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Princeton in the News
February 9, 2000
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HIGHLIGHTS• Princeton professor predicts computers will
• Battle over fuel for fuel cell cars heating up, no
• Austria; EU says the right stops here
• Princeton plans to expand online course
OTHER HEADLINES• Air force invests in next generation internet
• National press club luncheon with Robert Louis Johnson
• Screwing up the center; years behind schedule and way
• Author/lawyer otis graham sheds light on black upper
• Michael Graves
• NCAA changes initial eligibility rules for
• Pbs's superb 'greeks' breathes life into ghosts of an
• News analysis - Microsoft outsmarts itself
• International outlook; national perspective
• Narrator Neeson crams to tell the greeks' tale
• Princeton students launch internet
• How new computer technology has increased the
• Featured news from business week online's daily
• This year's leading presidential contestants
• Winter weather causes damage at princeton
• Building engineers of tomorrow; oakton team wins
• NJ rail line among goodies in Clinton budget
• 1.5 billion web pages linked by 19 clicks of
• Princeton graduate named miss Memphis
• Biggest RNA computer clears the 10-bit hurdle
• IT at the speed of light -- optical networking is
• Tall men get the girls and have more kids, study
• 'hit man' outlines death plots documents stun the
• College notebook-The 2000 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award
• Backwards to the future
• Betrayal
• Rival bishops a sign of similar fissures in many
• We all scream for chinoiserie; things oriental are
• Topsy-nervy
• Money to grow on
• Scientists expect great things from nanotechnology
• Strands of DNA compute
• A 'spoiled' kid is about more than money
• Carol is top of the ivy league
• Comment & analysis: why happiness is priceless
• Elaine Fantham, Princeton University
• Perfect score just the start for this north cross
• Let's focus on health, not health-care system
• Researchers Developing RNA Computer
• Biology as a policy benchmark; philosopher Peter Singer
• Blazing a trail for the new frontier
• High-tech breathes life into ancient Greece
• TV best
• Introduction of Everyday Mathematics in the Princeton (Regional) School District, which led to the parental revolt
• Bobst Foundation grants $10 million for
• Pocket-size PEMs
• Welfare reform and reducing teen pregnancy
OBITUARIES• Charles R. Schueler, 77 founded clothing store
• Peter F. Rothermel, 80
• Walter L. Cable, 72
• Thomas Parker Hamilton Jr.
• William S. Heckscher, historian of art and museum
• Susqehanna U. campus shocked by death of sociology
• George Yandes Wheeler iii at age 82; was vice
HIGHLIGHTS
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
February 9, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Princeton professor predicts computers will take the wheel
BYLINE: By RON SOUTHWICK, The Times of Trenton
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.The roads of the future won't have too many signs, predicts Princeton University professor Alain Kornhauser.
Why? Because drivers won't need a sign telling them which way to turn, Kornhauser says. Their onboard computer will do it for them.
In fact, drivers will be able to turn away from the wheel and have a business meeting because drivers won't be doing the driving anymore. Computers will be doing the job, Kornhauser says.
"If there's not so much anxiety over driving long distances, maybe the environment inside the vehicle will be a roundtable-conference type thing where we're sitting around a table and talking," Kornhauser says.
And he's not envisioning a scenario in some "Star Trek" world in the 24th century. He predicts the world of automated driving - where computers take the wheel and people take a break - will be here by 2025. …
Kornhauser is a professor in operations research and financial engineering at Princeton. He is also the founder of ALK Associates, a transportation technology firm based in Princeton.
Kornhauser serves as co-director of the TIDE Center - Transportation Information and Decision Engineering - funded by the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology. …
OXY-FUEL NEWS
Copyright 2000 Phillips Business Information, Inc.
February 7, 2000HEADLINE: BATTLE OVER FUEL FOR FUEL CELL CARS HEATING UP, NO CLEAR WINNER EMERGING
Chicago -- Fuel cells might be the future, but not until there's a practical fuel.
Aiming to grasp that opportunity, methanol, direct-hydrogen and "gasoline" (or Fischer-Tropsch fuel) advocates battled at the IQPC "F-Cells Infrastructure" conference here over which fuel should be required for the first expected market: California.
The race is on because automakers face a 2003 deadline to meet California's upcoming "zero-emissions vehicles" (ZEV) mandate covering 10% of all cars they sell there.
Given the short time-frame, the auto industry and the fuel supplying industry need to act fast, as California Energy Commission fuel distribution manager Peter Ward pointed out here. …
The high energy cost of reforming makes "gasoline" fuel cell cars not much more fuel-efficient than conventional internal combustion cars, some studies show. Example: A Princeton University study compares "gasoline" [and FT distillate) with methanol and direct-hydrogen. This study, by Princeton researcher Joan Ogden, showed that "gasoline" (or FT fuel) is the most expensive option on a per-car basis -- about $850 to $1,250 per car more than a direct- hydrogen car.
Ogden's study lumped together both the on-board (car) costs as well as the "off-board" (fuel refining and distribution) costs of getting hydrogen into the fuel cell. No extra refining costs were assumed for "gasoline" (even though zero sulfur would be required) in her study. But she found that a gas-to-liquids
(GTL) plant for FT diesel would add $220-$500/car extra, compared to a direct hydrogen car, depending upon GTL plant size.
Her study found that direct hydrogen infrastructure on a per-car basis would be about $380 to $640 per car, because of the simplicity of on-board reforming and relatively low-cost assumptions about evolution of distributed hydrogen production. The methanol option would cost at least $600 more than a direct-hydrogen car due to the on-board reformer and off-board fuel infrastructure, while the cost of building new methanol plants to meet future fuel-cell demand would add another $300-$600 per car. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
February 6, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: AUSTRIA; EU SAYS THE RIGHT STOPS HERE
BYLINE: Anson Rabinbach, Anson Rabinbach is a history professor and director of the program, in European cultural studies at Princeton University. His most recent, book is "In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between, Apocalypse and Enlightenment."
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.
Friday, after the swearing in of the new Austrian government that includes Joerg Haider's extreme-right Freedom Party, the European Union began to put in place measures that would for the first time sanction and virtually isolate a member nation. The United States followed suit, if more cautiously, vowing to take steps that would conform to those proposed by the Europeans and temporarily recalling its ambassador from Vienna.
Many immediately voiced misgivings about the EU's expanded compass, asserting that direct interference with the outcome of a democratic election in a peaceable and stable European polity was a disturbing precedent. Nonetheless, the European Union spoke with unusual clarity; it chose the Austrian crisis to take a stand on what Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema called "standards and values" of European unity: a refusal to countenance even faint echoes of Europe's totalitarian and racist past.
Why has the EU chosen to put those values to the test in the case of Austria, a prosperous, somewhat sleepy Alpine country with only 7 million inhabitants? One answer lies in Austria's Nazi years, in Haider's xenophobic slogans and in his often quoted--and halfheartedly retracted--sympathetic statements on behalf of Waffen SS and Wehrmacht veterans. More alarming than his extremism, however, is his political success, especially in a country where local excesses have historically tended to spill over into the rest of Europe.
The EU's threat to isolate Austria diplomatically is an expression of Europe-wide sensitivity to the real danger: the potential for Haider's Austrian brand of xenophobia to ignite similar movements elsewhere. Haider evokes the specter of a democratically elected far-right government long resisted by politicians and electorates everywhere in Europe. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 8, 2000HEADLINE: Princeton plans to expand online course program for alumni
BYLINE: By Andrew O'riordan, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.As the Internet becomes an increasingly crucial medium for disseminating information, Princeton University has begun to offer special online courses to alumni, according to associate provost Georgia Nugent.
The University has sponsored three Web-based courses thus far, and yesterday announced a new mini-course pertaining to Nelson Mandela, associate director of the Alumni Council Doug Blair '71 said.
The effort has been driven by a desire to add an educational dimension to the alumni's relationship with the University. "The courses are intended primarily for enrichment, no credit attached, and no requirements," Blair said, adding that the courses are self-paced and complemented by online discussion groups.
"Alumni reaction has been extremely positive," Blair said. "One of the best indicators is that there were almost 1,000 people signed up in the first course -- Walks in Rome."
Administrators began to consider whether Princeton should offer online courses about a year ago when Columbia University and Cornell University announced their commitment to wholly Web-based courses, Nugent said.
At about the same time, Nugent conducted a faculty survey and found that 95 percent of faculty communicate with students through e-mail and 67 percent of faculty use some type of technological teaching aid. She said she realized that "whether instructional technology will be used is no longer a question." …
OTHER HEADLINES
Federal Document Clearing House
Federal Department and Agency Documents
Copyright 2000 eMediaMillWorks, Inc.February 10, 2000; Thursday
AGENCY: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AIR FORCE
HEADLINE: AIR FORCE INVESTS IN NEXT GENERATION INTERNET RESEARCHROME, N.Y., (AFPN) -- The Air Force is making a $5 million investment in a faster, larger Internet with a grant to Drexel University of Philadelphia, Pa.
The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate has awarded $5,764,014 to Drexel to advance networking technologies and new applications through deployment of national-scale testbeds that are vastly superior to today's Internet. First demonstrated by the military in the 1970s, Internet technology is the foundation of today's military and commercial network systems. The government's NGI program, under which the Department of Defense will invest $50 million, is part of an inter-agency effort.
The grant goes toward research in "Ultra High Capacity Networking Enabled by Optical Technologies," and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of Arlington, Va. It is intended to develop technologies in support of DARPA's Next Generation Internet Program.
Dr. Stuart Personick of Drexel will lead a consortium, dubbed the "Pegasus Consortium," comprising researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, The City College of New York/CUNY, Princeton University, MCP Hahnemann University, Lucent Technologies and Bell Atlantic. The consortium is named for the winged horse of Greek mythology that with a stroke of its hoof caused a fountain to spring forth from a mountain.
