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The New Republic
Copyright 1998 The New Republic, Inc.
MAY 4, 1998HEADLINE: HOT AND NOT BOTHERED
BYLINE: Gregg Easterbrook
HIGHLIGHT: The answer to global warming.Let's assume for a moment that all the clamor over global warming is warranted: that burning fossil fuels to generate artificial greenhouse gases will change Earth's climate with disastrous consequences. Then shouldn't priority number one be to reduce such gases? Not necessarily. If global warming theory really is right, climate change will arrive before even the most ambitious reforms could counter the buildup of greenhouse gases. This makes the immediate priority adaptation--preparing to cope with climate change. Yet the subject of adapting to a warmer world is taboo in the greenhouse debate. Not only is nobody funding adaptation studies, few people in either government or the environmental movement want to discuss them. …
Any serious approach to greenhouse adaptation also ought to include more research into new energy forms. "Since the greenhouse problem is long-term, the R and D is more important now than short-term emissions policy," notes Robert Socolow, head of Princeton University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. President Clinton has proposed about $1 billion a year in tax preferences for renewable energy research, a welcome number but one that pales in comparison to the nearly $200 billion annually that government and industry spend for all research and development. …
New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
May 2, 1998HEADLINE: Shock waves
BYLINE: Hazel MuirHIGHLIGHT: Massive magnetic fields may tear the crusts of neutron stars
Colossal cracks ripping through the solid crusts of neutron stars could be the cause of enigmatic blasts of gamma rays from space, say astrophysicists in the US.
The gamma-ray flashes, from so-called soft gamma repeaters, were first spotted in the 1970s. Unlike gamma-ray bursters, which flash only once in distant galaxies, the repeaters are relatively close and, as their names imply, often reappear. Although the flashes last only a split second, they are extremely bright. …
In the latest "Astrophysical Journal Letters" (vol 498, p 45), Duncan says that his idea also explains why each soft gamma repeater seems to have a maximum energy. He suggests that the maximum energy corresponds to a fracture that rips nearly all the way round a neutron star's shell, causing the biggest quake possible.
Bohdan Paczynski, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey, thinks that the new estimates of the strengths of the magnetic fields that power soft gamma repeaters are an important step towards a final explanation of why these bright beacons appear. But he says it will take more precise data to put the theory to the test.
The answer may not be far off. NASA's Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility satellite, due to be launched later this year, could help to confirm Duncan's ideas.
The American Spectator
Copyright 1998 The American Spectator
May, 1998No Upsurge
In your March 1998 issue, William Tucker ("Unbroken Windows: The Good News About Crime") mischaracterized several aspects of what I have actually said and argued about juvenile crime and demographic trends. First, I am a professor of political science, not of sociology. Second, he based his paragraph on other sources, which were incorrect. Specifically, I have never predicted "an upsurge of 30,000-45,000 murders a year, with other violent offenses rising proportionately." These figures have been tossed around and others attributed to me, but they are to be found nowhere in my writings, speeches, or other works. I do not believe that the problem is the least bit unsolvable. In fact, in the very article in which I first mentioned the " super-predator" concept, I pointed to faith-based and other likely solutions. I have since spent much of the last three years doing research, writing, and civic work to test my sense of just how solvable the problem is. Mr. Tucker had shared with me a draft copy of the essay, and I had noted a number of the specific and general mistakes. But I suppose somehow they got lost in the translation to the printed page.
John J. DiIulio, Jr.
Professor of Politics and Public Affairs
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
Asiaweek
Copyright 1998 Asiaweek Limited Corp.
May 1, 1998HEADLINE: Where are they now?
Nine years later, some key figures from Tiananmen Square have moved on; others still live with the consequences.Chai Ling
* Argued that students should stay in the square as long as possible.
After the crackdown, she fled to the U.S. Now working on a master's degree at Princeton University.
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Copyright 1998 The Kansas City Star Co.
May 1, 1998 FridayOBITUARIES
GEORGE MORTON PAYNE JR.George Morton Payne Jr., 88, Mission Hills, KS, died Wednesday, April 29, 1998, at the home. …
Mr. Payne was born on June 22, 1909, in Kansas City, MO. A lifelong resident of the community, he attended Pembroke Country Day School and graduated from The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, NJ. Mr. Payne was a graduate of Princeton University, Class of 1930, and earned a master's degree from Princeton in 1932. He was a prominent architect who leaves a legacy of his work in the Kansas City area and in other parts of the country. …
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
May 1, 1998; FRIDAYHEADLINE: FOUNDATION HONORS 15 PLAYERS
BYLINE: RON FOX, Staff WriterDATELINE: HALEDON
The step from high school to the future often necessitates a generous dose of flexibility from the student making the jump. Paterson Catholic's Jamil Hamad believes he can handle it.
First, disappointment must be dealt with. The senior linebacker with the 3.98 grade-point average in all honors courses had longed to attend Princeton University. He qualifies, but cost makes it out of the question. Cornell was another costly possibility, but Hamad stepped up and faced reality, gave thanks for his blessings, and has accepted a full academic scholarship to Monmouth College. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
May 1, 1998, Friday
HEADLINE: Music for Thought: A Babbitt Symposium
BYLINE: Tim Page, Washington Post Staff WriterThe media are accused of all sorts of perfidy these days. But composer Milton Babbitt, who will be honored tomorrow at an all-day symposium at the Library of Congress, might justifiably describe himself as a "victim of the press."
In 1958, Babbitt wrote an essay for High Fidelity magazine that he called "The Composer as Specialist." A few months later, without informing the author, High Fidelity published Babbitt's essay under the title "Who Cares if You Listen?" After that, his notoriety was assured.
"The editor explained later that 'The Composer as Specialist' was such a dull, academic-sounding title," Babbitt once said. "When I complained that his title reflected little of the letter and absolutely nothing of the spirit of the article -- I care very much if you listen and where you listen and how you listen -- the answer was something along the lines of, 'Look, this really doesn't matter very much and it gets people to read the article and that's the important thing.' " Babbitt had intended to inform the general public about certain musical movements of the era. "I simply had to face the fact that we had a tiny audience for our music, one made up mainly of professionals," he said. He compared the position of 20th-century composers to that of physicists or most serious poets or professional philosophers -- in short, to people who do valuable and significant work that is all but unknown to the general public. …
Babbitt was born in 1916 and grew up in Jackson, Miss. He studied music and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Princeton University. He was later a profoundly influential teacher at Princeton -- where he helped establish the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center -- and he still teaches composition at the Juilliard School in New York. …
NPR
SHOW: NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
APRIL 30, 1998HEADLINE: GDP Grew at 4.2 Percent
BYLINE: John Ydstie, Washington, DC; Robert Siegel, Washington, DCHIGHLIGHT: The economy grew at a brisk rate in the first quarter, withou even a hint of inflationary pressure. The gross domestic product expanded at a 4.2 percent annual rate, according to the Commerce Department. A separate report on employment costs also showed inflation to be well under control. The financial markets found the reports reassuring. Stocks surged while interest rates came down slightly. NPR's John Ydstie reports. …
JOHN YDSTIE, NPR REPORTER: So far this year, the U.S. economy has turned in a sterling performance. It's growing twice as fast as many economists had predicted just six months ago. Unemployment for the past three months is at a 28-year low. And despite the belief by many economists that low unemployment will spark higher inflation, prices are rising at a rate of less than 1 percent annually -- the slowest pace in 34 years.
