Category: Education

Some of the coolest cycling jerseys ever!

One of the two MIT cycling team jerseys signed by Nobel laureates and Turing Award winners
The MIT cycling team is auctioning off two signed jerseys as a fund raiser. But instead of getting them signed by atheletes as one might expect, they’re signed by a pretty nifty collection of Nobel laureates and Turing Award winners who currently call MIT home. They’re auctioning off two jerseys via eBay (here and there), and the auctions end on 30 Aug. Both auctions are currently under $2, which is pretty darn amazing for a jersey signed by such luminaries. So go bid quick in support of both cycling and science!

The signatories are Wolfgang Ketterle (’01 Nobel Prize in Physics), Robert Horvitz (’02 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), Ron Rivest (’02 Turning Award), Philip Sharp (’93 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), and Jerome Friedman (’90 Nobel Prize in Physics).

Thanks to my wondrous sister (both a scientist and cyclist) for the pointer.

Now I’m off to hear the welcome speech for our new students, the first such speech (at least here) for our new Chancellor. Should be cool.

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Death by PowerPoint…literally…

OK, I promise to stop with the PowerPoint bashing Real Soon Now, but the situation is just so terrible that it’s hard to walk away.

In reading this thread from Tufte’s Q&A thing (sort of like his blog), he points to this post from the Arms and Influence blog, which quotes Thomas Ricks’ book Fiasco. Apparently the geniuses in the Bush Misadministration have taken to replacing direct orders and clear plans with PowerPoint Phluff, leaving the well meaning folks at the Pentagon struggling to make sense of it all. Check out, for example, this truly wondrous bit of Phluff that purports to explain how something as complex as the occupation phase of the current Iraq war was going to work:
PowerPoint Phluff explaining how the occupation phase of the current Iraq war was going to work.
Ah, right. I know exactly what to do now…

It’s worth repeating the conclusion from the Arms and Influence piece:

The Iraq disaster did not happen because someone in the JTF-IV planning group or the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) couldn’t write a good PowerPoint presentation. The problem was that anyone used PowerPoint to plan a war. Ricks is absolutely right in saying that only the most careless individual, in love with information technology for its own sake, would misuse technology in such an obvious fashion. Unfortunately, these are the people who planned and executed the Iraq war, and many of them are still prosecuting America’s wars.

BTW, Ricks give an excellent interview on The Daily Show recently. I suspect that Fiasco would be a very worthwhile (if quite depressing) read. After a little skimming I also was surprisingly impressed by the Arms and Influence blog (the title didn’t seem like my cup of tea). His description of flying on the day when the “liquids plot” broke in Britain is thoughtful and retains an impressive sense of perspective under difficult circumstances.

Tags: technology

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