[act-ma] Energy (and Other) Events - November 5, 2017
gmoke
gmoke at world.std.com
Sun Nov 5 08:59:07 PST 2017
Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater
Boston area that catch the editor's eye.
Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.
If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke at world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html
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Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index
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Index
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Monday, November 6 - Tuesday, November 7
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The Agriculture, Nutrition, Health, and the Environment in Africa conference
MIT Water Summit: Water & Food Nexus
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Monday, November 6
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8am Striving for Zero Waste at Colleges & Universities
9:30am Coordination through dialogue: applications in human-robot teaming
10am Socially-mediated visibility in authoritarianism
11am We got this? Mutual aid in post-Hurricane Puerto Rico
12pm PAOC Colloquium: Mixed-phase clouds and climate – a close and complicated relationship
12pm Fighting for Access to Justice in the Halls of Congress: Reps. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) & Susan W. Brooks (R-IN) on Civil Legal Aid
12pm Malkit Shoshan, “Border Ecologies”
12:10pm Digital Farming: Exploring the Intersection of Computation, Biology, and Photography at the MIT Media Lab
12:15pm Privacy Default(s) by Design? Personal Data in Cybersecurity Information Sharing
12:30pm On a World Climate Assembly and the Social Cost of Carbon
12:30pm Affordable Housing & Modernist Architecture
12:30pm Conversations on Environmental Justice: Pedagogy and Practice
1pm Deep Dive: Smart Cities: A New Language and a New Vision
3:30pm Andrew Ng: AI is the New Electricity
4pm Fantastic Feathers: Form and Function
4pm Why is Housing So Expensive?!
5:30pm Stephen Wolfram, in Conversation with Howard Gardner: What Is the Best Education in Mathematical Thinking for the 21st Century?
6pm MIT Solve: Student Challenge Design Workshop!
6:15pm City Planning and Urban Affairs Guest Speaker: Dr. Richard Tabors, Executive Vice-President, New Grid
7pm An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice
7pm The Future of Nature: What is the Future of Science?
7pm Is political correctness why Trump won?
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Tuesday, November 7
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8am Microgrid 2017 Conference Student Program
11:45am Reimagining Sustainability at AB InBev: Chief Procurement & Sustainability Officer Tony Milikin
12pm Alexandra Petri – Satire and Comedy in the Age of Trump
12pm Understanding Political Polarization in the US
12pm What should the course catalog look like in the 21st century? Leveraging data and design for course selection and discovery
12pm Fixing Our Broken Sleep
2pm Computational Ecosystems: Tech-enabled Communities to Advance Human Values at Scale
3pm Marvin Kalb
4pm The Migrant Passage: Survival Plays and Clandestine Journeys from Central America
5:30pm Built Positive Greenbuild Reception
5:30pm Launch Smart Clinic – Digital Health
6pm Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
6pm The Future Impact of Autonomous Vehicles in Boston that No One Is Talking About
6pm Mens et Manus America: Taking on the Divide: Good Jobs and Shared Prosperity in Rural America
6pm Resilience & Our Built Environment
6pm Smart Cities - Utility
7pm The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy
7pm The Search for Life: How do scientists know what to look for out there?
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Wednesday, November 8 - Friday, November 10
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GreenBuild 2017
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Wednesday, November 8
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8:30am Conference on Redistricting Reform at Harvard University
12pm Ralph Nader at the Harvard Law Forum
12pm Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers
4pm Genetics and Epigenetics of Adaptation to The Environment
4pm Trumping Trump: New Directions and Waves of Resistance - Nader & Derber
4pm Should Law Foster Forgiveness?: A Lecture by Martha Minow
4:15pm Book Discussion — Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi
5pm The Potential for Solar Energy
6pm Decoding Maya Hieroglyphs with 3D Technology
6pm Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
6pm Inside the Obama Years: A Conversation with Valerie Jarrett
6pm Getting to the Point: A Conversation with the Authors of One Nation After Trump
6:15pm RIKERS: An American Jail (Film Screening)
6:30pm ROOM TO GROW: FARMING INTO THE FUTURE
6:45pm Journalist Speaker Tim Shorrock Speaks at Mass Peace Action (North Korea)
7pm The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President
7pm Raising Resilience: The Wisdom and Science of Happy Families and Thriving Children
7pm They Were My Friends: Jack, Bob, and Ted
7pm Changing Distributions of Large Whales: How Climate, Oceanography, and Biology Influence Movement of the Largest Animals on Earth
7pm This is How We Do It: From sex evolution to sex education
8pm Resistance Mic!
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Thursday, November 9
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11:45am Toward the Efficient Impact Frontier with Mike McCreless of Root Capital
11:45am The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone
12pm Who is an environmentalist? Making “nature” at urban parks
12pm Universal Healthcare: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? - Dr. Donna Shalala
12pm A Circular Economy
2:50pm Building the Instant Internet with Machine Learning
3:30pm FBI surveillance & suppression of activists, social movements & targeted communities
4pm Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Syrian Civil War
4pm Racism and Medicine (an Equity and Social Justice Discussion)
4pm Nordic Ways: A Panel Discussion with the Ambassadors of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden
4:30pm Guest Lecture: Richard Florida and the New Urban Crisis
5pm Lecture by Award-Winning Artist Lynda Barry
5:15pm Fighting for Justice with an Open Heart: Conviction, Empathy, and the Niebuhrian Imperative
5:30pm Brian Michael Bendis: The 2017 Julius Schwartz Lecture
6pm Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics
6pm Rabobank-MIT Food & Agribusiness Innovation Prize Kickoff Dinner
6pm Greenbuild Sustainability Networking
6:30pm SUSTAINABILITY COLLABORATIVE
6:30pm Wheelwright Prize Lecture: Erik L’Heureux, “Hot & Wet”
7pm Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
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Friday, November 10
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12pm Remote Sensing Research
12:30pm Extreme Scale Computing, Big Data Science and Web-of-Life Network Science
3pm Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration
7pm Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy
7:30pm Not a Crime to Be Poor The Criminalization of Poverty in America
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Saturday, November 11 - Sunday, November 12
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Hacking Arts
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Saturday, November 11
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8:30am Sustainable House of Worship Workshop
8:30am "Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?”: Bonnyman Anti-Racism Symposium Part 1
12pm Smedley Butler Brigade - Veterans For Peace Invitation To March With Us On Armistice Day
4pm A Discussion with Ricky Jay: Magicians, Cheaters & Remarkable Characters
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Sunday, November 12
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3pm The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims
6:30pm Dorchester Climate Action Party
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Monday, November 13
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11:45am Sustainability Analytics with Nancy Cleveland, Co-Founder of Sustrana
12pm PAOC Colloquium: Jake Gebbie (WHOI)
12pm A HISTORY OF THE INTERNET - A BROWN BAG WITH SCOTT BRADNER
12pm Charging Electric Cars—The Challenges
12:10pm Growing Grapes in the Snow: Understanding the intersections between genetics, physiology, and climate
12:30pm Building Theories – Architecture and an Ethics of Technology
12:30pm Industrial Policy & Economic Development
4pm Writers Speak: Michael Ondaatje in conversation with Claire Messud
5:30pm Transporting our innovation economy - Civic Innovation Conversation Series
6pm Postcommodity: The Repellent Fence and Beyond
6pm A Plastic Ocean Screening and Panel Discussion
6:15pm City Planning and Urban Affairs
7pm Inside Private Prisons with Lauren-Brooke Eisen
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Tuesday, November 14
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12pm Edward Morris: Art and Activism
12pm Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes
12pm GSD Talks: Ronald Rael, “Borderwall as Architecture”
12pm Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series: Race & Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action
4pm Quantum Limits on the Information Carried by Electromagnetic Radiation
4pm The Charges are Criminal, The Case is Political: The Resistance Conspiracy Case
5pm Opening Discussion for Feminist Archaeology
5pm "Tidewater" Screening and Discussion
5:15pm Drafting the Cape Cod Formula
6pm Boston New Technology “Health and Energy” Startup Showcase #BNT83 (21+)
7pm Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom
7pm Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House
7pm Science Priorities for the North Atlantic Region – A NOAA Fisheries Perspective
7:30pm Sagan Day: Seeking Life Beyond Our Pale Blue Dot
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com
MIT Energy Hackathon Challenge: Rebuilding Energy Infrastructure in the Caribbean After the Hurrica
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/29/1710825/-MIT-Energy-Hackathon-Challenge-Rebuilding-Energy-Infrastructure-in-the-Caribbean-After-the-Hurrica
Orwell’s War: Quotes in Homage to Catalonia
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2017/10/orwells-war-quotes-in-homage-to.html
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Monday, November 6 - Tuesday, November 7
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The Agriculture, Nutrition, Health, and the Environment in Africa conference
November 6: Amphitheater, Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston
November 7: HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
More information at https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutrition-and-global-health/lecture-seminar-series/agriculture-nutrition-health-and-the-environment-in-africa/
The Agriculture, Nutrition, Health, and the Environment in Africa conference is a collaboration between Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and Technology, Harvard University Center for African Studies, and Africa Academy for Public Health. It will be held in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts on Monday and Tuesday, November 6-7, 2017.
The conference aims to generate attention and awareness, create opportunities for novel collaborations, and identify a path forward toward solving complex health and development challenges. Understanding the intersections of agriculture, nutrition, and public health is particularly important in Africa, where populations are growing and urbanizing rapidly, and high rates of undernutrition and infectious diseases are exacerbated by an increasing burden of overweight/obesity and noncommunicable diseases. Agricultural production systems are under pressure to keep pace with population shifts and dietary transition. In addition to preventing illness and removing some burden from health systems, a holistic approach to malnutrition can also help foster healthy, sustainable environments, with exponential benefits for planetary health.
There is increasing global attention and commitment to bridging this gap. The recently adopted United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have highlighted the interconnectedness of food security, agriculture, environmental sustainability, and nutrition, and secured high-level commitments from around the globe. There is no doubt that this is an increasingly important issue that requires multisectoral and diverse perspectives.
Contact Name: Todd Datz
tdatz at hsph.harvard.edu
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MIT Water Summit: Water & Food Nexus
Monday, November 6 - November 7, 2017
MIT, Building E-51. Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://mit.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=708&cid=35&p=1
Cost: $25 - $150
Early bird pricing until October 24
As populations continue to grow and demand for food rises, the role of water in meeting future food needs will become increasingly critical. This year’s MIT Water Summit will focus on issues at the heart of the food-water nexus, reflecting on the role of water in food production – both in agriculture and aquaculture – and the innovation, policy, and technologies required to support healthy and sustainable communities.
More information at http://www.mitwatersummit.com
Editorial Comment: Courtesy of Greenfest here are some reduced price codes for this event - 25% off the academic/govNGO price: MITWS2DAY25 if you sign up for 2 days and for one day: MITWS1DAY25.
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Monday, November 6
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Striving for Zero Waste at Colleges & Universities
Monday, November 6
8:00 AM – 4:00 PM EST
The Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/striving-for-zero-waste-at-colleges-universities-registration-37429016195
Cost: $50 – $75
Organized by the Zero Waste College and University Technical Committee (ZWCUTC) of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), this workshop will showcase zero waste practices and strategies to take waste reduction to the next level on your campus. Best practices from different entities across the U.S. will be presented along with opportunities for interaction among individuals with different backgrounds, knowledge, and experience in practices and topics relating to zero waste. Join us to learn from individuals who are highly involved in waste reduction and zero waste at colleges and universities and beyond.
Included in the workshop is a walking tour of zero waste practices at Harvard University.
Preliminary Agenda:
Introduction – Rob Gogan, Harvard University and Karyn Kaplan, University of Oregon
Strategies to Finance Zero Waste Programs – Katherine Walsh, Boston Public Schools; Sharon Daraphonhdeth, University of California Berkeley; Lin King, University of California Berkeley
Local Collegiate Zero Waste Efforts (TBD)
Hot Topic: Move Out Day – Mark Lennon, Institutional Recycling Network
Recyclemania – Jennifer Hobson, University of Texas at Austin
TRUE Zero Waste Certification – Ryan Peterson, Berkeley Haas Business School and Mike Carey, Orange Coast College
Student Lightening Round – presentations from students on Climate Change & Zero Waste, recycled plastic 3D printing, and more
Greenwashing and Hard to Recycle Items – Colleen McCormick, University of California Merced
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Coordination through dialogue: applications in human-robot teaming
Monday, November 6
9:30am
Tufts, Halligan 102, 161 College Ave, Medford
Speaker: Felix Gervits, Tufts University
Robots are increasingly needed to serve on teams with people in some of the most complex domains. Since human teams often rely on task-oriented dialogue to coordinate their actions, robot teammates will no doubt need to rely similarly on this modality. However, constraining factors such as workload, time pressure, and reduced situational awareness are prevalent in these domains, and affect human speech through increased speech rate, disfluency, and speech overlap. Though typically viewed as "messy" features of speech that are either ignored or parsed out of most dialogue systems, evidence from Psycholinguistics and Conversation Analysis suggests that these features are important resources in the interaction that can support coordination. Thus, in order for robots to serve as effective teammates, they will need to be able to handle (and in some cases, produce) these features of natural language. In this talk, I will give an overview of my work to date addressing this challenge. First, I will discuss some empirical work using the Cooperative Remote Search Task (CReST) corpus to identify dialogue and interaction features in a search-and-rescue scenario involving human teams. I will then show some of the novel mechanisms we have implemented in a cognitive robotic architecture to enable robots to handle some of the features seen in the corpus - in particular, overlapping speech. Finally, I will discuss remaining work, including the design of a novel experimental paradigm for evaluating our proposed mechanisms and for further studying human-robot teaming.
More information at http://www.cs.tufts.edu/Colloquia.html
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Socially-mediated visibility in authoritarianism
Monday, November 6
10:00 am - 11:30 am
Northeastern, 340 Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston
This event is free and open to the public, but if you are not a member of the Northeastern community, please email Sarah Connell (sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu) to register.
Visiting speaker Katy Pearce, University of Washington
Increased visibility is arguably the most significant affordance of social media and a large body of scholarly work has sought to understand how individuals deal with the effects increased visibility in terms of concern for privacy as well as the ability to broadcast to wide audiences. Much of this work explores how pre-social media norms are applied, for better or worse, to socially mediated spaces. The presented projects also seek to understand how pre-existing norms are enacted in social media, especially with regard to visibility, but in a different context. This project is set in a society – Azerbaijan – in which a norm of interpersonal as well as governmental surveillance has not only existed for a long time, but “permeates life” and is a part of “the dominant organizing value in society.”
Moreover, surveillance is part of enforcing societal behavioral codes, for which non-compliance results in severe punishment. The increased visibility afforded by social media has amplified and economized both interpersonal and government surveillance, making the risk associated with behavioral code non-compliance and likelihood of punishment much greater. Given the norm of surveillance and these higher stakes, Azerbaijanis make choices about online behavior that are of theoretical importance to our broader understanding of online behavior. Dr. Pearce will present 2 studies on visibility in an authoritarian environment: 1) Through an Impression Management framework, how honor is performed online and 2) How social media complicates the concealment/disclosure of stigmatized political identities.
Biography
Dr. Katy E. Pearce is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and holds an affiliation with the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies. Her research focuses on social and political uses of technologies and digital content in the transitioning democracies and semi-authoritarian states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, but primarily Armenia and Azerbaijan.
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We got this? Mutual aid in post-Hurricane Puerto Rico
WHEN Monday, Nov. 6, 2017, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Barker Center, 114, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights
SPEAKER(S) Professor Luis Othoniel Rosa, PhD
CONTACT INFO emr at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Before Hurricane María, Puerto Rico was hit with brutal austerity measures and an un-payable inhumane debt to Wall Street, as well as a century under colonial rule of imperialistic laws like the Jones Act and, more recently, PROMESA. Hurricane María, the worst hurricane in a century, devastated the island on Sept. 20, and made visible for many Americans the unjust realities of the American Citizens of Puerto Rico. As federal agencies and the military have remained largely absent and incapable to provide help to those who needed the most, regular people have effectively taken on the role of the federal and local government by spontaneously organizing in all sorts of networks of mutual aid. In this talk, Professor Rosa will focus on the simple yet vital and creative forms in which many Puerto Ricans have organized in the last weeks to prioritize life over capital, amidst a humanitarian crises. The questions that will drive this talk are the following: Can the disasters and catastrophes ever more recurrent in our historical present be a pedagogy for alternative practices of decolonization, horizontal modes of organization and the making of new worlds? Or, on the contrary, will these life-sustaining practices become the perfect excuse for capital and empire to completely disregard its responsibilities towards their most vulnerable peoples? How effective can bottom-up practices of direct action be against the strategies of “disaster capitalism”?
LINK https://emr.fas.harvard.edu/event/we-got-mutual-aid-post-hurricane-puerto-rico?admin_panel=1&login=1
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PAOC Colloquium: Mixed-phase clouds and climate – a close and complicated relationship
Monday, November 6
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Trude Storelvmo (Yale)
Clouds in Earth's atmosphere can be composed of liquid droplet, ice crystals, or a combination of the two. Clouds' thermodynamic phase is largely controlled by temperature, but other factors, most notably ice-nucleating aerosol particles, can also have a significant effect. Because cloud radiative properties are crucially dependent on cloud phase, any cloud phase change, no matter the cause, is bound to have a very powerful impact on Earth’s radiation budget. It has been hypothesized that anthropogenic aerosol emissions have impacted mixed-phase clouds since pre-industrial times, and thus imposed a potentially large radiative forcing on Earth’s climate. Estimates of how aerosol emissions could have influenced the radiation budget via mixed-phase clouds have recently started to emerge, but so far provide ambiguous forcing estimates, both in terms of magnitude and sign. Intuitively we also expect cloud phase changes to accompany a warming climate, given that temperature exerts a dominant influence on cloud phase. Recent work has revealed that such cloud phase changes represent a very important cloud-climate feedback in both past and future climates, particularly at mid- and high latitudes, and that this particular feedback mechanism has likely been misrepresented in many climate models to date. I will review progress in our understanding of the role of mixed-phase clouds in both climate forcings and feedbacks, from the seminal work of the mid-20th century pioneers in cloud physics to the recent breakthroughs made possible by modern satellite missions. I’ll end with my view of what is needed next in order to shed new light on the complicated relationship between mixed-phase clouds and climate.
About the Speaker
I am an atmospheric scientist, focusing my research on the role of aerosol particles and clouds in Earth’s climate. I am particularly interested in how aerosol particles affect climate by acting as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nuclei. I also work on question related to cloud-climate feedback mechanisms and climate engineering involving aerosols and/or clouds. Aerosol/cloud effects are arguable among the most uncertain and poorly constrained influences on the climate system, and will represent a tremendous challenge to the scientific community in years to come.
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Fighting for Access to Justice in the Halls of Congress: Reps. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) & Susan W. Brooks (R-IN) on Civil Legal Aid
WHEN Monday, Nov. 6, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Langdell Hall North, 225 Vorenberg Classroom, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Rep. Joseph Kennedy III
Rep. Susan Brooks
DIRECTED BY Pete Davis
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis: PeDavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu
DETAILS The co-founders of the bipartisan Congressional Access to Legal Services Caucus, Reps. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) and Susan W. Brooks (R-IN), come to Harvard Law School to talk about the importance of funding for civil legal aid for impoverished Americans.
Free and open to the public. Pizza will be provided.
LINK https://www.facebook.com/events/783182571866385/?ref=br_rs
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Malkit Shoshan, “Border Ecologies”
WHEN Monday, Nov. 6, 2017, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Gund Hall, 112 Stubbins, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge, Mass.
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
SPEAKER(S) Malkit Shoshan
CONTACT INFO events at gsd.harvard.edu
DETAILS "Borders shape and consolidate relations between states, people, jurisdictions, political entities, and territories, and they often lie at the center of conflict between them. They are tools entangled in complex socio-political and economic ecologies. While some borders are relatively stable, others are in a constant flow. They regulate economic relations and people’s access to places, resources, and rights.
Borders determine the way our surroundings are organized, inhabited and controlled, and the ways communities relate to one another—while some break through borders to survive, others fence themselves off.
In this lecture, Shoshan will present case studies from FAST's ongoing investigations and engagements with conflict and post-conflict areas. The concurrent exhibition “Border Ecologies” examines the spatial processes of bordering in conflict and post-conflict contexts. It concentrates on the way borders impact communities and produces new spatial forms
The Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST) is an Amsterdam- and New York-based architectural think-tank that initiates and develops cross-disciplinary research, advocacy, and design projects at the intersection between architecture, planning, and human rights. FAST is led by Malkit Shoshan.
Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events at gsd.harvard.edu.”
LINK http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/malkit-shoshan/
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Digital Farming: Exploring the Intersection of Computation, Biology, and Photography at the MIT Media Lab
Monday, November 6
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Boston
Tim Savas, Technical Associate, MIT Media Lab
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/research/research-talks/
Contact Name: arbweb at arnarb.harvard.edu
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Privacy Default(s) by Design? Personal Data in Cybersecurity Information Sharing
Monday, November 6
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Room 100F, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Paula Kift (Palantir).
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
STS Circle at Harvard
http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/events/sts_circle/
Contact Name: sts at hks.harvard.edu
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On a World Climate Assembly and the Social Cost of Carbon
Monday, November 6
12:30PM TO 1:30PM
Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Martin Weitzman, Professor of Economics, Harvard. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/seminar.html#fall2017
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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Affordable Housing & Modernist Architecture
Monday, November 6
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena, 105 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
The SPURS/Humphrey program is delighted to invite you to our fall seminar series: North American Planning Experience: Is It Relevant for the Developing World?
Our goal is to explore to what extent, and under what conditions, planning ideas generated from practice in the U.S. can travel to cities in the developing world and be implemented effectively. We’ll also consider whether planning ideas, practices and programs are traveling from the rest of the world back to the United States.
The fifth seminar is Monday, Nov 6, in the City Arena, 12:30 - 2 PM: Affordable Housing & Modernist Architecture: Repeated Architectural Mistakes or Resilient Urban Transformation?, with Lawrence Vale and Anya Brickman Reardon, respondent.
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Conversations on Environmental Justice: Pedagogy and Practice
Monday, November 6
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-450B, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Join DUSP Professor Justin Steil and Visiting Professor Gregg Macey as they lead a participatory conversation on teaching environmental justice and striving towards greater equity in ones practice.
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Deep Dive: Smart Cities: A New Language and a New Vision
Monday, November 6
1:00 – 04:00 PM
53 State Street, Boston
RSVP at https://hubweek.org/events/deep-dive-smart-cities-a-new-language-and-a-new-vision/
The phrase “smart city” has exploded in marketing materials in the past decade, as new technologies and devices have made it possible to integrate and facilitate urban living in ways we never imagined. But, sometimes it feels like the technology is a solution in search of a problem.
In this session, we will focus on how to use new technologies as tools, rather than see them as the end goal. The conversation will focus on how these tools, and others like them, can enhance the human experience in our communities.
This session will be of particular interest to entrepreneurs, urban planners, neighborhood activists, artists, and anyone interested in expanding our view of what’s possible in our communities. Using the unique opportunities at Union Point as a starting point, we will share ideas on how to move past the marketing language.
At the end of our session, we will have identified several possible engagements and activities that HUBweek can work on throughout the year to produce a model project at HUBweek 2018.
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Andrew Ng: AI is the New Electricity
Monday, November 6
3:30pm to 4:30pm
MIT, Building 32-123, Kirsch Auditorium 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Abstract: Similar to the rise of Electricity starting about 100 years ago, AI today is beginning to transform every major industry. This presentation will discuss how AI can transform your business, share major technology trends and thoughts on where your biggest future opportunities may lie, and describe best practices on incorporating AI, machine learning, and deep learning into your organization.
Bio: Andrew Ng, Founder, Deeplearning.ai, Founder and CEO, deeplearning.ai, Adjunct Professor, Stanford, Co-Chairman and Co-Founder, Coursera
Dr. Andrew Ng is a globally recognized leader in AI (Artificial Intelligence). He was until recently Chief Scientist at Baidu, where he led the company’s ~1300 person AI Group and was responsible for driving the company's global AI strategy and infrastructure. He was also the founding lead of the Google Brain team. Dr. Ng is also Co-Chairman and Co-founder of Coursera, the world’s leading MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform, and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University's Computer Science Department. Dr. Ng has authored or co-authored over 100 research papers in machine learning, robotics and related fields. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley.
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Fantastic Feathers: Form and Function
Monday, November 6
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 10-250, Huntington Hall, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
This fall's Wulff lecture will be presented by Professor Lorna Gibson.
When we think of birds, we think of feathers. Feathers give birds their color, from the bright red of a male Cardinal to the iridescent reds and greens of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Feathers keep birds warm and dry: down provides excellent insulation against heat loss and water really does roll off a duck’s back. Feathers form the aerodynamic shape of the wing, enabling flight. A Barn Owl’s flight feathers suppress sound, allowing it to fly nearly silently, while its ruff feathers reflect and focus sound into its ears, enabling the owl to hunt in total darkness by sound alone. This talk describes how the microscopic structure of feathers gives rise to their remarkable properties.
