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Princeton in the News
December 2 to 8, 1999
HIGHLIGHT• Princeton to close buildings on New Year's
OTHER HEADLINES• Child Killer Weds In Death-Row Ceremony
• Fusion power holds enormous promise for future
• In defense of Harry Potter and Pokemon
• Cartographer of the brain: Wilder Penfield plugged away to advance brain surgery
• Princeton committee weighs financial aid raise
• Forbes steps up campaign as key primaries draw near
• Religion prof's e-mail sparks controversy at Princeton
• WTO Talks Said to Send 'Grim Message'; Collapse May Boost Tension, U.S. Deficit
• US Vows to Continue Support for Indonesia
• Out-of-Left-Field, Surprise Cellular Play
• Survey: world's most respected companies: the quintessential figure of electronic commerce
• Internet stocks, their performance ... and whether they are a good value for the investor
• Index funds have gained huge influence in the mutual fund industry
• PR Newswire Names Vice President of Human Resources
• Curtains for Theater? Not So, Founder Says Crossroads Tackling Debt
• Princeton profs voice mixed views over increase in enrollment
• Princeton researchers to take part in Internet improvement project
• Xerox: Changes could raise insurance costs for some
• State board weighs Bible class funding
• Entrepreneur Gap
• Newly Discovered Signaling Pathway Expected to Lead to New Class of Antibiotics
• 50 years of relations, Indonesian and US continue
• Amorphous-silicon process aims at new 'macroelectronics'; Startup will print low-cost, large-area circuits
• Inheritances with strings attatched
• Sun Microsystems to Host Inaugural Meeting for Java(TM) Technology In Administration Special Interest Group
• How Sexy Is Chalk Dust?; Plenty, judging from the attention mathematicians and numbers (especially zero) are getting these days
• U. Michigan prof instrumental in war analysis
• Pre-U courses best at Sunway
• DANCE; An Improbable Convert to Wagner
• A Surrealist Composer Comes To the Rescue of Modernism
• Nobel Economics: Spending the Check
• Architecture
• Ivy League or Briar Patch?
• Students rethink views on alcohol; Young people and researchers say stricter rules and changing public attitudes have made an impact on campus drinking
• Students take (it) off for a run; streaking is making a comeback on college campuses
• Candidate for council has history of bad debts; bailey also wriggles when questioned about pro-basketball claims
• Xerox may pay workers to buy own insurance
• Hot-and-cold chips with running fluids
• Princeton's professor of infanticide
• Countdown 2000
• A Revisionist Ottoman History Shifts Blame for Today's Conflicts
• Search for a New Leader of NIH Focuses on the Short Term
• Architecture review==Tinkertoy Fantasy for a City of Unquenchable Desire
• Omaha, Neb., Family Overhauls Bank Ownership
OBITUARIES• UW history professor Peter Sugar dies at 80
• Longtime St. Petersburg, Fla., Auto Dealer Dies
• John C. Walker
• Donald H. Halsey, 89, advertising, pr exec
• Sam Treiman, 74; Physicist Helped Develop Particle Theory
Highlight
The Associated Press
December 8, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Princeton to close buildings on New Year's, fearing Y2K problems
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.Princeton University will close its buildings for 48 hours over New Year's, fearing possible blackouts and computer problems from the Y2K computer bug. It also will disconnect its computer system from the Internet for a seven-hour period around midnight Jan. 1.
From 1 p.m. on Dec. 31 to 1 p.m. on Jan. 2, only members of a Y2K contingency team, essential public safety officers and professors conducting certain research projects will be allowed to enter administrative and academic buildings, the school's public safety director, Jerrold Witsil, said in a memo to university employees last week.
Professors working on approved projects will be able to keep working when the clock strikes midnight.
Even though the school will be closed from Dec. 17 until Jan. 3 for winter recess, students who won't be going home will be allowed to stay in their dormitory rooms.
Employees have been encouraged to unplug nonessential devices like fax machines and television sets to conserve electricity and protect against power surges.
The university has said it is Y2K compliant and that the shutdown is only a precaution.
Other Headlines
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright 1999 The Commercial Appeal
December 8, 1999HEADLINE: CHILD KILLER WEDS IN DEATH-ROW CEREMONY
BYLINE: Bartholomew Sullivan The Commercial Appeal; Jan Smith of the newspaper's library contributed research to this; story.
Death row inmate Damien Echols, convicted of killing three West Memphis 8-year-olds in 1993, is now a married man.
Echols, 24, married 36-year-old Lorri A. Davis of Little Rock on Friday afternoon in the visitation room of the Maximum Security Unit at Tucker, Ark., Department of Correction spokesman Dina Tyler confirmed Tuesday. …
According to a June story in The Arkansas Times, Davis has been a close friend of Echols's for some time and has regularly sent him books whose content or character have required the scrutiny of DOC officials. When Davis sent him books by the acclaimed theologian and Biblical historian Elaine Pagels of Princeton University earlier this year - including The Origin of Satan - prison officials convened a screening review committee. …
DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
Copyright 1999 Denver Publishing Company
December 8, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Fusion power holds enormous promise for future
Regarding the Nov. 26 article ''Lobbying group slams public service'': Alarmists like the Colorado Public Interest Research Group have prevented real research into ''megapower'' generating systems of the future.
A Science page article earlier this year told of the NSTX Torus experiment at Princeton University's plasma physics laboratory. It explained that the fusion experiment shows promise, but research on the technology lacks government funds.
Lab director Robert T. Goldston noted that the fusion research will have valuable spinoffs, including plasmas to make better computer chips, medical items, luminous display panels that are more efficient, and a lightweight fuel for rocket thrusters for spaceships and satellites.
In the 21st century, world population will reach 10 billion people in a high-tech, power-hungry ''trans- industrial'' society. Fossil fuels will run low and atomic fission - although needed - is considered unsafe. Wind and solar power, even if perfected, would be grossly inadequate - a mere drop in the bucket.
Fusion power offers immense advantages. Heat exchangers serving huge turbine-generators would dwarf today's power-generating facilities. Grid systems would be improved.
Fusion power yields only a fraction of the radioactivity of the atomic fission plants. There is no threat of meltdown and a plentiful source of deuterium can be obtained from water.
Mega amounts of cheaper energy would enhance public transportation systems in cities and suburbs alike. Fusion technology could be used to dispose of wastes, and hydrogen-driven automobiles are within reach.
We should not let America's environmental extremists destroy the greatest social-technical society on earth. What they stand for is draconian policies and impractical solutions. But they have powerful political connections.
Joseph F. White Jr.
Littleton
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Copyright 1999 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
December 8, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: In defense of Harry Potter and Pokemon
BYLINE: By Catherine NewtonIt's hard to think about Destiny when you're worried about what the construction on I-30 is going to do to your commute home. It's impossible to ponder your ultimate fate when you're trying to find wet towels for your child's sudden, inexplicable bloody nose.
The truth is that most of us don't contemplate Destiny on a daily basis. We're too busy with the details of life _ pinballing between relationships and work, from crisis to crisis. We live on diversions. We live the unstudied life. This is the world of most grown-ups.
But it's not where kids live.
Kids live in a world of big-picture possibilities and terrors, where the question of the day, every day, is who or what will I "be"? They live in a world that's part fantasy. And for that world they need heroes and role models.
Which is exactly why I love Harry Potter and Pokemon. …
The torturous soul-searching began when Harry arrived at Hogwarts, and the Sorting Hat _ which places students into four sort-of fraternities _ said Harry would do well in Slytherin, the house founded by a once-great wizard who later turned to the Dark Arts. It was the house Voldemort was in.
Harry now brings his fears that he is Slytherin's rightful heir to Dumbledore, the school headmaster.
"It (the Sorting Hat) only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytherin. ..."
"'Exactly,"' said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "'Which makes you very "different" from Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort). It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities."'
"That's very theological," says Ulrich Knopflmacher, a professor of English at Princeton University, about the scene from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." Knopflmacher teaches children's literature. He also has a 9-year-old son who devoured the Harry Potter books and is a Pokemaniac.
Knopflmacher, expounding on Destiny in children's literature, begins with a little history lesson about fairy tales. The word "fairy" derives from the Latin "fatum," which means that which has been spoken, or fate. Fairies were once the equivalent to the Greek fates who spun the destinies of people.
"Embedded in the genre of fairy tales is the whole question of destiny," Knopflmacher says. In many fairy tales, like "Sleeping Beauty," there's a christening of a child, which both the good fairy and the bad fairy attend, each trying to affect the child's fate.
