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Princeton in the News
December 10 to 16, 1999
HIGHLIGHTS• Surface tension and electrostatic attraction may cause effect
• Why must charities struggle to survive?
• A mother's ardent 'project'; disciplined young bradley was coached to achieve
OTHER HEADLINES• Bradley campaign update
• Forging a strong bond
• Teen Sawyer once caught Bill's passes
• Apply yourself pathway to higher education requires prompt filing
• Keep those neurons working
• Bulldogs fill four holes
• Opposing life theories are not compatible
• Professor raises chilling thoughts
• Adapting cells give hope for new stroke treatment: after bone marrow cells were transplanted into rats' brains, they were able to rebuild damaged cells
• Mental patient gets treatment at home: medication, weekly check-ups and counselling sessions are giving her a semblance of a normal life
• Washington today: presidents relish role in bringing peace
• Princeton students scrap 'nude olympics' protest plan
• Milken institute 2000 global conference, march 8-10 in los angeles, focuses on technology's impact on world economy
• Universal display corporation holds grand opening of its technology transfer and pilot line facility
• China hands meet in taipei to review Taiwan's development
• Star in stripes
• Football for women? new league hopes to follow in cleats of soccer stars
• Revenge of the lame duck?
• Skewering "pro-choice' double-talk
• In a few months the US economy will have reached its longest period of uninterrupted growth
• Index funds gaining influence over the industry; even active mutual fund managers use them as guidelines
• Why I Love Pokemon And Harry Potter
• Test tube truths
• Q: Should congress fight poverty by promoting marriage? yes: we now know that marriage keeps parents and their children out of poverty
• A missile defense system isn't what america needs
• What's next: lower returns predicted; stock performance expected to average 5% to 12% in next decade
• Michael graves is one of the most influential archictects
• Conversation at 33,000 feet leads to investment success;
• Antiques; bakker boccelli balloons with bidders
• Houston-based Patrinely Group has been selected to develop an 80-acre corporate office campus
• Loose cannon
• Marshall scholars named
• Biological revolution raises many questions: not just about what science can do, but what it should do
• Ferry farm: beyond the myth; landmark designation is sought for washington's boyhood home
• UCSD prof makes a hard pitch for perfect pitch - she says most can get it
• Future imperfect
• Translator becomes quite popular
• Stepping out - see Drumthwacket
• Of mice and men
• Gallup says america has a shallow faith
• Australian ethicist Peter Singer under fire from disability activists
• The bigger picture
• Suffolk church puts local twist on traditional nativity
• Bradley the loner: a campaign liability?
• University of chicago names cornell university provost as new president
• Do 'digital certificates' hold the key to colleges' on-line activities?
• Short shots - Young is center of attention
• Weekend excursion; nation's history entwined with ivy
OBITUARIES• Richard Porter Bell
• Walter c. Carter, chemist, worked on a-bomb
• James L. Dodson , 89
• Sargent Karch
• Henry W. Large; was head of wabash railroad
• Datus Smith, 92
• Robert S. Taylor; popular carnegie mellon architecture professor
HIGHLIGHTS
Electronic Engineering Times
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc.
December 13, 1999HEADLINE: Surface tension and electrostatic attraction may cause effect -- New technique unmasks microchip patterning
BYLINE: R. Colin Johnson
PRINCETON, N.J. - The world's first demonstration of lithographically induced self-assembly (Lisa) enables submicron-sized circular pillars to be created without a mask. The maskless procedure, invented by Princeton University researcher Stephen Chou, promises semiconductor manufacturers a new tool for patterning deep-submicron features on chips.
"I believe that this discovery is a universal principle that, when perfected, will be used with many kinds of materials, not just to pattern microchips," said Chou. Lisa works by placing a solid planar plate above a liquid, without touching it (the exact distance, measured in microns, seems not to be critical).
Chou discovered that if the liquid is left to solidify while the plate is in place, a pattern of finely spaced pillars, measuring about half a micron in diameter, spontaneously form. Why that phenomenon occurs is not yet well- understood, however.
"We've worked on Lisa for two years trying to figure out a suitable theory, and we plan to continue that search, but we feel we need to begin developing applications now," Chou said. Chou kept his discovery secret for those two years while he sought an explanatory theory, but Princeton's technology- licensing office finally persuaded him to release news of the discovery without the supporting theory.
Chou's best guess is that Lisa faces off two universal "forces" in nature: surface tension and electrostatic attraction. Minutely different charges on the plate and the opposing liquid cause them to be attracted to one another, but surface tension opposes that attraction by trying to pull the liquid back down flat. When the two forces balance, the liquid forms a fine pattern of pillars on its surface that solidify as the liquid cools. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 13, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: WHY MUST CHARITIES STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE?
BYLINE: Peter T. Kilborn
As incomes of the better-off Americans rise in this age of prosperity, with the stock market and corporate profits booming, charities report that both individuals and companies are donating less to organizations that support the homeless, the young and the hungry than they did in leaner times.
Leading charitable organizations such aslike the Salvation Army and United Way say that as a result, they are struggling with a surging demand for their aid, and the private donations they collect are falling far short of the need.
"What is so stunning to me is that people in America have this image of prosperity and everybody benefits," said Deborah Leff, president of America's Second Harvest in Chicago, which oversees a network of 189 community food banks nationwide that distribute nearly $400 million in donated food to 26 million people.
Leff said contributions to Second Harvest's $10 million annual budget have been rising but by nowhere near enough to meet the demand. "I think people just aren't aware of the need," she said. "They think of hunger as a distended stomach in some developing country. That's starvation, not hunger." …
Meanwhile, better-off Americans who might help are spending and borrowing more than ever and reaching record levels of bankruptcy and debt, so they have less to save and to give. "One would have expected that at a certain level of prosperity, people might reach a certain limit of their consumption," said Julian Wolpert, a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University who specializes in tracking philanthropy. "But we're not getting that." …
In some ways, the nation has never looked so bountiful. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp., and his wife, Melinda, have created a foundation that dwarfs even those of the Rockefellers and Fords, and by the end of this year, Harvard will have amassed more than $2.3 billion in a single capital fund drive. Giving USA, which monitors philanthropic giving, reports a prosperity-driven surge in giving to a record $175 billion last year, up nearly 11 percent from 1997.
But about 90 percent of the money goes to religious organizations, some of which operate services for poor people, and to other organizations that cater mostly to the rich and the middle class, like the opera, ballet, museums and universities. "They add nicely to our quality of life," Wolpert said of these organizations, "but they are also the kinds of things that we ourselves use." …
NOTE: This story also appeared in The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, The Austin American-Statesman and The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
December 12, 1999, SundayNOTE: Features narrative on how Bradley chose Princeton over Duke.
HEADLINE: A Mother's Ardent 'Project'; Disciplined Young Bradley Was Coached to Achieve
SERIES: THE LIFE OF BILL BRADLEY; Great Expectations; Pg. 1/6
BYLINE: Barton Gellman; Dale Russakoff, Washington Post Staff Writers
DATELINE: CRYSTAL CITY, Mo.Susie Bradley's unforeseen journey to motherhood began its final leg in a hearse. Her husband of three years, rigid with arthritis, felt unequal to driving the Cadillac. In that wartime summer of 1943, the nearest substitute with a reliable supply of gas belonged to Gentry Politte, the undertaker. …
"Well, it's a boy and I wanted a girl!" she lamented. On further inspection, Bill Bradley struck her as a "long, skinny, ugly baby--I'm just being honest," Bond recalled. "He was so thin that she thought it was a challenge to get him to look--well, everybody envisions a plump baby."
Susie Bradley set about conforming her son to that vision, the first of many. …
Strikingly early, the road they mapped for Bradley led to the White House. Each milestone--state and national student council, Princeton all-American, Olympic champion, Rhodes scholar--brought new believers. Other high school principals in those days may have imagined their standout graduates as president. Not many could have had the image taken seriously, as Edward Rapp did, in a New Yorker magazine profile that cemented Bradley's place as the most celebrated collegian of his day. …
Alternately drawn and repelled by the spotlight, Bradley is now running for president more than 30 years after it became commonplace to say it was his destiny.
"From the time when he was a junior in high school, however you define his world, he was--if not the king of it, he was at the very least a prince," said investment banker John Garber, who became Bradley's Princeton roommate after meeting him when they were 17-year-old student body presidents at a national convention in Janesville, Wis. "With Bill, 38 or 40 years of promise have turned into something real now." …
Cutting the Apron Strings
The 3,066 points Bradley scored in high school attracted recruiters from every college basketball power. Kentucky's Adolph Rupp, a four-time NCAA champion and the most famous coach of his day, cooled his heels for more than an hour when he turned up without an appointment at the Crystal City State Bank. Warren Bradley had never heard of him. In the end, Bradley applied to five colleges and got 75 scholarship offers in the mail.
Bradley's choice boiled down to Princeton and Duke, with his parents on opposite sides. Warren Bradley nudged his son toward the Ivy League. Susie, won over by Duke, made a comparative chart of its virtues: basketball, academics and a religious ethos of which she approved.
On May 10, 1961, Bradley signed a letter of intent to play for Duke. "It was quite a disappointment to me," Warren Bradley told Ahnemann in the unaired audio recording of 1967. By way of unspoken appeal, the banker arranged for his son to tour Europe that summer and see a wider world. "The purpose in sending him over there, at least in the back of my mind, was to cut these apron strings," Warren Bradley said.
Crossing the Atlantic aboard the Queen Elizabeth, Bradley met Jay Gunther, a Princeton sophomore who had just been admitted to the university's selective Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "I'd just got in, and I was all excited about it," Gunther recalled. Later, the tour stopped at Oxford University, where Bradley walked enthralled through the Tudor battlements and manicured gardens of Christ Church, an architectural gem among the university's three dozen colleges.
Back in Crystal City, the 17-year-old Bradley read more about Oxford, decided he wanted to go there one day, found out "there was something called a Rhodes Scholarship," and discovered that Princeton won more than its share. Crystal City, he said recently, "was a wonderful place to grow up and yet by virtue of its size and its--I'll just say by virtue of its size--there was always a larger world, and the larger world was always what I was curious about."
