Princeton in the News
April 22 to 28, 1999
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Federal News Service
Copyright 1999 Federal Information Systems Corporation
APRIL 28, 1999HEADLINE: PREPARED STATEMENT OF UWE E. REINHARDT PH.D., PRINCETON UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE
SUBJECT - "MEDICARE: ITS CONTEXT AND EVOLUTION"THE POPULARITY OF THE MUCH-MALIGNED MEDICARE PROGRAM
I. INTRODUCTION
It has become almost habitual among policy analysts and policy makers to adorn the federal Medicare program with derogatory adjectives such as "moribund," "obsolete," "inefficient" and "unsustainable." It is argued that the program has not kept pace with the pace of innovations in the private health-insurance market and that the private sector could administer it more efficiently--hence more cheaply-- than can the public sector, thus delivering more "value" for the dollar.
This sorry description of the program stands in stark contrast to the image it has among the American people, both young and old. In national opinion surveys on consumer satisfaction, Medicare usually ranks very high or highest in consumer satisfaction. A recent national survey conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that in response to the question "What kind of job does each do serving health-care consumers?" Medicare received relatively more favorable responses than did private-sector insurance products, in the eyes of both people under age 65 and the elderly (see Figures 1 and 2). In the same survey, both young and old declared by overwhelming margins that "it is very important that Medicare is preserved for all people when they retire" (see Figure 3). Finally, in that same survey about two thirds of all respondents favored expansion of the Medicare benefit package to include prescription drugs and long-term care, even if that meant higher taxes and premiums. It is difficult to reconcile these responses with the image of a moribund program. ...
Federal News Service
Copyright 1999 Federal Information Systems Corporation
APRIL 27, 1999HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF SARA S. MCLANAHAN, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE HOUSE WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE, HUMAN RESOURCES SUBCOMMITTEE
I've come here today to tell you about a major new study of unwed parents that my colleagues and I are conducting. I believe our study has important implications for the design and implementation of fatherhood initiatives. As you know, unwed parents and their children are the fastest growing families in the United States, accounting for one third of all births in 1997. Yet very little is known about these families, and hardly anything is known about the fathers. Our study is designed to remedy this situation. We begin at the hospitals by interviewing mothers soon after they give birth. Next we interview the fathers, either at the hospitals or someplace else, as soon we can find them. Our plan is to follow both parents for four years, to study the relationships in these families, and to learn how government policies affect their lives. ...
I want to make three points. First, I want to say that the vast majority of unwed fathers are strongly attached to their families, at least at birth. These men want to help raise their child, and the mothers want their help. Let me give you some statistics that may surprise you. First, and perhaps most telling, we were able to interview 75 percent of the unwed fathers in these two cities. Nearly 60 percent were interviewed at the hospital. Clearly, these figures belie the myth that unwed mothers do not know who the father is, or that unwed fathers do not care about their children. Over half of the parents in our study were living together when their child was born, and 80 percent were romantically involved. Over three-quarters expect to marry. Three quarters of the fathers provided support during the pregnancy, and nine of ten mothers plan to put the father's name on the child's birth certificate. Ninety percent of mothers want the father to be involved in raising their child. In short, unwed parents have high hopes for the future of their families.
My second point is that most unwed fathers are not in a good position to support their new family. Nearly half the men in our study had no high school degree, and only 20 percent had education beyond high school. Twenty percent of the fathers did not work at all during the past year, and those who worked had very low earnings. Ten percent of the fathers had problems with drugs or alcohol, and nearly 5 percent were in jail or prison at the time of the interview. In sum, despite good intentions, most of the fathers in our study have serious handicaps and need help to achieve their goals. ...
Foreign Affairs
Copyright 1999 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
May, 1999 / June, 1999HEADLINE: A BARBARIC VIEW
BYLINE: RICHARD FALK, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Princeton UniversityTo the Editor:
I was disturbed by John R. Bolton's review of two recent books on war crimes prosecutions ("The Global Prosecutors," January/February 1999), in which he treats the obligations of international law as subordinate to the geopolitical whims of government.
Bolton writes that "customary international law meets none of the tests we normally impose on 'law.'" By "normally" he obviously means what qualifies as law within a well-ordered constitutional state -- but not even the most rigid legalist claims that international law operates in this way. Instead, international law is generally respected because most governments realize that their interests are best served by a law-oriented international society. And most value having a reputation for upholding international law. Although it is violated on occasion, domestic law is as well, indeed with greater frequency, and yet there is no impulse to deny the existence of domestic law or to regard violations as discretionary. ...
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine
Copyright 1999 Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc.
May, 1999HEADLINE: Breaking the silence
"There are 2,350 passages in the Bible dealing with money and material possessions--more than on any other subject--but it's the least talked-about subject in the church," says Brian Kluth, an ordained minister and president of the Christian Stewardship Association, which advises primarily evangelical Christian churches about stewardship issues. "The church has been silent for so long that people don't understand the responsibilities that undergird a generous lifestyle."
To address both the spiritual needs of parishioners and the financial needs of the church, lay leaders and pastors of successful churches are taking a number of steps to break the silence and reverse the direction of church-giving trends.
They're providing more guidance to members. "People actually come to me and say 'How much should I give?'" says Phillippe. "They have no clue, and my goal is to try to get pastors to understand that they're now going to have to tell people."
While many denominations, including the Episcopal church, still encourage tithing as the standard to strive for, other denominations emphasize "proportional giving," such as "5+5" (5% to the church and 5% to other organizations).
"Churches don't want to turn people off by seeming too rigid or dogmatic," says Robert Wuthnow, professor of sociology at Princeton University. "They prefer to say, 'You figure it out and give us whatever you feel like giving,' and often that isn't very effective." In the absence of guidance, people may either pick a number out of the air or give what they gave last year (usually the same amount as the year before and the year before that). ...
National Post
Copyright 1999 Financial Post from National Post
April 28, 1999 WednesdayHEADLINE: Euro slow to challenge dollar's world domination
BYLINE: Louis Uchitelle;Louis Uchitelle is a columnist with The New York Times.Western Europe's new currency, the euro, ought to be a powerhouse, already diminishing America's place in the global economy. Such was the advance billing. But nearly four months into its existence, the euro is hardly noticeable on this side of the Atlantic.
That is not too surprising. Even thoroughbred currencies inch their way up rather than leaping. Children now in diapers may be finishing college before lives are changed by the existence of the euro. And even then, a solid American economy - one that has avoided the deterioration of severe recessions - would dilute the impact. The robust economy today keeps the focus on dollars, not euros.
Still, the euro's potential challenge to the dollar's dominance is considerable. 'Establishing a European currency that will rival the dollar is indeed one of the points of the whole exercise," said Peter Kenen, an international economist at Princeton University. ...
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
APRIL 28, 1999, WEDNESDAYHEADLINE: Vietnam War Writers Seek Clemency for Killer; Noted novelists ask governor to spare convicted veteran
BYLINE: Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff WriterDATELINE: CALIFORNIA
BODY: Some of the best and brightest writers on the Vietnam War have urged Governor Gray Davis to spare the life of Khe Sanh veteran and convicted killer Manny Babbitt.
The writers -- including novelists Tobias Wolff and Robert Stone, journalist and screenwriter Michael Herr, and poet Yusef Komunyakaa -- worked or served in Vietnam.
In letters to the governor, delivered yesterday, they ask Davis to commute Babbitt's death sentence to life in prison without parole. Babbitt's execution is scheduled for May 4.
The former Marine was convicted of and sentenced to death for the 1980 murder of Leah Schendel, a 78-year-old Sacramento woman who died of a heart attack after she was robbed and beaten in her home. ...
Komunyakaa, a professor at Princeton University, won the Bronze Star in Vietnam for his service as a military correspondent and editor. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry.
"As a fellow veteran, someone who only glimpsed a fragment of what this Marine experienced, it is not difficult to grasp the complexity of (Babbitt's) emotional life after returning to the world,' " Komunyakaa wrote. "Here is a man who returned, miraculously, but with a diminished image of himself, with his possibilities and dreams dead." ...
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
April 28, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: FOUR MONSANTO OFFICIALS SHARE IN NATIONAL MEDALS AWARDED AT WHITE HOUSE
BYLINE: Bill Lambrecht; Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau
DATELINE: WASHINGTONPresident Bill Clinton draped medals on some of America's leading scientists Tuesday, including four from St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., and praised them for expanding the frontiers of understanding.
