"Science is the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money."
C. Hauer (Jr.) misquoting H. James from The Golden Bowl
"In an insane society, the sane man must appear insane."
From the movie, Serial
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits."
A. J. Kenerleber
"Focus on the solution, not the problem"
Terry Goodkind from the Sword of Truth series of books.
Also from Goodkind - The Wizard's Rules:
First Rule: "People are stupid. People will believe any lie if they want it to be true or if they fear it to be true."
Second Rule: "The greatest harm can result from the best intentions."
Third Rule: "Passion rules reason."
Fourth Rule: "There is magic in sincere forgiveness; magic to heal. In the forgiveness you grant and more so in the forgiveness you receive."
Fifth Rule: "Mind what people do, not only to what they say, for deeds will betray a lie."
Sixth Rule: "The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason."
Seventh Rule: "Life is the future, not the past."
Eighth Rule: "Deserve victory."
Ninth Rule: "A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole."
Tenth Rule: "Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self."
The Department annually celebrates the end of the year, the end of the first semester, and the holiday season with a party. Click to see scenes from a recent party.
The graduate chemistry departments in New England hold a one day softball tournament each summer normally hosted by the previous years champion. URI has participated every year since 1989, although the tournament started in 1987. Here is the history of the tournament as I remember it (note that there are some gaps - my memory is failing these days!).
Year Host Winner 1987 UMass 1988 UNH 1989 UNH MIT 1990 MIT 1991 Maine UVM 1992 UVM URI 1993 URI UMass 1994 UMass 1995 Dartmouth Harvard 1996 Harvard Harvard 1997 Yale MIT 1998 MIT UVM 1999 UVM Harvard 2000 Harvard Princeton 2001 Brown/Princeton Yale 2002 Yale Yale 2003 MIT Yale 2004 UMass Yale 2005 Yale MIT 2006 UConn MIT 2007 UMass Tufts 2008 Harvard Tufts 2009 ? ?
The 1998 tournament was hosted by MIT and the URI team managed to win one game out of the six we played. More importantly, we all had a great deal of fun.
The 1999 New England tournament was hosted by the University of Vermont. We didn't quite manage to win a game but were able to get Harvard's colors.
Harvard hosted and provided some unbelievably good cookies with dinner. Once again we were unable to eke out a win, but we did manage to tie Yale-B!
A breakout year for the rebuilding URI team: we won 1 (against UConn), lost 2, and tied 2.
URI made it back to the tournament playoff this year, posting a 3 wins & 2 losses record in round-robin play. We lost in the quarterfinals to UMass, but a good time was had by all, once again.
The team started strong beating UConn in the first game of the day. That turned out to be the highlight as we lost the next four games to UMass (a playoff team), Tufts, Princeton A (the tournament runnerup), and Yale C (also a playoff team).
This was an excellent year for the URI Chemistry Softball team. The team went 4-1 in round robin play (losing to UConn and beating Yale2 and BC3 each twice). This got us to tournament play, where we lost to Yale1 in a competitive game, 7-5.
Another excellent year for the URI Chemistry Softball team. The team went 3-1-1 in round robin play (losing to UConn, tying Umass2, beating UMass2 in the rematch, and beating BC2 twice). This got us to tournament play, where we lost to the top seed, Tufts. URI had the largest entourage and exhibited exceptional spirit throughout the day.