Encarta Space

Athletes and Drugs

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:08:27 GMT

With the Winter Olympics just concluded and baseball's spring training in full swing (ouch, sorry about the pun), there have been a lot of feel-good stories in the press these days. But count on a not-so-pleasant subject to crop up regularly in the news as well: Performance-enhancing drugs.

You may know them simply as steroids, but there are plenty of other substances and procedures that some athletes use to try to improve their performance. It's sad, but a fact of life. When millions of dollars or gold medals are on the line, some people are willing to cheat to win.

It's not a new story—athletes have actually been doing it for over a century. But medical science has made the drugs more powerful, harder to detect, and better at targeting specific parts of the body. There are more types of these drugs available than ever before, and new ones are being developed every day. The Internet makes them very easy to obtain.

There will undoubtedly be even more focus on the issue this spring as baseball slugger Barry Bonds approaches Babe Ruth's career home run total. Bonds has long been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, and even admitted to taking a steroid-laced substance at one point, although he claimed he did not know what it was. There was also the sad spectacle of baseball stars such as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa testifying about the problem in front of Congress last spring.

Encarta recently produced a new article on this phenomenon (see link above). Written by science writer Christopher King, the piece not only discusses the controversy but also the science behind the story. How do steroids work? What is blood doping? What about stimulants such as ephedra? And what kinds of steps are sports organizations such as professional baseball taking to combat the problem? Read the article and find out.

David Hirning

Encarta Reference Editor

Super Bowl Fever

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:11:20 GMT

Somebody warn the Devil – I think his front walk just froze up.

Yes, the Seattle Seahawks are in the Super Bowl. For the first time, the football team from the Emerald City finds itself a part of the Biggest Sporting Event in the Universe, taking on the Pittsburgh Steelers on February 5 in Detroit. (Okay, so the Motor City weather isn't exactly Miami or Southern California this time of year, but beggars can't be choosers. At least it's in a domed stadium.)

The Hawks punched their ticket to Super Bowl XL (Extra Large!) on January 22 with a thorough stomping of the Carolina Panthers, 34-14. It's a sweet moment for a city that has won exactly one professional sports title in its history, with the 1979 Seattle Supersonics—and that was in the pre-Michael Jordan era of pro basketball. Jack Sikma and Gus Williams weren't exactly household names, before or after their championship run.

But I digress. The next couple weeks are all about the Seahawks. OK, so I'm a tad biased, having lived in Seattle almost all my life. But I've been a (long-suffering) fan since the team began play in 1976, so I've paid my dues. Many football fans don't know or remember that the Seahawks used to be so bad that the (former) owner once tried to sneak the franchise out of town and move it to Los Angeles. I think half the fans offered to help them pack. But those days are long gone. Seattle has a new owner (see below), a new stadium, and a new attitude. The Hawks are now the class of the league, with fans to match

Let me make it very clear: I take nothing away from the Steelers, who performed the amazing feat of winning three straight road playoff games against higher-seeded foes. They're a great team and a worthy opponent. But the Steelers won four Super Bowls (count ’em) in the space of six seasons in the 1970s. They've had their glory era, and it's time for Seattle to get a piece of the pie.

At the risk of jinxing the Hawks, I'll go out on a limb and predict a Super Bowl victory. Here are the Top Five reasons why Seattle will win in Detroit, plus a bonus reason:

1) -- Mike Holmgren – you won't find a better football mind in the NFL. He'll have his team ready and rarin’ to play.

2) -- Shaun Alexander – a big-time back who runs behind the best offensive line in the league. As if he needs any more motivation than a championship ring, Alexander will be a free agent after this season. A title will look pretty good on the ol‘ resumé.

3) -- Paul Allen – the reclusive billionaire owner has come out of his shell during the postseason and is practically basking in the excitement. Buying the once-struggling Seahawks is now officially the best move Allen has made since founding Microsoft with his buddy Bill Gates 30 years ago. (Full disclosure: Microsoft cuts me a check every two weeks, so forgive the plug.)

4) -- Bald Is Beautiful – Seattle's dazzling quarterback, Matt Hasselbeck, is follicullary challenged at age 30. He'll win it for all those guys in the Hair Club for Men.

5) -- Soaking It In – the city suffered through 27 straight days of rain recently, including the first two weeks of 2006. Our fingertips were starting to look like prunes. Only the Seahawks' success has kept Seattleites from drowning in despair.

6) -- Bonus Reason: It's Just Meant to Be – call it a hunch, a feeling, a blessing from the ghost of Vince Lombardi, who knew something about winning Super Bowls. Seattle is a Team of Destiny. You heard it here first.