"You have sought answers to questions that few Americans can even begin to understand and others that people ask, but can't answer," Clinton said. ...
Clinton spoke at a ceremony in the White House in which he presented the National Medal of Technology and the National Medal of Science.
Winners of the 1998 National Medal of Science:
John N. Bahcall, (Institute for Advanced Study) and Princeton University, for advances in physics and development of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
April 28, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: House panel seeks to help dads provide
BYLINE: Cheryl WetzsteinA House subcommittee working on a bill to help fathers with little or no income become financially responsible and emotionally involved in their families yesterday heard just how hard the next step in welfare reform will be.
Poor fathers often have inadequate education, criminal records and substance-abuse problems, fatherhood and child-support experts told the House Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources.
Inflexible child-support rules are driving fathers away from their responsibilities, other witnesses said. As examples, they mentioned the Bradley amendment, which bars judges from reducing or forgiving child-support debt, and policies that allow states to keep child-support payments to repay their welfare costs instead of passing the money through to families. ...
Sara S. McLanahan, a Princeton University researcher who is studying the growing phenomenon of unwed parents, said that fatherhood programs should contact men when their children are born because it is a time when many men are romantically involved with the mothers, strongly attached to their babies, and "highly motivated" to take care of them.
"The birth of the baby is a 'magic moment' for these men, and policy-makers and program directors should not let this moment slip by," said Ms. McLanahan. ...
U.S. Newswire
Copyright 1999 U.S. Newswire, Inc.
April 27, 1999HEADLINE: White House Fact Sheet: Renewing the Federal Government-University Research Partnership for the 21st Century
Today, President Clinton will direct the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) to strengthen the Federal government's research partnership with American universities and to work with universities to advance shared goals. The President will call on Federal agencies and universities to renew their mutual commitment to the partnership; strengthen the linkages between research and education; and take actions to make the partnership more effective and efficient. The President will release the NSTC report on Renewing the Federal Government-University Research Partnership for the 21st Century. ...
1998 National Medal of Science Recipients
John N. Bahcall, Professor of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study; and Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, for his pioneering efforts in neutrino astrophysics and his contributions to the development and planning of the Hubble Space Telescope. ...
The Associated Press
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Chernobyl virus strikes hard at Asia, Middle East and U.S. home users
BYLINE: By CHRIS ALLBRITTON, AP Cyberspace Writer
DATELINE: NEW YORKProving more destructive than expected, the Chernobyl virus caused hundreds of thousands of computer meltdowns around the world, though the effects were far worse overseas than in the United States.
The unusually destructive virus - timed to strike on April 26, the 13th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster - tries to erase a computer's hard drive and write gibberish into its system settings to prevent the machine from being restarted.
While experts were still tallying numbers, Turkey and South Korea each reported 300,000 computers damaged Monday, and there were more elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East. Officials said warnings there weren't heeded. ...
About 100 student computers were wiped out at Princeton University about two weeks before term papers were due.
"The computers were affected to a point where the hard drives were rendered useless," Princeton spokesman Justin Harmon said Tuesday. ...
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: News from Philadelphia and its suburbs
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIAPHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia's two oldest City Council members say they are too young to step down.
David Cohen, 84, and W. Thatcher Longstreth, 78, both said they plan to stick around for a long time to come.
"I'd rather get thrown out than quit," said Longstreth, a five-term Republican member of the council. "This is my life."
"As long as I'm able to do it, then I'm going to be here," said Cohen, a six-term Democrat who came to the council after a career as a labor lawyer.The two have significant differences. Cohen's office is decorated with a portrait of civil rights heroine Rosa Parks; Longstreth's with mementos from Princeton University. Both hope to raise a quarter of a million dollars this year, but Cohen gets his money in $25 and $50 contributions, while Longstreth raised $72,000 in a single fund-raising dinner. ...
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Volcker on Bill Bradley
BYLINE: By David Warsh, Globe StaffIt seems like another world - the one in which Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, after Ross Perot split the Republican vote. The president-elect was an unknown then. Big-spending traditionalist? Or fiscally conservative "new Democrat"?
Probably Clinton didn't know himself. He chose Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen, the Texas Democrat, to serve as Treasury secretary - and began the process of trial and error that led to the present day.
Under Clinton's zigzag leadership, the Democrats have learned how to dominate the Senate by proving to be more careful stewards of the Republican program than the GOP itself. Witness the long boom and the balanced budget. What a long strange journey it has been! ...
It is of some interest that the Democratic potentate whom Clinton passed over in 1992 to appoint Bentsen to the Treasury post has now endorsed Gore's opponent, former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.
Paul Volcker's iconic influence among the Democratic Party's faithful has never been as great as among the Reagan Democrats, who for 12 crucial years proved to be the swing factor in American politics. But then that is precisely the point. ...
So when the former Fed chairman stood before a cheering throng at the New York Sheraton earlier this month he struck a chord when he said, "I am a disturbed citizen. For too many years I've seen the healthy skepticism of Americans about government erode into a corrosive cynicism. That cynicism and distrust needs to be changed," said Volcker. "It seemed to me long ago that Bill Bradley had the potential - had the essential qualities, the character to do just that."
Volcker and Bradley share a good deal of background and temperament. Volcker was raised in New Jersey; Bradley represented the state in the Senate for 18 years before stepping down in 1996. The two are among Princeton University's most famous graduates; Bradley starred at basketball there before turning pro with the National Basketball Association's New York Knicks.
Indeed, if nothing else, the Volcker endorsement underscores the extent to which the presidential race has turned into a type of tong war among three leading Ivy League universities. George W. Bush is the Yale man. Gore went to Harvard. Each has built a dense network of connections to alumni and faculty of his alma mater. ...
Business Times (Singapore)
Copyright 1999 Times Business Publications
April 27, 1999HEADLINE: Macro-modelling an economy
BYLINE: Anna TeoHow do econometric models "predict" social and political upheavals?
(SINGAPORE) "THE meteorologists have gone way beyond us," a Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist is reported to have said, lamenting how forecasters have fallen behind the weatherman in their predictive ability.
An apparently robust US economy in the last several years has repeatedly defied forecasts, leaving economists consistently far off the mark. And in Asia, the regional crisis has shown -- as Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out recently -that non-economic factors are critical to economic performance, and the future cannot simply be extrapolated from the past. ...
What does it say about economic forecasting if economists keep tripping over their forecasts? In particular, how do those that maintain forecasting models take into account socio-political uncertainties which have a bearing on their projections?
Former US Federal Reserve vice-chairman Alan Blinder addresses such questions in his 1998 book Central Banking in Theory and Practice.
Some central bankers and economists, he notes, scoff at large-scale macroeconometric models, questioning their underlying assumptions and sceptical that something as complex as an entire economy can be captured in a set of equations.
Others raise a host of technical problems, while "some central bankers simply do not understand these ungainly creatures at all and doubt that they should be expected to".
There is truth in the criticisms, says Prof Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University. "Every model is an oversimplification. Economies do change over time . Econometric equations often fail sub-sample stability tests. Econometric problems like simultaneity, common trends, and omitted variables are ubiquitous in non-experimental data," he says. And of course some parameters may change when policy changes.
"Yet what are we to do about these problems? Be sceptical? Of course. ...
CNN
SHOW: CNN MONEYLINE NEWS HOUR WITH LOU DOBBS 18:30 pm ET
April 27, 1999; TuesdayBYLINE: Lou Dobbs, et. al
DOBBS: Finally this half hour, an update on the Chernobyl computer virus that struck PC's around the world yesterday. That virus also hit Princeton University, where about a hundred computers had their memories wiped out. A spokesman there tells MONEYLINE the victims failed to update their anti-virus software. That's fair enough. But, perhaps there's something else going on -- term papers at Princeton are due in about two weeks, and perhaps someone considered there might not be a better excuse than at the very end of the 20th century say, sorry, the virus ate my homework. ...
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 1999 The Financial Times Limited
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Is Nato waiting for the Kosovars to starve to death before it mobilises?
From Prof Michael Doyle and Prof Stephen Holmes.