"The current grant will allow an optical networking team consisting of Lucent, Drexel, and Princeton to build and demonstrate a packet switch that can process five terabits (trillion bits) of information per second and can be scaled up to higher capacities," said Paul Sierak, program manager in the directorate's Information Grid Division. "With today's Internet traffic traveling at close to one terabit per second and growing rapidly, multi- terabit switches will be required for the next-generation Internet. …
Federal News Service
Copyright 2000 Federal News Service, Inc.
February 10, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: NATIONAL PRESS CLUB LUNCHEON WITH ROBERT LOUIS JOHNSON, CHAIRMAN, BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION
MODERATOR: JOHN AUBUCHON
LOCATION: NATIONAL PRESS CLUB BALLROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.AUBUCHON: Robert Johnson dreams no small dreams, and he has the unnerving habit of making most of them come true. The Washington Post described him as "smart, charming, politically astute, and intensely ambitious." February is, as you know, black history month. But Mr. Johnson over the past 20 years has made some black history of his own.
In 1979 he founded Black Entertainment Television, BET, the nation's first television network aimed at an African American audience, and the first company controlled by African Americans -- (off mike) -- vision of creating a state for black artists when cable television was still in its infancy. …
Robert Louis Johnson's personal history began in Hickory, Mississippi, April 8, 1946. He was the ninth of 10 children. …
But he did graduate from high school with honors and history, and earned an academic scholarship to the University of Illinois. With a BA in history and with financial support from the Ford Foundation, Johnson gained admission to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He graduated in 1972. He was sixth in his class. Johnson thought we might be addressing him as "Mr. Ambassador" some day, but the Army Reserve came first in large part. Because of the Vietnam War, he decided against a career in public service to follow. …
MR. JOHNSON: John, thanks for that obituary. (Laughter.) You know, I didn't know all that stuff about me existed. If I did, I probably wouldn't have showed up. …
But the -- you know, I am here -- BET is celebrating this year's 20th anniversary, and BET is an interesting story in that -- it's interesting because it it represented for me at least, in defining what happened, a watershed in the development of African American business, particularly as it relates to media. Prior to BET, almost every African American media property was founded by the individual entrepreneur and solely owned by the individual African American entrepreneur or entrepreneurs. …
Well, when BET started, there was a new attitude. You know, there had been this change from a society that was for all practical purposes totally segregated economically and socially to one that was integrated. And we, the sons and daughters of the civil rights marchers and protesters, went to integrated schools and got educated at some of the top schools in the nation, and got involved to some extent in the mainstream business world. And so, BET was born not as a sole ownership of someone called Bob Johnson. It was born of a joint venture with a cable industry, particularly led by a guy named John Malone. So, BET always had at its ownership structure majority owned investors. And so our focus was no so much on being what traditional newspapers have been, sort of the rallying point for black issues, but more a business that had to focus on delivering shareholder value and return on investments because we had investors who put money into it for the purpose of growing an enterprise. And we've sort of been focused on that. We recognized that entertainment, and content, and information created value for the customer. It created an opportunity for people to be better informed and better educated, but we also had to marry that with a business that spoke to the issues of shareholder value. …
Miami New Times
Copyright 2000 New Times Inc.
February 10, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Screwing up the Center; Years behind schedule and way over budget, the performing arts center is another Miami miracle
BYLINE: Jose Luis JimnezA thin man with a round, weathered face and a pair of gold, oval, wire-rimmed glasses resting precariously on the tip of his nose prepares to speak before the Miami-Dade County Commission. Because he is more than six feet tall, he towers above the microphone, and his words come across only faintly. The early afternoon proceedings pause for a moment as county workers raise the lectern several inches, then his voice booms in a thick Argentine accent.
The man is Cesar Pelli, architect of the Performing Arts Center of Greater Miami, which is planned for the Omni area. Although commissioners had approved $132 million in tax dollars for the project four years before, Pelli asks the board to add another $54 million. …
Reinforcing Pelli's appeal that November 1997 afternoon were representatives of the wealthy class who had supported the project for two decades, as well as influence peddlers hoping to score points with the arts backers. Among those in the gallery were lobbyist and Florida Republican Party chairman Al Cardenas, county hall insider Chris Korge, and Parker Thomson, the lawyer who has spent decades leading the private effort to get the center built.
With so many campaign contributors and power brokers on hand, a vote against the additional money for the center would have been akin to political suicide. So one by one, the commissioners began lauding Pelli's vision.
"World-class communities have world-class facilities," commented Dennis Moss. …
When the idea for a performing arts center was born in the 1970s, Parker Thomson assisted in the delivery. Back then his hair was brown, not gray; he was slimmer; and his shoulders were a little broader and straighter. But one thing has remained constant: his passionate dedication to getting the structure built. Thomson conservatively estimates that he has volunteered ten hours per week as an advocate for the center during the last decade, which equals about two and a half years of full-time work.
Thomson was born in Troy, New York, in 1932. He attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and began practicing law in Boston in the 1950s. Retreating from the cutthroat competition of the Northeast, he arrived in Miami in 1961. Ironically the attorney does not consider himself an arts devotee. He attends some cultural events but has grander reasons for supporting the center. He contends Miami will not be taken seriously until it is built. "There is no great city in the world that is not a dynamic city culturally," the six-foot-tall lawyer argues in a soft, deliberate voice. "The center will help us get there." …
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
February 10, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Author/lawyer Otis Graham sheds light on black upper class
BYLINE: By Thomas J. BradyReaders, both black and white, greeted Lawrence Otis Graham's book about the African American elite, "Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class" (HarperPerennial, $14), with surprise, according to the author.
The biggest response was, "Wow! I never knew this existed," Graham said during a recent interview. People didn't know how extensive the black upper class was and that there had been black millionaires at the beginning of the 20th century.
Not everyone was happy to see him tell the story when his book was published in hardcover last year, Graham said. "There were some people who said they did not like the idea of me telling the family secrets ... " he recalled. "Another group criticized the book because they felt that to even be talking about the black upper class would be divisive. Even acknowledging it existed was divisive because the presumption was if you are black you don't consider class, you don't see class. When in fact, that's simply not true. That's an intellectually dishonest argument, that black people don't see class." …
Graham was born on Dec. 25, 1961, in Westchester County, N.Y., and grew up in a comfortable environment in White Plains. He received his undergraduate education at Princeton University and his law degree from Harvard. As a child, he had been a member of Jack and Jill. He now belongs to the Boule. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
February 10, 2000HEADLINE: MICHAEL GRAVES
DATELINE: JAMES HILSTONA native of Indianapolis, Michael Graves studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. In 1960, he won the Rome Prize and studied at the American Academy in Rome, of which he is now a trustee.
He has taught architecture at Princeton University since 1962.
In 1964, Graves opened his architectural practice in Princeton, which now employs 75 people in offices in Princeton and New York City. He is a fellow of The American Institute of Architects, and enjoys an international reputation, with buildings in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Europe and Egypt.
Although a modernist early in his career, Graves later was in the vanguard of the postmodern movement, and among the first to design contemporary buildings using the traditional forms and motifs of classical architecture. …
His buildings in the United States include Oregon's Portland Building, the Humana Building in Louisville, the San Juan Capistrano Library, River Bend Music Center in Cincinnati, the Clos Pegase Winery in the Napa Valley, the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotels and the Crown American Corporate Office Building in Johnstown.
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 10, 2000HEADLINE: NCAA changes initial eligibility rules for athletes
BYLINE: By Sophia Hollander, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.It was not a big problem for most Princeton student-athletes. No one was ever prevented from playing. But for a small number of Tigers, the recent ruling by the NCAA to amend its definition of core courses -- one of several criteria used for determining eligibility -- was very good news.
Although students must still maintain a minimum grade-point average during high school while taking four years of English, two years of mathematics, two years of natural or physical sciences and two years of social science, the requirement that 75 percent of the class content be in the subject area for which it was counted as a core-course has been eliminated. …
Typically, Princeton students did not have to worry about meeting minimum class requirements, since all experience rigorous secondary schooling. But with charter schools -- which advocate a more creative and interdisciplinary learning process -- increasing in prominence, and with a more general trend to blur the lines between traditionally divided subjects developing in education, the 75 percent mandate was becoming less tenable.
"I think that it's the kind of thing I think at face value, people would probably say why is this even an issue for Princeton students? We have the best and brightest in the country, it shouldn't make a difference," Assistant Princeton Athletic Director Michael Cross said. "But Princeton gets students who go through some very creative and demanding high schools and preparatory schools and this will make qualifying for some of these students easier." …
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Copyright 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 09, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: PBS'S SUPERB 'GREEKS' BREATHES LIFE INTO GHOSTS OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE
BYLINE: JOHN LEVESQUE P-I COLUMNISTVernon Dobtcheff, Willy Bowman, Jeffery Dench and Bill Reimbold will no doubt have other roles that audiences remember fondly. But they may never do a greater service than reminding us that the alabaster of antiquity is only in our minds, that the ancient Greeks were so much more than the bloodless white marble of museum galleries and coffee-table books.
