Stanford Report, March 17, 2004

WHO'S BRIGHTER -- LAW STUDENTS OR those who teach them? On Friday night, students, faculty and staff matched wits (and witticisms) at the Ninth Annual Battle of the Brains for this year's answer to that question. The quiz show-style contest -- played with questions drawn from just about every conceivable topic except the law -- was hosted by a real live game show host, BEN STEIN of Comedy Central's "Win Ben Stein's Money." Throughout the event, Stein -- a former speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford who has worked as a trial attorney -- kept up a steady stream of lawyer jokes and bemused jabs at the zeal that contestants and members of the Kresge Auditorium audience brought to the competition. ("You really are law students," he said, as student players repeatedly interrupted his questions with buzzers.) After rounds that winnowed the field to two student teams and one faculty team, four law professors -- HANK GREELY, THOMAS GREY, ROBERT WEISBERG and TOBIAS BARRINGTON WOLFF -- were pronounced the winners. Law Professor BARBARA BABCOCK, whose "Class Action" team lost out in an earlier round, was honored nonetheless: The contest trophy will be named the "Babcock Trophy" to recognize her support of the event, it was announced. The event, organized by the Stanford Law Association, raised $18,800 from sponsors for the Stanford Community Law Clinic and East Palo Alto Community Legal Services.

ON MARCH 1, STANFORD CHEFS OUTcooked their peers in an American Culinary Federation-sanctioned contest sponsored by the National Association of College and University Food Services at a regional conference on the University of Arizona campus. RAUL LACARA, chef and manager at Manzanita Dining, won a gold medal, and GARY ARTHUR, chef at LINX, brought home silver. Lacara, a master ice carver who once fashioned a cell phone from a watermelon and who cooked on cruise ships and in hotel restaurants before coming to Stanford, prepared a proven winner: His sesame-crusted Coho salmon, stuffed with balsamic shitake mushrooms and served with an Asian salad made with daikon, cucumber and banana flower shoots, won a Stanford Dining-sponsored contest last fall. In July, Lacara will compete at a national competition in Las Vegas.

A BOOK DRIVE TO COLLECT TEXTBOOKS in all fields, as well as dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, catalogs, journals, magazines, novels, essays and books of poetry, will be held on campus March 22 through April 4. The books will be donated to Bridge to Asia, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that has sent 6 million books to more than 1,000 schools in developing countries. Books can be dropped off at the Stanford Bookstore beginning Monday, March 22, or at a donation van that will be parked on campus on Community Day, April 4. Although most used books and periodicals are welcome, computer books that support specific operating systems and software and foreign language books, other than English, aren't needed.

Write to Barbara Palmer at barbara.palmer@stanford.edu or mail code 2245 or call her at 724--6184.

Barbara Palmer