Articles by and on Philip Emeagwali at Michigan Today,University of Michigan Paper,Februray...

8/8/2019 Articles by and on Philip Emeagwali at Michigan Today,University of Michigan Paper,Februray 1991,vol.23.no.1

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Michigan TodayThe University ofMichigan February 1991 Vol. 23 , No.1

mere s a supemomputingrace between The ChickensiJ the Ox

Michigan Today illustration byFred Zinn


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Michigan TodayThe University o f M ichigan February 1991 Vol. 23, No . 1

By Philip EmeagwaliHUMAN COMPUTING

"Can you do addition?" the White Q ueen asked. "What'sone and one and one and one and one and one and one andone and one and one?" Lewis Carro l l , Alice Throughthe Looking-Glass.T he word "computer" is often thought tohave been coined with the advent of thefirst electronic computer in 1946. Actually,according to W ebster's dictionary, the e arliest re-corded us e of "compu ter" came exactly 300 yearsearlier, in 1646.From the 17th century until the tu rn of the 20thcentury, the term was used to describe peoplewho se jobs involved calculating. In h is 1834 bookMemoirs of JohnNapier of Merchiston, Mar k Nap ie rwrote: "Many a m an pass es for a great mathemati-

cian because he is a huge computer. Hutton andMaseres were great calculators rather than greatmathema ticians. When their pages were full offigures and symbols, they were happy. [John]Napier alone, of all philosophers in all ages, madeit the grand object of his life to obtain the powerof calculation witho ut its prolixity."Hum an computers have both strengths andweaknesses. We hum ans have great powers ofreasonin g. Most of the things we do come fromknowledge that we have developed culturally orthat we have learned as so-called common senserules. We also have great tolerance for ambiguity.Confronted with asentence that has severalpossible interpretations, humans can choosethe correct interpretation for the given context.Hu ma ns also have the capacity of categorization,

TheWays ofCountingThe march oftechnologyis toward oodlesof calculationsin almost notime at all

Simulation of seismic waves propagating throughamodel containing a salt dome an arching forma-tion in sedimentary rock with amass of rock salt

such as identifying an d classifying birds , under-standin g regional variations in-accented speechand so on.At the same time, we are unable to performmore tha n one calculation at atime (sequentialcompu ting). We compute at a very slow rate,and with a very small memory. Even worse, ourlimited memory som etimes causes us to forgetintermediate results an d thu s to fail to reach solu-tions. We need to w rite down m any intermediateresults and can use only simple procedures tosolve mathematical problems .Since the human computer preceded the elec-tronic computer, and since humans developed theelectronic computer, we created it in our ow n im-age. This mea ns early electronic comp uters reflectour limitations. Just as the human computer hasonly one brain, so the early electronic co mputer shad only one processor. Since our brain canperform only one calculation at a time, mo stcomputers were built to perform only onecalculation at a time.The world's first large-scale general-pu rposeelectronic computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Nu-merical Integrator And Computer), was designedwith only one processor. (Michigan's Arthur W.Burks, professor emeritus of electrical andcomputer science, helped design and buildENIAC. A model of ENIAC, which was op eratedfrom 1946 to 1955, stands on display in the Electri-cal Engineering a nd C omp uter Science Buildingon North Campus.)One of the primary problems that motivated thedesign of ENIAC was to calculate the trajectoryof ballistic missiles at the U. S. Army's BallisticResearch Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland.Before the invention of ENIAC, Army engineersused 176 hu ma n com puters to perform the calcu-lations needed to produce firing and bombingtables for gunnery officers. Such calculationsmust be sequential, and therefore they mappedwell onto the early electronic compu ters w ith theirsequential processing.Another example of a technology matched tothe human image is robotics. Early robots tendedto have arms and/or legs and one centralizedbrain. This design has shifted recently to one inwhich robots now have anetwork of small, simplebrains (or processors), each devoted to asingle jobsuch as lifting a n arm .As mathematical reasoning progressed,however, it became apparent that sophisticatedmathematical techniques suited for electroniccomputing diverged from those suited for thehuman brain. For example, the 10-based decimalsystem has proven to be the best for humancomputers, while the binary system based onthe number 2, although too awkward for hum ans,is anatural match for electronic computers, wherestrings of bits with values of either 0 or 1 are u sedto store data.

COMPUTATION-INTENSIVE PROBLEMS"'Firstly, Iwould like to move this pile from here tothere,' he explained, pointing to an enormous moundof fine sand, 'but I'm afraid that all Ihave is this tinytweezers.' And he gave them to Milo, w ho immediatelybegan transporting one grain at a time." No rto n Ju s te r ,The Phantom Tollbooth.As mathematics progressed, the tasks under-taken by hum an computers grew increasinglycomplex. By the late 19th century, certain cal-

culations were recognized as outstripping thecalculating capacity of hundreds of human clerks.The 1880 United States censu s po sed one of thebiggest compu tational challenges of that time.To analyze the 1880 census results, the U.S.government employed an army of clerks (called"computers") for seven years. The populationchanged significantly during those seven years,


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2 February 1991

WORKING IN PARALLELThe human computers worked independentlyand simultaneously on the 1880 census data toproduce numerous and voluminous sets of tables.In the field ofcomputation their method istermed"working in parallel." Itwas the best techniqueknown at hat time, but since the results were stillunacceptably slow in coming, the Census B ureauheld acompetition to find amore effective wayto count the population. T his competition ledtothe invention ofHollerith's Tabulating Machine,which was subsequently used to compute theU.S. population more accurately in 1890.A DRAG STRIP FOR COMPUTERSThe century-old idea ofholding a competitionto solve computation-intensive problems w asrevived in 1986 by the Institute ofElectrical an dElectronics Engineers C ompu ter Society withits annual G ordon Bell Prize C ompetition.As in1890, competition has spur red advancesin computing.The solution of important computation-intensive problems, like those required in

weather-prediction, dem and the calculationof trillions, quadrillions and even more calcula-tions, whether by human or mechanical orelectronic devices. Solving these problems oneat a time or in a step-by-step fashion is analogousto moving a pile of sand one grain at a time.It takes forever.Fortunately, m any com putation-intensive pro b-lems do not have to be performed one step at atime. In fact, performing thous ands and even mil-lions ofcalculations at he same time is he onlyway to solve many computation-intensive prob-lems quickly enough for the results to do somegood. The latter approach is called massivelyparallel compu ting but with machines insteadof the human computers that used this system inthe 1880s.NATURAL PARALLELISMResearchers are now learning that manyproblems in nature, hu ma n society, science andengineering are naturally parallel, that is, theycan be effectively solved by using mathematicalmeth ods that work in parallel. These problemsshare the common thread of having a large num-be r ofsimilar "elements" such as anim als, peopleand m olecules. The interactions between the ele-ments are guided by simple rules but their overallbehavior is complex.An individual a nt is weak and slow, but antshave developed amethod offoraging for food to-gether with other ants. Their massively parallelapproach is well described by the scientist andwriter Lewis Thomas inLives of a Cell:"A solitary ant, a field, cannot be considered tohave much ofanything on his mind; indeed, withonly afew neurons strung together by fibers, he

can't be ima gined to have amind at all, much lessa thought. He ismore like aganglion on legs. Fourants together, or 10, encircling adead moth on apath, begin to look more like an idea. They fumble

Why the chicken isGoverning Equations

Quadrillions of calculations are needed o model E arth'sclimate. Aconventional supercomputer (diagram #1)tries touse one processor to perform the quadrillions ofcalculations. It's very powerful, but no t powerful or fastenough tocomplete the calculations in time toyield auseful forecast of approaching weather.

The natural laws gov erning Earth's weather and themathematical equations derived from those laws operate atall locations in our atmosphere, and in thesame way (diagram #2). Therefore, the quadrillions ofcalculations required to solve weathe r equations aredistributed eve nly throughout the globe, whether theclimatic conditon is ablizzard in Boise, a hunderstormin Oslo, torrential rains in Bangladesh or bright sunover Harare. When anatural law applies toall loca-tions in the same way, the problem is inherentlymassively parallel.

and shove, gradually moving the food toward theHill, but as though by blind chance. It isonly whenyou watch the dense mass ofthousands ofants,crowded together around the Hill, blackening theground, that you beg in to see the whole bea st, andnow you observe itthinking, p lanning, calculating.It isan intelligence, akind of ive computer, withcrawling bits for its wits/'Massive parallelism can also be found inhum an society. We see itin wars, elections, eco-nomics and other endeavors characterized by thesimple, independent and simultaneous actions ofmillions of individuals. This parallelism is so nat-ural that people aren 't even aware of it. AdamSmi th descr ibed it inThe W ealth of Nations:"Every individua l endeavors to employ his capitalso that its produce may be ofgreatest value. He gen-erally neither intends to promote the public interest,nor knows how much he ispromoting it. He intendsonly his own security, only his own gain. And he isin this led by an invisible hand to promote an endwhich w as no part ofhis intention. By pursuing hisown interest he frequently promotes that ofsocietymore effectually than when he really intendstopromote it/'In science and engineering the common threadthat makes m any problems naturally parallelisthat they are governed by a small core ofphysical

laws that are local an d uniform.Local mean s thatto know the temperature insay, Detroit, in thenext few m inutes, we only have to know w hat ishappening right now in the nearby suburbs ofDetroit. Uniform mean s that the laws governingweather formation in D etroit are the same as inTimbuktu, Vladivostok or anywhere else.In weather forecasting five uniform and locallaws are used : conservation of mass; conservationof momentum ; the conservation equation formoisture; the first law of hermodynamics; andthe equation of state.