By late August, Susie Bradley had dispatched her son's aluminum steamer trunk to Duke, but the young man was reconsidering. On the Friday night of his last weekend home, he took his girlfriend, Susan Fortney, out to the Stoplight Drive-In. " 'I have a major decision to make. I'm so confused. I don't know where I'm going to go,' " he announced, as she recalled it recently. "But he couldn't even discuss it with me."
The next morning, Sept. 2, Warren Bradley phoned Austin P. Leland, Princeton's St. Louis alumni representative, to ask if it was too late for his son to change his mind. Leland dialed Princeton's admission director and caught him at home, raking leaves. William Van Cleve, who took part in the call, said Bradley was readmitted on the spot, with two provisos. He had to send a letter to Duke that day, with a postmark from Crystal City, clearing Princeton of involvement in his change of heart. And he had to be on campus Monday morning, like everyone else, for registration. …
OTHER HEADLINES
The Bulletin's Frontrunner
Copyright 1999 Bulletin Broadfaxing Network, Inc.
December 16, 1999HEADLINE: Bradley Campaign Update.
Bradley-Sawyer Romance Reported. The New York Post (12/16, Blomquist, Connor) cover story reported Bradley and ABC's Dianne Sawyer were "college sweethearts." Bradley "was a basketball star and senior at Princeton University when he started keeping company with brainy Wellesley beauty Sawyer in the mid- 1960s." Said Stanford professor Dan Okimoto, a Bradley roommate, said "she was a Junior Miss and she heard about Bill Bradley, this All- American, and she dropped him a note and said she'd like to meet him. His interest was piqued, and they met and they really liked each other." The "romance continued to bloom" when Bradley went to Oxford. Sawyer's parents, who lived in Kentucky, "spent Christmas 1966 with the Bradley clan in Missouri." Okimoto "said Bradley was smitten," adding, "I asked him once in hindsight what he felt, and he said, 'For a long time, I thought Diane was the one.'"
Bradley Reluctant To Reveal Personal Details. The Wall Street Journal (12/16, Davis) reported Bradley's "reticence reveals a lot about the man. Over the campaign, Mr. Bradley has declined to answer questions about his favorite book, his religion and his daughter. On a Wall Street Journal questionnaire, he wouldn't name his favorite television show or movie, or his closest friends. In Chicago last month, he told an African-American audience that he had benefited from a kind of affirmative action, in that his basketball skills got him admitted to Princeton University, not his college- test scores. But he wouldn't reveal his SAT scores." Bradley's "appeal is as a truth teller concerned with big ideas and big issues and the grubby details of raising money could tarnish that image. At a conference of leaders of black churches in Los Angeles, he recasts his personal history -- small-town banker's son, All-American college basketball player, Rhodes scholar, Hall of Fame professional basketball player, three-term senator -- as one of hardship and empathy." …
The Herald (Glasgow)
Copyright 1999 Scottish Media Newspapers Limited
December 16, 1999HEADLINE: Forging a strong bond
BYLINE: No Caption
SCULPTOR Sandy Stoddart works on a model of the Paisley-born Rev Dr John Witherspoon, founder of Princeton University, in New Jersey.
Paisley University hopes strong links will be forged with the elite American education establishment by their joint project to honour the historical Scottish figure.
The two universities have commissioned two bronze statues to celebrate the life of the clerical, educational, and political pioneer. The identical 12ft monumental figures are being created by the internationally acclaimed sculptor, one for each university.
The New York Post
Copyright 1999 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: TEEN SAWYER ONCE CAUGHT BILL'S PASSES
BYLINE: Brian Blomquist and Tracy Connor
Presidential wannabe Bill Bradley and ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer have a secret: They were college sweethearts.
Bradley was a basketball star and senior at Princeton University when he started keeping company with brainy Wellesley beauty Sawyer in the mid-1960s.
"She was a Junior Miss and she heard about Bill Bradley, this All-American, and she dropped him a note and said she'd like to meet him," said Dan Okimoto, a Stanford professor who was Bradley's college roommate.
"His interest was piqued, and they met and they really liked each other."
Sawyer, who won the Junior Miss contest at age 17, had all the qualities that Bradley was looking for in a woman.
"She was vivacious, intelligent, poised and intellectually curious. Diane was a very impressive person and she really had Bill's attention," Okimoto said. "Everyone who met her thought it was a good match."
After graduating from Princeton in 1965, Bradley went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, but the romance continued to bloom.
The lovebirds' families even got to know each other. Sawyer's parents, who lived in Kentucky, spent Christmas 1966 with the Bradley clan in Missouri. …
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 1999 San Antonio Express-News
December 16, 1999HEADLINE: APPLY YOURSELF Pathway to higher education requires prompt filing of creative essays
BYLINE: Elaine Aradillas
Deadlines are looming for high school seniors who are putting the finishing touches on essays for college applications.
For those who have procrastinated all semester, the holiday break is usually the time when students get those applications out on the table and begin writing before the February deadlines start rolling.
"It's definitely not something you can do the night before - no way," says James Swift, a senior at the International School of the Americas.
Swift has completed two essays that he'll be using for various applications. Although most college application deadlines are in February, Swift says he's been mailing applications throughout the semester. …
Professional college preparatory programs, such as Kaplan, and private tutors agree that the key to a successful essay is making it unique.
"You have to make yourself different than the 17,000 applications they're reading," says Jill MacDougal, a private tutor who counsels high school and college students.
She assisted high school senior Taylor Bolz with her essay. They spent the early part of the summer brainstorming for her essay to Princeton. Bolz says she would have written a bland essay without MacDougal's advice.
"I'd probably have followed the guidelines and common techniques taught in English class," she says. "I was encouraged to write a little more freely." …
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1999 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Keep those neurons working
BYLINE: Bob VanWagoner
Something's happening to us, as we ride out the end of this century. Seniors are showing up, speaking up, and keeping their oars in the water. No passive holiday season here.
There's a new attitude among our generation, which seems unusually active, firm and perceptive. We're not "fading away."
It's connected to: 1) realizing how far we've come during our lives; 2) a recognition that we've been part of, or witnesses to, tremendous historic and cultural changes over these times; and 3) a more subtle awareness that adaptations and changes also have occurred within each of us - and are continuing, even today.
Not only are we watching a new technological and global world develop before our eyes, but we are still learning about it, discerning its pluses and minuses, and responding as "players" in the scheme of things - despite our ages. In fact, we step forward often to give the new-age developments a pause or fine-tuning from our older reservoirs of knowledge. …
"Think Again" warned a headline on a science story in the New York Times Oct. 24.
"Common wisdom holds that people are born with a fixed allotment of these cells, which then die off one by one," the reporter wrote. While recent experiments had begun to chip away at this, he noted, a recent study by Princeton University researchers discovered that thousands of new neurons - per day - were being formed in the brains of adult monkeys, and migrating to the brain's centers for intelligence and decision-making.
Further studies show that animals using these new cells to learn new tasks retained them; but those which did not continue learning, tended to lose the new cells. Dr. Elizabeth Gould concluded: "People who continue to read (for example) are much less likely to experience memory loss than those who are more passive and don't exercise their mental capacity. These findings are a classic case of 'use it or lose it'." …
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1999 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Bulldogs fill four holes
BYLINE: Dennis Maffezzoli STAFF WRITER
The DeSoto County High athletic department filled four vacancies on its coaching staff on Wednesday.
Ray Sutphin takes over as softball coach, replacing Frank Giddens, who stepped down after one year.
The other new assignments include football assistant Dan Talbot as girls track coach, Roy Dodd as boys tennis coach and Neal Cannon as girls tennis coach.
"I thought about taking it last year," Sutphin said. "The circumstances weren't right at the time. But when they moved golf to a fall sport, it gave me an opportunity, and I was able to get some key people involved."
Sutphin has Laura White and Sheri Hipp as assistant coaches, Bill Hines and former player Amanda Holder as volunteers and girls junior varsity basketball coach Christy Jekenik, a former pitcher for Princeton University, to work with the hurlers. …
The Toronto Star
Copyright 1999 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: OPPOSING LIFE THEORIES ARE NOT COMPATIBLE
Re Professor shakes up debate over questions of life and death - Bioethiciist doesn't believe in sanctity of human existence (Nov. 29).
Twenty years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge said that, ''It takes just about 30 years in our humane society to transform a war crime into an act of compassion,'' as euthanasia was then coming to be seen.
He also said that the time was coming when the utilitarian way of looking at society, in which killing becomes akin to quality control, would become respectably viewed alongside the view that since every life contains within it the potentialities of all life, it therefore deserves our infinite respect, and we will have to choose one or the other, as the two are not compatible.
In the latter, we are a family with God as our father. In the former, our families become economically driven factory farms.
With the appointment of bioethicist Peter Singer to such an acclaimed seat of learning as Princeton University, clearly the time Muggeridge was speaking of has arrived. And just as clearly, the placard-waving, slogan-wielding disabled who protested Singer's appointment have made their choice: We're not better off dead!
Gale White
The Toronto Star
Copyright 1999 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: PROFESSOR RAISES CHILLING THOUGHTS
Re Professor shakes up debate over questions of life and death (Nov. 29). It is beyond belief how Peter Singer, who believes it should be okay for parents to have a disabled child of theirs killed, can teach a course entitled ''Questions of Life and Death'' out of Princeton University's Centre for The Study of Human Values.
Any man who in the same breath supports the fight against discrimination of disabled people and believes the parents of these same people should have the right to kill their disabled children ought to be considered unbalanced, not awarded a prestigious academic post.
I do not count myself among those who are ''disabled,'' but if a man of his position can question why we should not experiment on a disabled child instead of a monkey, I experience even more chill at the thought of who's next.
Since he does not believe that human life is sacred, why not conduct experiments on the infirm and the elderly as well?
Singer is now 53. Let's wait 20 years and check in with him again, measuring him against his own standard of a worthwhile life. If he does not meet his own criteria for human value, perhaps he should volunteer himself to replace a young, healthy laboratory ape.
