Temp Housemasters Picked For Senior House
Senior House residents have picked interim housemasters for the next year, after their choice for permanent housemasters was rejected by Dean of Student Life Chris Colombo in early July. Jagruti S. Patel ’97 and her husband Antony N. Donovan ’94, both Senior House alumni, have been appointed as interim housemasters after a brief search.
Can Harvard Trademark Common Phrases? An ‘H’?
Harvard University has sought for decades to protect and profit from its good name, one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
Aafia Siddiqui ’95 Scheduled To Stand Trial In October
Aafia Siddiqui ’95, a Pakistani neuroscientist accused of trying to kill American soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan, has been found competent to stand trial by a federal judge in Manhattan.
Day-Long E-mail Outage Affects 10,500
Repeated problems have plagued MIT’s electronic mail systems in the second half of July. Failures of the traditional IMAP and the new Microsoft Exchange mail systems caused large portions of campus e-mail to be unavailable for the better part of a day, followed by shorter and smaller outages last week.
Student Center Post Office Closed
The post office in the basement of the MIT Student Center has closed its doors for the summer, as of July 20. The post office is scheduled to reopen on Monday, Aug. 31.
Robbery at Tang Last Friday
On Friday July 31, an unidentified male assaulted and robbed a woman in the laundry room of Tang Hall, the MIT Police said in a crime bulletin distributed Monday.
Police Log
<i>The following incidents were reported to the Campus Police between May 29 and Jul 12. The dates below reflect the dates incidents occurred. This information is compiled from the Campus Police’s crime log. The report does not include alarms, general service calls, or incidents not reported to the dispatcher.</i>
Welcome to Pre-Post-Racial America
The President of the United States does not typically publicly berate a local police department during a nationally-televised press conference. But at the end of his health care speech on July 22, Barack Obama went there.
Web 2.0 and The Destiny of a Nation
Following Iran’s disputed tenth presidential election on June 12, the world witnessed how new digital technologies have provided opportunities for younger Iranians to rise up and revolt. The rallies in favor of democracy and reform within the Islamic state quickly gave way to demonstrations against the regime. Web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, IPTV and iReport — still fairly new among Westerners — proved to be powerful enough to potentially change the destiny of a nation.
Lessons From The Sotomayor Saga
One senator said, marveling, that her biography gave him goosebumps. Another praised her as passing qualification tests with an “A++” and one “enjoyed [the confirmation hearing] so much” that he begged her to let TV stations record her future court hearings. Maybe some of this praise is a bit over the top, but Sonia Sotomayor does have a strong resume and a moving life story.
2022 AD: India and Pakistan
<i>Editor’s note: This is a historical narrative based on the views of the author.</i>
Chilling This Summer
Where did the summer go? Mother Nature has been extra kind to our air conditioning bills and sweat glands these past months. It has been Boston’s fourth-coolest two-month period since 1872 and one of the wettest as well. Has something gone awry?
Color Blind
I grew up in a post-racial society. Okay, maybe that’s not quite possible. But it sure felt that way for the first fifteen years of my life in a generic East Coast suburb. Looking back, my youthful obliviousness to skin color was probably largely a product of how I was raised. My dad is German, my mom Filipino. Both are “American” in their values and viewpoints: freedom and equality, responsible voting, and pizza for dinner.
CONCERT REVIEW A Wild and Wet Performance: Downpour Adds Organic Effect to Wilco Concert
There’s no better way to spend a cool summer night than at an outdoor concert featuring one of your favorite bands. On July 11 I stood among excited fans at Wilco’s performance in Lowell, Massachusetts. The evening began as one of those rainless nights we seem to be getting so few of this summer in Boston, and I could only hope that the lack of precipitation would last through the performance.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ Men Are Pigs and Women Think Too Much: Is That All There Is to ‘The Ugly Truth’?
