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"No one in their right mind would ever go to a math talk," said University of Colorado at Boulder Visiting Mathematics Professor Edward Burger, who will speak on campus April 28 on "Why I Hate Math But Love Museums." Burger, a mathematics professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., is not your run-of-the-mill faculty member. He has written jokes for the Jay Leno show, put on plays involving construction workers proving mathematical theorems during their lunch breaks and had his own comedy radio show in college.

A memorial service for Verle Plumb, a long-time employee at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will be held Tuesday, April 20, at 3:30 p.m. in the Glenn Miller Ballroom. Verle died after a short illness on April 15 at Boulder Community Hospital. He was 51. "It is with deep sadness and regret that the UMC staff announces the untimely demise of a beloved colleague and friend," said J.C. Ancell, associate director of the University Memorial Center. Verle was born April 26, 1947 in Flager, Colorado, to Loren Plumb and Mabel Rosebury Plumb.

University of Colorado at Boulder Law School Professor Mark J. Loewenstein will give the 24th Annual Austin W. Scott Lecture in the Fleming Law Building on the CU-Boulder campus Thursday, April 22. Titled "Lessons from the Race Debates: A Talk on Corporate Law," the lecture will begin at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 22, in the Lindsley Memorial Courtroom. The talk is free and open to the public. Professor Loewenstein teaches corporate and securities law and is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on those subjects.

The department of East Asian languages and civilizations will feature experts on Chinese and Taiwanese literature as part of two ongoing series, "Beauty and Its Discontents," and the Chinese Writer/Artist and Literary Critics Speaker Series II. The presentations will be on April 21 at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Thirty years ago three University of Colorado at Boulder Law School graduates established the firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Strickland, P.C. in Denver. Today they celebrated their 30th anniversary by giving their alma mater a $100,000 gift to be used for diversity student scholarships. "We are grateful for the success we have had as a result of our law school education," said Managing Partner Steve Farber. "And we are proud to provide similar opportunities for many others to follow us."

Professor Richard Brettell, an internationally known art historian and Denver native, will lecture on his research on the Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin at the University of Colorado at Boulder on April 22-23. Brettell is a professor in the interdisciplinary division of arts and humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas and also has taught at Harvard, Northwestern and Yale universities.

Zion Bar-El, founder of Michigan-based Ideation International, will present a seminar on TRIZ, a systematic methodology for developing product or service improvements, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The seminar, which is free and open to the public, will be at 1 p.m., April 23, in the Eaton Conference Room at the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The conference room is located on the first floor of the Engineering Center, at the corner of Regent Drive and Colorado Avenue.

Tom Cech, Nobel laureate and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at CU-Boulder, will present the next installment of the CU Wizards Series on campus on Saturday, April 24, at 9:30 a.m. in the Chemistry building, room 140. The free presentation, titled "Chemical Reactions, Forward and Backward," is recommended for children in grades five through nine. Reservations are not required.

The department of East Asian languages and literatures has changed its name to the department of East Asian languages and civilizations, according to Laurel Rasplica Rodd, department chair. The department's mission is the teaching of language and culture, as well as a scholarly focus on texts, broadly defined. "While the designation of 'literature' was accurate, if listeners understood literature to mean texts of any sort, it was very easy to misinterpret it and believe that the department only treated "belles lettres" (such as poetry and fiction)," Rasplica Rodd said.

The East Asian Graduate Association will host the second annual EAGA conference on April 15 and 16 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The title of the conference is "On the Edge: Subversion and Reaction." "The purpose of the conference is to provide a formal, public forum for young researchers nationwide to freely present their research on China or Japan and be reviewed by professional scholars and their peers," said Benjamin Tompkins, a conference coordinator.