Princeton in the News
September 23 to 29, 1999
PrincetonUniversity
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The Bond Buyer
Copyright 1999 The Bond Buyer, Inc.
September 29, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: News In Brief
Blinder Sees No Move On Rates Next Week
SAN FRANCISCO -- Former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman Alan Blinder said that if he were joining monetary policymakers at their meeting next week in Washington, his vote would be to leave interest rates right where they are.
Blinder echoed remarks made earlier by San Francisco Fed President Robert Parry -- not a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee this year -- when he said uncertainties in measuring the economy's performance allow for a less pre-emptive stance on inflation. The FOMC next meets Oct. 5. It raised the federal funds lending rate -- the interest charged between banks for overnight loans -- a quarter-percentage point both in June and when they last met on Aug. 24. At the later meeting, they also raised the largely symbolic discount rate, for direct loans from the Fed, by 25 basis points.
Parry and Blinder, now a professor of economics at Princeton University and chairman of a Group of Seven advisory panel, were speaking Monday at the semi-annual meeting of the National Association for Business Economics.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
September 29, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: Chase Agrees to Acquire Hambrecht & Quist
BYLINE: By JOSEPH KAHN and PATRICK McGEEHAN
The Chase Manhattan Corporation agreed yesterday to buy San Francisco-based Hambrecht & Quist for $1.35 billion, giving one of America's dominant traditional banks an entree into the world of Internet start-ups and bringing it a step closer to becoming a full-service financial concern.
The proposed cash deal pairs two financial companies -- Chase, the heavyweight banker for large corporations, and Hambrecht, a boutique catering to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs -- that had begun to look like lonely singles at a swinging square dance. Chase's major competitors have all bought or merged with investment banking firms. Hambrecht is the last of its class of finance firms that catered to technology companies to find a larger and deeper-pocketed partner.
Hambrecht's roots in the technology banking business run deep. Daniel H. Case 3d, the chief executive, is the older brother of Steve Case, chief executive of America Online. Hambrecht's reputation for picking small but promising winners was made in 1980, when it brought Apple Computer to market, and sealed in 1995, when it backed Netscape's initial public offering.
Mr. Case and the man he referred to as "my new boss," Mr. Lee, are a study in contrasts. Mr. Case, tall and slim at 41, still looks the part of the wunderkind he once was. A Princeton University graduate, he joined Hambrecht after completing a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University. He was named co-chief executive in 1992 and sole chief executive two years later.
The Post and Courier
Copyright 1999 The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
September 29, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: Bioethics must not reject reverence for life
BY:Paul Greenberg
The news that will shape our culture and therefore our future now tends to be made not by the generals and politicians, but by the scientists and bioethicists. For example:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton's top advisory panel on medical ethics is recommending government financing of limited forms of research on human embryos ...
The promise of such experiments is breathtaking - new bodies for old! - and so is the danger. We will have taken another step toward scientific experimentation on human beings.
Nothing has so degraded our ethics in this modern era as our ethicists. The great champion of infanticide at Princeton University, Peter Singer, is after all a professor of, yes, bioethics. It is astounding what a supposedly civilized society will routinely accept. Last time I checked (June of 1998) the going price of human fetuses for research purposes varied from $90 to $280, depending on gestational age and whether you wanted yours fresh or frozen.
NOTE: This nationally syndicated column also appeared in The Washington Times.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
SEPTEMBER 29, 1999, WEDNESDAY
SECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: Smarter Mice -- and Men?; Enhancing desired traits
undermines who we are
BYLINE: Zach Hall
FRONT-PAGE stories recently announced that biologists at Princeton University have used genetic manipulation to create a strain of mice that is able to learn and remember better than normal mice. They accomplished this feat by turning on a gene in older mice that is normally active only in young animals. This discovery may eventually lead to a treatment for Alzheimer's disease or other disorders affecting memory.
Several commentators, however, including the lead researcher, immediately raised a different possibility, namely, that gene treatments might be used to make normal people smarter.
Is this what we really want? The traditional role of biomedical research, and the reason for its sustained support by the federal government, has been to develop means for preventing and treating disease. The idea of being able to fight back against the age-old afflictions caused by injury and disease is a powerful one in the American psyche, one that reflects our optimism and belief in our abilities to improve the quality of human life.
The Straits Times (Singapore)
Copyright 1999 The Straits Times Press Limited
September 29, 1999
HEADLINE: Bioethics: The conundrum of our times
BYLINE: Yeong Ah Seng
THE National Kidney Foundation says it will be spending $10 million in a five-year campaign to persuade more Singaporeans to sign up as organ donors.
Apparently, many people still assume wrongly that the Human Organ Transplant Act covers all organs when, in fact, it is confined to kidney donations in accident cases and only when the victims have not opted out.
While it is always a noble deed to help save lives, the issue of organ donation is but one of a growing list of difficult ethical choices brought about by advances in medical science.
In the United States, Mr Peter Singer, the author of Animal Liberation and a controversial champion of animal rights, was recently appointed Princeton University's first professor of bioethics.
Ethicists like him address questions faced by any family that has ever been confronted with an elderly, sick and helpless relative. The choices they offer may not be palatable to everyone but they are, at least, well-considered and thought through.
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
September 29, 1999
HEADLINE: Bradley Unveils Health Care Plan; Proposal to Expand Tax Credits, Subsidies Is Broader Than Gore's
BYLINE: Dan Balz and Amy Goldstein, Washington Post Staff
Writers
DATELINE: VAN NUYS, Calif., Sept. 28
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley outlined a plan today intended to provide all Americans access to health coverage by significantly expanding federal subsidies and tax credits to help families buy insurance.
Bradley's proposal, aimed at the roughly 45 million people who lack health coverage, would pay all or part of the insurance premiums for nearly 30 million lower-income children and adults. It also would for the first time allow anyone to buy private coverage through the program that insures federal workers.
The plan, which Bradley said could cost as much as $65 billion a year, represents one of the most ambitious government initiatives offered so far by a presidential candidate of either party. It also elevates the question of how to help the nation's uninsured to the front ranks of campaign issues, and puts the former New Jersey senator into a direct competition on the topic with Vice President Gore, his rival for the Democratic nomination, who released his own health care proposal three weeks ago.
But after the defeat of the Clinton administration's plan for universal coverage in 1994, Bradley appears to have avoided certain expansions of the federal role in health care, several health policy analysts said today. "He's obviously trying to straddle the delicate road between [providing universal insurance] without having to come with the heavy hand of government and mandating all this stuff," said (Uwe) Reinhardt, a Princeton University health economist.
