Sandy Smith

What is it about baseball that attracts the literary crowd? Maybe it’s the drama of the game itself. “I like the mano a mano of the confrontation between a good pitcher and a good batter,” said Pennsylvania Gazette senior editor Sam Hughes, a Phillies fan since he was a mere youth. “It has to be the most interesting confrontation in sports.

There’s a chance that, in a couple of weeks, we may all be reliving our last electoral cliffhanger, as officials in Los Angeles and 18 of California’s 57 other counties scrutinize punch cards for hanging or dimpled chads, trying to divine whether a voter wanted to kick Gov. Gray Davis out or keep him around.

A new alliance headed by a Penn computer scientist seeks to promote life science research in greater Philadelphia by spreading knowledge of bioinformatics.

Just because those messages about a “movie,” “your application” or a “wicked screensaver” have stopped clogging your e-mail doesn’t mean that you can relax now. The W32.Sobig.F virus, which flooded e-mailboxes worldwide with bogus messages from late July until Sept. 10, may have shut itself down, but it is only a harbinger of things that may come.

STAFF Q&A/Call it luck or call it craft, but Amy Calhoun has managed to float into her perfect job “I actually have often thought that my career was sort of as if there’s a river and I’m standing on the bank, and various rafts come by, and people are on the raft and they wave and say ‘Hi! Jump on!’

The Western scientific medical model has produced stunning achievements in extending life and treating disease. But in the relentless march of science, some say, the doctors have lost sight of the patient. A required course for all first-year School of Medicine (SOM) students, “Culture Matters,” aims to put the patient back in the doctor’s sights.

VCR alert: The award-winning PBS science series “Nova” starts its 30th season Sept. 30 with a program featuring Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health Chris Rorres of the School of Veterinary Medicine. The subject is Archimedes, not animals, though—Rorres has made the study of the ancient world’s greatest scientist his life’s passion.

Service runs deep in Penn’s blood. The notion that service is an important part of education was part of founder Ben Franklin’s original vision, which saw “an Inclination joined with an Ability to serve Mankind” as “the great Aim and End of all Learning.”

A persistent rumor circulating around campus has it that President Judith Rodin will run for office after she steps down next June.

Congratulations, neighbor: Your Buzz correspondent would like to salute Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) for being honored as the nation’s best pediatric hospital in the annual U.S.