read the book were intrigued that the story was so exciting, which can be unusual for a scientific work,” Cochran wrote.

There are still many unanswered questions in physics, some of which Gates sets out to answer in his current research. In a recent paper, Gates and his team found that error-correcting codes — those used in all kinds of digital communication — exist inside mathematical equations. Error-correcting codes only exist in one other place naturally, formed through evolution: in all genomes. Considering this information, Gates asked, “Could there have been some kind of evolution of mathematics that led to our universe?”

Luck may have played a role in the success of his career, Gates said, as it

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Jim Gates was previously awarded the National Medal of Science in 2013 by former President Barack Obama. did with Einstein’s. He attributed his success to his unbounded imagination, dreaming up mathematical possibilities, and the fortune he has had in encountering fellow African American physicists who became his mentors.

Gates currently serves as Director of the Brown Theoretical Physics Center, where University students have the opportunity to work alongside him as he continues his groundbreaking research. There, he is a mentor himself.

“When I met Jim, I understood what genuine leadership is. Jim recognizes each team member’s efforts and cares about everyone deep-heartedly. As a theorist, Jim has lots of brilliant insights,” Sze Ning “Hazel” Mak MS’18, a researcher in Gates’ lab, wrote in an email to The Herald.

Yangrui Hu, another PhD student (PhD’23), wrote in an email to The

Herald, “Jim is an amazing physicist and advisor. His passion for physics and research influences and encourages us a lot.” Hu said that Gates explains complex concepts, does not pressure his students and has helped him feel accepted as an international student.

Gang Xiao, professor of physics and engineering, chair of the physics department and researcher on material physics, said that he learns so much from watching Gates teach in documentaries and other settings. “Gates is a fantastic mathematician, as well as really good at articulating complex concepts for people to understand.”

Although Xiao and Gates specialize in different fields within physics, they work closely together in their directorial positions. Xiao called Gates “a treasure to our department.”

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

F@B FROM PAGE 1 heritage or memory or aesthetic and the way they’re developing that concept … and finally putting it into their looks is so exciting,” Immonen said.

As the show came to a close and the models entered the runway for their last walk, steady applause accompanied the final exhibition of each designer’s works, including a series of yellow and orange outfits as well as a collection composed of red and pink mesh pieces.

Another model wore a dress made of coins, and one look was accessorized with a sword.

Quinn Coleman ’23, who has designed two prior collections, remarked on the particularly collaborative nature of this year’s design process. “I’m used to pulling all-nighters sewing, but not with other people. It was kind of weird creating together in the studio, but it’s been pretty good.”

“It’s crazy to see how other students are out here making clothes, and just creating things,” said Jenya Kirsch-Posner ’23. Kyran Flynn ’23 reflected a similar sense of amazement. “I came because I knew some of the models,” he said. “I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did.”

Behind the bright lights and colorful balloons of the runway, the Events team coordinated the logistics of the show, fine-tuning technical details from choosing decorations to booking the rooms in Granoff.

“We make sure everyone knows where they’re supposed to be and when they’re supposed to be there,” said Sapphire Faruque ’22, one of the Events Directors.“We’re in charge of setting up … (and) making sure it runs.”

Madison Hough ’22, also an Events Director, mentioned how managing the show involved “a lot of moving pieces.”

“We’re trying to make it more a celebration of the designers,” she said, adding that “there’s been a lot more involvement with other teams.”

“Every year the shows will keep getting better and better,” Hope said.

“I’m excited (to see) where we can grow and continue growing.”

ANDREW DING / HERALD

SINCE 1891

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

11

Down with the Death Penalty

BY DONNIE SAHYOUNI ’21 STAFF COLUMNIST

The question of whether our government should be in the business of putting violent criminals to death, once a hotly debated social issue, has been strangely absent from political discourse in recent years. The era of hyper-partisan politics and the Trump presidency has embroiled our campus with issues like climate change and immigration. But with more than four percent of death row inmates estimated to be innocent, it is dangerous to ignore a question of government policy that is, literally, a matter of life and death. On one hand, death penalty supporters say it is a deterrent for the worst crimes. While I have no sympathy for murderers and capital punishment is legal in most states, there are plenty of reasons to oppose government executions. The death penalty is inordinately expensive, it is an unconvincing deterrent and it undoubtedly kills innocent people.

In the first place, all available evidence shows that charging and administering the death penalty is more expensive than a life sentence. For example, in 2008, the state of California estimated that its capital punishment-related costs were at least 11 times more than those of lifetime incarceration. This should come as no surprise. Death penalty trials are much longer and more meticulous than trials that could only lead to imprisonment.