In a manner of speaking, Dobtcheff et al. are the stars of PBS's "The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization," though they don't utter a word. Like live mannequins in a department-store window, they stand rock steady, letting the camera move around in a bit of ingenious filmmaking that goes Ken Burns one better. Where Burns gives life to static objects, director Cassian Harrison uses the same technique to give monumental stature to real people. …
These four Athenians of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. hardly constitute the complete Greek package tour, but in telling their stories to humanize the Greek saga, Harrison and producer Anthony Geffen have nimbly vivified ancient history. For Princeton University professor Josh Ober, an expert who appears in the film, the effect is significant. "We always start with this image of pure, white sculpture, this idealized vision of a perfect world that is dead and distant," Ober said recently. "For me, part of the excitement of this series is that it … starts out not just with the marble images but with a world in which you begin to imagine the Greeks as flesh and blood." …
DATAQUEST (INDIA)
Copyright 2000 FT Asia Intelligence WireHEADLINE: News Analysis - Microsoft Outsmarts Itself
Though it is now Microsoft's turn to call witnesses and put forth its version of events, it is government that seems to be scoring most of the points in recent weeks.
When Microsoft Corp entered US District Court to defend itself against a Justice Department antitrust suit in October, it had what many people assumed would be a surefire defense in one area-a June US Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the software maker's right to combine products as it saw fit. The higher court said that as long as the integration provides "some technological value" that can't be achieved if users combine the features themselves, there was no problem. That ruling, legal experts said, would make it all but impossible for the government to prove that Microsoft violated tying laws when it combined its Internet Explorer browser with Windows.
So much for the experts. Throughout, the government has been able to produce evidence disputing Microsoft's claim that integrating the browser was simply the next step in the Windows' evolution-and not a way to force computer makers to offer its browser rather than one from Netscape Communications Corp. …
Perhaps most discouraging, Microsoft's own witness, Sr VP James E Allchin, has provided some of the most damning testimony. Under cross-examination by Justice attorney David Boies, Allchin conceded on February 1 that a consumer with Windows 95 could install Internet Explorer later and achieve many of the features offered in Windows 98, with its integrated browser. Washington antitrust attorney James R Loftis III says Allchin's testimony was "another nail in the coffin of Microsoft's argument that (Windows 98) is integrated and not separate products."
Allchin's testimony also raised serious questions about Microsoft's credibility, from which it may not easily recover. On February 2, Boies began a cross-examination aimed at discrediting a videotaped demonstration that Microsoft had entered into evidence. The purpose of the tape was to prove that government witness Edward W Felten of Princeton University was wrong when he asserted that he could remove browsing capability from Windows 98 without harming the system. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
February 9, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK; NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE;
Taiwan Waves Linguistic White Flag
BYLINE: JIM MANN, Jim Mann's column appears in this space every Wednesday
DATELINE: TAIPEI, TaiwanDeng Xiaoping, the late leader of China, is about to arrive in Taiwan. So is Jiang Zemin, China's president.
Well, not in the physical sense, but in written English and other Western languages.
For many decades, Taiwan has operated with a different Romanization or spelling system from China. Deng's name has been spelled Teng Hsiao-ping in Western-language publications, and Jiang is Chiang Tse-min--even though the names are pronounced just as they are on the mainland. The same is true for many thousands of other Chinese names.
Now, in this one tiny respect, Taiwan is preparing to surrender to the mainland. It has tentatively decided to adopt China's Pinyin Romanization system, the one in use throughout most of the rest of the world. …
And to Westerners, Romanization can be seen as merely a tool of convenience, not a political symbol. But that viewpoint ignores matters of Asian culture and history.
"It's deeply embedded in Chinese culture that the way you write your language represents morality and appropriate behavior, including political behavior," observes Perry Link, professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University.
"There's the whole tradition of calligraphy showing the moral worth and character of an individual. . . . The whole computer revolution is going to eat away at these notions." …
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 2000 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
February 9, 2000 WednesdayHEADLINE: NARRATOR NEESON CRAMS TO TELL THE GREEKS' TALE/
BYLINE: By MARK DAWIDZIAK; PLAIN DEALER TV AND RADIO CRITICThe makers of the IMAX film "Everest" knew that breathtaking pictures and a fascinating story weren't enough. They didn't forget that their ambitious documentary needed something else - a narrator whose voice was stirring and lyrical enough to lure viewers step by step through this amazing journey.
They hired Liam Neeson, the Oscar-nominated star of director Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" (1993). Powerful and haunting, his narration added just the right touch to what became the most successful IMAX movie ever.
Little wonder, therefore, that Neeson was the first choice to narrate "The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization," a three-part PBS documentary chronicling how, "against a backdrop of war and feudalism," an empire emerged and "laid the foundation of modern science, politics, warfare and philosophy." All three segments will air tonight, starting at 8, on WVIZ Channel 25 and WEAO Channel 49. …
There were plenty of experts ready to answer his questions and help with pronunciations. The documentary's board of expert advisers included Josh Ober, professor of ancient history and chairman of the classics department at Princeton University, and Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek history at the University of Cambridge. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 9, 2000HEADLINE: Princeton students launch Internet businesses
BYLINE: By Ben Grossman, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.While most Princeton University students are busy buying books and starting classes, a couple of their peers are busy meeting with venture capitalists and earning six-figure salaries. VarsityPlanet.com, a leading college student portal, and Digital Kiwi, an e-business consulting firm based on Nassau Street, are both companies owned and run by Princeton students.
Three University students -- one of whom has since graduated -- founded VarsityPlanet.com last February. Company president Jim Citron '00 described the Website as one that "caters to college kids in its content, commerce and community features."
According to Citron, the site features articles covering college sports, dorm life and dating, all of which are written by students from more than 40 college campuses across the country. In addition, the Website offers chat and messaging options, a free e-mail service and a virtual store featuring commerce partners such as Dell, Buy.com and Amazon.com. …
National Public Radio (NPR)SHOW: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED (8:00 PM ET)
February 8, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: HOW NEW COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY HAS INCREASED THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY
ANCHORS: NOAH ADAMS; LINDA WERTHEIMER
REPORTERS: DON GONYEALINDA WERTHEIMER: The US economy is continuing to see the sort of productivity gains that have allowed it to grow for years without inflation. Today, the Labor Department reported that the productivity of US workers increased at an annual rate of 5 percent. For all of 1999, the gain was 2.9 percent. That's the biggest increase since 1992.
NOAH ADAMS: Productivity gains are a key factor behind the nation's record economic expansion. New technology's allowing businesses around the country to cut costs and be more innovative. That's especially true in the trucking industry, which has invested heavily in computers and software, and is beginning now to see the results. NPR's Don Gonyea has the report.
DON GONYEA reporting:
At Yellow Freight world headquarters in suburban Kansas City, the wall behind company chairman Bill Zollars' desk is dominated by an antique metal sign dating back to the company's earliest days in the 1920s.
Mr. BILL ZOLLARS (Chairman, Yellow Freight): That's actually a side panel from an old Yellow Transit Service's trailer. The reason that's up on the wall is that it's important that we remember our heritage, but it's also important to remember how far we've come.
GONYEA: Yellow Freight is a survivor in the sometimes rough and tumble business of hauling goods to every corner of the country. This is an industry that's back on solid ground after struggling through much of the 1990s as companies, large and small, try to cope with the effects of deregulation. Yellow responded by turning to technology, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in computers and, more importantly, in computer software systems that have completely reinvented the company. …
GONYEA: That's Mark Mathis(ph), director of the central dispatch operation. He's showing off the computer system designed jointly by Yellow's technology department and Princeton University. SIS Net is the central nervous system of the Yellow Freight operation. On the monitor, there's a map of the US with large circles marking more than 40 key cities across the country. Around each city are red and green markings, each numbered, each representing a truck at a loading dock somewhere. To find out what is where, you just click on the map with your mouse. I point to a number outside Kansas City.
Mr. MATHIS: On this particular trailer, which the trailer number's 41004. It has 15 thou--18,000 pounds on it, and some--there are 16 shipments varying in weight from 30 pounds to it looks like 5,840 pounds on this shipment.
GONYEA: And you can tell all of this about any trailer anywhere in the country.
Mr. MATHIS: Any trailer anywhere in the country. …
PR Newswire
Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
February 8, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Featured News from Business Week Online's Daily Briefing
DATELINE: NEW YORK, Feb. 8The following articles are now available exclusively on Business Week Online's Daily Briefing (http://www.businessweek.com/today.htm).
Alan Blinder on the Boom: "Who's to Say It Can't Continue?" (http://www.businessweek.com/today.htm)
How long can the current economic expansion -- the longest in American history -- last? That question is addressed in Business Week's Feb. 14 Cover Story, "The Boom." To get a sense of where the U.S. economy is headed, Business Week Senior Economics Writer Rich Miller recently caught up with Alan Blinder, former Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Clinton years who has returned to Princeton University where he teaches economics. The former Fed vice-chairman cautions: "If you're at the central bank now, you're walking on eggs." Here are excerpts from their conversation.
TOPEKA CAPITAL JOURNAL
Copyright 2000 The Topeka Capital-Journal
February 8, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE this year's leading presidential contestants
BYLINE: Capital-Journal
BODY: It may not be just a coincidence that this year's leading presidential contestants, Bush, Gore, Bradley and McCain, respectively are graduates of Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the U.S. Naval Academy, four of America's most distinguished and select schools. The fact is, some mid-20th century educators planned it this way.
Nicholas Lemann's book "The Big Test" tells how the Scholastic Aptitude Test was adopted to identify the nation's "best students" for the nation's "best schools." And how its founders intended that this "natural meritocracy" should lead our nation.
First, James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard (1933-53) and his colleagues and successors --- such as Clark Kerr, president of the University of California (1948-70) --- decided America's most prestigious schools should no longer be the private preserves for sons of America's plutocracy.
No longer should young men from wealthy and influential families be admitted to Ivy League schools for a bit of education and a lot of socializing with the purpose of determining what law firm or financial house they would join. The educators decided their schools should be both more democratic and better, much better. …
Tests had been developed during the two world wars to determine who should fly expensive planes and who should peel potatoes --- including identifying a select group who should continue in school at government expense.
