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Clothed in controversy
Performing Arts Center announces fifth-season lineup
Annual conference presents children’s literature awards
Computer science professor explains complex programs in graphic detail
Administrative Changes
Human nature: born or made?
An extensive feature in the Science Times section of the New York Times explored the ongoing debates about “evolutionary psychology” in the wake of a recent book that concludes that rape is primarily a sexual act. The article quotes Patricia Gowaty, with UGA’s Institute of Ecology, who studies bird species. On the complex question of determining forces that may have shaped human behavior, Gowaty noted: “We don’t have a time machine. We don’t even know for the Pleistocene what the social and environmental conditions were. The only evidence we have for these things is the behavior itself.”
Buckhead’s image tarnished
Recent much-publicized shootings in Atlanta’s Buckhead area have attracted national attention. A USA Today article quotes UGA political science professor Charles Bullock on what has happened to Buckhead Village, where small retail shops have given way to clubs and bars. “It’s kind of like Underground [Atlanta] has moved uptown,” said Bullock. “The kind of problems that sucked the life and energy out of Underground have been displaced.”
Retail chains slight black areas
Even though the buying power of African Americans is increasing faster than overall national buying power, national store chains seem slower to consider opening a store in neighborhoods with predominantly minority households, according to an article in the Toledo (Ohio) Blade. The story quotes Jeffrey Humphreys, of the Terry College’s Selig Center for Economic Growth, who has done extensive research on black buying power. “Small retailers have been in this market for years,” Humphreys said, but big chains are just starting to consider niche markets.
Beware tax-refund loans
Taxpayers who apply for “refund anticipation loans” pay a high price for getting their hands
on this money--with interest rates that can be in the triple digits, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News. The paper noted research done in 1996 by Joan Koonce and Roger Swagler, with UGA’s department of housing and consumer economics. “Given the small amount involved and the fact that the actual loan period may be as short as one week, the actual charge is very high,” they concluded in the study.
More on Internet taxation
A Newhouse News Service report on the question of Internet taxation quotes Walter Hellerstein, of UGA’s School of Law and one of the nation’s leading authorities on the issue. Keeping the Internet tax-free isn’t sound tax policy, he argues. Internet vendors, he said, “seem to be doing quite well without a thumb on the scale from Congress.” Hellerstein and others favor action by Congress that will get rid of a “physical presence” definition of commerce in return for a streamlined and simplified tax system.
The UGA News Service monitors coverage of UGA in local, state and national media. Newsmakers appears in every other issue of Columns.
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