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Princeton in the News
May 31, 2000
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HIGHLIGHTS
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 31, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Commencements; Remember Ethics, Graduates Are Told
BYLINE: By The New York Times
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., May 30Princeton University's president warned graduates today that crumbling respect for authorities and institutions meant that a sense of moral purpose must temper their use of technological and scientific advances like genetic research.
"We have to accept the fact that in a world that is changing as fast as ours, all thoughtful citizens will have to share in the anguish of finding the right moral perspective within which to accommodate these changes," said the university president, Dr. Harold T. Shapiro, who is the chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
"Today, we strain harder than ever before to define ethical guidelines that will help us to navigate this flood tide of discovery," he added, "as we struggle to construct new moral perspectives within which science and technology can thrive."
On a cloud-covered day, the university conferred 1,092 bachelor's degrees and 625 advanced degrees. Some form of honors was awarded to 44.4 percent of the seniors.
Five honorary degrees were also conferred. In the sciences, honorary doctorates were awarded to Val L. Fitch, a Nobel winner and the James S. McDonnell distinguished university professor of physics at Princeton, and to Mary F. Lyon, the British researcher whose work in mouse genetics led to the discovery of a sex-linked gene mutation process.
In the humanities, honorary doctorates went to Mae C. Jemison, the first African-American woman astronaut, and to Wendy Kopp, the founder and president of Teach for America, a national teacher corps of recent college graduates.
An honorary law doctorate was awarded to Gordon E. Moore, a cofounder of Intel. …
Note: Below are selections from the extensive coverage of Men's Lacrosse, Women's Rowing and Men's Baseball.
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
May 30, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Syracuse 13, Princeton 7
BYLINE: By DAVID GINSBURG, AP Sports Writer
DATELINE: COLLEGE PARK, Md.In one glorious afternoon, the Syracuse lacrosse team celebrated its sixth NCAA Division I championship, bid farewell to a star and showcased another player with a knack for scoring.
Liam Banks had a career-high six goals and Ryan Powell joined his brother atop the Syracuse scoring list as the Orangemen won their first title since 1995 by defeating Princeton 13-7 Monday. …
It was the second time in just over a month that Syracuse (15-1) blew away the Tigers (12-3). Princeton had won four straight games since losing 16-4 to the Orangemen on April 23.
"They were fabulous," Princeton coach Bill Tierney said. "They're just a quick, highly skilled team. You can usually deal with one or the other, but not both."
Josh Sims had two goals and an assist for Princeton, which lost for the first time in six championship-game appearances.
"This was a good weekend for us," Tierney said. "We feel like we've taken a giant step with a bunch of young puppies. That team was better than us, but we'll gear it up again next year." …
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
May 30, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Impressed Tigers learn lessons: Young team hopes loss pays dividends in 2001
NCAA notebook/College Lacrosse
BYLINE: Bill Free and Gary LambrechtCOLLEGE PARK - Princeton coach Bill Tierney is regarded as one of the brightest and innovative lacrosse coaches in the history of the sport, but even he could not come up with a scheme yesterday to negate the overwhelming edge Syracuse had in talent on the young Tigers in the NCAA championship game.
Tierney may have been able to keep the game closer if he had more than one day to prepare for one of the most explosive NCAA champions in recent years. But there didn't seem to be any way an emotionally spent Princeton squad was going to beat the Orangemen just 48 hours after upsetting powerful Virginia in the semifinals.
Tierney said after a thorough 13-7 spanking by the Orange at Byrd Stadium yesterday, "With not much time to prepare, we did things a little differently. In certain cases, it worked and in some cases you saw what looked like easy goals. That wasn't our kids' fault. We just didn't have the time to prepare for what a team like this does."
However, Tierney didn't believe all was lost in such a disappointing afternoon for his team.
"It was a challenge to meet Syracuse," Tierney said. "And I'm sure we learned a lot out there today. We feel like we've taken a giant step with a bunch of young puppies and we'll try to be back here next year."
One of those "young puppies" was freshman defenseman Damien Davis (Gilman), who experienced some major frustration yesterday against Syracuse's four-time All- American Ryan Powell, who finished with five points. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
May 29, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Sims Eyes Last Stand; Princeton Lacrosse Star Seeks NCAA Title
BYLINE: Christian Swezey , Special to The Washington PostThey sell replicas of Princeton senior Josh Sims's lacrosse jersey at a store near campus. He has school records for goals in a season and a career by a midfielder. Teammates say it is an honor to play with him. Sims, a Severn School graduate and Harford, Md., native, has one more game left.
That game is today, when third-seeded Princeton (12-2) plays No. 1 Syracuse (14-1) in the NCAA Division I men's lacrosse title game at Byrd Stadium at 10:55 a.m.
Princeton is 5-0 in championship games and has won 20 of its past 23 NCAA tournament games. However, all three losses were to Syracuse, including by 7-5 in the first round last year. The Orangemen also defeated Princeton, 16-4, April 23. Neither team focused much on that result yesterday. …
Sims enters as the Tigers' leading scorer with 34 goals and 14 assists. The 34 goals this year and 101 in his career are school records for midfielders. He is the only Tigers player who started in both the 1998 NCAA title game--a 15-5 victory over Maryland--and today. He also is the only current Tiger whose jersey is for sale.
"It was a surprise when I saw some kids wearing my jersey," Sims said. "It was pretty neat. I used to see kids wearing [former Princeton all-American] Jesse Hubbard's jersey. It is a good feeling." …
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Team concept takes precedence
Lacrosse: Baltimore's Chris Berrier and Ryan Mollett have plugged themselves in the Princeton program and enjoyed the title rides.BYLINE: Bill Free
SOURCE: SUN STAFFForget the glamour.
Forget the headlines.
Check all egos at the door.
This is Princeton lacrosse, where the only stat that matters is winning.
"Years from now, no one will really care how many goals you scored in a season," said Princeton's senior captain, Chris Berrier. "All they will remember is if you won the national championship."
Berrier and junior defenseman Ryan Mollett own three championship rings between them, and the Baltimore-area youngsters will be out to add to the collection this weekend at Byrd Stadium in College Park.
The third-seeded Tigers (11-2) will begin their quest for a sixth national title in the past nine years tomorrow at 3 p. m. in the NCAA final four semifinals against second-seeded and defending champion Virginia (13-1).
Berrier and Mollett are perfect examples of how two celebrated three-sport high school athletes could put aside all their press clippings and do whatever Tigers coach Bill Tierney has asked them to help the team succeed.
Berrier was renowned for his football, lacrosse and basketball exploits at St. Paul's, and Mollett rolled up the accolades in those same three sports at Boys' Latin.
Once they arrived at Princeton, Berrier and Mollett had to adapt at first to being something of role players in a well-drilled Tigers machine that has made a rather surprising run this season . …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: TWO LIVELY CREWS ARE FAVORITES BROWN, WASHINGTON VIE FOR NCAA WOMEN'S TITLE
BYLINE: By John Vellante, Globe StaffCAMDEN, N.J. - They've been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 all season, and now it's time to settle the matter once and for all.
Is it Brown or is it Washington? The question should be answered this morning on the Cooper River, where the varsity women's heavyweight eights will slug it out for NCAA rowing supremacy.
Top-ranked Brown, the defending national champion, turned in the day's best time (6 minutes, 25.79 seconds) yesterday - as it did in the qualifying heats Friday - and it will row today in Lane 3. Right alongside in Lane 4 will be No. 2 Washington, which won its heat in 6:26.29.
The East-West powers will be joined by Virginia, Michigan, California, and Princeton. That's six of the top-ranked seven teams in the the latest US Rowing and Collegiate Coaches Association poll. No. 4 Radcliffe, No. 8 Boston University, and No. 13 Northeastern were relegated to Petite Final status. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
May 27, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Texas Tech 10, Princeton 0
DATELINE: HOUSTONCory Metzler scattered six hits as Texas Tech eliminated Ivy League champion Princeton from the Houston Regional with a 10-1 victory Saturday.
The Red Raiders improved to 36-25 and will face the loser of the Rice-Houston game in an elimination game Saturday night.
The Tigers fell to 24-20.
Metzler (5-3) lost his shutout when Mickey Martin delivered an RBI single with two outs in ninth. The righthander struck out two and walked two. …
OTHER HEADLINES
The New Republic
Copyright 2000 The New Republic, Inc.
JUNE 5, 2000HEADLINE: Putin and Other Parasites
BYLINE: Stephen Kotkin
HIGHLIGHT: What stands in the way of Russia is Russia.Stephen Kotkin is director of Russian studies at Princeton University and the author of a forthcoming book on the Soviet collapse, 1970-2000.
First Person:An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait
by Vladimir Putinwith Natalya Gevorkian, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolseniko
translated by Catherine Fitzpatrick (Public Affairs, 207 pp., $15)Yeltsin:A Revolutionary Life
by Leon Aron
(St. Martin's Press, 934 pp., $35)Russia's Politicsof Uncertainty
by Mary McAuley
(Cambridge University Press,351 pp., cloth $69.95,paper $24.95)Provintsial A Provincial
by Boris Nemtsov
(Vagrius, 149 pp.)I.
People say that there are two Russias: Moscow and the rest of the country. This is certainly the view of those who have not grasped that elite Moscow is itself two distinct worlds, the populous apparatchik nation (notably including the tycoons, who bleed into the executive power) and the rest. And even more overlooked is the fact that the insiders, too, divide into the mass of interconnected "natives" and the parvenus. Someday the history of the years since 1985 in Russia will be written not in terms of programs and parties, which exist primarily in the journalistic accounts of them, but in terms of the stunning influx of outsiders into Moscow's elite circles.
The newcomers, whatever their ostensible political ideology, acquired fancy Moscow apartments and the lifetime use of state dachas; and they did whatever it took to get their children into the right schools, or to set themselves up in "private" business. Yet even the highest ranked provincials in Moscow are nothing compared with the capital's natives, because they lack the extensive familial, academic, and professional networks that transgress ministerial boundaries and outlast the rule of individuals. Formal office in Russia means little without cronyism and clientelism. …
In sum, the Russian state is even less reformed than the time-warped heavyindustrial Russian economy, which is the other principal inheritance from the Soviet Union. Russia's dysfunctional state apparatus is the world's biggest parasite. …
It is more than seven hundred pages long, but Leon Aron's biography of Boris Yeltsin does not tell who cameto power along with Yeltsin, and therefore it cannot explain who remains in power after Yeltsin. Nor does Aron explain the new institutions that took shape under Yeltsin. Instead Aron minutely details the scary views and actions of the anti-democratic opposition to Yeltsin. He also celebrates Yeltsin's anti-Communism and his support for electoral democracy, the market, and integration with the West--all worth celebrating, and all downplayed by Yeltsin's many unrealistic critics. But Aron, quoting sober commentators who invoke tough choices and the lesser evil, elevates Yeltsin to the status of history's greatest democratic leaders. …
Yet another "young reformer" whom Aron and many others misinterpret is Boris Nemtsov; and his story, too, is directly relevant to Putin's.In 1997, the thirty-something governorof Nizhny Novgorod was appointed to the federal government, a move that Aron adduces as a demonstration of Yeltsin's renewed commitment to reform. Aron writes that Nemtsov took pride in a decree forbidding the central apparat to acquire foreign cars for state business, and mandating that they use domestic cars. Never mind that Nizhny Novgorod is a leader in automobile production. Aron also neglects to mention that state officials nominally subordinated to Nemtsov openly ridiculed the order.
Nemstov's brief run in the government made him a laughingstock. It broughtno lasting reform of any substance, by Nemtsov's own admission. His autobiography, A Provincial, written around the time he was named First Deputy Prime Minister--and Yeltsin's likely successor--opens with Nemtsov recalling how agypsy once told his mother that "herson would be world famous. My mother laughed heartily." So would you, after reading these scribblings. …
III.
Among those who were considered over the years to follow in Yeltsin's footsteps, Vladimir Putin stood out--way out. He was of the new generation, but he was not childlike. He was competent at whatever job he was assigned. He never displayed ambition openly, let alone a shameless grasping for power. He was loyal to the president, but his loyalty was free of sycophancy. He spoke the vocabulary of patriotism, and he seemed to mean it. He did not use foul language and he did not abuse alcohol or a microphone. …
IV.
From the perspective of Russia's eighty-nine regions, Mary McAuley poses the question of whether 1991 really constituted a revolution. With the end of the old rules of closed politics, a new era of uncertainty opened in the early 1990s. But by the time the "soviets," or Communist-era legislatures, gave way to "dumas" in late 1993, Russian regions had experienced a re- aggrandizement of local executives, whose powerwas not grounded in social constituencies even though they submitted to elections. The Communist party ceased to be the ubiquitous shadow to the state, but most Soviet-era personnel endured, along with many earlier practices. "If earlier an unaccountable elite ruled a mute society," McAuley explains in her admirable book, "now a partially accountable elite ruled a noisy one. Both authority and repression had gone, to be replaced by freedom and lawlessness."
