Interview with Meredith Viera: On Alzheimer’s Advocacy and Journalism

Meredith Vieira is an award-winning journalist who has hosted various TV programs including The View, NBC News Today, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Meredith Vieira Show, among many others. Vieira has hosted major events ranging from the 2014 Winter Olympic Games to President Obama’s inauguration. She is also known for her extensive … Read more

Hackers at Harvard

  It’s Saturday evening. The science center is lit with fluorescent lights and humming with quiet energy. To my left stands table after table of tech booths, manned by caffeinated recruiters and filled to the brim with branded memorabilia. To my right are heaping boxes of ‘Noch’s, platters of Kong, and tubs of JP Licks. … Read more

One Orchestra: Music and Harmony on the Korean Peninsula

August 15, 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of a single Korea from Japanese colonization. On that day last year, a 70-person North Korean choir stood at the 38th parallel in Panmunjom, awaiting the arrival of a South Korean orchestra with which it would perform Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and a Korean folk tune, “Arirang.” The South Korean … Read more

Why Holistic Admissions Matter: Emphasizing Service in College Admissions

The modern university strives to assemble classes of students hailing from a variety of backgrounds and interests to create the “conditions for social transformation,” as Harvard’s mission statement imagines. Holistic admissions processes that assess character in addition to academic merit are vital to identify well-rounded students who can contribute to such a transformation. However, today’s … Read more

Rise of the Robotic Workforce

The press has recently been awash in stories of worker robots of ever-increasing ability making human labor obsolete. Is it true that we are approaching a future of a mechanized workforce where humans need not apply? Experts’ opinions on the future of technological development vary spectacularly, as do views on the nature and magnitude of … Read more

Food for Thought

Graduation caps had been tossed in the air, diplomas handed out, and students released for the summer. But for the IT department in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the work was just beginning. LAUSD’s cafeteria management system, which helps order food for schools and manages meal account data for over 640,000 students, needed … Read more

Polling Alone

The most exciting point of Panos Toullis’s work involved a late night of caffeine-powered data-hacking, when Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt sauntered into the room, nudged him on the shoulder and said something to the effect of, “You know, you guys are doing something new and innovative and something that people will be repeating over and over again from now on.” To … Read more

Crafts for Sale

Dreamy acrylic landscapes splashed on cloth canvases and boldly printed tablecloths hang on the walls and across the doorway, tinting the already dim shack’s interior a curious shade of amber. Around the small stall’s narrow corridor, all the surfaces and every square inch of floor space are crammed with a kaleidoscopic collection of crafts: decorative … Read more

Unicorns and Other Mythological Creatures

  In spite of recent legal troubles, six-year-old on-demand transportation network Uber is valued at a staggering $50 billion. Vice Media’s $2.5 billion valuation technically makes it worth more than The New York Times. And it’s only been two years since Evan Spiegel wisely turned down Facebook’s whopping $3 billion acquisition offer for Snapchat– the messaging … Read more

Free Trade: Not Everyone Wins

The past few weeks have been historic for U.S. foreign policy. In addition to a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran that has resulted in a potential deal limiting the country’s nuclear program, while the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, which has gained majority support in Congress, seeks to foster free trade among the nations of the Pacific. … Read more