Princeton in the News
February 4 to 10, 1999
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Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
February 10, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: CALIFORNIA PROSPECT/ COMMENTARY;
Keep Watching China, but Don't Listen to the Talk; Beijing, feeling the pain of economic reforms, may grow more belligerent. But it's for domestic consumption only.BYLINE: TOM PLATE, Times contributing editor Tom Plate teaches at UCLA.
If last year was the year of Japan--will it or won't it get its economy moving again?--this year is likely to be the year of China. Its economic direction is a huge question of considerable interest and enormous consequence not just to the Chinese but to the rest of the world. An unstable or deteriorating China can keep all of Asia awake at night. And it could have dramatic effects on U.S. foreign policy and the 2000 presidential campaign.
China today has a great many problems, not all of them evident to the West. In rural China alone, unemployment is said to reach 100 million. Many millions of workers have already been laid off from government jobs and many others receive reduced or no wages at all. A wave of recent bombing attacks--probably reflecting across-the-board frustration as well as some ethnic unrest in the provinces--punctuate the reality that China is going through yet another period of turmoil. ...
The government will permit economic reform to proceed only at a speed it can control. One tactical possibility is that Beijing will keep its 1.3 billion people in line by playing a nationalistic, we-Chinese-against-them card around the region. If it does go this unsavory route, regional neighbors Japan, South Korea and the Philippines will begin to feel the heat. All have outstanding territorial disputes with China. But Princeton University scholars Erica Strecker Downs and Phillip C. Saunders, in a balanced essay in the current issue of International Security, advise the West to under-react if and when harsh rhetorical ice storms break out. "Their use of nationalistic rhetoric is aimed primarily at a domestic audience and is intended to shore up the regime's legitimacy," they write. In their view, all combative rhetoric notwithstanding, China is unlikely to launch aggressive moves against neighbors because that "would interfere with economic performance, which requires expanded access to the international economy." ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
February 10, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: STUDENT HOPES TO CONTINUE RODGERS' TRADITION
BYLINE: LES HARVATHSince 1970, an elite group of Norwin High School graduates have gone on to attend some of America's best-known colleges, and then to earn paychecks at some of its best-known employers.
One went to Princeton University, and another to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One runs the computer system for Congress, and another works on space-shuttle design.
Starting with Thomas Byerly in 1970, and including Mandy Owston in 1999, each has been the recipient of the John Bayard Rodgers Scholarship, awarded annually to a "most deserving senior," said Guidance Department Chairman Vic Mayhugh. ...
PR Newswire
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
February 10, 1999, WednesdayDISTRIBUTION: TO ARCHITECTURE AND ARTS EDITORS
HEADLINE: Five Architects Selected to Propose a New Future for Key Site on the West Side of Manhattan, in First IFCCA Prize Competition
DATELINE: MONTREAL, Feb. 10Phyllis Lambert, Founding Director and Chair of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), today named the five architects who have been chosen to participate in the first IFCCA Prize Competition.
Founded to encourage the new contributions to the design of cities that are so badly needed now, and will be even more urgently needed in the next century, the Competition offers a prize of $100,000 US. The Competition has been established through the International Foundation for the CCA (IFCCA), a fundraising organisation that supports CCA's mission of making architecture a matter of public concern. ...
Ralph Lerner, Dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, is Director of the first IFCCA Prize Competition. ...
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1999 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
February 10, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
MANATEE COUNTYJoel C. Leuchter, 68, Bradenton, died Feb. 7, 1999.
He was born Jan. 26, 1931, in Philadelphia and came to Bradenton 22 years ago from Vineland, N.J. He was the former publisher for his family's business, the Times Journal in Vineland, N.J., where he introduced offset printing and color photography to the newspaper. In Bradenton, he established the distribution company, Snackworks, with his wife, Hope. He retired in 1966.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1952. He was a Navy veteran of the Korean War. He was a past board member of the Sarasota-Manatee Jewish Federation, a board member of the Jewish Housing Council and a founding member of the Great Outdoors Conservancy. ...
The Times-Picayune
Copyright 1999 The Times-Picayune Publishing Co.
February 10, 1999 WednesdayHEADLINE: QUEEN NOOR LIKELY TO RETAIN SOME CLOUT
BYLINE: By Nomi Morris Knight Ridder NewspapersDATELINE: AMMAN, JORDAN
Outside Zahran Palace, traditional home of the queen mother, Bedouin women chanted prayers and beat their chests in a ritual of grief as hundreds of women dressed in black filed inside to pay their respects to King Hussein's widow.
Queen Noor, born in New York 47 years ago as Lisa Najeeb Halaby, received her guests alongside other female members of the Jordanian royal family. Amman society women with Gucci sunglasses and designer clothes stood shoulder to shoulder with simple village women. Almost all broke down in tears after they kissed the woman who spent 22 years with their king.
Hussein's fourth wife, the Princeton University-educated Noor is the undisputed leader of the elite women of the Hashemite royal family, who wield a significant amount of power behind the scenes in what is still a patriarchal monarchy. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Targum via U-Wire
February 10, 1999SECTION: EDITORIAL
BYLINE: Staff Editorial, Daily Targum
SOURCE: Rutgers U.
DATELINE: New Brunswick, N.J.Underage drinking is an issue that warrants the attention of the University. Current programs such as Cops in Shops have been effective in the war on fake IDs, which might be won with a new harder-to-replicate driver's license being issued in the year 2000.
But the plan to offer students an alcohol-free alternative, as is being tried at Princeton University, is as stale as the warm beer being offered at most parties.
Most students don't spend Fridays searching for dry environments, rather they do the exact opposite -- seek out the most booze-drenched places to go. To spend time and effort creating alcohol-free events for a majority group that wants to drink is pointless. ...
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Information Bank AbstractsFebruary 10, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: A PLEDGE TO PRINCETON WAS FOR $100 MILLION, BUT ASIA INTERVENED
BYLINE: BY STEVE STECKLOWABSTRACT:
Gordon Y S Wu of Hong Kong announced in Nov 1995 that he would make unrestricted gift of $100 million, to be paid over a period of years, to Princeton University, to repay hospitality shown to foreign students, such as himself; at the time of his pledge, Wu estimated his fortune at $1 billion; Wu's fortune grew about 20% in 1996, but has since been reduced to about $100 million by Asian financial crisis; Wu plans to fulfill pledge nevertheless.
Capital Times (Madison, WI.)