And if I'm wrong, heck, it's no big deal. Our team has reached the top of the mountain, and we're feeling light-headed in the thin air. Bring on the Steelers, the Rolling Stones, and an international television audience. The Seattle Seahawks are ready for their close-up.

-David Hirning, Encarta Reference Editor

Dark Matter, Theoretically -- An Interview with Physicist Clifford V. Johnson

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 00:08:48 GMT

Clifford V. Johnson is professor of physics at the University of Southern California and the winner of the 2005 Maxwell Medal from the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom. He is the author of Encarta’s new article on Dark Matter. (You can access this article by entering "Dark Matter" in MSN Search and then clicking on the Encarta tab just above the search box. You'll see a link to "Learn more about Dark Matter" at the top of the search results page. This will also give you a 2-hour free pass to all Encarta article content. To get access to all of Encarta's rich content—including multimedia features, maps, archive articles, primary source documents, and more—subscribe to Encarta Premium.)

We recently asked Professor Johnson a few questions about his field and its latest developments. Here is the interview transcript.

Encarta: You are a theoretical physicist. For our younger readers, could you briefly explain what a theoretical physicist is and how your work differs from that of other physicists?

Johnson: First I’d like to say how they are similar, since there are more similarities than differences. Both as a theorist and an experimenter, the job of the physicist is to try to understand how nature works. What this means in a practical sense is that one tries to observe physical processes or other phenomena and make models of how they work, or how they came to be. Like explaining how the planets orbit the Sun: Why are the orbits elliptical and not some other shape?

The real test of how good the model is comes when one looks at its consequences. Does it tell you things about other physical situations that are not true, or does it fit nicely with other data? Well, the physics of gravity that we use to understand how the planets go around the Sun is the same physics that explains how the moon goes around the Earth, and how planets go around other stars elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy, and probably in the whole universe.

Most importantly, you don’t want to have a different model for every physical situation that can arise. You want what is called an “economical” explanation, one that uses as few assumptions as possible to make a model. So in the example of orbits I mentioned, the key assumption is that all the objects involved have mass and that the same force of gravity works in the same way in all those many situations. The best models then make new predictions about nature that can be tested with new experiments or observations. So for example, that same physics of gravity describing the motions of the planets can also enable you to deduce that there might be other planets you did not know about. That was how British astronomer John Couch Adams and the French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier independently discovered the planet Neptune in the 1840s, for example. Knowing about wobbles in the orbit of Uranus, they deduced that the gravitational influence of another planet was causing these wobbles. That’s how new planets orbiting about other stars are being discovered today.

A theoretical physicist is a specialist whose job it is to take the data about nature that experimenters gather and construct those “economical” models of the physics lying behind those data. The next step is then to generate new predictions from those models to guide the experimenters in carrying out new experiments. The cycle then continues again and again, and we learn more about nature at every step. So Adams and Leverrier actually did not look through a telescope and find Neptune. Instead, their predictions were tested by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle who found Neptune where the theorists said it should be. By the way, I should mention that some physicists actually do both theoretical and experimental work. It very much depends upon which field of physics they are working in as to whether this is really practically possible or not.

Encarta: How did you first become interested in physics?

Johnson: Actually, I’m not sure exactly how it happened. I was always interested in science since I was a very small child. Not just physics, but everything. So I did everything from looking at bugs and pond-water through magnifying glasses and (later) microscopes and drawing and collecting interesting leaves, etc., all the way to mixing up various household chemicals to see what would happen, and fixing appliances like radios (and later building them), all for fun. I didn't know at the time that there were different fields of science, or that there were theoreticians vs. experimenters, or scientists vs. engineers. I just liked doing it all.

Because I was always offering explanations for things, my nickname at school was The Professor, although they weren't intending to be complimentary, I think! One day as a child (I might have been about 9 or 10), a family friend asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said that I wanted to be a scientist. He then asked me what kind of scientist and this stumped me, as I did not know that there were different sorts. So I went and got the dictionary and went through it page by page finding all the “-ists” and “-ians” “-ologists”, and read the definitions. They all sounded good to me. But when I found the one for “physicist,” it said something really nonspecific like “studies how nature works” or something like that. So I went for that, since it seemed to allow me to keep my options open for a lot longer than any of the others. I still wanted to study everything, you see, and nature was everything, wasn’t it?

Encarta: In your article, you point out the observational evidence that first led astrophysicists to suspect the existence of dark matter. At the time this was a puzzling and interesting finding. Today scientists believe that if dark matter didn’t exist, then we wouldn’t exist. Can you explain what this means?

