Princeton in the News
January 14 to 20, 1999
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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Copyright 1999 Telegraph Group Limited (London)
January 20, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Way of the World: Too busy or too ill
BYLINE: By Auberon WaughYOUNG Australians are being urged to take more interest in sex and less interest in their careers, we learn in a report from Sydney. At the Perth Human Sexuality Centre in Western Australia, more and more of these business whiz-kids are being treated for loss of libido, poor sex and feelings of tiredness, all of which are now spiralling out of control. …
I wonder if this is what happened in California, where, as I have often observed, practically no sexual intercourse seems to occur, unless as a floor show that audiences pay to watch. My earlier guess was that the absence should be attributed to anxieties about health.
These seem to be spreading throughout the United States. The president of Princeton University, Dr Harold Shapiro, has threatened to put an end to one of the university's best-loved traditions, the annual Nude Olympics.
It takes place after the first snowfall, when about 350 second-year students gather at midnight to run naked round the quad. Alcohol always plays a part in the celebration, but this year five students had to be taken to hospital after drinking excessively. Dr Shapiro explains: "I am simply not prepared to wait until a student dies before taking preventive action."
What is wrong with everyone?
The Jerusalem Post
Copyright 1999 The Jerusalem PostJanuary 20, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: News in brief
BYLINE: Haim Shapiro, Judy Siegel, Jessica Steinberg, ItimWolf Prizes in math, physics awarded
A Technion scientist will receive the 1999 Wolf Prize in physics, while Yale University and Princeton University professors will share the Wolf Prize in mathematics.
Prof. Dan Shechtman, 57, of the Technion's department of materials engineering, has been cited for his experimental discovery of quasi-crystals, which inspired the exploration of a new fundamental state of matter.
The mathematics prize is to be shared by Prof. Laszlo Lovasz of Yale for his outstanding contributions to combinatorics, theoretical computer science, and combinatorial optimization; and Prof. Elias M. Stein of Princeton, for his contributions to classical and Euclidian-Fourier analysis and his impact on a new generation of analysts through his eloquent teaching and writing.
Medical Industry Today
Copyright 1999 Medical Data International, Inc.
January 20, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Aetna Tops HMOs in Complaints in '98, Texas Dept. Reports
The battleground of opinion over the impact of the proposed merger between AETNA U.S. HEALTHCARE (Hartford, CT) and PRUDENTIAL HEALTHCARE (Roseland, NJ) is being waged rather publicly in Texas, where doctors are vocal and industry experts straddle the fence.
Physicians in Dallas-Fort Worth first fought with Aetna. Now, their counterparts in Houston are stirring with stories of drastically reduced reimbursements and fears of what is to come from a combined entity with more control.
Aetna says the situation is not as the doctors portray it.
This week, hard facts pierced the rhetoric when the Texas Department of Insurance issued an analysis of complaints against HMOs showing poor results for Aetna, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle Wednesday. Of the five largest HMOs in the Houston area, Aetna had the most justified complaints against it in 1998. The firm also generated the second highest rate of justified complaints among all HMOs in Texas, according to the department's analysis.
The complaints cover nine categories and include quality-of-care issues, contracts with doctors and marketing practices. Although they come from both patients and doctors, the bulk are lodged by physicians. …
But Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., warned that doctors have good reason to be concerned at Aetna's mammoth new size.
"When you have 53 percent of the market, that's an awfully big gorilla for an independent doctor to face," Reinhardt said. "When something gets that big, the market isn't balanced. If you have many sellers and only one buyer, that's obviously a very lopsided market." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 20, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths PECKERMAN, EDWARD R. JR.
PECKERMAN-Edward R. Jr., Washington, CT, 93, died Tuesday morning at Rose Haven in Litchfield after a short illness. Mr. Peckerman was born in Boston, June 3, 1905. His family moved to New York in 1914. He graduated from Horace Mann School, where he later served as chairman of the board of trustees. He graduated from Princeton University in 1925 and from Columbia Law School in 1928. …
USA TODAY
Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
January 20, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Sidestep of embryo-research ban possible
BYLINE: Elizabeth Neus; Gannett News ServiceWASHINGTON -- Researchers might be able to sidestep a federal ban on human embryo research under a policy announced Tuesday.
Such research, expected to lead to treatments one day for such killers as heart disease and diabetes, has been controversial because cells have come from aborted fetuses, embryos left over from efforts to create test-tube babies or embryos grown using cloning.
At issue are embryonic stem cells, the basic cells from which all of a body's tissues and organs develop. With private funding, these cells have recently been derived from embryonic tissue and then grown in laboratories. …
Congress has banned federal money for research that involves human embryos. But Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said a legal team's review of that ban concluded that the laboratory-grown cells could not grow into a human being and therefore do not qualify as an embryo. …
The panel met at President Clinton's request to discuss research into human stem cells, and commission Chairman Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University, said a report could be complete by June. …
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Copyright 1999 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
January 19, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Amazombies' Fuel Buying Frenzy for Internet Stocks
BYLINE: By Miriam HillThey're called Amazombies. They look like regular people, but they have an overwhelming -- and so far, very profitable -- obsession: the stock of Amazon.com.