CHALLENGES IN CO MPUTINGConstructing and runnin g acomputer modelwith the level ofspatial resolution required foraccurate computer-based weather forecastingtakes quadrillions ofarithmetical operations.Yet even this spatial resolution is too coarseto image tornadoes and other damaging localweather phenomena.To improve the spatial resolution so that itimages local weather increases the am ountof calculation required by 10s of times, andconsequently m akes the original problemcomputationally intractable even for a modernsupercomputer.The U.S. government has identified weatherforecasting as one of20 com putation-intensive

Climate Modeling: Using a Connection Machine super-computer, scientists at Los Alamos National Labs aremodeling Earth's climate. They stretch amesh of 500,000tetrahedrons over a model of the globe, then compu techanges to the weather in each cell. Every tetrahedronspans an area of about 20 miles.To gain accuracy, the mesh actually stretches o ut overareas of calm weather, bu t twists and bunches up aroundlocal disturbances like hurricanes. Red areas indicate highkinetic activity; land-masses are yellow; low and lowestareas of activity are wh itish and purple, respectively.The technique was first developed to model explosions.The advantage of a massively parallel computer likethe Connection Machine is that after one processor is pro-grammed to calculate such weather variables as pressure,temperature, humidity and wind-speed for its tetra-hedron , the computer does the rest, directing the otherprocessors to calculate the variables at the remaining half-million locations at discrete intervals.In The Mathematics of Chaos,Ian Stewart compares

And the outlook for tomorrow is .Computingthe Weather'Theanswer, my friend,isblowin' in the wind'

Perhaps Bob Dylan isright when he sings, "Youdon't need a weatherman to tell which way thewind blows." But you certainly need consider-able expertise toknow which way itwill be blowin'tomorrow or a few days hence, how strong its blastwill be, wh ere itis likely to turn and w hat dam age itis capable ofdoing.Through out history, people have attempted topre-


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MICHIGAN TODAY 3

ed over the ox

architecture of a massively parallel computer istomatch th e computer with th e problem.in weather prediction, ath e globe todifferent processors inside th e#3). Today, th e most powerfulha s 64,000 processors. Aamillion processors

The cart pulled bythe ox (diagram # 4 ) represents a con-ventional supercomputer. Intuit ion might lead on e tothink that th e bull ca n outperform th e cart pulled by amulti tude of well- trained, harnessed chickens. But thecoordination of many smaller units results inbetterperformance. Similarly, amassively parallel computeris faster an d more powerful than aconventionalsupercomputer.

Illustrations copywrighted byFred Zinn for Michigan Today.

"grand challenges." Others include improvingextraction ofoil deposits, modeling the ocean,increasing computers' skill atunderstandinghuman speech andwritten language, mappingthe human genome, anddeveloping nuclearfusion. Many other problems inmathematicswould take trillions ofyears tosolve w ith thefastercom puters currently available.EXPLOITING PARALLELISM:A PARADIGM SHIFTSeminal ideas inscience usually occur in aprocess that has been described as a series ofparadigm shifts, that is, a shift in thedominantpatterns orexamples which human s use inthink-in g orportraying "how things are." Awell-knownexample ofparadigm shift isthe transition fromthe belief that the Earth isflat tothe belief that itis round. With this paradigm shift, Magellan be-came aware that hecould travel around the globe.If only one human computer had been usedto analyze the 1880 census, thework would havetaken forever tocomplete. Similarly, ifonlyonecomputer were used tosolve a computation-inten-sive problem oftoday, itwould take forever tocomplete it.This paradigm ofusing one computerto solve a problem iscalled sequential computing.We are now living throug h a great paradigmshift inthe field ofcomputing, a shift from

computing inthe image ofthe human brain(sequential computing) tomassively parallelcomputing, w hich employs thousands ormorecomputers tosolve one com putation-intensiveproblem. Just as a paradigm shift inthe beliefabout the shape ofthe Earth led toroutine cir-cumnavigations onthe high seas, we will soonroutinely solve importan t societal problems thatare socomputation-intensive that we hadprevi-ously only dreamed ofattempting them.Examining the roots ofthis paradigm shiftwill show why continuing efforts tosolve com-putation-intensive problems with sequentialcomputers will succeed only aswell as theearlyaircraft did byattempting to fly by flapping-bird-like wings.Since many computation-intensive problemsare inherently parallel, itonly makes sense tobuild and use a compu ter that exploits their inher-ent parallelism. Such a compu ter will give thebestperformance when it"looks" like theinherentlyparallel problems that it istrying tosolve. Theproblems such asmodeling atmospheric condi-tions, asdiscussed earlier arise from myriadsimple interactions between thousands ormillionsof elements. As a result, thetotal calculationsrequired carry usinto the realm of "teraflops"computing.

TERAFLOPS - HARDLY A D IN O SA U R"Teraflops" m a y s ound l i ke t h e n a m e of a d i n o -saur, b u t itd o e s n o t descr ibe ext inc t c rea tures ,r a ther a level ofc o m p u t i n g y e t to be achieved c o m p u t i n g onth e trillionfold level. T h e Holy Gra i lof la rge- sca le computa t ion is toa t ta in a s u s t a i n e dteraflops rate ini mpor t a n t p r ob l e ms .As E l izabe th Corcoran p u t it in January 'sScientific American, " F r om th e pe r s pe c t i ve ofs upe r c omput e r de s i gne r s , t he i r de c a t h l on isbe s tde s c r i be d by t h r e e Ts a t r i l l ion opera t ions a s e c -o n d , a t r i l lion byte s ofm e m o r y a n d a data c o m -muni c a t i ons r a t e of a t r i l lion byte s per s e c ond . "The effort toi nc r e a s e c omput i ng s pe e d is ano ldone . It ist h e pr i ma r y mot i va t i on t ha t le d toth e in-ve n t i on ofth e abacus , logar i thmic table , s l ide ruleand e lec t ronic computer . However , these devicess ha r e o n e fundamenta l l imi ta t ion: they a re ba s e don s e que n t i a l c ompu t i ng , a n d t h u s a re s ub j e c t tot he s pe e d l i mi t s i mpos e d byc omput i ng s i ng l y . Asa resul t , some invest iga tor s n o w bel ieve tha t m a s -s ive para l le l i sm isth e only feas ible approach tha tc a n beu s e d toa t ta in a te ra f lops r a te of c o m p u t a -t ion. Only massive para l le l i sm a l lows us toper form mil l ions ofca lcula t ions at onc e .The most mass ive ly para l le l computer bui l ts o far, k n o w n as t h e Conne c t i on M a c h i ne , u s e s64,000 processors toper form 64,000 ca lcula t ions atonc e . T h i s a pp r oa c h ma ke s it64,000 t imes fas te rt h a n u s i n g o n e processor .T he Conne c t i on M a c h i ne h a s a t t a i ne d c omput a -t i ona l s pe e ds int h e r a n g e offive to10 billionca lcula t ions p e r s e c o n d . T h e next genera t ion ofth eConne c t i on M a c h i ne ise xpe c t e d tous e on e m i l -l i on p r oc e s s o r s tope r f o r m o n e mil l ion ca lcula t ionsa t once . Tha t could make ito n e mil l ion t imesfas te r than us ing a s ingle processor . T h e t a r ge tc omput a t i ona l s pe e d for t h i s ma c h i ne is onet r i l lion ca lcula t ions per s e c ond .Massive ly para l le l computer s a lso havepr ope r t i e s t ha t ma ke t he m farless cos t ly thanc onve n t i ona l c omput e r s . W he n t h e n u m b e r ofpr oc e s s o r s a re d o u b l e d , t h e pe r f o r ma nc e doub l e s ,

b u t t h e cost increases only by a fe w pe r c e n t a gepo i n t s , s i nc e ma ny c ompone n t s a r e s ha r e d by allt he p r oc e s s o r s .A massive ly para l le l computer a lso runs coole rt h a n a c onve n t i ona l s upe r c omput e r . You can r es ty o u r h a n d on itw h i l e itr u n s ; itdoe s n ' t r e qu i r ethe $10,000-a-month energy bi l l s needed to k e e pa ma i n f r a me s upe r c omput e r f r om ove r he a t i ng .We have come a l ong w a y f rom t h e i nd i v i dua lw i t h ana ba c us totoday 's mass ive ly para l le lc o m p u t e r s . T h e mot i va t i on a l ong t h e path f romt h e n ton o w h a s b e e n th e exis tence of c o m p u t a -t i on - i n t e ns i ve p r ob l e ms r e qu i r i ng c omput i ngr e s our c e s ofl a r ge r ma g n i t u de t ha n t hos eavailable.D e s p i t e huma n i t y ' s g r e a t p r og r e s s inc o m -p u t i n g , t h e na t i ona l g r a nd c ha l l e nge s c ompi l e db y t he U .S . gove r nm e n t i de n ti f y c ompu t a t i on -intensive problems tha t wi l l inspi re us to f inde ve n mor e n e w w a ys ofc o m p u t i n g . Inf ive years,w e s hou l d be c o m p u t i n g at th e teraflops level. Itwil l be f asc ina t ing tos e e w ha t a c h i e ve me n t s a n dnew cha l lenges wi l l come af te r tha t . NT

a pioneer inmathematical weather prediction, w a sthe f irst investigator tounde r s t a nd th e computa t ion-intensiveness ofweather forecasting.The following passage from Richardson's WeatherPrediction by Numerical Process, publ ished in 1922,i l lustrates h is f a r s ightedness . It is a descr ipt ion of ahuge amphitheater f il led with "64,000 computers torace th e weather ofth e whole globe." (In Richardson 'sday, "compu ter" stil l referred no t to a ma c h i ne b u tto anindividua l us ing anabacus, logarithmic table orslide rule. Here isRichardson's vision ofth e assem-blage ofc omput e r s ne e de d topredict th e weathermathemat ica l ly:

"Imagine a large hall like a theater, except that the circlesand galleries go right round through the space usually oc -

maintain communication to North an d South on the map."From the floor of the pita tall pillar rises tohalf theheight of the wall. Itcarriesa large pulpit on its op . Inthis sits the man incharge of the whole theater; he is sur-rounded by several assistants an d messengers. One o f hisduties is tomaintain a uniform speed of progressin allparts of the globe. In this respect lie islike the conduc-tor of an orchestra inwhich tlie instruments are slide rulesand calculating machines."

