Princeton in the News
January 1 to 6, 1999
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The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Copyright 1999 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
January 6, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: New findings keep cosmologists questing; Evidence of universe's accelerating expansion has astronomers rethinking basic theories
BYLINE: SETH BORENSTEIN, KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- This was expected to be the year when astronomers offered convincing answers to one of the most fundamental questions in science -- the age of the universe.
Instead, they have been thrown into a tizzy by developments in recent months that threaten much of what they thought they knew.
NASA's chief space scientist, Ed Weiler, called the turn of events in cosmic theorizing "one giant leap forward for mankind and one giant leap backward. ... And that's great. The worst thing that happens for scientists is they get smug."
As America's astronomers prepare to meet this week at the annual conference of the American Astronomical Society, few are feeling very smug.
"This is all potential disarray," said P. James Peebles, Albert Einstein professor of physics at Princeton University.
The trouble started about a year ago when astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and several astronomers from two distinct teams shook the science world with their announcement that the universe appeared to be expanding at an accelerating pace and has been doing so for about 7 billion years.
As the year went on, Perlmutter and others found more evidence of the speedup in shifts of light from 80 different supernovas.
That confirmation has led to other confusions:
The accelerating growth of the universe means it probably is a lot older than scientists had thought -- possibly 15 billion to 18 billion years old instead of 12 billion to 15 billion. Scientists have the new challenge of deciding just how old.
Some previously unaccounted-for force must be fueling the acceleration. Physicists are faced with the bewildering mystery of determining just what particle or energy form may be working that magic. …
An older universe, using lambda, would remove any messy paradox about the universe being younger than some of its stars, which had been a problem earlier with Freedman's calculations, Weiler said.
But it could produce a new possible paradox, Peebles said: The universe may end up being much older than its older stars, something that would confuse our understanding of the big bang. However, lambda may also help explain the mystery of the missing majority of the universe….
NOTE: This story appeared on the Knight-Ridder/Tribune wire service and in at least a dozen major newspapers.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 6, 1999, WednesdayNAME: Robert E. Kirby
HEADLINE: Robert Kirby, 80, Former Chief Who Helped Save Westinghouse
BYLINE: By LESLIE WAYNE
Robert E. Kirby, a former chief executive of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation who masterminded a turnaround of the company in the 1970's, died last Thursday at Naples Community Hospital in Naples, Fla. He was 80.
Mr. Kirby, who retired from the company in 1983, suffered several strokes, a Westinghouse spokesman said. Since 1993, Mr. Kirby had also suffered from Guillain-Barre syndrome, the nerve disorder. …
After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Penn State in 1939, Mr. Kirby took a job with the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company in Tyrone, Pa., and within a year became assistant superintendent of the mill. In 1943, he joined the Navy's highly secret radar corps. He was sent to study electrical engineering at Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bell Labs and was discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant after serving as an electronics officer. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 6, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Economists Reject Notion Of Stock Market 'Bubble'
BYLINE: By LOUIS UCHITELLEIn all the talk at their annual meeting about the United States economy and what keeps it so robust, the nation's economists gave short shrift to one concern -- that the soaring stock market might be a speculative bubble that could burst, damaging the economy.
The stock market is neither a principal reason for the economy's strength nor a big threat to the nearly eight-year-long expansion, the economists said in their various sessions at the American Economic Association's three-day meeting, which ended yesterday, and in interviews. The majority view was that high stock prices probably reflect not a bubble but the economy's actual strength, although no one said that categorically. …
This time, inflation has not risen, as it so often did in the past, particularly when the unemployment rate dropped below 5.5 percent. It is now 4.4 percent.
And the reasons? Considerable credit went to "lucky shocks," as Alan Blinder of Princeton University phrased it -- falling oil prices, for example, falling import prices, smaller-than-expected increases in health care costs and ever sharper declines in computer prices. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
January 5, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: I-270 congested again after $200 million widening project
DATELINE: ROCKVILLE, Md.Montgomery County transportation officials believed when Interstate 270 was widened eight years ago, the project would meet the needs of the future.
I-270 has again been reduced to what one official called "a rolling parking lot," following a $200 million project that widened the highway for 12 miles and increased it to 12 lanes in some places.