Shares of the online retailer spiked 966 percent in 1998 and an additional 31 percent in the first two weeks of 1999. More than any other stock, Amazon.com has come to symbolize the mania for Internet stocks, a craze that longtime market-watchers said exceeds anything they have ever witnessed. …
Internet stocks showed some weakness last week, but not enough to create the painful pop that has ended previous bubbles.
Princeton University economist Burton Malkiel said he will add the Internet bubble to chapters on manias in the seventh edition of his investment classic, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," due out this year.
"I am convinced that many investors are going to take substantial losses by buying willy-nilly anything that has dot-com in it," Malkiel said.
Malkiel and others who have studied, and in some cases lived through, previous manias offer eerie parallels to the present:
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
January 19, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: STUDENT: H-SC WOULD EXPEL CLINTON
BYLINE: Kathryn Orth; Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTONIf President Clinton were a student at Hampden-Sydney College, he would be expelled, the editor of the college newspaper said on national television yesterday.
The president's actions would violate the private, all-male college's honor code, Hampden-Sydney Tiger editor Greg Thomas said on the 7 p.m. broadcast of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. …
Editors from the student newspapers of Princeton University, the University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina and the University of Wisconsin said most students on their campuses are not interested in Clinton's trial, which resumes today in the Senate. But Thomas said many Hampden-Sydney students want to see Clinton removed from office. …
Editor Christine Whelan of the Daily Princetonian called the impeachment trial "a nonissue on our campus." She said students are more interested in final exams, the stock market and the job market.
USA TODAY
Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
January 19, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Public's dueling views Many Americans balance performance vs. character
BYLINE: Susan Page; Richard BenedettoDATELINE: WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON -- A year ago, six days after Monica Lewinsky's name first appeared in the headlines, President Clinton used the State of the Union address to steady his threatened presidency and show he was still in charge.
Tonight, as the Lewinsky scandal nears its apex in the Senate impeachment trial, Clinton goes before a joint session of Congress again. This time he is riding an astonishing surge of support from a public buoyed by a booming economy and a heightened sense of national well-being.
A new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds a widening split in Americans' assessment of Clinton. His job-related ratings are soaring to new highs even as his personal ratings sink to record lows. Overall, 81% call Clinton's presidency a success, a stunning judgment for a president who is on trial on articles of impeachment alleging perjury and obstruction of justice. …
"There's a high level of rationalization and sanctimony everywhere, but I don't see how politicians can ignore the polls," says Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University. …
AAP NEWSFEED
Copyright 1999 AAP Information Services Pty. Ltd.
January 18, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: People and places
US NUDEPRINCETON, New Jersey, Jan 17 AP - The Nude Olympics, a Princeton University ritual that began during the streaking craze of the 1970s, is under fire after several students landed in hospital.
Nine students were treated last weekend for alcohol poisoning after more than 350 people packed into a courtyard wearing little more than hats, gloves, shoes and socks, said Princeton spokesman Justin Harmon.
Another student was treated for lacerations during the event marking the first snowfall of winter. There were other problems, too.
Some students say there was inappropriate sexual grabbing and groping, public urination and even couples engaging in sex.
The problems prompted Princeton President Harold Shapiro to send a letter last week to The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, decrying the event as too dangerous to continue.
Gannett News Service
Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
January 18, 1999HEADLINE: Nets first order of business: re-sign Douglas
BYLINE: BOB CONSIDINE; Bridgewater Courier News
DATELINE: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- John Calipari still sits in his office.
His players still show up, albeit sporadically, at the New York Nets' practice facility.
Life remains woefully the same for the Nets and other teams since the NBA lockout won't officially end until Wednesday, at the earliest.
But while the opening of training camp stagnates as the league and players union try to hammer out slight differences in the new collective bargaining agreement, off-the-court rumors involving the team swirl. …
Gatling, Keith Van Horn, Jayson Williams, Brian Evans, Don MacLean and Lucious Harris worked out at the Nets' practice facility Monday, along with training camp invitees Steve Goodrich (the ex-Princeton University center), Sherell Ford (a No. 1 pick for Seattle in 1995), Earl Boykins (a CBA guard from Eastern Michigan) and Kevin Salvadori (a 7-0 center who played with Sacramento the last two seasons). …
The Ledger
Copyright 1999 Lakeland Ledger Publishing Corporation (Lakeland, FL)
January 18, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY TRADITIONS DATE LONG BEFORE TIMES SQUARE BASH
BYLINE: CHRIS BRENNAN The LedgerSay the phrase "New Year's Eve tradition" and many people think of the ball of light dropping during a countdown on Times Square in New York City.
But the history and traditions of New Year's date back to a time before anyone had even dreamed of a place such as New York.
It is thought the Babylonians celebrated the start of the new year sometime in March, about 4000 years ago. The new year celebrated by the Babylonians and other agrarian societies was attached to the start of a new crop in the fields. …
But the tradition of New Year's Eve parties, with revelry, drinking and noise-making, dates back to the 17th century, according to Leigh E. Schmidt, a Princeton University religion professor.