Bolstered by this knowledge of testing, Conant and colleagues set up The Educational Testing Service on the campus of Princeton University in 1948 under the command of Henry Chauncey, Groton prep school, Harvard University graduate and former Harvard administrator. He ruled until 1970.
The SAT, the test that decides in great part which high school seniors may enter elite colleges, is ETS's primary product. …
Lemann sees outlawing affirmative action as the beginning of the end for aptitude and intelligence testing. But his case is not strong.
However the question of cultural bias in the tests comes out, for now ETS tests (and their cousins, the ACTs) still reign supreme --- and go a long ways in deciding who goes to America's elite schools and enters the influential network of their graduates.
Lemann is probably weakest in his brave attempt to answer: If not aptitude and intelligence testing, then what? He pretty much comes down on the side of spending more money and developing more Harvards, etc. Fortunately, more than a handful of other great state and private universities already exist. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 8, 2000HEADLINE: Winter weather causes damage at Princeton
BYLINE: By Cason Crosby, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.A 12-inch, 15-pound stone fell from the northwest side of Edwards Hall on Friday, nearly striking a building services employee who was shoveling snow outside the dorm, according to Crime Prevention Specialist Barry Weiser.
"[The custodian] heard a rumbling and looked up and saw a stone falling off the roof," Weiser said. "It appeared that water seeped into the joints and froze, causing the ice to expand and loosen stones."
Princeton has closed off the potentially hazardous area and boarded the northwest door of Edwards, Weiser said, adding that repairs on the building were begun shortly after the incident. Students were asked to use an alternate door when entering the building in an e-mail from the undergraduate housing office.
According to Lou Dursi, associate director of maintenance, University roof maintenance and masonry crews checked and approved the stability of Edwards Hall in September as part of an ongoing building maintenance program.
Despite these precautions, "water finds its way into cracks and into the ornate features in buildings with this architectural style," Dursi said. "We go around and make sure that the buildings are tight and stable, but stone buildings are sensitive to water ingress, and these things can happen." …
The Washington Times
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
February 08, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Building engineers of tomorrow; Oakton team wins state honors for shelter design
BYLINE: Arlo Wagner; THE WASHINGTON TIMESOakton High School's teachers and administrators' standing ovation yesterday echoed state-championship kudos for physics students who designed and built a compact, emergency shelter for disasters.
"They did a phenomenal job," said Principal Charlie Ostlund, grinning proudly at the compact, 8-foot-long stack of metal rods about 18 inches in diameter that minutes earlier was four cots within a 100-square-foot, plastic tent-like shelter.
"Fabulous. They're dedicated. They're bright," said physics teacher Steve Scholla. "There's nothing in this that was prefabricated."
On Saturday, judges for the National Engineering Design Challenge at Virginia Commonwealth University had agreed and picked the Oakton students' project as the best in the state. …
Scott Gilmore, 18, also of Oak Hill said he had a lot of fun on the project, too, but he will be majoring in physics at Princeton University. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
February 7, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: NJ rail line among goodies in Clinton budget
BYLINE: By LAURENCE ARNOLD, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTONWhere Democrats found much to like in President Clinton's eighth and final budget, Republicans found too much spending and not enough tax relief.
Clinton's proposed $1.84 trillion plan would expand access to health care, shrink the national debt and cut taxes for the sick, elderly, poor and college-bound, while spending more for the environment, schools and gun-law enforcement.
New Jersey lawmakers were particularly heartened by continued funding for a new rail line. …
Budget also includes:
-$248 million for continued research into alternative energy sources, much of which will go to the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Copyright 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 07, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: 1.5 BILLION WEB PAGES LINKED BY 19 CLICKS OF SEPARATION; INTERNET EXPANSION IS SIMILAR TO PLANT GROWTH, SCIENTISTS FIND
BYLINE: TOM PAULSON P-I REPORTER
The World Wide Web is growing like a weed. Literally.
Scientists say it's developing according to the same organizing patterns and mathematical principles observed among plant life in the wild.
Nobody knows exactly why.
The rapidly expanding Web today has about 1.5 billion pages. But some scientists think its size is best measured by the average number of connections it takes to link any two random sites.
Thus was born the "19 clicks of separation" theory of the Web. This scientific effort to size the Web has helped reveal the organic way in which the global network is growing. …
"What's most interesting is how the Web's structure has evolved without any central authority," said Steve Lawrence, a computer scientist at Princeton University and at NEC. He has been internationally recognized for his work on Web information distribution and access.
"It's ending up with a high degree of structure," Lawrence said, and it's somehow creating that structure on its own. …
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright 2000 The Commercial AppealFebruary 7, 2000, MONDAY
HEADLINE: PRINCETON GRADUATE NAMED MISS MEMPHIS
BYLINE: The Commercial AppealTracee Roderick of Memphis was named Miss Memphis 2000 during the 53rd scholarship pageant Sunday at Ridgeway High School.
She won more than $29,000 in scholarships and will represent Memphis and Shelby County at the Miss Tennessee pageant in June.
Roderick, a Princeton University graduate and Memphis native, hopes to direct television and movie projects. …
Electronic Engineering Times
Copyright 2000 CMP Media Inc.
February 7, 2000HEADLINE: Biggest RNA computer clears the 10-bit hurdle
BYLINE: R. Colin JohnsonPRINCETON, N.J. - Princeton University researchers claim to have reached a new level of complexity in DNA computing. The group has demonstrated an RNA- based computer capable of solving mathematical problems that were encoded as 10-bit strings.
Strands of RNA containing 1,024 base pairs were encoded with every possible solution to a specific chess problem. Ribonuclease digestion progressively narrowed down the possible solutions until only the 43 correct solutions-plus one incorrect one-remained.
"Molecules can store more information than silicon chips, and this was the largest problem ever solved by a molecular computer-using either DNA or RNA. We also learned how far we can push this technology when we discovered why it made a single error," said professor Laura Landweber, the leading Princeton researcher on the project. Landweber's colleagues are professor Richard Lipton and postdoctorate candidates Dirk Faulhammer and Anthony Cukras. …
Tough combinatorial problems like that chosen by Landweber's Princeton team present significant hurdles to any finite-size computer. The possible solutions to such problems expand so fast, Adleman reasoned, that even a few variables will result in a problem so complex that only approximate solutions can be found. …
The Princeton research team's problem was toy-size, having a mere 1,024 possible solutions, but the group claims the basic nature of the single error indicates that it can be scaled up to real-world-size problems. Apparently, the error came from a rare source that will not increase geometrically with the higher-dimensional solution spaces of real-world problems.
"We just had a bit of bad luck-or more literally two bits, since it was two single-point errors in a row that foiled our algorithm," Landweber said. "Two errors in a row are exceedingly rare and shouldn't become a problem when we scale up."
The Princeton team substituted RNA for DNA to enable the use of a universal enzyme that targets any part of a molecule. DNA has only a limited set of restriction enzymes, so scientists may not be able to cut the molecule where they want. The group demonstrated that its streamlined approach using RNA could inherently scale up to real-world-size problems by virtue of the universal enzyme. …
InformationWeek
Copyright 2000 CMP Media Inc.
February 7, 2000HEADLINE: IT at the speed of light -- Optical Networking Is Poised To Change Business Networks-And Their IT Departments-Forever
BYLINE: Stephen Saunders and Peter haywoodOptical networking may sound like some far-out technology, the effects of which won't be seen for years. Though it's true that it will be some time before human brains are directly linked to optical networks or goggles replace televisions and computer screens, as some industry experts foresee, optical networking is poised to profoundly affect business processes and company information systems-to the same degree the Internet has, some analysts predict-within the next few years.
Optical networks transmit voice, data, and video traffic over fiber cables using light streams. By delivering huge amounts of bandwidth and virtually eliminating network delays, optical networks promise to radically improve the performance, price, and flexibility of network services.
What's predicted? Fundamental changes in the way people work together will result from quick service setup coupled with lower network delays and distance-independent pricing. Instead of buying and maintaining software and running it on PCs, companies will shift to inexpensive thin-client hardware and either run applications on their own central site servers or outsource the task to application service providers. …
This trend also could turn the PC software market on its head, threatening Microsoft's hegemony. So far, Microsoft has been slow in aggressively developing software solutions for thin-client computing, choosing to support the technology via its investment in Citrix Systems Inc. "It will be hard for Microsoft to tear themselves away from Windows to get ASP applications right," predicts Larry Peterson, a professor of computer science at Princeton University. "They've had trouble doing this before." Still, don't count Microsoft out. "Nobody's gotten rich betting against Bill Gates yet," O'Donnell says. …
Jet
Copyright 2000 Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
February 7, 2000HEADLINE: TALL MEN Get The Girls And Have More Kids, Study Finds
For years women have defined their dream man as "tall, dark and handsome." The first description of tall appears to be at the top of most women's checklist for Mr. Right as a recent study revealed that tall men get the girls and have more kids than short guys.
Polish and British scientists studied the medical records of about 3,200 Polish men ages 25 to 60 and found that childless men were on average 1.2 inches shorter than men who had at least one child.
Bachelors were about an inch shorter on average than married men. That was true even after researchers took into account the fact that men's heights increased in recent decades because of better nutrition and health care. …
"When height is an indicator in health, this is not surprising, and if females are programmed to look for health, they would end up with taller males," James Gould of Princeton University told USA Today. …
Chicago Sun-Times
Copyright 2000 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
February 06, 2000, SUNDAYNews you can use
Attorney Jack Guthman will chair the 12th annual Harold Washington Literary Awards dinner June 1 in the Cultural Center. This year's winner is historian John Hope Franklin, a former U. of Chicago professor. . . . And Chef Hans Aeschbacher of the Smith & Wollensky restaurant has been invited to Princeton University for one week starting Monday -- not to teach, but to demonstrate the art of cooking and serving. He'll be the guest chef at the university's many dining halls.