Sir, What will be done to save the lives of approximately 800,000 (the latest estimate according to the UN High Commission for Refugees) Kosovar Albanians currently homeless in the hills of Kosovo?
Slobodan Milosevic's forces have driven them from their homes and are destroying available food supplies. By selectively closing the borders, Mr Milosevic is now holding them hostage and making them vulnerable to disease and starvation in weeks, if not days.
Over the coming months, bombing may degrade Serb military capabilities and it may restrict fuel supplies, but it does little to curb the ethnic cleansing now under way and it does nothing at all to assist the Albanians now in the hills. A ground intervention by Nato is at present off the table, for political reasons. Will Nato wait until tens of thousands have starved to death before it mobilises the will to act? If Nato finally does intervene, how many Kosovars will be alive after the months it will take to assemble a sufficient ground force?
There are no truly good options. Dropping enough food supplies to sustain them in place, Nato says, is too risky under current conditions. Saving the Kosovars now therefore means assisting them to escape. Unless Mr Milosevic is prepared to enact an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of his forces from Kosovo, Nato should drop weapons to the Kosovars, mark corridors of exit, and use available airpower and armed helicopters to assist their effort to fight a way out. Only if we help them survive can we then worry about how to get them back home.
Michael Doyle, director, Centre of International Studies, Stephen Holmes, department of politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, US
The Guardian (London)
Copyright 1999 Guardian Newspapers Limited
April 27, 1999HEADLINE: When girls and boys make up
One of America's foremost women's colleges is merging with Harvard . Carey Goldberg asks what's in it for these prestigious institutionsBYLINE: Carey Goldberg
After more than 100 years of arm's-length interaction between the his-and-hers institutions at the pinnacle of academic prestige, Radcliffe College has agreed to be fully absorbed into Harvard University, officials have announced.
Radcliffe, which lost much of its initial mission as a women's annexe when Harvard turned fully coeducational in the 1970s, is to be renamed the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and expand its study of women and gender, among other subjects, bolstered by an infusion of $150 million from Harvard.
But the change in Radcliffe's status means it will give up its vestigial claims on undergraduate women at Harvard - it had still, technically, accepted their applications and put its seal on their diplomas, even though they studied at Harvard - and act as a centre for scholarship much like a similar institute at Princeton University, officials said. ...
The Hotline
Copyright 1999 The National Journal Group, Inc.
April 27, 1999HEADLINE: LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS: TAFEL CITES CIVIL WAR IN GOP
BODY: Log Cabin Republicans Exec. Dir. Rich Tafel argued during a lecture at Princeton Univ. 4/26 "that his gay political organization is playing a key role in the fight for gay rights. Tafel dismissed the notion that it is pointless to fight for gay rights in the traditionally conservative" GOP. He said the GOP "is in the midst of 'nothing less than a civil war' regarding homosexuality, and he said his group can do more for the gay cause from within the party than as an adversary with no access to GOP leaders": "We have a huge debate in the Republican Party ... with huge ramifications for the gay and lesbian community." ...
The Independent (London)
Copyright 1999 Newspaper Publishing PLC
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: CLASSICAL: A SKILL TO DAZZLE
BRENTANO STRING QUARTET WIGMORE HALL LONDONBYLINE: Adrian Jack
THE BRENTANO String Quartet will be Quartet-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall next year. From the coming autumn they will also be in residence at Princeton University after similar appointments at the Lincoln Center and New York University. Their appearance at the Wigmore last weekend certainly confirmed the strong impression they made with their first concert there two years ago. ...
International Herald Tribune
(Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
Copyright 1999 International Herald Tribune
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: College Professors Get the Boost
BYLINE: By Brian Knowlton; International Herald TribuneAverage salaries for U.S. college professors rose 3.6 percent last year, their biggest inflation-adjusted jump in a dozen years, leaving full professors at 19 institutions earning $100,000 or more a year.
The highest salaries were at institutions offering doctoral degrees, led by Rockefeller University ($125,400), Harvard University ($122,100), Stanford University ($117,000), Princeton University ($114,900) and the California Institute of Technology ($114,600).
At the bottom end, wth salaries below $33,000, were lesser-known establishments, including Cornish College of the Arts and Truett McConnell College. ...
Japan Economic Newswire
Copyright 1999 Kyodo News Service
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Study shows Darwin's finches to be still evolving
DATELINE: TOKYO, April 27 KyodoA genetic study has shown that Darwin's finches, which were cited as a textbook example of the evolutionary process, are continuing to evolve in their native Galapagos Islands, according to a U.S. scientific journal published Tuesday.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by seven scientists, also identified for the first time in 164 years the specific bird species in the South American mainland from which the finches are believed to have evolved. ...
The scientists include Peter and Rosemary Grant, evolutionary biologists at Princeton University in the United States who have been studying the finches since 1973, and Akie Sato, a researcher of immunogenetics at Germany's Max Planck Institute of Biology. ...
Contrary to the traditional view, the Darwin finches were found to belong to four diverse groups, namely ground finches, tree finches, vegetarian finches and Warbler finches. DNA data of six ground finch species and four tree finch species were found to be similar.
The genetic similarity seems to suggest that the differentiation between the species is still incomplete and consequently could be a sign that the finches are still evolving, the study said. ...
PR Newswire
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: NaturalBridge Launches BulletTrain(TM) Byte-Code Compiler for JavaDATELINE: MENLO PARK, Calif., April 27
NaturalBridge, LLC announced the release of BulletTrain, the first static compiler designed specifically for Java. Using state-of-the-art compiler optimization techniques coupled with highly integrated runtime support, BulletTrain provides unsurpassed performance, robustness, and scalability for Java applications on Pentium(TM)-compatible computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT/98/95 operating systems. BulletTrain includes a linker, compilation manager, and debugging tools. ...
"I've been extremely impressed by the BulletTrain compiler," says Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University and a former member of Princeton University's Secure Internet Programming Laboratory. Professor Wallach has been using early releases of BulletTrain for almost a year. "My applications put a lot of pressure on the garbage collector and BulletTrain runs them twice as fast as anything else I've tried."
Press Journal (Vero Beach, FL)
Copyright 1999 Scripps Howard Newspapers
April 27, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: VNA HOSPICE HONORS LUIPPOLD
VNA Hospice's retiring medical advisor Dr. Eugene Luippold, who has volunteered his time and expertise to the organization for more than 15 years, was honored during the Visiting Nurse Association's annual volunteer luncheon.
"Since its founding in 1984, Dr. Luippold has been an integral part of VNA Hospice," said Sharon Kennedy, president and CEO of the VNA and VNA Hospice. ...
A graduate of Princeton University, Dr. Luippold earned his medical degree from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was with a community medical group for 30 years before establishing a private practice in Vero Beach in 1969. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
April 27, 1999HEADLINE: Former FDA chief foresees long war on tobacco during Princeton U. talk
BYLINE: By Ben Grossman, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton University
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.In his speech Monday night in Princeton University's Dodds Auditorium, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler detailed his agency's fight against tobacco and emphasized that the struggle to regulate the cigarette industry and lower youth smoking rates will continue for decades.
Kessler began by telling the audience that "in about a year, the Supreme Court will rule on whether the FDA has jurisdiction over tobacco."
He said the only way the FDA can regulate tobacco is by proving tobacco is a drug. Kessler said FDA bylaws define a drug as "an article [other than food] intended to affect the structure or any function of the body." ...
Asbury Park Press
(Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Obituaries
ROBERT E. LLOYD JR., 75, of MIDDLETOWN, and formerly of Rumson, died Saturday at King James Care Center, Navesink, Atlantic Highlands. He was a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He served in the Pacific during World War II, having joined the Army in 1942 and serving through the occupation of Japan. He graduated from Princeton University, class of 1946. ...
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Armenians recall century's 'first genocide' amid Kosovo crisis
BYLINE: By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: NEW YORKAcademics and lawmakers, including Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., are demanding that the Turkish government abandon what they call a policy of denial that the 1915-23 diaspora of Turkey's Armenian minority even occurred.
"The Armenian genocide is the model, the prototype, for the genocides of the 20th century," said Roger Smith, a college professor who heads the Association of Genocide Scholars, a group committed to preventing genocide.
Some 2,000 people rallied in Times Square on Sunday to remember the deaths and displacement of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks - 80 years before Yugoslavia added the term "ethnic cleansing" to the world's lexicon of misery. ...
