Sunday, October 28, 2012

Energy (and Other) Events - October 28, 2012

Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater Boston area that catch the editor's eye.

Hubevents  http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.

If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com

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Planning for After the Storm Emergency and Before the Next One
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/28/1151415/-Planning-for-After-the-Storm-Emergency-and-Before-the-Next-One

Yet Another Robocall from Crossroads GPS
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/26/1150998/-Yet-Another-Robocall-from-Crossroads-GPS

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Announcement:  Next week's edition will not be published on Sunday which is why this week's edition is expanded to include events up to Wednesday, November 7.  I'll try to publish again on Monday, November 5 or Tuesday, November 6 with another idea-packed edition for your browsing.

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Monday, October 29
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Venezuelan Elections: Post-Election Reflections
WHEN  Mon., Oct. 29, 2012, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
WHERE  Carr Center Conference Room, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy 219, Rubenstein Building, HKS,
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S)  Carlos Blanco, former minister for reform of the state and president of the Presidential Commission for State Reform in Venezuela
CONTACT INFO git_nahmens@hks.harvard.edu
NOTE  Please note the time change to 10 a.m.
LINK http://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr/programs/latin-america/study-group/session-details/2012-13-academic-year/session-4

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MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar Series (MASS) - Tim Palmer - The Real Butterfly Effect: Theory and Implications
Monday, October 29, 2012
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-915, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (the tallest building on campus)

Speaker: Tim Palmer

MIT Atmospheric Seminar Series (MASS)
The MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS) is a student-run weekly seminar series within PAOC. Seminar topics include all research concerning the atmosphere and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars usually take place on Monday from 12-1pm followed by a lunch with graduate students. Besides the seminar, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged. The seminar series is run by graduate students and is intended mainly for students to interact with individuals outside the department, but faculty and post docs certainly participate.

Web site: http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/events/calendars/mass
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC), MIT Atmospheric Science Seminars, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:  Darius Collazo
(617) 253-0251
dcollazo@MIT.EDU 

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"The Political Economy of Oil in Latin America"
Monday, October 29, 2012
12:15pm - 1:45pm
Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

with Francisco Monaldi, Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor, Harvard Kennedy School; Director, Center on Energy and the Environment, IESA, Venezuela

Contact Name:  Louisa Lund
louisa_lund@harvard.edu

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"Approach to Net Zero Building"
Monday, October 29, 2012
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Claire Maxfield, Director, Atelier Ten, San Francisco
Building Technology Lecture Series
Web site: http://architecture.mit.edu/building-technology/lecture/approach-net-zero-building
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture
For more information, contact:
617-253-1876

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Libya: A Year of Revolution and State-Building
WHEN  Mon., Oct. 29, 2012, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE  Allison Dining Room, Taubman Building, 5th Floor, Harvard Kennedy School, 5 Eliot Stree, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Middle East Initiative
SPEAKER(S)  Dirk Vandewalle, associate professor of government, Dartmouth College, and author, "A History of Modern Libya"
CONTACT INFO jessica_salley@hks.harvard.edu
LINK http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/events/5869/libya.html

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Shari‘a-Compliant Home Financing in the United States
WHEN  Mon., Oct. 29, 2012, 4 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE  Austin Hall North classroom, Harvard Law School campus
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Islamic Finance Project
SPEAKER(S)  Yusuf Talal Delorenzo (Shari‘a consultant, Malfa Inc. Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
Panelists:
Shahab Ahmed, moderator (Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Visiting Associate Professor of Islamic Legal Studies Harvard Law School)
Thomas Gainor (senior vice president and general counsel, Guidance Residential, LLC, Reston, Virginia)
David Loundy (chairman of the board of directors, Devon Bank, Chicago, Illinois)
Intisar A. Rabb (Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Visiting Associate Professor of Islamic Legal Studies, Harvard Law School)
CONTACT INFO ifp@law.harvard.edu
NOTE  Speaker and panel discussion, with reception to follow.
LINK ifp.law.harvard.edu
NB:  "Sharia prohibits the fixed or floating payment or acceptance of specific interest or fees (known as riba, or usury) for loans of money."  This may be one reason who there is so much opposition to Sharia law.

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Migration, Health, and Well-Being in Rural Africa
WHEN  Mon., Oct. 29, 2012, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
SPEAKER(S)  Michael White, Professor, Department of Sociology, Brown University
NOTE  Open to all faculty, research scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and students.
LINK http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/centers-institutes/population-development/events/pop-center-seminars/index.html

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Sustainable Streets: New York City's New Public Space Visition
Monday, October 29, 2012
5:00p
MIT, Building 10-485, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Andrew Wiley-Schwartz
Andy Wiley-Schwartz is an Assistant Commissioner for Planning and Sustainability at New York City Department of Transportation. He was hired by Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn in 2007 to develop a public space program at DOT and develop a complete street design and planning process for the department. In this capacity he developed and launched the NYC Plaza Program to create new public spaces out of existing streets in communities across New York City. Andy joins DUSP Visiting Scholar Aaron Naparstek in discussing the details of the groundbreaking approach to urban planning and design that has led to the construction of more than 50 new plazas and 21 acres of new public space in North America's biggest, busiest, most politically complex urban environment.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/sidewalks/publicplaza.shtml

CDD Forum - The New Urban Interface
Web site: http://dusp.mit.edu/cdd/event/cdd-forum-new-urban-interface-0
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning, City Design and Development
For more information, contact:  Sandra Elliott
617-253-5115
sandrame@mit.edu

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MTA Composer Forum presents Peter Whincop, MIT Lecturer in Music
Monday, October 29, 2012
5:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building 14E-109, MIT Lewis Music Library, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

Speaker: Peter Whincop, composer
A Reception will follow.
Web site: web.mit.edu/mta
Open to: the general public
Cost: FREE
Sponsor(s): Music and Theater Arts
For more information, contact:  Clarise Snyder
mta-request@mit.edu

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Lecture with Covanta Energy
Monday, October 29, 2012 
5:30pm
Sever Hall Room 209, 25 Harvard Yard, Cambridge
The Harvard College Global Energy Initiative presents a lecture with:  COVANTA ENERGY
International leader in Energy-from-Waste Systems and Facilities

About the event:
Come hear about the innovative and fascinating work being done by Covanta Energy in the field of Energy-from-Waste!  Energy-from-Waste is the process of combusting trash and municipal waste to generate power while simultaneously reducing or altogether eliminating locally the need for landfills and other trash disposal techniques, which have a significant negative impact upon the environment.  Covanta is a chief innovator and driver of this industry, with several high-capacity plants in operation across the country, and has received high acclaim and praise both for its technological advancements and for its vision and practice of sustainability.  Lead engineers from the company will be on campus to discuss the technology itself, the economics of Energy-from-Waste, and the environmental goals driving Covanta’s operation.

Pizza and refreshments will be provided!
http://www.covantaenergy.com/
Contact Name:  Andrew Cohen
akcohen@college.harvard.edu
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Terrorism as a Political Modernism
WHEN  Mon., Oct. 29, 2012, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Cabot Room, Busch Hall, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History and the Center for European Studies
SPEAKER(S)  Claudia Verhoeven, Department of History, Cornell University
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Julian Bourg, julian.bourg@bc.edu
LINK http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/harvardcolloquium

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Beyond Walls: Appraising Architecture Vis-a-Vis Material Culture
Monday, October 29, 2012
6:00p–7:30p
MIT, Building 3-133, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Pamela Karimi, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
AKPIA@MIT FALL 2012 "AN EVENING WITH..." LECTURE SERIES
Studying the History of Islamic Art & Architecture
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/akpia/www/lecturescurrent.htm
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
For more information, contact:  Jose Luis Arguello
253-1400
akpiarch@mit.edu 

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Creating Enlightened Society Together: Integrating Personal and Social Transformation
WHEN  Mon., Oct. 29, 2012, 6:15 – 7:45 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Braun Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Lecture, Religion
SPONSOR Harvard Divinity School Buddhist Ministry Initiative
CONTACT Julie Gillette, 617.496.5586
NOTE  A presentation in the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhist Ministry Speaker Series by Buddhist teacher Fleet Maull. Maull is the founder of Prison Mindfulness Institute, the Center for Mindfulness Research in Corrections, and National Prison Hospice Association. He is a cofounder of the Peacemaker Institute and the Upaya Institute Chaplaincy Training Program. He is also president of New Line Consulting, LLC, a management consulting firm offering a wide spectrum of mindfulness-based and transformative business consulting and coaching services. He is a senior meditation teacher in both the Shambhala International and Zen Peacemaker Communities and has been teaching mindfulness meditation for more than 30 years.

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Designing Design Teams
Monday, October 29th
6:30PM
Microsoft NERD Center, Horace Mann Room, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at http://refreshboston.org/rsvp/

This month's Refresh Boston event features a special guest from San Francisco's Twitter headquarters, Martin Ringlein, Design Manager at Twitter
Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, & professional culture of New Media endeavors in the Boston area while promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

Contact http://refreshboston.org

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"Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter."  
Monday, October 29
7 pm
Harvard Science Center C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Dan Barber, Blue Hill Farm   

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Tuesday, October 30
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A Wake-Up Call for American Competitiveness
WHEN  Tue., Oct. 30, 2012, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Nye A, 5th Floor Taubman, 5 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government and the Office of Career Advancement
SPEAKER(S)  Fred Hochberg, chairman and president, Export-Import Bank of the United States
CONTACT INFO Lunch will be served. RSVP to mrcbg@ksg.harvard.edu

Editorial Comment:  Fred P. Hochberg will also be speaking October 29, 2012, 6:00 - 7:30 pm at Weiner Auditorium ( Taubman Building, ground floor) with Richard Parker
Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.  Hochberg "as head of Ex-Im Bank, Hochberg is one of the most senior openly gay members of the Obama Administration."

