From: Quad-City Times (Davenport, IA)
Author Chad Simpson will sign copies of his award-winning short story collection, “Tell Everyone I Said Hi,” from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19, at Books-a-Million, 4000 E. 53rd St., Davenport. Simpson is an associate professor of English at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill… Read more…
From: The Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON)
Knox College psychology professor Tim Kasser is interviewed for an article, “How can I have Christmas without the clutter?” Craig and Marc Kielburger, founders of Free the Children and Me to We, write: “In theory, Christmas is about time spent with loved ones, not great deals on electronics. Yet, in reality, many of us struggle with the holiday paradox of giving to others without succumbing to the trappings of mass consumption…
This week we asked experts: How do we reconcile the holiday spirit of giving with the avoidance of material excess? Tim Kasser, author of The High Price of Materialism — ‘My academic analysis shows that people report the highest holiday well-being when they de-emphasize the materialistic aspects of the season and instead focus on being with their families and practising their religion.’…” Read more…
From: The Register Mail (Galesburg, IL)
“Tell Everyone I Said Hi,” the award-winning short story collection by Knox College associate professor of English Chad Simpson, has been published by the University of Iowa Press. Earlier this year, Simpson’s book was named the winner of the prestigious John Simmons Short Fiction Award. The award is given to a first collection of fiction in English and is administered through the Iowa Writer’s Workshop… Read more…
From: WIUM (Macomb, IL)
The University of Iowa Press chooses two winners each year for the Iowa Short Fiction Awards. One of the winners this year is Chad Simpson of Knox College. Simpson received the 2012 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. As part of the honor, the University of Iowa Press just published Simpson’s collection of short stories “Tell Everyone I Said Hi.”…
Simpson’s book was chosen for the award by writer Jim Shepard, who in a release is quoted as saying: “Chad Simpson writes with a piercing tenderness and sadness about loss and helplessness and the impossible decisions that we face every day, and the complexity of the compromises we offer the world, and ourselves, in response.”… Read more…
From: Earth Times (Ripon, N. Yorkshire, UK)
Research by Knox professors Jennifer Templeton and James Mountjoy is noted as “the very first demonstration of visual mate choice lateralisation.” They and colleagues in Australia found that the male Gouldian finch uses only the right eye to evaluate potential mates; research originally published in Biology Letters.
British web site EarthTimes reports: “Your colour, your size and your song are what matters if you are a bird choosing a mate. In a polymorphic species, where several colour variations exist side-by-side, mates are chosen often because they match the chooser. But in the very rare and absolutely beautiful Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) from northern Australia, this can only happen with the use of the right eye, linked internally to the brain’s left hemisphere The zebra finch also uses his right eye to eye up his female during a static early stage of courtship. This seems to mean that these birds have a strong specialisation in each hemisphere for different tasks…” Read more…
From: Discover Magazine
It’s said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that’s only half-true for the Gouldian finch. Jennifer Templeton and James Mountjoy from Knox College, Illinois found that these beautiful birds only display their famous fussiness over mates if they’re looking with their right eye. If the right is shut, and the left eye is open, the birds have more catholic tastes. As Templeton writes, “Beauty, therefore, is in the right eye of the beholder for these songbirds.” The article was originally published in the journal Biology Letters… Read more…