Copyright 1999 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
February 9, 1999, TuesdayEDITORIAL
HEADLINE: MELLON'S QUIET GIFTS OF ART, LITERATURE MAKE ALL OF US RICHER
BYLINE: Linda BrazillPaul Mellon, who died last week at age 91, was not exactly a household name. And that's just as he wanted it.
''To me, privacy is the most valuable asset that money can buy,'' was his explanation of one of the advantages of having a fortune at his disposal.
Though he kept a low profile, most of us have benefited from his fortune. Mellon was a misfit in his family's business world and in the mid-1930s he turned his inventive eye toward the nation's cultural life instead. ...
Mellon said that ''collecting is the sort of thing that creeps up on you.'' Perhaps going to museums is the equivalent for the rest of us who love art but don't have Mellon's wherewithal to collect. ''It is the only art form that has dramatically increased attendance of people of every kind, not just the intellectual elite,'' says Paul DiMaggio, an expert on public participation in the arts from Princeton University. ...
The Des Moines Register
Copyright 1999 The Des Moines Register, Inc.
February 9, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Hussein's American widow
What's next for the beautiful Queen Noor, formerly Lisa Halaby and a 1974 Princeton graduate?BYLINE: Larry Kaplow
SOURCE: Cox News ServiceAmman, Jordan -She stood up for her adopted country when the United States accused it of being too soft on Iraq. She sat diligently by her husband's bedside until her beloved king died. But still, in Jordan, the American-born Queen Noor is seen as being just too American.
And now, Noor, 47, is a grieving widow. Her husband, King Hussein, died Sunday after a seven-month bout with cancer. He leaves the future filled with uncertainty for the woman who has worked hard to straddle two cultures.
Only last month, the ailing Hussein, 63, shocked his country and the restless Middle East region by removing his brother Crown Prince Hassan from the role of heir, which he held for 34 years, and replacing him with Hussein's first son, Abdullah.
The change was notable for its transparent intrigue. Hussein wrote, in a letter to Hassan, that "parasites" and "climbers" were poisoning the palace atmosphere.
Queen Noor was most certainly in the mix. Friends and observers, though most speaking anonymously, said she had long hoped that her first-born son Hamzah, could be the next king. Hamzah is Noor's first son, but not the king's. ...
She was born in the United States as Lisa Halaby, to a mother of Swedish background and father Najeeb Halaby, of Syrian-Lebanese descent. Her father was also born in the United States and once headed Pan American World Airways.
Lisa Halaby was a cheerleader and protested against the Vietnam War. She graduated from Princeton University -class of 1974 -with a degree in architecture. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times
February 9, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Genius or Gibberish? The Strange World of the Math Crank
BYLINE: By GEORGE JOHNSONThe letter, dated Christmas Day 1998 and addressed to a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, began portentously: "Nowadays, we seek to comprehend our comprehensions and call that comprehensiveness knowledge in the mistaken belief that as a science it is immortal. Such omniscience diffuses like Helium-3 into the penetralia mentis of omnipotent impotency within any God-head such that any caveat actor is saved. ... "
Within a few sentences, the writer was holding forth on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and "the concept of nothing" as the empty set, before launching into speculations involving number theory: "It's enough to make me conjecture that infinity's prime and Riemann's Zeta function accounts for fractional charge subatomically just for the Higg's boson with an involucral matrix of ogdoad parity as midwife!"
The letter was typed single-spaced with the tiniest of margins and embellished with hand-drawn diagrams and colored annotations. Copies were sent to a list that included the linguist Noam Chomsky, the physicists John Archibald Wheeler, David Deutsch and Stephen Hawking, and the mathematician John Casti.
"It has all the hallmarks of a crank," said Dr. Casti, who is affiliated with the Technical University of Vienna and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. "It's amazing all the stuff you can get onto a single piece of paper."
But was it not just possible that couched in the obscure mix of mathematics, physics and Egyptian mysticism ("ogdoad parity" refers to four pairs of gods with names like Darkness, Absence and Endlessness), there lay an important insight?
Didn't two Cambridge University mathematicians dismiss the great self-taught Indian number theorist Srinvasa Ramanujan as a crackpot when he sent them long eccentric letters from India early in this century? Only their colleague G. H. Hardy had the foresight to recognize Ramanujan as a genius. And didn't the great German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss foolishly throw away unread a groundbreaking paper from his young Norwegian colleague Niels Heinrik Abel, calling it "another of those monstrosities"? ...
Physicists get their share of mail from amateurs attempting to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity or to show that Einstein was wrong. ...
"You can't just say Ramanujan was a genius and these other guys were cranks," Dr. Hersh said. "With a superficial look, there is hardly any visible difference. There is not always a sharp line between eccentric mathematicians and intelligent but maybe obsessed amateurs."
Until recently much of the mail contained supposed proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem. But since Dr. Andrew Wiles of Princeton University recently proved this famous puzzle and number theory, Dr. Paulos said, the focus has shifted to disproving Dr. Wiles. Another favorite diversion is Goldbach's Conjecture, which holds that all even numbers are the sum of two primes. Though no one has found a counter example, this would-be theorem remains unproven, unless the solution has been crumpled up in a math department wastebasket somewhere. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
February 9, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: When a Cell Does an Embryo's Work, a Debate Is Born
BYLINE: By GINA KOLATASix years ago, scientists in Canada published a remarkable paper, reporting that they had grown entire mice from individual cells that they had plucked from mouse embryos.
At the time, it was seen by those in the world of mouse research as a technological tour de force. But now, as scientists are eyeing human embryo cells as material for research, the experiment is giving rise to a thorny philosophical question. If you can grow a mouse from a single embryo cell, you should in theory be able to grow a human from a single human embryo cell. And if you can do that, is the single embryo cell the moral equivalent of an entire embryo? Where, in other words, does the potential for human life lie?
There are no simple answers anymore, ethicists say.
"There's a certain ambiguity or complexity that wasn't appreciated before," said Dr. Thomas Murray, director of the Hastings Center, an ethics research organization. ...
Dr. Lana Skirboll, director of science policy at the National Institutes of Health, said that the mouse work adds "nothing that would suggest the the N.I.H. back off from its position that pluripotent stem cells are not in and of themselves embryos." The institutes uses the term "pluripotent stem cells," she said, because the phrase "'embryonic stem cells' sounds like an embryo."