The Des Moines Register
Copyright 2000 The Des Moines Register, Inc.
February 6, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: 'Hit man' outlines death plots Documents stun the Hunters
BYLINE: Lee RoodThe volatile argument haunted Jan Hunter as she fell asleep late one night in May. Her ex-husband, Peter, the eldest of four sons in a wealthy Des Moines family, had been threatening her on the telephone, she said, "clearly out of control."
Hunter awoke the next morning to find tires slashed on two cars in her driveway and a mirror damaged. She called police.
"They told me I had nothing to worry about," she said. "I kept saying to them, 'You are wrong.' ''
Hunter, who shares three children with her ex-husband, was one of several people who were stunned when details emerged about Peter Hunter's alleged six-figure scheme to have his family killed.
The plans were outlined by the alleged hit man in search-warrant documents that were unsealed at the request of The Des Moines Register.
The documents, she said, included too many details not to be taken seriously. …
Peter Hunter wasn't always so troubled, his ex-wife said.
A graduate of Princeton University and the Wharton School of Business, he was widely considered a bright, witty and refined man during the early years of the marriage. For close to a decade, she said, Peter held his own as president in a family business, Hiland Potato Chip Co.
He changed after Hiland was sold in 1988, Jan Hunter said.
For years, he refused to look for work, staying home for weeks at a time. He became increasingly bitter, paranoid and verbally abusive. He saw numerous psychiatric professionals, who diagnosed major depression and borderline personality disorder -two serious mental illnesses that she said were complicated by alcoholism. …
New Hampshire Sunday News
Copyright 2000 New Hampshire Sunday News
February 06, 2000 SundayHEADLINE: COLLEGE NOTEBOOK
BEYOND THE BORDERSThe 2000 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, presented by Texaco, will be awarded at a dinner on the evening of March 23 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place.
An award of the USA Hockey Foundation, the Kazmaier Memorial award recognizes the accomplishments of the most outstanding player in women's intercollegiate varsity ice hockey season.
Now in its third year of existence, the inaugural Kazmaier Memorial Award was presented to University of New Hampshire forward Brandy Fisher in 1998. Last year Harvard University forward and 1998 Olympian A.J. Mleczko received the honor.
The top 10 candidates for the award will be announced on Feb. 14 and the three finalists will be announced on March 13.
An accomplished athlete who excelled in ice hockey, field hockey, and lacrosse, Patty Kazmaier, daughter of Princeton's Heisman Trophy winner Dick Kazmaier, was a four-year varsity letter-winner for the Princeton University women's ice hockey team from 1981-82 through 1985-86.
Following a long struggle with a rare blood disease, Kazmaier-Sandt died in 1990 at the age of 28. The men's ice hockey award is also named for another Princetonian, Hobey Baker. …
New Scientist
Copyright 2000 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
February 6, 2000HEADLINE: Backwards to the future
BYLINE: Marcus ChownHIGHLIGHT: There could be a world where people grow younger every day, rain falls into the sky, and cakes unbake . . . It could even be your world, muses Marcus Chown
IN a distant galaxy, a star unexplodes. Just moments ago a shell of tortured matter was flying together at 30 000 kilometres a second. Now it has become a star, and the last shreds of glowing debris are being sucked in. With the explosion undone, the star begins the long journey back to the time when it will be unborn into the gas and dust of an interstellar cloud.
Is someone running the film backwards for comic effect ? Not necessarily. In a paper published in the last week of 1999, Lawrence Schulman of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York dropped a bombshell. He showed that regions where time flows in the normal direction can coexist with regions where it flows backwards. There could be places, perhaps even within our Galaxy, where stars unexplode, eggs unbreak and living things grow younger with every second.
To understand how time could run backwards, you need to understand why it has a preferred direction at all. The equations of physics say that particles of matter don't care what direction time runs in: any interaction between two particles could happen just as easily in reverse. (Some nuclear interactions do show a small bias, but no one has found a way to turn this into an arrow of time.)
But when you have a lot of particles instead of just two, things change. Messy, disordered states tend to develop from tidier ones. This tendency is called the thermodynamic arrow of time. Physicists say that entropy - a measure of disorder - always increases. "It's easy to break an egg, difficult or impossible to put the pieces back together," says Schulman. …
In the 1970s, John Wheeler of Princeton University suggested observing the decays of atomic nuclei with ultra-long half-lives, perhaps many tens of billions of years. The suggestion was that the normal exponential decay would be modified by exponential "undecay" and that this might actually be observable in a sample of a few kilograms in the laboratory. Possible candidates are rhenium-187 and samarium-147, which have half-lives of about 100 billion years.
Unfortunately, Wheeler was too optimistic. For an experiment of a sensible duration, a few years, say, you'd need roughly the total supply of these isotopes in the Universe to see deviations from exponential decay.
"A far better bet is galaxy clustering," says Schulman. He believes that the way galaxies cluster together could be affected by a future contraction phase. Unfortunately, he has not yet worked out what form this effect might take. …
The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC)
Copyright 2000 The News and Observer
February 6, 2000 SundayHEADLINE: Betrayal
BYLINE: Nell Irvin Painter, CorrespondentIn 1901 William Hannibal Thomas wrote one of the most hysterically anti-black books in American history, "The American Negro." In his 440 page diatribe, Thomas asserted that African-American history "is a record of lawless existence, led by every impulse and every passion." Black men, he said, were rapists by nature; black women were totally unchaste. The Negro, Thomas wrote, is "an intrinsically inferior type of humanity ... one whose predominant characteristics evince an aptitude for a low order of living." …
"The American Negro" was standard racist writing of its time. What made it so remarkable was the fact that its author was African American. How could a black man write such an anti-black screed? That's the question at the heart of John David Smith's engaging new biography, "Black Judas." Smith, a professor of history at N.C. State University, has produced a meticulously researched biography tracing the strange life of this conflicted man. In the process, he shows how pernicious concepts of race helped destroy a man. …
Nell Irvin Painter, Director of Princeton University's program in African-American Studies, is the author of "Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
February 6, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: RIVAL BISHOPS A SIGN OF SIMILAR FISSURES IN MANY MAINLINE CHURCHES
BYLINE: ANN RODGERS-MELNICK, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITERWhen the Anglican archbishop of Southeast Asia consecrated two Americans as missionary bishops to conservative Episcopalians stranded in liberal Episcopal dioceses, it was one more turn of a screw that threatens to split several of America's mainline Protestant denominations.
The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia are supposed to be sister churches in the Anglican Communion.
"I think this is the beginning of the unraveling of Anglican polity worldwide," said Bishop Larry Maze of Arkansas, who expects missionary Bishops John Rodgers of Ambridge and Charles Murphy of South Carolina to try to enter his diocese on behalf of the Province of Southeast Asia. …
In the Anglican Communion, which is heavily African, the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church is a drop in a 70 millionmember bucket. Members in the Third World often are more conservative about biblical interpretation.
The consecration of missionary bishops "adds a whole new dimension to a struggle that has gone on for a few years between the Episcopal Church in America and the wider Anglican Communion," said Robert Wuthnow, professor of sociology at Princeton University and author of "The Restructuring of American Religion."
He has heard Episcopal leaders predict that pressure from both a conservative minority within and a conservative majority overseas will force a division. But Wuthnow doubts it.
"There is a substantial middle group who doesn't want to fight on either the left or the right. They want to maintain the center," he said. …
The San Francisco Examiner
Copyright 2000 The Hearst Corporation
February 6, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: We all scream for chinoiserie; Things Oriental are hot hot hot but some take offense at that.
BYLINE: VANESSA HUABODY: A No.5 chow mein, jasmine tea, and a side order of culture - to go, please.
These days, Chinese culture is the hottest take-out dish around the country, with ancient tradition served up for creative and spiritual inspiration.
New York Knicks player Marcus Camby and Sporty Spice Melanie Chisholm are among the jet set sporting Chinese calligraphy tattoos. Power, Zen, and Buddha beads - bracelets inspired by humble Buddhist wrist malas - are trendinista must-haves. And mass market clothiers such as Aeropostale as well as hip San Francisco boutiques carry assorted chinoiserie fashions and home decorations.
Many Chinese Americans take the mark of mainstream cool as a compliment, and are even amused at the sudden interest in what they consider to be at-home, everyday aspects of their lives. But critics say such trends co-opt fluff without making social progress and callously disregard the cultural significance of symbols. …
Last year, designer Zoe Metro paired the beads with New Age crystal therapy to sell more than 500,000 of the $25 to $50 bracelets in upscale stores. Her design spawned thousands of copycats sold in mall kiosks, sidewalk stalls, and other retailers. Metro's top seller, mother-of-pearl, offers financial success - a seeming contradiction of Buddhism's ascetic ideals. Others represent love, balance, even relief from premenstrual syndrome.
"No one has time to say the mantra anymore every day," said Metro, 30, a Princeton University art history graduate. "I'm reinterpreting Buddhism as my own, so more people can understand it. That's a positive influence." …
The Seattle Times
Copyright 2000 The Seattle Times Company
February 6, 2000HEADLINE: Topsy-nervy
Perfect period details mix with modlern sensibility in new historical dramasBYLINE: Misha Berson; Seattle Times theater critic
In the new Mike Leigh film "Topsy-Turvy," proper Victorian styles of dress and decor are recreated down to the last collar pin, corset stay and desktop bric-a-brac.
