Stem cells still alive
Human embryonic stem cell researchers — at MIT and elsewhere — can rest easy … at least for now.
First open house in over 30 years draws 20,000
To the outside world, MIT can be an intimidating place. Films like Good Will Hunting and 21 have portrayed the Institute as an exclusive — and sometimes snobbish — club of scientists and engineers. Last Saturday, MIT set out to change all that by hosting its first open house in more than 30 years, dubbed “Under the Dome.”
A gift to MIT from an alumnus raises questions
The founder of the Bose Corp., a privately held company that makes high-end audio products, has donated the majority of the company to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the university said last Friday.
Maseeh to have binding lottery
Students moving into Maseeh Hall next term will not be able to enter the re-adjustment lottery. Maseeh Hall is an RBA dorm, and like McCormick, students who place in Maseeh in the summer lottery will have to live in that dorm. Virginia L. Nicholson ’12, Phoenix Group president, confirms that Maseeh will still participate in REX, but students will not have the option to move into Maseeh in the re-adjustment lottery — which about a third of incoming freshmen enter. The dorm will still hold events open to the entire campus.
MIT now the new majority owner of Bose Corporation
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just gone into the consumer electronics business — as the new majority owner of Framingham audio equipment maker Bose Corp.
Two groups apply for MEF
Emily Zhao ’12, UA Finance Board chair, reported yesterday to the UA Senate that two groups asked for funding from the new Medium Events Fund (MEF), Finboard’s newest allocation fund. The MEF was created earlier this semester with the intent of funding events that were too small for the Large Event Fund (LEF) and too expensive for student groups to fund on their own.
Obama finds praise for risky operation, even from Republicans
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama drew praise from unlikely quarters on Monday for pursuing a risky and clandestine mission to kill Osama bin Laden, a successful operation that interrupted the withering Republican criticism about his foreign policy, world view, and his grasp of the office.
Shorts (left)
While federal officials said that analysis of DNA from several relatives helped confirm that it was Osama bin Laden who was killed in the military raid on Sunday, they have not yet disclosed the relationships of the family members whose DNA was used.
Emblem of evil in the US, icon to the cause of terror
Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan on Sunday, was a son of the Saudi elite whose radical, violent campaign to re-create a seventh-century Muslim empire redefined the threat of terrorism for the 21st century.
In Arab world, Osama bin Laden’s confused legacy
BEIRUT — The words were not uncommon in angry Arab capitals a decade ago: Osama bin Laden was hero, sheik, even leader to some. But after his death, a man who once vowed to liberate the Arab world was reduced to a footnote in the revolutions and uprisings remaking a region that he and his followers had struggled to understand.
Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea aimed to prevent a shrine on land
White House officials decided before Sunday night’s firefight in northern Pakistan that if U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden, they would bury him at sea in order to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine for his followers, a White House official said Monday. They planned to include all rites associated with Muslim burials, the official added.
Shorts (right)
ISTANBUL — Turkey closed its embassy in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on Monday, becoming the latest country to do so amid increasing violence there. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry also said it would maintain its consulate in rebel-controlled Benghazi.
Last week’s tornado outbreak breaks record
As reviewed in last Friday’s weather discussion, the tornado outbreak in the southern part of the country was a historic event. Yesterday, NOAA released a preliminary estimate on the total number of tornadoes associated with that storm. Between 8 a.m. April 25 and 8 a.m. April 28, there were 362 tornadoes. The bulk of those tornadoes (312) occurred between 8 a.m. April 27 to 8 a.m. April 28. This shattered the previous record for largest number of tornadoes in one event, which had been 148 from April 3–4, 1974.
Bin Laden’s sprawling compound stood out in neighborhood
ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan — The sprawling compound where Osama bin Laden sheltered before his death stood out in its middle-class neighborhood on the edges of this scenic city, home to a large Pakistani military base and a military academy.