All in all, it's the best economy in a generation.
Princeton economist Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, says the healthy economy results from lean and efficient U.S. businesses, good economic policy, and good luck.
The elimination of the federal deficit and the management of interest rates by the Federal Reserve are the policy successes. And the good luck has come mostly on the inflation front.
ALAN BLINDER, ECONOMIST, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: For example, falling energy prices, barely increasing health care prices, as I mentioned before, computer prices have been tumbling -- that's related to this technological surge.
YDSTIE: Still, for the past year and a half, the economy has been growing far faster than most economists believe can be sustained without sparking higher inflation. And since the Asian crisis hasn't slowed U.S. growth, some economists have argued it's time for the Fed to raise rates to cool things down before inflation reawakens.
Blinder says no.
BLINDER: There is a case for raising rates. I wouldn't deny that. And there ought to be a vigorous debate going on inside the Fed, and by all indications there is. But I think there's also a strong case that says: let's stand pat and enjoy the good fortune that we're having. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
April 30, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Julian Jaynes, 77; Author, Princeton professor
A memorial service will be held Saturday for Julian Jaynes, a West Newton native and an author and professor at Princeton University, who died last November. He was 77.
Mr. Jaynes, of Princeton, N.J., died Nov. 21 at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Prince Edward Island, Canada, where he had spent his summers since childhood at his family's summer home.
His most well-known book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," was published in 1977 and was a runner-up for the National Book Award in 1978. The book explained his theory that modern consciousness arises from the power of language to create metaphors and analogies and is a learned social construction. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
April 30, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Constantine Dadiskos; Was buyer for Raytheon; at 74
Funeral services will be held today for Constantine C. Dadiskos of Weston, a retired senior buyer for Raytheon Co., who died at his home on Monday. He was 74.
Mr. Dadiskos was born in Hartford on Dec. 25, 1923. He graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford and attended Princeton University, where he played in the college band. He also graduated from Suffolk University and Boston University. …
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Publishing Society
April 30, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Our Role in Earth's Climate
BYLINE: Robert C. CowenHIGHLIGHT: How human activity is changing atmospheric chemistry
IS THE TEMPERATURE RISING?
THE UNCERTAIN SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING
By S. George Philander
Princeton University Press
262 pp., $29.95They sound like questions from a curious child. Why is the sky blue? What makes the winds blow? Why is summer hotter than winter? Where do clouds come from? Yet understanding the answers to such deceptively simple questions is essential to dealing intelligently with the biggest yet-to-be-answered atmospheric question of all: Is human activity causing undesirable climate change?
George S. Philander, geosciences professor at Princeton University, guides us through this learning experience with grace, wit, and clarity. Like it or not, humans have become a critical part of the climate machinery.
Humans have taken the climate-weather machine for granted. It's big nature. We've considered ourselves, in comparison, to be bit players whose actions are insignificant on a planetary scale. But by changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere, we're changing the settings of the geophysical machinery.
Wide use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) threatened to weaken the stratospheric ozone layer that shields us from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. The world woke up to that threat and is phasing out the CFCs by international agreement. We have yet to appreciate how significantly human activity is changing atmospheric chemistry in other ways.
Dr. Philander has tried to help us gain that appreciation in "Is the Temperature Rising? The Uncertain Science of Global Warming" and he succeeds. He lays out the basic facts, explains the science, and outlines the unknowns and uncertainties. He gives enough detail for readers to grasp the subject but avoids nerdish technicalities. …
The Commercial Appeal
Copyright 1998 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation (Memphis, TN)April 30, 1998, THURSDAY
HEADLINE: T&B BOULEVARD NAMED IN HONOR OF THOMAS & BETTS CORP.
BYLINE: Ann MeeksT & B Boulevard in southeast Shelby County takes its name from a new resident on the street, Thomas & Betts Corp., a Memphis-based global manufacturer of electrical and electronic connectors, components and systems.
The $2.2 billion manufacturer employs approximately 16,000 people, including about 900 at its new corporate headquarters at 8155 T & B Boulevard.
Most of the company's factories are in North America, and less than 25 percent of Thomas & Betts' sales are outside the United States, though an added emphasis is being placed on expanding international sales, according to company president and chief executive officer Clyde R. Moore.
The company began in 1898 when Robert M. Thomas and Hobart D. Betts, both engineering graduates from Princeton University, established an agency in New York City to sell electrical conduit. They were joined within a year by Adnah McMurtrie, an engineer whose designs added to the agency's list of salable products. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
April 30, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: NCAA VOLLEYBALL; ROUMAIN IN THE RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME, RIGHT SPORT
BYLINE: GREG SANDOVAL, TIMES STAFF WRITERYou watch George Roumain playing volleyball and you wonder if he didn't pick the wrong sport.
You wonder where the 6-foot-6, 250-pound junior stashed his helmet and shoulder pads? Why isn't he muscling guys out of the post on the basketball court, with calf muscles that look like overfilled grain sacks and a chest that juts out like a comic-book hero's. …
"I'm not thinking about any of that stuff," said Roumain as Pepperdine prepared to open the Final Four tonight against Princeton at Honolulu. "I'm just interested in this team, this season and winning the national championship." …
The Toronto Star
Copyright 1998 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
April 30, 1998, Thursday, Edition 1HEADLINE: New Facility Tackles Crucial Puzzle
BYLINE: Joseph HallObservatory aims to solve neutrino mystery
SUDBURY - It might provide the most precious thing ever to come out of a mine in this city.
Sitting two kilometres below the rocky surface, beneath one of the world's prime nickel deposits, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory could strike a vein of fundamental knowledge about the composition and very future of the universe.
"In my view, this is one of the most important experiments of the latter half of the 20th century,'' says Princeton University astrophysicist John Bahcall. It will solve the longest-standing scientific mystery . . . one going back 30 years.''
