On January 3 The New York Times ran a front-page story citing research conducted by L. Sandy Maisel, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government. The story concerned the reluctance of candidates to run against Congressional incumbents because of the money they have to raise and the separation from family and friends. Maisel said : "I think the cumulative effect of those deterrents is that high-quality candidates for one reason or another opt out." In the same article Stuart Rothenberg '70, a Congressional analyst, offered a different perspective. "You give me a recession, a grid-locked Congress and a war, and I'll show you candidates coming out of the woodwork to run," Rothenberg said.

On January 30 the Dallas Morning News published an essay, "It's easy to remain ignorant," by Colby Echo editor Matt Apuzzo '00. After reporting that two out of five high school seniors he interviewed thought Nelson Mandela was a singer, Apuzzo wrote: "I find the overall apathy of today's youths frightening."

The February GPS World magazine explains how time is synchronized on the Internet using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data, and it lists 13 big universities and Colby College as hubs in the U.S. Network Time Protocol (NTP) system. Colby's NTP server, which resides in the basement of Lovejoy, can be consulted at http://www.colby.edu/info.tech/time/. Be aware that from a remote location (California, say), computers consulting Colby's time server could be up to two hundredths of a second off.

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