Ray Scott
The Vancouver Sun
Copyright 1999 Pacific Press Ltd.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Adapting cells give hope for new stroke treatment: After bone marrow cells were transplanted into rats' brains, they were able to rebuild damaged cells.
BYLINE: Jamie Talan
In search of ways to rebuild the brain, scientists have injected stem cells from bone marrow into the brains of rats and mice to see whether the cells, which continuously divide to rebuild tissue in the marrow, could do the same thing for the brain.
To the surprise of Michael Chopp, a neuroscientist at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, the experiment paid off: The stem cells performed like neurons and, what's more, eventually became functioning neurons able to reverse some of the brain damage associated with stroke in animals.
''We had this wild idea and we gave it a shot,'' said Chopp, who recently presented his findings to a packed audience of colleagues at the Society of Neuroscience annual meeting in Miami. Other researchers say they've discovered similar results, but would not discuss the details because their work has been submitted for publication.
If true, the implications are enormous. What if bone marrow could be removed from a patient's femur (thigh bone) in the hours following a stroke -- or any type of brain trauma -- and injected into the brain to protect it from subsequent damage? These cells ''could literally reconstruct the brain,'' Chopp said. …
''You wouldn't believe the claims scientists are making these days,'' said Fred Gage, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
Gage was the first scientist to report finding new neurons in the brains of older adults. Previously, it was thought that the adult brain did not grow new neurons. The neurons that Gage, and now others, found were located in the dentate gyrus, an area of the hippocampus that regulates aspects of learning and memory.
''I am not being negative,'' Gage added. ''I am just overwhelmed by all of these reports. There's a feeling these days that all bets are off and that anything is possible.''
Indeed, Gage is now trying to replicate a report released last month by Elizabeth Gould of Princeton University suggesting that in the adult monkey, some higher thinking areas of the cortex also are giving birth to thousands of new neurons. …
The Vancouver Sun
Copyright 1999 Pacific Press Ltd.
December 16, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Mental patient gets treatment at home: Medication, weekly check-ups and counselling sessions are giving her a semblance of a normal life.
BYLINE: Glenn Bohn
Just two years ago, Jeanette Gobin used to call 911 and ask for an ambulance to try to get admitted to the psychiatric unit at Lions Gate Hospital.
Now, she stays out of hospital and nurses pay weekly visits to her home, thanks to a two-year-old North Shore Health Region program called Assertive Community Outreach.
Gobin still must cope with the mood swings triggered by a mental health problem called bipolar disorder, but medication, weekly checkups and counselling sessions are giving her a semblance of a normal life.
It's a starkly different life than the one she led two years earlier, when taxpayers were footing the bills for police interventions, ambulance trips and emergency room visits. …
Abnormal Psychology, a textbook written by Ronald Comer of Princeton University, offers this definition of Gobin's illness: ''People with bipolar disorder experience both the lows of depression and the highs of mania. Many describe their life as an emotional roller coaster. They shift back and forth between extreme moods.'' …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
December 15, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: WASHINGTON TODAY: Presidents relish role in bringing peace
BYLINE: By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTONHistory often remembers presidents for wars that occur on their watch, but presidents usually strive to be remembered for the peace agreements they help put in place.
President Clinton hopes to leave a legacy as the American president who helped bring peace to the Middle East, just as former President Carter is remembered for the 1978 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel.
"We have a truly historic opportunity now," Clinton said in advance of today's meeting at the White House between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa.
If the get-acquainted talks succeed, and particularly if they lead to a wider peace agreement, it will cap Clinton's earlier accomplishment of coaxing Israel and the Palestinians to the bargaining table.
Many presidents have generous - perhaps exaggerated - opinions of their ability to influence world events through personal dealings, said Fred Greenstein, a political science professor at Princeton University.
In Clinton's case, self-assurance and an apparent belief that he can talk anyone into nearly anything works to his benefit, Greenstein said. "He's full of skill and savvy," Greenstein said. "He's got the presidency at his disposal, and it doesn't involve having to cut deals with Congress." …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
December 14, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Princeton students scrap 'Nude Olympics' protest plan
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.
Princeton University's sophomore class has decided against burning an administrator in effigy for her role in banning the Nude Olympics.
During the campus tradition, students mark the season's first snowfall by running around naked.
Sophomore class president Ben Shopsin said Monday that he scrapped the effigy idea after receiving hundreds of e-mails from classmates opposed to it.
The protest target, Dean of Student Life Janina Montero, led the committee that banned the sophomore rite after 10 participants were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning last January. The committee also called for one-year suspension for students who violate the ban.
The Nude Olympics began in the 1970s.
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
December 14, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Milken Institute 2000 Global Conference, March 8-10 in Los Angeles, Focuses On Technology's Impact On World Economy
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Dec. 14, 1999
Nine winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics will join some of the world's most prominent business, financial, academic and public policy leaders March 8-10, 2000, in Los Angeles at the third annual Milken Institute Global Conference.
The focus of the 2000 Global Conference is technology and how it is impacting economies, businesses and lives around the world. All panels will touch on this issue, and 10 will deal specifically with technology issues such as e-commerce, electronic trading and the explosion of the telecommunications, information and entertainment industries.
The Nobel Laureates scheduled to appear (include):
-- John Nash, Princeton University
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
December 14, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Universal Display Corporation Holds Grand Opening of Its Technology Transfer and Pilot Line Facility
DATELINE: EWING, N.J., Dec. 14, 1999
Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (NASDAQ: PANL; PHLX: PNL), a developer of an innovative flat panel display technology based on organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) held the grand opening of its new Technology Transfer and Pilot Line Facility on Friday, December 10.
Located in Ewing, New Jersey, the 11,000 square foot facility has a class 100 clean room, OLED deposition lab, materials purification and reliability labs and prototype fabrication facilities.
The new facility is only 20 minutes from the Company's research partners at Princeton University, and will significantly increase the resources the Company can bring to develop and commercialize its proprietary OLED technologies.
Over 150 people attended the Grand Opening and were able to see how an OLED display was made. …
Central News Agency
Copyright 1999 Central News Agency
December 14, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: CHINA HANDS MEET IN TAIPEI TO REVIEW TAIWAN'S DEVELOPMENT
BYLINE: By Sofia Wu
DATELINE: Taipei, Dec. 14A symposium on Taiwan's development in the 20th century opened in Taipei on Tuesday, with the participation of 13 world-renowned scholars on China affairs.
The two-day seminar is being co-sponsored by the Republic of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government Information Office (GIO) as well as the China Quarterly, a flagship publication of the London University's School of Oriental and African Studies.
The British quarterly broached the idea of holding the seminar in view of Taiwan's increasingly important role in Taiwan Strait-related affairs following the reversion of Hong Kong and Macau to mainland Chinese rule.
After more than one yearof preparations, the authoritative quarterly decided to convene the seminar in Taipei in cooperation with the ROC's GIO and Foreign Ministry. …
In addition, the participants will also analyze major challenges Taiwan may face in the future.
Among the participants are Richard Louis Edmonds, editor-in-chief of the China Quarterly; Prof. Christopher Howe of the School of Oriental and African Studies; Prof. Michael Leifer of the London School of Economics and Political Science; Prof. Lynn T. White of Princeton University; Prof. Yoshihide Soeya of Japan's Keio University; and Prof. Angelina Chun-chu Yee of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. …
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Information Bank Abstracts
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company: Abstracts
December 14, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: STAR IN STRIPES
BYLINE: BY KEVIN TATUM
Profile of Princeton University freshman basketball player Spencer Gloger notes up-and-coming star changed his mind twice from going to UCLA to attend Princeton; photo (M)
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Football for women? New league hopes to follow in cleats of soccer stars
BYLINE: By BETH GARDINER, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: UNIONDALE, N.Y.The New York Sharks donned cleats, shoulder pads and helmets and mustered all their strength trying to pound through the Minnesota Vixens' defense on a windy football field this weekend.
But the tough-and-ready female players were aiming at more than just the opposing line - they hoped to knock down the barriers that have kept women out of one of the last exclusively male sports.
The Saturday exhibition game was part of a fledgling effort to launch a professional tackle football league for women. Organizers hope to ride the wave of enthusiasm for women's sports generated by the U.S. victory in the 1999 soccer Women's World Cup, the success of the WNBA basketball league and the triumphs of American Olympic teams in women's hockey and softball.
"This is a dream come true for all of us," said attorney Lynn Lewis, a Sharks offensive tackle. "I grew up playing football with the guys. Then when you got to a certain age you couldn't play in anything organized. ... Out of all the major sports, this is the last one that brought women to its playground." …
The new women's football league is short of money, and without seasoned players like the college basketball stars who joined the WNBA, the level of its play can sometimes be less than professional.
But players are impassioned and willing to sacrifice for their sport. Most on the two main teams gave up jobs elsewhere to move to Minnesota, where they practice at night and travel on the weekends for games. The Vixens roster boasts a Princeton University graduate, a NASA engineer, a criminal prosecutor and several police officers. …
Business Week
Copyright 1999 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
December 13, 1999HEADLINE: REVENGE OF THE LAME DUCK?
BYLINE: By Amy Borrus in Washington
HIGHLIGHT: Despite defeats, it's far from over for the Clinton agenda
Well before impeachment put an indelible blot on his Presidency, Bill Clinton was obsessing about his place in history. Through countless Oval Office skull sessions with historians and late-night phone calls to friends, one question loomed above all others: Would Clinton's record of legislative accomplishments prove strong enough to erase the stain of impeachment?
Now that Congress has wrapped up another session that saw many key Clinton initiatives wither, the superficial answer appears to be: No. The President attempted to bounce back from impeachment by pushing through an overhaul of Social Security, a minimum-wage hike, new patient protections, improved health care for the elderly, campaign-finance reform, and ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty. But he has little to show for such an ambitious agenda. And next year promises to be even harder on the Prez as his lame-duck status saps more of his power.
