January 3, 2000

On a late Friday afternoon in December, when most Silicon Valley executives were heading to their Napa Valley estates for the weekend, Vinod Khosla was tucked away in his office in Menlo Park, Calif., talking about God. As an 11-year-old growing up in his native India, he says, he came to believe that organized religion was just a centuries-old form of social control; a fear of God was the only way to make an unruly population behave.

Gov. George E. Pataki announced yesterday that he would propose establishing a 500-employee research institute to study the Hudson River, an initiative that several environmental leaders said could represent a milestone in the decades-long struggle to restore the river. The governor said that the center, to be called the Henry Hudson Institute for Riverine and Estuarine Research and Education, would be modeled after the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts.

Been cutting corners on your income tax return? Claiming more in charitable deductions than you gave away? Understating income from your business? By the middle of the decade, it will probably be much tougher to shortchange Uncle Sam, or state tax agencies, for that matter, than it is today.

THERE is something about being around so many winners that makes people want to make ever bigger bets. So after a year when the only thing flying higher than Internet stocks was the price of the television ads that the start-up companies bought with their stock money, people and companies in the media and technology industries are feeling lucky. And many are now prepared to bet their fortunes -- or at least test their skills as visionaries -- that they can find success in something the rest of us may not yet be able to see.

DOCTORS and scientists are thrilled with New York's new tax on cigarettes, and with good reason. Once the higher tax kicks in, cigarettes in New York will be more expensive than anywhere else in the country. The price will inevitably turn some smokers into nonsmokers and deter many young people from ever picking up one of those noxious weeds. But the medical community and lawmakers who approved the new tax aren't the only ones cheering.