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
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo
----------------------------------------------------------
*******************************************
Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index
******
———
Index
———
******
——————————————————
Monday, April 29 - Saturday, May 4
——————————————————
Sustainaville Week
————————
Monday, April 29
————————
11am How Norms Change: New Evidence from Data and Experiments
12pm On Soil Moisture, Plants, and the Atmospheric Boundary Layer
12pm Towards Energy Storage for Profitable Renewable Integration: What's Needed and When
12pm Learning Sciences Speaker Series: Justin Reich
12pm BU AR/VR Festival
12:15pm Agency and Automation: Digital Disobedience and Its Infrastructure
3pm Paul Alivisatos: Perspectives in Nanotechnology Seminar Series
3:30pm Books@Baker with Gary Pisano
4:30pm Community Voices: Responses to Violence in Boston - Slomoff Symposium 2019
5:30pm Introducing the Electricity Growth and Use in Developing Economies (E-GUIDE) Initiative
5:30pm Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century: David Eaves (Faculty Director, DigitalHKS)
6pm A Conversation with Senator Bob Corker: Reflections on a Life of Leadership
6pm Medium Design
6pm Lean In: The Regulator’s Perspective (Gina McCarthy)
6pm VR in energy and aerospace by Packet 39
7pm Broadband and Beers with Upgrade Cambridge
7:15pm Community Conversation: What is a Progressive Housing Position?
—————————
Tuesday, April 30
—————————
11am Modeling Opinion Dynamics in the Age of Algorithmic Personalization
11:45am Ghettoside: Understanding Urban Violence in Los Angeles and Across the Nation, and What Can Be Done About It
12pm What the Quaternary paleobiological record can tell us about vegetation turnover and climate change?
12pm Arctic Shipping and the Northern Sea Route, Shipping Trends, and The New Polar Code Regulations: The Concerns and Contributions of The International Insurance Industry
12pm Tuesday Seminar Series: Resistance and Repression: One Year on from Nicaragua's Civil Uprising
12:30pm BU URBAN Spring Symposium
4pm Are Today's Frontiers In Cities? A Lecture by Saskia Sassen
4pm Open Learning xTalks: Online Learning Innovations and Interventions
4:30pm Fireside Chat with Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios
5pm Our Extravagant Universe: The Undiscovery of Cosmic Deceleration
5:30pm Youth on Climate Justice: Why should we care?
5:30pm Cleantech Startups: Navigating the Mass Cleantech Landscape
6pm Tackling Climate Change as an Issue of Justice
6pm Boston Green Drinks - April 2019 Happy Hour
6:30pm We Are America: A Conversation
7pm Be the Change: Emily Bazelon & Juliette Kayyem
7pm Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi
7pm White Nationalism, Community Response & the Rule of Law
7:30pm Green tech Entrepreneur Forum & Brainstorming
—————————
Wednesday, May 1
—————————
10am Mary Robinson keynote: Climate Justice Can Help Secure a Good Future for All
12pm Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar: Ken Caldera
12:30pm Cities as Climate Leaders: The Carbon-Free Boston Initiative
4pm SustainaVille Greentown Labs Tour
4pm xTalk: Innovating Education on a Large Scale: What, Why, and How
4:30pm The 2019 Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health with Dr. Mary T. Bassett: An Unbroken Thread: The Pursuit of Health, Equity, and Racial Justice*
4:30pm The 2019 Harvard President's Innovation Challenge - Awards Ceremony
5pm Lean In: Public Commenting in Practice (Wendy Jacobs)
5pm Ford Hall Forum First Amendment Award
6pm Tapping into Plants' Natural Chemical Arsenals Without Taxing Nature
6pm Brookline, Massachusetts, and the Origins of Suburbia
6pm Poetry Fuels Democracy - CAMBRIDGE FORUM Live: Poet Richard Blanco
6:30pm How AI is Changing the World - For the Better
7pm A Grassland Restoration Tale of Weeds, Wildlife, and Renewal
7pm Hacking the Human Mind, the Art and Science of Neuro-Weapons
————————
Thursday, May 2
————————
3pm 54th Annual Whitehead Lectures
4:15pm Why Brain Science Needs an Edit: Non-human Primate Studies in Neuroscience and Biomedicine
5:30pm The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865
6pm Ben Green: The Smart Enough City
6pm The Human Swarm: How Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
6pm Waste Myth Busters: Everything you didn't know about waste and recycling
6pm The Furniture Trust 9th Annual Eco-Carpentry Challenge
7pm A Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine
7pm Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11
7pm Professor Philip Deloria will discuss and sign Becoming Mary Sully
7pm Melissa and Maya Ludtke, Touching Home in China: In Search of Missing Girlhoods
7pm FREE Movie Night: Citizen Jane
———————
Friday, May 3
———————
8:30am MIT Sustainability Connect 2019
11am Kai-Fu Lee, Dertouzos Distinguished Lecture: The Era of Artificial Intelligence
12pm Rapid Climate Change: Evidence from Andean Ice Fields and Beyond
12pm Managing high salinity brines from geologic carbon sequestration
3pm Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods
3pm 54th Annual Whitehead Lectures: What About the Workers?
5pm 2019 Keynote: Hustle vs. Flow — Real Talk about the Real Entertainment Industry Pipeline
7pm Discussion & Signing - Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health
7pm TEDxCambridge 2019
————————
Saturday May 4
————————
9am 13th Annual Youth Summit on Climate Change
9am Hacking the Archive: Co-designing the next 50 years of social action
9:30am Water in Dedham - Past, Present and Future
9:30am 2nd Annual Poverty Teach In
12pm Annual spring plant swap
1:30pm TEDxHultBoston 2019: Global Experiences
———————
Sunday, May 5
———————
7pm Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
———————
Monday, May 6
———————
8am Discuss Cryptocurrency Research with MIT's DCI [Breakfast]
12pm Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC Colloquium]: Inez Fung (UC Berkeley)
12pm Data, Innovation, & the Future of Criminal Justice
12pm The Value of Electricity Reliability in India
4pm MIT Solve: Coastal Communities Workshop
4:15pm The Divestment Debate — A Panel Discussion
5pm Valuing Nature in Real-World Decisions — with Gretchen C. Daily
5:30pm Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century
7pm FLASH TALKS: Probing The Future
——————————————————
Tuesday, May 7 – Wednesday, May 8
——————————————————
Amazonia and Our Planetary Futures: A Conference on Climate Change
————————
Tuesday, May 7
————————
11:30am Climate Risk and Finance
12pm The E-Cigarette Dilemma: A Public Health Perspective
12:30pm Solve Transportation + Climate
3:30pm Nanomaterials and Light: New Opportunities in Energy Research
4pm Solve at MIT 2019 - Opening Plenary
5:30pm How We Win: A Workshop with George Lakey on Nonviolent Direct Action
6pm Sheldon Krimsky: GMOs Decoded
6pm The Green New Deal
6:30pm Stepping Up: Business In The Era of Climate Change Part 4 (The Road Map Of The Future: Transportation)
6:30pm Getting to the Point: The Path to Affordable Housing in Massachusetts
6:30pm Dirt Rich: Discovering the power beneath our feet
7pm The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
7pm Surrogacy, Labor and the Abolition of the Family
7pm THE BURN ZONE with Renee Linnell
*******************************************
My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
*******************************************
——————————————————
Monday, April 29 - Saturday, May 4
——————————————————
Sustainaville Week
See http://somervillema.gov/sustainavilleweek for the full event lineup
————————
Monday, April 29
————————
How Norms Change: New Evidence from Data and Experiments
Monday, April 29
11:00 am
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th floor, Boston
ANDREA BARONCHELLI, City University of London
Researchers and policy makersagree that new social norms could help solve large-scale problems, from climatechange to antibiotic resistance. However, our understanding of how norms changehas been limited so far by the lack of suitable data. In this talk, I willdiscuss two recent studies that shed light on this process. In the first [PNAS115, 8260 (2018)], we examined linguistic norm shifts in English and Spanish.We identified three main drivers of norm change that leave markedly differentsignatures in the data, namely (i) authority, (ii) informal institutions and(iii) a bottom-up process triggered by a small number of committed users (akinto a 'critical mass' phenomenon). We proposed a simple model that reproducesthe empirical observations. In the second study [Science 360, 1116 (2018)], wefocused on critical mass theory and tested it experimentally in artificialsocial networks. We let a group of individuals evolve their own socialconvention. Then, once the agreement was reached, we introduced fewconfederates pushing for a different norm. As their number crossed a tippingpoint - roughly 25% of the group size – the whole population would follow themand adopt the new norm. This is the first empirical evidence for the widelyadopted theory of critical mass. These results will help better understand bothhow norms change spontaneously in our societies and how to design effectivepolicies to foster collective behavioral change.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Andrea Baronchelli is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at City University of London, a fellow at the ISI Foundation in Turin, and a research fellow at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. Prior to joining City University of London in 2013, he was at MOBS Lab (Northeastern University) and at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona. He received his BS and MS in Theoretical Physics from the Sapienza University of Rome and his PhD in Physics from the same university. Andrea is an Associate Editor at EPJ Data Science, PLoS ONE and Frontiers in Blockchain. His research is on the dynamics of social and cognitive systems using mathematical modelling, network and data science, and experiments with human subjects. Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/andreabaronchelli/.
———————————
On Soil Moisture, Plants, and the Atmospheric Boundary Layer
Monday, April 29
12:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Amilcare Porporato, Princeton University.
Abstract: The terrestrial water balance and the related soil-moisture dynamics affect vegetation growth, which in turn controls the water and energy fluxes between the land and the atmosphere. Using minimalist models of these coupled dynamics, we explore the role of photosynthesis types and plant-water stress on the diurnal evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer. We focus on the initiation of moist convection taking place when the atmospheric boundary layer reaches the lifting condensation level (LCL) in conditions of high convective available potential energy (CAPE). We show how transpiration regimes of different photosynthetic types (e.g., C3, C4 and CAM) and main crops may imply different controls of such occurrences, with potential feedbacks on the regional water cycle.
EPS Colloquium
Contact Name: Summer Smith
———————————
Towards Energy Storage for Profitable Renewable Integration: What's Needed and When
Monday, April 29
12:00PM TO 1:15PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Jay Whitacre, Trustee Professor in Energy, Department of Engineering and Public Policy and Director, Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University
Lunch is provided.
HKS Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
———————————
Learning Sciences Speaker Series: Justin Reich
Monday, April 29
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT
BU, Castle Room, Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, 4th Floor, Boston
“From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies”
New education technologies are often introduced in tandem with promises to “democratize education.” Unfortunately, the benefits of these new tools often accrue primarily to the already-advantaged. In this talk, Justin Reich will present some of well-developed lines of research that explain why improving equitable outcomes through technology is so challenging, and emerging lines of research that aim at developing a set of design principles for digital equity. Background reading can be found at https://dmlhub.net/publications/good-intentions-real-outcomes-equity-design-learning-technologies/
———————————
BU AR/VR Festival
Monday, April 29
12:00 PM to 5:00 PM
BU, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
The AR/VR Festival is Boston University’s second AR/VR exposition event. Our event aims to connect heads of the AR/VR industry, startups, scholars, and students at BU’s newest innovation hub, the BUild Lab.
Each company will get their own room where they can showcase to attendees, as well as receiving stage time to do presentations, while attendees can demo different AR/VR technology.
The exhibitors include PTC, Wayfair, Simmetri, AugmentX, Hoverlay, Arrowstreet, STYLY VR and EmotiVR.
Big thanks to our sponsors PTC, Wayfair, BU Spark!, Boston University Computer Science Department, and Innovate@BU for supporting this event.
This event is part of Innovation Week at BU! April 20-26 is an entire week dedicated to recognizing and celebrating novel ideas and endeavors across Boston University and the community! Celebrate with us and check for the full schedule here: http://www.bu.edu/innovate/innovationweek/
———————————
Agency and Automation: Digital Disobedience and Its Infrastructure
Monday, April 29
12:15PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Robin Celikates, University of Amsterdam, Philosophy
Please RSVP via the online form by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
STS Circle at Harvard
———————————
Paul Alivisatos: Perspectives in Nanotechnology Seminar Series
Monday, April 29
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
What will happen when artificial nanocrystals can be observed and controlled at the level of single atoms? with PAUL ALIVISATOS, UC Berkeley
Colloidal nanocrystals have already emerged as one of several artificial building blocksfor nanoscience and nanotechnology. Small crystals of a few thousand atoms are regularly used in applications as varied as biological imaging and television displays. These application arise from the ability to control the average size, shape, and topology of building blocks whose fundamental properties vary in predictable ways at the nanoscale. Today there is a new challenge to control these materials, not just on average, but with precision at the atomic level. With such controls, it may be possible, for instance, to create a new class of photon-based energy conversion technologies. To succeed, it will be necessary to develop new methods for observing the structures of nanocrystals, and one example of such a tool using the graphene liquid cell will be described.
This event is free and open to the public. Advance registration required.
———————————
Books@Baker with Gary Pisano
Monday, April 29
3:30 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field Road, Aldrich Hall 210, Boston
Gary Pisano, Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Author of Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation
Every company wants to grow, and the most proven way is through innovation. The conventional wisdom is that only disruptive, nimble startups can innovate; once a business gets bigger and more complex corporate arteriosclerosis sets in. In Creative Construction, Professor Gary Pisano's remarkable research conducted over three decades, and his extraordinary on-the-ground experience with big companies and fast-growing ones that have moved beyond the start-up stage, provides new thinking about how the scale of bigger companies can be leveraged for advantage in innovation.
Bigger companies are complex. They need to sustain revenue streams from existing businesses, and deal with Wall Street's demands. These organizations require a different set of management practices and approaches – a discipline focused on the strategies, systems and culture for taking their companies to the next level. Big can be beautiful, but it requires creative construction by leaders to avoid the creative destruction that is all-too-often the fate of too many.
There will be a Q&A with the author, and books will available for purchase and signing.
