Princeton in the News
June 24 to 30, 1999
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The Washington Quarterly
Copyright 1999 The Center for Strategic and International Studies
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1999 SummerSECTION: THE NEXT ASIA
HEADLINE: China and the United States: Asymmetrical Strategic PartnersBYLINE: Sheng Lijun - Dr. Sheng Lijun is a fellow of international relations at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. The author would like to thank Professor Pei Minxin of Princeton University for his comments on the second draft of this essay.
China's economic reforms since the late 1970s have led to spectacular achievements. The country's rapid ascent, especially in the years immediately following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, took many by surprise: It came despite serious social unrest and political and territorial instability, which are not usually conducive to rising power. Concern has been expressed over the rise of China, and some have predicted that China will soon be a global power on a par with the United States.
But closer examination suggests that although its ascent may continue, China lacks three critical determinants needed to achieve superpower status: a favorable security surplus; military and economic hard power; and political, social, and intellectual soft power. …
Africa NewsCopyright 1999 Africa News Service, Inc.
June 30, 1999HEADLINE: Owens-Kirkpatrick Nominated To Be Ambassador To Niger
BYLINE: The White House (Washington)Washington - President Clinton on June 29 announced his intention to nominate Barbro A. Owens-Kirkpatrick to be the next U.S. ambassador to Niger.
A career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, class of counselor, Owens- Kirkpatrick currently is director of the Office of European Political and Security Affairs at the State Department. …
Owens-Kirkpatrick was born in Helsinki, Finland, where she received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Swedish School of Economics. She received a Master of Public Affairs degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. …
Chicago Daily Herald
Copyright 1999 Paddock Publications, Inc.
June 30, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: South grads, neighbors admitted to Princeton
BYLINE: David Oberhelman Daily Herald CorrespondentOf the 14,873 high school seniors nationally who sought admission this fall to Princeton University, fewer than 11 percent, some 1,600, were accepted.
Chicagoland students made up 415 of the applicants. Thirty-four gained admission to the prestigious New Jersey institution.
Wheaton Warrenville South's John Knorring and Brien Bell not only were accepted by Princeton, but they're next-door neighbors to boot.
Knorring speculated on the odds against that happening.
"If only 34 from the whole metropolitan area got in and two people from the same school, and on top of that we're next-door neighbors, I'd think it's kind of like getting struck by lightning three times in one day. And then winning the lottery," he said. …
THE STATESMAN (INDIA)
Copyright 1999 FT Asia Intelligence Wire
June 30, 1999HEADLINE: All for biryani and democracy
As an expatriate, people often ask me what I miss most about India. To be honest, for all its other benefits, the greatest shortcoming of living abroad is that one's taste-buds are almost always unsatisfied. These days I live in the States, and serve in the galleys of academia as an undergraduate in the Politics department at Princeton University. Academically, it's not an unsatisfying arrangement. But I find it slightly distressing to be on a campus where experts can produce energy out of nuclear fusion but don't seem to know how to serve up a passable plate of rice. So, every summer one's stomach growls for an excuse to journey back to homeland. This year, I may have finally found one.
In our final year, students are required to write a 'senior thesis', a 100-150 page tract of original research on a topic largely of one's own choosing. …
But, there is one glimmer of hope. It turns out, the university - God bless its coffers - has a little-known stash of grant money available to students who wish to travel abroad to do fieldwork for their thesis. Students I know are travelling to distant corners from Brazil to Cyprus, studying everything from corruption to civil wars. My thesis proposal? A three month excursion to India and Pakistan to research the 'Prospects for a Democratic Peace in South Asia'. …
- Kushanava Chowdhury is an undergraduate at Princeton University, USA
Dayton Daily News
Copyright 1999 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.
June 30, 1999, WednesdayKICKER: GLOBAL WARMING
HEADLINE: CUTTING POLLUTION WILL MAKE EARTH HOTTER IN 21ST CENTURY, SCIENTISTS SAYSUBHEAD: * Rise in sea levels also predicted, affecting coastal areas of the United States.
BYLINE: Seth Borenstein; KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICEWASHINGTON - As America cleans its air dramatically, it will pay a price in noticeably higher temperatures, according to a report released Tuesday.
The United States and other nations have cut sulfur dioxide pollution, which causes health problems and acid rain. But the same sulfur in the air also reflects the sun's heat and slows global warming, top climate scientists said.
So removing the sulfur from the air is expected to raise global temperatures in the next 100 years a degree above predictions made only four years ago, said the study by Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
''If we save the world from acid rain . . . we might exacerbate the global warming problem,'' Wigley said Tuesday.
And the United States will get hotter faster than the rest of the globe, Wigley predicted. …
The sulfur particle issue represents a ''moral paradox'' because cleaning the air in the short term is a priority, yet global warming is at a runaway pace, said Princeton University atmospheric sciences professor Jerry Mahlman, who runs the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Wigley's study is published by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a nonprofit that tries to raise global warming issues. It was peer reviewed by top climate scientists, including Mahlman and MacCracken, who said Wigley drew proper conclusions. …
But NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences director James Hansen, who helped prove the world was warming, cautioned that determining how sulfur, clouds and other variables will factor into climate change was too complicated to predict outcomes confidently.
NOTE: This story was widely circulated in the United States and Canada.
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
June 30, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: A.R. KNOTTS JR., METHODIST MINISTER, DIES
BYLINE: David S. Brooks; Times-Dispatch Staff WriterThe Rev. Albert Ray Knotts Jr., a retired United Methodist minister, died of leukemia Monday in his Blackstone home, 3 1/2 miles from the Nottoway County house where he was born. He was 73.
Mr. Knotts had served churches in the Richmond, Petersburg, Farmville, Roanoke, Danville and Winchester districts.
He began his career not in the ministry but in engineering. He earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering at Princeton University, where he was involved in ROTC. In 1945, he joined the Navy, serving on active duty for a short period of time, and remained in the reserves until 1960.
He went to work for the Virginia Department of Transportation as a draftsman for a year before he went to Duke Divinity School for a master's degree. …
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
JUNE 30, 1999, WEDNESDAYOBITUARIES
HEADLINE: Thoma Snyder
BYLINE: J.L. PimsleurServices will be held July 10 for Professor Thoma Mees van't Hoff Snyder.
Professor Snyder was a nuclear physicist who played a key role in the development of the atomic bomb and was later a leader in the postwar development of nuclear fuel. He died May 24 -- one day after his 83rd birthday -- after a long illness at his home in Santa Cruz.
In 1943, Professor Snyder was recruited by Edward Teller and Edwin McMillan to join the Los Alamos nuclear weapon development project. …
Professor Snyder said he knew from age 4 that when he grew up he would become a professor of science and teach at an Ivy League university.