Johnson: Well, people have to be careful when they say that. What we can say with confidence is that if dark matter did not exist, we (or life as we know it) would not exist in anything like the form we know now. Maybe some other form of life would have formed, made of other stuff, and their scientists would be saying “It’s a good thing that there’s no hidden matter out there that we don’t know about, otherwise we wouldn’t exist.”

The point is that dark matter is really crucial not just for holding galaxies together, but also for their formation in the first place. The universe started out as very smooth and featureless. Tiny disturbances in this smoothness, starting out very early in the universe’s existence, eventually seeded the structure we see around us today by allowing matter to become clumped together in dense regions. These dense regions eventually became the places where stars were born, which is where all the heavy chemical elements from which we are made come from. Dark matter plays a crucial role in all this clumping. So without it, we may not have had stars, and so we would not have carbon, and oxygen, etc, and so we would not have us.

But like I said, maybe some sort of hydrogen-helium-lithium life forms might have evolved, sort of floating out there in the almost smooth featureless universe, and their scientists would have asked other questions.

Encarta: Some people say this is the ultimate Copernican revolution. Not only are we not at the center of the universe, the stuff we’re made of is only a small percentage of all the matter and energy in the universe. And now some of the work you’re pursuing entertains the possibility that our universe may be only one of many universes. How did we get to this point?

Johnson: Let me make it clear from the start that we don’t know if we are at that point yet. We’re very far from it, and the stuff about other universes is all wild speculation at this point, and will remain so most likely for a long time. We should be clear about that, since the other matters are firmly experimentally backed up.

We know that Copernicus was right: We are not the center of the universe. We are orbiting an average star in the suburbs of an average galaxy in an average galaxy cluster at a random point in the universe. We can check this all out with telescopes and other instruments. We also know that the stuff we are mostly made of--protons and neutrons--form only about 4 percent of the stuff the universe is made of. Another 23 percent--the rest of the matter--is there, but we’re just not made of it. We don’t know as much as we would like to about the remaining 73 percent, which we call dark energy, but we know for sure that it isn’t matter at all. We know about this breakdown of the contents of our universe because again, all our instruments and the science we’ve developed over centuries tell us that. We can really put it to the test.

Now some people in my field are talking about the possibility that maybe our universe is just one of many. This has nothing whatsoever to do with any experiments or observations that anyone has done—at least so far. There are some fun and interesting theories of physics that might allow for this possibility, and that’s nice. Theories like string theory which suggest that our universe has extra hidden dimensions (beyond the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time) seem to allow solutions where we have our four-dimensional universe right alongside one or more other four-dimensional universes which are separate from ours. We don’t see them because you’d have to move “sideways”--that is, along one of the hidden dimensions--in order to get there. Those universes might have properties that are somewhat similar to ours in the rough, but different in the details. Perhaps they did not have so much dark matter and so they did not form galaxies, stars, etc. Perhaps my hydrogen-helium-lithium creatures (from the previous question’s answer) live there.

It’s fun to imagine, but too early to say whether any of that has anything to do with science. For a start, we don’t really understand the theories well enough yet to know if solutions really exist or not. If we ever come to a point in science where our theories say that those universes really exist, then there would be testable predictions for the theory, and we could develop an experiment for it. The experiment would then tell us whether it’s true--whether the other universes are there or not, even if we can’t see them directly. We are a long way from that point.

However, let's not forget that less than 100 years ago, we thought that the Milky Way Galaxy was the entire universe! It was a big controversy as to whether the curious objects that could be seen in telescopes jects that could be seen in telescopes (“nebulae” they called them) were in our galaxy or outside it. This was not settled as a debate until more basic science was done, for example on Cepheid variable stars by American astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, and then more refined observations were made by American astronomer Edwin Hubble. I don’t think that there is anything out there (analogous to nebulae) that we’ve seen that is even hinting at there being other universes just yet, but maybe I’ll be shown to be wrong.

But anyway, it is an important part of being a theorist to play with ideas, no matter how outlandish, from time to time. That’s where the really good stuff that we can use for real science often comes from. But we must not forget that a lot of the playful stuff will always be exactly that--playful. We just can never know in advance what parts of it are useful and what aren’t.

Encarta: Several experiments are either underway or will soon be underway to detect some of the proposed dark matter candidates. Which of these experiments do you think are most likely to produce interesting results?

Johnson: I think that it has to be the collider (particle accelerator) experiments. We are quite sure that the bulk of dark matter is made of material that we have never detected before. Totally new stuff. Whenever you talk about new matter, new fundamental material, you should look to particle physics to characterize its properties, and that field proceeds by making the new things in the lab and studying their properties directly. All the signs are that there will be new physics of some kind or other--about the origin of mass, or the role (if any) of supersymmetry, or things we have not even thought of--showing up at the next big international collider experiment to switch on in a few years, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland.