———————————
Community Voices: Responses to Violence in Boston - Slomoff Symposium 2019
Monday, April 29
4:30 PM EDT
UMass Boston, Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor Atrium, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
4:30 pm—Reception | Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor Atrium
6:00 pm—Lectureship | Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor Atrium
Boston in 2016 and 2017 saw a jump in violent crimes and murders after years of low rates. 2018 saw lower rates, but violence remains a concern in many neighborhoods across the city. What is responsible for this violence, and what can the peace, conflict resolution, and nonviolence fields do to help our communities roll back the violence and address its root causes?
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins will give the keynote address on this subject, followed by a panel of community activists including Pastor Ray Hammond. The audience will then be invited to join the discussion through a participatory conversation through which we generate some further ideas on addressing violence in Boston.
———————————
Introducing the Electricity Growth and Use in Developing Economies (E-GUIDE) Initiative
Monday, April 29
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Jay Taneja (UMASS Amherst)
Abstract: The past decade has seen dramatic improvement in the availability of electricity in developing countries. Investment, public policy, and research has focused heavily on increasing generating capacity and rolling out electricity connections, both on- and off-grid. An underlying assumption of the approach to power system development in recent years, in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, is that there is a nearly insatiable latent demand for electricity that, if met, will support broad and rapid socio-economic development. In this talk, I will challenge these two assumptions and advocate for more resources to be allocated to better understand the demand side of the power sector and developing means by which productive uses of electricity can be facilitated to support sustainable development. Towards this goal, I will introduce the Electricity Growth and Use in Developing Economies (E-GUIDE) Initiative, a new Rockefeller Foundation-funded project that aims to develop insights and tools for utilizing electricity consumption data to improve the planning and operation of power systems in developing regions. Among its activities, the Initiative will build models for predicting electricity consumption for new customers of utilities in emerging economies to improve system planning and develop integrated electricity-agriculture planning approaches to simultaneously promote productive uses of electricity and rural economic growth.
Bio: Jay Taneja is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He develops and studies applications of sensing and communications technology on the measurement and management of infrastructure systems in developing regions. Prior to joining UMass, he was a Research Scientist leading the Energy team at the IBM Research - Africa lab in Nairobi, Kenya, from 2013 to 2016. There, he focused on developing technology to improve electricity reliability and access in sub-Saharan Africa, collaborating with utilities and other energy service companies. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science at the University of California - Berkeley, where for his dissertation work, he built and studied supply-following electricity loads that change electricity consumption to match fluctuations of increasingly renewable electricity supplies.
———————————
Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century: David Eaves (Faculty Director, DigitalHKS)
Monday, April 29
5:30pm to 6:45pm
Harvard, Wexner Room 102, 79 JFK Street Cambridge
Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21stCentury is a new talk series organized and facilitated by Mathias Risse, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration. Drawing inspiration from the title of Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the series draws upon a range of scholars, technology leaders, and public interest technologists to address the ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.
Held on select Monday evenings at 5:30 – 6:45 in Wexner 102, and occasionally on other weekdays, the series will also be shared on Facebook Live and on the Carr Center website. A light dinner will be served.
David Eaves, Faculty Director of Digital HKS, will be giving a talk.
————————————
A Conversation with Senator Bob Corker: Reflections on a Life of Leadership
WHEN Monday, April 29, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Bob Corker, U.S. Senator from Tennessee (2007 – 2019); director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Belfer Professor of Technology and Global Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School; director, Technology and Public Purpose Project; United States Secretary of Defense (2015-2017)
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office, 617-495-1380
DETAILS Bob Corker (R-TN), former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, discusses his public service and lessons in leadership with former Secretary of Defense and current Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Ash Carter.
————————————
Medium Design
Monday, April 29
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, ACT Cube, E15-001, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Medium Design finds expanded means to generate change on the flip side of some dominant cultural habits. Inverting the authority given to declarations, master plans, standards or laws, Medium Design discovers extra political and aesthetic capacities in, activity, latency, indeterminacy, entanglement, heavy information, failure, temperament, and discrepancy. Instead of seeking solutions alone, problems can be addressed with responses that do not always work. Multiplying problems can be helpful. Messiness is smarter than newness. Obligations are more empowering than freedom. Histories can expand to include non-events. And discrepancy tutors sly forms of political activism that might more successfully outwit the world’s cunning forms of stupidity.
Keller Easterling is an architect, writer and professor at Yale. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), examines global infrastructure as a medium of polity. A recently published e-book essay titled Medium Design (Strelka Press, 2017) previews a forthcoming book of the same title. Another recent book, Subtraction (Sternberg, 2014), considers building removal or how to put the development machine into reverse. Other books include: Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999). Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home: The House that Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934-1960. She has published web installations including: Extrastatecraft, Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Her research and writing was included in the 2014 Venice Biennale, and will be included in the 2018 Biennale. She lectures and exhibits internationally.
Respondent: Rania Ghosn is Associate Professor of architecture and urbanism at MIT and founding partner of DESIGN EARTH. Her research engages the geographies of technological systems to address the aesthetics and politics of the environment. The work of DESIGN EARTH has been exhibited internationally, including Venice Biennale (2018, 2016), Oslo Triennale (2017), Seoul Biennale (2017), Sharjah Biennale (2016), and MAAT (Lisbon, 2018), Sursock Museum (Beirut, 2016), Times Museum (Guangzhou, 2018) and collected by MoMA. Rania is co-author of Geographies of Trash (2015) and Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (2018), which has received support from the Graham Foundation. She is founding editor of the New Geographies journal and editor-in-chief of NG 2: Landscapes of Energy (Harvard GSD, 2010). Rania holds a Bachelor of Architecture from American University of Beirut, a Master in Geography from University College London, and Doctor of Design from Harvard GSD.
————————————
Lean In: The Regulator’s Perspective (Gina McCarthy)
Monday, April 29
6–8 pm
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue Kresge G-2, Boston
This is part of a 2-part series hosted by Harvard's Council of Student Sustainability Leaders entitled, “Lean In: Advocacy through Regulatory Commenting."
EPA Administrator and Professor Gina McCarthy will be hosting part one of this series!
Join us as Professor McCarthy shares stories from her time leading local and federal environmental agencies on how regulators view public comments. The commenting process is an important way for advocates, residents and citizens, and expert organizations to become involved in shaping the rules and regulations that are transforming our environment and the spaces we call home. Come get the realistic, behind-the-scenes take on what makes for a good comment from the agencies’ point of view, and learn how you too can be involved in the process.
Gina McCarthy is the Director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard’s School of Public Health, and has been a leading advocate for common-sense strategies to protect public health and the environment for more than 30 years. She served under President Barack Obama as the 13th Administrator of the EPA from 2013–2017. Her tenure as EPA Administrator heralded a paradigm shift in national environmental policy, expressly linking it with global public health. A longtime public servant, McCarthy was previously Assistant Administrator for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, Deputy Secretary of the Massachusetts Office of Commonwealth Development, and Undersecretary of Policy for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
————————————
VR in energy and aerospace by Packet 39
Monday, April 29
6:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Venture Cafe Cambridge, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
In this presentation, Packet 39 CEO, Vice will go over a few VR projects and applications they developed for nuclear power, aerospace and medical industries in the past 3 years.
Highlights:
Creating stress in VR to reduce stress in real life
The importance of muscle memory and designing effective VR training
A show of hands - camera based Mixed Reality to bring user's hands into VR
VR-less VR - the power of VR 3D tracking without the bulky headset
Avoiding spacetime collisions with 4D visualizations and work scheduling
A power plant in your cubicle - Cost effective 3D scanning of industrial spaces for walkdowns and work planning
SCHEDULE:
6:00pm - Doors open, demos begin, snacks are served.
7:00pm -Announcements and Community information
7:15pm - CEO of Packet 39 "Vice" talk begins
8:15pm - 9:45 Demofest!!
9:45 - After party at TBD
—————————————
Broadband and Beers with Upgrade Cambridge
Monday, April 29
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT
Remnant Brewing at Bow Market, 2 Bow Market Way, Somerville
Hang out with members of Upgrade Cambridge and talk about municipal broadband efforts in Cambridge and beyond at our Broadband and Beers events! Anyone is invited to this event, which will include a review of current status in Cambridge and other towns and recent efforts across the country. Come meet up with other folks who are working on helping provide better internet for residents of Cambridge and the rest of New England via internet that is affordable, reliable, and fast!
—————————————
Community Conversation: What is a Progressive Housing Position?
Monday, April 29
7:15 PM EDT
First Baptist Church, 633 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Join JP Progressives for a community conversation with housing and policy experts on What is a Progressive Housing Policy
The City of Boston is rapidly becoming more unequal and segregated than at any time in its recent history. Boston is one of the least affordable major housing markets in the world, and Massachusetts is one of the most unequal states in the country. Our community in Jamaica Plain is at the forefront of this crisis. In JPP’s first community conversation dedicated to housing we will bring together policymakers, local activists, and housing researchers to address some of the basic problems in housing policy and discuss possible solutions. We hope that this conversation will be one of many that are dedicated to better defining: "what is a progressive housing policy?
Panelists:
Lydia Edwards
Nathalie Janson
Lisa Owens
Barry Bluestone
Moderated by: qainat khan, WBUR/GroundTruth Journalist who has reported extensively on housing in Boston
Post your questions at www.slido.com - Event #Q133****
***PLEASE NOTE: TICKETS DO NOT GUARANTEE ENTRANCE BUT TICKET HOLDERS WILL BE GIVEN PRIORITY*****
—————————
Tuesday, April 30
—————————
Modeling Opinion Dynamics in the Age of Algorithmic Personalization
Tuesday, April 30
11:00 am
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th floor, Boston
Modern technology hasdrastically changed the way we interact and consume information. For example,online social platforms allow for seamless communication exchanges at anunprecedented scale. However, we are still bounded by cognitive and temporalconstraints. Our attention is limited and extremely valuable. Algorithmicpersonalization has become a standard approach to tackle the informationoverload problem. As result, the exposure to our friends’ opinions and ourperception about important issues might be distorted. However, the effects ofalgorithmic gatekeeping on our hyper-connected society are poorly understood.During the talk, I will discuss a model of opinion dynamics where individualsare connected through a social network and adopt opinions as function of theview points they are exposed to. I will consider various filtering algorithmsthat select the opinions shown to each user i) at random ii) considering timeordering or iii) her current opinion. Furthermore, I will analyze the interplaybetween such mechanisms and crucial features of real networks.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nicola Perra serves as Associate Professor in Network Science in Business School of Greenwich University in London, UK. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Cagliari, Italy in 2011. In 2009 he joined the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research at Indiana University as a Research Associate. From September 2011 until August 2014 he was a Post-Doctoral Research Scientist at the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Technical Systems at Northeastern University. From September 2014 until July 2015 he served as Associate Research Scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. His research focuses on human dynamics, dynamical processes on complex networks, big-data analytics, and mathematical/digital epidemiology. He is the co-organizer of Databeers London, and of the Computational Social Science Initiative London.
—————————————
Ghettoside: Understanding Urban Violence in Los Angeles and Across the Nation, and What Can Be Done About It
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Wexner 330, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy (HKS); Criminal Justice PIC
SPEAKER(S) Jill Leovy, Journalist and Author of "Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America"
Thomas Abt, Senior Research Fellow, Center for International Development, Harvard Kennedy School
DETAILS Jill Leovy's book, "Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America," was a wake-up call in policy and academic circles, imploring leaders to do more to save lives in America’s cities. Thomas Abt's forthcoming book, "Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence – And a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets," offers concrete solutions to the gang and gun violence that plagues many poor communities today. Leovy and Abt will discuss their work on violence, comparing and contrasting their experiences, and offering insights into how to save lives in urban America.
—————————————
What the Quaternary paleobiological record can tell us about vegetation turnover and climate change?
Tuesday, April 30
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, 22 Divinity Avenue, HUH Seminar Room 125, Cambridge
Israel Loera, Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Davis Lab, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Tropical forests house the vast majority of plant species. Unfortunately, very little is known about most of these species and specifically about how they are being affected by climate change. In his presentation, Dr. Kenneth Feeley describes a suite of studies documenting changes in the composition of tree species in forests throughout the tropical Andes (and beyond) and how these changes are being driven by upslope shifts in species' ranges due to rising temperatures. Dr. Feeley also discusses how ecotone barriers, for example at the timberline and cloud base, may be preventing some species from migrating upslope and thereby hastening extinctions and species loss in these vital ecosystems.
—————————————
Arctic Shipping and the Northern Sea Route, Shipping Trends, and The New Polar Code Regulations: The Concerns and Contributions of The International Insurance Industry
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South Building, Room S354, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Environmental Sciences, Humanities, Law, Lecture, Research study, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
SPEAKER(S) Michael Kingston, Managing Director, Michael Kingston Associates; Special Advisor, Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) Working Group, Arctic Council
Moderator: George Soroka, Lecturer, Harvard University; Center Associate, Davis Center
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-4037
Fax: 617-495-8319
daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS In this talk Michael will look at the increasing trends in Arctic Shipping and Northern Sea Route transits, in the context of the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Costa Concordia Disaster in Italy in 2012, which caused significant concern in the London Insurance Market. Michael worked as legal advisor on leading reports by Lloyd’s of London into the incidents. Michael also worked on Lloyd’s of London’s leading report into Arctic risk in the shadow of these disaster, which resulted in significant recommendations with far-reaching affect in both the development of the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code for Shipping, and in the development of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum and its web portal www.arcticshippingforum.is established by the 8 Arctic States at the end of the United States Arctic Council Chairmanship in Fairbanks Alaska in May 2017 to assist with the harmonized implementation of the Polar Code. The aim of this work is to ensure that the Arctic is protected by focusing on increased safety and environmental protection both in the planning of operations and in their actual real time operation. The aim is to ensure all decision makers in the process — operators, Flag States, the Insurance Industry and Port State Control understand the regulations, and UpToDate information about best practice to create the correct behavioral atmosphere so that those who are operating correctly can go about their business, and those who are not are stopped. The Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum is a ground breaking development bringing together the who’s who of Arctic Stakeholders who then provide information available on a publicly accessible Web Portal so that it is all in one place creating a harmonised approach to the regulations. This includes State Administrations providing important information for industry, such as the Russian Federation. It is a truly collaborative approach to the implementation of regulation. For further reading see ‘Rules are one thing. Implementation another’. This concept will be presented by Iceland, incoming chair of the Arctic Council, with Michael’s assistance, on behalf of the 8 Arctic States to the World Delegations at the International Maritime Organization in June 2019 as an example for the implementation of other world regulation.