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"The Changing Media Landscape: Smart News in the Age of Social Media."
Tuesday, October 30
12 p.m.
Harvard, Taubman 275, 5 Eliot Street, Cambridge

Speaker Series with Chris Hughes, publisher and editor-in-chief, The New Republic; co-founded and served as spokesman for Facebook.

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China's Unfinished Revolution: The Challenges Facing the New Leadership
WHEN  Tue., Oct. 30, 2012, 12:15 – 2:10 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Harvard University
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
SPEAKER(S)  Jonathan Fenby, writer and commentator
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO lkluz@fas.harvard.edu
NOTE  Jonathan Fenby is a writer and commentator with expertise on Chinese political, economic, and social affairs. In his talk, he will analyze where China stands 34 years after the start of economic reform. He will bring together the political, economic, and social issues facing the last major state ruled by a Communist Party. He will examine the wholesale change in leadership personnel taking place at the Party Congress in November and the outlook for the changes China needs to maintain its momentum.
LINK http://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/event/jonathan-fenby

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From Green Tweaks to Systemic Shifts: Urban Sustainability from an Open, Integrated, and Networked Perspective
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 9-450B, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

EPP Speaker Series with Alex Aylett
Green cities have been a popular topic for decades now. But performance has lagged far behind potential. Drawing on examples from fieldwork in Canada, the US, and Africa, I'm going to look at why, and highlight some possible solutions. Rather than focus on specific technologies or planning principles, this is going to be a talk about people, communities, and municipal institutions. My work on sustainable cities emphasizes networked systems of governance and the socio-institutional dynamics of change. This talk will share some recent ideas on what that approach tells us about efforts to go from marginal tweaks to creating systemic shifts towards urban sustainability.

Dr. Alex Aylett is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow working with JoAnn Carmin in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He is also the Research Director for Sustainable Cities International. He has a PhD in urban sustainability from the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He has worked on urban sustainability in Canada, the United States, Europe and Africa.

More info on Alex's work can be found at www.openalex.ca
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): EPP
For more information, contact:  Nina Tamburello
617.253.1509
epprequest@mit.edu

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Adapting Social Media to Promote Credible Elections in Low Technology Countries
Tuesday, October 30
12:30pm
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor
RSVP required for those attending in person at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2012/10/odewale#RSVP
This event will be webcast live at 12:30pm ET at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive

Oluwaseun Odewale, Berkman Center Fellow
The new millennium ushered in a new dispensation for a new wave of democratic experimentations in Nigeria. A new republic commenced in 1999 and since then Nigeria has held a historic four consecutive elections. Until 2011, none of the elections have received positive review in the arena of credibility – or freeness, or fairness. However, the appointment of a new leadership for INEC renewed confidence in the body that the April 2011 elections were optimistically anticipated to be a marked improvement over the discredited previous experiences. The new INEC Chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega, was reputed to be a respected academic and principled activist.

In light of the renewed hope and confidence, and the desire to get things right through concerted efforts, several civil society organizations established election reporting platforms via SMS, twitter, websites, blogs, facebook, telephone lines etc. One particular organization recruited volunteers and got itself embedded within the INEC systems to promote a “two-way communication between INEC and its stakeholders”.

What evolved was a media-tracking centre established to assess the robust blend of traditional and new media during the election period. Of the 87 million mobile phone users in Nigeria (44 million of which have access to the Internet), it was an interesting trend to see how social media, for the first time, was adopted and, quite interestingly, adapted, to ensure credibility of the electoral process in Nigeria.

During this presentation, I intend to showcase the Nigeria experience, highlight what worked and what didn’t really work as expected; specific instances of how social media interventions prevented rigging; how the elections has helped the growth of use of social media, the patterns of usage during and after the elections; and, how traditional media has adjusted to social media practice.

I hope the audience will share their experiences and help to proffer recommendations to revamp the innovation for a more institutionalized adaptation in promoting good governance in Nigeria, as I continue to explore this in my present research work.

About Oluwaseun
Odewale is male, Nigerian with degrees in Chemistry (Medicinal Chemistry) and Chemical Engineering Technology. Born, some 32 years ago in Lagos Island, Lagos, South West Nigeria, he also holds professional training diplomas in Community Local Participation (UNICEF); International Elections Observation Missions (KAIPTC/ECOWAS); Mentoring Young Leaders under the Kwame Nkrumah emerging leaders training series, and; the African Contingency Operations and Training Assistance (ACOTA) (ECOWAS) among others.

This young chemist has garnered a combination of nine years local and international work experiences in social and development work, spanning especially the West African sub-region. He has worked variously with regional institutions like the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF), the West African Bar Association (WABA) and recently, the Economic Community of West African States as Programme Officer (Youth), Programme Officer (Governance and Human Rights) and Research Assistant (Disaster Risks Reduction) respectively. His research experiences spanning the academic and development sectors cover both the natural and social sciences. In the development sector his focus areas include human rights, governance and political processes, regional integration and human security (security sector governance and architecture). He has five years of field experiences in Elections Observations and Monitoring in twelve member states of ECOWAS and other parts of Africa, UNOWA youth employment mapping in West Africa and inclusion of young people in processes for attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) under the United Nations Millennium Campaign African office situated in Nairobi.

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Joshua Introne, Tracing the Flow of Knowledge in Online Conversation
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
1:30 - 3:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building E62-450, 100 Main Street, Cambridge

Abstract:  How does technology influence a community’s ability to exchange and recombine its available information? In an ideal case, we would be able to witness the historical evolution of knowledge as it flows across a socio-technical network, and describe the impact of technology in these terms.
In this talk, I present the an approach to this called Topic Evolution Analysis (TEvA),  and describe a case-study that illustrates its application. TEvA tracks co-occurring clusters of words in online forums and shows how these clusters change, merge, and split over time.
We used TEvA to analyze a dataset collected in a prior study on decision support technology. Our analysis revealed two findings. First, regions of the conversation where many topics converge and posting speed increases often correspond to moments of knowledge construction for groups. We also find one type of deliberative decision support appears to dampen collaborative knowledge construction, even though there is no clear impact on performance in the decision task.

Bio:  Joshua Introne is a research scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and the chief software architect of the Climate CoLab. His research interests include the design of mediating tools to improve collaborative and collective performance, understanding the impact of social network structure on collaborative information processing, and the development of sociotechnical architectures for problem-solving. Introne has a PhD in computer science from Brandeis University.

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"Towards the Probabilistic Earth-System Simulator: A Vision For Weather and Climate Prediction in the 21st Century."
Tuesday, October 30
3p.    
MIT, Building 54, 18th Floor Conference Room, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (the tallest building on campus)

Tim Palmer

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12th Annual Marshall J. Seidman Health Policy Lecture. "The Affordable Care Act: A New Paradigm for Health Care in America"
WHEN  Tue., Oct. 30, 2012, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Tosteson Medical Education Center, Carl Walter Amphitheater, 260 Longwood Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy
SPEAKER(S)  Sen. Tom Daschle
COST  Free
CONTACT INFO craw@hcp.med.harvard.edu
NOTE  A review of the challenges that lie ahead and what it will take to succeed

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Election 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
4:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building E25-111, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge

Join Political Science Professors Andrea Campbell, Devin Caughey, and Charles Stewart III for a lively discussion of issues surrounding the 2012 election. Topics to include the place of this election in historical context; the effect of voter ID laws and other election administration issues on the voting process; and the public policy issues at stake, such as the future of the Obama health reform, entitlement reform, and the fiscal issues facing the nation.

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/polisci/news/election2012.html
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Political Science
For more information, contact:  Kafka, Anita
617-258-5885
kafka@mit.edu

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Climate & Conflict: Heat & Violence
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
6:00p–7:30p
MIT, Building N51, MIT Museum, 275 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Nathan Black
Soap Box: Climate & Conflict
The MIT Museum invites you to contribute to the debate about climate change as we explore fresh new perspectives on politics, profits, and conflict.

Part 3: Heat and Violence
Can global temperature change cause conflicts to heat up? Nathan Black, French Environmental Fellow at Harvard University Center for the Environment, will discuss the link between climate change and civil unrest. Explore how governmental response to climate change can incite or defuse violent conflict around the globe.

Web site: http://mit.edu/museum/programs/soapbox.html
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): MIT Museum
For more information, contact:  Josie Patterson
617-253-5927
museuminfo@mit.edu

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MASSCreative Somerville/Cambridge Regional Kickoff
October 30th
6:00-7:30pm
The Artisan's Asylum, 10 Tyler Street, Somerville
RSVP at http://www.mass-creative.org/introcambsomer

MASSCreative is coming to Somerville!
Please join the Somerville Cultural Council, Cambridge Arts Council, elected leaders and supporters of the Cambridge/Somerville creative community to introduce MASSCreative on its statewide tour and explore its mission and bold program initiatives to bring resources and attention to Massachusetts' thriving creative sector.

This event is being co-hosted by the following local organizations: Mudflat Studio, Somerville Historic Preservation Commission, HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands, Somerville Arts Council

Katy Hannigan · khannigan@mass-creative.org · 617-350-7610

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Boston Green Drinks - October Happy Hour
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)
kingston station, 25 kingston street, Boston
RSVP at http://bgdoct12-es2.eventbrite.com/?rank=626

Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists.  Enjoy a Drink at Kingston station and build your connection with our green community!
Keep sending feedback to Lyn@bostongreendrinks.com for ideas about speakers or content for the future and mark your calendar for drinks on the last Tuesday of every month.  Also, if you RSVP and can't make it, e-mail us to let us know.

Boston Green Drinks  builds a community of sustainably-minded Bostonians, provides a forum for exchange of sustainability career resources, and serves as a central point of information about emerging green issues.  We support the exchange of ideas and resources about sustainable energy, environment, food, health, education.