That set up conflicts between religious people and people who wanted to throw parties, Schmidt said.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Copyright 1999 MacNeil/Lehrer Productions
January 18, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Killing The Truce; Witnessing History; Building Diversity; Freedom
JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Elizabeth Farnsworth looks at the new violence in Kosovo; Andrew Kohut, Margaret Warner, Terence Smith, and five college editors examine impeachment trial reaction outside Washington; Spencer Michels tells the story of racial diversity in California's law schools; and poet laureate Robert Pinsky reads a poem for Martin Luther King Day. It all follows our summary of the news this holiday. …
JIM LEHRER: Additional perspective, and again to Terence Smith.TERENCE SMITH: Joining us now for a different perspective five college newspaper editors: Sharif Durhams of the "Daily Tarheel" at the University of North Carolina; Jin Whang of the "Daily Trojan" at the University of Southern California; Dan Alter of the "Badger-Herald" at the University of Wisconsin; Gregory Thomas of the "Hampden-Sydney Tiger" in Virginia; and Christine Whelan of the "Daily Princetonian" at Princeton University. So welcome to you all. Jin Whang, let me begin with you and ask whether those numbers that you just heard from Andy Kohut and those opinions reflect attitudes on your campus. …
TERENCE SMITH: Christine Whelan, it sounds like a low level of interest and different opinions on what should happen to the President. What about Princeton?
CHRISTINE WHELAN: At Princeton, the "Daily Princetonian" we came out with a staff editorial in late September calling for the resignation of President Clinton. I don't think that fits with the consensus of campus opinion. Later in December, about 75 students came out to protest the impeachment of Clinton. But that's 75 out of a student body of 4500. So I think for the most part it's a non-issue at our campus.
TERENCE SMITH: If that's so, if this trial, if this moment of history has failed to engage students, why?
CHRISTINE WHELAN: Well, right now we're in the middle of finals. We are wrapped up in what we are going to do after graduation, and as long as the job market continues to boom and investment banks keep hiring, I think college students are happy. …
The Patriot Ledger
Copyright 1999 The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)
January 18, 1999 Monday All EditionsHEADLINE: Noah Herndon, 66, banker, member of stock exchange
CHESTNUT HILL -- Noah T. Herndon, 66, of Chestnut Hill, a bank executive, died Tuesday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston after a brief illness.
Mr. Herndon was a senior partner at the oldest private bank in the United States, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
He joined the bank in 1958 and remained with the firm until his death.
He graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1954 and received a business degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1958. …
The Weekly Standard
Copyright 1999 The Weekly Standard
January 18, 1999HEADLINE: BIG BUSINESS VS. NATIONAL SECURITY?
BYLINE: By William R. Hawkins; William R. Hawkins is senior research analyst for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). The views expressed here are his own.
On December 1, 1998, Vice President Al Gore told an audience of farmers that he favors a review of American use of economic sanctions. "All this excessive use of sanctions in willy-nilly form should be reevaluated," he said. That Gore chose to thus opine at the very time the administration he serves was under pressure at the United Nations to lift sanctions on a still defiant Iraq is disturbing. But the vice president has something besides the U.N. on his mind -- namely, courting campaign contributions for his White House bid in 2000, and the eagerness of potential business donors to trade with rogue regimes is pushing him toward embracing "sanctions reform."
The business community's wooing of Gore is just one manifestation of its drive to curb the use of sanctions. At a U.S. Chamber of Commerce briefing in September, Willard Workman, the chamber's vice president for international affairs, castigated Congress for enacting sanctions against Iran and Libya. It turns out the chamber wants to do business with both of those notorious regimes. In September, chamber president Thomas J. Donohue called for repeal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which he deemed part of "a restrictive, isolationist model that has no relevance to the global community." …
But if the United States is missing out on export opportunities, what are they? The development of the oil industries in Iran and Libya has already been mentioned. The "big emerging market" in China is also cited. But what does China want? When Commerce Secretary William Daley called on China to open its market to increased U.S. exports and reduce the nearly $60 billion trade deficit expected this year, the official China Business Weekly replied that Beijing's efforts to make large-scale purchases have been frustrated by U.S restrictions on high technology products. These restrictions exist, of course, because of China's record of applying imported technology to military projects, both in China and in cooperation with Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan. China is looking not for American consumer goods, but for technology and investment to build up its military-industrial base and to aid its anti-Western allies. …
The U.S.-China trade imbalance allows China to build up hard-currency reserves and thus feeds Beijing's ambitions. Kent Calder of Princeton University points out that, with Russia holding the greatest military yard sale in history, "the Chinese, flush with hard currency from their soaring, multibillion-dollar trans-Pacific trade surpluses, stocked up." Their purchases have included everything from tanks and fighter planes to submarines and missile-armed warships. Some 1,500 Russian engineers and technicians are working in China, and hundreds more are on retainer, using an e-mail network between Russian and Chinese defense research institutes. …
The Denver Post
Copyright 1999 The Denver Post Corporation
January 17, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: Air-safety guru a risk-taker 'Pit bull' is native of Denver
BYLINE: By Jeffrey Leib, Denver Post Business WriterChristopher Hart is a guy who's willing to take risks.
