Sunday, June 27, 2010

Energy (and Other) Events - June 27, 2010

Harvard

Creating an Enduring Commons

Lewis Hyde, Berkman Fellow

Tuesday, June 29, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor
RSVP required for those attending in person (rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast) at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after.

Lewis Hyde's talk will be drawn from a book he has just finished, Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership. One thesis of the book is that the founding generation in the United States hoped to establish a cultural commons of art and ideas, a lively public domain of created works that all of us use because nobody controls it. What has become apparent in recent years is that the founders did not leave us with any good way to protect this commons. The public domain has turned out to be highly vulnerable to private capture. How might this vulnerability be reduced? How might an unguarded public domain be converted into a rule-governed and thus durable cultural commons?

About Lewis
Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World(1998) uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the kind of disruptive intelligence all cultures need if they are to remain lively, flexible, and open to change. Hyde is currently at work on a book about our “cultural commons,” that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to produce.

A MacArthur Fellow and former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University, Hyde teaches during the fall semesters at Kenyon College, where he is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing. During the rest of the year he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

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Other

Tech Tuesday

MA Technology Leadership Council

Event Details

• Date: 6/29/10
• Location: Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142
• Time: 6-8pm
• Audience: Tech
• Description: If you're looking for talent, clients or to just spread the word about what you are doing, join us for this Tech Tuesday. You'll have an opportunity for a fast-pitch shout-out to the audience of fellow geeks, tech savvy professionals, DIY-ers, and other industry luminaries at this high energy informal gathering.

New in 2010 - Office Hours
In addition, we are continuing our 2010 Entrepreneurial Series with Office Hours. The short sessions with well known industry connectors will provide premier access for Entrepreneurs in search of advice on how to move their idea and or company forward. Office hours are reserved time slots and you must apply in advance to reserve your spot.
http://masstlc.homestead.com/eventscalendar.html
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Gubernatorial Forum on the Environment, June 29, 6:00 to 8:00 pm, Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street, Boston
RSVP to smoser@envrionmentalleague.org.
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Transition House Greening Kickoff – Presentation of plans to green the emergency shelter for families experiencing domestic violence and fundraising event; called The Green Door Campaign. June 29, Athenaeum Building, 1st floor, 215 First St., Cambridge. Music, cocktails, food, silent auction. See http://www.transitionhouse.org for more info.
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Links to events at over 30 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://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/site02.html)

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Energy (and Other) Events - June 20, 2010

MIT

Monday, June 21, 2010
"Pollution Transport, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Climate Change in the Himalaya"
Speaker: Dr. Arnico K. Panday, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
Time: 12:00p–1:00p
Location: 54-915
EAPS Special Seminar

Web site: http://eapsweb.mit.edu/news/index.html
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
For more information, contact:
Roberta Allard
253-3382
allard@mit.edu
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June 24, 2010
11:00am - 1:00 pm
Demonstration of Electric Smart Car
http://www.smartusa.com/electricdrive/?ref=hp
Stata Amphitheater MIT
Cambridge, MA
Introducing the smart for two electric drive vehicle to MIT.
Thursday, June 24, 2010

Perspectives on Energy and Climate Policy Research

Time: 1:00p–5:30p

Location: E51-Wong Auditorium

Please join us JUNE 24 at an Afternoon Symposium to honor and pay tribute to Co-Founder and Co-Director Professor Henry D. "Jake" Jacoby of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The afternoon will consist of a series of guest lectures on the topic:

"Perspectives on Energy and Climate Policy Research"

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Center for Global Change Science, Center for Energy & Environmental Policy Research, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, MIT Energy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Frances Goldstein
617 253-2682
fkg@mit.edu

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Harvard

Yardswap — Harvard Freecycle Event
WHEN
Tue., June 22, 2010, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
WHERE
Science Center Overpass Lawn
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION
Environmental Sciences, Special Events, Working@Harvard
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
FAS Green Program, Harvard Law School Green Team, Harvard Recycling, Harvard Office for Sustainability
CONTACT INFO
sustainability@harvard.edu
NOTE
Late spring cleaners, unite! Don’t trash your office and home leftovers, freecycle them! Both office supplies for Harvard reuse and items from home are welcome at this event. File folders, cabinets, printers/cartridges, books, movies, music, housewares, games, sports equipment, art supplies, and clothes welcome.
Please, NO: TVs, computers, large electronics, or large furniture.
Please bring items to donate on the day of the event between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
All leftover items will be donated to local charities.

http://green.harvard.edu/events
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Haiti: Sustaining the Response
WHEN
Thu., June 24, 2010, 2 – 4 p.m.
WHERE
O'Keefe Auditorium, Blake Building, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION
Health Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Center for Global Health
Massachusetts General Hospital
SPEAKER(S)
David Henderson, Division of Global Psychiatry, MGH; Laurence Ronan
Durant Fellowship in Refugee Medicine, MGH
CONTACT INFO
jason_harlow@harvard.edu
http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/globalhealth/
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Other

diybio june meetup 7:00 PM Tuesday 22 June 2010 at Sprout

Howdy Garagistas,

Do you like yogurt? This Tuesday, June 22, Vaughn Tan is bringing by a culture of 1000-year old yogurt that originated from India (and was handed-down by the mythical Harold McGee). We'll chat about biotech in the kitchen and the practicalities of culturing your own yogurt, and have little samples of Vaughn's strain for you to take home should you wish.