A brilliant student, he was accepted directly into the doctoral program in physics at Johns Hopkins University and joined the physics faculty at Princeton University at age 24. …
The Times (London)
Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Limited
June 30, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Cannibalism is de rigueur in Y2K
BYLINE: Uri GellerPROGRAMMERS in Seattle running a "deathpool" -- the blackly humorous betting syndicates that forecast celebrity demises and national disasters - are taking bets on the nummber of Americans who will die as a result of the Y2K bug, writes Uri Geller. The low end of the spread is 18,000,000 corpses.
This bleak news comes from Tracy Fletcher's daily round-up of Millennium meltdown news stories. The list can be e-mailed to you, but don't subscribe unless you want a dozen or more tales of doom and destruction posted in your pigeonhole daily. You could also make y2ktoday.com your personalised homepage, tuned to provide the latest in oblivion alerts. …
Alert readers will perceive that I am not too anxious about Y2K. Computers will certainly crash, much expense will be incurred, but I predict the world will not explode and the sun will not go out. I can be this confident because of Uri Geller's Millennium Bug-Buster. This furry computer accessory, inspired by 20 years of research at Princeton University in New Jersey into psychokinesis and computers, will go on sale in the autumn. Users will be able to invoke psychic energy to beat the bug.
The Buffalo News
Copyright 1999 The Buffalo News
June 29, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: $1 TRILLION WINDFALL REAPED BY GROWTH
BYLINE: JAMES GERSTENZANG and ALISSA J. RUBIN; Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTONOne trillion dollars . . . $1 trillion . . . or, try $1,000,000,000,000.
No matter how you write it, it's a powerful heap of money.
How is it that the Clinton administration has discovered that the federal budget surpluses during the next 15 years will be $1 trillion greater than its previous estimate just five months ago?
The answer, in a sense, is simpler than might seem possible. A little more economic growth now not only generates more tax revenue now. It has the same effect over time -- only more so.
"That is part of the miracle of compounding," says Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. "Most of us who forecast are deeply cognizant that we've been forecasting too low for quite a while." …
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1999 The Christian Science Publishing Society
June 29, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Then, now
BYLINE: Staff
DATELINE: BOSTONWilson, president of Princeton University (Universal Exposition in St. Louis, 1904):
"History must be revealed, not recorded, conceived before it is written, and we must all in our several degrees be seers, not clerks. It is a high calling, and should not be belittled.
Statesmen are guided and formed by what we write, patriots stimulated, tyrants checked.... We must not suffer ourselves to fall dull and pedantic, must not lose our visions or cease to speak the large words of inspiration and guidance." …
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
June 29, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: DEGREES OF SEPARATION;
A college degree may prepare you for life, but life doesn't always follow your degreeSOURCE: Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Ellen SweetsThere are people who -- no matter how hard they try -- just can't conform. For them, education is not a means to an end; it's just another step on life's journey.
How else could you account for someone with a doctorate in plasma physics who becomes a country swing and cowboy music singer; an anthropology student who opens a shoe repair academy; a physician who plays major-league baseball; an honors graduate in accounting who becomes a musician; or a biochemistry doctorate who becomes a chef? …
Until Jordan's King Hussein died, people probably forgot that his wife, the former Lisa Halaby, had a bachelor of arts degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University before she became Queen Noor; or that Masako Owada of Japan was an honors graduate of Harvard and a law student at Tokyo University who did graduate work at Oxford University's Balliol College before marrying Crown Prince Hirohito. It took courage and commitment to make those decisions, too.
"It takes real self-confidence to go against the grain," Ms. Jacobs says. "If you've ever spoken with someone who has remained in a frustrating job, you find it's because they fear stepping out of the box," Ms. Jacobs says. "Some personalities and temperaments are just less risk-averse. They're going to say, 'Hey, I've only got one life to live, and I'm gonna do this.' " …
International Herald Tribune
(Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)Copyright 1999 International Herald Tribune
June 29, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Sure, Microsoft Is Big and Bad, But It's Not Bad for Consumers
BYLINE: By Ronald A. Cass; New York Times ServiceDATELINE: BOSTON
Although the judge who is hearing the Microsoft antitrust case has not reached a decision, and probably won't until the fall, after nine months of testimony the computer software maker has certainly been bloodied in the court of public opinion. For example, a senior executive at International Business Machines detailed what he called Microsoft's bullying tactics in getting IBM to favor Windows over its operating system. A computer specialist from Princeton University mocked Microsoft's claim that its Internet browser software could not be separated from Windows. And internal Microsoft e-mail files have portrayed company managers as self-appointed knights in a holy war against Netscape, which makes Navigator, a rival browser.
But what has the U.S. government proved, other than its ability to tweak the tail of the tiger? It has shown only that Microsoft runs scared, investing heavily in new markets to avoid becoming detritus on the information superhighway.
Hard to believe that's all? Take a closer look at the government's case. Microsoft, it argues, has a monopoly because most personal computers use Windows. Rivals are kept out of this market by what the government calls the ''applications barrier,'' which it says means that nobody buysa computer unless it can run lots of software, and nobody produces software unless there are plenty of computers out there to run it.
But then why are leading software developers rushing to write applications for Linux, an upstart operating system with about 15 million users? And why hasn't Microsoft sought higher prices? …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
June 29, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Advisory Panel Votes for Use of Embryonic Cells in Research
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS WADE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 28Consulting their political as well as their ethical compasses, members of a White House ethics panel decided in a straw vote today to recommend that federally financed scientists be allowed to derive stem cells from human embryos as well as to conduct research on stem cells derived by others.
The vote by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which follows the recommendation of its draft report released last month, frames a position that some members hope will be more acceptable to abortion opponents in Congress than that of the National Institutes of Health, the principal source of universities' biomedical research money.
Embryonic stem cells can develop into almost any tissue of the body. In the seven months since they were first isolated, they have aroused intense interest as a possible all-purpose tissue repair kit for a host of afflictions. …
The commission's report will be completed in July, said its chairman, Harold T. Shapiro, president of Princeton University. One test of its success may be how it plays in Congress, where opponents of stem cell research plan to reintroduce the rider. …
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Copyright 1999 The Post and Courier
June 29, 1999, Tuesday, POST AND COURIER EDITIONHEADLINE: A Trip To Science Mountain;
LESSONS FOR TEACHERS: An institute in Greenville shows teachers how to make learning about science coolBYLINE: KRISTINA TORRES
DATELINE: GREENVILLEA lot of dead things line the Living Things classroom as more than a dozen teachers take their seats this bright Monday.
They can see the obvious dead things - the bear hide that lurks above the door, the shed boa constrictor skin that snakes across the wall, various and sundry stuffed birds that perch expectantly on cabinets above their heads.
