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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Editor’s Note: This piece is a response to a New York Times op-ed written by Gerard Alexander on Aug. 7th. If you ask Jon Stewart, he will tell you: he is biased. He is certainly liberal (in the American sense) and has admitted to holding some socialist beliefs. If he lived across the Atlantic, Stewart would … Read more
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
The first time I heard a PSY song was probably sometime in middle school, during a family gathering where my cousins and I were lounging around the couch. The oldest one, two months my senior, pulled out his phone, and, as we waited for YouTube to finish buffering, promised us that it would be crazy—the … Read more