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GSD Public Lecture Program. "Building for the Future"
WHEN  Tue., Oct. 30, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard GSD
SPEAKER(S)  Werner Sobek
CONTACT INFO events@gsd.harvard.edu
NOTE  Educated as both an architect and a structural engineer, Werner Sobek has been a full-time professor at the University of Stuttgart in Germany since 1995. He has also taught at the Harvard GSD, as well as the IIT in Chicago as Mies van der Rohe Professor. He is the founding director of the Institute for Light Weight Structures and Conceptual Design, University of Stuttgart. The Werner Sobek Group was founded in 1992 with branches worldwide.
LINK www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/werner-sobek-building-for-the-future.html

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The 2012 Election and the Twilight of the Elites
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
7:00p–8:30p
MIT, Building W79, Simmons Hall Multipurpose Room, 2229 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Chris Hayes
In his new book, Twilight Of The Elites, journalist and MSNBC host Chris Hayes poses a challenge with special resonance for the MIT community -- Are the institutions which foster America's leadership class working as intended? Hayes' book covers ground as diverse as education, the financial sector, our political system and the Catholic church in an attempt to understand whether the American elite truly upholds the values of competition and meritocracy which it claims to espouse. His conclusions are troubling.

Join Chris Hayes in conversation with Atlantic Senior Editor and visiting MIT professor, Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tuesday October 30 at Simmons Hall for an election year discussion on the future of our country and an assessment of its institutions.

Open to: MIT Community and Friends
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, The Knight Science Journalism Program, Residential Scholars @ Simmons Hall, The William R. (1956) and Betsy P. Leitch Endowment
For more information, contact:  Steven Hall
srhall@mit.edu 

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MIT Visiting Artist John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul "The Nine Muses" film screening
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
7:00p–9:00p
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge

Speaker: John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, Renee Green
MIT Visiting Artist Program
Structured as an allegorical fable and loosely inspired by existential science fiction, "The Nine Muses" is a stylized, unusual and idiosyncratic retelling of the history of mass migration to post-war Britain through the suggestive lens of Homer's epic poem, "The Odyssey." Divided into nine overlapping musical chapters and mixing a vast array of archival material, "The Nine Muses" is a modern recasting of Homer's epic as a tone poem about journeys, migration, memory and the power of elegy.

This program is presented in collaboration with the MIT Program of Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) as part of the Fall 2012 Lecture Series: Experiments in Thinking, Action and Form: Cinematic Migrations.

Web site: arts.mit.edu/va
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free // Ticket Required
Tickets: https://arts.mit.edu/va
Sponsor(s): Arts at MIT
For more information, contact:  Leah Talatinian
617.252.1888
arts@mit.edu

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Green tech Entrepreneur Forum & Brainstorming.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
7:00 PM To 10:00 PM
Eastern Bank, 647 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Clean-Tech-and-Energy/events/84391012/

The Agenda is:
We will introduce ourselves and tell about our interest, expertise or work (1st hr)
You can give a ~3 to 5 minute elevator speach about your startup if you would like. (We will divide the 1st hour by # of people.)
What stage is your ideas or startup?  What is your goal?
Tell what personnel or additional expertise, funding, etc. you are seeking,
Discussion and Brainstorming on (2nd hr)
ideas for viable moneymaking startups,
methods of collaboration, networking, forming teams & partnerships etc.
marketing, media, social media, ideas that have worked well for publicity
Agencies, websites, companies that assist startups
Boston Greenfest & Gov't opportunities.
What would you like to see in future meetups?
Seminars - We will have seminars by Sustainable Energy engineers and other tech experts as often as possible.
The bank is near the center of Central Sq., where Prospect and Mass Ave cross, - there is a Starbucks on the Northeast corner of the intersection.  Next to Starbucks is a Flower shop, and next to that is Eastern Bank.  You can see the conference room thru the window, so just wave to us and we will let you in.

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Wednesday, October 31
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Lorenz, Goedel and Penrose: From chaos to fundamental physics
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
10:00a–11:00a
MIT, Building 54-915, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (the tallest building on campus)

Speaker: Tim Palmer, Univ. Oxford, UK
"In the final part of this trilogy of talks, I will return to my PhD routes (in general relativity and quantum gravity) and discuss how the type of measure-zero fractal state-space geometry introduced to science by Ed Lorenz, may help solve two of the most intractable problems in theoretical physics: the meaning of the superposed state in quantum theory, and the route to unification of the gravitational force with the electromagnetic and nuclear forces. The talk will be mostly non-technical, but will refer to a recent paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.3940 where full technical details can be found."

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC), Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:  Kristen Barilaro
fisher@mit.edu 

------------------------------------

Terahertz Explorations in Nanotechnology: Ultrafast Dynamics of Electrons, Plasmons and Spins
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
11:00a–12:00p
MIT, Building 34-401A, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Farhan Rana, Cornell University
EECS/RLE Optics & Quantum Electronics Seminar Series
Web site: http://www.rle.mit.edu/oqe/seminar/
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Optics & Quantum Electronics Seminar Series
For more information, contact:  Donna Gale
253-8529
dgale@mit.edu 

----------------------------------------

Service Member, Veteran, and Family Wellness: What Is It, and Why Should We Care ?
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40--496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Margaret Harrell, RAND Corporation
SSP Wednesday Seminar
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Security Studies Program
For more information, contact:  617-253-7529
valeriet@mit.edu

Editorial Comment:  The US has entered into a condition of permanent war with many of our first responders serving multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under combat.  Their service leaves permanent wounds, obvious and invisible.  As a society we have to learn how to support them in their service and when they can no longer serve.  This is an important and often overlooked reality.

----------------------------------

Bible in Public Schools: 50 Years Later
WHEN  Wed., Oct. 31, 2012, 1 – 2 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Religion
SPONSOR Office of Ministerial Studies
CONTACT nathan_walker@mail.harvard.edu
NOTE  Please join us for this talk given by Ellery Schempp.
In 1956, high-school student Ellery Schempp was disciplined for attempting to read the Quran rather than recite 10 verses from the Bible, as required by Pennsylvania state law. In the landmark case Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), the US Supreme Court ruled in Ellery's favor, deeming school-sponsored Bible readings to be unconstitutional. Fifty years later, what’s the state of religion in US public schools?
-------------------------------------

National Instruments LabVIEW Campus Tour
WHEN  Wed., Oct. 31, 2012, 2 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  65 North Harvard Street, Boston
Harvard University Parking area behind Bright Hockey Center.
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Exhibitions, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR National Instruments
COST  Free
CONTACT INFO alison.kwong@ni.com, 512.683.8462
NOTE  National Instruments, a tech company based in Austin, TX, is visiting Harvard next week and bringing their latest technology for engineering students and faculty.
Through live product demos, students, educators and researchers can explore the latest embedded, control and measurement applications and network with peers and National Instruments experts on campus.
LINK http://www.ni.com/mobileexpo/

-----------------------------------

“Impacts of global change on forests, from organisms to ecosystems”
Wednesday, October 31, 2012 
3:00pm
Harvard, Main Lecture Hall, BioLabs Building, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge

Andrew Richardson, Harvard University, OEB 

Contact http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/news_events/seminars.html

------------------------------------

“Coal Fired-Sales: Evidence on Incentives in Procurement and Regulation from Power Plant Divestitures.”
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
4:10pm - 5:30pm
Kennedy School of Government, Room L-382, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge

Steve Cicala, Harvard University.

Contact Name:  Jason Chapman
617-496-8054

-----------------------------------

Planning Against Planning: The Mont Pelerin Society and the Origins of Neoliberalism
WHEN  Wed., Oct. 31, 2012, 4:15 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, CGIS-S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Center for History and Economics
SPEAKER(S)  Angus Burgin, Johns Hopkins University
CONTACT INFO gauth@fas.harvard.edu
NOTE  History and Economics Seminar
Book signing to follow
LINK http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~histecon/seminars_hec.htm

---------------------------
Thursday, November 1
---------------------------

"Take Note" Conference
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1 – Fri., Nov. 2, 2012
WHERE  Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
TICKET WEB LINK  http://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?480535
TICKET INFO  Registration required
CONTACT INFO 617-495-8600.
NOTE  "Take Note" brings together scholars from literature, history, media studies, information science, and computer science to explore the past and future roles of note-taking across the university. Panelists will discuss the history of note-taking in different disciplines as well as the potential of emerging digital annotation tools. Includes presentations and site visits.
LINK http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2012-take-note-conference

Editorial Comment:  This appears to be a free conference with many different site visits as well as discussions between scholars on literature, history, media studies, information and computer science exploring the past and future roles of note-taking including the potential of emerging digital annotation tools.  I wonder if they will talk about collaborative learning?

-------------------------------------

[MIT Energy Club] Discussion Series: "Smart Grid: Opportunities and Challenges"
Thursday, November 01, 2012
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 5-232, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Samantha Gunter
In this round table discussion, Samantha will first give a quick summary to the topics in the smart grid. Then she will lead the discussion between the audiences about topics of interest in the electric smart grid industry.