The Wulff Lecture is an introductory, general audience, entertaining lecture that aims to educate, inspire, and encourage MIT undergraduates to take up study of materials science and engineering and related fields. The entire MIT community, particularly freshmen, is invited to attend. The Wulff Lecture honors the late Professor John Wulff, a skilled, provocative, and entertaining teacher who conceived of a new approach to teaching general chemistry and inaugurated the popular freshman subject, 3.091 Introduction to Solid State Chemistry.
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Why is Housing So Expensive?!
Monday, November 6
4:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/why-is-housing-so-expensive-tickets-38003902696
Join us for a lively discussion on Greater Boston’s housing costs and what we can do about it
It’s clear that housing affordability in our region is a problem. Housing that is too expensive for the average worker impacts quality of life (like will you live with three roommates forever?), whether businesses can hire and expand, and if graduates from our institutions can stay and build a career. From apartments to houses and everything in between, the region has a lot of increasingly high priced real estate. So how did we get here?
Join us for an interactive session for young people living and working in Greater Boston to learn about the true dynamics at play when it comes to housing affordability. Speakers will lead interactive presentations examining the following questions:
What does zoning actually mean?
How can it and does it impact housing in your city or town?
How can you advocate in your neighborhood or community for positive zoning and land use changes?
What policies are in play at the state level that could have an impact on Greater Boston’s housing future?
For those who aren’t land use, housing or zoning experts (or if you don’t even know what zoning means!) this session is for you.
There will be refreshments and a cash bar available.
Sponsored by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute, the City Awake program from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and the Alliance for Business Leadership.
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Stephen Wolfram, in Conversation with Howard Gardner: What Is the Best Education in Mathematical Thinking for the 21st Century?
Monday, November 6
5:30 – 7 P.M. EST
Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
Speakers:
Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, HGSE, and senior director, Project Zero
Stephen Wolfram, founder & CEO, Wolfram Research; creator, Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language; author, A New Kind of Science
Join Dr. Stephen Wolfram and Dr. Howard Gardner as they discuss views on mathematical thinking in 21st century education. Topics will include: relations among mathematical, logical, computational, programming, and coding skills; whether, and if so in what ways, other disciplines (from science to the arts) should be included in mathematical education; and how we should be thinking about mathematical education, broadly construed, over the lifetime.
PLEASE NOTE: Seating for this forum will be available on a first come, first seated basis.Askwith Hall is expected to fill up quickly and we encourage participants to arrive early in order to obtain a seat. Seats may not be saved for those pending arrival. Additional seating will be available in satellite spaces on campus once Askwith Hall fills to capacity.
The queue for Askwith Hall seating will start at 4 p.m. Out of respect for the academic and classroom environment, we request that you do not arrive prior to 4 p.m. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m.
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MIT Solve: Student Challenge Design Workshop!
Monday, November 6
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
MIT, The Bush Room [77 Massachusetts Ave, Building 10 Room 105], Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mit-solve-student-challenge-design-workshop-tickets-38876615002
Are you a student or recent grad?
Are you interested in technological innovation?
Do you aspire to help solve the world’s most pressing problems?
Or what about making lasting connections with other students and experts in the Boston area?
If you answered yes to one and/or all of these questions, sign up for the Solve Student Challenge Design Workshop!
**Seats are limited; reserve your spot in advance!**
At the Solve Challenge Design Workshop you will work with other local students to brainstorm and identify the most difficult problems our world faces today. From this, you will formulate actionable challenges for which people from across the world can develop and submit innovative solutions. You can make a difference!
Bring an open mind and come prepared to collaborate with other future innovators, entrepreneurs, and change makers!
Note: Pizza and beverages will be provided.
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City Planning and Urban Affairs Guest Speaker: Dr. Richard Tabors, Executive Vice-President, New Grid
Monday, November 6
6:15 pm to 7:30 pm
BU, 685-725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 315, Boston
Dr. Tabors is an Executive Vice-President, New Grid, enterprise offering a software solution for optimal line switching of transmission systems. Dr. Tabors will be guest lecturing in City Planning and Urban Affairs' UA: 510 Sustainable Energy Planning course. He will be discussing the topic Retail Electricity Markets as Essential Elements in a Sustainable Energy Future. Dr. Tabors is also a Visiting Scholar and Co-Director of MIT’s Utility of the Future Project, and President, Tabors, Caramanis, & Rudkevich, an energy focused consultancy based in Boston. Find more about Dr. Tabors on LinkedIN at https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-tabors-24aa723/
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An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice
Monday, November 6
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:30)
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.harvard.com/event/khizr_khan/
Cost: $5.00 - $27.00 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes KHIZR KHAN—the Muslim American Gold Star father well known for his 2016 Democratic National Convention speech—for a discussion of his debut memoir An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice. He will be joined in conversation by writer, Harvard Law School professor, and human rights expert MARTHA MINOW.
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The Future of Nature: What is the Future of Science?
Monday, November 6
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston
RSVP at https://support.nature.org/site/Ticketing?view=Tickets&id=10586
Cost: $10 – includes hors d’oeuvres and drink | Space is limited, so please reserve your ticket.
From gene editing to self-driving cars, in a quickly changing world, innovations in science and technology can raise difficult ethical and social questions—environmental and beyond. Who answers them and how? What’s the role of science? How do we ensure disparate communities and perspectives are heard in the march of progress? The Nature Conservancy and the Museum of Science jointly present a panel discussion featuring Sheila Jasanoff, Professor of Science and Technology, HKS; Daniel Sarewitz, Co-Director, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University; Hugh Possingham, Chief Scientist, The Nature Conservancy; and moderated by Carey Goldberg, editor of WBUR’s CommonHealth, to examine these questions.
More information at https://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/massachusetts/explore/ma-future-of-nature.xml?src=r.future
Contact Name: Cameron Bruns
cameron.bruns at tnc.org
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Is political correctness why Trump won?
Monday, November 6
7:00 – 10:30 EST
Harvard University Science Center, Science Center Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/is-political-correctness-why-trump-won-harvard-university-tickets-37749961150
The shock election of Donald Trump has sent many looking for answers. Why didn’t his outlandish statements, his ‘locker-room talk’ and his out-there views sink his candidacy in the way it would have sunk others? While many have chalked his win up to racism, xenophobia and misogyny – others suggest it was a revolt precisely against those who so casually throw around those labels. In short, the election was a referendum on political correctness, a choice between the immaculately focus-grouped Clinton and the from-the-hip Trump. Did PC culture get Trump elected? Will his presidency serve as an antidote to offence culture? Or is the thin-skinned Trump, who rankles at any criticism, just a different kind of ‘snowflake’?
SPEAKERS: Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer and social critic. She has written about law, liberty and feminism for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of eight books, including Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today.
Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He has written for the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic, and is the author of 10 books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature. His forthcoming book, Enlightenment Now, will be published in February 2018. @sapinker
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and a regular columnist for Reason and the Spectator. He has also written for the LA Times, the Telegraph, the Australian, and more. This year, he was named best online columnist at the Maggie Awards. He is the author, most recently, of A Duty to Offend.
Robby Soave is associate editor at Reason and a columnist for the Daily Beast. He has also written for the New York Times, New York Post, CNN, USA Today, and more. He is currently on sabbatical, writing a book on activism in the age of Trump. at robbysoave
This is a FREE panel and Q&A, as part of the spiked US Unsafe Space tour.
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Tuesday, November 7
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Microgrid 2017 Conference Student Program
Tuesday, November 7
8:00 AM – 2:45 PM EST
Boston Park Plaza, 50 Park Plaza, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/microgrid-2017-conference-student-program-tickets-38362558445
Microgrid 2017 will feature prominent industry and policy speakers, regulators and government agencies, lively panel discussions, vendor booths, and networking opportunities for students.Students may select from one of two seatings on Tuesday, November 7.
The morning seating ticket grants access to three plenary panels featuring prominent industry leaders and regulatory experts discussing the future of microgrids and the utility industry.
The second seating ticket enables students to oversee the Keynote Luncheon Address by Ms. Anne Pramaggiore, President and CEO of ComEd, an electric utility company serving Chicago and Northern Illinois. Ms. Pramaggiore will share her insights on the evolution of the electric utility industry and the emergence of new technologies.
Students must present a valid student ID upon check-in.
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Reimagining Sustainability at AB InBev: Chief Procurement & Sustainability Officer Tony Milikin
When: Tuesday, Nov 7, 11:45am-12:45pm
Where: TBD
What: Join Tony Milikin (Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer), Greg Belt (Global VP of Smart Value Creation), and Ezgi Barcenas (Global Director of Procurement Sustainability) to learn about Procurement at AB InBev, the company’s evolving strategy to mainstream sustainability into the Procurement function, and how you can play a role as a Global MBA summer intern. Students interested in working in any function at AB InBev are encouraged to attend.
RSVP: https://sloangroups.mit.edu/sustain/rsvp?id=359811
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Alexandra Petri – Satire and Comedy in the Age of Trump
Tuesday, November 7
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Alexandra Petri writes The Washington Post’s ComPost blog, offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. She joined the Post as an intern in 2010, after graduating from Harvard College.
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Understanding Political Polarization in the US
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room 2009, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Susan Podziba, Podziba Policy Mediation
Liz McClintock, CMPartners
CONTACT INFO Julie Barrett, jbarrett at law.harvard.edu
DETAILS The fever pitch of US political polarization is unrelenting. Susan Podziba (Podziba Policy Mediation) and Liz McClintock (CMPartners), mediation and conflict resolution experts, will share their thoughts on current societal dynamics based on their experiences in addressing complex conflict.
Liz observes a likeness to the tribalism inherent to her work on ethnic conflict in Central Africa. Susan sees a clash of worldviews similar to religion-based conflicts, including her work with Massachusetts leaders of the pro-life and pro-choice movements. These observations prompted them to ask the question: Can we engage a civic fusion approach to addressing polarization whereby disputants bond across passionately different political positions and worldviews to address common public goals without sacrificing their core values?
At this event, Susan and Liz will each offer their observations, engage each other in dialogue, and then invite the audience to participate in an open discussion.
LINK https://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/understanding-political-polarization-us/
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What should the course catalog look like in the 21st century? Leveraging data and design for course selection and discovery
Tuesday, November 7
12:00 pm
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/11/Curricle#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/11/Curricle
Curricle with Professor Jeffrey Schnapp, metaLAB Harvard
Curricle will offer a new experience in course selection at Harvard: a platform that gives students powerful tools in data visualization and analytics for browsing and selecting courses. The platform will enable students to see the broader landscape within which they navigate the curriculum, offering more opportunities for choice and customization. Additionally it will offer opportunities for students and scholars to see trends in Harvard’s curriculum over time.
The usual course-selection process has blind spots where life-changing courses can lurk undiscovered. And especially in a post-disciplinary era, finding ways to identify links currents among courses across departments—to chart, visualize, and connect far-flung parts of the curriculum—will allow students to forge new and productive paths. metaLAB’s team of designers and scholars will be offering an interactive lunch to preview Curricle and offer opportunities for engagement, reflection, and comprehensive rethinking of the course-selection experience.
About metaLAB
metaLAB (at) Harvard, led by Professor Jeffrey Schnapp (RLL, GSD), and headquartered at the Berkman Klein Center, is a creative research team exploring new roles for media and technology in the arts and humanities. The group's project-based research takes many forms, from museum and gallery installations to books, websites, and interventions in virtual and real space.
About Professor Jeffrey Schnapp
Before moving to Harvard in 2011, Jeffrey Schnapp occupied the Pierotti Chair of Italian Studies at Stanford, where he founded and led the Stanford Humanities Lab between 1999 and 2009. A cultural historian, designer, and curator with research interests extending from antiquity to the present, his most recent books include The Electric Information Age Book, Modernitalia, Digital_Humanities, and The Library Beyond the Book. At Harvard he occupies the Carl A. Pescosolido Chair in Romance and Comparative Literatures, while also serving as a faculty member of the Architecture department at the Graduate School of Design and as one of the faculty co-directors of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. For more information, go to jeffreyschnapp.com.
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Fixing Our Broken Sleep
Tuesday, November 7
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM (EST)
MIT, Building 76-156; The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, 500 Main Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fixing-our-broken-sleep-registration-36747397455
Presenter – Rick Clerici, Certified Clinical Sleep Educator; Director, Clear Mind Systems
Do you struggle to get a good night’s sleep? If so, you are not alone. Recent studies suggest that we are experiencing a worldwide epidemic of insufficient sleep, with 60 percent of Americans reporting difficulty sleeping nearly every night. In this interactive seminar, attendees will learn techniques for overcoming common sleep problems; examine sleep from a scientific, historic, and traditional perspective; and learn the connections between sleep and health. This presentation has helped many people begin to get better sleep almost immediately. Some sleep concerns that will be addressed include:
Trouble falling asleep
Difficulty staying asleep
Excessive thinking
Waking too early
Daytime sleepiness
Sunday night insomnia
Chronic insomnia
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Computational Ecosystems: Tech-enabled Communities to Advance Human Values at Scale
Tuesday, November 7
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Refreshments: 1:45 PM
MIT, Building 32 - G449, Kiva, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Haoqi Zhang , Northwestern University - EECS Department
Speaker URL: http://users.eecs.northwestern.edu/~hq/
Abstract: Despite the continued development of individual technologies and processes for supporting human endeavors, major leaps in solving complex human problems will require advances in system-level thinking and orchestration. In this talk, I describe efforts to design, build, and study Computational Ecosystems that interweave community process, social structures, and intelligent systems to unite people and machines to solve complex problems and advance human values at scale. Computational ecosystems integrate various components to support ecosystem function; the interplay among components synergistically advances desired values and problem solving goals in ways that isolated technologies and processes cannot. Taking a systems approach to design, computational ecosystems emphasize (1) computational thinking to decompose and distribute problem solving to diverse people or machines most able to address them; and (2) ecological thinking to create sustainable processes and interactions that support jointly the goals of ecosystem members and proper ecosystem function.
I present examples of computational ecosystems designed to advance community-based planning and research training, that respectively engages thousands of people in planning an event and empowers a single faculty member to provide authentic research training to 20+ students. These solutions demonstrate how to combine wedges of human and machine competencies into integrative technology-supported, community-based solutions. I will preview what's ahead for computational ecosystems, and close with a few thoughts on the role of computing technologies in advancing human values at scale.
Bio: Haoqi Zhang is the Allen K. and Johnnie Cordell Breed Junior Chair of Design and assistant professor in Computer Science at Northwestern University. His work advances the design of integrated socio-technical models that solve complex problems and advance human values at scale. His research bridges the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Social & Crowd Computing, Learning Science, and Decision Science, and is generously supported by National Science Foundation grants in Cyber-Human Systems, Cyberlearning, and the Research Initiation Initiative.
Haoqi received his PhD in Computer Science and BA in Computer Science and Economics from Harvard University. At Northwestern he founded and directs the Design, Technology, and Research (DTR) program, which provides an original model for research training for 50 graduate and undergraduate students. With Matt Easterday, Liz Gerber, and Nell O'Rourke, Haoqi co-directs the Delta Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab and design studio across computer science, learning science, and design.
Contact: Linda Lynch, 617 715 2459, lindalynch at csail.mit.edu
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Marvin Kalb
Tuesday, November 7
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Marvin Kalb is a distinguished journalist, author, and the founding director of the Shorenstein Center. Kalb’s journalism career included three decades of award-winning reporting for CBS and NBC News as chief diplomatic correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, and anchor of NBC’s Meet the Press. Kalb is the Murrow Professor emeritus at Harvard Kennedy School and hosts The Kalb Report at the National Press Club. His 15th book, The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956—Khruschev, Stalin’s Ghost, and a Young American in Russia, will be released in October 2017.
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The Migrant Passage: Survival Plays and Clandestine Journeys from Central America
Tuesday, November 7
4:00pm to 5:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
The Migrant Passage draws upon over two years of in-depth, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork along human smuggling routes from Central America across Mexico and into the United States to explore questions central to debates about human security, international borders and transnationalism. By tracing the survival strategies of Central American migrants during their journey, Dr. Brigden shows how their im/mobility reshapes the social landscape of Mexico and she explores the implications for the future of the nation-state.
Speaker: Noelle Brigden, Ph.D. (Cornell 2013) is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Marquette University. She teaches courses on international relations, human security, and migration. She held a 2013-2014 postdoctoral fellowship at the Watson Institute for International Studies. She has published in International Studies Quarterly, Geopolitics, Migration Studies, Antipode and Mobilities.
Free and open to the public | Refreshments will be served
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Built Positive Greenbuild Reception
Tuesday, November 7
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Fraunhofer USA Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, 5 Channel Center Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/built-positive-greenbuild-reception-tickets-38253907467
You are invited to an exclusive reception the evening before Greenbuild with William McDonough, FAIA, Int. FRIBA, world renowned architect, author, product designer, and Cradle to Cradle Co-Founder.
Join your materials-minded colleagues from across the Built Positive network at the Fraunhofer USA Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, which is walking distance from the Boston Convention Center. The reception will include drinks, hors d'oeuvres and the opportunity to connect with industry leaders involved in redefining the materials landscape to build a positive future.
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Launch Smart Clinic – Digital Health
November 7
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Foley & Lardner, 111 Huntington Avenue, Boston
RSVP at http://www.mitforumcambridge.org/event/launch-smart-clinic-digital-health/
Cost: $10 for Members; $30 Non-members: $10 for students
At the Digital Health Themed Launch Smart Clinic, startups present a 20-minute pitch for feedback from our panel of experts + the audience.
Launch Smart Clinics are a great place for startups to get constructive feedback on their pitch from a board-of-directors-level panel of experts and thoughtful audience members. The focus on early stage ventures encourages a sympathetic and supportive atmosphere. Audience and panel feedback often helps presenters understand their problems and offers useful tips and solutions.
Even if you’re not quite ready to present, we encourage entrepreneurs to attend the clinics to see what our panel of experts (investors and others) are looking for in a pitch, what kind of questions they ask and their suggestions for refining the business plan.
Presenting Companies
CarePassport lets patients consolidate and share all your medical data from anywhere universally.
CarePassport is a trusted platform for patients to aggregate and access all their medical data, including medical images, lab results, dental records, clinical reports, and more from different healthcare providers.
Consolidate medical data from a provider, imaging CD’s, an Apple watch, HealthKit, Fitbit, health forms, CDA files, JPEG and PDF documents. Track your health and access your data anywhere, from any device. It helps healthcare systems and providers to get a universal access to their patients and exchange medical data with them from outside sources.
Presenter: Mohamed Shoura, CEO
Siuvo Rooted in the development and application of artificial intelligence, Siuvo is devoted to consolidating the intelligence of human brains and the computational resource of computers to best assist and empower healthcare professionals. Siuvo provides an AI-based medical assistant to both doctors and patients. By sparing doctors from repetitive work, they are able to devote themselves on more valuable and creative tasks, such as working on more difficult and complicated medical cases. With their cutting edge customized user experience using AI, Siuvo can deliver the personalized functionality doctors need within a fraction of the time conventional app development companies require.
Presenter: Bin Shen, CEO, Siuvo
Panelists
Nikhil Bhojwani, Managing Partner, Recon Strategy® LLC
Barbara Clarke, Founding Principal of The Impact Seat / Angel Investor
Deb Kemper, Managing Director, GoldenSeeds
Sandra Nagale, Research Fellow, Boston Scientific
Moderators:
Ameeta Soni, Entrepreneur, Marketer, and Investor
Nikhil Pradhan, Attorney, Foley & Lardner LLP
Launch Smart Schedule
5:30-6:00 pm – Networking + Pizza
6:00 -6:15 pm – Industry Overview (Expert Presentation)
6:20-6:40 pm – Startup 1 Presents
6:40-7:00 pm – Small Breakouts: Audience + Experts
7:00-7:15 pm – Experts Share Consolidated Feedback From Breakouts
7:15-7:30 pm – Networking Break
7:30-7:50 pm – Startup 2 Presents
7:50-8:10 pm – Small Breakouts: Audience + Experts
8:10-8:25 pm – Experts Share Consolidated Feedback From Breakouts
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Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
Tuesday, November 7
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.harvard.com/event/dan_ariely_and_jeff_kreisler/
Cost: $5 - $28.75 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes Duke University Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics DAN ARIELY and JEFF KREISLER—comedian, speechwriter, and advocate for behavioral economics—for a discussion of their book, Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter.
About Dollars and Sense
Blending humor and behavioral economics, the New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational delves into the truly illogical world of personal finance to help people better understand why they make bad financial decisions, and gives them the knowledge they need to make better ones.
Why does paying for things often feel like it causes physical pain?
Why does it cost you money to act as your own real estate agent?
Why are we comfortable overpaying for something now just because we’ve overpaid for it before?
In Dollars and Sense, world renowned economist Dan Ariely answers these intriguing questions and many more as he explains how our irrational behavior often interferes with our best intentions when it comes to managing our finances. Partnering with financial comedian and writer Jeff Kreisler, Ariely takes us deep inside our minds to expose the hidden motivations that are secretly driving our choices about money.
Exploring a wide range of everyday topics—from credit card debt and household budgeting to holiday sales—Ariely and Kreisler demonstrate how our ideas about dollars and cents are often wrong and cost us more than we know. Mixing case studies and anecdotes with tangible advice and lessons, they cut through the unconscious fears and desires driving our worst financial instincts and teach us how to improve our money habits.
Fascinating, engaging, funny, and essential, Dollars and Sense is a sound investment, providing us with the practical tools we need to understand and improve our financial choices, save and spend smarter, and ultimately live better.
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The Future Impact of Autonomous Vehicles in Boston that No One Is Talking About
Tuesday, November 7
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Central Bistro, 101 Arch Street, Floor 2, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-future-impact-of-autonomous-vehicles-in-boston-that-no-one-is-talking-about-tickets-38630606183
Cost: $0 – $20
After work on November 7, Meet the Insider Expert on "The Future Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles in Boston That No One is Talking About”
What will it mean for Boston when you can get into a driverless Uber or Lyft? Of if Amazon is delivering our packages and Peapod our groceries in driverless vehicles? What if we could easily hop in a driverless car in the suburbs and make it to work having read our Facebook newsfeed and had a cup of coffee wtihout looking over the dashboard?
This future has huge implications for downtown, the environment, our public safety, and for our lifestyles. And virtually no one is talking about it.
You'll walk away from this meeting feeling you've heard what it REALLY means for Boston, as told by one of the most knowledgeable experts anywhere in autonomous vehicles.
Rafael Mares has been interviewed on transportation policy for the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, WGBH, WSJ, WBUR, BNN, NECN and spoken to the MassDOT Autonomous Vehicles Working Group. He is a Vice President at the Conservation Law Foundation, a regional environmental group.
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Mens et Manus America: Taking on the Divide: Good Jobs and Shared Prosperity in Rural America
Tuesday, November 7
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building E51-345, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
When it comes to rural America, stereotypes abound. We often miss the innovation, resilience, and revitalization that is happening every day in communities across the country.
MIT Sloan's Barb Dyer and Simon Johnson will lead a conversation with those who are taking on the very notion of an American divide in Maine, Wisconsin, Virginia and other rural communities.
Four exciting leaders, long experienced in community and economic development, will share their stories to help us understand their local economies and the American divide from their perspectives:
Betsy Biemann, CEO of Maine Coastal Enterprises, Inc;
Kelly Ryan, CEO of Incourage Community Foundation in Wisconsin Rapids;
Karl Stauber, CEO of Danville Regional Foundation, Danville Virginia;
Janet Topolsky, ExDir of the Community Strategies Group, Aspen Institute.
What can we at MIT do to deepen our understanding of these places and economic contexts? This round-table will address what MIT brings to the table: innovation and technology, and the implications of globalization.
Light food will be offered starting at 5:30 pm.
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Resilience & Our Built Environment
Tuesday, November 7
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
CIC Cambridge - Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/resilience-our-built-environment-tickets-38555172559
Cost: $8 – $12
In the wake of an unprecedented season of concentrated and extreme environmental disasters – hurricanes, earthquakes, heat waves, drought, flooding and forest fires – one question looms large for millions of people: How on earth do we fix the systems we have or, in some cases, rebuild after these disasters?
Critical lifeline services like housing, energy, water, sanitation, waste treatment, transportation, and communication underpin our civil and economic needs. When collapse of these systems happens at scale (e.g. entire cities, states, nations), the instinct is naturally to want to get things back to normal as quickly as possible for those impacted. Doing things quickly does not traditionally lend itself to a high-quality outcome though, but if a longer-term solution means a slower recovery or greater cost, what is the choice?
Our guest speaker(s) will share select frameworks and strategies used by decision-makers to determine the resilience of the built environment around us and how it can either support or undermine our social and economic objectives. What have we learned from past experiences? How well is our current infrastructure designed to accommodate changes over time? What is the potential for emerging strategies, such as distributed energy services, water purification, solid waste treatment and other engineering innovations, to mitigate social and environmental disasters in the future?
Sarah Slaughter, Founder & Director, Built Environment Coalition
Dr. Sarah Slaughter is a recognized expert on resilience and sustainability for the built environment. She is the CEO and founder of the Built Environment Coalition, a research and education nonprofit (501c3) focused on community sustainability and resilience. She currently serves on the Green Building Advisory Committee (GBAC) to the U.S. General Services Administration on sustainable federal built facilities, and was recently a Visiting Lecturer in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning on resilient urban communities. Before the Coalition, she was the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Associate Director for Buildings and Infrastructure, and co-founder and faculty head of the Sustainability Initiative in the MIT Sloan School of Management. Previously, she was founder and CEO of MOCA Systems, Inc., and, before she founded MOCA, she was a MIT professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and earlier, was a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lehigh University.