They leave the less obvious to their imaginations, sinister things on shelves and in cabinets and drawers.
"I hate science," someone says, "I hate creepy-crawly things." …
The county school district owns the property though it doesn't pay for everything. Of the center's $1.4 million budget, it pays 60 percent - mainly upkeep and operating costs.
Most of buildings were paid for by private donations. Acquisition of some equipment could be called serendipitous - its vintage 1882 telescope, originally used at Princeton University, languished in pieces in a Navy warehouse before the center asked to have it. …
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
Copyright 1999 The Hearst Corporation
June 29, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Nation's drug czar critical of sentences
BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER S. WREN; New York TimesHIGHLIGHT: Building more prisons, as New York is doing, won't solve the problem of drug-driven crime, federal official asserts
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the retired general who directs the White House's drug control policy, has added his voice to the criticism of the mandatory prison sentences required under New York's stringent drug laws.
In a speech scheduled for today before a conference on substance abuse and criminal justice in Albany, McCaffrey, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, asserts that building more prisons, as New York is doing, will not solve the problem of drug-driven crime.
''Even those who helped pass the Rockefeller-era laws now have serious concerns that these laws have caused thousands of low-level and first-time offenders to be incarcerated at high cost for long sentences that are disproportionate to their crimes,'' he says. …
McCaffrey notes a new study by John DiIulio, a Princeton University professor, reporting that one-fourth of recent admissions to prisons in New York involve felons whose only crimes have been low-level, nonviolent drug offenses. …
U.S. News & World Report
Copyright 1999 U.S. News & World Report
June 28, 1999HEADLINE: Roads to riches
BYLINE: By Anne Kates SmithHIGHLIGHT: Like it or not, more Americans are taking control of their own retirement savings. Are they up to the task?
Audrey Schaefer doesn't look like a revolutionary. But the 38-year-old mother of two from suburban Maryland is among the vanguard in a new financial world order.
Frustrated with a broker who sold her his company's mutual funds, which turned out to be both expensive and poor performing, Schaefer decided to take control of her investments. …
Great moments in personal investing …
1973. Burton Malkiel of Princeton University, in A Random Walk Down Wall Street, concludes no stock-picking strategy can consistently beat the market averages. The book lays the groundwork for index funds.
ASIA COMPUTER WEEKLY
Copyright 1999 FT Asia Intelligence Wire
June 28, 1999HEADLINE: TWO DECADES OF TECHNOLOGY
Twenty years have come and gone. The best way to describe the changes that have taken place in the IT industry is to look at the waves of business computing
During the 1950s to 1960s, it was an era of host-based computing and batch processing. Online terminals dominated the 1970s and 1980s was deemed as the age of the PC revolution. It was later during the early to mid-1990s that client-server became the next wave of computing, where the vision promised to deliver multi-user access to information, increased productivity of employees, and better integration of workgroups. Next came the Internet. Although not new, the World Wide Web brought order to chaos. Simplicity and ubiquity of the Web were reasons enough to drive the masses towards a new era of online commerce and online communities. …
1985: The modern Internet gained support when the National Science foundation formed the NSFNET, linking five supercomputer centres at Princeton University, Pittsburgh, University of California at San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University.
The Fresno Bee
Copyright 1999 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc
June 28, 1999 MondayHEADLINE: 'Common folk' voters have choice among Ivy Leaguers
BYLINE: Martin F. NolanSince the first "log cabin" election in 1840, presidential candidates have tried to insulate themselves from an American suspicion of aristocrats by claiming kinship with the common folk. In 1999, partisan propagandists trying to drag class warfare into the 2000 election might pause to ask: How can class count if Ivy Leaguers flood the field?
On the Democratic side, Al Gore, a Harvard graduate, faces Bill Bradley of Princeton. Among Republicans, George W. Bush of Yale and Harvard Business School is pursued by Elizabeth Dole, with a Harvard master's degree and one from Harvard Law School; Steve Forbes, another Princetonian; and Patrick J. Buchanan, who holds a master's from the Columbia School of Journalism, where, classmates recall, he majored in polemics and minored in diatribes. …
NOTE: This column first appeared in The Boston Globe.
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Houston Chronicle Publishing CompanyJune 28, 1999, Monday
HEADLINE: Program's success evident in its veterans; College students more focused, prepared with help of mentors
SOURCE: Special to the Chronicle
BYLINE: HEATHER SAUCIERThere's a good chance that students who have successfully completed the Fort Bend Gifted and Talented Mentorship Program never will switch majors in college or make radical career changes.
That's because the high school participants get an in-depth, hands-on experience of working in their chosen fields with mentors who assist the students in identifying their professions early in life, said Kristen Norton, the program's instructor. …
After working in a lab, student Andria Boateng, 18, said the mentorship program affirmed her commitment to chemistry and piqued her interest in corporate law and marketing. When she was a junior at Willowridge High, Boateng worked with Sophia Wang, a research chemist at Nalco-Exxon Energy Chemicals L.P. in Sugar Land, determining viscosity levels of oil samples.
Talking with various company executives, Boateng said she learned it was possible to link her chemical interests with other fields, including law and marketing.
"I don't think I would know what specifically I wanted to do without this program," said Boateng, a sophomore chemistry major at Princeton University. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
June 28, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Point, Counterpoint in the Microsoft Trial
BYLINE: By STEVE LOHR
The last of 26 witnesses stepped from the stand last week in the Microsoft antitrust trial. They were the human voices in a case brimming with other evidence -- videotapes and transcripts from hundreds of people, and thousands of E-mail and other documents running to more than two miillion pages.
The Justice Department and 19 states suing Microsoft say that their witnesses have shown the big software maker to be an overreaching monopolist, wielding its market power to thwart competition. Microsoft, the Government says, prodded industry partners and rivals to favor its products over competing software. The Government adds that the company bundled its Internet browser to its industry-standard Windows operating system and gave the browser away as part of a predatory scheme that unfairly hurt rivals, posing a long-term threat to consumer welfare. …
Edward W. Felten; Computer Scientist, Princeton University
Wrote a program that he said stripped the browser out of Windows. The technical experiment was intended to support the allegation that Windows and the browser are separate programs and not one, as Microsoft asserts.
New Jersey Lawyer
Copyright 1999 The New Jersey Lawyer, Inc.
June 28, 1999SECTION: OBITUARIES
HEADLINE: James Boskey, ADR expertSeton Hall Law School professor and nationally-known alternative dispute resolution expert James B. Boskey died June 14 at age 57.
A decade ago, the North Caldwell resident, with 28 years on the school's faculty, started The Alternative Newsletter, which now is read by more than 800 lawyers and mediators worldwide.