Several features ofRichardson's giant computerwith hum an components correspond to the fastestand most powerful supercomputer known today,the Connection Machine, designed byDannyHillis ofThinking Machines Corporation ofCambridge, Massachusetts. The similarities

** The "myriad computers atwork upon theweather ofthe part ofthe map where each sits,"ca n bedescribed asmapping a n d load distributionin theConnection Machine.** Richardson's concept that "each computer at-tends only toone equation orpart of anequation"is known today aslocal computation.Richardson's vision was bold andwonderfulbe-cause heunderstood that weather forecasting iscomputation-intensive andenvisioned massiveparallelism as a useful tool insolving weatherequations.What R ichardson did no t foresee, however,is that accurate weather forecasts would requireabout a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) calcu-


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4 February 1991

Weather,ContinuedThe analogy between Richardson ' s v ision a n dt h e co n temp o r a r y use of c o m p u t e r s for wea th e rforecast ing is of more than h istor ical in terest .

Hu g e so c ia l a n d economic benef i ts could b eachieved ifmassively paral le l computing leads tomore accurate weather forecasts. Accordingly , th ePresident's Office of Science a n d Technology Policyincluded weather forecast ing as one of 20 nat ionalco mp u ta t io n a l Gr an d C h a l l en g es in science a n den g in ee r in g .C i t in g th e benef i ts to be gained f rom moreaccurate weather forecast ing , Elber t W. Friday,d irector of the U.S National Weather Serv ice notedin a n a d d r e s s to the 18th a n n u a l C o m p u t e r Sci-ence Conference that th e United States h a s mo r evio lent weather than a n y co u n t r y of co mp ar ab le

size a n d t h a t 85 percent of president ia l ly declaredd i sa s t e r s a re weather- a n d f lood-rela ted ."The NWS's $2 bil l ion modernizat ion of its fore-cast ing capabi l i t ies . . .will repay it s co s t man ytimes over b y reduc ing ann ual $30-$40 b i l l ionweather - re la ted U.S. economic losses b y 5to 10percent ," Fr iday added.Fr iday ' s rema rks would have d el ightedR ich a r d so n , w h o w a s d i s m i s s e d as an idled r e a m e r by h i s contemp orar ies. Today, 70 y ea r saf ter Richardson wrote h is mathem atical fan tasy,the Nat ional Center for Atmo sp h e r i c R esea r ch h a sselected th e C o n n ec t io n Mach in e for as t u d y ofthe feasibility of using massively parallel computersto forecast th e weather. NT

Th e 1922 dream of Lewis E Richardson: 64,000human computers tocalculate the variables requiredto predict the weather numerically. He foresawthat mathematical forecasting was computation-intensive, but didn't realize itwould have takenhis calculating army 1,000 years to predict thenext day's weather.Illustration by A. Lannerback, Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm.

Grad student Phil ip Emeag wal i One of the world'sfastest human!By John W oodford

F aster supercomputers are needed to solveimportant scientific and engineering problems.Computing twice as fast would be impressive; tentimes faster would be even more impressive.Philip Emeagwali, adoctoral candidate in scientificcomputing in the College of Engineering and the1989 recipient of the G ordon Bell Prize for his su per-compu ting research, has increased the speed of amassively parallel supercomputer to as much as1,000 times faster than amainframe computer and1,000,000 times faster than apersonal computer.Almost as impressive as its speed of operation isthe massively parallel compu ter's thrift. Itcosts onlyabout one-fiftieth of the money to perform computa-tions on amassively parallel computer as on aconventional supercomputer."The supercomputer industry and much of theacademic establishment have claimed that massivelyparallel computers were suited only for certain typesof problems," Emeagwali says. "But in the past fewmonths, reports at scientific gatherings and in thenews media have indicated that some investigatorsusing the Connection Machine the largest mas-sively parallel super com puter now available have proved the establishment w rong."Emeagwali had already been looking at com-putation-intensive problems from atheoreticalstandpoint . W hen he learned of a$1,000 pr izeof-fered by the Institu te of Electrical and ElectronicsEngineers Computer Society for the fastest com-putation in ascientific and engineering problemrequ iring trillions of calculations, he decidedto compete.Emeagwali studied the U.S. government's list ofthe 20 most computationally difficult problems. Theone that interested him most involved calculatingoil flow. Even before the o nset of war in the PersianGulf, American experts recognized the importanceof improving the efficiency of oil extraction."The oil industry purchases 10 percent of all super-com puter s and is keenly aware of the difficulty ofcom putin g oil-field flow," Emeagwali says.Oil has properties that make calculating its flowpattern s within an oil field more difficult than mod -eling the flow of groundwater. To model oil-field flowin acomputer requires simulation of the distributionof the oil at tens of thousands of locations throughoutthe far-flung field. At each location, the computermust be programmed to make hundre ds of simul-taneo us calculations at regular intervals of time odetermine such variables as temperature, directionof oil flow, viscosity, pressure and several geologicalproperties of the basin holding the oil."Even asupercomputer working at the rate of mil-lions of calculations asecond is far too slow to reacha result that can be acted on in atimely fashion,"

Emeagwali with the Connection Machine in Cam-bridge, Massachusetts. Massively pa rallel computersare a young technology. Only a few universities ha veacquired their own models. The U-M is now consid-ering venturing into this field, Emeagwali says.

percentag e point translates into billions of dollarsof savings."Emeagwali attracted the attention of manyindustries and investigators when he won the Gor-don Bell Prize by showing how he used a$6 millionmassively parallel computer to perform the trillionsof oil field-modeling computations at three times thespeed of the mightiest $30 million supercomputer.He hit acomp utational s peed of 3.1 billion calcula-tions per second.How did he do it? It ook some creativemathematical thinking for Emeagwali, who was re-nowned for mathematical prowess even as achild inNigeria, to hit upon a"new" technique that resur-rected some equations that had grown d usty in thecomputing field for 50 years.Rather than use the equations that have been usedthrou gho ut the cen tury to calculate oil-field flowand similar phenomena, Emeagwali asked himself,"When did we start using these equations, and wh ydid we start using them?"He researched those questions and learned thatin the late 19th century "a type of partial differentialequation similar to the classical 'heat equation' wasderived to perform the kinds of calculations requiredto des cribe oil-field flow."There are thre e families of partial differentialequation s elliptical, parabolic and hyperbolic. Theequations usually used to simulate an oil reservoirfall into the parabolic category. Oil reservoir e qua-tions take into account thr ee of the four major forcesaffecting flow: pressure, gravitation and viscosity(or drag). They ignore the fourth force inertia(or acceleration).In 1938 aSoviet mathematician, B.K. Risenkampf,derived aset of partial differential eq uations th at in-

"The fourth, or inertial, force affecting the slowflow of oil in the grou nd is about 10,000 times sm allerthan the three other forces," Emeagwali explains,"so neglecting inertia didn't result in much erroreven though the solutions still resembled those ofthe parabolic equations."If Iput 10,000 dollar bills on the table in ones andyou take adollar, I'm not likely to detect and reportthe crime. In the same way, itwas reasonabletoignore the inertial force back then."Emeagwali had become interested in theRisenkampf equations while working at the NationalWeather Service, and decided to take a"top-downapproach" by seeing ifthe hyperbolic equationswould result in abetter model of oil-field flow."I knew that hyperbolic equations result in solu-tions that m ore accurately reflect the real wo rld,"Emeagwali says, and so he expected them to yielda better represe ntation of the real prop erties of oil-field flow.Even though they are more complex, Emeagwalitheorized, hyperbolic equations would open "ashorter and quicker path" to the solution of modelingflow. And in terms of his academic goals, usinghyperbolic equations on amassively parallelcomputer would show that "calculations that couldtake months, even years, to perform on apersonalcomputer could be done in seconds or minutes."If we had massively parallel computers ah u n -dred years ago," Emeagwali continues, "we wouldhave used hyperbolic equations instead of parabolic.The serial computer hardware we have today reflectsthe absence of aneed to g o the hyperbolic route.But once you have acertain kind of hardw are, itrein-forces the methods you've used. It 's not that anyoneis to blame for it, but in asense computers havedeveloped dow n ablind alley."In the future, Emeagw ali says and the very ne arfuture at that the architecture of massively parallelcomputers like the Connection Machine will trickledown to the personal computer level. They willincrease realism in what co mpu ter buffs call artificialreality (AR).More imp ortant for civilization will be the impactof massive parallelism at the supercomputer level.Emeagwali expects to see quite soon "automakersusing these computers to fully simulate car crasheson the compu ter rather than crashing expensiverigged-out models at up to $750,000 atest."In medicine, "Investigators will find that usingcompu ters based on the technology of massiveparallel ism will permit them to stud y hu man dis-eases by studying humans without compromisinghuman health, instead of using mice, chimpanzeesand the like.""Any way you look at it," Emeagw ali conclud es,"the computer industry will have no choice. Theywill have to switch to massive parallelism."Emeagwali hopes to give the industry abi gnudge in early 1991 ifhis latest submission for theinternational computing contest is as convincing aslast year's."I 'm trying to prove that we now know how toreach the Holy Grail of comp uting compu ting at


6/16

MICH IGAN TODAY 5

Do youhave aquestionabout financial aid?

