Health Care Policy and the Next U.S. Administration
In an energetic talk delivered prior to the U.S. presidential election, Jonathan Gruber provides a useful breakdown of the two candidates’ remedies for the nation’s troubled health care system. His detailed analysis of the key issues around health care may prove invaluable as the next president assumes office.
After
Financial Services: Prospects for Your Future
In a lively discussion with Simon Johnson,
Lawrence Fish deconstructs the near collapse of the banking system and points out the multiple factors that have contributed to the financial crisis.
Topics in the discussion include the banks that did not fail, how Canadian and other countries' banking systems
Creating a Game Plan for Transition to a Sustainable Economy
The “chief inspired protagonist” of one of the nation’s oldest and most successful green manufacturers apologizes for delivering a talk “more depressing than expected.” While discussing the challenges facing businesses attempting to transition to a more just and sustainable economy, Jeffrey Hollender enumera
Recent History of Boston Transportation
Frederick Salvucci’s perspective on transportation development is an amalgam of civil engineering, history, economics, policy, and not least, the direct impact on people’s lives. Here he surveys the evolution of transportation in Boston and beyond from the 1830s to the present.
Salvucci covers si
The Mysterious Field of Engineering Systems
One of the nation’s revered technology leaders dispenses anecdotes and wisdom on the slippery subject of engineering systems (or systems engineering). Norm Augustine just can’t get a handle on the discipline: “No one agrees on what it is, or what it does.” After years in industries like Lockheed Martin, Augusti
The Militarization of Science and Space
Chomsky launches a savage, two-pronged assault on national economic policies and efforts at “global domination….By now the stakes are so high that issues of survival arise,” says Chomsky.
The basic principle underlying our current economy is “to make rich people happy and make everybody else frightened.” Chom
Human Rights and Politics in Israel-Palestine
Human rights are central to the fraught politics between Israelis and Palestinians, these two panelists argue. Any conceivable solution to such an endless conflict must begin by acknowledging the current bleak realities of Palestinian life under Israeli rule, they say.
Anat Biletzki and the group B'T
The War in Afghanistan: How to End It
[from the MIT News Office]
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urges the Afghanistan government to consider bringing Taliban supporters into its political system, telling an MIT audience that the prompt pursuit of a political deal among Afghanistan’s warring factions is necessary to build a lasting p
Opportunities for Reducing U.S. Transportation's Petroleum Usage and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
While the U.S. has set formidable goals around cutting oil consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these will likely remain out of reach as long as we continue our romance with big, powerful cars, says John Heywood. This unshakeable passion, alongside the well-established habit of petroleum use, and the expanding
The Inner History of Devices
Contemporary science has done a great disservice to Sigmund Freud, suggests Sherry Turkle, who believes the psychoanalytic tradition can teach us much about the often concealed connections between physical objects and our thoughts and feelings. On the occasion of the publication of her latest book, The Inner History of Devi
How organisations work together to build a sustainable supply chain: The case of Nespresso
Executive Doctorate (DBA) alumna Gabriela Alvarez discusses the impact of the programme and her research with Toby Thompson. LinkedIn Profile: http://linkd.in/dHMAns
El Sistema: Social Support and Advocacy Through Musical Education
Even in the confines of a panel discussion,
Gustavo Dudamel radiates so much passion and ebullience that it requires little imagination to see him at the podium with a baton in hand. MIT’s 2010 McDermott Award in the Arts winner is, at the tender age of 29, one of the world’s top conductors and music disseminators.
Humanistic Approaches to the Graphical Expression of Interpretation
The session begins with brief introductory remarks by moderator Kurt Fendt. He points out the need for new tools that will examine data in meaningful ways through aspects of interpretation and visualization. Dean Deborah Fitzgerald emphasizes the importance of support for digital humanities and visualization interpretati
DBA supervisor perspective: The role of personal values as antecedent to management behaviour...
DBA supervisor perspective: The role of personal values as antecedent to management behaviour and performance in a tenanted pub retail business in a UK regional Brewer.
Prof Kim Turnbull James talks about the doctoral research of Dr Andrew Wood and impact that the Executive Doctorate (DBA) programme had on him.
Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq
The Bush administration began its “great misuse of history” shortly after 9/11, says
John Dower, when it seized upon Japan’s 1941 Pearl Harbor attack as a useful analogy, a way to promote its own invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation. Dower views as simplistic these “popular hooks to history
The Future of Digital Public Media
Public broadcasting executives and producers discuss their changing roles as digital technology transforms the news and entertainment industries, and provides individuals with powerful tools for shaping their communities. Moderator Jake Shapiro asks panelists to discuss ventures that illustrate new dimensions of public medi
Developing Future Leaders
If Woodie Flowers gets his way, students with the vision and initiative to change the world will be commonplace at MIT – rather than the extraordinary exemplars who speak on his panel: Elizabeth Basha, who’s developing an early storm warning system for rural villages in a Honduras river basin prone to
Where the Sun Shines, There Hack They
Even if the typical MIT hacker doesn’t qualify as a secret agent, he or she is to be admired for pulling off the collegiate world’s most surreptitious, elegant pranks, believes Jay Keyser. While Harvard students get a chuckle out of “putting panties over statues,” MIT students have placed a telephone booth and a police cru
China gateway
China Gateway is a collection of annotated gateways of relevance to undergraduate students and their teachers. Although primarily meant as a study aid for the students of Boston College, China Gateway aims to offer a concise introduction to the manner in which developments in the digital world have aided the study of Chinese culture and society. From the Culture and History section of the main page, users will find links to gateways (themed in sections), covering: geography and maps; language an
Village Works
From 1992 to 1993, women in villages of rural north west China were given cameras to record a year of their daily life, as pat of a women's reproductive health programme supported by the Ford Foundation. The resulting pictures not only formed an exhibition, but were used as prompts to discussions with officials on improving conditions in the areas involved. From the main page of the website, users can view a textual introduction to the project, and link to selected photographs, covering: work; f