For his work in the ADR field, Boskey recently received the Outstanding Practical Achievement Award from the Center of Public Resources in New York. …
Boskey held a bachelor's degree from Princeton University, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and an LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The New York Post
Copyright 1999 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.
June 28, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: THE PROTEGE TURNS POWERFUL: VOGUE EDITOR ANNA WINTOUR LOSES HER NO. 2 AND GAINS A FORMIDABLE RIVAL
BYLINE: JENNIFER TUNGWHEN Katherine Betts, who was named the new editor in chief of Harper's Bazaar last Thursday, is asked what she did to celebrate her new job, she laughs into the phone and replies, I'm nine months pregnant - I came home and collapsed! But news of her appointment was traveling through the magazine and fashion worlds like wildfire. …
A native New Yorker, Betts attended the Fieldston School in The Bronx and Choate Rosemary Hall Prep School in Connecticut,and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in European history. I've always wanted to be a reporter, she says. I was the managing editor of the Choate Rosemary Hall News, but I had ulterior motives - if you were on the paper, you didn't have a curfew. Betts, who also worked at the Daily Princetonian, has always adored fashion. …
USA TODAY
Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
June 28, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Economists predict rate increase this week and another to follow
BYLINE: Beth BeltonEconomists predict that a Federal Reserve quarter-point interest rate increase this week will be followed by another increase as soon as Aug. 24.
That forecast in USA TODAY's quarterly economic survey reflectsa sharp shift in the consensus forecast from last quarter, when the experts were evenly split on whether the Fed's next policy change would be to raise or lower rates. …
Former Fed policymaker Alan Blinder says the Fed might retain its tightening bias this week to signal markets that another increase is likely. After an increase, the Fed usually returns its bias to neutral.
"Without (the bias), you risk giving stock prices a license to run," says Blinder, who teaches at Princeton University. "There's a good bet there will be a second (rate increase)." …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Getting his kicks out of NFL Europe;
NEW HAMPSHIRE WEEKLY / SPORTS NOTEBOOK / BOB REINERTBYLINE: By Bob Reinert
Hometown boy Jon Watterson is off to a sizzling start for the Keene Swamp Bats of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. Watterson, a Keene High School product who will be a junior at Princeton University in the fall, recently was leading the league in hitting with a .433 batting average. The righthanded-hitting outfielder had also scored 9 times and driven in 7 runs. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: HAS THE U.S. ECONOMY ENTERED A GOLDEN ERA?
BYLINE: JONATHAN PETERSON, TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTONLike a centenarian on steroids, America's economic boom is closing in on the longevity record with no sign of slowing down. Unless something goes unexpectedly haywire, next January it will become the longest upswing in U.S. history.
Is it a freak, the economic equivalent of a 100-year flood? A growing number of experts think not.
Not only will today's good times roll longer than ever before, according to this view, but the traditional cycle of boom and bust will never be the same again. Economic expansions of the future will be longer than they used to be, and the anguishing interludes known as recessions will be milder, shorter and rarer. …
"The longer this expansion lasts, the more you start to think there's something to this idea," said Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. "Do I think that recessions will be less frequent and less severe in the 21st century than in the 20th? I think the answer is probably yes." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: ART REVIEW; Chinese Art With Character
BYLINE: By WILLIAM ZIMMER
DATELINE: PRINCETONTO pass through the Art Museum's gallery dominated by European Baroque paintings to the adjacent featured exhibition on Chinese calligraphy is to go from dramatic, fleshy forms that often enact some familiar episode from Western civilization to extremely lean ones that are mute to the uninitiated.
Any disorientation disappears early on. "The Embodied Image" is a clear and thorough overview of a subject that provokes wide interest, not least because of China's relatively recent ascendancy in world affairs. The objects come from the collection of John B. Elliott, Princeton class of 1951, who died in 1997. Elliott acquired these major examples of calligraphy mainly to form a teaching collection. The exhibition was organized by Cary Y. Liu, associate curator of Asian art at the museum, and Robert E. Harrist Jr., associate professor of art and archaeology at Princeton. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: IN BRIEF
MacArthur Grants Go to 3 in the State
BYLINE: By KAREN DeMASTERSA Rutgers University historian, an AT&T researcher and a Princeton University architect are among the 32 recipients of this year's MacArthur Foundation awards. The awards, often called genius grants, include stipends of $200,00 to $375,000 over a five-year period given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to encourage creativity in a wide range of fields.
An award of $375,000 went to David Levering Lewis, the Rutgers professor who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for the first volume of a biography, "W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race."
Elizabeth Diller, 45, a Princeton architecture professor, and Ricardo Scofidio, 64, a professor at the Cooper Union, who are architectural partners in New York City, also received $375,000. …
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Copyright 1999 The San Diego Union-Tribune
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Union issue complicates the doctor-HMO debate
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
BYLINE: Phil Galewitz
DATELINE: NEW YORKNEW YORK -- Consumer groups, employers and federal regulators are warning that a campaign by doctors to form unions won't deliver on prromises for better health care.
Even worse, they say, powerful doctor unions could bring higher costs.
Union supporters, however, say doctors need more negotiating clout to win back control of patient care from health maintenance organizations, which are often accused of unfairly restricting treatment to save money. …
Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University, says unions have one main goal. "Unions enhance the quality of life for the union member," he says, adding that teacher unions don't necessarily improve education to students. …
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Copyright 1999 The San Diego Union-Tribune
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: cashingin.com; Pioneers on Net frontier strike it rich
SOURCE: STAFF WRITER
BYLINE: Bruce V. BigelowIt cost Gavin Mandelbaum about $6,000 in 1995 to start his own Web-based business, an infant-product store called "Internet Baby."
Three years later, the San Diego entrepreneur sold his online business to New York-based iVillage in a stock and cash deal. The terms were not disclosed, but Gavin's dad says it's safe to report that his son is now a multi-millionaire. …
Jared Schutz was 22 when he founded ProFlowers.com, a Web-based florist in La Jolla that operates as a direct-sales flower broker.
"Really what we saw was that the flower distribution system in this country is broken," says Schutz, who is now 24. "There are many, many stages. The consumer ends up purchasing old flowers at a huge markup." …
Schutz, who attended La Jolla Country Day School, financed the start-up chiefly from the sale of American Information Systems, an Internet software firm he started as a student at Princeton University. …
The Union Leader (Manchester, NH)
Copyright 1999 Union Leader Corp.
June 27, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: Baseball-rich Keene embraces Swamp Bats. Granite Staters can play
BYLINE: KEVIN GRAY Staff Sports Writer
No, the Keene Swamp Bats didn't sign five New Hampshire players for local flavor alone.