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., a founder of the 70-member Armenian caucus in the House, said Turkey's strategy of denial includes intense lobbying for its views in Congress and such moves as endowing university chairs, including one at Princeton University. ...
Jet
Copyright 1999 Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
April 26, 1999SECTION: THIS WEEK IN BLACK HISTORY
HEADLINE: April 25, 1918Ella Fitzgerald, premier jazz vocalist, was born in Newport News, VA, on this day. The "First Lady of Song" was discovered in Harlem's famed Apollo Theater during an amateur contest by bandleader Chick Webb. She made her first record a year later with Webb. She went on to appear with some of the world's finest bands, including the Duke Ellington Orchestra. In 1938, she recorded a novelty number, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, which catapulted her to fame. Fitzgerald set the standard for jazz singers, having received numerous awards that include 14 Grammy Awards, the Kennedy Center Honor, the National Medal of the Arts, The American Black Achievement Award and honorary degrees from Talladega and Dartmouth Colleges, Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities and the University of Southern California, and a performing arts center dedicated in her name at the University of Maryland. She died June 15, 1996.
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
April 26, 1999, Monday2 Studies Focus on Contraceptive Failure
About one in every 10 women using contraceptives experiences an accidental pregnancy associated with contraceptive failure, according to two new studies in the March/April issue of Family Planning Perspectives. But in actual practice, not surprisingly, some methods were found to carry higher risks of failure than others.
Long-term methods requiring no ongoing effort by the user--hormonal implants, injectable contraceptives and the IUD--have a very low failure rate. Methods that require daily actions, such as the pill, the diaphragm and the condom, have slightly higher failure rates. Spermicides, withdrawal and periodic abstinence have considerably higher failure rates.
One study, by researchers from Princeton University, breaks new ground by examining how frequently women discontinue using contraceptives. They found that a typical woman discontinues using a contraceptive nearly 10 times over the course of her reproductive lifetime, and experiences about two contraceptive failures.
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: THE DAY IN SPORTS:
A DAY-BY-DAY RECAP OF SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SPORTS MOMENTS OF THE 20TH CENTURYAlso on this date: In 1905, Chicago Cub center fielder Jack McCarthy turned in a performance equaled only once in this century. He threw out three runners at the plate after catching fly balls, a feat duplicated since only by Ira Flagstead of the Red Sox in 1926. . . . In 1967, the Lakers, looking for a successor to coach Fred Schaus, reached into the Ivy League and hired Princeton's Butch van Breda Kolff, 44. Schaus moved up to the general manager's post. . . . In 1961, in Detroit, the Yankees' Roger Maris hit the first of his 61 home runs that season, off right-hander Paul Foytack in the fifth inning. It would be his only home run in April. . . . In 1941, the Chicago Cubs became the first major league team to install an organ in a ballpark.
National Post
Copyright 1999 Financial Post from National PostApril 26, 1999
HEADLINE: McGill beams up recruitment efforts
BYLINE: Margret Brady
DATELINE: MONTREALMONTREAL - While most Canadian universities are promoting their names internationally, McGill University might claim to boldly go where no university has gone before.
Actor-alumnus William Shatner, better known as the intergalactic traveller Captain Kirk, was beamed down on the Montreal campus last month for the filming of a CBC Life and Times documentary.
While admitting students from other planets may be light years away, McGill has established an active recruitment and liaison office to attract top students from Canada and abroad. The school's alumni play an active role. Recruitment drives are even tied in with alumni group tours to such places as Japan and Thailand. ...
A 1998 endowment study by the U.S.- based National Association of Colleges and University Business Officers showed the immense disparity between the wealthiest and poorest North American universities. Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., towered over the others with endowment assets of more than $13-billion. The University of Texas Systems ranked second with more than half that amount, followed by Ivy Leaguers Yale and Princeton. The University of Toronto ranked 20th in the list with endowment funds of $615-million. McGill and University of British Columbia were 89th and 91st respectively. Oxford's endowment fund is less than one-quarter of Harvard's. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Economist at Harvard Awarded Prize
BYLINE: By LOUIS UCHITELLEAndrei Shleifer, a Harvard University economist who immigrated to the United States from Russia when he was a teen-ager, has won the John Bates Clark Medal, the most prestigious prize in economics short of the Nobel. The medal, awarded every two years by the American Economic Association, goes to an outstanding economist under 40 years old.
Mr. Shleifer, who is 38, was honored for his empirical research into the workings of financial markets, commercial law and corporate securities, particularly in countries making the transition from socialism to a market economy. Some of his research has focused on Russia. ...
Mr. Summers, then of Harvard, Mr. Card at the University of California at Berkeley, and Mr. Murphy, at the University of Chicago, are the three previous Clark medalists -- Mr. Summers in 1993, Mr. Card in 1995 and Mr. Murphy in 1997. They are all prominent empiricists. Rather than focus on theory, they focus on what amounts to experiments that elaborate on existing theory, amend it or create new theory. Mr. Summers is now deputy director of the Treasury Department; Mr. Card and Mr. Murphy are labor economists. Mr. Shleifer won out over four or five others who had been considered by a selection committee, including Alan B. Krueger of Princeton University, who was the most prominent on the list. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: S. Warner Pach, 79; Headed Gillette Unit
Stewart Warner Pach, who ran the Gillette Company's razor business in the 1960's, died April 14 at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston following a heart attack, according to his son, Peter B. Pach. He was 79.
Mr. Pach was born in Worcester, Mass., and reared in Bronxville, N.Y. He received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1942 from Princeton University. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: NATO Can Wait, But Can Kosovars?
To the Editor:John J. Mearsheimer's and Stephen Van Evera's suggestion of redrawing the borders of Kosovo reflects cold war strategy (Op-Ed, April 19). A Kosovo peacekeeping force under NATO command (with Russian forces) with an empowering Security Council resolution should shepherd the deportees back. Reconstruction and repatriation have to take place in order to establish a credible situation and to offer an incentive for all the deportees to return to their homes.
As an interim solution, a European Union civil authority should be established for Kosovo and Serbia, encouraging democratization and assisting reconstruction. A long-term plan should consider a quasi-federal structure comprising Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia, with an effort to bring all the Balkan states into the European Union.
WOLFGANG DANSPECKGRUBER
Princeton, N.J., April 20, 1999
The writer is director of the Liechtenstein Program on Self-Determination at Princeton University.
PR Newswire
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Michigan Residents with Special Needs Make the Move from Medicaid To Managed Care; Michigan Public Health Institute Planning the Management Of Issues Expected to Arise from the Transition
DATELINE: OKEMOS, Mich., April 26
The Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI), with funding from the Center for Health Care Strategies, will undertake a six-month process to plan the transition into managed care of Michigan residents with disabilities who are currently covered by Medicaid. ...
Michigan's 336,000 Medicaid beneficiaries with special health care needs were required to be enrolled in a qualified health plan by the beginning of this year. Several Detroit-based Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) have been accepting Medicaid beneficiaries who are eligible for SSI for the past three years. The state is now on the verge of a significant shift away from fee- for-service care, for this specific population, into the arena of managed care. ...
The Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc. (CHCS) was established in 1995 as a nonprofit, non-partisan policy and resource center affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. CHCS directs two national initiatives of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF): the Medicaid Managed Care Program and the Building Health Systems for People with Chronic Illnesses program. ...
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
April 26, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: T. JUSTIN MOORE JR. SUCCUMBS AT 74;HE'D BEEN CEO OF VIRGINIA POWER, HELPED FOUND RICHMOND RENAISSANCE
BYLINE: Jenifer V. Buckman and Ellen Robertson; Times-Dispatch Staff Writers
T. Justin Moore Jr., the retired chief executive officer of Virginia Power who helped establish Richmond Renaissance as one of the city's most powerful economic development and revitalization organizations, died Saturday at his Richmond home. He was 74.
The Richmond native was also former chairman of Virginia Power's parent company, Dominion Resources Inc. At his death, Mr. Moore was serving as senior counsel at the law firm of Hunton & Williams. ...
T. Justin Moore Jr. was a graduate of St. Christopher's School, where he was an all-state basketball and football player. World War II interrupted his studies at Princeton University, where he had continued playing football and basketball under the nickname "Red Dog."