That mystery is based on the smallest, most slippery and ephemeral particle in creation - the neutrino. …
The Virginian-Pilot
Copyright 1998 Landmark Communications, Inc. (Norfolk, VA)
April 30, 1998, Thursday
HEADLINE: CLAYTON V. HENDRICKS
DATELINE: SAN MARCOS, TEXASRetired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Clayton Verne Hendricks, 77, died April 29, 1998, in his home. Hendricks, a former resident of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 34 years. …
Hendricks was born March 27, 1921, in Stratford, Iowa, to Jennie and LeRoy Hendricks. He was an All-State football player for Boone (Iowa) High School and later lettered in football at Simpson College, Western Michigan University and Princeton University. …
AAP NEWSFEED
Copyright 1998 AAP Information Services Pty. Ltd.
April 29, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: US: ANOMALIES RESEARCH CONSIDERED MUMBO JUMBO BY PEERS
BYLINE: By Shankar VedantamNEW YORK, KRT - In a basement lab at Princeton University's engineering school, highly trained scientists believe that if they concentrate really hard, their thoughts can alter reality.
The X-Files it's not, but it's weird work for the austere halls of science at an Ivy League school.In a recent experiment, psychologist Brenda Dunne pressed a button and then stared hard at her computer screen. The computer was hooked up to a drum. She was trying to will the drum to beat harder.
"Boom-BOOM," it went. "BOOM-BOOM-boom-BOOM.""When people look at the computer with intense intent and concentration, can they produce bizarre, unexpected, inexplicable events?" said Dunne.
Testing that theory at Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab "over tens of millions of trials, we have a very strong case that people's intentions can have a small but persistent effect on the results", she said.
A tossed coin, in other words, will come down heads more often than tails - if you will it so. It may require thousands of coin tossings for the small effect to show up, but Dunne said the results were real. …
Financial Times
Copyright 1998 The Financial Times Limited (London)
April 29, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: America's most vaunted
Many Ivy League college buildings are covered with ivy but this is not how the best known grouping of universities in the US gained its name. This elite, originally formed for sporting purposes, takes its name from roman numerals. There were four founders and so it was known as the "IV" League.
Today, the name is misleading as there are eight members -Brown in Providence, Rhode Island; Columbia in Manhattan; Cornell in up-state New York; Dartmouth in New Hampshire; Boston-based Harvard; Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania; Princeton in New Jersey; and Yale, which is in New Haven, Connecticut. …
The prestige, and power, of the Ivy League - particularly Harvard, Yale and Princeton - irks competitors. For example, Princeton does not have a business school and yet it regularly appears in league tables when employers are asked to rank business schools by reputation.
Statistics show that the Ivy League colleges are the most competitive. Harvard accepts only 11 per cent of applicants, the lowest proportion of any university in the US, while Princeton accepts only 12 per cent. …
M2 PRESSWIRE
Copyright 1998 M2 Communications Ltd.
April 29, 1998HEADLINE: NSF names new engineering head
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named technologist and academic Eugene Wong of Berkeley to head its engineering directorate. Wong is scheduled to assume his new position as NSF's assistant director for engineering in June.
Wong is a pioneering researcher in database management systems. He was co-designer of INGRES, one of the first modern database systems. He then co-founded INGRES Corporation, which became a leading commercial provider of database software. He is currently chief scientist and member of the board of directors of Vision Software Tools, Inc., a start-up company based in Oakland, Calif. which produces software products for automating business processes. He is also Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California Berkeley. …
Wong received his B.S. degree, his A.M. degree and his Ph.D., all in electrical engineering, from Princeton University. He is a member and councilor of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 29, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Five Myths, and Why Adults Believe They Are True
BYLINE: By MIKE A. MALES; Mike A. Males is the author of "The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents."
ON the day last month that two youths shot four students and one teacher to death in Jonesboro, Ark., a mother in Daly City, Calif., was arrested for suffocating her three children with duct tape. About 10 days after the three West Paducah, Ky., school killings in December, parents in Weston, W.Va., were arrested for burning down their house and murdering five children to collect insurance.
The paradox: school killings receive enormous attention not because they are routine, but because they are rare. The National School Safety Center estimates that of the 52 million students in school, about two dozen are murdered each year, a number that is not rising. By contrast, the National Commission on Child Abuse and Neglect reports that every year 2,000 to 3,000 children and youths are murdered by parents, a toll that is rising.
The public image of teen-agers is shaped by sensational crimes like the Jonesboro killings and by a selective use of statistics that make uncommon events like teen-age murder or suicide seem epidemic. At the same time, many experts are declaring that today's youths are more criminal, more suicidal, more stoned and less moral than their predecessors. John DiIulio Jr., a professor of politics at Princeton University, and William J. Bennett, a former Secretary of Education, for example, forecasted in their 1996 book "Body Count" that there is a growing "population of teen-agers with higher incidence of serious drug use, more access to powerful firearms and fewer moral restraints than any such group in American history."
It is hardly surprising, then, that the public stereotype of contemporary teen-agers is a hostile one. Deborah Wadsworth, the executive director of Public Agenda, a public-policy research firm, said its 1997 survey found that Americans tended to view young people with feelings of alarm or fear. …
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 1998 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
April 29, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: EXPERT PREDICTS RISING HEALTH-CARE COSTS; EMPLOYERS ARE EXPECTED TO CAP THEIR SPENDING; FOR CONSUMERS, 'DIZZYING' CHOICES
BYLINE: John G. Carlton; Post-Dispatch Medical Writer
A "second revolution" in American health care is fast approaching, Princeton University economist Uwe E. Reinhardt told a St. Louis-area audience Tuesday.
If you thought the first - managed care - was confusing, wait till you see what's next.
Reinhardt, an internationally known expert on health care economics, envisions a future with a dizzying array of choices for consumers. They will select from a menu of health plans that will dictate the medical care they receive, he predicted.
But they will also pay an increasing share of the cost.
In the future, both private employers and even Medicaid will probably move away from specifying exactly which medical services will be covered, Reinhardt said.
Instead, they'll "tell employees that they will make a fixed contribution, and anything above that (the employee) will have to eat," he said. "The consumer is going to be increasingly assuming the risk for the cost of our own health care….
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
April 29, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: The $3 Gift Quiz
BYLINE: Al KamenIt's Academic, for Now
No denial either that McCurry too is entertaining thoughts of other employment. With the scandal front quiet, there is plenty of buzz about whether he will escape while he can, say, to some part-time public relations work at Powell Tate along with an academic position at his beloved alma mater, Princeton University.
"That would be news to Powell, news to Princeton and news to me," McCurry said with a laugh. But McCurry acknowledged that he talks periodically with former Carter press secretary Jody Powell "about what I should do with my no-good life after I leave, because he's one of the few people on the planet who understands what it's like." Powell has suggested McCurry think about coming to work with him, but "that's so far away from being anything close to a done deal."