Dr. Slaughter is currently a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Construction. She was previously on the National Research Council (NRC) Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE), several Boards and committees for the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and other national and international advisory committees. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Charles River Watershed Association. She received her PhD, SM, and SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Andrea Atkinson, Executive Director, One Square World
Andrea is a Executive Director of One Square World, a nonprofit dedicated to community-powered sustainable development worldwide. Andrea is a sustainability professional with a background in international relations, organizational management and sustainable community development. Andrea’s innovative community engagement and project management work for projects such as My Job Stories (a project of the Skees Family Foundation), NEXUS Green Building Resource Center, Down2Earth Boston, Elevate Destinations Haiti Volunteer Trips and philanthropic education programs has resulted in high-impact and high-profile outcomes for environmental and social change.
In the New England area, Andrea is creating a network of practitioners for regenerative development to provide a framework that benefits communities and the environment. In 2007, Andrea launched the NEXUS Green Building Resource Center, a first of its kind community center in the Northeast to promote and educate stakeholders implementing green building measures. Her work with New England Sustainable Energy Association resulted in a peer-to-peer educational network for energy efficiency providers and consumers in Massachusetts.
Andrea grew up in Brazil, Bolivia, and Niger and has traveled extensively. She has a degree in International Relations with a focus on sustainable development in Latin America and Africa from Boston University and a graduate certificate in environmental management from Tufts University.
Note: Additional speakers pending
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Smart Cities - Utility
Tuesday, November 7
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
CDM Smith, 75 State Street, Suite 701, Boston
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Boston-DIG-Digital-Industrial-Group/events/244357055/
Welcome to the second event in our Smart Cities Series, where the topic this time is Smart Utilities.
Power, water, sewer, and other utilities are fundamental infrastructures required to support our modern communities and neighborhoods. As urban areas grow, we are faced with a question: Can we leverage data to understand a city as a holistic system, build a smarter city that is more sustainable, and better plan for future growth?
Please join us as innovators from public and private sectors share their experiences utilizing data in applications such as optimizing electricity and gas delivery, improving water management, and enhancing communication robustness. Stay tuned for more updates!
Agenda:
6:00-6:30pm Mix & Mingle with food & refreshments
6:30-7:30pm Presentations from corporates and startups panel members (~5 minutes each), followed by Q&A
7:30-8:30pm Organizer announcement + 30 sec shout-outs, followed by networking
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The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy
Tuesday, November 7
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
For over a century and in scores of countries, patriarchal presumptions and practices have been challenged by women and their male allies. "Sexual harassment" has entered common parlance; police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; and a woman candidate won the plurality of the popular votes in the 2016 United States presidential election. But have we really reached equality and overthrown a patriarchal point of view? The Big Push exposes how patriarchal ideas and relationships continue to be modernized to this day.
Through contemporary cases and reports, renowned political scientist Cynthia Enloe exposes the workings of everyday patriarchy--in how Syrian women civil society activists have been excluded from international peace negotiations; how sexual harassment became institutionally accepted within major news organizations; or in how the UN Secretary General's post has remained a masculine domain. Enloe then lays out strategies and skills for challenging patriarchal attitudes and operations. Encouraging self-reflection, she guides us in the discomforting curiosity of reviewing our own personal complicity in sustaining patriarchy in order to withdraw our own support for it. Timely and globally conscious, The Big Push is a call for feminist self-reflection and strategic action with a belief that exposure complements resistance.
Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor at Clark University specializing in critical studies of militarism and transnational feminism. She has appeared on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and NPR and has written for Ms. and the Village Voice. She is the author of more than fifteen books, including Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives and The Curious Feminist Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. Enloe was awarded the Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement in Peace Studies Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA).
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The Search for Life: How do scientists know what to look for out there?
Tuesday, November 7
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Nonprofit Center 89 South Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-search-for-life-how-do-scientists-know-what-to-look-for-out-there-registration-39222210688
Scientists are probing the farthest reaches of the universe looking for an answer to a long-standing question: Are we alone? But the search for life out there starts right here on Earth, our only example of life. In many ways, we're searching for our own reflection. But what about life as we don't know it? Would we even recognize life out there – if it's there to be found?
Join The Christian Science Monitor for a short film and panel discussion with some of the scientists shaping the search for life out there. (Watch a trailer here)
Panelists:
Sara Seager, is an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT. Her science research focuses on theory, computation, and data analysis of exoplanets, as she is a pioneer in the quest for an Earth-twin in another solar system. Professor Seager was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, and the 2012 recipient of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences.
Christopher Carr, is a Research Scientist at MIT and a Research Fellow in the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology. He is focused on instrument development, and application of bioengineering models to interesting scientific problems. He is currently leading the instrument development for a miniature RNA/DNA sequencer to search for life on other worlds.
Robin Wordsworth, is an assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at Harvard. His research is focused on the processes that shape planetary climate and habitability, both in the Solar System and around other stars. He has worked on NASA Astrobiology Institute projects focusing on questions of planetary habitability.
Geoffrey Collins, is a planetary scientist at Wheaton College. He has been involved with NASA projects such as the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn. Professor Collins particularly focuses on the geological processes on icy worlds in the outer solar system, considering questions of whether extraterrestrial life could arise there.
Moderator: Eva Botkin-Kowacki, is a staff reporter on the science, environment, and technology team. At the Monitor, she covers everything under the sun and beyond.
The event is open and free to the public. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and the program will kick off with a short film at 7:00 p.m. Follow the conversation on Twitter via the hashtag #SearchForLife.
For those unable to attend in person, join us on Facebook Live.
This event is sponsored by American Trust.
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Wednesday, November 8 - Friday, November 10
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GreenBuild 2017
Wednesday, November 8 - Friday, November 10
Boston Convention Center
The international green building conference and expo of the U.S. Green Building Council will be held in Boston again next year. Persons interested in serving on the host committee or conference subcommittees should visit the USGBC Massachusetts Chapter website
More information at https://www.greenbuildexpo.com/en/home.html
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Wednesday, November 8
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Conference on Redistricting Reform at Harvard University
Wednesday, November 8
8:30 AM – 7:30 PM EST
Harvard, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conference-on-redistricting-reform-at-harvard-university-tickets-37853844869
You are cordially invited to join the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation for a for a day-long conference on gerrymandering, redistricting, and the fight for American democracy. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear and hand down its decision in the most important case on political gerrymandering in a generation, join us for a convening of scholars, practitioners, and activists from around the country, as we seek to understand a path forward on redistricting reform. Our panelists will provide unique insight into the history of gerrymandering, the role of race in redistricting, the current crisis of the Census, and examine the landscape for reform.
The day long program will close with a public talk at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 5 - 7:30 pm. A draft agenda for the day is below.
Agenda
Date: November 8, 2017
Location: Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School
8:30: Coffee and light breakfast
9:15: Welcome
Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor, Harvard Law School
Douglas Elmendorf, Dean, Harvard Kennedy School
Archon Fung, Academic Dean and Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship, Harvard Kennedy School
Miles Rapoport, Senior Practice Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
9:45: Gerrymandering: A Tortuous History
Alex Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
10:45: Race and Redistricting
Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor, Harvard Law School, Moderator
Terry Ao Minnis, Director of Census and Voting Programs, Asian Americans Advancing Justice
Janai Nelson, Associate Director/Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Thomas Saenz, President and General Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
12:00: Redistricting Through a Partisan Lens (lunch to be provided)
Chris Jankowski, Republican Consultant and Former Director, Operation REDMAP
Kelly Ward, Executive Director, National Democratic Redistricting Committee
1:30: The Landscape of Reform: Issues and States
Moon Duchin, Associate Professor and Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Society, Tufts University
Cathy Duvall, Redistricting Reform Project
Dan Vicuña, National Redistricting Manager, Common Cause
Michael Li, Brennan Center, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice
Wendy Underhill, National Conference of State Legislatures
3:30: The Crisis of the Census
John H. Thompson, Executive Director, Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics and Former Director of U.S. Census Bureau
Arturo Vargas, President, National Association of Latino Elected Officials
Location: House of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (shuttles provided).
5:00: Reception
6:00: AAAS “Stated Meeting”: Redistricting & Representation
Moon Duchin, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Tufts University
Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Gary King, Weatherhead University Professor and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University
Moderator: Hon. Patti Saris, Chief Judge, U. S. District Court, District of Massachusetts
https://ash.harvard.edu/event/gerrymandering-redistricting-and-american-democracy-conference
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Ralph Nader at the Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Langdell Hall North, 225 Vorenberg Classroom
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Ralph Nader
CONTACT INFO pedavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu / 347-453-3135
DETAILS Ralph Nader — consumer advocate, public citizen, Harvard Law alumnus, and one of The Atlantic's 100 most influential figures in American history — is coming to Harvard Law to inspire students to deploy their education for justice, democracy and the public interest.
Free and open to the public.
Contact Pete Davis at PeDavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu for more information.
LINK https://www.facebook.com/events/124270571579473/
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Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers
Wednesday, November 8
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
David Edelstein, Georgetown University
How do established powers react to growing competitors? The United States currently faces a dilemma with regard to China and others over whether to embrace competition and thus substantial present-day costs or collaborate with its rivals to garner short-term gains while letting them become more powerful. This problem lends considerable urgency to the lessons to be learned from Over the Horizon. David M. Edelstein analyzes past rising powers in his search for answers that point the way forward for the United States as it strives to maintain control over its competitors.
David M. Edelstein is an associate professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, the Center for Security Studies, and the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers (Cornell University Press, 2017) and Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupations (Cornell University Press, 2008). He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from Colgate University.
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Genetics and Epigenetics of Adaptation to The Environment
Wednesday, November 8
4:00PM
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Detlef Weigel, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
My group is addressing fundamental questions in evolutionary biology, using both genome-first and phenotype-first approaches: (i) Where do new genetic variants come from? (ii) Why are some variants maintained for a much longer time than others? (iii) And why are some combinations of variants incompatible with each other?
The background for these questions is our population genomic work in Arabidopsis and the related genus Capsella. In collaboration with Bergelson, Ecker, Mott, Nordborg, Schmid and others, including Monsanto, we have been describing whole-genome variation in wild isolates of A. thaliana(http://1001genomes.org). This has, for example, led to the discovery of a Neanderthal-like group that has apparently survived since the Last Glacial Maximum. A similarly remarkable finding that emerged from the Capsella work with Neuffer, Slotte and Wright is the ubiquity of long-term balancing selection, specifically at immunity loci. On the other end of the spectrum, we are analyzing new DNA mutations and epigenetic variants that have arisen under laboratory conditions or in a natural mutation accumulation experiment. The latter studies, with Bergelson and Burbano, take advantage of an A. thaliana lineage that was apparently introduced to North America in historic times and accounts for about half the population there.
The ultimate goal of our top-down studies is to understand how genetic and epigenetic variation interact with natural selection to shape geographic patterns of diversity. One example is our efforts to predict which A. thaliana populations will and which populations will not be able to adapt to climate change.
OEB Special Seminar
https://oeb.harvard.edu/event/oeb-special-seminar-weigel
Contact Name: Wendy Heywood
wheywood at oeb.harvard.edu
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Trumping Trump: New Directions and Waves of Resistance - Nader & Derber
Wednesday, November 8
4:00 p.m.
Old South Church (Gordon Chapel), 645 Boylston Street, (Copley Square), Boston
Ralph Nader, in a rare Boston appearance, joins activist scholar and public sociologist Charles Derber in a public conversation about resistance in the Trump era. Both will speak to the content of their recent books and public
initiatives to resist the current regime by universalizing resistance across movements. Although not completely identical in approaches both thinkers turn to public opinion and identify a progressive majority whose values and preferences contradict both the Trump agenda and the alternatives proposed by mainstream Democrats.
For more information: see http://UniversalizingResistance.org, @ universalizenow <https://twitter.com/universalizenow>
RSVP on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/events/140432129918012> (not required, free admission on a first come, first serve basis, doors open at 3:45 p.m.)
Program: 4:00 - 4:45 Speaker Presentations; 4:45 - 5:15 Discussion; 5:15 -
5:30 Closing Comments
This event is free and open to the public; donations may be offered to help
defray venue and publicity costs.
Contact Suren (suren at fairjobs.org), or Jason(jlow19 at gmail.com) for more information.
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Should Law Foster Forgiveness?: A Lecture by Martha Minow
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 4 – 5:15 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Martha Minow, 2017-2018 Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School; Vice Chair of the Board of the Legal Services Corporation
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events at radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Martha Minow's current work considers whether and when legal systems and rules should promote forgiveness. When people violate criminal laws, fail to pay debts, or run afoul of immigration laws, should law promote forgiveness by those who have been harmed? When should governments pursue amnesties, pardons, or alternatives to legally authorized sanctions? What should be unforgiveable? Looking at issues within the United States and at international debates over sovereign debt and treatments of child soldiers, her project considers legal, historical, religious, and cultural resources.
LINK https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2017-martha-minow-fellow-presentation
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Book Discussion — Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Center for European Studies
SPEAKER(S) Thomas Weber – Professor of History and International Affairs, University of Aberdeen; Director, Center for Global Security and Governance, University of Aberdeen; Chair Derek Penslar – Visiting Professor of History, Harvard University; Resident Faculty; Daniel Ziblatt – Professor of Government, Harvard University; Resident Faculty
CONTACT INFO Roumiana Theunissen: rtheunissen at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS When he first became a historian, Thomas Weber never imagined writing at any length about Adolf Hitler. So many great works of scholarship had been published about the leader of the Third Reich, he found it difficult to imagine that there was anything new or worthwhile left to say. However, as his research took him through archives and private collections in attics and basements on three continents, he started to see the flaws in our understanding of Hitler. Most notably, at a time of new authoritarian populism, new threats to democracy, and an unraveling of the globalization of our own times, he was no longer sure that we really knew how Hitler had become a Nazi.
LINK https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2017/11/becoming-hitler-making-of-a-nazi-book-discussion
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The Potential for Solar Energy
Wednesday, November 8
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 66-110, 25 Ames Street Cambridge
with Becca Jones-Albertus, Acting Deputy Director, U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office
Solar deployment has increased 100-fold in the past decade, yet solar energy supplies just 1% of U.S. electricity today. In a little over 10 years, solar is expected to grow to about 5% of U.S. electricity and hit 10-20% by 2050. But more is possible. With aggressive solar and storage technology cost declines and a focus on grid integration, the country could more than double that deployment. This talk will describe promising pathways for advanced solar technologies and for integrating solar with energy storage and other technologies. Becca Jones-Albertus will also look at the associated projections for solar deployment based on NREL's Regional Energy Deployment System model.
Speaker Bio: Becca Jones-Albertus is the acting deputy director for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, working to advance solar energy technology and accelerate market adoption with an annual budget of over $200 million (to date). The Solar Office has a history of working to reduce the cost of solar electricity through the SunShot Initiative and, with the rapid growth in solar deployment, is now expanding its emphasis on solving the challenges related to integrating large amounts of solar energy onto the grid.
Jones-Albertus has spent her career advancing solar technology, from fundamental research and development to manufacturing. Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Jones-Albertus was at Solar Junction, where she led efforts developing the company’s two-time world record solar cells and then transferring that technology to a high volume manufacturing toolset.
Jones-Albertus graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a BS in electrical engineering, and also holds a MS and PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She has more than 10 patents and 30 technical publications.
Please note this is a public event and we will open our doors to unregistered participants 15 minutes before the event start time. To guarantee your seat, we recommend you register and arrive at least 15 minutes early.
If you are not able to attend, note there will be a high-quality recording of this seminar made available on our YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/MITEnergyInitiative about a week following the event.
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Decoding Maya Hieroglyphs with 3D Technology
Wednesday, November 8
6:00 pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Barbara Fash, Director, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program and the Gordon R. Willey Laboratory for Mesoamerican Studies, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
The Peabody Museum has conducted archaeological research in the Maya site of Copan, Honduras, since the 1890s. One of Copan’s most iconic elements is a staircase made of over 620 blocks carved with Maya glyphs. Dating back to the eighth century CE, this stairway has captivated Mayanists since its discovery, but the meaning of its texts has remained a mystery—until now. Barbara Fash will discuss how 3D technology and scholarly collaborations are merging to decode the Hieroglyphic Stairway, in conjunction with Honduran and international organizations aimed at conserving this World Heritage Site.
Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
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Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
Wednesday, November 8
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.harvard.com/event/bill_mckibben1/
Cost: $5 - $23.75 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes celebrated author and environmentalist BILL McKIBBEN—founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement—for a discussion of his debut novel, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance. This event is co-sponsored by 350 Mass.
About Radio Free Vermont
A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic.
As the host of Radio Free Vermont—"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"—seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law.
In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that's become more popular than ever—seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of 'Ethan Allen Day' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.
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Inside the Obama Years: A Conversation with Valerie Jarrett
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics,
Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama
Director, White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, (2009 –2017)
Yohannes Abraham, IOP Fall 2017 Resident Fellow, Senior Advisor, Obama Foundation, Senior Advisor, National Economic Council
CONTACT INFO Forum Office
617-495-1380
LINK http://iop.harvard.edu/forum/inside-obama-years-conversation-valerie-jarrett
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Getting to the Point: A Conversation with the Authors of One Nation After Trump
Wednesday, November 8
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, Columbia Point, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/getting-to-the-point-a-conversation-with-the-authors-of-one-nation-after-trump-tickets-38786200570
Cost: $0 – $35
One year after the 2016 election, many are still asking questions about President Trump’s rise to the presidency and where the nation will go from here. Two of Washington’s premier political scholar-journalists E.J. Dionne, Jr. and Norman J. Ornstein, will discuss President Trump’s election and the citizen activism it has inspired, as detailed in their new book, One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported, through a moderated conversation with Boston College History Professor Heather Cox Richardson.
How did our political system give rise to President Trump? What dangers does his administration pose to our free institutions? How can millions of Americans harness a renewed sense of citizenship and engagement? Dionne and Ornstein will discuss the current political climate, what the Trump presidency means for our political norms and institutions, and the importance of seizing on the renewed sense of civic responsibility and engagement in the American people.
A book signing will follow. Two ticket options are available, including general admission tickets (free), and premium tickets ($35; $30 for members). Premium tickets include the book and guaranteed seating. Free parking is available at the Institute.
Speakers: E.J. Dionne, Jr., Columnist for The Washington Post, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Professor at Georgetown University at EJDionne
Norman J. Ornstein, Resident Scholar the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor and columnist for National Journal and The Atlantic @NormOrnstein
Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History, Boston College @HC_Richardson
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RIKERS: An American Jail (Film Screening)
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 6:15 – 8:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Film
SPONSOR Professor Matthew Potts
CONTACT Matthew Potts
DETAILS RIKERS: AN AMERICAN JAIL, a riveting new award-winning documentary from Bill Moyers, brings you face to face with men and women who have endured incarceration at Rikers Island. Their stories, told direct to camera, vividly describe the cruel arc of the Rikers experience—from the shock of entry, to the extortion and control exercised by other inmates, the oppressive interaction with corrections officers, the beatings and stabbings, the torture of solitary confinement and the many challenges of returning to the outside world.
From the website: http://rikersfilm.org/
LINK http://rikersfilm.org
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ROOM TO GROW: FARMING INTO THE FUTURE
Wednesday, November 8
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Le Laboratoire Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/room-to-grow-farming-into-the-future-tickets-39004761291
Le Lab Cambridge presents ROOM TO GROW: FARMING INTO THE FUTURE
A lively conversation moderated by Leah Mennies Group Editor, John Brown Media; food Journalist
Join our incredible panelists Chris Sherman, Bill Braun, and Dr. Deane Falcone,
for a forward-looking discussion about regional farming, sustainability, scalability, and what "eating local" looks like in the future
As usual, the talk is free.
Space is limited.
Door: 6:00pm
Talk: 6:30pm
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Journalist Speaker Tim Shorrock Speaks at Mass Peace Action (North Korea)
Wednesday, November 8
6:45 PM
American Friends Services Committee, 8 Hamilton Place, Boston
The war hawks are wrong when they say that negotiations don't make a difference. Tim Shorrock is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured in many publications including Huffington Post, The Nation, and The Los Angeles Times. He is an expert in US- Korean relations, US intelligence and foreign policy. He is the author of Spies for Hire, The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (2008).
Recent articles include, "Diplomacy with North Korea has worked before, and Can Work Again"-- The Nation, Sept. 5 2017; and "America is not an innocent bystander in Korea," Febr. 2 2017 LobeLog.
He blogs at http://timshorrock.com
This talk will follow a rally to be held at 5:15 at Park St. Station.
http://masspeaceaction.org/event/diplomacy-with-north-korea-has-worked-before-and-can-work-again/
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The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed writer and Harvard Law professor NOAH FELDMAN for a discussion of his latest book, The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About The Three Lives of James Madison
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician he co-founded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
In The Three Lives of James Madison, Noah Feldman offers an intriguing portrait of this elusive genius and the constitutional republic he created—and how both evolved to meet unforeseen challenges. Madison hoped to eradicate partisanship yet found himself giving voice to, and institutionalizing, the political divide. Madison’s lifelong loyalty to Thomas Jefferson led to an irrevocable break with George Washington, hero of the American Revolution. Madison closely collaborated with Alexander Hamilton on the Federalist papers—yet their different visions for the United States left them enemies.
Alliances defined Madison, too. The vivacious Dolley Madison used her social and political talents to win her husband new supporters in Washington—and define the diplomatic customs of the capital’s society. Madison’s relationship with James Monroe, a mixture of friendship and rivalry, shaped his presidency and the outcome of the War of 1812.
We may be more familiar with other Founding Fathers, but the United States today is in many ways Madisonian in nature. Madison predicted that foreign threats would justify the curtailment of civil liberties. He feared economic inequality and the power of financial markets over politics, believing that government by the people demanded resistance to wealth. Madison was the first Founding Father to recognize the importance of public opinion, and the first to understand that the media could function as a safeguard to liberty.
The Three Lives of James Madison is an illuminating biography of the man whose creativity and tenacity gave us America’s distinctive form of government. His collaborations, struggles, and contradictions define the United States to this day.
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Raising Resilience: The Wisdom and Science of Happy Families and Thriving Children
Wednesday November 8
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Christopher Willard
Drawing from growing bodies of research on social psychology and neuroscience, Raising Resilience is a practical guide for parents and educators from preschool through adolescence, detailing ten universal principles for happy families and thriving children.
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They Were My Friends: Jack, Bob, and Ted
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gerard-f-doherty-they-were-my-friends-tickets-38876462546
They Were My Friends is a rare, first-hand account of the behind-the-scenes work thatled to some of the most influential moments of the Kennedy brothers' political lives and how the son of a Boston firefighter got to be in the middle of it all. Gerard Doherty, the only man who had a seat at the table with all three Kennedy brothers, takes the reader through the history of Massachusetts politics and the golden age of the Kennedy political dynasty. Doherty ’s clever voice weaves the story of his unlikely rise to the top of Massachusetts political leadership and how he became the man behind the Kennedy political machine at key moments in history. He also shares behind -the -scenes accounts of his work helping President Jimmy Carter and President Lyndon Johnson win the White House. Mr. Doherty takes the reader back in time when tuberculosis and war were a daily concern of families and struggles of loss were real in every pocket of the neighborhood. He writes about the power of boyhood friendships and how the relationships that you welcome throughout your life can carry you through difficult times to triumph.
About the Author
Gerard F. Doherty was born and still lives in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. He was educated at Malden Catholic High School, Harvard University and Suffolk University Law School. He was a two-time State Representative and MA State Democratic Party Chairman. He was active in the campaigns of Jack, Bob and Ted Kennedy and became their friend. He was also involved in the presidential campaigns of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. He built a successful law practice with a specialty in real estate development.
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Changing Distributions of Large Whales: How Climate, Oceanography, and Biology Influence Movement of the Largest Animals on Earth
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Simons IMAX Theatre New England Aquarium, Aquarium Wharf, Boston
RSVP at http://support.neaq.org/site/Calendar?id=107326&view=Detail
Dan Pendleton, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium
The mystery of how and why large whales know when and where to migrate has perplexed humankind for thousands of years – first in their attempts to hunt and kill them and now to save them from extinction and exploitation. Right and bowhead whales are among the largest animals on Earth, yet they feed on some of the smallest marine organisms, zooplankton. This connection through the food web dramatically highlights associations of species linked closely to climate-induced changes in the oceans, such as recent rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine. Large filter-feeding whales, as ecological sentinels, are therefore a highly visible sign of underlying ocean health and conditions. This lecture will explore pressing questions surrounding large whale conservation and describe cutting-edge quantitative methods being used to understand whale distributions in the Anthropocene.
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This is How We Do It: From sex evolution to sex education
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Harvard Medical School, Armenise Auditorium, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/seminar-series/
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Resistance Mic!
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 8 – 10 p.m.