After serving as a Navy officer in the Pacific, he returned to Princeton, where he graduated in 1947. He graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1950. That same year, he joined Hunton & Williams and was named a partner five years later. ...
Chicago Sun-Times
Copyright 1999 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
April 25, 1999, SUNDAYHEADLINE: Target stores putting accent on trendy style
BYLINE: BY NICOLE VOLTA AVERYDiscount stores have arrived.
There's no shame in dropping dollars at Kmart or Wal-Mart or any other "mart." But thanks to crafty trend analysis and product partnerships with heavy hitters such as architect Michael Graves, Target, or shall we say Tar-zhay, may be positioning itself as the premier discounter. ...
The kitchen and home wares aisles are where the action is. A few people glimpse the Michael Graves Collection, the much talked-about line of ultra-hip kitchen items designed by the well-known architect and Princeton University professor. The Graves line -- set to expand to watches, ready-to-assemble furniture and garden supplies -- rivals the much-loved Martha Stewart stuff at Kmart. ...
The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY.)
Copyright 1999 The Courier-Journal
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: DOCTOR to the STARS
Surgical success returns horses to track - including '96 Derby winnerBYLINE: BOB DEITEL, The Courier-Journal
DATELINE: LEXINGTON - Dr. Larry Bramlage was driving through Indiana and Michigan two weekends ago - visiting colleges with his 16-yearold son, Matt - when it's a sure bet he otherwise would have loved staying home to watch a colt named Menifee win the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland.
Of course, Bramlage raced to a television the moment he returned.
''As soon as I got home, I watched the videotape,'' he said, grinning almost as if he were proud papa of the winning horse too.
And why not?
What world-renowned equine orthopedic surgeon wouldn't thrill to see a former patient stride into a promising racing career and a legitimate slot in the 125th Kentucky Derby?
It was only last summer that Bramlage removed a bone chip from Menifee's knee - a nowroutine kind of surgery that took perhaps 30 minutes and cost maybe $1,900 but, done expertly, enabled the horse to develop into a solid betting choice in Saturday's Derby. ...
The Bramlages also have a daughter, Joey Marie, 20, a sophomore studying aeronautical engineering and a member of the women's rugby team at Princeton University. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Men in Black
BYLINE: By James E. Young; James E. Young, a professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is currently a visiting Stewart Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.
FOR THE RELIEF OF UNBEARABLE URGES
By Nathan Englander.
205 pp. New York:/Alfred A. Knopf. $22.In traditional Jewish families, a yeled tov m'yerushalayim -- a good boy from Jerusalem -- is a nice little yeshiva student, a parent's dream of piety, studiousness and obedience. Meet Nathan Englander, a bad boy of Jerusalem, a former yeshiva student from New York now at home in secular Israel, who happens to be a very good writer. In his extraordinary debut collection of stories, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges," Englander combines a compassionate grasp of the Orthodox Jewish world with the skeptical irreverence of one estranged from yet still oddly defined by it. The fiction that results is not so much a betrayal of Orthodox Judaism as it is a revelation of the human condition. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 25, 1999, SundayOne-Woman Election: Parent vs. Taxpayer
BYLINE: By DEBRA GALANTWENDELL WILLKIE once said that any person who isn't something of a socialist before age 40 has no heart, but anyone who is still a socialist after 40 has no head. ...
A few weeks ago, I found myself at a meeting of the local taxpayers' association, listening to what seemed at the time to be an incontrovertible argument to vote against the school budget. Everything they said made perfect sense.
Property taxes have doubled in the last 12 years. If things keep going the way they have been, I'll be shelling out something like $14,000 in property tax in a few years.
My brain has been telling me that voting for the school budget is stupid.
But recently, I have been trying to get some extra help for my special-needs child. And it has been impossible to ignore the fact that the whole operation over at her school is running on a shoestring. Guidance counselors, speech therapists, psychologists and nurses spend half their time running back and forth between different buildings. Everybody is so overscheduled that it takes weeks to set up a meeting. The school board president says the staff is like an overstretched rubber band. ...
But always when it comes to property taxes in New Jersey, it's a lot more complicated than just head and heart. A task force appointed by the Governor reported last fall that what really drives our property taxes sky high is home rule -- the fact that we in New Jersey are organized into 566 municipalities and 618 school boards, many of which duplicate each other's services. ...
Just when I thought my mind couldn't get more tangled up on the tax issue, I talked to a Princeton University politics professor named Stephen Holmes, a co-author of a new book called "The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes." What Professor Holmes basically argues is that democracy is expensive but that we rely on it for, among other things, our right to enjoy our property. "If the government wasn't able to tax and spend, it couldn't put a roof on the registry of titles and deeds," he says. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: ECONOMIC VIEW: Euro Has Plenty of Time To Challenge the Dollar
BYLINE: By LOUIS UCHITELLEWESTERN EUROPE'S new currency, the euro, ought to be a powerhouse, already diminishing America's place in the global economy. Such was the advance billing. But nearly four months into its existence, the euro is hardly noticeable on this side of the Atlantic.
That is not too surprising. Even thoroughbred currencies inch their way up rather than leaping. Children now in diapers may be finishing college before lives are changed by the existence of the euro. And even then, a solid American economy -- one that has avoided the deterioration of severe recessions -- would dilute the impact. The robust economy today keeps the focus on dollars, not euros.
Still, the euro's potential challenge to the dollar's dominance is considerable. "Establishing a European currency that will rival the dollar is indeed one of the points of the whole exercise," said Peter Kenen, an international economist at Princeton University. ...
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: HOLLINS UNIVERSITY'S STORIED WRITING PROGRAM;LITERARY UNION
BYLINE: BILL McKELWAY; Times-Dispatch Staff WriterMaybe its reputation as a birthing ground for great writers is simply a product of the environment.
Imagine proud, sway-backed Tinker Mountain as one bookend and distant Mill Mountain with its glowing, neon star as another. ...Hollins University, this place for writers cupped among blue mountains and red neon, seems to have harbored people and imaginations like that for a long time now.
Named the state's first Literary Landmark at dedication ceremonies earlier this month, Hollins' Wyndham Robertson Library brims over with the writings of the school's own graduates.
More than 1,500 titles have been penned by Hollins graduates.
And in the late 1960s, there was George Garrett, still a familiar face at Hollins these days although his stint there lasted only four years. He has been a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia since 1984.
Even in the late 1960s, though, Garrett was perhaps Virginia's most-beloved, unassuming man of letters. And in some ways least likely.
A former prizefighter and smash-mouth football star at Princeton University, Garrett is named in the exclusive Philadelphia Social Register and includes in his resume a brief career as a tile installer.
At the Hollins library dedication, dressed in a non-descript windbreaker, Garrett, who is 69, looked for all the world like a third-base coach at spring practice. ...
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: GORE'S VA. CAMPAIGN 'GOING VERY WELL'; TWO RICHMONDERS WORK FOR BRADLEY
BYLINE: Tyler Whitley; Times-Dispatch Staff WriterThree Virginia members of the Democratic National Committee have begun working quietly to make sure Vice President Al Gore secures Virginia's 96 delegate votes at the presidential nominating convention next year.
"We're trying to get party activists lined up behind Gore," said Susan Swecker, a Richmond lobbyist. "Virginia is strong for Al Gore. We have found no reticence."
The state party proposed rules last week that pass up the new opportunity to hold a presidential primary. Instead, the party will use the traditional caucus/convention system.
Swecker, DNC committeewomen Mame Reiley of Alexandria and Susan McCleary, vice chair for organization and development of the state party, volunteered their services to the Gore campaign. ...
Gore, considered a strong favorite for the nomination, has one opponent, former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.
Richmond Democratic activists McLain T. O'Ferrall Jr. and Richard S. Reynolds III have begun seeking support in Virginia on Bradley's behalf.
O'Ferrall said they are concentrating mostly on graduates of Princeton University, where Bradley was a basketball star.
O'Ferrall said he has no objection to Gore but believes the Democrats need a change from the Clinton-Gore team. ...
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Copyright 1999 New Mexican, Inc.
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Special Report: School Vouchers Weighing the future of New Mexico schools
BYLINE: KRISTEN DAVENPORT, with photos by Julie GraberNine years after Milwaukee put its voucher program into place, debate continues over its effectiveness and impact on public schools.
