The Week - President Bush's State of the Union speech - this and other events are discussed

-- One long thread running through the modern history of the English- speaking nations has been the attempt to civilize the sport of boxing. The desire of some men to punch each other in the face until one of them falls down, and the desire of many more men (and a few women) to watch them doing it, is apparently ineradicable in our culture. We can hope only to regularize and socialize it. Efforts in this direction have been underway since the English prizefighter Jack Broughton introduced the first rules for the sport in 1743 -- an act that so endeared him to his countrymen, they buried him in Westminster Abbey. Alas, boxers are, in the nature of things, a rough crowd. There have been many whom no amount of success, wealth, and social prominence could draw into the ranks of civilized humanity. Such a one is Mike Tyson, who at a press conference in late January assaulted and bit champion Lennox Lewis, then emitted a string of shouted profanities when disengaged. Tyson, a convicted rapist, has a long record of erratic behavior both in and out of the ring. The decision by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, denying him a license to fight in that state, is good news for boxing fans, for the noble ideal of sporting pugilism, and for those of us who believe that young Americans can never have too many restrained, gentlemanly role models to emulate, or too few of the other kind.

n In the largest effort of its kind to date, an international team of astronomers has conducted a survey of the light emitted by over 200,000 galaxies. Their conclusion: The universe, taken all in all, is a rather fetching shade of pale greenish turquoise. Though there are no green stars, the astronomers explain, the large number of old, red stars and young, blue stars combine to give the overall green effect. Why wouldn't the red and the blue make purple? Hey, they're the scientists, we just report this stuff.

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