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
September 28, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Your Views: Child's potential disregarded
The Arc of New Jersey is outraged by many of the opinions of Princeton University's new professor, Peter Singer. We believe Singer is grossly misinformed about the quality of lives of people with disabilities.
The Arc of New Jersey is the state's largest grass-roots advocacy group for people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities. Parents of newborns who focus on their youngster's ability and potential, not their disability, truly help them to learn, thrive, live in their communities and lead very productive and fulfilling lives.
We're talking about real people with real potential, not eliminating babies because someone deems their life invaluable.
Thomas Baffuto, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
THE ARC OF NEW JERSEY
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
September 28, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Capitals 8, Flyers 2
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
Jeff Toms and James Black each scored two goals to lead Washington to a 8-2 win over Philadelphia in a National Hockey League exhibition game.
Jeff Halpern, Jaroslav Svejkovsky, Glen Metropolit, and Steve Konowalchuk also scored for the Capitals, who built a 5-0 lead in the second period Monday.
Halpern, who was playing hockey for Princeton University this time last year, gave the Capitals a 1-0 lead at 2:31 of the first period when he broke in from center ice and put a backhander past Flyers' goaltender Brian Boucher.
Charleston Daily Mail
Copyright 1999 Charleston Newspapers
September 28, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Local briefs
Artist from city joins Detroit News staff
Henry Payne, a Charleston native and former Daily Mail editorial cartoonist, has joined the staff of the Detroit News.
Payne, a graduate of Princeton University, produces five editorial cartoons every week. His work is distributed nationally by United Feature Syndicate and still appears frequently in the Daily Mail.
"We think he's one of the most incisive and amusing cartoonists on the American scene today," said Tom Bray, editorial page editor for the Detroit News.
M2 PRESSWIRE
Copyright 1999 M2 Communications Ltd.
September 28, 1999
HEADLINE: AHCPR
HHS Secretary appoints new members to AHCPR National Advisory
Council
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala today announced the appointment of four new members to the National Advisory Council (NAC) for the Health Care Policy, Research and Evaluation. The Council provides advice to the Secretary and to the Administrator of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR). The 24-member Council is composed of private-sector experts representing health care plans, providers, purchasers, consumers, health services researchers and includes top federal health officials. "These four new members bring a wealth of knowledge and experience that will enrich the Council's ability to advise AHCPR on its direction and research portfolio," said Secretary Shalala. "Their imaginative and creative leadership will help the agency achieve its goal of improving the quality of health care services for all Americans."
The four new Council members are:
Karen Davis, Ph.D., President, The Commonwealth Fund, New York, NY.
Marsha Lillie-Blanton, Ph.D., Vice President, Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, Washington, D.C.
Uwe E. Reinhardt, Ph.D., James Madison Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
John Clark Nelson, M.D., Partner, Mountain West Obstetrics and Gynecology, Salt Lake City, UT.
PR Newswire
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
September 28, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Reuters Foundation and Carnegie Endowment Announce New Global Public Policy Series; Partnership to Offer International Debates on Economics and Trade
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 28
A new series of global public policy debates designed to foster and disseminate the best new thinking on international economics and trade is to be launched this Autumn, sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Reuters Foundation, which is the educational and humanitarian arm of Reuters Group PLC.
The series of globally televised debates, featuring leading figures in the world of government, business and finance, and the media, will also support special publications, an interactive Web project, and an annual grant award of $50,000.
List of Advisory Board Members -- Public Policy Series (includes)
Professor Peter Kenen
Department of Economics, Princeton University
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
September 28, 1999
HEADLINE: Princeton to offer wireless ethernet
BYLINE: By Emily W. Johnson, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.
Through a joint pilot project between CIT and Firestone Library, Princeton University students will be able to check their e-mail and surf the Web with wireless ethernet services starting next week, according to Steven Sather, CIT director of support services.
The new program, an extension of Dormnet, will provide six wireless ethernet cards for students to borrow from Firestone's reserve desk for five hours at a time.
The cards, which fit into the slot on a laptop where a regular ethernet card is inserted, will allow students to gain access to the Internet while they work outside or in areas difficult to connect to the wired network. If the cards prove to be popular, CIT has four more on reserve.
USA TODAY
Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
September 28, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Religions use retail marketing to compete for
converts
BYLINE: Gerald L. Zelizer
A little more than a year ago, swimmers on the beaches of Long Island looked up to see an airplane trailing an advertising banner from the Marble Collegiate Church on New York's posh Fifth Avenue.
"Make a Friend in a Very High Place," the banner read, "Marblechurch.org."
The banner was a shortened version of one of several slogans being used by the church: "Everyone knows it helps having friends in high places, and no one's higher than God. So stop by Marble this Sunday and make a powerful new friend. Or just strengthen your friendship with an old one." The ad campaign also included the slogan, "You don't have to be a sinner to attend our church. But it helps."
There's a large market out there to be persuaded. In 1955, a Gallup poll showed that only one person in 25 converted from the religion of their childhood. according to Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow's The Restructuring of American Religion. But now, Wuthnow wrote, faith-switchers comprise approximately one-third of the religious population -- an indication that, for many, allegiance to a particular religion is grounded in factors that transcend birth and ancestry.
Business Week
Copyright 1999 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
September 27, 1999
HEADLINE: Jeffrey P. Bezos
BYLINE: By Robert D. Hof
JEFFREY P. BEZOS
AMAZON.COM INC. Position: CEO Contribution: Showed the world how
to deliver ''anal-retentive'' customer service on an e-commerce
Web site. Ambition: To create the online place where people can
find anything they want to buy -- not just books and music
CDs.
A lot of kids in the 1960s wanted to be astronauts, but few as ardently as Jeffrey P. Bezos. A paper he wrote for a NASA student program, ''The Effect of Zero Gravity on the Aging Rate of the Common Housefly,'' won him a trip to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. And in his high school valedictory speech, he called for colonizing space to ensure humanity's future.
Bezos, now 35, never realized those high-flying dreams. But as the founder and chief executive of online superstore Amazon.com Inc., he's on a rocket ride of his own -- one certain to transform everyday life far more than Alan Shepard's first flight in space.
INFORMATION EMPIRE. Before Amazon, Bezos showed little sign of becoming a titan of business -- besides scary smarts, unbounded energy, and the world's loudest laugh. As a senior vice-president at New York investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co., the Princeton University electrical-engineering and computer-science grad was a quick study -- always jumping into new businesses.