Still, Clinton could manage to snatch political victory from the jaws of legislative defeat. Not only has he triggered public debate on voter-friendly issues but he has also put the GOP on the defensive. In fact, as Hill Republicans sink in the polls, Clinton is riding high. According to a CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey on Nov. 18-21, he has a 59% approval rating -- better than Ronald Reagan enjoyed at the same point in his Presidency and 15 to 20 percentage points above the GOP in many polls. ''There's almost an inverse relationship between [Clinton's] concrete success and his political success,'' says Princeton University political scientist Fred I. Greenstein. …
Chattanooga Times / Chattanooga Free Press
Copyright 1999 Chattanooga Times and Free Press
December 13, 1999, MondaySECTION: OPINION
HEADLINE: Skewering "Pro-Choice' Double-Talk
BYLINE: Karl Spence Editorial Page Editor
Princeton University is justly criticized for having appointed the infanticide-supporting "animal rights" activist Peter Singer to teach ethics at its Center for Human Values. (A droll title, that, in view of Professor Singer's anti-human stance.) But now there's good news from Princeton: The university has named the eloquently pro-life Professor Robert P. George as McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence.
Professor George's appointment may be as unwelcome among the proponents of today's "culture of death" as Professor Singer's has been to everyone else. For among Professor George's writings we find a short contribution to a 1994 symposium on anti-abortion violence that ran in the distinguished journal First Things.
All the symposium participants came down against assassins like Florida abortionist killer Paul Hill, most of them arguing earnestly that to be consistently pro-life, one must oppose all forms of violence, including murder. But Professor George put tongue in cheek to pose the question of whether you can be consistently pro-choice while punishing murder. (Attention, reader: Be sure to note this was said with irony.)
"I am personally opposed to killing abortionists," he wrote. "However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in a sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go so far as to support mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even nonjudgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity -- not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately pro-choice."
Pro-choicers who recognize their own slippery rhetoric in Professor George's lampoon may burn with indignation, or they may squirm with embarrassment. The few who are capable of shame may even be mocked out of engaging in such double-talk in the future. Let's hope Professor Singer is one of those few.
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 1999 The Financial Times Limited
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: In a few months the US economy will have reached its longest period of uninterrupted growth.
Usually when an economy grows this fast for this long prices rise sharply. So far this does not appear to be happening. This benign inflation performance has been even more remarkable in the last four years, when the economy has expanded at a much faster rate than was previously considered sustainable. Even those who were sceptical at first are now talking of a 'New Economy', one in which a number of structural changes are making Americans more productive. Gerard Baker begins a week-long series:
BYLINE: By GERARD BAKER
In the heart of the plains, as far as it is possible to be in America from the bi-coastal buzz of information age frenzy, Kansas City seems an unlikely place to search for evidence of a late 20th century US economic transformation.
As the jumping-off point for the pioneers headed west in the last century, it has endured a reputation as something of a backwater. Kansans describe their outlook with self-deprecating humour.
"People with creativity and imagination went on and founded California," goes a local joke. "The chickens stayed here."
Its status as a great road and rail hub also gives it a faintly obsolescent air. Trucks and trains seem a quaint throwback in an age of networked hyperactivity. But it is a sure sign of the reach of economic regeneration that the humdrum business of transport - the very activity that put Kansas, quite literally, on the map - has also been swept along in the innovative wave that seems to have lifted US economic performance in the last few years.
Hunched over a computer screen in the central dispatch office of Yellow Freight, the nationwide trucking giant, Scott Osborn is moving numbers and arrows around as though playing a giant electronic game of snakes and ladders.
Using software called Sysnet, specially designed for Yellow in collaboration with Princeton University, the map on the monitor tells him that, on this particular morning, he has a shortage of truck drivers for some big consignments of goods on the route between St Louis and Chicago. Fortunately it also tells him he has the opposite problem in Nashville - too many drivers and too few loads. With a click of the mouse he can redirect drivers from oversupplied Nashville to under-supplied St Louis.
"A few years ago, before Sysnet, I would have had to trawl through pages and pages of schedules and data to figure out where these were," he says. "Now it takes me a few seconds." …
But most important of all, according to Gary Beggs, vice-president of express services, has been the impact of the investments on customers.
The innovations at freight companies such as Yellow have helped bring about a revolution in cost control for all businesses, by filling a massive information void. …
"Information technology raises output per hour by reducing hours worked on activities needed to guard productive processes against the unknown and the unanticipated," said Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, in a recent speech. That means the economy can grow faster than in the past without igniting inflation. Mr Greenspan went on to describe the recent advances as "a major surge in innovation - matching, if not exceeding, the other great waves this century".
But is the evidence that radical change has occurred really overwhelming? Some sceptics believe the current excitement is overdone, that the trumpeted arrival of the internet and other innovations are important but should be seen as merely part of the inexorable, steady progress of economic history, not as some new leap on to a higher plane.
"I'm not convinced that the information technology revolution we are going through, and have been going through for about the last quarter century, is greater than, say, the previous 25 years, which saw the jet aircraft and nuclear energy," says Alan Blinder, professor of economics at Princeton, and a former vice-chairman of the Fed. …
The Fresno Bee
Copyright 1999 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
December 13, 1999 MondayHEADLINE: Index funds gaining influence over the industry; Even active mutual fund managers use them as guidelines.
BYLINE: Miriam Hill, Philadelphia Inquirer
Someday 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 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. …
When index funds got started, few people would have predicted that they would become the leaders of the fund industry.
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 agreed, but the idea was not well-received at first.
At first, only S&P 500 funds were available, but as the concept took hold, fund companies started slicing and dicing indexes to mirror different markets. Investors today can buy funds that track foreign indexes, real estate investment trust indexes, or large-cap value indexes. …
The Gazette (Montreal)
Copyright 1999 Southam Inc.
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Why I love Pokemon and Harry Potter
BYLINE: CATHERINE NEWTON
DATELINE: FORT WORTH, Tex.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. 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.
This isn't a popular opinion - at least among the over-12 set.
Harry Potter (a kid-lit protagonist), and Pokemon (a multimedia phenomenon) are taking a beating in the United States these days as they stand at the very top of the heap of children's popular culture. Kids love them, but mobs of vocal adults question whether the pop phenoms are actually, well, evil.
Two weeks ago, the cover of Time magazine bannered Pokemon as an ''addiction'' for kids (Pokemon being the collective Nintendo-spawned assortment of Game Boy games, TV shows, trading cards, toys and feature films all centring on a boy named Ash and his adventures in a world filled with magical pocket monsters). The statement was followed by the rhetorical nail-biter: ''Is it bad for them?''
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 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. …
The Guardian (London)
Copyright 1999 Guardian Newspapers Limited
December 13, 1999HEADLINE: Test tube truths;
The future of science lies with the marketplace and the public - but how fit are we for the task?
It was one of those science stories which pop into the news and then disappear again. This time, the story was the extraordinary idea that scientists were on the verge of creating life 'from scratch'. The US scientist, J Craig Venter, having fiddled with a microbe called Mycoplasma genitalium, was said to be on the point of 'playing God'.
This looked like the fantasy come true of every kid who has ever got a chemistry set for Christmas. If Venter could be on the point of pulling this one off, what might a scientist crack next - alchemy?
Calm down, was the response of the scientists I spoke to. Sure enough, remove emotive vocabulary such as 'playing God', and the real story which emerges is not that Venter was creating life, but that he and his team at the Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) in Maryland are on the threshold of pinpointing the irreducible nature of life by eliminating 'non-essential' genes to find what is the core blueprint which enable the Mycoplasma genitalium to live. This is about answering questions such as what exactly is life and what is its physical and chemical basis? This has been a line of scientific research for 50 years, and before that a question of philosophical and theological speculation.
But that is not the story which was left in most people's minds after watching the news last week. There is a huge difference between creating life from scratch and discovering the nature of life itself, but it will pass most people by.
The reason why this matters takes us back to the Maryland institute's breakthrough and why it hit the news in the first place. …
But Joe Public is largely scientifically illiterate - I count myself in this category. The media have to use crude hooks such as 'playing God' or 'Frankenstein foods' to penetrate a thick layer of apathy - generated in some measure by a tradition of patronising elitism in a scientific establishment which didn't particularly want, or need, anyone to understand what it was doing. …
The most disturbing contribution to this debate comes from Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. He paints a graphic picture of the future of reproductive genetics and the gene-enhanced super-beings it could create: in his field,'the ethicists are not going to decide this. Nor are governments. Instead the marketplace will. There are going to be people who want to use this technology and . . . the people who want to use it will find others who will take their money.' …
Is that wisdom? It seems a frail bulwark against the market forces Silver referred to. We live in a time of astonishing scientific discovery but the mechanisms to ensure these are wisely harnessed for the greater well-being of all human beings seem pathetically inadequate.
Insight on the News
Copyright 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Q: Should Congress fight poverty by promoting marriage? Yes: We now know that marriage keeps parents and their children out of poverty.
BYLINE: Rep. Nancy L. Johnson; SPECIAL TO INSIGHT
It is impossible to deny the statistical connection between poverty and marriage. According to the most recent Census Bureau data on poverty, families headed by a single woman are almost six times more likely to be poor than married-couple families (29.9 percent vs. 5.3 percent). Correlations of this magnitude in social policy are rare.
Even so, avoiding poverty is not the major reason our society should reinvigorate its emphasis on marriage. The effects of single parenting are devastating for children. Of course, many single parents struggle against serious odds to do a good job and succeed but, despite individual heroic cases, single parenting is on average associated with a host of social ills, including poverty, mental-health problems, violence against children, school failure, delinquency and crime - as well as divorce, unemployment, welfare dependency and other problems when the children of single parents grow up. These conclusions are based on 20 years of increasingly sophisticated social-science research, recently summarized in masterful fashion by Maggie Gallagher in The Age of Unwed Mothers and by Linda Waite in her forthcoming book, The Case for Marriage. Today there are virtually no social scientists who deny the connection between single parenting and a legion of dour outcomes.