McAuley, who runs the Ford Foundation office in Moscow, offers a rare comparative analysis, based on the local press and on her own interviews, of six well-chosen Russian regions: Krasnodar, Perm, Tomsk, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan, and Sakha (Yakutia). …
President Clinton, before leaving office, should point the way toward what should have been done long ago: making Russia policy look more like China policy (Russia certainly deserves a China-like policy more than China does), while also taking advantage of democratic Germany's power, and far more aggressively preempting the staggering harm that could come from the mischievous sale or leakage of even small portions of the unique Soviet-era arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and perhaps biological weapons. …
Governing Magazine
Copyright 2000 Congressional Quarterly
June, 2000HEADLINE: THE HMO LAID LOW
BYLINE: Penelope LemovHIGHLIGHT: Two-thirds of managed care companies are losing money. When they get in trouble, states often get in trouble as well.
Belinda Miller's job can be messy and unpleasant. As director of insurer services for Florida's state Insurance Department, she is charged with putting sick HMOs out of their misery. "It's an absolutely horrible experience," she says.
She's not the only one who hates to go through it. When a health maintenance organization goes bust, policy holders are left scrambling for new coverage, which may not be available at a price they can afford. Some may be told they owe money to surgeons for expensive operations that the insolvent HMO failed to pay for. The physicians may dun them for payment, even though, by law, they aren't supposed to. Some patients get harassing phone calls from a collection agency. "It's quite frightening for them," Miller says. "And it's horrid for providers, too. They haven't been paid. Everybody gets hurt."
It's no wonder, then, that if there's any chance at all for a troubled HMO to survive, Miller and her department will help them find a new investor or try to raise the cash to cure the deficit. And for most of the past decade, they were quite successful at this mission. …
Five years ago, it would have been unthinkable in most states for a legislature to tamper with an HMO's cost-containment tools--or to pass any legislation at all that could be described as anti-HMO. No patient bill of rights containing anything as controversial as the right to sue an HMO would have come close to enactment in states such as California, Texas and Georgia. …
That is no longer the case. The corporate lobbyists who befriended HMOs in the old days are keeping their distance now. This is due in part simply to good economic times. With unemployment low, companies are finding it a challenge merely to keep the work force intact. They are more reluctant than in the past to upset workers with a penny-pinching managed care plan. …
But more is involved than the unemployment rate. HMOs are suffering from a political backlash all across the board: They've become the entity everyone loves to hate. And this has happened, argues Uwe E. Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton University, because HMOs made a fatal mistake early on. They failed to establish a convincing and humane public case for managed care. They tended to see their refusal to pay for certain health services not as the withholding of care but as efficient purchasing and smart fiscal stewardship. "In the eyes of patients, however, and in the eyes of health care providers, the media and the courts, that refusal to pay for certain health services tends to be viewed as 'rationing' health care outright," Reinhardt wrote recently. He went on to point out that rationing of this type "becomes especially suspect among the public when it is practiced by profit-seeking, investor-owned companies who are easily demonized in the media." …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
June 1, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: WHAT'S NEXT;
Unlike Viruses, Bacteria Find a Welcome in the World of ComputingBYLINE: By ANNE EISENBERG
CAN living cells be transformed into computers? A number of researchers are betting that the answer is yes. They are trying to use DNA, in and out of actual living cells, that can add, subtract, store results and run programs.
If they succeed, silicon and the microchips it made possible may one day be replaced by bacteria that can handle computing. Such biological computers could be able to handle very large numbers of analytical steps simultaneously, a process called parallel computing, and might be able to do that cheaply.
Not quite yet, though. While scientists seek to hijack the biological controls already present in cells and reprogram them for their own purposes, no one knows how to get a billion or so cells talking to one another in a controlled fashion. …
The idea was to engineer a circular section of DNA with two genes that inhibit each other, so the first gene is on while the second one is off, and vice versa. Those states can be thought of as a zero or 1, just as a silicon switch is on or off. The gene network is prodded to switch from one state to the other by a dose of a particular chemical or a change of temperature. If the cell is given enough of the chemical, for instance, the inactive gene will turn on; by turning on, it turns off the other gene. …
Other laboratories working on related problems in cell computation and the design of genetic networks include that of Dr. Stanislas Leibler at Princeton University, where Dr. Michael B. Elowitz devised a type of biological clock that will work within a cell. Dr. Elowitz worked on the project as a graduate student and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University. …
The Associated Press
May 31, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: That Was the Week That Was
BYLINE: By The Associated PressEntertainment highlights during the week of June 4-10:
50 years ago: Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe and Marilyn Monroe starred in John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle."
30 years ago: The Who performed the rock opera "Tommy" at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
Bob Dylan was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
May 31, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: HOT SHOTS TWO BAY STATE STUDENTS TAKE A RACY DETOUR INTO MODELING FOR THE ABERCROMBIE & FITCH CATALOG
BYLINE: By Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe StaffFor most of her life, Kelly Donovan, 19, has rejected anything she considered "girly." The Merrimack College sophomore never cut her hair or manicured her nails. Her preferred look: sweat pants and sneakers. Her favorite pastime: playing basketball. Most of all, she loved poking fun at her older sister Kristen, a part-time model.
"Who wants to put on makeup and smile at a camera?" Donovan would say. "I'm an athlete. Basketball is my priority." Then, in November last year, Donovan contracted Lyme disease and spent four months in and out of the hospital. "They thought I had multiple sclerosis or a tumor in my brain." Playing basketball was too physically demanding. Modeling, all of a sudden, didn't seem so bad; it's typically sedentary and the pay is great.
Enter Click Models Boston, an agency Donovan approached in March. Before she could say cheese, the Bourne native was taking her first airplane ride, to New York last month for an Abercrombie & Fitch fall fashion shoot with famed photographer Bruce Weber. Her pay for three days of light work? $3,600. …
On her second day, Donovan met a group of about 15 other models in her Manhattan hotel lobby at 6 a.m. to take a bus to Princeton University in New Jersey. Donovan's role for this campus scene was to "jump a lot. Throw books up in the air, throw basketballs. They brought in three golden retriever puppies and we played with them. It was more acting than posing." …
The Columbus Dispatch
Copyright 2000 The Columbus Dispatch
May 31, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: HOBEY BAKER: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
"It is a fact that the good, far too requently, die young and that whom the gods love, they often destroy."
-- Boston columnist George Frazier, writing of Hobey Baker.
The Heisman Trophy of American college hockey is the Hobey Baker Memorial Award, or simply the Hobey Baker. It is named for a man who achieved mythic standing on the eve of the Roaring '20s.
Baker set the stage for the iconographic sportsmen that came on his heels, men such as Bobby Jones, Babe Ruth and Red Grange. Although Baker isn't as famous as those giants, his legacy is unique.
For Baker had a sense of sportsmanship that exceeded his legendary athletic prowess. He was humble, hugely intelligent and, as Frazier wrote, "It is part of the legend, and not the least true, that he was as handsome an undergraduate as his college ever had."
Baker was born into privilege in Philadelphia in 1892. While in secondary school, Baker led his St. Paul's football team to a terrific upset over previously undefeated Princeton in 1909. A year later, he was Princeton.
Baker captained the Princeton football and hockey team at a time when the Ivy League dominated the collegiate sports world. Baker's football scoring marks stood at Princeton for nearly 50 years, and Baker was proclaimed "The Wonder Player of Hockey" after his junior season.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, a Princeton classmate, based his Allenby character in This Side of Paradise on Baker. …
When World War I broke out in Europe, Baker joined the famed Lafayette Escadrille fighter squadron before America even threw her hat into the ring. He flew with Columbus native Eddie Rickenbacker and butted heads with Manfred von Richtofen, a k a the Red Baron, and Herman Goering, future mastermind of the Luftwaffe.
Baker was credited with three kills. A ticker-tape homecoming was prepared for him. Just before he was to leave France, he was killed while testing a repaired aircraft. He was 26.
In 1981, members of the Decathlon Club of Bloomington, Minn., went into a brainstorming session. They had to think of a man in whose honor they would dedicate their annual award for the best college hockey player in America. The were not long in their deliberations. …
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
May 31, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Ancient Asian characters known as "kanji" have become a hot new street fashion on clothes and in tattoos -- even though not all the wearers know what the symbols mean.
BYLINE: By Kevin L. CarterPHILADELPHI A-- Iain Walker, a security man for Electric Factory Concerts, is a student of aikido, karate and Taoist philosophy.
Last year, he decided to go to a South Street tattoo parlor and have ink injected into his skin to form an Asian character for "bad omen." It's one of seven tattoos on his body that convey martial arts concepts, though he admits he didn't know all their meanings when he got them.
Walker, 20, is among a growing number of non-Asians who decorate their bodies and clothes with Chinese or Japanese characters. And unlike most followers of the hip-hop-fueled trend, he actually knows what they mean. …
Shown a picture of (professional basketball player Marcus) Camby, who says the kanji on his right arm mean "I love my family" and "strive to be your best," Seiichiyo Makino, who teaches Japanese at Princeton University, had some bad news. The "family" kanji means "a kind of people who belong to the same group," he said. The two characters are real, "but they don't go together as a compound."
The kanji on Iverson's neck mean "center" and "heart," Makino said. Loosely translated, that could be construed as "loyalty," as the Sixers guard asserts, "but (the Japanese) don't do it in that way." …
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 31, 2000, WEDNESDAYHEADLINE: PASSING THE TIME AT PRINCETON
SOURCE: Wire servicesPHOTO: Allen Clement of Houston, Texas, spinning a Frisbee on his finger Tuesday before graduation ceremonies at Princeton University.
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
Copyright 2000 News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
May 30, 2000, TuesdayEDITORIAL
HEADLINE: NEW ROTARY CLUB DEVOTED TO SERVING EAST GREENSBORO
Krishna Kasibhatla, interim chair of the Business and Economics department at Bennett College, is one of the newest members of what organizers hope will become Greensboro's newest Rotary Club. But his association with Rotary International goes way back.
As a student in his native India, Kasibhatla visited the United States through one of the 95-year-old service organization's exchange programs. Through that visit, he gained admission to Princeton University, which led to a brand new life in this country.
Now he's part of a small group of Rotarians seeking to make a contribution to the new life that's stirring in east Greensboro. …
Business Week
Copyright 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
May 29, 2000HEADLINE: IS THE FED FIGHTING A PHANTOM MENACE?
BYLINE: By Charles J. Whalen in New YorkHIGHLIGHT: A new study says no indicator is much good at predicting the inflation rate
With unemployment at a 30-year low, it seemed only natural for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates on May 16. Conventional wisdom says a tight labor market forces companies to pay more for scarce labor, and this leads to higher prices. Unemployment is ''the classic and most watched indicator'' of inflation, says Jonas D.M. Fisher, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
But a new study by the New York Fed throws cold water on this widely accepted theory. It finds that inflation cannot be predicted from current unemployment rates. Some 85% of the time, according to the study, taking unemployment into account produces worse forecasts than simply assuming inflation will continue on its current path. And that's not all. Other widely followed indicators of inflation do little better (table). This suggests the Fed's forecasting ability is far weaker than many people believe -- and there's at least a chance the Fed is waging war against a phantom inflation menace.
The study, The Unreliability of Inflation Indicators, cannot be dismissed lightly. Its three authors are Stephen G. Cecchetti, an Ohio State University professor and longtime inflation hawk who is a former research director of the New York Fed; Rita S. Chu, a New York University graduate student who used to work at the Fed; and Charles Steindel, a senior vice-president for research at the New York Fed. …
Cecchetti, Chu, and Steindel note that their study concerns indicators used individually, and they suggest it might be easier to forecast inflation using combinations of indicators. James H. Stock of Harvard University and Mark W. Watson of Princeton University, for instance, have used historical inflation data to generate a predictor incorporating more than 160 indicators. But it's still not clear that the composite is consistently much better than single indicators. ''We're still in the research and development and testing phases,'' Stock says. …
The Guardian (London)Copyright 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited
May 29, 2000HEADLINE: Brown's olive branch to Oxbridge;
Extra money earmarked for talent -spotting teams to prevent top students slipping through the net
BYLINE: Michael White and Will WoodwardGordon Brown will offer Britain's elite universities - not just Oxbridge - an olive branch in his midsummer spending review when he gives them extra funds to create talent-spotting teams to prevent exceptional students from poor backgrounds slipping through the net.
Ministers are adamant that they are not backing down from the Brown-led campaign against educational privilege in the face of widespread criticism and charges of 'class warfare". John Prescott and David Blunkett will join the fray this week.
But some have been troubled by the chancellor's tone when he cited the Tyneside sixth-former Laura Spence's 'scandalous" problems with admission to Oxford without knowing all the details. …
Despite persistent pressure, most of Britain's top 10 universities fail to find the best students from all social classes, ministers and officials stress.
Their US equivalents, Ivy League colleges such as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Yale, devote up to 50 staff to talent-spotting and recruiting the ablest pupils, especially the poorest.
Mr Brown has told colleagues that in the 25 years he has known Harvard it has turned from being a 'finishing school for elites' into a university that is genuinely open for all. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 29, 2000, MondayNAME: Robert L. Johnson
HEADLINE: PUBLIC LIVES;In the Balance: Maintaining Pride and Making a Deal
BYLINE: By STEVEN A. HOLMESDATELINE: WASHINGTON
ROBERT L. JOHNSON remembers well a scene from his early days in cable television. In a bar with a number of cable executives, he was, as usual, the only black person in the group. An executive, a man Mr. Johnson had known for years, told a tasteless joke about the Ku Klux Klan and the miniseries "Roots."
Reminiscing in his office at his company, BET Holdings Inc., Mr. Johnson's point in retelling the story was not its questionable humor. It was how as an African-American in the upper echelons of corporate America he often found himself confronted with a choice. Should he express his hurt or anger at racial slights? Or should he bury them for the sake of getting ahead?
