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NO RX REQUIRED

Even if the average American woman continuously uses birth control throughout her reproductive years, she will have two unintended pregnancies. In real life, our reversible methods of contraception are highly unreliable: People forget to take some of their birth control pills, while condoms tear and slip--or the supply of either unexpectedly runs out. Many women find present birth control so awkward and uncomfortable that continuous use is not even a reality. And so, half the 6.3 million pregnancies in America each year are accidents. r Yet it has been known for 30 years that there is a second chance to prevent pregnancy: If you haven't used birth control properly before sex, you can still use it immediately afterward. Since 1999, there have been two FDA-approved prescription drugs made specifically for this purpose. A bill expected to be introduced this week in the New York State Assembly would make these drugs available without a prescription.

Studies show that emergency contraceptives can prevent up to 90 percent of pregnancies if used within three days of unprotected sex. When used during the first 12 hours, they are nearly 100 percent effective, but their efficacy steadily declines after that. These drugs ''could reduce the number of abortions by half, but women just don't know about them,'' says James Trussell, a faculty associate at Princeton University's Office of Population Research. ''And even if women know about these drugs, then they need to get them very quickly. And not many people can go to the doctor, get a prescription, and have it filled in 12 hours.''

BUSH: RACE ON TO CLAIM VICTORY

After "weeks of talking tough" on China, Bush "toned down his rhetoric when faced with a standoff" over the downed U.S. jet.

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Princeton univ. prof Sean Wilentz maintains that Bush's "performance accords with the Bush family's political projectory over the last three generations, moving to the right while clinging, barely, to the legacy of what used to be called 'modern Republicanism' -- a Republicanism the Bushes helped establish" (4/8). In "pleasing the right," Bush "has infuriated many liberals" and has "helped re-energize some of his most vocal political opponents and provided a rallying cry for those politically active Democrats who were already fuming" over how the campaign ended (Stevenson, New York Times, 4/8).

Transitions

Manuscripts by Charles and Anne Lindbergh urging the United States to stay out of World War II plus 1,500 letters, most supporting their stance, were unsealed at Princeton University last week. "He was seen as this serious, stolid lone eagle," says Princeton curator Don Skemer of the record-breaking pilot. "But in draft after draft, you see a lot of agonizing."

The fix isn't in at polls

After chad chaos, no easy answers

McKINNEY - For many Americans, the Florida punch-card fiasco during the 2000 presidential election was an embarrassment for a nation that prides itself on its technological innovation. ...

After that, phone inquiries started streaming into Global Election and other purveyors of electronic voting mechanisms. Election officials from across the country inundated voting system innovators with questions about modernizing decrepit systems.

Since January, the push for quick fixes has settled into a more measured assessment, looking at costs, databases, bureaucratic hurdles and the inherent problems with e-voting.

"ATMs can address similar risks with an audit trail that makes it possible to verify every transaction," writes Edward Tenner, author of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, in a recent New York Times op-ed piece. "Such records in electronic voting devices would obviously violate the secrecy of the ballot."

In fact, Dr. Tenner, a visiting professor at Princeton University, said a hybrid system that largely ignores the technological advancements of recent years may become the ultimate answer to the nation's voting concerns.

"Paradoxically, it is the paper ballot," he wrote. "Not the folded sheet stuffed in a box, but a laser-printed ballot that would let each voter review all choices before exiting the polls."

Because the machine would mark ballots uniformly and wouldn't accept common errors, voters could be confident that their choices would register, Dr. Tenner said. Such paper ballots could be machine-counted with high accuracy and would remain available for auditing. ...

One Day, All Children The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way By Wendy Kopp 208 pp. Public Affairs

Wendy Kopp's slim, breezy memoir is not really about teaching. It barely deals with the problems plaguing education. Instead, it is a diary of a social entrepreneur, an inspiring how-to guide for young people with big dreams, a thoughtful tale of the ups and downs of a decade at the stunningly successful nonprofit organization, Teach for America, which has placed more than 5,000 recent college graduates in impoverished classrooms.

The book begins when Teach for America was born, with Ms. Kopp's senior thesis at Princeton University in 1989. "I wasn't feigning confidence," she writes. "I was confident." Then it moves on to Ross Perot's office, where Ms. Kopp refuses to leave without a $500,000 pledge; to Michael Milken's private jet, where she fails to win his support; to late-night staff meetings, fueled by Chinese takeout, at which her young army of activists plots to change the world; and on to marathon runs, during which Ms. Kopp occasionally questions herself. ...