For social scientists, the turning point for acknowledging the vital importance of marriage probably was the publication in 1994 of Growing Up With a Single Parent by professors Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur of Princeton University. Throughout the seventies and much of the eighties, most social scientists insisted that single parenting was not bad for children. Their nostrums, based on paltry research and lots of faulty thinking, enabled a generation of opinion leaders to deny that marriage was crucial for the well-being of adults and children. Once social scientists no longer could deny their own studies, it simply was a matter of time before intellectuals were obliged to change their tune, too. …
Now comes evidence, primarily from McLanahan at Princeton, that poor mothers who give birth out wedlock are closely connected with their baby's father at the time of birth. Based on her research on nonmarital births in 20 major metropolitan areas, McLanahan finds that 50 percent of these couples are cohabiting at the time a child is born. Equally surprising, 80 percent of the couples label themselves "romantically involved," and 70 percent even say there is at least a 50/50 chance they will get married. Unfortunately, other research shows that within two years, less than 10 percent of these fathers will be living in the household with their children. Clearly, the year or so around the time of the child's birth is critical for any program that wants to help these young couples overcome the odds and turn their relationship into a marriage. …
International Herald Tribune (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
Copyright 1999 International Herald Tribune
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: A Missile Defense System Isn't What America Needs
BYLINE: By Philipp C. Bleek and Frank N. von Hippel; Washington Post Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTONLike an elephant stampeded by a mouse, the United States is driven toward increased danger by the fear that North Korea or Iran could soon acquire nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching America. A U.S. national missile defense system is in development, and a deployment decision on a ''thin'' defense against a small number of missiles is scheduled for July 2000.
The desire for prestige and bargaining leverage may motivate North Korea and Iran to acquire intercontinental ballistic missiles. But these missiles are unlikely vehicles for a deliberate nuclear attack, unless a country wants to commit suicide. The attacker's identity would be far easier to conceal if a boat or civilian aircraft were used.
It might make sense to invest in a missile defense ''just in case,'' if the costs were only monetary. But, as Chinese, Russian and West European officials have warned, U.S. deployment of a national missile defense would have more far-reaching consequences.
China's military has noticed that the first anti-missile base, proposed for Alaska to intercept a potential future threat from North Korea, is also positioned to shield against China's small intercontinental missile force. Beijing fears that this might give the United States more freedom to back Taiwan if it declared independence.
China's response to a deployment decision would probably be to build more nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching the United States. This would move the United States toward a large-scale missile confrontation with China similar to the one with Russia that Washington is finding so difficult to dismantle.
Mr. Bleek is with the Federation of American Scientists. Mr. von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University. They contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
Pensions and Investments
Copyright 1999 Crain Communications, Inc.
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: WHAT'S NEXT: Lower returns predicted; Stock performance expected to average 5% to 12% in next decade
BYLINE: Susan Barreto
Following 20 years of dynamic market growth, the first 10 years of the new millennium could prove disappointing.
Most economists, academics and money managers interviewed say stock market returns in the next 10 years will be a far cry from the 20%-plus gains of recent years. Predictions for the next decade range from 5% to 12% per annum.
Of course in 1989, when Pensions & Investments gathered predictions for the 1990s, no one forecast the phenomenal stock returns of this decade. Some even believed there would be a recession.
Now, all of the experts interviewed agreed the stock market boom will come to an end. But the cause of the downturn is up for grabs. …
Although either scenario is grim, Mr. Paulsen believes the greatest odds are that neither will happen by 2010, and the S&P 500 should give a real return of 8% to 12% per year during the decade.
Burton Malkiel, professor of economics at Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., also is afraid inflationary pressures could bring the bull market to a close, but in his view, a recession is not likely.
He is worried about the valuations in the Internet sector, but acknowledges that we are living in the information revolution, which promises to be just as important as the industrial revolution.
But "people will be disappointed," he said of technology investors.
"We will be very fortunate to have high single-digit returns" in the next decade, Mr. Malkiel concluded. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: MICHAEL GRAVES IS ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARCHICTECTS
Michael Graves is one of the most influential architects in the world. His work has won more than 120 awards, including the National Medal of Arts. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Schirmer Professor of Architecture at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1962. Graves is currently working on the United States Courthouse in Washington. He was in Pittsburgh last week for the gala opening of the O' Reilly Theater, which he designed.
Q How would you rank Pittsburgh architecturally among American cities?
A I couldn't possibly rank cities or anything like that. I don't even think that way. What impresses me about Pittsburgh so much is the arts district, the theater district. It's so compelling. Where else could that occur except in New York, and it has such a different character. Here it seems a place for people who live here, and in New York its role is a place for people to visit. …
Q What's your creative process like?
A I begin in many ways simultaneously. In terms of the particular institution, in this case a theater, you recall your memories of arrival, lobbies and entrances, the play, the whole cycle of theatergoing. At the same time you're thinking about the life of the city, the streets, the context, its age. Those things come together in what a musician would call scoring, but for us it's the parti. You make a plan, you start to understand the three-dimensional qualities of the building by virtue of the plan and how it fits within the context of the overall construct of the site. …
The Tampa Tribune
Copyright 1999 The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune
December 13, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Conversation at 33,000 feet leads to investment success;
BYLINE: Janet Forgrieve
TAMPA - John Kirtley heaved a rather heavy sigh when he sat in his airplane seat and looked next to him.
The flight from Newark to Tampa would take a good two hours and 15 minutes, and the guy in the other seat had nothing to read.
"I was disappointed at first, because I don't really like to talk a lot on airplanes," he says.
Kirtley, a founding partner of 10-year-old, Tampa-based FCP Investors Inc., recalls the following conversation with seat mate, Darrell Hanks.
Hanks: "So, you from Tampa?"
Kirtley: "Yeah."
Hanks: "What do you do?"
Kirtley: "Ah, it's hard to explain. And you're in sales, right?"
Hanks: "Yeah! I work for the world's largest manufacturer of penlights!"The phrase, "the world's largest manufacturer of" made Kirtley's ears perk up, and the flight got more interesting. That was spring of 1991. Less than six months later, Kirtley's firm invested $7 million in the Largo company, Adva-Lite.
Unlike the growing army of venture capital companies hunting for the next Amazon.com, FCP is looking for people who make stuff.
In addition to Adva-Lite, FCP has invested in Classic Rope Inc., the world's largest maker of rodeo lariats, and Perfecto Manufacturing Inc., the nation's second largest maker of aquariums and related accessories. …
FCP and its seven partners manage more than $200 million in institutional equity funding. Investors include the endowments of Princeton University and MIT, units of Chase Manhattan Corp. and Bank of Boston, and Raymond James Financial Inc. …
The Boston Herald
Copyright 1999 Boston Herald Inc.
December 12, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: ANTIQUES; Bakker Boccelli balloons with bidders
BYLINE: By FRANCES McQ.-J. MASCOLO
Even the parking lot was filled with overflow bidders at the Bakker Boccelli Dec. 5 auction in Watertown. The first part of the sale was given over to artworks, many of which are by Provincetown and Cape Ann painters, that attracted a coterie of dealers, with some retail buyers.
An auspicious start to the sale was lot one, the unsigned early 20th century "Study of Figures at the Beach" that rolled past its estimated $400-$600 estimate to $1,650. Bidders were so pleased with Olga I. Sears' "Harborside Village" that they drove it to $1,045, more than triple the low estimate.
The Lynn school of painters is attracting interest in the market, and Nathaniel Berry's "Quiet Harbor," accompanied by an article on Lynn painters, went to $770. Ross Turner's coastal landscape, perhaps of the Dorchester Flats, was a good buy at $2,090. Arthur Clifton Goodwin's colorful "Winter on the Neponset" brought $8,250 from a telephone bidder and Jane Peterson's striking watercolor, "Portrait of an Officer" was $770.
"Gray Day in New England," by Lester Stevens, was also of great appeal to buyers and sold for $4,400, while his "The Church in Gill, Massachusetts" brought $3,300. A charcoal-on-sandpaper view of Phillips Academy in Andover or Nassau Hall at Princeton University sold for $2,860, more than triple the low estimate. …
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 1999 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Houston-based Patrinely Group has been selected by Princeton University to develop an 80-acre corporate office campus
SOURCE: Staff
Houston-based Patrinely Group has been selected by Princeton University to develop an 80-acre corporate office campus at Princeton Forrestal Center in Princeton, N.J. The project will contain 1 million square feet of office space upon completion. The first building, 100 College Road West, will consist of 154,150 square feet. The second building, 150 College Road West, will consist of 70,850 square feet. Construction will begin next year.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Loose Cannon
BYLINE: By Aaron L. Friedberg; Aaron L. Friedberg, the director of the Research Program in International Security at Princeton University, is the author of the forthcoming "In the Shadow of the Garrison State."
THE END OF NORTH KOREA
Nicholas Eberstadt.
The AEI Press.
Cloth, $29.95. Paper, $14.95.The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a bizarre and frightening new kind of political life form: it is less a nation-state than a shakedown state. Unable to feed its people, incapable of directing the economy to make anything that can be sold on world markets and unwilling to risk reforms that might weaken its grip on power, the country's ruling clique subsists on the earnings from a calculated policy of extortion. By threatening to build and test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, the North Korean government has succeeded in extracting substantial quantities of assistance from the international community, in particular from the United States, Japan and the genuinely democratic Republic of Korea to the south. North Korea exports terror and imports foreign aid. In his careful, incisive and important new book, "The End of North Korea," Nicholas Eberstadt, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains how this unwholesome exchange began and makes the case for bringing it to a close. …
Eberstadt argues persuasively that prolonging North Korea's life may actually increase the costs and the dangers of its inevitable demise. With every passing day, the developmental gap between the two Koreas grows, and with it the difficulty of merging them into a single, prosperous society. Given time, North Korea will also be able to build more and better terror weapons. …
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Marshall Scholars Named
Forty students from 28 colleges and universities have won this year's Marshall Scholarships, which pay for American students to continue their studies for two or three years at British universities.
Worth about $50,000 over two years, the scholarships will cover tuition, books, travel and living expenses for students while in Britain. They are financed by the British government. The winners were announced recently by the British ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer.
The Marshall Scholarships were established in 1953 as a British gesture of thanks to the people of the United States for the assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. More than 1,000 Marshall Scholarships have been awarded.
Following is a complete list of this year's Marshall Scholars:
Rea, Susan, Princeton University
Newsday (New York, NY)
Copyright 1999 Newsday, Inc.
