New York Times Upfront articles from October 2004

New York Times Upfront archives from October 2004

The head of Chief Crazy Horse.(News & Trends)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... The head of Chief Crazy Horse, the Sioux warrior who routed Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, rises out of Thunderhead Mountain in Custer, S.D. The privately financed sculpture, begun in 1948, is 17...

Oh, say, can you sing it?(Music)(Star Spangled Banner)(American national anthem)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... It's been our national anthem for almost 75 years, but few people can actually sing "The Star Spangled Banner." Ed Siegel wants to change that. A psychiatrist and amateur pianist from Solana Beach, Calif., Siegel wants to lower the key of the...

Numbers in the news.(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... $3.9 billion Net worth of each of the two founders of the search engine Google, following the initial public offering of stock in the company in August. SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES 24% Percentage of high school students who say...

Grimacing like the pros.(Faces)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Anyone who's seen a rock concert is familiar with the look: that nutty face that the guitar player makes--a contorted grimace, often involving lots of tongue, that suggests either ecstasy or accidental electrocution. "My sister always asked me:...

Fibbers get an assist from their cell phones.(Technology)(phony excuses)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... The latest feature of cell phones? They'll help you concoct phony excuses. For example, there's Escape-A-Date, a service of Cingular Wireless. If you're going out on a date, you can arrange to have your cell phone ring at a set time. The call...

Noted & quoted.(Soundbites: extreme edition)
October 11, 2004... 'I'm happy and proud that I can get Turkey in the record book, even if it's for milk squirting.' --Ilker Yitmaz, 28, who hopes to be recognized by Guinness World Records for snorting milk up his nose and squirting it 9.2 feet out of his...

Who says politics isn't a game?(Election 2004)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Computer games are the latest form of political persuasion. In Kerryopoly (at gop.com), paid for by the Republican National Committee, players roll the dice and move their piece on an animated board that looks like the game Monopoly. But...

The young brains behind the O.C.(Q&A)(Brief Article)(Interview)
October 11, 2004... In 2003, Josh Schwartz became the youngest-ever creator and producer of a one-hour TV series, Fox's hit teen drama The O.C. With its second season set to begin in November, UPFRONT spoke to Schwartz, 28, about what it takes to make it in...

AIDS in Africa.(Health)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
October 11, 2004... Life expectancy is plunging in several African nations hit particularly hard by AIDS, according to a United Nations report issued in July. In the U.S., life expectancy is 77.2 years. LIFE COUNTRY ...

Book worms: endangered species?(Media)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Americans are reading less than they used to, especially when it comes to literature. A recently released survey by the National. Endowment for the Arts revealed that fewer than half of U.S. adults read novels, short stories, plays, or poetry....

Aping each other's yawns.(Science)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... People yawn when they're tired, bored, or nervous, but sometimes they yawn just because they've seen someone else do it. Now, for the first time, "contagious yawning" has been documented in another species: chimpanzees. James Anderson of the...

Edging toward democracy: Afghanistan is holding its first presidential, election this month, even as it struggles to rebuild after 25 years of war and oppression.(International)
October 11, 2004... The male voter-registration team waited on the terrace for the last stragglers. In three days, they had registered almost the entire male population of voting age in Chashmai Maiwand, a 300-household village in southern Afghanistan. But things...

Ma Yan's China: untouched by a booming economy, millions of Chinese peasants can barely afford to eat or go to school. One teen's diary tells their story.(International)
October 11, 2004... The long road that brought Ma Yan to a book fair in Paris this past March began three years ago in a remote village in Ningxia (Ning-sh-YAH), one of China's poorest regions. At the time, she was distraught because her parents could not...

Confronting the past: as prosecutors take fresh looks at decades-old cases, Southern communities are being forced to revisit some of the most painful episodes of the civil rights era.(National)
October 11, 2004... On Aug. 28, 1955, in Money, Miss., a black teenager named Emmett Till was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night, beaten, shot in the head, and dropped in the Tallahatchie River. Till, a 14-year-old Chicagoan who was visiting...

The 30-second campaign: television ads have assumed an enormous role in presidential elections. While they're carefully scripted and visually arresting, they often shade the truth in an effort to sway your vote.(National)
October 11, 2004... Can a candidate be sold like a soap, soup, or soft drink? That's the goal of political advertising, which ha some ways is similar to, but in others is very different from, its product-peddling counterparts. Like all advertising, political...

Electoral College 101: don't understand the Electoral College? Well, you're not alone. Here's a guide to what it is, how it works, and why it matters.(National)
October 11, 2004... What exactly is the Electoral College? It's not a university, though it sounds like one. It's a group of 538 people (electors) who, according to the Constitution, are responsible for selecting the President and Vice President. How did...

Should the Electoral College be abolished? The 2000 election and its aftermath prompted renewed debate over our system for electing the President and Vice President.(Debate)
October 11, 2004... YES When the Constitution was written, the typical voter had few opportunities to learn about presidential candidates, so the job of choosing the President was given to the Electoral College: Electors, who were appointed by their states,...

What the election is really about: courage and resolve.(Opinion)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... The key questions of this campaign have been: Who has political courage? Who's willing to fight? Who has the resolve to lead in times of war? John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were featured [at the Republican convention in...

Wole Soyinka: the voice of African democracy.(Opinion)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... If the spirit of African democracy has a voice and a face, they belong to Wole Soyinka, 70, the political, activist and Nobel laureate in literature who has earned a reputation as the conscience of Nigeria. He's been arrested at least 10 times,...

The challenge of gene therapy.(Opinion)(Brief Article)
October 11, 2004... Perhaps the most complex decision in the history of our species is approaching: In what ways should we improve our genetic endowment? My concern is that we will irreversibly change what it is to be human. Once gene therapy becomes available,...

In 1912, three was a crowd: Teddy Roosevelt showed that a third party could make a serious run for the White House.(Times Past)
October 11, 2004... The question comes up often during presidential, elections, including this year's: Does a third-party candidate stand a chance of winning the nation's highest office? If nothing else, the often overlooked election of 1912 proved that the...

Wildfire destroyed her home, but not her life.(Voices)(Short Story)
October 11, 2004... When I saw the blinking strip across the bottom of our TV screen--"Douglas County is in fire warning and must evacuate"--I was more irritated than worried. It was June 2002, and Colorado was in the midst of what became the largest wildfire...

Cartoons.(Comic)
October 11, 2004... BUT IF WE PULLED OUT, IRAQ WOULD SLIP INTO CHAOS! AS OPPOSED TO WHAT WE HAVE NOW? Mike Keefe * The Denver Post * Caglecartoons.com HERE'S ANOTHER ONE FROM OUR CROSS-COUNTRY DRIVING TRIP... I BELIEVE THIS IS OKLAHOMA... NO...

Letter from the editor.(Editorial)
October 11, 2004... OK, I admit it: I get confused by the Electoral College, and I'm guessing that many of your students--and maybe even a few of you!--have some trouble with it as well. That's why we have "Electoral College 101" in this issue: a...

Population shifts alter electoral college votes.
October 11, 2004... Americans move around a lot. Each year, thousands of families and individuals pack their bags and move from one state to another for employment or personal reasons. Whatever the reason, population shifts produce changes in the number of...