Knopflmacher says the Texas educators who've banned Harry Potter come from a long tradition. "They're equating this modern version of a fairy tale with witchcraft. That goes back to the Puritans. The distrust of fairy tales as being pagan goes back a long way." …
The Ottawa Citizen
Copyright 1999 Southam Inc.
December 8, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Cartographer of the brain: Wilder Penfield plugged away to advance brain surgery
SERIES: Year 2000
BYLINE: Charles EnmanIn his time, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield was often called ''the greatest living Canadian.'' In 1934, he founded the Montreal Neurological Institute, which became one of the most highly regarded centres for brain surgery in the world.
Dr. Penfield was especially famous for his surgical treatment of people with epilepsy. Epilepsy is caused by abnormal electrical activity in some area of the brain, usually caused by scar tissue or a tumour. Patients usually sense a telltale ''aura'' before a seizure occurs.
Dr. Penfield devised a way to locate the damaged tissue causing the abnormal electrical activity. With the patient fully conscious and the skull open, Dr. Penfield would apply a very weak electrical current to various spots on the surface of the brain. When the patient sensed the telltale aura, Dr. Penfield knew his probing had just chanced upon the damaged tissue, which he could then remove or destroy. Often, that ended the epilepsy. …
He did well at virtually everything he undertook, but not because of extraordinary gifts. As his eldest son, Wilder Penfield Jr., once told an interviewer, ''Some called him a genius, but the opposite was true -- he was a plugger. He had to plug along very hard to do what some could do in a flash.''
He must have begun plugging early on. He was valedictorian when he graduated from Galahad School, a private school in small-town Wisconsin that his mother had helped to found. When he graduated from Princeton University, he was named ''Best All-Round Man'' and ''Most Respected Man.''
He had chosen Princeton, in New Jersey, partly because he hoped to win a Rhodes Scholarship, which were given out one to each state. He reasoned that New Jersey's small population would enhance his prospects.
He won a Rhodes in 1915, but arrived at Oxford University, in England, to find the quadrangles empty. A generation of students were fighting in the trenches of wartime Europe. …
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
December 8, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton committee weighs financial aid raise
BYLINE: By Emily W. Johnson, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.The Priorities Committee is considering a proposal to expand Princeton University's financial aid program by more than $2 million over four years through an increase in grants, additional funding for international student travel and elimination of home equity from aid calculations.
The committee, which recommends the University's operating budget, will announce its intentions regarding financial aid during next Monday's U-Council meeting, according to Associate Provost Joann Mitchell.
To make the University more competitive with other Ivy League schools in terms of financial aid packages, the Faculty and Student Committees on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid introduced the proposal, which aims to boost the percentage of students on financial aid.
The committees made two requests to the Priorities Committee for next year: one for $470,000 to assist students from middle-income families and another for $44,000 for international students. …
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
December 8, 1999HEADLINE: Forbes steps up campaign as key primaries draw near
BYLINE: By Daniel Stephens, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.With the New Hampshire primary fast approaching and the Republican presidential race quickly narrowing, Steve Forbes's campaign is pushing hard to catch up with front-runner George W. Bush and challenger John McCain.
The Forbes campaign's hectic schedule this week included two major national television appearances as strategists attempt to overcome what some observers see as insurmountable odds.
Campaign chairman J. Kenneth Blackwell was featured on CNN's "Crossfire" Monday night and Forbes himself was a guest on ABC News' "This Week" Sunday morning, where he fielded questions on his campaign's status.
Supporters
In a speech yesterday afternoon in Whig Hall at Princeton University, "This Week" commentator George Will GS '68 said Forbes understands the issues better than any other Republican candidate. …
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
December 8, 1999HEADLINE: Religion prof's e-mail sparks controversy at Princeton
BYLINE: By Michael Koike, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Princeton University Dean of the Faculty Joseph Taylor called an e-mail posted on the Internet by Princeton religion department representative Shaun Marmon "unfortunate" Tuesday after Marmon created a stir within the department by issuing broad criticisms of students.
The e-mail came after Ben Farmer '01, a religion major, posted a message Dec. 1 on the department's colloquium homepage in which he questioned the "functionality and effectiveness" of the colloquium, which all juniors in the department must take in lieu of writing a second junior paper.
In her response the next day, Marmon wrote, "This is not a democracy. You are students. We are teachers. We have doctoral degrees and have written books. You have not yet written an acceptable junior paper." …
Taylor said he did not approve of the e-mail and said he has spoken with religion department chair Martha Himmelfarb about the matter. Taylor added that he believes the situation has been resolved.
"There were a number of things that were written that were unfortunate," Taylor said. "They were done without much reflection, on the spur of the moment. It just seemed to me that it was one of those instances where people realized that they shouldn't have pushed the 'send' button."
Taylor said the University is not planning to take any disciplinary action regarding the e-mails. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
December 8, 1999HEADLINE: WTO Talks Said to Send 'Grim Message'; Collapse May Boost Tension, U.S. Deficit
BYLINE: Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post Staff WriterThe failure of the world's most powerful governments to launch a new round of global trade talks last week is not likely to slow the pace of globalization, but it could usher in a period of trade friction and cause the already burgeoning U.S. trade deficit to climb even higher.
That's the consensus of trade experts, economists and business leaders polled since the meeting of the World Trade Organization collapsed Friday night. They predicted that any further liberalization of the world's trading rules would have to wait at least two years, until after a new U.S. president and Congress have been elected and a new governance structure has been put in place at the WTO headquarters in Geneva.
"The grim message of Seattle is that not only won't we have a new round now, but we won't have one for some time," said Peter Kenen, a widely respected international economist at Princeton University. "And in the meantime, there will be a whole new set of trade issues that will come along that will fester." …
ASIA PULSE
Copyright 1999 Asia Pulse Pte Limited
December 7, 1999HEADLINE: US VOWS TO CONTINUE SUPPORT FOR INDONESIA
DATELINE: JAKARTA, Dec 7The US Ambassador to Indonesia, Robert S Gelbard, has said Washington will continue supporting Indonesia, particularly in exercising democratic principles and strengthening a civil society.
"I am glad I could help President Wahid meet President Clinton in Washington last month," Gelbard said, noting that the meeting demonstrated the importance of Indonesia to his country.
During the meeting, he said, President Clinton had reaffirmed US support towards a strongly united Indonesia.
"What has been expected by Washington, is the integrity of Indonesia," he said.
He made the remarks at a one-day forum on the 50th anniversary of US-Indonesia relations in Jakarta on Monday.
Bedides Shihab and Gelbard, experts like Dr John Bresnan of Columbia University, Clifford Geertz of Princeton University, Moslem scholar Nurcholis Madjid and senior political observer Mochtar Pabotinggi shared their views on social, cultural and political issues. …
BIOWORLD Today
Copyright 1999 American Health Consultants, Inc.
December 7, 1999HEADLINE: OUT-OF-LEFT-FIELD, SURPRISE CELLULAR PLAY.
BYLINE: Leff, David N.AUTHOR-ABSTRACT: THIS IS THE FULL TEXT: COPYRIGHT 1999 American Health Consultants, Inc. Subscription: $1350.00 per year. Published daily (5 times a week). Box 740021, Atlanta, GA 30374.
The cuckoo bird (Cuculus canoris) is famous - or infamous - for laying its eggs in other birds' nests. Stem cells - the primordial developmental cells that give rise to the embryo's organ systems - are reputedly more virtuous. That is, an immature blood- forming stem cell will make muscle, not blood. To cell biologists, such cellular adultery sounds like a cuckoo idea.
But that stem-cell dedication to keeping faith with its own progeny cells is not necessarily perfect, as very recent research shows. "Nobody categorically came out and said stem cells must be dedicated to their tissue of origin," observed stem cell biologist Ihor Lemischka, at Princeton University. "That was just the unspoken consensus feeling that arose in the field over the years. Few would have thought of doing these kinds of surprising experiments."
The latest such deviant research is reported in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), dated Dec. 7, 1999, under the title: ""Hematopoietic [blood-forming] potential of stem cells isolated from murine skeletal muscle." Its senior author is stem cell biologist Margaret Goodell, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Lemischka wrote the accompanying commentary, quizzically headed, "The power of stem cells reconsidered?" He told BioWorld Today, "The Goodell paper's significance might well be that it's possible to grow blood-forming stem cells if you isolate them from a different source, in this case, muscle. What's really surprising about that paper," he added, "is that there's a huge effort in the hematopoietic stem cell community - particularly in the human clinical community - to achieve the expansion of transplantable stem cell populations ex vivo or in vitro.