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: LONG ISLAND OUR FUTURE / CHAPTER 12: FAITH AND VALUES / WILL WE NEED... AN ETHICS GENE? / THE BIOLOGICAL REVOLUTION RAISES MANY QUESTIONS: NOT JUST ABOUT WHAT SCIENCE CAN DO, BUT WHAT IT SHOULD DO
BYLINE: By Laurie Garrett. STAFF WRITER
AT AGE 45, Robert Batkin died of the virulent cancer called multiple polyposis of the colon, a condition known to be hereditary. He was survived by two daughters, 17 and 10, who have since said they were never told that the cancer-treatable if caught early-may also lay hidden in their genes.
Twenty-six years later, in 1990, the youngest of those girls, Donna, developed the disease, which brought her to the edge of death at age 36, when doctors fought it into remission. And in 1996, she sued the estate of the doctor who treated her father.
The legal issue? Did the doctor have a duty to make sure that the children and any siblings knew they faced a risk as well? The decision, reached earlier this year: There is a duty to third parties, the court ruled, but a jury refused to assess blame, saying it's unclear how that duty should be carried out. …
It is an issue that ethicists say will resonate for quite awhile as genetic tests become more and more adept at pinpointing the wide range of risks we face individually, and within families. …
Consider the issue of genetic commercialization.
In just the past year, two companies-Celera Genomics and Human Genome Sciences, both of Maryland-have jumped headfirst into the race to sequence the human genome, investing billions of dollars in their efforts. Why? Because the genes they discover can be registered with the U.S. Patent Office, and the hope is that useful products derived from those genes will return lucrative royalties for decades into the future.
How lucrative? Consider the potential of genetic findings reported in November: At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Medical Center in Manhattan, scientists announced the discovery of a gene for long life in mice, while scientists working at Princeton University found a gene that enhanced mouse intelligence.
Suppose a human counterpart is found for each. How much might you pay for extra years of life, or to make your child smarter? Indeed, many are concerned that the drug industry will focus less on disease treatment, a complicated process at best in which each treatment will affect only a small number of people, and more on the high profit potential of genetic enhancement. …
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: FERRY FARM: BEYOND THE MYTH; LANDMARK DESIGNATION IS SOUGHT FOR WASHINGTON'S BOYHOOD HOME
BYLINE: Kiran Krishnamurthy; Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
DATELINE: STAFFORDThe place where George Washington may have chopped down that fabled cherry tree could soon win federal protection.
The National Park Service will decide this week whether Ferry Farm, the boyhood home of America's first president, should be recommended for National Historic Landmark status. The vote on the proposal, which still would need approval from Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, coincides with the 200th anniversary of Washington's death on Dec. 14, 1799.
Winning the landmark designation would not only help protect the Stafford County plantation from encroaching suburban development, it could build more public awareness and prestige, both of which are key to fund-raising and preservation efforts. …
Ferry Farm also plays a role in the legend of Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River. More likely, historians say, Washington used to throw stones across the much narrower Rappahannock River at Ferry Farm. In 1936, Hall of Fame pitcher Walter "Big Train" Johnson visited Ferry Farm to attempt the feat with a silver dollar - and succeeded.
Sean Wilentz, professor of early American history at Princeton University, said it's easy to see how such legends took on lives of their own, given Washington's popularity. There was talk in Colonial America of crowning Washington king of the young nation.
"He was a semi-deity," Wilentz said. "He was almost made of marble, even in his own time." …
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Copyright 1999 The San Diego Union-Tribune
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: UCSD prof makes a hard pitch for perfect pitch - She says most can get it, if they work on it early
SOURCE: STAFF WRITER
BYLINE: David E. GrahamThe 18th century composer Mozart had perfect pitch, the ability to hear a single musical note, or a sound, and identify it unmistakably: whether C, F sharp, E. It was a talent that infused his works and helped make him a musical genius.
Although it has long been thought that perfect pitch is quite rare and perhaps inherited, a UCSD cognitive scientist is turning that notion on its head. By studying speakers of some Asian languages, Diana Deutsch has concluded that perfect, or absolute, pitch may be quite common -- even universal -- even though it must be developed early in life.
Asians who speak tonal languages, such as Vietnamese or the Chinese language Mandarin, have a form of perfect pitch, Deutsch concluded through experiments that test how individuals speak. Tonal languages are those in which the rising and falling intonations employed when a word is pronounced are critical to the word's meaning.
"It's very clear tonal language speakers have perfect pitch," Deutsch said.
The word "ma," for example, whether spoken with an intonation that is flat, rises, falls or some combination, can alternately mean mother, hemp, a reproach or horse. From very early in life, speakers of such languages are sensitive to these nuances of sound that convey meaning.In the course of her study, Deutsch found that people would speak the same set of words days apart, yet repeat the words in virtually the same pitch.
"That shows they're making reference to a fixed pitch template in their minds. They must have absolute pitch," Deutsch said recently when she first presented the results of her study at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.
If she is correct, it could mean that a memory for perfect pitch "may well be present in infancy universally," she said. Thus, early musical training might help innumerable people develop perfect pitch -- as opposed to a rare few, she said. Previous studies had suggested that perhaps only one person in 10,000 might have perfect pitch.
Even though tonal language or musical training might develop perfect pitch, she said other studies indicate that people who do not have perfect pitch by about age 6 or 7, at the very latest, probably cannot attain it.
One language expert said he is not convinced by Deutsch's study.
"The idea strikes me as far-fetched," said Perry Link, a teacher of Chinese languages and literature at Princeton University. "It's just beyond belief to me that there's a tendency in the entire Chinese population to have that because of tonal language."
Even if the speakers somehow remember and speak words at the same pitch, that speech production may have little or no relationship to perfect pitch as it's used in music, Link said. They may have no recognition of what they are doing, he said. …
Sunday Times (London)
Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Limited
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Future imperfect
BYLINE: Stuart Wavell and Martin Wroe
The approach of the new millennium has triggered a welter of predictions about the future, but will they be right? Stuart Wavell and Martin Wroe report
Whatever happened to the future? Our forebears had a compelling vision of what life would be like in the year 2000. Flying cars would swoop through pollution-free skies, armies of robots would make work virtually obsolete, ageing would be arrested and wars abolished.
In this projected utopia, there would be time travel, teleportation, levitation and even invisibility. A cure for the common cold was a foregone conclusion. As the milestone approaches in 19 days' time, few of these achievements are in sight. As Arthur C Clarke, the science-fiction writer, says: "The future isn't what it used to be." …
Lee Silver, a biologist at Princeton University in America, suggests that, rather than opting for extinction, genetically improved people will gradually evolve into a separate super-race. …
Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA)
Copyright 1999, Telegraph-Herald
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Translator becomes quite popular
BYLINE: Associated Press
'Charterhouse': It continues a traditionNEW YORK (AP) - No one could have mistaken this gathering for a tribute to "Chicken Soup for the Soul."
Some 30 friends, admirers and general readers assembled recently in a downtown Manhattan bookstore to hear poet Richard Howard discuss one of the great 19th-century novels, Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma."
"I accept the applause for Stendhal," Howard began, presiding over an audience he presumed to be fellow travelers, conversant in French and Italian, not to mention fluent in French and Italian literature. After the reading, one woman said she regretted not asking about Stendhal's influence on Marcel Proust.
Howard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, celebrated translator, and now, to everyone's surprise, popular translator. His highly praised edition of "Charterhouse" is mingling with an unusual crowd these days, appearing with Frank McCourt, Stephen King and the "Chicken Soup" writers on best-seller lists around the country. …
"Charterhouse" continues a notable tradition of a new translation begetting a new audience. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's acclaimed rendition of Dante's "Inferno" has sold more than 100,000 copies since being published five years ago. Recent editions of "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad," both translated by Princeton University classics professor Robert Fagles, have sold more than 200,000 copies apiece. …
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
December 11, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: STEPPING OUT - See Drumthwacket
Drumthwacket, the official governor's residence at 354 Stockton St., Princeton, is all done up for the holidays, and the Drumthwacket Foundation invites you to stop in. The foundation's annual open-house events were launched Dec. 1, and the finale will take place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday.
This is the last Holiday Open House being conducted under the supervision of Daphne Pontius Townsend, the foundation's executive director, who is launching the millennium by retiring! Stepping into Daphne's pumps is Lisa Paine, Princeton, a graduate of Princeton University, who has a background in communications and decorative arts. Townsend will serve on the foundation's board of directors. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company
December 11, 1999, SaturdaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: OF MICE AND MEN
Once again mouse gives man a possible glimpse of his future - this time in Italy, where researchers isolated a gene that triggers aging. By eliminating that trigger in genetically engineered mice, scientists were able to increase the animals' lifespan by about 30 percent. The experiment was reported in the journal Nature last month. Could man do the same one day? Would he want to?
Scientists doing the experiments at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, along with researchers at the Institute of Pathology in Perugia and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, say they found no side-effects in mice bred without the trigger protein responsible for oxidation, which damages cells. …
Researchers caution that gene-tinkering may also be shown to cause harm eventually, but for now they are projecting the tantalyzing possibilities of a cream that might someday reverse the aging process in the skin or a miracle drug that extends life - Ponce de Leon's fountain in a bottle.
Such visions are irresistible, but will they, too, come at a price? Earlier this fall Princeton University scientisits engineered a smart mouse that could out-think its average cousins in the lab. …
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
December 11, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Gallup says America has a shallow faith
SOURCE: Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Diane Winston
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.PRINCETON, N.J. -- Faced with the classic good news-bad news story, pollster George Gallup Jr. doesn't pull his punches. Yes, according to his statistics, Americans are as God-loving, churchgoing and Bible-believing as ever. But -- and it's a big one -- their brand of faithfulness is a mile long and an inch deep.
"We've become a more churched nation but not necessarily a more Christian one," said Mr. Gallup, co-author of Surveying the Religious Landscape, a newly published treasure trove gleaned from some 70 years of scientific polling. "God is important but not primary in people's lives."