WHERE Oberon, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Comedy, Concerts, Humanities, Law, Poetry/Prose, Special Events, Support/Social, Theater
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights, Pangyrus Literary Magazine, Oberon
SPEAKER(S) Anne Champion is the author of The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Crab Orchard Review, Epiphany Magazine, The Pinch, The Greensboro Review, New South, and elsewhere. She was an 2009 Academy of American Poet’s Prize recipient, a Barbara Deming Memorial grant recipient, a 2015 Best of the Net winner, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Boyah J. Farah is a refugee turned writer from Somalia whose works of nonfiction have been featured in The Guardian, Salon, WGBH, Harvard Transition, Grub Daily, Somerville Times, and Truthdig. A Judy Layzer Fellow, he participated in the Memoir Incubator at GrubStreet Creative Writing School in Boston.
Literary performer Regie Gibson has lectured and performed widely in the U.S., Cuba & Europe. As a representative of the U.S., Regie competed for & received the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy. Himself & his work appear in “love jones” a feature-film based on events in his life. He’s been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, various NPR programs, nominated for a Boston Emmy & has been a featured presenter for several TedX events. He’s served as a consultant for both the National Endowment for the Arts’ “How Art Works” initiative and the “Mere Distinction of Color,” an exhibit at James Madison’s Montpelier, examining the legacy of slavery & the U.S. constitution. Regie has performed with and composed texts for Boston City Singers, the Mystic Chorale, and the Handel+Haydn Society. His work has been published in Poetry magazine, Harvard Divinity Magazine, The Iowa Review, among others. His volume of poems, Storms Beneath the Skin, received the Golden Pen Award.
He is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for Poetry, the Walker Scholarship for Poetry from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, a YMCA Community Writer’s Fellowship, the Lexington Foundation Education Grant, and is a 2017 recipient of the Brother Thomas Award from The Boston Foundation. Regie teaches at Clark University and is head instructor for the Mass Poetry “Poets in the Schools Program” at Lesley University. When Regie is not teaching, he is the lead singer for Atlas Soul, a world music, global funk ensemble and is Artistic Director of Shakespeare to Hiphop’s “Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy,” a multimedia performance focusing on the works and influence of William Shakespeare.
Jessica Halem, MBA is currently the LGBT Program Director for Harvard Medical School. She has been leading programs for social justice and organizational change since the 1990s. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she worked with former Congresswoman Bella Abzug to organize women leaders from around the world to advocate at the United Nations. Jessica was then recruited to lead the Lesbian Community Cancer Project in Chicago. And in 2008, she was asked to serve on Barack Obama's first LGBT Advisory Committee. While in Chicago, she trained at Second City where she cultivated her improv skills and led a successful comedy career for 15 years. Jessica has shared the stage with Lady Gaga, Indigo Girls, and Margaret Cho. She has been featured in Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal and on NPR.
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and a Memoir, named an Indie Next Pick and a Junior Library Guild selection; one of the most anticipated books of 2017 by Buzzfeed, Book Riot, and the Huffington Post; a must-read for May by Goodreads, Audible.com, Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple and People; long-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize and a finalist for a New England Book Award; one of the 10 best books of the year so far by Entertainment Weekly; and one of the best books of the year so far by Audible.com and Book Riot. It was published May 16th in the US and May 18th in the UK, to be followed by the Netherlands, Turkey, Korea, Taiwan, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and France. The recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo, as well as a Rona Jaffe Award, Marzano-Lesnevich lives in Boston, where she teaches at Harvard.
Timothy Patrick McCarthy (@DrTPM) is an award-winning scholar, educator, and activist who teaches at Harvard University. He is author or editor of five books from the New Press, including Stonewall’s Children: Living Queer History in the Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love, forthcoming in 2018. He is also the host and director of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series. Find him at www.hks.harvard.edu….
Sarah Sweeney is the author of the essay collection, Tell Me If You’re Lying (Barrelhouse Books, 2016), and The Dark Length Home, a chapbook co-written with Anne Champion. Her essays and journalism have appeared in Salon, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Oxford American, Catapult, and others. She has been received residencies from the Akumal International Artists Residency and the Turkey Land Cove Foundation in Martha’s Vineyard. She is working on a memoir and lives in Boston.
Grace Talusan is the winner of the 2017 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for Nonfiction for The Body Papers, a memoir about trauma, illness, and immigration scheduled for publication in the fall of 2018. She has published essays, longform journalism, fiction and book reviews in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Boston Magazine, Boston Globe, The Rumpus, and many others. She is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded residencies to Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and the Dune Shacks in Provincetown. She is a graduate of Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. At Tufts University, she teaches in the English Department and The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. She is a longtime member and teacher at Grub Street, an independent creative writing center, and lives outside of Boston with her husband.
COST $5-10
TICKET WEB LINK https://americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/resistance-mic
DETAILS The 2016 election inspired a broad-based Resistance not seen in the United States in decades. People from all walks of life have been protesting, marching, mobilizing, and organizing in an effort to take back our country and create a more compassionate and just world. Artists are vital to this work. This fall, the American Repertory Theater and Carr Center for Human Rights Policy – in collaboration with Pangyrus and other literary and arts initiatives – are launching a new series of intimate performances on the theme of “Resistance.” Each of these five evenings will feature a diverse group of artist-activists telling powerful stories and performing politically engaged works that read, move, sing, and speak truth to power in these troubled times.
Resistance Mic! is part of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series, an ongoing collaboration between the American Repertory Theater and Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Resistance Mic! will take place on Wednesdays @ 8 p.m. @ OBERON, A.R.T.’s second stage theater, and will be co-hosted by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and Sarah Sweeney.
LINK https://americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/resistance-mic
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Thursday, November 9
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Toward the Efficient Impact Frontier with Mike McCreless of Root Capital
When: Thursday, Nov 9, 11:45am-12:45pm
Where: MIT, Building E62-276, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
What: Mike will be presenting Root Capital's article "Toward the Efficient Impact Frontier" in the Winter 2017 Stanford Social Innovation Review. The article describes an approach by which impact investors can construct portfolios on the 'efficient frontier' of impact and financial performance, and manage impact alongside financial risk and return in a quantitative and holistic way.
RSVP: https://sloangroups.mit.edu/sustain/rsvp?id=359812
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The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at the Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Thomas Hazlett, H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University
DETAILS Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to mrcbg at hks.harvard.edu
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Who is an environmentalist? Making “nature” at urban parks
Thursday, November 9
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Cathy Stanton & Shirley Wang, Department of Anthropology, Tufts University
Parks are paradoxical places where a sense of “nature” is carefully constructed, maintained, and regulated, often in ways that reinforce normative categories and behaviors. Through a pair of case studies at urban parks in coastal US cities, two anthropologists explore the ways that visitors, park staff and planners, state officials, and others express and negotiate what it means to be an environmentalist, and how that sits within often very different visions of parks as public or civic spaces. Cathy Stanton describes the tensions around her depiction of a Boston Harbor Island cottage community as environmentalists in a report commissioned by state officials overseeing the cottagers' displacement from a space being remade as “natural.” Shirley Wang presents a range of innovative understandings of environmentalism at two iconic San Francisco parks and asks about their potential to shift patterns of racial exclusion.
Cathy Stanton is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and the academic advisor for the Food Systems & Nutrition minor at Tufts. For many years she produced ethnographic studies for the National Park Service, including a recent project on Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor on which this talk is based.
Shirley Wang is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Tufts University studying anthropology. She is a Tufts Summer Scholar and received a grant to conduct fieldwork in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Her research data will be used for a 3-part audio- documentary podcast series called Neutral Grounds, as well as her senior thesis.
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Universal Healthcare: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? - Dr. Donna Shalala
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Online at hsph.me/Shalala2 or in The Leadership Studio, 10th floor Kresge Building
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Voices in Leadership @ HSPH
SPEAKER(S) Dr. Donna Shalala, former President of the Clinton Foundation
COST free
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices/events/donna-shalala-former-president-of-the-clinton-foundation/
TICKET INFO https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices/events/donna-shalala-former-president-of-the-clinton-foundation/
CONTACT INFO Alison Barron - abarron at hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Universal Healthcare: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? - An event with the former President of the Clinton Foundation, Dr. Donna Shalala
Donna E. Shalala is Trustee Professor of Political Science and Health Policy at the University of Miami. She served as President of the Clinton Foundation from June 2015 to March 2017; President of the University of Miami from 2001 to 2015; President of Hunter College of the City University of New York from 1980 to 1987; and Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1987 to 1993. A political scientist, she has held professorships at Columbia University, the City University of New York (CUNY), and the University of Wisconsin.
One of the most honored academics of her generation, she has been elected to seven national academies: the National Academy of Education, the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the National Academy of Medicine.
President Clinton nominated her as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1993, and she served in that post for eight years. In 2008 President Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.
Please join us for this exciting talk!
LINK https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices/events/donna-shalala-former-president-of-the-clinton-foundation/
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A Circular Economy
Monday, November 9
12:00-1:30 pm
MAPC, 60 Temple Place, 3rd Floor, Boston
A brown bag lunch presentation with Leonie Janssen-Jansen, Professor of Land Use Planning at Wigeningen University and Andre Struker, Strategic Adviser at Waternet. The speakers will discuss the Netherlands drive for a wholly circular economy by 2050, with a 50% reduction in minerals, fossil fuels, and metal by 2030. Attendees need to RSVP to eva-de.winkel at minbuza.nl or +1.646.557.2212.
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Building the Instant Internet with Machine Learning
November 9, 2017
2:50pm - 4:00pm
Tufts, Halligan 102, 161 College Avenue, Medford
Speaker: David Lerner, ViaSat
Why is the web still so slow? Why don’t web pages just snap? You have a high speed network and a fast device, so what’s wrong? In a word, “latency.” In this talk I will discuss why web pages are still slow and how the use of machine learning and Internet-scale computing lets us mitigate latency and build the world’s fastest web browser. The discussion will also touch on how we got the project funded, the role of patents, how we built Internet-scale services, and how we approached the machine learning problem.
Bio: David is a product manager at ViaSat, a company that is connecting the world with broadband Internet delivered by satellite. He has spent the last 17 years working on various products and techniques for accelerating web and network traffic. Prior to ViaSat, he experienced the ups and downs of the start-up world, and cofounded a wide area network optimization company.
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FBI surveillance & suppression of activists, social movements & targeted communities
Thursday, November 9
3:30-5:00pm
UMass Boston, University Hall, Floor 1 Room 1300, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
Leslie James Pickering, former Earth Liberation Front (ELF)* spokesman & owner of Burning Books Buffalo discusses FBI surveillance & suppression
of activists, social movements & targeted communities.
Want to learn about surveillance?
Wondering if you, your community & your family are targets?
Want to learn about the Freedom of Information Act & other tools of
resistance?
Free & open to the public. Sponsored by the Dept. of Political Science.
For information contact: joseph.brown at umb.edu
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Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Syrian Civil War
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Augustus Richard Norton, Professor 'Emeritus' of Anthropology and International Affairs, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.
LINK https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/title-be-announced-9
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Racism and Medicine (an Equity and Social Justice Discussion)
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Medical School, Tosteson Medical Education Center, Room 227, 260 Longwood Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership
SPEAKER(S) Keynote: Rahsaan Hall, Esq., Director, Racial Justice Program, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts
Panel: Luis Castellanos, M.D., M.P.H.; Nancy Krieger, Ph.D.; Audra R. Meadows, M.D., M.P.H.
COST No Cost. RSVP Requested.
TICKET WEB http:// www.surveymonkey.com/r/ESJ_11_9_17
CONTACT INFO teresa_carter at hms.harvard.edu
DETAILS The keynote presentation, "Reaping What We Sow: Structural Racism as a Driver of Health Disparities," will be followed by a panel discussion and reception.
LINK https://mfdp.med.harvard.edu/equity_and_social_justice/2017/racism_and_medicine
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Nordic Ways: A Panel Discussion with the Ambassadors of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden
Thursday, November 9
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
BU, Sargent College, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 101, Boston
Speakers Lars Gert Lose, Denmark’s Ambassador to the United States Kirsti Kauppi, Finland’s Ambassador to the United States Karin Olofsdotter, Sweden’s Ambassador to the United States Marius Dirdal, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Norway in Washington
The Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland – may separately be small in terms of numbers but they are among America’s strongest partners in areas like defence, security, and counter- terrorism, the economy and even popular culture. And put together the Nordic Region reach a significant size. Also with regard to trade and investment ties are close. And the potential for further development is great with the United States in general and New England in particular.
The Nordic Region has taken the lead in green growth and has proven that new green technology offers economic growth in a world more populated than ever, more urban than ever, and with increasing expectations to protect public health. The Nordic Region is the first part of the world to break the link between economic growth and climate change. Nordic solutions are based on the unique features of the Nordic model, strong expertise and high-quality technical solutions, widespread environmental knowledge, and effective open and participatory planning processes. <p>
Contact: Elizabeth Amrien
edamrien at bu.edu
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Guest Lecture: Richard Florida and the New Urban Crisis
Thursday, November 9
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm
BU, Florence and Chafetz Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, Boston
RSVP at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eel5edrue7e97e6a&oseq=&c=&ch=
Join the Initiative on Cities to welcome to campus Richard Florida, Author, The New Urban Crisis, University of Toronto for a lecture on his most recent book, The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class-and What We Can Do About It. Best known for his concept of the creative class, Florida's latest book examines the adverse consequences of contemporary urban migration as cities grapple with growing inequality, housing affordability and gentrification.
Contact Email ioc at bu.edu
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Lecture by Award-Winning Artist Lynda Barry
Thursday, November 9
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
BU College of General Studies, 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lecture-by-award-winning-artist-lynda-barry-tickets-39041240401
Award-winning painter, cartoonist, writer, and illustrator Lynda Barry will speak on creativity and the biological function of “the arts.”
Why do people wish they could write, sing, dance, and draw, long after they’ve given up on these things? Does creative activity have a biological function? There is something common to everything we call the arts. What is it? It’s something Lynda Barry calls ‘an image’, something that feels alive and is contained and transported by something that is not alive—a book, or a song or a painting—anything we call an ‘art form’. This ancient ‘it’ has been around at least as long as we have had hands, and the state of mind it brings about is not plain old ‘thinking’. This talk is about our innate creative ability to work with images and the biological function of this thing we call “the arts.”
Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. The New York Times has described Barry as “among this country’s greatest conjoiners of words and images, known for plumbing all kinds of touchy subjects in cartoons, comic strips and novels, both graphic and illustrated.” Widely credited with expanding the literary, thematic and emotional range of American comics, Barry’s seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook’s Comeek, ran in alternative newspapers across North America for thirty years.
Lynda Barry will be delivering the annual Stanley P. Stone Distinguished Lecture. The Stanley P. Stone Distinguished Lecture Series brings notable, inspiring speakers to Boston University College of General Studies, inviting the CGS and BU community to broaden their educational experience related one of the College's academic division areas: humanities, social science, natural sciences, or rhetoric. The event is free and open to the public.
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Fighting for Justice with an Open Heart: Conviction, Empathy, and the Niebuhrian Imperative
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
SPONSOR HDS Dean's Office
CONTACT HDS Dean's Office, 617.495.4513
DETAILS Journalist and author E.J. Dionne, William H. Bloomberg Visiting Professor, will deliver the 2017 Horace De Y. Lentz Lecture. The title of the talk is "Fighting for Justice with an Open Heart: Conviction, Empathy, and the Niebuhrian Imperative."
Dionne is a distinguished journalist and author, political commentator, and longtime op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University, and a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC’s “This Week,” and MSNBC.
His most recent book, co-authored with Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, is One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.
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Brian Michael Bendis: The 2017 Julius Schwartz Lecture
Thursday, November 9
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing is thrilled to welcome award-winning comics creator Brian Michael Bendis, a New York Times bestseller and one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics, for the 2017 Julius Schwartz lecture.
For the last eighteen years, Brian’s books have consistently sat on the top of the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts. He is the co-creator and consulting producer of the Peabody Award-winning Jessica Jones on Netflix from Marvel TV. For Marvel entertainment, Bendis is currently the monthly writer of the bestselling Defenders, Jessica Jones, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy series.
The introduction of the multiracial Spider-Man, Miles Morales, made the front page of USA Today and went on to become an international hotbed political topic featured on Fox News, CNN, The Daily Show, Conan O’Brien, Howard Stern and many others.
The news of a new ‘Iron man’ character in the form of 15-year-old Riri Williams made massive international headlines when the story broke in Time magazine. Her solo debut as Invincible Iron man debuted in the top five nationwide.
Before that, Brian completed a 100 issue run on the X-Men franchise with the debut of ALL NEW X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN and 9 years helming Marvel’s popular AVENGERS franchise by writing every issue of the NEW AVENGERS plus debuting the hit books AVENGERS, MIGHTY AVENGERS and DARK AVENGERS along with the wildly successful ‘event’ projects AVENGERS VERSUS X-MEN, HOUSE OF M, SECRET WAR, SPIDER-MEN, SECRET INVASION, AGE OF ULTRON, SIEGE and CIVIL WAR 2.
In delivering the 2017 Julius Schwartz Lecture, Brian follows comics and science fiction legends Neil Gaiman (video) and J. Michael Straczynski (video).
The Julius Schwartz Lecture is hosted by the Comparative Media Studies/Writing program at MIT and was founded to honor the memory of longtime DC Comics editor Julius “Julie” Schwartz, whose contributions to our culture include co-founding the first science fiction fanzine in 1932, the first science fiction literary agency in 1934, and the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. Schwartz went on to launch a career in comics that would last for 42 years, during which time he helped launch the Silver Age of Comics, introduced the idea of parallel universes, and had a hand in the reinvention of such characters as Batman, Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom.
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Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics
Thursday, November 9
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
RSVP at http://www.harvard.com/event/lawrence_odonnell/
Cost: $5 - $28.75 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes the host of MSNBC's The Last Word LAWRENCE O'DONNELL for a discussion of his latest book, Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Playing with Fire
The 1968 U.S. Presidential election was the young Lawrence O’Donnell’s political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations. For years he has deployed one of America’s shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself, but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different, and how we got to where we are now. Playing With Fire represents O’Donnell’s master class in American electioneering, embedded in the epic human drama of a system, and a country, coming apart at the seams in real time.
Nothing went according to the script. LBJ was confident he'd dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson's greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren't prepared to challenge their own party’s incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring to run against the president and the Vietnam War. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, LBJ dropped out, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage.
Suddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth façade behind which he feverishly held his party’s right and left wings in the fold, through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace. But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason. The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today.
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Rabobank-MIT Food & Agribusiness Innovation Prize Kickoff Dinner
Thursday, November 9
6:00pm to 8:30pm
MIT Sloan School of Management, E62-233, 100 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Interested in food, agribusiness, and sustainability? The Kickoff Dinner will be a chance to learn about the challenges in food and agribusiness from the perspective of prominent leaders and entrepreneurs, hear innovative ideas for improving the food and agriculture industry, and network with like-minded individuals. The event is open to students and industry experts from the Boston area.
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Greenbuild Sustainability Networking
THURSDAY, November 9
6:00-8:30 pm
Boston Convention Center
RSVP, will also give attendees access to the GreenBuild/ABX expo hall, AT https://www.compusystems.com/servlet/ar?evt_uid=678&site=ABX&discount=AB17ALUMNI10
use the code AB17ALUMNI10. This event is free. If you have already registered for GreenBuild, emailabx.registration at informa.com and let them know you would like to attend the ASAP event. GreenBuild.
The American Society of Adaptation Professionals with the Urban Land Institute/Boston, Boston Society of Architects, and UMass Sustainable Solutions Lab are holding a reception that will follow the day’s events at the GreenBuild/ABX conference in Boston. It is not necessary to be registered for the conference to attend this networking event. It will be an opportunity meet other people working on climate change adaptation and resilience. Appetizers and dessert will be served and there will be a cash bar.
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SUSTAINABILITY COLLABORATIVE
Thursday, November 9
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Venture Cafe at Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th floor, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
The Sustainability Collaborative was spurred as an outgrowth of the Sustainability unConference and aims to provide an ongoing platform for collaboration, connections, and solutions generation. Rotating sustainability advocates are given the chance to facilitate group discussion around central sustainability themes ranging from hunger alleviation to impact investing. The goal is to raise awareness within the innovation community while strengthening the social impact ecosystem.
Hosted monthly as part of The Venture Café Foundation’s Café Night at Kendall gathering.
Please reach out to Sierra Flanigan at sierra at coalesce.earth
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Wheelwright Prize Lecture: Erik L’Heureux, “Hot & Wet”
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Graduate School of Design
SPEAKER(S) Erik L’Heureux
CONTACT INFO events at gsd.harvard.edu
DETAILS "Erik L'Heureux, 2015 winner of the GSD's Wheelwright Prize, presents insights from his two years of travel and research for his Wheelwright project, “Hot & Wet.” “Hot & Wet” traces five dense cities across the equator from the large mega-cities of Asia and South America to the mid-scale cities found in India and Africa. Each city confronts rapid population growth, increasing climate change and extreme developmental pressures. The research follows architecture as a guide, framing the complex intertwining of atmosphere, climate, politics, and history at both the building and urban scale. From the recently burned Pasar Johar market by Thomas Karsten, to diminutive tower of Hassan Vogel, to the vestiges of Harry Weese, to the crafted Golconde Dormitory, and the stunning roofs of Vilanova Artigas, the “Grand Tour” of the torrid zone illustrates that architecture holds critically important agency in the transformation and aspiration of the equator.
L'Heureux's Pencil Office works on mid-scale building projects that combine the challenges of density, urbanization and specifics of the equatorial city. Each project is driven by the atmospheres of passive ventilation, day-lighting, thermal comfort, and durability. A language of simplicity and material detail produce works of meaning and importance. Pencil Office’s design leadership is by Erik L’Heureux. Erik migrated to the equator from New York in 2003. Despite his cool climate background, he has built a thriving and productive practice, with a specialty working on projects throughout South East Asia. The Office for Equatorial Intelligence in parallel operates as the research wing of his design practice and as an extension of his love for the Equator.
Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events at gsd.harvard.edu."
LINK http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/wheelwright-prize-lecture-erik-lheureux-hot-wet/
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Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
Thursday, November 9
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
he first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam's intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front's presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II.
With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.
Mark Bowden is the author of thirteen books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down. He reported at the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and now writes for the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and other magazines. He is also the writer in residence at the University of Delaware.
Chris Daly lives near Boston and teaches at Boston University. Before that, he worked for many years for The Associated Press and for The Washington Post, where he was the New England correspondent.
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Friday, November 10
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Remote Sensing Research
Friday, November 10
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Christian Frankenberg, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Research Scientist, Caltech, will discuss his research on remote sensing.
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
https://www.seas.harvard.edu/calendar/event/104786
Contact Name: Brenda Mathieu
bmathieu at seas.harvard.edu
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Extreme Scale Computing, Big Data Science and Web-of-Life Network Science
Friday, November 10
12:30pm to 2:00pm
Harvard SEAS, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
IACS Seminars are free and open to the public. Lunch will be served from 12:30-1pm on a first-come, first served basis. The talk will begin promptly at 1pm.
Manju Manjunathaiah, Harvard SEAS
Speaker Bio: Professor Manjunathaiah is a visiting Assistant Professor of Computational Science and an academic staff in the School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences at the University of Reading in the U.K. At Harvard, he will teach CS 205 (Computing Foundations for Computational Science) in Spring, 2017.
Professor Manjunathaiah has a long standing track record in two prominent formalisms in parallelism and concurrency in Computer Science: Polyhedral Model and CSP from research fellowships at Oxford, Manchester, Reading, Southampton, from collaborating with international researchers (INRIA, IRISA, Colorado) and from implementing parallel systems in industrial research labs.
Professor Manjunathaiah's research interests span theoretical and practical computer science in parallel and concurrent computing, as well as interdisciplinary areas in computational and data science. His research experience is in formal models for parallel and concurrent computing, parallel programming models, parallel architectures, parallelising compilers, parallel program verification, hardware-software co-design, performance modelling on Petascale systems, and domain specific programming languages to explore parallel and concurrent computations in various domains.
Professor Manjunathaiah's interests are driven by a ‘curiosity’ of what is computable and the phenomena of computation itself. In particular he is interested in computation as a modelling means to answer the fundamental question: ‘does nature behave in this way’ ? He has taught extensively covering foundations of Computer Science (discrete maths), core areas (algorithms, OS, Compilers) and advanced topics (Concurrent systems) and he received the faculty of science award for ‘outstanding contribution to teaching and learning’ at the University of Reading in 2007.
IACS Seminar Series
Host: Institute for Applied Computational Science (IACS)
Contact: Natasha Baker
Phone: 617-496-2623
Email: nrbaker at seas.harvard.edu
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Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Friday, November 10
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and Harvard Criminal Justice Policy Program welcome senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Justice Program LAUREN-BROOKE EISEN for a discussion of her latest book, Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration. She will be introduced by Harvard Law School professor CAROL S. STEIKER.
About Inside Private Prisons
When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration―to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America.
From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.
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Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy
Friday, November 10
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes prize-winning economist DANI RODRIK—the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government—for a discussion of his latest book, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy.
About Straight Talk on Trade
Not so long ago the nation-state seemed to be on its deathbed, condemned to irrelevance by the forces of globalization and technology. Now it is back with a vengeance, propelled by a groundswell of populists around the world. In Straight Talk on Trade, Dani Rodrik, an early and outspoken critic of economic globalization taken too far, goes beyond the populist backlash and offers a more reasoned explanation for why our elites’ and technocrats’ obsession with hyper-globalization made it more difficult for nations to achieve legitimate economic and social objectives at home: economic prosperity, financial stability, and equity.