Traffic on some segments already has exceeded the levels projected for 2010. …
Widened highways generate their own traffic in a phenomenon known as "induced travel," national transportation analysts say. …
"If you make a road wider, it will be a more attractive place to travel and a more attractive place to live," said David Bernstein, a Princeton University professor. …
The Charleston Gazette
Copyright 1999 Charleston Newspapers
January 5, 1999, TuesdayEDITORIAL
HEADLINE: The costs of living Managed care has failed to cure health-care problems
BYLINE: John DavidThe financial crisis faced by the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) is indicative that health care is once again a front-burner issue.
To many, this is no surprise. Several years ago, when a single-payer medical plan was clearly needed, those who favored managed care prevailed. Now the limited savings provided by managed care have apparently peaked. …
Ten years ago, 31.8 million Americans lacked health insurance. Today, according to Business Week, this number has increased by a third to 43 million. This number doubles if those with limited, inadequate coverage are included. Seemingly, this is inconsistent with an economy that leaders claim is healthy and strong.
The reason for this inconsistency is the shift to part-time and temporary employment. Economists Henry Farber at Princeton University and Helen Levy at the University of California in Berkeley have found that the share of private-sector workers with health insurance fell from 72 percent to 65 percent during the past decade. This is precisely the period that the economy experienced a major shift away from manufacturing to services and selling. …
Chicago Sun-Times
Copyright 1999 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
January 5, 1999, TUESDAYHEADLINE: Studies vouch for private schools
BYLINE: William SanderThe recent U.S. Supreme Court and Wisconsin Supreme Court rulings supporting the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program have resulted in inflated rhetoric either supporting or opposing education vouchers. The Milwaukee voucher program is an experiment that allows a small number of students from low-income families to attend private schools. At first, students could select only nonsectarian schools. The experiment now includes religious schools.
An analysis of the effects of the Milwaukee experiment by Princeton University's Ceclia Elena Rouse shows that voucher students had faster math score gains than they would have had in the public sector. The gains in reading scores were similar to what the gains would have been in the public sector. …
The News and Observer
Copyright 1999 The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC)
January 5, 1999 TuesdayHEADLINE: Pharmacists dole out emergency contraception
BYLINE: KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERSSEATTLE, Wash. -- An innovative law in Washington state that permits pharmacists under certain circumstances to prescribe medication has brought a dramatic increase in the use of emergency contraceptive, or "morning after," pills by women.
Since February, more than 6,000 prescriptions for the pills were written through the Puget Sound Pharmacist/Emergency Contraceptive Pills Project that enables druggists to directly prescribe the medication. This rate of 166 prescriptions a week compares with some preprogram estimates by pharmacists of just one doctor-prescribed dosage in a given week.
"It's amazing that emergency contraception has been available in the United States for more than 20 years but only 1 percent of women of reproductive age have ever used it," said James Trussell, a faculty associate at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University that co-sponsored the project. "By making women aware of this contraceptive alternative, we can literally prevent millions of unintended pregnancies each year." …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
January 4, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Infertile couples target Ivy League for egg donations
BYLINE: BRIGITTE GREENBERG, Associated Press WriterDATELINE: NEW HAVEN, Conn.
Some infertile couples want strictly Grade A eggs.
A national fertility registry is focusing more of its advertising on newspapers at Ivy League campuses, and so are individual couples looking for donor eggs.
"Intelligence is a key factor in our recruitment, mainly because that is probably the most sought-after attribute," said Teri B. Royal, director of OPTIONS National Fertility Registry.
The Los Angeles-based agency advertises at Ivy League institutions on behalf of infertile couples. In between classes, it's not unusual for brainy coeds to find offers for their ova in the Yale Daily News, the Daily Princetonian or the Harvard Crimson. …
Yet a New Jersey couple who went through OPTIONS to get an egg donation warn parents against trying to produce a genetically perfect child. Janet Lasley and Marc Brahaney, himself a Princeton graduate, describe their 1-year-old son, Charlie, as "brilliant."
Their egg donor got a 1,270 on her SATs, earned A's in college and has an IQ of 146 - but she wasn't an Ivy Leaguer.
"It was a much more of an emotional connection than for me to genetically engineer this thing," said Ms. Lasley, 45. "There is that temptation ... but once you get this child, it doesn't matter. You just love them, no matter what." …
The Deseret News
Copyright 1999 The Deseret News Publishing Co. (Salt Lake City, UT)
January 4, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Predicted 'crime storm' fails to appear
BYLINE: By Jacques Steinberg New York Times News ServiceIn 1994, when a small but influential group of criminologists and politicians began fixing their gaze on the end of the 20th century, they saw a crime storm on the horizon, one teeming with a new breed of predators who would soon be reaching their teens.