MIT Energy Club Discussion Series
The Discussion Series is an energy discussion series led by graduate student experts in various energy areas. Suggested preparation readings for upcoming discussions are available on our website.
Open to: the general public
Cost: None
Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club
For more information, contact:  Jonathan Mailoa; Michelle Park
jpmailoa@mit.edu; mpark15@mit.edu 

----------------------------------

Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor Belfer Building (HKS), 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government
SPEAKER(S)  Gary P. Pisano, Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at HBS; and Willy C. Shih, Professor of Management Practice at HBS.
TICKET INFO  RSVP to mrcbg@ksg.harvard.edu
CONTACT INFO Lunch will be served. RSVP to mrcbg@ksg.harvard.edu

----------------------------------

Character Compass: Building Powerful School Culture and Student Success Through Character Education
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE  Eliot Lyman, Longfellow Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Civic and Moral Engagement Initiative
SPEAKER(S)  Scott Seider
COST  Free and open to the public
NOTE  HGSE alumnus and Boston University Professor Scott Seider will present his new book Character Compass: Building Powerful School Culture and Student Success Through Character Education. His book offers portraits of three high-performing urban schools in Boston that have made character development central to their mission of supporting student success, yet define character in three very different ways.
LINK  http://cmei-harvard.ning.com/events/cmei-collquium-dr-scott-seider

---------------------------------

The 2012 Presidential Election: What’s at Stake?
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262),  CGIS Knafel Building, 2nd Fl, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Sponsored by the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; co-sponsored by the Institute of Politics (IOP), Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S)  Michael Dukakis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Northeastern University; Democratic Party Nominee for the President of the United States (1988); and Governor of Massachusetts (1975-79; 1983-91)
COST  Free
CONTACT INFO xtian@wcfia.harvard.edu
LINK  http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/us-japan/schedule/schedule.htm

----------------------------------

Housing & Cities: Building Sustainable and Inclusive Communities
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 1:05 – 2:05 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard Kennedy School, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 160, Room 105
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
SPEAKER(S)  Ben Hecht, President & CEO, Living Cities
COST  Free
CONTACT INFO 617.495.7908
LINK http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/event/housing-cities-ben-hecht-living-cities

-----------------------------------

The Hub of Swing: A Look at Boston's Jazz Scene
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center for the Humanities, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Music, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Learning from Performers
SPEAKER(S)  Steve Schwartz, Eric Jackson, Fred Taylor; moderated by Bob Blumenthal
COST  Free and open to the public
NOTE  They are the unsung heroes of Boston’s jazz scene—for decades, WGBH-FM radio personalities Steve Schwartz and Eric Jackson, and presenter/promoter Fred Taylor, have been tireless advocates for the music and its artists. They will discuss their careers and the current state of jazz in performance and on the air, and the future of the music during a time of upheaval in the recording industry. Schwartz, Jackson and Taylor will be honored at a concert featuring the Harvard Jazz Bands, November 2.
LINK  http://www.ofa.fas.harvard.edu

-----------------------------------

Himalayan Glaciers, Climate Change, Water Resources and Water Security
Thursday, November 1, 2012 
4:00pm
Harvard, CGIS S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge

The South Asia Initiative Water and Climate Change Seminar Series presents:
HIMALAYAN GLACIERS, CLIMATE CHANGE, WATER RESOURCES, AND WATER SECURITY

With Henry J. Vaux, Jr., Professor of Resource Economics, Emertius Chair, Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy, University of California Riverside; Chair: John Briscoe, Professor of the Practice of Environmental Health (HSPH) and Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering (SEAS)

Contact Name:  Nora Maginn
maginn@fas.harvard.edu

------------------------------------

The Limits of Human Rights Advocacy: Syria and the Blowback of the Arab Spring
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  1737 Cambridge Street, Knafel Building, K262, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR CMES and WCFIA
SPEAKER(S)  Sarah L. Whitson, Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch
COST  Free and open to the public

------------------------------------


BE Seminar Series: Combining High-Throughput Measurements and Network Modeling to Reveal Hidden Mechanisms of Disease
Thursday, November 01, 2012
4:00p–5:15p
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Ernest Fraenkel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/be/news/seminars.shtml
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Biological Engineering
For more information, contact:  617-253-1712
be-acad@mit.edu 

-------------------------------------

Gasoline and Diesel Contributions to Air Pollution Problems
Thursday, November 01, 2012
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 48-316, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Robert A. Harley, Professor of Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley
Gasoline and diesel engines contribute significantly to emissions of gaseous and particulate pollutants on urban to global scales. I will present results of recent field measurements to characterize trends in pollutant emissions from on-road vehicles. I will compare the magnitudes of gasoline and diesel contributions, and show for example that nitrogen oxide (NOx) inventories are increasingly dominated by diesel emissions.

Distributions of emission rates from individual vehicles, measured using fast time response instrumentation,have become more skewed as fleet-average emissions decline. Using state of the art mass spectrometry techniques, an unprecedented level of chemical detail and mass closure has been achieved in the characterization of fuels, organic gas, and primary organic aerosol emissions. These results help to improve understanding of motor vehicle contributions to secondary organic aerosol.

Environmental Sciences Seminar Series
Join us for a weekly series of EFM/Hydrology topics by MIT faculty and students, as well as guest lecturers from around the globe.
Web site: http://cee.mit.edu/events/60
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering
For more information, contact:Brenda Pepe
258-5554
pepebe@mit.edu

---------------------------------------

Digitizing the Culture of Print: The Digital Public Library of America and Other Urgent projects
Thursday, November 01, 2012
5:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building E14-633, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Speakers
Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard, Director of the Harvard University Library and one of America's most distinguished historians.
Susan Flannery is director of libraries for the City of Cambridge.
Moderator: Ann Wolpert is director of libraries at MIT and oversees the MIT Press.

The role of the library in the digital age is one of the compelling questions of our era. How are libraries coping with the promise and perils of our impending digital future? What urgent initiatives are underway to assure universal access to our print inheritance and to the digital communication forms of the future? How is the very idea of the library changing? These and related questions will engage our distinguished panelists, who represent both research and public libraries and one of whom serves on the steering committee for the Digital Public Library of America.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and open to the public.
Sponsor(s): Communications Forum
For more information, contact:  Brad Seawell
617-253-3521
seawell@mit.edu 

----------------------------------------

Cleantech/Clean Energy Angel Investor Panel
Thursday, November 1, 2012 
5:30pm - 8:30pm
5:30-6:30 pm Networking
6:30-7:30 pm Panel Discussion
7:30-8:30 pm Networking
Greentown Labs - a Cleantech Business Incubator and Prototyping Space in Boston's Innovation District 337 Summer Street, Boston
Register at http://greentownangels.eventbrite.com

Are you a clean energy  or cleantech entrepreneur seeking funding from angel investors in the next 6-12 months? Not sure where to find angel investors who invest in clean energy or how to approach them? Not sure how much funding to ask for? Want to know how angel investors evaluate cleantech start-ups like yours?

Come and join in our panel discussion to hear from angel investors  and early stage companies who have successfully raised an angel/seed round of investment in the cleantech or clean energy space.

Moderated by Paul Seireko, a experienced entrepreneur who has raised $40M in investment capital (including from angels), this panel allow cleantech and clean energy entrepreneurs to get the information they need to get funded.

Panelists:
Joseph Steig, Long River Ventures/Venture Well
Bic Stevens, Stevens Capital Advisors
David Miller, Clean Energy Venture Group

Eventbrite: http://greentownangels.eventbrite.com/
---------------------------------

Humanitarian Networking Event
Thursday, November 1
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Orleans, 65 Holland Street, Davis Square, Somerville
RSVP at http://humanitariannetworking.eventbrite.com

Hi All:
Please join us for an informal networking event at Orleans from 6:30 - 8:30PM on November 1st hosted by the Tufts Humanitarian Aid Society. This event was a success last Fall, with professors and students from other schools in attendance. We also had a few practitioners from the area come.

Please forward to anyone with an interest in humanitarian work in the Boston area who might be interested in attending. More details to come closer to the event.

You can register here: http://humanitariannetworking.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you there!
Julia Moline

---------------------------

Predicting Climate in a Chaotic World: How Certain Can We Be?
Thursday, November 01, 2012
6:30p–8:00p
6:30p.m. Community Reception
7:00p.m. Lecture
The New England Aquarium, 1 Central Wharf, Boston

Speaker: Professor Tim Palmer, Royal Society Professor of Climate Physics at Oxford University
The John Carlson Lecture communicates exciting new results in climate science to the general public. Free of charge, the lecture is made possible by a generous gift from MIT alumnus John H. Carlson to the Lorenz Center at MIT.

Lecture summary: Edward Lorenz's pioneering work on systems whose evolution is unpredictable and chaotic was motivated by a skepticism about the use of statistical models to predict next month's weather. And yet, on the web and elsewhere, one can find predictions not only of next month's weather, but also of the human effect on long-term climate. Can we have any confidence at all in long-range predictions of weather? And should we believe these estimates of human-induced climate change? Or is the whole notion of predicting long-term changes in climate misguided and unscientific?

Biography: Palmer is the Royal Society Professor of Climate Physics at Oxford University and a world expert on the the dynamics and predictability of weather and climate. He has pioneered the development of probabilistic forecast techniques for both weather and climate prediction. These techniques are now used routinely in operational centers around the world. Palmer is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, and has won both their Jule G. Charney and Carl-Gustaf Rossby Medals.

The event is free and open to the public.
Students and families welcome.
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/lorenzcenter/activities/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC), MIT School of Science
For more information, contact:  Shira Wieder
swieder@mit.edu

------------------------------------

Synthetic Biology: The Next Generation of Biotechnology
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Science Center Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Neekeyfar Lecture Series on Math and Science, Harvard University
SPEAKER(S)  Christina D. Smolke, Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University
COST  Free and open to the public

------------------------------------

BUSINESS ETHICS AND OTHER OXYMORONS
Thurs., Nov. 1
7-8:30 pm
C. Walsh Theatre, Suffolk University, 55 Temple Street, Boston

Nitin Nohria (Dean, Harvard Business School) and Tom Peters (Business Author);
moderated by Donna Carpenter (CEO, New Word City)

Two of the foremost minds on business, Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School, and Thomas J. Peters, author of “In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies,” discuss teaching ethics to business students. Nohria and Peters share their wisdom on morally committing to your business, the misnomer of “corporate responsibility,” and teachable behavior versus intrinsic personal character. With guidance from moderator Donna Carpenter, CEO of New Word City, their conversation will span from partnering with others who aren’t ethical to serving the stakeholders. Between purpose and pay-offs, where are our principles in business today?