Keep the Bush tax cuts
Deadweight loss triangles are a tough concept to explain to laymen. They require discussions of marginal cost and benefit, of incidences and elasticities, and of Pareto optimalities. Perhaps that’s why, in the 10 years since passage, the mainstream media has altogether forgotten the reasonable motivations behind the Bush tax cuts and substituted a narrative of its own. Today the airwaves are filled with serious men touting the ridiculous notion that the Republicans passed the tax cuts in order to give money to their favorite class, the ultra-wealthy.
North Korea’s people are starving, and they need our help
Former President Jimmy Carter recently made a three-day visit to assess North Korea’s continuing food shortage. He returned charging the U.S. with worsening the shortage by withholding food aid to millions in North Korea. Carter sees this situation as a human rights violation. Understandably, the former president would not want any person to starve. Unfortunately, many critics want to keep economic sanctions in place and food shipments minimal. They believe that repressive governments such as North Korea’s should not be given aid. But peanutman Jimmy Carter sees it in a different light; millions should not have to suffer for the North Korean government’s actions.
MOVIE REVIEW Forget Jason Bourne — it’s time to meet Hanna!
Hanna opens with some beautiful panoramas of the beautiful, snow-covered remote wilderness of Finland. In this silent, almost enchanted landscape, a girl — later introduced as Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) — hunts and eventually kills a stag, demonstrating some unusual skills for a 16-year-old. Soon it becomes clear that Hanna has mostly been living alone with her father Erik (Eric Bana). Erik, a former CIA agent, has been training his daughter her entire life to become an assassin. The two have been hiding from civilization since the day she was born, and Hanna’s only knowledge of the outside world comes from the languages and information that her father teaches her from books. This knowledge remains very abstract to the girl, though. In one scene Hanna asks her father about the sound of music — she knows the definition of “music” from an encyclopedia but has never heard any. Ronan lists this curiosity as one of her favorite aspects of her character: “We meet her as she goes out on her own, and when she does she is fascinated by everyone and everything she comes across. My favorite quality of hers is that she is non-judgmental; she shows an open mind to, and a fascination with, everything.”
THEATER REVIEW The prosecution of genius
The lights rise in the black box at the Central Square Theater. Alan Turing (Allyn Burrows) speaks nervously with the constable (Dafydd Rees). He is reporting a personal theft — committed, we’ll discover, by a lover many years his junior. The losses themselves are trivial — clothes, half a bottle of sherry — but are reported out of principle. It is principle, and idiosyncrasy, that defines Turing. He is a man unable to be untrue about his ideals — whether they pertain to science, mathematics, or love.
EXHIBIT REVIEW And then there was glass
Dale Chihuly has been working with glass for over 40 years, and his newest collection of glass sculptures is now on display at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass is not your typical art exhibition, it’s a celebration of installation art and fragility at its very finest. Of course, before we give Chihuly all the credit, you should know that he does not work alone. A dislocated shoulder from a 1979 bodysurfing accident left him unable to hold a glassblowing pipe; since then, he has relied on a team of glassblowers to carry out his artistic plans. Chihuly classifies his role as “more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor.” The result of these artistic collaborations is an oeuvre focused just as much on presentation as craftsmanship.
ALBUM REVIEW Arresting, thoughtful, accessible
I am sitting on an American Airlines flight when they have just served the same vile plastic egg-y mess they have always dished up for so-called breakfast. Untouchable — I simply fail to understand why they persist in throwing such muck at their passengers. The 777 is surprisingly noisy, at least where I am sitting. But I have a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and I have The Great Deep — a new album from Duo LiveOak — within reach.
Cycling finishes dominant ECCC conference season
At the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) championship weekend, held in State College, Pa., the MIT Cycling team completed a fantastic road racing season, winning the season points series by a commanding 1957 to 1431 margin over second place Penn State.