Rodrik takes globalization’s cheerleaders to task, not for emphasizing economics over other values, but for practicing bad economics and ignoring the discipline’s own nuances that should have called for caution. He makes a case for a pluralist world economy where nation-states retain sufficient autonomy to fashion their own social contracts and develop economic strategies tailored to their needs. Rather than calling for closed borders or defending protectionists, Rodrik shows how we can restore a sensible balance between national and global governance. Ranging over the recent experiences of advanced countries, the eurozone, and developing nations, Rodrik charts a way forward with new ideas about how to reconcile today’s inequitable economic and technological trends with liberal democracy and social inclusion.
Deftly navigating the tensions among globalization, national sovereignty, and democracy, Straight Talk on Trade presents an indispensable commentary on today’s world economy and its dilemmas, and offers a visionary framework at a critical time when we need it most.
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Not a Crime to Be Poor The Criminalization of Poverty in America
Friday, November 10
7:30pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
A nationally known expert on poverty shows how not having money has been criminalized in the U.S. today and shines a light on lawyers, activists, and policy makers working for a more humane approach
In addition to exposing racially biased policing, the Justice Department’s Ferguson Report exposed to the world a system of fines and fees levied for minor crimes in Ferguson, Missouri, that, when they proved too expensive for Ferguson’s largely poor, African American population, resulted in jail sentences for thousands of people.
As former staffer to Robert F. Kennedy and current Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, Ferguson is everywhere in America today. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, strictly enforced laws and regulations against behavior including trespassing and public urination that largely affect the homeless, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, in one of the richest countries on Earth we have effectively made it a crime to be poor.
Edelman, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare “reform,” connects the dots between these policies and others including school discipline in poor communities, child support policies affecting the poor, public housing ordinances, addiction treatment, and the specter of public benefits fraud to paint a picture of a mean-spirited, retributive system that seals whole communities into inescapable cycles of poverty.
Peter Edelman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy and the faculty director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America (The New Press). A top advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy from 1964 to 1968, he went on to fill various roles in President Bill Clinton’s administration, from which he famously resigned in protest after Clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform legislation. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina. For his education he attended St. Albans School, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States. Awarded the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law, Mr Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications. His most recent books are For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law, The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, and Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal.
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Saturday, November 11 - Sunday, November 12
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Hacking Arts
Saturday, November 11 - Sunday, November 12
MIT, Building E14: Media Lab, 6th floor, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
RSVP for Saturday conference at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mit-hacking-arts-conference-2017-tickets-38480711845
Cost: $37.33 - $79.13
The fifth annual Hacking Arts Festival will bring together creative technologists, artists, innovators and hackers to explore the future of the arts at the annual Conference, Tech Expo and Hackathon.
More information at http://hackingarts.com
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Saturday, November 11
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Sustainable House of Worship Workshop
Saturday, November 11
8:30 am-12:30 pm
United Parish in Brookline, 210 Harvard Street, Brookline
RSVP at http://conta.cc/2xA7lP5. Advance registration closes on November 9.
Leading by example can be a powerful part of our moral responsibility to care for creation. Shrinking the carbon footprints at our houses of worship means lowers energy bills & more funds for other important purposes. Participants will learn what to do about:
Electricity — How to recognize the major energy hogs — and what to do about them.
Solar Power — What options are available and which is best for your congregation?
Heat & Air Conditioning — Is it time for an upgrade?
Building Envelope — How to increase comfort & save money.
Behavior — How simple actions can lower your energy bill – and carbon footprint.
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"Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?”: Bonnyman Anti-Racism Symposium Part 1
Saturday, November 11
8:30 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Trinity Church, 206 Clarendon Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/is-inequality-bad-for-our-health-bonnyman-anti-racism-symposium-part-1-tickets-36080468653
In 2015, the infant mortality rate was more than twice as high among blacks than among white non-Hispanics. How does systemic racism contribute to this and other health disparities, and what can we do about it? Explore these issues at this year’s symposium, and develop specific ways we can create positive change in our community.
Featured Speakers:
State Representative Jeffrey Sánchez, Chairman, MA House Ways and Means Committee
Dr. Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Bishop Dwayne Royster, founding Pastor of Living Water United Church of Christ in Philadelphia and Political Director of PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing)
Join us for Part 1 on Saturday, Nov. 11, 8:30 - 1 p.m, Trinity Church
Activities include a keynote speech delivered by Rep. Sánchez and facilitated breakout sessions to explore race, class and health in relation to...
Impact of legislation and other factors on access to health care
Disparities in health care quality and services
Faith and spirituality in personal and systemic well-being
Wellness and healthy choices
Racism as trauma
Violence as a public health issue
RSVP at link above.
Please also join us for speakers and music at Part 2 of the Bonnyman Symposium, Sunday, Nov. 12, Trinity Church
Multiple services and activities including:
9 a.m.: Holy Eucharist service with sermon by Bishop Royster
10:15 a.m.: Address by Dr. Nancy Krieger
11: 15 a.m.: Morning Prayer service with sermon by Bishop Royster
3 p.m.: World Music Concert by Northern Harmony
See Bonnyman Symposium (Part 2)
For more up-to-date information, and to join the conversation today, please visit www.facebook.com/bonnymansymposium
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Smedley Butler Brigade - Veterans For Peace Invitation To March With Us On Armistice Day
Saturday November 11
12pm
Corner Of Beacon Street and Charles at the far end of Boston Common
We would be pleased to have you join us.
Put Your Marching Sneakers On? Armistice Day For Peace Saturday November 11, 2017
It is that time again. Every year for well over a decade we have had our Armistice Peace March behind the ?official? Veterans Day parade in Boston. We continue that tradition this year as well.
Meet at the Corner Of Beacon Street and Charles at the far end of Boston Common at Noon
We will form up at the corner of Beacon Street and Charles at the edge of the Boston Common at noon for an approximately 1 PM step off. (Depending when the ?officials? step off.) We will have flags, banners, etc. but you can bring your own posters especially this year around the war clouds forming over North Korea and Iran.
Armistice Day Program starts at Sam Adams Park in Fanuiel Hall at about 2:00 PM
After the finish of the march at City Hall Plaza we will walk across the street for our Armistice Day program at Sam Adams Park at Fanueil Hall from about 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. This year?s MC will be our Smedley Butler Brigade-VFP coordinator Vietnam veteran Dan Luker. We are lining up speakers knowledgeable about the impending war clouds over Korea and Iran and the long continuing ones over Afghanistan. We will have music, poetry and other speakers. As usual we will have our canopy up where you can purchase VFP clothing, media, and buttons.
See you all on Saturday November 11th at noon at Beacon and Charles
thanks
Executive Committee-Smedley Butler Brigade-VFP
Editorial Comment: If you don’t know who Smedley Butler was, you should. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor twice, was a Marine Major General, the highest rank offered at the time, helped foil a coup d-etat against FDR, and wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, based upon his experiences in the military and what he saw in the wars he fought, from the Spanish-American War to WWI:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
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A Discussion with Ricky Jay: Magicians, Cheaters & Remarkable Characters
Saturday, November 11
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST
John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-discussion-with-ricky-jay-magicians-cheaters-remarkable-characters-tickets-38816425975
Ricky Jay, the renowned sleight-of-hand artist, author and actor will speak about his esteemed collection of books and images of magicians, cheaters and remarkable characters. Mr. Jay wrote for and appeared in the series Deadwood and in the films House of Games, Boogie Nights, Tomorrow Never Dies, and possibly Casablanca. He was the subject of a recent profile on the award winning PBS series American Masters. He is the former curator of the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts. Among his many works are Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women and Jay's Journal of Anomalies, both New York Times notable books of the year. Last season his collection of drawings of the armless 18th century magician and calligrapher Matthias Buchinger was exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This is a special program as part of the 41st annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (www.bostonbookfair.com). LIMITED CAPACITY. TICKETS ARE FREE BUT MUST BE RESERVED IN ADVANCE.
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Sunday, November 12
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The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims
Sunday, November 12
3:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Mustafa Akyol, author of The Islamic Jesus, discusses his book with Steve Watson, senior pastor of Reservoir Church in Cambridge.
When Reza Aslan's bestseller Zealot came out in 2013, there was criticism that he hadn t addressed his Muslim faith while writing the origin story of Christianity. In fact, Ross Douthat of The New York Times wrote that if Aslan had actually written in defense of the Islamic view of Jesus, that would have been something provocative and new.
Mustafa Akyol's The Islamic Jesus is that book.
The Islamic Jesus reveals startling new truths about Islam in the context of the first Muslims and the early origins of Christianity. Muslims and the first Christians the Jewish followers of Jesus saw Jesus as not divine but rather as a prophet and human Messiah and that salvation comes from faith and good works, not merely as faith, as Christians would later emphasize. What Akyol seeks to reveal are how these core beliefs of Jewish Christianity, which got lost in history as a heresy, emerged in a new religion born in 7th Arabia: Islam.
Akyol exposes this extraordinary historical connection between Judaism, Jewish Christianity and Islam a major mystery unexplored by academia. From Jesus Jewish followers to the Nazarenes and Ebionites to the Qu ran's stories of Mary and Jesus, The Islamic Jesus will reveal links between religions that seem so contrary today. It will also call on Muslims to discover their own Jesus, at a time when they are troubled by their own Pharisees and Zealots.
Mustafa Akoyl is a regular columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News, Al-Monitor.com, and the International New York Times. His prior book, Islam without Extremes, has been reviewed and quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, National Review, and Washington Times. Akyol has appeared on Fareed Zakaria's GPS on CNN, Hardtalk on BBC, and TED.com. Islam without Extremes was long-listed for the 2012 Lionel Gelber Prize literary prize.
Steve Watson joined the staff of Reservoir Church as its senior pastor in July, 2013. Prior to that, he served as the headmaster of Watertown High School, as a middle- and high-school English teacher in the Boston Public Schools, and as a campus staff minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In all of his endeavors, Steve has maintained great passion for teaching, coaching and mentoring, organizational and community development, and really good chocolate. Steve attended Brandeis University, where he graduated with a B.A. in music, and has immersed himself in graduate and self-directed studies in secondary English education, educational leadership, Bible, theology, and ministry—some of which have resulted in completed degrees.
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Dorchester Climate Action Party
Sunday, November 12
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EST
119 King Street, Apt 1, Dorchester
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dorchester-climate-action-party-tickets-38978693321
Please join Dorchester-based members of the Boston Climate Action Network (BCAN) for an informal house party, during which we can discuss climate change consequences in our neighborhood and how the City of Boston can take a leadership stance on climate issues. There will be an update on the campaign for Community Choice Energy and a discussion of what climate action looks like at the neighborhood level. We will brainstorm political and personal action for lowering our carbon footprints and create connections in the community so we can share the message of climate justice around Dorchester.
Appetizers will be served. If you have any questions, please contact Alice at actilton at gmail.com or 603-689-6677.
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Monday, November 13
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Sustainability Analytics with Nancy Cleveland, Co-Founder of Sustrana
When: Monday, Nov 13, 11:45am-12:45pm
Where: TBD
What: Nancy Cleveland is a Principal and co-founder of Sustrana LLC, a sustainability management technology and consulting company. Nancy does consulting and leads content development for Sustrana’s online software service that enables businesses to manage and realize performance improvements through sustainability best practices. Nancy co-chairs the Governance and Sustainability sub-committee of the American Bar Association's Business Law Section. She is an FSA (SASB) and LEED® AP, and is trained under GRI and as a TSC Service Provider.
RSVP: https://sloangroups.mit.edu/sustain/rsvp?id=359813
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PAOC Colloquium: Jake Gebbie (WHOI)
Monday, November 13
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged.
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A HISTORY OF THE INTERNET - A BROWN BAG WITH SCOTT BRADNER
Monday, November 13
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building E25-202, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
In a way the Russians caused the Internet. This talk will describe how that happened (hint it was not actually the Bomb) and follow the path that has led to the current Internet of (unpatchable) Things (the IoT) and the Surveillance Economy.
About the discussant:
Scott Bradner was involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET. He was involved in the design of the original Harvard data networks, the Longwood Medical Area network (LMAnet) and New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet). He was founding chair of the technical committees of LMAnet, NEARnet and the Corporation for Research and Enterprise Network (CoREN).
Mr. Bradner served in a number of roles in the IETF. He was the co-director of the Operational Requirements Area (1993-1997), IPng Area (1993-1996), Transport Area (1997-2003) and Sub-IP Area (2001-2003). He was a member of the IESG (1993-2003) and was an elected trustee of the
Internet Society (1993-1999), where he was the VP for Standards from 1995 to 2003 and Secretary to the Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2016. Scott was also a member of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) as well as a trustee of the IETF Trust from 2012 to 2016.
Mr. Bradner retired from Harvard University in 2016 after 50 years working there in the areas of computer programming, system management, networking, IT security, and identity management. He still does some patent related consulting.
See also: Collaborative Knowledge Creation, Brown Bag
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Charging Electric Cars—The Challenges
Monday, November 13
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
The Consortium for Energy Policy Research with Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/seminar.html#fall2017
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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Growing Grapes in the Snow: Understanding the intersections between genetics, physiology, and climate
Monday, November 13
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Jason Lando, Research Geneticist, USDA-ARS Grape Genetics Unit, will discuss his research on understanding the genetic and phenotypic aspects of environmental stress tolerance and adaptation.
https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/research/research-talks/
Contact Name: arbweb at arnarb.harvard.edu
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Building Theories – Architecture and an Ethics of Technology
Monday, November 13
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Franca Trubiano is Associate Professor and Associate Chair (Architecture) at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Registered Architect with l'Ordre des Architectes du Quebec and an International Associate of the AIA. She conducts funded research in the areas of Advanced Energy Retrofits and Building Information Modeling. She teaches in construction technology, materials, theories of building, integrated design, architectural ecologies, and high performance buildings.
Franca is President of the Building Technology Educators Society (BTES) - http://www.btesonline.org/, where she was Treasurer/Secretary since 2011. She is also a founding member of the Editorial Board of the Journal - TAD ( Technology, Architecture and Design) and since 2014 has been a Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Architectural Education.
Her edited book Design and Construction of High Performance Homes: Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice (Routledge Press 2012), features 18 essays of which 6 were authored by her. In 2014, it was translated into Korean, by the Korean Research Institute of Environmental Architecture and launched as part of their 10th year anniversary. Franca has also published essays on the subject of high performance design in edited books Architecture and Energy (eds. Braham and Willis, Routledge Press, 2013) and Architecture and Uncertainty (ed. Benjamin Flowers, Ashgate Press, 2014). She is presently completing a manuscript for Routledge on building technology and architectural theory. Building Theories, Integrating Matter, Energy, Data, and Labor for a new Ethics of Architecture (Routledge), proposes an alternative definition of architectural theory; one that valorizes the as yet untapped potential of ‘thinking through building’.
Franca is a Principal Investigator and inaugural member of the Consortium for Energy Building Energy Innovation (CBEI) – formerly the Energy Efficient Building Hub, a US Department of Energy sponsored project. Her three year funded research is focused on the development of Integrated Design Roadmaps of use by all members of the AEC industry in pursuit of Advanced Energy Retrofits. Franca also conducts funded research on Building Information Modeling (BIM), developing both Facility Management processes for maximum applicability of BIM authoring models, as well as helping the National Masonry Institute develop BIM based protocols of value to the industry. Since 2014, Franca has also been an expert reviewer for the MIT-KUWAIT Signature Project on Sustainability where she will continue in this role until 2016.
MIT Department of Architecture / Fall 2017 Lecture Series
Building Technology Group, hosted by Caitlin Mueller
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Industrial Policy & Economic Development
Monday, November 13
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The SPURS/Humphrey program is delighted to invite you to our fall seminar series: North American Planning Experience: Is It Relevant for the Developing World?
Our goal is to explore to what extent, and under what conditions, planning ideas generated from practice in the U.S. can travel to cities in the developing world and be implemented effectively. We’ll also consider whether planning ideas, practices and programs are traveling from the rest of the world back to the United States.
The sixth seminar is Monday, Nov 13, in the City Arena, 12:30 - 2 PM: Industrial Policy & Economic Development, with Jason Jackson and Balakrishnan Rajagopal, respondent.
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Writers Speak: Michael Ondaatje in conversation with Claire Messud
WHEN Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Memorial Hall, 45 Quincy St., Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cosponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs’ Canada Program.
SPEAKER(S) Michael Ondaatje is the author of five novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Man Booker Prize, and his fourth novel, Anil’s Ghost, won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Ondaatje now lives in Toronto.
Claire Messud, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing in the English Department at Harvard; author of numerous novels, most recently The Burning Girl (2017)
TICKET INFO free and open to the public; no tickets required
CONTACT INFO humcentr at fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-0738
DETAILS Book sale and signing to follow. Special thanks to Harvard Book Store.
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/michael-ondaatje-conversation-claire-messud
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Transporting our innovation economy - Civic Innovation Conversation Series
Monday, November 13
5:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transporting-our-innovation-economy-civic-innovation-conversation-series-tickets-38714441938
Transportation systems are the arteries that carry the people to fuel our regional innovation ecosystem. As we have seen more concentration of people and companies (of all sizes) in the Greater Boston area, having a diverse and robust transportation network that adequately serves all is an important infrastructure element to plan and build. The quality of this infrastructure will drive how and where people will live, work and play now and far into the future.
Our Civic Innovation Conversation Series is returning to the topic of transportation innovation on Monday, November 13th, 2017 at District Hall. We will discuss the progress being made in ride sharing, parking, autonomous cars, pod transportation and more.
The speakers for the session are listed below:
Adrian Albus - Growth Strategy Leader, Zagster
Syed Gilani – CEO, Safr
Braden Golub – CEO, Parkeasier
Karl Iagnemma – CEO, nuTonomy
More to be announced
Moderator – Kevin Wiant
Agenda:
5:30 - Registration and networking
6 - 7:30 PM - Conversation and Q&A
7:30 PM - Reception
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Postcommodity: The Repellent Fence and Beyond
Monday, November 13
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, ACT Cube (E15-001) 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Postcommodity will discuss their 2015 land art installation and socially engaged artwork Repellent Fence, and the implications of this work on their art practice, their future work, and the field of contemporary art as we approach the year 2043 (when the US transitions to a non-white majority).
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist. Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence.
This lecture is part of the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT)'s Fall 2017 Lecture Series.
For more information on the series, see http://act.mit.edu/projects-and-events/lectures-series/about-pages/fall-2017-about-series/s
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A Plastic Ocean Screening and Panel Discussion
WHEN Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard School of Public Health, Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Chan Office of the Dean
Harvard Global Health Institute
DETAILS Join Dean Michelle Williams, Ashish Jha, the film's director and producer, and others for a film screening and panel discussion. A reception will follow.
LINK https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/deans-office/a-plastic-ocean-screening-and-panel-discussion/
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City Planning and Urban Affairs
Monday, November 13
6:15 pm to 7:00 pm
BU, Room 315, 685-725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Melanie Kenderdine, Principal, Energy Futures Initiative, and Principal, EJM Advisors, will be guest lecturing in City Planning and Urban Affairs' UA 510: Sustainable Energy Planning course. She will be covering the topic Electricity and National Security: Relevance to Urban Planning and Sustainable Energy Policy. Ms. Kenderdine's prior roles include Director of Energy Policy and Systems Planning of the U.S. Department of Energy and Counselor to the Secretary of Energy.
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Inside Private Prisons with Lauren-Brooke Eisen
Monday, November 13
7:00pm
Trident Bookstore, 338 Newbury Street, Boston
Join Lauren-Brooke Eisen as she discusses her new book and the subject of for-profit prisons and mass incarceration.
About the Book: From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them?
About the Author: Lauren-Brooke Eisen is senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Justice Program, where she focuses on changing financial incentives in the criminal-justice system. Previously she was a senior program associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections, served as an assistant district attorney in New York City, and taught criminal justice at Yale College and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
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Tuesday, November 14
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Edward Morris: Art and Activism
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S) Edward Morris, Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts
COST Free
DETAILS Edward Morris works with photography, video, writing, and installation. He is Professor of Practice in the Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, and co-director of the Canary Lab. He works in collaboration with his wife Susannah Sayler as Sayler/Morris. In 2006 Sayler/Morris co-founded the Canary Project, a collaborative that produces visual media and artworks that deepen public understanding of climate change and other ecological issues. In 2015 Sayler/Morris were awarded the 8th annual David Brower Center: Art/Act Award, and in 2014 they were awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. In 2008-09 they were Loeb Fellows at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Their work has been exhibited broadly in the United States and abroad at both science and art museums, including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the Walker Center for the Arts.
LINK https://shorensteincenter.org/event/edward-morris/
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Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes
Tuesday, November 14
12:00 pm
Harvard Law School, Griswold Hall, Room 110, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/11/Katsh#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/11/Katsh
featuring author Ethan Katsh
Ebay resolves 60 million disputes a year and Alibaba 100 million. How do they do that? At the other less impressive extreme, in 2015 the IRS hung up on telephone callers 8.8 million times without making contact. Are there online solutions for that? Disputes are a “growth industry” on the internet, an inevitable by-product of innovation but often harmful to individuals. Drawing on his recent book, Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes, (co-authored with Orna Rabinovich), Professor Katsh will consider opportunities for online dispute resolution and prevention in ecommerce, health care, social media. employment and the courts.
About Ethan
Professor Katsh is widely recognized as one of the founders of the field of online dispute resolution (ODR). Along with Janet Rifkin, he conducted the eBay Pilot Project in 1999 that led to eBay’s current system that handles over sixty million disputes each year. With Professor Rifkin, he wrote Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace (2001), the first book about ODR. Since then, he has published numerous articles about ODR and co-edited Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice, which received the International Institute for Conflict Resolution book award for 2012. The frequently mentioned metaphor of technology as a “Fourth Party” was first proposed in Katsh and Rifkin’s Online Dispute Resolution (2001).
Professor Katsh is a graduate of the Yale Law School and was one of the first legal scholars to recognize the impact new information technologies would have on law. In The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989) and Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995), he predicted many of the changes that were to come to law and the legal profession. His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Legal Forum, and other law reviews and legal periodicals. His scholarly contribution in the field of law and technology has been the subject of a Review Essay in Law and Social Inquiry.
Professor Katsh has served as principal online dispute resolution consultant for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a federal agency mandated to provide mediation in Freedom of Information Act disputes. During 2010-2011, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Haifa (Israel). He has been Visiting Professor of Law and Cyberspace at Brandeis University and is on the Board of Editors of Conflict Resolution Quarterly. He was principal dispute resolution advisor to SquareTrade.com and is Chairman of the Board of Advisors of Modria.com. His principal current research concern involves issues related to health care and, more particularly, to disputes over electronic health records (see How Patients Can Improve the Accuracy of their Medical Records).
Since 1996, Professor Katsh has been involved in a series of activities related to online dispute resolution. He participated in the Virtual Magistrate project and was founder and co-director of the Online Ombuds Office. In 1997, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, he and Professor Rifkin founded the National Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. During the Summer of 1999, he co-founded Disputes.org, which later worked with eResolution to become one of the first four providers accredited by ICANN to resolve domain name disputes. From 2004 – 2010, Professor Katsh was co-Principal Investigator, with Professors Lee Osterweil and Lori Clarke and Dr. Norman Sondheimer of the UMass Department of Computer Science, of two National Science Foundation funded projects to model processes of online dispute resolution. This work was coordinated with the United States National Mediation Board.
Professor Katsh has chaired the International Forums on Online Dispute Resolution, held in Geneva in 2002 and 2003, Melbourne in 2004, Cairo in 2006, Liverpool in 2007, Hong Kong in 2007, Victoria (Canada) in 2008, Haifa (Israel) in 2009, Buenos Aires in 2010, Chennai (India) in 2011, Prague in 2012, Montreal in 2013, Silicon Valley in 2014, New York in 2015 and The Hague and Beijing in 2016 and in Paris in June 2017. Professor Katsh received the Chancellor’s Medal and gave the University of Massachusetts Distinguished Faculty Lecture in October 2006. In 2014-2015, he was an Affiliate of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is the 2017 recipient of the D’Alemberte-Raven Award from the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution.
Links: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-justice-9780190675677?lang=en&cc=us
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GSD Talks: Ronald Rael, “Borderwall as Architecture”
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Gund Hall, 112 Stubbins, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Graduate School of Design
SPEAKER(S) Ronald Rael
CONTACT INFO events at gsd.harvard.edu
DETAILS "Despite recent attention to wall building as a security measure, the building of barriers along the U.S. – Mexico border is not a new phenomenon. The U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006 funded the single-largest domestic building project in the twenty-first century and financed approximately 700 miles of fortification, dividing the U.S. from Mexico at a cost of up to $16 million per mile. Today, approximately one third of the 1,954-mile-long border between the U.S. and Mexico has been walled off. Ronald Rael will discuss his book, Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S. – Mexico Boundary, a timely re-examination of what the physical barrier that divides the United States of America and both a protest against the wall and a projection about its future.
Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events at gsd.harvard.edu."