The Granite Staters have been key members of the league-leading Swamp Bats. The proof is in the first-place record and the individual statistics of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. A look at this year's New Hampshire players: …
Jon Watterson, Keene, Princeton University Winner of two state titles at Keene High, Watterson returns for his second season with the Swamp Bats. He raised his average to .433 tops in the NECBL after a five-hit game against the Torrington Twisters on June 20. Watterson, a steady outfielder, has also enjoyed success at Princeton. As a freshman, he drove in the game-winning run against Cornell while propelling the Big Red into the Ivy League Championship Series.
"He brings speed and a good bat," said Ouellette. "He has a passion for the game, more than other people." …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
June 27, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Theodore Marton
Behavioral Science EngineerTheodore Marton, 73, a behavioral science engineer who retired in 1993 from Dynamic Research Corp., where he did research for the military on human factors in accidents, died of congestive heart failure June 24 at his home in Reston.
Dr. Marton was a native of New York, where he graduated from New York University. He received a master's degree in physical therapy from NYU and a master's and doctorate in experimental psychology from Princeton University. He also studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. …
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
June 26, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Amen Corner; News and notes concerning the religious, spiritual and volunteer communities of metro Atlanta
NEW MODERATOR: Freda A. GardnerDelegates to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, elected former Princeton University professor Freda A. Gardner to be the denomination's new moderator. Gardner named the Rev. Floyd Rhodes, an executive in the Greater Atlanta Presbytery, as vice moderator of the 3.6 million-member denomination.
The Boston Herald
Copyright 1999 Boston Herald Inc.
June 26, 1999 SaturdayHEADLINE: Obituary; Reginald Hudson, high school teacher, 49, lived in Concord
Reginald deKoven "Dick" Hudson Jr., formerly of Concord, a high school teacher, died April 13 at his Arizona home. He was 49.
Originally from Minneapolis, Mr. Hudson's family moved to Concord when he was 10. He attended the Fenn School and the Noble and Greenough School. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from Princeton University.
Mr. Hudson was a lifelong sports enthusiast and Red Sox fan. He was Princeton's football team manager while playing varsity hockey for the Tigers. …
The Independent (London)
Copyright 1999 Newspaper Publishing PLC
June 26, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: OBITUARY: PROFESSOR LAURENCE STONE
BYLINE: David CannadineLAWRENCE STONE belonged to a remarkable generation of British historians who dominated and defined their subject for nearly half a century, and which included Christopher Hill, G.R. Elton, Asa Briggs, J.H. Plumb, Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Thompson. They all wrote widely and well, and reached a large audience in universities and far beyond. But in many ways, Stone was the most creative - and the most controversial - of them all. …
The last thing Stone could ever have been called (and he was called many things) was a cautious or pedantic or inhibited historian, mouldering away obscurely or ineffectually into dry-as-dust. Known to his graduate students at Princeton as "Il Magnifico", he was as unlike Casaubon as it was possible for a scholar to be. Instead of confining himself to one of history's increasingly ring-fenced sub-specialisms, he moved back and forth from political to economic, to social, to cultural, to family, to educational, to architectural history. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
June 26, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: CLINTON SEEKS PLAN TO HELP ELDERLY PAY FOR PRESCRIPTIONS
BYLINE: ROBERT A. ROSENBLATT and ALISSA J. RUBIN, TIMES STAFF WRITERSDATELINE: WASHINGTON
President Clinton plans to propose next week that the government pick up part of the cost of prescription drugs for elderly Medicare beneficiaries who agree to pay an additional premium of up to $45 a month, knowledgeable sources said Friday.
The exact size and shape of the complex package is still being worked out as the administration tries to keep the cost to a minimum while satisfying congressional Democrats who want to assure a generous new benefit. …
Some groups that represent the elderly, such as the American Assn. of Retired Persons and the National Council of Senior Citizens, say they worry that the premiums the elderly would be asked to pay for the drug benefit would be too high. But experts say the suggested premium is far lower than the amount many people currently pay for their coverage. And the amount of coverage often is limited to several hundred dollars a year.
"Within three to four years, drug spending will be such a burden that the elderly are going to find it a huge hit on their pocketbook," said Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of health economics at Princeton University.
"Those who don't have health insurance already will break under that burden . . . and the groups that represent the elderly . . . ought to educate members that the president's plan is in their own interest," Reinhardt said. "This is the last time to get on that train."
NOTE: This story ran on the L.A.Times/Washington Post wire and received wide circulation.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
June 26, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Is a Holocaust Skeptic Fit to Be a Historian?
BYLINE: By D. D. GUTTENPLANLONDON, July 25 -- Can a writer who thinks the Holocaust was a hoax still be a great historian?
The British writer David Irving's books have been praised by some of the most eminent scholars in his field. The military historian John Keegan, who says Mr. Irving "knows more than anyone alive about the German side of the Second World War," considers his work "indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the war in the round." Gordon Craig, a leading scholar of German history at Stanford University, also calls Mr. Irving's work "indispensable." He adds, "I always learn something from him." …
Mark Mazower, a historian at Princeton University, pointed out that "if you restricted yourself to works produced in conditions of freedom, by writers with whom we can feel intellectually akin," you would rule out a lot. The real question, said Mr. Mazower, author of "Dark Continent: Europe's 20th Century," is how you treat such material. "After all, even the Nazi historians produced some useful information." …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
June 26, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: In Kosovo, Peace Requires Partition
To the Editor:
Re Anthony Lewis's June 22 column on the evil behavior of the Serbian soldiers in Kosovo: Time and again we find that the propensity for evil exists within each of us and can be awakened by particular situations. The psychologist Stanley Milgram demonstrated the degree to which ordinary citizens abdicate their personal morality when an authority figure insists that they perform a lethal harm against another; the My Lai massacre in Vietnam demonstrated how otherwise moral Americans could perform heinous crimes against innocents.
Although it is easier to locate evil within the individual, it may be ultimately more useful to focus on the exigencies of the situation rather than on the flaws of the individual.
KEVIN CARLSMITH
Princeton, N.J., June 23, 1999
The writer is a doctoral student in social psychology at Princeton University.