"Being in business you swallow things that you don't like just because I'm trying to get this deal," he said. "So, O.K., fine. I'll laugh at your jokes.
"So sure, you swallow those kinds of things," he continued. "Sometimes it does go overboard and you've got to decide at what point do you draw the line, and say this is beyond deal-making; this is beyond trying to sell your product." …
That philosophy -- keep emotions in check, don't let issues of race get in the way of the deal -- has helped Mr. Johnson, 54, become one of the country's most successful black entrepreneurs, indeed one of the most successful business executives of any race. In the last 20 years he has used his business savvy and his ability to attract white investors with deep pockets to build Black Entertainment Television -- and later BET Holdings -- into a entertainment giant worth, he says, more than $2.5 billion.
He also used his corporate connections to place himself in the position to become one of the few African-Americans ever to own a commercial airline. As part of the proposed merger between United Airlines and US Airways, Mr. Johnson would acquire a spinoff of US Airways' operations -- including routes, planes and personnel -- at Reagan National Airport in Washington. …
That he can easily shrug off the criticism of black people and the slights of whites is a testament to what Mr. Johnson believes is his complete comfort and confidence in himself. His background of growing up in Freeport, Ill., a town that was about 90 percent white, attending the University of Illinois and Princeton University has made him comfortable dealing with whites. …
The Post and Courier
Copyright 2000 The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
May 29, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: District 45 candidates spar over Senate seniority issue
BYLINE: LINDA L. MEGGETT; Of The Post and CourierEducation, health care, economic development and the environment are the common denominators for state Reps. Curtis Inabinett and Clementa Pinckney who are competing for the Senate District 45 seat vacated by McKinley Washington Jr.
The two men differ in their philosophy regarding seniority in the Senate.
Pinckney, 26, contends that the person who gets elected has the potential to be in office a long time.
"The longer one stays in office, the more resources he can get to the community he represents," Pinckney said. His youth gives him that advantage, plus he has experience dealing with multiple issues and counties, he said. In House District 122, Pinckney is responsible for Beaufort, Hampton and Jasper counties. …
CLEMENTA PINCKNEY
Age: 26
Residence: RidgelandEducation: Bachelor of arts in business from Allen University, master's degree in public administration from the University of South Carolina, summer research fellow from Princeton University in public policy and international studies and currently a seminary student at Southern Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbia.
Career: Pastor at Mount Orr AME Church, Yonges Island
The Tampa Tribune
Copyright 2000 The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune
May 29, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: The great World War II Memorial will mark a century's defining event;
This Memorial Day weekend, Tom Hanks, star of "Saving Private Ryan," will appear in his second public service advertising campaign intended to encourage support for the National World War II Memorial.
With regard to the success of the first campaign, Hanks said, "It's been gratifying to see the way Americans have rallied to support this important memorial project. The World War II generation did nothing less than help save the world. They earned their place of honor on America's National Mall."
Hanks, of course, is right. World War II was the defining event of the 20th century. A memorial is fitting because it would be "a monument to the spirit, sacrifice, and commitment of the American people, to the common defense of the nation and to the broader causes of peace and freedom from tyranny throughout the world," as the memorial's Web site pronounces. …
Education will also be an important mission of the World War II Memorial. Significantly and unfortunately, many young Americans have little knowledge of the nation's previous struggles against foreign enemies. Although Franklin D. Roosevelt defined Dec. 7, 1941, as "a date which will live in infamy," less than half of all students interviewed at Harvard, Stanford and Princeton universities in 1998 connected that date with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. …
The Times-Picayune
Copyright 2000 The Times-Picayune Publishing Co.
May 29, 2000 MondayHEADLINE: MORAL BEHAVIOR IN COMBAT: IS IT AN OXYMORON?;
2 REPORTED INCIDENTS STIR SECOND-GUESSINGBYLINE: By David Wood (c) 2000, Newhouse News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTONThe story, a cruel morality play, will haunt him forever.
On a combat sweep through rural hamlets of South Vietnam, U.S. Marines accidentally wounded a 4-year-old child, torn by shrapnel from a hand grenade.
James Webb, then a 23-year-old company commander: "My medic came up to me carrying the boy in his arms and said, 'Skipper, we gotta get this kid medevacked in 20 minutes or he's gonna die.' "
Daylight fading into deadly shadow. Webb, holding two radio mikes, struggling to get his men safe for the night. Knowing he cannot divert a medical evacuation chopper that's ferrying desperately wounded Marines. A civilian, even a child, is a lower priority.
"I said, 'Doc, I just can't do that.' And he said, 'OK, fine, then you watch him die.' And he put that child down on an ammo box in front of me. ... While I was working, I was watching this little kid die.
"And in half an hour he was dead." …
"It's easy to second-guess somebody when you're sitting at home," said Ralph Peters, an author and strategist who retired as an Army colonel last year.
"This is not a matter of condoning 'war crimes,' " Peters said. "It's a matter of understanding the fundamental speed, confusion, terror and eruptive violence of warfare. An army should be as moral as practical, but to me, war is by its very nature a fundamentally immoral act. So this is a matter of degrees, not absolutes."
Even so, soldier and civilian alike have a responsibility to work toward a resolution or at least a common understanding, argues antiwar activist and philosopher Michael Walzer, who teaches at Princeton University. …
"It's easy to opt out" of the debate, but "only the wicked and the simple make the attempt," Walzer wrote in his landmark study, "Just and Unjust Wars."
But even he concedes that "the world of war is not a fully comprehensible, let alone a morally satisfactory, place."
The Washington Times
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
May 29, 2000, Monday, Final EditionHEADLINE: Michael Vatis;
Invasions keep the nation's top cyber cop on his toes
BYLINE: William Glanz; THE WASHINGTON TIMESMichael Vatis has had a busy year.
As director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, Mr. Vatis is the government's top cyber cop. The wave of attacks this year - from the e-mail-delivered "ILOVEYOU" virus to the denial of service attacks in February that clogged networks with requests for information - have kept him hopping.
Q: Do you think the attacks have undermined the public's faith in the Web and made people hesitate before giving an electronic commerce site their credit card number?
A: I think those high-profile attacks and other instances of computer crime that we've seen over the last year can have the affect of undermining people's confidence in security on the Internet and make them more reluctant to engage in e-commerce.
That's a powerful reason why companies should really demand more security in the software they use.
Q: Do e-commerce companies take enough security measures to protect themselves and consumers?
A: I think overall it's important that e-commerce sites and consumers demand better security. It's accepted now that security has been an afterthought when it comes to hardware and software because there's been a rush to market with new features and things that are attractive to consumers without paying much attention to security. . . . But I think people are realizing that either their privacy is in jeopardy, their business operations are in jeopardy or even their money may be in jeopardy if they don't pay attention to security. …
SELF-PORTRAIT
Michael Vatis, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Infrastructure Protection Center
AGE: 36
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree, 1985, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; doctorate in law, 1988, Harvard Law School
EXPERIENCE: 1998 to present - director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center; 1994-1998 - associate deputy attorney general Department of Justice and deputy director of the executive office of national security advising the attorney general on national security; 1993 - special counsel Department of Defense; 1990-1993 - private law practice
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
May 28, 2000,HEADLINE: Attorney, associate professor new diversity assistant
DATELINE: MOSCOW, IdahoThe University of Idaho has selected Raul M. Sanchez as the new special assistant to the president for human rights and diversity.
Sanchez is an attorney, associate professor and longtime human rights advocate.
"Raul Sanchez is impressive and quite capable of providing strong leadership on diversity issues not only for the university but throughout Idaho," said University of Idaho President Bob Hoover.
Hoover added that Sanchez's position gives the university a single point person for the school's diversity initiatives as well as someone whose sole job is to pay attention to issues of diversity.
Sanchez assumes his new position July 1. He currently serves as an associate professor of law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. He started and directs the Inter-American Legal Studies Program there.
Sanchez holds a bachelor's from Princeton University, a master's degree from Stanford and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Albuquerque Journal
Copyright 2000 Albuquerque Journal
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: STATE SENATE RACES
Candidates for the New Mexico State Senate in contested primary races on June 6DISTRICT 21
Victor R.Marshall
PARTY: Republican
HOMETOWN: Albuquerque
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: June 5, 1947, New York
EDUCATION: Princeton University, B.A. magna cum laude, 1969; Harvard Law School, J.D., 1975
OCCUPATION: Attorney, Victor R. Marshall & Associates, P.C.
POLITICAL/GOVERNMENT EXPERIENCE: Chairman, Open Spaces Task Force for Sandia Foothills acquisition; state senator, District 21, from 1984 to 1992; co-chairman Judiciary Committee; sponsored adult seat-belt bill, merit selection of judges, DWI penalties, child-support enforcement, Natural Lands Protection Act1. Please summarize your legislative priorities.
Restoring integrity to the Legislature by selecting new president pro tem and speaker of the House
Empowering parents and children to reform their schools through every kind of educational choice: vouchers, charter schools, magnet schools, etc.
Closing the casinos, which are wrecking families and bleeding our local economy.
Allowing the people to vote on all bond issues, to stop the secret growth of government debt . …
Asheville Citizen-Times (Asheville, NC)
Copyright 2000 Multimedia Publishing of North Carolina, Inc.
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: WOLFE'S WORKS IMPRINTED ON LITERARY LANDSCAPE
BYLINE: Rob Neufeld SPECIAL TO THE CITIZEN-TIMES"All of Thomas Wolfe's huge novels are still in print today," Ted Mitchell, author of the acclaimed biography, "Thomas Wolfe: A Writer's Life," affirms, "despite the fact that publishers think slim novels are trendy and academics second guess his choice of literary form."
Approaching the 100th anniversary of the great Asheville writer's birth, and self-consciously immersed in the new millennium, readers young and old are alerted to reevaluate Wolfe's impact. Along these lines, Mitchell will present "Knowing Wolfe: A Discussion of His Work and the Mark He Made" at Pack Memorial Library June 4.
"When the poets die, the death of the nation is assured," Wolfe once stated, and Mitchell quotes him to emphasize how today's romance with technology has temporarily choked out the appreciation of a humanized, poetic diction. As site interpreter for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Mitchell encounters "the devout and the devoted" enthusiasts, but he realizes that many readers dismiss Wolfe as a romantic, focussing on such Wolfian utterances as: "O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." (Prelude to "Look Homeward, Angel")
Yet, students who spoke with Mitchell at Princeton University in March after his presentation, "Thomas Wolfe in the 21st Century," represent a new generation of Wolfe disciples. "They revered Wolfe as a prose Walt Whitman," Mitchell recounts.
More than Wolfe's lyricism, his realism inspired an impressive roll call of writers who, as youths, had not realized that the common affairs of their families and towns provided material worthy of great literature. Contemporary German critics called Wolfe "the American Homer." William Styron, Pat Conroy and Jack Kerouac, among others, owed their literary existence to him. James Jones, author of "From Here to Eternity," said in an interview: "Reading about that crazy boy and his crazy family and his drunken father and his miserly mother is so like myself and my own family that I discovered I'd been a writer all along without really having realized it." …
The Jerusalem Post
Copyright 2000 The Jerusalem Post
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Polishing up your genetic inheritance
BYLINE: Judy Siegel-ItzkovichHIGHLIGHT:
The tragic death of a young American from gene therapy will not hinder explosive development of the field over the next few years, US experts told a recent symposium in Jerusalem. Judy Siegel-Itzkovich reports
The death last September of an Arizona teenager resulting directly from gene therapy sent shock waves through the gene-research community. Some were concerned that this first death might halt extensive research in the field - some 400 clinical trials worldwide aimed at curing a variety of diseases.
Eighteen year-old Jesse Gelsinger suffered from a mild form of a rare metabolic disease which impairs the body's ability to rid itself of ammonia. He was given an infusion of genetically engineered viruses to replace a defective gene preventing him from producing a necessary enzyme.
Jesse himself was healthy. He took medication for his condition - diagnosed when he was two - and avoided protein foods. He volunteered for gene therapy in the hope that the research would discover a cure for others more severely afflicted.
But his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died four days after the infusion. An autopsy directly linked his organ failure to the gene therapy. US federal officials sent letters to more than 100 scientists conducting clinical trials with similar viruses asking them to report any evidence of trouble.
Despite the heartbreaking incident, US geneticists and gene therapists who attended a recent Hebrew University symposium on "Genetics and its Impact on Society" were optimistic that Jesse's case, however tragic, would not deter scientists and physicians from developing and using gene therapy.
THE EVENT, open to the public, drew hundreds to Jerusalem's Wise Auditorium on the HU's Givat Ram campus. To help mark its 75th anniversary, the university brought in five genetics research leaders: Harvard University gene therapy expert Prof. Richard Mulligan; Stanford University human genome project expert Prof. David Cox; Cornell University plant genetics expert Prof. Charles Arntzen; University of California geneticist Prof. Paul Rabinow; and Lancaster University fertility and cloning expert Dr. Sara Franklin.
Princeton University's president, Prof. Harold Shapiro, who is a bioethics expert … rather than a scientist, also presented his views on biological manipulation. …
Shapiro, who declared he was speaking as a bioethicist and not as a scientist, explained the general public's anxiety about gene therapy and genetic food engineering.