Nonsense, says Dr. Lee Silver, a mouse geneticist at Princeton University. If what matters, as the Government lawyers wrote, is "the capacity to develop into a human being," then human embryonic stem cells are the moral equivalent of embryos. "Metaphysically, it's all the same," Dr. Silver said, who complained that he is offended by the winking and nodding of scientists who do not want to admit the potential of the cells to become babies. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
February 9, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: New Findings Help Balance the Cosmological Books
BYLINE: By JOHN NOBLE WILFORDDATELINE: CHICAGO
In a kind of summit conference on the universe, the world's leading cosmologists have assessed their theories and pronounced them healthy, saying that a wealth of new research that at first seemed puzzling turns out to strengthen the intellectual framework that has shaped decades of debate about the origin and evolution of the universe.
The astonishing discovery last year that the universe's expansion is not slowing down, as assumed, but seems to be speeding up jolted theorists of the Big Bang whose concept for the explosive beginning and expanding evolution of the universe had, as Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University in England put it, "lived dangerously for 30 years."
An indispensable corollary, introduced in 1981 and known as inflation, had breathed new vitality into the theory with a plausible explanation of how, in its first microseconds, the universe made the transition from initially featureless conditions to the ripples out of which mighty galaxies would grow. But scientists had been short on evidence to support the reality of inflation.
So, in a six-day meeting that ended here on Wednesday, the cosmologists were relieved to find their inflationary Big Bang theory more robust than ever. ...
With so many important questions still unanswered, Dr. P. James E. Peebles of Princeton University worried about premature celebration of a theory triumphant. "This is a wildly healthy field, but still in its early days," he said. "We've got a lot to do yet." ...
TechWeb News
Copyright 1999 CMP Media, Inc.
February 9, 1999HEADLINE: DOJ: Microsoft Gave Up $100M To Harm
BYLINE: Darryl K. Taft, 1The U.S. government maintains that Microsoft gave up substantial revenue from agreements with Internet content providers (ICPs) to gain market share over -- and harm -- Netscape.
The government's lead attorney in the landmark antitrust case against the software giant, David Boies, said Monday that Microsoft was willing to "give away" $100 million "just to restrict Netscape." Boies added Microsoft did so with a "zero revenue product," a reference to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which the company includes with the Windows operating system. ...
Prior to Poole's testimony Monday, Microsoft's attorneys played an eight- minute video to show the workings of the channel bar. In the video, Microsoft showed how the channel bar could be removed from the start-up process. The channel bar is removed, but not deleted, Poole later said.
Boies said this was significant because the channel bar is only "hidden" from the user, which is exactly what the prototype removal program Princeton University computer-science professor Edward Felten said did. Microsoft harped bitterly about the fact that Felten's program only hid functionality and did not actually remove it. Boies said the channel-bar removal process does the same
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 9, 1999HEADLINE: Policy slows student businesses, denies use of Princeton U. resources
BYLINE: By Dan Wachtell, Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.When Brian O'Kelley '99 made an agreement with a client for his software business the summer before his junior year, he never imagined the result would be three months of University probation. But when the deal went bad, that was exactly what he got.
According to O'Kelley, the disgruntled investor from the summer transaction contacted the University with the intention of shutting down his business. After investigation, the University concluded O'Kelley "abused University resources," he explained.
'UNIVERSITY RESOURCES'
University regulations prohibit the "use of University resources for personal profit-making endeavors," Associate Dean of Student Life Kathleen Deignan said.
"University resources" include e-mail accounts, University-based Websites, University printers, telephone numbers and other facilities, she explained. Deignan said while it is acceptable for students to use telephone or e-mail services to contact people for certain aspects of their businesses, listing a University-provided e-mail address or telephone number as contact information is in violation of University regulations.
Because the University is a nonprofit organization, it would be unfair for students to use University-provided resources for financial gain, Deignan explained. ...
ABC NEWS
SHOW: ABC GOOD MORNING AMERICA
FEBRUARY 8, 1999HEADLINE: QUEEN NOOR
GUESTS: MARSHA LEVY-WARREN (Princeton University classmate and current Trustee)BYLINE: CHARLES GIBSON, DIANE SAWYER
HIGHLIGHT: QUEEN NOOR MOURNS HER HUSBAND'S DEATH
DIANE SAWYER: While the world mourns the death of King Hussein of Jordan, the loss weighs most heavily on his family, especially his wife, Queen Noor. There were some Jordanians who were not too pleased when their king married a blonde American. But Queen Noor has spent the past 20 years winning the acceptance of her adopted homeland. We're going to take a look back at the woman who met her king almost by accident. She helped to design a hanger in Amman and he was there and they had lunch.
(voice-over) Lisa Halaby's first lunch with King Hussein of Jordan lasted five hours. A six-week courtship, a conversation to Islam and the two were heading down the aisle. King Hussein said she brought light into his life, so he called her Noor, Arabic for light. Just three years out of Princeton University, the 27-year-old told Barbara Walters the thought of being a queen was scary. ...
DIANE SAWYER: And joining us now, Marsha Levy-Warren, a personal friend of Queen Noor. You watched our piece, shook your head and said, she was never a commoner.
MARSHA LEVY-WARREN, PhD., Queen Noor's Friend: This is true. From the time I met her she had a presence, a charisma that gave her regal bearing. Even in college, yes.
DIANE SAWYER: How did that affect the other students?
MARSHA LEVY-WARREN: Well, I think she was a bit of a loner, she certainly had friends, but she also is someone who kept to herself. She is a private person, I think she still is. I respect that and I always admired her, she is highly intelligent, she has a great sense of humor, she is extremely creative, she is a wonderful architect, even in college, which is why she managed to go out from college and get design jobs. ...
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 1999 The Baltimore Sun Company
February 8, 1999, MondaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: Supporting responsible spankingIN AN unprovoked outburst of common sense, officials in Oakland, Calif. , recently rejected a proposal to make their city the first "No Spanking Zone" in the United States.
The proposal, which was promoted by a 65-year-old Oakland resident named Jordan Riak, would have made it a nonpunishable offense (naturally) for parents to spank their children anywhere in the city. And the proposal would have called for anti-spanking messages directed at parents to be posted in public places like the children's section of city libraries.
But Oakland officials, still reeling from the embarrassment of a short-lived 1996 experiment in teaching black English (Ebonics), decided to send the anti-spanking proposal to the corner for some "time out." ...
New research
And in a fascinating new study just published in the academic journal, American Sociological Review, Brad Wilcox of Princeton University found that parents with orthodox religious beliefs are "characterized both by strict discipline and an unusually warm and expressive style of parent-child interaction." According to Mr. Wilcox, these parents employ a "neotraditional parenting style that spares neither the rod nor the hug."
Now, it is important to point out that no one is suggesting that parents should be quick to employ spanking. Or that corporal punishment is warranted in every situation requiring discipline. ...