And while McCurry said he has received feelers from four universities -- Princeton, Harvard, George Washington and American -- he added that "I have not advanced those conversations" and just yesterday told one school setting semester plans to proceed without him. "I told them I didn't foresee any circumstances in which I'd be able to do that any time soon," he said.
NOTE: This item was also carried by The Bulletin’s Frontrunner.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
April 29, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Concealed arms deter crime, says researcher's book; Gun-control advocates outraged
BYLINE: Robert Stacy McCain; THE WASHINGTON TIMESWant to prevent violent crime? Pack heat, advises author John R. Lott Jr.
Laws that permit citizens to carry concealed weapons are a deterrent to crime, Mr. Lott says, a conclusion based on research that forms the basis of his new book, "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws."
"Obviously, bad things can happen with guns, but guns can also keep bad things from happening," Mr. Lott said.
Mr. Lott's research - first published in the Journal of Legal Studies in 1996 - has come under fire from gun-control advocates such as Rep. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. After more than a year of additional research, however, Mr. Lott stands by his initial findings: guns prevent crime. …
Mr. Lott's research impressed such colleagues as John DiIulio of Princeton University. "I think it's impossible not to be impressed by the analysis John Lott has done," said Mr. DiIulio, who moderated a panel discussion of Mr. Lott's findings Monday at the American Enterprise Institute. Another panelist, Daniel Polsby of Northwestern University, called Mr. Lott's work "the best study to date" of the effect of concealed-carry laws. …
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
April 29, 1998 WednesdayHEADLINE: EVEN BEST STUDENTS HEAR, 'WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU'
BYLINE: By Julie Deardorff, Tribune Staff Writer.Angela Lubke knew she was facing brutal competition for a coveted spot at Harvard or Princeton, but the 17-year-old Glenbrook South High School senior carefully filled out the extensive applications anyway.
Her college test scores and grades were outstanding. And her activities and interests, ranging from ecology to Shakespeare, made her one of the most dynamic and involved students at the school.
Still, when the small white rejection envelope arrived in the mailbox in early April, Lubke was temporarily crushed. Her favorite sweatshirt as a child had been from Harvard University, and the Ivy League had been planted in the back of her mind ever since.
"At first I was really disappointed because I realized how much I wanted to go there after I wasn't accepted," said Lubke, of Glenview, who selected the University of Notre Dame over six other schools, including Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Illinois. "But when I found out there was no chance of getting in because so many good kids were applying, I realized it wasn't a reflection on me. At least I was good enough to apply."
With the number of highly selective colleges dwindling to about 40 nationwide by some accounts and once-exclusive universities looking for diversity on several levels, students and administrators are confronting a new reality: An outstanding academic record and impressive outside interests hardly guarantee entry into top-tiered colleges and universities these days. In fact, it's the bare minimum. …
For many top students used to doing everything well, college admissions is the first time they have been seriously judged by strangers and the first time they have encountered rejection. While devastating at the time, many counselors say, it can also be a valuable lesson--one better learned sooner than later.
Patrick Sullivan is headed to Princeton University next fall, a natural destination for a bright, ambitious teenager who has done nearly everything right on the academic front.
Yet Sullivan, an accomplished senior at Lake Forest Academy who combined stellar grades and test scores with leadership roles in cross country, student government and the school newspaper, was rejected by Yale University. Dartmouth College heartlessly said no. And one of his top choices, Williams College in Massachusetts, unceremoniously dumped him into the collegiate version of purgatory: the waiting list. …
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Copyright 1998 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
April 28, 1998 TuesdayHEADLINE: FED REACTS TO VARIETY OF SIGNALS
BYLINE: By Marcia Stepanek and Bill Virgin, Hearst NewspapersFortunetellers read palms, astrologers consult the stars, bettors study the racing form.
But is there a gauge for predicting the action by the Federal Reserve and its chairman?
"People are always searching for the Holy Grail, the magic statistic that swings the Fed," says Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman who is an economics professor at Princeton University. But there isn't any one such figure.
"One of the things one has to remember, the leader of the Fed is this master of minutiae of the American economy," said John Mitchell, economist with U.S. Bancorp in Portland, Ore.
According to Fed officials, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tracks at least 1,000 statistics - many of them during morning soaks in his bathtub at home - to come up with his picture of the economy at any given moment. He uses their arcane fluctuations as a crystal ball to give him a sense of what's likely to happen. …
The Commercial Appeal
Copyright 1998 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation (Memphis, TN)
April 28, 1998, TUESDAYHEADLINE: LE BONHEUR OFFICER, PEDIATRIC SPECIALIST NAMED MED SCHOOL DEAN
BYLINE: Sarah A. Derks and Laurel Campbell The Commercial Appeal
Dr. Henry G. Herrod, a Memphis pediatric immunologist with a bent for women's and children's health, has been named dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, the university announced Monday.
Effective July 1, Herrod will resign as senior vice president of medical affairs at Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center and from Le Bonheur's board of directors, he said.
He also will step down from his position as vice chairman for UT's department of pediatrics and from the board of directors with Methodist Healthcare Systems, he said. …
An Alabama native, Herrod received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1967 and his medical degree from the University of Alabama-Birmingham in 1972. …
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1998 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
April 28, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Horace R. Toy
Horace R. Toy, 87, Bradenton, died April 26, 1998.He was born Oct. 3, 1910, in Planfield, N.J., and came to Bradenton four years ago from Richmond, Va. He was a Navy veteran and a former sales executive with Thomas T. Toy and Co. Inc. He was a Princeton University graduate and a member of Saints Peter and Paul the Apostles Church and the Squadron A Association. …
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Publishing Society
April 27, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Euro-phoria! Le Continent Is Back
BYLINE: James L. Tyson, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: WASHINGTONTurn back, Columbus.
The Old World you left behind is now a New World of economic growth and equity profit.
Across the Continent inflation, interest rates, and chronic double-digit unemployment are giving way to economic growth and rising earnings.
The result: beguiling, crown-jewel stock markets. By mid-April this year, France's rose 28 percent, Germany's 26 percent, Italy's 53 percent, and Portugal's 61 percent.
The rediscovery of Europe has apparently just begun. …
Also, the months after the euro launches will probably be rough, some economists predict.
"The question is how long will monetary union last, and what kind of problems will strain the transition," says Paolo Presenti, assistant professor of economics at Princeton University. …
The Connecticut Law Tribune
Copyright 1998 American Lawyer Newspapers Group, Inc.
April 27, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: ONE MAN'S IVY LEAGUE IMBROGLIO
HIGHLIGHT: Nobay v. Princeton University
Ivy league schools, falsified academic records and a family of generous lepers figured in an unusual invasion of privacy case heard -- and thrown out -- this month by U.S. District Court Judge Dominic J. Squatrito.