Chock full of tables on everything from belief in reincarnation to biblical trivia, Surveying the Religious Landscape is a must-read for anyone interested in religious trends. And the bottom line is clear, as Mr. Gallup and co-author D. Michael Lindsay say in their introduction. Despite religion's continuing and widespread appeal, Americans are ignorant about doctrine, inconsistent in their beliefs, superficially faithful, and lacking trust in God. The solution to such shortcomings, said Mr. Gallup, an Episcopal layman, is for churches to start evangelizing those already in the pews.
"Churches assume that if membership and stewardship levels are high, all is well," he explained. "There's no attention to the need to grow in faith." …
Diane Winston is a fellow at the Center for Study of American Religion at Princeton, N.J.
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY (12:00 Noon PM ET)
December 11, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: AUSTRALIAN ETHICIST PETER SINGER UNDER FIRE FROM DISABILITY ACTIVISTS
ANCHORS: SCOTT SIMON
REPORTERS: MARGOT ADLERSCOTT SIMON, host:
This is NPR's WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Scott Simon.
Peter Singer has been called a fascist by his critics. An article in The New Yorker described him as one of the most influential philosophers alive. So when the Australian ethicist Peter Singer arrived this fall to teach at Princeton University, there were demonstrators assembled to greet him. Campus security was strengthened. As NPR's Margot Adler reports, Mr. Singer does take on the great concerns of our day: the border between life and death, the distance between rich and poor and our treatment of other conscious beings.
MARGOT ADLER reporting:
The philosopher Peter Singer tells this story: A German student was visiting a professor in Ireland and began to look at the books on his shelf. Noticing several by Peter Singer, the German student said, 'I think I'm going to have to leave.' 'Why?' the professor asked. 'Because you have books by the fascist Peter Singer,' and she left.
Peter Singer's views supporting euthanasia for extremely disabled infants and his views arguing that some animals, adult chimpanzees for example, have more of a claim to be called persons than a week-old human infant, are not merely controversial. He has supporters and opponents all over the political map. …
When Peter Singer was hired to be the Ira W. DeCamp professor of bioethics at Princeton, his first day of classes was marked by protests. Here are the voices of some who came to Princeton from as far away as Illinois. …
ADLER: As a student of philosophy, Peter Singer says he was never interested in theoretical questions. You know, is the table real? He was interested in ethical questions as they played out in the real world.
Professor PETER SINGER (Australian Ethicist): I was a graduate student during the Vietnam War era, so I started looking at questions like the obligation to obey the law, civil disobedience, and I started to take notice of discussions that were going on in areas like abortion, euthanasia. …
Prof. SINGER: Almost everything we think about how we treat animals is wrong, and not just wrong in some minor way at the margins, but fundamentally wrong in the way that, for example, people thought about African-Americans in Mississippi in 1820 was fundamentally wrong. So clearly to suggest that we ought to dramatically turn around the way we think about animals, that we ought to start accepting that we have no right to use them as our means to our ends just because it's convenient to do so, that obviously was going to be highly controversial. …
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
December 11, 1999HEADLINE: The bigger picture
BYLINE: Marina Chicurel (Santa Cruz, California; Marina Chicurel is a freelance science writer based in Santa Cruz, California)
HIGHLIGHT: We can't understand cells by taking them apart piece by piece, since their biochemical pathways form tangled networks. But getting a handle on this complexity could lead to insights into cancer and other long-standing puzzles. Marina Chicurel reports
Richard Trethewey thought it would be easy to make a starchier potato. In this age of genetic engineering, he and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, Germany, figured they just needed to insert the right gene into potato plants. And because they knew all the steps in the biochemical pathway that plant cells use to produce starch, they thought they knew exactly which gene ought to do the trick. Breaking down sucrose is the first step in starch production, so the researchers inserted a yeast gene that codes for invertase, an enzyme that cleaves sucrose.
To their surprise, the engineered potatoes turned out to have a sixth less starch than before. The invertase, they eventually discovered, had shifted the plants' biochemistry towards producing glucose, not starch. To correct the problem, they inserted a second gene, a bacterial glucokinase that would funnel the excess glucose into the starch pathway. But once again, the plants' biochemistry shifted in an unexpected direction, and starch yield dropped by another sixth.
Trethewey's experience is not unusual. Many biologists have been frustrated by their inability to control the behaviour of cells and organisms by tinkering with one or two genes. "One measure that we don't understand biology very well is that our understanding is not predictive," says Roger Brent, associate director of the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California. "You can't look at the genome of an organism and even tell how many legs it has." …
This is why many biologists are now trying to find ways to study how cells' many components work together, rather than just studying the individual components. …
In the US, leading universities - including Harvard, Princeton, Caltech and Johns Hopkins - are spending tens of millions of dollars setting up institutes and departments to probe the complex workings of cells. And biotech companies betting on the success of the new approach are springing up far and wide. "This is the wave of the future," says Robert Dinerstein, a cell biologist at the drugs company Hoechst Marion Rousell in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
Sometimes, models can even reveal fundamental principles that no one had thought to look for before. For example, most biologists have assumed that to keep biochemical systems running smoothly, the activity of every component has to be precisely tuned. Until recently, hardly anyone had considered questioning this assumption. But then Stanislas Leibler and his colleagues at Princeton University started modelling chemotaxis, the process by which certain bacteria detect food and swim towards it. Chemotaxis begins when an attractant binds to a receptor protein on a bacterium's surface (New Scientist, 15 August 1998, p 40). The receptor is linked to a network of proteins inside the bacterium, the Che proteins, which control the rotation of the flagella that propel the bacterium. The result is that the bacterium spends less time tumbling randomly and more time swimming towards the food source. Eventually, it gets used to the presence of the attractant and resumes its normal tumbling behaviour.
Leibler's group soon realised that theoretically, there were many ways they could hook up the Che proteins to simulate chemotaxis. Most allowed bacteria to resume their normal tumbling rate only if each Che protein was present in exactly the right concentration. But a few models worked even if the concentrations varied widely. Since real life is messy and ever-changing, the researchers began to wonder if nature might have chosen one of these robust designs.
To answer that question, the researchers genetically engineered bacteria that made too much or too little of some Che proteins. They found that altered bacteria returned to normal tumbling rates even when producing 50 times as much of one Che protein as normal ("Nature", vol 397, p 168). …
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
Copyright 1999 Landmark Communications, Inc.
December 11, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: SUFFOLK CHURCH PUTS LOCAL TWIST ON TRADITIONAL NATIVITY STO
BYLINE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLKAs Christmas stories go, the one being told this weekend at Ebenezer United Methodist Church has a few new twists.
The time is 1940, not two millennia ago.
Mary is an oysterman's daughter from Yorktown. Her husband, Joseph, is a boatwright who hails from Eclipse, the former fishing village that's now part of Suffolk.
Their child Jesus will be born in a waterman's shanty, and will be heralded by watermen and wise men bringing gifts of collards, salt fish and oysters.
Why take such liberties?
Why not? asked the Rev. Carl LeMon, who wrote the script for this retelling of the Christmas story. If the Nativity could happen in Bethlehem, why couldn't it happen in Eclipse, LeMon asked, adding: ''Christ is that contemporary and relevant.''
He began developing the script for the play - ''What Would You Bring Him?'' - after Thanksgiving, figuring that a strong dash of local history would make the miracle of Christmas more meaningful.
Many in his congregation agree. They have turned out by the dozens to build sets, rehearse lines and provide the music. …
As the action unfolds, Joseph and Mary are traveling to Eclipse by boat - drawn down the center aisle of the sanctuary.
And there's one more twist. The wise men are still astronomers, but they're from New Jersey - Princeton University, to be exact.
''Any Yankee who heads south is smart,'' LeMon, who grew up in New Jersey, said with a laugh.
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
December 11, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: Bradley the Loner: A Campaign Liability?
BYLINE: Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer
When Bill Bradley decided this summer to reverse his longtime--and very vocal--opposition to federal tax benefits for ethanol, a gasoline additive made from corn, he stunned farm lobbyists and former colleagues.
But no one was more surprised than his advisers, who feared that the change would be seen as a craven sop to Iowa, where corn is the chief product, followed closely by caucuses. Some longtime aides fretted that Bradley could be squandering the image of rectitude that they saw as crucial to his campaign.
Bradley curtly informed his staff of his planned change, and later said he had "decided to listen to the people, not the policy wonks."
Often convinced that he has the answers and dismissive of much outside political advice, Bradley is largely going it alone in a season in which Vice President Gore's fleet of consultants has become one of his campaign's defining features and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas has unabashedly signed up a flock of tutors.
And while Bush fights the perception that he may be more smiles than brains, Bradley may have a different problem: He has such confidence in his own intellectual capability that he has unveiled important policy positions with little leavening from experts--and has been burned in the process. …
Fred Greenstein, a political scientist at Princeton University who specializes in presidential leadership styles, recalls seeing Bradley a few years ago at a synagogue dedication, "not talking to anyone, just towering over the reception like an awkward, haunted figure."
Greenstein said a loner politician, while redolent of the Jimmy Stewart ideal, can be hobbled in the White House.
"If you keep your own counsel, you're in danger of seeing what you want to see," he said. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
December 10, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: University of Chicago names Cornell University provost as new president
BYLINE: By KATE N. GROSSMAN, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: CHICAGOFor years, Cornell University's provost begged off headhunters urging him to consider top university jobs across the country. Don M. Randel told them he was a Cornell "lifer," and he wasn't leaving.
"I wasn't interested in being the president of a place just for the sake of being president," Randel said.
But then the University of Chicago came calling. After 31 years at Cornell, Randel suddenly had an interest in moving on.
On Thursday, Chicago picked Randel, 59, to lead the campus as it embarks on some of the most significant changes in the school's nearly 110-year history. The school's search committee recommended Randel, provost and music professor at the Ithaca, N.Y., university, as its 12th president. …
During his time at Cornell, Randel has been a professor, music department chair, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and, since 1995, second to the university president as provost.
He grew up in Panama and received his bachelor's and doctorate degrees in music from Princeton University. …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 10, 1999HEADLINE: Do 'Digital Certificates' Hold the Key to Colleges' On-Line Activities?
BYLINE: FLORENCE OLSEN
Facing a growing need to verify the identities of students and employees for on-line transactions, a handful of universities have begun issuing high-tech "digital certificates" that are nearly impossible for hackers to tamper with.