.:- . -:s^ry^^Hllilliillliil.ffl)iiWJIl.|W.Mlliiwp lWffiMwif'"i'|i''l ii*w ii_i nw i r>!.iiiiiwii i'in,ML.HHI j'vuwIh HI IIHHII ' ' ii i .SN'I^IK immiiw.i.mvm*" iiumi).' iFinancial aid advisers respond todozens of parents' and students' q ueries daily in the Student Activities Building.

By Vivian A. ByrdOffice of Financial Aid *P arents address thousands ofqueries to theOffice ofFinancial Aideach year. Themostfrequently asked questions, andbrief an-swers tothem, include the following:What isfinancial aid?Financial Aid is the total ofresources availableto assist students and their families inmeetingeducational costs. There are twokinds of financialaid gift aid (grants and scholarships) and self-help aid (loans andWork-Study employment).Ho w isfinancial need determined?Need for aid equals the total cost of educationfor anacademic year minus the amount that afamily isdeemed able tocontribute.The family contribution has twoparts: the par-ental contribution and the student contribution.The parental contribution is anestimate of howmuch parents canafford to pay toward costs forthe year. It isbased primarily onparents' incomeand assets. Thestudent contribution isbased onstudent income, savings and checking accounts.The amounts ofboth the student and the familycontributions arederived from a uniformly ap-plied formula prescribed by the U.S.Departmentof Education (DOE).If your family contribution for a given academicyear isless than the cost of attending, you haveshown "demonstrated financial need" and maybe eligible toreceive financial aid. Cost includestuition, fees, books and all living expenses.Part of our family's savings areseparated for re-tirement. Why should wehave to use those assetsto send our children toschool?In assessing financial need, the financialstrength of the family isconsidered. Thus, currentincome aswell asassets areused in the analysis.Allowances, based on the age of the parents, aremade for retirement needs . Theamount of assets"protected" for retirement increases as the parent

aid. Thefamily would include thecustodial par-en t and his or her spouse. Theincome and assetsof the non-custodial parent are not included inthe analysis.I'm notg o in g toclaim my child this year as adependent. Will youtreat her as independent?The criteria for independent status arecomplex.A decision not toclaim a child isinsufficient initself togive a student independent status.There are, however, some straightforwa rd .circumstances under which the student isconsidered independent, such as being 24yearsold or a graduate student. Foryounger under-graduate students, the criteria for independentstatus include assessment of the students'avail-able resources during specified periods of timeand whether parents claimed them asdependents.Since this is a complex issue, discussion with afinancial aidofficer isadvised.Next year I will have twochildren at U-M. WillI have to pay double theparental contribution?No, theparental contribution derived from theDOE formula isbased onannual income and as-sets, and is the amount the family should be ableto afford for educational expenses. If a family hastwo children inschool, the amount would be di-vided by two, one-half available for each of thetwo children. If there aremore than twochildrenin school at one t ime, the amount would be di-vided by the number of dependent children incollege.

W h en do I have to pay theparental contribu-tion to theUniversity andwhere do I pay it?The parental contribution is not a fee to be paidto the University. It represents assistance from thefamily to the student during the year and can beapplied toward tuition, room andboard costs, orto other expenses.D o e s my child have toaccept theWork-Studypart of the financial aid award? I really don'twant him/her towork while at school.Some parents worry that work will interfere

sistant in the Department of Chemistry, assistantteacher for Community DayCare, and clerk forthe University's News and Information Services.Often a job during the semester adds structure toa student 's schedule, making iteasier tobudgettime. Since the alternative toworking is oftenborrowing, it iswise toexplore Work-Study.H ow can I get in-state residency for my child?Residency status isdetermined at the point ofadmission. Any appeals to the status must besubmitted to the Residence Status and ResidenceAudit Section of the U-MRegistrar's Office.Although thedifference between resident andnon-resident expenses issubstantial, we considerthis cost difference indetermining financial need.What if there's adeath, adivorce or a job layoffin our family during our child's matriculation?We encourage the student or the family to con-tact us assoon aspossible any time there is asignificant change infamily circumstances. Aidawards may be revised when warranted, and theOffice ofFinancial Aidmaintains some resourcesfor resp onding toemergency situations.

Financial AidFactsThe University currently estimates that thetotal annual budget for first-year and sophomorein-state students students is $9,700 for tuition,hous ing, meals , book s , fees , travel and le isure,and $10,000 for juniors and seniors.Any in-state student could qualify for aid up tothe amount by which theannual budget exceeds

the family contribution. If, for example, an in-com ing in-state student's family can contribute$3,000, thestudent would qualify for a combina-tion of grants, loans, Work-Study and scholar-ships totaling $6,700.President James J. Duderstadt has emphas izedthat noin-state student whomeets U-M quali-fications needs toworry about meeting school


7/16

6 Febru ary 1991

This article is excerpted from several chapters of DavidW Belin's Leav in g Mo n ey Wise ly , published in Januaryby Scribner's Sons, New York ($19.95). This article iscopyrighted by the publisher and the author; no portion ofit may be reprinted without their permission.By David W. Belin

L ife is full of paradoxes, many of which in-volve money. I have been astounded at howmany women and men spend lifetimesaccumulating money, yet spend so little time indeciding what the fate of their property will beonce they are gone.One does not have to be a m ultimillionaire tobe affected by the federal e state tax law s. Today,anyone w ith m ore than $600,000 in assets including the value of a home, life insurance pol-icy proceeds and retirement plans s affectedby these laws, and millions of Americans fall intothis category.One thing I can guarantee: Whether you arerich or poor, old or young, m arried or unm arried,you will probably be making a big mistake if youdo not have a will or living trust. If that is thecourse you chose, the state will write your will foryou. In some states, here is the kind of a will thelaw will provide if you have no will or living trustof your own:If lam married an d have children, I leave my surviv-ing spouse one-third of my property and my childrentwo-thirds of my property. If I don'thave a survivingspouse or children, I will leave my property to my par-ents, and if neither parent is living, I will leave it to mybrothers and sisters.I understand that if I have children and theyare un-der22, guardians will have to be appointed who willmanage the property for my children through a guard-ianship court proceeding until a child reaches age 21 ,when he or she will get all ofhis share of the propertyoutright.If you want your spouse to get more or lessthan one third of your property, if you want yourchildren to have property held in a way to avoidcumbersome and expensive guardianship orconservatorship proceedings, if you don't w antchildren to get a big lump sum of cash when theyreach the age of 21 because you are con cernedabout whe ther they can handle it properly, thenyou better prepare a will promptly. If not, and youdie without a will, the laws of the state in w hichyou live will determine w here your property g oes.

What is a Living Trust?

If you want to leave money wisely, I urge thatyou consider adopting a living trust. It avoidspublicity. It avoids tying u p pro perty in probatecourts. It avoids executor fees. It substantially re-duces legal fees. Perhaps m ost importan t of all,a living trust in essence is a posthumo us gift toyour family, for it can save them a lot of time andeffort and avoid the frustration that often comeswhe n one has to deal with the complexity ofprobate courts.I have planned my estate in a way to minimizecosts, just as I recommend to clients. I have exe-cuted a living trust and have transferred all of myassets to that living trust.My house and my car are not registered in m ynam e. Rather, legal ownership is in the nam e ofthe David W. Belin Living Trust.My checking account is not in my own name.When I sign checks, I merely sign my nam e, bu tbelow the signature line is the word "Trustee,"and the actual bank account is in the nam e of theDavid W. Belin L iving Trust.Everything I own is in the nam e of the David W.Belin Living Trust stocks, bonds, real estateand even household furniture and furnishings.When I die, since all of my property has been

LeavingMoneyWisely

Author,at torney, alum nu sDavid Belinguides famil ies

in estate plann ing

cause no inventory of property will be filed in aprobate court, which w ould let the whole worldknow the amount of property I own. No one,other than the beneficiaries of my living trust, willknow how much m oney I left to individuals, howmuch m oney I left to charities and how I disposedof the remain ing part of my estate. There will beno probate of my estate, except for what is calleda pour-over will, which will cover the contingencythat all of my assets may not have been trans-ferred to my living trust.Since at the time of my death all of my assets,hopefully, will already have been transferred to aliving trust, these assets can be sold, new assetscan be bought, distributions can be made to myheirs without any delays, and all of the red tapeof probate will have been avoided.The living trust has one other basic advantage.In the event of your temporary or permanen t inca-

taxes. It does not avoid valuation problems andtax problems that arise upon one's death and theprofessional fees necessary to deal with theseproblems. A nd, if you're not thorough in transfer-ring all of your property to the trust an d leave partof your property outside of the trust, which maynecessitate extensive probate proceedings, theremay be no material savings of lawyers' fee andother probate costs.The key provisions to understan d are that youcan be one of the trustees, you can have all of theincome and all of the right to principal du ringyour lifetime, and you can have the right toamend or revoke the trust at any time you desire.Every single provision that you m ight want toinclude in a will can be included in a living trust,for upon your death your living trust in essencebecomes your will. The major difference is that itwill distribute your prope rty automatically, w ith-out going through the cumbersome and expensiveprovisions of probate.