Business Dateline
Birmingham Business Journal
Copyright Birmingham Business Journal, Inc. 1999;
February 8, 1999HEADLINE: Healthcare making unfortunate news
BYLINE: Katherine Capps
DATELINE: Birmingham; AL; US; South Central
(Editor's note: In January, Katherine Capps moved her consulting firm, Health2 Resources, from Birmingham to the Washington, D.C., area. She offers some impressions of the healthcare scene inside the Beltway.)
If you look up in Washington to the High Court, you see that on Jan. 22, 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act could apply to health insurers.
Consumers can sue health insurers for fraud under the law. The decision stemmed from a case involving healthcare insurance payments. ...
In local markets HMOs and insurers are merging, and, according to a New York Times article by Milt Freudenheim, the industry is "whittling itself down to a few giant companies that dominate the health systems of the country's biggest cities."
He quoted Ure Reinhardt of Princeton University as saying, "If only one insurer is left to deal with local doctors and hospitals (in a market), they will send the bill to the consumer by raising premiums. Then the government will say: 'You have converted healthcare into a public utility. We are going to regulate you." ...
Computer Reseller News
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc.
February 8, 1999HEADLINE: Allchin takes the heat for misleading Microsoft demo
BYLINE: Darryl K. Taft
Washington, D.C. -- Microsoft Corp. took some very public lumps in the 14th week of the government's landmark antitrust case against the software company.
Most notably, the Redmond, Wash.-based company spent most of its time trying to regroup from an embarrassing snafu in which a Microsoft videotaped demonstration was shown by a government lawyer to be misleading at best.
Government attorney David Boies Tuesday pointed out that an on-screen PC, ostensibly showing how a "prototype removal system" degrades Windows 98 performance, did not appear to be running the removal system at all.
A flustered Jim Allchin, senior vice president of personal and business systems at Microsoft, had to agree. He said he had not administered the demonstration and relied on his team to set it up.
The problem was unintentional and Allchin insisted the removal program, by Princeton University Professor Edward Felten, hurts the performance of the operating system and does not remove Internet access.
"This certainly casts doubt on the entire reliability of your video testimony," said U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
Allchin offered to do a live demonstration in the courtroom. "I stand by what I said before about the Felten program ," he said. ...
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
February 8, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Underclass guns win Rolex titles
SOURCE: Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning NewsBYLINE: Jodie Valade
DATELINE: FARMERS BRANCHFARMERS BRANCH - All day on Sunday, James Blake was fighting for an edge. Looking for one little break, one small way to steal an advantage in the Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships.
He found it in the third set against Washington's Robert Kendrick in the most unlikely of places: A mistake.
A soft drop shot that the sophomore from Harvard tried to place precisely brushed the net, popped up and skipped past Kendrick's left ear as he rushed in. And that was where Blake, the No. 1 seed, found his opening for a 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 victory and a singles title at Brookhaven Country Club. ...
Blake became the first Ivy League champion at the Rolex since 1983 when Princeton's Ted Farnsworth won a title. Irvin became the fourth Stanford women's champion at the event and the second in as many years. ...
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
February 8, 1999, MondayUNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM
HEADLINE: Old dogs can change their opinions
BYLINE: Richard Morin
Forget what you've heard about how old dogs can't learn new tricks. Older people are much like the young in one important way: They're surprisingly flexible in their views and quite willing to reconsider their positions on political and social issues.
"In fact, we found that older adults were just as open to attitude change as were young adults. It was the middle-aged adults who were most resistant," said Penny Visser, assistant professor of psychology and public policy at Princeton University.
Ms. Visser and Jon Krosnick, a professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University, have been sifting through polling data trying to figure out what makes some people change their minds on political issues. ...
InternetWeek
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc.
February 8, 1999HEADLINE: The Case Against Microsoft -- VPs, Lawyers and Videotape
BYLINE: Jeffrey Schwartz
Microsoft's credibility came under attack when government lawyers questioned the accuracy of a company video intended to show how Windows 98 performance degrades when Internet Explorer is disabled.
Lead government attorney David Boies questioned James Allchin, senior vice president of Microsoft's personal and business systems division, regarding the integration of the Internet Explorer browser into the Windows operating system.
In the demonstration, Microsoft tried to show how a software-removal program from a third party caused Windows 98 performance to suffer. To do so, the company ran Windows 98 on identical systems, one with the removal program and one without. On close inspection, however, Boies discovered that the slower system actually was not running the removal program, devised by Princeton University Professor Edward Felten. To explain the snafu, Microsoft attorney Steven Holley said the company was victimized by installing Prodigy software on the PCs used for the test. ...
Investor's Business Daily
Copyright 1999 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
February 8, 1999HEADLINE: Investigative Reporter John Stossel
BYLINE: By Ed Carson, Investor's Daily
An ABC-TV producer wanted John Stossel to do a story on faulty Bic lighters, which were being linked to the deaths of four people in the prior four years.
Sure, Stossel answered, but under one condition: He'd do two other stories first.
The first would be on a killer that claims 11 lives every year. What was it? Plastic bags. The other would be on an even bigger killer, which costs 50 lives a year. Buckets.
It was vintage Stossel. Where other journalists might have seen an easy way to grab headlines, he saw an overhyped story.
A correspondent for ABC's ''2 0/20'' newsmagazine since 1981, Stossel, 52, is one of the country's most successful investigative reporters. He's won 19 Emmys and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. ...
As someone who's ''easily bored'' and has a short attention span, Stossel says he figures out what would make him want to watch an hourlong show about public policy.
The Princeton University psychology graduate says the fact he didn't take any journalism classes gives him an edge. With no formal instruction on what's important and how to be a reporter, he ''learned through fear,'' he said. ...
Investor's Business Daily
Copyright 1999 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
February 8, 1999HEADLINE: Rent Or Buy?
If you've ever rented an apartment or a house, you've probably had people tell you you're making a mistake. Paying rent, people say, is just like throwing money down the drain. You may even have said this yourself. But is it true?
The economics of real estate is a topic many people think they understand, even if they don't.
Take the idea that renting is like throwing money down the drain. The main reason people say this is because when you pay rent on a property, you don't gain any ownership. When you pay a mortgage, you do.
What this overlooks, though, is that you don't pay as much when you rent.
When you rent, you pay for use of the house or apartment while you live there. When you buy, on the other hand, you pay not just for using the house or apartment while you're there, but also for the right to sell the property when you move out. ...