"Change is naturally accompanied by high anxiety... Laymen who oppose these things are not Luddites who are against change as a matter of principle," he said; they are less confident in others' competence to do things properly, and they're not sure where science is headed.
In conclusion, Shapiro urged scientists to reach the general public through an informed media, help the public deal with their anxiety, and explain the need for public support for research.
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: The Second Great Wave;
Hispanic Immigrants Are Changing the Face of Central JerseyBYLINE: By RICHARD BRAND
DATELINE: PRINCETONIT is 6:30 p.m., and there isn't an empty seat at St. Paul's Catholic Church at the church's busiest service on the holiest day of the year. Father Javiar Diaz, reading from a Bible written in Spanish, gives the Easter Mass while hymns are accompanied by Mexican guitars.
The parishioners -- many dressed in worn jeans and mud-stained sweatshirts -- line the pews at the stolid brick church on Nassau Street. They come from places like Oaxaca, Mexico; Santa Rosa, Guatemala; and Havana, Cuba.
There weren't always standing-room-only crowds at St. Paul's. Two years ago, only a third of the pews were filled on Easter Sunday. And less than a decade ago, there was no Spanish-language Mass at all.
"This is a growing community, one with many needs," Father Diaz said. "They are people who work very much and make very little. The majority don't have social security or medical security. Yet they pay their taxes, because they have enough problems in their lives." …
The crowd at the service is just one reflection of the recent flood of Hispanic immigrants to central New Jersey, one that immigration experts say rivals the great wave of European migration of the late 19th century. And Newark International Airport, where about 55,423 international flights land each year, has replaced Ellis Island as the port of entry. …
Not all of New Jersey's newest Hispanic immigrants came merely to tap the employment opportunities on the bottom rung of the ladder. To be sure, engineers, academics and entrepreneurs make a significant portion of the new immigrants, especially since the immigration agency now gives preference to those with high-tech skills.
A handful of New Jersey companies recruit abroad, and a growing number of Latin American-born people with doctorates are streaming into the New Jersey work force after graduating from Rutgers and Princeton Universities. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: It's Hard to Predict What Admissions Office Wants Each Year
BYLINE: By ADAM BOWLESARE you a high school senior who can debate the pros and cons of such controversial issues as cloning? Then Georgetown University wants you. Can you deftly handle the basketball at point guard? Try Princeton University. Or maybe soccer is your game. In that case, head to Dartmouth College.
Those are the perceptions many families have as they try to find a way that will make their children stand out in this bumper year of high schools seniors nationwide, said Matthew Greene, a senior associate for Howard Greene and Associates, an education consulting company in Westport and New York City.
Problem is it doesn't quite work that way. For all college admissions officers at higher universities care, it could be stamp collecting that gets you "in." …
".... What we counsel families to do is for students to pursue their passions. Colleges are looking for talented academic students who have one or two clearly defined passions." …
For Harvard University in Massachusetts, squash and crew have been traditional targets, he said Yale University in New Haven also prizes rowing athletes. At Princeton University in New Jersey, it has been basketball and lacrosse. And at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, he said, soccer and football players seem to gain an advantage over other equally academic students. …
Portland Press Herald
Copyright 2000 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
May 28, 2000, SundayGRADUATIONS
BYLINE: From staff reportsBowdoin College
BRUNSWICK --- Bowdoin College, Maine's oldest college, awarded 410 bachelor of arts degrees Saturday during its 195th commencement.
In keeping with a Bowdoin tradition dating to 1806, graduating seniors delivered the keynote addresses.
Naeem Ahmed of Islamabad, Pakistan, winner of the Goodwin Commencement Prize, talked about "The Debt of our Degrees." Gretchen Selcke of Minnetonka, Minn., winner of the Class of 1868 Prize, talked about "Bowdoin Knowledge: Reading, Love and the Pointer Sisters."
During the ceremony, Bowdoin awarded honorary degrees to Phyllis Pray Bober, a Maine native and professor of art at Bryn Mawr College; Robert Fagles, professor of comparative literature at Princeton University; Peter Gomes, professor at Harvard University and minister of Harvard's Memorial Church; and Bernard Osher, businessman, philanthropist and Bowdoin alumnus.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 28, 2000, SUNDAYHEADLINE: PUTTING MUSCLE BEHIND NEW LAW
BYLINE: JAMES AHEARNCOOKOUTS and shore outings await this holiday weekend, but I propose to distract you with some thoughts on the Unfunded Mandates Amendment to the New Jersey Constitution.
Do I hear cries of"No way, Jose"? You doubt that even so stirring a topic could keep you from chili dogs or a stroll on a boardwalk?
Well, let's give it a shot.
Our story begins five years ago, when the Legislature and the electorate amended the Constitution to invalidate certain state directives, whether laws or regulations. The amendment sought to block mandates requiring local governments to do things costing money, without providing state funds to pay for them.
The amendment, sought by Republicans for years, proved to be popular. In a referendum, the voters approved it by a margin of nearly 2-to-1.
The amendment was not self-enforcing. Somebody, or some panel of somebodies, would have to decide which directives would result in additional expenditures by counties, school boards, or municipalities, and were therefore subject to invalidation.
For good and sufficient reasons, the Republican-controlled Legislature chose not to vest this power in the state Supreme Court. The Legislature set up a new agency for this task, a Council on Local Mandates.
It is a strange beast. It consists of nine members, appointed by leaders of all three branches of the state government. The governor appoints four; the Senate president, Assembly speaker, Senate minority leader, and Assembly minority leader appoint one each, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court appoints one. Decisions of the council are
not subject to court review. Whatever the council decides, sticks. …
The membership is a curious amalgam of law, business, academia, and politics, with two retired judges, Robert Clifford of the Supreme Court and George Farrell III of the Superior Court; two former mayors, Dominick Crincoli of Livingston and Janet Whitman of Summit; Sherine El-Abd of Edison, executive director of the Egyptian American Business Association; Karen Jezierny, assistant dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and two lawyers, Ronald Riccio of Little Silver, former dean of the Seton Hall Law School, and Timothy Karcher of
Princeton, who did not join in the decision. I think we will be hearing more from them.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 28, 2000, SUNDAYHEADLINE: SPIN CITY;
ULTIMATE FRISBEE IS TAKING OFF INHIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND, OF COURSE, THE LOCALPARKBYLINE: TIMOTHY D. MAY, Staff Writer
"NICE HAMMER, TOAST!"It's 6:30 on a breezy spring evening at Brookdale Park in Bloomfield, and the gang of after-work Frisbee fanatics who meet here each week is just starting to heave disks, or in Toast's case, to hammer.
A hammer is an overhand toss in which the Frisbee flies upside down. And Toast, a 29-year-old educational consultant from Teaneck who declined to reveal his real name, had just completed a lovely such pass,
zipping the disk downfield to connect with a teammate and set up a score. …
Welcome to the world of Ultimate Frisbee, Ultimate for short, a laid-back game invented in New Jersey by a bunch of high school students that has grown into an organized and increasingly popular international sport. …
The sport also is strong at the college level, with Princeton, Rutgers, and Drew universities fielding clubs that compete in organized competitions against other schools and in tournaments. …
PHOTO 4 - Connie Lee of Belleville, above, played on Princeton's first women's Ultimate team in 1992.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 2000 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
May 28, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Ex-lawyer charged with theft;
Personal injury lawyer Jeffrey Dalrymple is accused of stealing $52,000 from his clients.
BYLINE: Robert Eckhart STAFF WRITERPersonal injury lawyer Jeffrey Dalrymple, whom the Florida Bar Association has accused of stealing $52,000 from his clients, was arrested Friday on a warrant for grand theft.
Dalrymple, whose Port Charlotte law practice folded about a year ago, settled his clients' cases out of court without telling them and kept the money for himself, according to the bar association.
Last October, the Princeton University graduate resigned from the bar association under pressure because of accusations that he stole the money and abandoned 11 clients by allowing their cases to expire in the court system.
Dalrymple, who was living in Fort Myers, remained in the Charlotte County jail on Saturday in lieu of $50,000 bail.
After his Port Charlotte law practice folded, Dalrymple took a job as a public defender in Lee County but was fired after a few months.
He now works in construction, according to the arrest report. He filed paperwork Friday asking for a public defender to represent him. …
The Sunday Herald
Copyright 2000 Scottish Media Newspapers Limited
May 28, 2000HEADLINE: 21st CENTURY FOX
BYLINE: Barry DidcockDavid Duchovny returned to his Scottish roots by visiting Edinburgh last week, leaving the USA speculating about his future in The X-Files. Barry Didcock asks whether the actor can swop television stardom for success in Hollywood
THE last time David Duchovny was in Scotland he was 10-years-old, just another American kid being dragged round the old country by a mother who had left her home near Aberdeen for a new life on another continent.
He couldn't have imagined that on his next visit, nearly 30 years later, he would be hobnobbing with royalty, attending a movie premiere wearing Ancient Hunting McFarlane and fielding questions about his new film between brief transatlantic chats with his movie star wife and continued speculation over his role in one of the most famous television shows on the planet.
Not without a little off-planet help, anyway.
Perhaps behind his habitually amused look and healthy Californian tan, the irony of it all has struck the Yale and Princeton-educated star of The X -Files. If it has, he doesn't say, although he will admit to feeling at ease in the land of his mother's birth. "Genetically half of me feels home," he says. "I don't know which half, but there's some kind of pull. My mother has always identified herself as being very Scottish and talked about it a lot so it is definitely a big part of my heritage."
Tall, muscular and wearing a blue shirt and sleek black trousers, Duchovny is certainly physically imposing and you can see where the "thinking woman's sex symbol" tag comes from. In his poise and carriage there's lingering proof of a sporting past which included a berth in the Princeton basketball team. The nose, in profile, is perhaps a little longer and more sharply defined than it looks on television, the hair more carefully placed, but we're talking fractions. What's most evident is how undifferent he looks from his on-screen character. There's more body movement, though - the hand on the chin is a favourite, showing off the unflashy watch and slim wedding band. And he likes to rock back in his chair and chuckle. And of course there's that gleeful little smirk. Always the smirk. …
The Associated Press
State & Local WireMay 27, 2000, Saturday
HEADLINE: Princeton journalists mark 100th anniversary of club
BYLINE: By RICHARD BRAND
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.Princeton University's Press Club, an organization of undergraduate journalists that counts former presidential press secretary Michael McCurry and New Yorker editor David Remnick among its alumni, celebrated its 100 anniversary Saturday.
"This is an extraordinary moment for journalism," McCurry told 100 Press Club alumni and students at the university's annual reunion. "Should you current members choose to go into journalism, you are going to be a part of redefining what journalism is in the Internet age, and that is an extraordinary opportunity."
McCurry, who graduated from Princeton in 1976, covered the campus for The Times of Trenton. He says that one of his most memorable assignments was to trail then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during her 1974 visit to campus.
"Dick Harwood, who was then the editor of The Trenton Times, he had somehow or other, perhaps from Deep Throat, been convinced that when Golda Meir was here at Princeton, someone was going to try to assassinate her," McCurry said. "And so I was given the assignment of literally following her around the entire time she was anywhere within a 25-mile radius of Trenton."
The Press Club was founded in 1900 as a way for campus correspondents to pass on their jobs when they graduated, and membership then was granted to the highest bidder. Today, the club runs a semester-long candidates period during which applicants must write 16 trial stories. At the end of the period, four members are inducted and assigned a newspaper. …
The Economist
Copyright 2000 The Economist Newspaper Ltd.
May 27, 2000HEADLINE: Some baseless speculations
HIGHLIGHT: Genes are not all there is to heredityBY THE middle of June, if the latest pronouncements are to be believed, a draft version of the human genome -- in other words a list, in order, of the 3 billion or so chemical bases that form the letters of the genetic message needed to assemble and run a human being -- will be complete. That will be both an end and a beginning. The end will be the list itself, although it will be subject to refinement and revision over the coming months and years. The beginning will be the task of interpreting it.
This will not be easy. Indeed, as the next points out, geneticists are having difficulty even agreeing how many genes the genome is likely to contain. But beyond the questions of how many genes there are, and what they all do, lies another: how much can their function be modified, and to what extent can those modifications be passed down the generations?
This is the realm of epigenetics, the science of how the activity of DNA can be altered semi-permanently, not by mutations in which the sequence of the bases is changed, but by other chemical processes. The importance of epigenetics is hotly debated. But if those who think it is important are right, it may lie at the heart of many differences between individuals and even between species, and may also be an important mechanism in disease. …
Epigenesis may even account for differences between species. In a study published in the May issue of Nature Genetics, researchers at Princeton University disrupted the epigenetic imprints on several mice genes by crossing two related strains of mice. These strains do not ordinarily mate with each other, and their hybrid offspring tend to show abnormal growth. Shirley Tilghman and her colleagues correlated this abnormal growth with disruptions of the methylation patterns on the hybrid offspring's genes. They hypothesise that epigenetic effects may be so dramatic that merely altering these imprints can create a new species.
The dominant theory of speciation is that it results from a slow accumulation of genetic mutations. But, as Dr Tilghman points out, some species emerge more rapidly than this hypothesis can explain. So the epigenetic hypothesis of speciation has an edge. Methylation, for instance, can turn off an entire gene instantly, which makes for much more radical change. This change could be radical enough to prevent the new strain from interbreeding with the old, signalling the birth of a new species. …
The National Journal
Copyright 2000 The National Journal, Inc.