According to their forecasts, the storm should have hit by now. Instead, the sky has been clearing.
For example, the rate of homicides committed by 14- to 17-year-olds, which leapt from 10 per 100,000 in 1985 to 30.2 in 1993, has gone down every year since, to 16.5 in 1997, said James Alan Fox, dean of the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University.
Moreover, statistics released by the Justice Department last week indicated that robberies by offenders of all ages fell a staggering 17 percent in 1997, continuing the seven-year drop in violent crime that followed the crime surge of the 1980s. That drop, criminologists say, is being driven by the falloff in the crack market and by concerted efforts by police departments across the country to seize handguns from juveniles, among other causes.
But that's not exactly what Fox -- along with James Q. Wilson of UCLA, John DiIulio of Princeton University, and Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., the chairman of the House subcommittee on crime -- foresaw in their crystal balls several years ago.
In November 1995, for example, DiIulio, a professor of public affairs, suggested that a dip in crime, already perceptible then, was "the lull before the crime storm."
But if that was the case, said Franklin Zimring, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, who was skeptical of such forecasts, "We should have our umbrellas open right now." …
Perhaps the most exaggerated factor underpinning the anticipated youth crime wave has been demographics. In January 1996, the Council on Crime in America, an organization of law-enforcement experts, issued a report compiled by DiIulio describing violent crime as a "ticking time bomb" that would go off as the number of teenagers soared in the coming few years. …
Health Line
Copyright 1999 The National Journal Group, Inc.
January 4, 1999HEADLINE: FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS: SANTA CAME EARLY FOR SOME
In an ironic twist, a popular form of tax-free medical accounts designed to save money caused some end-of-year health care spending sprees that some critics said wasted money and deprived employers and the government of funds that could be more usefully spent elsewhere. Congress created Flexible Spending Accounts in 1984 "to give workers relief from ever-shrinking health care coverage." Under the option, more than four million Americans choose a yearly, tax-free amount which their employers deduct from their paychecks. They may use the money on medical expenses not covered by insurance, such as orthodontia, chiropractic therapy or acupuncture. Should they not use the entire amount by Dec. 31, the remainder goes back to their employer. …
Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt said, "Why are rich people getting a 40% discount on their kids' orthodontia, but gas station attendants have no insurance at all?" …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 4, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Henry Schwartz, 89, Surgeon and Lecturer
Dr. Henry Gerard Schwartz, a neurosurgeon and lecturer who trained a new generation of specialists in his field at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, died there on Dec. 24 at St. Mary's Health Center. He was 89 and lived in suburban St. Louis.
In recognition of his work, 60 former neurosurgery residents at Washington University contributed $1 million in 1996 to establish a chair in neurological surgery in his name. While chairman of the department from 1946 to 1974, Dr. Schwartz developed a training program that produced many academicians and practitioners who went on to full professorships.
Dr. Schwartz, a native of Brooklyn, entered Princeton University at 15 and graduated in 1928. He earned his medical degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 4, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Hospitals in New York Escalate Competition for Cancer Patients
BYLINE: By JENNIFER STEINHAUERThe vast prestige, power and -- critics would argue -- arrogance of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center can be measured by its physical space.
It is on York Avenue in the 60's -- inconvenient, like many prestigious New York hospitals, to public transportation. Many of its hospital floors feel grim and dated, with harsh lighting and nurses' stations enclosed in Plexiglass. Its parking lot is dismal, and some waiting areas are about as welcoming as the average public hospital's.
Yet historically, Sloan-Kettering has been the place to go for cancer treatment in New York, because of its prestigious doctors and esteemed reputation for clinical research, and the promising drugs trials it conducts. Ambience has never been the point.
But lately, curious things have been happening at Sloan-Kettering. It is building a new ambulatory care center at 53d Street and Third Avenue, smack next to several subway lines. The main hospital is undergoing a face lift …
And last week, Sloan-Kettering's 72-year-old president, Paul A. Marks, said he would retire this year, perhaps paving the way for further changes in the center's way of doing business, which at this point has included all but ignoring the managed-care movement.