So please join us at Sprout* on June 22 at 7:00 PM EST.

Coming up, on July 1 Marcus Gay will present a DIY prototype of an algae photobioreactor he helped develop at a local biofuel startup company, and on July 20th participants from a biotech + game conference ("play + DNA") are invited to join us for a meetup.

Hope to see you for some conversation and yogurt on this Tuesday.


* Sprout is located at 339R summer St, Somerville, MA 02144 http://thesprouts.org We also have the opportunity to use Lorem Ipsum Books in Inman square for our meetup - would this be preferable?
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Tuesday, June 22
6:30 to 7:30 P.M.
Cambridge Public Library Children's Room, 3rd floor, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Eager to cut your home's electric bills? Want to teach your kids how to save energy?

Six King Open students wrote and illustrated a book, "Energy Lite," to help families do this.

The Cambridge Public Library invites you to a book launch and reception recognizing these young local authors and activists, the Sprouts of Hope. The Sprouts of Hope are a community-based Roots & Shoots group. We hope members of the Cambridge community will join us to celebrate the library's acquisition of this one-of-a-kind book and the corresponding electricity usage monitors (Kill A Watt meters) donated by The Sprouts of Hope. The book and meter will be available for check out from the main library and branch libraries.

Learn how to use a Kill A Watt meter to measure how much energy your family uses. Then have fun using the book "Energy Lite" and learn how making small changes can make a big difference.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information about this event, please call 617-349-4038.

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Tuesday, June 22, 6:30pm

King Corn

Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway


Followed by discussion and refreshments.

Description: In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm. The trailer can be viewed at www.kingcorn.net.

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Weatherization Barnraising

Saturday, June 26th
12:30—5:00 p.m.
Attic air-sealing Saturday, June 19th 9-2

Cambridge YWCA Emergency Family Shelter
3 Bigelow Street, Cambridge

• Pitch in to help 10 homeless families who live at the shelter
• Lower vast energy bills for the shelter so it can help the families more
• Learn skills that can save you $$ at home
• Fight climate change
• Share food & celebrate after a job well done
• No skills necessary – training on the job!!

Work includes:

• An easy and cheap way to fix old vinyl replacement windows so they easily close again
• Air-sealing an incredibly leaky attic
• Using caulk and sprayfoam to stop air leaks
• Saving water and electricity
• Installing programmable thermostats
• Masonry, plastering, and more
If you want to take part in the attic air-sealing, check the box on the form, or if Emailing or calling, let us know.

Sign up today by web, email or phone!!

www.heetma.com
heet.cambridge@gmail.com
617-491-6761

Organized by HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team), a Cambridge-based co-op that brings neighbors together to weatherize our homes and take the energy future into our own hands.
Co-sponsored by Cambridge Energy Alliance
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Somerville Climate Action & Transition Somerville present
SOMERVILLE CLIMATE WEEK!

Tuesday, June 22nd through Sunday, June 27th, 2010

Somerville Welcomes Climate Riders! Tues. 6/22 to Sun. 6/27
Somerville hosts six New England Climate Summer Student Riders who are spending
their summer biking from town to town. The goal: to raise awareness about the climate
crisis and energize communities to do something about it! They will attend public
events, meet with community leaders, and lend a hand to make Somerville a climate-
friendly city! A gigantic THANK-YOU to First Church Somerville who will be housing the
students!
Meet the students and hear their
story at the following locations:
> Wednesday 12:00 to 6:00pm
Davis Square Farmer's Market
> Thursday 6:00 to 9:00pm
Somerville Living Green Festival *
> Saturday 9:00am to 1:00pm
Union Square Farmer's Market
> Saturday 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Somerville Community Growing Center **
* Climate riders will talk with attendees about the state of our climate, their climate summer project,
and the need for science-based legislation.
** Climate riders will facilitate a grassroots organizing training session

Somerville Living Green Festival! Thur. 6/24 6 - 9 pm Argenziano School,
290 Washington Street, Union Square
Learn to live green! Topics will include saving energy & money, gardening, eating local,
reducing waste, learning about green building, reducing toxics. Energy-efficiency
workshop in Spanish. Presentation by Climate Student Riders at 7:00pm. Kids crafts!
Co-sponsored by the City of Somerville’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment

Grassroots Organizing Training! Sat. 6/26 2 – 4 pm at the Somerville
Community Growing Center
The Climate Riders have been trained in renowned community organizer Marshall
Ganz’s organizing model and will be sharing these skills at this training. Come learn
how to be a new or more effective community organizer!