"It's only recently," Lemischka went on, "that a number of these systems have actually yielded some encouraging results. On the other hand, you have somebody who comes at this sort of out-of-left-field experiment, where Goodell's lab took cells from muscle and stuck them into culture. And after five days in culture they're getting hematopoietic transplantable activity that is 10 times enhanced on a per-cell basis over what is found in fresh bone marrow. I think that's the most intriguing thing about that paper."
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 1999 The Financial Times LimitedDecember 7, 1999, Tuesday
HEADLINE: SURVEY - WORLD'S MOST RESPECTED COMPANIES: The quintessential figure of electronic commerce
BYLINE: By TRACY CORRIGANThe rise of Jeff Bezos, the youngest chief executive officer to rank in the top 30 world's most respected business leaders, has been almost as rapid as that of the company he founded just five years ago, Amazon.com.
At the tender age of 35, Bezos ranks 29th - equal with Michael Eisner of Disney - in the business leaders' league table, higher than Amazon's position (31st) in the list of most respected business.
One executive described Mr Bezos as "a successful pathfinder in the new economy". Another said "he introduced e-commerce". For many, he is in fact the quintessential figure of e-commerce, just as Bill Gates personifies the software technology business.
But the internet is not Bezos' first love: the son of a Cuban immigrant, Mr Bezos wanted, along with many other boys in the 1960s, to be an astronaut. He even wrote a paper on the effect of zero gravity on the aging rate of the common housefly, which won him a trip to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
A high school valedictorian, he went on to read electrical engineering and computer science, graduating Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University.
After a stint at Bankers Trust, in 1990 he moved to DE Shaw, the specialist investment firm, where he worked on a project involving the internet. In 1994 he left and, famously, set up Amazon in a garage in the suburbs of Seattle. It opened for business in July 1995. …
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: TALK OF THE NATION (3:00 PM ET)
December 7, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: INTERNET STOCKS, THEIR PERFORMANCE IN TODAY'S STOCK MARKET AND WHETHER THEY ARE A GOOD VALUE FOR THE INVESTOR
BROOKE GLADSTONE, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Brooke Gladstone, and I have a problem, I think. Back in the days before I worked for a company with a pension plan, I started a little, independent retirement account, an IRA. It's all in stocks. Now that I've accrued some pension money with the company--thank you, NPR--I have the option to again invest every red cent of my future financial security in stocks, and I am itching to do that, too. I know the market is overvalued, the market is risky; the market is all about timing, and the timing is wrong. But I feel like I'm missing a chance to score big. The fact is, I've been playing the market, shifting a few dollars hither and yon, for about a decade now, and I'm definitely ahead, even though I don't know what the hell I'm doing. …
GLADSTONE: And also Burton Malkiel, professor of economics at Princeton University and author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Advice for the New Century." And he is in the communications office at Princeton University, in Princeton.
Hello, there.
Professor BURTON MALKIEL (Princeton University; Author, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street"): Hello, Brooke. How are you?
GLADSTONE: Good. Thank you so much for being here.
Let's start with how do we judge a stock? I mean, how do we know what it's worth? …
Prof. MALKIEL: Well, you should value a stock as being worth what is called the present value of the stream of cash that it is able to distribute for the benefit of the shareholder. I think that is the classic way shares should be valued, and I think that's the right way to value a stock. The P/E ratio is certainly something you can look at, but since you're looking at a future stream what that will mean is that the higher the growth that is likely to be earned by the company, the higher the P/E multiple is likely to be. So P/Es are certainly not irrelevant. If the argument is the P/E is irrelevant, I would say absolutely not. But the stock is worth the present value, and it's called present because obviously a dollar 10 years from now isn't worth as much as a dollar today, so you have to discount the dollars that are going to come a long time in the future. But essentially it's what the company can earn, how fast it can grow and what it can distribute to the shareholders.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Copyright 1999 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
December 7, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Index funds have gained huge influence in the mutual fund industry
BYLINE: By Miriam HillSomeday soon, Vanguard Group in Malvern, Pa., will have the world's largest mutual fund.
With $95.7 billion in assets, Vanguard's 500 Index Fund is poised to surpass Fidelity's Magellan fund, with $97.5 billion in assets, possibly before the end of the year.
No one is planning a ticker-tape parade through Malvern to celebrate the event, but it will be momentous even so. The ascent of the 500 fund, which mirrors the Standard & Poor's index of 500 large-company stocks, symbolizes the influence that indexing has gained over the fund industry.
Anyone who owns mutual funds today, even those that are not index funds, feels the iron grip of indexes. …
After research in the mid-1960s found that most managers could not beat market indexes, American National Bank in Chicago and Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco introduced index funds in 1973. Burton Malkiel, a Princeton University professor and Vanguard director, suggested that individual investors should be able to buy such funds. Bogle happily complied, but the idea was not well-received at first. …
PR Newswire
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
December 7, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: PR Newswire Names Vice President of Human Resources
DATELINE: NEW YORK, Dec. 7Kevin M. Mullin has been named PR Newswire's vice president of Human Resources, responsible for creating policies and programs that will help develop employee training and development efforts, PR Newswire announced today.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19991207/HSTU001F )
Mullin will now focus on several employee-related issues such as enhancing internal communications and creating teams across departments to prioritize business processes.
"Kevin Mullin has great experience in improving employee satisfaction and growth. He will be a great asset in reaching our training and development goals," said President of PRN Americas Charlie Morin.
Prior to joining PR Newswire, Mullin was the executive director of strategic planning for Covance, Inc. a New Jersey based pharmaceutical services company. He also served as director of human resources and operations for Merck's Vaccine Business in New Jersey. Mullin played professional basketball for the Boston Celtics and was a star member of the Princeton University basketball team in 1984. …
Mullin, who is based in New York, received a bachelor's degree in business and economics from Princeton University in New Jersey in 1984 and a master's degree in human resources management from Villanova University in Pennsylvania in 1991. …
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 1999 Bergen Record Corp.
December 7, 1999, TUESDAYHEADLINE: CURTAINS FOR THEATER? NOT SO, FOUNDER SAYS CROSSROADS TACKLING DEBT
BYLINE: JIM BECKERMAN, Staff Writer
Crossroads Theater Company of New Brunswick, which received a Tony Award just six months ago for Outstanding Regional Theater, is perceived by some as being in trouble.
Not so, says Ricardo Khan, the 21-year-old theater's co-founder and artistic director. Khan, who begins a sabbatical Jan. 1, says Crossroads is in the process of working out its $1.2 million debt.
Cash problems are not unusual for a regional theater company, Khan says, adding that Crossroads is in better fiscal shape than it was four years ago, when it owed $1.7 million.
Of late, a series of problems has beset the country's best-known African-American theater company. …
Dale Caldwell, a consultant with degrees from Princeton University and the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, became theater board president in June, and has been appointed to the newly created position of theater CEO. …
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
December 7, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton profs voice mixed views over increase in enrollment
BYLINE: By Michael Jenkins, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.As plans for the expansion of Princeton University's undergraduate student body progress, faculty members and graduate students have begun to speculate as to what the increase will mean for their respective departments and for the University as a whole.
Some professors said they look forward to the increase of students.
"It seems to me to be a good idea," classics department chair and professor Josiah Ober said. He added that because the proposed size of the increase is not very large, the experience of being a Princeton student will not be diluted.
"From what I understand, the intention is to bring in students with a strong academic and a strong international background," Ober said. He also speculated that the increase in students will likely bring with it an increase in the number of classics majors on campus. …
University Wire
Copyright 1999 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
December 7, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton researchers to take part in Internet improvement project
BYLINE: By Jessica Hafkin, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.As the number of online users rapidly expands, delays in World Wide Web navigation have prompted researchers to search for new technologies that will aid Internet growth, speed and applications.
Funded by a $7.5-million contract from the federal government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a project named "Pegasus" -- after the winged horse of Greek mythology -- officially began Dec. 1. About three dozen researchers from Lucent Technologies Inc., Bell Atlantic Corp. and area universities including Princeton University are working on the project.
Electrical engineering professor Paul Prucnal is the primary Princeton researcher working on the project. …
Likewise, the enormous growth of Internet traffic has raised the need for larger Internet Protocol Routers that route data, said Joseph Montemarano, the University's associate director for industrial liaisons, photonic and optoelectronic materials.
Montemarano likened information traveling through the Internet to water flowing through a pipe. "Trillions of bits of data are pouring down the pipe and you need to be able to pull the information off without slowing anyone else's information down," he said. …
American Health Line
Copyright 1999 The National Journal Group, Inc.
