Chicago Newspaper Theater Critics of the Early 20th Century

In the early years of the twentieth century, when live theater dominated the entertainment world and print media led public discourse, each without competition from electronic forms, the daily newspaper theater critic mediated ideas and values quite differently than today’s critics, whose main function has been reduced to that of a consumer guide. This article examines the corps of theater critics who served ten Chicago newspapers about 100 years ago. At a time when news editors were reluctant to cover new ideas and social movements, such as the push for women’s suffrage, theater critics were encountering radical new social ideas from European playwrights. Whether they approved or disapproved—and they did both, vehemently—their open debate with each other provided a level of public conversation of incalculable value in their own time, and largely missing today

Observational Constraints on Trojans of Transiting Extrasolar Planets

Theoretical studies predict that Trojans are likely a frequent byproduct of planet formation and evolution. We present a novel method of detecting Trojan companions to transiting extrasolar planets which involves comparing the time of central eclipse with the time of the stellar reflex velocity null. We demonstrate that this method offers the potential to detect terrestrial-mass Trojans using existing ground-based observatories. This method rules out Trojan companions to HD 209458b and HD 149026b more massive than ~13 Earth masses and \~25 Earth masses at a 99.9% confidence level. Such a Trojan would be dynamically stable, would not yet have been detected by photometric or spectroscopic monitoring, and would be unrecognizable from radial velocity observations alone. We outline the future prospects for this method, and show that the detection of a "Hot Trojan" of any mass would place a significant constraint on theories of orbital migration.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, accepted to ApJL. Added references, new transiting planets to table; minor correction

A letter to the editor

The goal of this letter is to point out that the fastest way to weaken any society and its business model, including the IEEE and its reader-pays stance, is to lose your professional integrity

Newspaper Critic Shapes Chicago Style of Theater

This study of coverage of the local theater scene from 1975–85 in three Chicago dailies found that one critic, Richard Christiansen, had the strongest influence on the development of the Chicago Style that flourished in the off-Loop theaters. </jats:p

The engineers that time forgot

You and I, dear reader of IEEE Microwave Magazine, are set to become more valuable day by day. Let me see if I can paint a picture of why