The big question about school vouchers is whether giving parents public money for private-school tuition will reform and improve education.
In Milwaukee, where vouchers have been available for nine years, there is still no conclusive answer.
A Midwestern city of about 600,000 on Lake Michigan, Milwaukee has the longest-running voucher program in the nation. ...
Comparisons are inconclusive
Studies on whether the Milwaukee vouchers have improved student learning have been inconclusive and contradictory, fueling battles between those who performed the reviews. ...
Witte found that students who switched to private schools neither raised their test scores nor performed worse than public-school pupils.
But another 1995 study, by Paul Peterson of Harvard University, indicated that private-school voucher students did slightly better. And a study by (Cecilia) Rouse of Princeton University found private-school students were improving in some academic areas. ...
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
Copyright 1999 Landmark Communications, Inc.
April 25, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: DRY SPELLS AND PHILOSOPHICAL SELF-DOUBT ON THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
BYLINE: BY BRINKLEY CRAFT GORANSONLISTENING FOR GOD A Minister's Journey Through Silence and Doubt
RENITA J. WEEMS
Simon and Schuster. 204 pp. $22.Renita Weems is a minister, a professor of Old Testament studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, a writer, a pastor's wife and mother of a daughter. She lives in Nashville.
In this autobiographical account, her memory goes back to a revival meeting in a robust little Pentecostal Church in Atlanta. There, the evangelist's word meant nothing if not backed up with signs and wonders.
At the age of 17, Weems was called to the front of the church and told that God was going to use her to do great works for him. She knew she was supposed to fall to the floor in awe of His prophetic power. Instead, she listened attentively, returning to her seat as sober as she left it, an attitude which bothered the evangelist.
Weems holds degrees from Wellesley College and Princeton University. She has three books and numerous academic publications to her credit. She is a popular speaker around the world. Yet, she does not view such origins as the drama, the naivete and the farce of the religious training of her childhood with contempt. Surely God was at work, she writes, and it was all done without incense, chants, saints or icons.
Through her spiritual journey from Pentecostal to Methodist to ordination into the African Methodist-Episcopal Church in 1984 and marriage to a Baptist minister, she confesses that there are times when she is adrift in a sea of spiritual apathy. She listens for God and receives only ''Holy silence.'' ...
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 1999 The Baltimore Sun Company
April 24, 1999HEADLINE: Anti-gun crusade obscures real issues
BYLINE: Gregory KaneTHE DEAD in Littleton, Colo., weren't even buried before the anti-gun nuts all but named the National Rifle Association as co-defendant in the Trenchcoat Mafia/neo-Nazi shooting and bombing spree that left 15 dead.
The yelping of the anti-gun nuts -- no, let's call them what they are: anti-self- defense fanatics -- was as constant as it is irritating. There are too many guns, they screech. Kids get their hands on guns all too easily, they whined, as if dying by pipe bomb is some kind of honor compared to being shot to death. ...
Race in background
All this talk of gun control may be a red herring, however. There are other issues not being discussed in light of the Littleton murders.
Kevin Lynch is a black Montgomery County attorney who is for gun control and anti-NRA. He also feels gun control is not the only issue in the Littleton shootings. Lynch posted a 4.0 average at Princeton University and worked 40 hours a week to put himself through Georgetown Law School. He has little patience with excuse-making blacks or racist whites. The media, Lynch charged, are guilty of portraying Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- the two Trenchcoat Mafia members Littleton police believe shot up Columbine High School and then committed suicide -- as wayward youths in need of help.
"They tend to criminalize the behavior of black youth," Lynch said of the media. "But these guys Harris and Klebold are not thugs or racists but 'troubled youth.' " ...
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company
April 24, 1999, SaturdayOBITUARIES
HEADLINE: San-Carlo Rota, mathematician; and philosopher at MIT; at 66Gian-Carlo Rota, a mathematician and philosopher who taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for many years, died at his home in Cambridge. He was 66.
Mr. Rota was found Monday afternoon after failing to arrive in Philadelphia on Sunday for three lectures he was to give this week at Temple University. The cause of death was heart disease, according to the Middlesex County medical examiner.
Mr. Rota was the only MIT faculty member to hold the title of professor of mathematics and philosophy.
As a mathematician, he is credited with having transformed his specialty area, combinatorics - which he described as "putting different colored marbles in different colored boxes, seeing how many ways you can divide them" - into one of the most important areas of mathematics. ...
Mr. Rota came to the United States in 1950. He graduated from Princeton University in 1953, earned a master's degree in mathematics at Yale University in 1954, and a doctorate at Yale in 1956.
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 1999 The Financial Times Limited
April 24, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Game for gentle geniuses: Holly Finn discovers the art of communication from boardgame to boardroom
In the spring of 1949, Princeton University in New Jersey was a hotbed of mathematical discovery. Among the big brains doing the discovering, a boardgame called Nash was the most popular pastime. Named after its creator, John Nash, the game is described in his recent biography,A Beautiful Mind, as the mathematician's "first bona fide invention and the first hard evidence of his genius". His peers, even his mentors, were "beguiled by its ingenuity and beauty".
But, as biographer Sylvia Nasar points out, "the inventors of games that people do play are, of course, lost in the sands of time". Nash almost was. He had a breakdown at 31 and descended into schizophrenic madness for three decades, but, remarkably, recovered. In 1994, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, thereby avoiding anonymity forever.
The inventors of Abalone, a boardgame that has captured the imagination of France and is about to be introduced in the UK and US, may not have such trauma and recognition ahead, but what they have created is worth noting, their game worth playing. ...
The Gazette (Montreal)
Copyright 1999 Southam Inc.
April 24, 1999, FINALSECTION: Editorial / Op-ed; B7
HEADLINE: Gretzky was the greatest
BYLINE: LAWRENCE MARTINA welcome distraction from the Serbian war and the Colorado massacre can be found in the appearance of a scientific study that says Mario Lemieux was a better hockey player than Wayne Gretzky. Coming in the week when the country toasted Gretzky's retirement, the analysis by American mathematicians has triggered vigorous debate.
Gretzky, who goes under the banal nickname of "the Great One," is the idol of Canada. How dare they place Mario on a higher plateau? ...
Like Gretzky, the Montreal native had an exceptional sense of everything going on around him. Wrap-around vision in combination with an intimate mind-to-eye harmony to compute the movements. The basketball star, Bill Bradley, who made logic-defying passes and lit up the hoop at Princeton University, spoke of what it took. He used a simple but telling phrase: "a sense of where you are."
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
April 24, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: BOOK REVIEW
A LOOK AT NEW RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN LATIN AMERICA;
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND EVANGELIZATION IN LATIN AMERICA: THE CHALLENGE OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM; EDITED BY PAUL E. SIGMUND; ORBIS BOOKS $25, 400 PAGES
BYLINE: MARGARET RAMIREZ
In assessing the impact of Pentecostalism in Latin America, Bolivian lawyer and religious liberties expert Pedro C. Moreno has painted the region as a society of paradoxes.
"It is a land of deep religiosity, but substantial official corruption. Saturated with macho types, but not enough responsible men. With a ruling class ethnically mestizo (mix of Indian and European), but, out of prejudice, considering itself white. Where the law is seldom openly challenged, but frequently disobeyed or ignored."
Moreno argues that Pentecostal churches have brought these divided classes together in a way unfamiliar to Latin Americans. By questioning the dominant religious structures of Catholics and Protestants, Pentecostals have found a fresh way of expressing their discontent with existing society.
After almost two decades of dictatorship and military domination, Latin America is emerging as a region marked by democracy and economic growth. With the exception of Cuba, all Latin American nations have democratically elected governments. Even in Mexico, where the PRI has dominated elections for more than six decades, one-party dominance is being challenged.
An outgrowth of the political change has been a move toward greater religious freedom. The intricate details of how that change has unfolded is the topic of Paul E. Sigmund's new book, which gathers up some of the most renowned scholars on Latin American theology to trace the origins of religious freedom and discuss issues confronting the region. ...
In his introduction, Sigmund, a professor of Latin American politics at Princeton University, cites two main reasons for the new era of religious pluralism. First, with the end of the Cold War, basic principles of freedom are being challenged less often by those who have traditionally favored a more authoritarian model of church-state relations. Second, the dramatic expansion of evangelical Protestantism constitutes a strong and increasingly visible presence in Latin American society. ...