December 6, 1999HEADLINE: XEROX: CHANGES COULD RAISE INSURANCE COSTS FOR SOME
All eyes are on Xerox Corp., a longtime "corporate innovator in health benefits," as it announced plans to overhaul its health insurance program. Xerox is considering giving employees between $5,000 to $6,000 a year to buy a health plan of their choice, abandoning the traditional approach of employer coverage. The move comes at a time when many companies are examining ways to revamp their health plans due to rising costs, increased government regulations and the potential for more exposure to liability. …
But policy experts warn that Xerox's plan could have a "devastating impact on less healthy and older workers," as they face higher costs. Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt said, "This could totally unravel American health care." Workers would be forced to "sort out their ... choices in a complex marketplace." Younger, healthier workers, free to choose health plans, could opt for "cheaper, bare-bones coverage," leaving the elderly and sicker employees with the high cost of more comprehensive plans. Reinhardt noted, "The young people will get out and that will deprive the whole system of money." …
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
December 6, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: State board weighs Bible class funding
BYLINE: Doug Cumming, StaffState-funded Bible courses have the blessing of the state school superintendent, her staff and thousands of letter-writers across Georgia. But state Board of Education members, who have withheld approval, say they're worried about lawsuits and not having enough analysis to determine whether these courses will be used to preach a certain religion.
"We have not seen any documentation," said state board member Gloria Bromell-Tinubu, who asked the Department of Education staff for a better analysis when the courses first came to the board for state funding in August. Board members Cathy Henson and Bruce Jackson say they agree the state's review of the material has been inadequate. …
Robert George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence who is representing Ridenour's group in Georgia, explained the courses are promoting Biblical literacy. Knowing the Bible in this way is crucial not only for understanding something that millions of people believe in as essential to their faith, but also for understanding the Western canon, such as the writings of Shakespeare, John Locke and Abraham Lincoln.
Ridenour and George claim the lawsuit in Fort Myers does not reflect on their curriculum because the Bible courses in dispute there included other material. The U.S. District Court agreed the curriculum from National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, although originally used as one source, was eventually not relevant to the case. …
But Tom Julin, a Miami attorney who represented plaintiffs in the case, said the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools material was no more objective than what he was challenging. "We would have advanced the same claims if it had been their curriculum verbatim," he said.
Business Week
Copyright 1999 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
December 6, 1999HEADLINE: Entrepreneur Gap
BYLINE: BY PETER COYAbout 15% of working white Americans are self-employed, compared with 6% of working African Americans. That racial gap has baffled researchers for years.
In a new working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, sociologist Michael Hout of the University of California at Berkeley and economist Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton University admit they're not getting much closer to the answer.
One factor behind the discrepancy is that white families are richer, on average. Also, whites are more likely to come from two-parent families, which produce more entrepreneurs. But even after taking those factors into account, the authors note, blacks are still less likely than whites to be self-employed.
You could blame the disparity on racism or the fear of discrimination. On the other hand, says Rosen, you could also argue that self-employment is a way to overcome inequities. The authors conclude: ''We are still missing some important pieces to the puzzle of low rates of self-employment among blacks.''
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
December 6, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Newly Discovered Signaling Pathway Expected to Lead to New Class of Antibiotics
DATELINE: CARLSBAD, Calif., Dec. 6, 1999, Jan. 20, 1999Quorex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an emerging biopharmaceutical company, today announced the completion of a first closing of a $1.1 million equity financing towards its target of $2 million. Investors include Tullis-Dickerson & Co., Inc., one of the nation's largest health care focused venture capital firms.
The Company, formerly known as Quorum Pharmaceuticals, was founded on the discovery of a novel signaling pathway occurring in a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria. The recent discovery of this new molecular signaling system was made after many years of basic scientific research by Dr. Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University and Dr. Michael Surette of the University of Calgary.
Quorex Pharmaceuticals is using this signaling pathway and its proprietary screening platform to discover and develop novel anti-infective drugs for the treatment of serious bacterial infections, including those infections that are resistant to existing drugs. Moreover, this system is expected to provide a platform to develop novel vaccines and diagnostic tools used to guard against and detect pathogenic bacteria. …
ANTARA - THE INDONESIAN NATIONAL NEWS AGENCY
Copyright 1999 FT Asia Intelligence Wire
December 6, 1999HEADLINE: 50 YEARS OF RELATIONS, INDONESIAN AND US CONTINUE NEEDING EACH OTHER
Jakarta, Dec. 06 (ANTARA) - While the relations between Indonesia and the United States have their positive as well as negative impacts, the two countries will continue needing each other.
This was one of the conclusions of a one-day meeting on the 50th anniversary of US - Indonesia relations in Jakarta on Monday.
Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab on the occasion in his perspective on Indonesia-US relations said the country's first President Soekarno's famous slogan "Go to hell with foreign aid," should be changed into "Let's go to Heaven together through Cooperation."
"The old slogan is now no longer valid, because cooperation between the two countries is based on mutual interests," he said. …
Bedides Shihab and Gelbard, experts like Dr John Bresnan of Columbia University, Clifford Geertz of Princeton University, Moslem scholar Nurcholis Madjid, and senior political observer Mochtar Pabotinggi, shared their views on social, cultural and political issues. …
Electronic Engineering Times
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc.
December 6, 1999HEADLINE: Amorphous-silicon process aims at new 'macroelectronics' -- Startup will print low-cost, large-area circuits
BYLINE: Chappell BrownPRINCETON, N.J. - A group of Princeton University research-ers is taking its amorphous silicon process into the commercial arena with a startup called Printed Transistor Inc. The group plans to start with design and prototyping services for the process, which can print transistors on a wide variety of substrates from previously defined ICs to plastic and flexible foil. Since 1990, the Princeton group has been developing a class of materials and processes aimed at merging conventional printing technology with semiconductor electronics to create a new type of "macroelectronics."
Low-cost displays and image sensor arrays are typical application areas that could benefit from the macroelectronic techniques the startup has assembled. But to get the enterprise off the ground, Printed Transistor is offering a fast prototyping service for large-area circuits.
"This technology is particularly useful for prototyping because you can turn something around very quickly," said Matthias Wagner, business development manager for the company. The initial service will make use of laser printers to print the masks needed to define circuits. By eliminating conventional mask making and silicon fab runs, the thin-film process will allow clients to quickly and cheaply redesign prototypes. The company eventually envisions a technology similar to current digital printing services. A customer would design a circuit and transfer the digital file to a circuit printer, which would run off a large number of copies.
"We have a good portfolio of intellectual property that we are licensing from Princeton University. The idea is to build expertise on our team through customer projects and let the market meet us as we develop our core technologies, vs. trying to push a particular technology onto the market," Wagner said. The two critical properties of the technique-circuit definition on a wide variety of rugged, low-cost substrates and the potential low- cost use of printing technology to manufacture circuits-could address a wide range of applications. …
Two characteristic problems of the technology are stress-induced fracturing of the films and the adhesion of the silicon to a substrate. The Princeton group has therefore spent many years studying these essentially mechanical problems, according to Matthias Wagner. Solving those problems is crucial to applying the technology to large- area substrates or in rugged applications such as smart credit cards or sensor membranes. …
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
December 06, 1999, MondayDEADLINE: INHERITANCES WITH STRINGS ATTATCHED;
The latest fad in estate planning ties financial gifts to future actions on the part of heirs
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
BYLINE: MONICA LANGLEYStraight from a win for the Atlanta Braves this fall, star pitcher Tom Glavine is talking to his lawyer about how and when his two children will inherit his wealth. With an $8 million annual salary, the 33-year-old Glavine wants to set up a trust that provides for his children - but on his terms.
"Obviously I'm concerned about giving my children that kind of wealth," says Glavine, who played in this year's World Series. "I don't want my kids to feel like they don't have to do anything in life." His solution: a "family incentive trust" that provides them with more money if they act in ways he approves.
To make sure his children work - "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth," Glavine says - he'll match their earned income up to $100,000. And though he vows "I'm not going to make my son play baseball," he is thinking about making extra money available to help his kids engage in sports. …
Say hello to the latest fad in estate planning for the affluent - tying the transfer of wealth to descendants' acceptance of one's core values.
The notion is quickly catching on as an antidote to the "affluenza" of heirs afforded instant wealth. "Incentives are the new trend for the millennium," says Rodney Owens, a Dallas attorney whose clients are packing incentives - and disincentives - into their estate plans. …
Daniel and Charmaine Warmenhoven, for example, recently spent two days cloistered with a team of advisers at the Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, Calif., hammering out an elaborate incentive arrangement. The couple, who met at Princeton University and married after graduation 26 years ago, raised two children while Daniel Warmenhoven moved up in the high-tech field. Today, largely due to the huge run-up in the stock of the company Warmenhoven now heads, Network Appliance, the couple are worth more than $200 million.