A federal jury in Hartford heard four days of testimony before Squatrito granted a defense motion for a directed verdict in Nobay v. Princeton University. Plaintiff Rommel Nobay, a 1989 Princeton graduate, sued his alma mater when his applications to medical schools were rescinded or withdrawn after Princeton notified those schools of alleged discrepancies in Nobay's academic record. …
Perhaps Nobay's most interesting claim, made during his sophomore year at Princeton, was that a family of lepers in Kenya had donated half the money they earned from begging to his college education. He acknowledged in court that that, too, was an overstatement. obay claimed that Princeton's disclosures of the alleged discrepancies violated his right to privacy and breached his implied contract with the school.
But Silvestri said Nobay's claims were meritless. Silvestri, of Bridgeport's Zeldes, Needle & Cooper, argued in legal papers that Princeton did not violate Nobay's privacy rights because it never made public the information it passed along to admissions officers of five medical schools. …
The Times
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Limited
April 27, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: The euro note 'will become best for cash launderers'
BYLINE: James Bone in New YorkAN economist has warned that the euro could displace the dollar as the favoured currency of drug-dealers, gangsters and tax evaders, and called on the European Union not to issue 200 and 500 euro notes.
Kenneth Rogoff, Robertson professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, estimates that between Pounds 50 billion and Pounds 75 billion (Pounds 30 billion and Pounds 45 billion) currently held in the underground economy around the world could be transferred into the euro, because some euro notes will be in larger denominations than dollar notes.
At the expected exchange rate, the 200 and 500 euro note will be valued at $220 and $550, while the largest US banknote in general circulation is the $100 bill.
"I think issuing the 200 and 500 euro notes is nuts," Prof Rogoff said yesterday.
He has outlined his concerns in the current issue of Economic Policy, the journal of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research, saying that about half of the current money supply in OECD nations is held domestically in the underground economy and that a further 25 per cent is used in the black economy abroad - the vast majority in dollars. The $100 bills are so popular that the banknote has had to be redesigned recently. After forgers came up with a so-called "super-Bill" copy, new security features have been added to the note. …
THE HARTFORD COURANT
Copyright 1998 The Hartford Courant Company
April 27, 1998 MondayHEADLINE: LIARS' HALL OF FAME EXPANDS
The thought that Rommel Nobay might one day treat the sick is terrifying.
Mr. Nobay, a New Haven resident, is the Princeton University alumnus who lied to win admission to medical schools at Dartmouth College and Tufts and Georgetown universities then had the nerve to sue Princeton for exposing him. Fortunately, U.S. District Judge Dominic J. Squatrito of Connecticut threw out his suit before a jury had a chance to deliberate the case.
Among the "overstatements" that Mr. Nobay admitted to in court were that he ranked in the top 20 percent of the students in his high school class, that he was a National Merit Scholar, that he scored 720 in mathematics on his Scholastic Assessment Test and that he is black. But the whopper that will earn Mr. Nobay a place in the liars' hall of fame was when he wrote in his college autobiography that lepers in his Kenyan village supported his dream of becoming a doctor by sharing what they earned from begging.
In truth, Mr. Nobay ranked in the top 60 percent of his high school class. He was not a National Merit Scholar. Furthermore, he was born in New York and grew up in Los Angeles. As for his heritage, Mr. Nobay now says his parents are Kenyans descended from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, now part of India.
Sadly, Mr. Nobay's lies about his race may have given ammunition to those who would dismantle collegiate affirmative-action programs. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 27, 1998, Monday, Late Edition - FinalNAME: Russell Banks
HEADLINE: John Brown Lives Anew As a Writer's Inspiration
BYLINE: By MEL GUSSOW
As a novelist, Russell Banks has deeply mined contemporary working-class America, a world that he knows from firsthand experience. Through "Continental Drift," "The Sweet Hereafter" and other books that deal with the violence and pain in everyday life, he has achieved a reputation as a tough-minded, Hemingwayesque writer, an image that is enhanced by his appearance. A burly man of 58 with a close-cropped white beard, he could stand in for Hemingway in a movie about his later life.
Outwardly, his new novel, "Cloudsplitter," is a startling change of pace. Twice as long as his other books, it is his first extended work of historical fiction. It is an ambitious re-evaluation of the life of John Brown, the abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry, W.Va., in 1859 was regarded by some historians as the spark that led to the Civil War. …
"The themes are very much the ones I've worked with in the past," he said during a recent lunch at the Union Square Cafe. "The tension between father and son, the individual and the larger community, the issue of racial identity in a racialized society." …
For many years Mr. Banks has taught fiction writing at Princeton University, along with other celebrated novelists including Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates. While he was working on "Cloudsplitter," Ms. Morrison was working on her new novel, "Paradise," and they were, he said, collegial in their mutual support. "In a sense, we were both writing historical novels, deeply formed by the history of African Americans in this country, although hers is set in the middle of the 20th century." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 27, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: A Day in Court, and Justice, Sometimes, for the Chinese
BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
DATELINE: BEIJING, April 26
Sun Lili's legal odyssey began in October 1996, when she became pregnant -- without the required permission of her employer's all-important family planning office.
Chinese state enterprises are charged with approving employees' pregnancies in advance, and the response from the Worker's Hotel in Beijing was swift: Ms. Sun, a banquet assistant, could quit or have an abortion.
Ms. Sun protested. She was married and childless and had already had two abortions. And after their contraceptives failed this time, she said, she received permission for the birth from her neighborhood family planning committee, the other required step.
She decided to have the child, even though she knew that she would probably face sanctions from her employer, including a modest fine.
But she and her husband, Zhang Zhuan, who stress that they accept China's family planning policy restricting most urban couples to one child, were stunned when company officials heaped on penalties equivalent to nearly a third of her yearly wages and refused to pay medical expenses for Ms. Sun or their daughter, Zhang Hao, born last July.
After pleading unsuccessfully with the hotel to ease its sanctions, which Ms. Sun and Mr. Zhang called excessive and illegal, the couple decided to fight back using a new and increasingly popular tool: they hired a lawyer and sued.
All over China, ordinary people are suing the powers that be -- their employers, state enterprises, the local police -- acts of defiance against their broad and previously unchecked power over people's lives. …
"People are flocking to the legal system," said Minxin Pei, a political scientist at Princeton University. "My explanation is that despite all its flaws, even the partial legal reform that we see in China is producing real benefits. Otherwise people wouldn't spend the time and money or take the risk." …
The Seattle Times
Copyright 1998 The Seattle Times Company
April 27, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: GROUP SEEMS SLOW TO DELIVER -- AMERICA'S PROMISE TRIES TO MATCH NONPROFITS, CORPORATIONS
BYLINE: ELIZABETH BRYANT; NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
On Philadelphia's historic Germantown Avenue sits the Germantown Boys & Girls Club, its garden and freshly painted rooms a testament to the spring day last year when 600 volunteers spruced the place up.