IN PERSON

This Marriage Takes A Bit of Explication

A RENOWNED scholar and an accomplished poet, married for 36 years, have just gone through hell together -- line by line. They are in the midst of purgatory at the moment, and will soon start on paradise.

The journey has not always been a pleasure cruise, as both can attest.

Robert Hollander, a professor of literature at Princeton University who is a specialist on the medieval Italian authors Giovanni Boccaccio and Dante Alighieri, is collaborating with his wife, Jean, who teaches poetry and literature at the College of New Jersey, to translate the three books of Dante's "Commedia," or "The Divine Comedy," the epic poem about the afterlife. ...

Rendering a nearly 700-year-old text into the vernacular of another tongue is time-consuming, painstaking and fascinating, Mr. and Mrs. Hollander said. As Mr. Hollander wrote in their new edition of the "Inferno" (Doubleday, $35), Dante "can be as simple and straightforward as one's country neighbor, or as convoluted as the most arcane professor."

Now they are pressing ahead with an edition of "Purgatorio," which they hope to have published next year. A new "Paradiso" is planned for 2003. ...

On the Lindberghs, War and Fame

Charles Lindbergh wrote in ink with a strong, straight and determined forward-sloping hand, triple-spaced to leave room for interlinear corrections. His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, seemed to favor a pencil with a tip too blunt to break under the force she must have applied to achieve her thick, emphatic, perpendicular scrawl. But however different the method of their writing, the Lindberghs agreed in the early 1940's that the United States should stay out of Europe's war, and for the first time last week, a collection of early drafts, manuscripts and letters that show their hands and minds at work were opened to researchers by Princeton University's Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, where the papers had been under seal since 1941. ...

...to Don C. Skemer, Princeton's curator of manuscripts, the opening of the documents pertaining to Charles Lindbergh's "Letter to Americans," which was published in Collier's magazine on March 29, 1941, and Anne Lindbergh's "Wave of the Future: A Statement of Faith" also opened up a small window into the habits -- and maybe the psyches -- of one of America's most famous and most tragic couples.

IN SECRECY AND HASTE, NEW POLITICAL MAP TAKES SHAPE

...In New Jersey, the 11-member commission redrawing the lines for the state's 40 legislative districts has been holed up behind closed doors in a conference hotel outside Princeton for the last week.

Aside from four public hearings at which panel members only listened and would not respond to questions, the redistricting work is being done in secret. ...

Commission members, including one who is sponsoring a bill to provide more public access to government records, say the horse trading involved in redrawing district lines to accommodate population changes over the past decade could not get done in time to meet tight deadlines if the public knew what was going on. ...

"I think it would be very hard to make progress in this type of negotiation" in public, said Larry Bartels, a Princeton University professor chosen by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to serve as a non-partisan, tie-breaking member of the commission.

"Given the time pressures, the only way we're going to be able to make much progress is in private. It would be much harder to have public input at every stage," he said. ...

After a smooth launch, Bush presidency encounters political turbulence

After dazzling both parties with his smooth, post-inaugural footwork, President Bush has embraced a set of conservative domestic policies that has pleased his core supporters while energizing the opposition...

That era of good feelings was bound to come to an end eventually, but even some of the president's cheerleaders acknowledge that he may have prematurely ended the honeymoon in a needlessly clumsy and abrupt manner...

Some experts suggest it may be too early to categorize Bush ideologically.

''What we don't know yet is whether these are lines in the sand or openers in a bargaining process,'' said Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University.

''He doesn't want to be known as the pro-arsenic president,'' said Greenstein.

MIT Gives It Away

Maybe we should start calling it the Massachusetts Institute of Open Source. While companies try to figure out how to make money off "distance learning," MIT will put almost all its courses online for free.

OpenCourseWare would be the biggest, broadest effort of its kind, but it's not unique. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that schools including Princeton and UCLA put course material online, though the AP said these schools' online course material is "often available only to students."

'Random Walk' author prefers bonds, REITs

Double-digit returns not likely for stocks, Burton Malkiel says

Burton Malkiel, whose 1973 best-seller A Random Walk Down Wall Street preceded the grinding bear market of the 1970s, is telling investors equities are no longer the preferred asset class, that real estate investment trusts and high-yield bonds hold out the promise of better returns early in the new century.