This is hardly enlightenment in a vacuum. Cancer is becoming an essential part of any hospital's business, and the major medical centers in the city are aggressively trying to nibble away at Sloan-Kettering's market share. …
"The best way to go after patients is through building your talent base," said Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University. What is more, prestigious doctors attract drug companies and other institutions needed for drug trials, which are another major attraction for critically ill patients. …
The Tampa Tribune
Copyright 1999 The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune
January 4, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: 1998: A Year in Science
BYLINE: KURT LOFT of The Tampa Tribune;While everyone looks ahead with trepidation to the Y2K computer crash that threatens the millennium, today we look back on some of the more intriguing science events, local and universal, of 1998. …
Nonpetroleum gas: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Princeton University for a nonpetroleum substitute for gasoline. Called P-series, the alternative fuel is a blend of ethanol, natural gas liquids and a co-solvent. Its inventors designed the juice to be competitive with gasoline, to meet standards set by the 1990 Clean Air Act and to run in most cars and trucks now on the road.
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
January 3, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: ANNUAL MARKETS AND MUTUAL FUND REVIEW AND OUTLOOK; WHAT INDEXING CAN, CAN'T BE COUNTED ON TO DO
BYLINE: PAUL J. LIM, TIMES STAFF WRITER
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That explains why retail investors in 1998 plowed a record amount of money into passively managed index funds.For a fifth consecutive year, low-cost index funds that track the Standard & Poor's 500 --by just holding all of the stocks in the blue-chip index --beat at least three-quarters of all actively managed domestic stock funds.
Indeed, despite the tumultuous late-summer market slide, S&P 500 index funds ended the year up about 28%.
By contrast, the typical actively managed U.S. stock fund --which trades in and out of stocks, building up expenses and taxes --gained just 13.7%, about the same as the typical government bond fund.
"Index investing is a sure strategy to gain investment returns that exceed those available from the average mutual fund, which is constantly in the market, actively buying and selling stocks in a futile attempt to gain extraordinary returns," Princeton University economics professor Burton Malkiel writes in his forthcoming book, "Earn More, Sleep Better: Investing With Index Funds." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 3, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: COLLEGE PREP: Which Way to the Salad Bar?
BYLINE: By Linda Lee; Linda Lee, an editor in the style department of The New York Times, is writing a book on the choices facing high-school seniors.
WHEN CHOOSING A college, high-school seniors and their parents invariably say that cost and academics come first. Students also want a school that is as far away from home as possible, or as close as possible, and to go where siblings and friends have gone before. But there are other, far subtler factors influencing a student's choice.
Mariah Balaban, 21, opted for Sarah Lawrence College because, she said, she "liked the way people dressed."
Cornelia Nicholson, a private counselor in Massachusetts who helps students pick colleges, says she's heard it all. "How about two snowboarding requests in one week?" she said. "Another student wants to go where he can windsurf!" Call it the Club Ed approach to choosing a school. …
Even if a college is not within shouting distance of a city, it will stress its proximity to one. Admissions officers at their respective schools promote the fact that Bard College, in rural Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., is only two hours from New York City by train"; that Clark University, in industrial Worcester, Mass., is less than an hour from Boston"; that Princeton University, in its tranquil New Jersey setting, is only an hour and 15 minutes from New York." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 3, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths BURR, ROBERT PAGE
BURR-Robert Page. On December 31, 1998, of Matinicus Island, Maine, formerly of Lloyd Harbor, NY. Beloved husband of Elizabeth, loving father of Susan, William, James, Jonathan, Elizabeth, and David, and devoted grandfather of ten grandchildren. Born in Mineola, NY, on September 28, 1922, the son of Robert Page Burr and Laurence Hewlett, Mr. Burr attended Princeton University, graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and served as an officer in the Navy during World War II. …
AP Online
Copyright 1999 Associated Press
January 02, 1999; SaturdayHEADLINE: NJ Sen. Compiles Historical Quotes
BYLINE: LAURENCE ARNOLD
DATELINE: WASHINGTONHe is, as anyone on Capitol Hill will tell you, a prolific talker. But Sen. Robert Torricelli also pays attention to the words of others.
The New Jersey Democrat is compiling memorable quotes from throughout history, as well as great speeches from the 20th century. The quotes may eventually be published; the speeches are being turned into a book, ''In Our Own Words: The American Century,'' to be released this year. …
With Carroll and the assistance of students from Rutgers and Princeton universities, Torricelli collected 170 great speeches for the upcoming book. …
The Guardian
Copyright 1999 Guardian Newspapers Limited (London)
January 2, 1999HEADLINE: Books: A love that gathers dust
BYLINE: ANTHONY JULIUSThe Archivist by Martha Cooley 328pp, Abacus, pounds 9.99
T S Eliot fell in love with Emily Hale in 1913. They corresponded, on and off, through the decades that followed. When Eliot's first wife, Vivienne, died, Emily expected a proposal of marriage. It didn't come. Instead, upon his marriage to Valerie (who survives him), he broke completely with her. The end was abrupt, and, one might think, heartless. Hale was devastated. Eliot destroyed her letters; she sent his to Princeton University Library, where they are sealed from view until 2019.