Psycholog ical Factors"\ T oney holds the promise of providing oppor-1.V.L tunities to beneficiaries, enhancing theirsecurity, imparting responsibility to them a ndencouraging positive feelings toward you, towardthemselves and toward the entire family. But leav-ing money also carries with it the possibilities ofoverburdening your beneficiaries, creating an en - -vironment in w hich relatives maneuver or fightwith one another, potentially inhibiting motiva-tion and fostering laziness, an d even creating orexacerbating feelings of anger, guilt, envy and re-gret among family mem bers. A litany of bookswritten by unhappy children of wealthy andpowerful individuals can testify to the latter.There is the potential risk associated w ith achild receiving her or his inheritance ou trighton attaining legal age. Young people often makemistakes in handling large sums of money theyreceive in one lump sum , mistakes they would notmake if they were older and ha d more experience.Despite my overall disposition that free choice is adesirable state of affairs, I have seen lots of situa -tions that suggest that young people w ho receivelarge amounts of money in one lump sum maydissipate all or a major portion in a relatively shorttime. Restraints on access to inherited wealthmake sense in m any instances.

Some ScenariosO ften w hen clients turn to m e for advice asthey struggle to resolve these problem s, I re-fer to what I call "Belin Basic Rules One and Two."Belin Rule Number One: There is more than oneright way.Belin Rule Number Two: When trying to chooseamong tw o or more alternatives, consider wh atyou would adv ise your best friend to do if he orshe came to you for advice under similar facts andcircumstances.In a first marriage, the typical will for a marriedcouple with no estate tax problems is usually verysimple. Each person leaves all of her or his prop-erty outright to the su rviving partner. If thespouse doe s not survive, then the property w ill gooutright to the children or, if none, to brothers andsisters or nieces or nephews. Although th is is avery natural and understandable approach, it canresult in major problems.For instance, if a wife and husba nd (or singleparent) are killed in a car accident, and there arechildren under legal age who survive and there isno trust, the property will generally be managedunder the jurisdiction of a court. This is often acumbersom e and relatively expensive proceeding,with the added disadvantage of limited invest-ment flexibility.

Problems can also arise whe n a couple has nochildren. If an experienced businessm an or busi-nesswoman leaves everything to a spouse, andthe spouse is not experienced in h andling assets,the property could be mismanaged and conceiva-bly be entirely dissipated. T he event of remarriageposes another potential problem: property owned


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MICH IGAN TODAY 7

her family brothers and sisters, nieces andnephews with none to the family of the hus-band. Sometimes couples avoid this eventuality byhaving wills that state that the person who is thesecond to die will leave the property, half to thehusband's side and half to the wife's side.Here is my overall recommendation, should youhave no strong preferences of your own: Leave yourproperty in a trust. A well-prepared trust instru-ment with capable trustees offers protection andflexibility for many possible problems that canarise. Consider making your surviving spouse aco-trustee. Give your spouse all of the income andgive the independent tru stee the additional powerto use whatever principal is needed to provide forthe proper care, maintenance and sup port of yourspouse.

Leaving Money O utrightTo Children Is Not Always BestI n the typical will for a person w ith children,if there is no surviving spo use because of deathor divorce, the property generally is d istributedoutright to the children.In many instances this may be fine, but thereare situations where this can result in difficulties.We have already discussed problems that canarise when property is left ou tright to childrenwho are not of legal age. Even when the size ofthe estate is not large, the astute person withyoung children will consider putting the propertyin trust instead of leaving it outright to children.The trust terms can provide that the income canbe used for their proper care, support, mainte-nance and education, and the trustee can be givendiscretionary power to invade the p rincipal, ifnecessary. Then, w hen the children reach an agewhen the parent thinks they can handle largesum s of money, the property can be distributedoutright.Many individuals are naturally concerned aboutwhether trustees would be sufficiently generousin the event that a particular family need arose.My experience is that tru stees generally respondliberally in times of need, but I suggest that, ifthere were any doubt, the trust terms could givethe child a right each year to take out 5 percent ofthe principal.Another advantage of using a trust arises ifa child is divorced. Property ow ned outright bya child generally becomes part of the property tobe divided by the court. O n the other hand , ifproperty rem ains in trust, it is at least partiallyshielded from claims of the child's spouse.There is yet another advantage to a trust: It canact as a shield from the psychological pressures ex-erted by a spouse or other members of a family.

When Should PropertyBe Distributed O utright to Children?

M y own preference is to give a child two orthree opportunities to handle a large sum.For example, if a trust were to have $75,000 ofprincipal, instead of having a child get the entire$75,000 in one lum p sum at age 21,1 might sug-gest distributing half at 25 and half at 30, or onethird at 25, one third at 30, and one th ird at 35.The undistributed balance can continue to be heldin trust, with the income distributed each year tothe child. There can also be flexible provision toinvade the principal if there are specific needs,such as medical bills, college or post-graduateeducation costs, a down paym ent for a house,the purchase of an automobile or householdfurniture, etc.All Children Are Not Equal

W hat do you do when you have three children a schoolteacher earning $30,000 a year,an ophthalmo logist earnin g $300,000 a year anda graduate student heading toward a businesscareer? Do you divide your property equallyamong all three?When this problem was presented to me severalyears ago, I developed a proposal that I called the"extra common share" approach, and m y clients

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CREATIVEESTATE PLANNINGFO R MIDDLE- AND CBPPER-INCOME AMERICANSFOR THE 1 9 9 0 s: : . - :

were earning above the $75,000 floor, then the in-come would be divided equally am ong all three,but if only two were earn ing above $75,000, thenthe third child would get all of the income fromthe fourth share.There is more than one right way to divideproperty among your children. In making deci-sions about which path to take, one cardinal ruleto remember is that all children are not equal, andthere is no absolute requirement that all childrenmust b e treated equally under a will or livingtrust.Leaving Money to GrandchildrenI f there are four grandchildren, three by onechild and one by another, there are two waysto leave them money: pe rstirpes distribution: onegrandchild ends up w ith half of the total estateof the grandparents and the other grandchildreneach end up with one sixth (or collectively threesixths) of the estate.The alternative approach is what is known asa pe r capita distribution, where each grandchildwould get one fourth of her or his grandpare nts'property.In looking at the conundrum of grandchildrenequality, there is one other consideration which, ofcourse, is similar to questions that arise when oneconsiders how to leave property to children. W hat

will the grandchildren think? If one grandchild re-ceives three times as m uch as his cousins becausehe or she happen ed to have no siblings, will thislead the cousins to feel that they were unfarilytreated by their grandparents? Should this be ofconcern to the grandparen ts in their deliberationsabout how to leave the property?Some people have come to me and raised thepossibility of discussing the per capita-per stirpesdilemma with their children and grandchildrenand telling everyone how and w hy they reachedtheir decision. However, my experience hasbeen that in many families premature discussionsabout these decisions often create unpleasa ntsituations for all concerned. If you are in doubt,I would recommend not discussing this emotion-ally charged issue with your family unless youthink there is a compromise that w ould satisfyeverybody.Blended Families and Adopted Children

If a person dies without a will, the law in moststates will generally treat natural-born andadopted children equally. However, differencesarise in blended-family situations where there is

could in turn leave the property to her child andexclude Walter's two children from his prior mar-riage. The same situation could ha ppen in reverseif Betty predeceased Walter and Walter had notadopted Gloria.In general, the best way to deal with the in-creasingly common circumstances of the blendedfamily is to use the flexibility of a trust. Thus, in-stead of Walter leaving property outright to Betty,he could leave the property in trust for her benefit.The trust would provide that, during the remain-der of Betty's life, she wo uld get all of the incom e.The principal could also be used for her benefitand , if Walter so provided , for the benefit of allthree blended-family children, if needed. Onthe death of Betty it would go in equal shares toWalter's two children and Betty's child, Gloria.

Second Wives and Second HusbandsIn today's society, increasing numbers of firstmarriages unfortunately often end in divorce. Onthe other hand, many people find great happinessin their second marriages, including those whosefirst marriages ended because of the death of aspouse. However, complications can arise whenestate-planning issues are discussed.There might be three sets of children thewife's children from the first marriage, the hus-band's children from the first marriage, and thechildren of the two together. Each partner w antsto treat all of her or his children equally. But onechild (assuming one child from the second mar-riage) will in a sense be ultimately receivingproperty from both paren ts in the second mar-riage. The children from the first marriage couldinherit from additional sources, too from theother natural parent or from grandparents. Whenchildren from neither marriage have a potentiallarge inheritance from a source other tha n your-self, it is easier to determine a measure of equalitybetween the m. But when there are potential largeinheritances that apply to only one set of children,it is more difficult to determ ine w hat is fair.I believe that, if one is to err, it is better to erron the side of generosity because it has one majorfringe benefit: It helps make the second m arriagework. O ne of the best ways to reach the heart of apartner is to reach out to the h earts of your part-ner's children.A Final Plea