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
June 26, 1999HEADLINE: Proof and beauty
BYLINE: Ian StewartHIGHLIGHT: Mathematical proofs used to be short and sweet: these days they read more like War and Peace or, worse, a phone directory. Is the elegant proof a lost art, asks Ian Stewart
IT IS OFTEN said that there are only seven narrative lines for a novel, all known to the ancient Greeks. There seem to be even fewer ways to write a mathematical proof, and the ancient Greeks knew only one of these narrative lines. That was the short, sweet, compellingly clever kind of argument that made Euclid's reputation. No one ever asks why such proofs are necessary. You set out an interesting mathematical statement, prove that it's right by some brilliant, concise insight that occupies just a few lines of maths, and your reputation is made. Everyone exclaims at the elegance of the maths, the beauty of the mathematical world. Everyone now understands exactly why your statement is right. Everyone is happy. …
Many of the most significant proofs of the past few years have certainly been long and complicated. Take Fermat's last theorem, famously cracked in 1996 by British-born mathematician Andrew Wiles, working at Princeton University in New Jersey. To solve the problem, Wiles had to use massive mathematical machinery, battering the question into submission like a gnat beneath a steam hammer. But far from being boring and unnecessary, the resulting proof is rich and beautiful - not a short story, like the proofs in The Book, but a "War and Peace". …
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
June 26, 1999HEADLINE: Stripe tease
BYLINE: Michael Brooks (Michael Brooks is a freelance writer based in East Sussex)HIGHLIGHT: Microscopic rivers of charge called stripes may underlie the miraculous properties of superconductors. Or are they teeming with red herrings ? Michael Brooks investigates
A BULLET train slips quietly out of Singapore at 500 kilometres an hour, hovering just above the superconducting track. Its power is carried by superconducting cables that never waste a single watt. In first class, a businessman taps away at his superconducting laptop, which contains the fastest processor ever seen. Until the coolant runs out, and it turns into a piece of junk.
Superconductors, which carry electricity without resistance and repel magnetic fields, could be the key to many technical marvels. But even the "high-temperature" superconductors don't work above about 130 kelvin (-140 degrees C), so without expensive and bulky refrigeration they are useless. And when it comes to increasing this critical temperature, scientists have a big problem: they know very little about how high-temperature superconductors work.
But one strange little phenomenon could hold the answer. Stripes. Nothing to do with naff wallpaper, these stripes are microscopic rivers of charge that run through the high-temperature superconductors. …
Antonio Bianconi of La Sapienza University in Rome believes that stripes are like thin superconducting wires separated by bands of insulating material, and that this configuration somehow increases the normal superconducting temperature of a material. He has been granted a European and Japanese patent for a "superconducting lattice" of wires that is supposed to mimic the behaviour of stripes in high-temperature superconductors. …
The gap between experiments and Bianconi's claims is rather large, to say the least, and it could be years before he can prove he's right. That hasn't deterred him, however. To make further progress, he needs wires less than 10 nanometres thick - the thinnest in the world. A few researchers are working on this, but progress is slow. "This is at the forefront of nanotechnology," Bianconi says. "Normally people work to 500 nanometres with superconductors."
Other researchers in the field won't be holding their breath. "If Bianconi's device ever turns out to be superconducting, it will be superconducting for the wrong reasons," says Philip Anderson, a theorist at Princeton University, New Jersey. He is one of those who think the stripes are a red herring, an irrelevance in the quest to explain high-temperature superconductivity. …
The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
Copyright 1999 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
June 25, 1999, FridayHousing meeting set for today
People interested in learning more about opportunities to bring better housing to Augusta's Laney-Walker area can attend a presentation at 9 a.m. today at Tabernacle Baptist Church.
The presentation is the result of this week's symposium of experts on city design, sponsored by the city's department of housing and urban development, Mayor Bob Young and the National Endowment for the Arts. The symposium focused on housing in the Laney-Walker area.
The Mayor's Institute on CityDesign group included Grover E. Mouton III, director of the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center; Leigh M. Ferguson, president and chief executive of Chattanooga (Tenn.) Neighborhood Enterprise Inc.; Ralph Lerner, dean of architecture at Princeton University; and Karen Stokes, executive director of the Coalition for Low Income Community Development. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Expected rate hike draws political interest;
Pre-emptive strike against inflation called blow to poor
BYLINE: By Aaron Zitner, Globe StaffWASHINGTON - What is the most effective federal social program? Some economists say it is not college tuition grants or housing subsidies. Instead, they point to the low interest rates set by Alan Greenspan and other Federal Reserve policy makers.
Low rates have encouraged businesses to add millions of new jobs, pulling more minorities and low-income Americans into the work force. Businesses, competing hard for workers, have had to raise wages. In short, these economists said, low interest rates have been the best medicine for the most Americans.
But now, this program could be repealed. And a vocal minority is complaining. …
Because higher rates cause businesses to lay off workers, a key question hangs over next week's Fed meeting. Which is the greater evil: Putting some Americans out of work in order to ward off inflation, or letting everyone work at the risk that inflation will rise and hurt the whole economy? …
The Fed does not have to wait until the consumer price index rises, argued Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the economics department at Princeton University and co-author of a book on central bank battles against inflation. "If they see inflation based on futures prices or any other indicator, they should act now," he said. …
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Mayfield Fund is First Venture Capital Firm to Close Number Ten - X - Fund; Mayfield X Will Focus Primarily on Internet, Communications Fund Adds Three New General Partners
DATELINE: MENLO PARK, Calif.
June 25, 1999--Mayfield Fund, a Menlo Park-based venture capital partnership, today announced the closing of the $450 million Mayfield X Fuund.
"With this fund's closing, we intend to make investments that enhance our leadership position in communications, the internet and healthcare, including a greater emphasis on ecommerce and web-enabled communications services," said General Partner Kevin A. Fong. …
Investors in the Mayfield X Fund include, Emory University; Ford Foundation; Harvard University; Horsley Bridge Partners; Princeton University, Stanford University and Yale University.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 25, 1999HEADLINE: NEH Official Calls for Broader Research Into U.S. Humanities Policy
BYLINE: PAULETTE WALKER CAMPBELLThe National Endowment for the Humanities has handed out about $180-million in fellowships since 1967 to support scholars to spend a year on full-time research and writing. But no one at the agency can say for sure how many of those grants led to a book or other major publication.
Nor do officials know how many humanities Ph.D.'s were awarded last year. Or how many of those degrees went to women. Or how many faculty appointments in humanities departments today are adjunct versus tenure-track. …
"I know the N.E.H. has enormous competitive pressures on its resources," said John H. D'Arms, president of the American Council of Learned Societies. However, he added: "Those of us who care about humanities trends -- in terms of financial support, graduate and undergraduate enrollment, faculty appointments -- would like to be able to poinnt to a single agency or set of agencies where reliable data on these trends are collected and periodic reports issued."
Stanley N. Katz, Mr. D'Arms's predecessor at the council, is not as lenient. Mr. Katz, the director of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University, said: "The N.E.H. has defaulted on its obligation to collect and refine data about the humanities, and it's because the leadership of the N.E.H. never gave a damn. This failure of leadership and imagination at the agency happened long before the budget cuts." …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 25, 1999HEADLINE: Wealthy, Infertile Couple Narrows Field of Egg Donors at Top Universities
Who says the perfect woman doesn't exist?
The field of candidates in a search undertaken by a wealthy, infertile couple who offered $50,000 for the eggs of a tall, smart, athletic woman has been narrowed to 90, according to a representative of the couple.