But little has changed at the Youth Project two miles east, where director Paula Cooper recently spent six months on unemployment after a federal grant ran out.
Across America, the year-end report card is uneven for the President's Summit for America's Future, last year's star-studded summons to boost volunteerism and programs for troubled youths.
Power or hype?
Some call last April's summit and its promise - to provide 2 million needy American children with a safe, healthy and nurturing environment by 2000 - as powerfully embracing as the 1960s civil-rights movement. Others call it mostly hype, as short-lived and shallow as the new paint slapped on at the Germantown cleanup.
Do more donated computers, playgrounds and manpower translate into fewer high-school dropouts and drug addicts? Will volunteerism outlive a one-day neighborhood cleanup or a three-year corporate pledge?
"Troubled teens are a complicated problem that isn't solved by a weekend a month (of volunteering)," said Princeton University professor Julian Wolpert, who studies volunteerism. "When problems get to be messy and complicated, most Americans feel that requires some professional help." …
The Bulletin
Copyright 1998 The Bulletin (Bend, OR)
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Readers can expect more, more often
BYLINE: John Costa
Newspapers are many things to many people, but to most they generally serve to provide the advertising, the news and a view.
The news is easily understood.
Make sure readers know what is going on around them in timely and useful ways.
A view is the province of the editorial page, the place where a newspaper steps out of the pure information business and begins to shape, argue, propose ideas that it believes will help provoke a better community.
The editorial page, and its companion Op-ed page, are also places where those who have a different view have a chance to make their case.
They are the bully pulpit and Speakers Corner in Hyde Park compressed to facing pages.
The person who is privileged to control these pages in a newspaper is very powerful indeed.
For the last year, John Henrikson has guided our efforts, and in challenging circumstances. There have been tough issues: a school bond and doctor assisted suicide among them.
And we have moved into an editorial board format. …
Replacing John as editor of editorials of The Bulletin will be Erik Lukens, who now writes editorials for the Trenton, N.J., Trentonian.
Erik, who will join us on July 6, met our requirement that the editor of editorials be analytical, persuasive and eloquent. He is all of those.
He graduated with honors from Cornell University and went on to earn a master's and Ph. D in literature from Princeton University.
While at Princeton, he started working at the Trentonian as a copy editor, but moved into editorial writing. We're glad he did.
This year, in the annual Scripps Howard national writing contests, Erik was the runnerup in national editorial writing. The top award went to The Wall Street Journal.
Erik is married to Shelli Muldar, who has a Ph.D in political science from Princeton. In a month they will have their first baby, and then start heading west. …
Chicago Sun-Times
Copyright 1998 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
April 26, 1998, SUNDAYHEADLINE: Rock writer; Honoring the tectonic prose of John McPhee
BYLINE: Henry Kisor
John McPhee, the nonpareil writer's writer, comes to town Thursday to claim the Field Museum's Award of Merit.
This is no minor laurel. Each year a $5,000 check and Tiffany crystal globe reward a distinguished author who has advanced the public's ''environmental understanding.'' The winner usually is a renowned scientist.
Among its recipients: Jane Goodall, Richard Leakey, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Tory Peterson, Sir David Attenborough and Edward O. Wilson -- and popular novelist Michael Crichton, who more than anyone else turned the world on to dinosaurs.
More than anyone else, McPhee has turned the world on to rocks, and that's why the Field Museum tapped him for the honor.
Among his 25 celebrated books are four on American geology -- Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), Rising From the Plains (1986) and Assembling California (1993). All of them first appeared in the New Yorker and are exemplars of ''explanatory journalism,'' that awkward term for clear and understandable writing about complicated things. …
And so the masterwork is completed. But will McPhee also revisit and revise any of his other, shorter works, the splendid miniatures? I've often wondered what happened to Henri Vaillancourt, the New Hampshire craftsman-hero of The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975); John McPhee, the writer's namesake and game-warden bush pilot of ''North of the C.P. Line'' (1985), and others he has so memorably chronicled. And what about Bill Bradley, the Princeton basketball hero who was the subject of McPhee's first book, A Sense of Where You Are (1965), now that he has retired from the U.S. Senate? …
As for Bradley, ''we became good friends and have been ever since. I'm the godfather of his daughter. He is in numerous respects a brother.''
There is one geologically changeless thing about John McPhee: Princeton and New Jersey. Talk about tree-hugging! McPhee was born in Princeton, grew up there, attended school there, then went to the university, where he first won fame at age 19 as a collegiate panelist on the old television show ''20 Questions.'' He has been a professor of journalism at Princeton University since 1975.
Exactly what is it about Princeton that has anchored him for so long?
''The library,'' McPhee said. ''There's a lot of truth in that. It was the library that drew my family back to Princeton after Jenny arrived -- daughter No. 3 (of four children). We had been living in New York. And now I teach writing courses at the university.'' …
Sunday Times
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Limited
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Black mark
BODY:
THE euro will be an ideal vehicle for crime and the black economy, according to Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Princeton University. In a new book, Emu: Prospects and Challenges for the euro, published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, Rogoff questions whether the European authorities are wise to have decided to print the euro in large-denomination notes - up to 500 euros (Pounds 350).
Though there are so-called seignorage gains from printing currency to the issuing banks (the network of central banks participating in Emu), Rogoff says this will be more than offset by lost tax revenues as the euro becomes the currency for drug dealers and others in criminal activity.
"The best way to reduce underground currency usage is not entirely clear," he writes. "Eliminating high-denomination notes, or placing reporting requirements on them, seems like a good place to start."
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1998 The Dallas Morning News
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: CLIMBING THE ECONOMIC LADDER;
Black communities find the rise of the middle class a mixed blessing
BYLINE: James Ragland
Roger B. Williams grew up in a tough neighborhood on Philadelphia's west side, the youngest of seven children. His father worked as a butcher in a meat-packing company, his mother off-and-on as a domestic trying to help the family make ends meet.
Now, Mr. Williams is an executive with a growing medical cost-containment business founded by his oldest sister and brother-in-law. He joined the Dallas operation three years ago after helping the company start a branch in Atlanta.
To be where he is today "is sort of amazing, really."
"Some of my friends say, "You sold out. You're a shirt-and-tie guy now,' " said Mr. Willliams, 41, whose older brother, Willie Williams, is the former police chief of Los Angeles. "I understand where they're coming from. But I also understand where I've been."