Y ou have within yourself the ability to makethe kinds of personal decisions that will bebest for you and your loved ones. The worst thingyou can do is to d o nothing . If you care about allof the sweat and toil that have gone into accu-mulating w hatever estate you have, if you careabout your loved ones and want to make it a littlebit easier for them in the sorrow of your death, ifyou want to take advantage of the tax-saving fea-tures that the laws allow, then undertake the effortto plan how you want to leave your property. MlDavid W. Belin worked his way through the University ofMichigan in six years, earning in that time three degrees all with high distinction a B.A. in 1951, an M.B.A. in '53and J.D in '54. The National Law Journal has included Belinin its list of the 100 "most powerful and influential lawyers inthe United States."Belin is also the author of Final D isclosure, an account ofhis service as chief counsel for the Warren Commission thatinvestigated the assassination of Preside nt John F. Kennedy.Belin finds it regrettable that "most A mericans believeerroneously that the re was a conspirac y involved in the assas-sination of President Kennedy." He blames the news mediafor this collective gullibility, not the "conspiracy-tlieoryprofiteers.""This is a bad chapter in the history of the US. newsmedia," he says. "T he underlying philosophy of a free press isthat it will help the public reach conclusions about issues andevents. But when news media play up groundless charges ofassassination conspiracies and then give little or no coverageto rebuttals, they are not carrying out the principles for whichour country h as established and maintaine d a free press."The most disheartening thing is that in colleges and uni-versities it's being seen a s liberal to believe in a conspiracybehind the Kennedy assassination. Mark Lane, a profiteer and


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Febru ary 1991 MICHIGAN TODAY 9

everal years ago, rummaging through anold art supply store, I came across tubes ofpaint whose names I didn't know. With aAs a painter I 'm u sed to hand ling "pure" color,itself. Mixed from treasured formulasof a tube

b when applied to p aper orSap Green had a slight stink when it gobbedin aen that was lost imme-

other colors. The Artist'sTechniques listed it asuckthornfrom the lexicon of modern paints.hat other colors

the names alphabetically.these colors.Apricot, azure, alizarine crimson and aqua-"A." Each color wasied by name and hue. The shape of the let-

I loved the way grouping

At first I saw this idea as a possible book forabout 10

alette. The theory at work herefirst to brightyellows, and learn bestto educate wespread

Victorian toys allowed children to see forestk as well as flaming crimsonpossessions. Another Victorian play-break

So much more to tthan meets the eyeTHE ALPHABET O FCOLORBut what about the rules of the spectrum thatI 'd been taught in school, the color charts andwheels that demonstrate so precisely how everycolor relates to every other? Why confuse the vi-sual with the verbal? What do names have to dowith actual color? Does color have meaning likethe verbal meaning of words? My playful alphabetcontradicted everything I thoug ht I knew aboutcolor and forced me to re-examine its source. Asmy search widened, like the botanical explorerswho sailed the world, I du g up and collected lostand exotic colors and beautiful color concepts toinclude in my alphabet.What is color? In the everyday jumble of life,color is inseparable from the surrounding worldof objects. It is one of our fundamental means

of separating one shape from another, definingvolume, recording the passage of light and time.Light strikes objects and refracts into our eyes in akaleidoscope of color. Consider thenumber of waysthat blue may beproduced. The blueof the sky is causedby the scattering ofsunlight throughthe atmosphere(more red inLondon or yellowin Los Angeles dueto pollutants). Theblueness of waterreflects the lightof the sky on a smooth surface; a cloudy, roughday makes the water gray. The blue portion of therainbow is due to light dispersion through waterdroplets. The iridescent blue of a beetle's shelldepends on the angle of view across fine, evenlyspaced ridges on the shell that intensify and d is-tort light waves. The wing of a housefly has manytransparent layers whose interference with lightwaves causes iridescent colors similar to thoseproduced by oil films.Most coloration in animals, like blue eyes,is a result of the scattering of light. The blues ofsapphire and lapis lazuli result from charge trans-fers in a crystal field. The star Sirius glows bluefrom the temperature of its atoms and ions. Theblue from a color TV owes its light emission tobombardment by a stream of electrons. Vaporlamps, lightning, auroras and some lasers arecreated by gas excitations. A blue gas flame is acondition of the vibration and rotation of light.Blue dyes from organic compounds form trans-itions between molecular orbitals. The milk-and-fire blue of an opal is caused by light diffraction.With C. L. Hardin's compelling list of blues fromColor for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow, Iknew I had discovered my letter "B."

Fascination with the color of objects is whatfirst attracted me to painting. Trying to paint theroundness of a cup, the variations of the red of anapple, daylight on a checkered tablecloth, the im-portance of a shadow, I learned immediately thatevery color is relative to and altered by its circum-stance. Change one dab of gray and the lip of thecup bends in instead of out, shadow becomesmore interesting than the cup, green foliagegoes muddy, a porcelain cup turns to clay. Paint-ing asks how the h uman eye receives, stores andrecreates color. Painting honors the fact that an ob-ject can not only create color in several ways, butalso affect the color of nearby objects. There maybe a transmission color, a reflection color, an inter-ference color each of which can be furtheraltered by the angle at which a viewer sees themand by the character of surrounding light.Philosophers pose the question of whether coloreven exists as "color" before it is perceived by thehuman eye and brain. My search for the origins ofcolor turned from the outer world to the inner eye.As the full range of light and dark strikes the in-

ner eye, only a narrow band of energy is capableof creating the rainbow of color called the spectrum.This is a sliding scale of undiscriminated hue.

Spectrum graphpaper, Technical andEducation Center ofthe Graphic Arts,Rochester Instituteof Technology.Color is perceived anatomically, not bit by bitbut along an overlapping and intermixing contin-uum. Receptor cells of the retina at the back ofthe inner eye take in the spectral information andthen, unlike a passive camera, continually reworkand reorganize the captured image. Seeing is anact of interpretation from the first glimmer. Whenyou look at this page, your eye tells you not onlyall the colors of this spectrum but also that it'sprinted on paper, not reflected through a glassprism or a rainy sky. Eminently adaptable, sensi-tive to the slightest contrast, the optical networkof color vision is an instrument set to detect and _interpret as much as possible from one point ofview. I captured and pinnedjlown the spectrumfor my letter "S."

T here appear to be three irreducible primarycolors ed, blue and yellow rom whichall other colors can be produced. That is the first"rule" about color that everyone is taught. As witheverything else about color, however, this first ruleis not hard and fast, but relative. The exact colorof those primaries fluctuates; they are differentin light, paint or printing; they are not so much arule as a function of three mutually exclusive hueswithin a given system. Each color is perceived inthree dimensions: the brightness of the color fromlight to dark; the hue of the color named "red,""blue," "purple" and so on; and the saturation ofa given color from its "pure" hue to gray.

T he challenge of demonstrating how colors re-late has led to some marvelous charts. The"color wheel" is the most basic. It shows the pri-mary colors as red, blue and yellow, in wedges ofa circle with their secondary mixtures purple,green and orange between. To demonstratethe three dimen-sions of light/dark, .hue and intensitysimultaneously, asphere is often pro-posed with purehues circling the pe-rimeter, becomingdarker toward thebottom to black,lighter toward thetop to pure white,and cutting throughthe center from top to bottom to a core of gray.Mesmerized by these charts, I wanted to includethat systematic approach in my alphabet. Theletter "W" shows my version of the color wheel.The need for all these charts points to a centralenigma of visual perception. Unlike the auditoryrecall of pure pitch, color memory for a singleprecise shade is poor. When tested, as RudolfArnheim reports in Art and Visua l Perception,observers "cannot agree on where the principalcolors appear at their purest. This is true even forthe fundamental primaries, especially for purered." Furthermore, words fail to pin color down.Verbal description falls short of any dependablecolor accuracy. So even if we can perceive all thesedazzling variations on the charts, we can't com-

municate those perceptions without actuallyreproducing the color itself. Consider these linesfrom Amy Lowell's poem, "The Customer.".. . She minced up to the counter, said:'I want three years of ribbon - red /Sat down upon a stool and waited.The tranquil atmosphere vibrated.I bowed and brought a brilliant red,Flaming and smooth as though each threadWere new-run blood or molten glassShe gave one look and let it pass.I brought her scarlet, a poppy shadeHot as a subaltern's cockade.It darted out between my handsLike a spurted flame of many strands.She shook her head and murmured, 'Crude/ . . .I urged a cardinal crimson she pouted.Magenta, vermilion both were flouted.Carbuncle, ruby, cinnabar,The counter looked like a mad bazaar.I brought down carmine doubled with gold.I found pale buffs un der which rolledA faint suggestion of watchet or blue.Nothing I showed her seemed to do .. .

These undefin-able shades ofdifference betweenouter perceivedcolor and innerimagined color havecaused some philos-ophers to showthe white flag anddesignate color theprime example ofpure, unanalyzablequality. This is when m y alphabet of color comesin handy. Letter "R" revels in the many reds of red.

E very culture has names for colors. Beginningwith the distinction between light and dark,then a word for red, societies add color namesto their languages in a pattern. In my growingcollection, names are as evocative as the colorsthemselves. They bring to mind sources of pig-ments, like cobalt and cochineal. Coral, canaryand chestnut vividly recall colors in nature, whilecream, cocoa and charcoal evoke tastes, smellsand textures. My search came to a turning pointwhen I discovered the National Bureau of Stan-d a r d s ' Universal Color Language and C olor NamesDictionary. Here Ifound 7,500 colorslisted alphabeticallyby name and chartedby number throughseven ascendinglevels of accuracy.The color dictionarymay not satisfyphilosophers, but itdoes set industrialstandards of textiledesign, chemistry,graphic arts, print-ing, tanning , horticulture and optics for colorcodification. (See accompanying article). I was bothoverjoyed and overwhelmed, but I also learnedwhat my alphabet was not.