Normally, that's fine, even laudable. But in Hart's case, it requires some explanation, since he's in the aviation-safety business.
Hart, a 51-year-old lawyer, pilot and Denver native, is assistant administrator for system safety at the Federal Aviation Administration's headquarters in Washington.
He's also the FAA's quarterback for a new initiative to get airlines, aircraft manufacturers, unions and others to share air-safety information on a worldwide basis. …
Born in Denver, Hart attended Columbine Elementary, Smiley Junior High School and East High School before heading east to attend Princeton University. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace and mechanical science at Princeton and later a law degree from Harvard University. …
The Gazette (Montreal)
Copyright 1999 Southam Inc.
January 17, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: Brains behind the bomb: Entry into the nuclear era was engineered by scientists who had studied atomic physics in obscurity until the war. Then science's best and brightest were assembled in secrecyBYLINE: TOM SIEGFRIED; DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: DALLAS
The middle of the 20th century marked a turning point in human history, and science was responsible. Atomic explosives, the signature product of 20th-century science, thrust their shock waves throughout the non-scientific world when they brought World War II to an end in 1945.
World War II's victors deified their scientific saviours, and sketches of atoms and mushroom clouds became symbols of science's power. But soon the Soviet-American Cold War chilled the world, and civilization faced the prospect of nuclear annihilation.
Society's entry into the nuclear era was engineered by scientists who had studied atomic physics in obscurity until the war. Then science's best and brightest assembled in secrecy, unleashing the power of the scientific method to produce the world's most powerful weapon. "We all worked constantly and with great enthusiasm," remembers Cornell University physicist Hans Bethe. "We all wanted to win the war." …
Glenn Seaborg, then a young chemistry instructor at the University of California, Berkeley, recalls hearing about fission in a seminar at the end of January 1939. Also present was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who became the Manhattan Project's director. "I remember Oppenheimer was there, and he didn't believe it at first," Seaborg, 86, said in an interview last year. "But ... after a few minutes he decided it was possible. It just caught everybody by surprise."
Word of fission had been delivered to America that January by the Danish atomic physicist Niels Bohr. He enlisted the collaboration of the Princeton University physicist John Wheeler to produce a thorough explanation of the fission process. Their paper was published on Sept. 1, 1939, the day that Hitler invaded Poland to launch World War II. …
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Copyright 1999 The Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc.
January 17, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: Thomas W. Binford
Perhaps it is appropriate that the final opportunity to call on Tom Binford comes tomorrow on Martin Luther King Day.
Binford's abundant energy was steadfastly focused on the cause of opportunity for all. He addressed such just causes with a quiet strength and grace that also characterized his advocacy for excellence in education and business, compassion for the troubled and the needy, and fairness in all human endeavors, including auto racing.
Indeed Binford, 74 when he died Thursday at work, was probably most widely known as the gravelly voiced tough guy who for 22 years as chief steward of the 500 Mile Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway enforced the rules, called the close ones and settled serious disputes. …
Binford grew up in Indianapolis, attending private school before he went on to Princeton University. He could have been content simply to run the family lumber and lubricant businesses. But he dedicated his life to making his home city a better place in which to live, work and have fun. …
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Copyright 1999 The Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc.
January 17, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: E. Havens Kahlo had been Bell executive, civic leader
Services for E. Havens Kahlo, 91, Indianapolis, a retired businessman and community leader, will be at 2 p.m. Jan. 18 in Second Presbyterian Church's Milner Chapel, with calling there from noon. …
He was a 1929 magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a 1937 graduate of Benjamin Harrison School of Law. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 17, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: HIGHER EDUCATION; Naked Came The Tiger. Brrrrr.
BYLINE: By KATHERINE ZOEPFDATELINE: PRINCETON
Sartorially speaking, there's Ivy League, and then there's Ivy League.
At Princeton University a couple of Friday nights ago, the focus was on the latter. That is to say, no collar buttons to button down, no pants legs to cuff. No tweeds. No nothing. The tradition-bound Ivy university was merely following one more tradition.
Each year, at midnight after the first snowfall, students gather in the uber-Gothic Holder Courtyard to participate in the unofficial annual celebration of snow, spontaneity and class spirit. Traditionally (there's that word again) it is the sophomores who run. But because there was no snowfall during the 1997-98 school year, sophomores and juniors alike ran on Friday night, Jan 8.
Shortly before midnight, the Nude Olympics torch was lit. The torchbearer, according to tradition (there's that word AGAIN!) a freshman member of the women's squash team, began circling the courtyard, followed by the rest of the nude runners. There they went: 350 Princeton students of both sexes publicly doffed their clothes to participate in the Nude Olympics, by far Princeton's quirkiest and most controversial tradition.
"It was really surreal, like a bad dream, only extremely fun," said Mary Bonner Baker, a junior from Houston.
But now the university's president, Dr. Harold Shapiro, wants to ban the annual sophomore -- or sophomoric, depending on one's point of view -- run in the raw.