Whenever we find new physics it usually has consequences beyond the context in which it is initially found. So that new physics is going to be new particles, perhaps, and those particles may have just the right properties to be relevant in cosmology, telling us about what stuff a lot of our universe is made of. Of course, it may not turn out to be so, but that’s my gut feeling about where progress on this matter will be made. It is an exciting time. Imagine being around when we, as a species, learn what as much as 85 percent of the matter in the entire universe is made of, and that we can make it in the lab!

Holiday Learning

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:02:13 GMT

Christmas means many things to many people. For some, it's one of the most important religious holidays of the year. For others, it's a time to get together with family and friends. For many children, it's all about Santa Claus and the gifts under the tree.

Yet, even as the word seems to be everywhere each December, there's not much discussion of the origins of Christmas. I was curious about the roots of this holiday, so I looked up Encarta's Christmas article, and I found it full of fascinating info.

The article was written by Penne Restad, a history lecturer at the University of Texas and the author of the book Christmas in America. It contains scads of details about both the history of Christmas and the different ways it is celebrated around the world. Among the revelations:

-Winter festivals and holidays go back centuries before Christmas came into being. For example, the ancient Romans had an annual December festival called Saturnalia, during which they "feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves." Check out the Roman Mythology article for more on this and other Roman traditions.

-For Christians, Christmas is the time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. However, the Biblical accounts of Jesus' birth don't actually give the date, and some scholars believe that Christian leaders chose December because it was already considered a time of celebration.

-The American Santa Claus tradition probably originated with Dutch immigrants, who brought their Christmas stories of Sinter Klaas with them to the United States. Although how we went from the Dutch figure of "a tall, dignified, religious figure riding a white horse through the air" to a chubby guy in a red suit is kind of a mystery. Read our article for more details.

-Some of the winter holiday traditions in other parts of the world are great fun to learn about. For example, did you know that:

*in Russia, the Santa Claus-like figure is known as Dyed Moroz (Grandfather Frost)?

*in Italy, a witch named La Befana delivers presents to children?

*many Australians and New Zealanders celebrate Christmas with picnics on the beach? (Remember, December falls in the summertime Down Under.)

*in England, the day after Christmas is a national holiday called Boxing Day? No, the day is not dedicated to disposing with all those leftover cardboard boxes, like I once thought. It comes from an old tradition of giving gifts to servants and tradespeople.

These details just scratch the surface of Encarta's treatment of Christmas history and multicultural twists, not to mention our articles on other winter holidays such Hanukkah and Kwanzaa (both of which were written by authorities in their fields). I hope readers get a chance to check these out, but most of all, I hope everyone has a happy holiday season.

-David Hirning, Encarta Reference Editor

Giving Thanks for Adoption

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 01:26:50 GMT

We all know that November is famous for Thanksgiving Day and the start of the festive "holiday rush." But many people probably don't know about another federally recognized celebration held the same month: National Adoption Day. It's appropriate that the two fall so close together, since adoption is indeed something for which many Americans give thanks, along with millions of others around the world.

The traditional American celebration of Thanksgiving is believed to have started in 1621 in Plymouth Colony (now part of Massachusetts). In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Interestingly, National Adoption Day also began in Massachusetts. In 1976, then-Governor Michael Dukakis proclaimed Adoption Week to promote awareness of the many children in foster care awaiting permanent, loving homes. Other states soon followed, and later that year, President Gerald Ford announced National Adoption Week. In 1990 the week was extended to the full month of November, which is dedicated to celebrating adoption as a positive way of building a family.

Events during National Adoption Month include adoption expos, where prospective adoptive parents can gather information; festivities at adoption agencies; and private family celebrations. One Saturday of the month is designated as National Adoption Day. This year, National Adoption Day was celebrated on November 19th; on that date, more than 3,000 adoptions were finalized in courthouses across the United States.

Adoption affects more lives than you might think. According to Adam Pertman, adoptive father and author of the book Adoption Nation, six out of ten Americans report having a personal experience with adoption, whether through a family member, a friend, a co-worker, or a neighbor. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, as of 2000, 2.5% of children under the age of 18 were adopted.

Many famous people were either adopted as children or are adoptive parents. Apple Computer co-founder Steven Jobs, singer Sarah McLachlan, and Wendy’s restaurants entrepreneur Dave Thomas were all adopted as children. Thomas went on to create the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a charity dedicated to promoting adoption of the nation’s 150,000 foster children. Well-known adoptive parents include President Andrew Jackson, comic Bob Hope, U.S. senator John McCain, and writer Erma Bombeck.