------------------------------------

A Late Quartet (FREE Advance Screening, directed by MIT alum Yaron Zilberman!)
Thursday, November 01, 2012
7:00p
MIT, Building 26-100, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

This is a FREE sneak preview! Members of the MIT community will be admitted beginning at 6pm; doors will open for the general public at 6:30. Audience members are invited to enjoy a special string quartet performance before the show begins!

A Late Quartet is directed by MIT alum Yaron Zilberman '94 (SB Course 8, SM Course 15B).

When the beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet receives a life-changing diagnosis, the group's future suddenly hangs in the balance: suppressed emotions, competing egos, and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. As they are about to play their 25th anniversary concert, quite possibly their last, only their intimate bond and the power of music can preserve their legacy. Inspired by and structured around Beethoven's Opus 131 String Quartet in C-sharp minor, A Late Quartet pays homage to chamber music and the cultural world of New York. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, Mark Ivanir, and Imogen Poots, and directed by Yaron Zilberman.
Web site: http://lsc.mit.edu
Open to: the general public
Cost: FREE
Sponsor(s): LSC
For more information, contact:  MIT Lecture Series Committee
617-253-3791
lsc@mit.edu 

----------------------------------

Lawlessness in China
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1, 2012, 7:30 – 9 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, CGIS South, Belfer Case Study Room (S020), 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Fairbank Center New England China Seminar
SPEAKER(S)  Jerome A. Cohen, Professor, New York University School of Law
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO lkluz@fas.harvard.edu
LINK http://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/event/jerome-cohen

------------------------
Friday, November 2
------------------------

"Take Note" Conference
WHEN  Thu., Nov. 1 – Fri., Nov. 2, 2012
WHERE  Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
TICKET WEB LINK  http://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?480535
TICKET INFO  Registration required
CONTACT INFO 617-495-8600.
NOTE  "Take Note" brings together scholars from literature, history, media studies, information science, and computer science to explore the past and future roles of note-taking across the university. Panelists will discuss the history of note-taking in different disciplines as well as the potential of emerging digital annotation tools. Includes presentations and site visits.
LINK http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2012-take-note-conference

Editorial Comment:  This appears to be a free conference with many different site visits as well as discussions between scholars on literature, history, media studies, information and computer science exploring the past and future roles of note-taking including the potential of emerging digital annotation tools.  I wonder if they will talk about collaborative learning?
----------------------------------

Institutional Financial Conflicts of Interest in Research Universities
A symposium organized by Dr. David Korn
November 2, 2012
Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Milstein Conference Rooms, 2nd Floor, Harvard Law School
RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3787516564

Conflicts of interest are on everyone's minds (and lips) these days, but most of the attention to date has focused on individual conflicts held by doctors, researchers, and others. Institutions can also face important conflicts as a result of their various interests and allegiances, and research universities in particular are at a crossroads. President Obama has called on these universities to collaborate with industry, investors, and agencies to bolster entrepreneurship, commercialize research results, and enhance economic development - and a number of universities have pledged to do so. Should this be a welcome development, or cause for concern? How will this new role for research universities influence their traditional mission to educate and promote reliable, unbiased knowledge?

Please join us at a symposium, co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, to address a number of critical and timely questions regarding institutional financial conflicts of interest in research universities. With a world-class line-up of speakers who have grappled with these issues at some of the highest echelons in which they arise, this event is not to be missed.

------------------------------------

9th Annual Energy Symposium @ Harvard Business School – “Navigating a constantly evolving energy landscape”
Friday, November 2, 2012 - Saturday, November 3, 2012
Harvard Business School Campus, Harvard Way, Allston
Register at http://www.hbsenergysymposium.com/#!register/c24vq

The 9th Annual HBS Energy Symposium will feature top industry executives, investors, entrepreneurs, innovators and startup companies. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn about and discuss key issues and trends relevant to practitioners in the energy industry. The symposium will provide insights and answer questions about the current state and future of the energy industry and give attendees a chance to network with leading professionals representing a diverse group of firms, markets and geographies.

Highlights include: 
Nine panels covering diverse energy topics including energy policy,
entrepreneurship, energy finance, VC and renewable energy
Panel moderation by Harvard Business School faculty
Keynote speeches from top industry executives and visionaries, including:
Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy
Dr. Cheryl Martin, Deputy Director of Commercialization, ARPA-E
Arno Harris CEO, Recurrent Energy and Chairman, Solar Energy Industry Association
Networking lunch and cocktail hour

Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn about and discuss key issues and trends relevant to practitioners in the energy industry. The symposium will provide insights and answer questions about the current and future states of the energy industry while giving attendees the opportunity to network with leading professionals representing a diverse group of firms, markets and geographies. In addition, the HBS E&E Club is partnering with the MIT Energy Club to host the 2nd HBS Energy Startup Showcase and networking event, which will be the culmination of the conference activities and a focal point for many attendees. Select energy firms will have the opportunity to provide information about their company and to interact with representatives from other companies as well as conference attendees and industry stakeholders including investors, entrepreneurs, press, academics, Harvard & MIT graduate students, and more.

http://www.hbsenergysymposium.com/

Editorial Comment:  This conference costs money but may well be worth it.

--------------------------------------

Streamlined LCA: Eco-Impact Estimator for Highways
November 2, 2012
10:00 -11:00am ET
Webinar at  https://mitweb.webex.com/mitweb/onstage/g.php?d=646757345&t=a
Event number: 646 757 345
Event password: 12345
**Registration beforehand is not required, however I recommend you log in at least five minutes early to complete the (short) registration and test your phone/speakers before the webinar starts.

Speaker: Jamie Meil, Managing Director of the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute
Jamie will be discussing the Impact Estimator for Highways software, an innovative approach to calculating a highway's environmental impact that considers the materials, construction, and maintenance phases of the life cycle. The software includes a large materials database and can be used during the design phase to evaluate and compare potential designs in terms of their environmental impact.

Whether or not the sustainability of highways is in your bailiwick, this webinar will touch on a number of overarching issues within the field of life cycle analysis, such as developing a streamlined approach to LCA in conjunction with a wide range of stakeholders, addressing issues around data collection and maintenance, and incorporating a complex and uncertain use phase into the life cycle. I hope you can join us!

Leaders in Environmental Assessment and Performance Sustainability Speaker Series
Please be in touch with questions or if you experience any technical difficulties accessing the webinar. An ical appointment is attached should you like to add the event to your calendar.
Contact:  Suzanne Greene
Phone:  (617) 715-5473
Email:  segreene@mit.edu

-------------------------------------

SMArchS Colloquium: Mark Goulthorpe: Practising Failure/Instituting Failure
Friday, November 02, 2012
10:00a–12:00p
MIT, Building 3-133, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Mark Goulthorpe in conversation with Mark Wigley
Goulthorpe: dECOi/HypoSurface/Zero+/MIT
Wigley: Dean of GSAPP, Columbia University, NY

Web site: http://architecture.mit.edu/lecture/practising-failureinstituting-failure
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture
For more information, contact:  Annette Horne-Williams
617-253-7791
ahwill@mit.edu 

-------------------------------------

Biotechnology for Food in Asia
WHEN  Fri., Nov. 2, 2012, 12:15 – 1:45 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, S153, 1st Floor, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Asia Center, Modern Asia Seminar Series
SPEAKER(S)  Robert Paarlberg, Department of Political Science, Wellesley College; associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
COST  Free and open to the public
LINK http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/News-Events/Events

-----------------------------------

Ultra-Efficient Solid-State Lighting: Likely Characteristics, Economic Benefits, Technological Approaches
November 2
3:00 PM 
BU, Room 210, 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston
Refreshments served at 2:45 PM

Jeff Tsao, Sandia Labs
Abstract: Technologies for artificial lighting have made tremendous progress over the centuries. At this point in time, there is virtually no question that solid-state lighting (SSL) will eventually displace its predecessor technologies [Haitz, 2011b].  A remaining question, however, is what the final efficiency of SSL will be.  In this talk, we give a perspective on the future of SSL, with a focus on ultra-high [Phillips, 2007] (>70%) efficiencies.  We ask, and sketch answers to, three questions.  First, what are some of the likely characteristics of ultra-efficient SSL?  Second, what are some of the economic benefits of ultra-efficient SSL?  And, third, what are some of the challenges associated with various possible technological approaches to ultra-efficient SSL?

Biography: Jeff Tsao is a graduate of Stanford University (AB in Mathematics, MS in Electrical Engineering) and Harvard University (MS, PhD in Applied Physics).  He is currently a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, and Chief Scientist of its Energy Frontier Research Center for Solid-State-Lighting Science. From 1981 to 1991, he was research staff at MIT-Lincoln Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, where he studied laser microchemistry, ultrafast laser annealing of semiconductors, and molecular beam epitaxy. From 1991 to 2001, he was a research manager at Sandia National Laboratories and E2O Communications, where he built teams and programs in the area of “smart” compound semiconductor epitaxy and complex heterostructure devices for high-speed communications. From 2001 to the present (2012), he has been at Sandia National Laboratories as research staff, where he co-authored white papers and reports with an aim to influence larger national and global research directions.  He helped the DOE Office of Science and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy coordinate a number of workshops and roadmaps in various areas of energy science and technology.  He was an early advocate for (and pioneer in) solid-state lighting, a technology now poised to transform how the world consumes 20% of its electricity.  Along the way, he has outlined new and counterintuitive ways of thinking about the energy economics of lighting.

