W E D N E S D A Y OCTOBER 23, 2002
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXVII, No. 97
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
www.browndailyherald.com
Library staff set to stage Friday walkout BY JULIETTE WALLACK
Seth Kerschner / Herald
Library services, like circulation services at the Rockefeller library, could be disrupted Friday by a one-day walk out. About 90 members of the Service Employees International Union Local 134 will not work Friday if the University does not agree to a four-month temporary contract and a 5 percent pay increase.
Ninety library staff members will stage a one-day walkout on Friday if the University does not meet their contractual demands, potentially disrupting service for students and faculty. Service Employees International Union Local 134 authorized the walkout in anticipation of the University refusing demands for a four-month contract extension and 5 percent raise. The University is “in active negotiations now” with union representatives, said Laura Freid, executive vice president for public affairs and University relations. She would not comment on the possibility of Friday’s walkout, saying “there are proposals on the table that are being discussed. “These conversations are always complicated, and they do take time,” she said. Library staffers’ contracts expired at the end of September, and the current negotiations deal mostly with a planned library reorganization that could require staff members to assume duties that do not correspond closely with their areas of expertise. see WALKOUT, page 4
Explaining the algorithm that is life Prof outlines Author and scientist Stephen Wolfram Boston plan for says that patterns in nature can be explained by the same basic instructions youth violence that control computer programs prevention BY HAYLEY TYLER
All of creation can be defined by a simple computational code, Stephen Wolfram told an audience of some 300 people Tuesday night in MacMillan 117. The intricacies of a snowflake, the perturbations along a surface of water, even the free will of an individual can be explained, Wolfram said, by a single computer program. Wolfram presents this thesis in his book “A New Kind of Science,” which was released in May and instantly became a bestseller. Although Wolfram does not pretend to know the lines of code that create natural phenomena, he believes that patterns in nature can be understood by the basic instructions that create similar patterns on a computer, he said. Wolfram said the universe began with a few basic instructions that have played themselves out to create everything that exists today. “Almost any process that looks to us complex will correspond to a simple computation,” he said. Wolfram called this the “Principle of Computational Equivalence,” and expanded upon it to say that with the appropriate input, a simple computer program can create arbitrarily sophisticated systems — such as the complex patterns along a mollusk shell. “Even simple rules can produce incredibly complicated behavior,” he said. The Principle of Computational Equivalence challenges the perception that humans possess some sort of higher order complexity that differentiates us from other elements in the universe. “By this principle, we can’t expect patterns made by human thinking to have more complexity than those made elsewhere,” he said.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
Kea Johnson / Herald
Stephen Wolfram spoke in MacMillan Hall Tuesday night. His book “A New Kind of Science,” released in May, became an instant bestseller. This leads to another principle, that of computational irreducibility, he said. “There is competition between an observer and a system being observed,” Wolfram said. “The principle is that the observer will be computationally equivalent to the
see PREVENTION, page 7 see WOLFRAM, page 6
I N S I D E W E D N E S D AY, O C T O B E R 2 3 , 2 0 0 2 Brown and Cairo universities team up to preserve ancient Egyptian tombs at Giza page 3
Korean women’s university awards honorary degree to Ruth Simmons page 3
Author and alum Tony Horwitz ’80.5 discusses his book and journeys in the South Pacific page 5
Harvard Professor Christopher Winship urged students and professors to solve problems of urban youth violence through collaboration in his Tuesday discussion of Boston’s Ten Point Coalition, a group of ministers and police officers that aims to decrease street fighting. Winship, a professor of sociology, delivered “Boston Cops and Black Ministers: From Antagonism to Cooperation in Youth Violence Prevention” to an audience of about 15. The Ten Point Coalition holds conferences in neighborhoods with “noise,” or inter-gang activity where the police identify the group members as “players” in gang wars, he said. The ministers confront the teenagers and commit to helping them — if they’re willing to withdraw from the gang, Winship said. The ministers read the gang members “the riot act, but it’s an interesting riot act,” Winship said. “The ministers tell them: ‘If you stop your gang activities, we will help you. But if you keep doing what you’re doing, we will do everything we can to see that you’re put in prison. The last thing we want is to be presiding over your funeral,’” he said. Winship described the partnership between the
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Yale Wang ’06 says Bush should look to bomb Harvard, SciLi before Iraq column, page 11
Volleyball splits two at home, trouncing Princeton but falling to Penn sports, page 12
showers high 50 low 32