Screening of A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish, Sat. 6/26
7 – 9 pm at First Church Somerville, 89 College Avenue. A film about ocean
acidification, climate change, and solutions. Co-sponsored by First Church Somerville,
Somerville Climate Action, and Ocean River Institute.

Student Goodbye Ride-Off – Sun. 6/27 2:00pm Bike-off with the students part
of the way to their next town! Leave from First Church Somerville, 89 College Avenue.

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Thanks to Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area (http://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/site02.html)

Sunday, June 13, 2010

MIT

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
2010 Knight News Challenge: Winners Announcement Ceremony
Speaker: Alberto Ibarguen, Knight Foundation

Time: 2:30p–4:00p

Location: 10-250

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, hosted by the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, will announce the 2010 Knight News Challenge winners. The winners represent the cutting-edge of technology for news, shaping the future of communities and media.

The announcement will feature "lightning sessions" from the 2010 winners.

Learn more about the Knight News Challenge at http://newschallenge.org.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, MIT Center for Future Civic Media

For more information, contact:
Andrew Whitacre
617.324.0490
awhit@mit.edu

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 - Presentations by 2010 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize Winners and InvenTeams

Time: 1:00p–3:30p

Location: 32-123

Attend presentations and demonstrations by the winners of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prizes at MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the California Institute of Technology, as well as several high school InvenTeams.


Web site: http://www.eurekafest.org

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Tickets: N/A

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.45.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 - Introduction of the Inventing merit badge

Time: 3:30p–4:00p

Location: 32-123

Attend a presentation by the Lemelson-MIT Program and the Boy Scouts of America introducing the Inventing merit badge


Web site: http://www.eurekafest.org

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.452.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 - InvenTeams Showcase

Time: 6:00p–8:45p

Location: 32, Stata Student Street, Stata Center, 1st Floor

The 2010 InvenTeams, teams of high school students nationwide, will exhibit their invention prototypes.


Web site: http://www.eurekafest.org

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.452.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 - Presentation by the 2010 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability Winner

Time: 7:30p–8:15p

Location: 32-123, Kirsch Auditorium

2010 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability winner, BP Agrawal, will discuss his innovations including a rainwater harvesting system, mobile health clinics and cultural implementations

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.452.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Friday, June 18, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 - InvenTeams Showcase

Time: 5:30p–8:30p

Location: 32, Stata Student Street

The 2010 InvenTeams, teams of high school students nationwide, will exhibit their invention prototypes.

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.452.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Friday, June 18, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 - Lemelson-MIT Awards Ceremony

Time: 6:30p–8:00p

Location: 32-123, Kirsch Auditorium

This public ceremony will honor the work of inventors improving our world. The 2010 Lemelson-MIT Award winners will be recognized, including a special presentation by the 2010 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize Winner.

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.452.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Friday, June 18, 2010

Reporting a black hole : A journalist's experiences from Chhattisgarh in Central Tribal India

Speaker: Shubhranshu Choudhary

Time: 7:00p–9:00p

Location: 2-105

A talk by Shubhranshu Choudhary, founder CGnet (a community news platform dealing with Chhattisgarh issues).

The talk will be preceded by a short screening of a documentary film titled ?India's Hidden War,? made in 2007 by a team of which Shubhranshu was a part and screened in a program called Unreported World on Channel 4 in the UK.


Web site: http://aidboston.org

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): AID-MIT

For more information, contact:
Ramya Aja
aid-mit-exec@mit.edu

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Saturday, June 19, 2010

EurekaFest 2010 at the Museum of Science, Boston

Time: 10:00a–5:00p

Location: Museum of Science, Boston

Cheer on over 200 high school students in an all-day design challenge that explores the invention process. Come meet Marvel Comics artist Nick Dragotta, and professional toy designer Ingrid Dragotta, as they teach the creative process of making your own inventions. Families are encouraged to attend!

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Lemelson-MIT Program

For more information, contact:
Michael Perry
617.452.2170
mperry@mit.edu

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Harvard

Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: Internet Games, Social Inequality, and Racist Talk as GriefingLisa Nakamura, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Tuesday, June 15, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor
RSVP required for those attending in person (rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast).