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Copyright 1999 The Post and Courier
April 24, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Obituaries |
BYLINE: Staff ReportsMORRIS D. COOKE
BEAUFORT - Retired Marine Corps Col. Morris Dawes Cooke, 77, died Thursday at his residence. The funeral will be at 3 p.m. Sunday in St. Helena's Episcopal Church. Burial, directed by Copeland Funeral Home, will be in the church cemetery, with military honors.
Mr. Cooke was born in Chestnut Hill, Pa., a son of George J. Cooke and Elizabeth Meade Cooke. He attended Princeton University and Cornell University under the Navy V-12 program in World War II. ...
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
April 23, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Universal Display Corporation Received Last Minute Warrant Exercises, Total Now Exceeds $4.4 Million
DATELINE: BALA CYNWYD, Pa.April 23, 1999--Universal Display Corporation (UDC), a developer of flat panel display technology, previously announced that it had received approximately $3.7 million from the exercise of 1,067,725 warrants. The final total is $4.4 million from the exercise of 1,257,300 warrants. The warrants, which expired on April 12, 1999, had traded under the symbol "PANLW", and had an exercise price of $3.50 per share. "We are very pleased that the final total was more than 84% of the Warrants exercised. This shows an extraordinary vote of confidence in the Company," said Sidney D. Rosenblatt, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of UDC. UDC has had a strategic research partnership with Princeton University and the University of Southern California (USC) for the Organic Light Emitter Project since 1994. Recently, the partnership was extended through 2002, the Universities became shareholders in UDC, and UDC committed to continue funding the Project for the next five years for applications such as flat panel displays, lasers and light generating devices. ...
The Columbus Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Columbus Dispatch
April 23, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: EXHIBIT DIGS INTO OBSESSION WITH LAWNS
The lawn is as American as apple pie and the flag.
Americans' passion for lawns -- some call it an obsession -- is unprecedented.
Passion? Obsession?
What else can you call the $39.3 billion lawn-care industry that produces nothing you can wear, eat or use for shelter? ...
Lawns are big business.
Americans spend about $25.9 billion a year on do-it-yourself lawn-care products and another $13.4 billion on professional landscaping and lawn services, said Georges Teyssot, one of the show's creators and a professor of landscape architecture at Princeton University. ...
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Copyright 1999 The Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc.
April 23, 1999 FridayHEADLINE: The life and death of Hope
BYLINE: TIM SWARENSThe baby was scheduled to die.
The doctor was ready. So was the clinic staff. And so was the mother.
But something went wrong. The child lived.
At least long enough to be rocked, long enough to hear a woman sing softly to her, long enough to touch the hearts of the people who cared for her.
But within three hours of her birth the baby named Hope did what she was supposed to have done. She died.
Hope was born April 7 in a Cincinnati hospital. Since she had grown in her mother's womb for only 22 weeks, doctors decided her lungs had not developed enough to support respiration.
So medical technician Shelley Lowe gave the baby a name, then held her and rocked her and sang to her until she breathed her last.
Hope's life was supposed to have ended at a Dayton, Ohio, abortion clinic.
Her mother had visited the Women's Med Center on April 6 to begin the lengthy process known as partial-birth abortion. ...
Births, just as pregnancies, are sometimes inconvenient. So a distinguished professor by the name of Peter Singer, recently hired by Princeton University, argues that parents should be allowed to kill newborn children with disabilities.
Singer often dresses his proposals in the lofty language of academia. But occasionally he allows plain speaking to reveal the moral vacancy of his ideas.
For example, in his book Practical Ethics, Singer writes: "Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all." ...
Swarens is a Star editorial writer. His email address is: tswarens£starnews.com
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY
April 23, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: SCIENTIST AND US REPRESENTATIVE RUSH HOLT DISCUSSES WHAT HE CAN BRING TO POLITICS AS A SCIENTIST
ANCHORS: IRA FLATOW
This week, the House of Representative passed an earthquake hazards bill, providing continued funding for earthquake warning and response systems. This bill is just one of the many science-related issues likely to be taken up in the current congressional session. Others include the Y2K problem, the International Space Station, electricity deregulation, computer security and Internet issues. One of the lawmakers casting his votes for the first time this session is New Jersey Representative Rush Holt, a physicist who left his post at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey for Capitol Hill. He was elected to a two-year term in the House of Representatives last fall, and he hopes to make his mark as one of a few scientists in Congress. This hour, we'll have what we hope will be the first of many discussions with Rush Holt during his term of office. Hopefully, he'll keep coming back and telling us what his views are of Capitol Hill as a scientist sees them. ...
FLATOW: ... Is it like you expected?
Rep. HOLT: Very much as I expected. I actually had worked here, oh, a decade and a half, nearly two decades ago, as a congressional science fellow. A number of the professional societies sponsor midcareer scientists to work on Capitol Hill for a period of time, and back in the early '80s, I worked for the American Physical Society in a congressional office. So I came here knowing the ropes and have found it pretty much as I expected, somewhat more partisan, I might say...
Rep. HOLT: Well, I wouldn't say taking the politics out of something, because that's what Congress is about. Congress is about politics, which is essentially balancing competing interests. I like to think of politics as applied ethics, and as a scientist, I guess I would say politics is to ethics as maybe engineering is to physics. If you want to build something that will rest on the ground solidly and stand up and carry the traffic--if it's a bridge, you need good engineering, but you can't violate the fundamental physical principles. Well, similar relationship between ethics and politics, perhaps. ...
I imagine our energy future will be a mix of things. I spent the last 10 years before I ran for Congress working at the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory, which is the largest center for research in fusion energy. And I went there, in part, because I wanted to do something about energy, and I felt that fusion researchers, instead of just talking about it or lamenting our waste, you know, of good natural gas and burning it up, we're trying to do something about it. And so that is something I care about. I have a patent in a solar energy device, a collection and storage device, and I have a longtime interest in that area. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
April 23, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths
LORD, JERE W. JR, M.D.LORD-Jere W. Jr, M.D. On April 20, 1999 of Bedford, New York. Vascular Surgeon. A pioneer of heart surgery. A Professor of Clinical Medicine at University Hospital. Graduate of Gilman School, Princeton University 1932 & Johns Hopkins Medical School 1937. ...
The Toronto Star
Copyright 1999 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.Contraception
DON'T FAIL ME:Contraceptives fail for 9 to 12 per cent of women who have used them for a year, researchers report. Two studies of U.S. women by the non-profit Alan Guttmacher Institute and a team at Princeton University found that, on average, a woman has a 10 per cent chance of getting pregnant in any given year, despite using contraception. Researchers took information from surveys done on contraceptive use and unintended pregnancy.
''When contraceptive methods are ranked by effectiveness over the first 12 months of use, the implant and injectables have the lowest failure rates (2 to 3 per cent), followed by the pill (8 per cent), the diaphragm and cervical cap (12 per cent), the male condom (14 per cent), periodic abstinence (21 per cent), withdrawal (24 per cent) and spermicides (26 per cent),'' they wrote.
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
April 23, 1999HEADLINE: UN official discusses reform, composition of Security Council
BYLINE: By Jennifer Chang, Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Addressing approximately 35 audience members in Princeton University's Dodds Auditorium Thursday, Didier Opertti-Badan, president of the U.N. General Assembly, discussed the long-term importance of reforming the composition of the Security Council.
Opertti-Badan argeed that there are two main reasons supporting the need for reform.
"First, there is a lack of representativeness of the organ in relation to the present structure of the international community," he said of the Security Council.
The former minister of foreign affairs for Uruguay explained that since the Security Council's formation in 1945, the U.N. membership has increased from 51 states to its current total of 185.
"This increase in protagonists on the international scene requires another expansion of the composition of the council in order to make it more representative and democratic," he said. ...
Asbury Park Press
(Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
April 22, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Your Views
Professor's views violate state lawThe Associated Press article April 18 says that Princeton University has employed a professor from Australia who has made his reputation promoting the death of some children born with disabilities. The university supports the appointment, saying Peter Singer's academic work and teaching will contribute to scholarship at the university and stimulate debate on the major ethical dilemmas of medicine.
