Populists at the Gate
In the beginning, it was nothing more than knee-jerk catharsis, drawn from the tattered, frustrated, and disenfranchised remnants of small-c conservatives and angry libertarians. It was disorganized and chronically off-message, defenseless against being used as a public soapbox by every ‘birther’ conspiracist and one-world-government loon that didn’t feel he had a large enough audience on the Ron Paul internet forums. It was derided as far-right fringe, dismissed as corporate astroturf, and joyfully mocked as latently homosexual.
Corrections
A Nov. 6, 2009 article on the Division of Student Life Visiting Committee’s visit to MIT and the Undergraduate Association’s response misspelled the last name of the Dean for Student Life. He is Chris Colombo, not Colomobo.
What Makes Up MIT’s Core?
Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the Task Force Final Report is the ambiguity about the parts of the community and MIT core that are worth preserving. While the report references community involvement as a way of ensuring that MIT stays “true to its core,” there is little substance to this hope.
Protest in Iran: <br />What Happens Next Is Anybody’s Guess
One of the most difficult aspects of the study of politics is recognizing the natural tendency in human psychology toward certainty and simplification, even when the data itself is not entirely clear. More difficult still is resisting this temptation when powerful historical analogies are available that cursorily appear to match the current experience.
Illegal Immigration: It’s Illegal
Blue hats are blue. Big trees are big. Do you agree with these statements? How about this one: Illegal immigration is illegal. For some reason, this point has been a contentious issue in the United States over the past few years.
‘The Tech’ on the Task Force Report
Were we conspiracy theorists, we would have to say that the release of the Institute-wide Planning Task Force’s Final Report smack in the middle of final’s week was done purposefully to minimize the number of students who would read and comment on it immediately. The timing, coming almost two months behind schedule, certainly seems coincidental, and intentional or not, student commentary on the report has been muted.
The Off-Campus Option
For a lot of reasons, undergraduates are often scared off from moving to apartments in Cambridge, Boston, or Somerville. Finding an apartment is a significant investment of valuable time and there are more unknowns than living in dorms or FSILGs — how much will utilities cost? How will I get to class? What’s a security deposit? But with the right strategy and the right attitude, moving off-campus can be financially, socially, and developmentally well-worth the risk.
Iran’s Numbered Days
Some countries are no better than publicity-crazed celebrities. Britney Spears has a breakdown one day just so she can make a comeback the next. As a global example, North Korea claimed in April to have put a satellite into orbit with a Taepodong-2 missile. Of course, anyone who saw part of the very same missile fall into the Sea of Japan must be lying. And any radar tracking the missile must have been malfunctioning.
The Bhopal Disaster, 25 Years Later
In the night of December 3, 1984 forty tons of methyl isocyanate, a highly toxic chemical used to produce pesticides, leaked from a chemical plant belonging to Union Carbide (now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical) in Bhopal, India, that by some estimates killed 8,000 people within three days and affected over 500,000 residents of the area. Over 15,000 more people died of the consequences of gas exposure in the years that followed. Today, with the plant’s toxic waste site still not cleaned up, people in Bhopal are drinking very toxic water. Recently published reports from accredited laboratories in Switzerland and the UK found 15 highly toxic chemicals in the groundwater of Bhopal whose levels greatly exceed the safe levels recommended by the WHO, in some cases over a thousandfold. Most of these chemicals could be neurotoxic and damage the brain and other internal organs. The incidence of children born with congenital birth defects linked to their parents’ exposure to the gas is ten times higher in Bhopal than in other localities with matching socioeconomic factors.
Letters to the Editor
Since this is the last week of classes, you undoubtedly have many things to do today. Nevertheless, please take a few minutes to go to your polling location (Kresge Auditorium for most students who live on campus) and vote in the special election primary to choose the next US senator to represent the state of Massachusetts.
OpenCourseWare and the Future of Education
As we are all aware, MIT has and will continue to make relatively large cuts to its budget in light of the recent financial meltdown. The administration established the Institute-Wide Planning Task Force to evaluate ways to make these cuts with minimal impact to the MIT community. One proposal is to cut funding to OpenCourseWare (OCW) or continue funding only until the grant funding that has paid for 72 percent of OCW since its creation runs out. For those not familiar with OCW, it is a brilliant piece of intellectual philanthropy that MIT opened to the public in September of 2002. Essentially, anyone in the world can access the same knowledge and information that MIT students are inundated with by classes. Not just a few classes here and there in the most common disciplines — as of May 2006 there were 1400 courses online. This is an unbelievable resource that has been utilized by about 60 million people, both on and off the campus. Twenty years ago, the thought that one could log onto a computer and access nearly the entire curriculum at MIT would be unthinkable. But now it can be done.
Corrections
An article on November 24 about MIT’s Rhodes Scholarship winners incorrectly said Ugwechi Amadi ’10, one of the winners, is majoring in Brain and Cognitive Sciences with a minor in literature. She is actually double-majoring in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and literature.
Five Years In: <br />The Hockfield Administration
During last week’s quarterly meeting of the Corporation, President Susan Hockfield was given a round of applause in special recognition of her first five years of service leading the MIT community. Now, on the cusp of 2010, we as a community can also look back to see where the President has succeeded and where she may need to change her approach in the future.
Things That Are Political and Paradoxical
Ever since Obama visited MIT a few weeks ago, I’ve been feeling more politically charged. Was it because the President of the United States came to MIT? No. Was it because he delivered an address about MIT’s devotion to clean energy? No. Was it because we had an auditorium full of political giants? No. Because MIT scrambled in less than a week to prepare the campus for a presidential visit? Nope. It wasn’t that either. So what was it?
Making Orientation Better … for Less!
The Orientation planning committee will soon be evaluating options for making Orientation cheaper as MIT contends with an Institute-wide budget crunch. Some measures have been suggested that have potential to significantly detract from the freshman Orientation experience — including cutting the length of Orientation in half. We instead propose a couple of simple tweaks to the existing schedule that will both save the Institute money and improve the Orientation experience for students and the campus community.
UA Update
Senate met on Monday, November 30 for their second special budgetary session during UAS 41. The Senate discussed the budget for the Spring 2010 semester, which is available at <i>http://ua.mit.edu/finances/</i>. On Monday, December 7, Senate will be voting on the proposed budget. Pending legislation will also be discussed and voted upon at this meeting, which is the last Senate meeting of the fall semester.
Going Beyond Traditional Political Restraints
Criticism of the capitalist state does not equal support for totalitarian socialism.
‘Hackers’ Reveal Corrupt Science At Climate Research Unit
Over the past few weeks anonymous “hackers” entered the computer systems of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK. This intrusion has been confirmed by the university and at least some of the data leaked to Wikileaks.org have been confirmed as authentic by officials at the CRU. Among the data were hundreds of e-mails and source code files which describe a shameful corruption of the scientific process.
Corrections
An article Tuesday about MIT’s Rhodes Scholarship winners incorrectly claimed that MIT broke its record for the most Rhodes Scholars in a given year. MIT did not break that record this year, but this year’s three winners did break the record for the most MIT Rhodes Scholars from the U.S. in a year.
An Idea for Afghanistan: The Ownership Society Principle
How do you turn a rebellious liberal into a risk-averse conservative?