My Irish grandmother, Sarah, who hailed from County Down often told me “self praise is no recommendation.” I’m in a quandary. An increasing number of you are aware that we’ve won awards for our magazine (excuse me, your magazine, after all, it’s about you and UCSD). Many of you also tell me that we should advertise our awards—so here goes, sorry Granny. Since our first issue in January 2004, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) has awarded us bronze medals for @UCSD and the @UCSD website, a gold for magazine writing, and a silver for best individual article (the Seuss article titled “Oh the Places He Did Go,” in the May 2004 issue).

The most satisfying reward is of course hearing from you. We gather from your letters you are pleased to receive the magazine, but you are also feisty and critical, accepting the challenge that it is your magazine and sometimes telling us what we could do better. Thank you, we do listen.

From the thousands of Class Notes we’ve learned that you want to share with your peers and hear about them. And for those of you who haven’t written, don’t be shy, you don’t have to win a Nobel or climb Everest. Marriages, births, changes of jobs are all interesting to your classmates and I encourage you to reach out to them and us with a note. You are probably like me when I read my own alumni magazine, you go straight to your year to see what your peers are doing. But as editor I have to read and reread everything, and it is a pleasure. UCSD alums are scattered across the globe, from Poland to Hong Kong and Chicago to Dubai. They discover new drugs, write new software, invent new machines, educate and nurture a new generation, create new businesses, win Tonys and Emmys, and they play rock ‘n’ roll, which brings me to this issue.

We thought long and hard about what to put on the cover, after all we have features on some serious topics, global warming and autism. In the end we decided on Switchfoot, the rock band, which is an alumni story that allows for a little levity in what might be called a worrier’s issue. Chris Vaughan begins his article on autism with a list of the nightmares that stalk contemporary parents. And our article on global warming—well Chicken Little said it all—apparently the sky is falling. But before this torrent of concern prompts you to toss us into the recycling bin, open up and give us a spin. Our autism feature is also a hopeful guide to the new discoveries and resulting therapies that could help treat this epidemic. As for global warming, all alumni can be proud of the pioneering work that’s been done and is currently being done at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Knowledge in this case is power, and it may even help prompt our leaders into more earth-friendly policies.

Both articles are worth reading, even if it is only to learn how your alma mater is at the cutting edge of science. And, Granny, that’s not self praise, it’s just a recommendation.

RAYMOND HARDIE
Editor