Games are a radically transnational medium: as Martin Lister writes in New Media: An Introduction, “even before Pokémon, the videogame was perhaps the most thoroughly transnational form of popular culture, both as an industry (with Sony, Sega ad Nintendo as the key players) but also at the level of content—the characters and narratives of many videogames are evidence of relays of influence between America and Japan.” Internet gameplay is becoming more socially and culturally diverse and ubiquitous than ever before. Yet at the same time, the culture of griefing or pranking that dominates these games and other forms of networked social life such as Second Life and Chatroulette takes increasingly racist and racialized forms. The Patriotic Niggas, a group of griefers who delight in "breaking" Second Life and Habbo Hotel by filling public space with garbage, are assuredly not African American, but resort to offensive racist languages as the shortest route to their goal: the disruption of online community and social life. This essay will recap the history of racist griefing online and link the current crisis in racial discourse in the US with this practice, exploring the implications for digital games as a public sphere.

About Lisa
Lisa Nakamura is the Director of the Asian American Studies Program, Professor in the Institute of Communication Research and Media Studies Program, and Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.

She is the author of "Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet" (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), "Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet" (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of "Race in Cyberspace" (Routledge, 2000).

She has published articles in Critical Studies in Media Communication, PMLA, Cinema Journal, The Womens Review of Books, Camera Obscura, and the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies. She is editing a collection with Peter Chow-White entitled "Digital Race: An Anthology" (Routledge, forthcoming), and she is working on a new monograph on social inequality in virtual worlds, tentatively entitled "Workers Without Bodies: Towards a Theory of Race and Digital Labor in Virtual Worlds, or, Why World of Warcraft needs a Civil Rights Movement."

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Building Bodies and Brains for Autonomous Robots

WHEN
Thu., June 17, 2010, 3 – 4 p.m.
WHERE
Room 521, Wyss Institute
3 Blackfan Circle, Boston, MA 02115

ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Wyss Institute at Harvard University
SPEAKER(S)
Daniela Rus, visiting scholar Wyss Institute; professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department, MIT; co-director, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Center for Robotics
NOTE
In this talk, Daniela Rus will discuss the challenges of building brains and bodies to create mobile autonomous systems that can interact in new ways with the physical world, on the ground, in water, and in the air. She will focus on recent progress in Self-Organizing Robots, which constitute distributed networks of robots that can sense, actuate, compute and communicate in support of adaptive self-organization. The nodes in such networks can include static sensors, mobile sensors, robots, animals, and humans. Such systems combine the most advanced concepts in perception, communication, and control to create computational systems capable of large-scale interaction with the environment, extending the individual capabilities of each network component to encompass a much wider area, range of data, and control capabilities.
LINK
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewevent/66/wyss-visiting-scholar-daniela-rus

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Other

Monday night, June 14th
7pm
The first Greater Boston Slow Money MeetUp
The Nonprofit Center
89 South Street
Boston, MA 02111
617-439-3142

Please sign up at http://www.meetup.com/Greater-Boston-Slow-Money/

The first half of the evening will focus on the Slow Money movement and principles and the second half will be a Slow Money showcase. Presenters will include David Warner from City Feed and Supply, Jessie Benhazl from Green City Growers, Dorothy Suput of The Carrot Project, Julia Frost of CHIVE Sustainable Event Design & Catering, and Glynn Lloyd from City Fresh Foods - City Growers.

We suggest a donation of $10 at the door, or better yet become a member of the Slow Money Alliance for just $25 and admission is free.

The Greater Boston Slow Money MeetUp aims to provide a collaborative forum for Boston's locavore, social investing, and local economy communities to channel capital toward building a sustainable, equitable food system.
The idea is to create a critical mass of people and organizations committed to channeling capital to sustainable ag related enterprises in our area. Our MeetUps will offer entrepreneurs the opportunity to present their business plans and for attendees to consider making investments. We envision an environment where all participants learn something from the process.

Hope to see you there!

Eric Becker
eric@cleanyield.com
(617) 395-9966

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GreenPort Forum

Where Does Our Water Come From?

Tuesday, June 15 at 7:00pm

Central Square Library, 45 Pearl St.

Recent problems in the water supply to Boston have highlighted the need for urban residents to understand where our basic resources, such as the water we drink, come from. How sustainable is the Cambridge water supply? How might it be affected by climate change? What can we do to conserve and help assure the long term availability of fresh water in Cambridge?

Sam Corda, Managing Director of the Cambridge Water Department, will present on these issues and more, followed by a roundtable discussion.

For more information, contact Steve Wineman at swineman@gis.net

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Bikes Not Bombs
GREEN ROOTS FESTIVAL!

June 20th, 2010. Noon to 5:30
in the park in front of the Stony Brook T station, Boylston Street, Jamaica Plain, 02130


Links to events at over 30 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://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/site02.html)