As Princeton University economist Burton Malkiel has explained, ''The real estate market is less efficient than the stock market. There may be hundreds of knowledgeable investors who study the worth of every common stock. Perhaps only a handful of prospective buyers assess the worth of a particular real estate property. Hence, individual pieces of property are not always appropriately priced.'' ...
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Copyright 1999 The Kansas City Star Co.
February 8, 1999 MondayHEADLINE: Statesmanship: Why can't we find it now? Partisan nature of impeachment has split capital
BYLINE: KEVIN MURPHY, The Kansas City StarWASHINGTON - The senator listened to the question reflectively.
A reporter wanted to know why "as a politician" Sen. Arlen Specter would favor videotaping witnesses at President Clinton's impeachment trial.
"Well," the Pennsylvania Republican began to answer. "As statesman ... "
Laughter from a roomful of observers interrupted him.
Who wouldn't rather be a statesman than a politician?
But Specter's answer begged a serious question: At a time when Congress needed someone to lead it out of the impeachment morass, where had all the statesmen gone? ...
Lamenting an absence of statesmen is not new. Woodrow Wilson, in an essay he wrote as a Princeton University freshman in 1879, warned of a "marked and alarming decline in statesmanship," said Don Wolfensberger, a former longtime Capitol Hill staffer who is a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Copyright 1999 Journal Sentinel Inc.
February 8, 1999 Monday FinalHEADLINE: As Web pages proliferate, finding what you're after gets more difficult
BYLINE: JUDY BROWN"Hey, have you seen the great Web site from the ABC Company?" Chances are very high that the answer is "no."
How often do you get asked such a question? It seems to happen to me at least once a day.
Howard Strauss from Princeton University did his homework and figured that with the more than 250 million Web sites today, plus hundreds being added every hour, it would take more than eight years to look at all Web sites at the rate of one per second. No wonder we haven't seen a specific Web site we are asked about. Lucent estimates are higher, with 830 million Web pages now and 8 billion by 2000. At this rate, it would take much longer than eight years. No one knows just how many sites exist, but we do know that the number is ever increasing. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
February 8, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: DEATH OF A KING: THE ROYAL WIDOW;
Once Derided, Noor Is Likely to Remain a Power at the PalaceBYLINE: By DOUGLAS JEHL
DATELINE: AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 7For more than 20 years, she was his wife and confidante, an American-born beauty who became a Jordanian Queen. And even with the death of King Hussein, no one here is expecting Queen Noor to go away.
At age 47, she is now the honored widow of a sovereign whose family includes his 11 children, by four wives.
Queen Noor was at the King's side throughout his illness and is said to have been a buoying force as family members gathered around his hospital bed. And as the King lay dying, she won hearts here by venturing into the rain on Saturday evening, her head covered modestly in white chiffon, to circulate outside the hospital gates -- the widow-to-be comforting the bereaved. ...
But the Queen has not always been regarded with favor at home. A 1974 graduate of Princeton University, she has been an outspoken advocate for women's rights, economic development and environmental protection. She has been seen by some Jordanians as too ambitious, too forceful and too foreign to be Queen in what is a very conservative society. ...
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 1999 The Baltimore Sun Company
February 7, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Warren S. Torgerson, 74, professor who studied psychological measurement
BYLINE: SUN STAFF
Warren S. Torgerson, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Johns Hopkins University who was internationally known for his work in psychological measurement, died Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital after surgery resulting from a fall at his home in Fallston. He was 74. ...
He received his doctorate in psychology in 1951 from Princeton University, where he developed a method of psychological measurement and published his book, "Theory and Methods of Scaling." ...
The Denver Post
Copyright 1999 The Denver Post Corporation
February 7, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: Within 72 hours Emergency kit new approach to birth control
BYLINE: By Claire Martin, Denver Post Staff Writer, HEALTH/MIND/BODYTechnically, this is not strictly for only "The Morning After." Nor is this an abortion pill.
Unlike the controversial European drug RU-486, emergency contraception cannot abort a pregnancy - it can only work before pregnancy begins. And it doesn't need to be taken within a few hours in order to be effective.
Last fall, the Food and Drug Administration approved Gynetics' Preven Emergency Contraceptive Kit, a packet of birth-control pills arranged in specific concentrations. The pills are meant to be taken in three doses, at precise times, starting within 72 hours (three days) after an episode of unprotected sex. ...
Until Preven went on the market, only about 1 percent of American women reported using birth-control pill combinations as emergency contraception, according to Princeton University Professor James Trussell, who helped originate a Web site on emergency contraception (www.opr.Princeton.edu/ec).
"That's about 500,000 women - 1 percent of the women at risk for unintended pregnancy," Trussell said. ...
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Copyright 1999 The Kansas City Star Co.
February 7, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: Line by line, they pine for fame
Poets, then and now, strive to avoid the fate of being 'writ in water'
BYLINE: GEORGE GURLEY, The Kansas City Star
"Not marble, nor the guilded monuments of princes, shall outlast this powerful rhyme," wrote Shakespeare, boasting that his scribblings would be immortal.
But Keats -- not as confident as the Bard -- wrote, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
Poets have always been obsessed with fame. Milton called it "the last infirmity of noble mind. " And the idea that poetry offers the best ticket to an imperishable name has been kicked around for a long, long time. ...
Hay, by Paul Muldoon (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $22), though not without some filler poems, is the most fun to read. Muldoon, an Irishman who teaches at Princeton University, has a legitimate shot at being mentioned in the same breath as Dylan Thomas. ...
Omaha World-Herald
Copyright 1999 The Omaha World-Herald Company
February 7, 1999, SundayLetitia Baldrige
HEADLINE: The Past Always Has Something to Teach Us
Washington, D.C., has been taking a ribbing lately in the media, what with sex scandals, investigations and an occasional marked lack of civility on the floor of the Senate and the House. I've never seen such a period of negativity in all the years I have known this great city, but let's look at the other side of it.
This is one of the most interesting, stimulating cities that ever flourished in this world - Athens, Rome and Ephesus included. Once every six months I take a personal day off, not for self-pampering or beautifying (although heaven knows I could use it), but for "checking out the action" at any one of the many memorable historical and cultural sites we take so for granted here. I feel refreshed and invigorated at the end of such a day, once my feet are in working condition again. ...
Wilson House was celebrating the 75th anniversary of the death of this great president with a special exhibit. I saw everything from his famous shiny top hat (he was something of a dandy, always impeccably dressed) to the Nobel Prize he won for his work on the League of Nations. A former president of Princeton University, he was famous for many things such as contributions to the Federal Reserve System, national labor reform, international diplomacy and education. Woodrow and Edith Wilson's house was considered one of the most fashionable of the 1920s. ...