Nw that the search for color names had be-came a matter of choice, I began looking backto the colors themselves. Contemporary Americanartists who have explored pure abstraction haveconsidered color as a subject all its own. Throwingpaint, spraying it, soaking, stripping, chunking,even massing it into whole walls, artists let paintrefer to nothing but surface and let color playas freely as music to reach the emotions of eachviewer in a totally uninterrupted interchange.Two seemingly contradictory approaches tocolor have been used a step-by-step experimen-

tal method that mirrors the scientific discoveriesof the century, and a method that is an innersearch of emotion and imagination, a meditationlike that practiced in certain Eastern and NativeAmerican religions.Josef Albers' method in The Interaction of Colorwas the classic example of the first approach.He demonstrated the various effects of colorcontrast in a series of eloquently simple visualexperiments. He chose colors not because theyharmonized but because they demonstrated hispoints about colorcontrast. His formatof visual proof isthe format I usein my alphabet,although my objec-tive is more open-ended. I chosecolor arbitrarily(alphabetically) anda known series ofshapes (the lettersof the alphabet) to observe color unrestricted.The second contribution of American artists tothe understanding of pure color has been to set itapart, to frame it as worthy of our concentration,to use it as a mode of contemplation.When allowed our deepest uninterrupted atten-tion, color can open up w hat Mark Rothko called"states of soul." Rothko looked for a way to revealthe source of light that our seeing implies. His ap-proach was similar to the ancient use of color as apoint of meditation. Or as he put it: 'A painting isnot about experience, it is an experience."As an internal contemplation, the disciplineof yoga associates color with bodily organs andwith the seven points of the spine through whichthe yogi experiences the rise of the inner spiritthrough the ph ysical body to the infinite. Color isalso used as an external meditation. The mandalais one form, a circle within a square where colorenacts the cyclical flow of self to cosmos.

Mark Rothko's 'Number 10' (1950, oil oncanvas, MOMA)Color stimulates not only the eye but the wholebody. Rudolf Arnheim reported in Art and VisualPerception that strong, bright colors in the red-orange range produce excitement. Muscular powerand blood circulation are increased by coloredlights shown in sequence, beginning with blue,the least effective, through green, yellow, orangeand red. Patients with a cerebellar disease havebeen found to be so sensitized to color that one,a woman wearing a red dress, became dizzy, losther sense of balance and was in danger of falling,symptoms that disappeared when she changedto a green dress. Our whole organism has beenfound to have an expansive response to the rangeof yellow to red colors, and to constrict or with-

lSth-century Indian d iagram used in computingastronomical periods and in medita tion. From Tantra,by Philip Raw son, Thames & Hudson, N.Y. (1973).

draw towards the center of the organism inresponse to the blue to purple range of color.These physical reactions give color immediatecommand over our faculties. They strike at theinstinctual, intuitive, emotional level of being.Looking at a color for a long time is the best way tolearn one's own physical and emotional reactionsto it. I hope my alphabet of color stimulates thosereactions and reflections.

C olor is as much about social history as it isabout the spectrum. Color reaches us sublim-inally, as in the red dress Bette Davis wears in thefilm Jezebel, which is seen as a shade of gray inthe black-and-white film. Yet, the red has searedthrough layers of celluloid and time into oursocial memory.Color can define experience, as we in Americahave demonstrated, in the crudest to the mostsubtle forms. The distinguishing color of skin pig-mentation has been misused by every race as arationale for the harshest domination. Where colorfor one group is a means of control, color for an-other group is a matter of life. Color systematizedinto human stereotypes is never more dangerous,more enmeshing. In the great lyric tradition of theblues, "blues" names emotion, situation, a historyof great endurance, the musical beat that bo thremembers and releases the pain.Color absorbs and records our memories ofpleasure and pain. When leftover scraps of mate-rials are stitched into quilts, colors patched fromold patterns into new become dense with memo-ries. My letter "Q" takes a piece from every otherletter to make a quilt.The narrative of color is carried still further witha single evocative word. T hough we can't compareit with a visible spectrum, we can't forget howMelville expanded the meaning of the color"white" in Moby Dick. The African w riter AmosTutuola records the terror of color magic in ThePalm Wine Drinkard. We travel with a man andhis wife looking for the "Deads Town" and passthrough zones of color where anything can h ap-pen. Here they are entering a "Red-Bush," a bushthat "was in deep red together with all the trees,ground and all the living creatures therein. Imme-diately we entered th is 'Red-Bush' my wife andmyself turned deep-red." Tutuola vividly inducesthe fear of color's mastery over our inner and outerlandscape. We have only the wife's words as pro-tection: "This is only fear for the heart but notdangerous to the heart."There seems to be a great need to control color,a fear of its mutability. Color changes with everypersonal interpretation and has m any more mean-ings than letters of the alphabet. My alphabet isjust one interpretation, and also an homage tocolor in its multitudinous garbs, and for its powerto engage our energies, emotions and memories.MT

Margaret Parker '69 of Castine,Maine, majored in painting at heSchool of Art. Her 14 erra cottareliefs representing lives of thehomeless as images of the Stationsof the Cross were published to-gether with meditations by FatherDanielBerrigan (Stations, theWay of the Cross, Harper &Row, 1989).Photo by Suzannah Hall

It


10/16

10 February1991

Applications of color(O r why ts hard tosell agreencar)By Linda Walker

Why,instead ofa vivid,glowingrainbow ofcolors inour daily life, do we usually face relatively few choicesin everything we buy, rom car shift knobs to carpetsand drapes, kitchen cabinets, sweaters and stationery?This isbecause a color committee ofpeople from theseindustries gets together to decide what is best for themand us. There is no color clash,or much choice, inAmerican consumer products by design.

Every six months about 500 industrial decision-makers meet to decide what the colors will be inthree years' time for everything from cars andbricks to fabrics and greeting cards.

These colorists, as they are called, are membersof the Color Marketing Group (CMG), explainsCharles McGrew of Indiana, a former automotivedesigner for Navistar International.

"Here's how it works," McGrew says. 'At oneof the two annual meetings there are workshopsof about 20 members each, organized aroundan industry. There might be five transportationworkshops and all the members will be decision-makers the people who are designing cars,commercial vehicles or boats as well as peoplewho work in fabrics, leathers and paints.

"Every member brings forecast guesses, sam-ples of color actual bits of fabric and byconsensus each workshop presents the five colorsthey predict. Then the captains and co-captainsget together," McGrew continues, "and narrowdown the 25 choices from the workshops tofive, which in turn go to a steering committeethat includes the captains from fashion, homefurnishings and other workshops. All the colorsare homogenized down to 15 or 20 colors bestrepresenting all industries."

Robert S. Daily, color marketing manager forDu Pont's Automotive Products Finishes Divisionin Troy, Michigan, is charged with puttingtogether a palette of exterior colors for automanufacturers to choose from. Like McGrew,he attends CMG meetings and looks for trendsin color everywhere.

"We take note of the fall fashion showings inParis, Milan and New York," Daily says, "andthere's a trickle-down effect to cars. But fashioncan turn around in a year. Cars take a longerlead time because we have to coordinate vinyl,plastics, fabric, leather and paints."

"The whole point is to keep a manufacturerfrom choosing the wrong color and losing money,"McGrew explains. "Carpets and wallpapers haveto agree and 85 different disciplines from silkflowers, packaging, greeting cards and cosmeticsall tie in."

Color is as much a matter of function as aes-thetics for two University of Michigan industrialdesigners whose work includes dishware, furni-ture, office partitions, locomotives and industrialmachines.

Allen J. Samuels, professor in the School ofArt, was aware of the CMG when he worked forCorning in the 1960s. "Trends were important,"he says, "and our designs had to fit in with theavocado, harvest gold and burnt orange kitchensof that era.

"Color is a function of ergonomics," he con-tinues. "When I design surgical instruments I takeinto account the operating room the low light,the fact that it's a room full of people in a condi-tion of stress. I have to take into account whatthey can see and feel. Colors are a function ofthose things; for example, there are no red instru-ments. There must be a contrast, and white is thebest color to contrast with blood.

But white and beige are the worst colors for thesides of bathtubs, Samuels notes, "because ageflattens the lens of the eye. Elderly people oftencan t perceive depth when it is white on white,so they often fall when getting into a bathtub.A glass of milk on a white tablecloth presentsthe same problem. The elderly have troubledistinguishing it, and can knock it over."

Ronald Sekulski, assistant professor at the

Sekulski and Samuels

chairs. Both tasks require "unity of aesthetics andfunction, color, shape and safety."To design the piston-making machine, Sekulskihad to understand the product environment,

"how people interface with the equipment, whatenvironmental contaminants there are that mightaffect the paint, what kind of light there is full-spectrum, fluorescent or halogen and whetherworkers have to wear tinted glasses."

Even when the choice of color is more a matterof taste than function, compared with the infinitevariety of color, choices available to consumersseem quite narrow.

"The staples for cars are black and white, thebread and butter; then the reds that shift," saysthe CMG's McGrew, "and peach is a new basiccolor for fashion and the home."

When it comes to cars, green is tricky. "No onewants to do it; it's controversial," Daily says. Al-though the color enjoyed salad days in the 1950s

and '60s, Daily says people get tired of green anddon't wear it much because it's not complimentaryto the skin. What to do with it? "Probably themost salable way is a deep jewel color like hunter,which exudes elegance and richness. Jaguar hasused it."

Colorists agree that brighter colors are on thehorizon in the auto industry, and that they willappear first in less expensive models and sportscars.

Other color specialists emphasize that despitefads, the pendulum of color taste does not swingfar from the norm. The Pantone Cororation, makerof ink and fabric samples used throughout theprint and textile industries, tracked 900 printingcolors over 25 years and found that 90 percent ofthose used fell in less than 10 percent of the colorrange. MT

There's still a maize inworld of crayons"As of this time, Dixon Ticonderoga, the maker ofPrang's Color Art crayons, has no plans to discontinuemaize."