InfoWorld
Copyright 1999 InfoWorld Media Group
September 27, 1999
HEADLINE: Security Flaws Or Usability Features? You Decide
The following security exploits or viruses have hit Microsoft software in the past two months.
August
* Researchers at Xerox PARC and Princeton University discover a flaw in Microsoft's Java virtual machine that allows people to create an attack applet attached to an HTML page. When executed, the attack applet can read, modify, or destroy any data on the computer, insert a virus, and insert software to spy on future online activities.
Insight on the News
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
September 27, 1999, Monday
HEADLINE: When Truth Deferred Is Truth Denied
BYLINE: Sarah J. McCarthy
Six-and-a-half years after its infamous siege at the Branch Davidian religious compound in Waco, Texas, the FBI again is being besieged with questions. Director Louis Freeh and White House officials are calling for an independent investigator to head the probe into why it took Freeh's agency so long to acknowledge using pyrotechnic tear-gas canisters at Waco. With the recent admissions by the FBI, mistrust of government justifiably will grow - and should soar among administration apologists and reporters who obstinately have been oblivious to what many view as the totalitarian instincts of the Clinton administration.
Nancy T. Ammerman, a visiting scholar at Princeton University, also evaluated Waco for the Justice Department, concluding that the government's approach was based on building up a legal case against the group and planning a paramilitary-type assault on the compound. "In that atmosphere, I believe, it became easy to lose sight of the human dynamics of the group involved, to plan as if the group were indeed a military target," Ammerman wrote.
M2 PRESSWIRE
Copyright 1999 M2 Communications Ltd.
September 27, 1999
HEADLINE: ROCHESTER UNIVERSITY
University theatre boasts unique season
Double-bill productions revolving around a "Rochester connection" and an original version of an ancient classic make the new theater season at the University of Rochester especially noteworthy.
An ambitious original production of Homer's The Iliad will have its world premiere at the University in the spring. Adapted from an award-winning translation by Robert Fagles, a renowned classicist at Princeton University, the work will be performed in two parts, each presented on alternate evenings. On selected weekends both parts will be presented back-to-back, with an extended dinner break in-between.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
September 27, 1999, Monday
HEADLINE: Inside Politics
BYLINE: Jennifer Harper; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
ATTACK DOG STEVE
Presidential candidate Steve Forbes denies he is trampling on academic freedom by demanding Princeton University fire Peter Singer, the bioethics professor who believes parents should be allowed to kill defective babies.
"It's not about academic freedom," Mr. Forbes told NBC yesterday. "He goes way over the line: infanticide, allowing you to murder your baby a month after the baby is born, killing the elderly. And he makes no bones. He says if you're not happy with your child, kill it."
"You don't put avowed pedophiles in a professorship. You don't put an avowed Nazi, an exterminator, in that kind of position. He is way over the line," Mr. Forbes said of Mr. Singer.
"No university would hire a believer in Nazis. No university would hire somebody who advocated the extermination of a race. And why should we have a person there who advocates - openly - infanticide, openly killing the infirm and the elderly?" Mr. Forbes said.
Last week, the magazine magnate pulled further donations to Princeton, which he estimated to total "over seven figures" since he graduated from the school in 1970.
He'll resume his philanthropy to Princeton if the school gets rid of Mr. Singer, which Mr. Forbes believes likely.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Copyright 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: Fair Share; In Giving, How Much Is Enough?
BYLINE: PETER SINGER
In the Brazilian film "Central Station," Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people.
Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.)
She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted - he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation.
Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor's plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back.
Suppose Dora had told her neighbor that it is a tough world, other people have nice new TVs too, and if selling the kid is the only way she can get one, well, he was only a street kid. She would then have become, in the eyes of the audience, a monster. She redeems herself only by being prepared to bear considerable risks to save the boy.
At the end of the movie, in cinemas in the affluent nations of the world, people who would have been quick to condemn Dora if she had not rescued the boy go home to places far more comfortable than her apartment.
In fact, the average family in the United States spends almost one-third of its income on things that are no more necessary to them than Dora's new TV was to her. Going out to nice restaurants, buying new clothes because the old ones are no longer stylish, vacationing at beach resorts - so much of our income is spent on things not essential to the preservation of our lives and health.
NOTES: Australian philosopher Peter Singer has just begun teaching ethics at Princeton University. He is the author of books including "Practical Ethics," "Rethinking Life & Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics," "How Are We to Live?: Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest" and "A Theory of the Good and the Right." This article is reprinted from The New York Times Magazine.
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Copyright 1999 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
September 26, 1999
HEADLINE: Stimulate Memory Through Exercise
BYLINE: By Joan Rattner Heilman
If you want to stimulate your brain, think harder, remember more and get moving. Scientists at two scientific institutions say vigorous exercise - physical or mental - may spur the growth of new brain cells responsible for learning and memory.
Animal studies headed by neurobiologist Fred H. Gage at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego suggest that strenuous exercise can stimulate the production of neurons. Another scientific team at Princeton University has found that mental tasks might be another way to increase the brain's store of neurons.
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: Oped
Legitimizing bioethicist's warped views a danger We cannot
allow euthanasia to evolve into public policy
BY: LEWIS R. FRIEDNER
Princeton University has inflamed the cinders of hate crimes, reversed years of progress our society has made toward our relations with our neighbors and given academic credibility to extremists in our society who would go back to a time when persons with disabilities where swept under a rug, if not worse.
When Princeton, an international leader in crafting public policy in the field of bioethics, made an offer of employment (with tenure, no less) to Australian bioethics philosopher Peter Singer, it raised more than just a few eyebrows of concern, including those of department chairs and of magazine publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes.
To say that Singer's views, especially toward persons with disabilities, are radical would be a gross understatement. In his writings, Singer makes it clear that human attachment to others is not important, and that our actions should be viewed exclusively in terms of how they effect our future, or the future of others. In this context, Singer argues that it is clear that a person with a disability, with limited potential, should be - in his own words - killed.
Lewis R. Friedner is director of Camden County's Office of Disabled Consumer Services and a board member of the Easter Seal Society of New Jersey. The father of three, he lives in Cherry Hill.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: 100 Southerners Millennium Ballot
BYLINE: Staff
Here's your chance to vote for the 100 most influential Southerners of this century. We've compiled this list of 200 names, but you can also write in your own candidates on the other side of this page. Please make sure to also fill out the entry form as you may be contacted by a reporter.