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 1999 Bergen Record Corp.
February 7, 1999HEADLINE: SCIENTISTS TO REINVENT AIRPLANE FOR MARS FLIGHT
SOURCE: Associated PressDATELINE: NEWARK
Like much of aviation history, this story begins with the Wright brothers.
In 1997, Edgar Choueiri, an aerospace engineering professor, challenged his colleagues at Princeton University to top or equal the milestone set by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
"How about this?" said Choueiri, 37. "A plane that could fly over Mars. And we could tip our hat to the Wrights at the same time."
What started out as Choueiri's science fiction fantasy may be taking off, according to a published report. ...
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
February 7, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: New novel offers a rare glimpse inside Castro's Cuba
BYLINE: Alejandra BronfmanReading the translated work of a Cuban writer who remains on the island and continues to write is a rare opportunity. Writers, and intellectuals in general, have two options: Either they leave Cuba, and work in exile, or they stay, publish in the country with great difficulty and in the United States with even greater difficulty.
The appearance of a voice from the increasingly fashionable but persistently opaque nation is reason enough to pay attention to the English-language publication of Abilio Estevez's first novel, "Thine is the Kingdom." There are other reasons as well, having less to do with where the author is from than with his craft as a writer. From the book's provocative entanglement of politics and art emerges a melancholy exploration of spatial and moral confinement.
The novel's premise is deceptively simple: A neighborhood houses a diverse group of people, they interact, time passes. The setting is pre-revolutionary Havana, and the neighborhood is aptly named "The Island." But Mr. Estevez, with dizzying energy, fills that simple frame with the memories, tragedies, desires and frustrations of each character. ...
Alejandra Bronfman has visited Cuba several times in the course of her history studies at Princeton University.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Copyright 1999 Telegraph Group Limited (LONDON)
February 06, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Outdoors: Country Diary The miracle of the Hay diet
BYLINE: By RWF PooleAn interesting thought that had never occurred to me before: Professor Dyson of Princeton University was asked what he thought was the most important invention in the past 2,000 years. His answer was: "Hay."
Hay is grass that has been mown and then allowed to cure in the wind and the sun, thereby retaining its essential goodness and nourishment value. Hay is the basic fuel of horse power and that is the Prof's point. Hay is not thought to have existed BC, therefore, the Prof maintains, horses could exist only in warm climates where winter grazing was possible. Ergo the great south-north invasions and migrations of people would not have been possible without hay. ...
The National Journal
Copyright 1999 The National Journal, Inc.
February 6, 1999HEADLINE: So Very, Very Tired
BYLINE: Carl M. CannonHIGHLIGHT:
After Gennifer and Monica, Filegate and Travelgate, cattle futures and coffee klatches, we just don't care.
It was a typical morning in the exercise room of a big-city hotel--this one happened to be the Westin-Bonaventure in Los Angeles--and four or five bleary executives huffed away on treadmills and stationary bikes. A television blared in the background. A new arrival walked into the gym and studied the television, which was showing the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton.''Anybody mind if I switch the channel?'' he asked.
''God, no!'' the other exercisers replied. ''Please do.'' ...
''The fact that a President who gets into so many difficulties can nevertheless control the political agenda so readily suggests (a) robustness to the presidency as a base of power,'' says Fred I. Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University. ''It also suggests a high degree of political skill.'' ...
New Scientist
IPC Magazines Ltd
February 6, 1999HEADLINE: Send in the clouds
BYLINE: Charles SeifeHIGHLIGHT: Speeding matter may help galaxies stay in shape
THE origin of the mysterious fast-moving clouds of hydrogen gas that astronomers can see across large areas of the sky might have been pinned down at last, says a team of physicists from the US and Mexico. The scientists think their computer model has also located the dark matter that holds galaxies together.
"High-velocity clouds have been a mystery for 40 years," says David Spergel, an astronomer from Princeton University. Researchers have argued for decades over whether the clouds, some of which move faster than 350 000 kilometres per hour, are formed within galaxies or outside them. (see Written in the Clouds, New Scientist, 21 November 1998, p 38). The answer might be at hand.
Galaxies form when huge gas clouds collapse under their own gravity. Physicists calculate that there should be hundreds of smaller, satellite galaxies trapped in the gravitational pull of every large galaxy, such as ours and the Andromeda Galaxy. But this doesn't seem to be the case, at least near our Galaxy. ...
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
February 6, 1999HEADLINE: Stars burst
FOR the first time, astronomers have seen the flash of light from a gamma-ray burst, an event thought to be triggered by the collision of two neutron stars or the collapse of a massive star into a black hole.
An automated camera photographed the flash on 23 January, within 22 seconds of a tip-off from the orbiting Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
The observatory pinpointed the burst as roughly 10 billion light years away.
The flash released 10 times more energy than would be expected if two colliding neutron stars had caused it. "The energy is a real surprise," says Bohdan Paczynski, a gamma-ray burst expert at Princeton University in New Jersey. As a result, astronomers may be forced to rethink the cause of the bursts.
For more science news see http://www.newscientist.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Copyright 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 05, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: MICROSOFT'S POINT IS PROVEN, EXEC ASSERTS;
U.S. PROGRAM ONLY HID BROWSER, HE SAYSBYLINE: JOEL BRINKLEY THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTONTrying to stop the damage from a disastrous week in court, the Microsoft Corp. played a new, videotaped demonstration at its antitrust trial yesterday.
The 70-minute video showed James E. Allchin, a senior company executive, performing live tests and then looking into the camera and saying that he had proved his point - that a prototype government program intended to separate Microsoft's Web browser from the Windows operating system had really done no such thing.
The program just hid the browser, he showed. Further, he demonstrated, running the program disabled some other features in Windows and caused additional problems.
In federal court on Monday, Microsoft had played a long videotape intended to demonstrate the advantages of integrating a Web browser with Windows and debunk the government program, written by a Princeton University professor (Edward Felten) and two of his students.
But in the past two days, David Boies, the government's lead lawyer in the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, gradually pulled the tape apart, pointing out numerous technical questions and errors, until finally Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared Wednesday afternoon that he no longer viewed the tape as reliable evidence. ...
NOTE: This story first appeared in The New York Times.
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 1999 The Baltimore Sun Company
February 5, 1999, Friday, FINALHEADLINE: Edgar Merryman Lucas, 89, raised thoroughbreds at Helmore Farm
BYLINE: SUN STAFFEdgar Merryman Lucas, one of Maryland's most prominent thoroughbred breeders and enthusiastic horsemen, died Saturday of cancer at Blakehurst Life Care Community in Towson. He was 89.
