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A head well-used can change the world, some say, but rarely has this proved more true than in the case of a ramapithecus skuli David Pilbeam, professor of Anthropology, discovered during a 1980 expedition to Pakistan.
Two years' examination of the fossil have confirmed that ramapithecus--traditionally thought to be the ancestor of human beings--is really the evolutionary father of the orangutan. The discovery leaves a 14-million-year gap in knowledge about man's lineage.
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Early morning City Council meetings apparently--make for unanimous decisions. At an 8 a.m. meeting Tuesday morning the council decided without opposition to allow city residents the chance to over-ride Prop 2 1/2 with a mid-April referendum. Without a fiscal crisis to rally around, however, the council will probably revert to its normally split voting at next Monday night's regular session.
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For an agency that usually meets in front of no more than a handful of citizens and ordinarily receives little direct scrutiny from the media, the Cambridge Rent Control Board wields tremendous power with its regulations over landlords and tenants. At a meeting Wednesday night, the board refused to find Harvard liable for more than a year of rental overcharges of tenants at 8 Pympton St. Although the official tally, according to the rent board's clerk, was 4-1, the five members never took a formal roll call vote, and two members, as is their custom, sat through the session with their backs three-quarters turned to the half-dozen citizens in the room.
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In its first meeting of the spring term, the Faculty Council began reviewing the Faculty's current grievance procedure because tremendous difficulties arose during the procedure's first and only use last spring.
The professors and administrators on the council discussed allowing complaints besides these that "allege discrimination on the basis of race, color, religious belief, sex, national or ethnic origin, handicap or age" to be included in the procedure.
The council also discussed measures that would tighten up and improve the actual procedure that floundered when Theda Skocpol, then an associate professor, charged in 1980 that the Sociology Department discriminated on the basis of sex in refusing to recommend her for tenure.
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Attempting to prove that once one gets to Harvard, the bonds are never lossened, alumni leaders said last week they will soon begin collecting a list of possible alumni House associates.
Under a plan to bring Harvard graduates back into the Houses, which the Associated Harvard Alumni (AHA) approved last spring and the House Masters approved this fall, six alumni will act as associates of each House.
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Wall Street probably wouldn't recommend investing $100 in a lottery with 777 to I odds, but one Watertown man who did just that is glad he didn't listen to expert advice.
Tod Whittemore, a professional square dance caller, won a three-bed-room condominium worth $70,000 Wednesday night in a fundraising lottery run by the Cambridge YMCA. Although he doesn't usually buy lottery tickets, Whittemore said he made an exeption this time "because it looked like good odds."