—————————————
Tuesday Seminar Series: Resistance and Repression: One Year on from Nicaragua's Civil Uprising
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Kai Thaler, Assistant professor in the Department of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of government, Harvard University
COST Free and Open to the Public
CONTACT INFO drclas@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS How did Nicaragua's protest movement grow so quickly in 2018, and how has President Daniel Ortega's regime survived the most serious threat yet to its rule? With activists in prison, exiled, or killed, what options remain for the opposition? One year on, we look at the roots and trajectory of Nicaraguan civil resistance campaign.
—————————————
BU URBAN Spring Symposium
Tuesday, April 30
12:30 – 3:00pm
BU, Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
The BU URBAN Spring Symposium acts as a forum where program partners, students, and faculty of the Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health come together to share successes in tackling urban environmental challenges. These presentations are meant to highlight the current work that has been done as part of this program and inspire additional partnerships, projects, and ideas that focus on urban environmental challenges.
—————————————
Are Today's Frontiers In Cities? A Lecture by Saskia Sassen
Tuesday, April 30
4pm-5pm
BU, Myles Standish Hall, English Room, 610 Beacon Street, Boston
A reception will follow at the IOC
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Her new book, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, has been released in 15 languages.
She is the recipient of diverse awards and mentions, including multiple doctor honoris causa, named lectures, and being selected as one of the top global thinkers on diverse lists. Most recently she was awarded the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social Sciences and made a member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of Netherland.
———————————
Open Learning xTalks: Online Learning Innovations and Interventions
Tuesday, April 30
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
In this panel discussion, three project leaders from MIT’s Integrated Learning Initiative will discuss their work with online learning innovations and applying interventions. This year, nearly $1M in funding was provided to six research projects tasked to find a way to make learning more effective and making online learning more engaging.
Eva Ponce, Kyle Keane, and Pawan Sinha each have different approaches for making online learning more engaging. This high-level discussion will focus not only on the interventions but the learners themselves and how, as Dr. Ponce describes, ‘zombie learners’ often lack motivation to complete online courses. Dr. Keane and Dr. Sinha are testing two different strategies for making learning more effective. Keane’s research focuses on the potential benefits of utilizing computer programming and visualization to solve and understand undergraduate physics problems. Sinha’s research uses various course modules from the MITx library, specifically introductory biology, to insert short novel clips derived from a variety of sources such as NASA, PBS, and National Geographic.
The panel will discuss research successes and challenges and how newly discovered best practices in online learning can be used to produce new MITx materials that not only keep the attention of the online learners but also prove more educationally effective.
Dr. Keane is winner of the MIT’s James N. Murphy Award and the School of Engineering Infinite Mile Award. He has been a lecturer in DMSE since 2013, where he teaches computational methods for materials science and engineering, and has been the departmental lead on integrating computation throughout the undergraduate curriculum.
Dr. Sinha is a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and his Masters and doctoral degrees from the Department of Computer Science at MIT.
Dr. Ponce is the Executive Director of the Supply Chain Management MITx MicroMasters Program as well as a Research Associate at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. She oversees the five online MITx courses in Supply Chain Management (CTL.SCx courses) that make up the MicroMasters Program.
———————————
Fireside Chat with Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Business School, Aldrich 107, Soldiers Field Road, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative
SPEAKER(S) Ed Catmull, Co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and Former president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation
Moderated by: Linda Hill, Faculty Chair
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://secure.hbs.edu/hbsPoll/taker/open/1,143782
CONTACT INFO connects@hbs.edu
DETAILS Join us for a Fireside Chat with Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and former president of Pixar animation and Disney animation, moderated by Linda Hill, Faculty Chair, HBS Leadership Initiative
———————————
Our Extravagant Universe: The Undiscovery of Cosmic Deceleration
Tuesday, April 30
5 PM
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Lecture by Robert P. Kirshner, Clowes Professor of Science, emeritus, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of over 200 research papers dealing with supernovae and observational cosmology. His work with the “High-Z Supernova Team” on the acceleration of the universe was dubbed the “Science Breakthrough of the Year” by Science Magazine. Kirshner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and American Astronomical Society.
Astronomers have known about the expansion of the universe for nearly a hundred years. Twenty years ago, we set out to use exploding stars to measure gravity’s predicted effect: the slowing down of cosmic expansion. Amazingly, when we actually made the measurement, the expansion of the universe turned out to be speeding up! The astonishing (un)discovery of cosmic acceleration has now been confirmed from many directions. We attribute it to a “dark energy” that dominates the universe, whose nature is a deep mystery at the heart of physics.
For program information, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2019-robert-kirshner-lecture. This event is part of The Undiscovered Science Lecture Series.
The event is free and open to the public. We encourage you to share this invitation with friends.
———————————
Youth on Climate Justice: Why should we care?* An interactive, workshop developed and led by the Green Team.
Tuesday, April 30
5:30-7:30 pm
Mystic Activity Center, 530 Mystic Avenue, Somerville
This workshop is part of the City of Somerville's SustainaVille Week
*What is climate justice? How does it connect to racism? Why should Somerville residents care about climate change? How are young people experiencing, dealing with, and fighting climate change? How does and will it affect us, from the food we eat to the health inequities we face? What can we do about it?*
*If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, this workshop is for
YOU!*
FREE and snacks will be provided.*
More information at: bit.ly/gtclimate19
———————————
Cleantech Startups: Navigating the Mass Cleantech Landscape
Tuesday, April 30
5:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
Pre-registration is required at https://mitefcamb.z2systems.com/np/clients/mitefcamb/eventRegistration.jsp?event=3383&%20&_ga=2.61727532.1084245857.1554942113-1895775866.1458499108
Cost: $10 Members; $30 Non-Members; $5 Student Members, $10 Non Member Students, $10 Startup Founders - Member or Non-Member
Meet the Organizations Creating an Enduring Ecosystem for Cleantech Innovation
Over 200 institutions in New England provide support for Cleantech research, innovation and entrepreneurship. Many of these organizations offer help to startups at all stages of development and provide critical resources like business and marketing support, mentorship, and more.
We are lucky to have so many support organizations in the area, but we know it can be hard for an entrepreneur in Cleantech to navigate all of them.
That's why we're bringing together concept/early stage startup founders and startup support organizations specializing in Cleantech for this special event where we'll help founders:
CONNECT with experts who can guide you in your journey from idea to commercialization
DISCUSS ideas and challenges with other entrepreneurs and learn from their experiences
ACCESS a guide showcasing resources at the inflection points along the path to entrepreneurial success
Hear from people who have participated in these startup support organizations, prepare your questions regarding where you are in your journey. They will be there to help you succeed.
Agenda
5:30 - 6:00 pm: Registration
6:00 - 6:15 pm: MITEF intro, event overview, and purpose
6:15 - 7:50 pm: Startup and supporting organizations presentations
7:50 - 8:50 pm: Networking and tabletop discussions between entrepreneurs and Supporting organizations
8:50 - 9:00 pm: Wrap Up
———————————
Tackling Climate Change as an Issue of Justice
Tuesday, April 30
6:00PM
Harvard, HKS Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
The Honorable Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland, discusses issues of justice arising from climate change with Professor John Holdren, Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at HKS, and former Science Advisor to President Obama and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Hosted by the Institute of Politics at HKS.
Contact Name: Patricia McLaughlin
———————————
Boston Green Drinks - April 2019 Happy Hour
Tuesday, April 30
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)
Warehouse Bar & Grille, 40 Broad Street, Boston
This month we are joined by Nicolle Fagan of the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium! Nicolle will be sharing a bit of information about the First Stepcampaign. Our tremendous and sustainably-active restaurant host, The Warehouse Bar & Grille, has recently signed on to be the first Boston-area restaurant partner to join this exciting new national campaign to pledge to skip the straw, as a first step. And it is just that...a first step on the march towards a more sustainable community. A march that we all know must happen. And it's a march full of opportunity!
Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community! 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.
———————————
We Are America: A Conversation
WHEN Tuesday, April 30, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Gutman Conference Center, E4 & E5, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Education, Exhibitions, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Gutman Library & HGSE's Project Zero
SPEAKER(S) Lowell High School students
Sarah Dryden-Peterson, HGSE Professor
Adam Strom, Re-Imagining Migration Co-founder
DETAILS Join us for a conversation between Lowell High Students, HGSE Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson, and Re-Imagining Migration Co-founder Adam Strom about these students' new book We Are America.
This year, students in Lowell High School's Seminar on American Diversity set out to explore their own personal history and draw connections between their history and the larger history of America. They and their teacher felt that to better understand the history of diversity in America and the fight for equity in this country, they needed to set their story with in the larger context of the story of America. Together they spent a semester exploring their histories, and then finally telling their stories. They published their stories in their new book We Are America. These are deeply personal stories — of finding the courage to speak, of searching for home, of seeking acceptance, of asking for help.
Learn more about We Are America here: lhsweareamerica.com
———————————
Be the Change: Emily Bazelon & Juliette Kayyem
Tuesday, April 30
7:00pm
Peabody School Auditorium, 70 Rindge Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $28
Tickets are required for this event. Each ticket includes a copy of CHARGED: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.
This event will be held at the Peabody School Auditorium in Cambridge, MA.
Renowned journalist and legal commentator Emily Bazelon exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out. She is joined in conversation by national security and crisis management expert Juliette Kayyem.
The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. That image of the law does not match the reality in the courtroom, however. Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, from choosing the charge to setting bail to determining the plea bargain. They often decide who goes free and who goes to prison, even who lives and who dies. In Charged, Emily Bazelon reveals how this kind of unchecked power is the underreported cause of enormous injustice—and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle.
Charged follows the story of two young people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases—from arrest and charging to trial and sentencing—and, with her trademark blend of deeply reported narrative, legal analysis, and investigative journalism, illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong and, more important, why they don’t have to.
Bazelon also details the second chances they prosecutors can extend, if they choose, to Kevin and Noura and so many others. She follows a wave of reform-minded D.A.s who have been elected in some of our biggest cities, as well as in rural areas in every region of the country, put in office to do nothing less than reinvent how their job is done. If they succeed, they can point the country toward a different and profoundly better future.
“Bazelon, cogent and clear-eyed as ever, lays out a welcome double-barreled argument: A prosecutorial shift toward mercy and fairness is crucial to healing our busted criminal justice system, and it’s already happening.”—Sarah Koenig, host of Serial
Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law, and a lecturer at Yale Law School. Her previous book is the national bestseller Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. She’s also a co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest, a popular weekly podcast. Before joining the Times Magazine, Bazelon was a writer and editor at Slate, where she co-founded the women’s section “DoubleX.” She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Juliette Kayyem is one of the nation’s leading experts in homeland security. A former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, and the state of Massachusetts’ first homeland security advisor, Kayyem served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security where she handled crises from the H1N1 pandemic to the BP Oil Spill. Presently a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she also is the founder of Kayyem Solutions, LLC, one of the nation’s only female-owned security advising companies, and CEO and co-founder of Grip Mobility. Kayyem is a security analyst for CNN, a weekly show contributor on WGBH, Boston’s NPR station, and the host of the podcast Security Mom, also produced by WGBH. In 2013, she was the Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns in The Boston Globe. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Kayyem lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children.
Be the Change is PSB's civic engagement program to provide the resources to those who want to make change at all levels of government and in society in general. Click here for more information about Be the Change.
———————————
Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi
Tuesday, April 30
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Joshua Hammerman
The Talmud states, “In a world that lacks humanity, be human.” In a world as untethered as ours has become, simply being human, a good person, is a measure of heroism. At a time when norms of civility are being routinely overwhelmed, it may be the only measure that matters. Mensch-Marks represents Rabbi Joshua Hammerman’s personal Torah scroll–the sacred text of his experiences, the life lessons he has learned along his winding, circuitous journey.
Mirroring 42 steps Israel wandered in the Wilderness, Hammerman offers 42 brief essays, several of which first appeared in The New York Times Magazine, organized into categories of character, or “mensch-marks,” each one a stepping stone toward spiritual maturation. These essays span most of Rabbi Hammerman’s life, revealing how he has striven to be a “mensch,” a human of character, through every challenge.
————————————
White Nationalism, Community Response & the Rule of Law
Tuesday, April 30
7:00 PM EDT
The Center for Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, #1c, Somerville
Forum with two renowned experts on white nationalist hate groups and strategies to combat hate. ELden Rosenthal is a civil rights attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center and Steven Gardner is a research analyst with Political Research Associates. Doors open at 6:30 pm for registrants to sign in.
—————————————
Green tech Entrepreneur Forum & Brainstorming
Tuesday, April 30
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Eastern Bank, 647 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Agenda is:
You can give a 5 to 10 minute elevator speech about your startup if you would like. (We will divide the 1st hour by # of people.)
Review Entrepreneur & Green Tech Opportunities in Cambridge and Boston.
Discuss and What stage is your ideas or startup? What is your goal?
Tell what personnel or additional expertise, funding, etc. you are seeking, 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 ou like to see in future meetups?
We will introduce ourselves and tell about our interest, expertise or work (1st hr):
Discussion and Brainstorming on (2nd hr)
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.
—————————
Wednesday, May 1
—————————
Mary Robinson keynote: Climate Justice Can Help Secure a Good Future for All
Wednesday, May 1
10:00am to 11:00am
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theatre, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
SA+P's Intellectual Commons event series continues this spring with a keynote by Mary Robinson, lawyer, politician, and climate justice advocate who served as president of Ireland (1990–97) and as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997–2002).