166. Woodrow Wilson: Virginia-born U.S. president and president of Princeton University.
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
September 26, 1999
HEADLINE: Disability-rights activists answer right-to-die comment with protest; Members fighting to show they aren't a drain on society
SOURCE: The Philadelphia Inquirer
BYLINE: William R. Macklin
For a grass-roots group with no membership list and a name lifted from a Monty Python movie, it was a dramatic showing.
For weeks, Not Dead Yet, a tiny, largely unheralded disability-rights group based in suburban Chicago, had plastered the Internet with calls for a demonstration Tuesday against controversial Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer.
Nearly 250 people - some from as far away as Oregon - showed up.
Many sat in wheelchairs in the rain.
Fourteen were arrested.
And some, unable to walk, crawled up the steps of Princeton's administration building to show their disdain for Mr. Singer and his argument that the parents of severely disabled babies should be allowed to let them die.
Federal News Service
Copyright 1999 Federal Information Systems Corporation
SEPTEMBER 26, 1999, SUNDAY
SECTION: NEWS MAKERS & POLICY MAKERS
HEADLINE: John Mclaughlin's "One On One" With Guest: Malcolm "Steve" Forbes, Publisher, Forbes Magazine, and Republican Presidential Candidate
TAPED: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1999 SEPTEMBER 24, 1999
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: "Steve Forbes: Talking and acting tough."
This week, presidential candidate Forbes cut off his alma matter Princeton University from any money until it fires a controversial faculty member who advocates certain homicides, including infanticide and euthanasia. Professor Peter Singer rejects philosophies that depict human beings as having a unique and exalted dignity that distinguishes them from other species, including animals.
This week, candidate Forbes also called for the abolition of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. What do these cases tell us about the kind of president Forbes would make? We'll find out.
Here is the host, John McLaughlin.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: How much have you donated to Princeton, Mr. Forbes, since your graduation in 1970?
MR. FORBES: Well, over the years, it's been over seven figures from all the members of the family. And, as you indicated in your beginning, when Mr. Singer was given this appointment and I found out who he was and what he stood for, I have not given a penny since.
He goes -- it's not academic freedom -- he goes way over the line; infanticide, allowing you to murder your baby a month after the baby is born, killing the elderly. And he makes no bones. He says, "If you're not happy with your child, kill it." You don't put avowed pedophiles in a professorship; you don't put an avowed Nazi, an exterminator, in that kind of position. He is way over the line.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He doesn't get into pedophilia, or he doesn't get into Nazis, does he?
MR. FORBES: Well, he comes from a school, Eugenics, which believes that you should be allowed to cull the human race for its imperfections. That was very prevalent in the Western world, sadly, in the '20s and '30s. And the Nazis advocated what he advocated in killing the infirm, killing the handicapped.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Did you attempt to dissuade Princeton from hiring Dr. Singer?
MR. FORBES: I didn't know he was being considered. When I found out about the appointment, I made it very clear what my views are, and have since.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think since taking this step you are building Singer?
MR. FORBES: I think quite the opposite. If you don't fight evil, whether it's with an individual or with an ideology, then I think you're guilty of derelection.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Are you trampling academic freedom on the premise that students should be exposed to variant, even unpopular and controversial points of view?
MR. FORBES: There are plenty of variant and controversial points of view in a university today. But it is one thing to have controversy, quite another to have an open advocate of open murder.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: If the case is as clear as you present it, do you not expect the management, the officialdom of Princeton University, to capitulate to what you have asked them to do -- get rid of Singer?
MR. FORBES: I think -- I would use the word -- I think they will see the light and realize this was truly over the bounds and take the appropriate steps of having Mr. Singer removed from Princeton University.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Don't misinterpret me. I'm not assigning blame to you. What I'm saying is that the custodians, the officialdom of Princeton University may plea academic freedom and stay with Singer.
MR. FORBES: They've done that from the beginning, and my point is, it's not an issue of academic freedom. It's putting somebody on a platform whose views are beyond the pale.
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: Healthy Traveler; Thinking Ahead About Emergency Contraception
BYLINE: KATHLEEN DOHENY
During travel medicine consultations with her patients, Dr. Terri Rock brings up the question ever so delicately. There's no easy way, she has learned, to ask people planning a trip whether they've thought about their need to take along emergency contraception.
But Rock, a Santa Monica family practice physician with expertise in travel medicine, mentions it if they don't, because she has seen too many travelers come home worried about pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
"When I bring up the possibility of sex with a stranger, they all say, 'Oh, no,' " she says. "They are almost offended." In fact, "the people you least suspect get into trouble. And there's so little awareness about emergency contraception."
For information, travelers can turn to the Internet. The Office of Population Research at Princeton University operates the Emergency Contraception Web site, http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/. In the section titled "ECPs Around the World," the Princeton site lists which options are available by country.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: The Singer Solution to World Poverty
It is not always so simple to draw a clear line between a necessity and a luxury. Isn't it a luxury to attend an Ivy League university like Princeton, whose faculty Singer recently joined? Will he encourage his students to transfer to state schools and donate their leftover tuition money to charity?
Karen Steinig, Tarrytown, N.Y.
Although a Princeton University alumnus, I have not been paying much attention to the uproar over appointments to the faculty. One rather expects professors to be quirky and trusts that the quirks of one professor will balance those of another. But Singer's article is so incompletely reasoned that I'm inclined to think his opponents may be right, even if not for their reasons.
What purpose is there in making the extra effort to earn income beyond immediate minimal requirements if you are simply going to give it away to strangers? Better to kick back and enjoy more leisure! And buy less. If that kind of thinking catches on, our economy will go into a depression and we can stop this moral worrying, because there won't be any surplus income or wealth to worry about.
Mikk Hinnov, Bridgewater, N.J.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: JERSEY FOOTLIGHTS: Medals for Graves and Segal
BYLINE: By KAREN DeMASTERS
Michael Graves, the Princeton architect who designed the Newark Museum expansion, and George Segal, the New Brunswick sculptor who creates lifelike human figures out of white plaster are among the 11 recipients of the National Endowment of the Arts medals to be awarded at the White House on Wednesday.
Mr. Graves, an award-winning architect, is the Schirmer Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. He has designed everything from charm bracelets to kitchen timers to vases and may be most widely known for his "Tea Bird" kettle.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: JERSEY FOOTLIGHTS: For the Poetry in Your Soul
BYLINE: By BARBARA WIND
"New Jersey is such a poetry state!" the poet Sharon Olds says. Home of Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, it is also the site of the biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, where more than 12,000 people go to listen, read and meet kindred souls. This is not a festival year, but you can catch its spirit from PBS tonight at 9 with the premiere of "Fooling With Words With Bill Moyers," a two-hour documentary filmed in 1998.