Based on the brief rupture and exciting renewal of the creative partnership between playwright William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, the movie visually revives the London theater world of 1885 with great scrupulousness - from the smoky footlights, to the lacy flounces, to the garish greasepaint.
And yet, "Topsy-Turvy" is anything but a traditional bio-pic, or a conventionally chipper display of upscale Victoriana.
Drug and alcohol addiction, senility, incipient union organizing and the ravages of back-alley London poverty intrude on this tale of two rich and famous British gentlemen-artists at the peak of their success.
And instead of the film climaxing on the upbeat, with the triumphant premiere of the G & S masterwork, "The Mikado," it ends on a melancholy note. …
One can easily evade complaints about historical "accuracy," of course, by simply updating plots and characters of venerable stories to our own time - as did the film "Clueless," a fizzy remake of the Jane Austen novel "Emma," and as will two upcoming movies based on Shakespeare plays: a modern-dress "Hamlet" with Ethan Hawke, and "O," a retake of "Othello," set among high-school basketball players.
But for her own spin through Jane Austen-land, Canadian director Patricia Rozema charted a riskier route.
In response to Austen-lovers who decried the liberties taken in her "Mansfield Park," Rozema simply answered: "Great novels bear reinterpretation."
But her brisk, absorbing, and impudent alternative to the formal-tea-service treatments of Austen has been largely applauded by critics.
And among Rozema's most vocal defenders is Princeton University professor of English Claudia L. Johnson, who wrote in a Los Angeles Times essay: "At last a director has treated Austen not as a sacred text or museum piece but as a living presence who inspires us to take wing ourselves." …
St. Petersburg Times
Copyright 2000 Times Publishing Company
February 06, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Money to grow on
BYLINE: KRIS HUNDLEY
DATELINE: TAMPAFCP Investors of Tampa invests in profitable small niche companies looking to grow. Its strategy has paid off. All but two of FCP's more than 85 investments over the past 12 years have been a success - with average returns of 30 percent.
The conference room of FCP Investors Inc., five stories above Twigg Street, is cluttered with stuff: a waxed nylon lariat, an empty aquarium, a hummingbird feeder that looks like a giant strawberry, a leather car seat, colorful bottles of paint, an old-fashioned rubber handstamp and a reel of black plastic stripping used to hold microchips during the assembly process.
Each of the products represents an investment by FCP. And despite their odd market niches, all but two of the company's more than 85 investments over the past 12 years have been a success. …
At a time when the hot money is chasing dot-com start-ups, FCP's philosophy is positively stuffy. Every few years the company creates a fund, raising money from financial institutions, wealthy individuals and college endowments. Among its stable of regular investors: Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bank of Boston, Chase Manhattan Corp. and Raymond James. …
The Star-Ledger
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
February 6, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Scientists Expect Great Things from Nanotechnology Research
BYLINE: By Kevin CoughlinThe dreams of scientists were lofty in the 20th century, an era of skyscrapers and space exploration.
Now experts expect revelations from a molecular universe, where infinitesimal structures could make today's microchips look like the Empire State Building.
Nanotechnology, scientists say, will redefine all aspects of life in the new millennium.
By building things one molecule at a time -- or by guiding molecules to assemble themselves, as nature does -- the scientists forecast lightweight products with amazing strength that perform incredible tasks in the tightest places.
It's a vision driving some of the world's brightest minds. From Princeton University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology to the giants of the automotive, chemical, electronics, computer and semiconductor industries, researchers are hustling to make Small the Next Big Thing. …
The Sunday Gazette Mail
Copyright 2000 Charleston Newspapers
February 06, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Strands of DNA compute
BYLINE: Rick Callahan THE ASSOCIATED PRESSScientists have created a "DNA computer" from strands of synthetic DNA they coaxed into solving relatively complex calculations.
The short-lived chemical computer has no immediate practical applications, but it nudges the fledgling technology of DNA computing further out of the world of science fiction and into the realm of the possible, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers said.
"It's kind of a nonautomated computer - an abacus of sorts - but it's an approach we're confident can be automated like a conventional computer," said Lloyd Smith, a professor of chemistry.
Conventional computing is driven by computer chips, but that technology is fast approaching the limits of miniaturization. Scientists dream of using the vast storage capacity that enables DNA and its chemical cousin RNA to hold the complex blueprints of living organisms.
While other researchers have had success with DNA computing, in most of those tests the DNA was suspended in liquid-filled test tubes. …
Laura F. Landweber, an assistant professor of biology at Princeton University, is leading a team working to exploit RNA's computing potential. Her team recently fashioned RNA strands that processed complex problems similar to those that chess players encounter.
While Smith's team produced a chemical computer that tackled a problem with 16 possible solutions, the Princeton RNA computer searched through 512 possible answers, she said. The research will be published this year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Anchorage Daily News
Copyright 2000 Anchorage Daily News
February 5, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: A 'SPOILED' KID IS ABOUT MORE THAN MONEY
BYLINE: Judith KleinfeldIn ''Bratla The Race to Raise Unspoiled Kids,'' The Wall Street Journal features the Holmes family as an example of how parents are coping with new affluence.
''Glen and Christy Holmes have given their two sons as much as any child could wish for -- a sprawling home in southern California, ski trips and Caribbean vacations.
''Yet even though the family came into a multimillion-dollar windfall last year after Mr. Holmes sold his computer-consulting firm, if the boys ask for a new CD or a basketball, their parents won't buy it; the kids have to pay for those things themselves from their $5 weekly allowances.
''The Holmses constantly tell the boys of their hardscrabble beginning in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. And when 9-year-old Nick asks how much money the family has, his mother tells him, 'We're in the middle.' ''
An Alaska family I know, the ''Browns,'' take an entirely different approach to the problem of raising unspoiled kids when you can afford to give them anything. …
Princeton University sociologist Suzanne Keller points out the pitfalls of this strategy in ''The American Upper Class Family'' (Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 22, 1991).
Take John D. Rockefeller, the Bill Gates of his day. Worth $1 billion in 1905, his fortune was a topic of wonder. He was also the most hated man in America, due to his ruthlessness and to envy at his success.
The Rockefellers lived lavishly, but their children didn't. The children were required to earn their spending money and had to wear hand-me down clothes. …
With what results?
One Rockefeller daughter indulged herself as soon as she broke free, buying $2 million pearl and emerald necklaces, eating off gold plates that had belonged to the Bonapartes, and amusing herself with sexual affairs and odd causes. The boy, John D. Rockefeller Jr., became a dutiful son who devoted himself to philanthropy.
But John D. did not become the man he himself wanted to be. The great Rockefeller wealth, he confessed, ''has not meant the greatest happiness.''
The lesson I draw from these family histories is that you don't spoil kids just by giving them things. You don't create good kids by denying them things you can afford. …
DAILY MAIL (London)
Copyright 2000 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
February 5, 2000HEADLINE: Carol is top of the Ivy League;
HIGHERS 'FAILURE' WINS GBP 25,000 PLACE AT PRINCETON
BYLINE: George MairAT the end of her fifth year at school Carol King realised she had failed to gain enough Highers to win a place at university.
But her determination to succeed drove her on to try again and take more Highers so as to win a place at Stirling University.
Now that same determination has helped Carol, 23, to defeat the cream of graduates from Oxford and Cambridge to win a GBP 25,000 scholarship to the Ivy League Princeton University in the U.S.
Princeton, in New Jersey, counts two former Presidents and more than 30 Nobel Prize winners - such as Albert Einstein - among its former students.
Carol, whose father Alex is a forklift driver and her mother Sarah a typist, will take up her studies for a Doctor of Philosophy degree in politics in the U.S. next week. …
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 2000 The Financial Times Limited
February 5, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Why happiness is priceless: Rising prosperity does not make people feel more content. Economists want to know why, writes Ed Crooks:
BYLINE: By ED CROOKS
I n his book Luxury Fever, the economist Robert Frank remembers his time in the Peace Corps in Nepal. "My one-room house had no electricity, no heat, no indoor toilet, no running water," he writes. And yet "I experienced a feeling of prosperity that I have recaptured only in recent years." Though he was poor he was happy. And though the US is now very rich indeed, it is unhappy, he thinks.
The book, an attack on the headlong pursuit of material accumulation, is part of a wave of criticism aimed at the conspicuous consumption created by unprecedented prosperity.
While the influential thinking of a decade ago was all about how to get the US back on top, today the hot topic, in academic and increasingly in official circles as well, is the anxiety of affluence. Like J.K. Galbraith in the 1960s, American liberals are challenging the assumption that the pursuit of happiness amounts to the same thing as the pursuit of prosperity.
The difference this time is that their arguments are based on much more rigorous scientific foundations.
"People have questioned for years whether economic growth is good for us," says Andrew Oswald of Warwick university, Britain's leading researcher into the link between wealth and well-being. "But only in the last few years have we had the data to be able to check it."
There is now a vast amount of data available on happiness derived from social surveys in the US and Europe that, quite simply, ask people how happy they feel. Economists are beginning to analyse the numbers. …
Researchers expect that within five years there will be a national panel to monitor the quality of life, the way that incomes and consumer confidence are monitored today. For the first time, a developed country would have an official system of measuring sucess that is not simply dependent on counting gross domestic product.
"One might think that this should be the most fundamental question of economics: what makes people happy. I hope in the next few years, we will be able to get it on the curriculum for first-year undergraduates," says Prof Oswald.
However, there is a problem. When we talk about being "happy", what do we really mean? Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University argues that measurements of happiness derived from surveys are badly flawed.