Mr. Lucas presided over Helmore Farm, his 87-acre horse breeding farm in Brooklandville, where during his career, more than 50 stakes winners were bred or raised.
Born and raised in Roland Park, Mr. Lucas was a 1928 graduate of Gilman School and attended Princeton University. "I don't think he ever rode a horse again after leaving Princeton where he was in the ROTC," his son said with a chuckle. ...
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 5, 1999HEADLINE: A Group Attacking Affirmative Action Seeks Help From Trustees and Students
BYLINE: PATRICK HEALYTo protect themselves and their universities from lawsuits, trustees should study court decisions on affirmative action and end campus policies that use preferences to increase racial diversity, according to a trustee "handbook" released last week by a non-profit legal center that has sued colleges over those policies.
"The evidence is now almost overwhelming that nearly every elite college in America is violating the law, in that they have two admissions standards, one for black applicants and one for all other applicants," said Terence J. Pell, a lawyer at the Center for Individual Rights (C.I.R.).
The manual -- as well as a companion text urging students to scrutinize policies and to sue to reform them -- is the latest attempt by partisans in the affirmative-action debate to influence college officials on race-based policies. In September, former presidents of Harvard and Princeton Universities published a book, The Shape of the River, finding that race-conscious entrance policies had helped increase diversity on college campuses.
The law center, which in 1996 won the well-known Hopwood case against the University of Texas, and is leading lawsuits against race-based admissions policies at the Universities of Michigan and Washington, contends that many elite colleges are violating the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on college affirmative action, in the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. ...
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 5, 1999HEADLINE: Scholars of Immigration Focus on the Children
BYLINE: D.W. MILLERAmericans' ambivalence about the unending flow of immigrants to the United States is clear from the conflicting stereotypes they hold about immigrants' offspring. People think of Chicano cholos in baggy pants and gang bandannas cruising around in low riders, or of bespectacled Vietnamese students winning science fairs.
As shallow as they are, those images do reflect an important truth about the consequences of large-scale immigration. "The main legacy of the new immigration is not going to hinge on the fate of immigrant adults, but on their children," says Ruben G. Rumbaut, a Michigan State University sociologist.
A recent focus on the second generation is helping immigration scholars confront the crucial question posed by the new immigrants and by the anxiety about them: Whether, as the Princeton University sociologist Alejandro Portes puts it, "they succeed economically, are accepted socially, and participate politically." ...
"Children of immigrants are adapting faster than ever before," says Mr. Rumbaut, of Michigan State. In 1992, he and Princeton's Mr. Portes interviewed more than 5,200 eighth- and ninth-graders, all of them children of immigrants, in south Florida and San Diego. Four years later, when most of the children were seniors in high school, the pair followed up.
Their study showed that, by the 12th grade, nearly 90 per cent of immigrant children preferred to speak English, although Latinos lagged behind other groups in that regard. "The power of American culture is such that it influences and 'pre-socializes' immigrants before they arrive," says Mr. Portes. "The question is not whether immigrants will adapt to American society, . . . but what segment of American society they can adapt to." ...
CNNfn
SHOW: DIGITAL JAM 19:30:00 pm ET
February 5, 1999; FridayHEADLINE: "Microsoft Antitrust Trial - evidence tapes", CNNfn
BYLINE: Steve YoungSTEVE YOUNG, CNNfn ANCHOR, DIGITAL JAM: There was high drama in the Microsoft trial this week over the software giant's use of videotape. Microsoft's antitrust defense was sent reeling by a Princeton University computer science professor and two of his former students. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEVE YOUNG, CNNfn CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Talk about a battle of the nerds. The world's most celebrated geek saw his company humbled this week by a little known Princeton professor and two recent grads. Professor Edward Felten, Peter Kreith (ph) and Kristen Hicks (ph) sliced and diced and help discredit a videotape Microsoft made and used as evidence at its antitrust trial. Microsoft grudgingly calls them "the brainiacs" or "the Feltenites."
DAVID BOIES, LEAD GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY: It has all been just incredible over the last five or six days where, working around the clock, they have been able to analyze and deconstruct this videotape, not once or twice, but three separate times. YOUNG (on camera): The chairman of the Computer Science Department here at Princeton says, everybody here is smart, but Peter and Kristen were smarter than most of the other students.
DAVID P. DOBKIN, PRINCETON COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPT.: Did the things that they did this week that you're marveling about take all of the talents that they had? I don't think so. I mean, it took a certain amount of determination and then a certain amount of you know, "I'm just going to sit and stare at this thing until we get it."
YOUNG: They run their own computer game company, Alysium (ph), and their potential hasn't been lost on Microsoft.
TOD NIELSEN, DEVELOPER RELATIONS, MICROSOFT: Microsoft is always looking to hire great young people who have good ideas and want to change the world. And based on the limited observation I've had of them, they sound like great folks we'd love to have at Microsoft. ...
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 1999 The Financial Times Limited
February 5, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Case of vanishing icon leaves Microsoft red-faced: Two students found the flaw in company's evidence, reports Richard Wolffe:
Call it the case of the disappearing icon. In the best television traditions of Perry Mason and Columbo, a subtle flaw in a single piece of evidence unravelled the best-laid defence plans of the world's biggest software company.
It took two young computer students from Princeton University to spot the tell-tale signs which had been missed by two teams of Microsoft defence lawyers, and attorneys from the US government and 19 states.
The students, working in a lunchtime court recess, were puzzled by a Microsoft video which showed one of its own computers running Windows 98, the best-selling version of its operating system.
In one frame the computer screen showed two icons. But in a later sequence the two icons had become one. Far from showing a single computer, the company had used several machines with different software on each one.
The apparently minor discrepancy led to Microsoft's worst day in court since the opening of the US government's antitrust trial three months ago, undermining its credibility and casting doubt on key parts of its defence case. ...
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Copyright 1999 Orange County Register
February 5, 1999 FridayHEADLINE: TRUE LIFE: Bipolar disorder helps cut short a full young life; Killer disease was not just all in his head
BYLINE: ELEANOR M. COLLINS, The Orange County RegisterIt was 9 degrees under gray skies as we huddled around a flower-covered casket and listened to the haunting strains of bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace. "
It was two days before Christmas and we were there to bury my nephew, Andy. The weather in upstate New York matched the way we felt -- cold with shock, pain, grief.