Government expenses continue rising after a conviction. Those sentenced to death get ample opportunity — rightfully so, given the finali-

ty of it — to appeal their sentence. All the while, taxpayers fund their food, health care and residence. In fact, the average tenure on death row was close to 15 years in 2010, and seems to be increasing. And when the time for execution finally comes, just a single dose of lethal injection may cost over $16 thousand. Nonetheless, cost is just one of the problematic externalities of the death penalty.

Contrary to what many of its proponents be-

reversed the former decision, and affirmed the death penalty. The most dedicated research on deterrence tells a similar story: The effects of the death penalty on crime rates are inconclusive.

The third problem with the death penalty is the moral disaster that a wrongful execution entails. To be clear, I do not want to argue that murderers are being wrongfully executed.

It is neither a cruel nor unusual punishment to

“But with more than four percent of death row inmates estimated to be innocent, it is dangerous to ignore a question of government policy that is, literally, a matter of life and death.”

lieve, capital punishment does not appear to be a strong disincentive for violent crime. Admittedly, the deterrence argument is not unreasonable — most people do not want to be executed.

However, I wonder if all those who kill think about the consequences when committing the act. Murder rates were not noticeably affected by the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Furman v. Georgia case, which declared many state death penalty schemes unconstitutional, or Gregg v. Georgia, which then effectively

end the life of someone who intentionally takes someone else’s with malice. At the same time, the American legal system is imperfect. No judge or jury can be expected to decide every case correctly, so it is not a shock that about one in 25 death sentences is handed down to an innocent person. While many of these wrongly convicted cases result in adjusted sentences or exoneration, it is likely that innocent people have been executed in the modern era United States.

The death penalty is unacceptable if it caus-

es the death of even one innocent person. If a life sentence is incorrectly handed down, the accused can be released from prison and compensated for the injustice they have been dealt, but no government can bring the dead back to life. That certainly was the case for Carlos DeLuna, whom the state of Texas executed on Dec. 7, 1989, for a murder he (by almost all available evidence) did not commit. If a single case is not terrifying enough, the Death Penalty Information Center maintains a list of possibly innocent people executed in the U.S. between 1989 and 2019.

Advocates of capital punishment might say that any prison sentence is irreversible, not just the death penalty. It is true, after all, that we all have a finite amount of time to live, and no person can turn back that clock. But taking time from an innocent individual is a far lesser evil than taking their life. Moreover, it is futile and expensive to enforce the death penalty, which isn’t a surefire deterrent, when there are cheaper punishments that are more effective.

The death penalty should be abolished and replaced with life without parole. Such a system would be far easier to adjudicate, sparing taxpayers the cost of expensive drug cocktails and appellate trials. And most importantly, in addition to giving up on a non-existent deterrent factor, abolition of the death penalty would keep our government out of the business of executing potentially innocent people.

Donnie Sahyouni ’21 can be reached at donnie_sahyouni@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Opinions pieces published in The Herald — which include columns, op-eds , letters to the editor and editorials — are written independently of news coverage.

C O R R E CT I O N A previous version of the Feb. 27 op-ed, “Siemens ’21: S.2077: The end of partisan gerrymandering in Rhode Island?” referenced resolution S.2007 in its title and body when it actually refers to S.2077. The Herald regrets the error.

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12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Translator talks importance, difficulties of language Former New Yorker head copy editor Ann Goldstein discusses nuances of translating

BY BEN BALINT-KURTI SENIOR STAFF WRITER Acclaimed translator of Italian works and former Head of the Copy Department for the New Yorker Ann Goldstein spoke on the nuanced and complex process of adapting foreign-language literature into English during the keynote address of the Center for Language Studies’ Translation Across Disciplines conference Thursday evening.

The conference aims to highlight “cross-disciplinary interest in the field of translation, modern languages and the humanities,” and involves many University departments, said Director of the Center for Language Studies Jane Sokolosky in an introduction before the address.

Goldstein is a recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award, as well as awards from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is also known for her translations of Elena Ferrante, a well-known Italian writer who has published numerous works over the past two decades and was listed as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2016. Goldstein’s translation of Ferrante’s “The Story of a New Name” was shortlisted for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award.

Goldstein began doing literary

CS FROM PAGE 1 can mean nearly the same thing yet not be recognized as synonyms by computers — a shortcoming of this search method.

The team is using neural network technologies to try to achieve cross-lingual information retrieval, which allows for personalized search results, and overcome such shortcomings. Say “you trained a search engine to find news articles in English, and you want to retrieve technical documents in Arabic. We try to find whether there is a good representation of language that will allow you to make that transition without new training,” Pavlick said.

This type of cross-lingual information retrieval could potentially allow users to search through Chinese documents without knowing a word of Chinese, Eickhoff said.