"We don't want the money to be a burden or a negative influence," Daniel Warmenhoven says. "We want to provide a positive structure with incentives for the children to make the most of their lives." …
PR Newswire
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
December 6, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Sun Microsystems to Host Inaugural Meeting for Java(TM) Technology In Administration Special Interest Group;
Sun Sponsors Special Interest Group for Java Technology Development in Higher Education Administration
DATELINE: PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 6
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that it will host the first worldwide Java(TM) in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG) meeting on December 9-10, 1999 at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida. The Sun sponsored Java in Administration Special Interest Group is an independent organization designed to facilitate information sharing and collaboration between educational institutions and companies involved in the development of administrative applications using Java technology. Approximately 120 attendees from leading higher education institutions and firms are expected to participate in the conference which will address Enterprise Java technology directions and implementations in higher education.
Keynote presentations will be delivered by Ron Kleinman, Sr. Evangelist, Enterprise Java, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Jim Clarke, Sr. Architect, Sun Professional Services. Achieving Performance and Scalability with Enterprise JavaBeans(TM) architecture, portal design, and the SunConnect(TM) framework will be addressed in workshops and presentations.
"JA-SIG is designed to enable an exchange of experiences as we build applications with Java technology and to develop a common infrastructure upon which we can build shareable components," said David Koehler, director of Information Systems for Princeton University and chair of the JA-SIG governing committee. JA-SIG will not only foster communication of best practices, collaboration, but it will also aim to increase peer review of new technologies and projects related to Java technology. …
Time
Copyright 1999 Time Inc.
December 6, 1999HEADLINE: How Sexy Is Chalk Dust?;
Plenty, judging from the attention mathematicians and numbers (especially zero) are getting these days
BYLINE: Paul HoffmanTo call mathematics a fin-de-siecle craze would be a bit of an exaggeration, but there is something remarkable about how the most arcane of academic disciplines has finally implanted itself firmly in popular culture. The trend began in 1994 when Princeton University's Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, a cantankerous problem that had defeated the best mathematical minds for more than 350 years. Not since Archimedes ran naked from his bathtub shouting "Eureka!" has a mathematician received more publicity. PEOPLE magazine put him on its list of "the 25 most intriguing people of the year," the Gap asked him to model jeans, and Barbara Walters chased him for an interview. "Who's Barbara Walters?" asked the bookish Wiles, who had somehow gone through life without a television.
Hollywood didn't want to be left out, so filmmakers green-lighted Good Will Hunting, in which Matt Damon, who does watch TV, makes it sexy to be a number cruncher. (The sexy image was reversed--for the few bohemians who saw it--by the 1998 art-house flick [pi], the story of a psychotic, self-mutilating mathematician who discovers a very big number that holds the secrets of the universe.) Books on mathematics, such as Fermat's Enigma and A Beautiful Mind, the tale of a schizophrenic mathematical economist who wins the Nobel Prize, hit best-seller lists here and abroad. …
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Michigan Daily via U-Wire
December 6, 1999HEADLINE: U. Michigan prof instrumental in war analysis
BYLINE: By Yael Kohen, Michigan Daily
DATELINE: Ann Arbor, Mich.The end of World War II brought with it a vast array of effects - peace in Europe, attempts at reconstruction in the war-torn continent and the rise of the United States to world dominance.
But out of this era a new world order was born, one marked by the importance of international relations and the United States' relationship with the Soviet Union.
University of Michigan political science Prof. J. David Singer served in the U.S. Navy for two years during the war, and one year following its end, he wasn't sold on U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.
"After World War II, I was very convinced that the American policy towards the Soviets was very stupid," Singer said, speaking about his experiences in the naval reserves and intelligence. Singer said he believed foreign policy makers were "ignorant of world politics."
In 1964, Singer began the "Correlates of War" project, using empirical research to examine the factors that contribute to war.
Wayne State University history Prof. Melvin Small, a former COW researcher, described the project at its initiation.
When COW began it was a "different way to approach political science," Small said, adding that the project uses "quantitative methods to study international relations."
The idea behind COW was to collect data that help define extrastate and interstate wars, alliances, territorial changes, military and industrial capabilities and the many other factors that contribute to the likelihood of a war, graduate student Jonathan Canedo said.
"The purpose of the project is to develop theoretical models and test out different theories," Singer said.
The project's data sets are used by political scientists across the nation.
"The data sets ... are widely used in the study of international conflict," said Kenneth Schultz, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. "I use them on a regular basis," he said.
"Most of the important research on the quantitative study of international conflict ... rely on the Correlates of War project," Schultz said adding that the COW project is widely used because "it encompasses a large number of different data sets." …
New Straits Times (Malaysia)
Copyright 1999 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad
December 5, 1999HEADLINE: Pre-U courses best at Sunway
BYLINE: By Tina MelanWITH an excellent track record spanning over a decade, Sunway College, has been offering pre-university courses since 1988.
One of the most widely recognised pre-university qualification available at the college is the Cambridge Board's GCE or A-Levels.
To date, more than 5,000 students have graduated from the Sunway's A- Level programme.
Sunway's A-Level students have been identified by prestigious universities worldwide as prospective undergraduates.
And these students' results prove that they are of world-class standard.
Sunway's Rachel Gong and Nathaniel Tan recently left for Princeton University and Harvard University respectively to pursue their degrees.
Rachel, who received an unconditional offer from Princeton to pursue her degree in Chemical Engineering was at the same time offered a place at Girton University to read Physical Science. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 5, 1999NAME: David Rousseve
HEADLINE: DANCE; An Improbable Convert to WagnerBYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER REARDON; Christopher Reardon's most recent article for Arts & Leisure was about American Ballet Theater.
BY now David Rousseve is a familiar face at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But when he returns this week, to present his third commissioned piece in seven years, he will show a side he has never revealed before.
Long accustomed to working with black female vocalists, Mr. Rousseve has turned for the first time to classical music -- and not just the sweet sound of Puccini. He punctuates the new piece, a collage of dance and theater called "Love Songs," with the enigmatic strains of Wagner, whose famously heroic scores and anti-Semitic sentiments made him an emblem of German nationalism. For a choreographer who is black and openly gay, it was not an obvious choice.
"I hated Wagner before this piece, and everything I know about him as a person I find offensive," Mr. Rousseve said in an interview last month. "So I was absolutely appalled at myself when I came to adore his operas." Even now he wonders, "How could someone who was such a beast write such sublime music?"
Such seeming contradictions are a recurring theme in "Love Songs," which will be performed Wednesday through Saturday at the academy's Harvey Theater. As before, Mr. Rousseve weaves family history, cultural criticism and surreal stagecraft into an emotionally charged postmodern epic. The piece is a loose retelling of "Tristan und Isolde," Wagner's fatally erotic opera about a couple of Celtic royals. Now set in the antebellum South, its main story line follows two slaves, John and Sarah, whose forbidden love slides back and forth between bondage and freedom, faith and doubt, day and everlasting night. …
Mr. Rousseve, who turned 40 two weeks ago, has been traversing cultural divides all his life, a pattern he traces to his family tree. His mother's mother was a Creole maid who never finished first grade, while his father's father was a classical organist who earned a doctorate in history. Growing up in Houston, Mr. Rousseve was bused across town to integrated schools, where he was the only boy in his dance class.
Later, as an undergraduate at Princeton University, he vacillated between pursuing a career in the performing arts or civil rights law. He ended up writing his thesis on political theater in South Africa and, after graduating magna cum laude in 1981, set out for New York. Soap opera cameos and late-night paralegal work paid the rent until he joined Toronto Dance Theater, where he performed in expressionist pieces derived from the technique of Martha Graham. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 5, 1999, SundayNAME: Thomas Ades
HEADLINE: A Surrealist Composer Comes To the Rescue of ModernismBYLINE: By RICHARD TARUSKIN; Richard Taruskin teaches music history at the University of California at Berkeley.
"NOWADAYS you're eclectic or you're nothing," a graduate student at Princeton University said recently when I inquired about the reigning philosophy of composition at that old bastion of utopian purity. Talk about signs of the times! By that new-Princetonian token, Thomas Ades, the English composing phenom (still under 30) is really something, and the records keep coming. The fourth and latest Ades disc from EMI Classics brings "Asyla," the 23-minute symphony-in-all-but-name that has just won its young composer Louisville University's Grawemeyer Award, the biggest plum the classical-music world now offers.
Is all the shouting merited? Yes indeed. If the attention being paid the 28-year-old Mr. Ades is another sign of the times in classical music, there is reason, at this time of millennial stock-taking and auguries of doom, for renewed hope. Mr. Ades has in effect extended to a satisfying end-of-century culmination the far side or other face of serious modern music, the alternative current that has always shadowed the severely abstract variety of modernism that hogged the headlines until it ran out of gas.