May 27, 2000HEADLINE: Gone Are the Giants
BYLINE: Burt SolomonHIGHLIGHT:
Today in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, the nation seems to lack the larger-than-life figures who ruled the capital in earlier eras. Why?
Listen to the somber reflections of an eminent historian and statesman: "The ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity.... The best men do not go into politics.... Great men have not often been chosen Presidents, first because great men are rare in politics; secondly, because the method of choice may not bring them to the top; thirdly, because they are not, in quiet times, absolutely needed."
How could James Bryce, a professor of law at Oxford Universit y and later a British ambassador to the United States,
have possibly known of the presumptive American presidential nominees in 2000 when he penned The American Commonwealth in 1888? He knew that the Presidents between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, and again during the decades following the Civil War, had been-as he spelled it-"intellectual pigmies." Was he imagining Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a Republican who smirks while discussing his decision to send a murderer to her death, and Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat whose pandering meanderings on Elian Gonzalez suggest that he has no political
core? "They are underwhelming, aren't they?" says presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein of Princeton University. …
What's going on? Why have we entered the land of the pygmies-or, at least, of the absence of giants? It isn't just
coincidence, venerable Washington-watchers say. A lot of it is the times we're in. It's almost a cliche that it takes a great crisis to make a great President; in this lovely era of peace and prosperity, we're out of true crises-and we should thank our stars for it. …
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 27, 2000, SATURDAYHEADLINE: INVESTMENT BANKER GIVES PRINCETON $25M
COLUMN: BUSINESS REPORT
BYLINE: Compiled from Associated Press and Bloomberg News reports.DATELINE: PRINCETON
Investment banker Gerhard R. Andlinger, a 1952 graduate of Princeton University, has donated $25 million to his alma mater's anniversary campaign, helping the Ivy League school's fundraiser top the $1 billion mark.
Andlinger, founder of Andlinger & Co. Inc., a private investment and management firm in New York, serves on the advisory council for the university's Bendheim Center for Finance. "Princeton holds a very special place in my heart,"said Andlinger, a native of Austria. "I feel privileged to be able to give back to this great university and to the country that has offered me a welcoming home and a wealth of opportunity."
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 27, 2000, SATURDAYHEADLINE: ASSEMBLY BACKS CENTRAL JERSEY RAIL ROUTE
SOURCE: Wire services
BYLINE: KATHLEEN CANNON, The Associated Press
DATELINE: TRENTONOpinions are split on a proposed $400 million rail line through Monmouth, Ocean, and Middlesex counties. Some see it as a convenient way to beat the traffic in fast-growing central New Jersey, but others call it a dangerous boondoggle.
The project has languished for years, but was recently put on the fast track by NJ Transit officials who say they cannot improve local roads such as Route 9 fast enough to keep up with regional growth.
The answer to area congestion, backers say, is a commuter rail system linking northern Ocean County, western Monmouth County, and southern Middlesex County, where it would connect with the busy Northeast Corridor.
The state Assembly weighed in Thursday, voting, 43-23, to endorse a new central New Jersey rail project. But the Assembly vote did not designate a specific route. …
The Middlesex route would serve shore commuters who need to travel to Rutgers and Princeton universities or the jobs-rich Route 1 corridor, in addition to those eventually heading to New York, he said.
The Tennessean
Copyright 2000 The Tennessean
May 27, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: PROGRESSIVE THINKING RUNS STRONG IN MAINLINE CHURCHES, SURVEY SHOWS
BYLINE: TENNESSEAN NEWS SERVICES AND STAFF REPORTS
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.Religious people are more interested in progressive causes than conservative issues favored by the Religious Right, a new study by Princeton University says.
The survey of 5,603 adults found that most people sympathize with issues advocated by mainline Protestant denominations, despite declining membership in many of those church bodies.
Most people think churches should lead in advocating racial reconciliation, environmental protection and help for the poor, the poll said all issues that have been central to mainline churches for decades, Religion News Service reported.
"Mainline" church bodies include the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA) and Disciples of Christ.
"The perception that religious groups are really only interested in conservative issues is not true," said sociologist Robert Wuthnow, who led the study. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
May 26, 2000, Friday
HEADLINE: Business news in brief from around New Jersey
DATELINE: JERSEY CITY, N.J.Princeton, N.J. (AP) - Investment banker Gerhard R. Andlinger, a 1952 graduate of Princeton University, has donated $25 million to his alma mater's anniversary campaign, bringing the Ivy League school's fund-raiser past the $1 billion mark.
Andlinger, founder of Andlinger & Co. Inc., a private investment and management firm in New York, serves on the advisory council for the university's Bendheim Center for Finance.
"Princeton holds a very special place in my heart," said Andlinger, a native of Austria. "I feel privileged to be able to give back to this great university and to the country that has offered me a welcoming home and a wealth of opportunity."
The campaign, which ends on June 30, is raising funds to launch interdisciplinary programs in the natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities. It will also support teaching and research programs and enhance campus life.
Business Wire
Copyright 2000 Business Wire, Inc.
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Six Named Professor At Harvard Law School
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 26, 2000Harvard Law School has appointed six persons to the faculty, the largest addition of new faculty members during Robert Clark's Deanship, which began in 1989. Two received lateral appointments to professorships; the other four are new appointments to assistant professorships.
The appointments will take effect on July 1, 2000, and will increase the size of the permanent faculty to 80, an all-time high.
"These six additions to the faculty will allow the School to expand the curriculum to cover important areas of the law, improve the student-faculty ratio, further diversify the faculty, and strengthen the faculty in the wake of the untimely deaths this spring of three beloved professors," said Dean Robert Clark.
The new faculty are:
- Legal historian Kenneth Mack, a specialist in the history of African-American civil rights lawyers, has been named Assistant Professor. He is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Princeton University. Mack's publications include "Law, Society, Identity and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875-1905," Law and Social Inquiry.
The London Free Press
Copyright 2000 Sun Media Corporation
May 26, 2000, FridaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: BUILDING THE BRIDGE BETWEEN SCIENCE, THEOLOGY
BYLINE: RORY LEISHMAN, LONDON FREELANCE WRITERHow can we know the difference between right and wrong? Don't ask a scientist for an authoritative answer.
Writing in Free Inquiry, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism, Richard Dawkins, the eminent Oxford biologist, states: "'What is right and what is wrong?' is a genuinely difficult question that science certainly cannot answer."
In Dawkins's opinion, philosophy also offers no answer. "Given a moral premise or a priori moral belief," he says, "the important and rigorous discipline of secular moral philosophy can pursue scientific or logical modes of reasoning to point up hidden implications of such beliefs, and hidden inconsistencies between them. But the absolute moral premises themselves must come from elsewhere, presumably from unargued conviction."
Unargued conviction? What about moral theology? For Dawkins, this option is out of the question. In his influential book, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, he contends the existence of God is a scientifically unnecessary and absurd hypothesis.
In brief, he argues that unlike a man-made watch, life is manifestly not a product of intelligent design. Instead, he maintains the Darwinian theory of evolution has conclusively established that all life on Earth, including human life, has spontaneously evolved over the past three billion years through a combination of chance and necessity. …
On all these points, the great majority of scientists and mathematicians agree. However, there are some notable exceptions. One of them is William Dembsky, a prominent intelligent design theorist who holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Illinois.
In his latest book, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, Dembsky argues the theory of evolution as propounded by dogmatists like Dawkins is implausible because nothing so complex as a single cell could conceivably have evolved over so short a period of geological time as a mere three billion years.
Dembsky's work has been endorsed by Michael Behe of Lehigh University and Robert Kaita of Princeton University. …
The Morning Call (Allentown)
Copyright 2000 The Morning Call, Inc.
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: KRUM TOP SOCCER SCHOLAR
BYLINE: ANDRE WILLIAMS; The Morning CallAn all-star career for Moravian Academy senior Katie Krum came to a disappointing end when the Lions lost to Catasauqua in the first round of the District 11 girls soccer playoffs.
But the Princeton University-bound Krum had her disappointment replaced with joy on Sunday when she was named the recipient of the 2000 Lehigh Valley Girls Soccer Scholar Athlete award.
Krum was selected over 25 other girls soccer players.
'I didn't expect to win it," Krum said. 'It's a great honor because it's more than just soccer. I'm getting recognition for all that I've done."
Krum really excelled on the field, collecting 20 goals this season and 56 goals and 32 assists in her scholastic career. …
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 2000 The Providence Journal Company
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Acclaimed architect to design RISD Center
BYLINE: BILL VAN SICLEN; Journal Arts WriterThe building, which will serve as a focal point for the East Side campus, will be built behind the school's museum and across the street from the RISD Auditorium.
PROVIDENCE - The Rhode Island School of Design has selected Rafael Moneo, an internationally acclaimed Spanish architect and winner of the 1996 Pritzker Architecture Prize, to design a new campus center on South Main Street. The new center will be built directly behind the RISD Museum and across the street from the RISD Auditorium.
The roughly half-acre site is currently a parking lot.
"We're very pleased to have an architect of Rafael Moneo's caliber working at RISD," said school President Roger Mandle. "We believe that his artistic vision and creative problem-solving will result in a building that will strengthen the college's critical role in 21st-century art and design." …
Though most of his work has been done in Europe, Moneo is no stranger to the United States. From 1985 to 1990, he was chairman of the architecture department at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He's also taught at Princeton University in New Jersey, Tulane University in Louisiana and Cooper Union in New York City. …
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 2000 The Providence Journal Company
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Gaining Access - Local Internet firm sold for $22.5 million
BYLINE: RUSSELL GARLAND; Journal Staff WriterPROVIDENCE - A dot-com company started by a Brown University graduate student a year ago is being acquired by NetZero, the largest provider of free Internet access, in a deal worth $22.5 million.
NetZero (NZRO:Nasdaq) will issue 2.5 million shares of its common stock and pay $2.6 million in cash to Simpli.com, founded by 26-year-old Jeffrey M. Stibel, the two companies said yesterday.
NetZero stock was $7.94 a share when the Nasdaq market closed at 4 p.m., down 44 cents. At that price, 2.5 million shares are worth $19.9 million.
Simpli, which has 35 full-and part-time employees, will remain in Providence as a wholly owned subsidiary of NetZero. The Rhode Island company has developed technology to help users focus their Web searches.
Based in Westlake Village, Calif., NetZero was launched in October 1998 and has about four million users. Its stock has gone as high as $40 a share since the company went public last fall. It has dropped substantially in recent months along with many other technology stocks. …
Most of the people involved in the company are from Brown, MIT and Princeton University. They include James A. Anderson, vice president and chief scientist, who took a leave as head of Brown's department of cognitive and linguistic sciences. ….
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
Copyright 2000 The Hearst Corporation
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Wrestling champion takes a hold on life
BYLINE: ALAN HART; Staff writerHIGHLIGHT: Glens Falls At a clinic, Dan Russell speaks of lessons from the sport
Dan Russell's roots are firmly embedded in the state of Oregon, but the personable four-time NCAA wrestling champion expressed a great admiration for the Capital Region of upstate New York and its rich wrestling tradition last week when he appeared as a speaker and gave a clinic for area youngsters at Glens Falls High School.
''It's great to be in this neck of the woods. It's a great wrestling area and it has produced some of the sport's finest people,'' Russell said in a private interview before addressing more than 60 boys -- many from Saratoga County schools -- during his three-hour clinic.
Russell, who has a shaved head and neatly trimmed mustache and beard these days, smiled and pointed over at the other side of the gym to where stocky Joe DeMeo, one of the most recognizable men in the sport, was standing and talking to one of the boys attending the clinic.
''Coach DeMeo is just a great guy. He and I have coached together on various teams all over the world; I coached with him just last summer at the Pan-Am Games. Then there's (1984 Olympic gold medalist) Jeff Blatnick, Shawn Sheldon, Ike Anderson, Andy Seras ... just so many excellent wrestlers and fine people in the sport who come from around here. I'm proud to have been asked to speak here.'' …
Judging from the enthusiastic reaction of the many young wrestlers who attended his clinic, Russell made a lot more friends in his visit here. Parker at mat clinic: Still on wrestling, former state champion Greg Parker of Shenendehowa High and Princeton University is one of the many talented clinicians and speakers scheduled to appear at the ATWA Division I Wrestling Camp this summer. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
May 26, 2000HEADLINE: Princeton admits 12.2 percent of freshman applicants, increase from last year
BYLINE: By Cason Crosby, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Princeton University admitted 12.2 percent of undergraduate applicants this year -- 1,670 of 13,654 -- a slightly higher acceptance rate than last year's 11.3 percent.
For the first time in University history, men and women both received 50 percent of the admission offers, Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon said. Minorities made up 35 percent of the acceptances, slightly higher than last year's 33-percent figure.
Thirty-four percent of the Class of 2004 was admitted through the early decision process in December.
Hargadon offered several explanations for this year's higher acceptance rate. "Overall, last year we had an unusually large group who applied," he said, noting that the University received a record 14,874 applications last year.
Hargadon said the slightly lower number of applications the University received this year is not a source of concern. "None of us really know why applicant pools really bounce around," he noted.
Despite fewer applications, the University still had to turn away many talented high school students, Hargadon said.
"It's far too many. We're just turning down all types of good kids," he said. "When you're starting with a large group, there's some people in there who end up quite advanced in one or another field."