This special young man, who graduated from Princeton University and MIT magna cum laude, had plunged from brilliance into the dark abyss that is manic depression. His death was ruled an accidental overdose -- his attempt to quiet his demons for even a few hours. ...
Why do we view mental illness as a character defect? Why did Andy have to die so young? Why does my sister have to carry with her forever the pain of losing a child?
Depressive illnesses, including bipolar disorder, affect about 17 million adults in the United States. But when was the last time you watched a telethon to raise funds for research into mental disorders? When was the last time there was a marathon staged for such a cause?
And finally, when will we stop treating mental illness as something to whisper about, or, worse, something to joke about? ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Yale Daily News via U-Wire
February 5, 1999HEADLINE: Yale U. working to raise faculty salaries
BYLINE: By Letitia Stein, Yale Daily News
SOURCE: Yale U.
DATELINE: New Haven, Conn.At yesterday's Yale College faculty meeting, Provost Alison Richard said she has been working since last year to raise professor's salaries to a more competitive level and that she will report on her progress next month.
Responding to a report released earlier this week by the Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty, Richard said is preparing a formal response and will circulate it before the March faculty meeting. The report found Yale's salaries and benefits lagged behind those offered at Princeton University and other peer institutions.
Faculty members in attendance said they were pleased with the Provost's prompt response and await next month's meeting to discuss her forthcoming ideas.
"She said that they would match the competition, but the devil is in the details," said Donald Crothers, chairman of the chemistry department. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Pennsylvanian via U-Wire
February 5, 1999HEADLINE: Internet 2 makes progress toward faster modem speeds
BYLINE: By Andrew Ribner, Daily Pennsylvanian
SOURCE: U. PennsylvaniaAfter getting that ethernet card up and running for the first time, you thought nothing could ever make the Internet any faster. Think again.
But now, Internet 2 is currently being developed to increase speeds in cyberspace by at least 10 times. ...
Involved since the inception of the Internet 2 organization in 1996, the University has taken a particularly large role in the creation of a regional GigaPoP, or Gigabit Point of Prescence, which will allow Penn to access the high-speed system.
"We are in the process of negotiating and talking to universities around us to see what is the best way of serving those universities and Penn," said Farber, a member of the Network Research Advisory Board.
Possible participants with Penn in the GigaPoP include Rutgers, Drexel and Princeton universities, according to Kassabian.
Despite the speed promises of Internet 2, however, Farber noted that "in five years, we will be looking for an even faster connection." ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Dartmouth via U-Wire
February 5, 1999HEADLINE: Door locking debate continues at Dartmouth
BYLINE: By Allison Robbins, The Dartmouth
SOURCE: Dartmouth College
DATELINE: Hanover, N.H.While Acting Dean of the College Dan Nelson prepares to decide if Dartmouth dorms should be equipped with a more restrictive system of locks, far more security-conscious measures have already been instituted at most other east coast universities.
The current College policy of leaving all residence halls unlocked 24 hours a day is unheard of at urban schools such as the University of Pennsylvania and is increasingly rare at smaller and more rural colleges like Amherst and Williams.
At Princeton University a new 24-hour "prox" system was instituted in September. Students have a combined ID and safety card which when brought into close proximity to scanning devices near their residence door deactivates its locks.
The "prox" system has been used for several years, but only recently has been instituted 24 hours a day. ...
AP Online
Copyright 1999 Associated Press
February 04, 1999HEADLINE: HMOs Said to Influence Non-HMOs
BYLINE: PHIL GALEWITZ
DATELINE: NEW YORKThe power of managed care may be even greater than you'd expect.
Not only do health maintenance organizations help reduce the overall cost of health care for their members, but they appear to cut medical expenses for those in traditional insurance as well, suggests a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
''Managed care seems to have a spillover effect,'' said Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University health economist.
Health expenses for patients in traditional Medicare plans tend to fall in regions with growing HMOs, according to a study by Stanford University researcher Laurence Baker. He surmises that doctors in regions with fast-growing HMOs order fewer tests and cut other costs even for their patients who aren't in HMOs. ...
The study's findings raise doubts about suspicions that doctors treat patients differently based on their insurance coverage, said Reinhardt, who wrote an accompanying editorial in this week's edition of JAMA. Economists, he said, have long assumed doctors were influenced by how they are paid. ...
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
Copyright 1999 News & Record
February 4, 1999, ThursdaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: MORE AND MORE PHDS; MORE JOBLESS SCHOLARS; THE INHUMANITY OF HUMANITIES.What if you spent five or six arduous years and tens of thousands of dollars getting a Ph.D. only to find you could not get a job? Welcome to the angst-ridden world of academe.
The Modern Language Association, the organization for professors, part-time professors and graduate students in English and foreign languages, met in San Francisco recently, and the news was as grim as a poorhouse in a Dickens novel.
Fewer than half of Ph.D candidates will find full-time tenure-track teaching jobs within a year of completing their degrees.
This is not a bolt out of the blue. It is merely a trend that is not getting better and, in some case, is growing worse. Nor does the job shortage represent the entire spectrum of academia. Graduate students in computer science, business, law and other ''practical'' fields are hot property.
But Ph.D. candidates in English and foreign languages should find another line of work. At least, that was the jarring message from M.L.A. president Elaine Showalter, a professor at Princeton University who is also a freelance journalist. Showalter and like-minded professors told the M.L.A. that scholars without jobs should abandon academia and find work in business, television, journalism, speech-writing and fields where they can use their academic training. ...
Other professors insisted the problem is not lack of jobs but lack of full-time jobs. Higher education, like corporate America, increasingly hires part-time professors, who are paid less and rarely get benefits. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 4, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton civil rights crusader becomes full law professor
BYLINE: By Sophia Hollander, Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.When she was 10 years old, Sally Frank '80's fifth-grade civics teacher assigned her to watch the nightly news.
Dutifully following her teacher's instructions, she switched on the set every evening that year. What she saw was a black man bound and gagged in a U.S. courtroom, sitting through his own trial, unable to speak and unable to move. Frank was stunned.
The man was Bobby Seale, a Black Panther, and he was being tried -- along with others -- for allegedly inciting riots over the Vietnam War and racial protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. For Frank, seeing this prompted a wariness of traditional politics and a desire to practice law as a way to effect social change.
This sense of justice propelled Frank, as a junior at Princeton University, to launch a 13-year legal battle to force the remaining all-male eating clubs to admit women.
It also led her to pursue a law career herself, and this year, in recognition of her contributions over nine years to the Drake University law school, Frank was made a full law professor at the Des Moines, Iowa, campus. ...
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