January 2011
46 posts
Friedman Event Postponed
February 3 Friedman event postponed
“Because there is no Planet B” — a conversation with Thomas Friedman, columnist for The New York Times — which was originally scheduled for Thursday, February 3, in Kresge Auditorium, has been postponed.
Due to breaking news in the Middle East, Friedman is unable to attend; plans are underway to reschedule the event, and a new date will be...
Shortening REX and why I think it's nonsense.
Ok, so I’m not usually particularly political, let alone MIT political, but I gotta tell you—the intended shortening of REX just makes me angry.
First, to summarize the proposal: MIT wants to delay the official time at which freshman are required to arrive to Monday afternoon. Housing re-adjustment lottery entries would still be due Tuesday evening—thus making REX (Residence...
Dear Google,
Thank you for being able to translate Portuguese. You are amazing.
Love,
Naomi
Olive rosemary bread is my new best friend.
Editing
Why do I get excited about a recruiting e-mail for contract-based editing jobs?
Dear self, do your own work. Love, Naomi.
Transportation Post #1 →
Ok, so I cheated and started early. But so did the conferences. If you’ve every wondered why at the train station in Zurich all of the trains arrive and depart together every hour or half hour on the hour, these guys can tell you. They came to MIT yesterday.
Also, I’m not entirely sure how to work this whole double-blogging thing, so just bear with me.
You know how I keep telling myself I'm going to...
Well, I’m going to write this paper about high speed rail and the interaction of multiple planning scales. But not tomorrow because we’re having a full-day workshop with SMA, a Swiss railway consulting firm. And I’m taking a intro to spatial statistics class. And going to hopefully buy a bike. And packing for DC. And planning my TRB schedule.
But yes, I’m going to write...
Blah Blah Blogging
thekeri:
misspants:
Looks like I will be the CEE student student blogger for TRB starting Sunday (the Transportation Research Board conference). I’ll post when I have the link.
Does this mean we get to hear all about your transportation-related feelings while you’re conferencing it up? Because if so, I’m already too excited for my own good.
Well, yes, that’s exactly what it means....
Blah Blah Blogging
Looks like I will be the CEE student student blogger for TRB starting Sunday (the Transportation Research Board conference). I’ll post when I have the link.
Farewell @mit.edu accounts.
I sincerely hope this expiration date won’t make people harder to find.
I have an addiction. I admit it.
D.I. McMillan: I'm charging you too! Aiding and abetting!
The Doctor: Yes, I'll just step inside this police box and arrest myself.
Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl! →
Can dogs learn grammar?
Actually the most interesting part of this was reading about the things that can go wrong with this type of work:
Haunting almost every interaction between people and animals is the ghost of Clever Hans, a German horse that in the early 1900s would tap out answers to arithmetic problems with his hoof. The psychologist Oskar Pfungst discovered that Hans would get the...
Awkward moment of today
I walk into the student lounge to fill up my water-bottle only to be stopped dead in my tracks by the sight a girl sprawled across the neck of the boy seated next to her. Once ascertaining that no, the Sussman lounge has not degenerated into a frat house, I tiptoed past the strangely arranged pair to the water cooler.
Remember grad students, we’re at least supposed to feign greater...
“Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
– Jane Jacobs, via William T. Bogart in Don’t Call It Sprawl
“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in...”
– Jobs, in a 2005 address at Stanford University, on calligraphy
via
Dear body,
I know you like vacation and all but was it really necessary to confine me to my bed from 10pm last night to 1pm this afternoon, thus preventing all productive work? You know it doesn’t count as vacation if you feel like shit, right?
Love,
Pants
Voting to create a new state. No big deal. (!!!!) →
Southern Sudan begins to vote on secession.
(Title adapted from Matt Goodman)
“The safety of the world depends on your saying ‘no’ to inhumane ideas. Standing...”
– Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in her 2009 commencement address at Scripps College. I don’t even know how to process what happened today. As a woman, as an American, as another human being I can’t even begin to fathom what would bring anyone to do this, let alone someone my age.
Today was an...
22. The shooter is 22 years old.
thekeri:
inthefade:
I don’t know why this floors me, but it does.
It should. I and most of my friends are this age. I can’t imagine any 22-year-old I know doing this.
“And we’re not being mean,” Mr. Hunter told a Tea Party rally in Southern...”
– Um, excuse me?
—attempts to deny citizenship to children born in the United States if their parents are illegal immigrants—
Go read the fourteenth amendment.
Weird. The taxi company knows my phone number and old address. Weird.