On rush and razors and yeshivas
One of Keynes’s less emphasized ideas was to make economists “humble” and “competent people, on a level with dentists.” In addition to macroeconomic forecasts, they could provide analysis to our day-to-day lives. Keynes’s idea, however, is objectionable on many levels. First, my personal experience with dentists has been one of arrogance and control rather than of deference to the patient. Second, in light of the economic crisis, many people would question if economists are even capable of competence; economists have already led the world into a major recession, imagine the carnage if they took control of our intimate surroundings too.
While Karachi slowly burns
In the game of geopolitics, Pakistan was dealt a terrible hand. It began its existence situated next to an aggressive and mortal enemy who, both in population as well as gross domestic product, outnumbered it by more than three to one.
Letters to the Editor
While there has historically been a degree of suggestiveness or double entendre in the entries of the Daily Confusion, we at East Campus felt that a number of the entries added by the Tech staff this year were highly inappropriate and damaging.
Welcome to MIT
There are always things you wish someone had told you earlier. This is especially true for a place like MIT, where you’ll likely be facing challenges you’ve never had to face before. But there’s also value in learning to how to deal with these challenges on your own. So without taking some of the mystery (and fun) out of your first year at MIT, here are some things we wished we knew for our upcoming freshmen years.
Letters to the Editor
<i>Samuel Markson is also an associate arts editor for </i><i>The Tech</i><i>.</i>
Leaving our children behind
<i>“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works... Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”</i>
A freshman’s guide to thriving at MIT
At this point, you’ve settled into your temporary room, semi-unpacked and probably eaten lots and lots of free food. If you’re hungry or have paid for food, you’re doing something wrong. Maybe you’ve gone to some “mandatory” Orientation events or you’re doing an FPOP. You’re meeting lots of people, staying up all night, and generally having a great time. And slowly, you might even be starting to believe that this is what MIT is like all of the time.
I Have Truly Found Paradise — now what do I do with it?
It feels a bit strange to write that September 8 will mark the third annual Wednesday that I walk down the Infinite to the requisite “first day of classes” buzz at MIT. Time flies when you’re having fun. Or, in our case: psetting, socializing, studying, exploring campus and city life, and discovering every possible iteration of “IHTFP.” Either way, I am officially an upperclassman, and as such, I’m going to give you ’14ers a bit of practical advice that I’ve accumulated from two, very busy years at the Institvte.
Build the NYC mosque
On August 3, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Society voted unanimously not to extend landmark status to 45–47 Park Place, formerly a Burlington Coat Factory, now a partially-damaged warehouse. As far as municipal law goes, the decision was as mundane and routine as handing out a parking ticket or issuing a liquor license — the warehouse, with its commonplace architectural style, simply did not offer a compelling justification for landmark status. And yet to hear many conservatives talk about the matter, it seems as if the Landmarks Preservation Society has dealt a death blow to the American way of life. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich claims that it will “encourage [radical Islamists] in their challenge to our civilization,” and Arizona Senator Jon Kyl writes that it will “risk giving militant Islamists a victory to exploit.”
Radically bitter tea
The tea party movement has come a long way since its inception. Emerging in 2009 as a reaction to bank bailouts and the looming health care reform, the movement originally appeared to be a highly localized and disorganized group angry with the increasing size, power, and spending of the federal government. They seemed to resuscitate the ghost of the old “states-righters” around the time of the Civil War. Due to the extremely localized nature of the movement, many believed that the party would quickly disintegrate. Unfortunately, they were wrong — instead of falling apart, it has mutated into a virus that is taking hold of many voters and Republican politicians throughout this country.
Tyranny of the majority in France
Legislation banning face veils from public, passed by the lower house of the French Parliament, is a sadly misguided attempt to maintain national identity. In reality, it promotes only xenophobia and religious discrimination.
Getting lost in <br />freshman advising
As the fall semester approaches and MIT’s Class of 2014 arrives, I feel obligated to discuss an issue that affected my experience as a freshman. The Institute can boast of an exemplary faculty, course selection, and student body. However, MIT’s freshmen advising program has not been impressive. In contrast to most schools, MIT offers freshmen the ability to choose between group and individual advising. Residence-based Advising (RBA) and Freshmen Seminar Advising (FSA) place students with a group of their peers and MIT faculty members, while Traditional Advising focuses on individual meetings with a specific faculty adviser. Whereas most schools assign hundreds of students to a few specialized counselors, MIT advisers are largely drawn from the normal faculty.
Free speech requires responsibility
Keith Yost misses the point in his column “Muhammad in a bear costume,” a thoroughly confused ramble that disguises prejudice in the guise of apparently reasoned discourse. He states up front that “I am not calling for offending for offense’s sake there is a reasonable argument to be had that responsible institutions should take measures, including self-censorship, to avoid inspiring animosity between Islam and the West.”
Check your intellectual freedom <br />at the door
In 1858, a relatively obscure lawyer named Abraham Lincoln ran for a U.S. Senate seat against Stephen A. Douglas, at that time the most powerful senator in the country. The two candidates agreed to a series of seven (seven!) three-hour-long (three hours!) public debates on slavery, each to be held in a different congressional district of Illinois. Although Lincoln lost the election, the debates and the publication of their transcripts brought him to national attention, and two years later propelled him to becoming the 16th president of the United States.
OPEN LETTER In preparation for MIT’s new campus centennial, <br />a modest proposal to Hockfield
<i>The following petition was sent to President Susan J. Hockfield on June 25, 2010.</i>
Muhammad in a bear costume
On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film director, author, and father, was shot and killed by Mohammed Bouyeri as van Gogh rode his bicycle to work. In the open air of the streets of Amsterdam, Bouyeri shot van Gogh eight times, attempted to decapitate him, and then finished by stabbing two knives into his chest, pinning there a 5-page manifesto threatening the lives of others, including a prominent Dutch politician.
The freshman experience
I remember falling asleep that first night after moving into my room. Music blasted somewhere in the distance, cars zoomed by across the river, and voices shouted and laughed outside as people walked by MacGregor House. It was a sharp contrast to what I was used to. Having grown up in Uxbridge, MA, a small town of 13,000, I was accustomed to far more natural sounds: the rustling of leaves as the wind swept through them. The chirping of crickets amid the buzzing of other insects. The gentle pattering of rain on the roof.
Where will you go from here?
In 1970, an American agronomist named Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize. His research on improving crop yields, a central component to what is commonly called the “Green Revolution,” has been credited with saving as many as a billion lives. If this estimate is an exaggeration, it is not a large one — at the time of Borlaug’s effort, the conventional wisdom of pundits, epitomized by Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb,” was that without significant population control, mankind was on its way to mass starvation. Though he achieved little fame or monetary reward, Borlaug may be the greatest humanitarian of all time.
Process is key for dining
For all undergraduates, including the majority who don’t live in dining hall dorms and have no direct stake in the costs of meal plans, MIT’s house dining program impacts more than just how they eat; it impacts their cultures, friends, and social habits. Changing house dining, a financial necessity, will alter or eliminate some long cherished traditions and replace them with new, potentially better ones.