'Conditions for equity investors are not nearly as favourable as they were in the past,' Mr. Malkiel, a professor at Princeton University, said yesterday in an interview prior to making a presentation at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Washington Memo

Now for Bush, a Novelty: Having to Face Novelty

President Bush prides himself on order and does not care much for surprises. That explains why his aides painstakingly plotted out the first days, weeks and months of his presidency and are already thinking in detail about what they want to happen next year and the year after.

Yet the carefully constructed game plans have been spoiled by two dramas in recent days that are largely beyond Mr. Bush's control but could have deep consequences not only for the world but for his presidency: the standoff in China and a stock market that, to put it in the mildest of terms, is looking sick and making people feel sicker.

Indeed, presidents are inevitably judged not simply by how they followed through on campaign promises but by how they reacted to the unexpected.

"People will be watching to see how he deals with it," said Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton University. "He has to establish a secure presence. You don't want to be as overexposed as Clinton was. But I don't think you have to be the little man who wasn't there."

The Face of Jesus

On Easter, the Discovery Channel will present "Jesus: The Complete Story" (8-11 p.m.), which, with much less subtlety, promises to show the real Jesus was not "the airy weakling presented to us in pious paintings and Hollywood movies."

Its answer to centuries of artists is a portrait of Jesus created with the help of a forensics expert and computer graphics. "Although this is not the actual face of Jesus, it does take us beyond the idealized images of the last 1,500 years and closer than ever before to the real Jesus of history," boasts the narrator of this special, which was produced with the BBC.

In many ways, the production's showmanship tends to mask that, for the most part, it presents the carefully researched ideas of such recognized scholars as Princeton University professor James Charlesworth; the Rev. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, a scholar at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem; and a string of Israeli archaeologists.

Watching the 'sea' grass grow ... from space

Quick quiz: Where does most of the photosynthesis on Earth occur?

A. At sea.

B. On land.

C. In your fridge's cheese bin.

Not long ago, many scientists might have picked B, notes Gene Carl Feldman, project manager for an orbiting imager, known as SeaWiFS. It's giving researchers amazing new views of the planet's biological activity.

Now, however, the 3-year-old imager is showing how critical ocean-dwelling phytoplankton are to the global carbon cycle. In the process, it's giving scientists a powerful new tool for tracking the impact of climate change.

"One of the great uncertainties regarding climate change is how biology will respond," says Jorge Sarmiento, a Princeton University climate researcher, referring to the plant and microbial life that act as sinks for CO2. "These data are essential to projecting the future trajectory of CO2."

Make way for the Cloning Express

The stakes couldn't be higher - possibly altering the future of the human race. How do we find the proper role for morals and ethics?

An international team of infertility doctors announces that it will clone a human being within 18 to 24 months. A religious sect that claims UFO connections insists it will shortly do the same, and has lists of donors and surrogate mothers already lined up. A high-tech magazine trumpets the message that techniques have progressed so rapidly that scientists agree it is either just about to happen or has already taken place.

And the broad public debate that many scientists acknowledge needs to take place has yet to occur - a debate not only about cloning to create children, but also about the implications of its use in research in conjunction with other powerful technologies.

Lee Silver, a biologist at Princeton University, advocates not only human cloning but genetic engineering designed to enhance specific capacities of future generations; in "Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World," he envisions a direct human role in evolution through creation of a superspecies.

Deadline moved to April 12 for Senate, Assembly candidates only

Candidates for the state Legislature will get an extra week to file their petitions to make sure they have enough time to collect the required signatures.

The extra time was needed because the state Legislative Redistricting Commission has not yet agreed on a new map for the state's 40 districts to comport with revised population figures from the 2000 Census.

The 10-member commission with five Democrats and five Republicans reached an impasse last week as Supreme Court Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz appointed Princeton University professor Larry M. Bartels to act as a tiebreaker.

Controversial ad fails to generate protest at Princeton

Princeton University's student newspaper published a controversial advertisement placed by conservative author David Horowitz, but the full-page message opposing reparations for slavery failed to produce student protests as it did recently at several other campuses.

The advertisement in Wednesday's Daily Princetonian, titled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea - and Racist Too," suggests that black Americans owe the United States more than it owes them.

Student protesters confiscated The Brown Daily Herald's entire press run three weeks ago when it published the same ad. Protests also greeted the ad's publication by student newspapers at Duke University and the University of California.

At Princeton, leaders of campus minority organizations said Thursday that while they were offended by the advertisement they supported the way the newspaper handled it.

The Daily Princetonian published an editorial criticizing the content of the ad and donated the revenue to the Trenton chapter of the Urban League.

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