---------------------------------

Energy Lecture Series: "A Day in the Life of the Grid" by FERC Chairman Wellinghoff
Friday, November 02, 2012
3:30p–4:30p
MIT, Building E25-111, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Jon Wellinghoff, Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
FERC Chairman Wellinghoff tells us about the hottest day of the year 2011 in the Midwest and the effect that had hour-by-hour on the grid and on wholesale utility pricing. In summary, the talk demonstrates that the FERC commissioners get the smart grid and the necessity "to unleash the information and unleash the power" of the American electrical grid.

Short Biography:
Jon Wellinghoff was named Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by President Barack Obama on March 19, 2009.

First appointed as a Commissioner to FERC in 2006, Chairman Wellinghoff is an energy law attorney with 37 years of experience in regulatory, consumer and commercial law. Prior to joining FERC, he was in private practice focusing exclusively on client matters related to renewable energy, energy efficiency and distributed generation.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club
For more information, contact:  MIT Energy Club
energyclub@mit.edu 

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Saturday, November 3
---------------------------

The Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology: Student Oral Presentations
Saturday, November 03, 2012
8:00a–1:00p
MIT, Building W20, Mezzanine Lounge Room, Stratton Student Center, Bldg. W20, 3rd Floor, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

The Siemens Foundation takes great pleasure in inviting the students, faculty, and staff of MIT to the Student Oral Presentations.

The Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology is the nation's premiere math and science research competition for high school students. The Siemens Foundation provides nearly $2 million in college scholarships and awards each year for talented high school students in the United States. By supporting outstanding students today, and recognizing the teachers and schools that inspire their excellence, the Foundation helps nurture tomorrow's scientists and engineers.

Web site: http://www.siemens-foundation.org/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Information Center
For more information, contact:  Joe Coen
617-253-5734
jcoen@mit.edu

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I am pleased to announce that the *Massachusetts Restorative Justice Task Force *will convene a day-long summit *
Building Communities of Care Wherever We Are
Saturday, November 3, 2012
8:30am to 5:00pm
Harvard Law School, Cambridge
Registration and breakfast will be held from 8:30am to 9:00am and the conference will start promptly at 9:00am.

Building Communities of Care Wherever We Are is a day-long gathering that will equip participants with tools to build restorative justice and transformative practices.  We will use a "care lens" wherever there is an opening including:
Schools
Youth centers
Domestic violence and sexual assault centers
Faith communities
Prisons

We will explore perspectives, skills, practices and resources to use with different populations and settings. Participants will experience healing dialogue, peacemaking circles and other innovative approaches to create nurturing communities.

Key topics will include the following:
Examine our own mindsets;
Justice, integrity and community values;
Preventive approaches, hope and healing;
Restorative justice and transformative practices in specific contexts;
Circle practice; and
Building the world we want to create.

Space is limited so register today!  To reserve your spot, please register at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2DB9RY5

Please distribute this announcement to your networks!

We welcome organizations and networks that would like to sign on as conference supporters.  If your organization would like to sign on as a conference supporter, please contact Barbara Best, Children's Defense Fund at bbest@childrensdefense.org

Supporting organizations and networks will be listed in conference materials.

For questions or additional information, please contact Barbara Best,
Children's Defense Fund, bbest@childrensdefense.org (202.320.2328) or
Pierre Berastain, Renewal House, pberastain@uuum.org (214.957.0363)

------------------------------------

9th Annual Energy Symposium @ Harvard Business School – “Navigating a constantly evolving energy landscape”
Friday, November 2, 2012 - Saturday, November 3, 2012
Harvard Business School Campus, Harvard Way, Allston
Register at http://www.hbsenergysymposium.com/#!register/c24vq

The 9th Annual HBS Energy Symposium will feature top industry executives, investors, entrepreneurs, innovators and startup companies. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn about and discuss key issues and trends relevant to practitioners in the energy industry. The symposium will provide insights and answer questions about the current state and future of the energy industry and give attendees a chance to network with leading professionals representing a diverse group of firms, markets and geographies.

Highlights include:
Nine panels covering diverse energy topics including energy policy,
entrepreneurship, energy finance, VC and renewable energy
Panel moderation by Harvard Business School faculty
Keynote speeches from top industry executives and visionaries, including:
Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy
Dr. Cheryl Martin, Deputy Director of Commercialization, ARPA-E
Arno Harris CEO, Recurrent Energy and Chairman, Solar Energy Industry Association
Networking lunch and cocktail hour

Conference attendees will have the opportunity to learn about and discuss key issues and trends relevant to practitioners in the energy industry. The symposium will provide insights and answer questions about the current and future states of the energy industry while giving attendees the opportunity to network with leading professionals representing a diverse group of firms, markets and geographies. In addition, the HBS E&E Club is partnering with the MIT Energy Club to host the 2nd HBS Energy Startup Showcase and networking event, which will be the culmination of the conference activities and a focal point for many attendees. Select energy firms will have the opportunity to provide information about their company and to interact with representatives from other companies as well as conference attendees and industry stakeholders including investors, entrepreneurs, press, academics, Harvard & MIT graduate students, and more.

http://www.hbsenergysymposium.com/

Editorial Comment:  This conference costs money but may well be worth it.

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Weatherization Barnraising
Saturday, November 3rd
9 am to 1 pm
First Parish Church, Arlington Center
Sign up at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEVsdno4dlBEX3lUZFR0OXlWOWF2RkE6MQ#gid

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Sunday, November 4
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Harvard Business School Cyberposium Tech and Media Conference
Sunday, November 4, 2012 
9:00am - 4:30pm
Harvard Business School 500 Soldiers Field Road, Boston
Cost:  $25
Register Here:  http://www.cyberposium.com/

Held annually for the past 17 years, Cyberposium is the largest MBA technology conference in the world.  The conference facilitates an interactive network of current and future business leaders to engage in a provocative dialog about technology and its impact on business and society.

We expect 600 – 800 attendees, including students from HBS, Harvard University, MIT, MIT Sloan, and Babson College; business leaders from Boston, New Hampshire, and NYC; and other members of the Boston area and international entrepreneurship community. A tangible-products expo during lunch will allow participants and panelists to engage with technology and while sharing their excitement about new and future developments.

With the theme of “Access,” this year’s Cyberposium addresses our increasingly ubiquitous web connectivity at home and at work. We will explore the increasing presence of technology in realms such as music, in-store payments, and healthcare, and consider where and how new companies blossom. We’ll also investigate the blurring lines between what’s online and what’s offline in panels looking at advertising, big data, and user interface design.

We hope to see you there!

Panels for Cyberposium 2012:
Education Technology
Healthcare Technology
Cultural Entrepreneurship and the Arts
Digital Media: The Future of Music
Subscription Business Models: Evolution or Fad?
Entrepreneurship Hubs
The Evolution of Payments
Mobile Advertising
Omni-channel Retail
Social Media in the Enterprise
The Impact of Big Data
Hardware & User Interface Design

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Monday, November 5
--------------------------

MASS Seminar - Robert Black of Georgia Tech
Monday, November 05, 2012
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-915, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (the tallest building on campus)

MASS Seminar
The MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS) is a student-run weekly seminar series within PAOC. Seminar topics include all research concerning the atmosphere and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars usually take place on Monday from 12-1pm followed by a lunch with graduate students. Besides the seminar, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged. The seminar series is run by graduate students and is intended mainly for students to interact with individuals outside the department, but faculty and post docs certainly participate.

Web site: http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/events/calendars/mass
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Atmospheric Science Seminars, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:  MASS organizing committee
mass@mit.edu 

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"Electricity Sector Reform: Towards Low-Carbon Generation - Lessons from Europe and Germany"
Monday, November 5, 2012 
12:15pm - 1:45pm
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

with Christian Van Hirschhausen, Research Director, DIW Berlin (German Institute for Economic Research)

Lunch will be provided.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/events.html
Contact Name:  Louisa Lund
louisa_lund@harvard.edu

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"Currents of Sustainability in Practice: Beyond the Individual Building"
Monday, November 05, 2012
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Meredith Elbaum, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, President, The Elbaum Group, Boston
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture

For more information, contact:  617-253-1876

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Covering Conflict: War, Storytelling and the Impact of Witnessing Violence
WHEN  Mon., Nov. 5, 2012, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Bowie Vernon Room, K-262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution
SPEAKER(S)  Finbar O'Reilly, Reuters photographer and Neiman Fellow; and Bessel A. van der Kolk, medical director, Boston Trauma Center
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Donna Hicks: dhicks@wcfia.harvard.edu, 617-519-8574

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Water Lecture Series: Wetter Weather? Water on a Changing Planet
WHEN  Mon., Nov. 5, 2012, 5 p.m.
WHERE  Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S)  Dan Schrag, the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a professor of environmental science and engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment at Harvard University
COST  Free
CONTACT INFO 617.495.8600
NOTE  The Radcliffe Institute's Water Lectures Series will be relatively informal presentations by Harvard faculty, followed by discussion with attendees, on topics that approach water from multidisciplinary perspectives. The collegial events are intended to present, and potentially to link, faculty interests, in order to learn more about research currently under way and to foster connections across Harvard schools.
LINK  http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2012-dan-schrag-water-lecture\

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Peer-to-Peer Politics: Moving Beyond Left and Right 
Monday, November 05, 2012
6:00p
MIT, Building E14, Third Floor Atrium, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Steven Johnson, Larry Lessig, Yochai Benkler & Susan Crawford
An election even conversation with author Steven Johnson and Harvard Law Professors Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler.