“The Frameworks negotiated by member states of the UN in 2015–the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement–appeared to be voluntary or weak in enforceability. Now, however, through the lens of climate justice, we can see that they are imperative frameworks for human survival. The challenge is to galvanise political will globally, and commit to transformative change which will leave no one behind.”—Mary Robinson
————————————
Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar: Ken Caldera
Wednesday, May 1
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard University Center for the Environment, 26 Oxford Street, Room 429
Presentation by Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA
Lunch Provided
RSVP: acchang [at] seas.harvard.edu
————————————
Cities as Climate Leaders: The Carbon-Free Boston Initiative
Wednesday, May 1
12:30 PM to 2:00 PM (EDT)
MIT, Building 9-255 (City Arena), 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cities as Climate Leaders: The Carbon-Free Boston Initiative is part of the spring 2019 DUSP Climate lecture series on what should cities do to prepare for climate change, co-hosted with the MIT Sloan Sustainability initiative.
Information about the speaker:
Harvey Michaels, MIT Sloan Lecturer, Energy, and Climate Innovation. Directed DUSP/Colab Community Efficiency Strategy Project. Led Aclara Software and Xenergy. Advisor on climate innovation to Carbon-free Boston, Cambridge Net Zero, Boston Interfaith Environmental Justice.
————————————
SustainaVille Greentown Labs Tour
Wednesday, May 1
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville
SustainaVille Week is an annual celebration of sustainability and climate action in Somerville.
Join us May 1st at 4PM for a 1-hour guided tour of the largest cleantech startup incubator in the United States! Learn how we're working (right here in Somerville!) to solve the world's biggest energy and efficiency challenges.
————————————
xTalk: Innovating Education on a Large Scale: What, Why, and How
Wednesday, May 1
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 1-242 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
In 2016, the Delft University of Technology decided to start innovating mathematics courses for engineers. Basic courses in Calculus, Linear Algebra and Probability& Statistics were redesigned in order to increase student activity, improve study results, and enhance transfer from maths to engineering. In this talk Annoesjka Cabo, the project leader of PRIME (Programme Innovation Mathematics Education) will explain the workflow chosen, show some of the material, share lessons learned, and present results obtained so far. She will also show that in order to embed the changes in a sustainable and scalable way, use and reuse of educational material is crucial, and hence a lively community of lecturers is indispensable.
Annoesjka Cabo is associate professor in Statistics at the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematicsat the faculty of EEMCS (Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science). She is the director of studies of interfaculty education. Since the beginning of February 2019 she is also the academic director of the Teaching Academy at TU Delft. She won the second prize at the national Henk Dekker innovation award.
————————————
The 2019 Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health with Dr. Mary T. Bassett: An Unbroken Thread: The Pursuit of Health, Equity, and Racial Justice*
Wednesday, May 1
4:30 - 6:00 PM
BU, Kilachand Center, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP and more info at https://ciswh.org/2019-hubie-jones-lecture-with-dr-mary-t-bassett/
Dr. Bassett, director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and former commissioner of health for New York City, will review the enduring impact of the color line on national and urban health. This year?2019?marks 400 years since the first African arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, to be sold into bondage. She will discuss how the revived commitment to racial/ethnic equity in health, particularly in cities, draws on a long history. Dr. Bassett will argue that strategies to promote equity are necessary not only for democracy with justice, but for the pursuit of technical excellence.
1.5 social work continuing education credit hours available. Presented by the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health (https://ciswh.org/) at
Boston University's School of Social Work.
—————————————
The 2019 Harvard President's Innovation Challenge - Awards Ceremony
Wednesday, May 1
4:30 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Klarman Hall, Kresge Way, Allston
Do you want to discover the next generation of companies working to make the world work better? Don’t miss an exclusive opportunity at the President’s Innovation Challenge Award Ceremony on May 1st.
Several student teams from all Harvard schools are currently working on their application to enter the Challenge program. On May 1, you'll have the chance to meet the most innovative of the startups being built at Harvard and see 20 finalists showcase their highly-anticipated projects LIVE. Harvard President Lawrence Bacow will then announce this year's winners who will take home Bertarelli Foundation Prizes totaling $410,000 in award money.
Agenda:
4:30 - 5:30pm – Finalists Showcase
5:30 - 7:00pm – Live pitching and awards ceremony
If you’re interested in what’s next, this is a must-attend event.
*Open to anyone in the greater Boston community.
—————————————
Lean In: Public Commenting in Practice (Wendy Jacobs)
Wednesday, May 1
5–7 pm
Harvard Law School: Emmett Environmental Law Clinic, 6 Everett Street 5th floor, Cambridge
RSVP at
This is part of a 2-part series hosted by Harvard's Council of Student Sustainability Leaders entitled, “Lean In: Advocacy through Regulatory Commenting."
On Wednesday, May 1, Professor Wendy Jacobs will guide us through part two of the series, in which we apply the advice and lessons learned to practice the public comment process and analyze an example set of comments recently submitted by Harvard’s Environmental Law Clinic.
Professor Jacobs will walk through an example on commenting for rules that would prohibit EPA to consider studies based on confidential human health data. Filing a public comment is a key way to exercise your voice and provide guidance before rules are finalized; this workshop will reveal the steps required to prepare and submit thoughtful, impactful comments (non-lawyers welcome!).
Wendy B. Jacobs, Esq. is the Emmett Clinical Professor of Environmental Law and Director of the Harvard Law School Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic. She is on the Faculty of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's Center for Health and the Global Environment, is a Special Advisor to the HLS Dean on Learning and Practice, is a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and is on the board of the Clean Air Task Force. Professor Jacobs first worked as an appellate lawyer and special litigator for the U.S. Department of Justice in its Environment Division in Washington, D.C., and worked for nearly 18 years as a partner in the Boston law firm Foley Hoag LLP. Her work has covered the gamut of compliance counseling, preparation of comments on federal and state rulemakings, drafting of legislation, regulations and ordinances, administrative trials and appeals, environmental due diligence and audits, and development of environmental protection policies.
——————————————
Ford Hall Forum First Amendment Award
Wednesday, May 1
5:00-7:30 p.m.
Suffolk, Sargent Hall, Fifth Floor Sky Lounge and Commons, 120 Tremont Street, Boston
Ford Hall Forum First Amendment Award cocktail reception and forum with honoree Marty Baron, editor of The Washington Post and former editor of The Boston Globe. The First Amendment Award was created in 1981, to honor those individuals and organizations that demonstrate extraordinary commitment to promoting and facilitating the thoughtful exercise of our right to freedom of expression. The Forum honors Baron for his powerful and fearless defense of the First Amendment. His relentless pursuit of the truth over his storied career, and his stalwart defense of journalists especially in these harrowing times for the Fourth Estate, have resulted in impactful and important journalism, with implications for years to come.
—————————
Tapping into Plants' Natural Chemical Arsenals Without Taxing Nature
Wednesday, May 1
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Whitehead Institute, 455 Main Street, Cambridge
Part Three of Whitehead Institute's Spring into Science Series
Jing-Ke Weng, a Member of Whitehead Institute and an assistant professor of biology at MIT, will discuss how discoveries in natural product chemistry and biochemistry, particularly from plants, have impacted our society in big ways. The rapid advances in emerging fields such as genomics and synthetic biology have now enabled us to explore and exploit the remarkable diversity of plant chemistry in an entirely new way. Small molecules are low molecular-weight organic compounds omnipresent in all living organisms. Humans have a long history of using these compounds from nature to fulfill a wide range of purposes including forming the basis for traditional global medicine.
—————————
Brookline, Massachusetts, and the Origins of Suburbia
Wednesday, May 1
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square - Commonwealth Salon, 1st Floor, 700 Boylston Street, Boston
Explore the history of Brookline, Boston’s most renowned nineteenth-century suburb.
Since 1945, American popular culture has portrayed suburbia as a place with a culture, politics, and economy distinct from cities, towns, and rural areas. Ronald Dale Karr examines the evolution of Brookline, Boston’s most renowned nineteenth-century suburb, arguing that a distinctively suburban way of life appeared here long before World War II.
Already a fashionable retreat for wealthy Bostonians, Brookline began to suburbanize in the 1840s with the arrival of hundreds of commuter families—and significant numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants drawn by opportunities to work as laborers and servants. In Brookline the poor were segregated but not excluded altogether, as they would be from twentieth-century elite suburbs. A half century later, a distinct suburban way of life developed that combined rural activities with urban pastimes, and a political consensus emerged that sought efficient government and large expenditures on education and public works. Brookline had created the template for the concept of suburbia, not just in wealthy communities but in the less affluent communities of postwar America.
Ronald Dale Karr is a retired reference librarian from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
—————————
Poetry Fuels Democracy - CAMBRIDGE FORUM Live: Poet Richard Blanco
Wednesday, May 1
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, 154 Moody Street, Waltham
Join CAMBRIDGE FORUM and Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation for a very special collaborative event at the Museum featuring former poet laureate Richard Blanco who will read and talk about his new book, How To Love A Country.
The evening will begin with a wine reception at 6:00pm; the event itself will kick off at 7 pm and a book-signing will follow. There will be live jazz preceding and following the reading by Ken Field/saxophone and Blake Newman/bass. - This free event is sponsored by the Lowell Institute.
As presidential inaugural poet, educator, and advocate, Richard Blancohas crisscrossed the nation inviting communities to connect to the heart of human experience and our shared identity as a country. In this new collection of poems, his first in over seven years, Blanco continues to invite a conversation with all Americans. Through an oracular yet intimate and accessible voice, he addresses the complexities and contradictions of our nationhood and the unresolved sociopolitical matters that affect us all.
Editorial Comment: Blake Newman is a fine musician and poetry will always be news.
—————————
How AI is Changing the World - For the Better
Wednesday, May 1
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Three cutting-edge AI companies describe and demonstrate how their products are making the world a better place.
About this Event
Come see three innovative and exciting AI companies - Hooper, DeepCure, and Smartvid.io - demo how their cutting-edge products are advancing research and changing the world.
In this event you’ll:
See four exciting AI technology demos, presented by leaders from the companies
Network with attendees from the Boston-area startup/tech community
Enjoy pizza with soft drinks
PRESENTERS:
Matt DiNardo, Data Scientist, Hopper
Kfir Schreiber, Founder, DeepCure
Sean True, Director of Machine Learning, Smartvid.io
AGENDA:
6:30 - Networking with pizza and drinks.
6:45 - Intro by Yosi Taguri, CEO, MissingLink.ai
7:00-8:30 - Startup presentations. 15-minutes each.
—————————
A Grassland Restoration Tale of Weeds, Wildlife, and Renewal
Wednesday, May 1
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Grow Native Massachusetts is proud to present our 2019 Evenings with Experts lecture series!
Join us for this talk with Jenna Webster, Senior Designer at Larry Weaner Landscape Associates.
Restoring weed-dominated habitats comes with many complex challenges and often involves difficult tradeoffs. This process is even more complicated in public landscapes with diverse constituencies. Join landscape designer Jenna Webster to learn how Larry Weaner Landscape Associates negotiated these challenges in their restoration planning for a 100-acre grassland at Croton Point Park in New York. Located atop a capped landfill, this site provides vital habitat for imperiled bird species. The Park’s popularity and complex history led Jenna and her team to seek stakeholder input, synthesize crowd-sourced ecological data, and utilize scientific research— creating a thoughtful restoration plan that is now under construction. This case study gives us valuable lessons for land restoration on sites both large and small, and particularly for protecting specialized habitat used by native wildlife.
Jenna Webster is the co-curator of the New Directions in the American Landscape conference, and a teacher in the Ecological Gardening Certificate program at the Mt. Cuba Center.
———————————
Hacking the Human Mind, the Art and Science of Neuro-Weapons
Wednesday, May 1
7:00 PM
Landmark's Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney Street, Cambridge
MIT recently released to the press that they have developed lasers to transmit perceived audio, ranging from music to speech, to a person across a room without any receiver equipment. Charles M. Wynn said in press release, “It is the first system that uses lasers that are fully safe for the eyes and skin to localize an audible signal to a particular person in any setting.” In a paper published in the journal Optics Letters, the MIT team describes how it developed different methods to transmit tones, music, and recorded speech via a laser. There is a wide range of applications from military “Voice of God Weapons” to civilian applications.
Technology is a tool. Like any other tool, it can be used for good or evil. This lecture hopes to discuss the perils of clandestine uses, as well as the good, so a balance and understanding can be reached. Often the Ivory Towers shield us from the evil of man.
What we would like you to consider is the possible abuse of such technology. If the recipient of these voices beamed into their heads remotely was not aware the technology existed, could they be convinced the voices were ghosts, demons, aliens, God or a mental illness? Could they be driven to do things out of character? Commit crimes or hurt themselves or those around them?
I would like to invite you and your students to a virtual lecture followed by Q & A. The presenter is Dr. Robert Duncan, scientist and engineer, who worked on black budget projects for DARPA, CIA, the Justice Department, and the Department of Defense. Dr. Duncan was involved in artificial intelligence and cybernetics. As a Harvard student, he studied linguistics under professor Noam Chomsky at MIT for natural language processing and has studied many hours in the media labs. His research is primarily in cybernetics and brain to computer interfacing networks.
He will be discussing a topic called Cybernetic Hive Minds, a technology created to increase intelligence, brainstorming, interrogation, mind control, accelerated education, predictions of mass influence and rapid communications. These specific topics present the possibility of very dark and sinister applications. Some of the various technologies used to transmit sound have also been referred to as Psychotronics, Microwave Auditory Hearing Effect, Silent Sound, Voice to Skull ( V2K) or Synthetic Telepathy.
We will be giving away a few FREE copies of Dr Duncan’s book, “, “Project: Soul Catcher: Secrets of Cyber and Cybernetic Warfare Revealed, Volume 2,” to early RSVPs and will be selling more at the door.
This lecture is FREE to attend
Our goal is to provide students and teachers from local technology schools as well as the general public an easy-to-remember experience, that will raise overall awareness of the potential abuse of technology and create a more bioethical future together.