Because the portable electronic identifiers are highly efficient at proving to other computers that people are who their computers say they are, officials at some leading research universities say that certificates have dozens, if not hundreds, of potential uses.
Administrators hope to rely on the digital certificates as they make more and more of their campus functions "self-service" -- for example, letting students register for courses on line. And the certificates may let network administrators determine who gets to take advantage of new high-speed links created by projects like Internet2. …
The new service, which created its first certificates last month, could have the effect of "bootstrapping" colleges that might otherwise lag in adopting an important technology for conducting transactions with other institutions over the Internet, says Jeffrey I. Schiller, manager of network services for M.I.T. and the principal architect of CREN's certificate service. …
One day last month, Mr. Schiller was the center of attention for about three dozen university officials who crowded into Room 302 of the Muckley Building on the M.I.T. campus here. His equipment on that day was a specially engineered certificate server that could be activated only by a physical key. The small gathering watched as he turned the key and generated its more-complex digital equivalent, a "root key" for creating CREN certificates. The key was a sequence of 2,048 characters, making it "very, very hard" for hackers to break, he said.
As Mr. Schiller carefully executed the initial steps in generating the root key, several college officials who were present said the occasion was "historic." After generating the key, Mr. Schiller used it to sign the first CREN institutional certificate, which was issued to Princeton University. …
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
December 10, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: SHORT SHOTS - Young is center of attention
SOURCE: Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Steve RichardsonPrinceton sophomore forward Chris Young has become the Tigers' main offensive threat this season. And that's fine with him, even if the Tigers, 3-4 before playing TCU on Thursday night, have had some ups and downs on the court.
"Their guards are young," said UNLV coach Bill Bayno, whose Runnin' Rebels defeated the Tigers earlier this season. "When Young is a senior, they will be as good a team as they were two years ago."
That season Princeton finished 27-2.
Young, from Highland Park, was the first Ivy League player in history to be named Rookie of the Year in baseball and football last season. He's a pitcher for the Tigers' baseball team and had the best earned run average in the Ivy League last spring.
"At times, it is fine and at times it is tough," Young said of his new role on the basketball court. "There are some positives and negatives. A lot is expected of you."
"I have told him, he's going to have to score inside and outside," Princeton coach Bill Carmody said. "At the end of last year, we would go to him in clutch situations. He has to be everything for us - passer, rebounder, scorer, leader."
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 10, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: WEEKEND EXCURSION; Nation's History Entwined With Ivy
BYLINE: By GUSTAV NIEBUHR
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.Is there a college building anywhere in the United States that can match the storied past of Nassau Hall at Princeton University, a history that goes well beyond the world of academe? Built of local stone and capped with an impressive bell tower, the building served as the college's centerpiece when it was erected by Presbyterians in 1756.
But in a remarkable seven-year span it twice served as a seat of government (state and national) and figured in a Revolutionary War battle. New Jersey's first Legislature gathered at Nassau Hall in 1776 and adopted the state seal. In 1783 Congress met there for four months with James Madison, a former student, returning as a representative from Virginia.
To walk such historically rich ground is reason enough to visit Princeton. Besides, it is an easy jaunt from New York, thanks to frequent New Jersey Transit trains that run from Pennsylvania Station.
About an hour out, the trains stop at Princeton Junction, actually in West Windsor, N.J., from which one can catch a one-car shuttle (called the Dinky by locals) for a five-minute trip into town. The newly arrived will find a pleasant, centrally located hotel called the Nassau Inn, restaurants, a fine bookstore (Micawber Books) and no shortage of shops on and around Nassau Street, the main thoroughfare.
The university lends Princeton an identity that sets it apart from the commercial and suburban mass continually spreading out across central New Jersey. …
Obituaries
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
December 10, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: RICHARD PORTER BELL CAREER PPG EXECUTIVE AND TIRELESS VOLUNTEER
BYLINE: TERESA F. LINDEMAN, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITERRichard "Dick" Porter Bell was an unusual man. He did not mind finding sugar in the salt shaker, at least on April 1, which also happened to be his birthday.
"He got a big kick out of that," said his daughter, Judith Bell Clark, who worked diligently with her sister, Nancy Bell Patterson, to put one over on their father when they were growing up.
Mr. Bell's sense of humor emerged throughout his 37-year career at PPG Industries, on the family's annual Canadian fishing trips and even in his decades of following the hometown professional sports teams. …
Mr. Bell, 84, died Monday at UPMC St. Margaret, where he was being treated for complications from a fall. He had been a resident of the Longwood at Oakmont retirement community in Plum. …
Mr. Bell, who grew up on Elgin Street in Highland Park and attended Shady Side Academy, used an athletic scholarship to get into Princeton University, where he earned a degree in economics in 1937. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
December 16, 1999HEADLINE: James L. Dodson, 89
1ST PROFESSOR HIRED AT VALLEY COLLEGE DIES; CURATOR: JAMES DODSON, A PRINCETON GRADUATE AND FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR, ESTABLISHED A MUSEUM DEVOTED TO AREA HISTORY.
BYLINE: SOLOMON MOORE, TIMES STAFF WRITER
The first professor hired at Valley College in Valley Glen died Tuesday after being hospitalized for three weeks. James L. Dodson, a Princeton University graduate and Fulbright scholar, was the first of 23 faculty members hired in 1949, the year Valley College was established.
Dodson was battling cancer when he died at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. He was 89 years old.
Dodson played an important role in developing the overall curriculum during the college's early years and taught Greek and Roman history and Latin for 35 years, college officials said Wednesday. Dodson also established a campus museum that was the first dedicated to the history of the San Fernando Valley. Dodson's name is still on the museum's door. …
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
December 15, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: HENRY W. LARGE; WAS HEAD OF WABASH RAILROAD
A funeral service for Henry W. Large, a former president of the old Wabash Railroad in St. Louis, was held Monday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh, Pa., with burial at the church's cemetery in Whitemarsh.
Mr. Large, 94, died of infirmities Thursday (Dec. 9, 1999) at his home in Blue Bell, Pa.
He was born in Philadelphia. After graduating from Princeton University, he served in the Navy in World War II. He began his career at Pennsylvania Railroad in Chicago, advancing to the executive ranks. …
Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1999 Information Access Company,
December 13, 1999HEADLINE: Obituaries; Obituary; Brief Article
Datus Smith, 92DATUS C. SMITH JR., who played a leading role in scholarly publishing in the U.S. for many years, and was instrumental in the postwar Franklin Book Programs that brought American books to developing countries, died in Princeton, N.J., on November 17. He was 92.
Smith was director of Princeton University Press from 1942 to 1953, when he left to join what was then Franklin Publications. Supported by the Ford Foundation, the Franklin program had offices in many developing countries, exchanging books and personnel with publishers in the States; it was regarded as a major factor in the internationalization of American publishing during the past 30 years. Smith was later active with the Asia Society and UNICEF. His Guide to Book Publishing was translated into at least seven languages.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
December 11, 1999, SaturdayNAME: Datus C. Smith Jr.
HEADLINE: Datus C. Smith Jr., 92, Leader Of Princeton University Press
BYLINE: By ERIC PACEDatus C. Smith Jr., former director of the Princeton University Press, died on Nov. 17 at the Medical Center in Princeton, N.J. He was 92 and lived in Hightstown, N.J.
Mr. Smith, who was president of the Association of American University Presses from 1947 to 1949, was director of the Princeton Press from 1942 to 1953, when he resigned. Under his directorship, the Princeton Press quadrupled its annual sales of scholarly and scientific books and greatly increased its foreign distribution. The books it published in those years included the first volumes in the multivolume series "The Papers of Thomas Jefferson" and Albert Einstein's revised version of "The Meaning of Relativity." …
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Sargent Karch
NFL AttorneySargent Karch, 63, a lawyer who was chief negotiator for the National Football League during the 1970s and 1980ss, died of cancer Nov. 28 at Sibley Memorial Hospital. A resident of Washington off and on for 30 years, he lived in Bethesda and Easton, Md.
As executive director of the NFL labor relations committee, Mr. Karch was in charge of all negotiations with the NFL Players Union. After he retired from the NFL in 1987, he continued as a management consultant for the organization as a partner with the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler.
Mr. Karch was a native of Cleveland and a graduate of Princeton University. He received a law degree from the University of Michigan. …
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
December 10, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES: Walter C. Carter, chemist, worked on A-bomb
BYLINE: Celia Sibley, Staff
SOURCE: CONSTITUTIONDr. Walter C. Carter, 79, of Atlanta was a doctoral student in physical chemistry at Princeton University when he was recruited to perform top-secret work with the Manhattan Project, an elite corps of scientists developing the atomic bomb.
"He got to know Albert Einstein pretty well and had some funny stories to tell about Einstein showing up at receptions with one sock on and the other completely missing," said Dr. Fred Cook, chairman the of textile and fiber engineering department at Georgia Tech and Dr. Carter's former boss.
Unlike Mr. Einstein, who later tried to stop the bomb project, Dr. Carter felt it saved millions of lives, Dr. Cook added.
Dr. Carter died of a heart attack at his residence Tuesday while cutting magnolia leaves for Christmas decorations for his church. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1999 by P.P.G. Publishing Company
December 12, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: ROBERT S. TAYLOR; POPULAR CARNEGIE MELLON ARCHITECTURE PROFESSOR
BYLINE: GARY ROTSTEIN, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITER
In nearly four decades of teaching architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, Robert S. Taylor became known to students and colleagues as a caring, accessible instructor with a masterful sense of architectural history.
Mr. Taylor, who retired as a professor in 1990, died Wednesday of Alzheimer's disease in the medical center of Presbyterian Seniorcare in Oakmont. The longtime Park Place resident, who was 75, had lived the past two years in Woodside Place, Presbyterian Seniorcare's specialized facility for Alzheimer's care.
Originally from Shade Gap, Huntingdon County, Mr. Taylor developed his interest in architecture early and obtained degrees in the subject in the late 1940s from Princeton University, as both an undergraduate and graduate student. His undergraduate training was interrupted by service as an Air Force flight instructor during World War II. …
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