For me, Adoption Month is a time to celebrate the joy my adopted daughter has brought to our family for the past six-and-a-half years. I am also extremely thankful for the selfless love that led my daughter’s birth mother to make an adoption plan for her child. That's something worth celebrating every day.

-Kathryn Shield, Encarta editor

Encarta: Why Ask Why?

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:19:50 GMT

Hey, Encarta Blog Pals. The topic for today is: Who are you, and why are you here?

I don’t mean that in an Existentialist sort of way. Let’s face it, human beings have been asking themselves those questions since the very beginning, and nobody has come up with a rock-solid answer yet. Maybe, as the bumper sticker says, you’re here just to serve as a warning to others. But I digress.

No, what I mean is, why are you an Encarta user? What do you like about our product? What don’t you like about it? What would you like to see us do differently?

To paraphrase the airlines, we know you have a lot of choices in where you get your information, and we thank you for choosing us. We want to keep you coming back. So, we want you to share your thoughts with us.

First of all, the who. Are you a student? A teacher? A seeker of knowledge? Someone avoiding the laundry and dirty dishes?

Even more importantly, why do you use Encarta? Is it our articles, which you know have passed through a professional editorial process (fact-checking, editing, proofreading) and which in many cases have been written by experts in their fields? Our groovy multimedia features? This witty-yet-informative blog?

As we plan for the future and strive to make Encarta even better, we want (no, we NEED) input from you. Your opinions matter greatly to us; after all, without you, we wouldn’t be here.

Leave a comment below, or send me some e-mail. Because we’d really like to know.

David H.
Encarta Reference Editor

White Sox Win!

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:05:41 GMT

Well, I just thought I should note that yes, indeed, the Chicago White Sox are the 2005 World Series champions. They were clearly the best team in baseball this year, with an emphasis on the word "team." You can't argue with their 11-1 postseason record, nor with their "new hero every night" approach. Their pitching also came up huge. It was great watching (ex-Mariner) Freddy Garcia shut down the Houston Astros last night. A 1-0 clinching game--baseball purists everywhere no doubt loved it.

I'd also like to give some props, while I'm thinking of it, to the Astros for at least getting there. I'm glad players like Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell (the Killer Bs!) finally made it to the Series after such long, distinguished careers. At least they can say they got on the stage. Many great players can't claim that distinction (hello, Mr. Ernie Banks).

Finally, we can all quit hearing about the Black Sox scandal and the fact that no Chicago team has won a World Series since ... well, since dinosaurs walked the streets of the Windy City.

The Red Sox did it last year, and the other Sox took care of business this year... it's a feel-good story for the whole family. Now, how about the Cubs in 2006? It's time.

- David H. (long-suffering Mariners fan since 1977)

World Series - Historic Home Run

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 21:47:10 GMT

Well, it happened.

As I wrote in my previous blog entry, there's always something worth watching for in the World Series. Sunday night, we saw another dramatic moment that will go down in Series lore.

Game Two. Bottom of the ninth. Tie ball game: Astros 6, White Sox 6. The tension is thick in the air.

Already there had been dramatics--White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko's seventh-inning grand slam had erased a 4-2 deficit and sent the Comiskey Park crowd into a frenzy. Then, with the Astros down to their final out in the top of the ninth, Houston's Jose Vizcaino hit a two-run single to tie it up.

On comes hard-throwing 'Stros closer Brad Lidge for the bottom of the ninth. With one out, up comes light-hitting Chicago leftfielder Scott Podsednik. I was listening to the game in the car, and I had a slight premonition: "What if he hits it out?" Then, I thought, Nah, he's not a home run hitter. I didn't realize how true that was: Podsednik hadn't hit a home run all season (although he did hit one in the American League divisional series, strangely enough).

So I turn off the game and walk into the house. Snap on the TV. Hey, what's this--it's already over?

Yep. Of course, Podsednik hit out. Just the 14^th game-ending home run in World Series history--and I missed it. Typical. Seeing replays is just not the same thing. There's no drama in that. (I missed the Konerko and Vizcaino moments too because I had to go to the store--I just can't win!)

Did I mention that Podsednik was once released by my team, the Seattle Mariners? Also typical.

Oh well. Here's hoping the 'Stros can make a good series of it. I'm not rooting for either team--I just want more dramatics.

David H.

A Rite of October: The World Series

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 22:39:25 GMT

Ah, fall. The leaves change color, the air turns crisp, Halloween decorations appear (by mid-September in most stores), and the baseball postseason enthralls sports fans everywhere. You gotta love the World Series.