“Project: Soul Catcher: Secrets of Cyber and Cybernetic Warfare Revealed, Volume 2,”details “CIA’s practices of interrogation and cybernetic mind control in their pursuit to weaponize neuropsychology. It covers the art of bio-communication war. Human beings are complex machines, but their inner workings have been deciphered. Mind control and brainwashing have been perfected in the last 60 years. The 21st century will be known as the ‘age of spiritual machines and soulless men.’”
To RSVP for this FREE educational seminar please RSVP here or call 603-505-7985
————————
Thursday, May 2
————————
54th Annual Whitehead Lectures: What About the Workers?
WHEN Thursday, May 2, 2019, 3 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Emerson Hall, Room 105, 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University - Department of Philosophy
SPEAKER(S) Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO 617-495-2153
DETAILS 54th Annual Whitehead Lectures.
Guest Lecturer Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
What About the Workers?
Lecture I, May 2nd, 2019: Why Work Matters
Lecture II, May 3rd, 2019: Work and Class
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University.
————————————
Why Brain Science Needs an Edit: Non-human Primate Studies in Neuroscience and Biomedicine
Thursday, May 2
4:15 PM
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
2018–2019 Kim and Judy Davis Dean’s Lecture in the Sciences
Lecture by Mu-ming Poo, professor emeritus of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley; and the founding director of the Institute of Neuroscience at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Working at the forefront of genetic cloning, Poo’s research led to the infamous 2017 cloning of the macaque monkeys. He will discuss the use of gene-editing tools such as CRISPR in efforts to develop a macaque monkey behavioral model for studying self-consciousness.
To register, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2019-mu-ming-poo-lecture.
The event is free and open to the public. We encourage you to share this invitation with friends.
———————————
The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865
Thursday, May 2
5:30pm
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 87 Vernon Street, Boston
Join us at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts for a reading from Mark Peterson, author of The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865!
A groundbreaking history of early America that shows how Boston built and sustained an independent city-state in New England before being folded into the United States
In the vaunted annals of America's founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary "city upon a hill" and the "cradle of liberty" for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clich's, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston's overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston's development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain's Stuart monarchs and how--through its bargain with slavery and ratification of the Constitution--it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States.
Drawing from vast archives, and featuring unfamiliar figures alongside well-known ones, such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and John Adams, Peterson explores Boston's origins in sixteenth-century utopian ideals, its founding and expansion into the hinterland of New England, and the growth of its distinctive political economy, with ties to the West Indies and southern Europe. By the 1700s, Boston was at full strength, with wide Atlantic trading circuits and cultural ties, both within and beyond Britain's empire. After the cataclysmic Revolutionary War, "Bostoners" aimed to negotiate a relationship with the American confederation, but through the next century, the new United States unraveled Boston's regional reign. The fateful decision to ratify the Constitution undercut its power, as Southern planters and slave owners dominated national politics and corroded the city-state's vision of a common good for all.
Peeling away the layers of myth surrounding a revered city, The City-State of Boston offers a startlingly fresh understanding of America's history.
Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.
———————————
Ben Green: The Smart Enough City
Thursday, May 2
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $0 – $19.96
Please join the MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming Ben Green to discuss his upcoming book, The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future.
Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself.
Ben Green is an Affiliate and former Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. From 2016 to 2017 he was a Data Scientist in the City of Boston's Department of Innovation and Technology.
———————————
The Human Swarm: How Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
WHEN Thursday, May 2, 2019, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
SPEAKER(S) Mark W. Moffett, Author and Photographer
COST Free and Open to the Public
CONTACT INFO (617) 495-3045, hmnh@hmsc.harvard.edu
DETAILS Based on his new book, "The Human Swarm: How Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall" (Basic Books, April 2019), Moffett will discuss the social adaptations that bind societies and distinguish humans from other animal species. Drawing on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology, he explores how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity — and will address what is required to sustain them.
Moffett earned his doctorate under Edward O. Wilson at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Most widely known for his articles and photographs in National Geographic Magazine, he has conducted research and written books on ant social behavior and the ecology of forest canopies, based on work in over 100 countries. He has received awards for writing, science, photography, and exploration and has been a regular guest on The Colbert Report, Conan, NPR’s Fresh Air, and CBS Sunday Morning.
Lecture and Book Signing. Free and open to the public.
Free event parking at the 52 Oxford St. Garage
Presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
———————————
Waste Myth Busters: Everything you didn't know about waste and recycling
Thursday, May 2
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Tufts Administration Building, 167 Holland Street, Somerville
Where does my recycling go after I put it in the bin? Why can I recycle some plastics but not all? What is happening with China’s recycling policies and why does it matter in Somerville? If you’re curious about the answers to these questions, come to a fun, interactive panel discussion about the global and local recycling market with local experts. There will be lots of time for Q&A and discussion, so bring your tough questions! Light refreshments will be provided.
Speakers:
Rachel Perlman, doctoral student at MIT in Engineering Systems focusing on waste management and contractor for the City’s school recycling program.
Cole Rosengren, Senior Editor of Waste Dive
Mark Evans, Senior Business Development Manager at Casella Recycling (Somerville’s recycling provider)
This is event is part of SustainaVille Week, Somerville's annual celebration of sustainability and climate action. There are events all week from April 27th through May 4th. Check out the entire schedule at www.somervillema.gov/sustainavilleweek.
———————————
The Furniture Trust 9th Annual Eco-Carpentry Challenge
Thursday, May 2
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
Please join us for The Furniture Trust annual competition on May 2, 2019. We are excited to have 11 schools rise to the challenge this year.
Come see what they made we promise you won’t be disappointed.
———————————
A Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine
Thursday, May 2
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes author and historian ROBIN WOLFE SCHEFFLER—Leo Marx Career Development Chair in the History and Culture of Science and Technology at MIT—for a discussion of his new book, A Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine.
About A Contagious Cause
Is cancer a contagious disease? In the late nineteenth century this idea, and attending efforts to identify a cancer “germ,” inspired fear and ignited controversy. Yet speculation that cancer might be contagious also contained a kernel of hope that the strategies used against infectious diseases, especially vaccination, might be able to subdue this dread disease. Today, nearly one in six cancers are thought to have an infectious cause, but the path to that understanding was twisting and turbulent.
A Contagious Cause is the first book to trace the century-long hunt for a human cancer virus in America, an effort whose scale exceeded that of the Human Genome Project. The government’s campaign merged the worlds of molecular biology, public health, and military planning in the name of translating laboratory discoveries into useful medical therapies. However, its expansion into biomedical research sparked fierce conflict. Many biologists dismissed the suggestion that research should be planned and the idea of curing cancer by a vaccine or any other means as unrealistic, if not dangerous. Although the American hunt was ultimately fruitless, this effort nonetheless profoundly shaped our understanding of life at its most fundamental levels. A Contagious Cause links laboratory and legislature as has rarely been done before, creating a new chapter in the histories of science and American politics
———————————
Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11
Thursday May 2
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith
This is a 9⁄11 book like no other. Masterfully weaving together multiple strands of the events in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Fall and Rise is a mesmerizing, minute-by-minute account of that terrible day.
Mitchell Zuckoff is the Sumner M. Redstone Professor of Narrative Studies at Boston University. He covered 9⁄11 for the Boston Globe, and wrote the lead news story on the day of the attacks. Zuckoff is the author of seven previous nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller “13 Hours,” which became the basis of the Paramount Pictures movie of the same name. As a member of the Boston GlobeSpotlight Team, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting and the winner of numerous national awards. He lives outside Boston with his family.
———————————
Professor Philip Deloria will discuss and sign Becoming Mary Sully
Thursday, May 2
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
Dakota Sioux artist Mary Sully was the great-granddaughter of respected nineteenth-century portraitist Thomas Sully, who captured the personalities of America's first generation of celebrities (including the figure of Andrew Jackson immortalized on the twenty-dollar bill). Born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota in 1896, she was largely self-taught. Steeped in the visual traditions of beadwork, quilling, and hide painting, she also engaged with the experiments in time, space, symbolism, and representation characteristic of early twentieth-century modernist art. And like her great-grandfather Sully was fascinated by celebrity: over two decades, she produced hundreds of colorful and dynamic abstract triptychs, a series of "personality prints" of American public figures like Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, and Gertrude Stein.
Sully's position on the margins of the art world meant that her work was exhibited only a handful of times during her life. In Becoming Mary Sully, Philip J. Deloria reclaims that work from obscurity, exploring her stunning portfolio through the lenses of modernism, industrial design, Dakota women's aesthetics, mental health, ethnography and anthropology, primitivism, and the American Indian politics of the 1930s. Working in a complex territory oscillating between representation, symbolism, and abstraction, Sully evoked multiple and simultaneous perspectives of time and space. With an intimate yet sweeping style, Deloria recovers in Sully's work a move toward an anti-colonial aesthetic that claimed a critical role for Indigenous women in American Indian futures-within and distinct from American modernity and modernism.
Philip J. Deloria (Dakota descent) is professor of history at Harvard University and the author of Indians in Unexpected Places and Playing Indian. His most recent book, coauthored with Alexander I. Olson, is American Studies: A User's Guide. He is a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, where he chairs the Repatriation Committee; a former president of the American Studies Association; and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
————————————
Melissa and Maya Ludtke, Touching Home in China: In Search of Missing Girlhoods
Thursday, May 2
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Two girls were abandoned in China as newborns and adopted by American parents when they were nine months old. As teenagers, they returned to the farming towns in China where their lives began. Girls their same age who’d grown up in these towns showed the American girls what it’s like to be a rural daughter in 21st century China. As the adoptees and Chinese girls spent time together, they shared stories about their different life experiences, while also discovering some common threads.
Maya Ludtke, one of the teenagers who made this journey of discovery, and her mother, Melissa, who wrote Touching Home in China: In Search of Missing Girlhoods, will read from the book and Maya will talk about what she learned about girlhood in rural China and how this experience affected her own sense of personal identity.
The book’s stories explore modern-day China through the lens of girls and women's lives. Its stories delve into China's one-child policy, which likely led to these American adoptees being abandoned soon after birth. The core of the book revolves around cross-cultural encounters among these American and Chinese girls. On touchinghomeinchina.com, an accompanying website, stories are also told through mini-documentary videos. (The Chinese girls speak in their Mandarin dialect and we provide English translation.) There are also photo slideshows and interactive graphics that are woven into the stories’ text. Open Source Lesson Plans on this website were created by global educations to offer teachers guidance to project-based learning aligned with the book’s six stories. On the website, there is also an annotated online resource library organized by theme, topic and learning levels with links to news stories, videos, books, documentary films and photo presentations that supplement the content in this book. Touching Home in China also has social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – where we post stories about adoptees and Chinese girls, including essays about birth family searches in China and issues of personal identity as seen through the eyes of transracial adoptees.
Maya will graduate from Wellesley College with her degree in environmental studies at the end of May. Melissa Ludtke is an award-winning journalist and the author of On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America. She is writing a book about Ludtke v. Kuhn, her 1978 legal case that won equal access for women sports reporters.
————————————
FREE Movie Night: Citizen Jane
Thursday, May 2 (Rain date: Sunday, May 5th)
7-9pm
Remnant Brewing, 2 Bow Market Way, Union Square, Somerville
Kick off Somerville’s “May Preservation Month” with a free film
Free, outdoor screening of Citizen Jane: Battle Cry for the City
Venue is ADA accessible
Presented in partnership with the City of Somerville Historic Preservation Commission, Union Square Main Streets and Remnant Brewing
The Details: Jane Jacobs is widely celebrated for dramatically reshaping the way we as Americans look at, live in, and experience cities. Her contributions carry so vibrantly that the entire world honors her with Jane's Walks–an annual festival of citizen-led walking conversations the first week of May each year.
Join the celebration in Union Square on May 2nd with a free, neighborhood screening of Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, a documentary that examines the city of today through the lens of one of its greatest champions. This screening will be hosted in Remnant Brewing’s courtyard. It may be chilly, but Jane would urge us to bundle up, gather together, and screen on!
RSVP for this free screening share the Facebook Event with friends and neighbors. Attendees of all ages welcome.
The City will host this year’s Jane's Walk in Winter Hill and Gilman Square area: “Past, Present, and Future” on Sunday, May 5th. To learn more & sign up visit: janeswalk.org/united-states/somerville
———————
Friday, May 3
———————
MIT Sustainability Connect 2019
Friday, May 3
8:30am to 3:00pm
MIT, Samberg Conference Center, 7th Floor, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Sustainability Connect is an annual event, hosted by the MIT Office of Sustainability, designed to bring together the ecosystem of actors working to create a sustainable campus and world. This year, with the launch of the Pathway to Sustainability Leadership framework, Sustainability Connectseeks to broaden the network of engagement and provide insight into MIT’s progress on sustainability. We invite the MIT campus community to join us. Seating is limited, so register today. We hope you can make it!
——————————
Kai-Fu Lee, Dertouzos Distinguished Lecture: The Era of Artificial Intelligence
Friday, May 3
11:00am to 12:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, Kirsch Auditorium, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
ABSTRACT: I will talk about the four waves of Artificial Intelligence (AI) , and how AI will permeate every part of our lives in the next decade. I will also talk about how this will be different from previous technology revolutions -- it will be faster and be driven by not one superpower, but two (US and China). AI will add $16 trillion to our global GDP, but also cause many challenges that will be hard to solve. I will talk in particular about AI replacing routine jobs -- the consequences, the proposed solutions that don't work (such as UBI), and end with a blueprint of co-existence between humans and AI.
BIO: Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures (www.sinovationventures.com/) and President of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, managing US$2 billion dual currency investment funds, is a leading venture capital firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the President of Google China. Previously, he held executive positions at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Dr. Lee received his Bachelor degree from Computer Science from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Honorary Doctorate Degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Times 100 in 2013, WIRED 25 Icons , Asian Business Leader 2018 by Asia House, and followed by over 50 million audience on social media.