Mr. Moyers has also made "Sounds of Poetry," a series of nine half-hour shows drawn from last year's festival, to be shown on Sunday evenings starting next week. "Bill Moyers has been faithful to the cause of the festival and has repeatedly found ways to bring poetry to the public, extending the reach of the festival to a national and international audience," said James Haba, poetry director of the Dodge Foundation.
The program, which intercuts readings with poet interviews and audience reactions, includes a galaxy of star poets. New Jersey is well represented: Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate, is a native of Long Branch; Amiri Baraka lives in Newark, and Joe Weil in Cranford. Paul Muldoon teaches at Princeton University, and Deborah Garrison lives in Montclair. W. S. Merwin grew up in Union City and went to Princeton, where he and Galway Kinnell became friends.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 1999 Bergen Record Corp.
September 26, 1999, SUNDAY
HEADLINE: Refiguring Age Of The Universe: Findings Suggest It's Not As Old As Thought
SOURCE: Wire services
BYLINE: ALEX DOMINGUEZ, The Associated Press
The celestial yardstick most commonly used for measuring the universe may have to be recalibrated.
That's the upshot of an analysis by a team of astronomers who worked with new, more precise measurements of the distance to a far-off galaxy.
If their analysis is correct, the universe may be expanding faster and could be somewhat younger than currently thought, the researchers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding in 1929, astronomers have sought to determine the rate of that expansion, called the Hubble constant, and whether the universe will continue expanding or eventually collapse in on itself. Over the past five years, astronomers have come up with increasingly more accurate measurements, and some believe their estimates are within 10 percent of the actual rate.
To reach these estimates, astronomers measure and compare distances to certain flickering stars called Cepheid variables. Astronomers use the brightness of Cepheids observed in far-off galaxies and compare them with Cepheids in a galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The problem, however, has been determining the distance to the LMC, which has been measured only to within 10 percent accuracy.
NASA researcher Eyal Maoz and his colleagues tried to get around the problem by using new, more precise measurements to another galaxy altogether, known as NGC4258. These measurements are believed to be accurate to within 4 percent.
"Galaxy NGC4258 may turn out to be a better yardstick," Princeton University astronomer Bohdan Paczynski wrote in an accompanying commentary. But he said that because of other recently discovered errors in celestial observations, the mistakes may cancel themselves out and the Hubble constant may not need to be revised after all.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
SEPTEMBER 26, 1999, SUNDAY
HEADLINE: Letters To Book Review
POWS AND RACE
Editor -- I have not had the chance to read "Hart's War" by John Katzenbach (September 11), but as a POW in the South Compound of Stalag Luft III, I had the chance to establish a passing acquaintance with his father, Nicholas Katzenbach, who was I believe, studying for exams at Princeton University. He also did some teaching in the class sessions.
Boredom was indeed the common denominator in each "kriegie's" life.
For a more detailed discussion on how we coped (successfully) , I suggest "Stalag Luft III," by Arthur A. Durand, the most complete and authoritative discussion of this POW or any other POW camp of the period.
lRVING BAUM, Lt. Col. USAF (Retired)
Kriegsgefangener No.3629
Napa
Sunday Times (London)
Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Limited
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: Master of controversy prevails
BYLINE: Garth Alexander
Love them or hate them, management gurus such as Michael Porter have changed the face of business, writes Garth Alexander
MANAGEMENT gurus are a controversial breed. Some economists scorn them as worthless. One book about them is called The Witch Doctors.
But people clamour for their advice. Management consultancy is a Pounds 12billion a year industry. America's business schools annually hand out 75,000 MBA degrees and corporate America snaps up the graduates at a median starting salary of $100,000 a year.
Michael Porter of Harvard Business School in Boston is among the most influential. His seminal work, Competitive Strategy, published 19 years ago, challenged the conventional theory of comparative advantage and introduced a new definition of business strategy.
The son of an army officer, Porter spent his youth moving from one military base to another. This must have played havoc with his friendships and his education but it encouraged him to be a competitive sportsman, doubtless to impress his ever-changing circle of friends. By the time he left school he was a state football and baseball star. But golf became his favourite sport when, at the age of 12, he moved with his father to a base where the family home was next to a golf course.
At Princeton University, where he took an engineering degree, he was selected for the NCCA All America college golf team and he briefly considered turning professional. Looking back on his decision to abandon football and baseball in favour of golf, he says: "I had the highest upside potential in this (golf) than in any other sport. I was planning to win all the major college championships in the eastern part of the US. But I found it wasn't stimulating enough to go on as a professional. It was glamorous. But it was kind of boring."
TULSA WORLD
Copyright 1999 The Tulsa World
September 26, 1999
HEADLINE: Olympics swim has lasted 63 years
BYLINE: JOHN A. FERGUSON
SOURCE: World Sports Writer
Albert Vandeweghe of Tulsa earned a silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke in the 1936 Olympics at Berlin, Germany.
Now 63 years later, Vandeweghe, at 83, registered victories in the 100-meter freestyle and the 50- and 100-meter backstroke events of the 13th annual Oklahoma Senior Olympics.
His triumphs in swimming are legion. After returning from Germany, Vandeweghe entered Princeton University where he was never beaten while piling up six AAU National Championships, five NCAA Championships and nine American records.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: A controversial appointment at Princeton
Peter Singer wants to define his own moral values, and he considers God-centered way of thinking about human beings to be "medieval."
Well, one would hope Mr. Singer is in the minority at Princeton University, and perhaps after enough protests, the administration at Princeton may reconsider its foolish action in giving Mr. Singer his faculty position. Perhaps with a lot of prayer, Princeton might even come to its senses and reverse itself.
RICHARD B. HALL, Huntsville, Ala.
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright 1999 The Commercial Appeal
September 25, 1999, SATURDAY
HEADLINE: The Sacred Exists In The Mundane, If You Look
BYLINE: The Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK
Theologian Jane Redmont is striding down Fifth Avenue at a quick clip as the words come out: "To get a spiritual life, we need to slow down and take some deep breaths."
She knows both the hectic pace of modern life and a shared yearning for spirituality.
"A lot of us in the contemporary world feel assaulted by the speed, the economic pressures, the competition and the feeling that 'I have to pull myself up by my own bootstraps, make it on my own,' " Redmont said in an interview. "We're feeling very fragmented, and there's a desire to pray with our whole selves, with our heads and our hearts as well as our bodies, our senses."