LINK http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/ronald-rael-borderwall-as-architecture/
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Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series: Race & Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Gutman Conference Center - Area 3, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Gutman Library
SPEAKER(S) Max Klau
DETAILS For his doctoral research at HGSE, Max Klau studied a provocative educational exercise that extends a long line of classic social psychology research, such as the Milgram obedience experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment. This exercise essentially immersed a diverse group of students in a simulated Jim Crowe-style social system and challenged them to confront and transform it.
Race & Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action, answers the question: What might we learn by observing three Civil Rights movements in a petri dish? The book integrates the author's own personal quest to understand matters of race and social change as a privileged white male. It ends with both a personal and national call to action.
Lunch will be served.
LINK https://www.gse.harvard.edu/event/gutman-library-distinguished-author-series-race-social-change-quest-study-call-action
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Quantum Limits on the Information Carried by Electromagnetic Radiation
Tuesday, November 14
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Massimo Franceschetti, University of California, San Diego
In many practical applications information is conveyed by means of electromagnetic radiation and a natural question concerns the fundamental limits of this process. Identifying information with entropy, one can ask about the maximum amount of entropy associated to the propagating wave.
The standard statistical physics approach to compute entropy is to take the logarithm of the number of possible energy states of a system. Since any continuum field can assume an uncountably infinite number of energy configurations, the approach underlying any finite entropy calculation must also necessarily include some grouping of states together in a procedure known as coarse graining or, in information-theoretic parlance, signal quantization. The problem then reduces to counting the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian of the quantum wave field.
In this talk, we examine the relationship between entropy computations in a statistical physics and an information-theory context. In the latter context, rather than attempting to directly count the number of energy eigenstates of the quantum wave field, we constrain the geometry of the signal space and decompose the waveform into a minimum number of orthogonal basis modes. We then ask how many bits are required to represent any waveform in the space spanned by this optimal representation with a minimum quantized energy error. We show that for scalar quantization this entropy computation is completely analogous to the one for the number state channel of statistical physics, and it has the attractive feature that the complexity of state counting is now replaced by the geometric problem of optimally covering the signal space by high-dimensional boxes, whose size is lower bounded by quantum constraints. For bandlimited radiation in a three-dimensional space, using this approach we can recover the Bekenstein entropy bound on the largest amount of information that can be radiated from a sphere of given radius. We also compare results with black body radiation occurring over an infinite spectrum of frequencies and along the way we provide some new results on the asymptotic dimensionality and $\epsilon$-entropy of bandlimited, square-integrable signals.
Biography
Massimo Franceschetti received the Laurea degree (with highest honors) in computer engineering from the University of Naples, Naples, Italy, in 1997, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, in 1999, and 2003, respectively. He is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). Before joining UCSD, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Berkeley for two years. His research interests are in physical and information-based foundations of communication and control systems. He was awarded the C. H. Wilts Prize in 2003 for best doctoral thesis in electrical engineering at Caltech, the S.A. Schelkunoff Award in 2005 for best paper in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2006, an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2007, the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 2010, and the IEEE Control theory society Ruberti young researcher award in 2012.
LIDS Seminar Series
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The Charges are Criminal, The Case is Political: The Resistance Conspiracy Case
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Robinson Hall, Lower Library, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Education, Humanities
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Charles Warren Center's Workshop on Crime and Punishment in American History
SPEAKER(S) Susan M. Reverby (Wellesley College)
LINK https://warrencenter.fas.harvard.edu/reverby
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Opening Discussion for Feminist Archaeology
Tuesday, November 14
5:00 pm
Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2017-jennifer-bornstein-exhibition-opening
Please join artist Jennifer Bornstein RI '15 for an opening discussion and reception for her exhibition.
The opening talk will take place at 5 p.m. in the Knafel Center, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. The reception will immediately follow in the Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery.
Bornstein will be joined in conversation by Yukio Lippit, Johnson-Kulukundis Family Director of the Arts, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University and Jennifer L. Roberts, Arts Advisor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities and Harvard College Professor.
This gathering with Radcliffe fellows, Harvard faculty and staff, members of the arts community at Harvard, and beyond is open to the public and provides a chance to see the new exhibition and meet the artist.
Free and open to the public.
Feminist Archaeology is an interdisciplinary art project consisting of an original video projection with accompanying prints and sculptures. The exhibition explores different strains of feminism, which the artist has experienced both personally and through her research, and that have been somewhat at odds with one another over time.
The video component of the exhibition purposely conflates different historical periods of feminism. It includes moving-image media from several sources: 16mm film; HD; and Sony Portapak—an anachronistic 1970s video camera that shoots only black-and-white, standard-definition video. Portapak was frequently used by artists to make experimental, performance-based videos during the time period of the 1970s that coincides with the focus of this project’s artistic research. The print component of the exhibition consists of large-scale, 1:1 relief-type prints made using oil-based printing ink on canvas. The prints were created from pieces cut from a temporary drywall structure that was formerly in Harvard’s Carpenter Center. Segments of the drywall structure, which was built as a collaborative project by students in Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), and served as Bornstein’s classroom and as a video projection room while she was a visiting lecturer in VES, are also displayed in the exhibition as sculptural elements.
Research for Feminist Archaeology began in 2014–2015 during Bornstein’s fellowship year at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The research materials for the exhibition, which function partly as the project’s blueprint, come from the collections of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
The artist would like to thank Harvard undergraduates Eriko Kay and Lily Scherlis, who contributed significantly to the development of the work, as well as VES students Ariana Chiavaron, Helen Miller, Billy Orman, Noel de Sa e Silva, Gleb Sidorkin, Kensho Tambara, and Sam Wolk for their help with the project.
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"Tidewater" Screening and Discussion
Tuesday, November 14
5 pm
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard University Center for the Environment invites you to a screening of Tidewater. The film focuses on the national security threats and economic opportunities associated with sea level rise. A panel discussion will follow featuring director and producer Roger Sorkin; and Peter Huybers, Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Environmental Science and Engineering, and Co-Director, HUCE.
The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is relatively unknown nationwide, but it is the region whose vulnerability to sea level rise most affects military readiness and our overall national security. With 14 military installations spread across 17 local jurisdictions, it is our highest concentration of military assets in the country, where 1 in 6 residents are associated with our nation's defense. Their homes, schools, hospitals, and families are increasingly struggling to keep up with the effects of rising waters, and the military and all the surrounding municipalities are working towards solutions in the name of strengthening national security and enhancing economic prosperity.
Hampton Roads requires $1 billion in urgent infrastructure repairs with 900 miles of its roads and electric grid threatened by permanent flooding. Faced with these unprecedented challenges that can only be tackled by a wide range of stakeholders, from ordinary citizens to the U.S. Navy to local businesses, Tidewater demonstrates that an innovative whole-of-government problem-solving model being attempted by local and military leaders is the only way to ensure the continued strength of our national security, along with the continued prosperity of the region and the nation.
If Hampton Roads succeeds, it will mean success on several levels. They'll save their homes, schools, businesses, the bases, and that's no mean feat. But they'll also create a powerful template for success, a model other regions can use to prepare for and deal with disaster – and more: a model that can demonstrate how people, businesses and government can pull together to solve any complex problem. The story strikes a positive tone, highlighting the outsized capabilities of Hampton Roads to show the nation and the world how it can be done. Lots of hard choices and sacrifices will have to be made in order for the plan to succeed, but if they get it right, human communities everywhere will have a roadmap.
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Drafting the Cape Cod Formula
Tuesday, November 14
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts Jacqueline Gonzalez, Historical Research Associates with comment by Steven Moga, Smith College. Free and open to the public. A light sandwich supper will follow.
Boston Environmental History Seminar
http://www.masshist.org/research/seminars
Contact Name: seminars at masshist.org
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Boston New Technology “Health and Energy” Startup Showcase #BNT83 (21+)
Tuesday, November 14
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Draper’s Sembler Office, 1 Hampshire Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Boston_New_Technology/events/244224231/
Enter the lobby from the entrance under the pedestrian bridge on the north side of Broadway. Please check in at our table on the left side of the lobby, presenting your identification to pick up your name tag.
Price: $12.00 /per person
Refund policy
Come learn about 7 innovative and exciting technology products and network with 150+ attendees from the Boston/Cambridge startup community! Dinner, beer, wine and more are included.
This event is 21+, due to alcohol being served. Valid photo identification is required.
Each presenter gets 5 minutes for a product overview & demonstration and 5 minutes for Q&A
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Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom
Tuesday, November 14
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes author, historian, and journalist RUSSELL SHORTO—best-selling author of The Island at the Center of the World—for a discussion of his latest book, Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Revolution Song
In his epic new book, Russell Shorto takes us back to the founding of the American nation, drawing on diaries, letters and autobiographies to flesh out six lives that cast the era in a fresh new light. They include an African man who freed himself and his family from slavery, a rebellious young woman who abandoned her abusive husband to chart her own course and a certain Mr. Washington, who was admired for his social graces but harshly criticized for his often-disastrous military strategy.
Through these lives we understand that the revolution was fought over the meaning of individual freedom, a philosophical idea that became a force for violent change. A powerful narrative and a brilliant defense of American values, Revolution Song makes the compelling case that the American Revolution is still being fought today and that its ideals are worth defending.
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Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House
Tuesday, November 14
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/donna-brazile-hacks-the-inside-story-of-the-break-ins-and-breakdowns-that-put-donald-trump-in-the-tickets-38875658140
From Donna Brazile, former DNC chair and legendary political operative, an explosive and revealing new look at the 2016 election: the first insider account of the Russian hacking of the DNC and the missteps by the Clinton campaign and Obama administration that enabled a Trump victory.
Packed with never-before-reported revelations about what went down in 2016, Hacks is equal parts campaign thriller, memoir, and roadmap for the future. With Democrats now in the wilderness after this historic defeat, Hacks argues that staying silent about what went wrong helps no one. Only by laying bare the missteps, miscalculations, and crimes of 2016, Brazile contends, will Americans be able to salvage their democracy.
About the Author
Donna Brazile is the former Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and a contributor to ABC News. A graduate of Louisiana State University, Brazile worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she served as Al Gore's campaign manager. In 2014, Brazile was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on to the board of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. She is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting, grassroots advocacy, and training firm based in Washington, DC.
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Science Priorities for the North Atlantic Region – A NOAA Fisheries Perspective
Tuesday, November 14
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Simons IMAX Theatre New England Aquarium
RSVP at http://support.neaq.org/site/Calendar?id=107288&view=Detail
Jon Hare, Science and Research Director, Northeast Fisheries Science Center
REGISTER
The mission of NOAA Fisheries is compelling and important. The agency is responsible for the stewardship of the nation’s living marine resources, including fisheries, aquaculture, protected species, habitats, and ecosystems. As Science and Research Director of the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), Jon Hare is responsible for the Northeast U.S. Shelf Ecosystem, which extends from North Carolina to Maine and includes watersheds, estuaries, the continental shelf, and the open ocean. The ecosystem supports a wide array of living marine resources, from Atlantic sea scallops, one of the most valuable, to the North Atlantic right whale, one of the most endangered, to Atlantic cod, one of the most iconic. A set of science priorities will be described for the region. These priorities aim to better understand this complex ecosystem and ultimately improve the stewardship mission of NOAA Fisheries.
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Sagan Day: Seeking Life Beyond Our Pale Blue Dot
Tuesday, November 14
7:30pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building 35-225, 127 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Secular Society of MIT will celebrate Carl Sagan Day this year, to honor and remember the popular astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan, with a talk by Julien de Wit, an exoplanet researcher in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Dr de Wit, who has developed and applied innovative analysis techniques to map exoplanet atmospheres, will present and discuss his work on investigating solar systems -- including the famed TRAPPIST-1 system -- beyond our own, placing our own pale blue dot within a cosmic perspective.
Social time follows. We will serve apple pie and mocktail cosmos (both references to Sagan's work).
Turtlenecks and/or casual blazers suggested.
One lucky attendee will go home with a Sagan reference art poster we will raffle out at the end of the event.
Free entry and refreshments.
More about Sagan Day: http://carlsaganday.com/
We are also organizing a trip to Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on Thursday, NOV/16, 7:30pm for a nontechnical public astrophysics talk, followed by a telescopic night sky viewing and socializing out. More on that event at https://goo.gl/hTbmvh. Email ssomit at mit.edu if you'd like to join us then.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, November 15
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Boston Sustainability Breakfast
Wednesday, November 15
7:30 AM – 8:30 AM EST
Pret A Manger, 101 Arch Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boston-sustainability-breakfast-tickets-30734228906
Join us every month for Net Impact Boston's informal breakfast meetup of sustainability professionals for networking, discussion and moral support. It's important to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones out there in the business world trying to do good! Feel free to drop by any time between 7:30 and 8:30 am.
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Dementia and Democracy: America's Aging Judges and Politicians
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, 12 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Pound Hall, Room 102, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
DETAILS Our judiciary and our elected officials are getting old. Five of the nine Supreme Court Justices are 67 or older, with two over age 80. The President is 71, the Senate Majority Leader is 75, and the House Minority Leader is 77. Does the public have a right to know whether these officials have been screened for dementia? If the individuals don’t self-report their dementia status, should experts continue to adhere to the “Goldwater Rule” and refrain from offering an armchair diagnosis? As the nation reflects on its midterm elections, and prepares for the 2020 election cycle, these questions are timely and challenging.
Learn more about the event here: http://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/dementia-and-democracy
LINK http://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/dementia-and-democracy
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Gulf Scuffles and Their Regional Implications: How the Iran-Saudi Rivalry is Coloring MENA Conflicts
Wednesday, November 15
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Joost Hiltermann, International Crisis Group
Joost Hiltermann is Program Director, Middle East & North Africa, at the International Crisis Group, an independent NGO dedicated to preventing deadly conflict, for which he has worked in various capacities since 2002. Before that, he was Executive Director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch (1994-2002) and database coordinator and research coordinator at the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in Ramallah (1985-1990). He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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The Ethics of Sensors and Networks: Is There Any Privacy in the Public Realm?
Wednesday, November 15
12:30pm to 2:30am
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Part of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning's Planning Ideas that Matter: Urban Science: Regression to Technocracy or Pathway to Progressive Planning?
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TECH PLANTER DEMO DAY Boston - Startup Pitches from Japan and America
Wednesday, November 15
1:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tech-planter-demo-day-boston-startup-pitches-from-japan-and-america-tickets-37145576419
The Global TECH PLANTER accelerator program DEMO DAY is coming to Boston on Nov 15. TECH PLANTER is a unique international seed acceleration program for deep-tech startups. TECH PLANTER brings the best companies from their Asian accelerator to DEMO DAYS in cities around the world. These DEMO DAYS are an opportunity for local companies and investors to see the company pitches for potential partnership and investment. Venture Café is partnering with Leave a Nest, Glocalink and CIC to bring the TECH PLANTER DEMO DAY to Boston.
The Boston TECH PLANTER DEMO DAY is also an opportunity for 10 -12 American startups to participate in a pitch competition. The American companies can compete to win three prizes:
1st Place - $2,000 & Trip to Japan
2nd Place - $1,000 & Trip to Japan
3rd Place - $500
The visits to Japan also includes introductions to business and technology partners to grow your business in Japan and other parts of Asia Leave a Nest will help the winner build a business network in Japan. Leave a Nest has extensive experience connecting real tech startups from around the world Japan with both the R&D and marketing departments of the top Japanese corporations.
We encourage startup companies to apply to pitch via the Global TECH PLANTER website page for the BOSTON DEMO DAY. The application deadline to pitch is October 20th. We are particularly interested in startups in the Biotech, robotics, agri-tech, healthcare, IoT, clean energy, food and nanotech spaces. Others are welcome to attend the event to hear the pitches from both the Asian and American startups and can register at this site.
The format for the pitch is seven minutes of presentation & seven minutes for Q&A (judge and audience).
Schedule of the Event
Wednesday, Nov 15th, 2017
Venue opens at 12:15
13:00-13:30 Opening remarks & Keynote presentation
13:30-14:30 4 companies’ pitch (Team 1~4; 7min presentation & 7min Q&A)
14:30-14:40 BREAK
14:40-15:40 4 companies’ pitch (Team 5~8; 7min presentation & 7min Q&A)
15:40-16:00 BREAK
16:00-16:45 Pitches from 6 companies from Asia (5 min pitch)
16:45-16:50 BREAK
16:55-17:55 4 companies’ pitch (Team 9~12; 7min presentation & 7min Q&A)
18:00-18:30 Networking time/ Time for the judges to discuss the winner!
18:30-19:00 Award Ceremony
19:00-20:30 Post awards reception
The Japanese Startups that will be presenting are:
Challenergy (https://challenergy.com/en/)
Magnus VAWT windmill generates electricity in any wind conditions even in Hurricane
Meltin MMI (http://meltin.jp/home/en/meltin-mmi/) - Cyborg technology for unleashing physical limitation
RESVO (http://resvo-inc.com/E_index.html) - Optimization of the treatment for schizophrenia/autism using blood biomarker
Inupathy (http://inupathy.com/ ) - Better communication with dogs enabled by visualizing dogs’ mood through HRV sensing and analysis
Cognitee (http://cognitee.com/indexE.html) - Context analysis for quantifying a difference between high/low performers of sales talks, presentations, ads-leaflets and interviews.
DO NOT MISS IT! These Japanese startups will be pitching at the Venture Cafe Kendall on the 16th of November (link <- http://vencaf.org/event/tech-planter-japanese-startup-pitches/ )
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Small Hydropower and the Low-Carbon Frontier in China
Wednesday, November 15
3:30PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard-China Project hosts Tyler Harlan, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract: Since the 1950s, the Chinese government has used small hydropower (SHP) to drive rural electrification and local economic development in the remote, resource-rich west of the country. More recently, however, this same technology has been re-framed as a renewable energy that generates electricity for the national green economy. In this presentation I argue that SHP represents a broader transformation of rural western China into a ‘low-carbon frontier’, characterized by the rapid growth of renewable energy infrastructure far from urban centers. I show how the frontier is simultaneously constructed as a site of ecological degradation and of untapped low-carbon value, both discursively and materially through preferential state policies for renewable energy expansion. This, in turn, enables energy firms and local governments to extract new profits from natural resources that may have competing uses. Drawing on policy analysis and twelve months of interviews with government officials, hydropower investors, and farmers, I argue that SHP on the ‘low-carbon frontier’ privileges renewable energy generation over other local resource needs. At the same time, I show how local governments employ new SHP infrastructure for their own uses, such as powering nearby mining and mineral processing facilities. This presentation thus highlights the importance of examining subnational geographies of low-carbon transformation, and the ways that resources and technologies can be re-purposed for local and national development goals.
Co-sponsored by China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Environment in Asia Series, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
China Project Seminar
https://chinaproject.harvard.edu/event/harlan20171115
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
tiffanychan at seas.harvard.edu
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Understanding and modeling aging
Wednesday, November 15
4:00pm
Whitehead Institute, McGovern Auditorium, 9 Cambridge Center, Cambridge
Speaker: Dr. Anne Brunet, Stanford University
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The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois, African Americans, and the History of World War I
Wednesday, November 15
4:00 pm
Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Part of the 2017–2018 Fellows' Presentation Series
Lecture by Chad L. Williams RI '18
Free and open to the public.
At Radcliffe, Chad L. Williams is completing a book about W. E. B. Du Bois’s attempts to write what he believed would be the definitive history of African Americans in World War I. Based on Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript and research materials, the project explores how the personal, political, and historical legacies of World War I haunted both Du Bois and black people more broadly throughout the interwar period. Williams hopes to shed new light on Du Bois’s intellectual life, the experiences of African American soldiers, and the meaning of World War I for peoples of African descent.
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Big-Data Astrobiology: Exploring the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere
Wednesday, November 15
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Harvard, Haller Hall, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Dr. Robert Hazen (Carnegie)
Large and growing deep-time data resources in mineralogy, geochemistry, paleobiology, petrology, tectonics, and proteomics facilitate statistical exploration and visual representation of large-scale patterns in planetary evolution. Of special note are recent applications of network analysis: visually striking interactive paleobiology networks of coexisting animals reveal mass extinction events; dynamic 3D-mineral networks display dramatic clustering and embed compositional vectors and timelines; intricate networks that compare thousands of protein structures reflect Earth's redox evolution and suggest the coevolution of geochemistry and biochemistry. "Big-data" astrobiology is thus lead to a deeper understanding of the origins and evolution of our home and ourselves.”
More information at https://origins.harvard.edu/event/dr-robert-hazen-carnegie-big-data-astrobiology-exploring-co-evolution-geosphere-and
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Solar Panels for Homeowners Workshop
Wednesday, November 15
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM EST
HUECU, 104 Mount Auburn Street, 4th Floor, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solar-panels-for-homeowners-workshop-tickets-39017142323
Owning a solar energy system can provide many benefits for years to come. Not only can you save money on your monthly bills, but you'll also be adding to the value of your home. This one-hour workshop is ideal for any homeowner interested in adding a solar energy system to your home. You'll learn about the benefits from purchasing a solar panel system, the ordering and installation process and about your finances options.
This workshop will be presented in partnership with NRGTree.
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Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics with Nancy Gibbs: “The Divided States of America”
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, Littauer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Award Ceremonies, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S) Editorial Director, Time Inc. News Group; Former Editor, Time Magazine
COST Free
DETAILS The 2017 Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics will be delivered by Nancy Gibbs, Editorial Director, Time Inc. News Group.
Also at the event, the David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism will be presented to Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe columnist.
Nancy Gibbs is the Editorial Director of Time Inc., and former Editor of Time Magazine, which has 50 million readers worldwide. Gibbs joined Time as a fact checker in 1985 and worked as a writer and editor before holding senior management positions. She was named Time’s 17th managing editor in 2013. She was the first woman to hold the position. Gibbs is one of the most published writers in the history of Time, having been an essayist and lead writer on virtually every major news event of the past two decades, including four presidential campaigns and the September 11 attacks. She has written more cover stories for Time than any other writer in its history and won the National Magazine Award for her cover story of Time’s black-bordered Sept. 11, 2001 special issue. She is the co-author, along with Time’s Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012), which spent 30 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (2007).
Kevin Cullen is a columnist for The Boston Globe. He worked as a local, national and foreign correspondent before becoming a columnist. He served as bureau chief in Dublin and London. He has worked at the Globe‘s Spotlight Team, and was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service in 2003 for exposing the cover-up of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. In 2014, he won the Mike Royko Award as best columnist chosen by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer for breaking news for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, and was a Pulitzer finalist in commentary. He is the only two-time winner of ASNE’s Batten Medal for writing about the marginalized. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Whitey Bulger, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was a 2003 Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
LINK https://shorensteincenter.org/event/2017-theodore-h-white-lecture-press-politics-nancy-gibbs/
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Designing Life: Early Experiments in Synthetic Biology
Wednesday, November 15
6:00pm to 7:30pm
Harvard, Science Center Lecture Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Sophia Roosth, Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor in the History of Science Harvard University
Synthetic biologists combine biology and engineering to design (or re-design) biological entities or living systems. The work of these scientists could have many potential applications in the medical, energy, and environmental sectors, but the field remains controversial because of ethical and biosecurity concerns. Based on her research with MIT scientists working to model and engineer viruses in the early 2000s, Sophia Roosth will discuss how synthetic biologists think about themselves and their power to “evolve” life, putting their perspectives in the context of the American political discourse over creation and intelligent design.
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Grab Back the Environment
Wednesday, November 15
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Zone 3, 267 Western Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/grab-back-the-environment-tickets-39483456080
Zone 3 is proud to present Nomadic Gallery, a moveable gallery created to give local artists and curators a flexible exhibition space to house short term exhibitions or ongoing programs. Constructed out of three large movable walls, Nomadic Gallery is designed to move inside and outside the space, with the potential to be plugged into other locations along Western Avenue.
The project will launch in November 2017 with curator Scott Murry of The Grab Back with Grab Back the Environment on November 15th from 6 – 9pm. Proceeds from sales will be donated to the Sierra Club, the nation’s most influential grassroots environmental organization.
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Anthropology as Cosmic Diplomacy: Toward an Ecological Ethics for the Anthropocene
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, 6:15 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Religion
SPONSOR Center for the Study of World Religions
CONTACT CSWR: 617.495.4495
DETAILS Forests think. This is neither a metaphor nor a cultural belief. There exists a kind of thinking, which I call “sylvan,” that is made exquisitely manifest by tropical forests and those that live with them. This kind of thought extends well beyond us humans and, in fact, holds our human forms of thinking. Thinking with the sylvan logics that thinking forests amplify can provide an ethical orientation—a mode of thought—that is adequate for these times of planetary human-driven ecological devastation that some call the “Anthropocene.” I here discuss three projects in and around the tropical forests of Ecuador whose goal is to capacitate sylvan thought. This research, which has brought me into collaboration with indigenous leaders and shamans, lawyers and conceptual artists, and even forest spirits and archaic pre-hispanic ceramic figures, has encouraged me to see my anthropological vocation as a kind of “cosmic diplomacy.” This form of diplomacy is “psychedelic” in so far as its goal is to make manifest the mind manifesting nature of the sylvan thinking on whose behalf it advocates. Another word for this kind of emergent mind is “spirit.” I here explore alternative “sylvan” means to give voice to the spirits among us, and I trace the challenge this poses for how we should think about what it means to be human.