Mr. Williams personifies a post-Civil Rights era trend - the rise of the black middle class. …
"The fundamental crisis in black America is twofold: too much poverty and too little self-love," Cornell West, a former professor at Princeton University who has since joined the Afro-American Department at Harvard University, said in his 1993 book Race Matters. "The urgent problem of black poverty is primarily due to the distribution of wealth, power and income -- a distribution influenced by the racial caste system that denied opportunities to most "qualified' black people until two decades ago." …
The Florida Times-Union
Copyright 1998 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL)
April 26, 1998 SundayHEADLINE: Cinema South;
No matter how much the South changed over the years, it stayed relatively the same on the big screen -- dangerous, charming and quirky with small-town and racist themes. But recent films show Hollywood's outsider view of the area may slowly be changing
BYLINE: Matt Soergel, Times-Union movie writer
At the counter of a diner in Wahzoo City, Ala., New Yorker Joe Pesci looks with dismay at a plate of white mush placed in front of him.
'What's this over here?'
The counterman is taken aback. 'You never heard o' grits?'
'Sure, sure, I heard of grits,' Pesci says. 'I just actually never seen a grit before. . . . What's a grit?'
It's a funny throwaway line in My Cousin Vinny, a 1991 culture-clash comedy about New Yorkers and the South. But it's also a moment that says a lot about how movies of the '90s approach the contemporary South.
No matter that much of the South now resembles a bland Anywhere, U.S.A., with Barnes & Noble stores, strip malls, gated communities and 24-screen megaplex theaters.
In movies, the South is still an exotic place, as foreign as . . . well, grits.
And part of the attraction of setting a movie in the South is simple: For all its homogenization, there's still no place else like it. …
Many movies set in the South -- going all the way back to 1915's The Birth of a Nation -- deal with the issue of race, of whites and blacks clashing or trying to live together.
'That's literally always been the hallmark of Southern literature and movies, hasn't it?' said Princeton University film scholar Michael Wood. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: BENEFITS
Preserving Film History
MONDAY -- Peter Bogdanovich, the director, and P. Adams Sitney, a professor of visual arts at Princeton University, will be among those receiving awards from Anthology Film Archives at its annual Preservation Honors Dinner. Proceeds go to the group's archiving projects and public programs. The evening at Paggio, a restaurant at 223 West Broadway (White Street), begins at 6:30. Tickets, $250, from (212) 505-5181.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Ideas & Trends; Crime's Newest Cash of Choice
BYLINE: By SYLVIA NASAR
THE potential challenge that Europe's new single currency poses to the dollar's dominance of global trade and bond portfolios has been widely anticipated. Largely overlooked, however, is another threat: The Euro may edge out the dollar as the currency of choice in the world's huge underground economy -- and in the process end a highly profitable American monopoly.
The threat comes from a seemingly innocuous, little-noted decision by the European Monetary Institute to issue the Euro in some very large denominations, including 100, 200 and 500 Euro notes -- equivalent to $110, $220 and $550 bills at the expected rate of exchange.
These denominations are intended to mirror those of the German mark and thus make the new currency seem reassuringly familiar to those with doubts about monetary union.
But the big bills, says Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Princeton University, will also have the presumably unintended consequence of offering Columbian drug lords, New York mafia bosses and Russian gangsters -- as well as garden-variety tax dodgers -- a superior vehicle for doing business and hoarding their ill-gotten gains.
"Giant bills will help the Europeans compete with the United States for these 'customers,' " says Mr. Rogoff. "We have these crummy $100 bills and they're going to have a $500 bill. You'll be able to smuggle a million in or out of the country in a purse instead of a suitcase." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Alexander Papamarkou, 68, An International Financier
BYLINE: By DANA CANEDY
Alexander Papamarkou, a philanthropist and international investment banker whose clients included royalty, industrialists and major institutions, died Thursday at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York. He was 68 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause of death was a heart attack, his family said.
Mr. Papamarkou founded the Papamarkou & Company investment firm in New York. He began his career on Wall Street in 1961 as a broker at Oppenheimer & Company and had also been a vice president of E. F. Hutton before establishing his own firm. …
Mr. Papamarkou graduated with honors from Athens College in 1948 and came to the United States that year to attend the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in public affairs. He received a master's degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He also studied at the London School of Economics. …
The Observer
Copyright 1998 Guardian Newspapers Limited
April 26, 1998HEADLINE: So does that clear it all up, then?; Rob Edwards answers the questionable Dounreay affair
BYLINE: ROB EDWARDS
MAKING a nuclear weapon could hardly be more simple. Just drop two lumps of highly enriched uranium down a drainpipe to create an explosion equalling that of Hiroshima in 1945.
'It's childishly easy,' says Frank Barnaby, who used to work at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire.
That, essentially, is why US President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were anxious to get 5kg of highly enriched uranium out of Georgia last week to the Dounreay nuclear plant in Scotland.
Chechen terrorists or Iraqi agents could have stolen it from the former unstable Soviet republic, they feared.
Why Dounreay?
It took six months of secret negotiations. Foreign Office officials received a request from the US State Department in August last year to take the Georgian consignment as part of an international understanding reached at the 1996 summit in Moscow to share out responsibility for fissile material from the former Soviet republics. …
Was the Georgia shipment enough to make a bomb?
No. But with a further 20kg, there would be enough to wipe out a city. The Government claims that by transforming the uranium into medical isotopes it is turning swords into ploughshares.
Is it safe now?
Not according to the senior US official who launched Auburn Endeavour two years ago. If the British Government and Dounreay do as they intend, says Ken Luongo, former head of the US Department of Energy's Office of Non -Proliferation, the uranium will remain in circulation - and could still be stolen by terrorists.
Luongo, now a senior fellow at Princeton University in New Jersey, argues that the best way truly to turn swords into ploughshares is to abide by the US policy of 'blending down' the uranium to make low enriched uranium, which cannot be used in bombs.
'Keeping it as highly enriched uranium is keeping the sword in its sheath,' he says. …
Roanoke Times & World News
Copyright 1998 The Roanoke Times & World News
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: AMERICA: HOME OF THE FREE AND LAND OF THE LAWSUIT; LITIGATING ALL ILLS
BYLINE: TOMMY DENTON EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
LAST SUNDAY, in the comic strip ''Wiley's Non Sequitur,'' a malfunction in the navigation system of his spacecraft left Lost Leonard hurtling through a time warp. After careening backward from the year 2498, he was finally able to make an emergency entry to the 21st century.
''I was stranded in a time of intellectual Armageddon,'' Leonard observed, as he encountered a scruffy panhandler extending a cup and holding a sign that read, ''Pay up or I'll file suit.'' Nowhere could Leonard find evidence that the advanced intelligence of the 1990s had survived.