In the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee built one of the first game playing programs to defeat a world champion (1988, Othello), as well as the world’s first large-vocabulary, speaker-independent continuous speech recognition system. Dr. Lee founded Microsoft Research China, which was named as the hottest research lab by MIT Technology Review. Later renamed Microsoft Research Asia, this institute trained the great majority of AI leaders in China, including CTOs or AI heads at Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Lenovo, Huawei, and Haier. While with Apple, Dr. Lee led AI projects in speech and natural language, which have been featured on Good Morning America on ABC Television and the front page of Wall Street Journal. He has authored 10 U.S. patents, and more than 100 journal and conference papers. Altogether, Dr. Lee has been in artificial intelligence research, development, and investment for more than 30 years. His New York Time and Wall Street Journal bestselling book AI Superpowers (aisuperpowers.com) discusses US-China co-leadership in the age of AI as well as the greater societal impacts brought upon by the AI technology revolution.
——————————
Rapid Climate Change: Evidence from Andean Ice Fields and Beyond
Friday, May 3
12:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State
Our tropical ice core program began in 1974 with a focus on the Quelccaya ice cap (Peruvian Andes) which we drilled to bedrock in 1983. The resulting 1500-year climate record provided the first evidence of the “Little Ice Age” in the southern tropics. Subsequent drilling projects on high-altitude glaciers in the central Andes, the Tibetan Plateau, southeastern Alaska, East Africa, and Papua, Indonesia have yielded climate records covering many millennia and some back to the last glacial cycle. Ice core-derived climate records from opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean show teleconnections between the Andes and Himalaya through processes involving the tropical Pacific atmosphere and sea surface temperatures. Evidence for a massive mid-Holocene drought occurs in many of these tropical cores. However, glaciers, which are highly sensitive indicators and recorders of climate change, are retreating due to the recent anthropogenic warming, often augmented by the effects of El Niño. Stable isotopic evidence of this warming will be presented, along with a discussion of new research on black carbon and microorganisms in ice. An overview of our upcoming expedition to Huascarán in northern Peru, one of the few remaining ice fields not yet dramatically affected by recent climate change, will also be presented. The present and future impacts of low-latitude glacier melting jeopardize countries with economies that rely on glacial streams and rivers. The loss of these mountain glaciers is likely to be a “threat multiplier” for growing geopolitical tensions in some regions.
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Contact Name: Kelvin Bates
Editorial Comment: The Kogi people of Colombia, a high mountain people, have been warning us since 1992 about this.
———————————
Managing high salinity brines from geologic carbon sequestration
Friday, May 3
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 48-316, Ralph M Parsons Laboratory, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Prof. Meagan Mauter, Carnegie Mellon University
Transformational changes are needed to sustain energy and water systems in the 21st century. From decarbonizing the energy sector to building a circular water economy, these systemic transitions will require large scale infrastructure design and technology innovation. This presentation will outline these associated challenges for managing high salinity brines from geologic carbon storage and discuss a framework for evaluating potential technology and policy solutions. By combining systems analysis and technoeconomic analysis, we find that the majority of saline brines produced during the carbon sequestration process will exceed 100,000 ppm total dissolved solids. Treating this water using state-of-the-art thermal methods, including mechanical vapor recompression and crystallization, would impose significant energy penalties and negate some of the benefits of carbon storage. Identifying the need for energy efficient high salinity brine treatment, we developed a novel, membrane-based approach for concentrating high salinity brines entitled Osmotically Assisted Reverse Osmosis (OARO). Finally, we perform a cost optimization of OARO configurations, demonstrating that while the cost optimal and energy optimal configurations are not equivalent for this system, the cost-optimal configuration for OARO dominates MVC on both cost and energy consumption metrics.
Environmental Science Seminar Series
———————————
Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods
Friday, May 3
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes UMass Lowell history professor ELIZABETH A. HERBIN-TRIANT for a discussion of her debut book, Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Threatening Property
White supremacists determined what African Americans could do and where they could go in the Jim Crow South, but they were less successful in deciding where black people could live because different groups of white supremacists did not agree on the question of residential segregation. In Threatening Property, Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant investigates early-twentieth-century campaigns for residential segregation laws in North Carolina to show how the version of white supremacy supported by middle-class white people differed from that supported by the elites. Class divides prevented Jim Crow from expanding to the extent that it would require separate neighborhoods for black and white southerners as in apartheid South Africa.
——————————
54th Annual Whitehead Lectures: What About the Workers?
WHEN Friday, May 3, 2019, 3 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Emerson Hall, Room 105, 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University - Department of Philosophy
SPEAKER(S) Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO 617-495-2153
DETAILS 54th Annual Whitehead Lectures.
Guest Lecturer Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
What About the Workers?
Lecture I, May 2nd, 2019: Why Work Matters
Lecture II, May 3rd, 2019: Work and Class
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University.
——————————
2019 Keynote: Hustle vs. Flow — Real Talk about the Real Entertainment Industry Pipeline
Friday, May 3
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT
The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
2019 Keynote (open to the public): Hustle vs. Flow — Real Talk about the Real Entertainment Industry Pipeline delivered by DMA, Director, Walt Disney Television Creative Talent Development & Inclusion from 5-6pm. Q&A to follow.
DMA is a veteran entertainment industry showrunner and executive and twice-patented tech entrepreneur, DMA designs and executes transformative gameplans for companies in media, tech, government, education and more. Over the past 20 years, she has helmed top-rated programming for CBS, Bravo, BET, A&E, TLC and more, authored two entertainment books that are taught in media programs nationwide, and championed inclusion across multiple industries, including her current role as Director of Walt Disney Television's Creative Talent Development & Inclusion team. She is a graduate, with distinction, of Stanford University and is an active member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Producers Guild of America and American Mensa. You can connect with DMA online on all platforms as @planetdma.
——————————
Discussion & Signing - Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health
Friday, May 3
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
In Well, physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health.
Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up.
The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine -- the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, and the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. While all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale.
Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character -- and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics.
About the Author
Sandro Galea is Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He has been named an "epidemiology innovator" by Time and one of the "World's Most Influential Scientific Minds" by Thomson Reuters. A native of Malta, he has served as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders and held academic positions at Columbia University, University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. At the time of his current appointment, he was the youngest dean of a school of public health in the United States.
——————————
TEDxCambridge 2019
Friday, May 3
7:00 PM
Citizens Bank Opera House, Boston
Cost: $65
This year's speakers span a range of disciplines and interests, from leading Diversity Scholar Anthony Jack, whose recent book "The Privileged Poor" has helped us all better understand the experiences of underrepresented communities in higher education, to Dorsa Amir, an evolutionary anthropologist investigating cross-cultural variation in the development of time and risk preferences.
More information at http://www.tedxcambridge.com
————————
Saturday May 4
————————
13th Annual Youth Summit on Climate Change
Saturday, May 4
9:00am to 3:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
We are very proud to host the 13th Annual Youth Summit on Climate and Sustainablity on May 4! This decade+ relationship is a cornerstone of our spring semester and an exciting way to connect with the youth of Boston/Cambridge and the metropolitan area. This year's theme is Facing Waste.
9:00am - 10:00am Registration/Check In
10:00am - 11:00am Welcome, Keynote Speaker
11:00am - 12:00pm Workshops
12:00pm - 1:30pm Lunch/Exhibitors/Activities
1:30pm - 3:00pm Networking, Next Steps, & Door Prizes!
Online Registration will open Friday April 12th
———————————
Hacking the Archive: Co-designing the next 50 years of social action
Saturday, May 4
9:00 AM – 5:30 PM EDT
MIT
Hacking the Archive is a hands-on civic adventure to uncover new ways to tell activist stories that have changed the city of Boston. Anchored by a unique partnership of neighborhood youth, area activists, college students and professional archivists, this project will prototype a street guide for progressive social movement building. Working on teams analyzing a range of historic social justice topics including racial desegregation of public schools, how to build coalitions, urban migration narratives and democratic economies, you will help blaze a new trail for future action.
Participation by INVITE only. Limited seats available on a first come, first served basis. Your eventbrite RSVP will alert the #hackorganizing team to review your request to be invited. Tell us about more you! https://forms.gle/ALjcAyKr62eauCxe8
Partners
MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab)
MIT Civic Media: Collaborative Design Studio
Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative
Boston Ujima Project
Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (Metco)
Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections
MIT Department of Urban Studies & Planning
Historic Boston, Inc.
UMass Boston Archives & Special Collections
Boston City Archives
Suffolk University Libraries & Archives
The Boston Foundation
*hack=shorthand for a creative solution to a defined problem
—————————
Water in Dedham - Past, Present and Future
Saturday, May 4
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
Dedham Historical Society & Museum, 612 High Street, Dedham
Join us on Saturday, May 4th from 9:30am -12pm as we explore the history and future of water in Dedham. Experts in the field will enlighten us on the history of New England's most prominent urban river, the Charles. Speakers from the Dedham Historical Society & Museum, Charles River Watershed Association, Neponset River Watershed Association, Dedham Westwood Water District, local high school students, Dedham Trails and L.L. Bean will reveal its past, present and likely future.
Once a haven for residents seeking respite from the City and a major source of recreation, the Charles River later became heavily polluted as a result of urbanization. Since the EPA launched its Charles River Cleanup in 1995, the river has come back as a place for recreational activity: in the past few years, Dedham has built 3 public canoe launches and created a 6.5-mile Water Trail, partnering with L.L Bean to get residents out on the water.
Our symposium on May 4 will also explore how extreme precipitation events and flooding in the future will impact the river and the town through which it flows. Immediately following the symposium, please join us at the Dolan Center Launch, 269 Common Street for a guided tour of the Charles River in Dedham by L.L. Bean. Please register for this tour at http://www.llbean.com
Please visit the following locations for historic and current photos of water in Dedham. The exhibit will run from mid April through mid May (exact dates to be announced soon) at the following locations:
Dedham Historical Society & Museum, 612 High St
Dedham Community House, 671 High St
Dedham Community Theater, 580 High St
Dedham Public Library, Main Branch, 43 Church St
Dedham Public Library, Endicott Branch, 257 Mt Vernon St
Dolan Recreation Center, 269 Common Street
MotherBrook Arts and Community Center, 123 High St
———————————
2nd Annual Poverty Teach In
Saturday, May 4
9:30 AM – 3:00 PM EDT
Thelma D. Burns Building, 575 Warren Street, Boston
Please join us Saturday May 4, 2019 for our 2nd Annual teach-in on poverty. This year we will focus on the factors of systemic education issues that contribute to poverty and other inequities. We will have a plenary session, workshops, keynote speaker, teach/talk back. Lunch is provided. Event is free of charge.
Goals:
Walk away motivated to do something
''Real Truth'' Turn experiences into Action (information=advocacy)
people+platform+education= informed community
———————————
Annual spring plant swap
Saturday May 4
12 to 2, Fayette Park (off Fayette Street), Cambridge
All gardeners welcome. We generally have perennials, seedlings, seeds, herbs, houseplants, catalogs, pots, and lots of "whatever." Rain date (in case of downpour): Sunday May 5, 12 to 2.
More info: Hmsnively@aol.com
————————————
TEDxHultBoston 2019: Global Experiences
Saturday, May 4
1:30 PM
Hult International Business School, 1 Education Street, Cambridge
Cost: $25 – $65
Theme: Global Experiences
Check-In/Arrival at 1:30 PM
Estimated Program Length 4 Hours
Post-Reception & Networking Event to Immediately Follow
Early Bird Ticket Prices Valid Through April 29;
Prices Increase April 30;
Ticket Sales End May 3
'Global Experiences’ will set the stage for an afternoon of sharing unique ideas, real-time exposure and awareness of global identity, design-thinking models - all from speakers coming from different walks of life. Our goal is to provide our audience members with an educational and inspirational experience and show them new perspectives of approaching situations in their daily lives. We hope to awe and stimulate powerful conversations and encourage the audience to focus on the bigger picture - our world.
Andrée-Anne LeBlanc
Sales Manager, LinkedIn
Delvina Miremadi-Baldino
Director of Education and Programs, Life Advantages
Chief Resilience Officer, Realize Your Resilience LLC
Derek Gwaltney
VP of Marketing and Business Development, Alchemy3
EMBA Candidate, Hult International Business School
Jazzmina Redondo
MIB Candidate, Hult International Business School
Michael Rolleigh
Professor, Hult International Business School
Nicholas Kelly
Chiesi/Snow Company and Dietitian, Grace Hospital
Nimmer Khokhar
MBA Candidate, Hult International Business School
Resham Sethi
Candidate for MA in Sustainable International Development, Graduate Research Assistant and India Initiative Associate at Brandeis University
Sean McDonald
Global Program Director
EMBA Candidate, Hult International Business School
Dr. Simone Xavier
Sigma Beauty co-founder/Veterinarian
Thomas Sullivan
My City at Peace, Founder
Professor, Hult International Business School
———————
Sunday, May 5
———————
Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
Sunday, May 5
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes celebrated feminist historian and biographer SUSAN WARE for a discussion of her latest book, Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Why They Marched
For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the many women who worked tirelessly in communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.
Ware tells her story through the lives of nineteen activists, most of whom have long been overlooked. We meet Mary Church Terrell, a multilingual African American woman; Rose Schneiderman, a labor activist building coalitions on New York’s Lower East Side; Claiborne Catlin, who toured the Massachusetts countryside on horseback to drum up support for the cause; Mary Johnston, an aristocratic novelist bucking the Southern ruling elite; Emmeline W. Wells, a Mormon woman in a polygamous marriage determined to make her voice heard; and others who helped harness a groundswell of popular support. We also see the many places where the suffrage movement unfolded―in church parlors, meeting rooms, and the halls of Congress, but also on college campuses and even at the top of Mount Rainier. Few corners of the United States were untouched by suffrage activism.
Ware’s deeply moving stories provide a fresh account of one of the most significant moments of political mobilization in American history. The dramatic, often joyous experiences of these women resonate powerfully today, as a new generation of young women demands to be heard.