Eduardo Kohn is the author of the book How Forests Think, which has been translated into several languages. It won the 2014 Gregory Bateson Prize and is short-listed for the upcoming 2018 Prix littéraire François Sommer. His research continues to be concerned with capacitating sylvan thinking in its many forms. He teaches Anthropology at McGill University.
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Dance and Empathy
Wednesday, November 15
doors 6pm / talk 6:30pm
Le Laboratoire Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dance-and-empathy-tickets-39007659961
Ilya Vidrin and moderated by Lisa Wong
This fascinating talk is part of the Artsenses series
curated by the Arts and Humanities Initiative at Harvard Medical School
Emerging from professional dance practices, Ilya's work investigates physical principles of human interaction. From concepts like empathy, care, trust, vulnerability and respect, his central research question probes the language and biomechanics surrounding what it means to be "connected" within dance partnering, aiming to identify which aspects are determinable, generalizable, and further, measurable. To address this question, he works with wearable biofeedback technology designed to capture haptic and proxemic data. Currently used in studio and performance environments, implications for this research extend beyond artistic practice to promote healthy physical interactions.
As usual, the talk is free.
Space is limited.
BIOGRAPHY
With backgrounds in cognitive neuroscience, rhetorical theory, and classical, contemporary, and improvisational movement and sound, Ilya has spent much of his time synthesizing his academic and artistic interests to investigate interdisciplinary collaboration. A graduate of Northeastern University's College of Science, Ilya went on to receive a Master’s Degree in Human Development form Harvard University, where he worked on clinical and experimental research projects investigating alternative therapies for cognitive and neurodegenerative disorders, including neuro-navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and mindful/somatic enrichment. He has been a guest teacher at the Interlochen Arts Academy (Michigan), Hakodate Performing Arts High School (Japan), and the Laban Conservatoire (London), and has worked with professional musicians and dancers at the International Beethoven Festival, Greenhouse Festival (Israel), Royal Swedish Ballet (Stockholm), Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Kurofune Ensemble (Japan), The Cambrians (Chicago), and the Doppelgänger Dance Collective (Providence). Ilya continues to develop his research through a practice-based PhD in Performing Arts, with postgraduate fellowships at Harvard University and the Centre for Dance Research in the United Kingdom.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Wednesday, November 15
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:30)
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.harvard.com/event/walter_isaacson1/
Cost: $5 - $34.75 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes celebrated writer and journalist WALTER ISAACSON—author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin—for a discussion of his latest biography, Leonardo da Vinci. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Leonardo da Vinci
He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us?
Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.
He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius.
His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from having wide-ranging passions. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history’s most memorable smile. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo’s lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions.
Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance of instilling, both in ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it—to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.
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Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series: LaToya Ruby Frazier
Wednesday, November 15
7:00pm
Lesley University, University Hall Amphitheater, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
LaToya Ruby Frazier is a photographer and video artist who uses visual autobiographies to capture social inequality and historical change in the postindustrial age. The College of Art and Design is pleased to have Ms. Frazier join us this Fall as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series.
In 2014, Frazier was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts. The following year, she became a TED2015 Fellow and her monograph, The Notion of Family, published by Aperture in 2014, was awarded the 2015 Infinity Award for Best Publication by the International Center of Photography (ICP).
In 2015 Frazier was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, to which she responded that the award was "validation to my work being a testimony and a fight for social justice and cultural change.”
In 2017 Ms. Frazier was included on the exclusive list of the 100+ Most Powerful Women of All Time by Ebony magazine.
LaToya Ruby Frazier received her MFA in 2007 from Syracuse University. She's held artist residencies at the Lower Manhattan Culture Council (2009–2010) and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2010–2011).
Frazier was the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (2013–2014) before assuming her current position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Frazier’s work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the Brooklyn Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.
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The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President
Wednesday, November 15
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/noah-feldman-the-three-lives-of-james-madison-genius-partisan-president-tickets-38876824629
A sweeping reexamination of the Founding Father who transformed the United States in each of his political “lives”—as a revolutionary thinker, as a partisan political strategist, and as a president
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician he co-founded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
About the Author
Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the author of six previous books, most recently Cool War: The Future of Global Competition. He is a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and a columnist for Bloomberg View.
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High-Stake Steaks: The science behind prions, Mad Cow, and other neurological diseases
Wednesday, November 15
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Harvard Medical School, Armenise Auditorium, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/seminar-series/
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Climate Changed Ideas Competition: Information Session & Meet-and-Greet
Wednesday, November 15
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 9-451, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-changed-ideas-competition-information-session-meet-and-greet-tickets-39412747589
Climate Changed Ideas Competition http://www.climatechangedmit.com
INFORMATION SESSION AND MEET-AND-GREET:
We will be reviewing the competition brief and answering questions. The information session will be followed by a mixer for interested individuals to meet one another and find potential teammates. Pizza will be served!
COMPETITION PROMPT:
Imagine the Greater Boston region in 2050. The local sea levels will have risen by as much as 1.5 meters. King tides, caused by the gravitational interactions of the earth, sun, and moon will flood low-lying areas with every new and full moon. Coastal storm events, like hurricanes, will occur more often and with greater force. Due to rising temperatures, the New England summer will look more like that of Washington D.C. Heat waves will be hotter and longer, tripling the heat-induce mortality rate. The Northeast will see a continual increase in extreme storm events. This will disrupt transportation and cause flash flooding over built-up urban areas.
These projections are alarming. Yet, we believe there are ways to mitigate and prepare our communities for the climate changed. In this competition we explore the power of models: to illustrate large and small scale shifts, to calculate uncertainty, to communicate the science, and to show the community how the events will unfold. With this in mind, we ask you to “model” an idea on one of three Greater Boston sites that addresses at least one climate hazard, and show how modeling can help transform the site in a climate changed. Teams are asked to select one of the three sites: the MIT campus and its surroundings, East Boston Greenway, or the Fresh Pond & Alewife areas and address the following objectives:
1. Explore the agency of models to develop new ways of seeing the site and to design an idea intervention.
2. Develop a climate-responsive intervention to address issues identified, founded on understood climate change predictions and your model. Show how your proposal will be better the site and community in question.
Climate Changed Co-Chairs: Irmak Turan and Jessica Varner
Faculty Advisor: John E. Fernandez
The Climate Changed event series is generously co-sponsored by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative and the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
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Precision Medicine: Precision Health
Wednesday, November 15
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Museum of Science, I Museum Park, Boston
RSVP at https://www.mos.org/public-events/precision-medicine-precision-health
What if, starting from birth, we could keep everyone at their healthiest state throughout their life? In the future, might we prevent diseases from happening altogether? This is the vision that researchers and technology companies, both big and small, are aiming to make a reality.
Join us to find out what is possible now and what may be possible in the very near future.
Welcome by Gloria S. Waters, PhD, vice president and associate provost for research and professor of speech, language, and hearing services at Boston University. Introduction by Katya Ravid, DSc, founding director, Boston University Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Office and Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research.
Lee and Nile Albright Annual Symposium
Funding provided by the Lee and Nile Albright Annual Symposium Fund. This program is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute.
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Thursday, November 16
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Innovations to put solar power in the hands of every American
Thursday, November 16
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Steph Speirs, CEO and co-founder, Solstice
More solar is installed every year compared to the last, yet it still only accounts for less than 1 percent of our electricity. Why isn't solar blanketing our towns and cities yet? Why have so many big solar companies gone bankrupt in the last few years? What innovations need to occur for the benefits of solar energy to be enjoyed by everyone in America? Join Solstice co-founder and CEO Steph Speirs in discussing the impediments--and innovations required--to realizing a truly democratized clean energy economy that works for all of us, not just some of us.
Steph Speirs is a social entrepreneur and community builder with management experience in the Middle East, South Asia, and the United States. She is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of Solstice, an enterprise dedicated to radically expanding the number of American households that can take advantage of solar power. She was selected as an Echoing Green Climate Fellow, a Global Good Fund Fellow, a Kia Revisionary, a Grist 50 Fixer, and an Acumen Global Fellow, all of which recognize emerging leaders in social enterprise. She previously led sales and marketing innovation in India at d.light, a solar products company powering areas without reliable electricity; spearheaded Acumen's renewable energy impact investment strategy in Pakistan; developed Middle East policy as the youngest Director at the White House National Security Council; and managed field operations in seven states for the first Obama presidential campaign. She holds a B.A. from Yale and a Master in Public Affairs (MPA) with distinction from Princeton, and is a recipient of the Paul and Daily Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
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Hidden in Plain Sight: Family Secrets and American History
Thursday, November 16
4:15 pm
Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2017-hidden-in-plain-sight-panel-discussion
The theme of this discussion is the not-quite-secret histories of American families, stories hidden in plain sight that, once revealed, require us to rethink the broader outlines of American history.
The program will tackle important connections between the secret/private and the official/public.
The Schlesinger Library’s specific mission to document the history of American women also means that recording secrets—thinking about privacy and discoverability—is a particular interest of ours.
How do we know what we know? What can’t we know, ever? What should and shouldn’t be preserved?
A panel discussion with:
Gail Lumet Buckley '59, author of The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016)
Alice Echols, Barbra Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies and Professor of History and Gender Studies at University of Southern California
Susan Faludi ’81, RI ’09, author of In the Darkroom (Metropolitan Books, 2016)
Alex Wagner, author of Stories We Tell Ourselves (One World, forthcoming)
Moderator: Annette Gordon-Reed JD ’84, RI ’16, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School, and Professor of History, Harvard University
Free and open to the public.
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Spiritual Ecologies: Sustainability and Transcendence in Contemporary Asia
Thursday, November 16
5:00pm
Harvard, Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Prasenjit Duara, Oscar Tang Professor of East Asian Studies, Duke University
The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center
The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center is convened by Robin Kelsey (Dean of Arts and Humanities, Harvard University) and Ian Jared Miller (Professor of History, Harvard University).
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Film Screening: An Inconvenient Sequel
Thursday, November 16
5:00PM
Harvard, PBHA Shepard Room, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/1467987583256126/
Join the Environmental Action Committee and Harvard College Conservation Society in viewing Al Gore's new film. 10 Years after An Inconvenient Truth, follow former Vice President and climate activist Al Gore as he continues on his quest to tackle the world's most important - and most challenging - problem. Live-streamed Q&A Session with Al Gore following screening. Register requested.
The Harvard College Environmental Action Committee seeks to help achieve a sustainable world and protect the environment for its human and non-human inhabitants. To this end, the EAC aims to raise the consciousness of Harvard’s students to the effect of their own actions on the environment and to their status as stewards of this planet’s resources. We advocate specific changes at the campus, local, national, and international levels. Furthermore, we serve as a forum for discussion and a source of information on environmental issues. Finally, we seek to enrich our members through fun and fulfilling experiences.
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Starr Forum: Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win
Thursday, November 16
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 4-270, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Book talk with Peter Krause PhD '11, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College and a Research Affiliate with the MIT Security Studies Program
His new book Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win was just published with Cornell University Press. Krause's research and teaching focus on Middle East politics, terrorism and political violence, national movements, and international relations.
Roger Petersen (Discussant), Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science
Books will be signed & sold at event
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Let's get climate smart
Thursday, November 16
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Hyatt Regency, 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lets-get-climate-smart-tickets-37093058336
Join us for a Climate-Smart Cities™ event featuring a panel discussion:
Cool, Connect, Absorb, Protect: How parks and open space can help make your city climate smart
We will explore the many ways that climate change is impacting the Boston region and discover how parks, open space, and new multi-city and public-private partnerships, such as the Metro Mayors Coalition*, are helping us overcome unprecedented environmental challenges.
The evening will include an interactive mapping demonstration, keynote presentation, and Q&A session with leading climate experts.
Hors d’oeuvres will be provided. Cash bar available.
Please register by November 7th.
Speakers include:
Bill Lindsay, City Manager, Richmond, CA (keynote)
Holly Bostrom, Climate-Smart Cities Program Director, The Trust for Public Land
Marc Draisen, Executive Director, Metropolitan Area Planning Council (moderator)
Axum Teferra, Clean Energy Planner and Climate Specialist, Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Alicia Hunt, Director of Energy and Environment, City of Medford, MA
*The Metro Mayors Coalition is a partnership of 14 municipalities in metro Boston which is home to over 1.3 million people. With the help of The Trust for Public Land through its Climate-Smart Cities ™ program, and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the coalition is working to develop and implement new green infrastructure strategies that will make the entire region resilient to a changing climate.
The Metro Mayors Coalition is comprised of Boston, Brookline, Braintree, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Melrose, Malden, Newton, Quincy, Revere, Somerville, and Winthrop.
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Sankofa Lecture: Janine de Novais
Thursday, November 16
6:00pm
Lesley University, Marran Theater, 34 Mellen Street, Cambridge
The Sankofa Lecture Series was established to create a forum for thought-provoking diversity and inclusion themed presentations on current hot topics led by guest scholars, authors and researchers within academia and in the greater society. The meaning of the word Sankofa asks that we embrace our past in order to achieve a rewarding future. The series creates a platform for diverse perspectives and ideas to be shared and discussed in open and vibrant community dialogue on critical issues related to race, gender, sexuality and intersectionality.
Dr. Janine de Novais is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and beginning fall 2018, she will be an assistant professor at the University of Delaware School of Education. Her work sits at the intersection of race, culture, democracy and education. In a recent study, de Novais introduces "Brave Community," a theory about the relationship between classroom culture and meaningful learning about race. In 2016, de Novais was one of nine scholars honored by the American Educational Research Association as “Promising Minority Scholars” and an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Semi-Finalist. She has served on the Editorial Board of the "Harvard Educational Review" (2012-2014), and on the Dean's Advisory Committee for Equity and Diversity at HGSE (2014-2015). Before coming to Harvard, de Novais was associate director of Columbia University's Center for the Core Curriculum. She received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2017 and her B.A. in sociology from Columbia University.
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Envision Alewife Working Group
Thursday November 16
6:00 pm
Russell Youth Center, 680 Huron Avenue, Cambridge
More information at http://envision.cambridgema.gov/event/alewife-working-group-meeting-12-2/
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INSIDE THE MINDS OF BRILLIANT DESIGNERS
Thursday, 16 November
6:30 – 8:30 pm EST
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://generalassemb.ly/education/inside-the-minds-of-brilliant-designers/boston/42648
About This Event
This inspiring panel event series invites key players in Boston's design community to offer a rare insider’s look at how they work and create. From branding to user experience to city planning, panelists will discuss how they approach projects from a design point of view, how design thinking methods help with problem-solving, and much more.
Where are they now? An evening with General Assembly Design Alums
For November, we are inviting General Assembly design alums back to campus to share 'Where they are now'. Learn about their path to General Assembly, the work they are doing now, and what their transitions into professional design roles have been like.
Why It Matters: Design is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. It affects our morning commute, how we experience websites and apps, and how we communicate with each other. Gaining a better understanding of this universal force will help you see the world and your projects through a fascinating new lens.
By signing up for this event, you're giving our sponsors permission to contact you about upcoming events and promotions.
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NEXPO: Northeastern's Entrepreneurship Expo
Thursday, November 16
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Northeastern University Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex, 799 Columbus Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nexpo-northeasterns-entrepreneurship-expo-tickets-39021843384
Celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week with IDEA by taking part in NEXPO, our annual venture showcase event. Whether you are a student hoping to start your own company, an industry professional looking to share your experience, or an entrepreneurship enthusiast interested in learning about the cutting edge of technology in startups, NEXPO provides the perfect platform to connect at Northeastern and beyond. Join us on November 16th from 6:30pm – 9:00pm in the new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, ISEC.
Speak with our participating ventures and guests to learn about how they are disrupting the market. Benefit from the networking opportunities NEXPO provides by speaking with students, mentors, and investors.
For more information about IDEA | Northeastern University’s Venture Accelerator, visit www.northeastern.edu/idea
Learn more about NEXPO and Global Entrepreneurship Week at: www.northeastern.edu/eweek/
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Tech Planter Japanese Startup Pitches
Thursday November 16
6:45 pm - 8:00 pm
Venture Café (Havana) @ CIC, 5th Floor, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tech-planter-japanse-startup-pitches-at-venture-cafe-kendall-tickets-38058975420
The Global Tech Planter accelerator program DEMO DAY is coming to Boston on Nov 15. TECH PLANTER is a unique international seed acceleration program for deep-tech startups. TECH PLANTER brings the best companies from their Japan accelerator to DEMO DAYS in cities around the world. These DEMO DAYS are an opportunity for local companies and investors to see the company pitches for potential partnership and investment. The Japanese startups from the Nov. 15th DEMO DAYNov. 15th DEMO DAY will be pitching at the Venture Cafe Kendall
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The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office
Thursday, November 16
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes University of Texas professor JEREMI SURI for a discussion of his latest book, The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office.
About The Impossible Presidency
In this bold new history of the American presidency, celebrated historian Jeremi Suri argues that the successful presidents of the past created unrealistic expectations for every president since JFK, with enormously problematic implications for American politics. Suri charts the rise and fall of the American presidency, from the limited role envisaged by the Founding Fathers to its current status as the most powerful job in the world. He argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success—the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it. As managers of the world's largest economy and military, contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There is little room left for bold vision.
Suri traces America's disenchantment with our recent presidents to the inevitable mismatch between presidential promises and the structural limitations of the office. A masterful reassessment of presidential history, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand America's fraught political climate.
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Aging with Wisdom: Reflections, Stories and Teachings
Thursday, November 16
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
"Opens the door to aging's wisdom and love in a beautiful and heartfelt way."--Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart
How do we enter our elder years with openness, curiosity, and engagement? A central assumption of this book is that deepening one's inner life is central to wellbeing in later life. Combining elements of memoir and inspiring examples of lives well lived, Aging with Wisdomis that invaluable guide to the inevitable (if we're lucky) process of aging with dignity and grace.
Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle is a writer and dharma teacher. Her bestselling first book, Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple's Journey Through Alzheimer's won many awards.
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Outbreak: Fighting Disease in a Changing World
Thursday, November 16
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston
RSVP at https://www.mos.org/public-events/outbreak-fighting-disease-in-a-changing-world
Human health is connected to the health of the environment and the animals inhabiting it. Viruses that originate in wildlife, such as HIV, Zika, Ebola, and influenza, can infect humans and our livestock and spread rapidly around the globe. Influenza and HIV have killed tens of millions of people every year. What is our role in preventing the next pandemic? How can society work toward reducing our risk? As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Spanish influenza pandemic, what have we learned?
Join us behind the scenes as we develop a forum that will be used in museums and libraries across the country and beyond. Learn about infectious diseases that affect millions of people all over the world and consider how we can apply lessons from diseases we've managed to eradicate. Discuss your ideas with other participants and help the Museum of Science improve this forum.
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Religion without Religion? Innovation and Disruption in America’s Spiritual Spaces
Thursday, November 16
7:15pm
MIT, Building W11, Main Dining Room, 40 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join Angie Thurston, Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and co-author of howwegather.org, as she charts the rapidly changing culture of religious identity and practice among rising generations in America. She’ll illustrate how a new landscape of meaningful communities – from CrossFit to coworking spaces – is replicating traditionally religious functions.
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Friday, November 17 - 5:00PM to Sunday, November 19 - 5:00PM
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Climate Reckoning: Paths to an Earth Restored
Thursday, November 16 - 5:00PM to Sunday, November 19 - 5:00PM
Harvard, Geo Lecture Hall (100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-reckoning-paths-to-an-earth-restored-tickets-37980907918#tickets
Cost: $20 - $200
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate and the Harvard Extension Student Environmental Club host this three-day conference addressing the Earth System and the universe of solutions that systems thinking makes possible.
With recent unprecedented wildfires, heat waves, super storms, droughts and floods, the climate is sending us messages that are impossible to ignore. It is increasingly clear: disasters like hurricanes Harvey and Irma are but dire warnings of what’s to come.
The scientific community now recognizes that even if we go to zero emissions tomorrow, the tragedies will continue to mount. If we think that our only option is emissions reductions, as essential as they are, we hit a wall with nowhere to go but resignation and despair. But when we add eco-restoration into the equation, a remarkable story emerges, one of renewal and hope.
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate is telling that story. When we began hosting conferences in 2014, the phrase “reverse global warming” was hardly spoken – it was presumed impossible in conventional climate science and activism. A fundamental cure, repair of Earth’s life-support systems, was off the table. Today, in collaboration with many wonderful people and organizations around the world, that story is rapidly changing. Eco-restoration is growing into a powerful global movement, a movement that needs us all.
In our previous nine conferences we helped usher in a new climate conversation, transforming gloom and doom into inspiration and action. Speakers from five continents have shown us how to bring dead landscapes back to life by restoring soil, native plant and animal species, and local water, carbon and nutrient cycles. Resulting living landscapes pull down excess carbon from the atmosphere, rehydrate the land, cool the biosphere, and produce nutritious food for humans and animals.
In this conference, Climate Reckoning: Paths to an Earth Restored, we’ll connect many dots linking biological systems, human endeavor and climate to expand this new and compelling story.
Contact Name: Paula Phipps
paula.c.phipps at gmail.com
Editorial Comment: The conferences of Biodiversity for a Livable Climate have been the most positive contributions to practical actions on ameliorating or even reversing climate change that I've attended. They always include expert practitioners from around the world who go far beyond what I've heard at Harvard, MIT, and the other universities on these topics. Mostly, the universities don't even know that these topics exist. If you are interested in climate change, this conference is more than worth your interest and attendance. The video proceedings of all their previous conferences are available at http://bio4climate.org
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Friday, November 17
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Climate Adaptation Forum
Friday, November 17
8:00 am to 12:00 pm
University of Massachusetts Club, 32nd Floor, 1 Beacon Street, Boston
RSVP at https://climateadaptationforum.org/2017/09/28/next-forum-november-17-2017-climate-adaptation-action-by-three-cutting-edge-programs/
Cost: $15 - $45
The Environmental Business Council of New England and the Sustainable Solutions Lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston are pleased to announce that The Honorable Sally Jewell, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and current Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics, will be will be opening the forum with a moderated discussion on "Adaptation through Collaboration" at the inaugural Climate Adaptation Forum on November 17, 2017.
Given that there is a growing understanding of the local impacts of climate change, as well as the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events like the current hurricane season in the United States and Caribbean, the need for innovative and strategic resiliency and adaptation planning and investments is greater than ever.
For this Inaugural Climate Adaptation Forum, the Honorable Sally Jewell, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, will participate in a conversation focused on adaptation and resilience. The Forum then continues with three speakers presenting their active adaptation programs and actions, ranging in region from Florida to New York City to Coastal Virginia.
These three speakers have specifically been selected to provide an opportunity for Boston-based climate practitioners to learn from experts in locations that have already been forced to face climate disruptions.
Finally, there will be a panel discussion moderated by Austin Blackmon, the City of Boston’s Chief of Energy, Environment, and Open Space.
More about The Honorable Sally Jewell:
As a business executive and public servant serving as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Obama, Sally Jewell focused her career on supporting a robust economy coupled with long-term sustainability of our natural world and its diverse people.
During her tenure as Interior Secretary, Jewell was recognized for taking the long-view, using a science-based, landscape-level, collaborative approach to natural resources management. She and her capable team were deeply engaged in rebuilding a trusting, nation-to-nation relationship with indigenous communities in the U.S. They championed the importance of science and sharing data to better understand our Earth's systems; supported development of commercial-scale renewable energy on public lands and waters; encouraged investments for more sustainable use of water in the West; and worked with Congress, President Obama and his team on long-term conservation of our nation's most vulnerable and irreplaceable natural, cultural and historic treasures.
Throughout her career, Jewell has been committed to connecting people to nature, particularly youth. At Interior, she and her team championed efforts to create a continuum of engagement that encouraged tens of millions of young people to play, learn, serve and work on public lands.
Prior to serving on President Obama's cabinet, Jewell was President and CEO of REI, a $2.6 billion retailer dedicated to facilitating outdoor adventures. Prior to REI, she served 19 years in commercial banking across a wide-range of industries, and began her career as an engineer in the energy industry. She has been active in many non-profit organizations throughout her life, including serving as a Regent of the University of Washington where she is a Distinguished Fellow in the College of the Environment. She is also serving as a Resident Fellow in Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics for the fall semester of 2017.
Registration and fee details:
EBC Member: $35
EBC Membership is corporate – all staff from our member companies can register as an EBC Member. Not sure if you’re a member? Visit our online Member Directory.
Non-members: $45
Government/Nonprofit: $15
This rate is available for those employed by Government, Municipal, or Nonprofit organizations.
Students – please get in touch with Rebecca Herst, Director of the Sustainable Solutions Lab at UMass Boston, for registration information.
Fine Print: Cancellations must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 10 for a refund. No-shows will be charged. Please keep in mind that online registration for this program will close at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 16.
Contact Name: Environmental Business Council
ebc at ebcne.org
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Is Trump Making Investigative Reporting Great Again?
Friday, November 17
10:00 AM – 2:30 PM EST
Northeastern University, Cabral Center, 40 Leon Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/is-trump-making-investigative-reporting-great-again-tickets-39259059905
Join Northeastern University's School of Journalism and ProPublica for a half-day of panels and discussion around investigative reporting in the Age of Trump. The conference will feature keynote presentations from Eric Umansky, Deputy Managing Editor of ProPublica, and Louise Kiernan, Editor in Chief of ProPublica Illinois.