Take Japan, he says. Japanese real incomes have increased five-fold since the 1950s, but there has been no change in reported happiness. Can this really mean the Japanese had no higher standard of living today than in 1950? "Another explanation is that expectations have changed," says Prof Kahneman. "It could mean that they do now have more pleasure and less pain, but they expect more pleasure and less pain." …
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY (1:00 PM ET)
February 5, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: ELAINE FANTHAM, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, DISCUSSES THE PARALLELS BETWEEN ROMAN POLITICS AND PRESENT-DAY POLITICS IN THE US
ANCHORS: SCOTT SIMONSCOTT SIMON, host:
Every four years the United States expends itself in a huge example of direct democracy. Now we think of democracy as a notion first toyed with by the Greeks, although the ancient Romans may have developed the system that more closely resembles our own, replete with senators, special interests and bribes. Joining us now from her office is our special correspondent to the ancient world, Professor Elaine Fantham, who teaches classics at Princeton University.
Professor, thanks very much for being back with us.
Professor ELAINE FANTHAM (Princeton University): Oh, it's good to be back with you, Scott.
SIMON: Now they weren't exactly what we would call presidential elections in the ancient world.
Prof. FANTHAM: No. The nearest thing, I suppose, to a US president is that in them they did have one very important office, which was the climax of the man's career in the public. And there were two counsels elected every year for the following year. This was the highest office that you could aspire to. And it was a matter of great importance and tremendous public interest. So it could corresponds as close as we can manage to the presidential elections.
SIMON: Who would vote?
Prof. FANTHAM: Well, the voting itself was weighted in the sense that you--the classes of the rich got to vote first. And there were a larger number of classes than there was a percentage of rich people. So the rich man's vote carried more power than the poor man's vote. But all adult male Romans were entitled to vote. The other limitation was they had to go to Rome to cast their vote. And some of them lived 200 miles away. …
Roanoke Times & World News
Copyright 2000 The Roanoke Times & World News
February 5, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: PERFECT SCORE JUST THE START FOR THIS NORTH CROSS SENIOR; LAINE CLARK-BALZAN ANSWERED EVERY SCHOLASTIC ASSESSMENT TEST QUESTION CORRECTLY
BYLINE: KATHY LU THE ROANOKE TIMES
The words flow so gracefully from her mouth that it takes a moment to realize the monstrosity of the subject.
"I want to be a part of a group that comes up with the unified field theory," said Laine Clark-Balzan, 17, a senior at North Cross School.
"It's the Holy Grail of physics. Einstein's view of gravity and the strange properties of the subatomic world. Well, it's not definitely his view, but I like it."
If developed, the theory would describe all fundamental forces in nature - such as gravity - and the relationships between the most basic subatomic particles. Albert Einstein spent most of his life trying to create a unified field theory to no avail.
But to follow in his footsteps, Clark-Balzan knew she needed a rigorous college education from places such as the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Princeton University, which have some of the country's best physics departments.
So when she found out she got a 1,500 - 800 verbal, 700 math - on her Scholastic Assessment Test, she knew she needed to do better.
So she took it again. And got a 1,600. …
The Toronto Star
Copyright 2000 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
February 5, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: LET'S FOCUS ON HEALTH, NOT HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM
DAVOS, SWITZERLANDIF WE WANT a healthy population, it's important to distinguish between investing in health and investing in the health-care system.
In many countries, public concern is focused narrowly on how much to spend on the system. In Canada, the provincial premiers are lobbying hard for Finance Minister Paul Martin to give them more money for the system in his upcoming budget.
But while the system is important, and we need to make it work better, it is in many respects a repair shop for our failure to deal with the wider influences on health.
Lisa Berkman, chair of the department of health and social behaviour at Harvard University's school of public health, argued here at the World Economic Forum that the way top executives treat their employees is a major determinant of health.
Stress levels in the workplace have a profound effect on health. Berkman defined stress as a situation where an employee faces high on-the-job demands but has low control over how he or she works. …
Nor is there adequate emphasis on other preventive measures, such as widespread public campaigns for flu vaccinations in the high-risk population every fall, which would take some pressure off hospital emergency rooms.
While medical research promises a new age of genetic and other interventions, including new vaccines for diseases such as AIDs, much more attention needs to be focused on preventive measures.
The problem, according to Peter Singer of the Centre for Human Values at Princeton University, is that public health initiatives lack a major advocacy group.
Broader socio-economic factors also determine health: the relationship between stress and anxiety and poverty and unemployment. …
The Canberra Times
Copyright 2000 The Federal Capital Press of Australia
February 4, 2000, Friday EditionHEADLINE: BIOLOGY AS A POLICY BENCHMARK; PHILOSOPHER PETER SINGER SAYS HUMAN NATURE, RATHER THAN UTOPIAN ECONOMIC IDEALS, IS WHAT COUNTS, WRITES LINCOLN WRIGHT.
PETER SINGER has given up the class war for a war of the genes in his quest to redefine the political Left in a global economy, where everyone loves the market, hates the state and fears Utopian reformers.
Singer, an Australian philosopher of world renown, wants to liberate animals from their human masters and the dying from their pain and their doctors. Now he wants to liberate the Left from its obsessions about class and economic inequality, replacing Karl Marx with Charles Darwin. He wants to view the world through the lens of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, rather than through Marx's materialist view of history.
Now a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, Singer has given up the 19th-century idea of socialism, with its emphasis on economic issues such as nationalisation, and embraced the late 20th-century sociobiology, the idea that biology represents the key to our understanding of human behaviour.
Sociobiology aims to reduce human psychology to evolutionary psychology, so that certain traits of mind and behaviour, such as altruism and aggression, can be understood as part of the human genetic inheritance, which we share with other living things at lower levels on the evolutionary tree.
Sociobiology is a challenge to the Left, which has generally stuck by the maxim that "Darwin applies to natural history, but Marx applies to human history" . Where Marx once saw no human essence, just the effect of changing economic relations on malleable humans, Singer now accepts that we have a relatively fixed human nature, determined by genes that have evolved over millions of years. …
Chicago Sun-Times
Copyright 2000 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
February 04, 2000, FRIDAYHEADLINE: Blazing a trail for the New Frontier
BYLINE: Steve NealHe represented a new generation of leadership.
Adlai E. Stevenson, whose centennial is being celebrated today at the high school that bears his name in Lincolnshire, in the state Capitol where he governed with such distinction and at his alma mater of Princeton University, was the Democratic Party's first nominee for the presidency of the United States to be born in the 20th century.
"We dare not just look back on great yesterdays," he said in welcoming delegates to the 1952 Democratic National Convention. "We must look forward to great tomorrows."
He was a light to the world. Stevenson was among the founding fathers of the United Nations, the inspiration for the first nuclear test ban treaty and a voice for civility and decency in public life. President Lyndon B. Johnson eulogized Stevenson, who died in 1965, as America's "foremost advocate and most eloquent spirit."
More than anyone else in the postwar era, Stevenson redefined American politics. He was a decade younger than his great rival Dwight D. Eisenhower and 16 years younger than Harry Truman, whose retirement in 1952 set the stage for Stevenson's ascent. The historian Henry Steele Commager summed up what made Stevenson so special: "He managed by sheer force of intelligence to lift the whole level of public life and discourse, and to infuse American politics with a dignity, a vitality, an excitement that it had not known since the early days of the New Deal." …
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 2000 The Christian Science Publishing Society
February 4, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: High-tech breathes life into ancient Greece
BYLINE: Gloria Goodale Arts and culture correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: PASADENA, CALIF.Socrates, Pericles, Athens, Sparta, the Battle at Marathon. These names float deep in the collective consciousness of Western culture, but few outside academia think about their impact on modern times.
Now, thanks to the design team that re-created World War II in the Oscar-winning movie "Saving Private Ryan," Greek leaders of some 2,500 years ago seem as relevant and three-dimensional as any presidential contender in this election year.
The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization, An Empires Special (Wednesday, Feb. 9, PBS, check local listings), uses cutting-edge technology and special effects to put the viewer into key battles, in the private chambers of politicians, and beside the deathbed of philosopher Socrates after he drank his deadly hemlock potion. The point: to bring the foundations of democracy to life.
"There is something in this deep, deep past that is profoundly exciting and interesting and that matters," says Josh Ober, a professor of ancient history and chairman of the classics department at Princeton University in New Jersey. "We are the people we are today because of things that happened 2,500 years ago." …
Gannett News Service
Copyright 2000 Gannett Company, Inc.
February 4, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: TV Best
BYLINE: MIKE HUGHES; Gannett News ServiceTONIGHT'S MIGHT-SEE: "The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization,"
8-10:30 p.m., PBS (check local listings).
Amid all those statues, the Greeks had towering individuals. This documentary focuses on three -- Socrates, Cleisthenes and Pericles.
"These are all people who have had a profound impact on our own history and our own lives," says producer Anthony Geffen.
That starts with the basics, says Princeton University professor Josh Ober, a series consultant: "The ancient Greeks developed a very distinctive form of government -- democracy ... The kind of openness, the kind of publicness of a democratic society (created the) distinctively Greek civilization."
The stories are narrated by Liam Neeson, and illustrated by ancient art and fresh reenactments.
During any one moment, "The Greeks" seems magnificent. At length, however, it seems monotonous, an unrelenting string of similar words and images. …
Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional TestimonyCopyright 2000 eMediaMillWorks, Inc.
February 4, 2000, Friday
HEADLINE: Testimony February 2, 2000, James Milgram, professor, Stanford University House education and the workforce early childhood, youth and families k--12 mathematics overhaul
Written Testimony of R. James Milgram
February 2, 2000
I am honored to be here today and to be able to share my observations on the state of mathematics education in this country with the distinguished members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The K-12 teachers in this country are dedicated professionals., deeply committed to teaching our children. They persevere in the face of difficult conditions and low pay. I have the utmost respect for them. But all too often. their knowledge of mathematics is extremely superficial, and when this happens they are easily swayed by trendy and unproven programs which typically offer a superficial treatment of the subject, leading to weak blackgrounds in their students. Perhaps a local parent described this situation best when she wrote me that the Curriculum was getting fuzzier and fuzzier, and she concluded that by and large most teachers support it because It makes them feel OK about math - they understand language not symbols." …It was the introduction of Everyday Mathematics in the Princeton (Regional) School District, which led to the parental revolt in Princeton. This led to the involvement of a number of faculty members in both mathematics and physics at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in trying to reform mathematics teaching in the district. ..