The market versus the state. Big capital versus big government. Just about everything we talk about in politics today revolves around those two poles. What if there's a third option? Instead of those two, creaky old monoliths, imagine a web of collaboration that's neither market nor state where no one is in charge because everyone is in charge. In his new book, "Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked World," author Steven Johnson argues that the core principles that apply to the design and function of the Internet could be applied to solving many different kinds of problems, across dozens of sectors, including cities. What if the most powerful tool to advance the cause of social progress is the peer-to-peer network? Join hosts Aaron Naparstek of MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Ethan Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab for an election eve conversation with three leading thinkers on the Internet and society.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKHDIXn5ZcE
Web site: http://dusp.mit.edu/cdd/event/cdd-forum-new-urban-interface-1
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning, City Design and Development
For more information, contact:  Sandra Elliott
617-253-5115
sandrame@mit.edu 

-------------------------------

GSD Public Lecture Program. "Modernist Planning and the Foundations of Urban Violence in Latin America"
WHEN  Mon., Nov. 5, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard GSD
SPEAKER(S)  Diane Davis
CONTACT INFO events@gsd.harvard.edu
NOTE  Diane Davis is professor of urbanism and development at Harvard GSD. Her lecture, the keynote of the open house for the Master in Urban Planning Program, argues that urban violence in today's Latin American cities is among the unintended consequences of the efforts by city planners to implement modernist planning ideas.
LINK www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/diane-davis-modernist-planning-and-the-foundations-of-urban.html

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 "Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter."   
Monday, November 5
7 pm
Harvard Science Center C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Joanne Chang, Flour Bakery  

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ACT Lecture | Chip Lord - Recent Projects: Ant Farm Media Van v.08 [Time Capsule] and To & From LAX
Monday, November 05, 2012
7:00p–9:00p
MIT, Building E15-001, ACT Cube, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Chip Lord, Professor Emeritus, Film & Digital Media, UC Santa Cruz
Chip Lord's talk presents several recent projects and includes a historical introduction to the radical art and architecture group Ant Farm, 1968-1978. In 1970 Ant Farm travelled cross-country in a "Media Van" shooting video and networking with other artists. Ant Farm Media van v.08 [Time Capsule], an interactive sculpture made in 2008, invites users to leave a "donation" to a digital Time Capsule, but also functions as a small video theater showing works made in 1970. This on-going project migrates across time and space and intersects with new ubiquitous technologies.

As a member of Ant Farm, Chip Lord produced the video art classics Media Burn and The Eternal Frame. His work has been shown at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arts, Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; SFMOMA; and at The De Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum among others.

Web site: http://act.mit.edu/projects-and-events/lectures-series/2012-fall/nov-5-chip-lord-recent-projects-ant-farm-media-van-v-08-time-capsule-and-to-from-lax/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and open to the public
Sponsor(s): MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, Department of Architecture
For more information, contact:  Laura Anca Chichisan
617-253-5229
act@mit.edu 

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Tuesday, November 6
---------------------------

Informal Workers in a Global Economy: Recent Trends, Current Debates, & Future Policies
WHEN  Tue., Nov. 6, 2012, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE  Belfer Building, Weil Town Hall, Lobby Level, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations
SPEAKER(S)  Martha Chen, lecturer in public policy, Harvard Kennedy School;
International Coordinator, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)
NOTE  Frontline with Faculty Series:  http://hausercenter.harvard.edu/1473/fall-2012-frontline-with-faculty-series/
LINK http://hausercenter.harvard.edu/1529/november-6-informal-workers-in-a-global-economy-recent-trends-current-debates-future-policies/

------------------------------------

Injecting Successful Charter School Strategies into Traditional Public Schools: Early Results from an Experiment in Houston
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
2:30p–4:00p
MIT, Building E62-650, 100 Main Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Roland Fryer (Harvard)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Seminar in Organizational Economics
For more information, contact:  Theresa Benevento
theresa@mit.edu

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"Cezanne's Gravity"
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
6:30p–8:30p
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Carol Armstrong, Professor of History of Art, Yale University
Architecture: History, Theory and Criticism Lecture Series
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture
For more information, contact:  617-253-7791

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Wednesday, November 7
------------------------------

Regional Economic & Development Planning in East Africa: Natural Gas - Fueling Tanzania Forward
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
9:30a–11:00a
MIT, Building 4-231, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Colonel (Retd.) Joseph Simbakalia, Regional Commissioner of Mtwara
Natural gas, discovered recently in coastal East Africa, has the potential to change the development equation in regional economic development and planning. Natural gas is coming ashore in Mtwara, Tanzania, a relatively undeveloped region in south-eastern Tanzania, which is creating opportunities and very serious social and environmental challenges. Colonel (Retd) Joseph Simbakalia, Regional Commissioner of Mtwara, is responsible for charting the future economic development plan for Mtwara. He will present the case to the audience and a distinguished faculty panel. This will be followed by responsive remarks from the panel, and an open question and answer period.

Web site: http://mitei.mit.edu/node/2000
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative, DUSP
For more information, contact:  Jameson Twomey
617-324-2408
jtwomey@mit.edu 

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Civil Wars, 1800-2012
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Stathis Kalyvas, Yale University
SSP Wednesday Seminar
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Security Studies Program
For more information, contact:  617-253-7529
valeriet@mit.edu 

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Migration to 'That Great Iron City': African American Environmental Consciousness in Chicago
WHEN  Wed., Nov. 7, 2012, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
SPEAKER(S)  Brian McCammack, Lecturer, History, Tufts University
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO 617.495.8508
dbievent@fas.harvard.edu
NOTE  A Q+A will follow the lecture
Feel free to bring a lunch
LINK http://dubois.fas.harvard.edu/calendar

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Direct Imaging of Exoplanets and Disks: Hubble, adaptive optics, & beyond
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 54-915, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (the tallest building on campus)

Speaker: Dr. Marshall Perrin, Instruments Division, Space Telescope Science Institute
EAPS Department Lecture Series
Web site: http://eapsweb.mit.edu/events/lectures
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:  Jacqui Taylor
617-253-2127
jtaylor@mit.edu 

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Who's Getting Globalized? The Size and Nature of International Trade Costs
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
4:00p–5:30p
MIT, Building  E51-345 - Please Note Room Change, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Speaker: David Atkin
Joint w/Harvard International Workshop
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): International Seminar
For more information, contact:  Theresa Benevento
theresa@mit.edu

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Everything is History/History is Everything
WHEN  Wed., Nov. 7, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Emerson Hall, 105, Harvard Yard, 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard History Department
SPEAKER(S)  Professors Jill Lepore, Niall Ferguson, Maya Jasanoff, Mark Kishlansky, James Kloppenberg, Ian Miller, Kelly O'Neill, Emma Rothschild, and Laurel Ulrich
LINK  http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/node/1296

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Dialogues of Silence
WHEN  Wed., Nov. 7, 2012, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Tsai Auditorium. CGIS South, Concourse level. 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Dance, Music, Poetry/Prose, Theater
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S)  Sabrina Lastman
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO mvramos@fas.harvard.edu
NOTE  Drawing from jazz, Latin American, and contemporary music, often integrating extended vocal techniques, New York based vocalist, performer, and composer Sabrina Lastman (Uruguay/ Israel) has created and performed interdisciplinary new music projects incorporating voice, sound, movement, and visuals. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Sabrina graduated from The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Israel. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, Yale University, New York University, La Mama, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, Rutgers University, Blue Note, Joe's Pub, Blues Alley Jazz, City University of New York and Classical Guitar Association of New York, among others.
LINK www.drclas.harvard.edu…

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GSD Public Lecture Program. "The City as Palimpsest"
WHEN  Wed., Nov. 7, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy St, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard GSD
SPEAKER(S)  Teju Cole
CONTACT INFO events@gsd.harvard.edu
NOTE  Teju Cole is a writer, photographer, and art historian based in Lagos and Brooklyn. He is author of a novella,Every Day is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, and the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is author of the Twitter project "Small Fates." An avid street photographer, he is currently work on a non-fiction narrative of Lagos.
LINK www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/teju-cole-the-city-as-palimpsest.html

---------------------------------

SITN Lecture - Clean Energy of the Future: Solar cells, Biofuels and Fuel Cell
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
7:00 PM
Armenise Amphitheater in Harvard Medical School Quadrangle, Longwood Avenue, across from the half traffic circle at Avenue Louis Pasteur.  The Armenise Amphitheater is the first building on the left (facing into the quadrangle).
For those of you not familiar with SITN's lecture format, lectures are free, accessible, and open to the public. All lectures are given entirely by graduate students at Harvard and focus on hot topics in science research and news.  They are 2 hours in length, with a 10 minute break in between.

They will have light refreshments before the lecture (coffee, tea, cookies, etc.)
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/sitn-seminars/

-----------------------------------

Pitfalls and Pathways in Conversations about Sustainability
Wednesday, 07 November, 2012
07:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Belmont Town Hall, 245 Concord Avenue, Belmont

Sustainable Belmont presents Jason Jay, director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative for Business and Society, November 7 at Belmont Town Hall Selectmen's Meeting Room, on Pitfalls and Pathways in Conversations about Sustainability.

Mr. Jay says that "as advocates for sustainability we often find ourselves stuck in unproductive conversations, where resistance and defense of the status quo seem to stymie our efforts. This talk explores the idea that we can be our own worst enemy in these contexts, falling into common pitfalls of self-righteousness, blame and disempowerment, and cynicisms about economic motivations for sustainability programs. By examining these pitfalls, and the deeper psychological tensions that lie beneath, we can find pathways around these pitfalls."  This talk will include an interactive workshop where we practice new techniques.

Jason Jay is also a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, teaching courses on sustainable business as part of the Sustainability Certificate, and gets students and alumni engaged in hands-on projects with leading companies and organizations. He is an active leader of sustainability initiatives across MIT.  Through the MIT Sustainable Societies Research Group, he brings together scholars from across the Institute to examine the invention, implementation, and transformation required for a sustainable society.  He has helped improve the energy and environmental footprint of the MIT campus by founding the MIT Generator and the Greening MIT community engagement campaign, and serving as founding member of the Campus Energy "Walk the Talk" Task Force.
Mr. Jay holds a Ph. D. in Organization Studies from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and an AB and M.Ed from Harvard University.
The talk is free and open to all.