With those words, Michael Gordon, the Mait-land, Florida, crayon manufacturer's senior vicepresident for marketing and sales, brought hopeto a U-M community shaken last Aug. 7, whenthe number-one crayon maker, Binney and Smith,dropped maize from its line of 64 Crayola crayons.

Crayola also eliminated lemon yellow, orangeyellow, blue gray, violet blue, green blue, orangered and raw umber. Of the eight dropped, threewere yellows and three were blues. Was it a plot?

Lina Striglia, Crayola's spokesperson, insistsnot. "We talk to the children who come throughon our tours and they told us we needed tochange. We had many similar color pairings maize and goldenrod, cadet blue and blue gray and we discovered we could pull some out with-out its being detrimental to our color offering.We're going to offer eight new colors that havehigher energy. The ones we're retiring are mutedand boring and so are their names."

Boring?!Striglia is sensitive to offended feelings.

"There's lots of passion for certain colors, andsome distress, not just that we're retiring colors,but that we're retiring favorites. We don't want tobe disrespectful to them, so we are putting themin our Hall of Fame they will never be forgot-ten. We've made oversize crayons of each of theeight retired colors and they will be on permanentdisplay."

Crayola introduced maize in 1949. Are 41 yearsenough? Striglia says yes, because today's childrenwant "lighter, brighter colors."

Amaizin' FactsHow did the "muted and boring" color maizecome to be adopted as half of the U-M's officialcolors? Maize and azure blue became the first official

committee replaced the lighter hue with thedarker one used today. Did the class of 1867 want the color yellow butnot the word's associations of cowardice? Is thatwhy they called it maize as some schools call itgold? If yellow is shunned, why do we of Michigansing, "The Yellow and the Blue"? Perhaps becausethe school's hymn and the 1867 colors predated thecraven connotations of the word "yellow." Accord-ing to the U-M's sesquicentennial songbook,Charles M. Gayley wrote the words for Michiganshymn in 1878; yellow did not mean cowardly untilaround 1910, in reference to the yellow press ofthe day.

The word maize entered the language in 1555from the Spanish for the grain we know as corn,which early on was also called Indian corn andGuinea, Turkish or Indian wheat. Yellow, denoting our brightest color, can betraced back to Old English geoluand made its firstwritten appearance in Beowulf about the year700. ("Yolk", spelled "yelk" until the 19th centuryand still pronounced that way in some regions,shares the same root.) Is there a platonic ideal of maize? The nearestwe can come to an official shade is somethingcalled "light yellow 86." Many professions havecodified colors to standardize descriptions ofstones, birds, flowers and even symptoms of dis-ease. The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureauof Standards combined many of these earlier cod-ifications in their book, Color Universal Languageand Dictionary of Names, and included seven huesof maize. The Commerce department bases its cat-egories in the Color Names Dictionary, published bythe Inter-Society Color Council and the NationalBureau of Standards, which catalogued colorsaccording to hue, value and chroma into 267 color-name blocks.

The seven maizes listed in the department'sbook are made up of such color-name blocks as


11/16

MICH IGAN TODAY / LETTERS 11

L E T T E R SOosterbaanNOWHERE in all the words writtenabout thegreat Bennie Oosterbaan did Isee a word about hisonly son, Bennie Jr.Those of us whowere student nurses atthe U-M in the postwar years stood byhelplessly asBennie and hiswife, Del,watched young Bennie (about 8yearsold, notsure) slowly die of anincurablebrain disease. What a caring, kind cou-ple they were! Wenever heard a wordof reproach to thehospital staff. Indeed,we grew tolove them as we watchedtheir silent suffering. I canstill see thehaunting sadness intheir eyes astheystood byBennie's bed. Inspite of thisburden, which seemed interminable, Ben-nie still manage d toperform hisjobs asMichigan's assistant football coach andhead coach inadmirable fashion, eventhough hisheart wasbreaking. Thoseof us whoknew him during this tryingtime in hislife will never forget w hat atender, loving man he was.

Elizabeth Lee Gannon '47NFarmington, MichiganPS . Love my little clock as a reward forbecoming a life member in the AlumniAssociation.

HindsightIT HAS been said that tosettle for a tie ina sports event islike kissing your sister.When M ichigan elected to go for twopoints to win itsgame with M ichiganState in theclosing moments, the con-sensus undoubtedly wasthat eventhough unsuccessful it was the smartthing to do. Butsubsequent eventsproved howwrong was the decision notto kick the tying point.Michigan ended itsseason in a four-way tie at 6-2with Michigan State, Illi-nois andIowa. IfMichigan had tied thegame with M ichigan State, as it couldeasily have d one, itsseason would haveended 6-1-1, making it the Big Ten win-ner. Itwould have been in the morelucrative andprestigious Rose Bowl in-stead of theGator Bowl, and if it hadwo n the Rose Bowl by a big score, itcould have wound upchosen asnumberone again in the final national poll.So much for hindsight!

George E Wilcox '24 Eng.Longxvood, Florida

Wahl Van AllsburgCORRECTION: Thephotographs ofauthors Chris Van Allsburg '72 and JanWahl '58were reversed in our Decemberissue. Here are thecorrect identifications.

Maddy, not 'McNetty

Books for theyoungFOR PERHAPS 12years, Iroad to mychildren each evening before bedtim e.Our favorite book was JanWahl's PleasantFieldmouse ("Once Upon a Time Is Now,"Decem ber 1990). Weactually wore thatbook out. Notonly were thestories funto read butevery one had a message foradults and the children.Terrence E. O'Loughlin '55 MBAColumbus, Ohio

I VERY much enjoyed Cathleen CollinsLee's interviews with U-Mchildren'sbook writers andwould like to addJoanBios, whose Gathering Days won the 1979Newbery Aw ard; Gloria Whelan, w hoseTh eSecret Keeper, published this year byScribner's, is her seventh book for youngpeople and, like theothers, distin-guished for its lyrical beauty andmoraland psychological insights; and X. J.Kennedy, whose volumes ofclever,amusing, literate verses for childrenare unsurpassed (see "TheOwlstoneCrown," "ThePhantom IceCream Man"an d atleast half a dozen others).

Martha Bennett StilesParis, KentuckyENCLOSED IS information about chil-dren's books and short stories by Martha(Wells) Bennett Stiles '54, a PhiBetaKappa graduate inchemisty and winnerof twoHopwood Awards. Imissedmention of her work in the article onchildren's publications.

Sister Hilda Bonham, IHMCoordinatorof the Hopwood Program,1979-81Adrian, Michigan

(Thanks for pointing out this oversight.Stiles is a ournalist, novelist, fiction writerand poet. The atest ofher nine novels, Kateof Still Waters (Macmillan, 1990) is set inrural Kentucky, and was singled out by theKirkus book review as a work "of unusuallyhigh quality" Ed.)AFTER READING about w riters ofchil-dren's books, I thought youmight beinterested in mywife, KayCooper W att,who graduated in1963 with a degree injo u rn a l i sm . (KayCooper recently publishedher 12th work for young readers, W h e r e inthe World AreYou? (Walker andCo.),anintroduction togeography Ed.)

John Watt '63PharmSpringfield, Illinois

On social progressIT LEAVES th is oldgrad breathlessto observe the social progress be ingachieved by our alma mater. Forexam-ple, the newrule that invites a student toreport anyone whoderogates his or herheritage andgenetic or gender-relatedattributes. Iwish such recourse hadbeenavailable to me when as a white maleunderclassman aspiring to be a varsitybasketball player I wassubjected tohurtful comments directed at me by thecoaches and lettermen whomade clearin allsorts of invidious andoccasionallyphysical ways that mypersonal attri-butes would prevent mefrom makingthe team. Aclear case of institutionalbias against people whocouldn't run,jump or shoot.No w the LS&A faculty hastaken an-other giant step with the establishmentof manda tory courses inrace and

contribute to the requirement." The syn-tax appears tohave come directly fromthe College ofEngineering, but the con-cept isnoble: Surely, the times demandthat teachers cast off obsolete notions ofscholarship and rigorous proof and startto think creatively. Besides, whowantsto take one of those old-fashioned, non-creative courses where the structure islogical and factual?In view of these enlightened initia-tives, I am puzzled that theUniversityhas failed toaddress aneven more ob-vious relic ofpast discrimination. I refer,of course, to theblatantly sexist and op-pressive treatment of female membersof the varsity cheerleading teams. I askyou: Why is it that only thewomen wearthose short little pleated skirts? D on'tthe authorities know howcold it is outthere? And why does our school con-tinue toallow the women to be tossedup in the air and twirled around by themen? Ifwomen are to be regarded asmore than "objects," shouldn't they haveequal opportunity to be the tosser andtwirler, instea d ofmerely tossee andtwirlee?I urge the LS&A curriculum commit-tee, with itscustomary scholarlyprecision, toissue a formal apology to

the affected students, pay such repara-tions as may be appropriate andresolveto prevent any future occurrence.Marshall C. Lewis '49New Canaan, Connecticut

Not sogruffFROM EARLY early 1924 throu gh 1926,I was on the staff of theMichigan Daily,during which time I had the medicalbeat. When Ifirst contacted Aldred ScottWarth in [a professor whose attitude towardwomen was debatedinJune and OctoberLetters columns Ed.]in a t t em p t in g togather information, hisgruffness almostcaused me toresign. However, after theinitial encounter, he wasalways mostpleasant andhelpful. He introduced meto hisassistant, Dr. Simpson, who foralmost three years kept meabreast ofmuch of themedical news. Ialso remem-ber that Dr.Cabot, who I

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