OK, admittedly not everyone cares about the Fall Classic. Maybe a majority of sports fans have moved on to football or hockey by now. But for traditionalists, there is nothing like the World Series. And this year we have a refreshing change: one team that hasn't appeared in baseball's annual showcase since before John F. Kennedy was in the White House, and another that is appearing there for the first time. It's time for a new champion.

For the American League, we have the Chicago White Sox, a franchise that last went to the Series in 1959 (when they fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games). The Sox haven't won a title since 1917, just two years before the infamous "Black Sox" scandal, when key members of the team were paid by gamblers to lose the Series. Perhaps that dark incident cursed the White Sox for all eternity … or maybe just until this year.

Representing the Senior Circuit (that's the National League, for those of you who aren't baseball geeks) are the Houston Astros, a franchise that has never been to the World Series before. To be fair, the Astros didn't even exist in 1959, let alone in 1917. They entered baseball in 1962 as the Colt .45s (a pro team named after a handgun--now there's something you don't see anymore). So it only took Houston 43 years (44 seasons, if you want to be picky about it) to reach the World Series; on the other hand, the Florida Marlins have won the World Series twice in their 13 years of existence. Go figure.

For me, the coolest thing about the World Series is that every game, every pitch, every at-bat could produce a historic memory that fans will still be talking about decades later. Here are a few big ones in my mind:

● 2004: The Boston Red Sox (team nickname: The Idiots) end 86 years of futility and win the Series, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals. This after coming back from a three-games-to-none deficit against their arch-rival, the New York Yankees, in the playoffs)

● 1988: An injured Kirk Gibson of the Dodgers limps to the plate in the ninth inning of the opening game of the World Series and blasts a two-out, pinch-hit home run to beat the Oakland Athletics. The Dodgers go on to upset the heavily favored As in five games. Talk about drama.

● 1977: Yankees star Reggie Jackson (nickname: "Mr. October") slams three home runs in three straight at-bats (all on the first pitch) against Los Angeles in the clinching game of the Series. I was a big Dodgers fan at the time, and it still hurts to think about this horrible event.

● 1956: New York pitcher Don Larsen hurls a perfect game--27 batters up, 27 batters down--in the fifth game of the Fall Classic. Larsen is still the only pitcher to accomplish this amazing feat in baseball's postseason. (If it seems like the Yankees are involved in a lot of great October moments, it's probably because the franchise has won 26 championships, which is nearly three times the number of titles captured by any other team.)

Maybe this year's match-up will produce a historic memory or two. At least we know it will crown a champion that we haven't seen celebrate a title in a loooooong time, if ever. And that's a good thing for baseball, its fans, and especially the two cities involved. With all the devastating hurricanes that have hit the region this fall, there's no doubt that the city of Houston and the surrounding region needs a pleasant distraction and a little good news.

For sports fans, it comes down to this: No matter who you root for or where you live, you gotta love the World Series.

David H., Encarta reference editor--who asks that no one bring up the Seattle Mariners' miserable 2005 season or their utter lack of World Series appearances. Please.

How Online Learning Changed My Life

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 21:36:47 GMT

By Kathryn Shield

The Seattle Times recently ran an article about a woman who went back to college two decades after her original class had graduated. The accompanying picture showed a 40-something woman wearing a T-shirt with the wry slogan “Older Than U.”

Well, she sure didn’t look older than me, but I knew where she was coming from. I, too, am a middle-aged student who took a long break between college stints. But if I wore an “Older Than U” T-shirt to class none of the other students would even see it, because I’m getting my master's degree online.

Some people might think that online distance education is an easy way to get a quickie degree without all the hard work. Some people would be wrong. Take it from me, an online degree program is just as challenging as getting a degree from a brick-and-mortar university. To demystify what it's like, I thought I'd share my story.

First, a quick bio: I’m a single mom with a demanding full-time job. I got my B.A. from Yale University about 25 years ago (when dinosaurs still walked the Earth). Yale’s a mighty good school, so I was pretty sure I had all the education I needed in life–and I did, up until now.

A little over a year ago I started feeling like I needed a new challenge. I wanted to move on to more interesting projects at work, and in my department here at Microsoft, that means helping create groundbreaking new products for students and teachers (such as Microsoft Student 2006). How could I show my managers that I was ready to take an important role in this initiative? Well, how about if I went out and got my M.A. in education? Bingo!

First I tracked down catalogs from local colleges and universities. There were some good programs to choose from, but they all required attending class on campus–not easy to do while holding down a full-time day job. Some offered evening classes, but there were still many disadvantages to this option, such as having to pay a babysitter, drive to the school, park, etc. It would also mean spending a lot less time with my young daughter. Sorry, not happening.