In a letter in the school newspaper on Wednesday, Dr. Shapiro wrote that the event should probably be banned because six students were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning this year. "I am simply not willing to wait until a student dies before taking preventive action," he said. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
January 17, 1999, SundaySECTION: EDITORIAL
IN WHAT MIGHT be called an Icy League event, the president of Princeton University has called for the cancellation of the Ivy League school's unofficial Nude Olympics. Nine students suffered alcohol poisoning during the event, which was reportedly the scene of rowdy behavior. The Nude Olympics, a collegiate "tradition" dating back to the streaking fad of the 1970s, isn't likely to be confused with the Winter Olympics, and not only because the participants don't attract product-endorsement offers. A university spokesman cited by The Associated Press said this year's event involved the convergence in a courtyard of 350 people wearing "little more than hats, gloves, shoes and socks." In the real Olympics, they wear goggles, too. Princeton obviously doesn't relish the publicity that has attended this year's Nude Olympics or the inebriation of its contestants. But there's a silver lining: No one's accusing Princeton of paying bribes to be able to host the event.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
January 17, 1999, Sunday, Final EditionHEADLINE: 'Boxers or briefs' girl recalls fleeting fame; Question to president now seems tame
BYLINE: David M. Stoloff; THE WASHINGTON TIMESLaetitia Thompson is just 21 years old, but she's already joking about her obituary.
"I know the day that I die, they'll say, 'The woman who said, "Boxers or briefs?" died today.' It will be on my epitaph," the Princeton University senior says.
Miss Thompson asked President Clinton which undergarment he preferred in April 1994 during the taping of an MTV forum on youth and violence.
"Mr. President," she asked, when she was a 17-year-old high school student from Potomac. "The world's dying to know: Is it boxers or briefs?"
"Mostly briefs," Mr. Clinton answered, somewhat uncomfortably.
Miss Thompson became an instant celebrity, a Wunderkind of pundits.
As the president's impeachment trial got under last week, the nearly 5-year-old question about Mr. Clinton's underwear seems almost prudish compared to what we know today of the president's personal activities. …
Miss Thompson is the daughter of Lea Thompson, reporter for "Dateline NBC." Miss Thompson, who is studying history at Princeton University, wants to be a journalist.
But she suspects nothing she will do in her career will surpass her legacy as the teen-ager who asked about the president's underwear.
The National Journal
Copyright 1999 The National Journal, Inc.
January 16, 1999HEADLINE: Redefining National Security
BYLINE: John MaggsThe United States ends this century in a position of unprecedented military and economic dominance. At the same time, it is beset by unfamiliar foreign challenges unleashed by the end of the Cold War, by the spread of technology, and by the whirlwind of economic globalization. In traditional terms, America may be more secure than it was 10 or 20 years ago, but recent events have so changed our idea of security that this longed-for goal may be irrelevant to our future.
Also never greater are the chances that pieces of Russia's nuclear arsenal could fall into the wrong hands. Add to
that China's willingness to sell its advanced nuclear and missile technology, or the possibility that a former nuclear power, such as Ukraine or Belarus, could enter the market, and it is clear that proliferation has replaced the East-West standoff as the likeliest form of nuclear security threat. And like other new sources of American insecurity, the proliferation threat comes as often from rootless terrorist groups as from national governments.
John Phillips proved the point some two decades ago. As a Princeton University undergraduate in 1977, Phillips used publicly available sources to design a crude but functional nuclear bomb. Among the well-wishers who congratulated him were representatives of the government of Pakistan, who offered to buy
his term paper (he politely declined, then called the FBI). When Pakistan detonated a bomb last summer, Phillips was on his way to his 20th college reunion. ''I am very surprised terrorists haven't yet (exploded) a bomb,'' said Phillips, who runs a political consulting firm. ''Of course, we don't know if someone has used a bomb successfully as a threat.'' …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 16, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Professors or Proletarians? A Test for Downtrodden Academics
BYLINE: By SARAH BOXERMaybe it was fitting that a tumultuous event in academia seemed to turn on a metaphor. Shortly before the Modern Language Association's annual meeting, Elaine Showalter, the president, informed her charges -- full-time professors, part-time professors and graduate students in English and foreign languages -- that they were on a sinking ship, the Titanic to be precise. Now there is a bitter dispute about the lifeboats.
Ms. Showalter's assessment was based on the M.L.A.'s survey of the nearly 2,200 graduate students who got their degrees in English, foreign languages, comparative literature, linguistics and classics in the 1996-97 academic year. Only 33 percent of those in English found tenure-track jobs within a year of finishing. Those in foreign languages and comparative literature had slightly better luck (about 40 percent got tenure-track jobs), while those in linguistics and classics did worse (30 percent). The figures are not only very close to the survival rates on the Titanic, but also to what graduate students in other humanities face. …
Ms. Showalter, a professor at Princeton University who is a freelance journalist on the side, suggested that scholars should stop sniveling and start jumping into any other fields that will take them. She is particularly fond of business. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 16, 1999, Saturday, Late EditionHEADLINE: THE TRIAL OF THE PRESIDENT: BEYOND THE BELTWAY;
Editor of A.M.A. Journal Is Dismissed Over Sex PaperBYLINE: By GINA KOLATA
The American Medical Association dismissed the editor of its leading journal yesterday, saying that he had rushed through a paper on whether college students think oral sex is "having sex" to influence President Clinton's impeachment trial.