The title of the prize-winning piece, the plural of "asylum," plays poetically (and yes, a little pedantically) on the word's ambiguity. Refuge? Madhouse? A little of both? It's a gentle tease and, like the music, sportively provocative. It may well have had its origins in "a beautiful statement about music," as the musicologist Joseph Kerman rightly calls it, from Emerson's "Journals." (Mr. Kerman quotes it at the end of "Concerto Conversations," a graceful set of ruminations just published by Harvard University Press.) "So is music an asylum," Emerson wrote. "It takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence and whereto." Wonder too much about such things and you might well end up in the madhouse, Mr. Ades seems to hint in his antic third movement. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 5, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Nobel Economics: Spending the Check
BYLINE: By SYLVIA NASARON a late October morning, Robert Alexander Mundell sat Buddha-like amid stylish clutter in his Claremont Avenue apartment, two blocks from Columbia University in Manhattan. The magic moment when, amid fairy-tale pomp, he will receive from the King of Sweden the heavy gold medal engraved with Alfred Nobel's stern profile was still weeks away. But life had already changed profoundly for Mr. Mundell, 67, the flamboyant Canadian-born economist whose ideas paved the way for the euro, the European currency.
Since the announcement of the prize two weeks earlier, The Wall Street Journal had already described him as more important than Keynes, a television network had filmed a documentary on his life and 3,000 e-mail messages had clogged his "in" box. Invitations were pouring in so fast on this particular morning that his wife, Valerie Natsios, desperate for the last hour to take a shower, couldn't leave the phone: It wouldn't stop ringing.
Mr. Mundell, who "half expected" the prize for some 15 years, had already decided how he would spend the nearly $1 million prize (to complete the renovation of his Tuscan palazzo, once featured in Architectural Digest, and to buy a pony for his 2-year-old son, Nicholas). And he had already decided that he would have the honorarium transferred to his bank account in euros, because he thinks the euro, though sinking of late, is bound to appreciate against the dollar. But one detail appeared to have escaped the man who, during the Reagan presidency, became the intellectual guru of the supply-side tax revolution: "You mean . . . " he asked, a tiny frown now evident on the capacious brow, "it's taxed?" …
NO laureate's life has been as thoroughly transformed by the prize as that of John F. Nash, a co-winner in 1994. The award literally brought the world back to Mr. Nash, now 71, whose life was shattered at 30 by paranoid schizophrenia. Mr. Nash's slim doctoral dissertation, written in 1949 when he was a 21-year-old graduate student, revolutionized the way economists thought about competition, but on the day that the prize was announced, Mr. Nash told reporters that he might now be able to get a credit card. They thought he was joking, but he was not.
When the long-delayed honor finally came, Mr. Nash had been without a job for 35 years, getting by on only a few hundred dollars a month from a trust his mother had established before her death, and avoiding homelessness only because of his former wife's compassion.
After years of grinding poverty, Mr. Nash now has some measure of financial security. The prize, which he shared with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten, netted him some $200,000, most of which he put first in tax-free municipal bonds and later into a global mutual fund. He even has the luxury to indulge in what was a passion of his youth, dabbling in stocks, mostly making long-shot bets with small amounts of money.
"Without the money, it wouldn't be the same thing," Mr. Nash said of the prize, adding that "the honor is worth more money than the money." After he won the prize, Princeton University offered him a part-time research post that pays about $25,000 a year. And a major Hollywood producer has bought the rights to his life story for a high-six-figure sum. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 5, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Architecture
BYLINE: By Martin Filler; Martin Filler is the architecture critic of The New Republic and writes for The New York Review of Books and House Beautiful.
VENTURI, SCOTT BROWN & ASSOCIATES: Buildings and Projects, 1986-1998. By Stanislaus von Moos. (Monacelli, cloth, $65; paper, $45.) Like their contemporary, Andy Warhol, the self-described Pop architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown have always been more appreciated in Europe than in America. It is easy to understand why. The deceptively superficial appearance of some work by this Philadelphia-based husband-and-wife team, as well as their nonjudgmental embrace of commercial imagery, has led certain critics to dismiss them as capitulating to the venal impulses of a celebrity-mad, consumer-driven society. Their genius for taking the givens of popular culture and transforming them into high art is more apparent to those at a safe remove from a setting where such wry (but also affectionate) appropriations hit a bit too close to home. …
For all their stylistic swings, Venturi and Scott Brown have developed a brisk business in campus architecture. At Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, among other schools, they have taken the Victorian collegiate style and abstracted it into an adaptable vocabulary of lively patterned brick jolted with the odd, unexpected detail, all the while responding to traditional settings much more effectively, and subversively, than the big names of modernism ever did.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 5, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: COMMUNITIES; Ivy League or Briar Patch?
BYLINE: By ROBERT STRAUSS
DATELINE: PRINCETONWhen Janice Harayda came to Princeton this summer to be the editor-in-chief of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, there was little she did not effuse about.
"I find Princeton a very romantic place and I want to capture something of the romance as well as the intellectual stimulation," she told a reporter for The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper. "This is the most exciting job I have ever had. Here there is always something new. I could see being challenged by this job just about forever."
But forever lasted only a matter of weeks. Ms. Harayda, the first non-Princeton graduate to head the coveted Alumni Weekly in its 100-year existence, left her job late last month under an Ivy-laden cloud. Whether she was asked to find employment elsewhere or left voluntarily was a bit of messy issue that those close to the affair preferred not to air publicly -- mostly because that was part of an agreement between the former editor and the board that controls the magazine. …
Portland Press Herald
Copyright 1999 Guy Gannett Communications, Inc.
December 5, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Students rethink views on alcohol; Young people and researchers say stricter rules and changing public attitudes have made an impact on campus drinking.
BYLINE: ANDREW GARBER Staff Writer; Julia McCue and Susan Butler, library assistants, contributed research; to this story.
Nicholas Leon died a few weeks ago when he fell from his dormitory window at the University of Southern Maine after drinking alcohol.
About the same time, two University of Central Arkansas students were killed in a traffic accident after drinking at a fraternity party. And a University of Florida student died during a brawl in which alcohol was a factor.
The news reports underscore the perennial problem of alcohol abuse among college students, despite a crackdown by colleges and changing attitudes toward drinking.
Although no agencies track alcohol-related deaths involving college-age drinkers, newspaper reports show that at least four college students in Maine, including Leon, have died in alcohol-related accidents since 1996. …
Nationally, the total number of students drinking has declined somewhat in recent decades, says Robert Dana, a substance abuse researcher at the University of Maine.
But the dramatic change in college-age drinking is public attitude.
"Back in the 19th century, a lot of the Ivy League schools like Princeton and Harvard had beer and wine in their dining halls. It was just considered to be part of their meal," says William Klein, a psychology professor at Colby College. Today, "it's become something that you are not allowed to do."
Incidents involving alcohol at colleges are scrutinized by the public, says Joel Epstein, associate director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention of Newton, Mass. …
The Columbus DispatchCopyright 1999 The Columbus Dispatch
December 4, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: STUDENTS TAKE (IT) OFF FOR A RUN STREAKING IS MAKING A COMEBACK ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
BYLINE: Mary Beth Lane, Dispatch Staff ReporterAt a time of year when most people are adding layers of clothing, some are shedding them -- all of them.
Streaking, the fad of a generation ago, is back on some Ohio college campuses this fall.
"My mom told me it happened at her school,'' said Jennifer Crosthwait, a Denison University junior from Mill Valley, Calif., whose mother graduated from North Texas State University in 1976.
So Crosthwait was amused to see streaking, the 1990s version, on her campus in Granville, Ohio.
One night in September, eight or 10 naked young men -- "kind of grungy looking, long hair, kind of hippie looking,'' she recalled -- jumped from a car and ran up three flights of stairs in the student union, yelling and making a commotion. …
What amounts to lighthearted fun at some Ohio colleges has become an annual -- and not entirely welcome -- tradition at other universities.
Indeed, Princeton University this year banned the longtime "Nude Olympics'' -- in which students streaked at winter's first snowfall at the New Jersey campus -- and told students that they would be punished if the tradition continued. …
DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
Copyright 1999 Denver Publishing Company
December 4, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: CANDIDATE FOR COUNCIL HAS HISTORY OF BAD DEBTS BAILEY ALSO WRIGGLES WHEN QUESTIONED ABOUT PRO-BASKETBALL CLAIMS
BYLINE: By Kevin Flynn, News Staff Writer
Denver City Council candidate John Bailey, who already has disclosed student loan and IRS debts, has a string of other creditors who have sued him over the last 13 years for nonpayment of debts.