Twenty of the candidates are from Yale University, 30 from Harvard University, 40 from Princeton University, and 15 from Stanford University. …
More than 300 women responded to an advertisement that ran in March in the student newspapers of several elite private universities. "Intelligent, Athletic Egg Donor Needed for Loving Family," the ad announced. "You must be at least 5'10", have a 1400-plus SAT score, [and] possess no major family medical issues."
The $50,000 payment is about 10 times as large as that offered to egg donors by fertility registries. …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 25, 1999HEADLINE: Penn Finally Succeeds in Luring Noted Princeton Criminologist; Williams College Ascribes 11 Departures to 'Bad Luck,' but Professors Cite Teaching Loads
BYLINE: SCOTT HELLER and ROBIN WILSONTwice before, the University of Pennsylvania has tried to lure John J. DiIulio, Jr., away from Princeton University, but the third time was the charm.
Mr. DiIulio, whose tough talk on crime has made him popular among politicians, is leaving Princeton for an endowed chair at Penn.
Starting next month, he will be the Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society. The professorship is one of several created with a $10-million gift to Penn's School of Arts and Sciences by Robert A. Fox, a university trustee. The move brings Mr. DiIulio back to his alma mater, where he did his undergraduate and master's-degree work.
Although he has previously fended off Penn's overtures, Mr. DiIulio has remained in the area while teaching at Princeton. "John has deep Philadelphia roots, and it was a matter of capitalizing on them to bring him home," says Samuel H. Preston, dean of Penn's arts-and-sciences school. …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 25, 1999HEADLINE: Scholarly Publishing in an Electronic Age: 8 Views of the Future
Why One Press Is Holding Back By Charles CreesyPeople sometimes ask why Princeton University Press -- with its resources and tradition of leadership among scholarly publishers -- has taken a restrained approach to electronic publishing. We have made some forays in that direction, but it is true that we have not strived to be at the fore of the electronic revolution.
To be sure, we have been aggressive in using the Internet to promote and market our books, through such means as on-line catalogues and e-mail announcements of new titles. And we are seeing increasing demand for making data sets, analytical software, and other such materials available with our books -- either on a CD-ROM, tucked in a pocket on the inside back cover (as is almost mandatory with instructional computer books tthese days), or on the Web when the data are more volatile.
A few years ago, we developed a multimedia edition of the I Ching on CD-ROM, which we felt offered a particularly propitious fit of form and content, and we are now distributing two other CD-ROMs. As an experiment, we have also put the complete text of a few works on line, equipped with a powerful search engine. Recently, we have started to take advantage of on-demand systems to make works readily available that would otherwise have gone out of print.
But to date, that is the extent of our electronic-publishing effort.
Part of the reason for our conservative approach is that we publish few reference works and hardly any journals -- the two areas that, at present, offer the greatest potential for electronic delivery. Indeed, I think e-journals are going to play a much larger role in scholarly communication, and much sooner, than is generally expected. And in dynamic fields, where data proliferate rapidly or become quickly outdated, putting reference resources on line would seem the most logical way to go. …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 25, 1999HEADLINE: Jewish Students at Princeton
To the Editor:
How does one answer the question, "How many Jews should there be at Princeton University?" As I read Ben Gose's article "Princeton Tries to Explain a Drop in Jewish Enrollment" (May 14), I increasingly felt a sense of both nervousness and anger. . . . I believe these feelings come from a contradiction that many Jews experience throughout our lives. We are meant to feel inferior because of our religion by those who are racist and ignorant; and yet we are told by others that we are in actuality no different from the majority, because of the color of our skin. . . .
It is quite apparent that Princeton, like most institutions of higher education, subscribes to and enforces a policy of affirmative action. Even though their faculty members and admissions representatives do not come out and say those two words, the process of setting aside "spots" and creating "flags and tags" for those who fit into certain ethnic and geographic categories is just that -- a process of affirmative action.
It is quite clear that Princeton believes that Jews cannot contribute to the diversity of its student body. Even though Jews are a minority, even though Jews tend to have a very strong sense of culture, and even though Jews have been systematically discriminated against (in this country and other countries, and at Princeton itself), these facts are not deemed important by Princeton and other institutions of higher education. . . .
Stacey Farber
Ph.D. Candidate in Educational Psychology
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, N.Y.
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Copyright 1999 The Cincinnati Enquirer
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Universe may be under power of a 'dark force'
BYLINE: ROBERT S. BOYD
SOURCE: Knight Ridder News ServiceIt sounds more like Star Wars than real science, but astronomers are taking seriously new evidence that a mysterious "dark energy" pervades empty space.
You can't see it or feel it, but this strange force is so powerful that it counteracts gravity and makes stars and galaxies fly apart faster than scientists previously thought.
Without it, the universe would have caved in ages ago.
"There is now tantalizing evidence for an extra repulsion force that overwhelms gravity on cosmic scales," Martin Rees, Great Britain's Astronomer Royal, told a symposium at the Library of Congress recently.
Understanding this force will be "one of the grand challenges for the millennium to come," said Neta Bahcall, a leading cosmologist at Princeton University.
In scientific papers and talks, the dark force goes by a variety of exotic names: "cosmic dark energy . . . negative gravity . . . vacuum energy . . . zero-point energy . . . X-matter." …
Corrections Professional
Copyright 1999 LRP Publications
June 25, 1999HEADLINE: Economists call for liberalizing prison labor
WASHINGTON - Allowing prisoners to unionize, privatizing the production of goods and services and eliminating all restrictions on where prison-made products can be sold are necessary to improve the prison labor system, according to University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt.
If these measures were taken, lifting bans on prison labor would benefit consumers, prisoners, businesses and the government, he said.
Levitt noted that while employment of all prisoners would have a small positive impact on America's economy, it would be of great benefit to society through the reduction of crimes committed by inmates after their release. …
Princeton University labor economist Jeffrey Kling said the average ex-prisoner commits 12 to 15 crimes in his first year of freedom at a cost of about 35,000 to society. However, a study found the recidivism rate by inmates who worked was 6.6 percent in their first year out of jail compared to 20 percent for those who didn't.
Kling said having prisoners work produces more money for society through paycheck deductions for taxes, victim's damages, child support, even room and board. Inmate laborers had about a 10 percent higher rate of employment in their first year out of prison than non-laborers, he added. …
THE PANTAGRAPH
(Bloomington, IL.)
Copyright 1999 The Pantagraph
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Morton's Sauder takes last shot at basketball
BYLINE: RANDY KINDREDPEORIA - The net had to be replaced often. Basketballs came and went, worn to a frazzle by constant use. A shooting form was born, nurtured, refined.
All in the shadow of J.R. Sauder's garage.
