Turn off your lights Big improvements in energy can start in the dorms
Here at MIT, we’re all about coming up with creative solutions to big problems. It’s just what we do best. But sometimes, it pays to remember that small, simple solutions can add up to solve big problems.
Paying for Mrs. Fuller
In 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act, an insurance program designed to cover against what were then considered the greatest financial risks in American society: disability, unemployment, loss of spouse or parents, and, most notably, old age. At the time, the poverty rate among the elderly was over 50 percent — the Great Depression had wiped out the savings of many, and older citizens, whose best wage-earning years were behind them, were particularly hard hit. By funding the benefits of current retirees with income taxes on current workers, Social Security constituted a major windfall for its first generation of recipients; Ida May Fuller, the very first citizen to receive a Social Security check, paid $24.75 into the system and received back $22,888.92 over the course of her lifetime. In this manner, the program theoretically provided a way to spread out the pain of the Great Depression — each generation would pay some ever-declining amount to the previous generation until the entirety of that one monumental loss had been spread out across decades.
Voting begins next week
Senate met on Monday, March 8. Before the regular proceedings, Chancellor Phillip L. Clay PhD ’75, Dean for Student Life Chris Colombo, and Dean for Undergraduate Education Daniel E. Hastings PhD ’80 came to Senate for a town hall meeting. Discussion with the chancellor and deans centered on the implementation of the Institute-wide Planning Task Force recommendations and possible changes to dining.
Lessons from the crisis
Before discussing banking reform, it is necessary to first understand why and how financial markets operate.
Rules of the game
I think my favorite childhood computer game — after the MS-DOS days of dinosaur building and Tetris — was SimCity. I spent hours staring down at my two-dimensional landscape, laying out residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and power lines and roadways to connect it all. I battled crime with police stations and natural disasters with exorbitant reconstruction. And while I never did scrape up the allowance money to upgrade to the three-dimensional version of the game, SimCity Classic (which you can now play for free online) kept me blissfully entertained through my middle-school years.
Let’s reevaluate keeping freshmen on campus
The recent proposal to change the freshmen-on-campus policy has caused much debate within the MIT community. The administration first made on-campus housing mandatory for first-years after the death of a freshman from heavy drinking at a pledge party for two main reasons. First, the Institute claimed that the change would expose freshmen to a community outside of their immediate living group. Second, the major public backlash after the death surely played a role in the policy change. But while keeping freshmen on campus does help them integrate within the broader campus community, that more campus-oriented community often isolates freshmen from an independent living group in which they may feel more comfortable.
Corrections
Sudeep Agarwala’s article “Two Minds in One Work” from Feb. 19 was edited for clarity, but omitted and distorted some of the author’s discussion and introduced errors. Biss and Goode’s performance was very well executed, given that pianists often perform as soloists (due to the timbre, history and range of the instrument). However, some works did not translate well into an arrangement for piano for two hands. The article as it appeared in <i>The Tech</i> was published without the author’s final approval.
Get over it
Thirteen months ago, I wrote an article for this newspaper entitled “Screw Bipartisanship,” in which I claimed there was a fundamental disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on the most important problem facing health care markets. I suggested that, rather than fruitlessly try to find common ground, Democrats should ignore the Republican point of view and muscle through legislation that would mandate individual insurance coverage.
Why you should care
Sometimes it seems like the Undergraduate Association can’t do anything for you. After all, isn’t it really just the same powerless, ineffectual government-ish organization that couldn’t do anything for you in high school, either? At the end of the day, doesn’t the MIT administration really call the shots? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean that participation in student government isn’t valuable for other reasons.
Campaigning has begun!
Senate met on Monday, March 1. Senate members passed 41 U.A.S. 4.2: Bill to Create Midterm Reviews, which created a review process for members of the UA Executive Committee between the fall and spring semesters. Senate also passed 41 U.A.S. 10.1: Bill to Task the Treasurer with Reimbursement Responsibilities. Ashley M. Nash ’11 was confirmed as the Vice Chair for the Special Projects Committee. Maggie K. Delano ’10 and Timothy R. Jenks ’13 were approved as Chair and Vice Chair of the Nominations Committee, respectively. Senate requested the report from the Financial Policy Review Committee to be ready for discussion at the next meeting on Monday, March 8.
Corrections
A graph on page 8 of last Friday’s Tech, “Finboard Student Group Allocations,” was labelled in a misleading fashion. The right axis, labelled “Percentage Requests Granted (Gray),” should have been labelled as “Percent of Requested Funds Granted.” It is the amount allocated by Finboard divided by the amount requested by student groups.
Democracy at risk in the UA
The deadline to declare candidacy for Undergraduate Association President passed last Friday with only one President/Vice President ticket having filed to run. This raises serious questions about the UA’s ability to attract talented leaders and to govern with authority.
Campaign documents due today!
Senate met on Monday, February 22. Senate members passed 41 U.A.S. 9.1: Bill to Define Nominations Committee Membership. 41 U.A.S. 4.2: Bill to Create Midterm Reviews, which would review members of the UA Executive Committee between the fall and spring semesters, was discussed then tabled. Paula C. Trepman ’13 was confirmed as the Vice Chair for the Committee on Dining. Senate also approved the Finance Board appeals.
Public option? How about a private option?
As national health care reform passes into Schrödingerian un-death (a quantum-pundit state of simultaneously being both perma-killed and on its way to certain victory), it is tempting to wallow in self-defeating cynicism and bemoan the eternal incompetence of the left wing. After their latest botching of the political process, it is clear that Democrats should be demoted from a “political party” to something a little more their league, like a “political intramural team” (with matches every other Thursday so long as Chad doesn’t screw up the scheduling again). For long-time supporters of health insurance mandates (myself included), it is difficult to summon the will to do anything but face-palm the remainder of 2010 away and wait for the inevitable Republican take-over of Congress. At least then we’ll have the opportunity to blame government gridlock on something real, like an irreconcilable partisan split between our executive and legislative branches.
The engineering of war The Tech interviews a former army operations engineer
With growing media speculation about the removal of U.S. troops from the campaign in Iraq, my engineering subconscious (naturally) began to consider the situation from a mathematical perspective. While overseas, the coordination of troops, munitions, aircraft, medical supplies, and combat vehicles is a strictly coordinated complex operation. In light of the current national canvas on the subject, I became interested in examining the potential withdrawal procedure from the standpoint of operations research. I had the opportunity to speak with Steven Clark, former Air Force Captain, who now works as a consultant for Analytics Operations Engineering in Boston.
Nasty, nurturing nitrogen
When Captain N.C. Middlebrooks claimed the Brook Islands for the United States in 1859, he had no idea they would later be known as Midway Atoll, site of a World War II turning point more than eighty years later. The island cluster was coveted for a humbler reason: guano.