Hargadon said another reason for last year's higher selectivity rate is that the University had an especially limited number of spaces available for the Class of 2003 because this year's sophomore class is unusually large. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
May 26, 2000HEADLINE: Students question Princeton's ability to draw minority applicants
BYLINE: By Kate Criner, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Deciding on a college often means lists of pros and cons, exhaustive campus visits and long conversations with guidance counselors. And for minority students, an assortment of additional factors are often considered, ranging from social options to curriculum choices.
But Ashley Adams '02 made her final decision in a few seconds, picking out of a hat filled with names of prestigious colleges.
And Princeton lucked out.
"If I had been more systematic about it, I would have given more weight to the fact that other Ivy League schools, like Harvard, actually sent a student -- an African-American -- to talk to our high school," Adams said, adding that she did not attend a predominantly African-American secondary school. "Princeton did none of this."
"Also, college counselors at many of the public schools in my town do not recommend even the most talented minority students apply to Princeton, because it hasn't made an effort to pull in minority students," Adams added.
And for the University -- whose trustees have pledged to seek additional minority representation in the student body, soon to be expanded by 500 -- that is a significant problem.
Adams, now an officer at the Third World Center, is not alone. Other minority group leaders said at a TWC governance board meeting in April that they are concerned about the University's ability to appeal to prospective minority students.
They also said they believe a lack of cooperation among minority groups may be limiting their ability to attract new members. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
May 26, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: The Ultimate Disc Drive
BYLINE: Elizabeth Kelleher , Special to The Washington PostTHROWING a Frisbee around, considered by most to be a leisurely activity, is intense competition to the 2,000 Ultimate players in Washington. On any given weekend, they're sprinting, diving, leaping, faking and "hucking" (throwing long) in order to advance a piece of plastic to an end zone for a point against an opposing team.
"In the '70s, there were a lot of people on the sidelines smoking doobies," says Johnny Labarge, a 32-year-old player for the Ultimate Frisbee team "Chop Shop." "Now people take the sport seriously."
Very seriously. In fact, Washington boasts the second-largest Ultimate scene in the United States, fielding more teams than any place except Boston.
From March to November, teams square off in a contest combining elements of basketball, soccer and football. In a seven-on-seven configuration, an offense moves the Frisbee--or "disc" to the initiated--down a 70-foot field by completing passes. A pass caught in an end zone scores a point and turns the disc over to the opposing team. While handling the disc, a player cannot run but can pivot and pass in any direction. His teammates "cut" in and out of field areas to help him get rid of the disc in 10 seconds. …
The game was invented by N.J. high school students in the late '60s. Purported math geeks who couldn't make a sports team, they managed their own recreation with a Frisbee in the school parking lot. As they devised their game, they borrowed from others to create what they considered the "ultimate" sport. They went on to Rutgers and Princeton universities, forming teams that played the first intercollegiate game in 1972. …
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Also in works: an airline for BET founder
Robert L. Johnson an important part of blockbuster deal
BYLINE: Rona Kobell
SOURCE: SUN STAFFRobert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, emerged yesterday as a key participant in United Airlines' $11.6 billion attempt to acquire US Airways.
Under the proposed deal, a new company - DC Air - would be formed with Johnson in charge.
Unlike what occurs with most start-up companies, he would be getting a ready-made airline, picking up most of US Airways' East Coast routes. That would give the new airline 122 daily departures to 44 cities and 3 million passengers a year.
DC Air would lease 37 planes from United Airlines, as well as flight and ground crews, thus creating a new airline with the experienceof a major carrier based at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. …
The ninth of 10 children born in Hickory, Miss., he scrubbed toilets and cleaned the assembly- line floor of a battery plant before enrolling into the University of Illinois. There, he met Sheila Crump, whom he married in the campus chapel in 1969, the year after he graduated.
Johnson enrolled in Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, graduating in 1972, then moved to Washington, where he joined the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He dabbled in politics before becoming a cable television lobbyist.
In 1979, he founded Black Entertainment Television as a two-hour-a week channel focused on programming for black Americans. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: PROFESSOR CONTESTS UNION ON ELECTION
BYLINE: By David Abel, Globe CorrespondentWoodrow Wilson quit the presidency of Princeton University to run for president of the United States, he once said, so he could get away from politics.
Pat Markunas, who ran for president of the union that represents 2,300 teachers and librarians in Massachusetts' nine state colleges, now knows what Wilson meant. The Salem State College psychology professor has learned the hard way that there's more to politics in academia than coffee klatches and professors pontificating. …
The Boston Herald
Copyright 2000 Boston Herald Inc.
May 25, 2000HEADLINE: Summer Olympics; Lincoln's Smyers ready to tri, tri again; Triathelete won't let injuries, cancer derail Olympic quest
BYLINE: By STEPHEN HARRIS
Karen Smyers has learned first-hand in recent months what it's like to attract the attention of the American media machine.
The 38-year-old triathlete from Lincoln long ago established herself as one of the all-time greats of her grueling sport, with a win at the prestigious Hawaii Ironman in 1995 and a variety of world championships in shorter swim-bike-run events.
But as Smyers prepares for the biggest race of her 16-year career - the U.S. Olympic trials Saturday morning in Irving, Texas, which will select the bulk of the team to compete in the inaugural Olympic triathlon at the Sydney Games - the focus of stories about her has been the terrible succession of injuries she's endured the past three years and her ongoing battle with thyroid cancer.
Just about anyone who watches television or reads newspapers and magazines probably has some inkling of Smyers' story. She estimates she's been interviewed by at least 50-60 major media outlets, including TV shows like "Good Morning America," "The Today Show," "CNN Newsstand," "Late Night with Peter Jennings," and NBC's "US Olympic Gold," by National Public Radio, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, USA Today and myriad other media outlets. …
There's no more pleasant and accommodating athlete than Smyers, who has somehow found the time for all the interviews - while training for the 1,500-meter swim, 25-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run event, and caring for her 2-year-old daughter, Jenna. But she wouldn't mind if some of the media spotlight focused elsewhere on her sport. …
SUBHEAD: The comeback kid
Rotten luck makes great press. One Sports Illustrated writer suggested if any Olympic triathlete is likely to get bitten by a shark in Syndey Harbor, Smyers, with her record, is a good bet.
A brief recap of Smyers' astounding run of setbacks:
-- Three years ago, the glass in a storm window she was removing shattered and severed her hamstring, forcing her to miss the 1997 racing season.
-- A little over a year later, biking on a narrow road in Sudbury, she was the victim of a potentially-deadly hit-and-run accident. Struck by a tractor trailer truck that never slowed down, Smyers suffered six broken ribs, a separated shoulder, bruised ribs and various cuts and bruises. …
-- Then there was the scariest setback of all, when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last September. In December - a few weeks after a second-place finish at the Ironman - she had surgery to remove her thyroid. Immediately after the Trials, she will have additional treatment aimed at wiping out any thyroid tissue or cancer cells that may remain.
Through it all, Smyers, a native of Wethersfield, Conn., and a former Princeton University swim team captain, somehow remained upbeat and optimistic. …
CBS News Transcripts
Copyright 2000 Burrelle's Information Services
SHOW: THE OSGOOD FILE (Various Times)
May 25, 2000, Thursday
TYPE: CommentaryHEADLINE: CLAY MATHEMATICS INSTITUTE GIVING AWAY $1 MILLION TO ANYONE WHO CAN SOLVE ANY ONE OF SEVEN MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS
REPORTERS: CHARLES OSGOOD
CHARLES OSGOOD reporting:
THE OSGOOD FILE, Charles Osgood on the CBS Radio Network.
If you can manage to get on the show and be chosen as a contestant, you can win $1 million on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" if you can answer 15 questions correctly. Some of these are difficult, some not so difficult. But without being chosen as a contestant anywhere, you can win $1 million if you can solve any one of seven admittedly difficult mathematical problems. These problems are so difficult, nobody has solved them yet. Andrew Wiles, the Princeton University math professor who cracked the 350-year-old conjecture known as Fermat's Last Theorem five years ago, says these seven mathematical problems stand out as great unresolved problems of the 20th century. We'll tell you about the problems after this. Stand by. …
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright 2000 The Commercial Appeal
May 25, 2000, THURSDAYHEADLINE: VALEDICTORIANS
JOHN CAPEN BROUGH
RIDGEWAY HIGH SCHOOLBrough, 18, is the son of Mary Claire and Terry Brough of Memphis.
-- School activities: Student Council - four years, president as junior and historian as senior; Junior Classical League - four years, president as senior, vice president as sophomore; Model United Nations, head delegate to University of Virginia and Rhodes College Model United Nations; Key Club - four years, secretary as junior; class officer - four years, president as freshman, vice president as sophomore; National Honor Society - three years; Mu Alpha Theta - three years; newspaper staff section editor as senior; Knowledge Bowl team member
-- Honors: National Merit Finalist; AP Scholar; American Legion Boys State delegate; National Latin Exam silver medalist; Coca-Cola Scholarship National Finalist; Elks Club Most Valuable Student National Finalist; Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership delegate; Tennessee Association of Student Council's Four-Star Council Award; National Alliance for Excellence Scholarship Finalist; William H. Sweet Award
-- Extracurricular activities: Salvation Army; Ronald McDonald House; St. Jude Children's Research Hospital; Bridge Builders; Youth Villages; American Heart Association
-- College/postgraduation plans: Princeton University, architecture
THE HINDU
Copyright 2000 FT Asia Intelligence Wire
May 25, 2000HEADLINE: The Hindu-Editorial: Ending the n-race
AFTER THEIR nuclear tests in May 1998, the Governments of India and Pakistan sought to placate international criticism by announcing that they did not intend conducting more tests and promising to control nuclear technology exports. They have also not yet deployed nuclear weapons. But, India and Pakistan have continued building up stocks of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons in a fissile material race with profound economic, environmental and health consequences for their people. Stopping this race would benefit both countries. Using newly available commercial satellite images they could verify a production freeze independently with considerable confidence. …
India and Pakistan would be better off if they stopped the production of fissile material for weapons purposes. However, the atmosphere of mistrust and tension between India and Pakistan, resulting from the May 1998 tests and the subsequent Kargil war, makes even starting talks a problem. Their limited nuclear weapons capabilities also put a premium on keeping secret the scale and operational characteristics of their facilities, severely restricting if not eliminating possible on-site inspections to assess compliance with any agreement. Rather than try to resolve these difficulties straight away, both India and Pakistan could follow the example of the other nuclear states and unilaterally declare a moratorium. …
Stopping fissile material production in South Asia, like any other arms control or disarmament measure, is a question of political commitment; the technical capability to verify such a commitment is available. A halt now to fissile material production for weapons in South Asia, announced unilaterally and independently verifiable by commercial satellite images, offers an opportunity for Pakistan and India to avoid the long, dangerous, and expensive race that the U.S. and the Soviet Union ran for 40 years. …
(The writers are physicists, the first two at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University, and the third at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University).Zia Mian, M. V. Ramana & Hui Zhang
Investor's Business Daily
Copyright 2000 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
May 25, 2000HEADLINE: BET's Johnson Looks To Soar Higher
BYLINE: By, Investor's Daily
Robert Johnson, who plans to launch America's first black-owned airline as a result of US Airways' proposed acquisition by the parent of United Airlines, is one of the country's most successful black entrepreneurs, with ties to the Hollywood and Washington power elites. As founder and CEO of Washington-based BET Holdings II, he runs a black-oriented entertainment empire, which includes the BET cable TV network, as well as Emerge magazine, Arabesque books and restaurant, film and radio concerns. Now he aims to emulate Britain's Richard Branson, who went from running an entertainment business to running an airline. …
Johnson, 53, graduated from the University of Illinois and holds a master's degree in international affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. …
The Morning Call (Allentown)
Copyright 2000 The Morning Call, Inc.
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: MACK TRUCKS NAMES GRADS TO RECEIVE SCHOLARSHIPS
BYLINE: The Morning CallSeven Lehigh Valley residents are among nine recent high school graduates selected to receive awards from the year 2000 Scholarship Program at Mack Trucks Inc. There were 48 applicants nationwide.
Valued at $1,000 per year for four years, the scholarships are awarded to the children of employees on the basis of academic achievement, leadership and extracurricular activities.
Recipients from the Lehigh Valley are:
Allen High School Kelly A. Gaydos, daughter of Anthony Gaydos of Mack's engineering development and test center. She plans to major in chemical engineering at Princeton University. …
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: MORNING EDITION
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: ROBERT JOHNSON, HEAD OF BET, MAY START NEW AIRLINE IN WAKE OF A UNITED-US AIRWAYS MERGER
ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
REPORTERS: SNIGDHA PRAKASHBOB EDWARDS, host:
The merger of United Airlines and US Airways has put a spotlight on 54-year-old cable television entrepreneur Robert Johnson. He's the chairman of Black Entertainment Television. If the United-US Airways deal goes through, Johnson will be chairman of a new airline called DC Air. It would be the first black-owned airline in the nation. United plans to sell Johnson most of the routes that US Airways now operates out of Washington's National Airport. NPR's Snigdha Prakash reports.
SNIGDHA PRAKASH reporting:
Robert Johnson didn't have a speaking role at the press conference yesterday where United Airlines and US Airways announced their deal. He was merely presented by Stephen Wolf, the chairman of US Airways.