Dr. E. Ratcliffe Anderson, the executive vice president of the association, said the incident, which led to a firestorm of protest among medical researchers and journal editors, had followed what he called a steady erosion of his faith in the editor, Dr. George D. Lundberg.
Although Dr. Anderson would not be specific, others said Dr. Lundberg had nettled many in the medical profession over the years when he published controversial articles. …
Of course, the paper has a certain news value now that it would not have had if it was published before or after the Clinton sex scandal, medical experts said. But the question remains: Why did Dr. Lundberg decide to publish it now?
Dr. Uwe E. Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton University who is a member of the editorial board at the Journal of the American Medical Association, said he could think of two reasons. Both are tied into the impeachment hearings.
"One is that he has a genuine belief that this is the most important political decision in this century and every bit of evidence on it should be published," Dr. Reinhardt said. The other, he said, is that the subject is suddenly of news value. And the journal, like others, he added, "loves being noticed in the media." …
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
January 16, 1999HEADLINE: Space oddity
BYLINE: Stephen BattersbyHIGHLIGHT: It makes up most of the Galaxy but no one has ever seen it. And, says Stephen Battersby, it's weirder than you ever imagined.
THINK of a galaxy and you probably think of stars, billions of them, in brilliant shining spirals. Or perhaps you picture nebulae - vast clouds of glowing gas. But these are just a tiny part of the whole. What galaxies are really made of is dark and slippery. And it now seems that it's also very strange.
When astronomers realised several decades ago that most of the galaxy is made of matter we can't see, they came up with a cosmic menagerie of possibilities for the invisible matter, including massive black holes, microscopic black holes and "shadow stars" that only interact with the world through their gravity. Eventually, two candidates took the lead: MACHOs (massive compact halo objects), which are failed stars, too dim to see, and WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), which are exotic particles that interact only reluctantly with their surroundings.
For years, the battle raged between MACHOs and WIMPs, but by the early 1990s it seemed that MACHOs had finally won the day. Now everything has changed. MACHOs are down and out, and exotic WIMPs are in the ascendant. The stuff of the galaxy, it seems, is anything but ordinary. …
Could an army of brown dwarfs be holding the Milky Way together ? These dark lumps of ordinary matter, called MACHOs, can't be spotted in the usual way. Instead, you have to look for the imprint of their gravity, a phenomenon called gravitational microlensing.
This ploy was suggested back in 1986 by Bohdan Paczynski, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey. If you stare at a distant star for long enough, he reasoned, a MACHO should occasionally drift in front of it. The MACHO's gravity will slightly bend the path of light from the star, converging it towards us and making the star briefly brighter. He also calculated that it would be an incredibly rare event, so to catch an example of this refracted glory astronomers have to watch a lot of stars at once. Millions of them. …
AP Online
Copyright 1999 Associated Press
January 15, 1999; FridayHEADLINE: U.S. Lag in Computer Climate Models
BYLINE: RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
DATELINE: WASHINGTONForeign researchers have pulled ahead of the United States in developing complex computer models of the weather that are crucial to predicting the effects of climate change.
While the United States pioneered much climate change research, it has fallen behind in computer power needed for massive climate simulations and fails to coordinate research efforts, the National Research Council warned in a new report.
''To understand how climate change might affect people ... we want to understand it at the level of counties, how it's going to affect my city, and the U.S. hasn't leveraged the resources together to achieve this as effectively as the Europeans have,'' study director Peter Schultz said Thursday. …
In the United States ''there is no integrated national strategy'' coordinating the climate modeling efforts, Schultz said.
''What we have in the U.S. are several different modeling centers'' including the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
While the three labs make an effort to cooperate, Schultz said better coordination would be valuable ''in terms of producing the simulations that are of value to policy makers.'' …
The Associated Press
January 15, 1999, Friday
BYLINE: By The Associated Press
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) - The Nude Olympics, a Princeton University ritual that began during the streaking craze of the 1970s, is under fire after several students landed in the hospital.Nine students were treated last weekend for alcohol poisoning after more than 350 people packed into a courtyard wearing little more than hats, gloves, shoes and socks, said university spokesman Justin Harmon.
Another student was treated for lacerations during the event marking the first snowfall of winter. There were other problems, too.
Some students say there was inappropriate sexual grabbing and groping, public urination and even couples engaging in sex.
The problems prompted Princeton President Harold Shapiro to send a letter this week to The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, decrying the event as too dangerous to continue.
Some students, however, say the event amounts to nothing more than a sophomore prank. Student Adam Sorensen was among those who said the tradition likely won't die easily.
"Trying to eliminate it is going to be a problem. Students are going to do it anyway," he said.
Capital Times (Madison, WI.)
Copyright 1999 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
January 15, 1999, FridaySECTION: Editorial
HEADLINE: PROUST BIOGRAPHY ALMOST TOO GAY FOR ITS OWN GOOD; BUT READER LEFT WANTING MORE
BYLINE: By Jacob Stockinger The Capital Times
It's hard to think of a better example of both the need for and limits of gay studies than this thin biographical volume about Marcel Proust (1871-1922), who is -- according to many critics, readers and especially writers -- the 20th century's most important and influential novelist.