———————
Monday, May 6
———————
Discuss Cryptocurrency Research with MIT's DCI [Breakfast]
Monday, May 6, 2019
8:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT
MIT, Building E15, Lower Atrium (Bartos Theater), 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
As part of Boston Blockchain Week, join MIT's Digital Currency Initiative, the academic community, and local cryptocurrency companies to discuss cryptocurrency research.
About this Event
In addition to our research, the DCI is helping steward the burgeoning field of cryptocurrency/blockchain technology. Later this year, we're starting a peer-reviewed journal and hosting an academic conference. As part of that process, we're excited to host this event to build more bridges with the Boston cryptocurrency community. Come here to share your research with like-minded computer scientists, economists, lawyers, and game theorists! In addition to DCI research scientists (Neha Narula, Tadge Dryja, Madars Virza, Rob Ali), we'll have folks from universities like MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc. and a variety of "research-based" cryptocurrency companies. Please stop by!
We'll discuss:
Your research! (We'll set aside most of the time for folks to connect, share, and co-explore their research questions.)
How to build blockchain/cryptocurrency technology into an academic field.
The "hot topics" in cryptocurrency research.
How academics and businesses can collaborate on research.
Note: A light breakfast and coffee will be provided. This event will occur in the Lower Atrium of E15.
———————————
Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate [PAOC Colloquium]: Inez Fung (UC Berkeley)
Monday, May 6
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
———————————
Data, Innovation, & the Future of Criminal Justice
WHEN Monday, May 6, 2019, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman 135, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Laurin Leonard and Teresa Hodge, Technology and Human Rights Fellows at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
DETAILS One-in-three Americans, 70 million, currently has an arrest and/or conviction record, and by the year 2030, that number is expected to be 100 million. When we look at the future of technology, we must begin fostering honest conversations regarding the role of innovation and data. Whether this be helping individuals with records move closer to the core of society or keeping them perpetually locked out of opportunity. In this discussion, we will explore the tension between advancing with future trends and maintaining a commitment to ensure that one-third of the population is included in the design of digital products and services. Participants will learn from a mother-and-daughter cofounding team with lived experience. Active dialogue is encouraged.
————————————
The Value of Electricity Reliability in India
Monday, May 6
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Harvard, Weil Hall, 1st Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Speakers: Shefali Khanna, PhD candidate, Harvard Kennedy School, and Kevin Rowe, PhD candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Lunch will be served.
Energy Policy Seminar
———————————
MIT Solve: Coastal Communities Workshop
Monday, May 6
4:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDT
Incubator at Sasaki, 64 Pleasant Street, Watertown
MIT Solve is a marketplace connecting innovators with resources to solve Global Challenges. MIT Solve's Coastal Communities challenge asks the provocative question: how can coastal communities mitigate and adapt to climate change while developing and prospering?
We invite you to the Incubator at Sasaki to hear from folks from the challenge's selected solutions and provide feedback. Spots are limited!
ISeeChange – Mobilizing communities to share microdata about climate impacts to better inform adaptation and infrastructure design
GreenStream – Low-cost distributed sensors to monitor and report on flooding to reduce safety risks and prevent property loss
GROW Oyster Reefs – Modular and scalable reef restoration solution to protect coast communities & ecosystems
Caras con Causa - Local community development through coastal ecology, empowerment, and education
CMTAS Yauco - Anaerobic biodigesters for economic development, public health, and food security
Shimmy Upskill – Upskilling garment workers for new jobs in the age of automation through digital pattern making and 3D modeling
The schedule is as follows:
4:00-4:15pm Guests arrive / networking
4:15-4:30pm Welcome by Sasaki Foundation Executive Director Alexandra Lee and intro by MIT Solve's Alexander Dale
4:30-5:00pm Teams pitch
5:00-5:30pm Breakout sessions
5:30-6:00pm Report-backs
6:00-6:30pm Networking
———————————
The Divestment Debate — A Panel Discussion
WHEN Monday, May 6, 2019, 4:15 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sever Hall, Room 213, 29 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Education, Humanities, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Universities: Past, Present, and Future
Mahindra Humanities Center
———————————
Valuing Nature in Real-World Decisions — with Gretchen C. Daily
Monday, May 6
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Livecast available
An Invitation to the 17th Annual Henry W. Kendall Memorial Lecture
Please join us for a thought-provoking evening with Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University Bing Professor in Environmental Science, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, co-founder and faculty director of the Natural Capital Project, and recipient of the 2017 Blue Planet Prize.
An awakening is underway, to the values of nature and the risks and devastating costs of its loss. Professor Daily will describe a powerful approach to valuing nature in policy and finance – using new forms of science, data, software, and engagement – that is driving change all over the world. The approach – developed by the Natural Capital Project at Stanford, together with many partners – is being deployed by governments, investors, businesses and communities. China and Latin America stand out today for innovation at scale, illuminating pathways toward green, inclusive development.
For more than two decades, Stanford University professor Gretchen Daily has pioneered the concept of natural capital, advancing science and tools together with decision-makers to integrate the values of nature into development plans. There is still a long way to go – but there has been stunning progress toward the transformation toward an “ecological civilization.”
Speaker: Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University
An ecologist by training, Professor Daily’s research spans biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and livelihoods; the production and value of ecosystem services for human health and well-being; and policy and finance mechanisms for integrating conservation and human development.
———————————
Towards Life 3.0 - Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century
WHEN Monday, May 6, 5:30 – 6:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Wexner 102, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Science, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Sushma Raman, Executive director, Carr Center
DETAILS "Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century" is a new talk series organized and facilitated by Mathias Risse, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration. Drawing inspiration from the title of Max Tegmark’s book, "Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," the series draws upon a range of scholars, technology leaders, and public interest technologists to address the ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.
Held on select Monday evenings at 5:30–6:45 p.m. in Wexner 102, and occasionally on other weekdays, the series will also be shared on Facebook Live and on the Carr Center website. A light dinner will be served.
———————————
FLASH TALKS: Probing The Future
Monday, May 6
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Cambridge Innovation Center, Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Doors open @ 6pm -- Come early and meet other Long Now thinkers -- Presentation starts @ 7pm
Long Now Boston presents selected
FLASH TALKS by members of the Long Now Boston Community.
FLASH TALK concepts will be original, interesting and designed to provoke discussion on science, technology, society or culture with a very long-term perspective, consistent with the aspiration of “striving to be good ancestors.”
Each FLASH TALK will be followed with a Q&A, and audience members will then be asked to vote for their favorite presentation. All FLASH TALK participants will join the final panel conversation and Q&A, after which the winner will be announced.
FLASH TALK proposals (limited to 100 word BIO and 200 word description) may be submitted by email to ggantz@longnowboston.org until April 11. Presenters will be announced on April 15.
Audience participation is encouraged, so bring your enthusiasm and your questions for a thought-provoking evening focused on the Long Now.
Join the conversation and be part of the solution.
Admission is FREE but tickets are required. Get a ticket HERE for attending the event and listening to talks.
Go to LongNowBoston.Org for details on how to present. We'd love to have you join us.
We’re proud and excited to welcome you to the Long Now Boston community.
——————————————————
Tuesday, May 7 – Wednesday, May 8
——————————————————
Amazonia and Our Planetary Futures: A Conference on Climate Change
Tuesday, May 7, 9:30 AM – Wednesday, May 8, 1:00 PM EDT
Harvard, CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
THIS EVENT WILL LIVE-STREAM ON FACEBOOK
Climate change is one of the most important long-term threats for the future of our societies. Solutions are complex, depending not only on engineering and policy, but also on imagination and public will towards alternative forms of inhabiting the planet. Latin America, home to the largest rainforest areas in the world, is both at risk of environmental catastrophe and a key region in which models for thriving bioeconomies based on rainforests can evolve. This symposium will bring together experts and leaders from the US and Latin America to discuss the past, present and future of Amazonia. We will discuss deforestation trends and their interactions with climate and health; how to move beyond our lack of imagination for viable futures, including the importance and role of indigenous peoples of the Amazon; and ongoing and emerging initiatives towards river-flowing, rainforest-based economies across Amazonia.
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2019
8:30am - Coffee & Registration
9:30am - Opening remarks by Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor (Emeritus); Museum of Comparative Zoology Professor (Emeritus)
Session 1: Forecasting land use, climate, and their interactions
Tasso Azevedo, General Coordinator, MapBiomas Initiative
Marina Hirota, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Federal University of Santa Catarina
Paulo Artaxo, Professor of Environmental Physics, University of São Paulo
Marcia Castro, Andelot Professor of Demography; Chair, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Moderator: Paul Moorcroft, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
12:00pm - Lunch Break
1:30pm - Remarks by Davi Kopenawa, advocate for the Yanomami people and the Amazon rainforest and author of The Falling Sky
Session 2: Imagining and creating futures
Eliane Brum, Journalist, writer
Luis Gilberto Murillo, former Minister of Environment, Colombia
Augusto Zampini, Theologian, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Moderator: Andrew Revkin, Strategic advisor for Environmental and Science journalism, National Geographic Society
WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2019
9am - Coffee & Registration
10am - Opening Remarks by Carlos Nobre, Senior Researcher, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo; Senior Fellow, World Resources Institute
Session 3: Towards a standing-forest, flowing-rivers bioeconomy
Brigitte Baptiste, Director, Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute
Beto VerÃssimo, Senior Researcher, Imazon
Daniela Baccas, Head of the Environmental Department, Brazilian Development Bank
Moderator: Robin Sears, Bullard Fellow, Harvard Forest
ORGANIZED BY:
Bruno de Medeiros, Postdoctoral Fellow, Climate Change Solutions Fund
Bruno Carvalho, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies; Affiliated Professor in Urban Planning and Design at the GSD; Faculty Associate, Harvard University Center for the Environment and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Brian D. Farrell, Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
————————
Tuesday, May 7
————————
Climate Risk and Finance
Tuesday, May 7
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building E62-250, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
Join us for this timely presentation and panel discussion on climate change risk and finance, featuring Dr. Blair Feltmate of the University of Waterloo and MIT Sloan’s Robert Pindyck (Finance and Economics) and Jason Jay(Sustainability Initiative).
Climate Risk and Finance
A warming climate and associated extreme weather risks (e.g., flood/drought, fire, hail, wind, extreme heat/cold, storm surge/sea level rise, etc.) can impact the operations and cash flow of companies spanning many, if not all, industry sectors. In some cases, these impacts could be material to the point of affecting the share price of a publicly traded issuer (e.g., through supply chain disruption), or the capacity of a borrower to repay a loan. Under these circumstances, it could be prudent for a portfolio manager to make adjustments to the weighting or inclusion of equities in a portfolio, or for a credit manager to adjust the credit rating of a borrower.
The fiduciary responsibility of institutional investors and credit rating agencies to account for material climate change and extreme weather risk impacts (“climate risk”) is not in question. However, despite the inclination that portfolio and credit managers may have to incorporate climate risk into investment/risk analysis, what is missing is a prioritization framework that identifies material climate risks that are specific to industry sectors.
This presentation will focus on how to develop an industry-specific climate-risk framework that will provide practical guidance to institutional managers and credit rating agencies.
Dr. Blair Feltmate
Blair is Head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at University of Waterloo. The Intact Centre is an incubator for research and knowledge mobilization, with an aim to limit the negative impacts associated with climate change and extreme weather events in Canada. The Intact Centre was made possible through the generosity of Intact Financial Corporation.
Previous positions Blair has held include Vice President, Sustainable Development, Bank of Montreal; Director, Sustainable Development, OPG; Partner, Sustainable Investment Group/YMG Capital Management; and President, Sustainable Systems Associates. His early career began by developing the sustainable development programs for such companies as Noranda, Falconbridge, Placer Dome, Barrick Gold, Consumers Gas and the American Chemistry Council (Washington).
He is Chair of theFederal Government of Canada Expert Panel on Climate Adaptation and Resilience Results, and he is Chair of the Adaptation, Canadian Climate and Clean Growth Institute. He is also Chair of the Electricity Transmission and Distribution Adaptation Standard, Canadian Standards Association (CSA); he serves on other flood mitigation Standards committees for CSA. He was Chair/Founder of the Sustainable Electricity Program, Canadian Electricity Association. Blair is also on the Advisory Board of the Global Risk Institute, which is a primary advisor to Canada’s major pension funds.
Blair has written textbooks on Sustainable Banking (University of Toronto Press), and Aquatic Ecology (CAB International). He is generally interviewed by TV/radio/newspapers 100-150 times per year, primarily on the subject of how to address climate change. He speaks regularly to governments (nationally / internationally) and industry sectors on the need and means to adjust to a changing climate.
Blair was an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow (University of Waterloo); he holds a Ph.D, Theoretical and Applied Ecology (University of Toronto); M.Sc., Zoology (U of T); M.A., Sustainable Development (Wilfrid Laurier University); Hon. B.Sc., Geography.
————————————
The E-Cigarette Dilemma: A Public Health Perspective
WHEN Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Leadership Studio, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
SPEAKER(S) Howard Koh, Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Robin Koval, CEO and president, Truth Initiative
Vaughan Rees, Director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Mitch Zeller, Director of the Center for Tobacco Products, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Moderator: Chris Kirkham, Enterprise Reporter, Reuters
COST Free webcast
TICKET WEB LINK https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4TOUj2RVNqsbbb7
CONTACT INFO theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Since their introduction, e-cigarettes have triggered controversy. Often touted as safer alternatives to regular cigarettes, e-cigarettes come with their own risks, including possible nicotine addiction. Use among youth in particular has increased dramatically, and the FDA has proposed tighter regulations in an effort to reduce teen use. In this Forum, experts will explore the perceived risks and benefits of e-cigarettes, asking how best to move forward while preserving past tobacco control successes.
————————————
Solve Transportation + Climate
Tuesday, May 7
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
DUSP Climate is a student-led, cross-cutting group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, dedicated to climate eduction, advocacy, and action.
DUSP Climate's lecture series 'What Should Cities Do?' is a series of events designed to explore how DUSP can change the way we work, research, and learn to further sustainable development goals and address our carbon impact.