Mr. STEPHEN WOLF (Chairman, US Airways): In talking about Bob Johnson, I think of two words. I think of leadership and energy. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure for me to introduce you to Bob Johnson. Bob, can you come up for just a second, please?
PRAKASH: The audience applauded and the press conference moved on. But Johnson is no bit player. He's really a key figure in United Airlines' strategy to get this deal past increasingly activist federal regulators. For the most part, United and US Airways fly along different axes of the country. United flies from east to west across the breadth of the US, while US Airways flies north-south, up and down the East Coast. That's why the deal makes so much sense for United. But the two do overlap in flights from Washington to the Northeast corridor. United is hoping to get around that problem by selling most of US Airways' Washington routes to Robert Johnson, who incidentally sits on the board of US Airways.
In a separate conference call, Johnson told reporters the new airline would offer low fares and could bring in revenues of as much as $500 million a year. He said DC Air would buy just a handful of small jets and turboprop planes from US Airways. Most of its fleet and many of its employees would be leased from United. What DC Air would own free and clear would be about 220 takeoff and landing slots at Reagan National Airport here for which Johnson would reportedly pay about $142 million. …
PRAKASH: So who is this man with the golden goose? His parents were farmers who moved north to get factory work in Illinois. Johnson was the first in his family to attend college. He then got a masters from Princeton University. …
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Author Jodi Picoult lived with Amish to research novel
BYLINE: By Thomas J. BradyJodi Picoult was astonished to learn that Amish youths join gangs.
"It just blew me away," said Picoult, who made the discovery when she spent a week living in two Amish households while researching her new novel, "Plain Truth" (Pocket Books, $24.95). The story centers on an 18-year-old Amish woman, Katie Fisher, who is accused of killing her newborn, and Ellie Hathaway, the non-Amish lawyer who comes from Philadelphia to defend her.
The Amish gangs aren't "like the Sharks and the Jets. Their names are the Ammos and the Happy Jacks, things like that," she said with a laugh during a recent interview. …
Picoult, who just turned 34, was born in Queens, N.Y., and reared in Nesconset, Long Island. She had her first two stories published i n Seventeen magazine after studying with Mary Morris at Princeton University.
"She went into labor while reading my thesis," she said with a laugh. Picoult later received a master's degree in education from Harvard. …
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: BET founder fully capable of running airline too, friends say
BYLINE: By William R. MacklinAs founder and chief executive officer of BET Holdings, parent company to Black Entertainment Television and a clutch of other companies worth an estimated $2 billion, Robert L. Johnson has proven that he can run with the big dogs.
The proposed acquisition of US Airways Group by UAL Corp. could test his ability to soar with the eagles.
Under one of the terms of the $11.6 billion deal, Johnson, 53, would assume control of some of UAL's Washington assets _ including prized take-off and landing slots at Reagan National Airport _ and use them to form the nation's only major black-owned airline. Johnson has already dubbed the proposed regional carrier DC Air.
While the deal revives old questions about Johnson's supposed tendency to take on too many projects and new ones about his ability to pilot a corporation in an industry where he has little practical experience, some friends and observers say the cable executive isn't likely to be shot down by a fresh challenge. …
Johnson, who holds a masters degree in international affairs from Princeton University, worked steadily, even cautiously, said Chappell, gaining experience as press secretary for former D.C. representative Walter Fauntroy, as a vice president with the National Cable Television Association; and in jobs with the Washington Urban League and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 2000 The Providence Journal Company
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Clintons in R.I. today for student's service
BYLINE: SCOTT MacKAY; Journal Staff WriterThe president and first lady are close friends of the parents of 21-year-old Casey Shearer, a Brown University student who died this week.
Since taking office in 1993, President Clinton has visited Rhode Island on six occasions, ranging from the political triumph of his 1996 reelection campaign to funeral services last year marking Sen. John H. Chafee's unexpected death.
Today, Mr. Clinton makes as private a visit to the state as a sitting president can. He will attend a service at Brown University to observe the death of 21-year-old Casey Shearer, a Brown student who was the son of two of the president's close friends. Shearer died Tuesday at Rhode Island Hospital after collapsing during a pickup basketball game last Friday. …
Casey Shearer, the youngest of three children, was known as a dedicated student who was passionate about writing, sports and sports broadcasting. A California native, he had many friends.
He wrote sports columns for the College Hill Independent, a weekly published jointly by Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. Some of his columns were funny and irreverent takes on college sports, such as one spoofing the mother of a Princeton University women's hockey player. Shearer reported that he and his friends had been taking "good-natured jabs" at Princeton players when the Princeton mother started to lecture him on sportsmanship being the "hallmark of the Ivy League." …
Roanoke Times & World News
Copyright 2000 The Roanoke Times & World News
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: HE ALWAYS BRINGS HIS 'A' GAME
BYLINE: RAY COX THE ROANOKE TIMESBruce Self's high school transcripts had more than enough merit to warrant a second look at any college admissions office in the country. The quality fastball that came with them was a bonus.
Self, possibly Grayson County High School's most well-rounded student and certainly its most accomplished academically, figures to be ultra busy next year when he embarks on his first year at Princeton University. Ivy League baseball will also be in his future.
Slackers don't tend to last long in the rigors of Princeton's classrooms. Fat fastballs don't stay around long in any college baseball park in America. Neither Slacker nor slowballer, Self should be fine.
His scholastic work ethic has made him the valedictorian of his class. The fastball, not to mention his curve, slider and bat, have made him the Blue Devils' best hope of a return to statewide baseball glory. …
The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
Copyright 2000 Spokane Spokesman-Review
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Handling culture clash leads to success
BYLINE: Robin J. Moody Staff writerWhen Claudine Richardson Fraser came to the Spokane Valley after living in Puerto Rico for eight years, it was no small adjustment.
''The biggest cultural shock is everyone here smiles, but they laugh really quiet,'' the 18-year-old University High School senior said.
''When someone in Puerto Rico laughs, everyone on the block knows it.''
Richardson Fraser moved here two years ago with her mother and stepfather from Caguagas, Puerto Rico, where she had attended private school since second grade.
While she loved the beaches and sunny weather, some memories of Puerto Rico aren't so sunny.
''I lived most of my life there, but it was hard,'' she said. ''I had to learn Spanish and English. The kids were really narrow-minded and they teased me because I'm black.'' …
Richardson Fraser also participated in debate and was able to travel to Princeton University in December with some members of her team for a tournament. …
DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
Copyright 2000 Denver Publishing Company
May 22, 2000, MondaySECTION: Editorial
HEADLINE: RANKING THE PRESIDENTS NOT JOB FOR FAINT OF HEART
BYLINE: By Charles RoosA recent New York Times / CBS poll indicates many people favor Vice President Al Gore's positions on issues, but don't "like" him as well as Texas Gov. George W. Bush and consider him a less "commanding" leader. So, as of now, they favor Bush 47 percent to 39 percent.
At this point, of course, no one knows how successful either might be. Voters make presidential choices in a mixture of moods: fearful, whimsical, patriotic, greedy, biased, hopeful, angry, desperate, whatever.
They've sometimes been pleasantly surprised and sometimes woefully disappointed. Yet even after a president has left office, many people still have no clear idea what he's accomplished, if anything.
Years ago some smartaleck came up with this mischievous view of presidental performance: Franklin Roosevelt proved a man could be president all his life, Harry Truman proved anyone could be president and Dwight Eisenhower proved we don't need a president at all.
Among this year's crop of political books, one in particular seems to me to offer a fresh and balanced view of the leadership provided by our 11 most recent presidents, beginning with Roosevelt. It's The Presidential Difference, written by Fred I. Greenstein, a presidential scholar, author and professor of politics at Princeton University (Free Press, $25).
Greenstein doesn't rate the 11 presidents (1, 2, 3, etc.) as others have done. …
Greenstein doesn't do that, leaving some questions unanswered, but if readers can forget the 1, 2, 3 business, they will find some of his judgments both surprising and provocative.
He measures the leadership performance of the presidents by six standards: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style and emotional intelligence.
Don't be turned off by the big words. He can talk plain, too. …
Chattanooga Times / Chattanooga Free Press
Copyright 2000 Chattanooga Publishing Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Advocate Bonnyman Crusades for Poor, Pushes TennCare Limits
BYLINE: LARRY HENRY Staff WriterIn a 1999 private memo to Gov. Don Sundquist, former TennCare Director Rusty Siebert identified what he believes to be the No. 1 problem with the state's ailing public health insurance program: Nashville attorney Gordon Bonnyman.
Mr. Siebert was concerned that Mr. Bonnyman's "relentless" legal pursuit of additional health benefits for poor and uninsured Tennesseans would bankrupt TennCare "forever."
"Gordon's actions need to be understood by every citizen, politician and soon-to-be-without health insurance person in our state," Mr. Siebert wrote. "I would be happy to help you in any way possible get this story to the citizens of Tennessee."
Who is Gordon Bonnyman?
To some, the 52-year-old Princeton and University of Tennessee Law School graduate is a crusading voice for the downtrodden, luckless and poor. He also is a fierce advocate for prisoner rights. His 1976 legal action against the state for overcrowded and outdated prisons led to 18 years of litigation and sweeping reform, including new prison construction.
"Gordon is a do-gooder," said state Sen. Ward Crutchfield, D-Chattanooga.
Others see the poverty-law expert in a different light.
"Gordon is the Energizer bunny of lawsuits," said former TennCare Director Brian Lapps.
Mr. Bonnyman recently took TennCare to court over the bureau's effort to reverify enrollees. He objected that many patients whose correct address is not in the TennCare computer or who are unable to read the eligibility-review letter would be kicked off the TennCare rolls for not responding.
Mr. Bonnyman also has been the lead attorney for enrollees in the Grier consent decree. The federal court order specifies that TennCare enrollees have the right to appeal a managed care organization's denials of physician-ordered medical care and to have care or medication continued while the appeal is pending. …
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Information Bank Abstracts
May 17, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: PRINCETON SCOUTING FOR MORE DIVERSITY
BYLINE: BY MELANIE BURNEY and ABHI RAGHUNATHANABSTRACT:
Princeton University plans to increase undergraduate enrollment by 10% to 5,100 without seeking more athletes; hopes to diversify population with emphasis on art and academics; school last increased its enrollment in 1969 when it first admitted women; photos (M)
Newsday (New York, NY)
Copyright 2000 Newsday, Inc.
May 13, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: ABOUT MOM / ESSAYS BY THE DAUGHTERS OF NEWSDAY'S MOTHERING COLUMNISTS
BYLINE: Tressa Whitney. Sarah Tomkins. Gabi Kupfer. Megan Geha. Katie Geha
TRESSA, SARAH, GABI, KATIE AND MEGAN. For years, their lives have been celebrated - and worried over - in Newsday's Mothering feature. On this day before Mother's Day, they write about their own lives and relationships with their columnist mothers.
Tressa Whitney, the daughter of T.M. Whitney, is a senior at Riverview High School in Manhattan. Sarah Tomkins, the daughter of Susan Cheever, is a senior at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan and plans to attend Princeton University in the fall. Katie and Megan Geha, the stepdaughters of Fern Kupfer, are both English majors at the University of Iowa. Gabi Kupfer, a graduate of New York University's law school, works for the Ford Foundation in Manhattan.
Their essays are on the following two pages.
SARAH TOMKINS
THE SUMMER following sixth grade, my mother took it into her head to educate me. I was furious with her.
I was also adamant - I was a decent student, and I read voraciously - I just happened to satiate my literary appetite with alternating supplies of "Sweet Valley High" novels and R.L. Stine. If a book had words with more than two syllables or references to the Bible, I was not interested. But hey, in my 12-year- old view of the world, I expected my mother to be grateful I was reading at all.
None of my friends even owned more than three books, let alone spent days enthralled in the adventures of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield. My mother, however, seemed set on my reintroduction into the world of literature - and just as she had presented me, more than seven years before, with a Young Readers copy of "Cinderella," she handed me a copy of "Animal Farm" with the command - "Read."
I wish I could say I was swept into the world of power-driven animals in Orwell's dark fable. Instead, I was bored out of my mind. It took me an unheard-of three days to labor through the prose. Having finished, I trudged into my mother's room, clutching the battered paperback, and glared at her meaningfully. The experiment had failed. I curled up in bed with the most recent Babysitters Club novel. When I woke up the next morning, my mother was holding a copy of "Kidnapped." I was almost enthusiastic about reading an adventure novel, but when I realized that, unlike the considerably briefer "Animal Farm," "Kidnapped" was more than 300 pages and was, furthermore, about a boy, my excitement quickly degenerated into dismay, followed by much calculation. …
It took me a year to find anyone as interesting as Jane Eyre, but that summer my mother gave me a gift that it has taken me years to understand and will take my lifetime to fully comprehend. When I have questioned my own spirituality I have been comforted by the doubts of Ivan Karamazov. When I was lonely on an exchange trip to France, it was a battered bilingual copy of "Hamlet" that stayed by my bed. The enigmatic gift of having a mother who writes about herself and her family is that through books I have also been forced to come to terms with my own history through someone else's eyes - and to identify with myself and my past. In the same way I identified with Jane on that summer day many years ago. In giving me the gift of real books, my mother has given me a way to connect with the world, with other people and with myself in ways that defy all descriptions. …
Technology Review
Copyright 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alumni Association
May, 2000 / June, 2000HEADLINE: The end of Moore's law?