Event Contact Info:  Judy Otto
Email:  otto.judy@gmail.com

-------------------------------

Censoring Children
Wednesday, November 7
7pm
First Parish (Unitarian Universalist), 3 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge

MIT's Noam Chomsky and Barbara Lubin of the Middle East Children's Alliance discuss A Child's View of Gaza,  the book of Palestinian children's artwork slated for exhibition
at the  Oakland Museum of Children's Art. The exhibition was canceled at the  last minute without explanation. Have children become pawns in a larger conflict? How has this come about? What does it say about the  possibilities for peaceful resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian  impasse?

Co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston;  American Jews for a Just Peace;  and the Middle East Education Group at First Parish in Cambridge.
Cambridge Forum
617-495-2727
http://www.cambridgeforum.org
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL53E08C59DDCA4890

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Upcoming
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**********

Thurs 11/8 The Unpeoples & the Elections: A Debriefing with Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad & Val Moghadam

No matter how dismal the candidates may be, every US presidential election is made consequential by our prolonged crises of environment, economy, and peace...?

In a surreal political climate where corporations are endowed with the rights of people and people are stripped of the their rights, three distinguished activist thinkers and scholars come together to help us think through the election results and how we should be responding.?

Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist and political philosopher, Vijay Prashad, the incisive commentator and analyst of global politics and chronicler of the "Darker Nations," join the Iranian-born, international relations scholar, feminist and theorist of revolutions, Val Moghadam in a globally-televised evening of conversation and reflection at the Old South Church (http://goo.gl/maps/gHmn1) on Thursday, November 8, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.?

Visit http://www.ChomskySpeaks.org/ for your event tickets (seating is limited); tickets are $15/person or $10 for low income/unemployed/students. Proceeds from the event will benefit encuentro 5 (http://encuentro5.org/).

"Unpeoples" is term from scholar Mark Curtis's (2008) analysis of foreign policy, "Unpeople: those whose lives are deemed worthless, expendable in the pursuit of power and commercial gain."

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GreenPort Forum LBJ Apartments Energy Renovation Tour
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
7 PM
150 Erie Street, Cambridge
Meet in Community Room, first floor

Join Cambridge Housing Authority's Tina Miller for a tour of the Lyndon B. Johnson apts. The just completed high rise retrofit estimates 55% energy savings by switching from electric to gas fired heating augmented by combined heat and co-generation systems, roof top solar pv arrays, passive solar plenums, energy recovery units, and a new energy saving exterior shell.

GreenPort envisions and encourages a just and sustainable Cambridgeport neighborhood.  
For more information, contact Steve Wineman at steven.wineman@gmail,com

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Ignite Spatial Boston 4 - A Geospatial Good Time
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 
6:30 PM - 9:30 PM
CGIS South, Harvard University, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2233676988/mcivte?utm_source=I+Spatial+Boston+List

Ignite Spatial Boston is an Ignite event with a geospatial twist. Ignite is a geek event in over 100 cities worldwide. At the events Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes.

Ignite Spatial Boston will be held on Wednesday, November 14, from 6:30pm to 9:30pm at the CGIS South Building at Harvard University. The event is free, however, due to limited space at the venue you must RSVP on this page.

If you would like to speak, please submit a proposal. All talks will be recorded and posted on online after the event. We will post an agenda here once speakers are finalized.

Please let others know about the event using the social network of your choice or click on the the Social Network icons on the registration page.

How to help
Submit a presentation, or get someone you know would do a great job presenting to submit.
Spread the word about this event. Make sure you let everyone know this is happening
Help us find some sponsors for refreshments.

Organizers

This event is a being organized by the members of the AvidGeo Meetup. We get together once a month for an informal gathering with two short talks about user and developer topics about geospatial technology.

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Opportunity

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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!

Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Membership in the coop costs $2.50 per quart. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch.  No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.

For more information checkout.
https://sites.google.com/site/somervilleyogurtcoop/home

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Boiler Rebate
If your boiler is from 1983 or earlier, Mass Save will give a $1,750 to $4,000 rebate to switch it out for a new efficient boiler that uses the same fuel (i.e. if you have oil, you have to continue to use oil) so long as it is installed by July 31, 2012.

Call Mass Save (866 527-7283) to sign up for a home energy assessment or sign-up online at  www.nextsteplivinginc.com/HEET  and HEET will receive a $10 contribution from Next Step Living for every completed assessment.

This is a great way to reduce climate change emissions for the next 20 or so years the boiler lasts, while saving money.

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CEA Solar Hot Water Grants
Cambridge, through the Cambridge Energy Alliance initiative, is offering a limited number of grants to residents and businesses for solar hot water systems.  The grants will cover 50% of the remaining out of pocket costs of the system after other incentives, up to $2,000.

Applications will be accepted up to November 19, 2012 and are available on a first come, first serve basis until funding runs out.  The Cambridge grant will complement other incentives including the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center solar thermal grants.  For more information, see
http://cambridgeenergyalliance.org/resources/additional-resources/solar-hot-water-grant-program

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Cambridge Residents: Free Home Thermal Images

Have you ever wanted to learn where your home is leaking heat by having an energy auditor come to your home with a thermal camera?  With that info you then know where to fix your home so it's more comfortable and less expensive to heat.  However, at $200 or so, the cost of such a thermal scan is a big chunk of change.

HEET Cambridge has now partnered with Sagewell, Inc. to offer Cambridge residents free thermal scans.

Sagewell collects the thermal images by driving through Cambridge in a hybrid vehicle equipped with thermal cameras.  They will scan every building in Cambridge (as long as it's not blocked by trees or buildings or on a private way).  Building owners can view thermal images of their property and an analysis online. The information is password protected so that only the building owner can see the results.

Homeowners, condo-owners and landlords can access the thermal images and an accompanying analysis free of charge. Commercial building owners and owners of more than one building will be able to view their images and analysis for a small fee.

The scans will be analyzed in the order they are requested.

Go to Sagewell.com.  Type in your address at the bottom where it says "Find your home or building" and press return.  Then click on "Here" to request the report.

That's it.  When the scans are done in a few weeks, your building will be one of the first to be analyzed. The accompanying report will help you understand why your living room has always been cold and what to do about it.

With knowledge, comes power (or in this case saved power and money, not to mention comfort).

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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhwM202dDYxdUZJVGFscnY1VGZ3aXc6MQ

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HEET has partnered with NSTAR and Mass Save participating contractor Next Step Living to deliver no-cost Home Energy Assessments to Cambridge residents.

During the assessment, the energy specialist will:

Install efficient light bulbs (saving up to 7% of your electricity bill)
Install programmable thermostats (saving up to 10% of your heating bill)
Install water efficiency devices (saving up to 10% of your water bill)
Check the combustion safety of your heating and hot water equipment
Evaluate your home’s energy use to create an energy-efficiency roadmap
If you get electricity from NSTAR, National Grid or Western Mass Electric, you already pay for these assessments through a surcharge on your energy bills.  You might as well use the service.

Please sign up at http://nextsteplivinginc.com/heet/?outreach=HEET or call Next Step Living at 866-867-8729.  A Next Step Living Representative will call to schedule your assessment.

HEET will help answer any questions and ensure you get all the services and rebates possible.

(The information collected will only be used to help you get a Home Energy Assessment.  We won’t keep the data or sell it.)

(If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to call HEET’s Jason Taylor at 617 441 0614.)


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Resource

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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide

SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!

To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha@sbnboston.org

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Massachusetts Attitudes About Climate Change – An opinion survey of Massachusetts residents conducted by MassINC and sponsored by the Barr Foundation found that 77% of respondents believe that global warming has “probably been happening” and 59% of all respondents see see it as being at least partially caused by human pollution. Only 42% of the state’s residents say global warming will have very serious consequences for Massachusetts if left unaddressed. The 18 to 29 age group is more likely to believe global warming is appearing and caused by humans compared to the 60+ age group.  African-American (56%) and Latino residents (69%) are more likely than white residents (40%) to believe global warming will be a very serious problem if left unaddressed.  The MassINC report, titled The 80 Percent Challenge:  What Massachusetts must do to meet targets and make headway on climate change (http://www.massinc.org/Research/The-80-percent-challenge.aspx), contains many other findings.

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Free Monthly Energy Analysis

CarbonSalon is a free service that every month can automatically track your energy use and compare it to your past energy use (while controlling for how cold the weather is). You get a short friendly email that lets you know how you’re doing in your work to save energy.

https://www.carbonsalon.com/

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Boston Food System

"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."

The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas.   Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities.  Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers.  Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.

It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs

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Artisan Asylum  http://artisansasylum.com/

Sprout & Co:  Community Driven Investigations

Greater Boston Solidarity Economy Mapping Project  http://www.transformationcentral.org/solidarity/mapping/mapping.html
a project by Wellesley College students that invites participation, contact jmatthaei@wellesley.edu

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Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston  http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/

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Links to events at 60 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://www.BostonScienceLectures.com

Boston Area Computer User Groups  http://www.bugc.org/

Arts and Cultural Events List  http://aacel.blogspot.com/

Cambridge Civic Journal  http://www.rwinters.com

http://www.massclimateaction.net/calendar/events/index.php

http://www.mitenergyclub.org/calendar/mit_events_template

http://www.environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/

http://green.harvard.edu/events

http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/tabid/57/Default.aspx

http://boston.nerdnite.com/

http://www.meetup.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/

http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/calendar

http://harddatafactory.com/Johnny_Monsarrat/index.html

http://bostoneventsinsider.com/boston_events/

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