ARIC J. DAMA ‘13 Course II sophomore Aric Dama reigns as one of MIT’s top pitchers
Starting pitcher Aric J. Dama ’13’s emergence as an ace on the Engineers’ roster has been one of the dominant stories of the 2011 MIT baseball season.
Tennis finishes perfect season with a 6-3 win
This past Saturday, MIT Women’s Tennis finished their season with a strong win over Trinity. In doubles both the number one team of Lauren C. Quisenberry ’14 and Candace L. Wu ’14, and the number two team of Julia C. Hsu ’14 and Bianca M. Dumitrascu ’13, destroyed their opponents with scores of 8-2. This brought MIT into the lead 2-0. Melissa A. Diskin ’11 and Katharine A. O’Neal ’14 had a closer match. After the turning game at 2-all, they took the lead to win their match 8-4. In exhibition, Jennifer A. Rees ’11 and Jenny C. Dohlman ’11 had a long match. The match was decided in the tie breaker, where they won 9-8(6). Caitlin R. Pomeroy ’13 and Hillary E. Jenny ’12 lost their match 8-0. Over all MIT was in the lead 3-0 going into the singles matches.
PREFROSH — CLASS OF 2015 The road to comMITment
From that fateful moment on Dec. 16 when I was accepted to MIT, I knew that I was in for a very different four years than most of my friends, should I choose to attend. The shock of getting into the college that I had always considered my dream school didn’t wear off until several months later. However, as reality sunk in and I enjoyed the warm California winter and plentiful sleep of senior year, I started to wonder — was MIT truly where I wanted to go?
PREFROSH — CLASS OF 2015 Finding the right match
Click. Check. Click. In the span of a few seconds, I went from being an undecided high school senior to a member of the MIT Class of 2015. As the confirmation screen loaded, I optimistically imagined attending an insanely difficult — yet rewarding — physics class, seeing a Saturday night show in Boston, or just hanging out with friends in a floor lounge, debating an insignificant topic with intricate precision. I began to really look forward to college.
Institute Double Take
An abstract perspective of MIT’s Chemistry building, Building 18, viewed from the west. At night, the windows light up in a grid pattern; the yellow glow strongly contrasts the black outer walls.
Events: May 3 - May 9
Events May 3 – May 9 Tuesday (10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.) Student Art Association (SAA) presents their Spring Ceramic Sale — Lobby 10 (3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.) Inside 150: Computers, Calculators and Cybernetics — MIT Museum (4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.) MIT150 Symposium: Brains, Minds and Machines — 26-100 Wednesday (5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.) MIT Chamber Music Society Student Concert — Killian Hall (5:15 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.) Science Trivia Challenge — Broad Institute (7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.) Hackfest 2011 (2.007 Competition) Preliminary round — W34 Thursday (9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.) Artists Beyond the Desk Bi-annual Crafts Fair — 32-100 (9:00 a.m – 2:00 p.m.), E62 (9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.) (4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.) CMS Colloquium Series presents Race and Representation after 9/11 — 2-105 (6:30 p.m. – 10:30 p.m.) Hackfest 2011 (2.007 Competition) Final round — W34 (8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.) DanceTroupe presents: Flux — W16 Friday (12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.) Emerson Scholar Student Recital: Nathan C. Haouzi ’11, piano — Killian Hall (3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.) Emerson Scholar Student Recital: Ka Yan Karen Lee G, soprano — Killian Hall (5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.) Emerson Fellow Student Recital: Stephen R. Serene ‘12, cello and Nicholas Joliat (G), piano — Killian Hall (7:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m.) LSC shows The King’s Speech — 26-100 Saturday (12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.) Emerson Scholar Piano Student Recital — Killian Hall (8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.) MIT Wind Ensemble — Kresge Auditorium Sunday (12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.) Emerson Scholar Woodwind Student Recital — Killian Hall (4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.) MIT Concert Choir — Kresge Auditorium Send your campus events to events@tech.mit.edu.