''No arts or science. No industry or commerce. Only lawyers.'' All direction signs on lamp posts pointed to the courthouse - signs pointing in every direction.
Hyperbole is among the cartoonist's most effective instruments for revealing deeper truths from apparent absurdity. Lawyers are easy marks, as the proliferation of lawyer jokes easily attests. …
As it is, we live in an age in which the lawsuit is no longer the course of last resort, but too often the unreflecting first line of attack. As a result, any grievance now demands satisfaction at the bar of justice.
Fortunately, most judges are not blind to what the law should and does allow. For instance, U.S. District Judge Dominic Squatrito of Hartford, Conn., recently threw out the case of a man who sued Princeton University for defamation and invasion of his privacy.
Rommel Nobay had graduated from Princeton in 1989 and later sought admission to a number of medical schools, several of which accepted his application. Those accpeptances were rejected or withdrawn after Princeton, having discovered that Nobay had lied about his background and academic achievements, notified the medical schools of the fabrications. …
Yet he insisted that the fulfillment of his personal ambitions should override his deceit, and that Princeton should compensate him for shattering his dreams. Never mind the implications of entrusting to an ethically challenged liar the solemn responsibility of a physician making life-and-death decisions. …
The Rocky Mountain News
Copyright 1998 Denver Publishing Company (Denver, Co.)
April 26, 1998, Sunday,HEADLINE: A VIEW OF OATES' INVISIBLE LIFE
BYLINE: Mark GrahamInvisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates
By Greg Johnson. Dutton, 560 pages, $34.95.In just over three decades, according to the bibliography at the end of Greg Johnson's new authorized biography, Invisible Writer, Joyce Carol Oates has been responsible for the following numbers of published books: 25 novels under her own name; six novels under the pseudonym, Rosamond Smith; 21 collections of short stories; four novellas; eight volumes of poetry; six plays; eight non-fiction works; 32 limited editions of various types of literature; and 12 anthologies she has edited.
During most of those 30-odd years, in addition to writing more than 100 books, Oates has also carried a full teaching load as a college professor at the University of Detroit, the University of Windsor and Princeton University, where she currently teaches creative writing, freshman literature, existential literature and survey courses on a wide variety of authors. Nineteen books about Oates have been published, two previous ones by Johnson. Invisible Writer, however, is unique in several respects: most previous studies have been specific, devoted only to the short stories, or to particular novels, or to periods of her life; many have been collections of essays on the author; and none have been written with access to Oates' copious journals and letters. This biography covers the author from her birth to the present, concentrating mostly on the relationships between her personal life and her major works. There are frequent references to Oates' journal reflections while writing these novels, and she provided more than 40 photographs from all periods of her life, many never-before published. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
April 26, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: .. . Graded by Machine
BYLINE: Amy E. SchwartzThe New Mexico State University system was proud enough of the invention by two faculty members to announce it on its Web site: "Computer software grades essays just as well as people, professors announced." When assistant psychology professor Peter Foltz and University of New Mexico colleague Thomas Landauer presented the software to a conference on educational research, they got the expected burst of attention and press coverage, but probably mixed with a significant component of dismay.
This educational breakthrough comes courtesy of the Intelligent Essay Assessor, a complex computer program that is fed information about an essay topic from online texts and encyclopedias and then calculates how many of the key words and concepts a student's paper manages to hit. It also rates how much its formulations deviate from programmed-in papers graded by a human being. …
Could the much-touted high-tech education of the future be nothing but a covert return to the old ideals of drillwork? It's not such a bad prospect -- except for one crucial difference. Reciting dates in high school history, competing in grammar and spelling bees, learning "dead" languages through painstaking translation of already-translated classics -- all these were reflections of the belief that, before you could fly intellectually, you needed to stand on a firm hill of accumulated solid ground.
The Princeton University Bulletin recently dug up a 1748 quotation from former college president Aaron Burr saying no student should be admitted who could not "render Virgil and Tully's orations into English; and to turn English into true and grammatical Latin; and to be so well acquainted with the Greek as to render any part of the four Evangelists in that language into Latin or English." Entering students, mind you. But after that, presumably, they would fly. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
April 25, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: Sentence by Judge Reflects Historic Documents' Value
BYLINE: By BENJAMIN WEISERSaying that the theft of hundreds of priceless maps and documents from Columbia University had deprived generations of scholars from being able to study and learn from the past, a Federal judge in Manhattan yesterday sentenced the man responsible to five years in prison.
The man, Daniel Spiegelman, was also ordered to pay a yet undetermined amount of restitution to Columbia for the stolen works, which were valued at $1.3 million.
The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, seemed determined to answer a seemingly unanswerable riddle: What is the value of something that is priceless? …
Robert Darnton, a professor of European history at Princeton University, said, "I don't rejoice when anyone goes to prison. He added, "But I think that an important point has been dramatized in this case that has to do with the importance of rare books. The ordinary citizen may think of rare books as luxuries, collected by wealthy people, and displayed in treasure houses under glass. In fact, they are key items of evidence in the attempt to reconstruct cultural systems." …
The Washington Times
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
April 25, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: 'Historical deja vu' drives award winner's work
BYLINE: Greg Pierce; THE WASHINGTON TIMESRenowned Civil War scholar James McPherson had little interest in the subject until he arrived in Baltimore as a young graduate student and saw the present collide with the past.
During a speech at the Union League in New York City last week in which he accepted the Lincoln Prize for his book, "For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War," Mr. McPherson explained how modern-day events shaped his interests as a historian.
The Lincoln Prize at Gettysburg College is awarded for the best Civil War work in the previous year. Mr. McPherson received $30,000 and a bronze bust based on the life-size sculpture "Lincoln the Man" by Augustus St. Gaudens.
"Unlike some of you in this room, I did not have a youthful fascination with the war. When I arrived in Baltimore for graduate work in history, I did not know that the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction would become my field," he said. Apart from a couple of books by Bruce Catton, Mr. McPherson said he had read little on the subject. Nor had he taken a college course on the Civil War era, because none was offered. …
"My senior year in college was also the year that nine black students integrated Central High School in Little Rock under the protection of the United States Army. I was well enough acquainted with history and current events to know that the constitutional basis for their presence at Central High School was the 14th Amendment, one of the most important results of the Civil War. In retrospect, it seems clear that this awareness planted the seed of my professional interest in the Civil War," Mr. McPherson said. …
Mr. McPherson, who serves today as the George Henry Davis Professor of American History at Princeton University, added: "This captain's consciousness of the relationship between his actions and the future brings me full circle back to the reason why I became interested in the Civil War: the relationship between that future, which is my present, and the past, which was his present. That indissoluble bond past and present is why we study history. Without a knowledge of where we have been, we cannot know who and what we are. …