The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 51

INSIDE SECTION Orlando mm Ed Hayes plumbs the depths of having handy neighbors, E5 Ticked Off! E2 Television E4 Dave BARRY HUMOR SECTION FRIDAY APRIL 27, 2001 hri In is all that matters stations i drop anchor One popular news anchor has been axed; another's fate is uncertain. Viewers ask: What's going on? Recognize these faces? By NANCY IMPERIALS WELL0NS and HAL B0EDEKER OF THE SENTINEL STAFF For the ultimate in "reality TV," Central Florida viewers haven't needed Survivor, Boot Camp or Temptation Island. They can just watch local news, where some top anchors have been treated like contestants on Weakest Link. First WESH-Channel 2 said goodbye lift 1 to news anchor John O'Connor. Then David Wittman of WKMG-Channel 6 learned he might be dumped.

Certainly, Central Florida has bid farewell to TV personnel before. But the news about Wittman and O'Connor who have a daunting 5 1 years of experience combined has left many viewers aghast. They wonder how longtime, respected newscasters could be given the boot. "What in the world is going on?" said Charles Bowen, 84, of Winter Park, echoing many perplexed viewers. "You watch these guys every night, and they become your friends.

You get used to them, I can't understand what the problem is." But Bowen's world is fast disappearing as newscasts scramble, competing not only for smaller and smaller slices of a shrinking audience, but to attract the news-shunning younger viewers desired by advertisers. The stability longed for by older, loyal news viewers such as Bowen can be a casualty. "Viewers think of the anchors like a family, like Gunsmofee: Matt, Kitty, Festus, Doc, a little family," said former WESH-Channel 2 anchor Robin Chapman. "But it's as much an illusion on a news set as it was on Gunsmofee. It's a business." Chapman, who worked at WESH from 1989 to 1994, talked about the pain of being demoted from a main anchor to a weekend anchor.

"I know how David feels. It hurts. I know he will go on to do something terrific. But I knew that about myself, and it still set me back." please see ANCHORS, E3 i President Bush says our schools need to do a better job of teaching mathematics, and I agree with him 150 percent. Many high school students today can't even calculate a square root! Granted, I can't calculate a square root either, but I used to be able to, for about 15 minutes back in 1962.

At least I think that was a square root. It might have been a logarithm. But whatever it was, if I had to learn how to do it, these kids today should have to learn it too. As President Bush so eloquently put it in his address to Congress: "Mathematics are one of the fundamentaries of educationa-lizing our youths." I could not have said it better with a 10-foot pole. We all need mathematics in order to solve problems that come up constantly in the "real world." For example, suppose four co-workers go to a restaurant, and at the end of the meal, the waiter brings a bill totaling $34.57.

How much, including tip, does each person owe? If the co-workers do not know mathematics, they will just guess at the answer and put in random amounts of money ranging from $9 to $11, unless one of them is a guy I used to work with named Art, in which case he will make a big show of studying the bill, then put in exactly $4.25. But if the co-workers know their mathematics, they can easily come up with exactly the correct answer. They can do this using algebra, which was invented by the ancient Persians. (They also invented the SATs, although they got very low scores because in those days there were no pencils.) The way algebra works is, if you don't know exactly what a number is, you just call it X. But getting back to the four co-workers at the restaurant: To figure out how much each person owes, they would simply use the algebraic equation where AEPO is the amount each person owes, is the tip, SA is whether the waiter has a snotty attitude, NSOB is whether the waiter has a nice set of buns, SITE is a variable used if you think somebody in the kitchen is spitting in the entrees, and is hydrogen.

Using this equation, our four co-workers can easily calculate that each one owes exactly, let's see carry the 7 OK, it would probably be somewhere between $9 and $11. So we see that algebra is a vi: tal tool for our young people to learn. The traditional method for teaching it, of course, is to require students to solve problems developed in 1928 by the American Association of Mathematics Teachers Obsessed With Fruit. For example: "If Billy has twice as many apples as Bobby, and Sally has seven more apples than Chester, who has one apple in each hand plus one concealed in his knickers, then how many apples does Ned have, assuming that his train leaves Chicago at noon?" The problem is that these traditional algebra problems are out of date. Today's young people are dealing with issues such as violence, drugs, sex, eating disorders, stress, low self-esteem, acne, global wanning and the demise of Napster.

They don't have time to figure out how many apples Ned has. If they need to know, they will simply ask Ned, and if hef doesn't want to tell them, they will hold him upside down over the toilet until he does. So what is the solution? How do we balance our children's need to learn math against the many other demands placed on them by modern life? I believe there is a simple, practical solu Leslye Gale (from top), Steve Rondina-ro and Robin Chapman were once familiar news personalities in Central Florida. Find out what they and other former TV anchors are doing, E3. if Is, A changing scene.

John O'Connor (top, with Wendy Chioji) was yanked off the air at WESH. David Wittman's days atWKMG (center) may be numbered. WFTV boasts the familiar faces of Maria Weech and Bob Opsahl. ILLUSTRATION BY INGRID PECCAORLANLX) SENTINEL; PHOTOS FROM SENTINEL ARCHIVES "There are only so many vases and gravy boats that you can have," Winter Park senior proves best at Bard ROBERT MCC0UUM Registries catch on as honeymoon boon It A There are only so many vases and gravy boats that you can have," said Robert McCollum, 29, who was among the first to sign up with honeymoon registry company Afterido (www.afterido.com) when he got married in October 1999. "It was a By CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN BALTIMORE SUN During their 10-day honeymoon in Italy, Robert and Kristin McCollum enjoyed romantic gondola rides in Venice, relaxed near scenic Lake Maggiore and blew hun By LESLIE DOOLITTLE OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Katey Parker, a 17-year-old who didn't even win Winter Park High School's Shakespeare contest last year, stood on a Lincoln Center stage this week and became the first Floridi-an to win the prestigious national competition.

"I was about to cry. I didn't even expect to make the finals," said the senior, who beat contenders from 57 cities Monday in New York. This year, the English Speaking Union's annual competition involved 14,000 participants. Katey performed a monologue from Troilus and Cressida, Sonnet No. 66 and a "cold reading" from Love's Labour's Lost.

The saxophone-playing former drum major said she wasn't nervous because she had been onstage with The Young Company of the Or lando-UCF Shakespeare Festival since the summer be- PLEASE see PARKER, E2 great idea because if we didn't do it, we probably would have stayed in Venice, gone for a shorter amount of time and it would've been bread and cheese every day, as opposed to going out to dinner at nice They offer items such as romantic dinners and day-trips. dreds of dollars on beautiful glassware from the famed island of Murano. The Dallas couple had no worries about the honeymoon indulgences burning away their savings. In fact, the McCollums didn't even pay for the trip their tion. I call it X.

1 Call them crass or practical, but honeymoon registries are the latest hot trend in the wedding industry. They work like traditional please see HONEYMOON, E2 family and friends did, using a honeymoon registry that allowed them to buy items such as gondola rides, cappuccinos and hotel stays for the Daw Barrs column is distributed by Tribune Media Services. Write to him in tare of the Orlando Sentinel, P.O. Box 211, Orlando, FL 32801-0211. JOHN RAOUX.ORUNIX) SENTINEL Labour not lost Katey Parker won the Shakespeare contest at Lincoln Center..