Bailey declined to discuss his debt record Friday, saying it was a distraction from his campaign. He is one of the front-runners in a field of 11 people seeking Denver's near- northeast council seat in a special election Tuesday.
''I'm not going to get into this with you,'' he said. ''If you want to go into my personal finances, we can do it after the election.'' …
Early in the campaign, Bailey disclosed debts of greater than $5,000 to the IRS and the New Jersey Higher Education Assistance Agency.
The unpaid student loan, on which the New Jersey agency obtained a court judgment 13 years ago, was for $5,857. Bailey has declined to specify the amount of his IRS debt. He said that he has worked out payment arrangements on both. …
The trustees of Princeton University filed the next largest claim against Bailey and Joint Effort in 1993. As of March 1998, that debt stood at $3, 938, according to court records. Princeton's collectors tried to garnish earnings Bailey may have had from the non-profit 100 Black Men of Denver, a group Bailey helped organize. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
December 4, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: XEROX MAY PAY WORKERS TO BUY OWN INSURANCE
BYLINE: ALISSA J. RUBIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTONXerox Corp., frustrated by the cost and hassle of administering its employee health insurance program, wants to abandon its long-standing approach to health benefits and pay workers to buy the insurance of their choice.
Although Xerox, headquartered in Stamford, Conn., has not settled on the shape of the system it intends to put in place, it has begun laying plans for a changeover in as little as five years, company officials said. Other companies large and small are expected to keep a close eye on what happens at Xerox, long a corporate innovator in health benefits.
Like Xerox, many firms are studying ways to overhaul the health care plans they offer employees. These efforts have been triggered by rising health care costs, increased federal and state regulation of health insurers, the likelihood of more exposure to liability--including medical malpractice lawsuits--and growing worker dissatisfaction with choices of health plans and managed health care overall.
Xerox hopes to give all workers $5,000 to $6,000 a year to buy health insurance on the open market. The plan could save Xerox money on administering health care benefits and would limit its exposure to lawsuits from patients injured by a health plan's denial of care. Employees potentially would get a wide choice of plans and the prospect of pocketing extra cash if they choose cheaper plans. …
However, in the absence of deep and fundamental changes in the insurance market, the plan could have a devastating effect on less healthy and older workers, who could face higher costs, according to policy experts.
"This could totally unravel American health care," said Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University. Workers could be left to sort out their health care choices in a complex marketplace, with far less leverage than they have now. Most important, it is unclear whether workers would have access to group coverage, in which coverage costs for the sick and well are averaged out. …
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
December 4, 1999HEADLINE: Hot-and-cold chips with running fluids
BYLINE: Jonathan KnightTINY rivers may help solve the problem of how to move liquids around in biochips - devices that combine electronic and biological functions on a silicon wafer. Engineers at Princeton University say they can channel liquids over the chip by setting up small temperature gradients.
The challenge of handling minuscule volumes of liquid has hampered the development of labs-on-a-chip. On this scale, water is more like treacle, gumming up pumps, valves and mixers.
Molecules on the surface of a liquid will flow towards regions of higher surface tension. Because surface tension increases as temperature drops, Sandra Troian and Dawn Kataoka realised that they could use this principle to channel liquids.
They placed a silicon chip across two brass blocks, one 4 degrees C cooler than the other, and added oil to the warm side of the chip. Shallow channels in its surface, each narrower than a human hair, guided the flow allowing rivers of oil only 1 micrometre deep to flow across the chip. "Essentially, the cold part is pulling on the warm part," says Troian.
Microscale heaters to control the temperature within a chip already exist and could be programmed to heat and cool the surface in any pattern. For reagents to mix, Troian says, the streams merely need to intersect. "It's a neat way to move liquids around," says Dorian Liepmann, a microfluidics expert at the University of California, Berkeley. But he says the main challenge will be protecting the liquids from contamination.
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 1999 The Providence Journal Company
December 4, 1999, SaturdaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: LETTERS - Princeton's professor of infanticideOn Nov. 28, you reprinted a Baltimore Sun article about Peter Singer ( Professor's unorthodox views are a subject of controversy, Page F-6).
It seems amusing to the author that Singer, recently appointed as Ira W. DeCamp Professor at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Human Values, is the subject of angry protests.
He is, after all, the very picture of the avuncular professor, gracious and soft-spoken, wearing corduroys and roomy sweaters.
The author, apparently unaware that evil is at its most insidious when presenting itself with an attractive facade, would probably also have been taken in by many a Nazi concentration camp guard. Following a day's hard work, they went home, after all, to nice families, loved their wives and their beautiful children, played with their German shepherds, and listened appreciatively to classical music.
The article represents Singer as saying that parents of severely disabled newborn should . . . be allowed to kill their babies. While this is a correct representation, it does not convey just how extreme Singer's position is. In his book Practical Ethics, he argues that there are situations in which hemophilia is sufficient as a defect on the part of a newborn to justify a decision to kill him or her. As for Princeton University's appointment of Singer, following a unanimous recommendation of a search committee and concurrence of its president, all I can suggest is that the university also establish a Humanitarian-of-the-Year award, and make Slobodan Milosevic the first recipient. This would be a fitting continuation of the spirit manifesting itself in the school's hiring of Singer.
FRITZ WENISCH
Kingston
The writer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Rhode Island.
Calgary Herald
Copyright 1999 Southam Inc.
December 03, 1999HEADLINE: Countdown 2000
BYLINE: Calgary HeraldToday is Dec. 3, 1999, the 337th day of the year; there are 28 days left until the year 2000.
Visit the Countdown 2000 archive at www.canada. com.Today's birthdays:
John von Neumann (1903-1957) born at Budapest, Hungary, son of a banker; died in Washington, DC Feb. 8, 1957; mathematician; educated at the Universities of Berlin and Hamburg; 1930 invited to teach at Princeton University; 1933 the youngest professor at the Institute for Advanced Study; worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico and devised the implosion lens that triggered the plutonium-type atomic bomb; 1944 at the University of Pennsylvania, figured out how to give the nascent ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer) computer a storable memory; 1943 published The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 3, 1999HEADLINE: A Revisionist Ottoman History Shifts Blame for Today's Conflicts
BYLINE: JEFF SHARLETThe Ottoman Empire, once known as "the sick man of Europe," breathed its last more than seven decades ago. But blood still soaks the soil of its former possessions, from Kosovo to Iraq to the strip of land once known as Palestine.
Although the questions of why and how the empire crumbled rarely get an airing beyond a limited corner of academe, the aftermath of that event is discussed daily even now, far and wide.
Turn on the television news, and you'll hear the Serbian wars explained away as ancient ethnic rivalries. Read a news magazine and you'll be warned of the specter of fundamentalist Islam.
And in scholarship on the various regions that once paid tribute to the most powerful government on earth, you'll find theories abounding on the inherently violent nature of nationalism.
The West's intentions may be fiercely debated by scholars of the left and the right, but when it comes to the Middle East, at least, nearly all would agree with Mr. Kedourie about the direction of events and the flow of nationalistic ideas: from West to East, from colonialists to colonized, from actors to acted-upon.
Until now. In December, Harvard University Press will publish Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923, by Efraim and Inari Karsh. Chapter by chapter, the Karshes argue in favor of overturning nearly every accepted history of the region, the foundation not only of a century of scholarship, but also of decades of conflict in the Middle East. The Karshes aim to prove the agency of Middle Eastern actors, a seemingly progressive ambition that carries with it the implication that those actors, not Western imperialists, are primarily responsible for the mess their descendants are in today. …
Although the Karshes have drawn charges of bias from across the political spectrum in the past for a biography of Saddam Hussein that they wrote -- and Mr. Karsh is currently embroiled in a very public dispute about Israel's origins with a movement of Israeli leftist revisionists called the New Historians, who are critical of Zionism -- Empires of the Sand is as yet unchallenged.
The Karshes say they preferred to keep their research to themselves until publication, so that they would not be swayed in the course of writing by partisan arguments.
But even in advance of the book's appearance, some scholars suggest that the Karshes may have misread the documents. M. Sukru Hanioglu, a historian at Princeton University and the author of Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 (Oxford University Press, July 2000), says that based on his own study of documents from the World War I period, he believes that Ottoman boasts of a reinvigorated empire stretching from the Volga to the Ganges were just wartime propaganda.
Mr. Hanioglu also dismisses the notion that nationalism was or could be a peaceful force. "What [the Karshes] may not take into account is that the Ottomans were a multinational empire," he says.