One of Eliot's biographers, Lyndall Gordon, writes of 'the strangeness of attachment that was bound up for many years with the fate of (Eliot's) soul'. This is a little precious, and one might think that his break with Hale could be described more accurately in plainer, less reverential language. Gordon adds that to try to imagine the relationship 'is to risk a fiction'. With The Archivist, Martha Cooley has obliged. …
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 1999 San Antonio Express-News
January 2, 1999, Saturday
HEADLINE: Touched by angels; Winged icons more popular than ever
SOURCE: RELIGION NEWS SERVICEEveryday, in an upstairs room in her home in Bethesda, Md., Linda Rose Levenberg enters the angelic realm.
With New Age music playing softly in the background, she sits cross-legged in meditation in front of a bamboo altar she has assembled herself. On the altar are incense, bells, a candle and a white potted mum.
But mostly, there are angels: angel pictures, angel figurines, angel tarot cards.
At her altar, Levenberg conducts rituals to connect with what she calls her "angel guides," named Gabriel and Sarah. Levenberg says these angels speak messages for her and for others.
Levenberg is not alone. Surveys show nearly 75 percent of Americans believe in angels. One-third say they've had some kind of personal experience or encounter with an angel. …
Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow says the high interest in angels reveals something important about contemporary American spirituality.
"Many people are uncertain about traditional religious teachings and they may feel for personal reasons that God has been very distant in their lives. Angels are much friendlier. Angels are more approachable," Wuthnow said. …
Astronomy
Copyright 1999 Kalmbach Publishing Company
January, 1999HEADLINE: Most Extreme Stars.
BYLINE: Irion, RobertThe galaxy's spinning neutron stars display some of astronomy's most astonishing behaviors.
Adjectives fly furiously when astronomers talk about the whirling dervishes called pulsars. Fastest spinning stars. Strongest magnetic fields. Greatest observable surface gravity. Quickest travelers in the galaxy. And the densest things in the universe save for black holes, which inhabit a bizarre realm all their own.
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars, the city-sized remnants of massive stars that die in supernova explosions. Spinning dozens of times per second or more, pulsars sweep the Milky Way with tight flares of radiation. It comes as no surprise that researchers must use all areas of known physics to explore these celestial eccentrics. "Pulsars display extremes that we will never duplicate in the lab," says physicist Roger Romani of Stanford University. "By studying them, we ultimately hope for a deeper understanding of the universe and the nature of matter itself." …
Millisecond pulsars are colder and more stable than their freshly minted cousins from supernovae. For that reason, they make the most accurate clocks in the cosmos, says physicist Stephen Thorsett of Princeton University. "There's something very appealing about taking a solar mass, putting it into a 20-kilometer package, and spinning it 600 times a second," he says. "They are ideal clocks, much like those you would find in one of Einstein's Gedanken [thought] experiments." …
CFO, The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives
Copyright 1999 CFO Publishing CorporationJanuary, 1999
HEADLINE: Critical Condition.
BYLINE: McCafferty, JosephJoseph McCafferty is an associate editor at CFO
Why health care CFOs have the toughest finance jobs in America.
A little less than a year ago, the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, Susan Porth, said she was leaving the nation's largest nonprofit health maintenance organization after 20 years, 10 as finance chief, "for personal reasons" just four days later, Kaiser announced a whopping $270 million loss for 1997, the first ever in the 50-year history of the Oakland, California-based HMO.
Porth wasn't alone in making an inauspicious departure A number of other health care companies announced that their CFOs were retiring in their 50s or stepping down "to pursue other interests" tellingly close to disclosures of staggering losses or other difficulties "Not many CEOs of managed-care company survived last year" says Eleanor Kerns, a healthcare analyst at BT Alex Brown Inc. in Boston "There was a 'shoot-the-messenger' mentality, and the bodies started to pile up,' she says. …
Like many HMOs, Aetna US Healthcare found itself facing bottom-line problems as it pursued market share at the expense of profits. The idea was that only the biggest would survive, and to compete for patients, they kept premiums low while costs spiked. "They competed to see who could offer the lowest premiums, to the point where the marketing people set the rates and the actuaries were sent on vacation," says Uwe Reinhardt, a health economics professor at Princeton University, of the pricing strategy many HMOs followed. …
The Futurist
Copyright 1999 World Future Society
January, 1999HEADLINE: Humanity's future in space; includes related article on six major technologies for future space missions
BYLINE: Kistler, Walter P.