And how, pray tell, does one do that?
Planting a garden, making love, kneading bread, dancing, singing, or even just sitting, breathing and meditating - all can be spiritual acts, says Redmont, whose new book, When in Doubt, Sing, explores myriad ways of "praying" in the angst-filled modern world.
Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow, an authority on trends in American spirituality, says, "More people in the United States pray than actually believe firmly that God exists. Prayer is a search, an expression of faith, but also an admission of doubt."
NOTE: This story, which circulated nationally, also appeared in The Desert News, Salt Lake City.
Lewiston Morning Tribune
Copyright 1999 Lewiston Morning Tribune
September 25, 1999, Saturday
HEADLINE: Princeton exposes its students to dangerous
ideas
BYLINE: Jim Fisher
Peter Singer is the rarest of people, on or off a university campus. He is an original thinker.
His thinking is too original for people who are protesting Princeton University's hiring of philosopher Singer as a bioethics professor. More than 250 of those people demonstrated during Princeton's opening of classes the other day, adding to the objections already raised by others including Steve Forbes, the publisher, presidential candidate and member of the Princeton Board of Trustees.
Forbes, a multimillionaire, has even vowed to withhold all donations to Princeton while Singer is there.
You can understand why people would object to some of Singer's ideas. As a founder of the animal rights movement, Singer has argued that mature animals are persons, deserving of as much respect and protection as we grant to humans. And as a latter-day utilitarian, he has also argued that very young infants, with as yet undeveloped consciousness, might be put to death if they are born with severe defects.
That kind of talk enrages right-to-life advocates, who assert that human life is sacred. But it should also make advocates of legal abortion uncomfortable. Singer does not see much difference between a late-term fetus, which many abortion defenders say is still not a person, and a newborn baby, which they say has become one through delivery from the womb.
What is less defensible than objections to Singer's ideas are objections to his presence on the Princeton campus. As a scholar, he is neither a slacker nor a fraud. His numerous books have challenged contemporary ethics in ways that must be dealt with, if only because Singer is not afraid to follow his assumptions to their logical conclusions. That goads the rest of us to do the same with some of our own assumptions, with sometimes disturbing results.
And some protesters' comparison of Singer to Hitler or, in Forbes' words, to "an anti-Semite or a racist," are themselves fraudulent. His writings can no more be written off to blind prejudice that Galileo's defense of the Copernican sun-centered universe could be written off to religious heresy. Galileo was a devout Catholic, and Singer is an unflinching exponent of a philosophy that has had a considerable influence on modern political theory.
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: SOUNDS LIKE SCIENCE (4:00 PM ET)
September 25, 1999, Saturday
HEADLINE: Studies On Mice Highlight Year In Science
Anchors: Ira Flatow
REPORTERS: DAVID KESTENBAUM
IRA FLATOW, host:
Because this is our last show, which means we won't be here when 1999 turns into 2000, so you're going to be on your own for that Y2K problem, we're going to jump the gun a bit. Here with a look back at the year in science, or at least so far is NPR's David Kestenbaum.
DAVID KESTENBAUM reporting:
Actually, looking back at all the science stories we've done this year, I couldn't find any breakthroughs. As far as I know we're still alone in the universe, the laws of physics still intact, cancer has not been cured. In fact, the year in science has been pretty dull; that is, unless you're a mouse.
BOB EDWARDS: Researchers at the University of Hawaii say they have successfully cloned male mice. Their findings are published in today's issue of...
ROBERT SIEGEL: Researchers from Princeton University say they've created a smarter-than-average mouse by altering a single gene.
The National Journal
Copyright 1999 The National Journal, Inc.
September 25, 1999
HEADLINE: A Gadfly for the New Millennium
BYLINE: Shawn Zeller
Even by consumer activist Jamie Love's exacting standards, July 22 was a productive day. Twice in eight hours, he trekked to Capitol Hill and challenged the titans of the technology and drug industries. First, Love warned the members of a House Commerce subcommittee about the growing power of the Internet's governing body--ICANN, the industry-backed Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Testifying in the afternoon before a different House panel, he denounced the Clinton Administration and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry for opposing South Africa's efforts to obtain low-cost AIDS drugs.
At 50, Love is older than the typical 20-something Nader raider.
In 1980, Love earned a spot in a mid-career master's degree program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, even though he did not have a college degree. Five years later, he collected a second master's degree, this time from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. After teaching stints at Princeton and Rutgers University, Love took a job as a senior economist at the Frank Russell Co., a pension fund consulting firm based in Tacoma, Wash. In 1990, he joined Nader as the director of the Taxpayer Assets Project, which worked to expand public access to government information. As his focus broadened, Love in 1994 changed the group's name to the Consumer Project on Technology.
American Health Line
Copyright 1999 The National Journal Group, Inc.
September 24, 1999
SECTION: MEDICAL ETHICS
HEADLINE: Peter Singer: Activists Protest His First Day
Police arrested 14 people Tuesday as nearly 250 disability advocates and some abortion opponents gathered at Princeton
University's Nassau Hall to protest the hiring of ethics professor Peter Singer, who has "written in support of euthanasia
for some disabled infants." Organized by the disability rights group "Not Dead Yet," protesters -- none of which appeared to be university students -- carried signs reading "Singer=Hitler," and argued that Singer's stance "smacked of the Nazi policy of putting the handicapped to death." Stephen Drake, one protest organizer, said, "This is more against Princeton than it is against Peter Singer. The university has chosen to hire this man, to give him a platform." Princeton spokesperson Justin Harmon said that since Singer's hiring, there have been other protests, adding, "There's been an active campaign of disinformation about Peter Singer. They've taken things he's said or written out of context."
PRINCETON'S BLUNDER
As Princeton welcomes Singer into its community, "it should accept, despite what it may prefer to assume, that there will inevitably be those who WILL perceive this welcome as a tacit endorsement of his views," says an editorial in the Trenton Times. Although a "liberal arts college of Princeton's stature is, after all, a place where ALL ideas, including 'dangerous' and unpopular ones" deserve a forum, the piece notes that this "doesn't mean the author himself merits a place on the faculty."