The team is also trying to personalize searches based on the individual user without using much, if any, private data. “Commercial search engines would keep track of your search behavior to learn effective ranking models for you and for everyone,” Eickhoff said. This type of personalization becomes very difficult if the person does not want to “pay the price of privacy,” he added. A possible approach would be to personalize the search results for groups of people rather than for individuals.

Although the project presents potential to be applied in many different domains, for now the team hopes to use it to target news-related searches on topics of public interest.

Project Grounded Artificial Intelligence Language Acquisition The GAILA project aims to teach

BEN BALINT-KURTI/ HERALD

Translator Ann Goldstein, known for her translations of Elena Ferrante, discussed the challenges of conveying an author’s intended meaning. translation “almost by accident,” after enrolling in an Italian night class while working as a copy-editor at the New Yorker. When her instructor assigned her a work by Dante Alighieri for the class, Goldstein took up the challenge of translating literature to English to benefit her own learning.

Goldstein began her address by noting the “existential importance that language can have,” providing the example of author Primo Levi, whose work Goldstein has extensively translated. Levi was deported to Auschwitz

in 1944, and found that his rudimentary knowledge of German helped keep him alive in the camp.

Goldstein then delved into “the crucial role of the translator ... how to get the text right, how to convey words, tone, meaning (and) style,” and how daunting it can be to accurately translate an author’s intended meaning. “You can never have (a translation) that’s exactly the same,” she said. “It can’t be, by definition. And maybe that’s not the goal.”

Much of Goldstein’s talk detailed the decisions she must make as a translator,

including how to convey regional dialects in a different language, translate syntactically flexible Italian to relatively inflexible English and adapt cultural references in a way that is accessible to non-Italians.

In advice to an undergraduate student during a question-and-answer session following the talk, Goldstein recommended “you should have a day job. You cannot support yourself as a translator.” But she added that, partially as a result of Ferrante’s recent popularity, “the role of the translator has become

... more vivid. People do tend to realize that there’s a translator involved in bringing you this book.”

Goldstein also discussed the sense of ownership she feels towards the texts she translates. “I feel like no one else should translate Ferrante,” she said, laughing.

Goldstein concluded by commenting on her straddling of the language boundary. “I think Italian is the most beautiful, perfect language in the world,” she said. “But English has its strengths.”

computers language in a way that is different from the common approach, known as the distributional semantics approach, in which words are represented with their surroundings in text.

“If a word is often being mentioned in a context, and if another word is also used in a similar context, then they are similar words … An eagle or hawk will take flight, but a bus will never do that,” Eickhoff said.

While this approach is effective, it also has its drawbacks. Computers can more easily learn to understand nouns than verbs, but they still “don’t really understand what (words) actually mean. They can’t answer fine-grain questions, … reason hypothetical concepts or stitch several things together,” Pavlick said.

The team had to consider how language is naturally understood and determine “the right representations to use for language so that computers can reason about what is meant by what is said,” Pavlick said.

A solution presented itself in the form of grounded language acquisition. The idea is to “let a little virtual agent loose in a VR setting where it interacts with humans, very similar to how children learn language. A child observes and has questions, and we want to create such interactions. We have kitchens and living rooms, both in 2D and 3D. Right now, it’s at the stage where the robot just observes,” Eickhoff said. The next step would be to have the robot interact with the researchers and ask questions in order to create a feedback loop, he added.

After the tests are run, the researchers compare the quality of the robot’s inferences to what would be expected of a human, Pavlick said.

Roman Feiman, assistant professor

of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences and one of the co-principal investigators of the GAILA project, is tasked with providing “input, ideas and design constraints informed by what we know about human language learning,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.

One of the main goals of the project is to “build systems that are more useful to people” and to make human-computer interactions easier, which can be accomplished by creating robots that understand natural human language. “Language is a really powerful interface to use to interact with a computer. It is easier to talk than code,” Pavlick said. “If you say, ‘Can you grab that’, (the computer) has to know what ‘that’ is.”

Teaching computers to better interact with language is also essential for access to knowledge. “Everything we know is documented somewhere in language, and the computers should be able to access those,” she added.

Studying human interactions is one way to understand the efficacy of language, Pavlick said. But constructing models like GAILA that interpret and represent language also provides another perspective. “It gives us the power to assess what representations work,” she said.

“This is an exciting grant not only because of its record funding level, but also, and more importantly, because of the multi-disciplinary research and progress it will enable on how machines can understand and use natural language, a core challenge to be addressed towards human-level machine intelligence,” wrote Ugur Cetintemel, professor of computer science and chair of the department, in an email to The Herald.

Ellie Pavlick is principal investigator of the two projects that aim to improve computer searching and language acquisition.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY