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Joey Lincoln touches down on the dirt airstrip. It's been four days since I've last seen Alpha Uniform, our Cessna Caravan which draws its name from the phonetic pronunciation of the last two letters of its tail number. Our stay at Dingila has been productive and fun, but I'm glad to climb aboard once again. We will be flying back to Bunia to drop of a passenger and some cargo before heading to Dungu. I ride in the copilot seat again, and have a nice conversation with Joey, MAF's east DRC Program Manager, about Congo life and IT needs that he feels the program has.
In Bunia we off-load our passenger and cargo and proceed to load our second VSAT system. This time around I feel less like an observer. I know exactly how the dish sections need to be loaded in order to fit them through the rear side door of the plane. I know where we're going to put the boxes of mounting components. The things the pilot and hanger crew do are starting become familiar. Loading complete, we contact Bunia tower, taxi and take off.
After a brief flight we land in Dungu. Uniform India, our Cessna 206 (a.k.a the "little plane"). Jon Cadd is checking out Rodney Dyrud, one of the program's new 206 pilots. Joey tells me it is uncommon for both planes to be on the ground at a remote airstrip at the same time. However today Jon and Rodney have changed schedule for a medical evacuation flight. As we taxi to park the Caravan, the 206 taxis to take off, and I wave as the little white plane with the distinctive red MAF dove on the tail heads for the grass runway.
The MSF compound is a short walk–maybe 200-300 meters–from the airport, so we load our bags in their vehicle and take a nice stroll with Claire from MSF, a sweet Norwegian woman with a kind smile, who gives us some information on the town. To my left are several brick buildings which, like many things I have seen in Congo, seem to have fallen from a prior state of glory and suffered the effects of time. One appears to have been a school or meeting hall of some sort, but now seems abandoned. On the right side of the road is a soccer field lined with palms and various other tropical trees. There is a small brick structure that appears to be bleachers, though it would scarcely accommodate more than twenty-something people. Claire explains that all the brick buildings in town were built by and are owned by the church. The monastery nearby was founded by Canadian missionaries some time ago and there are still several monks living there today.
Dungu seems very quiet and peaceful to me, but I learn that this is somewhat of a facade. Dungu is less than 40 miles from Garamba National Park where members of the Lord's Resistance Army has taken up residence. Consequently the people in the area are often victims of LRA violence. Recently a nun from Dungu was murdered while traveling to a nearby village. She was an ophthalmologist who was going to help people. It makes me so mad! These guys murdered a woman who was a nun and an ophthalmologist! With the presence of such danger I can understand how critical MSF's hospital is to those that live in the area.
At the compound we unload our things. Now experienced at installing this particular VSAT, I am able to direct much more of the assembly than at Dingila. Solo works with some MSF workers to get the frame ready, while I work with another group to prepare the dish. The whole process is going much faster than at Dingila. We finish around supper time.
We find places around a large, wooden, rectangular table on a patio covered by a thatched roof. Adjacent to the eating area is a large oven made of bricks which has an arched opening. The yard has a garden and various palm and papaya trees. Two more covered patios are also nearby. The whole thing looks quite like something you might find at a tropical resort…well, maybe if you added some tiki torches and got rid of the razor wire strung along the top of the encompassing brick wall.
After supper I put together the feed horn with the transmitter and receiver. The next morning I mount it to the dish and connect all the cables. Things are going very smoothly. We call the satellite company and conduct our signal tests. This time it goes much better than when we called from Dingila; our call lasts around 15 minutes instead of over an hour. We are finished a day early and there is an MAF flight coming in today, so we will get to return to Bunia this afternoon.
We get conflicting reports about which aircraft is coming to pick us up. Joey is dropping off passengers in the Caravan, but Chris Konop might get there in the 206 as well. Right now Chris can't take off because the UN has a helicopter parked in the middle of the runway he needs to use. They won't take off and there's nowhere to taxi. We learn later that it was eventually moved to the edge of the runway…by hand…by dozens of people. Words escape me, but a head-shake will do. This is Africa.
In the end both Chris and Joey end up at Dungu at the same time. For something that rarely happens, it's ironic that this week we've seen both planes together on the ground at the same time at the same airstrip. I'm not sure what the odds of that are. I opt to fly back with Chris in the tiny 206 and we get a 15-minute head start on Solo and Joey, narrowly beating the faster Caravan back to Bunia.
1 Comment
Great story Owen!


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Programmers are often called upon to present numeric quantities formatted as money. Conceptually, this is not a tough job. It's a simple matter of generating a formatted string that corresponds to a value stored in a numeric variable.
There are complexities, of course. For example, sometimes the fractional part is truncated and sometimes it is rounded according to specific rules. There are many international currency types and many different symbols to represent them. You can't even be sure how many decimal places to use. European currencies are customarily formatted with two decimal places, but many Arab currencies require three decimals for fractional parts.
In America, commas group digits in threes and the dot is used to separate whole dollars from cents. In much of Europe, the punctuation symbols are reversed. But that's just the beginning. In India, digits are grouped in pairs, and sometimes in trios. The user who sees
Rs3,25,84,729.25 on an e-banking display screen has no trouble parsing the amount as 3 crores, 25 lakhs, 84,729 rupees, and 25 paise.
Programmers must also contend with different ways of representing negative amounts and even the placement of currency symbols before or after numeric digits with or without a whitespace buffer.
Clearly, programmers who deal with multiple currencies must be prepared to contend with substantial complexity. In the C and C++ world, they logically start with locales. Locales are not to my taste, however. My experience is that they lead to low-level solutions that can be hard to write, read, debug, and maintain. That's what inspired me to search for an alternate solution to the money-formatting problem.
Learning from the Past
The first programming languages I learned were Fortran and Cobol. I frequently used picture clauses in my programs. They are simple to define and use, and they provide many formatting options. Picture clauses have worked well for decades, but for some reason, they are not part of the C++ or C library. I decided to base my C/C++ currency-formatting function on Cobol's picture clauses.
The first challenge I faced was to choose a name for my function. I settled on
mnyfmt, which is a sort of tribute to
strlen. Like
mnyfmt is a six-letter name that starts by specifying the object the function acts upon, then describes the action it performs.
Next, I had to figure out how to round numbers. I discovered that truncation is one of more than a dozen options. I learned that bankers use a special rounding scheme called "round half to even," in which rounding goes to the closer integer number, but halves always round to an even number. For example, -12.63 rounds to -13 and -12.50 rounds to -12, but +13.50 rounds to 14.
Handling so many rounding schemes is overwhelming…so I decided to decide to set the problem aside. My function does not accept a floating-point value as an argument, but instead accepts two integer parameters. One is the integer part of the number to format, and the other is the fractional part. Programmers must do their own rounding before calling my function. The invocation reads
mnyfmt(12,50) instead of
mnyfmt(12.50) note the comma that separates the two numbers. That's not a decimal point.
My first implementation was a C++ template function that received a
std::string argument. However, I discovered that I was not using any templates, nor any
std::string functionality, so I replaced the C++
std::string with a regular zero-terminated character array. I also added a parameter to mark the fractional separator. In my test programs, I used commas and dots, but there are situations where other separators could be useful.
At this point, the function prototype looked like this:
char* mnyfmt(char *fmtstr, char dec, long intpart, int fractpart); { { // test.overwrite typedef struct struct_overwrite { char bytes_8[8]; // 64 bits: probably aligned int int_neg; // -1 usually has all its bits equal to 1 } overwrite; overwrite o = {'1','2','3','4','5','6','7','\0',-1}; assertTrue(8-1==strlen(o.bytes_8) && o.int_neg == -1); strcpy(o.bytes_8, "1234567.."); // 2 more bytes... assertTrue(9==strlen(o.bytes_8)); assertFalse(o.int_neg == -1 && "Adjacent memory overwritten "); assertTrue(o.int_neg != -1); assertTrue(CHAR_BIT == 8 && "8 bits bytes required"); } }
I decided to use only one
char* argument because I know that C strings are problematic when dealing with limited memory. For example, field
bytes_8 can hold only eight characters. When 10 are copied into it, the last two overwrite whatever values are stored after
bytes_8 in this case, changing the value of the field
int_neg. This type of error is particularly difficult to catch.
Refining the Function
When the string that contains the picture clause is also the place where the formatted value will reside, the programmer needs to ensure that this variable is large enough to hold the resulting value. For most applications, a string of 96 or 128 bytes will be big enough. For what it's worth, you can represent the U.S. national debt of $14 trillion with just 16 digits, including two for the cents.
Best practices call for the construction of tests along with code. That's why my code is peppered with
assertTrue and
assertFalse statements. They mimic the assertions used in JUnit, the test framework for Java. In the code shown here, they simply output the condition tested when the assertion fails.
Earlier versions of
mnyfmt returned a pointer to the formatted string, mimicking the behavior of
strcpy. But it turns out that it is more useful if a pointer to the first significant digit is returned, so the same picture clause can be used to format a small value like 1235.87 or a huge one like 123456789.88.
mnyfmt always uses the hyphen as the negative sign, and it replaces a 9 in the format string. The only character in the format string that ever gets changed is a 9.
mnyfmt replaces each 9 in the format string with the corresponding digit, sometimes the result begins with a decimal separator. This special case should be handled by the programmer as there is no generalized solution that can be applied by

subset: commoncrawl


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Carrie Fisher
Born to Hollywood parents Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher was cast as Princess Leia in the first "Star Wars" movie when she was 19 years old. Since then, there's not much she hasn't seen or been through -- the galaxy just for starters. "Wishful Drinking" is her autobiographical Broadway show, a funny, confessional one-woman performance based on her strange life as a celebrity and her battles with addiction and mental illness. Why go: Who wouldn't want to hear about the life behind that cheese danish hairdo? Reviews from the Broadway engagement have been positive. Reconsider: You can also catch it on television -- an HBO documentary version is nominated for an Emmy. Details: Tuesday through Oct. 16 at the Bank of America Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.; $25-$65; 800-775-2000, ticketmaster.com
Copyright © 2019, Chicago Tribune


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Floor Board
Pictured (L-R): Daniela Ruah (Special Agent Kensi Blye) and Eric Christian Olsen (LAPD Liaison Marty Deeks). The NCIS: LA team continues their investigation behind the death of a CIA agent that leads to a dangerous ring of Russian super agents. In a race against time, Hanna risks having a secret exposed. Photo: Robert Voets/CBS ©2012 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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With long views to both east and west, the University of Vermont stands like a city on a hill. Morning light streams onto campus past Mount Mansfield and the rest of the Green Mountains. In the evening, Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks are alight, glowing or glowering, each day a new mood.
And, like any great city, UVM never sleeps. From before sunrise, into the day, and around again into darkness UVM is busy! But as Thoreau reminds us: "It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" With this, the third installment of our Day in the Life of UVM series, UVM Today set out to answer that question.
We dropped in on classrooms and sports fields, professors and first-years, laboratories and lunchrooms to collect dozens of stories and snapshots that give a sense of the humming life of this place -- the good work, collaboration, contemplation, conviviality, number-crunching, ab-crunching, short chats, long papers, silly shenanigans and lofty achievements. It's one day in the life of UVM.
5:52 a.m. UVM Dairy Barn
Sophomores Morgan Summers and Julia Balionis start the day at the barn milking cows as part of the CREAM program.
6:36 a.m. Gutterson Fieldhouse
The UVM synchronized skating team practices formations.
6:50 a.m. Gucciardi Fitness and Recreation Center
Getting strong.
6:54 a.m. Frank D. Forbush Natatorium
Members of the UVM swim team warm up in the pool.
6:59 a.m. Athletic Campus
7:15 a.m. Virtue Field
The track team takes the field.
8:01 a.m. UVM Green
Ken Boutin, a 36-year veteran of the UVM staff, is a half-hour into giving the Green its twice weekly mowing. Working solo today, he figures the whole job will take him six or seven hours.
8:05 a.m. Lattie F. Coor House, 438 College St.
Antonio Cepeda-Benito, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, arrives at work. On his schedule today: a change of clothes, meetings: with faculty, administrators, department chairs and a special luncheon to honor staff. "I bike every day," he says. "Rain and cold don't bother me."
8:11 a.m. WRUV Studio, Davis Center
DJ Rachel Gitajn sends out the sound on her "Fresh Tracks" show. Tuesdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Gitajn plays a line-up of new releases focused on electronica and indie rock. Cued up: Local band Rubblebucket led by UVM alumnus Alex Toth.
8:25 a.m. Davis Center
Students stream to the first class of the day.
8:39 a.m. 179 Main St., Winooski, Vt.
Sculptor and art professor Kathleen Schneider, in her home studio. While her work is known for its complexity (as seen in the background), during a hectic semester of classes, she's been working in the mornings, limiting herself to a brush, orange watercolor and paper. "I make a circle as perfect as I can given the amount of time I have that day," she says. "It puts me in a focusing state, keeping me in touch with my work."
8:40 a.m. Book House suite, Living/Learning Center
Sophomore Eleanor Johnson hangs out and reads Professor Paul Kindstedt's Cheese and Culture before heading off to her first class of the day.
9:16 a.m. Miller Research Complex/University Farm
"Hello, sweetie. How are you, big girl?" says university veterinarian Ruth Blauwiekel (Dr. Ruth to many) as she examines a calf. In addition to her primary focus on overseeing the care and health of animals used in research at UVM, the vet also teaches a course on livestock medicine at the farm facility.
9:26 a.m. Outside Bailey/Howe Library.
9:54 a.m. Muddy Waters, Main Street, Burlington
Recent grad Storm Leland '13, who majored in social work, is headed to nursing school. But first, there are entrance exams to pass. She's set up camp at her favorite study spot from her college days, double iced mocha at the ready.
9:56 a.m. Ecosystem Sciences Laboratory, Burlington waterfront
Wrist-deep in the "wet lab" of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Sciences Laboratory, technician Alex Sotola readies a sensor. He's working with fisheries biologist Ellen Marsden to understand the behavior of one of Lake Champlain's less-beloved critters: lampreys. They implant the juvenile lamprey with tags under the skin, set the water in the tank flowing "to simulate a stream," Sotola say, and then can track their behavior day and night.
10:12 a.m. University Green
Ideal morning to grab a bench and a book.
10:17 a.m. University Heights North
Professor Emily Bernard's Honors College sophomore seminar, African American Autobiographies, discusses Richard Wright's Black Boy.
10:19 a.m. 207 Votey Building
Determining the effectiveness of strength shoes, and the possibilities and pitfalls of observational studies is the question of the hour in Karen Benway's STAT 051 class, "Probability with Statistics."
10:28 a.m. 202 Southwick Hall
On a step toward their final projects -- an arrangement of a jazz standard for big band -- Professor Patricia Julien has asked her jazz composition and arranging class to choose a chord that intrigues them, focus on just one particular sonority and analyze its properties. Here, one student demonstrates.
10:30 a.m. Fleming Museum
Fleming intern Katherine Golde, a UVM junior, at work on her research project focused on portrait miniatures (small watercolor paintings on ivory) in the museum collection that feature Vermonters. Pictured in the elaborate gold frame: Jerusha, wife of Ira Allen.
10:35 a.m. Outside Bailey/Howe Library
Brit Kelleher and Kunrong Cai discuss how sales are going with Sustainable Style, their business for Professor Kathleen Liang's CDAE 166 course, "Community Entrepreneurship." Students in the class gain firsthand experience in conceiving and running a small business. Sustainable Style features jewelry made from recycled materials, including shoelaces re-purposed from UVM varsity soccer cleats, and all of their proceeds will go to support the local Lund Foundation.
10:45 a.m. 322 South Prospect Street
Peter Rippberger, a post-baccalaureate premedical student, waits to speak to a student adviser at UVM Continuing and Distance Education.
10:46 a.m. Patrick Gym Dance Studio
11:15 a.m. Billings Library
Sophomore Josh Gachette digs into his Introduction to Anthropology assignment: "Kinships charts," he says, and "a corresponding essay on the modern American family."
11:21 a.m. University Place
"It's an egg-and-cheese from Big Daddy's," says senior Jeremy Denton. "Three dollars." He's heading to a political science class, while senior psychology major Tesiah Coleman is about to turn the other direction, "and head home," she says, "to take a nap in Winooski."
11:31 a.m. University Place
Rick Carrick, grad student in bio-engineering, grabs a sesame chicken to go from Lucky Chinese, one of the beloved campus food trucks.
11:34 a.m. Booth House, 86 South Williams Street
11:38 a.m. Baird 5, Fletcher Allen
Senior nursing student Ashley French checks vital signs of a four-day-old baby as part of her five-and-a-half-week rotation in pediatrics. "Today is my last day," she says. "It has been an incredible experience working with these children."
11:55 a.m. Outside the Davis Center
Friends enjoy a lofty spot for lunch on this perfect Vermont autumn day.
Noon. Fleming Museum
UVM Student docent Nicole Bull practices for her upcoming gallery tour of the Fleming exhibition, EAT: The Social Life of Food. Nicole was one of the students who curated the exhibition along with her classmates in the University of Vermont's spring 2013 Honors College course "Introduction to Museum Studies."
12:18 p.m. Outside Pomeroy Hall
Not your typical exam room. Horticulture professor Mark Starrett quizzes students on the scientific names of trees for his Woody Landscape Plants course.
12:18 p.m. Burlington Harbor
Under the eye of captain Steve Cluett, the forty-five-foot vessel Melosira pulls away from the dock. Today, UVM's multipurpose research and teaching boat has aboard a crew of MAT students from the College of Education and Social Services. "They're learning to think cross-curriculum," explains professor Regina Toolin from the deck. As future middle- and secondary-school science teachers, the students are reflecting on how this kind of boat trip can provide opportunities to teach about math, ecology, maritime history and more.
12:30 p.m. Third floor, Bailey/Howe Library
Angeline Chiu, associate professor of classics, searches the stacks to prep for her spring Honors College course on Shakespeare and the classic tradition. "This is third time I've taught the class," she says, "but you have to keep it fresh."
12:48 p.m. Davis Center
"Grab a grilled cheese! And by the way, I love your sweater!" Rachel Madowitz lures Davis Center pedestrians to the student-run FeelGood grilled cheese stand with her literal take on a sandwich board -- and a friendly word. Proceeds from their sales benefit The Hunger Project.
12:51 p.m. Bailey/Howe Library
Sophomores Kathryn Darling, Olivia Abt, and Molly Helfend shut the door and get to work.
1:02 p.m. Outside the Aiken Center
Taking roll: Students in Natural Resources 001 pile into a yellow school bus for a field trip to Potash Brook.
1:09 p.m. Livak Ballroom, Davis Center
At a special luncheon, the College of Arts and Sciences presents two staff appreciation awards to longtime employees. The recipient for superior technical support is Michael J. Hamblin, scientific equipment technician in physics, having worked at the university for 37 years, including 17 in CAS. "His service," according to his nomination letter, "goes beyond (his) department, helping students and faculty in chemistry, engineering and physics over his career."
The recipient for superior administrative support goes to Candace L. Smith, a UVM alumna who has worked in the Department of Political Science (her major) for 32 years, "her sense of humor an invaluable part of her management portfolio."
1:10 p.m. East Avenue helipad
Members of the student-run UVM Rescue squad meet a New York State Police medical helicopter to transport a patient to nearby Fletcher Allen Healthcare.
1:21 p.m. Outside University Heights
English professor Huck Gutman has long brought a healthy dose of theatrics to the front of the classroom. This afternoon he brought his "Poetic Revolutions in the Modern World" class outside to the UHeights amphitheater to enjoy some sunshine with the day's lecture and discussion.
1:25 p.m. Clinical Simulation Laboratory, Rowell Hall.
Fletcher Allen cardiology fellow and clinical instructor in medicine Dr. Sadi Raza, second from left, teaches third-year medical students Laurel Wickberg, Monique-Terese Squiers, Hayley Munoe, Marissa Mendez, Kevin Pelletier and Colin King how to identify valvular heart disease using a Harvey cardiopulmonary simulator.
1:26 p.m. Catholic Center
Sophomores Kelly Mulvehill, Mikayla Peront and Bethany Trainque (from left) study at the Catholic Center where they also attend church.
1:28 p.m. Patrick/Gutterson Complex
Lisa Champagne, director of Athletics Communications, at work on a new brochure for the department. It's a busy time of year for Champagne and her staff as they regularly have a dozen or more events a week to cover during the fall sports season.
1:30 p.m. Fleming Museum
Art Professor Jane Kent teaches with prints from the permanent collection of the Fleming Museum during a class visit to the museum's study room.
1:44 p.m. Fleming Museum
1:53 p.m. Miller Research Complex, Equine Barn
Meredith Chamberlain, a senior in zoology/pre-vet, grooms her horse, M'Lady. Students at the UVM Horse Barn Co-op regularly host community open houses (AKA child-friendly petting fests), including the popular annual Halloween Barn. M'Lady dressed as a pinata last year, Chamberlain says. This year, she's thinking Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Red hooves.
1:57 p.m. Allen House
First-year student Dayle Sargeant stops by the LGBTQ Center to pick up her t-shirt for National Coming Out Day (Oct. 11) from Becky Swem, education and outreach coordinator. The shirt celebrates this year's theme: the power of visibility.
1:57 p.m. Edmunds Elementary School
Senior Caroline Manahan, an elementary education major, teaches a math lesson to a class of third graders at Edmunds Elementary School as part of her full-time student teaching experience.
2:05 p.m. College Street
Burlington's free College Street shuttle heads down the hill the mile to the waterfront, where it will turn around and head back up to campus.
2:10 p.m. Outside the Davis Center
2:30 p.m. Career+Experience Hub, Davis Center
Groups tour the Career+Experience Hub at a celebration of the new space, a clearinghouse for students looking for hands-on learning experiences and career-oriented advice.
2:50 p.m. Votey Hall
Behind the doors of the Fabrication Laboratory, "Clean Speed," the latest hybrid gas/electric racecar to be built by UVM's AERO racing club comes into being. Provost David Rosowsky gets a tour of the machine from Mitchell Dundon, a mechanical engineering major, Andrew Giroux, electrical engineering, and the team's adviser, professor Jeff Frolik.
3:12 p.m. Delahanty Hall
With a new noble gas mass spectrometer that creates a vacuum many times greater than that found in space -- "two times ten to the negative twelve torr," explains lab technician Dan Jones -- there's always a getting-to-know-you stage. He and assistant professor of geology Laura Webb work together to fine-tune procedures for using the machine. The spectrometer lets the scientists measure the age of rocks and other samples -- from thousands of years to billions. But it's very sensitive. "We're basically counting ions," Webb explains.
3:14 p.m. 206 Williams Hall
The artist-professor moves from studio to classroom. In Kathleen Schneider's advanced sculpture course, senior Ruth Shafer explains her "scorpion," the result of an assignment in which students were asked to deconstruct an old chair and put it back together in a completely different form, but one that can still function as a chair. "You don't have to want to sit on it," Shafer laughs. "I wanted to do something that gives me the willies but I also wanted it to be funny."
3:22 p.m. Perkins Geology Museum
Katy Huling came from Rhode Island and Wendell Soctomah from Connecticut -- to see the skeleton. "The real skeleton," of the famed Charlotte Whale, says Huling. She's wondering about how these fragile whale bones -- found in 1849 and assembled by UVM naturalist Zadock Thompson -- might connect to the durable and elusive creature of Lake Champlain legend: Champ. In fact, she's so curious about Champ that she's written a book, Water Horse of Lake Champlain. "It's on Amazon," she says, "and Champ's Trading Post in West Addison." As for the skeleton, it remains silent.
3:35 p.m. Farrell Hall
How does the happiness signal in Arabic stack up against that in English? Mathematician Chris Danforth discusses the data pouring into the UVM Complex Systems Center's now world-famous and world-searching hedonometer with Luis Garcia, dean of the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and fellow professor, Paul Hines. (Haven't heard of the hedonometer? Check it out at hedonometer.org.)
3:35 p.m. Kalkin Hall
Sixteen exchange students from Fribourg Switzerland attend a lecture at School of Business Administration by Bill Reichert. Their most interesting takeaway from the trip so far? "The ecological consciousness of companies here is surprising," Marie De Faria e Castro says. "Being from Switzerland, I didn't think U.S. companies focused on the environment."
3:45 p.m. Farrell Hall
Three graduate students in mathematics, Mike Foley, Lindsay Van Leir, and Eric Clark, work a problem on the venerable whiteboard. "What are you working on?" they're asked. "Measure theory," is the answer. Then they look closely at the reporter asking the questions. "And we can't explain it more than that," they say with a cheerfully sympathetic laugh.
4 p.m. Bailey/Howe Library
Among books to be labeled and prepared for shelving: Gregg Turkington's Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992, recently cataloged by Bailey/Howe staff.
4:12 p.m. Fabrication Laboratory, Votey Hall
With quiet curiosity, Hunter O'Folan, turns over a nautilus gear made here, in UVM's Fabrication Laboratory. O'Folan, a senior in mechanical engineering, also runs the lab as a student employee. His work ranges from machine maintenance to "helping senior design groups," he says. But right now, he and fellow engineering student Max Morgan have a fluid dynamics lab report to finish.
4:14 p.m. Fletcher Allen Health Care rooftop garden
A group of first-year medical students come together for their once-weekly Professionalism, Communication and Reflection class meeting. Catherine LaPenta leads the day's discussion on death and dying, a timely topic given their current course -- Human, Structure and Function -- which includes work with cadavers in the anatomy lab to gain an understanding of the intricacies of the human body. In PCR, students reflect on what they're experiencing and learn from each other as they progress through the first year of medical school.
4:14 p.m. John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill
LaToya Eaves, dissertation fellow at the University of Connecticut, delivers a lecture that is part of the Geography Department's fall semester colloquium series. Eaves' talk, "Fertile Ground: Landscapes of Race and Desire," discussed her exploration of the intersection of gender, sexuality and race. Her research is built on interviews with black queer and lesbian women in the western region of North Carolina, Eaves' home state. One quote she shared: "It is interesting being black and lesbian," said Stephanie, a 49-year-old woman living in Asheville. "Because, believe it or not, there are lesbians who are also racists."
4:28 p.m. Outside Englesby House
Even on a day that starts at 7 a.m. and ends a bit before 10 p.m., with five speeches to present, meetings, special events and an official dinner, the family dog still has to stretch his legs. President Tom Sullivan and Sully, an Australian Shepherd-Border Collie mix, take their late afternoon stroll.
5:32 p.m. Burlington Skate Park
Classes done for the day, it's down the hill to the waterfront skate park for a number of students.
5:37 p.m. 233 Marsh Life Science
With kale freshly picked from UVM's gardens, students in environmental cooking are making pizza and curly kale and potato soup from Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food. In addition to teaching basic cooking skills, Cynthia Belliveau, dean of Continuing and Distance Education and professor of nutrition and food sciences, is helping the class explore the social, environmental, culinary and nutritional aspects of local food.
5:43 p.m. Lake Champlain
The UVM sailing team heads in for the dock after the afternoon's session on the water. "I always get really sad when practice is over because then I have to go do homework," student sailor Adam Ceely, an environmental engineering major, is overheard saying. As his teammates laugh, he consents to have that on the record. The sailing team, a club sport at UVM, is perennially strong and is currently ranked fourteenth in the nation.
5:45 p.m. Southwick Hall
The Tuesday Afternoon Jazz Ensemble, led by Ray Vega, rehearses Thad Jones' "Don't Get Sassy."
5:46 p.m. North Lounge, Billings
As UVM looks to increase internationalization to strengthen and diversify the educational experience, the university welcomes a conversation with H.E. Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, the ambassador of Singapore to the United States.
6:10 p.m. Buell Street
Seniors Arline Weaver and Lara Nargozian make dinner, spring rolls with pork, in the Burlington apartment they share with four other students. The meal is all local, they claim, even the music that's on in the kitchen, a Vermont band called Twiddle.
6:12 p.m. Main Street
A longboarder crosses Main St. as the traffic light and sky turn yellow.
6:17 p.m. City Market
With a baking recipe at the ready on her iPhone, junior Hannah Trischman starts a shopping trip in City Market downtown. First stop is produce for some dates, then cashews, carob, etc. to follow.
6:21 p.m. Patrick/Gutterson Complex
Basketball players Nas Williams, Tray Davine, Harrison Taggart and Kurt Steidl study three nights a week in the men's basketball office so their GPAs are as impressive as their on-court statistics.
6:22 p.m. Stone Soup, Downtown Burlington
Sam Kleh, a senior in film studies, waits on customers at Stone Soup on College Street. He puts in about twenty hours a week behind the counter.
6:30 p.m. Patrick Gym
Shotokan Japanese karate practice.
6:41 p.m. Ira Allen Chapel
A small but good-spirited group of the On the Border Morris dancers demonstrates what the ancient English tradition looks like, "a celebration of the seasons and soil." When gathered in earnest, the group combines elaborate costumes, "a general rowdiness," including the clashing of sticks, with precisioned dance steps.
7:03 p.m. Royall Tyler Theater
Even mid-run of their production of The Mousetrap, UVM's Department of Theatre is in rehearsal for its next play, Little Women, directed by Peter Jack Tkatch.
7:18 p.m. Carpenter Auditorium, Given Building
Dr. Robert Shapiro, professor of neurological sciences, answers questions following his Community Medical School lecture on chronic headaches.
7:30 p.m. 427 Waterman
New England Italian Film Festival screening of La Scomparsa di Pato.
7:33 p.m. Lafayette Hall
Water Tower newspaper staff, writers and artists talk ideas for next week's issue.
7:34 p.m. Davis Center
The Trekkies clap and cheer at the screen. They're not watching Spock. They're participants and leaders in this year's edition of TREK, a team-building experience for first-year students that has them out on group service projects and backcountry outings before the fall semester begins. Tonight, they're reviewing some of their photos and adventures.
7:35 p.m. Huber House
With just 15 minutes to prepare after hearing the topic, debaters tonight argued the motion, in their particular parlance, "this house supports the creation of a new country, open to all, where the only functions of the government are to provide security and to protect property rights." And the fight begins...
7:40 p.m. Davis Center
Five seniors -- Jamisha Williams, Kat Luis, Jazmine Rodriguez, Shaunese Crawford and Tiffani Hemcher -- stand together on the fourth floor of the Davis Center. They've just finished watching the film, The Peculiar Kind. A documentary, it explores "the queer people of color experience in the inner city," explains Valerie Castaneen, the president of Alianza Latina, one of the student groups that sponsored the screening along with Free2Be. "We're demystifying the experience of LGBTQ people of color," Castaneen says.
7:45 p.m. Chikago Landing, Davis Center
Senior Caleb Fields and grad student Debbie Krug (right) meet with fellowships adviser Brit Chase for help with their Fulbright applications. Fields hopes to study glacier modeling in New Zealand, and Krug is interested in economic analysis of renewable energy sources in Germany. What's the outcome of their work tonight? "I've rewritten a lot of my personal statement," Krug says. "I was fine with it before I came, but now I'm not fine with it again. Thanks a lot, Brit!" she jokes. But, she says, Chase has helped her find a clear path forward "to make the narrative smoother and more compelling."
7:55 p.m. Outside Davis Center
A slice of moon over the grasses that line the walk into the Davis Center.
8:20 p.m. Southwick Hall Ballroom
The university's symphony orchestra rehearses under the direction of Yutaka Kono. Tonight they're working on a composition by associate professor Patricia Julien, "Among the Hidden," which they will premiere Nov. 12.
9:40 p.m. Pottery Co-op, Living/Learning Center
Medical student Bob Love (right) and Fletcher Allen resident and UVM alumnus Aaron Glenney relax with clay at the end of the day. Why come to the co-op now? "Why not?" Glenney says.
11:39 p.m. Outside Royall Tyler Theater
Campus police officer Shawna Crump responds to a minor fire. "Somebody threw a butt in there," she says, "and up it went."
11:43 p.m. Bailey/Howe Library
Burning the near-midnight scholarly oils. Or posting to Facebook. Either way it's good to be with friends at day's end.
11:49 p.m. Bailey/Howe Library
Twenty-eight-year staff veteran Greg Godbout collects trash and recycling on the second floor of the library. "I've worked all over campus," he says. "I've done five library tours."
11:51 p.m. Bailey/Howe Library
Heading home.
11:56 p.m. Bailey/Howe Library
How much longer are you going to study? For sophomores Maddy Hunt and Jocelyn Nicotero the locking of the library doors doesn't mean the end of their labors. "It's molecular genetics. Yes, it's hard!" says Hunt. They expect to be up til 2 a.m.
12:03 a.m. Central Heating and Cooling Plant, Royall Tyler Theatre Annex
Jason Clark, operating engineer, came on duty in the central heating plant at 11 p.m. He'll be on the job until 7 a.m., testing water samples and operating the boilers. "They come on and off as the load changes," he says.
1:25 a.m. Fletcher Allen Health Care Emergency Department
It's way past midnight. It's the emergency room. And these students are cheerfully on duty. Nektarios Konstantinopoulos is doing post-baccalaureate courses, aiming for medical school. Ashley French is a nursing major. (She's busy; see 11:38 a.m. above!) They're both part of Dr. Kalev Freeman's emergency medicine research team. Freeman has built a program with undergraduates in his Surgery 200/201 courses as "research associates." Their weekly four-hour lab is in the ER, day or night. They're looking for incoming trauma patients and others who they might enroll as volunteers for studies. "Nothing too crazy tonight," says French, "that's good, but it's not as interesting."
2:17 a.m. Intersection of Main Street and Beaumont Avenue
A few cars still streak by. A solo walker passes, laden with books. Then a trio of bicyclists cut across the grass,screeching -- or is it singing? The light of the new University of Vermont sign shines through the night.


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Sure, you can watch videos and play music on MCE right now, but that's old school. Everyone is doing that same ol' boring stuff and Microsoft can't sit around on its laurels while the other guys are copy-catting! eWeek is reporting that Microsoft will be releasing an update to the operating system on Friday that will bring some revolutionary new features to the media center interface:
The Redmond, Wash., software giant is expected to unveil on Friday an update for its Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system that will boost the computers' abilities to tap online entertainment such as movies, access e-mail and even let users go shopping via the special user interface
The roll up, dubbed Emerald, will contain other things besides the ability to buy things on MSN Shopping. The update will add "away mode" which will mimic the speediness of OS X's sleep mode (sorry, I had to), support for 200-disc DVD changers, and several content partners (AOL, Akimbo, Comedy Central, MTV, and more). If you're blown away by all that then just keep your pants on until they ship Vista. Many analysts are of the mindset that Microsoft is saving all the really good stuff for the next next release of MCE, code named Diamond, that will launch alongside Windows Vista.


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NEW YORK -- Sean Payton met Thursday with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who heard the New Orleans Saints coach's appeal of his suspension in the team's "bounty" scandal.
Goodell spent six hours hearing appeals, meeting separately with Saints representatives, general manager Mickey Loomis, assistant coach Joe Vitt and finally Payton at NFL headquarters. Goodell's decision on the appeals could come as early as Friday, but it's more likely to happen next week.
Payton was rushed into a black van following the meeting and didn't stop to talk to reporters.
Lawyer David Cornwell, who represents Vitt, said Payton went in to see Goodell after Vitt's 90-minute session with the commissioner.
Cornwell said Vitt understood he had to be held accountable, but they wanted to convey that the coach didn't participate in a strategy to injure players.
"I thought the commissioner was extremely receptive," Cornwell said of the meeting.
Asked if he believed his six-game suspension would be reduced, Vitt said: "I have no feel for that."
"The commissioner's got a tough job," he added. "I've worked hard to earn the respect of my players, and now I want to earn his respect."
Goodell suspended Payton for all of next season for his role in the bounty system. Loomis was suspended for eight games, and the team was fined $500,000 and docked two second-round draft picks.
Gregg Williams, now the St. Louis Rams' defensive coordinator, received an indefinite suspension for running the Saints' "bounty" program. He didn't appeal his punishment.
The league informed the Saints at the start of the playoffs that it was reopening its bounty investigation. Cornwell said Loomis and Payton then told Williams: "There's no place for this in this organization or this league."
However, in its statement last month announcing the penalties for team officials, the NFL said the GM and coach made only "cursory inquiries" into the possible presence of a bounty program.
Payton twice apologized for his role in the bounty program, saying he takes "full responsibility" for a system that operated for three years under his watch.
Beyond the punishment for Saints coaches and executives, the NFL still has to determine if players who were involved in the bounty program also will be disciplined. The NFL has said as many as 27 players could be sanctioned for their role in the scandal.
Follow Steve Wyche on Twitter @wyche89.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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The final whistle blew, and fans spilled onto the field. They scaled fences and jumped from the tops of walls and pushed through gates. They wanted to feel the turf under their feet, to steal an up-close glimpse of the players, to place a hand on a sweaty jersey. I felt a rush of panic. This was not my first soccer match in Africa, and I knew how quickly things could turn chaotic. I recalled stories of crushed spectators and mobs setting out to avenge losses. Not just in Africa, of course. Only a few days before, at a championship game in Athens in late May, police had teargassed hostile ticket holders. Now here I was, caught on the edge of a pitch in the surge of the crowd, desperate to find an escape.
Some 300 soldiers struggled to contain the celebration. The Ivory Coast national team—les Éléphants—had just defeated Madagascar, 5–0, in a qualifying game for the 2008 African Cup of Nations. The victory had been nearly a foregone conclusion. Many of the Ivorian players are well-paid members of professional squads in Europe, and standing next to the overmatched Madagascar team, the Elephants looked like giants. The 25,000 fans in Bouaké Stadium had roared at every pass and shot, and they'd gone wild with euphoria at each goal scored. But victory, per se, wasn't so much the point. You didn't have to look hard to see that there was much more at stake than just a soccer match. On this day, the Beautiful Game had reunited a country.
Several dozen of the soldiers formed a wall around Didier Drogba, the Ivorian captain and star striker who plays professionally for Chelsea in the English Premier League. Drogba finished this past season at the top of the league with 20 goals and in March was named African Footballer of the Year. But here in Bouaké, in the aftermath of his team's resounding win, he was being praised for other, loftier reasons. The soldiers managed to hold back the screaming fans, but they were also a little starstruck themselves. Several exchanged high fives with Drogba as they protected him; some even pulled out their cell phones to snap a quick photo. To everyone in the stadium, and to millions of others across Ivory Coast, Didier Drogba had just ended his country's civil war.
For nearly five years, Ivory Coast had been divided in two: rebel-held North, government-loyal South. But on a tour of the country in March, Drogba stunned his fellow Ivorians by proposing that the Madagascar game be played in Bouaké, the capital of the rebellion. North and South, unable to reconcile their differences through battle or peace talks, would set aside their guns and come together for a soccer game. And Drogba, already an international star, would become, in the eyes of Ivorians, something of a deity.
"When I saw Drogba say that on television, I got goose bumps," Christophe Diecket, an official with the Ivory Coast Football Federation, told me. "My wife cried. The people on TV cried. We Ivorians, we had this abscess, a sickness, but we had no way to lance it to get better. It couldn't have been done by anyone else. Only Drogba. He's the one who has cured us of this war."
The soldiers—all from the rebel army—hustled Drogba and his teammates off the field and guided the joyous masses to the exits. Up in the stands, 200 government troops looked on. They'd been invited to help symbolize the reunification of the country, and they cheered and sang with the rebel-friendly crowd throughout the day. It was the first time since the start of the war that the loyalist army had been in the rebel capital; the first time in nearly five years that the two sides had been face-to-face in a non-hostile setting.
"When I got here I felt apprehension and hope all at once," Diecket said. "There've been too many deaths—my brother lost his whole family. We know it's time to put it all behind us. Five years is not a lot compared to other African wars, but it's still too much. In life, sometimes you fall down. Drogba and the Elephants have helped us get back up. Now we can't fall down again."
I hoped he was right, but I was feeling no small amount of apprehension myself. I had come to Ivory Coast as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1995 and lived in a village northwest of Bouaké that was now in rebel hands. I spent two years there, learning French, building latrines, and talking endlessly about clean drinking water, giving little thought to the wars and civil strife that prevailed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere in West Africa at the time. Meanwhile, with the economy faltering, tensions were on the rise in Ivory Coast as well. On Christmas Eve 1999, two and a half years after I left, the country suffered its first coup d'état.
Unrest became the rule. There was another coup attempt in September 2002. It failed, but the country spiraled into civil war. I moved back to Ivory Coast and covered the conflict for the Associated Press for more than a year. In December 2003 I left the A.P. and relocated to New York, but I have continued to travel to Ivory Coast to write about the conflict and have watched the country become another African cliché, ruled by guns. No one is sure how many people have died in the war, but the number surely stretches well into the thousands. I've reported on mass killings, interviewed corrupt politicians, and been stopped at countless roadblocks by troops armed with machetes and AK-47s. A French journalist I knew was shot in the head in 2003 by a government police officer.
It had been a long time since I'd thought of Ivory Coast as the tranquil place of my Peace Corps days. But Drogba was intent on changing everything. It began with the run-up to the 2006 World Cup. As the Elephants fought their way to the top of their qualifying group, Drogba led his teammates in prayer following each game, asking for peace back home. When the team officially qualified in October 2005, it sparked days of celebrations and dancing in the streets. People in government-controlled Abidjan, the country's economic capital and its largest city, telephoned bars in rebel territory to order cases of beer for revelers who couldn't afford them. The team's players were from all over Ivory Coast, and their cooperative spirit was hailed by Ivorians as an example of how the warring sides should reconcile.
Drogba, the charismatic captain, became an icon. Young Ivorian men dressed like him, favoring sleeveless T-shirts and hair gel. Women swooned over his classic runway looks—broad shoulders, high cheekbones, sculpted jaw. Musicians wrote songs about him, and billboards with his likeness called on people to display their Drogbacité—their Drogba-ness. One-liter bottles of Bock, a locally brewed beer, became known as "Drogbas," a nod to the star's imposing physical presence. And whenever Chelsea played a game, life in Ivory Coast came nearly to a halt, as everyone watched the flamboyant striker dash across the screens of their flickering television sets.
I arrived in Abidjan a few days before the matchup with Madagascar and got a room at the Golf Hotel, built along the Ébrié Lagoon on the eastern edge of town. Drogba and the rest of his teammates were staying there as well, and they were unfailingly generous to their many fans, posing for pictures and signing autographs in the lobby. On my first morning I attended a team practice. Several Ivorian journalists were there, and when they learned that a Vanity Fair reporter had flown in from New York for the game, they rushed over and shoved microphones and a television camera in my face. I had made the evening news.
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro offered to fly me to Bouaké on his personal jet for the game. I had known Soro since my days with the A.P. at the start of the war, when he emerged as the leader of the rebellion. Earlier this year, shortly after Drogba was named the top player in Africa, Soro had signed a peace accord with Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast's president. It was the latest truce in a line of many that had gone unheeded over the years—but by installing Soro as prime minister, this agreement held more promise.
Doubts, however, remained. Cargo trucks hauling goods on the main road connecting Abidjan and Bouaké were still forced to pay bribes at government and rebel checkpoints alike. Rebel soldiers held on to their weapons and maintained their patrols in the North. And although Soro was the country's new prime minister, he retained his title as secretary general of the rebellion. (On June 29, four weeks after I flew to Bouaké with Soro, his plane was attacked by rocket fire upon landing at the rebel capital's airport. The prime minister survived, but at least three people traveling on the plane with him were killed. Reports speculated that the attack was launched by factions within the rebellion who were unhappy that Soro had joined President Gbagbo's government.)
There were 10 of us on Soro's Gulfstream III, and once we reached cruising altitude, he called me up front for a chat. Power has endowed the prime minister with a paunch and a thickness in the face that do little to hide his youth; he's only 35. But his eyes are aloof beyond his years, and he long ago mastered the political art of elliptical speech.
"The fact that this game is being played in the capital of what was called the rebellion in Ivory Coast is a symbol of the unity that Ivorians have found anew and of our national reconciliation," Soro said, buckled into his oversize white-leather seat. "This game is being played at a time when the chief of the former rebellion occupies the second-highest responsibility in the executive branch of the Ivorian government. This is no banal or trivial thing."
As for Drogba, "he is a national hero," Soro said. "From north to south, from east to west, all Ivorians are proud of him. I'd even say that all of Africa is proud of him. This game is taking place because Drogba came to Bouaké to consecrate reconciliation and reinforce peace."
At the Bouaké airport the prime minister was welcomed by the rebellion's marching band and military guard. He then met with top rebel soldiers and officials to discuss preparations for the game. I checked into the Ran Hotel, which had been shuttered by the war and stripped of most of its functional parts but was now being restored. There was a pile of concrete rubble in the entryway, movers were unpacking new sofas and tables for the reception area, and electricians were hooking up shiny stand-alone air-conditioning units in the lobby. The waitstaff scrubbed countertops and stocked refrigerators with soda and beer. A sign in the lounge read, from now on, it is forbidden to sit in the bar without drinking.
I went to check on the stadium, which the government was overhauling for the game at a cost of more than $700,000. As rebel troops practiced their security routine, I got a tour of the refurbished V.I.P. lounges and locker rooms, all chilled by freshly installed air conditioners. A lone man pushed a gas-powered lawn mower over the field, which had been planted with new grass only a few weeks before. The skies darkened just as he finished his work, then opened into a powerful rainstorm.
Up in the stands, I came across Clement Vehgu, a 45-year-old former housepainter. He sat among a pile of chair parts, which he'd been hired to put together for $3 a day. "It's the first real job I've had since the war started," he told me. The conflict had chased his wife and two sons to a small town near the border with Ghana. "I see them sometimes. Once a year or so," he said.
I looked out over the flooded field as the wind and rain knocked over equipment and tore banners from walls. "Don't worry," said Vehgu, smiling as he screwed a seat cushion to its frame and water ran down his face. "The rain will stop, and tomorrow the sun will shine. Drogba will play. And thanks to him, our country will reunite."
Sure enough, the sun was out the next day as I stood on the tarmac at the airport, watching the team's plane taxi to a halt. The players climbed aboard two buses, and a raucous parade followed them on the five-mile drive to the stadium. People sat on the roofs of trucks and cars, drove motorcycles and mo-peds, and sprinted along in the roadside grass. They sang, screamed, blew whistles, and waved Ivorian flags. Drogba sat in the back-left seat of the second bus and smiled as fans tried to touch his window, reaching from the tops of minivans as the procession rolled along at about 30 miles an hour. Rebel troops tried to control the bedlam, flanking the buses in four-by-fours from the Leopard and Anaconda brigades. As we neared the stadium, I turned to my driver and said it was a miracle that there hadn't been an accident. Suddenly a soldier fell from the camouflage-painted truck in front of us and tumbled across the pavement, his gun clacking along as he rolled. We swerved hard to miss him. Then a second soldier fell, and we braked, turned, missed him too, and pulled into the stadium parking lot.
Rebel bodyguards escorted Prime Minister Soro into the stadium, but his official salute was given by the Republican Guard, a branch of the government army in charge of ceremonies for the president, who was in Libya on business. At midfield before the game, Drogba presented Soro with a special pair of soccer cleats that had the prime minister's name, the game and date, and the words together for peace painted on them. When the national anthem began and the crowd thundered out the words in unison, Drogba closed his eyes and placed his right hand over his heart. The goalkeeper stood next to him, his eyes welling up as he sang.
I remember watching the World Cup when I was young and marveling at Diego Maradona and the furious passion of the players and fans. But it wasn't until I saw kids playing soccer in my Peace Corps village—barefoot, on grassless fields, with anything that might roll or bounce a bit—that I began to understand the game and its impact. As I stood on the edge of the Bouaké pitch and watched Salomon Kalou score the game's first goal in the 18th minute with a header off a perfect cross, I couldn't help but join the cheering. Kalou, who is 21 years old and from a government-loyal town in the South, was born around the same time as the kids I used to watch play in my village. Somehow that fact, in that instant, convinced me that the war really might be over.
Drogba scored the fifth and last goal with a few minutes left in the game. The stadium exploded in celebration, and several fans jumped the fence near him and sprinted along the sidelines before being caught by security forces. Once time had expired and Drogba and his teammates had been escorted from the field, I climbed into the stands to wait out the crowd. I found Geoffrey Baillet, the spokesman for the Ivorian minister of sports, leaning on a rail, watching the scene. "We, the politicians, we went to the best universities; we're the intellectuals, the supposed leaders of the country," he said. "But when it came to making peace, we failed. It's a group of soccer players that brought us together. Didier Drogba came from nothing. Now he's a worldwide star and a hero for us. He's done a great thing for his country."
Madagascar deserved praise as well, Baillet said. "They could have refused to play here. But they told us they were our brothers, and wanted to help reunite our country.… This was no mere game. When I saw the government troops here in Bouaké, saluting the prime minister, it brought tears to my eyes."
I was back in Abidjan the next day. The front-page headline of the country's main newspaper read, five goals to erase five years of war. Another declared, drogba brings bouaké back to life. A few players were hanging around the Golf Hotel, but most of them had checked out and were staying with family and friends in town. Drogba, meanwhile, had a couple days to relax before a festival in his honor in Guibéroua, a town near his father's village, located about 185 miles northwest of Abidjan. Drogba has never lived there; he was born in Abidjan and moved to Europe with his uncle when he was very young. He hadn't even visited the village in more than 15 years.
On the morning of the festival, shortly after nine, Drogba drove up to the front of the Golf Hotel in his dark-blue Porsche Cayenne S.U.V. I had been worried that I might not get a chance to talk to him; my flight back to New York was that night. I followed him down a hallway and tried to get his attention, but he was busy on his cell phone. So I ran back to the lobby and had my driver park behind the Porsche, ready to go. When Drogba returned to his car, he was still lost in his phone conversation, so I tried the back door of his Porsche. It was open. I got in. If he didn't want me there, I figured, he'd kick me out.
Drogba got in, started the car, and we sped off. He wore frayed jeans, a crisp white shirt, sunglasses, and a black baseball cap, worn backward, with a sequined skull and the words love kills slowly painted on the bill. He spent much of the ride on his phone. Traffic in Abidjan was heavy, and a couple of times, while we were stopped, children knocked on the car windows to beg or to try to sell us tissues or a newspaper. When they peered inside and saw Drogba, their eyes would grow wide, and they'd jump up and down, shouting to their friends. He'd give them a wave, then pull off into oncoming traffic to get ahead of the congestion.
We were headed for the airport. President Gbagbo had offered his helicopter for the trip to the village, but over the weekend 22 passengers, most of them officials with the Togo soccer team, had been killed in a helicopter crash in nearby Sierra Leone. Drogba, having heard that, turned down the president's offer. We'd be taking the presidential jet instead.
We arrived at the airport's V.I.P. terminal and made our way through the lounge and out onto the tarmac. About a dozen soldiers and security personnel followed us, trying to shake Drogba's hand or take his picture along the way. The pilots and flight attendants came clambering down the ramp to greet him as well. I sidestepped the crowd and walked up the steps and through the plane's door. We were in the air five minutes later. The jet, a Fokker 100, had about 60 seats. I was one of seven passengers. Drogba was in the presidential suite, and most of the rest of us were in the secondary suite, just behind him. The 45 seats in the rear were empty.
What would have been a four-hour drive was a 40-minute flight. We touched down in Daloa, a medium-size town in the heart of cocoa and coffee country in western Ivory Coast. A presidential convoy awaited us—two motorcycles, a military truck, two Mercedes sedans, and a Mercedes S.U.V. Drogba got in the S.U.V. and I got in one of the sedans, a sleek black model with dark-tinted windows. On the seat next to me was a pile of letters stamped "Personal and Confidential" and addressed to the president of the country.
It took us an hour to drive the 65 miles to Guibéroua. Several hundred people blocked the road just outside of town, surrounding our vehicles and shouting Drogba's name. It was only a glimpse of what was to come. Over the next four hours, Drogba was mobbed and praised and sung to and offered gifts and cheered by about 5,000 people. One woman ran up to me, breathless after shaking his hand, exclaiming that she'd just seen God. Nearly everyone I met claimed to be a member of his family.
We were back on the plane shortly before sunset, and as we climbed above the clouds, Drogba waved me up to his seat. We talked briefly about the festival, but soon the conversation shifted to the war and the game in Bouaké. "It was the best thing that's ever happened to me," he said. "It was more than soccer. To see everyone come together like that, only for a game. It shows how soccer can unite people. Sports in general can do this. Maybe only sports."
He went on. "We, the Elephants, all we did was our duty as soccer players, our obligation as Ivorians. We wanted Ivorians to share our dream and see it realized—the return of peace to Ivory Coast. The most moving thing was the national anthem. All the stadium was singing and it was the first time that the two armed forces were together, face-to-face. That was the best moment of my last several weeks."
He said he was relieved that he finally scored at the end of the match. "But our objective was to win the game and give joy to the people of Bouaké and Ivory Coast," he said. "Now we're on the path to peace. That's what is most important. And we want to show all Ivorians, especially the youth, that if this process can grow and thrive, we'll all win."
Drogba offered me a soda and a sandwich. He looked tired, so I thanked him for the interview and the flight, congratulated him on his efforts to reunite his country, and went back to my seat. We landed in Abidjan shortly before seven. My driver met me as I got off the plane and drove me over to the main airport, where I checked in to my Air France flight back to New York. Security was light—another sign that the country might really be on the mend. Earlier, I had spoken to one of the airport's chiefs of police, a man I'd had to bribe from time to time over the years to keep from getting harassed by his colleagues as I came and went to report on the conflict.
He asked about my stay in Bouaké. "It was an incredible thing to see," I told him. "They say the war is really over."
"Yes," he said. "That's what they say."
Austin Merrill's writing on Africa has appeared in The New Republic, Wired, The New York Observer, Tin House, and elsewhere.


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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A boy from Aliso Viejo returned from a family vacation last month with an unusual souvenir when a sea snail egg grew and then hatched inside the 4-year-old's knee.
Paul Franklin's parents admit they didn't think much of it when their son scraped his knee while playing on the beach during a recent camping trip.
"We cleaned it up, put a Band-Aid on it," his father, Ken Franklin, told CBS2/KCAL9's Michele Gile.
"Before you know it, a couple weeks later, his knee was very swollen and infected," Ken said.
Paul's parents took him to the doctor, who prescribed antibiotics, and days passed amid fears his wound was badly infected with a dangerous strain of Staph.
"I came home and his knee was the size of an orange and hot to the touch and he's limping. And I'm like, okay, we have to go to urgent care," Paul's mother, Rachael Franklin, said.
The antibiotics helped but throughout August the wound failed to heal.
Then last Thursday, Rachael noticed the spot on her son's knee was turning black.
Upon taking a closer look, she decided that she had to drain the wound. That's when she got a shock.
"It looked like a rock. It was a black thing," she said.
"I put it on a paper towel and I'm like, 'That is a weird looking rock. It has swirls on it.' And I turn it over and it is a sea snail."
Rachael said when she put the creature in water, she saw it move.
Despite the unnerving ordeal, the family is keeping a good sense of humor about the discovery of the mollusk.
"I just had to laugh because we were going through this three-week ordeal," the mother said.
Paul's parents say they are relieved. They also say Paul's wound is almost completely healed.


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Distant Heavyweight Galaxy Cluster Clobbers Dense-Universe Theory
A Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer has found the equivalent of the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in deep space. The "gorilla" is an extremely massive cluster of galaxies - the weight of several thousand of our Milky Ways - that existed when the universe was half its present age.
Paradoxically, the unexpected discovery of this ancient, heavyweight cluster is one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet that we live in a lightweight universe, one that doesn't have enough bulk to provide the gravity necessary to halt the expansion of space. Using X-ray satellites and ground-based telescopes to probe the remote regions of space, the Institute astronomer discovered MS1054-0321, a hefty galaxy cluster containing thousands of galaxies and many trillions of stars. The image on the left, taken by ground-based and X-ray observatories, shows the entire galaxy cluster surrounded by background and foreground galaxies. The image on the right, taken by Hubble's visible-light camera, provides a clearer view of the galaxies in the heart of the cluster.
A Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer has found the equivalent of the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in deep space. The "gorilla" is an extremely massive cluster of galaxies - the weight of several thousand of our Milky Ways - that existed when the universe was half its present age.
Paradoxically, the unexpected discovery of this ancient, heavyweight cluster is one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet that we live in a lightweight universe, one that doesn't have enough bulk to provide the gravity necessary to halt the expansion of space.
Using X-ray satellites and ground-based telescopes to probe the remote regions of space, Institute astronomer Megan Donahue discovered MS1054-0321, a hefty galaxy cluster containing thousands of galaxies and many trillions of stars. The cluster is 8 billion light-years from Earth.
Besides being one of the heaviest clusters, it is also one of the hottest on record. The temperature of its intergalactic gas measures 300 million degrees Fahrenheit. Donahue's observations of this heavyweight cluster, along with her analysis of four other less distant but nearly as massive clusters, suggests that the early universe was a busy construction zone that has now slowed its activity, as expected of a low-density universe.
Unearthing such a well-defined cluster at a time when the universe was so young was a surprise to Donahue, who reported her results in the Aug. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
"When I first began studying this massive cluster, I expected to see lots of cool lumps, based on conventional theories of cluster evolution, which hold that clusters grow over long periods of time," Donahue said. "Instead, I found a huge, hot, well-structured cluster of galaxies."
"If clusters have indeed been growing all along, we're looking back to a time where there shouldn't have been any massive clusters at all, and we're finding some. Our conclusion is that clusters of galaxies have slowed their growth rate significantly over the last 5 billion years or so, and that slower growth rate implies that the universe isn't dense enough to stop expanding," Donahue said.
Added co-investigator Mark Voit, also an Institute astronomer: "I estimate that the odds of finding such a massive cluster so far in the past, given the standard picture of a dense universe, are about 1 in 100,000."
In this traditional view of the universe, space holds just enough matter to be on the cusp of expanding forever or collapsing under its own weight into a reverse Big Bang. If this theory is true, then finding such a massive cluster so early in time is extremely unlikely, Donahue said. In a dense universe, clusters of galaxies grow continuously, getting more massive with every epoch. Therefore, astronomers expect to find fewer massive clusters in the past - if clusters have been growing continuously all along. The growth rate of clusters depends on how much matter is in space. A small change in the density of the universe creates a huge variation in the growth rate of clusters.
Donahue selected MS1054-0321 because it is the most distant cluster in the Einstein Extended Medium Sensitivity Survey, a catalogue of the brightest galaxy clusters at far-flung distances. Several members of Donahue's team compiled the survey from observations made by the Einstein Observatory, an orbiting satellite, from 1978 to 1981. The cluster's distance and an independent estimate of its mass were confirmed by team member Isabella Gioia using the ground-based Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii.
Donahue also calculated the total amount of matter in the cluster by analyzing its X-ray emissions. Those observations were made in 1995 and 1996 by two orbiting observatories, the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA), jointly operated by Japan and the U.S., and the Roentgen Satellite, known as Rosat, operated by the U.S., Germany, and the United Kingdom.
The emissions show that the space between the galaxies in the cluster is filled with a huge amount of extremely hot gas. This gas should have dissipated into space long ago, like steam escaping from a hot kettle. Instead, the gravitational pull of an immense amount of mass has contained this hot gas within the cluster. Because the amount of visible mass isn't enough to confine the gas within the cluster, Donahue reasoned, there must be plenty of invisible, "dark matter" around. Dark matter, many astronomers believe, constitutes most of the material in space.
Knowing how much matter is necessary to keep the cluster together enabled Donahue to calculate its total mass. Based on her calculations, the cluster has an estimated mass of 1 quadrillion suns. Most of it, however, is in the form of dark matter, which is up to 10 times the mass of the normal material.
Donahue's results support a growing consensus among astronomers that the universe will expand forever. Earlier this year, several teams of astronomers announced similar results using different methods, including measuring the expansion rate of the universe and the sizes and distances to remote galaxies.
The astronomer's next step is to sample the cluster's visible light with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. With Hubble's sharp eyes, Donahue hopes to classify the types of galaxies in the cluster, pinpoint the concentration of star birth, and study how the cluster neighborhood may have affected the lives and past histories of the galaxies dwelling within.
By pure coincidence, in 1996 the Hubble telescope captured the light of an exploding star, supernova 1996CL, in this distant cluster of galaxies. At the time the Hubble pictures were taken, 1996CL was the most distant supernova known. Members of the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, used the 1996CL data to demonstrate that the Hubble telescope is capable of imaging distant supernovae and their host galaxies even halfway across the universe. Such distant supernovae are so far away that they are used to measure the acceleration or deceleration of the expansion rate of the universe, the goal of Perlmutter's Supernova Project.
Donahue's main collaborators are Isabella Gioia of the University of Hawaii, John Stocke of the University of Colorado, John Hughes of Rutgers University, and Mark Voit of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
HST image: Megan Donahue (STSCI);
Ground-based image: Isabella Gioia (Univ. of Hawaii), and NASA
Donna Weaver/Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410/338-4493 or 410/338-4514)
Megan Donahue
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410-338-4701)


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text:
meta, or
linear rule
Major Section: MISCELLANEOUS
Example: Consider the :REWRITE rule created fromThe
syntaxp hypothesis in this rule will allow the rule to be
applied to
(lxd (trn a b)) but will not allow it to be applied to
(lxd (norm a)).
General Form: (SYNTAXP test)
Syntaxp always returns
t and so may be added as a vacuous
hypothesis. However, when relieving the hypothesis, the test
``inside'' the
syntaxp form is actually treated as a meta-level
proposition about the proposed instantiation of the rule's variables
and that proposition must evaluate to true (non-
nil) to
``establish'' the
syntaxp hypothesis.
Note that the test of a
syntaxp hypothesis does not, in general,
deal with the meaning or semantics or values of the terms, but rather
with their syntactic forms. In the example above, the
hypothesis allows the rule to be applied to every target of the form
(lxd u), provided
u is not of the form
(norm v).
Observe that without this syntactic restriction the rule above could
loop producing a sequence of increasingly complex targets
(lxd a),
(lxd (norm a)),
(lxd (norm (norm a))), etc. An intuitive reading
of the rule might be ``
norm the argument of
lxd unless it has
already been
Note also that a
syntaxp hypothesis deals with the syntactic
form used internally by ACL2, rather than that seen by the user. In
some cases these are the same, but there can be subtle differences
with which the writer of a
syntaxp hypothesis must be aware.
You can use
trans to display this internal representation.
There are two types of
syntaxp hypotheses. The simpler type of
syntaxp hypothesis may be used as the nth hypothesis in a
rewrite or
linear rule whose
corollary is
(implies (and hyp1 ... hypn ... hypk) (equiv lhs rhs))
test is a term,
test contains at least one variable, and
every variable occuring freely in
test occurs freely in
lhs or in
i<n. In addition,
test must not use any
stobjs. The case of
meta rules is similar to the above, except
that it applies to the result of applying the hypothesis metafunction.
(Later below we will describe the second type, an extended
hypothesis, which may use
We illustrate the use of simple
syntaxp hypotheses by slightly
elaborating the example given above. Consider a
rule whose
corollary is:
(IMPLIES (AND (RATIONALP X) (SYNTAXP (NOT (AND (CONSP X) (EQ (CAR X) 'NORM))))) (EQUAL (LXD X) (LXD (NORM X))))How is this rule applied to
(lxd (trn a b))? First, we form a
substitution that instantiates the left-hand side of the conclusion
of the rule so that it is identical to the target term. In the
present case, the substitution replaces
x with
(trn a b).
(LXD X) ==> (LXD (trn a b)).Then we backchain to establish the hypotheses, in order. Ordinarily this means that we instantiate each hypothesis with our substitution and then attempt to rewrite the resulting instance to true. Thus, in order to relieve the first hypothesis above, we rewrite
(RATIONALP (trn a b)).If this rewrites to true, we continue.
Of course, most users are aware of some exceptions to this general
description of the way we relieve hypotheses. For
example, if a hypothesis contains a ``free-variable'' -- one not
bound by the current substitution -- we attempt to extend the
substitution by searching for an instance of the hypothesis among
known truths. See free-variables.
Forced hypotheses are another exception to the
general rule of how hypotheses are relieved.
Hypotheses marked with
syntaxp, as in
(syntaxp test), are
also exceptions. We instantiate such a hypothesis; but instead of
rewriting the instantiated instance, we evaluate the instantiated
test. More precisely, we evaluate
test in an environment in
which its variable symbols are bound to the quotations of the terms
to which those variables are bound in the instantiating
substitution. So in the case in point, we (in essence) evaluate
(NOT (AND (CONSP '(trn a b)) (EQ (CAR '(trn a b)) 'NORM))).This clearly evaluates to
t. When a
syntaxp test evaluates
to true, we consider the
syntaxp hypothesis to have been
established; this is sound because logically
(syntaxp test) is
t regardless of
test. If the test evaluates to
nil (or
fails to evaluate because of guard violations) we act as though
we cannot establish the hypothesis and abandon the attempt to apply
the rule; it is always sound to give up.
The acute reader will have noticed something odd about the form
(NOT (AND (CONSP '(trn a b)) (EQ (CAR '(trn a b)) 'NORM))).When relieving the first hypothesis,
(RATIONALP X), we substituted
(trn a b) for
X; but when relieving the second hypothesis,
(SYNTAXP (NOT (AND (CONSP X) (EQ (CAR X) 'NORM)))), we substituted the
quotation of
(trn a b) for
X. Why the difference? Remember
that in the first hypothesis we are talking about the value of
(trn a b) -- is it rational -- while in the second one we are
talking about its syntactic form. Remember also that Lisp, and hence
ACL2, evaluates the arguments to a function before applying the function
to the resulting values. Thus, we are asking ``Is the list
(trn a b)
consp and if so, is its
car the symbol
NORM?'' The
quotes on both
(trn a b) and
NORM are therefore necesary.
One can verify this by defining
trn to be, say
cons, and then
evaluating forms such as
(AND (CONSP '(trn a b)) (EQ (CAR '(trn a b)) 'NORM)) (AND (CONSP (trn a b)) (EQ (CAR (trn a b)) NORM)) (AND (CONSP (trn 'a 'b)) (EQ (CAR (trn 'a 'b)) NORM)) (AND (CONSP '(trn a b)) (EQ '(CAR (trn a b)) ''NORM))at the top-level ACL2 prompt.
See syntaxp-examples for more examples of the use of
An extended
syntaxp hypothesis is similar to the simple type
described above, but it uses two additional variables,
mfc and
which must not be bound by the left hand side or an earlier hypothesis
of the rule. They must be the last two variables mentioned by
mfc, then
state. These two variables give access to
the functions
mfc-xxx; see extended-metafunctions. As
described there,
mfc is bound to the so-called
metafunction-context and
state to ACL2's
See syntaxp-examples for an example of the use of these extended
syntaxp hypotheses.