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
September 24, 1999, Friday
HEADLINE: Your Views
SPRING LAKE--Professor's views chilling I found the story about Dr. Peter Singer's appointment as a bioethics professor at Princeton University most disturbing, particularly that the article did not include any of Singer's philosophical beliefs that would immediately make clear why such a controversy should exist. Rather, the article included numerous remarks by Princeton's communications director that Singer "is actually someone who is very concerned with the value and quality of life," and that the "distorted descriptions" of Singer and his views are really to blame for this conflict.
No one needs to distort Singer's ethical stance -- his own words, both written and spoken, are chilling enough. In his book "Practical Ethics," Singer writes that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often, it is not wrong at all." Singer classes all infants below "normal human beings" and makes it quite clear that no newborn infant, healthy or disabled, has a strong right to existence.
While some might argue that these are only one person's beliefs, Singer's hiring by Princeton, a leading institution of higher education in the United States, only serves to legitimize his cold and frightening views.
Bernadette M. Rogoff
The Associated Press
September 24, 1999, Friday
HEADLINE: The growing moral debate over the value of human
embryos
BYLINE: By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP Religion Writer
DATELINE: NEW YORK
There's a growing moral debate over something smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
Such is the size of the early human embryo, or blastocyst, the cluster of cells formed just after fertilization that will grow into a newborn infant if nature is allowed to take its course.
How should citizens view this tiny thing? Is it a human being? A potential human being? Does it have rights? Should society protect it?
Or, if there's a potentially big payoff in terms of medical progress, should society allow it to be put to death? In the classical formulation, does the end justify the means?
This issue - paralleling the abortion debate - engages theologians, researchers, politicians and such organizations as the American Cancer Society.
Research using human embryos is currently limited by a congressional ban on federal funding. That could change, depending on reaction to a 111-page report issued last week by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission that urges public aid.
The panel of 17 scientists and academicians, chaired by Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro, advises the government on the ever more complex moral conundrums in biological research.
The embryo debate, brewing for years, was newly energized by scientific developments late last year. A University of Wisconsin team reported it had extracted and cultivated human "stem cells" taken from early embryos. And a Johns Hopkins University team acquired stem cells from aborted fetuses, a technique the panel also discusses.
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Copyright 1999 The Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc.
September 24, 1999 Friday
HEADLINE: Professor's opinions dangerous
BYLINE: TIM SWARENS
The clerk cracked a corny joke.
Perhaps it was patronizing, but I smiled anyway, hoping to encourage him as he rang up the salad, the ice cream and the soft drinks.
No doubt he encounters customers who, spotting the signs of Down's syndrome, are a little less patient, a little more gruff, as he tells a joke and takes their money. But he seemed happy, filling a job, earning his keep.
As Indiana, like other states, moves more people with developmental disabilities back into communities, we'll see them on the streets and in the stores. Some we will run into as they start new jobs.
Peter Singer began his own new job this week, leading his first class in bioethics at Princeton University. He came to his Ivy League post with an impressive resume. He also came with dangerous ideas.
"Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all," he's written.
Who is a defective infant? Singer cites children with Down's syndrome, hemophilia or spina bifida.
He extends his views on death to those at the other end of life as well, writing, "We would have to accept in some cases that it would be right to kill a person who does not choose to die on the grounds that the person will otherwise lead a miserable life. "
M2 PRESSWIRE
Copyright 1999 M2 Communications Ltd.
September 24, 1999
HEADLINE: The White House
J. Stapleton Roy named as Assistant Sec for Intelligence and Research at State Department
The President today announced his intent to nominate J. Stapleton Roy to be Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research at the State Department.
Ambassador Roy, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, joined the Foreign Service in 1956.
Over the next two decades, Mr. Roy served in the American Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, the Consulate General on Hong Kong, the Embassy in Taipei, Taiwan, the American Embassy in Moscow. In 1978 Ambassador Roy was assigned as Deputy Director first of the Soviet desk and later of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs. In 1978 he was assigned as Deputy Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, becoming Deputy Chief of Mission when the United States established diplomatic relations with China in 1979. Following an assignment as Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok, Thailand, Ambassador Roy was appointed Ambassador to Singapore in 1984. He returned to Washington in 1986 to become Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, following which he served two years as Executive Secretary of the Department and Special Assistant to the Secretary of State. Ambassador Roy was appointed Ambassador to the People's Republic of China in 1991 and then served as Ambassador to Indonesia from 1996-1999.
Ambassador Roy received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1956 and completed one year of post-graduate studies at the University of Washington from 1964-1965.
The Assistant Secretary reports directly to the Secretary of State on all intelligence matters, providing current and objective analysis on critical foreign policy priorities, both immediate and long term. The Assistant Secretary is also responsible for ensuring that the wide range of U.S. intelligence activities are reflective of Administration foreign policy objectives in a post Cold-War environment.
Newsday (New York, NY)
Copyright 1999 Newsday, Inc.
September 24, 1999, Friday
HEADLINE: Chamber's Odd Blend / Brentano Works Are A Little Electric (But Not Rock And Roll)
BYLINE: By Benjamin Ivry. Benjamin Ivry is a freelance writer.
SOME FANS of the refined art of chamber music might look askance if confronted with works for electric guitar and string quartet, but the audience that fills the 150-seat concert space of the Garden City Chamber Music Society is far from an ordinary crowd.
The 44-year-old program director, Bruce Adolphe, a composer and author who works for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, has been associated with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Central Nassau (where the concerts are held) since he became music director there as a teenager in the mid-'70s.
Since launching the chamber music series in 1987, he has offered series like this year's eight-concert program, led off Sunday afternoon by a gala event with the prize-winning Brentano Quartet. Princeton University composer Steven Mackey's "Troubador Songs" and "Physical Property" will be performed on a program with Schubert's popular String Quartet No. 15, in G Major quartet, D.887. The Brentano's first performance anywhere was at a Garden City series, in 1992, and the quartet's first violinist, Mark Steinberg, says, "The audience is very open-minded. They know Bruce and trust him, so that if he brings a concert there, it will be something of quality." Steinberg cautions that the two Mackey works are "not rock music. Mackey is very much into the sound of the electric guitar blending in with the string quartet. It's never blasted." He calls "Physical Property" a "rollicking good time," whereas the other work is "more reflective."
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
September 24, 1999
HEADLINE: Princeton student translators volunteer at Red
Cross to help flood victims
BYLINE: By Emily W. Johnson, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Bound Brook, N.J.
Princeton University undergraduates acted as translators in Bound Brook, N.J., throughout this week responding to the Red Cross' call to help Latino immigrants cope with losing their homes during Tropical Storm Floyd.