Singer, known as the father of the international animal rights movement, says parents should have the right to euthanize newborn children who have severe handicaps. It was reported that "Singer has said children less than one month old have no human consciousness and do not have the rights to life that older humans do."
In the mid 1980s, I was involved with former state Sen. Richard Van Wagner, D-Monmouth, and the current Assembly minority leader (Joseph Doria, D-Hudson) in a successful effort to pass a state law that guarantees medical treatment to children born with disabilities (A-538). It would appear that Princeton University has chosen to employ a professor who promotes a concept that is illegal in New Jersey under the umbrella of stimulating "debate."
With all due respect to Princeton, this is a stretch of academic stimulation. The killing of infants because they don't fit the "ideal" child and having that debate promoted by a university populated by those with the highest SAT scores (the intellectual elite) troubles me.
I suggest that Princeton's great minds direct their attention to how to make the world more tolerant of differences rather than eliminating those who don't fit into their elitist group.
Ray Waters
TINTON FALLS
The Bulletin (Bend, OR)
Copyright 1999 The Bulletin
April 22, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Obituaries
Richard Squier Hanni Feb. 16, 1950 -- April 19, 1999 Richard Squier Hanni died at his Bend home Monday. He was 49. A private burial will be held in Tumalo Cemetery.
Mr. Hanni was born to H. Squier and Virginia (Blair) Hanni Feb. 16, 1950, in Buffalo, N.Y. His undergraduate work was at Princeton University, and he earned a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. ...
Charleston Daily Mail
Copyright 1999 Charleston Newspapers
April 22, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Students eager for another kind of acceptance College letters show seniors where they'll be in fall
BYLINE: KRISTEN YOUNGBefore Nisha Thakker ripped open the giant envelope that landed on her doorstep last week, her eyes abruptly shifted to the return address - Boston College.
She yanked a big red folder out of the envelope, but didn't make it past the first word of the enclosed letter - "Congratulations."
Once high school seniors see that first word, Thakker explained, they stop reading. ...
"We had large numbers of applications this year to the Browns, the Harvards, the Georgetowns and the Princetons," Casdorph said.
"Whenever you have large numbers of applicants like that, even if 5,000 applicants are valedictorians, they may not get in.
"I tell them just because you are not accepted, doesn't mean you are not a perfect candidate for that college." ...
The Evening Standard (London)
Copyright 1999 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
April 22, 1999HEADLINE: Oxbridge 'left behind by America's Ivy League'
BYLINE: Mark BenhamOXFORD and Cambridge no longer deserve their reputations of being among the best universities in the world, according to a leading academic.
Oxbridge is losing its international pre-eminence because of chronic underfunding, according to Professor David Cannadine.
They are being left behind by America's rich Ivy League universities, such as Princeton, Yale and Harvard, Professor Cannadine warned in his inaugural speech yesterday as director of the London University Institute of Historical Research.
The long-cherished belief that British universities are world-class was "at best nostalgic delusion, at worst mistaken fact", said the historian, who has taught for 10 years in the Ivy League colleges. ...
The Herald (Glasgow)
Copyright 1999 Scottish Media Newspapers Limited
April 22, 1999HEADLINE: A wounded generation
BYLINE: Kirsty ScottThere is more to America's heartache than easy access to guns, finds Kirsty Scott
AS A nation, America may well have been badly jolted by the gun massacre in the classrooms and corridors of Columbine High School, but by the end of today, a further 10 children will have been killed in shooting incidents across the US in homicides, suicides or accidents.
These are the harsh facts of life in a country where a continuing love affair with firearms and a serious problem with juvenile crime have collided with such disastrous effect. ...
The term super-predator was coined by Professor John Dilulio of Princeton University, whose study of reckless adolescent behaviour caused shockwaves across the US in the mid 1990s.
"We are not just talking about teenagers," he said at the time. "We are talking about boys whose voices have yet to change. We are talking about elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches. We're talking about kids who have absolutely no respect for human life and no sense of the future."
Some say Professor Dilulio's terminology was unneccessarily emotive, but agree that a variety of factors have conspired to alienate and desensitise the country's youth. ...
The San Diego Union-TribuneCopyright 1999 The San Diego Union-Tribune
April 22, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Do kids learn from adults that it's OK to kill?
BYLINE: PETER ROWEThree targets
Killing Americans is hunky-dory, as long as the dead fall into the right categories. Three popular targets: ...3. The disabled.
The latest star of Princeton University's philosophy department, Peter Singer, argues in favor of killing infants born with disabilities such as spina bifida, hemophilia and Down syndrome.
After disposing of their unsatisfactory offspring, Singer adds, parents should acquire a "normal" replacement.
"It may still be objected that to replace either a fetus or a newborn infant is wrong because it suggests to disabled people living today that their lives are less worth living than the lives of people who are not disabled," Singer wrote in his book, "Practical Ethics."
"Yet it is surely flying in the face of reality to deny that, on average, this is so."
Who calculates those averages?
"I am not a philosopher or an ethicist, but I know what is right and what is wrong," Marca Bristo, a quadriplegic who chairs the National Council on Disability, told an anti-Singer rally this week. "Condoning the murder of infants is wrong. Devaluing the life of a human because of her disability is discriminatory, hateful and bigoted." ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Yale Daily News via U-Wire
April 22, 1999HEADLINE: Yale U. history department to lend new focus to world history
BYLINE: By Avery Johnson, Yale Daily News
SOURCE: Yale U.
DATELINE: New Haven, Conn.In a move to keep up with their more multi-cultural peers, the Yale University history department faculty overwhelmingly decided to raise majors' non-Western distributional requirement to three terms.
The change, approved last week, will affect majors starting with the class of 2003. ...
Currently, fewer than 20 percent of Yale's history courses focus on non-Western subjects, while other Ivy League schools devote between 25 and 30 percent of their history courses to the third world. The Harvard, Princeton and University of Chicago history departments lead the race toward internationalization, with at least two historians in every non-Western geographic area. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
April 22, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton U. teacher preparation program celebrates anniversary
BYLINE: By Rob Laset, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton University
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Each June, when many Princeton University seniors walk out FitzRandolph Gate and into J.P. Morgan's front door, a few not only refuse to "sellout," but also refuse to leave the University.
These students -- who range from engineering majors to comparative literature concentrators -- may hear a different drummer, but they are far from being misfits that failed to meet their graduation requirements.
Instead, they represent a growing number of students in the Program in Teacher Preparation who chose to take advantage of the program's Practice Teaching Option. The PTO, which will allow 14 seniors to return after graduation for a ninth semester, grants participants time to spend in classrooms far from McCosh Hall or the E-Quad. Returning University students concentrate solely on fulfilling their required teaching fields and course work, according to program assistant director Todd Kent '83. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
April 22, 1999HEADLINE: Massacre resonates in schools, media
BYLINE: By Jonathan Steinberg, Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.The massacre in Littleton, Colo., on Tuesday is shocking and horrific, but not all that surprising. In a world where life so often imitates art, it seems only natural that fictional and real media violence would over time seep into the psyches of our nation's youth. I do not believe that violent movies cause violence, but over time, after countless Schwarzenegger movies and endless nightly news reports of slaughter and gunfire, the use of violence as emotional release becomes a tangible option. What begins to evolve is a cycle of violence perpetuated by the need of 24-hour cable news networks to fill their excess airtime. And so, the very act of Clinton stating that he hopes this never happens again and the endless coverage of crying students virtually ensures that this will happen again, and the next time will be worse.
Media coverage of violence is a tricky issue. It would be negligent for the media to ignore the Littleton incident, but on the other hand, the coverage in the immediate hours after the incident was vacuous and gratuitous. ...
And as for the media, when MSNBC heard about the school slaughter, was it really necessary to cancel their Princeton University panel on Kosovo to lend even greater credence to the atrocity that these kids committed? The suggestion that the panel be re-focussed on youth violence seemed the most thoughtful and well-reasoned solution, but this idea was quickly abandoned for mindless live coverage of on-scene crying, speculation and confusion. Rather than holding a panel discussion on the causes and cures for youth violence ? the kind of discussion that could actually aid in positive social change ? the media followed the old local news rule of "if it bleeds, it leads." ...
Jonathan Steinberg, a guest columnist from New York City, is a Wilson School major. He can be reached at jonathan@princeton.edu.
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