HEADNOTE:
The current economic boom is likely due to increases in computing speed and decreases in price. Now there are some good reasons to think that the party may be ending. …
FROM TODAY'S PERSPECTIVE, IT SEEMS CLEAR THAT GORDON
Moore got lucky. Back in 1965, Electronics magazine asked Moore-then research director of electronics pioneer Fairchild Semiconductor-to predict the future of the microchip industry. At the time, the industry was in its infancy; Intel, now the world's biggest chip-maker, would not be founded (by Moore, among others) for another three years. Because few chips had been manufactured and sold, Moore had little data to go on. Nonetheless, he confidently argued that engineers would be able to cram an ever-increasing number of electronic devices onto microchips. Indeed, he guessed that the number would roughly double every year-an exponential increase that has come to be known as Moore's Law.
At first, few paid attention to Moore's prediction. Moore himself admitted that he didn't place much stock in it-he had been "just trying to get across the idea [that] this was a technology that had a future:' But events proved him right. In 1965, when Moore wrote his article, the world's most complex chip was right in his lab at Fairchild: It had 64 transistors. Intel's new-model Pentium III, introduced last October, contains 28 million transistors. "The sustained explosion of microchip complexity-doubling year after year, decade after decade;' Lillian Hoddeson and Michael Riordan write in Crystal Fire, their history of the transistor, "has no convenient parallel or analogue in normal human experience!
The effect of Moore's Law on daily life is obvious. It is why today's $3,000 personal computer will cost $1,500 next year and be obsolete the year after. It is why the children who grew up playing Pong in game arcades have children who grow up playing Quake on the Internet. It is why the wordprocessing program that fit on two floppy disks a decade ago now fills up half a CDROM-in fact, it explains why floppy disks themselves have almost been replaced by CD-ROMs, CD-Rs and CD-RWs. …
In 1995, productivity changed direction again. Without any fanfare, it abruptly began rising at an annual average clip of almost 2.2 percent-a great improvement from the 1980s, though still less than the 1960s. At first, most researchers regarded the increase as a temporary blip. But gradually many became convinced that it was long-lasting. "It was certainly something we discussed a lot at [Federal Reserve Board] meetings," says Alice Rivlin, a Brookings economist who recently left the board. "You know, 'Is this increase real?' By now, I think most economists believe it is:' The implications, in her view, are enormous: Renewed productivity growth means that more people are more likely to achieve their dreams. Although Rivlin is co-leading a Brookings study to determine the cause of the new productivity boom, she and many other economists believe it is probably due to computerization. "Moore's Law," she says, laughing, "may finally be paying off." There are two reasons for this belief, says Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton University economist. First, the acceleration in productivity happened "co-terminously" with a sudden, additional drop in computer costs. Second, the coincidence that productivity rose just as business adopted the Internet "is just too great to ignore." In the mid-'90s, Blinder says, "the rate of computer deflation moved from minus 10 percent to minus 25 percent per annum. And although the computer industry is a small fraction of GNP-less than 2 percent-the drop in costs has been so severe that as a matter of arithmetic it knocks a noticeable piece off the overall price index:' …
Technology Review
Copyright 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alumni Association
May, 2000 / June, 2000HEADLINE: Biological computing
HEADNOTE:
A vial of bacteria capable of computation? Injectable cells that survey the bloodstream and produce drugs on demand? These ideas might not be as far-fetched as they sound
TODAY'S SILICON-BASED MICROPROCESSORS ARE MANUFACtured under the strictest of conditions. Massive filters clean the air of dust and moisture, workers don spacesuit-like gear and the resulting systems are micro-tested for the smallest imperfection. But at a handful of labs across the country, researchers are building what they hope will be some of tomorrow's computers in environments that are far from sterile-beakers, test tubes and petri dishes full of bacteria. Simply put, these scientists seek to create cells that can compute, endowed with "intelligent" genes that can add numbers, store the results in some kind of memory bank, keep time and perhaps one day even execute simple programs.
All of these operations sound like what today's computers do. Yet these biological systems could open up a whole different realm of computing. "It is a mistake to envision the kind of computation that we are envisioning for living cells as being a replacement for the kinds of computers that we have now," says Tom Knight, a researcher at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and one of the leaders in the biocomputing movement. Knight says these new computers "will be a way of bridging the gap to the chemical world. Think of it more as a process-control computer. The computer that is running a chemical factory. The computer that makes your beer for you." …
GeneTic Tock
AS A GRADUATE STUDENT AT Princeton University, Rockefeller's Michael Elowitz constructed a genetic applet of his own-a clock.
In the world of digital computers, the clock is one of the most fundamental components. Clocks don't tell time-instead, they send out a train of pulses that are used to synchronize all the events taking place inside the machine. The first IBM PC had a clock that ticked 4.77 million times each second; today's top-of the-line Pentium III computers have docks that tick 800 million times a second. Elowitz's clock, by contrast, cycles once every 150 minutes or so.
The biological clock consists of four genes engineered into a bacterium (see 'A Clock in a Cell," p. 72). Three of them work together to turn the fourth, which encodes for a fluorescent protein, on and offElowitz calls this a "genetic circuit."
Although Elowitz's clock is a remarkable achievement, it doesn't keep great time-the span between tick and tock ranges anywhere from 120 minutes to 200 minutes. And with each clock running separately in each of many bacteria, coordination is a problem: Watch one bacterium under a microscope and you'll see regular intervals of glowing and dimness as the gene for the fluorescent protein is turned on and off, but put a mass of the bacteria together and they will all be out of sync. …
Business Courier
Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals
April 28, 2000HEADLINE: FORTY UNDER 40: JONATHAN HALL
JONATHAN HALL
Managing Partner SpencerHall Inc.
Age: 38Reared in a thoroughly academic environment by two college professors, Jonathan Hall always thought he'd follow his parents' footsteps into the collegiate world.
A funny thing happened on the road to full tenure, however, when the Vermont native came across a large Midwestern consumer products company named Procter & Gamble during his junior year at Princeton University.
Though he graduated with a bachelor's degree in the philosophy of religion, Hall left academia forever when he joined P&G right after college in 1982, launching a 14-year career that culminated with his job as director of new ventures for P&G's beauty products.
While at P&G, Hall led the creation and development of new products and new product categories. His concept development work established new beauty care records in premarket testing and provided a framework for a unique understanding of the consumer, having gained valuable marketing experience at P&G managing the successful Sure and Secret deodorants and Old Spice fragrance and toiletries.
Four years ago, Hall struck up a partnership with Nancy Spencer, a former vice president at a large Cincinnati ad agency, Northlich Stolley LaWarre, and the pair formed SpencerHall, a Symmes Township-based consulting, research and advertising firm that has posted 50 percent revenue growth each of its first three years in business. …
Business Courier
Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals
April 28, 2000HEADLINE: FORTY UNDER 40: JOHN KERN JR.
JOHN KERN JR.
Managing Director Reynolds, DeWitt & Co.
Age: 36When opportunity knocks, John "Jay" Kern Jr. is ready to fling open the door.
That attitude led him through diverse curricula at Princeton University, where he went to study physics and wound up with a bachelor's degree in romance languages and literatures. It carried him with honors through the law and economics program at the University of Chicago, on to a first job at McKinsey and Co. in Chicago, and then to the Cincinnati office of Reynolds, DeWitt & Co.
"I approach life open to the opportunities that are presented to me. And I see that a lot seem to appear if I can seize upon them and act upon them," Kern said.
He has led his firm's "new economy" investment initiative and directed equity investments in more than a dozen businesses ranging from start-ups to established companies. He led the acquisition of Buddy's Carpet and Flooring, which he serves as chairman of the board. And as chairman of Chicago-based Tech Lighting, a light fixtures manufacturer, he has helped to more than double its sales in two years.
"I get very excited about transactions and completing deals. I like to build things. And it's also very exciting to provide entrepreneurs with cash to realize their goals," he said. …
American Libraries
Copyright 2000 American Library Association
April 1, 2000HEADLINE: Endeavor Information Systems; Brief Article
Endeavor Information Systems--with Princeton University, for the Voyager library system, to replace the university's current NOTIS system; and with the Linnea National Library Network of Finland, to replace the current VTLS system with Voyager in the network's 22 academic and research libraries.
DISPLAY DEVELOPMENT NEWS
Copyright 2000 Business Communications Co.
April, 2000HEADLINE: Energy Efficiency Helps Organic LEDs
The Universal Display Corp. [UDC, 375 Philips Rd., Ewing, NJ 08618] said its research partners have discovered a variety of new, energy-efficient organic materials to be used with organic light-emitting diodes [OLEDs] for the manufacture and production of the next generation of electronic flat-panel displays. Their achievements were reported in the February 17 issue of Nature.
UDC's research partners, led by Stephen Forrest of Princeton University, have found that combining two different methods for emitting light, fluorescence, and phosphorescence can create more efficient sources of light. The findings by Forrest and the research team, including Mark Thompson of The University of Southern California and Marc Baldo, a graduate student at Princeton University, demonstrate UDC's proprietary material system, which involves co-mingling phosphorescence with fluorescence to improve the efficiency of the other OLED systems. Fluorescence, which has been used in OLEDs, can potentially provide a wider range of colors.
According to Forrest, electronics manufacturers could use the new techniques within six months in certain applications, such as automobile stereo displays. Eventually, the technique could lead to ubiquitous use of OLEDs in products such as palm pilots, cell phones, and laptops. …
Interior Design
Copyright 2000 Cahners Publishing Company
April 1, 2000HEADLINE: Rinse, Set, Surf.
BYLINE: Urbach, HenryEric Liftin and Jordan Parnass collaborate on Oscar Bond, a Soho salon that pulls hair styling into the digital age.
YOU CAN VISIT the Oscar Bond salon, designed by Eric Liftin and Jordan Parnass, by going to Soho's Wooster Street or, in a virtual mode, by visiting its Web site (www.oscarbondsalon.com). If you step into the physical space, the virtual environment is never far away. Liftin and Parnass saw this project as an opportunity to explore the integration of physical and virtual realms. "We were really interested in the idea of the salon as a social space," says Liftin. "We wanted to use multiple media to set up a complex network of interaction among the salon's clients, staff, and anyone with access to the Internet."
Access to the subterranean, 3,500-sq.-ft. space is directly off the street. Liftin and Parnass, principals of MESH Architectures and Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture respectively--the two met in graduate school and decided to join forces on this project--made an intriguing steel-framed entry structure of stairs and aluminum decking; it runs more than 25 ft. into the salon as a kind of catwalk. The attenuated platform, which passes along a wall of product display, leads directly to the reception desk and the waiting area and Internet lounge beyond.
This lounge is given unusual spatial priority as a central element around which everything else revolves. …
A contributing editor to Interior Design, Henry Urbach directs Henry Urbach Architecture, a gallery of contemporary art and architecture in New York. Urbach completed his M.Arch. at Columbia University and M.A. in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. He has written about architecture in books and magazines including Assemblage, Sites, ANY, Regarding the Proper, the New York Times Magazine, and Artforum. …
OBITUARIES
The New York TimesCopyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 31, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths
STEERS, JAMES RICHSTEERS-James Rich, May 26, 2000. Husband of Patricia (P.K.); father of James Rich Speers III, George, Philip, Robert and the late David; brother of Carol Steers Leslie. Grandfather of five. A graduate of Exeter Academy, Class of '44, & Princeton University, Class of '48, where he was active in alumni affairs. A veteran of WW II where he served in the European theater, Seventh Army, 15th Corps, 45th Infantry Division, 283rd Artillery Battalion. Memorial service Friday, June 2, 2000, 10:30 AM, Church of St. Thomas More, East 89th Street, NYC. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be made to Working Boys Center, Quito, Ecuador, care of Jesuit Mission Bureau, 39 East 83 St, New York, NY 10028.
The Herald (Glasgow)
Copyright 2000 Scottish Media Newspapers Limited
May 30, 2000HEADLINE: Sloan Allison
BYLINE: Campbell ThomasJW Sloan Allison, DSC, CA, naval officer and chartered accountant; born August 26, 1919, died April 2, 2000
SLOAN Allison was one of the last of the Clyde yachtsmen who volunteered to become naval officers at the outbreak of the Second World War.
He won the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry in the face of the enemy as a captain of minesweeping trawlers. While carrying out this hazardous work, he found himself at one time the youngest commanding officer in the entire Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
A talented jazz pianist whose true ambition had been the stage, his love of jazz and the Big Band sound was fostered when he was a scholarship student at Princeton University before the war. …
Contracting Business
Copyright 2000 Penton Media, Inc.
April 1, 2000HEADLINE: INDUSTRY MOURNS LOSS OF INNOVATOR; Brief Article
Calvin Dodd MacCracken, retired president of CALMAC and a major innovator in the HVAC industry, died in November 1999.
MacCracken was a nationally recognized inventor and problem solver.
A graduate of Princeton University, MacCracken was a pioneer in several areas that have become an integral part of the HVAC field. One of his most important energy-saving product was a thermal energy storage system, used mainly for air conditioning commercial buildings, that freezes water for cooling to coincide with off-peak power supplies.
During his career, MacCracken received more than 80 patents for energy-saving technologies and other inovations. In 1989, he was included in the first set of 10 inductees to the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame, along with Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.
In 1996, the prolific inventor and innovator was recognized for his contributions to the HVAC industry with the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.