"I spent as much time as anybody shooting in the driveway," said Sauder, a three-sport star at Morton High School. "I've probably played basketball more than anything."
Thus, when Sauder plays for the Class AA South tonight in the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association All-Star Games, he will carry a twinge of sadness onto the Carver Arena court.
Headed for Princeton University to play football, the 6-foot-4 Sauder will be bidding farewell to a lifelong companion.
"It's a strange feeling," he said of his final basketball game. "But it's kind of exciting. If you're going to play one last basketball game, why not play with the best guys in the state?" …
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, MN)
Copyright 1999 Star Tribune
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Doctors aim to regain some of their clout; To bargain with HMOs, more are seeking unions
BYLINE: Tom Hamburger; Staff Writer
DATELINE: Washington, D.C.Exasperated doctors from Minnesota and other states have shown increasing interest in joining or forming labor unions as a way of gaining more power in negotiating with managed-care organizations.
That interest reached a peak this week with two events: A congressional panel took up legislation authorizing independent physicians to organize collectively, and the American Medical Association (AMA) formally approved a plan to pursue unionization of the profession.
"This is a watershed in the history of medicine," said Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of medical economics at Princeton University. "Doctors out there have been feeling so beleaguered, they turned to what they learned in freshman college courses -- that organized labor helps workers who feel fiscally besieged." …
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, MN)
Copyright 1999 Star Tribune
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Grams offers bill to provide tax breaks for those buying their own health insurance
BYLINE: Coralie Carlson; Tom Hamburger; Staff Writers
DATELINE: Washington, D.C.Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., introduced legislation Thursday that would give tax breaks to people buying their own health insurance, which he said will help make health insurance affordable for 43 million uninsured Americans.
Grams said the tax breaks offered in his Health Care Accessibility and Equity Act will help the country's uninsured more than would legislation that mandates insurance companies to cover more illnesses, driving up premium costs.
Currently, employers can deduct health insurance costs from their taxes, but individuals cannot, which is why the self-employed are the group most likely to forgo such protection. …
The Congressional Budget Office has not yet determined how much this plan would cost, said Steve Behm, Grams' press secretary. However, Princeton University Health Economist Uwe Reinhardt estimated that such an approach would cost $40 billion to $80 billion annually. …
The Times (London)
Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Limited
June 25, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Eqbal Ahmad
Eqbal Ahmad, Pakistani scholar, died in New York on May 11. He was born in Bihar in 1933.
IN AN age of mean passions and institutional conformity, Eqbal Ahmad stood out as a public intellectual who believed passionately in justice, learning and the poetry of the human spirit.
Born into a family of educated landowners in undivided India, Ahmad was one of a group of children who accompanied Gandhi on his visits to riot-torn villages in Bihar. In 1947 he migrated to Pakistan with his brothers.
Yet Ahmad refused to partition his mind or heart, and in later years he argued passionately for reconciliation between the two countries to which he felt he belonged equally. In his columns for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, he wrote trenchantly against the recent nuclear arming of the sub-continent and the mindlessness of its politics.
In the mid-1950s, Ahmad went to America on a scholarship to read history at Princeton. But his commitment to justice extended beyond academe and frequently cut short his various teaching assignments. He joined the National Liberation Front of Ben Bella in its struggle for Algerian independence and took up the cause of Palestinian nationalism as well. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
June 25, 1999, FridayNAME: KATHERINE BETTS
HEADLINE: New Editor at Bazaar; Vogue's Katherine Betts Succeeds Tilberis
BYLINE: Robin Givhan, Washington Post Staff WriterHarper's Bazaar has a new editor in chief: Katherine Betts, formerly of Vogue magazine.
Hearst Magazines announced Betts's appointment to the top job at Bazaar yesterday, about two months after the fashion magazine's former editor, Liz Tilberis, died from ovarian cancer. She was 51.
While Bazaar's circulation of 730,000 lags behind Vogue's 1.1 million readers, the editor's position at the Hearst publication is a plum one and speculation on who would be Tilberis's successor began immediately after her death in April. Hearst began talks with Betts in early June, moving quickly to find someone to take the helm of the magazine.
"Obviously it's a dream job for me," Betts says, "and something I couldn't turn down, although the timing isn't great." Betts, 35, is expecting her first child any day. …
The Edmonton Sun
Copyright 1999 Sun Media Corporation
June 24, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: SELECTIVITY SHOULDN'T APPLY TO GIFT OF LIFE
BYLINE: DR. LAURAThe Nazi ideal of a master race required two main tactics: selective breeding and elimination of the weak, ill, deformed and handicapped, generally by murder in various liquidation camps around Europe.
Most folks perceive these actions and the thinking behind them as inhumane and evil. The president of Princeton University views this mentality not only as intellectually provocative, but worthy of a chair in bioethics at Princeton's Centre for Human Values.
This honour goes to Peter Singer, who wrote a book, Practical Ethics, in which he promotes a utilitarian philosophy of people worthy to live. He specifically targets the newborn. He suggests, for example, that if killing their newborn hemophiliac induces the parents to have another child who is born without hemophilia, "the loss of a happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second."
This from a guy who expends a lot of energy campaigning in his home country of Australia against the sale of eggs laid by cooped-up chickens, and who is the grandchild of Holocaust victims. …
I personally find it frightening that he would receive anything more than an invitation to debate from such a reputable university. It is horrifying that this man will be a teacher of young, impressionable minds with opinions such as, "Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all." …
Princeton's defence of this appointment is an affront to civilized society. This is an example of stretching academic freedom to the breaking point - the advocacy of sacrificing human life to convenience. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
June 24, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: AMA Votes to Unionize Doctors; Group Acts in Response to Managed Care's Effect on Rights, Duties of Physicians
BYLINE: Amy Goldstein, Washington Post Staff WriterThe American Medical Association voted yesterday to form a labor union to bargain on behalf of doctors for better pay and working conditions -- a dramatic attempt to give physicians more clout in an era of managed health care.
The decision to organize doctors into bargaining units represents a radical departure for one of the oldest and most conservative professional organizations in the country. It signals the profound discontent of many of the 700,000 physicians in the United States over the direction of the nation's health care system. …
Doctors' efforts to define themselves as employees reflect a remarkable shift. Since its founding a century and a half ago, the AMA has devoted much of its time to fighting to preserve physicians' autonomy.
Against that backdrop, Paul Starr, a Princeton University historian who is an authority on the history of American medicine, yesterday called the AMA's decision "a watershed" that "reflects a momentous change in the economic position of the medical position from the time when nearly all doctors were independent businessmen … to a time when large numbers are either on salary or face very large buyers of their services."
Starr also interpreted the AMA's action as an attempt to create a counterforce to the recent consolidation of health plans across the country. "Each [side] is trying to represent a larger power in order to have more bargaining leverage," he said. …
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