In the movie poster for “The Ugly Truth,” there are two stick figures, icons ripped straight from a public restroom door. They are adorned with hearts. The woman’s heart is in her head. The man’s heart is in his crotch. How original.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★★ ‘Summer’ Is Love Shattered, Put Back Together
5<i>00 Days of Summer</i> is not a love story. The narrator, in his rich public radio voice, warns of us this right away. It is about a boy who meets a girl. What? <i>500 Days of Summer</i> is not a love story? A clever indie film, it is a lovely thing that delves deeper into relationships and their complexities than most stories. While at a glance a simple love tale, <i>500 Days</i> triumphs due to its poignancy and dedication to detail.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ It’s Funny, Bruno, but We Don’t Really Care
The next character in Sacha Baron Cohen’s arsenal of disguises is the flaming fashionista Bruno. Born Austrian and “forever” 19, Bruno falls from international prominence as a fashion TV host when he arrives at a Milan fashion show wearing a suit made entirely of velcro. Predictable but amusing antics follow, at which point a dramatic montage exhibits Bruno’s pain at the rejection by his once loving and familial community of fashion-conscious celebrities. Thus begins Bruno’s journey to America to become a celebrity, and the audience’s journey through a generally hilarious but often extremely awkward film.
CONCERT REVIEW At Tanglewood, Merry Mozart and Moody Mahler
During the summer, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performs in bucolic western Massachusetts in the Tanglewood Music Festival — essentially a concert series on steroids of mostly classical music. A couple of weeks ago, I made the pilgrimage for a night of Mozart and Mahler. I was shaken.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ ½ ‘Harry Potter’ and The Magic of Adolescence, Which Is Quickly Wearing Thin
It’s never a good sign when you have difficulty remembering what happened in a movie soon after you leave the theater. And by soon, I mean before you hop on the subway after the film ends. I had been quite excited to watch <i>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</i>, the sixth movie in the series, especially after reading some very positive reviews. Perhaps they set my expectations too high; I should have known not to get my hopes up.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ ½ Beautiful Backdrops, but Little Intrigue, Little Plot, Little to Care About in FBI Thriller
If ever a movie could capture the romantic and roguish atmosphere of the ’30s, <i>Public Enemies</i> has done it. Directed and produced by Michael Mann (<i>Hancock</i>, <i>Miami Vice</i>, <i>The Aviator</i>), the film is based on the non-fiction book <i>Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34</i> by Bryan Burrough. Johnny Depp plays notorious Depression-era criminal John Dillinger, a role in which his suave manner rather than his quirky humour finds the spotlight. Since every criminal anti-hero needs a brooding man of the law to oppose him, a grave and focused Christian Bale plays FBI agent Melvin Purvis. The film focuses on Purvis’s attempts to stop Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, while also following Dillinger’s life more closely.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ Guinea Pigs on the Loose; Funny but too Predictable
Recent years have seen a surge of rodents on the big screen, in the most unusual and diverse roles. Thanks to Disney’s Mickey Mouse legacy, mice have always had an easier time being featured; the newest fad focuses on another type of rodents. Movies like <i>Ratatouille </i>and <i>Alvin and the Chipmunks </i>have been extremely successful at introducing to the public endearing new rodent species. Disney’s newest rodent adventure, <i>G-Force,</i> attempts to do the same for guinea pigs, yet it falls a bit short on substance. Nevertheless, the movie is extremely funny and the fluffy protagonists are quite delightful, especially for the very young audiences.
Sports Shorts
Following a historic season last fall, DeRon M. Brown ‘10 was selected to the d3football.com 2009 Preseason All-America First Team. The senior running back was the lone representative from the 16-team New England Football Conference (NEFC) to earn this honor and was MIT’s 10th overall pick and first since 1998.
Juicers Should All ’Fess Up Or Else Risk Destroying Baseball
“I would suggest everybody get tested, not random, everybody. You go team by team. You test everybody three, four times a year and that’s about it,” Red Sox slugger David Ortiz said back in February. Asked what should happen to players who tested positive, Ortiz responded, “Ban ‘em for the whole year.”
Brouhaha Rhythm
Game shows and personal dignity have never had the friendliest of relationships. They’re probably more like mortal enemies, with game shows as the sadistic dystopian empire and dignity as the underdog hero unable to sway the masses to his cause. Or, depending on the show, as the helpless orphan crushed under the boots of the faceless legions as an example to would-be underdog heroes.
Quarkiness
Earlier this summer, in the name of physics research, I was away in the distant lands of Cornell University. It’s a place that harbors more grass, flowers, trees, and cows than MIT can ever hope to accommodate. However, the natural beauty of Cornell’s campus was not enough to mask a certain flaw in its design: There was no Cornellian analogue to our Infinite Corridor. With few indoor routes to take to work, the weather became a lot easier to notice—and experience.
Squid vs. Whale
<i>Herein lies the tale of one fateful night, a subway ride, and the story of how my friend got felt up by a 72-year-old man and was presumed dead, as told from his point of view. Names have been changed to protect the humiliated.</i>