So I started looking into online universities. Now, I admit it, I started this venture as something of an Ivy League-degree-holding snob when it came to education. Getting a degree online seemed a bit like buying a strength training course from the back of a comic book. How legit could it be? (See the article "Are Online Degrees Real?")

It was the convenience factor that finally won me over. Just think: I could go online and attend class while my little girl slept in the other room. I could wear pajamas and bunny slippers "in class." I could study anytime, anywhere (coffee shop with Wi-Fi + laptop = classroom). With some accelerated programs, such as the M.Ed. program offered by AIU Online, I could even get my degree in less than a year if I chose to. What's not to like?

I’m now three-quarters of the way through the master's program at AIU, and I admit that my snobbery about online degrees was totally misplaced. This program is the real deal, and it takes true dedication to get through it. If you want to do well, you need to devote 12 to 20 hours a week to your schoolwork. For me, that has meant saying goodbye to spare time, folded laundry, and a weeded garden, and hello to chronic sleep deprivation.

Is it worth it? Oh, yes! Originally, I thought of going back to school as just an investment in my career. Of course, career advancement is a big part of it, but I’ve gained much more than that. My mind has been opened to a world of information and ideas. I’ve rediscovered the joy of learning.

I’ve also found out what I’m made of. Getting any kind of college degree, especially when you’ve already got a busy job and a family, takes work, time, effort, and the stubbornness to keep going when part of you just wants to quit. It’s tiring. It’s mentally consuming. And it’s the best darn decision I’ve made in years.

There's only one question left for me to deal with: After I graduate, what am I going to do with all that spare time? J

Kathryn Shield is an editor in Microsoft's Education Product Group (which includes Encarta Encyclopedia).

For more information about online education, see eLearning: Online Degrees. A helpful FAQ on the topic is found in the article "How Distance Learning Works." To see how employers view online degrees, check out "Who Would Hire an Online Grad?"

August Wilson, R.I.P.

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 00:44:26 GMT

I lost one of my heroes this past weekend. American playwright August Wilson has died at age 60, much too young, much too soon. In his obituary the New York Times described Wilson as a writer "who chronicled the African-American experience in the 20th century in a series of plays that will stand as a landmark in the history of black culture."

I first discovered Wilson in college through a class on modern drama. Along with famous works by the usual suspects (Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller), the course included Wilson's play Fences, which I had never heard of. But I was struck by its power and language. I'd never read anything like it, and I became an immediate fan of the writer.

(To read Encarta's article on Wilson you have to be a member of Encarta Premium or get a free pass by accessing the article through MSN Search.)

Several years later, I was back living in my native Seattle when I read that Wilson was doing a reading in a local bookstore. Not only that, it turned out he now lived in the Seattle neighborhood where I grew up. How cool. Unfortunately, I was out of town that weekend, but I got my parents to take my copy of Fences to the store and have Wilson sign it.

Flash forward another few years, and I had become an editor here at Encarta. Another editor had recruited Wilson to come out to the Microsoft campus to read a clip from his work for Encarta. She enlisted me to help pick out the passage and promised to e-mail me when they were heading over to meet him at the sound studios. (To hear this sound clip if you don't have a Premium subscription, go to MSN Search, type in "August Wilson Fences," and hit the Encarta label.)

Of course, my e-mail happened to be broken that morning and I missed the event completely. I was crushed.

Nevertheless, I remained vigilant. I figured I'd catch up to him sooner or later. I went out and saw two of his plays, but I skipped a one-man show he did two years ago. I can't remember why—too many other things going on at the time, I suppose. Maybe I felt it was too expensive. If only I had known….

Finally, at another Seattle signing, I finally got the chance to meet my hero. When I offered him my copy of his play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom to sign, he asked, "Now, why did you pick that play?" I was so nervous that it was all I could do to mumble something about being a big fan of blues music. (The play is about a 1920s blues singer.) This seemed to satisfy—and maybe even amuse—the man, and he signed my play.

Of course, I somehow ended up losing the book during a move. Unbelievable. I was crushed again.

But this is the real crusher. I never really got to tell him how much his work means to me. How true it rings. How it so beautifully captures the incredible trials that black people dealt with over the last hundred years, many of which they still struggle with today.

Just before his death, Wilson completed Radio Golf, the final installment in his ambitious ten-play cycle depicting the African American experience during the 20^th century. There is a play for each decade, nearly all of them taking place in The Hill, a poor neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Wilson grew up. These plays are his legacy, and I would highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys good literature. Each one is a historical snapshot, an earnest examination of race in America, and a vivid reminder that human beings all grapple with the same eternal problems and questions about life.