The Red Cross has opened a shelter in Bound Brook, a community 20 miles north of Princeton, for more than 350 residents who have lost their homes. The organization contacted the University Monday, requesting student volunteers to supply immediate and long-term support.
"Not many of the Red Cross volunteers knew how to speak Spanish," said Melissa Velez '01, who volunteered Tuesday as a translator. "It just made everything easier for the people in the shelter that we could communicate with them."
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
September 24, 1999
HEADLINE: Princeton freshman lives life to fullest after
summer heart transplant
BYLINE: By Michael Koike, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.
To get into Princeton University, high school seniors need good grades and strong extracurricular activities. But only Jessica Melore, Princeton freshman, managed to achieve both despite a heart attack and a leg amputation..
Almost exactly a year ago, while Melore was celebrating her aunt's birthday at a restaurant in her hometown of Branchburg, N.J., she began feeling dizzy and light-headed. Pressure pains in her chest and a "heaviness" in her arm exacerbated her condition, and she was taken to a nearby hospital.
After trips to two other hospitals that night, Melore ended up at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia where doctors determined that she had suffered a major heart attack.
A blood clot had developed in one of Melore's main arteries. As a result, blood stopped flowing to the left side of her heart. Melore's heart failure took her family completely by surprise: neither she nor any family members had a history of heart problems.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
September 24, 1999, Friday
HEADLINE: Correction--Republican presidential hopeful Steve Forbes announced Tuesday that he would not contribute any money to Princeton University as long as Peter Singer, the controversial bioethicist, remained a tenured professor there. The Washington Times incorrectly reported that the move was a reversal on Mr. Forbes' part. He actually stopped giving money to the university more than a year ago, in protest to the hiring of Professor Singer.
The Washington Times
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
September 24, 1999, Friday
HEADLINE: Senator Forbes?
Steve Forbes is certainly a conservative, but is he willing to become a conservative hero? That question has to be asked of the millionaire publisher because he is virtually assured not to get the Republican presidential nomination. With that brutal fact in mind Mr. Forbes should be considering other, albeit longer, roads to the White House. For Steve Forbes this could mean a serious look at New Jersey's open Senate seat.
As David Frum in The Weekly Standard pointed out in this week's issue, a Senate run has many advantages. The biggest objection raised to Mr. Forbes' presidential candidacy is not his ideas or proposed policy, but the simple fact that he has never held elected office. Being a senator from New Jersey would obviously counter that.
A term or possibly two terms in the Senate would also put Mr. Forbes squarely on the map as a conservative willing to fight. It is important to remember that last time the publisher ran for president he certainly was conservative on taxes - pushing the flat tax with more vigor than anyone - but his social conservative credentials weren't altogether clear. For example, he supported Christine Todd Whitman for governor of New Jersey and she isn't exactly in the pro-life camp - a constituency Mr. Forbes has been working to win over since after the last presidential election.
Likewise Mr. Forbes' recent decision to withdraw financial support from Princeton University because of the hiring of a professor who believes in killing the old, the handicapped and various other less-than-productive people, comes a little belatedly. As late as last week Mr. Forbes was ruling out withholding his contributions. The reversal, months after the professor was hired, looked as though he bowed to pressure instead of acting out of conviction -which is probably far from the truth, but in politics perception is reality.
HEADLINE: Universe May Be Younger Than Thought
BYLINE: ALEX DOMINGUEZ
The celestial yardstick commonly used for measuring outer space may have to be recalibrated, according to astronomers who say the universe may be expanding faster and could be younger than currently believed.
The team worked with new, more precise measurements of the distance to a far-off galaxy and reported its findings in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding in 1929, astronomers have sought to determine the rate of that expansion, called the Hubble constant, and whether the universe will continue expanding or eventually collapse in on itself.
To reach these estimates, astronomers measure and compare distances to certain flickering stars called Cepheid variables. Astronomers use the brightness of Cepheids observed in far-off galaxies and compare them with Cepheids in a galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The problem, however, has been determining the distance to the LMC, which has been measured only to within 10 percent accuracy.
NASA researcher Eyal Maoz and his colleagues tried to get around the problem by using new, more precise measurements to another galaxy, known as NGC4258. These measurements are believed to be accurate to within 4 percent.
''Galaxy NGC4258 may turn out to be a better yardstick,'' Princeton University astronomer Bohdan Paczynski wrote in an accompanying commentary.
But he said that because of other recently discovered errors in celestial observations, the mistakes may cancel themselves out and the Hubble constant may not need to be revised after all.
OBITUARIES
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 1999 The Providence Journal Company
September 29, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: OBITUARIES
MERLIN F. ROOD, 85, of 25 Hamilton Gate Court, a touring and executive manager for the American Automobile Association for 30 years before retiring in 1984, died yesterday at Brentwood Nursing Home. He was the husband of Helen L. (Lemos) Rood.
He was a graduate of Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pa., and completed graduate work at Princeton University.
HEADLINE: Son of former senator dies at age 54
DATELINE: NEWPORT, R.I.
Herbert C. Pell III, the oldest son of former U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, has died at Rhode Island Hospital at age 54. Pell died last Friday after battling cancer for six years.
Pell divided his time between Newport and Tucson, Ariz., where he owned a car dealership. Pell liked Mercedes cars. He was also an avid yachtsman and a devotee of the arts.
Educated at St. George's, Pell studied art history at Princeton University and received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1969.
Fulton County Daily Report
Copyright 1999 American Lawyer Media, L.P.
September 28, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Cancer Claims James W. Harris, Morris, Manning's Real
Estate Chief
BYLINE: Janet L. Conley, Staff Reporter
James W. Harris, the lawyer who handled most of the real estate finance work for the condominiums and apartments built along Lenox Road in recent years, died Saturday of cancer. He was 49.
Harris, an Atlanta native, was a senior real estate finance partner at Morris, Manning & Martin.
Harris, a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University, joined Smith, Cohen, Ringel, Kohler & Martin shortly after graduating from Duke University Law School in 1974.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
September 26, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: David Metcalfe Jr.; Electric Supply Firm Executive
David D. Metcalfe Jr., a business executive and community leader in St. Louis, died Friday (Sept. 24, 1999) at his home in Ladue of leukemia after a brief illness. He was 77.
Mr. Metcalfe was vice president of marketing and sales for Guarantee Electrical Co. from 1977 to 1988, and a consultant to the company until his death.
Mr. Metcalfe was born and reared in St. Louis. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1943 from Princeton University. He served in the Marine Corps in World War II and in the Korean War, receiving the medal of commendation. He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1972, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.