Only in the past two decades has the gay side of Proust begun to be explored to the degree that it deserves. As Edmund White points out, fully one-quarter or more of Proust's mammoth 4,400-page novel ''In Search of Time Lost'' (''Remembrance of Things Past'' in an earlier translation) is devoted, directly or indirectly, to characters, settings and themes that are homosexual.
White -- an openly gay writer who has written novels, stories, memoirs, travel books and a National Book Award-winning critical biography of postwar French writer Jean Genet -- is ideally suited to the subject matter. Now teaching at Princeton University, White was for many years an American expatriate who had fled to Paris when he found out he was HIV-positive because he liked the sense of the good life he found there. In short, White appreciates the French sensibility that Proust, perhaps more than any other modern writer save Colette, embodies. …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
January 15, 1999HEADLINE: Taming the Rampant Incivility in Academe
BYLINE: ELAINE SHOWALTEROver the past few years, I've inadvertently become a target for hate mail and ad feminam abuse. First as an author, and then during my recent stint as the president of the Modern Language Association, I've been treated to a broad sampling of the genre. My experience has made me think a lot about what causes incivility in academe -- and what we can do about it.
After I published Hystories, a book on epidemics of hysteria in modern culture, in 1997, I became accustomed to receiving angry messages and e-mail flames along with my other correspondence du jour. The most hostile respondents from members of the public (many of whom objected to my inclusion of chronic-fatigue syndrome in the volume) bragged that they had not read my book and never would, but they were nonetheless generous with their opinions of me: "evil," "fascist," "maggot," "ungrateful parasite," "imbecile," and "antiquated hack trying to bolster a flagging career in academia." The invective ran the gamut from personal abuse ("desperate, homely loser" and "If I had a dog with a mug like yours, I'd shave his behind and make him walk backwards") to the ever-popular accusations of a "secret agenda."
Some regular correspondents also made regular threats. Then, just before the M.L.A. convention in Toronto a year ago, when I was the first vice-president, I had received threats so specific and unsettling that I went about my duties -- awarding prizes, chairing the Delegate Assembly, and eating many official breakfasts, lunches, and dinners -- with four armed male bodyguards, who even accompanied me to the ladies' room. Luckily, nothing happened, and M.L.A.-goers were so preoccupied with literary matters that no one noticed the four burly guys in trench coats by my side -- or else assumed that they were English professors. …
Some of the misunderstanding and name-calling, I realized when I went on "e-grad" to talk to members, was fueled by the electronic medium itself. There were other problems, of course; some "e-grad" members mistakenly thought I belonged to "a generation of individuals who fell into positions in the academy," that I had never T.A.'d or worked part time myself, or that I was pushing post-academic jobs to the exclusion of all other reforms. But the hostility and angry tone of their remarks was exacerbated by the mechanical impersonality of e-mail. One-way electronic communication, by voice mail or e-mail, as the linguist Deborah Tannen notes in her book The Argument Culture, can breed misinterpretation, contempt, and aggression. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 15, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Alcohol Abuse Imperils a Naked Rite at Princeton
BYLINE: By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
DATELINE: PRINCETON, Jan. 14
At least since the days of disco, the keen-minded undergraduates of Princeton University have considered it a right -- a solemn duty even -- for members of the sophomore class to gather at midnight following the winter's first substantial snowfall and run naked through Holder Courtyard, a wide quadrangle surrounded by Gothic dormitory buildings. They call it the Nude Olympics.
Not surprisingly, the students who participate in this quarter-century-old tradition are often emboldened by alcohol. But the drinking and frigid frolicking can be a bad mix.
After this year's Nude Olympics on Friday night, five students were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning and four more were treated at the school's health center, prompting the university's president, Harold T. Shapiro, to suggest that the tradition should end. …
The Straits Times (Singapore)
Copyright 1999 The Straits Times Press Limited
January 15, 1999HEADLINE: At ease in two different worlds
BYLINE: Chua Mui HoongLee Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitor Joseph Nye is no ivory tower academic. He can be just as adept at pulling the levers of action in government. CHUA MUI HOONG talks to the Harvard professor best known for his theories on soft power. …
He has impeccable academic credentials: he graduated in 1958 from Princeton University, has won a string of prizes, went across the Atlantic as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford where he read politics, philosophy and economics, and received his PhD from Harvard in 1964 for a thesis on Africa. …
His guideline for dispensing advice and views: "Say what you really think and admit what you don't know. You may sometimes be embarrassed by how much you don't know, but at least you won't be embarrassed by being proven to be a liar."
He adds: "I suppose that the people who hype things get more marketability. I always laugh slightly about the fact that Paul Kennedy, the distinguished professor who wrote a book called The Decline And Fall Of The Great Powers, said the United States was going to decline.
"And I wrote a book called Bound To Lead: The Changing Nature Of American Power which said the United States, in fact, is going to be the rising power over the next century.
"And I was right and he was wrong, but he got much more royalties than I did." …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
January 14, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Princeton University officials want to ban nude student tradition
BYLINE: By KATHY HENNESSY, Associated Press WriterDATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.