Thanks, August. Your work lives on.

David H., Encarta reference editor

Is There a Doctor in Encarta's House?

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:31:48 GMT

As I've mentioned on this space before, we get a lot of fascinating comments through our Encarta Feedback program. Some readers are very specific—to the point of asking us direct questions and providing an e-mail address for a response.

Unfortunately, that's not what our Feedback feature was designed to do. We want our users to give us input when they find Encarta content that is out-of-date, inaccurate, confusing, or just plain missing. This helps us shape our editorial program, giving us insight into what users are looking for and what we need to fix. It also helps if people who know something about a topic can provide information and/or editing (which we then review and fact-check before posting).

We didn't instigate the program to answer individual users' questions, however. We just don't have the time and the staff to do that. I say "unfortunately" above, because many of the questions are quite serious and even heartbreaking. (Although, of course, there are many queries from users who just want us to directly answer a homework question!)

Many of the questions and comments we receive are medical in nature. Our users want specific information, as these actual pieces of feedback illustrate:

- "Can you have herpes and never get blisters?"

- "Is neuritis like a lump and is it able to be removed?"

- "I'm having great difficulty finding specifics on HRT in surgical menopause, or for how long (or to what age) should a woman continue treatment?"

Some are even more desperate, with the user describing ongoing health problems and struggles. One reader even left a comment on the Opium article recounting his or her long-term drug addiction, which was compounded by a motorcycle accident that resulted in a chronic back injury. It's not easy stuff to read.

While our articles may answer some readers' health questions, they are designed to be a general reference. We aren't doctors, nor do we have anyone with medical experience on our staff. Even if we had the time, we wouldn't want to offer health advice!

Obviously, the best person to ask is your doctor. Heck, ask someone else's doctor. Ask a doctor on the street if you must! There is also a lot of medical information out there on various Web sites. You might try MSN's Health and Fitness site (Encarta's partner, obviously) or a site like WebMD. You can do an MSN Search on a specific illness or condition to find more targeted information. Hopefully there's a site out there that can answer your question.

Meanwhile, let us know if there's a health- or human body-related article in Encarta that could use some improving or fixing. But please don't ask us for arthritis remedies, because we're just editors here--we can't even remember if it's "starve a cold, feed a fever" or the other way around!

Again, thanks for reading and contributing to Encarta.

David H., Encarta reference editor

(Comments or suggestions regarding this blog? E-mail me. Just please put "Blog" in the subject line.)

It's in the Stars

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 23:47:58 GMT

I enjoy reading what our users have to say through our Encarta Feedback program, which we launched earlier this year. We get submissions from readers all over the world, such as a few that I saw today from readers in Kenya and Pakistan. It's very interesting what subjects people like to look up and then comment on--it's almost like a one-way IM chat.

One subject that pops up relatively frequently is astrology. Encarta users apparently like to read about the astrological signs of the Zodiac, perhaps to see what they can tell us about an individual's personality. Encarta obliges with articles on all 12 signs, from the first (Aries) to the 12th (Pisces). Here are some of the things our readers have had to say about these articles:

-"Hi, I'm a Leo. Just wanted to say that I love what you had to write on here about Leos. After reading this article I understand a lil bit more as to why I'm the way I am."

-"What kind of love relationship do Virgos have and which sign is the best compatible for Virgos?" [Maybe another user could provide some insight, as they wrote: "I have been married to a Virgo for 37 years. You have hit the nail on the head. You gotta ovem'em." I'm not quite sure what that last part means, though….]

-"Hey I think it is so cool that you have history on the Zodiac but hey if you have info on figure skating then that's soooooo cool!" [This was a comment on the Gemini article—hey, maybe Geminis like ice skating?]

Is there really something to this? Encarta's article says that "Scientists have long rejected the principles of astrology, but millions of people continue to believe in or practice it." I suppose this must reflect humanity's ongoing spiritual quest to discover the meaning of life. Or maybe it's just for fun.

I'm a Cancer, which I've always thought was an unfortunate name (considering the other meaning of the term). Encarta's article on this sign says, among other things, that "astrologers believe typical Cancerians can have difficulty being objective, and are easily crushed by criticism. They also say that Cancerians worry too much." Hmm… could be, could be.

It also says that Cancers are good at "writing or other jobs that require imagination." So I guess I can stop worrying about whether I've chosen the right profession. Just don't criticize me, please. J

- David H., Encarta reference editor

(Suggestions for what to cover on this blog? E-mail me. Just please put "Blog" in the subject line.)