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire|
February 4, 2000HEADLINE: Bobst foundation grants $10 million for Princeton's new center
BYLINE: By Emily W. Johnson, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.The Elmer and Mamdouha Bobst Foundation has agreed to donate $10 million to create the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University, which will provide students with funds to explore more advanced research opportunities abroad.
The center, which will be operated by the politics department, will be dedicated to advancing the cause of peace and the understanding of ethnic traditions. It will sponsor research fellowships for students and will recruit guest speakers beginning next semester.
"The center will provide funds that will allow and encourage research by students on the lessons of conflict and reconciliation," said politics department chair Jameson Doig, who will serve as the center's director. "The donation will finance research trips for graduate students, which could last for several months and will finance summer trips for students working on their senior theses, paying for their time overseas." …
Mechanical Engineering
Copyright 2000 American Society of Mechanical Engineers
February, 2000HEADLINE: Pocket-size PEMs
HEADNOTE: While many eyes focus on fuel cells for automobiles and power generation, a few entrepreneurs look to a more Lilliputian realm. By Paul Sharke, Associate EditorABSTRACT:
Despite the strides made recently in reducing the cost of fuel cells - for instance, by decreasing the amount of platinum needed as a catalyst - they remain more costly per kilowatt than the internal combustion engine.
Despite the strides made recently in reducing the cost of fuel cells - for instance, by decreasing the amount of platinum needed as a catalyst - they remain more costly per kilowatt than the internal combustion engine. Of course, the manufacture of fuel cells has been the domain of laboratory scientists, who assemble them by hand at fairly high hourly wages. Until fuel cells are actually mass manufactured, their production-scale pricing can only be estimated. Some companies are aiming fuel cells at the electronics world, where micro-power plants have a better chance than their large-scale brethren to compete on price, while offering durability, range, and stand-by capacity that even the latest manifestations of rechargeable batteries will struggle to match.
BODY:
DESPITE THE STRIDES made recently in reducing the cost of fuel cells-for instance, by decreasing the amount of platinum needed as a catalyst-they remain more costly per kilowatt than the internal combustion engine. Of course, the manufacture of fuel cells has been, and is, the domain of laboratory scientists, who assemble them by hand at fairly high hourly wages.
Until fuel cells are actually mass manufactured, their production-scale pricing can only be estimated. A recent study by Joan Ogden at Princeton University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies tabulated a range of published estimates for the manufacturing costs of mass-produced auto fuel cell systems. Estimates ranged from is little as $32 per kilowatt to as much as $200 per kilowatt. For the equivalent system in a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, the cost per kilowatt was estimated at $39. Selling fuel cells to the car-buying public may prove a formidable task, at least if the case for buying is built solely upon economics. …
Public Interest
Copyright 2000 National Affairs, Inc. Winter
Winter 2000HEADLINE: Welfare reform and reducing teen pregnancy
The point is not that programs to reduce teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock births cannot be effective, but that without a change in social norms, their impact may be small.
It appears that sexual attitudes are becoming more conservative and that both safer sex and delayed sex are gaining ground. Teen pregnancy and birth rates have declined for most of the decade and the out-of-wedlock birth ratio has stabilized. Those looking for guaranteed programmatic solutions to the problems of teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock are likely to be disappointed, however. The point is not that programs cannot be effective, but that without a change in social norms, their impact may be small.
BODY: ALMOST no one thinks it's a good idea for unwed teenagers to become parents. It would be the odd parent, indeed, who counseled their own teenage son or daughter to start a family. Most parents hope that their children will finish school, find a job, and marry before they take on the burdens of parenthood. But what the majority of parents, almost regardless of race or social class, want for their own children is not what we have. Instead, 40 percent of all girls in the United States become pregnant before their twentieth birthday, and one out of every five goes on to become a teen mother. The overwhelming majority of these young mothers are unmarried and end up poor and on welfare. …
The disappearance of marriage is already far advanced in many low-income and minority communities. Liberals point to the lack of good jobs in such communities, a situation they believe has undermined the male role as bread winner. Conservatives emphasize the availability of welfare benefits, arguing that these have encouraged young women to raise children on their own. Neither explanation is strongly backed by the data, but this may be because standard social-science models cannot easily capture the dynamics' of the process that has led to the breakdown of the family. For whatever reasons, monogamy is being replaced by what a team of researchers from Columbia and Princeton universities calls "fragile families." Preliminary evidence from this team's work in several cities suggests that about half of young mothers who give birth out of wedlock are cohabiting with the father of their child at the time of birth and that another 30 percent are "romantically involved." Past research suggests that such ties are not very durable, but some believe that were we to intervene at the time of the child's birth in ways that encouraged more involvement of the father it could make a difference. Offering subsidized jobs or other supports to those couples in which one parent is willing to work full-time, and both are willing to make a more durable commitment to their children, might make a difference. …
OBITUARIES
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper CompanyFebruary 9, 2000, Wednesday
HEADLINE: CHARLES R. SCHUELER, 77 FOUNDED CLOTHING STORE CHAIN
A memorial service will be held tomorrow for Charles R. Schueler, a retired clothier and leather broker who died Friday of leukemia at his home in Brookline. He was 77.
Mr. Schueler, a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover and Princeton University, was the founder of John Douglas Inc., a chain of sportswear stores in Boston, Chestnut Hill, Weston, and Wellesley. He also founded C.R. Schueler & Co., a leather brokerage in Boston. …
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Copyright 2000 The Post and Courier
February 7, 2000, MondayPETER F. ROTHERMEL
Peter F. Rothermel, 80, of Charleston, a retired headmaster and coach, died Sunday in a local hospital. The funeral and burial will be private, according to the Cremation Center of Charleston.
Mr. Rothermel was born in Philadelphia, a son of Peter F. Rothermel and Louise Elliott Rothermel. He was a graduate of Princeton University. He was a decorated Marine Corps major in World War II. …
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 2000 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
February 4, 2000, FridayWalter L. Cable, on school board in Freehold Township
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP - Walter L. Cable, 72, who served on the Freehold Township Board of Education for 17 years, died Wednesday at Cape Coral Hospital, Cape Coral, Fla.
Mr. Cable was a mechanical engineer for Bendix, RCA, where he was awarded several patents for space program work, and Princeton University. ..
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
February 9, 2000, WednesdayHAMILTON, THOMAS PARKER, JR., DR.
HAMILTON-Thomas Parker, Jr., Dr. Died February 8, 2000. Retired surgeon. …
Dr. Hamilton was a graduate of Mercersburg Academy, Princeton University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Hamilton was a surgeon with the US Army Medical Corp. His unit landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. As a Major, he was awarded the Bronze Star for heroic service. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
February 7, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: William S. Heckscher, Historian Of Art and Museum Director, 94
BYLINE: By ERIC PACEWilliam S. Heckscher, a German-born art historian who fled Hitler's Germany and became a professor at Duke University and the director of its art museum, died on Nov. 27 at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 94. …
Professor Heckscher left Germany in 1936, spent a year as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., was interned as an enemy alien in Britain after World War II began and spent part of the war in a detention camp in Canada. There he helped prepare young foreign internees to pass Canadian universities' entrance examinations. Later he was awarded an honorary degree from McGill University in Montreal for that work. …
In later years Professor Heckscher was a consultant to the Princeton University library and held other posts.
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Crusader via U-Wire
February 7, 2000HEADLINE: Susqehanna U. campus shocked by death of sociology prof
BYLINE: By Peter Hall, The Crusader
DATELINE: Selinsgrove, Pa.Dr. Nallamotu Vasantkumar, professor of sociology and anthropology at Susquehanna University, died at the age of 58 in his Selinsgrove home Friday, Jan. 28, following a short illness.
Vasantkumar, known by most as Kumar, taught at Susquehanna for the past 18 years and was remembered by Chaplain Mark Radecke as an "exceptionally bright man," and a teacher devoted to his students, discipline and university.
"He wasn't here by inertia - he was here because of the students," Radecke said. …
Vasantkumar held a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Andhra University in India, a master's of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a master of arts and doctorate in sociology from Princeton University.
Vasantkumar's scholarly interests included social change, postmodernism and the social and cultural contexts of humor. He also received National Endowment for the Humanities grants that enabled him to attend programs at Duke and Harvard Universities and a Fulbright to attend a summer seminar in China in 1988. In 1994 and '95 he taught at Miyazaki International College in Japan and was a visiting scholar at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
February 4, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: George Yandes Wheeler III at Age 82; Was Vice President, Lobbyist for RCA
George Yandes Wheeler III, 82, who retired in 1961 as vice president and chief Washington lobbyist for RCA Corp., died Feb. 2 at his home in Hobe Sound, Fla. He had a liver ailment and pancreatitis.
Mr. Wheeler was a native of Washington and a graduate of Princeton University and George Washington University law school.
He began his career as a page at NBC's WRC radio affiliate in Washington in the 1930s. He was later a guide, announcer, master of ceremonies for band broadcasts and writer. He also produced and managed news and variety programs. He was a correspondent for NBC during World War II, assigned to Europe and landed with the Allied forces in the Normandy invasion of 1944.
He was named staff vice president of RCA in 1955. …
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