On September 22, William Deresiewicz, the opinionated and controversial author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite, sat down for a question and answer session in Harvard’s Paine Hall. The atmosphere was respectable enough: on an elevated stage beside the scrawny, bespectacled bohemian sat three deans, one English professor, a recent Harvard graduate, … Read more
[SAN FRANCISCO] First came the gold-seeking 49ers, and then came the newly-minted computer science college grads. “We’ve been a city of innovation ever since the Gold Rush,” David Chiu, supervisor of San Francisco’s board of directors, declared at the Share conference in May 2014. Share, hosted in San Francisco, convened for two days to talk … Read more
Two years after Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) first emerged as free, online educational opportunities for the public, they are still a growing trend. Platforms such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX continue to add new courses, and participants continue to enroll in classes that feature university professors and industry experts as instructors. However, these courses’ strikingly … Read more
Fighting men have always sought to maximize the amount of violence they can exert relative to the risk they take on. This instinct inspires the continuous advancement of our weapons’ range, striking precision, power, and speed of action. The next stage in the evolution of weapons technology is now arriving: swarm robotics. Swarm robots will … Read more
“7 Kettles” is like my lullaby. It transports me from any state of depression or stress to one of calm. I can literally feel myself being carried up and away by the strings that comprise the song’s opening. The soothing guitar riff that permeates the whole song is not grounding so much as it is … Read more
West Africa’s current Ebola epidemic is the deadliest in recorded history. Since Patient Zero, a two-year old boy from rural Guinea, died in December of 2013, the outbreak has spread through the country and into Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, crippling already fragile healthcare infrastructures and garnering anxious international attention. The disease has no existing … Read more
By March 24, 2014, I had been embedded in the organization Divest Harvard for five weeks, and there was little sign the group was about to grow. Its members told me they’d congregated every Monday for a year in this sterile, broad-windowed room in Quincy House. Since mid-February, when I started attending, I’d seen no … Read more
Upon mention that Eminem was white, Dr. Dre famously remarked, “I don’t care if he’s purple, as long as he can rap.” His defense of Eminem’s ability in light of his race is notable: Hip-hop, a predominantly African American genre with ever-increasing nationwide popularity, presents a valuable opportunity to examine how racial tension still manifests … Read more
In 1932, a money-minded showman named George Preston Marshall bought a team called the Boston Braves in the young, developing National Football League (NFL). His second head coach hired in his second year of ownership—the team began the tradition of new blood under the headset each season much longer ago than many believe—was a man … Read more
Whack-a-Mole Baghdad, July 2007. The sound of gunfire coming from U.S. Apache attack helicopters echoes in the streets. They have sighted what appear to be insurgents. The helicopters target them from the air. A few seconds later, as the dust and smoke clear from the scene, the aircrews comment on their work. Oh, yeah, look … Read more