————————————
Nanomaterials and Light: New Opportunities in Energy Research
Tuesday, May 7
3:30pm to 4:30pm
MIT, Building 6-104, Chipman Room, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
The Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Series presents Prof. Matthew Sheldon of Texas A&M University who will give a talk on "Nanomaterials and Light: New Opportunities in Energy Research".
Abstract
The central focus of research in the Sheldon Laboratory is to understand how the structural properties of nanoscale semiconductor and metallic materials can impart unique optical and electronic behavior, and to employ these attributes when they are advantageous for applications in solar energy conversion and more general optoelectronic and photoelectrochemical processes. More fundamentally, a unifying theme of the Sheldon Laboratory's work is the deep insights provided by analyzing the opportunities for nanoscale materials in terms of underlying thermodynamic concepts. In this seminar, Prof. Sheldon will discuss some of his recent breakthroughs in defining nanocrystal optical response, and plasmonic optoelectronic device design that exemplify how these materials enable new avenues for circumventing assumed thermodynamic limitations in optical energy conversion.
————————————
Solve at MIT 2019 - Opening Plenary
WHEN Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE MIT, Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Conferences, Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Information Technology, Science, Social Sciences, Sustainability, Volunteer Opportunities
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR MIT Solve
SPEAKER(S)Alaa Murabit, High-Level Commissioner on Health Employment & Economic Growth, United Nations; Sustainable Development Goals Advocate
Joichi "Joi” Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab, Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences
L. Rafael Reif, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Luis Alberto Moreno, President, Inter-American Development Bank
Lyla June, Poet, Musician, Human Ecologist, Community Organizer
Mark Reuss, President, General Motors
COST Free
CONTACT INFO For inquiries, contact Jenny Zhao:
DETAILS The world has made great strides over the last decade in reducing extreme poverty and expanding access to education and health care for millions, yet income inequality continues to increase between and within countries. A person’s zip code, gender, race, and nationality — rather than their talents — overly determine their opportunities. Technology holds great potential to speed progress; how can we design and deploy tech to reduce global inequality gaps — not exacerbate them?
LINK http://solve.mit.edu
————————————
How We Win: A Workshop with George Lakey on Nonviolent Direct Action
Tuesday, May 7
5:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Beacon Hill Friends House, 6-8 Chestnut Street, Boston
Cost: $10 – $100
This is a repeat of the sold-out March 30 workshop. This workshop is capped at 50 participants. We recommend purchasing tickets early as we expect this event to sell out as well.
In this participatory workshop led by social movement veteran George Lakey, participants will explore how to use direct action campaigns strategically, including:
choosing the right target
designing a creative campaign
avoiding burnout within your group
building a movement of movements to achieve real progressive victories.
Workshop participants who have read How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning will get the most out of the workshop, but it is by no means a prerequisite. Copies of the book will be available for sale and can be ordered at https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/how-we-win/ .
Bring a bag supper and eat in community together at 5:30pm, or arrive by 6pm for the workshop. Light snacks will be provided.
This event is cosponsored by Beacon Hill Friends House and the Boston Democratic Socialists of America.
Admission
Admission is on a sliding scale. Recommended range $10-$100; all donations gratefully accepted. Scholarships are available: please email program@bhfh.org. Advance registration is required.
About George Lakey and How We Win
“If you want to be a soldier, you can go to West Point. If you want to be a nonviolent change-maker-- well, this is an awfully good place to start. George Lakey has been near the center of American resistance for decades, and so he has both remarkable stories and remarkable insights—not to mention some remarkable colleagues who add their perspective to this necessary manual.”
-- Bill McKibben, co-founder 350.org
George Lakey, author of How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning, has led over 1500 workshops on five continents. He was first arrested in the civil rights movement and was a trainer for 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. In 2018 he was arrested campaigning for Power Local Green Jobs. In between he gave leadership to campaigns on neighborhood, city-wide, state, national, and international levels, including cross-race, cross-class coalitions and the LGBTQ movement. He co-led strategy workshops with César Chavez. He’s worked with labor unions, Mohawks, high school students, environmentalists, and the Puerto Rican independence movement. He also taught conflict studies at colleges and universities, most recently Swarthmore College, and authored ten books on how to bring about change.
————————————
Sheldon Krimsky: GMOs Decoded
Tuesday, May 7
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
The MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $0 – $19.96
Please join the MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming Professor Sheldon Krimsky to discuss his book, GMOs Decoded.
Since they were introduced to the market in the late 1990s, GMOs (genetically modified organisms, including genetically modified crops), have been subject to a barrage of criticism. Agriculture has welcomed this new technology, but public opposition has been loud and scientific opinion mixed. In GMOs Decoded, Sheldon Krimsky examines the controversies over GMOs—health and safety concerns, environmental issues, the implications for world hunger, and the scientific consensus (or lack of one). He explores the viewpoints of a range of GMO skeptics, from public advocacy groups and nongovernmental organizations to scientists with differing views on risk and environmental impact.
Sheldon Krimsky is Lenore Stern Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences and Adjunct Professor in Public Health and Community Medicine in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of fourteen books, including Science in the Private Interest and Stem Cell Dialogues.
————————————
The Green New Deal
Tuesday, May 7
6:00 PM EDT
Venture Cafe Cambridge, One Broadway, Cambridge
Cst: $8 – $12 (free if you use coupon code imin - as in "I’m in!”)
Join us on May 7th to talk about a big idea with high stakes - The Green New Deal. On Feb. 7th, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced H. Res. 109 to the House of Representatives and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced companion resolution S. Res. 59 in the Senate. There are now 103 congresspeople and counting co-sponsoring the resolution.
In the time since, there has been a lot of excitement and growing attention for the ambitious 10-year goals of the Green New Deal. Three months post-introduction, we gather at BASG to cover what's in the proposed program and how to get involved. How do we go from wave of enthusiasm to wave of action to address the economy, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, energy, equity, workforce readiness, and much more with a green lens?
There's a big gap between the goals and how to make them happen. Leading the charge in trying to see what a Massachusetts Green New Deal would look like is the volunteer network 350 Mass and their supporting nonprofit, Better Future Project. Using the same principles underlying the federal GND, they are trying to figure out what GND would look like at the state level. And they're coming to BASG to share their progress and hear ideas from us on how we might move things forward. BASG is a remarkable brain trust of folks actively trying to solve problems that should likely be part of the Green New Deal. The GND is built to inspire big ideas and solution, and in that spirit, our evening's format will be a highly interactive visioning session. We need you here this month even if it's the only BASG event you can get to this year!
We've also invited Representative Majorie Decker (D-25th Middlesex) and The Sunrise Movement Boston Hub to join the discussion. The Sunrise Movement is a grassroots organization of youth with a focus to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the influence of fossil fuel executives on politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.
Register early to join us for this evening. This will be the last BASG event before our summer break.
See you there!
Carol, Holly, Tilly, Eric, and Amy
——————————
Stepping Up: Business In The Era of Climate Change Part 4 (The Road Map Of The Future: Transportation)
Tuesday, May 7
6:30 pm
WBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.wbur.org/events/446272/stepping-up-the-road-map-of-the-future-transportation-part-4
Cost: $15.00
A five-part WBUR series in collaboration with Harvard Business School and Boston University Questrom School of Business
Business is the main source of the greenhouse gases that are causing the Earth’s climate to change. Business is also the main source of new products, services and business models that may save us from wholesale climate calamity. This 5-part series, featuring leading thinkers from business, environmental advocacy groups and area universities, will explore what businesses are doing, can do and should do to confront climate change.
In Massachusetts, the transportation sector generated more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector, and the pressure is on to make improvements. The specter of climate change is shaking up the business strategies of traditional automakers and giving a big boost to alternatives like peer-to-peer car sharing, biking, and scooters. What will the transportation system of the future look like? What are the barriers and how are upstart companies tackling them? How are big car companies responding?
Panelists:
Adam Gromis, Public Policy Manager, Sustainability & Environmental Impact, Uber
Kevin Butt, General Manager - Regional Environmental Sustainability Director, Toyota North America
Caroline Samponaro, Head of Bike, Scooter & Pedestrian Policy at Lyft
Moderator, WBUR Environmental Reporter Bruce Gellerman
Click the links below to purchase tickets to other events in this series.
Part 1: Open for Business?, March 5, 2019
Part 2: Food, Diet, and Climate, April 2, 2019
Part 3: Climate Politics and Business, April 22, 2019
Part 5: Energy Transitions, June 4, 2019
——————————
Getting to the Point: The Path to Affordable Housing in Massachusetts
Tuesday, May 7
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston
State and local leaders will discuss the housing challenges facing Massachusetts. How does the lack of affordable housing in the Commonwealth affect diverse communities? How does the housing crunch impact quality of life and economic growth in our region? How can the state work with cities and towns across the Commonwealth to create a sustainable housing market? Leaders will share how government and other stakeholders are working to address the need for affordable housing in our state.
Featuring:
Adam Chapdelaine, Town Manager, Town of Arlington, @AdamWChap
Rachel Heller, CEO, Citizens’ Housing & Planning Association (CHAPA), @CHAPAdotorg
Mike Kennealy, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts,@MassEOHED
Chrystal Kornegay, Executive Director, MassHousing, @MassHousing
Moderator:
Adrian Walker, Columnist, The Boston Globe, @Adrian_Walker
REGISTRATION & SEATING
Registration opens no earlier than 5:30 PM. Registration and doors close 15 minutes after the start of the program. Some seats have obstructed views. If needed, an overflow room will provide guests with a live stream of the program.
——————————
Dirt Rich: Discovering the power beneath our feet
Tuesday, May 7
6:30-9:00 pm
The Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Square, Somerville
Cost: $10
Farmers To You, along with cosponsors CitySprouts and Mothers Out Front, will host a screening of the film Dirt Rich at the Somerville Theatre. This provocative and moving documentary shifts the focus from greenhouse gas emissions to carbon drawdown as a clear and viable solution for reversing the effects of runaway global warming.
Immediately following the movie will be a panel discussion and Q&A with Greg Georgaklis of Farmers To You, Jane Hirschi from CitySprouts and Steve Keleti regarding MA Healthy Soils Bill.
Editorial Comment: There is a Soil Health Demonstration Trial authorized in Section 2307 (c) (7) of the 2018 Farm Bill. Contact Leslie.Deavers@wdc.usda.gov to request prompt implementation and full funding, at least the $15 million that was specifically appropriated for the Soil Health Demonstration Trail by the Senate.
———————————
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
Tuesday, May 7
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes New Yorker staff writer PETER HESSLER—acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones—for a discussion of his latest book, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution. He will be joined in conversation by MATTHEW BELL, correspondent for The World at WGBH Boston.
About The Buried
Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for the New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.
In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter's translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt's homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West's conventional wisdom.
Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity—the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time.
————————————
Surrogacy, Labor and the Abolition of the Family
Tuesday, May 7
7:00pm
Trident Books Cafe, 338 Newbury Street, Boston
Join Sophie Lewis and Moira Weigel for a wide-ranging conversation on the oppressive nature of the nuclear family, the contradictions of commercial surrogacy, and what to learn from the struggle for sex worker rights when fighting for the rights of all pregnant people, paid or unpaid.
About Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family by Sophie Lewis:
The surrogacy industry is worth an estimated 1 billion dollars a year, and many of its surrogates work in terrible conditions, while many gestate babies for no pay at all. Should it be illegal to pay someone to gestate a baby for you? Full Surrogacy Now brings a fresh and unique perspective to the debate. Rather than making surrogacy illegal or allowing it to continue as is, Sophie Lewis argues we should be looking to radically transform it. Surrogates should be put front and center, and their rights to the babies they gestate should be expanded to acknowledge that they are more than mere vessels. In doing so we can break down our assumptions that children necessarily belong to those whose genetics they share.
This might sound like a radical proposal but expanding our idea of who children belong to would be a good thing. Taking collective responsibility for children, rather than only caring for the ones we share DNA with, would radically transform notions of kinship. Adopting this expanded concept of surrogacy helps us to see that it always, as the saying goes, takes a village to raise a child.
About the Author
Sophie Lewis is a theorist, critic and translator living in Philadelphia. She publishes her work – on topics ranging from dating to Donna Haraway – on both scholarly and non-academic platforms including Boston Review, Viewpoint, Signs, Science as Culture, Jacobin, The New Inquiry, Mute, and Salvage Quarterly. Her translations include Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (MIT, 2016, with Jacob Blumenfeld), A Brief History of Feminism by Antje Schrupp (MIT, 2017), and Other and Rule by Sabine Hark and Paula Villa (Verso, forthcoming). A feminist committed to cyborg ecology and queer communism, she is a member of the Out of the Woods collective and an editor at Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry.
Moira Weigel is a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard Society of Fellows, the author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating and a founding editor of Logic magazine.
———————————
THE BURN ZONE with Renee Linnell
Tuesday, May 7
7:00pm
Trident Books Cafe, 338 Newbury Street, Boston
After seven years of faithfully following her spiritual teacher, Renee Linnell realized she was in a Buddhist cult and had been severely brainwashed. She had graduated magna cum laude with a double degree. She had traveled to nearly 50 countries alone before she turned 35. She was a surf model and a professional tango dancer. She had started five different companies and was getting an MBA from NYU. How does someone like her end up brainwashed in a cult?
Renee Linnell's The Burn Zone is an exploration of how we give away our power to others when we feel alone, lost, seeking, or doubtful of our self-worth--and a guide on how we can ultimately emerge from intense trauma stronger than ever. Part inspirational story, part cautionary tale, this is a memoir for spiritual seekers and those who feel lost in a world that makes them feel like they don't belong.
A cult survivor's story, The Burn Zone is filled with inspiration and encouragement for anyone struggling to find a sense of purpose, spiritual fulfillment, or the answers to their problems.
About the Author:
Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an Executive Masters in Business Administration from New York University. Currently, she is working on starting a publishing company to give people from diverse walks of life an opportunity to tell their stories. She divides her time between Colorado and Southern California.
****************************************
------------------------------------------------------
Links to events at over 50 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
MIT Events: http://calendar.mit.edu
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