"No region was a homogeneity. No region was without many legitimate, competing claims. That is why they fight in Kosovo today." …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 3, 1999HEADLINE: Search for a New Leader of NIH Focuses on the Short Term
Wanted: accomplished scientist for prestigious, well-paying government job in Bethesda, Md. Must be willing to consider short-term hitch.
Finding candidates who fit that bill is the challenge confronting Clinton Administration officials who are trying to pick a new director for the National Institutes of Health to succeed Harold E. Varmus, whose resignation will be effective at the end of December.
Some observers believe the Administration may decide to ask the agency's deputy director, Ruth L. Kirschstein, who will become acting director after Dr. Varmus leaves, to serve through the end of President Clinton's term. They note the difficulty of attracting a top candidate for a job that may last for a year or less, depending on the inclinations of the next President. …
Candidates from academe include J. Michael Bishop, chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco; Herbert Pardes, dean of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University; and Shirley M. Tilghman, a molecular-biology professor at Princeton University.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 3, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: ARCHITECTURE REVIEW; Tinkertoy Fantasy for a City of Unquenchable Desire
BYLINE: By HERBERT MUSCHAMPANOTHER CITY FOR ANOTHER LIFE: CONSTANT'S NEW BABYLON," a show now on view at the Drawing Center, fills in an important chapter in the history of contemporary architecture. Constant was a painter whose utopian ambitions propelled him into the realm of architecture and urban planning. What he found there was a nightmare surpassed in dreadfulness only by the commercial building types that eventually came to pass: malls, airports, theme parks, convention hotels and other products of the monoculture.
At the same time, Constant's visionary work prefigures projects by Frank O. Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Philippe Starck, Nigel Coates, Greg Lynn and other architects who have imbued individual buildings with the rich emotional impact of urban experience. And this show proposes that Constant looked even further into the future, toward the cyberspatial network now beginning to encircle the globe.
Organized by Mark Wigley, a professor of architecture at Princeton University, the show has the narrative structure of a horror movie. Buckminster Fuller once observed that all utopias tend to be taken over by thugs. In his designs for the New Babylon, Constant arrives at a similar realization about his own utopian ideas. The New Babylon was Constant's vision of a city given over to the pleasure principle. Dionysian, released from reason, dedicated to spontaneity, change and the realization of all fantasies, the city was a reaction against the rationalist city envisioned by Le Corbusier and other modern architects.
Two decades after embarking on this project, however, Constant had seen the dark side of the id unbound. Still, instead of abandoning the project, Constant determined to probe the shadows of the Babylon he had devised. In a final series of drawings, he sketches an apocalypse in black and red: madness, slavery, dehumanization, the dystopian consequences of unquenchable desire. …
OMAHA WORLD - HERALD
Copyright 1999 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
December 3, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Omaha, Neb., Family Overhauls Bank Ownership
BYLINE: By Steve JordonThe Lauritzen family has restructured its majority ownership of First National of Nebraska Inc. but has no plans to sell or change operations of the Omaha banking company, according to a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The document, filed Nov. 24, said that on May 28, a court order named Elizabeth D. Lauritzen and her children, Bruce R. Lauritzen and Ann Lauritzen Pape, co-conservators of the assets of John R. Lauritzen, triggering later changes in stock ownership.
Bruce Lauritzen is chairman and president
John Lauritzen of First National. John Lauritzen, Elizabeth's husband and father of their children, is the retired chairman of First National. The stock ownership changes amount to a change of control of First National, requiring the SEC filing.
Bruce Lauritzen said Wednesday that the family members, who have controlled the company for nearly 30 years, sought to become conservators because his father had an incapacitating stroke in July 1996, and it became apparent that he would not recover enough to resume handling his business affairs.
The new stock arrangement ensures that First National will remain a family-owned financial institution "for several decades to come," Lauritzen said. "It's important to the stability of the company as a Nebraska-owned company."
Bruce Lauritzen's two daughters are affiliated with the company. Meg Lauritzen Dodge is a loan officer at First National Bank of Omaha, the holding company's flagship bank, and Blair Gogel is a director of First National Bank of Kansas in Overland Park, Kan. The chairman's son, Clark Lauritzen, is a recent Princeton University graduate and now works with Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York. …
Obituaries
The Seattle Times
Copyright 1999 The Seattle Times Company
December 08, 1999HEADLINE: UW HISTORY PROFESSOR PETER SUGAR DIES AT 80
BYLINE: CAROLE BEERS; SEATTLE TIMES STAFF REPORTERPeter Sugar, an authority on the history of East-Central Europe and a one-time hockey player in his native Hungary, left a lasting impression at the University of Washington.
A former student, Gregory Morgan, wrote in a recent UW Alumni magazine that he still pictures Dr. Sugar "slinking across the Quad in his trench coat and signature beret."
Morgan recalled how Dr. Sugar, addressing huge classes on the history of Western civilization, "pontificated from a small ladder. His unique lecture style and strong personality, combined with his thick Hungarian accent and his powerful command of his subject matter, made him a mesmerizing force in the classroom." …
Dr. Sugar emigrated to the U.S. in 1946. After a brief business career, he earned a bachelor's degree in history at City College of New York in 1954. He earned a doctorate in history and near-Eastern studies at Princeton University in 1959. …
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Copyright 1999 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
December 8, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Longtime St. Petersburg, Fla., Auto Dealer Dies
BYLINE: By Craig Basse and Mary EvertzST. PETERSBURG, Fla.--E.W. "Bert" Smith Jr., 81, a prominent St. Petersburg auto dealer for 46 years, has died.
Mr. Smith, the chairman of Bert Smith International, Oldsmobile, BMW, Porsche, VW, Isuzu and Subaru, died Monday after a five-month illness in hospice care. His death was stroke-related, said his wife, Barbara.
Arriving in the Tampa Bay area from Detroit in 1953, he bought the Bonnett Oldsmobile agency at 1425 Fourth St. N. Five years later, he moved his dealership to its present location at 34th Street and 38th Avenue N. He was the first St. Petersburg automobile dealer to move out of the downtown area onto 34th Street, which today is know as "auto row." …
Mr. Smith attended Lawrenceville Preparatory and was a graduate of Princeton University. …
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
Copyright 1999 Law Bulletin Publishing Company
December 3, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: John C. Walker, 77
Retired Hopkins & Sutter partner John C. Walker died Wednesday in his Wilmette home after suffering from heart ailments. He was 77.
Mr. Walker grew up in Winnetka, attended Princeton University and received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1950.
Mr. Walker began his law career at Sidley & Austin after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He joined Hopkins & Sutter in 1956 and became a partner there in 1960. …
The Times-Picayune
Copyright 1999 The Times-Picayune Publishing Co.
December 7, 1999 TuesdayHEADLINE: DONALD H. HALSEY, 89, ADVERTISING, PR EXEC
BYLINE: From staff reportsDonald H. Halsey, a retired New Orleans advertising and public relations executive, died Sunday at Memorial Medical Center. He was 89.
Mr. Halsey was born in Asheville, N.C., and lived in New Orleans for more than 75 years.
He was president of Halsey, Stakelum & Brown Inc., an advertising and public relations agency, from 1969 to 1976. He worked in the advertising and public relations fields for 50 years before retiring in 1983. He also was a past president of the Advertising Club of New Orleans.
He attended New Orleans Academy and graduated from Gilman School in Baltimore and Princeton University. At Princeton, he was manager of the Cap and Gown Club, a member of the Right Wing Club, and a campus representative of the New York Herald Tribune. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 6, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Sam Treiman, 74; Physicist Helped Develop Particle Theory
BYLINE: By JAMES GLANZDr. Sam Treiman, who was recognized for his seminal research in particle physics and for his Socratic style in passing that knowledge to his students, died Tuesday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He was 74 and lived in Princeton, N.J.
The cause was leukemia, said Dr. Curtis Callan, chairman of the physics department at Princeton University, where Dr. Treiman retired last year with emeritus status.
In 1958, Dr. Treiman and a colleague, Marvin Goldberger, who is now at the University of California in San Diego, deduced an unexpected relationship between the so-called weak and strong forces of elementary particle physics.
What came to be known as the Goldberger-Treiman Relation connected two domains of the microworld that had been thought to be distinct and helped lead to a much grander theory of particle physics that is known as the Standard Model.
"The relationship that Goldberger and Treiman found was surprising in its simplicity," Dr. Callan said. With time, he said, "it became clear that this initial development opened the door to a new realm."
Dr. Treiman was also known for the time he spent as a mentor to his students, including Dr. Callan and Dr. Steven Weinberg, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for his work in unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces. …
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