Panels will feature tips, techniques and tales from reporters and editors from The Boston Globe, WGBH, WBUR, WCVB, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, STAT News, VTDigger, New Hampshire Public Radio and MuckRock.
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Biogeochemical Cycling and Environmental Lifetimes for Industrial Chemicals
Friday, November 17
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin 115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Elsie Sunderland, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Harvard, will discuss her research. Her ongoing research is elucidating the biogeochemical cycling of compounds with contrasting physical and chemical properties that can be used to obtain insights into the varying exposure pathways and environmental lifetimes for industrial chemicals.
Research in the Sunderland Lab focuses on how biogeochemical processes affect the fate, transport and food web bioaccumulation of trace metals and organic chemicals. Her group develops and applies models at a variety of scales ranging from ecosystems and ocean basins (e.g., the Gulf of Maine, the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans) to global applications to characterize how changes in climate and emissions affect human and ecological health, and the potential impacts of regulatory activities. Her group also makes key measurements of chemical concentrations and reaction rates in environmental samples (natural waters, sediments, and aquatic biota) and humans (hair, blood) to parameterize and evaluate environmental models.
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
https://www.seas.harvard.edu/calendar/event/104791
Contact Name: Brenda Mathieu
bmathieu at seas.harvard.edu
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Hack Your Mind: How Does Mindfulness Meditation Change the Mind and Brain?
Friday, November 17
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Join us for the first program of the semester of our Hack Your Mind series with Dr. Susan Gabrieli. Gabrieli is a neuroscientist and Senior Research Scientist for the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. From Dr. Gabrieli:
"Mindfulness meditation describes a set of mental techniques to train attention and awareness. Enhancing mindfulness through meditation training is of great interest because it may promote both emotional and cognitive well-being. I will review evidence about how mindfulness meditation changes the structure and function of the adult human brain, how a school-based program changes the brains of children, and how understanding the brain basis of mindfulness can suggest treatments of brain disorders, such as schizophrenia."
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Digital Minds: Science fiction or near-future reality?
Friday, November 17
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Refreshments: 1:45 PM
MIT, Building 32-G882, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Arlindo Oliveira , Técnico Lisboa
Reminder Subject: TALK: Digital Minds: Science fiction or near-future reality?
Exponential growth is a pattern built deep into the scheme of life, but technological change now promises to outstrip even evolutionary change, a process that created life and intelligence on Earth. In particular, exponential growth has characterized computing technologies in the last century, and has fueled the rapid developments of ICT that have changed society so deeply. In this talk, I will discuss the possibility that advances in computing technology will enable us to create digital minds, either artificial or natural, and discuss briefly the social, legal, and ethical implications of such a possibility.
Short bio: Arlindo Oliveira obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in EECS from IST - Técnico Lisboa and his PhD, also in EECS, from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are centered in the areas of Computational Biology, Machine Learning, Computer Architecture, Algorithms and Complexity. He is the author of the book "The Digital Mind", published by MIT Press and of more than 100 articles. He became president of IST - Técnico Lisboa in 2012, after a career that included a number of positions in academy and industry.
Contact: Sally O. Lee, 3-6837, sally at csail.mit.edu
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Machine Learning and AI for the Sciences —Towards Understanding
Friday, November 17
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium,
Speaker: Klaus-Robert Müller, Technische Universität Berlin
Speaker URL: http://www.ml.tu-berlin.de/menue/members/klaus_robert_mueller/
Abstract: In recent years, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods have begun to play a more and more enabling role in the sciences and in industry. In particular, the advent of large and/or complex data corpora has given rise to new technological challenges and possibilities. In his talk, Müller will touch upon the topic of ML applications in the sciences, in particular in neuroscience, medicine and physics. He will also discuss possibilities for extracting information from machine learning models to further our understanding by explaining nonlinear ML models. E.g. Machine Learning Models for Quantum Chemistry can, by applying interpretable ML, contribute to furthering chemical understanding. Finally, Müller will briefly outline perspectives and limitations.
Contact: Kathleen Sullivan, kdsulliv at csail.mit.edu
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The Boatman: Thoreau on the Water
Friday, November 17
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
The Arnold Arboretum welcomes Robert Thorson, PhD, Professor of Geology, University of Connecticut, and Columnist, Hartford Courant, who will give a talk on "The Boatman: Thoreau on the Water."
Henry David Thoreau was a boatman, more than he was a woodsman: a lifelong river rat whose sense of place emerged from boating, walking, and skating the Assabet, Sudbury, and Concord Rivers. As a backyard naturalist and river enthusiast, Henry David Thoreau was keenly aware of the way humans had altered the waterways and meadows of his beloved Concord River Valley. And he recognized that he himself—a land surveyor by trade—was as complicit in these transformations as the bankers, lawyers, builders, landowners, and elected officials who were his clients. Robert Thorson shares a compelling story of Thoreau’s intellectual growth and scientific understanding of the changes made to the river he cherished more than Walden Pond.
Robert Thorson’s book, The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s River Years, will be available for purchase and signing.
Fee Free, but registration required.
Offered in collaboration with JP Reads.
Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.
Contact Name: Pam Thompson
pam_thompson at harvard.edu
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Saturday, November 18
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TEDxBeaconStreet 2017 Nov 18th @ JFK Library
Saturday, November 18
8:00 AM – 9:00 PM
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Columbia Point, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tedxbeaconstreet-2017-nov-18th-jfk-library-registration-37775779373
TEDxBeaconStreet is bigger than ever! Now in its sixth year, Ideas in Action will spread across two weekends and two spaces: its cherished founding venue at Lincoln School in Brookline and at the landmark JFK Presidential Library & Museum in Dorchester two weeks later.
In celebration of the centennial of John F. Kennedy’s birth, join us for a series of talks organized around the values that President Kennedy championed: courage, service, innovation, and inclusion. This is the first time a TEDx event has been held at the Library, and we have lots of special surprises in store.
SCHEDULE
Check out our full schedule with speakers at http://www.tedxbeaconstreet.com/2017-speakers-and-location-jfk/
SPEAKERS
Meet the speakers at http://www.tedxbeaconstreet.com/2017-speakers-and-location-jfk/
We have a GREAT line-up of speakers to help celebrate our sixth year! We’ll hear from a former white house communications director, 3 astronauts (1st Iranian woman in space, 1st African American in space), deputy prime minister of Irelnad, glass artist, a governor, kanun player, sex therapist, human rights leader, US Ambassador, Harvard and MIT researchers, entrepreneurs, musicians, surgeons, athletes, hackers, and many more!
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Green Campaign School: Make a Difference by Running for Office!
Saturday, November 18
10:15am - 2:30pm
Make Shift, 549 Columbus Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://greenrainbow.nationbuilder.com/2017_campaign_school_regn
Cost: $20 suggested donation ($5 if low income ) which includes a light vegetarian/vegan lunch. No one will be turned away who cannot afford this
donation.
What: Across America Green candidates are changing the political climate by running for elected office with a call for real democracy, an end to social injustice, peace instead of militarism, and real solutions to the threat of climate change. This one-day campaign school focuses upon the skills and strategies that allow successful campaigns to be run in Massachusetts by candidates of the Green-Rainbow Party.
Who should attend: Anyone who is thinking about running for office as a Green (Green-Rainbow) candidate or who wants to acquire the skills to help their favorite candidate succeed.
Topics: Topics we expect to address include picking your race, raising the money you will need, recruiting volunteers, refining your message, using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, campaign websites, campaign literature, and Get-Out-the-Vote initiatives. We will have a panel of recent Green-Rainbow candidates who will share the lessons they learned in their races.
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Free Two-Hour Women's Self-Defense Training
Saturday, November 18
1:30-3:30pm
The NonProfit Center, 89 South Street, Boston
REGISTER HERE: www.fodada.com/2017-international-womens-self-defense-day
(select Boston, MA from drop-down)
This training is part of fodada's 6th Annual International Women's Self Defense Day and will be conducted by Impact Boston, which provides self-defense programs to give people the skills to stay calm and focused in unsafe situations. We are asking all dads, all men, to help us spread the word to the women in
their lives.
The training is free and open to women and girls over the age of 14. Transgender women and queer women are encouraged to attend.
Help spread the word by inviting your friends to the Facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/events/1948233068784204
Editorial Comment: I have seen this kind of training as I made sure my god-daughter and her mother went through it some years ago. These two hours may save the lives of women and girls. If you are thinking of attending, I urge you to go.
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Sunday November 19
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The Syrian American Forum would like to invite you to a talk by Janice Kortkamp, titled
An American Housewife in Syria.
Sunday November 19
2:00-4:00pm
Boston College, Fulton Hall-Room 511, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill
Janice Kortamp became an independent and completely self funded journalist after noticing the western media bias regarding Syria, and how that bias was promoting war and destabilization in Syria and the levant region.
She visited Syria four times over the past year and half, spending three months traveling around highly populated areas, on the outskirts of Damascus, Homs, Latakia, Kassb, Tartous, Arwad, Aleppo and recently Deir al Zour. Kortump also traveled to meet Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Kuwait, and Germany. Additionally she tracks the situation in Syria on a daily basis.
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ReRooted: Reconnecting with Nature —Practical Ecological Ethics in the Anthropocene
Sunday, November 19
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Cafe, Somerville
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rerooted-reconnecting-with-nature-practical-ecological-ethics-in-the-anthropocene-tickets-37733873030
How we view ourselves in Nature and how we relate to our environment defines our overall ecological impact. Come explore with us main environmental worldviews and ethics, and help develop a human ecological narrative that is aware and inclusive, so that we become thriving actors of changes.
About the Facilitator
Claire O’Neill is the president and co-founder of Earthwise Aware Inc., a nature conservation nonprofit that reaches out internationally. She’s traveled to more than 30 countries –often in most remote wilderness areas– and witnessed directly the human relationship to nature and its impact. Her work is dedicated to Practical Ecological Literacy & Ethics and how to bring those ethics to the public and organizations that have nature or wildlife as part of their curriculum.
Note: This event is a donation-based event, and the suggested donation is $10 per person. Please provide us with an email and phone number.
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Monday, November 20
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Governor's Convening for Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning
Monday, November 20
8:00 AM – 11:00 AM EST
MIT, SAMBERG CONFERENCE CENTER, CHANG BUILDING (E52), 50 MEMORIAL DRIVE, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/governors-convening-for-digital-innovation-and-lifelong-learning-tickets-37884085319
The Baker-Polito administration is committed to strengthening our workforce, growing our nation-leading economy, and equipping our residents with the skills they need to connect with career pathways and make the unemployed and underemployed more competitive. The Governor will deliver a keynote to celebrate innovation, foster conversation and energy around key initiatives, and accelerate the pace of progress in delivering access to high quality post secondary education.
In addition to keynotes from Governor Baker and Ted Mitchell, President of the American Council on Education, The Governor’s Convening on Digital Innovation for Lifelong Learning will focus on a number of key announcements being made that will:
accelerate the availability and use of innovative learning models
provide inspiration, and serve as a catalyst to scale
bring together industry leaders, educators, foundations and community-based organizations who can in turn forge new partnerships and create future initiatives
allow more adults to raise their skills, earn their credentials and accelerate their and their employers’ success
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PAOC Colloquium: Charles Ichoku (NASA Goddard)
Monday, November 20
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Research interests: Given that seasonal biomass burning is widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, can the effects of this burning on the environment be measured regionally and globally? This is one of the questions NASA scientist Dr. Charles Ichoku seeks to answer in his research examining the effects of wildfires, agricultural burning, and the emissions associated with these activities. Through a variety of measurement and modeling approaches coordinated under an interdisciplinary framework, Dr. Ichoku is helping scientists, researchers, and natural resource managers gain a better understanding of environmental change and climate variability in Northern Sub-Saharan Africa (NSSA) caused by seasonal fires and how these changes may impact the water cycle and other processes not just in this diverse region, but around the world.
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged.
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Regional Approaches to Carbon Emissions
Monday, November 20
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
The Consortium for Energy Policy Research presents Stu Bresler, Executive Vice President, Operations and Markets, PJM Interconnection. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/seminar.html#fall2017
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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Sonic Lawfare: The Jurisprudence of Weaponized Sound
Monday, November 20
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Room 100F, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with James Parker (Melbourne Law School).
The STS Circle at Harvard is a group of doctoral students and recent PhDs who are interested in creating a space for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issuesin science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences. We want to engage not only those who are working on intersections of science, politics, and public policy, but also those in the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture who have serious interest in exploring these areas together with social scientists and humanists.
There has been growing interest among graduate students and postdocs at Harvard in more systematic discussions related to STS. More and more dissertation writers and recent graduates find themselves working on exciting topics that intersect with STS at the edges of their respective home disciplines, and they are asking questions that often require new analytic tools that the conventional disciplines don’t necessarily offer. They would also like wider exposure to emerging STS scholarship that is not well-represented or organized at most universities, including Harvard. Our aim is to try to serve those interests through a series of activities throughout the academic year.
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
STS Circle at Harvard
http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/events/sts_circle/
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Contact Name: sts at hks.harvard.edu
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The Cooperative City: Urban Infrastructure Development and South-South Cooperation
Monday, November 20
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena, 105 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
The SPURS/Humphrey program is delighted to invite you to our fall seminar series: North American Planning Experience: Is It Relevant for the Developing World?
Our goal is to explore to what extent, and under what conditions, planning ideas generated from practice in the U.S. can travel to cities in the developing world and be implemented effectively. We’ll also consider whether planning ideas, practices and programs are traveling from the rest of the world back to the United States.
The seventh seminar is Monday, Nov 20, in the City Arena, 12:30 - 2 PM: The Cooperative City: Urban Infrastructure Development and South-South Cooperation, with Gabriella Carolini and Paul Smoke, respondent.
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LECTURE: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Monday, November 20
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST
MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, 6th Floor Multipurpose Room, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lecture-senator-sheldon-whitehouse-tickets-37098889778
The Environmental Solutions Initiative People & the Planet Lecture Series presents individuals and organizations working to advance understanding and action toward a humane and sustainable future.
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Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All
Monday, November 20
6:30 PM
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
This event is free; no tickets are required.
Harvard Book Store welcomes writer, performer, and activist JACLYN FRIEDMAN for a discussion of her latest book, Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All.
About Unscrewed
What bestselling authors like Sheryl Sandberg and Brigid Schulte have done for women's work lives, Jaclyn Friedman does here for women's sexuality: spark a culture-wide rethink about what's accepted as normal, urging us all to try for something better. Not only that: she does it with warmth, irreverence, and candor reminiscent of Roxane Gay in Bad Feminist, and the fiery conviction of her own co-edited anthology Yes Means Yes!.
In Unscrewed, Friedman reveals that the anxiety and fear women in our country feel around issues of their sexuality are not, in fact, their fault, but instead are side effects of our toxic culture. Dubbed the "era of fauxpowerment," that culture gives women the illusion of sexual power, with no actual power to support it. Exploring where media, religion, politics, and education overlap with feminist issues, Unscrewed breaks down the causes and signs of fauxpowerment, then gives readers tools to take it on themselves.
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Tuesday, November 21
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Badges of Oppression, Positions of Strength: Digital Black Feminist Discourse and the Legacy of Black Women’s Technology Use
Tuesday, November 21
12:00 pm
Harvard Law School, Griswold Hall, Classroom 110, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/11/KnightSteele#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/11/KnightSteele
featuring Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland
Black women have historically occupied a unique position, existing in multiple worlds, manipulating multiple technologies, and maximizing their resources for survival in a system created to keep them from thriving. I present a case for the unique development of black women’s relationship with technology by analyzing historical texts that explore the creation of black womanhood in contrast to white womanhood and black manhood in early colonial and antebellum periods in the U.S. This study of Black feminist discourse online situates current practices in the context of historical use and mastery of communicative technology by the black community broadly and black women more specifically. By tracing the history of black feminist thinkers in relationship to technology we move from a deficiency model of black women’s use of technology to recognizing their digital skills and internet use as part of a long developed expertise.
About Catherine
Catherine Knight Steele is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park and the Director of the Andrew W. Mellon funded African American Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum). As the director of the AADHum, Dr. Steele works to foster a new generation of scholars and scholarship at the intersection of African American Studies and Digital Humanities and Digital Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media with a specific focus on African American culture and discourse in traditional and new media. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how traditionally marginalized populations resist oppression and utilize online technology to create spaces of community. Dr. Steele has published in new media journals such as Social Media & Society and Television & New Media; and the edited volumes Intersectional Internet (Ed. S. Noble & B. Tynes) and the upcoming edited collection A Networked Self: Birth, Life, Death (Ed. Z. Papacharissi). She is currently working on a book manuscript about Digital Black Feminism.
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The Sharing Economy for the Smart Grid
Tuesday, November 21
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Kameshwar Poolla, University of California, Berkeley
Abstract
The sharing economy. It is all the rage. Going on vacation? Rent out your home for extra income! Have space in your car? Pick up passengers for extra income! Companies such as AirBnB, VRBO, Lyft, and Uber have disrupted housing and transportation sectors. Their innovative business models are based on resource sharing that leverage underutilized infrastructure. They are enabled by peer-to-peer platforms that match eager sellers with willing buyers. Are there compelling sharing economy opportunities in the electricity sector? What products can be shared in tomorrow's Smart Grid?
In this talk, we begin by exploring sharing economy opportunities in the electricity sector. We discuss regulatory and technical challenges to these opportunities. We then study the specific problem of a collection of firms sharing their electricity storage. We show that the investment decisions of the firms form a Nash equilibrium which supports the social welfare. We offer explicit expression for optimal storage investments and equilibrium prices for shared storage in a spot market. We discuss control technology platforms necessary for the physical exchange of power, and market platforms necessary
to trade electricity storage.
We then explore the promise of trading excess PV generation in a sharing economy. We argue that this approach encourages investment in renewables, without imposing unsustainable tariff structures such as net-metering. We suggest that a location-based solar subsidy policy can maximize the social welfare of PV producers.
Biography
Kameshwar Poolla is the Cadence Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley in EECS and ME. His current research interests include many aspects of future energy systems including economics, security, and commercialization.He was the Founding Director of the IMPACT Center for Integrated Circuit manufacturing. Dr. Poolla co-founded OnWafer Technologies which was acquired by KLA-Tencor in 2007. Dr. Poolla has been awarded a 1988 NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the 1993 Hugo Schuck Best Paper Prize, the 1994 Donald P. Eckman Award, the 1998 Distinguished Teaching Award of the University of California, the 2005 and 2007 IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing Best Paper Prizes, and the 2009 IEEE CSS Transition to Practice Award.
LIDS Seminar Series
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November Security of Things MeetUp with Bruce Schneier of IBM
Tuesday, November 21
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Akamai, 150 Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/The-Security-of-Things/events/242443755/
Noted security expert Bruce Schneier of IBM and Harvard University will join us for part of the November MeetUp.
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Opportunity
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Discounted Solar for Somerville
As part of the State’s Solarize Mass program, local volunteers and the City of Somerville recently launched the Solarize Somerville campaign to make it easier and cheaper for residents and small businesses to install solar panels.
The program, which is offering information and guidance, free site consultations, and solar panel discounts through November, has set an ambitious goal to inspire at least 200 property owners to sign up for solar —and each of those private solar installations will also benefit the community directly. For every 400 kW in signed private contracts through the program, the program’s solar vendor SolarFlair will donate a system of up to 5 kW for a public or community purpose. All are invited to the program kickoff at a Meet the Installer event on Tuesday, July 26 at 6-7:30 p.m., 167 Holland St. Additional events on topics such as solar basics, financing, and solar for multifamily homes will be announced.
Unique to the program is its neighbor-to-neighbor approach: trained resident volunteers and a designated volunteer Solar Coach are available essentially as mentors. They can, for example, walk anyone through the process, provide general loan program and tax incentive information, and share their own solar experiences. The campaign’s webpage and blog offers useful information, tips, and a link to websites where you can estimate the solar potential of your home and roughly calculate how much solar could save you on your energy bills at www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/solarize.
Somerville is one of the most urban communities ever to participate in Solarize Mass, which makes the neighbor-to-neighbor approach especially helpful due to some of the unique challenges here such as multi-family houses with more than one owner. Winter Hill resident Mary Mangan, the program’s volunteer Solar Coach, went through that process and is ready to share helpful tips.
"I'm excited to work with our eager volunteers to help our neighbors understand the benefits of solar power. As a co-owner of a two-family home with solar, I can also offer some insights about how that process went for us," said Mangan.
Also key to the program is the selection of a designated vendor, which allows the program to offer reduced cost installation through bulk purchasing. Through a competitive process, SolarFlair, based in Ashland, MA, was selected. They were also the selected installer for the communities of Arlington, Hopkinton, Mendon, Brookline, Carlisle-Chelmsford, Newton, and Quincy.
"We're excited to be the selected installer for Solarize Somerville, and look forward to speaking with any home or business owners that are interested in reducing their electric bills while also making a great investment," said Matt Arner, the owner and President of SolarFlair.
Quick facts:
Solar systems can be purchased outright (with a payback of about 4-5 years). The Mass Solar Loan program offers rates of 3.25% or less.
Or, for no money down owners can choose a power purchase agreement (PPA), where the system is owned and maintained by a third party, and residents buy back the electricity at a discounted price.
More on-site renewable energy is critical to reducing carbon emissions. It also saves money for residents.
Tax incentives for solar installations include:
Federal Tax Credit: A 30 percent federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is available for qualified residential and commercial projects
Massachusetts Personal Income Tax Credit: The lesser of 15% of the total cost of the solar electric system or $1,000, for qualified clean energy projects
Five-year Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS): Business owners can depreciate solar electric systems over a five-year schedule
For more information or to sign up for a free site consultation:
Visit the Solarize Somerville webpage at www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/solarize for
Helpful information and FAQs
To contact a volunteer or Solar Coach Mary Mangan to discuss solar options and incentives
To set up an appointment for a free site consultation directly with SolarFlair
To find out about events
To volunteer for Solarize Somerville
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch. No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.
For more information checkout.
https://somervilleyogurtmakingcoop.wordpress.com
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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhwM202dDYxdUZJVGFscnY1VGZ3aXc6MQ
Solar map of Cambridge, MA
http://www.mapdwell.com/en/cambridge
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Sunny Cambridge has just launched! Sunny Cambridge is the city-wide initiative that makes it easy for all types of residents to get solar power for their homes. Cambridge has lined up local solar installers through the EnergySage Solar Marketplace, which helps you request, receive, and compare solar quotes 100% online with support available every step of the way.
The City of Cambridge is working on many levels to reduce energy use and GHG emissions to make the city more sustainable. As a semifinalist in the nationwide competition for the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize, Cambridge Energy Alliance is encouraging residents to take actions to save energy, save money, and protect the environment. Get involved by signing up for a no-cost home energy assessment at the Cambridge Energy Alliance home page (www.cambridgeenergyalliance.org/winit)
and going solar at http://www.sunnycambridge.org
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"Greening Our Grid" Report Released April 24, 2017
MAPC is excited to announce the release of “Greening Our Grid,” a fact sheet and a case study detailing MAPC’s strategy to use municipal aggregation to help build new renewable energy in New England.
“Greening Our Grid” highlights MAPC's work with the City of Melrose as a case study for MAPC's innovative green municipal aggregation strategy. Melrose recently completed its first year of implementation. The city’s results demonstrate that economic and environmental goals can be met simultaneously, and provide a compelling example for others to follow.
The case study and fact sheet further describe the renewable energy strategy overall, why it can have a real impact on our electricity grid, and MAPC’s program to help other municipalities follow Melrose's lead. Arlington, Brookline, Gloucester, Hamilton, Millis, Somerville, Sudbury, and Winchester are poised to roll out their green aggregations within the year.
MAPC believes that municipal aggregation offers an opportunity for communities to leverage the collective buying power of their residents and businesses to transform our electric grid to cleaner sources of energy, while also providing cost savings and price stability for electricity. The fact sheet and case study will be useful tools for cities and towns that are exploring green municipal aggregation, as well as for those that already have active aggregation programs.
Check out “Greening Our Grid” today at http://www.mapc.org/greening-our-grid, and contact Patrick Roche, MAPC Clean Energy Coordinator, at proche at mapc.org for more information about MAPC's program.
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Cambridge Climate Change Game
Extending our work on face-to-face games, the MIT Science Impact Collaborative has developed a digital game on the health impacts of climate change that you can play alone on your computer or on your mobile phone. The game should take about 10-20 minutes. We would appreciate it if you could play the game at your convenience.
Play the game at http://www.doublecoconut.com/climate/
Any and all feedback on the game should be directed to Ella Kim at ella at mit.edu.
Thank you for your time and consideration!
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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha at sbnboston.org
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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas. Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities. Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers. Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs
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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development - http://www.bnid.org/events
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
Please feel free to email our organization at info at bnid.org if you have any questions!
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Boston Maker Spaces - 41 (up from 27 in 2016) and counting: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
Solidarity Network Economy: https://ussolidarityeconomy.wordpress.com
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston: http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
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Links to events at over 50 colleges and universities at Hubevents: http://hubevents.blogspot.com
Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area: http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Events: http://calendar.mit.edu
MIT Energy Club: http://mitenergyclub.org/
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Microsoft NERD Center: http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
Take Action MA: http://takeactionma.com
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
More information about the Act-MA
mailing list