Watch the Baseball Playoffs
Itâs October and the most exciting time on the sports calendar has arrived â baseball playoffs. For the first time in a long while, of the two teams Iâm a fan of, neither are playing for a title in the fall. To the non-baseball aware, this means I am not a fan of the Boston Red Sox, who are sneaking into postseason play as the American League (AL) wild card. My situation is like many students in Boston, who come to school with a team (or three) to cheer on. Many of the uninitiated will leave Red Sox fans, and while that saddens my heart, at least thereâs another baseball fan out there.
This Is MIT?
I chose MIT because of the stories: the great cannon heist, the police car, the student-run live-action role playing club, the simple trust that was placed in the intelligence and competence of the students â in letting them choose their own living groups that kept up their own cultures, often decades old, in letting them have a voice in any decisions affecting them. I guess I was imagining a sort of Utopia â 5000 of the funkiest, most brilliant minds from the entire country and around the world molding a homeland of their own in which to learn and live.
The Institute of Perfection
I sat down on the end of a row just before the State of the Institute speech began, and quietly introduced myself to the woman next to me. She wanted to know what I was expecting President Hockfield to talk about. I guess I was expecting a mention of the supposed drop in student integrity, or the demise of the moral hacker, both of which were highlighted in that recent e-mail that caused such uproar among students. As I explained this, the woman next to me seemed surprised, and told me she was wondering about the status of the Stata leakage lawsuit.
Institute Wisdom Watch
<b>Chancellor Clay âcelebrates community traditionsâ by chastising hackers.</b> Cognitive dissonance much? â thumbs down
Preventing Binge Drinking
MIT has a lot of alcohol emergencies â or maybe not, if you compare it to some other schools. But the reason these details make me cringe is because I can guarantee that every one of these emergencies was pretty awful for those involved.
The State of the Institute Hacker
With President Hockfieldâs âState of the Instituteâ just passed, I felt that it would be appropriate to address the state of the Institute hacker, who is after all, a member of MIT belonging to myriad macro and micro communities.
Letters to the Editor
I couldnât agree more with Ethan Solomonâs article âTextbook Procurement Issuesâ in the Sept. 19 issue of The Tech â particularly the point about silly extra clicker devices that the students have to purchase.
This Isnât a Bailout â Itâs a Stickup
As of Sunday it appears that Congress will pass a Wall Street bailout bill with expenditures potentially totaling more than $700 billion. After a week of fear tactics put forth by the executive branch and the Federal Reserve, the Congress has apparently caved.
An Insiderâs Take on the Amethyst Initiative
Over the previous two years, retired Middlebury College President, John McCardell, has spent considerable time and effort to engage American colleges in a serious dialogue regarding the dangerous effects of high-risk alcohol use on campus. While the use of alcohol on campus is nothing new, the increased incidence of excessive alcohol use and its associated negative effects are considered significant problems within institutions of higher education.
SafeRide Improves Based on Student Input
Weâve all been there: waiting outside in a below zero wind chill for a Saferide shuttle that was scheduled to arrive ten minutes ago. We ponder the possibility of just walking, but quickly abandon the idea because of the time already sunk waiting. You try to call Shuttle Track, but that system is unreliable at best. Guess you are just going to have to suffer. Along with dining, it seems that Saferide improvements are a perennial issue here at MIT, but improvements to Saferide â largely the results of student input â over the summer have vastly enhanced our ability to get around campus.
Can âBetty Crockerâ Really Run the United States of America?
If McCain had thought that playing the âgender cardâ would benefit his campaign, he was wrong. What made Hillary Clinton a dependable and ideal candidate was not the fact that she was a woman. Merely glimpsing at her political track record, one can see that she has had significant exposure to the national political scene â both in the White House and representing New York in the Senate. Palin, on the other hand, is not only a poor choice for a candidate, she is also a poor representation of the 21st century woman.
Critiquing Steinemâs Take on Palin Pick
âShe nails it,â was the consensus between IrresistibleBitch, JellyBean and Meow85 regarding Gloria Steinemâs op-ed piece, âPalin: wrong woman, wrong messageâ published on Sept. 4 in <i>The Los Angeles Times</i>. The first place I spotted the topic under discussion was, oddly enough, in the Politics and Religion forum of the Prince fan site, <i>Prince.org</i>.
âThe Sale of Our Futureâ
$43 trillion is the total sum of our governmentâs future Medicare and Social Security obligations over and above its current ability pay. This represents an unimaginable load on future generations of Americans. Without action within the next few years overhauling both commitment programs, the burden of supporting these programs amidst spiraling debt will fall directly onto the workers of the future â you and me!
Letters to the Editor
<i>The Tech</i>âs headline piece on 19 September detailed one alleged âexcessive forceâ incident by the MIT police. Until recently, I would have given the police the benefit of the doubt in such matters. However, several recent incidents have changed my mind.
A Tale of Woe on Wall Street
This past week, the country sat in awe as the financial institutions of Wall Street tumbled into bankruptcies and takeovers. Lehman and Merrill Lynch are gone as we know it. AIG, once the worldâs 18th largest corporation, is about to be owned by the government, effectively nationalizing much of the insurance industry. The surviving financial institutions sat around the remains to reluctantly begin cannibalizing their peers in the form of easily-digested portfolios. The US government stood on the sidelines heaping great mounds of tax-paid monies where they could to ensure the banking system didnât collapse upon itself. To hear the possible outcomes â âworld-wide economic collapse,â âday of reckoning,â and âprobably once-in-a-century type of eventâ â is to imagine a future where we drive through modern-day Hoovervilles and surf the internet while sipping our hobo soups.
Understanding the âStreetâ
The previous two weeks have been called the most turbulent ever in Wall Streetâs 200 year history, and with good reason. Weâve witnessed the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the $85 billion dollar federal loan to AIG, and the pièce de rĂŠsistance, the Treasuryâs plan to purchase $700 billion in securities from troubled financial firms.
John McCain: Facts or Fiction?
In recent months, the McCain campaign has been undergoing a transformation. The honest, straight talking John McCain of the past has become little more than a slick, well oiled PR machine determined to get your vote at any cost. Letâs go over several statements by Mr. McCain in recent weeks. His âStraight Talk Expressâ has derailed as to create a moral quagmire of epic proportions.
CME: An Educational Adventure
Humans are generally stay-at-homes who enjoy their zone of comfort. Yet, what is the reason to stay physically close to this support system in a world where the West Coast is just as long of a trip from MIT as a flight over the Atlantic? Where my motherâs credit card works just as well abroad as it does in Boston ⌠? I was one of 25 MIT students who escaped the sphere of MITâs influence and homely support over the last year on a venture to the University of Cambridge, UK, as part of MITâs CME program.
Textbook Procurement Issues:
For a university that makes it seamless for students to get health insurance and dental insurance, and for a university that ensures thereâs an on-campus barber shop and optical center for our convenience, MIT cannot seem to make it nearly as seamless or convenient for us to get the textbooks we need.