Deep-space missions may not be possible for many decades. Meanwhile, we will concentrate on designing new launch vehicles, setting up the international space station, and finding energy in space.
Should the United States support a "Man In Space" program? Opponents and proponents present strong arguments on both sides. …
The only conceivable way that people will travel in deep space is through means of human colonies living in large space islands, as suggested by Gerard O'Neill, a physics professor at Princeton University. There is no reason to expect that these large objects, weighing millions of tons, will be capable of moving anywhere near the speed of light. So unless people are put in a state of suspended animation, many generations will come and go before the "promised land" of long-distance space travel has been reached. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
January 1, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: ROBERT EMORY KIRBY; BRIGHT, LIKABLE WESTINGHOUSE CHAIRMAN IN ITS GLORY YEARS
BYLINE: STEVE MASSEY AND ALVIN ROSENSWEETRobert Emory Kirby, the quick-minded former Westinghouse Electric Corp. chairman and chief executive officer who fought off bankruptcy and reshaped the sprawling conglomerate into a profitable communications, defense and electronics giant, died yesterday at Naples Community Hospital, in Naples, Fla., after several strokes. He was 80. …
Mr. Kirby graduated from Penn State in 1939, with a chemical engineering degree. He also received training in advanced electronics at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while with the Navy, and earned a MBA. from Harvard Business School in 1952 under a Westinghouse executive scholarship program.
Psychology Today
Copyright 1999 Sussex Publishers Inc.
January, 1999HEADLINE: LIVING and DYING; animal rights advocate Peter Singer; Abstract; Interview
BYLINE: Singer, PeterThe Australian ethicist who fathered the animal rights movement is coming to the U.S. Brace yourself for a storm of controversy.
He has been called a "notorious messenger of death" in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. The British media have denounced him as "the man who would kill disabled babies," and in Germany he's been compared to Hitler's henchman Martin Borman. Protesters in wheelchairs have fought his appearances, chained themselves to barricades and smashed his glasses.
He's also been called the most influential philosopher alive.
Now, with Peter Singer's upcoming appointment as the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, controversy is erupting in the United States as well, sparking editorials in newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, and prompting Commentary magazine to compare his philosophy to the "life unworthy of life" eugenics program of the Nazis.
Who is the man behind all the furor? Peter Singer, director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University in Australia, is a 52-year-old Australian Jew whose grandparents, ironically, were victims of the Holocaust. In person, he's tall, slender, soft-spoken, even affable. …
According to Singer, religion's 2000-year domination of morality ended early this decade, specifically in 1993, when British law ruled that a comatose man named Anthony Bland could be killed by his doctors. That decision, he maintains, dealt a "mortal" blow to the unquestioned sanctity of human life.
Singer argues that ethics today should be guided by a particular brand of utilitarianism: he calls himself a "preference utilitarian." In classic utilitarianism, what is good is defined as what brings happiness. But happiness is hard to measure. Singer proposes instead that good be defined by "preference." Under this philosophy, moral decisions are based on the most intense preferences of a given individual or group.
Thus, claims Singer, many times animals will be more deserving of life than certain humans, including disabled babies and adults who are brain-injured or in vegetative comas. Presumably, a healthy chimp's preference for life is more intense than a disabled infant's. This philosophy would rule out most medical experimentation on animals, as well as the breeding of animals to provide organs for human transplants. …
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
January 1, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: H.D. DAWBARN DIES; FORMER STATE SENATOR
BYLINE: Jenifer V. Buckman; Times-Dispatch Staff WriterHenry Dunlop Dawbarn, a former state senator whose synthetic fiber factories in western Virginia gave jobs to hundreds of Virginians, died Thursday in Jupiter, Fla. He was 83.
Mr. Dawbarn, known as "Buz" to his employees and political colleagues, represented Waynesboro in the Virginia Senate from 1968 to 1974.
Mr. Dawbarn was the founder and CEO of two man-made fibers plants, Camac in Bristol and Dawbarn Brothers in Waynesboro. Together the two firms employed nearly 1,000 people. …
A New York native, Mr. Dawbarn was a graduate of Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University. He was a former city councilman and vice mayor in Waynesboro and briefly served on the State Lottery Board.
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