hihi, all - there is also a short article on the same story in the economist for this week, but it is not nearly as good, and, surprisingly to me, it has several misleading phrases about the problem and its significance i also was impressed with the new yorker article, but mostly in how much they emphasized the conflicts instead of the cooperation (well, it seemed that way to me) i did nto study this area very much in school, but my favorite topology books were general topology (i think) by sze-tsen hu, and algebraci topology by spanier (the densest book i can remember successfulyl reading, ever) more later, cal