It is a tradition hailed by Princeton University students as a bonding experience and a rite of passage.
But the ritual of running naked through the campus during the year's first snowfall is in jeopardy. University officials are considering banning the Nude Olympics after excessive drinking landed several students in the hospital Friday night.
Five students were taken to the Medical Center at Princeton and another four were taken to the university's infirmary for alcohol poisoning, said university spokesman Justin Harmon. One other student was taken to the hospital for lacerations, said Harmon.
There were other problems, too.
Some students say there was inappropriate behavior such as sexual grabbing and groping, public urination and even couples engaging in sex. Others say there were simply too many people, as more than 350 students wearing little more than hats, gloves, shoes and socks packed into Holder Courtyard, an area surrounded by dormitories.
The problems prompted President Harold Shapiro to send a letter Monday to The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, decrying the event as too dangerous to continue.
"I am simply not willing to wait until a student dies before taking action," Shapiro wrote in the letter. …
CBS News Transcripts
SHOW: 48 HOURS
January 14, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: A LOST LIFE; RICK MODICA, A GIFTED TEEN AND EXCELLENT STUDENT WHO WAS KILLED BY A DRUNK DRIVER
REPORTERS: HAROLD DOW
DOW: (Voiceover) He graduated as valedictorian of his high school class in Pleasantville, New York. He won a scholarship to Princeton University and joined the Tigertones, a campus singing group. …
DOW: (Voiceover) Rick Modica wasn't a youngster who got himself in trouble by drinking. In fact, he didn't drink at all. But Rick Modica still lost his life because of alcohol.
Mr. MODICA: (Voiceover) From that moment on, your life is never the same.
DOW: (Voiceover) When the lives of Freddy Wilson and Rick Modica came together one night in March of 1997, two families were changed forever. Rick was in central Florida on spring break with the Tigertones. They had just finished a singing tour and were heading back home. …
Ms. BERGER: Wearing his seat belt. Freddy Wilson was in his Lincoln Continental with a friend of his.
DOW: (Voiceover) Wilson and his friend had been drinking. His blood-alcohol was later measured at a .19, a little more than twice the legal limit.
Ms. BERGER: He was driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic, running people off the road. …
THE HARTFORD COURANT
Copyright 1999 The Hartford Courant Company
January 14, 1999 ThursdayHEADLINE: Lee, Albert G.
Albert G. Lee, husband of Janet Rice Lee, died Monday (Jan. 11, 1999). He was born March 27, 1917 in Steubenville, OH. He attended Lawrenceville Academy and graduated from Princeton University in 1938. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
January 14, 1999, ThursdaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: A LIFE-DESTROYERBYLINE: ANNA REIF; BRIGHTON HEIGHTS
An article about the "morning after" pill in the Dec. 31 Health and Science section should be clarified ("'Morning After' Pill Use Soars When Pharmacists Can Prescribe"). The story quoted James Trussell, a faculty associate at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, as saying: "If emergency contraceptives were widely available and easy to access, we think up to half of all unintended pregnancies could be avoided, and the need for abortion would be halved as well."
Apparently, Mr. Trussell does not realize that the "morning after" pill is not only a birth control agent, but also an abortifacient as well, and it can and does destroy the fertilized ovum where life already exists.
Life begins at the very second the sperm and the ovum unite and not when the fertilized ovum is implanted in the womb. The "morning after" pill destroys many babies.
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Copyright 1999 New Mexican, Inc.
January 14, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: FUNERAL SERVICES AND MEMORIALS
EDMUND H. KASE, JR.
Age 93, a residentof Santa Fe for over 35 years, passed away peacefully at his home on Sunday, January 10, 1999.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 64years, Mildred Mote Kase on August 17,1992 and by his sister, Mabel CookFaltermayer.
Dr. Kase was born in Philadelphia, PA onDecember 2, 1905. He received hisundergraduate degree, Master's, and Ph.D degrees from Princeton University inPrinceton, NJ, a Bachelor of Theology degree from Princeton Theological Seminaryand an honorary LL.D degree from Rider College in Trenton, NJ. …
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1999 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
January 14, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Dr. John Winslow French
Dr. John Winslow French, 80, Longboat Key, died Jan. 12, 1999.
He was born April 27, 1918, in New York City and came to Sarasota 35 years ago from Princeton, N.J. He retired to Longboat Key in 1977. He was a professor of psychology and college examiner for New College in Sarasota from 1964 to 1970, and dean of the school of education, University of Sarasota, in 1975.
He graduated magma cum laude from Princeton University in 1939 and earned his doctorate in experimental psychology from Princeton in 1942. He was a Navy veteran, serving in World War II. …
St. Petersburg Times
Copyright 1999 Times Publishing Company
January 14, 1999, ThursdayFREUND, SIDNEY WILLIAM, 79, of Clearwater, died Wednesday (Jan. 13, 1999) at Morton Plant Hospital, Clearwater. He was born in Newark, N.J., and came here in 1988. He was attending St. Petersburg Junior College and formerly attended City College of New York and Princeton University. …
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