PROCEEDINGS May 15, 16, 17, 18, 2005 - Casualty Actuarial Society

ADDRESS TO NEW MEMBERS–MAY 16, 2005THE MEANING OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND ALLTHATALLAN M. KAUFMANI am supposed to congratulate you, tell you what a great professionyou have joined, and tell you about the responsibilitiesyou will have as new members of the CAS. I will do that in duecourse.In preparing for that I thought back to the words of wisdom Ihad heard in previous new member addresses. I remember DavidHartman describing the careers of the seven members of his Fellowshipclass. I remember Roy Simon explaining the significanceof the invention of mass marketed deodorants. But what else didRoy say? And what about all of the other talks? What about thetalks I was forced (oops, privileged) to hear when I was a newFellow and Associate. I drew a blank. That concerned me. Wasthis a major senior moment?Before I get further into trouble, let me quickly say somethingto past presidents like Stan Khury and Irene Bass who spoke inthe past five years. I’m sure I would have remembered yourtalks, but I was based in London and hadn’t been to those CASmeetings. But before that?Fortunately, the Proceedings includes new member addresses.I joined the select group of people, past presidents giving newmember addresses, I imagine, who have read through the completecollection of those addresses. The collection is smaller thanI feared. The Proceedings have no such speeches prior to 1985–but was that a gap in the Proceedings? No, back in 1996 MikeToothman observed in his new member speech that the newmember address was only about a dozen years old at that time.One mystery solved–there were no addresses at my Associ-150