Capital punishment

Capital punishment is the topic for this year’s Kangas Lecture, sponsored by the Davis Senior Center and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, a unit of UC Davis Extension.

Organizers said Davis attorney Quin Denvir will address what he describes as capital punishment’s flawed application in the United States.

Denvir defended Unabomber Ted Kaczynski in pretrial court appearances in Sacramento. He also represented Cary Staynor, the Yosemite sightseer killer.

The lecture, free and open to the public, is scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 10 at the senior center, 646 A St.

MIND Institute

The MIND Institute’s eighth annual Distinguished Lecturer Series is set to begin Oct. 14 with a talk by Steven F. Warren, vice provost for Research and Graduate Studies, and professor of applied behavioral studies, University of Kansas.

His topic: “Automatically Mapping the Language Learning Environment of Young Children with Autism: Implications for Assessment and Intervention.”

In this year’s series, each presenter will give just one talk, designed for specialists and community members. In previous years, each presenter gave two talks, one for each constituency. Programs are scheduled monthly, October through June, with all but one of them on the second Wednesday of the month; the lone exception is Monday, Nov. 9.

All of the talks are set to begin at 4:30 p.m. in the auditorium at the MIND Institute, 2825 50th St., Sacramento. Admission is free and open to the public, with no reservations needed.

More information is available by telephone, (916) 703-0280, and online, mindinstitute.org.

Financial crisis

Phillip Swagel, assistant secretary for economic policy in the Treasury Department during the George W. Bush administration, is due on campus next week to give a talk titled: “The Financial Crisis — An Inside View.”

The talk, free and open to the public, is scheduled at 6 p.m. Oct. 15 in the Cabernet Room on the second floor of the Silo. The talk is presented by the Department of Economics, the Levine Family Fund and the Institute of Governmental Affairs.

Swagel is now a visiting professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, teaching and con-ducting research on financial markets and the economy, and serving as the director of the Capital Markets Research Center.

In addition, he is a nonresident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

All seminars and Colloquia.